Today's Topics:
1. anarkismo.net: In Ireland Jobstown not Guilty verdict points
to a Garda conspiracy by Andrew (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. anarkismo.net: A Response to "In Which the
Anarcho-Syndicalists Discover C4SS" by D. Morse and B. Sousa
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. London Anarchist Federation Crowdfunder Appeal For Common
House (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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Message: 1
The outraged media reaction to a jury doing its job and finding the Jobstown defendants
not guilty is quite extraordinary. Rather than do the right thing and launch an
investigation as to how 180 cops could produce evidence that was directly contradicted by
video evidence, the media have gone on a rant against Twitter! Rather than finding it
suspicious that nearly 3 million in public funds was spent by the DPP on a case that any
proper check of available evidence should have indicated was never likely to convince a
jury, the media suggest instead that the problem lay in the exact charges brought. The
trial was part of a large scale state operation to suppress a mass anti-austerity
community campaign. ---- As we look across our newspapers, TV channels and radio stations
and see what appears to be coordinated messaging from politicos, journalists and other
elite figures we should take this as a teaching moment. This isn't some exception, this
is how it works. It's only visible in this instance because so many of us followed the
trial in considerable detail, and that was only possible because of the large number of
activists who provided court updates, mostly in a voluntary role. Those activists with
access to social media allowed a collective challenging of the media framing. Hundreds of
people not only read what they posted but shared and retweeted it.
The central story of the Jobstown Not Guilty verdict is how so much money could have been
spent on what looks very much like a co-ordinated frame up. Who gave the orders for this?
Not just the formal orders in terms of the DPP's office but also the informal ones that
had to have come from government politicians for such a choreographed political show trial
to get underway. The likelihood is that there was a conspiracy, that is what should be
investigated. Instead the media are doing the complete opposite and rushing to insist a
conspiracy would be impossible. The Irish Times editorial goes so far as to declare the
"Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, a scrupulously independent and respected
institution". It's precisely that claim that should be under the journalistic microscope.
The sheer scale of garda evidence also demonstrates that this is not just a few bad
apples. Around 180 Gardaí gave statements that formed part of the excuse for the DPP to
press ahead with the show trial. Some 50 of these gave evidence and was noted by the
defence the evidence later given in court often omitted the more outrageous elements of
the earlier statements. Presumably because at that point they were aware of the video
evidence and know they would be cross examined. In theory Garda evidence should simply
consist of a truthful account of what happened. In practise it consisted of an attempt to
spin and even invent things that were said or done in order to get a conviction. Claims
were made about rocks being thrown or things being said by defendants that video evidence
revealed to be false. The number of Gardaí involved and the fact that in some cases
groups of Gardaí made identical false claims - suggesting they had co-ordinated in order
to do so - points to a conspiracy. And all this in a context where the gardaí have been
caught out again and again, right up to the current teflon commissioner. But the media,
in particular the Irish Times has ruled to cover this up.
Instead the focus is on Twitter and whether what was said there might have influenced the
jury. This shouldn't have been possible as standard direction to juries is not to look up
the case on social media, doing so would result in a mistrial. The media know that full
well so what is the actual reason for the focus on social media? It's simple. For a very
long time the media in Ireland has functioned, with only a handful of exceptions, as the
cosy sidekick of the ruling elite. Over and over again they have uncritically repeated
claims coming from those with wealth and power and attacked those opposing them who do not.
The decade long struggle against Shell at Rossport was one where growing numbers of people
came to see this in practise. They would see one thing happen in person - or increasingly
on social media, then they would see the opposite being reported as fact right across the
Irish media. With the water charges campaign this not only escalated it came directly
into many housing estates across the island. Suddenly tens of thousands of people were
seeing one thing happen on their own doorsteps as water meters were resisted only to see
something quite different being reported in the media.
Faith in mainstream media collapsed. People stopped buying newspapers and started to
refuse to pay TV licenses. Very many were outraged and angry about being lied to. There
were some negative aspects to this. With the gatekeeper they had once trusted now
discredited, some people tended to fall into right wing conspiracy theories. In Ireland
because the left was active in popular struggles this was a small problem. In the US where
there wasn't a radical left on the streets it became part of the reason Trump got elected
as white voters came to believe all sorts of racist nonsense from conspiracy sites. Those
on the soft left who rant about hard left ‘populism' might want to consider that reality
and realise there is a reason why resistance to neoliberalism in Ireland took a different
route.
The establishment hate social media because it has changed the game. It used to be that
the cops could batter people, claim that they were putting down a riot, the media would
faithfully report this and most of the population would applaud what they presumed was a
job well done. I was on the streets the day that ended: Dame street 2002. That was the
day when a pack of guards, batons swinging, came changing into a peaceful Reclaim the
Streets on Dame street and proceeded to batter teenagers. The riot story was made and
reported faithfully by RTÉ but, for the first time, activists not only had cameras to
capture what had really happened but a (pretty primitive) infrastructure to transmit that
footage. That was indymedia.ie and the footage that rapidly circulated online forced the
media to change the story. No gardaí were ever held to account of course. However,
considerable amounts were paid out in compensation in the years that followed with the
traditional cyclical pattern of this happening before cases got to court - and so in
silence, without publicity.
The technology greatly escalated in the years since so that nowadays the smartphone in
many of our pockets can capture, transmit and distribute video in a way that you'd have
needed 500,000 squids worth of equipment and satellite rental to do back in 2002. Videos
of Gardaí abusing people, whether that be political activists or homeless people trying to
get some sleep on our cold streets, have become routine. They seldom make the mainstream
media unless they have first been shared by enormous numbers of people. Of course, people
notice this and it adds to the move away and distrust of mainstream media.
This is why it is so disturbing that the media have not only failed to cover the other
elephant in the room but have run interference to stop it being spotted. Today the Irish
Times carries a piece by ex Justice Minister Michael McDowell that has a curious point at
the end, but one that can be understood in the context of the paragraphs above. They
reported him saying "Phone camera evidence could be edited to present any angle, he said
and perhaps it was time for gardaí to be equipped with cameras so their actions could be
monitored."
In the context of the trial this is very misleading, much of the video evidence was
captured by the Gardaí - e.g. the helicopter footage or of course from Burton's own phone.
But let us leave the implicit attack on the jury's verdict aside. The Gardaí have been
running a campaign over the last couple of years to try to make it illegal to record their
actions. We know from reports that the jury specifically requested to review video footage
before making their ‘Not Guilty' decision. In this case, where the claims of dozens of
Gardaí were contestable because the video showed otherwise, consider what the impact of
that video's absence would have been. Would the Jobstown 6 be starting prison sentences of
up to 14 years this morning?
That would suit the establishment. The politicians, garda and journalists who insisted
there has been some sort of ‘false imprisonment' and who are now outraged - not only that
the jury found otherwise but that a huge section of the population know why. Indeed
because the helicopter footage and the inside car footage made it onto social media, along
with accounts of garda evidence, a very, very large number of people are going to draw the
obvious conclusions, that they have seen and heard evidence that strongly points to a
conspiracy. And - this is what upsets the media - like us many of those people are going
to be asking why the journalists are not doing ‘their job' and investigating this apparent
conspiracy? Why are the politicians not demanding an inquiry? If it's just a rather
large amount of rotten apples where are the Garda whistleblowers coming forward to expose
the conspiracy within their ranks?
Those are very legitimate questions. As the clock ticks, the establishment not only fails
to raise them but works hard to distract attention from them. We are entitled to draw the
conclusion that this apparent conspiracy is business as usual. It's how wealth and power
protects itself from the many and it's the way things have almost always worked. If we
want things to continue to change for the better we have to organise together, to organise
against them, and bring forth a society without such divisions and those that police them.
Words: Andrew Flood
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/30395
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Message: 2
In this article, we respond to the brief exchange between the Workers' Solidarity Alliance
(WSA-IWA) and the Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS). ---- Have you ever noticed that
when you are in an argument you want to have the last word? It often feels like the last
word contains its own authority, as if you are the assaulted party and now you have
defended an honorable view. In debate, this is referred to as the "last word" fallacy; a
bias towards the most recent argument and likelihood to be swayed by it. Can we combat
these biases in arguments of value or, more pertinently, ones of fact? The most recent
political climate is emblematic of effective misinformation and narrative based politics.
Far Left and far Right political thinkers can believe themselves outside of the influences
of "centrist" politics, but maybe they too are gripped by the "truths" of bias. The
inherent vice of a political stance is a loss of objectivity, but a gain of effectiveness.
Can we actually argue a point legitimately, or will we forever circle mainstream politics
in a purgatory of "truths?"
R. and Sousa's A Free Market Fantasy, served to respond, in part, to a very brief,
substance-less, article published by Byas, titled Toward an Anarchy of Production, which
made an argument for "free markets" in anarchism and the lack of emphasis of "markets" in
the anarcho-syndicalist community. The anarcho-syndicalist community, as Byas describes,
is a non-scalable or socio-changeable system if as he says the following:
"Any society worth calling "anarchist" is going to be one that can continually adapt to
the needs and desires of the individuals within that society. This adaptation must also be
to the interests of the entire community, not toward the limited aims of a specific class
of people. There must be ceaseless social experimentation, and there must be incentives
toward developing institutions that benefit everyone and weeding out those that don't...
This requires markets, which are uniquely able to account for variation in ways that
other, more deliberately constructed social arrangements cannot. That
information-gathering function of the market process is typically just praised for its
efficiency, but this overlooks its potential as an engine of social change."
This, as R. and Sousa point out, is not consistent with the intellectual framers of
anarcho-syndicalist constructs (Rocker, Bakunin, Chomsky, Kropotkin and so on) and is
therefore likely a point of view that presupposes the veracity of the anarcho-capitalist
perspective and foundationally relies on the thinking of Tucker and others. It is actually
quite a leap of logic to call "free-markets" efficient in a positive meaning, as many
philosophers and social thinkers argue that they are efficient at extracting maximal
profit via minimal investment from "moneyed monopolies," which goes against Tucker's
position. If we were to analyze markets from a Marxist-environmental perspective, we may
reach a more disquieting conclusion about their supposed efficiencies.
As the Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS) article is free of empirically derived
reasoning (as is almost all literature in the libertarian and/or anarchist communities) we
must use argumentation based on foundation, structure, and axioms.
Byas defines markets to further the argument of the moral positivism that
anarcho-capitalism wants to identify with, but constantly fails to do so. Definitions of
markets and their utility are given by Byas herein:
"By contrast, two of the most important features of markets are radically decentralized
decision-making based on distributed knowledge, and the availability of alternatives. In
market transactions, one does not have to convince the community at large of the goodness
behind one's use of a given resource in order to use it, they just have to provide value
for value... Within a market, people can act more directly on what they believe is
genuinely best for them, even when the reasons for that are difficult to communicate to
those in more privileged positions... By creating new profit opportunities geared toward
those preferences of the oppressed, the seemingly impersonal market process becomes a
never-ending social critique, always backed up by immediate direct action A market society
is a society built on continuous self-creation, whose institutions are always kept in
check by the looming threat of creative destruction. In so far as anarchism is the
abolition of hierarchy, the production of anarchy requires the anarchy of production."
This style of thinking is exactly what R. and Sousa describe as "utopian at best" and
"mightily bold." As is the dictum in the sciences (and should be applied to rigorous
philosophy and political thought) "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence;"
which is not seen in the Byas article and from our reading of the C4SS website, not met
generally by its authors.
Carson starts with a degree of "vituperation" that is rarely seen from a response to a
publication by the United States based "Friend" of the International Workers' Association
- the Workers' Solidarity Alliance - and portrays a degree of anxiety over his own ideas,
which is nice, because it allows us to deconstruct his arguments from a similarly jaded
and vicious perspective.
The first critique of R. and Sousa's intellectual malfeasance is his appropriation of
Tucker as synthesizing individualism with Austrian economics, responding to this with an
obvious shock, as though such thinking is absurd and "inconsistent." Unsurprisingly, the
C4SS website gives a shiny view of Tucker's economic philosophies:
"Tucker built his theory of individualist anarchism (or what he called "Boston Anarchism"
to distinguish him from "Chicago Anarchists" who were generally less favorable to markets
and more favorable to violence as a means for social change) out of the principles of
individual sovereignty and the labor theory of value (which was commonly accepted by
mainstream economists dating back to Adam Smith, but was later thrown out by the
profession after the marginal revolution led by early Austrians, such as Carl Menger and
Eugene Böhm von Bawerk). For 19th century anarchists, the labor theory of value, or "cost
limit of price," was the natural extension of the individual's absolute sovereignty over
themselves. Labor was seen as the source for all wealth, and the laborer naturally owns
the fruits of their labor as an extension of their self-ownership. Tucker's theory of
value was intimately related to his ethical views based on each individual having sole
dominion over their body and their justly acquired property, which required labor mixing."
(We are not entirely sure if this is accurate, and we should not mistake the reality with
the story. As we don't think that even Adam Smith particularly cared about a man's labor
being his right, nor did his view of protectionist capitalism conflicted to directly with
the "Austrian" thinkers Massimino refer to with such distain. How, for instance, would
Tucker think about large capital investments? How about colonialism? A name is not a
philosophy and therefore we ought not to get hung up on calls to authority, in general, no?)
Whether or not Tucker's thinking is a synthesis of Individualism with Austrian economics
is not proved by Tucker's writing on the subject, but on how it is used to further such a
type of thinking. To quote Bojak, from Bojak Horseman "Hey, I stand by my critique of
Sartre. His philosophical arguments helped tyrannical regimes justify overt cruelty."
If we want our arguments to exist in the real world then we need to critique them based on
the influences they dominate, and so free ourselves of intellectual bias in that matter.
Carson then points to R. and Sousa's inconsistent definitions of markets with quod erat
demonstrandum authority, which any graduate T.A. would recognize as no certainty of proof.
"R. and Sousa display still more incoherence in their interpretation of Adam Smith. Smith,
they say, "suggested that that the crafters of legal statutes and political policy in his
day" guaranteed that the state's policy would promote primarily capitalist interests at
the expense of everybody else. This, they go on to argue, demonstrates the sheer
utopianism of believing "that markets could remedy the tendency of those in positions of
power advance their interests through exploiting the laborers and working class."... But
if capitalists exploit the working class through statutes and policies enforced by the
state, then "markets" as we understand them amount to the abolition of such statutes and
policies. So "markets," by definition, entail the abolition of capitalism in the sense of
Tucker's monopolies on land, credit and ideas. And the quote from Tucker, above - which
the authors appear to cite favorably - is an explicit statement that "markets," in the
sense of abolishing monopolies in land and credit and opening them up to competition,
would abolish all forms of rent extracted as surplus value from labor."
R. and Sousa are actually arguing the antithesis of Carson's critique, as when they say this:
"Class struggle libertarians know that private property is a major basis for capitalism
(which historically presupposes colonialism, imperialism, and the use of the state to
defend said private property)... Therefore, it stands to reason that the ideology evoked
by Byas and others is by no genuine means anti-capitalist. Ironically, the "free market"
positions of ALL and C4SS is virtually pro-capitalist, due to the fact that it supports
the societal roots capitalism depends on, including, most strikingly, private property. It
is more correct to call this position something like "market liberalism," but it's
strikingly similar to Anarcho-capitalism, which is an extreme ultra-right view that free
markets should coordinate the economy without any outside interference."
Or this on Adam Smith:
"More specifically, he suggested that that the crafters of legal statutes and political
policy in his day ensured that their selfish interests were "most peculiarly attended
to[no matter how]grievous" the consequence experienced by others... To think that markets
could remedy the tendency of those in positions of power advance their interests through
exploiting the laborers and working class is utopian at best."
From these, we are inclined to conclude that R. and Sousa define markets as being a
purely state-backed capitalist enterprise that is impossible to abstract into its own
"liberty" centered exchange. Free association cannot exist if single persons have
unchecked access to the communal resources: the capacity to create monopolies. It is
ironic that the corporate/state structures that Tucker purports to detest emerge so easily
from the anarcho-capitalist worldview. Carson's abstraction of the market from the state
structure is sophomoric and idealistic at best and cannot be used as a refutation to R.
and Sousa's arguments.
On private property, Carson shows that he can defend his own position without insulting
the intelligence of another person, but we run into an issue of definitions and of
purpose. The "use" argument that Carson refers to is the Lockeian argument, and when
Tucker makes it, he is making the same argument that Locke originally made, which was
based on a man's right to property of person (which, better stated in modern English as
Liberty of Person). That means that a man is due his labor, the product of his hands, such
that he does not exhaust the potential of every other man to use their labor for the same
purpose. This has striking similarity to the Marxist "each to their own capacity" dictum
and is a valid point of difference between hardline rightwing anarcho-capitalists who
don't believe that all persons have a right to life, and the "libertarian left" that
Carson supports.
It is a common sin in anarchist and socialist circles that capitalism will fail, and that
what will replace it is morally positive. Carson makes an eloquent argument for the fall
of capitalism, starting by accepting the colonial roots of resource abundance and creation
of artificial scarcity by controlled distribution and production. He states that:
"At the same time, artificial abundance is unsustainable because it's a basic economic law
that corporations will pursue business models that economize on costly inputs and instead
maximize reliance on extensive addition of inputs that are artificially cheap. Demand for
subsidized inputs will outstrip the supply. So the economy is driven towards material
input crises like Peak Oil, and crumbling infrastructure that can't keep up with the needs
of corporations operating over larger and larger market areas. States must socialize
larger and larger portions of the total operating costs of capital in order for business
to be profitable until, as neo-Marxist James O'Connor pointed out, fiscally exhausted
states can no longer keep up with the demand... On top of all this there's the chronic
tendency of corporate capitalism towards over-investment, under consumption and excess
capacity - a tendency that becomes worse over time and is exacerbated by technological
advances in small-scale, cheap and ephemeral production machinery that requires less and
less capital expenditure for a given level of output."
Where is the evidence that the socialization of loses will ever be curbed by the failing
of the corporate empires? (Seriously, where?) The 2009 financial crisis, which has been
determined to be of criminal negligence by multiple independent reviews, is still billed
in the form of debt on the American taxpayer. Nestlé corporation has furthered the most
obvious example of stolen commons by commodifying water, at the expense of both
governments and peoples. How about risk analyses of oil spill danger? British Petroleum
longs for artic drilling, even though there exists a 40% failure rate, and is not
responsible at all for the destruction of that environment? How about climate change? The
commons of air are completely ignored by business, government, and consumer interests.
Where is this complete collapse of corporate interests? (Please, send us the data.)
Even if we accept "terminal crisis tendencies" as being accurate, will they lead to the
outcome that Carson wants? We see these "hollowed out states" as falling prey to even
further corporate influence. The sort of mechanical society in the cyberpunk futurism of
Blade Runner, Brazil, and 12 Monkeys where society falls backwards into aristocracy, with
extreme wealth at the top maintained by private security and technology, and extreme
poverty plaguing those abandoned by the state and hence destined to live in squalor.
Carson then ends his critique of anarcho-syndicalists by categorizing them as being
beholden to the "old school" of Marxist socialism that is irrelevant to the modern
decentralized economy. This argument is a little hypocritical to the earlier assertion,
which reproached R. and Sousa for using selective quoting to lump all in the C4SS
community into the anarcho-capitalist position, and then selectively quotes R. and Sousa
to the same effect. While we cannot and do not want to speak on behalf of R., we think
that critics need to return to this old Marxist thinking. Carson is right, the working man
has become totally disenfranchised, where they don't even think of themselves as working
men - they are entrepreneurs, capitalists, masters of their own destinies, even when they
live in a one-bedroom apartment with no savings and no real prospect for social mobility...
A note to all authors involved
Obviously by writing this article, as a response to the responders' responses, we are
utilizing the last word fallacy to our advantage. We hope that what was written came off
as merely a refutation of inaccuracy and not a direct argument for the anarcho-communist
perspective, for its validity and viability are worth further debate and reflection.
Furthermore, we are agnostic to whether or not the "truths" in this article are capital
‘T' truths or empirical truths, but we try to understand them through a critical attack of
their consequences/philosophical implications. In turn, the significance of the
consequences are left to the reader to consider.
Related Link: http://ideasandaction.info/2016/11/free-market-fantasy/
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/30388
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Message: 3
Please support this important appeal. It has been a crucial venue for London AF as well as
other groups and campaigns.
Save the Common House
The Common House is a radical community-building space in East London. We need urgent
financial support to stay open!
CROWDFUNDER.CO.UK
https://aflondon.wordpress.com/2017/07/21/crowdfunder-appeal-for-common-house/
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