From: Remi Sussan (sremi@compuserve.com)
Date: Sat Sep 27 1997 - 07:31:29 MDT
Hi this is my first post to the extropian list !
Damien wrote :
>We'd agree, but Banks also feels that the
>closeness and smallness of a ship or habitat would require a _sort of_
>socialism within the ship. (Trick question: in an anarcho-capitalist
>O'Neill cylinder, how do you decide where the can goes?)
I remember Gerard O'Neill saying in an interview that he thought that
mini-worlds would be a place where true democracy could finally occur:
according to him, an independant population of about 50 000, roughly like
the antique Athenes demography, could permit everybody to have a real
power on the global politics.
>Otherwise you'd be throwing, say, European left-anarchist values at
American
>right-anarchist values, and making a mess.
It's true that the two trends of anarchism have difficulties to cohabit. I
was accustomed to left anarchist values when I first meet the extropians
more than one year ago (through the transhuman list), and it was a real
"cultural shock!". Only now I begin to understand the values of these
strange animals (I continue to disagree, but, at least, I understand).
This kind of debate always remind me "Illuminatus" this card with two
faces one saying "property is theft" the other "property is liberty". This
depends, says Wilson, of the meaning of "property" One is property of the
means of production; the second is property of personal objects.
Right-winged anarchism goes too far (IMHO) when it suggest the
privatization of all (such as for instance, oxygen supply in an O'Neill
cylinder), and left anarchism is wong when it contests the property of
personal goods (for instance, Emmet Grogan, leader of the
anarcho-socialists Diggers, telling Allen Ginsberg he was an ugly
capitalist, only because he wanted to retire in a house with a garden!).
Are right and left anarchism really opposite ideologies ? sometimes, there
can be a fruitful collaboration. The best example, IMO, is the GNU project,
a pure anarcho-socialist project (no property of information!) which gave
birth to successful companies such as Cygnus.
By the way, Damien, I think you are right when saying that left anarchism
is mostly european and right anarchism american (although there are
important exceptions, of course). I think this is because during centuries,
USA were a very large place, and when somebody was unhappy, he was free to
do his own thing by going to West. To the contrary, Europe is overcrowded
since centuries (a little like a spaceship).
Bye,
Remi
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:44:58 MST