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[Kevin Carson]

On 2/4/10, Andy Robinson <ldxar1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> "We know they want to not be poor.  Every chance they get they leave
> families, home lands and social structures to get an education to earn
> money."
>
> When someone grabs all the food and locks it up in a walled compound, people
> will try to break into the compound to get the food, or failing that, they
> will do what the person says so he gives it back to them.  This doesn't mean
> that they want the food to be locked up in a walled compound.
>
> If you really imagine that the global North has all the resources it does
> from being a better system, then you've obviously never studied the history
> of colonialism.
>
> In any case there are an awful lot of people who don't leave.  Those who do,
> a great many are victims of forced displacement or persecution.  China for
> instance is undergoing rapid urbanisation mainly because of the increased
> role of capitalism in rural areas, driving farmers off their land.

Again, I think this--the idea that "the law" and "society" are just
neutral states of affairs that result from the current state of
consciousness at any time--is my root objection to Ryan's narrative,
which appears in many forms.  The state came into existence because
"society" or "the people" all just decided for some reason that it
would be a good thing.  Globalization exists because "society"
"decided" it would be a good thing.  And when the law changes, it will
be because "society" or "the  people" one day just "decide" or
"realize," after due deliberation, that the preexisting state of
affairs wasn't a good idea after all.  And when "society" "realizes"
that things weren't working so great, it's just because their head was
collectively in a bad place and they became more enlightened.  Class
interest or power structures, and their cultural reproduction
apparatuses, have nothing to do with it.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html