Well, I described a society that was built around a sense of community
in which the concept of community was extended by circumstance. The
circumstance had a lot to do with a common language. Yes, in various
primitive societies there was a lot of warfare over resources, but there
was mutual cooperation within communities. I was trying to say that the
limits of the community were most often defined by language barriers. If
you do not understand one another it is a lot more difficult to
establish a mutual beneficial community and so it is harder to
cooperate. The Australian example is most probably an example of both
what it was like before the language differences became so extreme and
it is also an illustration of how languages diverged too. If one
population can communicate with the next population which can
communicate with the next population, but distant populations cannot
communicate then what happens if the folks in the middle somehow get
wiped out? New communities and new nationalities come instantly into
being. It is interesting that Jared Diamond described something almost
identical when he proposed how the Japanese and Korean languages so
radically diverged. His proposition was that in the past the people
living in the southern part of Korea did become extinct and that led to
the Japanese language, which descended from the Korean language,
becoming more dissimilar to Korean than most Indo-European languages are
dissimilar to each other. Diamond did not get into the cultural
differences, but that is the explanation of that too. Once the
communities become apart from each other and unintelligible to each
other they continue to diverge. Other cultures may be hard to believe,
but they do exist. To claim that they seem like some garden of Eden
fairy tale is essentially ethnocentrism. It is also cultural myopia.
Guard against assuming that the way people do things in the narrow
confines of the people you personally know, in your local community or
your own culture milieu and in the confines of your own lifetime are the
only way things can be done. Remember that if an Australian aborigine of
a couple hundred years ago was told about how you live he would most
likely refuse to admit that it was possible too. He would say that it is
against human nature.
On 3/2/2016 10:34 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
OK. I guess that I doubt that given how people behave, it's actually
possible to have a society in which all people labor for the human good.But
in the kind of pre literate society that you're talking about, yes, everyone
had to participate in one way or another. But in many of these societies,
like the Native Americans, there were leaders and followers, and the groups
tended to attack other groups in order to capture their belongings and
sometimes, to enslave their members. And then, one has to consider just what
kind of labor is involved. The original Australians that you describe sound
absolutely lovely and sort of hard to believe, like The Garden of Eden
before Eve tasted the apple.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger Loran
Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2016 10:12 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: 'The truth will come out: Finicum was flat
murdered'
If you are not using the word class in the same way that I am then you are
talking about a different subject and using the same word to talk about a
different subject to someone who is talking about one subject at the same
time that you are talking about a different subject is a recipe for a
failure to communicate. Anyway, a classless society does not deny the
existence of leaders or even bullies. What makes preclass societies
classless is that all members of the community participate in labor and the
labor is conducted for the collective good of the community. It would be a
stretch of the definition of exploitation, but if there is any exploitation
of labor then it is a mutual exploitation. One feature of the Australian
social system before the European colonization is the lack of clear lines in
regard to where one community ended and another began. In most cases of
preclass societies the limit was the limit of language. Even in nearby New
Guinea there were and still are hundreds of languages in a very small area.
These languages were unintelligible to each other and effectively made a
barrier that defined the community.
There are a lot of indications that prior to ancient imperialist conquests
the proliferation of languages was similar over the entire planet. Of
course, the necessity of common origins of humanity means that even prior to
that there must have been only a few or even one universal language. The
linguistic distribution in Australia was a bit different, though, and may
well be closer to what the situation was prior to the extreme proliferation
of mutually unintelligible languages.
In one area the people spoke in the same way while just a few miles away
some of the words were different and inflections were slightly different,
but there was no problem in understanding each other. The neighbors were
considered part of the community and aided each other. A few miles further
along the people spoke a little bit more different from the first group and
less different from the second group and to the second group were no more
difficult to understand than the first group and so were treated as just as
much of the community as the first group.
The first group would have noticed more profound differences in their
speech, but would have had not much trouble understanding them while having
less contact with them. Then just a few miles even further away the same
kind of pattern was seen. Once you got about half way across the continent
the people would be speaking so different from the first group that they
would not be able to understand each other at all and so they would
effectively be speaking another language. But would it really be a different
language since each adjacent group would be able to understand one another
perfectly well? On the rare occasions that people from one side of the
continent interacted with one another they would have considered each other
to have been different communities and in the modern world would have been
considered to be of different nationalities. Nevertheless, each adjacent
group considered itself to be one community. They just lived in slightly
different areas. What this led to was that effectively the whole continent
was cooperating with each other for mutual benefit with no coercion and no
coordinating government. The whole continent was living in anarchy, the same
kind of anarchy that the anarchists advocate. It functioned because the
people of one locale saw each other as friends and neighbors and realized
that mutual cooperation with the people around oneself was beneficial to
oneself and the others too. They also had every reason to understand that
cooperating with the people over the hill was mutually beneficial too. That
is, they had mutual interests and few conflicting interests.
Then the Europeans showed up and started deporting their criminals into the
continent and insisting that the natives adopt the European culture or else
and that kind of messed everything up.
On 3/2/2016 9:28 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
I don't know anything about the social organization and culture of theThe power is never distributed equally.
indigenous population of Australia. But I do know how little children
behave in a play area. Some kids are more aggressive than others. Some
take toys from others. Some push others out of the way in order to be
first going down the slide. I suspect that those folks in Australia
had a power structure with some being the leaders or the elites or
whatever, even if that meant that they were the ones who decided how
the food would be divided up or how tasks would be allotted. I'm not
using the word, "class", in the precise manner that you are. But I am
saying that in any group of people, you'll end up with some
individuals who are more dominant, who are leaders in one way or another.
Miriamgoal.
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger Loran
Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2016 8:36 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: 'The truth will come out: Finicum was
flat murdered'
If you claim that the main barrier to a classless society is human
nature then you will have to explain all of the classless and
stateless societies that have existed. About the only way I can see
that you can do that is to exclude them from being humans. To pick out
just one example, I would expect that all of the people who are
descended from the residents of Australia before the European
colonization might rather object to such a characterization.
On 3/2/2016 10:59 AM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
I think the main barrier to a classless society is human nature, notanarchist.
the stae. But other than that, I suppose I could call myself an
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger
Loran Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2016 10:48 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: 'The truth will come out: Finicum was
flat murdered'
Anarchism and socialism are very similar. I have explained on this
list before that anarchists and communists have pretty much the same
...Anarchists just call that goal anarchy and communists call it communism.will gradually transform from a means of administering people into a
Both tendencies are for the eventual abolition of the state. The main
difference is that the anarchists see the biggest obstacle to that
eventual goal to be the state itself. They have the idea that class
society is caused by the existence of the state and that if the state
were abolished then class society would go away. Lenin's book, State
and Revolution, was mainly a polemic against the anarchists. He
argued that their stance that a classless society could be attained
by the abolition of the state would not work because those who had an
interest in the state's continued existence would just reestablish it
on the instant that it was abolished. I will counterpose scientific
socialism to anarchism now because even though I said that socialism
and anarchism are very similar it is more accurate to point out that
anarchists have always been considered to be socialists, just not of
the scientific variety. Scientific socialists hold that class society
causes the state, that the state is a way of regulating and
administering class relationships and that if class society is
abolished then the objective conditions for the continued existence
of the state will have been removed and the state will fade away.
That is, it
means of administering things.
By the way, it is important to remember that anarchists calltalking about and that Chuck does not know enough about it himself to
themselves libertarians. They were calling themselves libertarians a
long time before the right wing libertarians started calling
themselves libertarians. That is why I cringe whenever the word
libertarian is used on this list as if right-wing libertarian was the
only kind of libertarian. Insofar as they advocate the abolition of
the state or its minimization, though, the right-wing libertarians
and the left-wing libertarians, the anarchists, have something in common.
The main difference between those two camps is that the left-wing
libertarians are in favor of the abolition of capitalism and class
society in general and the right-wing libertarians are for the
elimination of the state, but have no problem with capitalism and
with class society in general. Still, though, there are a whole lot
of complete misconceptions at large about what anarchism is and,
unfortunately, that is true among a lot of people who falsely call
themselves anarchists. That is probably why Chuck says that all the
anarchists he knows seem so selfish. The point is that the people he
knows who call themselves anarchists probably do not know what they
are
recognize that.
On 3/1/2016 9:57 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:Re:
Emma Goldman was an anarchist. There's a book about her on BARD and
one on Bookshare. I haven't gotten through much but she sounds very
close to being a socialist.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger
Loran Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2016 9:21 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Re:
[blind-democracy]
anarchy.[blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Re:
[blind-democracy] 'The truth will come out: Finicum was flat murdered'
My comment about bringing on the anarchy was intended as a sarcastic
response to your elevation of property over justice for human beings
and the then disparaging indication that otherwise you would have
But, actually, I wonder if you have really ever known an anarchist.
Most of the people I have known who call themselves anarchists do
not know what they are talking about. I remember one who was a
singer in a punk band who called himself an anarchist and I asked
him which anarchist tradition he adhered to. He didn't seem to know
what I meant so I offered some suggestions, Kropotkin, Proudhon, Bakunin
who?
anarchist.He then said that he was not an old anarchist, he was a new anarchist.vote for Bill Clinton.
Then he threw around some words like death and destruction. I just
shut up having satisfied myself that he did not have the slightest
idea what an anarchist was. Then there was the woman who claimed to
be an anarchist and when I tried to explain to her where I thought
anarchist politics went wrong she also seemed to not know what I was
talking about and then went on to tell me about how important it was
to
The list goes on. There have been a few, though, who did adhere to
traditional anarchist collectivism. I worked with a man in the
anti-draft movement who was well grounded in anarchist politics and
history. At a later time I got peripherally involved in the defense
of a high school student who was expelled from school for being an
agitators.I had some conversations with her and while I found her a bit naivefact, anarchist philosophy is completely incompatible with selfishness.
she was definitely learning about and following anarchist politics.
Later she sued the school board and even though I was not present in
the courtroom I caught a report on television and was surprised that
my old comrade in the anti-draft movement testified as a friend of
the court and as an expert on anarchism. He turned out to be a
university professor by then. Since you describe the anarchists you
have known as selfish people I suspect that they were of the variety
who claim to be anarchists but do not understand what anarchism is.
And if you take their claims of being anarchists as good coin I
suspect that you don't know much about it either. I do happen to
have some very strong reservations about anarchism, especially the
position about abolishing the state by decree and the theory that
capitalism is a manifestation of the state rather than the state
being a manifestation of capitalism or some other class system, but
it is undeniable that many anarchists have dedicated themselves to
anarchist collectivism as both a revolutionary goal and as a way of
life. That is far from selfishness. In
On 3/1/2016 12:54 PM, Charles Krugman (Redacted sender ckrugman forfarmers.
DMARC) wrote:
what has anarchy ever done for people? The anarchists that I knowcops.
of are extremely self-serving and operate out of a very narrow
perspective, their own!
Chuck
-----Original Message----- From: Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted
sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 5:09 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Re:
[blind-democracy]
Re: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] 'The truth will come out:
Finicum was flat murdered'
Property before people? How capitalist. Bring on the anarchy.
On 2/23/2016 6:38 AM, Charles Krugman (Redacted sender ckrugman for
DMARC) wrote:
the real issue here is how one chooses to fight for injustice.
When one crosses certain boundaries such as property lines there
are potential consequences. We live in a society where anarchy
does not rule.
Chuck
-----Original Message----- From: Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted
sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Friday, February 19, 2016 8:31 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Re:
[blind-democracy] 'The truth will come out: Finicum was flat murdered'
And what does one risk when one chooses to not fight back against
injustice?
On 2/19/2016 9:26 PM, Charles Krugman (Redacted sender ckrugman
for
DMARC) wrote:
when one chooses to live as an outlaw and adopt the ways of the
wild west taking over property that doesn't belong to them they
run the risk of being killed or murderedd if one chooses to use
the melodramatic rflare.
Chuck
-----Original Message----- From: Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted
sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Monday, February 15, 2016 6:35 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] 'The truth will come out: Finicum was
flat murdered'
http://themilitant.com/2016/8007/800755.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 80/No. 7 February 22, 2016
'The truth will come out: Finicum was flat murdered'
BY SETH GALINSKY
Working people should denounce the cold-blooded Jan. 26 killing
of Robert "LaVoy" Finicum by Oregon State Police and the FBI; the
frame-up conspiracy charges against Ammon Bundy and others who
took part in the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife
Refuge; and the frame-up of Dwight and Steven Hammond, two Harney
County, Oregon, cattle ranchers, imprisoned for a second time on
the same bogus arson charges dating back to 2001 and 2006.
"The truth will come out. LaVoy was just flat murdered," Tad
Houpt, the owner of a small logging company, said by phone Feb. 7.
Finicum and Bundy were traveling to a Jan. 26 community meeting
that Houpt helped organize in John Day, Oregon, when they were
intercepted by the
Bundy initiated the refuge occupation Jan. 2 to draw attention
both to the frame-up of the Hammonds and to U.S. government land
policies that have been undermining the livelihood of ranchers
and
up.ranch.The persecution of the Hammonds outraged small ranchers and
farmers throughout the West - controlled burns are common to
control invasive plants and to prevent the spread of wildfires.
Despite serving the sentence imposed by the trial judge, the
Hammonds went back to jail Jan. 4, because of a U.S. Appeals
Court ruling that their sentences didn't meet federal minimum rules.
After the trial the U.S. Bureau of Land Management vindictively
revoked the Hammonds' grazing permits, threatening the survival
of their
Meanwhile, the Oregonian reported Feb. 6 that the scanty official
information and one grainy video released on the killing confirm
many aspects of the accounts by Shawna Cox and Victoria Sharp -
who were in the pickup truck driven by Finicum.
According to both of them, the cops first fired one shot at the
vehicle they were in after Finicum initially pulled over. Finicum
then shouted out to the cops, "I'm going to see the sheriff," a
reference to Sheriff Glenn Palmer of Grant County, who was also
scheduled to be at the John Day meeting and has been quoted in
the press as saying the Hammonds should be freed.
Finicum tried to drive away, but was soon forced off the road again.
The
Oregonian reports that the FBI admits lethal force was used when
the truck "approached the checkpoint," that is, even before the
vehicle crashed into the snow bank and Finicum gets out with his
hands
Much of the capitalist press justifies the killing and
prosecutions by labeling Finicum and Bundy as extremists and
outside
land policies."To his detractors," the New York Times said, "he was a
doctrinaire leader of an illegal protest that is deeply opposed
by many who live near the refuge." The paper conveniently leaves
out that most people in the area support the demand to free the
Hammonds and are sympathetic to their opposition to the
government
discussion.Many local residents visited the refuge, met Finicum and Bundy or
donated food and supplies to the occupiers.
Some 1,000 people attended Finicum's funeral in Kanab, Utah, Feb . 5.
While pretending to be objective, the Times' description of the
scene plays on many of its readers' prejudices. After the service
there were "cowboys on horseback and members of so-called patriot
groups wearing camouflage and carrying small weapons," it reports.
The Times did quote one rancher from Nevada, Diana Clark, at the
funeral. "All of us ranchers feel like we're backed into a corner,"
she said. "And it's hard to get anyone to acknowledge our needs,
and so they gave us a platform."
At least 22 smaller protests against the killing of Finicum took
place Feb. 6, from Florida to Washington. One common placard was
"Hands Up, Don't Shoot," a slogan first popularized by protesters
against police brutality after the killing of Michael Brown in
Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. At events in John Day and
Prineville, Oregon, dozens of local ranchers participated.
Meanwhile, federal prosecutors have now indicted 16 supporters of
the occupation with conspiracy to "prevent by force, intimidation
and threats, officers and employees of the United States Fish and
Wildlife Service . from discharging the duties of their office"
at the wildlife refuge.
The list of what the indictment calls "overt acts" to further the
conspiracy is proof itself that the prosecution is a frame-up.
The first "act" it lists is an Oct. 5 meeting where Ammon Bundy
warned Harney County Sheriff David Ward that if the Hammonds went
to jail there could be "extreme civil unrest."
Although the occupiers are not accused of pointing their weapons
at anyone, the indictment claims that they "brandished and
carried firearms." Oregon law allows the open carrying of firearms.
Bundy released a statement from prison Feb. 6, noting that the
occupation was civil disobedience. He encouraged those "who
disagree with my speech" or dislike his ideas to engage in civil
"If you do not advocate for government to tolerate ideas that it
hates, then the First Amendment and free speech mean nothing," he
said. "Arm yourself with ideas. . Argue and disagree. Be free."
Supporters of the Hammonds continue to organize. A new online
petition calling on President Barack Obama to free the Hammonds
had
3,341 signatures as of Feb. 9. The Oregon Cattlemen's Association
is asking that donations be sent to: The Hammond Family, c/o
Sandra Carlon at US Bank, 493 N. Broadway, Burns, Oregon 97720.
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