Anarchy in the USA!

Anarchists , those fun-loving guys and gals who brought you such hits as "the battle in Seattle" and no WTO, are at it again. Yes-sir-ee.

This article is unintentionally funny, like a Lefty wearing an anti-globalisation t-shirt that was made in China that he bought for 10 bucks on some street corner just before the protest started.

I think that all talk of civil disobedience of this type would have the originators of that idea turning over in their graves. A nice dissertation topic for a political philosophy student might follow from this: The Changing Politics of Personal Liberty: Autonomy from Marx to Madness, Berkely University Press 2005

Since Marx argued for the idea that state not coerce anyone to do anything that he doesn't want to do, the etiology of the modern anarchists' belief system is well established. Problematically for both Marxists and anarchists, the idea of absolute autonomy is flawed in theory and practice. Theoretically, what if someone's idea of personal liberty involved the enslavement of others or constant warfare? Who adjudicates the conflict? Secondly, for practical matters, what is the incentive to be a garbage man or work for the sewerage and water board as a pipe-cleaner (an essential service to all societies)?

Maybe Barzun was right. We are decadent.

Definitions vary but most see anti-capitalism as the bedrock of their ideology. They question and disdain authority and hierarchal government as corrupting and intrusive in personal affairs. "Neither slave nor master'' is a common slogan.

Some are zealots [some? ed.]; others see anarchism as a way to raise awareness of problems like hunger, greed and materialism [How would uncoordinated effort achieve this? Isn't the very effort of uniting to do X (even without a nominal head) an effective acknowledgement that organisations are better at coordinating activities than are individuals? ed.].

"My guiding vision is a society without a state, but I am not necessarily a fundamentalist,'' said Meddle Bolger, 29, an anarchist from Sonoma County in California, who has led several San Francisco Bay Area demonstrations as part of Green Bloc, an anarchist group with an environmental bent. He said he is in New York now to take part in the Aug. 31 day of civil disobedience and rehabilitate community gardens in the South Bronx.

Chuck Munson, a 39-year-old anarchist in Kansas who runs the anarchist site infoshop.org, said he has observed more young people, particularly those once drawn to the "do-it-yourself politics'' of the punk movement, drawn to anarchism after the first Persian Gulf war and the fall of the Soviet Union.

After those events, "people saw the traditional radical left as not as relevant any more,'' he said. "I think it opened up interest in anarchism [like painting or poetry? ed].