Also remmended from Indymedia.ie - a large collection of essays on policing: http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/wsm/crime.html

Hi Cael, Thanks for taking the time to get this going and apologies for not responding sooner. I’m a bit short of time and the extensive analyses from old Lenin is a bit daunting. Anyway, here’s something I cobbled together outlining some pretty orthodox anarchist ideas. 1. Anarchism, like republican, socialism, Marxism etc is such a broad term that it can encompass many different meanings. So, for example, organisations as varied as the IRSP and Fianna Fail claim the mantle “republican”. Similar is true of anarchism; there are organisations such as the WSM and then there are tendencies I would regard as pretty weird interpretations. I’m in the WSM so naturally I regard it as being a fairly old school version; essentially we’re in the same tradition as the Bakuninists of the First International, the Makhnoivists of the Russian revolution. Obviously, the world has developed a lot since then and the tradition has to keep up to date, but that is the core of our history. 2. The State is not an abstract problem. It is both a consequence of the division of society into classes and the maintainer of it. For example, see how quick the state was to jail bin tax protesters for breaking an injunction while Michael O’Leary escaped the same fate when Ryanair ignored the High Court and proceeded with disciplinary action against a worker. 3. Capitalism divides society into classes, those who own the wealth created by others is keystone of exploitation. The ruling class can use their wealth to buy access to the media, fund political parties, influential think tanks, raise mercenary armies (very useful in Africa for instance). The vastly unequal nature of wealth distribution is therefore self-perpetuating. 4. Some of us see anarchism as a development of classic 19th century republicanism (talking about what happened in Europe rather than Ireland). The core ideals of republicanism are good ones, but the repeated failure of its many revolutions to deliver a socially just society threw up questions about its strategic approach. Probably many republicans would now accept that a republic without a socialist underpinning (by which I simply mean an equitable distribution of wealth) cannot ensure meaningful freedom. This is because of the points raised above: those with the great wealth have way too much influence. Anarchists were part of the political development of this advancement of republican thinking in the 19th century. 5. However, the anarchists diverged from Marxism around 1872 over the question achieving a socialist republic. Incidentally, anarchists no longer use such phrases as in the public mind a republic is seen as type of state and that tends to lead to confusion. Anyway, Marxism emphasised the need for a political party, engaging with electoral politics (that’s what the Bolsheviks generally mean by “political action”), and the necessity for a revolutionary state. Marxists tend to use a minimal definition of a state: it is an organised body of armed men capable of supressing enemy classes. Anarchists, on the other hand, understood the state to be a top-down institution that has the monopoly of violence. Bakunin and the anti-authoritarian socialists at that time predicted that Marxist practice would naturally lead to the dictatorship of a particular *party* and that this would have inevitable consequences. This is a reasonably impressive prediction of what occurred in Russia, but I suppose the lessons were there from the Great French Revolution. Therefore anarchists advocate that instead of a state, directly democratic workers’ and neighbourhood councils be the sole power in society. We advocate therefore workers’ power. (Also, anarchists have a somewhat looser conception of workers than old Marx; we include rural peasants under that term – Marxist hostility toward the peasantry was not at all helpful during the Russian revolution). 6. What is the role of the anarchists? Bakunin advocated that anarchists should organise in specific organisations that are dedicated to spreading the ideas of libertarian socialism. In contrast to the Marxist conception of the political organisation, he (and successors like Makhno, Arishinov etc), did not support the strategy of the anarchist organisation taking power on behalf of the people – if it did it would be no more immune to the influence of power than any other political tendency. The workers’ councils should be the sole power in society. Anything else just leads to the recreation of the state with its upper echelons populated by the dominant party. Instead it should seek only to advance the anarchist idea of participatory democracy, the necessity of replacing capitalism and the state with libertarian socialist institutions etc. This anarchist tendency is called platformism, after a pamphlet written by Arishnov, Makhno and a few others and emphasises working in mass movements. This means working with people who *aren’t* anarchists – after all these are the people who you want to persuade. There’s no point in preaching to the converted. This is a bit different to what sometimes passes for anarchism in the English speaking world, but it’s fairly common sense really. 7. In northern Europe, after Bakunin’s death, anarchists became quite confused about these issues for about 20 years. In an overreaction against perceived Marxist authoritarianism, they retreated from political organisation per se and thus lost ground which is very difficult to recover. In places like Spain where this didn’t happen, the anarchists continued to be influential for decades, including during the Spanish civil war where many libertarian ideas were practiced. That shows the benefit of organising over a long period of time. It took three generations for the anarchist idea to grow from 19 or so blokes in a room to a movement that permeated Spanish so thoroughly that workers instinctively implemented many of its basic ideas in reaction to the Fascist uprising of 1936. The emergence of syndicalism elsewhere signalled anarchist reengagement with mass organisations and in many countries anarchist ideas regarding direct democracy, the need for a revolutionary overthrow of the state etc infused the labour movement. This is known as anarcho-syndicalism and there are a few such organisations still going, albeit as a shadow of their former selves. The biggest is the Spanish CGT which has around 50,000 members and gets around a million votes in the labour council elections there. The anarcho-syndicalists tended to not see the need for a specific anarchist organisation though which is the major difference with the groups like the WSM. 9. Finally, it’s worth pointing out that anarchism was developed as a solution to organising large scale societies in a just and democratic way. Whenever I see the Leninist blather about bourgeouis individualism I react the same way as I’d imagine republicans do when they’re referred to as mindless terrorists; these people have an agenda and it’s not one that includes having a respectful dialogue. Anyway, that’s a brief introduction to anarchism, as I see it. Here’s a longer article outlining some of the basics.

Anarchism, like republican, socialism, Marxism etc is such a broad term that it can encompass many different meanings. So, for example, organisations as varied as the IRSP and Fianna Fail claim the mantle “republican”. Similar is true of anarchism; there are organisations such as the WSM and then there are tendencies I would regard as pretty weird interpretations. I’m in the WSM so naturally I regard it as being a fairly old school version; essentially we’re in the same tradition as the Bakuninists of the First International, the Makhnoivists of the Russian revolution. Obviously, the world has developed a lot since then and the tradition has to keep up to date, but that is the core of our history. Would you regard other tendencies as missing that core and as anarchists in name only? The State is not an abstract problem. It is both a consequence of the division of society into classes and the maintainer of it. For example, see how quick the state was to jail bin tax protesters for breaking an injunction while Michael O’Leary escaped the same fate when Ryanair ignored the High Court and proceeded with disciplinary action against a worker. Agreed, is this in any way a sort of for the nation against the state(s)? or is the concept of nation against anarchist thought? For nation you can read people. those with the great wealth have way too much influence within Republicanism? How would you view Fenianism in that it went out of its way to ensure that all classes were 'targeted' (for propaganda/membership) and felt that all men regardless of background were worthy of respect provided they stood on the same political committement. anarchists no longer use such phrases as in the public mind a republic is seen as type of state But would not any sort of functioning body not be seen as a form of state then? Should it not be the idea of government but the way that it governs (or is set up to govern) that should be the issue. Small decentralised over monolithic impersonal should be what is aimed for. Anarchists, on the other hand, understood the state to be a top-down institution In your personal view would a form of governing as envisioned by the Eire Nua program be top down? Therefore anarchists advocate that instead of a state, directly democratic workers’ and neighbourhood councils be the sole power in society. What body if any would then laison or mediate between them? This is as far as I can see close to Eire Nua with its regional bodys down to 'community (parish' and village level). Only Eire Nua is also advocating a national body, not to interfer or overshadow but to assist.

Again, apologies for not responding sooner, am pretty busy just now. Anyhow... Anarchism, like republican, socialism, Marxism etc is such a broad term that it can encompass many different meanings. So, for example, organisations as varied as the IRSP and Fianna Fail claim the mantle “republican”. Similar is true of anarchism; there are organisations such as the WSM and then there are tendencies I would regard as pretty weird interpretations. I’m in the WSM so naturally I regard it as being a fairly old school version; essentially we’re in the same tradition as the Bakuninists of the First International, the Makhnoivists of the Russian revolution. Obviously, the world has developed a lot since then and the tradition has to keep up to date, but that is the core of our history. Would you regard other tendencies as missing that core and as anarchists in name only? Pretty much. Anarcho-syndicalism and anarchist-communists are the mainstream of anarchism who trace their history back to the First International. Also, there are obviously relevant influences from feminism which positively add to the libertarian movement. However, I personally don’t regard groups like the Catholic Worker or Green Anarchy as anarchist. It’s not a big deal though. If they want to claim it, then fine. Many of us just decline to accept their claim. Not something to get too worked up over. These things get decided through long term practice rather than through church like pronouncements. The State is not an abstract problem. It is both a consequence of the division of society into classes and the maintainer of it. For example, see how quick the state was to jail bin tax protesters for breaking an injunction while Michael O’Leary escaped the same fate when Ryanair ignored the High Court and proceeded with disciplinary action against a worker. Agreed, is this in any way a sort of for the nation against the state(s)? or is the concept of nation against anarchist thought? For nation you can read people. The concept of “nation” is a slippery one. Which people? What about the 100,000 Poles living in Ireland. The loads of Irish in Britain. Let’s expand it a bit and say it means a grouping of people who speak the same language and most of whom have some sort of recent common history. This doesn’t address the role of elites in constructing the concept of nations via heavy indoctrination and ethnic chauvinism, which in my view is an overlooked part of the history of nationalism. To me the local culture is about as important as people being into television soaps or heavy metal music. Obviously we are against people being persecuted because they are identified as members of a group, just as we are against persecution on the grounds of sex or sexuality. This is one reason why the WSM opposes western imperialism and its long history of oppressin of national groups. There is nothing fundamental about a nation (or tribe or ethnic group) that means that society should be cut up along national lines. Sometimes it might make sense, often not. I prefer to emphasise what ordinary people have in common the world over and that we should work co-operatively in running society on as wide a scale as possible over the concept of the nation-state. Traditional national differences should be as important as whether you prefer rugby over soccer. Great if you’re into them, no big deal if you’re not. I suspect this emphasis on national culture and, more importantly on its concomitant goal of national independence, is a major difference between republicans and anarchists. hose with the great wealth have way too much influence within Republicanism? How would you view Fenianism in that it went out of its way to ensure that all classes were 'targeted' (for propaganda/membership) and felt that all men regardless of background were worthy of respect provided they stood on the same political committement. They can only have the same political commitment if they have a common political program (i.e. goals and means to achieve it). I don’t really see how wealthy capitalists can have the same *interests* as ordinary working people. As classes (or groups) they *have* to be in competition with each other. A bigger slice of the cake for one results in a smaller slice for the other. This was exactly the problem that socialism was developed to address. And once people have different material interests, they will, on balance, require different political programs to fulfil their interests. That is, a political program cannot fundamentally unite the interests of the opposing classes. The reality of any unified program is that it is a cross class alliance that it is always at the expense of workers. So, no, I’d disagree with the Fenians’ approach. anarchists no longer use such phrases as in the public mind a republic is seen as type of state But would not any sort of functioning body not be seen as a form of state then? Should it not be the idea of government but the way that it governs (or is set up to govern) that should be the issue. Small decentralised over monolithic impersonal should be what is aimed for. Well, I suspect you’re referring to Eire Nua here, which I haven’t read (yet.....give me few weeks and I’ll be freer). But two things. Firstly, we don’t just want to organise society on a small scale. In order for a revolution to be successful we would have to organise on a continental scale. Anarchism is a set of ideas of how to go about doing this without facilitating the rise of a dictatorial elite. Secondly, the state is designed to exclude the population from participation in decision making via its hierarchical and bureaucratic system. Decisions tend to be made at the top of the hierarchy, naturally enough. But there are other ways of organising society than via the state, i.e. a state is not the only way of agreeing public policy, a set of rules, and a means to implement them. The generic term for such entities is a polity, and a state is only one form of a polity. I think that the identification of the state as the only possible way of governing society is fairly deliberate in that it means most of us aren’t even aware that a democratic alternative is possible. Anarchists, on the other hand, understood the state to be a top-down institution In your personal view would a form of governing as envisioned by the Eire Nua program be top down? I'll get back to you in a few weeks. Therefore anarchists advocate that instead of a state, directly democratic workers’ and neighbourhood councils be the sole power in society. What body if any would then laison or mediate between them? This is as far as I can see close to Eire Nua with its regional bodys down to 'community (parish' and village level). Only Eire Nua is also advocating a national body, not to interfer or overshadow but to assist. Good question on the linking between community and workers’ councils. I think ultimately that the social councils (comprised of working people) should be the ultimate power. Personally I think some of the ideas in participatory economics are a modern workable version of libertarian ideas. I don’t see any need to stop at a national border though. I’d say we’d need to go Europe wide, at least, in order to survive counter-revolutionary attempts that will be inevitably be backed by ruling classes elsewhere. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- BTW, a couple of anarchists who shifted from left republicanism to anarchism did so because they identified the hierarchical leadership structure as being an obstacle to achieving a free society. Perhaps this is obvious with the PIRA and its development under the control of Adams. I would like to know, though, what is it about other sections of the republican movement (i.e. those that agree with 32CSM or RSF etc) that would prevent the same from happening in the future. I ask because being loyal to principles such as abstentionism and being up front about it are unlikely to be enough. After all, O Bradaigh maintained his principles, but lost the vast majority of the movement to the superior manoeuvring of Adams and co. How do republicans propose to address this problem as it will always affect a movement – including an anarchist one if we grow - in serious conflict with the state? Speaking internally, our approach is to maximise democracy in the here and now so that an authoritarian culture cannot take root, thus inhibiting the rise of factions intent on attaining power for themselves. In practice this means the national decision making committee is rotated heavily, usually every month, and that delegates to it receive explicit mandates from their branches. This seems to prevent any group of people getting control of the decision making bodies and it has the bonus of giving members the experience of having to decide on serious issues. This also clarifies how we see our role: if participatory democracy is to become a reality, then people need to get practising it in the here and now. Anarchists need to push for these structures in all the campaigns that we are involved in. Sometimes of course, people are not persuaded to go this route, sometimes the they do. Nevertheless it’s important that the idea is advanced all the time, otherwise libertarian methods of organising become as distant a utopia as the Christian heaven. Once folks whose previous experience of political activity is of being a foot soldier for a distant leadership get used to having their input having as much meaning as anybody’s, it becomes a lot easier to persuade folks that a libertarian socialist society is feasible. Once this happens, they will become less reliant on a minority of cadres, whether they be members of a political party or of entities like a guerrilla army. Thus, the importance of manoeuvring to control these bodies becomes less worthwhile for the leadership inclined. What is the republican approach to organising in the here and now?

Paley's Watch, a chara, thanks for taking the time to post such a detailed and informative reply. There is very little I would disagree with in your post. As you suspected, it’s the question of the nation that will be the biggest difference for Republicans. I believe that the nation is a very important concept as is national culture. Its often been said that he who dosnt love all cultures loves none. I believe that we can only love each culture and language as a distinctive entity – so we don’t love the idea of culture, but love each really existing culture. I have no intention, at the moment anyway, of learning Tibetan or of practicing Tibetan customs, but I would feel the world a much poorer and colder place if Tibetan culture ceased to exist. So, I depend on Tibetan people to preserve and develop their culture so that both they and I can live in its richness. Likewise, they depend on me to preserve and develop the Irish language and culture so that they and I may live in its richness. To preserve a national culture and language requires, in my view, some kind of national political unit – a federation of workers councils seems like an excellent idea to me and is well in keeping with Eire Nua. Such a federation based on a national unit need not be a contradiction with Anarchist principals in any way. I agree with you that any revolution must be, at least, Europe wide – otherwise the revolution is likely to perish under the weight of Capitalist terrorism – but a Europe in the form of a democratic federation is much more likely to protect national identity and culture and to provide small enough democratic units to be practical. I read that many industries in Spain, during the civil war, were collectivised according to Anarchist principals. It was found that industry wide councils were required to prevent wasteful competition. At a national size, such industry wide councils make sense, but Europe wide – its just too large to be in any way democratic. Its also a factor that the revolution may be sparked off, by particular circumstances, in one country – even a small one like Ireland – and that a level of success may well spark off a continent wide revolution. This seems much more likely than the prospect of a simultaneous rising all over Europe. Just look at the opportunity the Irish people have now to reject the Lisbon Treaty and strike a blow for European democracy, when the rest of the population of Europe are not allowed to do so themselves. I agree totally that the top down structure of the Republican Movement in the mid eighties was a disaster waiting to happen. We now know that many of those Adams surrounded himself with were active British agents. In effect, all the enemy had to do was get its plants into leadership positions and it was game, set and match to the Crown. Many honest Irish Republicans were led away from the Irish Republic and into the English Monarchy. Its very true that if you look at all the defections of the 20th century, from Collins to Dev to McBride to McGiolla and Adams – they were all lead by a small elite acting against the principals and beliefs of the rank and file. I agree fully that the way to make sure this cannot happen again is to make sure that elites don’t have a chance to form. I suppose neither SWP or RSF are big enough at present to be in real danger from elites, but this may not always be the case. In my view, the very idea of leadership should be gotten rid of, at least leadership in the form of the big personality. Any leadership should be in the form of leading by example. People will notice good example without being prompted. I do think we need institutions like the Ard Chomhairle, but positions could be filled by lottery among the total membership. In this case every member (or in the case of society, every citizen) prepares himself/herself to be called on to fulfil this role. Direct Democracy is also essential. This already exists in RSF, as all policy decisions are made by the Ard Fheis. The idea of voting for someone else to rule you is a relic of the dark ages, its just another way of keeping the rule of kings alive (except that we vote for our kings.) I think, however, that for the RM it is a good thing to have elder, respected patrons like Dan Keating, who we can be sure will never stray from the true road of Irish Republicanism, will never put themselves before the cause, and who are an inspiration for the youth of Ireland. For me the big question about Anarchism is the army and police. These two groups have always formed themselves into extremely powerful vested interests in any society. Im sure that Anarchism does not envision the kind of brutish paramilitary police forces that we see in Europe today, but any kind of police force is going to gather a lot of power to it. We would also need an army, as capitalist states such as the US would certainly organise terrorist attacks against a democratic Europe, and perhaps even try an all out invasion to implement “regime change.” Again, an army powerful enough to deter the US would tend to become a massive vested interest. Its seems to me that you are always going to need some kind of overarching "state" to prevent the police and army going off in their own direction.

some other 'round the edges' reading
hi all sorry for irregular posts but really busy these days. id agree substantially with what has been posted by Paleys Watch. what i'd like to post though is on a sloghty different vain, as much of WSM's material readers can access pretty easily from their website. What i thought might be of interest of readers is some of the growing theories within the looser libertarian/anarchist alter globalisation movement. they dont nessecaryily reflect the totality of my own view but i found them interesting reading (infact the first one has a bit of post modern bullshit in it but worth the read all the same. Politics in an age of fantasy If progressives want to be a meaningful political force in the 21st century we need to start dreaming, argues Stephen Duncombe Reality, fantasy and politics In the autumn of 2004, shortly before the U.S. presidential election and in the middle of a typically bloody month in Iraq, the New York Times Magazine ran a feature article on the casualty of truth in the Bush administration. Like most Times articles, it was well written, well researched, and thoroughly predictable. That George W. Bush is ill informed, doesn’t listen to dissenting opinion, and acts upon whatever nonsense he happens to believe is hardly news. (Even the fact that he once insisted that Sweden did not have an army and none of his cabinet dared contradict him was not all that surprising.) There was, however, one valuable insight. In a soon-to-be-infamous passage, the writer, Ron Suskind, recounted a conversation between himself and an unnamed senior adviser to the president: The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernable reality.” I nodded and murmured something about Enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create reality. And while you are studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” It was clear how the Times felt about this peek into the political mind of the presidency. The editors of the Gray Lady pulled out the passage and floated it over the article in oversized, multi-colored type. This was ideological gold: the Bush administration openly and arrogantly admitting that they didn’t care about reality. One could almost feel the palpable excitement generated among the Times’ liberal readership, an enthusiasm mirrored and amplified all down the left side of the political spectrum on computer listservs, call-in radio shows, and print editorials over the next few weeks. This proud assertion of naked disregard for reality and unbounded faith in fantasy was the most damning evidence of Bush insanity yet. He must surely lose the election now. What worried me then, and still worries me today, is that my reaction was radically different. My politics have long been diametrically opposed to those of the Bush administration, and I’ve had a long career as a left-leaning academic and a progressive political activist. Yet I read the same words that generated so much animosity among liberals and the left and felt something else: excited, inspired … and jealous. Whereas the commonsense view held that Bush’s candid disregard for reality was evidence of the madness of his administration, I perceived it as a much more disturbing sign of its brilliance. I knew then that Bush, in spite of making a mess of nearly everything he had undertaken in his first presidential term, would be reelected. How could my reaction be so different from that of so many of my colleagues and comrades? Maybe I was becoming a neocon, another addition to the long list of defectors whose progressive God had failed. Would I follow the path of Christopher Hitchens? A truly depressing thought. But what if, just maybe, the problem was not with me but with the main currents of progressive thinking in this country? More precisely, maybe there was something about progressive politics that had become increasingly problematic. The problem, as I see it, comes down to reality. Progressives believe in it, Bush’s people believe in creating it. The left and right have switched roles – the right taking on the mantle of radicalism and progressives waving the flag of conservatism. The political progeny of the protestors who proclaimed, “Take your desires for reality” in May of 1968, were now counseling the reversal: take reality for your desires. Republicans were the ones proclaiming, “I have a dream.” Progressive dreams, and the spectacles that give them tangible form, will look different than those conjured up by the Bush administration or the commercial directors of what critic Neil Gabler calls Life, the Movie. Different not only in content – this should be obvious – but in form. Given the progressive ideals of egalitarianism and a politics that values the input of everyone, our dreamscapes will not be created by media-savvy experts of the left and then handed down to the rest of us to watch, consume, and believe. Instead, our spectacles will be participatory: dreams the public can mold and shape themselves. They will be active: spectacles that work only if people help create them. They will be open-ended: setting stages to ask questions and leaving silences to formulate answers. And they will be transparent: dreams that one knows are dreams but which still have power to attract and inspire. And, finally, the spectacles we create will not cover over or replace reality and truth but perform and amplify it. Illusion may be a necessary part of political life, but delusion need not be. Perhaps the most important reason for progressives to make their peace with the politics of dreaming has little to do with the immediate task of winning consent or creating dissent, but has instead to do with long-term vision. Without dreams we will never be able to imagine the new world we want to build. From the 1930s until the 1980s political conservatives in this country were lost: out of power and out of touch. Recalling those days, Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s senior political adviser, says: “We were relegated to the desert.” While many a pragmatic Republican moved to the center, a critical core kept wandering in that desert, hallucinating a political world considered fantastic by postwar standards: a preemptive military, radical tax cuts, eroding the line between church and state, ending welfare, and privatizing Social Security. Look where their dreams are today. Participatory Spectacle All spectacle counts on popular participation. The fascist rallies in Japan, Italy, and Germany; the military parades through Moscow’s Red Square; the halftime shows at the Super Bowl – all demand an audience to march, stand, or do the wave. Even the more individualistic spectacle of advertising depends upon the distant participation of the spectator, who must become a consumer. But the public in both fascist and commercial spectacles only participates from the outside, as a set piece on a stage imagined and directed by someone else. As Siegfried Kracauer, a German film critic writing in the 1920s about “the mass ornament,” the public spectacles that prefigured Nazi rallies, observed, “Although the masses give rise to the ornament, they are not involved in thinking it through.” Ethical spectacle demands a different sort of participation. The people who participate in the performance of the spectacle must also contribute to its construction. As opposed to the spectacles of commercialism and fascism, the public in an ethical spectacle is not considered a stage prop, but a co-producer and co-director. This is nothing radical, merely the application of democratic principles to the spectacles that govern our lives. If it is reasonable to demand that we have a say in how our schools are run or who is elected president, why shouldn’t we have the right to participate in the planning and carrying out of spectacle? A participatory spectacle is not a spontaneous one; an organizer… needs to set the stage for participation to happen. But the mission of the organizer of an ethical spectacle differs from that of other spectacles. She has her eyes on two things. First is the overall look of the spectacle – that is, the desires being expressed, the dreams being displayed, the outcome being hoped for. In this way her job is the same as the fascist propagandist or the Madison Avenue creative director. But then she has another job. She must create a situation in which popular participation not only can happen but must happen for the spectacle to come to fruition. The theorist/activists of the Situationists made a useful distinction between spectacle and situation. The spectacle they condemned as a site of “nonintervention”; there was simply no space for a spectator to intervene in what he or she was watching because it demanded only passivity and acquiescence. The Situationists saw it as their mission to fight against “the society of the spectacle,” but they also felt a responsibility to set something else in motion to replace it. “We must try and construct situations,” their master theorist Guy Debord wrote in 1957. These “situations” were no less staged events than fascist rallies, but their goal was different. The Situationists encouraged people to dérive – drift through unfamiliar city streets – and they showed mass culture films after “detourning” the dialogue, dubbing the actor’s lines to comment upon (or make nonsense of) the film being shown and the commercial culture from which it came. These situations, it was hoped, would create “collective ambiances,” which encouraged participants to break out of the soporific routine of the society of the spectacle and participate in the situation unfolding around them: to make sense of new streets and sights, look at celluloid images in a new and different way, and thereby alter people’s relationship to their material and media environment. As Debord wrote: “The role played by a passive or merely bit-playing ‘public’ must constantly diminish, while that played by those who cannot be called actors but rather, in a new sense of the term, ‘livers,’ must steadily increase.” Whereas actors play out a tight script written by another, “livers” write their own script through their actions within a given setting. The ideal of the “situation” was to set the stage for “transformative action.” Transparent Spectacle Spectacle needn’t pass itself off as reality to be effective in engaging the spectator. At least this was the hope of the playwright Bertolt Brecht. Brecht was disturbed by what he saw of the theater that surrounded him in Germany between the wars. With most theater (and movies and TV) the goal is to construct an illusion so complete that the audience will be drawn away from their world and into the fantasy on stage. This seduction is essential to traditional dramaturgy. First theorized by Aristotle in his Poetics, it stresses audience identification with the drama on stage: when an actor cries, you are supposed to cry; when he triumphs, you triumph as well. This allure is aided by staging that strives toward realism or captivates the audience with lavish displays of full-blown fantasy… Such drama “works” insofar as the audience is well entertained, but there is a political cost. Entranced, the audience suspends critical thought, and all action is sequestered to the stage. A “cowed, credulous, hypnotized mass,” Brecht described these spectators, “these people seem relieved of activity and like men to whom something is being done. It’s a pretty accurate description of the problem with most spectacle. As a progressive, Brecht was horrified by this response of the theatergoing audience. He wanted to use his plays to motivate people to change the world, not escape from it. He understood that no matter how radical the content of his plays might be, if his audience lost itself in the illusion of his play and allowed the actors to do the action for them, then they would leave their politics up on the stage when the play was over. Brecht believed that one could change the way drama is done and thus change its impact on the audience. Borrowing from the Chinese stage, he developed a dramaturgical method called epic theater. Central to epic theater was the Verfremdungseffekt, a term he mercifully shortened to the V-effect, which, translated into English, means roughly “alienation effect.” Instead of drawing people into a seamless illusion, Brecht strove to push them away – to alienate them – so that they would never forget that they were watching a play. To accomplish the V-effect, Brecht and others, notably the Berlin director Erwin Piscator, who staged many of Brecht’s plays, developed a whole battery of innovative techniques: giving away the ending of the play at the beginning, having actors remind the audience that they are actors, humorous songs which interrupt tragic scenes, music which runs counter to mood, cue cards informing the audience that a scene is changing, stagehands appearing on stage to move props, and so on. Brecht even championed the idea of a “smokers’ theater” with the stage shrouded in thick smoke exhaled by a cigar-puffing audience – anything to break the seamless illusion of traditional theater. While the function of the V-effect was to alienate his audience, it is a misreading of Brecht’s intentions to think that he wanted to create a theater that couldn’t be enjoyed. Nothing could be further from his mind. He heaped ridicule on an avant garde who equated unpopularity with artistic integrity and insisted that the job of the dramaturge is to entertain, demanding that theater be “enjoyable to the senses.” For both political and dramaturgical reasons he rejected the preaching model of persuasion; he wanted his audiences to have fun, not attend a lecture. Deconstructing the mind/body binary, Brecht believed that one could speak to reason and the senses. One could see through the spectacle and enjoy it nonetheless: a transparent spectacle. Brecht’s V-effect has been adopted, in some cases quite consciously, by some of the more theatrical activist groups. Recall the Billionaires for Bush. Wearing long gowns and tiaras, tuxedos and top hats, the activists playing billionaires don’t hope to pass themselves off as the real thing. Real billionaires wear artfully distressed designer jeans; these Billionaires look like characters out of a game of Monopoly. Because their artifice is obvious, there is no deception of their audience. They are not seen as people who are, but instead as people who are presenting. Because of this the Billionaires’ message of wealth inequality and the corruption of money on politics is not passively absorbed by spectators identifying with character or scene, but consciously understood by an audience watching an obvious performance. Furthermore, the spectacle the Billionaires present is so patently playacted, so unnatural, that the absurd unnaturality of a caucus of “people of wealth” advocating for their own rights is highlighted. This is, of course, what American democracy has become: a system where money buys power to protect money. This is no secret, but that’s part of the problem. The corruption of democracy is so well known that it is tacitly accepted as the natural course of things. One of the functions of the V-effect is to alienate the familiar: to take what is common sense and ask why it is so common – as Brecht put it: “to free socially conditioned phenomena from that stamp of familiarity which protects them against our grasp today.” By acting out the roles of obviously phony billionaires buying politicians for their own advantage, the Billionaires encourage the viewer of their spectacle to step back and look critically at the taken-for-grantedness of a political system where money has a voice, prodding them to question: “Isn’t it really the current political system that’s absurd?” The transparency of the spectacle allows the spectator to look through what is being presented to the reality of what is there. Unlike the opaque spectacles of commercialism and fascism, which always make claims to the truth, a progressive spectacle invites the viewer to see through it: to acknowledge its essential “falsity” while being moved by it nonetheless. Most spectacle strives for seamlessness; ethical spectacle reveals its own workings. Most spectacle employs illusion in the pretense of portraying reality; ethical spectacle demonstrates the reality of its own illusions. Ethical spectacle reminds the viewer that the spectacle is never reality, but always a spectacle. In this way, ironically, spectacle becomes real. Real Spectacle For spectacle to be ethical it must not only reveal itself as what it is but also have as its foundation something real. At this point it is worth reiterating my initial argument that to embrace spectacle does not mean a radical rejection of the empirical real and the verifiably true. It is merely acknowledging that the real and the true are not self-evident: they need to be told and sold. The goal of the ethical spectacle is not to replace the real with the spectacle, but to reveal and amplify the real through the spectacle. Think of this as an inversion of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s infamous case to the United Nations for war in Iraq. Armed with reasoned reports and documentary photos of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions, Powell employed the tools of fact to make the case for the full-blown fantasy of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. Ethical spectacle employs the opposite strategy: the tools of spectacle as a way to mobilize support for the facts. As such, an ethical spectacle must start with reality. An ethical spectacle must address the real dreams and desires of people – not the dreams and desires that progressives think they should, could, or “if they knew what was good for them” would have, but the ones people actually do have, no matter how trivial, politically incorrect, or even impossible they seem. How we address these dreams and desires is a political decision, but we must acknowledge and respond to them if we want people to identify with our politics. To engage the real as part of an ethical spectacle is not the same thing as being limited by the current confines of reality. For reality is not the end but a point of beginning – a firm foundation on which to build the possible, or to stand upon while dreaming the impossible. Dream Spectacle The poet Eduardo Galeano writes of utopia: She’s on the horizon… I go two steps, she moves two steps away. I walk ten steps and the horizon runs ten steps ahead. No matter how much I walk, I’ll never reach her. What good is utopia? That’s what: it’s good for walking. This is the goal of the ethical spectacle as well. The error is to see the spectacle as the new world. This is what both fascist and commercial spectacle does, and in this way the spectacle becomes a replacement for dreaming. Ethical spectacle offers up a different formulation. Instead of a dream’s replacement, the ethical spectacle is a dream put on display. It is a dream that we can watch, think about, act within, try on for size, yet necessarily never realize. The ethical spectacle is a means, like the dreams it performs, to imagine new ends. As such, the ethical spectacle has the possibility of creating an outside – as an illusion. This is not the delusion of believing that you have created an outside, but an illusion that gives direction and motivation that might just get you there. I would love to give an example of the ideal ethical spectacle, one which incorporates all the properties listed above. I can’t. There isn’t one. The ideal ethical spectacle is like a dream itself: something to work, and walk, toward. Progressives have a lot of walking to do. We need to do this with our feet on the ground, with a clear understanding of the real (and imaginary) terrain of the country. But we also need to dream, for without dreams we won’t know where we are walking to. Progressive dreams, to have any real political impact, need to become popular dreams. This will only happen if they resonate with the dreams that people already have – like those expressed in commercial culture today, and even those manifested through fascism in the past. But for progressive dreams to stand a chance of becoming popular, they, too, need to be displayed. Our dreams do little good locked inside our heads and sequestered within our small circles; they need to be heard and seen, articulated and performed – yelled from the mountaintop. This is the job of spectacle. Spectacle is already part of our political and economic life; the important question is whose ethics does it embody and whose dreams does it express. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Enclosing The Enclosers ‘They might have the strength to impose their will, but we will never give them our consent…’ Gustavo Esteva looks back at the Oaxaca uprising of 2006 and explains how the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca posits an alternative solution for governance From June to October, 2006, no police were seen in the city of Oaxaca, Mexico (600,000 inhabitants), not even traffic police. The governor and all of his officials were reduced to meeting secretly in hotels and private homes; none dared come to work. The Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) had continued sit-ins around the clock in front of Oaxaca City’s public buildings, as well as in the private and public radio and television stations it had in its hands. One night, a convoy of 35 SUVs, with undercover agents and mercenaries, drove by the sit-ins and began shooting. They were not aiming at the people, but trying to intimidate them. APPO reported the situation instantaneously on its radio stations, and within minutes people organised barricades to stop the convoy. After that experience, every night at 11pm more than a thousand barricades closed the streets around the sit-ins and at critical crossroads, to be opened again at 6am to facilitate circulation. In spite of the guerrilla attacks by the police, a human rights organisation reported that in those months there was less violence in Oaxaca than in any other similar period in the last 10 years. Many services, like garbage collection, were operated by their corresponding unions, all also participants of APPO. Were we winning? Some analysts started to talk about the Oaxaca Commune. Smiling, some Oaxacans commented: ‘Yes, but the Paris Commune lasted only 50 days; we have been here for more than 100 days.’ No matter how pertinent, this historical analogy is an exaggeration except for the logical reaction both initiatives provoked in the power structure. In the same style in which the European armies crushed the communards, Mexican Federal Police, with the support of the Army and the Navy, were finally sent to deal with the uprising. When the Federal Police arrived, on October 28, APPO decided to resist non-violently, avoiding confrontation. In the face of the police, with all their aggressive equipment, the people of Oaxaca exhibited enormous restraint. Unarmed citizens stopped the tanks by laying their own bodies on the pavement. Adults held back young people trying to express their anger. When the police reached the main plaza, APPO abandoned it and regrouped on the campus of the university. The police began selectively capturing APPO members at the barricades or in their homes. By the end of the day, there were three dead, many injured, and many more disappeared. Those picked up by the police were sequestered in military barracks. For months, the government and the media condemned APPO in the name of law, order, public security, human rights, and stable institutions. All these elements were employed to justify the use of police force. But without realising it, the authorities gave us a lesson in revolutionary civics. The Federal Police became the vehicle for a massive violation of human rights: searches and arrests were carried out without warrants while the number of dead, wounded and disappeared increased. Only vigilantes of the dominant party and the government’s own hired guns were allowed to travel freely. Many were afraid that we would not be able to stop the bloodbath the governor and federal government seemed determined to provoke. In spite of APPO’s continual appeal to non-violence, the people of Oaxaca felt deeply offended and angry. Moreover they didn’t want to be cowards… What could we do confronted by this barbaric, irrational violence of the state against its own people? How do we deal with the mounting anger of the youngsters, after months of constant vigilance on the barricades? On November 2 the people resisted an attack on the University by the Federal Police. The clash was the largest between civilians and police in Mexico’s history, and perhaps the only one that resulted in an unquestionable popular triumph. The fight was certainly unequal enough: although the police were outnumbered five or six to one if we count children, they had shields and other weapons, not to mention tanks and helicopters, while the people had only sticks, stones, rockets (fireworks), a few slingshots, and some uninvited molotov cocktails. Following this victory, the largest march in the history of Oaxaca took place on November 5: almost a quarter of the 3.5 million Oaxacans came to it. Among the participants were scores of indigenous authorities from communities throughout the state who came to the capital carrying their staffs of office to publicly declare their allegiance to the movement. (Oaxaca is the only state in Mexico where two thirds of the population are indigenous). In order to strengthen our coordinating bodies we had a ‘constitutive congress’. The last session of the exhausting meeting ended at 5am on Monday, November 13. Some 1,500 state delegates attended this peculiar assembly. A Council of 260 delegates was created, in order to coordinate the collective effort. They were to ‘represent’ everyone; indigenous peoples, of course, but also every sector of society. Some barricades also sent delegates to the Congress and they now have a representation in the Council. The Congress approved a charter for APPO, an action plan, and a code of conduct. Most of the agreements were reached through consensus. Some of them were very difficult. It was not easy to agree on gender equity, for example, but we reached a good agreement: everyone recognised that women had been at the forefront, in all aspects of the struggle, and had given to it its meaning and soul. One of the easiest agreements was the decision to give the struggle a clearly anti-capitalist orientation. During the Congress the city was still occupied by the police. Eight more people disappeared that night. But ‘they cannot occupy our soul’, said one member of the Council. ‘We have more freedom than ever.’ Are we thus winning? On January 20, 2007, the International Civil Commission for Observation of Human Rights presented its preliminary report – after collecting hundreds of testimonies and documents, most of them focused on the massive, violent repression of November 25. The Commission reported 23 documented and identified dead and others disappeared but unidentified for lack of formal report. People are afraid. ‘They disappeared one of my sons. If I report it, they will disappear the other,’ said an old woman. Hundreds were injured and arbitrarily detained, and all kinds of abuses and violations of human rights – including torture and sexual abuses – were committed against them. For the Commission, What happened in Oaxaca was the linking of a juridical and military strategy with psychosocial and community components. Its final purpose is to achieve the control and intimidation of the civil population especially in areas in which processes of citizen organisation and non party social movements are developing. Are we winning? Is it enough to win to learn as much as we learned, about ourselves, our strengths and autonomy, and about the system oppressing us? Some background For almost two years, the people of Oaxaca were in increasing turmoil. The immediate cause was the corrupt and authoritarian administration of Governor Ulises Ruiz, who took office after a fraudulent election in December 2004. But as the Oaxaqueños resisted Ruiz, deeper struggles came to the surface and began to find expression in a process of awakening, organisation, and radicalisation. On May 22, 2006 the teachers union, with 70,000 members throughout the state, began a sit-in in Oaxaca City’s main plaza in order to dramatise their economic plight. They did not get much attention or solidarity from the public. But on June 14 the governor ordered a violent repression of the sit-in. This episode changed the nature of the mobilisation, unifying large numbers of Oaxacans with their own reasons for opposing Ruiz’s misrule. Overnight ¡Fuera Ulises! (‘Out with Ulises!’) became the popular slogan in Oaxaca’s neighborhoods and streets. On June 20 hundreds of social and grassroots organisations invented APPO. All this has happened within a profound political transition in which Mexico is currently engaged. Our ancient régime is dead. Economic and political elites are attempting to substitute it with a ‘neoliberal republic’, while the social majorities are trying to reorganise society from the bottom up to create a new regime. Over the last 25 years corrupt leaders who control public institutions have almost succeeded in completely dismantling them. Some were driven by market fundamentalism, others by greed or ambition. While their acts often shock us, enrage us, and even lead some of us to experience a kind of paralysis, sometimes they serve to awaken autonomous action among the people. As Marx wrote in a letter to Ruge, ‘what we have to do is undertake a critique of everything that is established, and to criticise without mercy, fearing neither the conclusions we reach nor our clash with the existing powers.’ This is all the more pertinent when those powers opt for violence in an attempt to solve conflicts they are incapable of resolving peacefully and democratically, as in the current impasse in Oaxaca. Their use of force can cause great harm, but it can’t restore their power. They have bloodied their hands in vain, for the people of Oaxaca will not back down under this threat. It is said that Napoleon once observed that ‘bayonets can be used for many purposes, but not to sit on’. This warning for amateur politicians has not been heard by Mexican political classes – not even after seeing the spectacular example of Iraq. With the army or the police you can destroy a country or a people but you cannot govern them. August 1: The Revolution Will Be Televised Confronted with the government’s use of the media against the movement, several thousand women from APPO peacefully occupied the studios of the state radio and television network – after it refused to give them 15 minutes on the air. Through its outlets in Oaxaca, the media has continually been used by the governor to distribute propaganda against the movement. Now instead the occupiers of TV and radio stations disseminated the ideas, proposals, and initiatives of APPO. They also opened both radio and television for members of the public to express their own opinions 24 hours a day. Despite every imaginable technical difficulty (the women occupying the network had no previous training for this), thousands who called the stations made it onto the air. Eventually, a group of undercover police and mercenaries invaded the facilities, shooting up and destroying the equipment and injuring some of the APPO ‘broadcasters’. In reaction, a few hours later APPO occupied all private radio and TV outlets in the city. Instead of one, APPO suddenly had 12 options to both disseminate information about the movement, and to give voice to the people. A few days later they gave the stations back to their owners, keeping only one powerful enough to cover the whole state. It broadcasted information about the movement 24 hours a day until it was jammed at the end of October. Radical democracy APPO is the product of a slow accumulation of forces and many lessons gathered during previous struggles. In particular, three different democratic struggles have converged in the single one being waged by APPO. The first joins together all those who wish to strengthen formal democracy. People are tired of fraud and manipulation. The second gathers those who want a more participatory democracy. Besides transparency and honesty they want more civil involvement in the workings of government through the use of popular initiatives, referendums, plebiscites, the right to recall elected leaders, participatory budgeting, and other such tools. The third looks to extend and deepen autonomous or radical democracy. Eighty per cent of all municipalities in Oaxaca are indigenous and have their own particular, autonomous forms of government, following ancient traditions. Although this autonomy was legally recognised by Oaxaca’s state law in 1995, it continues to be the subject of pressure and harassment. The advocates of radical democracy attempt now to invert this situation: to put the state and federal governments under pressure and harassment. The ultimate goal is to move from community and municipal autonomy to an autonomous coordination of groups of municipalities, from there to regions, and eventually to an autonomous form of government for the entire state. While this is an appeal to both sociological and political imaginations, it is also firmly based on legal and practical historical experience with autonomous self-government. Nor are the people of Oaxaca waiting for the inevitable departure of the governor to put these ideas into action; there are already many APPOs operating around the state on community, neighborhood, municipal, and regional levels. A group of lawyers is nourishing our dialogues and reflections with specific proposals for the new norms we will enact, transforming all public officers into public servants. The only authority will be the people themselves. Oaxaca has already abolished its old, badly constituted state government. But there has never before been a ‘crisis of governability’. In mid-September a violent brawl erupted during a private party in a neighborhood of Oaxaca. A half-drunk couple stumbled out onto the street. ‘We should call the police,’ he said. ‘Don’t be an ass,’ she said, ‘there are no police.’ ‘True,’ he answered, scratching his head. ‘Let’s call APPO.’ ‘They’re trying to force us to govern, but it’s a provocation we’re not going to fall for.’ <‘Nos quieren obligar a gobernar. No caeremos en esa provocación.’> This subtle bit of graffiti on a wall in Oaxaca reveals the nature of the present movement. It doesn’t seek to take over the current power structure but to reorganise the whole of society from deep inside and establish new foundations for our social life together. APPO cannot be reduced to a mere local disturbance or a rebellion. Rebellions are like volcanoes, mowing down everything before them. But they’re also ephemeral; they may leave lasting marks, like lava beds, but they die down as quickly as they catch fire. They go out. And this one hasn’t. In this case, the spirit of defiance has become too strong. Although Ulises Ruiz was the original focus of popular discontent he was just the detonator, the take-off point for a lasting movement of transformation to a peaceful, truly democratic society, for the harmonious coexistence of the different. As the Zapatista say, this is part of a struggle to create a world in which many worlds can be embraced. This is needed more than ever in a polarised society in which all forms of racism, sexism, individualism and violence are erupting. The end of an era Fifty years ago Paul Goodman said: Suppose you had had the revolution you are talking and dreaming about. Suppose your side had won, and you had the kind of society you wanted. How would you live, you personally, in that society? Start living that way now! Whatever you would do then, do it now. When you run up against obstacles, people, or things that won’t let you live that way, then begin to think about how to get over or around or under that obstacle, or how to push it out of the way, and your politics will be concrete and practical. Thousands, millions of people assume now that the time has come to walk our own path. As the Zapatistas put it, to change the world is very difficult, if not impossible. A more pragmatic attitude demands the construction of a new world. That’s what we are now trying to do, as if we had already won. Ulises Ruiz appeared as a great obstacle. He incarnated the old world we wanted to get rid of. We thus provoked the collapse of his government. When the whole political system coalesced to support him, preventing his removal from office, we looked for alternatives. As Goodman suggested, we are finding ways to get over or around or under his police and his maneuvers. He can no longer govern but he daily organises shows for the media to pretend that he is still in charge. He cannot go anywhere in the state without a hundred bodyguards, protecting him from people’s hostility. (The same is happening, by the way, with president Calderón. Even in Germany he needed to be protected by the police). We cannot wait for world revolution to dissolve the new forms of corporate capital. But we can attempt to make them marginal to our lives and to create new kinds of social relations. After refusing to be reduced to commodities and forced into alienated labour, after losing all the jobs many of us had, we are celebrating the freedom to work and we are renovating our old traditions of direct, non-exploitative exchange. We are thus enclosing the enclosers. And yes, we are winning, in spite of their violent reactions. Myriad initiatives are being launched in every corner of the state, offering solid proof of the vitality of the movement and people’s ingenuity and courage. We need, of course, all kinds of national and international solidarity. True, David can always win over Goliath if he fights him in his own territory, in his own way. But we cannot resist forever the daily aggression we are suffering, when every one of us is going to sleep, every night, not knowing if we will wake up in jail… or disappeared, or dead. But still, we are full of hope, smiling at the horror. The time has come for the end of the economic era. Development, once a hope to give eternal life to economic societies, has instead dug their graves. Signs of the new era, though appearing everywhere, are still perceived as anomalies of the old. The old one, in turn, looks stronger than ever and the death it is carrying is still perceived as a symptom of vitality. If people are fooled by such images, disguised by slogans of the older period and remain blind to the evidence of the new era, the economy will continue to dismantle and destroy its own creations to the point of collapse. There is an option. Now is the time for the option. San Pablo Etla, January 2007 Gustavo Esteva is a prolific independent writer, a grassroots activist and a deprofessionalised intellectual based in Oaxaca, Mexico. He works both independently and in conjunction with a variety of Mexican NGOs and grassroots organisations and communities. In 1996, he was invited by the Zapatistas to be their advisor. Since then, he has been very active in what today is called Zapatismo, involving himself with the current struggle of the indigenous peoples, particularly with APPO. He can be contacted at gustavoestevagmail.com. For more on the Oaxaca uprising, check out www.oaxacalibre.org, www.oaxacarevolt.org, www.zmag.org and www.narconews. For more on the context of the movement and a connection with Zapatismo, see Esteva’s article in zmag.org (http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11660). See also G. Esteva and M. Prakash, Grassroots Postmodernism (London: Zed Books, 1998).

The essay about Mexico is very important for Republicans. We need to really live in the Republic now and not wait until Leinster House and Stormont Castle are destroyed. In fact, the best way to destroy them is to make them totally irrelevant.

I was reading in the Cabhair Journal today an address given by Dr. Seán Maguire, son of the late Comdt. General Tom Maguire, at Tuam, Co. Galway, earlier this year, where he said that Gerry Adams had insisted on a permanent IRA leadership in the late 1970s. The only way to keep such a permanent leadership was to move the leadership as far from military operations as possible and thus make them as immune as possible from arrest. As Dr. Maguire points out, this was in stark contradiction to the IRA's tradition, where officers always lead from the front line and fought shoulder to shoulder with their comrades. As Dr. Maguire points out, once the enemy got an agent into this permanent leadership, they had secured a permanent spy at the heart of the Army. And, as we have since found out, this is exactly what happened in more than one case. So, no matter what way you look at it, its always better for leadership to be in the backround, and let the rank and file be in command. In the Army, and in society at large. In this way, small elites cannot build up and betray the People.

Grassroots gathering
Not sure if anyone would be interested in this but thought id post link to the upcoming Grassroots Gathering. More info and a reader can be found here: http://www.indymedia.ie/attachments/may2008/gg2008reader.pdf

Interesting forum for Irish and International debate on Anarchist topics: http://www.anarchistblackcat.org/index.php

Do ye think that some form of Anarchism is a logical conclusion of a progressively more educated, more democratised society with access to smaller and smaller units of more powerful technology ? Wind turbines are known as 'intermediate technology' by E.F. Schumacher ('Small is Beautiful') who played with the idea as applicable to the developing world but could just as well be used in Dingle, West Clare, Inishowen and owned by the locals who could afford them if they weren't rising in price for the demand. Other energy tech I've been on about elsewhere might also contribute to localised societies in terms of some economic sectors, but obviously not all. More complicated items might never be created locally but in a country like Ireland where there is abundant natural energy and food there isn't an awful lot more we have to demand, even though we demand nevertheless. There could be a trend-reversal against the bling we've been fascinating ourselves with lately in this country as geeky kids get more involved in software projects online and both adults and children get into the organic food buzz which is often produced locally or pushed by schools. Some allotments in the community next and we're off. The likes of the pursuit of Green Party policies in the area of local democracy is a sign of that need for democracy on a local level but I don't know if any Republican parties or Sinn Fein have similar objectives - devolving power to the most effective level - do they ?

Wind turbines are known as 'intermediate technology' by E.F. Schumacher ('Small is Beautiful') who played with the idea as applicable to the developing world but could just as well be used in Dingle, West Clare, Inishowen and owned by the locals who could afford them if they weren't rising in price for the demand. They are used in Derrybrien which is pretty remote and some distance from the sea, and if they are used there, there is no reason why they shouldn't be more prevalent in the places you mention that are at the ocean. None of the turbines i am aware of though are community owned. The ideas of intermediate technology largely form the basis of RSF's social programme "SAOL NUA" which can be read at the top of this forum. I also happened to be re-reading Small is Beautiful the other day. well more browsing through it. There could be a trend-reversal against the bling we've been fascinating ourselves with lately in this country as geeky kids get more involved in software projects online and both adults and children get into the organic food buzz which is often produced locally or pushed by schools. Some allotments in the community next and we're off. Dual or multi faceted projects such as these will be the life saver for rural communities. The likes of the pursuit of Green Party policies in the area of local democracy is a sign of that need for democracy on a local level but I don't know if any Republican parties or Sinn Fein have similar objectives - devolving power to the most effective level - do they ? Again, you may want to have a look at both the Eire Nua and Saol Nua proposals. I'd be intrested in your thoughts of them.

Hi, Auditor, just a point I noticed in your post. Eire Nua and Saol Nua are Republican Sinn Féin policy documents. I got the impression you were talking about Adams & Co., who have dropped Eire Nua. If Im mistaken, my apologies. Adams and his friends said that federalism was "a sop to Unionists."