Fw: Re: law & economics & everything else...

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

[here's my reply to Jim...]



----- Original Message -----
From: "Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>


Ian writes:>And we wonder why so many young people are embracing
anarchism
and the autonomist wing of Marxism, with their call for the
dismantling - in word and deed- of the dyad of
legal/illegal..........<

these folks may have their emotions on their side, but getting rid
of the
"dyad" of legal/illegal (i.e., the state) is silly. Without a
state -- and
the concept of legal vs. illegal -- we can't have democracy.

===============

Hey, I'm the first to agree with that, but there are anarchists who
are not democrats and are resolutely anti-majoritarian. There even
seems to be a couple over at lbo. So how do we resolve the issue of
limited government so the State doesn't go authoritarian on us over
time with the simple accumulation of laws? [Despite itself]



Without democracy, we can't have socialism. (We might get it if the
working class
and other counter-establishmentarian movements had significant
power and
could replace the state with something else, but this isn't
something that's
likely to happen in the near future.)

I'm sure Ken Lay would love the idea of getting rid of
(il)legality. That
means that his lust for endless accumulation would face no limits
at all.
Getting rid of the state would mean that even more than usual,
might would
make right. -- Jim Devine

==============

Well maybe that's what some capitalist are constantly striving for
too, no? Simply buy from the State the policies you need so they
can't bust you for what you'd prefer to do anyway. Legality is seen
simply as a form of insurance.


Even with the current array of the State[s] system we have now,
those who like might still don't give a hoot about what's right.
What is right in an irreducibly pluralistic social system
anyway?[facetiously...]

**Additionally, I would say that on the intellectual/theoretical
front, at least on the West Coast of the US, two figures stand out
as Anarchists' heavy hitters. Even more than John Zerzan[the
primitivist guy], Hakim Bey [Peter Lamborn Wilson] and Chomsky.
They are: Murray Bookchin and Michael Taylor [Taylor teaches
polisci at UW]. Bookchin is arguably the most knowledgeable guy in
the US regarding the Spanish revolution; lot's of Taylor's students
and former students were banging drums and locking down streets N30
of '99. Michael Pugliese probably knows more about how things are
south of Eugene [San Fran, LA etc.]

When groups of young[er] people came to the planning meetings in
the summer of '99 with copies of Kropotkin's 'Mutual Aid' in theie
hands, stuffed with flyers that appropriated images from 'The
Matrix' and 'Fight Club' I knew it was going to be lots of
fun..............


Ian