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Anarcho-Syndicalism versus
Letters #86-#90
Letter #086
Hello again, Babette,
The question I asked wasn't about you and the groups you work with. It was about the poor classes in whose name you labor under. Would these people rather work or starve? And if they'd rather work, why must they depend on handouts? Again and again, you're going to find artificial barriers: the right to property through deed, the establishment of landed monopoly, government in favor of Capitalism and inequality (even if it calls it "Socialism"), etc., etc.. The problem is not that those without anything don't want to work. It's that those with everything make more money if everyone else is desperate enough to accept starvation wages. That is to say, the problem will never go away if you throw crumbs at it -- we must directly reorganize society for ourselves, to meet human interests.
So, I assume you're going to throw out your Bible and start living according to your experience? No? I didn't think so. Life would be a terribly dreary thing if there was nothing beyond our direct experience of our own living.
Yes, this trend has been going on for the past 100 years. It's due mostly to the introduction of technology. Since only the wealthiest farmers can afford tractors and hydroponics (very expensive!), the small farmers cannot compete. It leads to an economy where a very few own all of the land, and the many depend upon them for food. Those farm hands still must eat the produce of farms. Instead of applying their labor to the land, they're digging up the coal and iron that will be used in the tractors that replaced them and made their labor cheap. The small farmer being driven out is a sign of this land monopoly. But, then again.... "Farmers," in the phrase you're using it, represents 2% of the population. The 45 million people starving in the United States would pick up that land in no time if it was offered to them.
Funny. Feminism, the rights of gays, the right to work the land, basic civil liberties, etc., are all a threat to your "tradition." Yet, Aborigines don't have this option, and when they try to claim it, you mock their tradition.
I am aware of this. What I am trying to convey to you is that you won't achieve your objectives by the tactics that you're using, because they have failed numerous times before. This isn't an honor contest, to see who is more noble. I am genuinely interested in knowing what must be done to abolish poverty across the globe. You need to ask questions like, "Why has philanthropy and charity failed to abolish poverty throughout the ages?" If you don't, if you don't investigate it, then you'll never be able to solve the problem. You'll only become part of it, directing the energies of those who want to create CHANGE into something that makes things STAY THE SAME. Either you will investigate the truth, so you can know what needs to be done to end hunger and unemployment. Or, you'll keep up the same games that the Capitalists have asked you to do: throwing bread crumbs onto the gaping mouths of millions and millions. So, what is it? Are you going to investigate why this social system has never provided opportunity or bread for the people? Or are you going to submit to the culture and the domination of a Capitalist class over the people? Sincerely,
Letter #087
Dear Andy, I don't work on behalf of the poor. I work to save unborn babies from abortion, in Australia. A few of their mothers are poor - most are aborting for social reasons. I don't judge, just try to help through pregnancy support services. Australia now has virtually full employment, the Aborigines have more land than they know what to do with. Most of their disputes concern "green issues", e.g. land locked up for forest so it can't farmed, rivers protected from fishing etc. A hunter-gatherer lifestyle is no longer viable for them as their children need to be educated etc and all that living in the 21st century involves. You can no longer lock people up into a 15th century agrarian society - but one who I admire who gets closest to your views is Allan Carlson, founder of the World Congress of Families, who believes in "home production". Google him and read his stuff before you next write to me. Babette
Letter #088
Hello again, Babette,
I thought we solved the problem? From now on, we're not aborting fetuses. We're just cutting their umbilical cord and taking them out. They definitely die after a while, you know, like the unemployed or the poor and hungry. We're not expected to feed them. If they want to eat, they can get off their welfare and march right up to a job -- even though that is physically impossible for a barely-developed infant, or economically impossible for a dispossessed peasant. Honestly, I do not see why life on that side of the vagina is suddenly considered sacred, but once it passes through, poof, it can starve to death the next day because of an unjust economic organization. So, problem solved: It's not called an abortion. It's called an early termination of welfare payment. Drag those poor people out of their tenements and scrape that fetus out of that cavity. This isn't some Marxist land that provides for everyone according to their need, now is it?
A real unemployment rate wavering around 10%, according to official statistics, is not "virtually full employment."
Yes, but today their children are ill-educated as ever. They did not benefit from "civilization" that turn their children into slaves. I don't understand why you have a problem with rejecting slavery (except maybe the Bible commands it, Ephesians 6:5). In the United States, Christians said that making slaves out of Africans was good, because it gave them comforts of modern life. It actually gave them the whip. Australia's interaction with the aborigines has been little different.
I never mentioned anything about agrarian society. It's only worth mentioning that agrarian society has no famine or hunger compared to our modern society. So, if you believe that society's purpose is to provide for those who participate in it, then today's system is worse than the Agrarian system. That is, unless you'd want to define famine and mass starvation as 'good' and plenty and comfort as 'bad.' Anyway, both those who I've repeatedly brought up, Diouf (as you mentioned) and Kropotkin both advocated the use of improved technology all over the world to solve the agrarian difficulty. Of course, the technology already exists. You see the problem? If we already have the technology, why does the starvation still occur? Simply put, because there are those who can benefit from starved masses of desperate workers -- simply put, there are landowners.
Why don't you write him?
Delightful. That's right, Babette. You can rely on a board game to provide you with the fundamental facts of social existence. Or, like me, you can use a mixture with a bit of experience and a lot of research, to base your understanding of society. You know that game is based on the Socialist game 'Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit'? I'm not joking. I looked at the game set on their website. The game was invented by Elizabeth Magie, an admirer of Henry George, in 1903, to show the effect of property being hoarded up by a single person (Monopoly also stole the game 'Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit'). That's hilarious -- a bunch of Conservatives make a game about how people cheat the system, and THEY STOLE THEIR GAME DESIGN FROM SOCIALISTS! Awesome. Sincerely,
Letter #089
Dear Andy, What on earth makes you think I support slavery? As an Indian by birth and skin colour, I know most slaves were black or brown, why would I support such a diabolical system? I repeat, no one is starving in Australia except a few though their own drug addiction or similar. The Aborigines are provided with excellent education but they can't be bothered to ensure their children go to school every day, so now the government has to sequester their welfare payments and they only get it if their children have a good school attendance, You never allow for human moral frailty - what we Christians refer to as 'original sin'. Babette
Letter #090
Hello again, Babette,
Oh, I don't know. Maybe supporting an unjust social system that is the product of centuries of slavery?
And I repeat, that I require evidence. What happens if I repeat you and someone asks me my source? "Oh, some lady I met on the internet who thinks that the UN makes up statistics about global warming and that Harlem's biggest problem is obesity." See, nobody would take that seriously.
Those welfare checks -- aren't they paid with the production of the land that was originally the entire property of the Aborigines, which was forcibly taken from them, as their children were sold into slavery? The situation sounds like the reverse that you're describing it. Indians and non-Aborigines in Australia are drawing welfare off of the property that originally belonged wholly to the Aboriginal people. Any history book will tell you that. The children of a conquered people are little more than slaves; it makes no difference that feudalism was used at one time, chattel slavery at another, and wage slavery today. It is control and domination of the land that once belonged to all by means of brute force.
Oh, I certainly allow for "human moral frailty." But I see it in religious believers who follow a church full of sympathizers of child rape, fascism, capitalism, and slavery. I see it in people who state that because god has spoken to them directly, monopoly of the land and poverty must both continue -- that a human being has a right to the nutrients of life on one side of the womb, but not the other. I see human frailty in those who read Chapter 31 of Numbers, watch as god orders the rape of children, and then hold it up as a holy testament of our universe. That is the truest of all weaknesses: self-deception. Sincerely,
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