Hitting nails on heads

September 16th, 2009

Cactus Mouth Informer takes a break from uploading post-punk obscurities to skewer the Conspiracy of Business Interests.

I wander around with an image of the “Boss” inside my head. Thats him on the left. The proverbial Fat Cat, wearing a tailored suit, smoking a cigar, lord of all he surveys and bloated with his own self-importance. [...]
Thankfully, the “Voice Of Business” – the CBI – do everything in their power to perpetuate those images and thus continue the confrontational nature of workplace politics.

Divide by Zero on why “anarcho”-capitalists are not our allies.

One things that crops up over and over when someone on the libertarian right notices the outright hostility of anarchists when he appropriates the “Anarchist” label for himself is the accusation of “harming the movement” by not being willing to look past differences and work with each other for a stateless society. The argument goes that since both Anarchist and “Anarcho”-Capitalists wish a stateless society but simply with a different mode of production (Socialism VS Capitalism respectively) we have at least one common goal we should be working together for: The abolition of the State.
On first view, this makes a modicum of sense, if we both want a stateless society, and if we are willing to tolerate each others productive organization within their respective areas, then why are we fighting, arguing and criticizing each other when united we could be more formidable in both convincing people and undermining the state?
The answer is simple: Tactics.

And a good way to tell an anarchist from a propertarian is their attitude to Ayn Rand. If they say “who”, they’re OK; if they say “wow” then they’re probably a member of the cult that turns class analysis on its head and tells selfish, soulless bams that they are in fact noble and lovable. (It might help non-USAnians understand the batshit nonsense that gets telt about, e.g. healthcare).

In Atlas Shrugged, her hero, John Galt, leads a capitalist strike, in which the brilliant business leaders who drive all progress decide that they will no longer tolerate the parasitic workers exploiting their talent, and so they withdraw from society to create their own capitalistic paradise free of the ungrateful, incompetent masses.

“For twenty-five years,” gushed a steel executive to Rand, “I have been yelling my head off about the little-realized fact that eggheads, socialists, communists, professors, and so-called liberals do not understand how goods are produced. Even the men who work at the machines do not understand it.” Rand, finally, restored the boss to his rightful mythic place.

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