A bleak view of government: Convince me this isn't true

[BurtWorm]

Government is criminality masked as normality. The government is a gang of thugs whose job it is to herd the sheep of citizenry into the labor force to produce wealth for the criminal class that owns the government and everything else. In monarchies and dictatorships, the criminal class is the government. In democracy, the criminal (corporate) class usually just owns the government; occasionally they lower themselves to buy their way into it, ostensibly to do public service, actually to have a firmer hand on the reigns governing their venal interests.

The default state of the world, on this view, is actually anarchy, but for the success of the thugs to keep the sheep in line. Every action a government takes is the face of an ulterior grab for power or wealth by the criminal class that controls the government. When a government makes a humanitarian appeal to other countries--to halt genocide in another country, for example--it must never be taken at face value. There is always venal interest behind it.

On this view, there is no ideal candidate for office from a citizen's point of view. All candidates, whether they even know it or not, are vying merely to become the next gangster shepherd, working at the interest of the criminal class.

[alexwcovington]

1. No...

In democracies there is always the choice of enlightened and equitable rule... for the good of all.

That's why I'm a liberal!

[ixion]

2. yep... and the only ones who can stop it

are We, the People. And there seems to be only a smattering of us who even realize there IS a problem to be dealt with. Anyone who reads over the history of Human civilization can see examples of this time and time and time again, but no one ever seems to make the connection to current day. Always, the realization is in hindsight, which basically makes us doomed ex post facto.

[wtmusic]

3. Spoken like a true cynic

Better yet, a cynical anarchist...

BW, did you have a little too much to drink last night? This sounds like a hangover POV ;-)

But seriously no government is ideal or even works the way it is designed to. It takes a lot of massaging by people with good intentions. My favorite Churchill quote (paraphrased): "Democracy is the worst form of government until you take into account every other form of government."

[BurtWorm]

13. I don't necessarily believe this, but I do need to be convinced it ain't

so. ;)

[el_gato]

4. you are wrong about anarchy

your assesment of the nature of government is correct
however, associating this with anarchy is just the opposite
of what anarchy is all about

anarchy means removeing the tools of domination, i.e. government

[wtmusic]

6. Are you an anarchist?

Are you contending that civilization requires no government?

[IrateCitizen]

9. The basic anarchist view centers around government as power

And true anarchists, by nature, are supremely distrustful of power. In their eyes, government is the consummate centralization of power, and therefore must be opposed.

If you want to REALLY learn a good bit about TRUE anarchism, take a gander at Emma Goldman's autobiography, Living My Life. It is a utopian point of view, but one that is centered around some badly needed change in the way we build our societies -- that is, developing an attitude about truly valuing and caring for each other, rather than acting out of primal greed and selfishness.

I have to say that, after reading her works, I have come to realize many of the anarchist tendencies in my own outlook, even if I do not adopt it fully.

[wtmusic]

10. To be distrustful of power is one thing

To oppose power is naive.

By opposing power you are just transferring power from government to the people. Well, surprise--some people have more power than others. All of a sudden--voila!--there's a new government. Here we go again.

I guess I can imagine a blissful world where everyone just picked daisies...

[IrateCitizen]

18. It depends on what you mean by "oppose"...

If you are talking about opposing power by planting bombs in the streets and hiding in the hills with a fully-stocked munitions room waiting to take on "the man", then you're right. It's naive.

However...

If you are talking about opposing power by remaining distrustful and vigilant; and opposing it clearly, directly and unequivocally when it seeks to extend its grasp or consolidate itself -- I would hardly call that naive. I would instead call that the best demonstration of patriotism that one could exhibit, an action worthy of the likes of Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, or Martin Luther King, Jr. I would call it the very definition of the title of "citizen".

I guess I can imagine a blissful world where everyone just picked daisies...

That's an overly simplistic (and overgeneralized) way of looking at it, but it actually IS on the right track. Not exactly a world in which "everybody picks daisies", but one in which the ethos of sharing, cooperation and compassion is given the same consideration as self-interest. As our society CURRENTLY stands, we are conditioned to believe SOLELY in self-interest, to the point that it turns into ugly selfishness and outright exploitative greed.

Like I said, if you really want to learn more about the philosophy of anarchism, check out some of the works of Emma Goldman -- especially her autobiography (it's a 2-volume work). You will most certainly not agree with everything she espouses, but it is an interesting and thought-provoking work nonetheless -- and will be certain to change many of your preconceived notions of anarchism as a social theory.

[wtmusic]

23. I'm inherently distrustful of any social theory

that requires me to read two volumes. If you can't sum it up in a post it's just wishful thinking.

What is getting thoroughly confused here are the concepts of power and oppression. The United States of America has ultimate power and authority over you (I'm assuming you live here) right now. You cannot break a law without going to jail. Is that a bad thing? Of course not--most of the time. Can laws also aid cooperation and sharing, as well as compassion? Of course they can. Your legislators would argue that that's what they are there for.

The notion that we are conditioned to believe solely in self-interest is nonsense. You are born that way (as was I) and everything you do is in self-interest, til the day you die.

[IrateCitizen]

28. And your post indicates that there is a wide gulf between us...

First off, the reason I recommended the 2-volume Goldman biography is not because it is the foremost authority on a certain social theory. The reason I recommended it is because it is an excellent story of one person's evolution of thought with regards to social theory over the course of several decades. It's also impressive simply because of the life that Emma Goldman lived.

Secondly, the things you speak of as being enforced by law in our society fostering cooperation, compassion and sharing did not originate in law. They originated in the social code of human beings as soon as they began to live in nomadic tribes. This code became law only when these tribes became settled and grew into cities.

As for the law "encouraging compassion and cooperation," strangely enough it has not happened in this country. Just look at the example as to how you can steal a TV and go to jail, but you can loot an entire pension fund of hundreds of millions of dollars and walk away scot free -- because you have not broken any LAWS per se, even if you have grossly violated the most basic social codes that go back tens of thousands of years. If laws could actually encourage selflessness, we would not have such rampant instances of the likes of Enron and WorldCom.

One more thing on laws -- they are NOT in place to encourage compassion and cooperation. They are in place to enforce order and maintain the status quo. That is because the overwhelming majority of legislators of which you speak are interested in maintaining the status quo, because the status quo has enabled them to get more than most other people. In some instances this is not necessarily a bad thing, but there are others in which the status quo is used to exploit and oppress -- and in those instances it needs to be opposed.

Finally, with regards to self-interest, I am not denying that we, as human beings, believe in self-interest our entire lives. What I AM saying is that there are other basic values that we are born with -- cooperation, compassion, empathy, etc. -- that are drowned out in modern society by the elevation of self-interest OVER ALL ELSE. In this sense, it ceases to be self-interest and becomes the extreme of selfishness. Self-interest can be healthy, because it can help us to recognize the innate value of cooperation, compassion and empathy. Selfishness is NOT healthy, because it is a value system that teaches us to EXCLUDE all these other values.

As for your theory that any social theory can be adequately summed up in a post, I'll just say that I disagree. There are so many things that are connected within social theories that it is impossible to completely explore them in a single post, outside of getting the most generalized idea of it, which often leads us to false conclusions rather than really understanding what the theory is all about.

[wtmusic]

29. Awright, I take it back

A social theory can't be summed up in a post. But I think the essence of most theories is simpler than sociologists would have us believe, and the paper used for most sociology dissertations was better off as a tree.

The 'social code' you speak of and 'law' are indistinguishable (as a matter of fact every Federal law appears as USC and a number, for "United States Code"). Do we doubt that even in nomadic times there were penalties for breaking their code?

Looting pension funds is illegal. The problem is selective enforcement.

Re: compassion, cooperation, empathy--these are all things which are not in addition to self-interest, but a direct result of it. And I haven't seen any argument as to why anarchy would foster any of those attributes. Let's attack exploitation and oppression, not the idea that a basic set of ground rules which everyone is held to is bad.

[IrateCitizen]

30. I never said that anarchy would better foster those attributes...

I hope you're not implying that from my post, because that's not the point I'm attempting to make. In fact, there is NO form of government, nor lack thereof, that would better foster those attributes than any other. Hell, communists think that their plan will lead to everybody sharing equally, but look at how that whole scheme was completely bastardized under Lenin and Stalin...

BTW -- that is another good reason to read EG's autobio. She is completely condemning of the Bolsheviks during the time she spent in Soviet Russia following her deportation from the US.

As for social code and law, I do not necessarily think that they are "indistinguishable". Rather, law is based on social code. However, it has been proved throughout the ages that "law" can actually be used to exploit and oppress, especially when it is a small group at the "top" who are solely writing the laws. This is where the failure of the society itself -- the citizenry -- comes into the picture, because it is they who allowed these injustices to take place by either being lazy or allowing themselves to be manipulated AGAINST their own self-interest, which is really reinforced by those old values of cooperation, compassion and empathy. (Funny how we keep coming back to those, as even you acknowledged in your post....)

As for attacking exploitation and oppression, I'm all for it. But in order to REALLY win out over these ill-conceived notions, we can't simply attack them. We must eliminate them through the reinforcement of cooperation, compassion and empathy. It's a similar approach to the old saying, "You can bomb the world into pieces, but you can't bomb it into peace."

[el_gato]

12. I'm not going to get into an ideological pissing contest

partly because it's a waste of time
but also because all "isms" are garbage (blinders)
I would rather deal in facts


As well you should also know there is a schism between those
who call them selves "anarchists" and those who aspire to
anarchy. Nevertheless, the tools of domination are the problem
not the solution.


I will tell you what I do believe though. We have removed
ourselves so far from nature that we have sown the seeds of
our own destruction.


If you are interested in reading other viewpoints
you can go here:
http://www.spunk.org/library/writers/


The following is from Bakunin's The Immorality of the State:

This flagrant negation of humanity, which constitutes the very essence of the State, is from the point of view of the latter the supreme duty and the greatest virtue: it is called patriotism and it constitutes the transcendent morality of the State. We call it the transcendent morality because ordinarily it transcends the level of human morality and justice, whether private or common, and thereby it often sets itself in shard contradiction to them. Thus, for instance, to offend, oppress, rob, plunder, assassinate, or enslave one's fellow man is, to the ordinary morality of man, to commit a serious crime.

In public life, on the contrary, from the point of view of patriotism,
when it is done for the greater glory of the State in order to conserve or to enlarge its power, all that becomes a duty and a virtue. And this duty, this virtue, are obligatory upon every patriotic citizen. Everyone is expected to discharge those duties not only in respect to strangers but in respect to his fellow-citizens, members and subjects of the same State, whenever the welfare
of the State demands it from him.

The supreme law of the State is self-preservation at any cost. And since all States, ever since they came to exist upon the earth, have been condemned to perpetual struggle - a struggle against their own populations, whom they oppress and ruin, a struggle against all foreign States, every one of which can be strong only if the others are weak - and since the States cannot hold their own in this struggle unless they constantly keep on augmenting their power against their own subjects as well as against the neighborhood States -
it follows that the supreme law of the State is the augmentation of its power to the detriment of internal liberty and external justice.

[wtmusic]

17. So you piss and we watch?

Is that how it works?

Your post was wonderful idealogical drivel until it actually tried to get logical in the last line:

"it follows that the supreme law of the State is the augmentation of its power to the detriment of internal liberty and external justice."

with no support whatsoever. I guess I'll have to read Bakunin and find out if it really does 'follow'.

[el_gato]

22. Look I'm just talking about what anarchy is about

If you don't like it go whine to someone else.
That line you refer to is from Bakunin as I said.
I did not write it but posted it to show you the thinking
behind the concept of anarchy as opposed to your reactionary
thoughts on the subject.

[wtmusic]

24. And I'm just saying it's bullshit

and explained why. No whining. Maybe you could explain why my thoughts are reactionary (or is that just a freebie)?

[el_gato]

26. good for you

I don't give a shit what you think.
As I said if you want to read some social theory
regarding the nature of government from the
anarchist point of view you can go do so.

Buh-bye!

[BurtWorm]

14. You misunderstand me.

I'm saying (in this persona as the naive Painean cynical anarchist) that since government is by its very nature criminal, what is it a crime against? It's a crime against the natural order of things, which is anarchy.

That's just the persona talking. I'm waiting to see what arguments there are to counter it.

[latebloomer]

5. Sounds about right to me!

Unfortunately.

Which is why I have little faith that anyone electable will make any REAL change.

[Mr_Scarecrow]

7. How naive,

the government is actually a cadre of ancient vampires who lull the working class to sleep at night only to drink their blood.

[el_gato]

15. you are obviously not here for a serious discussion

[IrateCitizen]

8. It's pretty much in line with Thomas Paine's assessment

"Some writers have confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher."

Excerpt taken from Thomas Paine's "Common Sense"

[BurtWorm]

25. Interesting. The first socialist!

Didn't Paine also elaborate a form of progressive taxation to ensure that wealth wasn't concentrated in few hands?

[IrateCitizen]

31. I'd hardly call Thomas Paine a "socialist"

In fact, I think his distrust of government is pretty clear. Socialists (at least in the dictionary sense) have operated under the assumption of giving the state more power in order to enforce greater equality -- an assumption that I alternately agree and disagree with, depending on the day you ask me. ;-)

Paine was much more of an old-school anarchist/libertarian (which bears little resemblance to the CATO libertarian of today).

[BurtWorm]

32. But I wonder if Paine wasn't an advocate of using government

which he called a "necessary evil" to create greater equity. Look at his quote about government as a negative force again. He's not really saying what I said in the first post of this thread.

[zeemike]

11. The reality is

That we have sold our government to the highest bidder.
That is what privatization is all about. Private enterprise is buying the functions of government slowly so that we don’t notice it too much. Corporations now incarcerate our criminals for profit and have a big piece of the military budget. In the future they will educate our children and probably run the police force as well as the court systems if the Neo-cons and the anarchist have there way.
We are in a struggle to take back the government and return those functions that should be run by a democratic government back to the people.
If we fail, our children will have to live under a new dictatorship that is run and controlled by a new sort of oligarchy.

[BurtWorm]

27. I haven't heard much about the outsourcing of thousands

of federal jobs to private contractors. That story has just disappeared. Bet the fact of it is progressing nice and smoothly, meanwhile.

[rucky]

16. Would You Like Some Baby With Your Bathwater?

Our founding fathers saw this stuff coming. Look how hard the corrupt have to work to subvert a system, or change the system from within to fulfill their needs. Bush just didn't take office and, with a sweep of his hand, undo democracy. This has been a coup that has been long in the making.

And why did it happen? Our fault. Voters got complacent. The more voters actively participate, the better democracy works. The more we honor the sancity of the individual over the state, the better we can live our lives freely. The state must be the shepherd (edited to: protector) of the individual, and the indiviuals must act collectively to assure that the state is serving no other purpose. The instituations (society and state) are naturally at odds - hence the system of checks and balances, which is the focus of Bushco's dismantling.

Without government, corporate thugs would rule without having to expend resources to influence government. Without a Federal Aviation Administration, would you ever fly in an airplane? Without an FDA, would you put anything in your mouth? Without Government Aid programs, could we count on the goodwill of strangers to keep people from suffering inhumanely? Without courts, could we count on people to deliver justice...er...justly? Would commuters fix their own roads?

Sure, the powers that government has are always abused. We've never seen it on this scale before in America. I've said it before and I'll say it again, these guys are after your soul. That's why the people shouldn't turn to the media or government to frame their own sense of self. That's the big mistake most people make.

Maybe the libertarians are onto something?

[IrateCitizen]

21. Despite the wondrous documents that founded our country...

... the Constitution itself was innately flawed. Benjamin Franklin recognized it as such, and in voting for the ratification of the Constitution, he stated that he was only doing it because the country needed to have SOMETHING as a basis of government. As soon as that short-term goal was accomplished, the FF's could get back to patching the holes in it, and making it much more sustainable.

But perhaps Franklin was being an idealist with all of this, publicly advocating something that he also knew could not exist -- an incorruptible form of government.

The primary failure of governments lies not in the governors, but in the governed. That is, that the governed are too easily swayed and manipulated by the governors, and therefore do not maintain adequate vigilance and challenge over their activities. The end result, no matter the system of governance, is an eventual consolidation of power and cycle of exploitation. I guess the one good thing about our system is that it has often allowed at least for the pendulum to swing back, while still maintaining the basic institutions of society.

Perhaps therein lies the grandeur of the democratic republic???

[sendero]

49. I was with ya....

...until you said:
>>Maybe the libertarians are onto something?

No, they are as delusional as Communists. :)

[forgethell]

19. You

sound like a libertarian to me.

[BurtWorm]

20. I was trying to sound like a Naderite!

A libertarian believes in the freedom of what I referred to as the criminal class to exploit the shit out of the sheep as long as the sheep go along willingly. The view I presented is much bleaker than that.

[Character Assassin]

35. Ah, the sweet stench of pig-ignorance

A libertarian believes in the freedom of what I referred to as the criminal class to exploit the shit out of the sheep as long as the sheep go along willingly.

Please support that statement. Extra points will be awarded for intellectual honesty and consistency.

The view I presented is much bleaker than that.

You really ought to know 'A' before you attempt to use it in comparison to 'B'.

[BurtWorm]

36. Ah, the sour stench of smug self-satisfaction!

Extra points? Who the fuck are you?

That said: What part do you need help with? What don't you understand about "that statement?"

[BurtWorm]

33. I am hoping to be convinced by someone that this view of government

is wrong.

[Mairead]

44. I think it's not wrong, but not totally right, either

Occasionally someone comes forward to lead who seems to want to do less exploitation. The only way we can know, though, is to look at their record, since past behavior is still the best--however imperfect--predictor of future behavior in individual humans.

I like to think Dennis Kucinich is one of the less-exploitation people. He certainly doesn't seem to have milked his political career for what he could get. Most politicians end up richer than when they started--they make money off their 'public service'. Dennis hasn't. He's no better off than his constituents, probably less well off than many posting here.

Dennis was urged to sell out in the city council, and was practically promised the earth if he'd sell out as mayor. He didn't. I'm sure he had opportunities in the state senate to sell out, too, and perhaps in the House. But he just keeps plugging away, apparently trying to make life better for ordinary people.

So I don't think we're doomed, but I do agree it's probably close.

[library_max]

34. First of all, nobody can prove a negative

Generally speaking, the view presented in your original post is based on terminology. You call the corporate class "criminal" so it's criminal. You say that government is to "keep the sheep in line," so it is. There is no way to refute a mere choice of words, or an attitude.

In any government (even a dictatorship), powerful interests (in modern times, that increasingly means moneyed interests) are going to have influence. In a democracy, the people can check that influence to a great extent. If you look at the history of this country in the 20th century and compare it to just about any other country, you can see what a difference that can make.

Right now, the check on moneyed interests isn't working very well because of apathy, stupidity, panic (over 9/11 mostly) and a very effective propaganda-mill. But you can see the situation righting itself - compare with twelve months ago when any criticism of Bush, even a question that might be hiding a criticism, was almost universally condemned. We've got a long way to go and a lot of work to do, but it's been done before and can and will be done again.

Anarchy is like a vacuum. It can't exist in any meaningful sense for long. As soon as you let it out of its sealed container, it dissipates. Any real practical anarchy, in the sense of no formal law or rulership, is in practice the rule of the meanest person with the biggest fist. Or with the biggest and meanest gang of buddies, or with the most weapons. Formal government and codified law is the only refuge for the weak against the strong, the peaceful against the belligerent. Again, it isn't always a good refuge, but democracy is the best shot. As Churchill said, I believe, democracy is the worst system except for all the other systems.

[BurtWorm]

37. I'm not asking for proof of a negative

Generally speaking, the view presented in your original post is based on terminology. You call the corporate class "criminal" so it's criminal. You say that government is to "keep the sheep in line," so it is. There is no way to refute a mere choice of words, or an attitude.


I'm not asking for proof of a negative (which would be asking you to prove something doesn't exist, not that something isn't accurately described) or a refutation of an attitude. I'm asking to be convinced that the bleak view I presented above is not true. The easiest way to go about this, it seems to me, is to offer a more convincing description of what government does. I think you make a stab at that below.



In any government (even a dictatorship), powerful interests (in modern times, that increasingly means moneyed interests) are going to have influence. In a democracy, the people can check that influence to a great extent. If you look at the history of this country in the 20th century and compare it to just about any other country, you can see what a difference that can make.



Like what, for example? I guess you mean the labor laws of the early 20th century? A cynic might say these were the price the criminal class had to pay to hang on to its wealth in the face of post-industrialization. Granted, the reason they were forced to pay it was because the working class developed the tools and political strength to exact it. But it wasn't until the whole system broke down and needed fixing that the government institutionalized these reforms. The government's goal, a cynic might say, even in eras of reform, is to maintain the divide between labor and capital, which means favoring the latter in most cases, if not all cases.




Right now, the check on moneyed interests isn't working very well because of apathy, stupidity, panic (over 9/11 mostly) and a very effective propaganda-mill. But you can see the situation righting itself - compare with twelve months ago when any criticism of Bush, even a question that might be hiding a criticism, was almost universally condemned. We've got a long way to go and a lot of work to do, but it's been done before and can and will be done again.


Again, a cynic might say that the reason Bush's popularity is suffering now is that he has screwed the class he was supposed to serve. They loved the tax cuts, but some of them are probably uneasy by the reverberations the growing deficit is threatening.




Anarchy is like a vacuum. It can't exist in any meaningful sense for long. As soon as you let it out of its sealed container, it dissipates. Any real practical anarchy, in the sense of no formal law or rulership, is in practice the rule of the meanest person with the biggest fist. Or with the biggest and meanest gang of buddies, or with the most weapons. Formal government and codified law is the only refuge for the weak against the strong, the peaceful against the belligerent. Again, it isn't always a good refuge, but democracy is the best shot. As Churchill said, I believe, democracy is the worst system except for all the other systems.


I think we may have a different understanding of the term "anarchy." For me, it doesn't mean chaos. It means society without property, or the government to protect it.

(I'm not an anarchist, by the way. And I'm usually not a cynic. I'm usually a democrat who believes in the positive role of government as a protector of the weak against the strong.)

[janekat]

38. Yep - you took the words out of my mouth.... n/t

[w4rma]

39. IMHO, chaos and anarchy are unsustainable

they quickly become more orderly as folks declare themselves leaders and grow followings. Depending on the leadership and the followers and what they have to do to keep enough power to keep from being overthrown by other groups of people they build order and laws and government.

The challenge is to build a government that can stay powerful enough to withstand outside pressure while building a healthy society for it's citizens. And this government must also try their best to act ethically to the folks outside their jurisdiction.

[FDRrocks]

40. I agree for the most part...

And there is nothing we can do! Great.

Well, almost nothing, we could work on the local level to get an HONEST MAN in office and HONEST PEOPLE in the house and senate, dedicated to expunging the various shitty aspects of our society.

But that doesn't change the world. Which is why I think a revolution is out of the question. I think foreign interests would move in immediately, and we might end up worse off than when we started.

It is sad, and bleak. As on DU'ers signature said "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face... forever." - George Orwell.

I don't know why my heart keeps beating.

[gottaB]

41. Consent of the governed....

Can you have crime without law? There you go. You say anarchy, but it sounds to me like you have some vision of a natural moral order that I for one might find oppressive. How are we to agree upon what's natural in our social relations, given our differences?

I agree with the view that it's wise to be skeptical of government actions and the claims made for them, even the most universally praiseworthy humanitarian causes. However, what should be most vigilantly attended to is the quality of the claim, whether it truly represents the will of the people, or whether it rather misrepesents the popular consensus around a given course of action.

This get complicated, as is the nature of misrepresentation. For example, there may be wide consensus around a premise, say the idea that terrorism sucks, and wide divergence around a conclusion, e.g. bomb Iraq. Or there may be a multitude of reasons and interests for one aspect of a consensus, but because of underlying conflict on a number of levels, the consensus is unstable and ephemeral, such that it would be in effect a misrepresentation to represent that consensus as legitimizing a particular course of action.

Does it matter which interests a misrepresentation conceals: mercurial, xenophobic, religious zealotry? I don't think so, not for the purposes of republicanism and its kin. "Follow the money" is generally good advice because economic class exploitation is rather endemic and corrupting. But it's a mistake to see class conflict as the be all and end all of oppression. Ideologies can be just as if not more perfidious and stifling. In the timeframes that matter to people, waiting around for the crises that reveal the essential conflicts over the means of production is a luxury most people don't have. It would be onerous in fact to expect that of people, that they shouldn't on a daily basis deal with the problems that present themselves as they appear--which is more often than not in ideological or hegemonic forms.

Therefore I believe that it is better to side with freedom against all forms of oppression, and not prejudge the reasons behind this or that misrepresentation. The greatest crime in this view is not that one has an interest in government, or participates in the wielding of power; rather the crime against the people occurs when governing powers misreprent the consent of the governed.

[Spider Jerusalem]

42. That's basically correct, but there's more to it than that.

Government is merely an expression and extension of the nature of humans as social primates. We're basically monkeys with oversized brains, and our social structure works the same way...the pack has alphas who set the guidelines and enforce them on everyone else, and the betas through zetas, for the most part, WANT the enforcement, NEED it, derive a sense of relief and contentment from the idea that someone is in charge and they don't have to make any of the tough decisions themselves.

Those who form this governing class, as I've said, are generally the alphas of the pack, who naturally exploit the structure to serve their own ends while everyone else gets screwed...it is nothing more than human nature, shaped by fiver plus million years of evolutionary heritage. For most people, it's hardwired in the brain circuits to accept authority, to welcome it, to feel a NEED for it...and those IN authority are wired to use their positions for their own ends.

This is nothing new. No government, be it democratic, communistic, socialistic, whatever, is free of this rot that sets in at the top...the abuse of power by those who hold it, the view of power as an end in itself by those who wish to obtain it.The ancient Roman republic, the French republic declared in 1789, our own republic, the "worker's state" founded in Russia on the principles of Marx soon enough descended into totalitarianism and the purges of first Leninism, then Stalinism...the list is endless, and it seems to be a pattern in human societies. Those in positions of power eventually abuse it, because they CAN, and those of us without it do nothing, because, for the most part, our very nature as heirarchical social animals leads us to ACCEPT the actions of our leaders.

It's a terrible shame that humanity hasn't evolved beyond this sort of stupid territorialism and heirarchy...our technology has outstripped our species' evolutionary development, and it's probably going to kill us.

[BurtWorm]

50. Excellent post!

:toast:

[Resistance Is Futile]

43. Of course it's true

The fundmanetal purpose of government is to protect the rich from the poor. Everything else stems from this: governments give out just as much as is necessary to prevent the poor from revolting but no more.

[muriel_volestrangler]

45. But why do anarchists think no government would be better?

If you think all government is to protect the rich, and that anarchy is BurtWorm's 'no government, no property', what do you think would happen if government, and property, were abolished?

There's no reason to think the rich are fundamentally different from the poor; we all have the tendency to try to get something for nothing, or as little effort as possible. So do all other animals. Even if you still have a social code of 'do not injure others', a world as populated as ours now would be chaos, with no-one able to plan anything for the future - you'd have to spend your time guarding what you've just managed to achieve.

Face it, an organised society has brought many benefits to many people (houses too complicated for one family to build, freedom from food shortages, medical care, and much more), and no-one has even come close to a workable system to maintain that without involving property and money. These then need laws, and some agreed way of enforcing them, and a way of reviewing the laws as circumstances change. Hey presto, a government.

Most of us don't have the skills to survive as subsistence farmers, and even if we did, would you exchange the benefits of our organised society for the satisfaction of being 'free'? And could we all become farmers without overloading the planet?

[Mairead]

46. There's a difference between government and a ruling class

'Anarchy' doesn't mean 'the state of having no government' it means 'the state of having no ruler' (an = no, arch = ruler, y = state).

We can be our government, just as we are in our everyday lives.

[muriel_volestrangler]

48. OK, I can accept that

and I think I can support you in saying that it is possible for government to be non-criminal. Some posters here are advocating no government at all, which would be a form of anarchy, but an unwrokable one, in my opinion.

[BurtWorm]

52. And yet another excellent post!

:toast:

Just to be clear, again, I am not an anarchist. I am not proposing abolishing government or property. I don't think instant abolishment of either would ever be a good idea. To attain the sort of socialist anarchy that Prudhon, Kropotkin et al. advocated would entail a fundamental evolution of human society away from the primative impulses, of the sort that Jerusalem Spider wrote about, that now drive it and have driven it for millions of years.

I'm a democrat and a Democrat. Yesterday's post was written in a spirit of inquiry into the nature of government based on my reading of Tariq Ali's The Clash of Fundamentalisms, which is a very important, though depressing book. Ali is unflinching in his criticism of American imperialism, which Democrats and Republicans have had an equal hand in contructing, perpetuating, excusing, and inflicting on the rest of the world. George Bush has merely heightened the contradictions inherent in this shared American worldview.

I think it's wise to be aware of our party's complicity. I still don't know what to do with that awareness. I would like to be able to use it to do whatever small bit I can to help shift our party's leaders toward a more rational, humane view of the US's place in the world.

[Lexingtonian]

47. Well....

You are talking about severely dysfunctional democracy, rather than democracy proper.

You are talking about behavior in a situation of empire, or colonialism. The opposite of which is civilization, as Gore Vidal has noted.

Politics is rarely about the best in people. It is inner adolescence which drives people into the hostilities and abuses, vainglory and jealousies and shortsighted measures, the choice of ill-gained wealth over real achievement. A significant proportion of the population never mentally achieves full adulthood and will be led by foolish desires.

The truth of government is that it is a means, and it reflects the condition of the society as a whole. We can't expect it to do all that much well- it does, when necessity forces things, but otherwise the needs of people to defeat and outdo each other always detracts from serving the public good. So the realistic attitude is always to try to live well despite the government, to assume it fails as our co-citizens do and as often.

[BurtWorm]

51. Another excellent post!

:toast: