Revision 18raw-print  2008-01-07 00:54dimitricomment  
Revision 17raw-print  2008-01-06 15:51739 
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    It works, but for whom? For a tiny, comfortable self-selected few. A tiny, laid-back elite that lives and prospers from the rest of us. It's a world structured for market shares and expansion. Our present system spends a fortune trying to convince us that this is how it has to be: that it is the 'natural' way. In essence, the system is based on controlling the majority of people to benefit the minority. Big business is built on the hierarchy of command that runs right from the chief executive to the poor sod deep-frying. People do what they a re told or they a re sacked. Customers a re 'told' through marketing. We are offered a passivity, a fear of losing what we have, and scapegoats to focus that fear. We are fed an illusion of a contentment and satisfaction that is just beyond our reach. Our lives can only be fulfilled with this product, this holiday, this person.
    You give people a crisis and they can work together and find a solution. They do that without authority, without orders, without someone getting all the power and all the rewards. Even the army has a system of 'Chinese parliament' where they dispense with trappings of rank of authority so that they can sort out how to do something. The British and Australian armies in the Second World War selected leaders by giving 'Ieaderless groups' difficult tasks but no structure. They just waited to see what organisation emerged and then codified it with rank markings and pay differentials. Anarchists would argue that it is those rank markings and pay differentials that destroy the natural organising skills of groups that even the most authoritarian of organisations recognise. Any organisation, however repugnant, has people that can 'get things done'. And these people are rarely the people at the top of the hierarchy.
    Watch the way the modern state is extended. Behind every growth there is always a threat of the 'other'. What this threat is varies considerably. Vikings figured big in the birth of the English government. The weather and seasons might have been a threat in pre-history and there is some evidence to link the growth in authority with a minority keeping information on the seasons. But the modern manufactured threat trend appears to be a shift from communism to muslims. My guess for the future manufactured threat will be the Chinese. The 'other' could also be asylum seekers, the Russian mafia, criminals travelling from the capital, people of different colour, or different sexualities, travellers, or the latest youth culture. All these can be made into a threat that needs a defence, and that need for defence is always used to extend centralised power. There are not many governments that say 'yes, we had a big hand in creating this problem and we need to acknowledge that and withdraw'.
    So when the Marxist paper sellers (or the 'managers in the wings') suggest that it is time to get some 'discipline' and 'proper organisation' it's time to worry. They will point out the danger of both 'irresponsible' revolutionary elements and the danger of infiltration by forces of the privileged and powerful. They will point to the need for pragmatism and the need for sacrifices to be made. They will suggest the need for a few wise men (sorry, but it's always men) to oversee and manage the process. And somehow, through some mysterious process, those few wise men will turn out to be themselves and their friends. And the thing that always gets me, the thing that really sticks in my throat is their final definitive argument: "But we're all on the same side". Let's make it clear: "You're not".

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