andyh wrote:
Anarcho-Syndicalists have a fair bit in common with commies. The both want basically the same thing.

www.socialism.org.uk/socialism21/ch9.htm
quote -
An end to the rule of profit. For a socialist plan of production. For a socialist society and economy run to meet the needs of all whilst protecting our environment.

i think this from the socialist party manifesto best sums up the difference between anarcho syndicalism and socialism (marx ideology )

surely those against commies couldve pointed this out ( ending profits therefore capping wages and creating a more equal society with no class structure )
its marx 101 afterall

dogsmilk wrote:
commie chicks

mushy wrote:
The difference I see is the "socialist plan for production", assuming that means some kind of centralised governmental authority.

"society and economy run to meet the needs of all whilst protecting our environment" is entirely anarcho-syndicalist. As is ending profit, a more equal society and no class structure - that last one being of paramount importance.

mushy wrote:
Phoooarrr!!!!!! Geddin!

I've been following/stalking this "commie" chick on youtube, super hot to me:


I'm gonna have a read of the links on Anarcho Syndicalism you posted I might edit some of the useful info into a post in a bit, there is definitely some useful bits and bobs.

dogsmilk wrote: So the unemployed and paye workers are self sufficient eh?
How is anyone self sufficient other than pygmies in the congo with that ludicrous definition?
Just yet another diversionary extreme irrelevant bullshit statement away from the core of the concept which is to have fewer people contributing to the tax system.
Or you could have shitloads of people working for a big corporate co-op ala mondragon who are all self-employed without taking as much risk and going it alone

Why would it have to be a shop? What sort of an idiot is going to run a shop as a business in such a situation?
Do you think I run a shop? Do you think I had to invest anything? You don't start a business thats destined to fail in the first place, it tends to be the intelligent thing to do. Whats the point in answering these strawman statements?

andyh wrote:
I didn't say unemployed people and employees are "self-sufficient" did I? Unemployed people, employees and self-employed people are all a part of the same system. None of them are "self-sufficient". Do you buy food or clothes or pay for electricity? If the answer is yes you are not self-sufficient.
Self-employed people have the advantage of working for themselves. Depending on the nature of other people's employers and contracts and the success of the self-employed's business, they may also earn less and miss out on benefits. So for example I know people who've spent a couple of months off sick on full pay - becoming sick for an extended period can be a problem for the self-employed.
Self employment can actually be a way of scamming workers - for example there has been a recent trend of people like security guards being hired as "self-employed" as a means to bypass employment rights. There are pros and cons.

I've already said think co-ops are a good thing. I think they are a much better way of doing things. But they are limited in what they will ever achieve.
I don't know how people work for Mondragon. I don't know if they are techinally self-employed or if they are employed as a member on equal terms with other people. We have already seen Mondragon acts as a regular employer. I don't know if full members are still employees, but members with a stake in ownership and decision making of the business. Running a co-operative as a bunch of independent people who are classed as self-employed seems like a strange way to run a co-operative.
In the one in Argentina AFAIK they were employed by the business, except the business was owned and run collectively by everyone it employed.

Of course it doesn't have to be a shop. But you seem to have this idea everyone is going to become self-employed and somehow bring down the state by doing so. Retail is an enormous market where self-employed people have been progessively driven out by giant companies. There's a world of difference of between someone having a good and successful idea and making a living out of it and expecting that somehow everyone is going to suddenly become self-employed and take on the enormous markets where they simply cannot compete. How is your vision of somehow bringing out the downfall of the state by everyone being self-employed and fiddling their tax going to work without your Randian heroes being able to take on giant markets like retail or manufacturing which is dominated by brown slaves in the third world? You talk about IT, but I'm aware the hardware in my PC will have been made in some high tech sweatshop in the third world - how's your tax scamming crusader hoing to take that shit on?
Food, clothes, electronic goods, plastics, construction etc - the actual fundamentals we need before anything else are all dominated by gigantic multinationals of immense power. An IT business is neither use nor ornament without the hardware it needs is it?

We all need clothes, right? How are your self-employed people going to take on Nike, Fruit of the Loom, Adidas etc etc etc. And the immense financial resources that go into the branding of the manufacture and retail as something as fundamental as clothing?

How are your self-employed people going to take on Nissan or Sony or Tesco? And alkl fiddle theirtaxes and hallelujah! The state sudden collapse and...well what's supposed to happen then I'm not really sure. A nation full of small businesses until the more successful ones become giant corporations?

I could give a deluge of anecdotes about people I know or have known who've tried really hard to make their self-employed business work and failed - often because of factors outside their control. And a lot of people are not business minded. All they want to is to make a living and pay their bills. Co-operatives can be very good for this - people can just get on with doing their job and reap their fair share for doing so. But the idea everyone can or will just go out and start a successfl business or co-op is simply totally unrealistic. Yes, co-ops should be encouraged and are a positive step. But the are not going to save the world.

You seem to have this attitude that because you started a successful business, that's easily within reach of everyone in the whole country. It reminds of when Michael Winner used to have his column in the News of the World where he'd be basically saying Well why don't the poor just go out and get several highly paid jobs like me? What's stopping them doing an Esure commercial?.

dogsmilk wrote: So it is just pygmies in the Congo then and I was absolutely correct in stating that you had just taken an extreme strawman position as per usual.
Given that you're happy to carry on like that the rest of your post isn't worth addressing.

andyh wrote:
You don't have to be a pygmy in the Congo specifically - people in the UK have tried very hard to be self-sufficient. I once watched this heartbreaking documentry about a bunch of people down south who wre trying really hard to be self-sufficient. They grew their own food, lived in benders they were converting into stone huts, they took deadwood from the woods for fuel, they had a horse and were even crafting a wooden cart for it by hand. Of course they were evicted from the disused land they occupied and made homeless. Now I'm not saying we should all live like that - and I'd say it's unrealistic to expect we should - but that is what self-sufficiency is about. It's about being...self-sufficient. Not depending on other people to produce virtually everything you need.

andyh wrote:

dogsmilk wrote:

andyh wrote:
Andy, you are well aware I spent a lot of time on the DIF defending and promoting anarchism and I've spent this entire thread defending the principles of anarcho-syndicalism. I don't believe in governments. My utopia would be people collectively organising the production of what people need in a spirit of co-operation absent of any hierarchy or money. As the slogan Marx popularised goes, from each according to his ability, to each according to to his need. No sexism intended - it's from olden days.

But if we are stuck with a government, I would rather have democratically elected socialism* than anything else. It at least focuses on the redistribution of wealth, the rights of workers and not handing over the vital utilities to multinationals. Unfortunately, socialism has been probably irrevocably demonised in the onward march of neo-liberalism.

I can see things from varying perspectives. Like just because I ultimately favour anarchism, that doesn't mean I don't have opinions on what are good or bad laws in the current set-up.

To me, self-sufficiency is self-sufficiency. As I said, I think there are pros to being elf-employed. There are also cons. What would happen to you if you were to become too sick to work for a month or two? If you fancy a day off to watch the football, can you call somebody up, tell them you've got food poisoning and then get paid for watching the football - as long as you don't do it too often? Do you get holiday pay? If you found circumstances suddeny changed for whatever reason and you could no longer make money doing what you're doing, could HR redeploy you to a different department? Somebody I know of works as lot with the public. They recently had a very nasty experience with some loon and feel they can't handle it any more. If their HR dept assesses this as legitimate, they will be redeployed so they no longer have to work with the public.
This is not to say being an employee is great. And many people can't do all the things I just mentioned. It's just to point out there is not a defining line between self employment being totally wonderful and being employed irredemably awful. And of course workers need rights. Which are being eroded. Which should be fought against. Because tey are only there becaues people fought for them in the first place. And it's no good saying [i[well fuck 'em -they should all just be self-employed![/i] because that is spectacularly narrow minded.

Have you ever considered standing for the Conservative Party? Or writing a column for the Daily Mail?

*I mean in that general Old, old Labour-ish, George Orwell kind of sense - obviously "socialism" has been interchangeable with "anarchism" and "communism" - like Kropotkin talked about socialism in the sense of anarchism.

dogsmilk wrote:
No you've spent a load of time trying to say its about some kind of union movement and said that co-ops are a waste of time because they'll never achieve anything and that self employment is a complete waste of time and its best left to the elite.

"Socialist wimps":
[youtube][/youtube]

Andy I think you should write a bit about your brand of "anarchism", i'd be interested in reading about it in one thread, instead of lot's of little bits in lot's of different threads?

When you say stuff like "iif you can't beat em join em" "socialist wimps" call the masses of people stupid idiots and so on, it just comes accross as a spiteful attitude really, not anarchism at all.

Instead of without authority, you have defined your position in this thread as "in symbiosis with authority", which would seem to correlate to the way "worker's" cooperatives flourished under Mussolini in Fascist Italy, from what little I've read on teh subject so far.

Guevarista wrote:
The symbiosis explanation is to explain how current business works with govt.
The one relies and thrives with the other while joe public suffers.

Ayn Rands libertarian capitalism is about a true free market so to speak, no taxation with the ability to trade literally anything (and just as importantly using any currency, not just 'legal tender')

I'm not an anarcho-capitalist because it needs a blank slate to work, if we ever had some kind of global disasater then it might be worth considering but then so would alternate forms of anarchism for similar reasons.

My own favourite model of anarchism is Jacque Fresco's Venus Project, it needs some practical experimentation as proof of concept though. Its also missing a transitionary phase.

SO what is your personal philosophy because it's not really Anarchism in my view.

Instead of just referring to ayn rand and jacque fresco and pointing out the failings in your opinion of both, why not explain your own ideology, it would avoid every thread turning into a circle jerk where you take it totally off topic explaining your version of "self employed anarchism"?

Guevarista wrote:
Self employment is all you can realistically do to improve your current situation unless you plan some kind of armed rebellion Gue.
As explained earlier I see people chipping together to go into self employment together provided its a good sound business idea and not too expensive to kick off as being the best they can hope for. If others join it and it becomes very profitable then they can pay for their own social system like mondragon do. If things went south later with the economy such as shtf scenarios then such a group would be well placed to try a resource based economy.
Jacque Fresco's idea has very few failings imho, it needs a lot of people to invest money in it initially to try it out is all.
We don't really know the failings of it, people can only speculate because its never been tried out.

andyh wrote: So essentially you're a petit bourgeois liberal with a deep cynicism about political grass roots action and alright Jack mentality?

e2a: who's never even read the Communist Manifesto but has used up 8 pages in a thread about MArxism, blabbering on about why everyone should just get a job and a good business plan.