Andrew Chrucky
Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, 2007.
Russian Mercenaries — The Wagner Group
Candace Rondeaux, Decoding the Wagner Group: Analyzing the Role of Private Military Security Contractors in Russian Proxy Warfare, 2019.
Below is a map of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with its various ethnic groups in 1910:
The federalism of the United States consists of 50 States. The whole country of over 300 million people elects a President. Each State elects two Senators to Congress — by thousands and millions of people. The number of Representatives to Congress is relative to the population of the State. But this too is by thousands and millions of people voting. As far as the government of a State is concerned, the Governor and the Representative to the State Legislature are also elected by thousands and millions of people.
This huge number of voters is also present on the municipal level. I live in Chicago which has a Mayor elected by the nearly 3 million citizens. There is also a City Council of 50 Alderman, each elected at 50 Wards by some 40,000 voters each.
I describe the federalism of Switzerland as Moderate as contrasted with that of the United States. Its territory is much smaller than that of the United States, and its population of nearly 9 million approximates the population of Greater Chicago (i.e., including the surrounding suburbs of Chicago). It consists of 26 Cantons, grouped by languages (German, French, Italian, and Romansh).
My objection to both the government of the United States as well as to the government of Switzerland is that they base themselves on, what I call, Mass or Macro-Democracy in which thousands and millions of people vote either for politicians or laws. Instead I favor Micro-Democracy as a unit of government of roughly 150 voters. This is my ideal of anarchism. Lately it has been called Participatory Democracy, Municipal Confederalism, Strong Democracy, and a system of Nested Councils. I found the following article clearly explaining this point of view [it also has relevant links!]: Sveinung Legard, Scaling Up: Ideas about Participatory Democracy
In the past (19th century) there was a constant concern with “the Social Problem.” Although this problem was seen from a symptomatic perspective as poverty, I think this problem can be expresses fundamentally and succinctly in the following way: some people by force prevent other people from taking up and occupying subsistence land. Put thus, all this means pre-historically is that groups of people delimited a territory as their property. This results in a scattering of tribes. Anthropologists study such “stateless people” especially indigenous people which were referred to as “savages” and “barbarians”, as contrasted with “civilized people.” The vocabulary comes from Lewis Morgan’s, Ancient Society (1877), which distinguished people by their tools, and “civilized people” by having a written script.
Now, because, as Oppenheimer calculated, there is and was enough land to go around. The prevention of someone taking up subsistence land can occur only by force. Presently this force is exercised by governments in States.
Oppenheimer believed that such governments and States can occur only by conquest of one external group by another. Some anthropologists quibble about this, contending that States can be formed through internal class divisions. Without entering into this quibble, let me offer the following two claims:
1. a sufficient condition for the formation of States is conquest by an external group.
2. the empirical data in recorded history is of warfare, strife, protest, rebellion, and conquest.
Moreover, these violences are almost invariably associated with particular individuals who are called emperors, kings, princes, rulers, conquerors, presidents, prime ministers, chancellors, and such. It is the deeds of these individuals which constitutes the history of States.
The Social Problem of forceful barring people from a free use of subsistence land is called by Oppenheimer the “political means” as contrasted with a free exchange of goods and services called by him the “economic means.”
Oppenheimer contrasted two ways of getting “honey.” (Honey is his metaphor for economic subsistence.) One is the method of the bear: attack the hive regardless of what happens to the bees and take the honey. The other method is that of the bee-keeper: take some honey, but leave enough so that the bees thrive and produce more honey for further taking.
Oppenheimer distinguished six stages (or ways) of how conquerors deal with the conquered people. The first stage in like that of the bear: kill the people and take the loot. This is illustrated in the Bible as the extermination of the Canaanites by Israelites, early Viking raids and pillages, and generally historic and modern ethnic cleansings and genocides. The second and subsequent stages or ways is that of the bee-keeper: make the conquered people slaves, or demand tribute, or settle among them as in feudalism and require goods and services, and later also payments (taxes), or just fees, licenses, and taxes. The so-called constitutional states attempt to give this class division legitimacy through such myths as the will of the people or a social contract, and finally as mass democracy (where thousands and millions vote for so-called “representatives”).
The essence of capitalism — which predated industrialization — is the continued barring of people from a free access to subsistence land. And since all the earth is now divided into States, the only places to go in order to escape a State are: a war zone, border lands, a frontier, mountains, swamps and jungles — where pursuit is difficult or unprofitable.
Here is an article about the town from BBC News: Linda Pressly, “Cheran: The town that threw out police, politicians and gangsters,” Oct. 13, 2016.
And here is one from Aljazeera: “How a Mexican town toppled a cartel and established its independence,”, 2014.
Below is one video out of many available on Youtube:
“In this video, Luke Rudkowski of WeAreChange gives you the latest on Cheran, Michoacan an anarchist town that’s followed by anarchy principles and over 30,000 anarchists. We talk to Jeff Berwick the dollar vigilante who organizes one of the largest anarchy conferences anarapulco.”
How is this possible within a State?
1. From the Mexican legal perspective, indigenous people have a right to a certain level of autonomy.
2. And this town is a homogenous one, consisting of Purepecha natives.
3. This town also has arms and a militia.
The situation of Cheran should be distinguished from that of the uprising of Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico in 1994. Here is a Democracy Now report in 2014 on its 20 year anniversary:
“On the same day North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect on January 1, 1994, the Zapatista National Liberation Army and people of Chiapas declared war on the Mexican government, saying that NAFTA meant death to indigenous peoples. They took over five major towns in Chiapas with fully armed women and men. The uprising was a shock, even for those who for years worked in the very communities where the rebel army had been secretly organizing. To learn about the impact of the uprising 20 years later and the challenges they continue to face, we speak with Peter Rosset, professor on rural social movements San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico.”
Alexey Navalny exposes the history of Vladimir Putin’s corruption.
Commentary on Charles Hall, “The Effects of Civilisation on the People in European States,” 1805.
Let me start by saying that socialism is concerned with providing people with food, shelter, clothing (i.e., their economic needs). It is not concerned with the way this is done. It seeks an end; and is silent about the means. Anarchism, by contrast, is focused on the means, which it proposed to be by democratic decisions by small communities. Combining anarchism with socialism, we get anarcho-socialism. And the model for anarcho-socialism are hunter/gatherer tribes. Their economy is based on a free access to land.
Charles Hall was a physician and his ultimate concern was with the physical and mental health of people. Writing in 1805, he did not challenge the existence of the State, and by this token he was not an anarchist. [Reminder: The French Revolution had occurred in 1789. Napoleon made himself emperor in 1804.]
While focusing on the health of people, he used the American Indians as examples of healthy people and a healthy society. [He was, thus, a precursor to Marshall Sahlins’ idea that hunter-gatherers had an “affluent society.”]
His diagnosis was that the main cause of suffering by the poor in England was due to lack of nurishment (malnutrition). So the main problem was the lack of food. This, he thought, could be solved by giving people free access to land.
He goes into detail about horticulture, giving prescriptions of how and what to grow.
He contrasted the demographics of England with that of the United States. Even though the fertility of both was substantially the same, the mortality rate of children was much higher in England than in the United States. The main difference was, he concluded, in nutrition.
He also noted that work in manufactures was unhealthy because of the conditions of work, such as exposure to noxious chemicals, and the type of bodily movements required in manufacture.
He made a distinction between crude and fine manufactures. Crude manufactures which aided the acquisition of food and diminishing necessary work were welcomed. On the other hand, he was against fine manufactures, i.e., the manufacture of luxuries.
Also too much time spent at work, did not allow time for leisurely activities, such as reading.
He was also quite aware that the State was the result of conquest. But he did not propose a change in government, he merely proposed that the State take particular measures to alleviate the condition of the poor, namely giving them access to free land. In this sense, he was a State-socialist.
Chris Hedges interviews David Harvey (Part 2)) — Nov. 2018
Does this sound like a contradiction? This is due to a linguistic ambiguity. On the one hand, there is a usage in which the owner of a business, i.e., the employer, is referred to as a “capitalist.” But, on the other hand, capitalism is considered as an economic market system. Let us distinguish between a business owner and someone who ideologically supports the capitalist system. Thus, let us refer to the owner of a business as “capitalist1” and the supporter of a capitalist system as “capitalist2.” Once this distinction is made, it is clear that a capitalist1 may not be a capitalist2, i.e., a business owner may not support the capitalist system.
But to properly understand this distinction, it is necessary to understand the nature of capitalism. And the easiest and clearest way is to note the difference as to how “primitive” or “stateless” people live and the rest of the modern world. And the difference is that primitive and stateless people have a free access to subsistence land, and the rest of us do not.
The consequence of this deprivation of access to free subsistence land is that we have to enter into a market economy. This is the essence of capitalism, and its proper name should be, as George Bernard Shaw advocated, “proletarianism.” It is a system which creates a class of people dispossessed of access to free subsistence land and forces them to be workers for others.
Given this predicament of having to enter the market, one can do so by becoming an entrepreneur, an owner of some business, rather than as an employee. A business owner may or may not like the capitalist system, but he, as everyone else, is forced into the market economy.
I think the complaint of employees is not against employers in general, but against employers who “exploit” them, meaning that they mistreat them. And what does this mean? It means that the employer can make their lives better, but deliberately does not because he can have a greater profit for himself.
Let us remember that the employer himself is caught up in the capitalist system and his business must be successful so that he can hire workers.
Some employers are very kind to their workers. One famous example of this is the textile factory at New Lenark in Scotland run by Robert Owen at about 1817. Let us call him a philantropist.
Some employers, on the other hand, are ruthless. A famous example of this is George Pullman. He owned a company town near Chicago for workers at his Pullman sleeping railroad car company. Unlike Owen who tried to provide welfare programs for the workers, Pullman tried to squeeze as much as he could out of the workers, which led to a strike in 1894 which had a national impact.
