Mutie lovers!

Anarchists ARE socialists...libertarian socialists, NOT authoritarian socialists.

When you fail to fight for power, you concede power to those who already have it.

When you fail to put your movement forward as the alternative to those who rule, most of your ranks choose to support the so-called lesser evil as the "real" alternative.

When you red-bait those who call for democratic socialism as AUTHORITARIAN socialists, you cut yourselves off from your true allies.

"When you fail to fight for power, you concede power to those who already have it." -

So the people in Argentina right now who are forming workers collectives to take over factories and neighborhood assembelies are not confronting power? Just because people are begining to refuse to work within the framework of the state dosen't mean that they are failing to confront power, it just means that they are confronting all power, whether it is manifested in the form of the state, or everyday interactions.

"When you fail to put your movement forward as the alternative to those who rule, most of your ranks choose to support the so-called lesser evil as the "real" alternative."

? Anarchists have always shunned the electoral system, and opted instead to work in their own communities to replace the state and capital in the here and now.

"When you red-bait those who call for democratic socialism as AUTHORITARIAN socialists, you cut yourselves off from your true allies." -

As modern activist circles are turning away from socialist parties, democratic canidates, small reforms, etc, and instead for anti-hierarchal, anti-authoritarian, consensus based, affinity group structures, spokescouncils, etc, it seem that we may not be gaining people openly calling themselves anarchists, but we certainly are gaining people acting like anarchists. (Even the values and structure that make indymedia work so well...)

Calling statist socialists authoritarian isn't distancing them, they are authoritarian. They want to take over an authoritarive body that would end up controling the miliarity, the police, the economic system, etc. They would have control over force and coersion, they would be authoritarian.

We don't have to distance ourselves from you, you do that yourself.

We need a grand theory of Global Resistance - And drafts will soon be out.

The context in Argentina is different than Iraq or in the core of evil the USA. We have to realyyyy think through our various strategies - In argentina anrchy is not very important as the road to power - there - as in Bolivia and Venezuela - workers really can soon sieze power and toatally reorient society.

In the US change is not possible and meaningful victory is unlikely. Politics, words and lifestyles are more than irrelevant - they only confuse the people who are potential allies and aid the enemy powers. All things in the US can only have value to the degree that they recruit revolutionary cells committed to hurting the beast...

SO it is fine to experiment with A or Green - or Direct Action (above -ground) but these are trivila and only propaganda of the deed - is likely to unify our forces to battle.

And so you will see! Even Naomi Klien - the ultimat sell-out Alternative - wrote an article in the NAtion last year about how the movement in Argentina has failed to explain or define itself enough and how it lost opportunities to advance its program and style of organizing -

The free tea is really good. Good honey, too.

it is good to see social spaces of this kind opening up, congrats to you all...aside from literature and tea that make up this infoshop, how will this physical space benefit the santa cruz "community," aside from the subcultural one of course? Will any type of people be able to use the space and feel welcome walking into it or will it remain exclusive for only certain types of people who call themselves anarchists? Just a random question, seriously, not meant to offend anyone or to cause chaotic out of control back-and-forth responses. Solidary, Jace.

jace,

i haven't been involved in the planning for the infoshop, and haven't visited it yet. but based on what i know, it is an open community space. you don't need to identify as an anarchist to utilize the space. that would be contradictory to what the infoshop (in my opinion) stands for. hope you get to visit it soon!

good luck with this one

infoshops in santa cruz are hard to keep open very long

santa cruz is such a nice place to be flaky

and such an expensive place to pay for space

and such a repressive place to make trouble

just keep trying!

"So the people in Argentina right now who are forming workers collectives to take over factories and neighborhood assemblies are not confronting power?"

Of course the Argentinean workers are confronting capitalist power. That is why revolutionary socialist groups such as the Argentinean Worker's Party play a key role in this movement. The current state of struggle, one that includes the seizure of these factories, however, cannot be sustained indefinitely without the seizure of worker's power. The current capitalist government of Argentina, ultimately is being pushed by the IMF and the Argentinean capitalist class for an extreme crack down on the worker's movement. The failure of that government to meet the workers needs coupled with the violence they’ve already dished out against the working class is far from any type of utopia. Argentina's problems can only be resolved through a workers seizure of power smashing the capitalist state and establishing a planned economy that can meet human needs.

While the Argentinean working class movement (especially its most advanced elements) correctly places the blame for the economic crisis on the IMF, World Bank, Argentinean capitalist class, and the capitalist government; the right-wing reaction blames the workers. The following solidarity letter I wrote to the Brukman workers about a year ago.

Dear Fellow Workers,

It is with sadness and anger that I have heard the reports of the brutal police attacks on 15,000 textile workers and their supporters at the Brukman factory in Argentina. The shooting of rubber bullets and live ammunition caused injury to 32 workers.

Among those shot, and shot in the face, is Vicente Balvanera. I know Vicente from his tireless activities promoting freedom for framed political activist Mumia Abu-Jamal in the United States, his involvement the worker’s struggle in Argentina, and his promotion of the struggle for the liberation of all humanity. Recently he joined us here in Santa Cruz at the memorial of comrade Evelyn Schoenfeld.

We here in Santa Cruz hope for the speediest recovery of those shot and beaten by the Argentinean police. We also demand the release of the 125 people who were arrested and call out for justice for those who carried out this crime.

The chaos of Argentina is the direct result of the failure of capitalism. Unemployed workers, facing the collapse of the capitalist economy and doing what is logical, have seized 100 abandoned factories that are now being run under democratic worker’s control. This provides needed production to meet human needs and curtails unemployment.

Yet the capitalists are insane, or so it would seem. Yet behind their every move against humanity is cold calculated reason. For the capitalists production without capitalist profit is treason. To them it is their God given right to make parasitic profit off of all of the labor of the working class or have no production at all.

So the capitalists sent their cops out against the workers with a court order stating, "There is no supremacy of life or physical integrity over economic interests." This death sentence issued by the courts luckily, but not luckily enough, only injured and maimed people, not murdering them this time. The repressive violence of the capitalist class against those standing up in the interests of humanity is typical, but not acceptable.

The people of Argentina have suffered so deeply under the dictatorship imposed under CIA Operation Condor (headed by George Bush Senior) from 1976 to 1983. That dictatorship left the mothers of the disappeared as the only ones to speak for justice for Argentina and for their dead and tortured sons and daughters. The people of Argentina should never have to endure that same capitalist and pro-imperialist dictatorship ever again. Yet the calls for law and order by present presidential candidates point to the same threat.

All events, past and present, point to the fact that the capitalist class of Argentina is not fit to rule economically, politically, or militarily. This points to the necessity of the working class to form armed militias of self-defense to defend yourselves and your factories against the capitalist class and build a revolutionary party for the seizure of power. The capitalists, if left to their military “solutions� of “law and order�, are already preparing to put another generation of leftists and workers to death.

IMF AND WORLD BANK OUT OF ARGENTINA!

CANCEL THE IMPERIALIST DEBT!

ALL POWER TO THE WORKER’S ASAMBBLEAS OF ARGENTINA!

In the deepest solidarity to the workers,

In the deepest loathing of the capitalists and their paid agents,

Steve Argue of the Peace and Freedom Party of Santa Cruz California.

Correction:

In reading over this letter I just noticed that I made a mistake on estimating the number of factories seized. Although 100 was correct at one time that number had risen to double that around the time of the letter.

It sounds like a really neat place.
check out this community center here in Dallas/Fort Worth www.1919hemphill.org

I post the following call for an April 1, 2004 demonstration against police repression and murder in Argentina to give a taste of the current situation under capitalist rule. As I've pointed out, the question of state power, worker's power, is critical for the survival of the worker's movement. -Steve Argue

Partido Obrero (Workers' Party, Argentina) Press Secretariat www.po.org.ar

Telephone: 54 11 4953-3824/7164 * Fax: 54 11 4954-5829 * Mobile: 54 9 11 4055-5424
Call Jorge Altamira, 54 9 11 4423-7873

Buenos Aires, April 1, 2003

Press Communiqué

Mobilization to the National Congress, April 1 at 7:00 pm.

The PO is mobilizing together with Family Victims of Police Murder "Familiares de Víctimas del Gatillo Fácil"

Trial and punishment for the murderers of Axel Blumberg

The Partido Obrero will participate tomorrow in the mobilization called by the father of the youth kidnapped and murdered, Axel Blumberg, which will take place April 1 at 7pm, in the Congress of the Nation, together with Family Victims of Police Murder, Zone North, where the greatest number of innocent people fallen due to the action of the security forces is concentrated. The Family Victims say: trial and punishment for those responsible for Axel's murder and for all of those fallen at the hands of the "easy trigger" [police murders], dissolution of the Buenos Aires police force, popular election of all judges by the people.

Behind the murder of Axel is to be found the complicity of the Buenos Aires police and the court system itself.

The Partido Obrero points out that the "iron hand" is already in force. The "iron hand" is applied every day by the Buenos Aires police by means of the 'easy trigger', the kids tortured inside the police stations, the murder of innocents. The prosecutors act without the intervention of judges as instruments of the police, just as Solá's "iron hand" law says they should.

I find that many people touting anarchist ideologies do not focus on the big picture. They shy away from activism if means having to deal with people that carry other politital ideas. I am involved with a group called Independant Texans that is a non-partisan organization working to create reform. We are trying to get Nadar and other alternative candidates on the ballot here in Texas. I think a good balance between community, state, and national activism is key especially at this point in time. I consider myself an anarchist, but cannot get so absorbed in it that I become unreasonable and inactive. Keep up the good fight! Peace.

you fuckin' rock! i'm gonna come drink some of that free tea, you'll see. my one critique, uh-oh, here it comes: get to know what the neighborhood there is about/like: the poor folk in the lower ocean area, the resource center for non-violence next door, former mayor chris krohn down the street on barson, the big park up the street on ocian view. not to endorse any of the above, nor castigate, just point out some opportunities for worldwide anarchist control of the world by 2005 starting with 509 Broadway. oh yeah, and watch out for those ranting ranters who give you a big headache and make folks want to avoid the place like The Plague!!@!! love 'n rage! xxooxyzpdq

anarkissed says, "oh yeah, and watch out for those ranting ranters who give you a big headache and make folks want to avoid the place like The Plague!!@!!"

This is a small town. Many of know each other. Who are these ranting ranters?

yeah for you ----
horray horray anarchist everywhere..say congrats!!

"I find that many people touting anarchist ideologies do not focus on the big picture."

So it's okay so focus on electoral politics and reforms, but it's bad to confront the very basis of what many see causing the problems in our world, ie capitalism, the state, unsustainability. And to confront this by doing things directly in your own community, how is this not the 'big picture'?

"They shy away from activism if means having to deal with people that carry other politital ideas."

I got into anarchism because the Green Party in my area didn't want me involved. I tabled for them, passed out things, fundraised, and they didn't like me because I mad to many "confrontational" ideas, and I was younger than all of them. I work with a wide range of groups, however, I can tell you that working within structures that are top down, and don't value all people's input can be off putting, and are in my mind, largely a waste of time.

"I think a good balance between community, state, and national activism is key especially at this point in time."

Kusinich was pretty much a green canidate. It didn't work, the democrats would rather have people vote just to get Bush out of office, than actually start picking people who represent more of a left stance, and get the Nadar vote.

"I consider myself an anarchist, but cannot get so absorbed in it that I become unreasonable and inactive. Keep up the good fight! Peace."

I don't see why not engagin in electoral politics, and insteading forusing on your immediate community, is "inactivitey".

calling yourself an 'anarchist' today is like calling yourself a 'witch' in the middle ages. what is the point? does getting burned at the stake help anything? you can be an anarchist and live like one instead of dying a martyr or going to jail like the so-called 'eco-terrorists'

The point of someone calling themselves an anarchist is to put forward and defend an ideology that they think will help create a better world. Bourgeois public opinion as created in the corporate media should not be the deciding factor in how we define ourselves. We should instead directly challenge those demonizations.

It is also worth remembering that the most demonized leaders and ideas are those that the people turn to in large numbers during revolutionary times.

I am not an anarchist, but I support the democratic rights of anarchists. As such I find the case of Sherman Austin very troubling and call for his immediate release.

The question of the Green Party is an important one and natural to come up in discussion about anarchism because many anarchists support the Green Party. I am also not a Green Party member and I do not see their party's electoral activity as an example of how to challenge the capitalist system. I do, however, appreciate the fact that they are challenging (to a degree) the Democrat Party in the electoral arena.

But the Green Party is not challenging capitalism. They are actually a capitalist party themselves. They're difference with capitalism as an economic system is only with its size. The Green Party advocates a society with an economy based on small businesses. Yet small businesses are often less efficient and more exploitative of workers than large-scale capitalist production.

The Peace and Freedom Party, as a socialist party, does not fight over which capitalists get to exploit us. We fight for a socialist planned economy that will be able to meet human needs and solve environmental problems in an economy not based on profit. We see that such a society can only be brought about through the struggles of the working class and its allies for power.

Here in Santa Cruz, Green Party member Tim Fitzmaurice rules as a city council member carrying out oppression against the homeless, socialists, and others that he and his fellow Democratic City Council members see as threats to business interests big and small. The Santa Cruz Green Party itself has done little to distance them selves from this oppressor who voted for the anti-homeless sleeping ban and the law against political tabling for over an hour downtown. Instead of opposing Fitzmaurice they have chosen to regularly publish his writings in their newsletter.

Another key difference between the Green Party and the Peace and Freedom Party is our positions on the right to bare arms. The Peace and
Freedom Party supports the right to bare arms as a fundamental right
of the people to defend ourselves from murderous government agents
whether they be the local cops, the FBI, or any other agency. We
also support that same right to defend ourselves from right-wing
paramilitary forces such as GOON death squads or the KKK.

Among other things, organizing unions to bring up the wages and
benefits of workers across the south often takes, and will take on a larger scale, a direct confrontation with the terror tactics of the KKK.

Those who think the working class should be disarmed while the government gets to hold on to the most sophisticated weapons on earth, have a dangerous faith in the capitalist government. Likewise, it is a mistake to think that we can end the evils of this system, evils from wars to exploitation and environmental degradation, through being nice to each other and building community and coming together on the liberal lowest common denominators that do not challenge the power of the capitalist political parties.

In response to an earlier posting, “Anarchist Infoshop Opening This Spring� I posted, “Congratulations on the opening of your Anarchist Infoshop. I wish you success. I hope there is also room for socialist ideas within the framework of your project as well.� I have not gotten a single positive response to this, so I can only conclude that I and other socialists are not welcome. Thanks for the warning, enjoy your tea, we will stay away.

Steve and others are quick to assume that they are "not welcome." One response to a previous posting complained of "anarchist infoshop dogmatism." This is an absurdity since no anarchists have posted anything here that could constitute "dogmatism," nor have any of them claimed to be involved in the infoshop project. Anyone is welcome to come to the infoshop and look at the literature available, talk to the people staffing, etc. It is, after all, a public space. But it will remain a specifically anarchist project because the people making it happen want it to be defined as such. Other groups and individuals not involved in the infoshop (whether anarchist or not) could collaborate on various projects with people involved in the infoshop if these various people decide they want to. There is no rigid organization involved that does not allow working with "socialists." However, it is true that anarchists tend not to be at all interested in perpetuating authoritarian institutions through electoral politics, and many anarchists do not feel they have as much common ground with "the Left" as is sometimes assumed. For those interested, there is an article entitled "Post-Left Anarchy: Leaving the Left Behind" by Jason McQuinn which I found interesting available at www.anarchist-studies.org/article/articleprint/43/-1/1/. I mention this because there seems to be a lot of confusion as to where anarchists are coming from.

It should go without saying, but on message boards like this it doesn't: The article I mentioned does not represent the ideas of all anarchists, it merely represents a viewpoint I sympathize with. Anarchists disagree
on many things, but they agree that all government is inherently oppressive and undesireable. For those who are interested, it would help to familiarize yourself with the different tendencies within anarchism. There is no Party Platform, as there is no Party.

Could you please read the following text from The Seatle Times, dated Sept 25, 2003:

Diebold insists its machines meet the security requirements of national and state certification and has dismissed as flawed a critical analysis by software experts from Johns Hopkins and Rice universities. (One of the study's authors later acknowledged he was on an advisory committee to Bellevue election-software company VoteHere and held VoteHere stock options.)

Critics of high-tech voting have questioned the propriety of Diebold Chief Executive Walden O'Dell's role as a prominent fund-raiser in President Bush's re-election campaign. O'Dell, whose company is marketing voting machines to its home state of Ohio, wrote to campaign contributors last month that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

---- Now that you read this important public information,
do you feel like affirming your Rights and creating a Santa Cruz militia to defend ourselves in the loss of democracy and establishment of Anarchy.

There are many things I like about Indymedia, but the post by Judasun is a good example of the sort of unthinking nonsense that people always post: "Now that you read this important public information, do you feel like affirming your Rights and creating a Santa Cruz militia to defend ourselves in the loss of democracy and establishment of Anarchy." If this is meant to be a question, I wonder how one could formulate an appropriate response. The nature of the confused syntax leads me to believe that the confusion doesn't stop there. The abstract affirmation of "Rights" coupled with the general vagueness of the whole posting makes Judasun's thinking (whatever it may be) fit in quite well with the rest of the naive liberal-left swill that gets posted on this site--the main purpose of which appears to be the clearing of guilty consciences. So onward, toward the "establishment of Anarchy"!

"Clarification", I think you would do better to be a little nicer to your fellow anarchists than you just were to Judason. I fully understood what their post was saying. As I see it nobody is born to socialist ideas and I see it as the duty of more advanced socialists to patiently explain our positions. I'm surprised that you do not have the same attitude towards your anarchist ideology. It is also interesting to see you dis Indy-media after they gave your anarchist info-shop article prominent display.

In response to Judasun I think that the establishment of armed working class militias for self-defense are a good idea and I will defend any unionists, left anarchists, or left socialists who do so.

As for "establishing Anarchy" I think we are more in a period of political education and agitation than any actual fight for revolutionary power.

Established anarchy is an interesting contradiction in terms, but I'll let the anarchists deal with that one. I advocate the establishment of a worker's government for socialist revolution that includes the democratic participation of the people.

lists.riseup.net/www/info/leonard_peltier
lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

I think we would need Judasun to tell us what s/he meant before labelling Judasun a "fellow anarchist." Aside from that, Steve's comment that I dissed Indymedia is misleading at best. I was referring rather explicitly to what people POST ON INDYMEDIA, not the existence of Indymedia itself. I re-used the phrase "establishment of Anarchy" because I thought it was funny i.e. I WAS JOKING. It seems like Steve may have read the essay I made a link to, since he refers to "left-anarchists" instead of "anarchists" in general as people he could support (Yet he still refers to my "anarchist ideology"-a minor point, I'll admit). As for a "worker's government for Socialist revolution that includes the democratic participation of the people," this is something that left-anarchists, if they are anarchists at all, should be against.

I use terms such as "anarchist ideology" and "left-anarchism" because I disagree with your points, not because I didn't hear them.

Perhaps you would rather lump yourself with those right-anarchists who carried out pogroms against Jews as they attempted to smash the Bolshevik revolution. I doubt you belong in that camp.

The fact that anarchists espouse an ideology and deny that they have one, this is obvious to most outside observers.

Your opposition to the establishment of a worker's government for socialist revolution that includes the democratic participation of the people, is part of your obvious ideology. Such ideologies are dangerous in that they can lead to a failure of the worker's movement to seize power at key junctures and subsequently lead to massive defeats of the working class.

Spain is a perfect example of this type of failure of the anarchist movement. Lacking their own perspective for seizing worker's power the anarchists joined the capitalist government in an ill-conceived attempt to defeat the fascists. This was at a time when the capitalist class was backing the fascists and the struggles of the working class had put worker's revolution on the agenda. Instead of putting themselves forward to lead the worker's revolution, the anarchists joined a capitalist government with no future while the Stalinists made similar mistakes. The Spanish revolution failed, not because the Spanish working class did not fight heroically, but because the revolutionary movement lacked the needed leadership.

Like the Spanish anarchists, the Zapatistas have failed in most of their objectives because they have refused to make their struggle one for power. Instead, they destroyed the momentum for revolution in 1994 by getting bogged down in useless negotiations with the Mexican government. Since then they have managed to sabotage their remaining revolutionary momentum by supporting the PRD (a capitalist party that came out of the long ruling PRI) and by failing to use their guns to protect the communities that have identified themselves as Zapatista from the government and its death squads.

To succeed, the struggle against capitalism must be a struggle for power.

lists.riseup.net/www/info/leonard_peltier
lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

When I have used the word ideology, I have not used it in the broadest (and largely useless) sense of meaning an individual's particular ideas and aspirations. I use it to mean "A set of doctrines or beliefs forming the basis of a political or economic system," but also any programs or abstractions that people place above their individual desires. I think this is as clear as I can be on this point. Anarchists who criticize ideology are not trying to say that they are pure and free from all of the prejudices of ideologies--especially those of the dominant culture, but that they are making a conscious effort to be critical thinkers who do not view the world through the narrow confines of an ideology. It seems obvious to me that developing a specific conception of the ideal social system (supposedly ideal for "the masses" or "the common good") and then trying to bring the world more in line with that particular form is far more ideological than the rejection of all social systems and formal organizations in favor of acting according to individual desires and aspirations--and developing theories and practices based on these desires. Whenever individuals are made subordinate to some collectivity, theory tends to become rigidified into ideology. Marxists have long argued that the anarchists in Spain should have "seized state power." Steve creates the false dichotomy of seizure of state power versus failure. If the intention of the anarchists was to create an anarchist social revolution, then allowing for the existence of any state power constitutes some sort of failure. The fact that influential militants such as Garcia Oliver and Montseney joined the Loyalist government shows the extent to which the CNT-FAI had become a thouroughly hierarchical organization managing revolt rather than encouraging it. Many in the CNT-FAI accepted the authoritarian logic that fighting for anarchist revolution would lead to "anarchist dictatorship." Social revolution had swept across much of Republican Spain without the support of the CNT-FAI. The official anarchist leadership had placed the war ahead of the revolution--and both were defeated. When the CNT-FAI leaders met on July 20, 1936, they decided the objective conditions for social revolution were not right. There are many things anarchists can learn from this, and that they should seize state power is obviously not one of them--that is something the Marxists will debate (not to say that Steve is a Marxist). To succeed, the struggle against capitalism must become a generalized revolt. Those who seek to manage that revolt have little affinity with those who wish to make it happen. All individuals must struggle for power--control over their own lives. To submit to powers outside of ourselves (the "needed leadership") is counter-revolutionary from an anarchist perspective. I hope this will clear things up. I know Steve disagrees, but hopefully he will appreciate my attempt at a coherent argument.

Steve, I noticed your Leonard Peltier link. It reminded me of an old essay by Russell Means If I may quote a bit,

So, in order for us to really join forces with Marxism, we American Indians would have to accept the national sacrifice of our homeland; we would have to commit cultural suicide and become industrialized and Europeanized. At this point, I've got to stop and ask myself whether I'm being too harsh. Marxism has something of a history. Does this history bear out my observations? I look to the process of industrialization in the Soviet Union since 1920 and I see that these Marxists have done what it took the English Industrial Revolution 300 years to do; and the Marxists did it in 60 years. I see that the territory of the USSR used to contain a number of tribal peoples and they have been crushed to make way for the factories. The Soviets refer to this as "the National Question," the question of whether the tribal peoples had a right to exist as people; and they decided the tribal peoples were an acceptable sacrifice to industrial needs. I look to China and I see the same thing. I look to Vietnam and I see Marxists imposing an industrial order and rooting out the indigenous tribal mountain people.

AIM did exactly what you suggest: took up arms against their oppressor. You are right that their main aim was not to seize power, but to decolonize the indigenous population. I have to admit that (looking beyond the hyperbole that Means so enjoys) that he has a rather compelling point -- authoritarian socialism and industrial socialism seem like just (not very) novel forms of oppression to the colonized. In any social movement I become involved with, I would like it to have room for the sovereinty of native peoples.

When I speak of leadership it does not mean looking for someone to follow. Leadership in the sense of the worker’s movement are those who teach, inspire, and organize for others to take the right kind of action.

If you read the platform of the Peace and Freedom Party, you will see that the rights of native peoples are an important part of our socialist platform:

"Native Americans

We support self-determination of indigenous peoples and sovereignty for Native nations. We demand:
· Honor treaty obligations with Native American nations and recognize California tribes.
· Stop the theft of natural resources located on reservation lands.
· Honor Native American water, hunting and fishing rights.
· Free the prisoners of the FBI/BIA war against Native Americans, end all harassment.
· Stop destruction of sacred burial sites."

The Soviet Union did make development in the poorer areas of the former Czarist Empire a priority. The centralized planned economy was able to make this a reality. Guaranteed employment, housing, education, and healthcare were one result. With this also came major advancements in the status of women.

This can be contrasted to Yugoslavia. Tito’s Partisan forces that drove the Nazis out of Yugoslavia were a successful unification of the regions ethnicities at a time when the Nazi’s puppet Ustashi Croat government had been carrying out genocide against Serbs and other nationalities. Yet Tito’s policies of market socialism failed to lift the poorer regions and nationalities at the same rate as improvements were being made for the traditionally better off Serbs and Croats. The regions that were poorer stayed that way relative to the rest of the country because resources for development were not distributed as part of a central plan.

Of course there are many in this advanced industrial nation who will argue that industrialization is the problem and not the solution. Yet people who are poor and hungry generally do not see things the same way.

A great tragedy of history was the plans of de-industrialization carried out from 1975 to 1979 by the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia. Influenced by ideas learned in western universities the Khmer Rouge leadership saw a return to an agricultural economy as the ideal. The horrible consequences included mass population transfers followed by mass starvation and the use of extreme brutality by the Khmer Rouge to maintain control.

The present day large population of the world does not allow us to go back on any large social level to the more primitive societies we come from. Any attempt to do so will be a repeat of the disaster in Cambodia.

Still, for many aware of environmental destruction and impending ecological catastrophes, industry itself does appear to be the problem. Added to this perception is the fact that most of the socialist economies, with the exception Cuba’s, have not been much kinder to the environment than the capitalist economies have been.

It is my argument that a planned socialist economy will give us the opportunity to make much better economic decisions based on human and environmental needs, but that will not necessarily mean that the best decisions will always be made. This is in contrast to capitalism where the best decisions can never be made because the profits of the market and corporate control of the government rule.

Yet to achieve the best decisions of how to run the socialist economy we will have to implement a true worker’s democracy with freedom of press and the right to organize opposition parties. Such democracy has not yet existed in the socialist countries because so far they have all been built on the flawed Stalinist model. In contrast, the Peace and Freedom Party advocates the preservation of the Bill of Rights as a major gain of the American Revolution and we fight to defend it and expand on it now and into the socialist future.

lists.riseup.net/www/info/leonard_peltier
lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

I am wondering why so many posts here from 'Steve Argue', arguing in favor of socialism, Peace and Freedom Party, etc.?

Isn't this topic anarchism? Why do socialists insist that 'Anarchists are Socialists'? This is absurd. The definitions of anarchism and socialism are easy to find in any dictionary. One is about state power, another is against state power.

There are many places to talk about socialism, why not leave anarchists to be anarchists, in peace.

THe greatest danger to all of our movements is the way we Anarchists, Socialists, Freedom Fighters etc descend like a mob on anyone who disagrees even slightly with any miniscule part of what we believe, or what our ideals are. I thought we wanted to 'change' the world...

I stopped in to the SC Anarchist Infoshop. IMHO, this is *yet another space* for the clique-ish, elitist, and marginalized anarchist sect that for years has done nothing in this town except whine and complain about other activists not being radical enough. Frankly, when I visited, I felt very unwelcome. I felt like I was viewed with suspicion. I understand your need to feel safe, but you are alienating people with this attitude of suspicion. Isn't the ultimate goal of our movements to recruit new people and grow? This space is not going to accomplish that. I've lived in this town for almost 12 years and have seen at least two "infoshops" come and go. This one won't last a year, I'd bet good money on it.