[geeks] KVM for Sun Sparc Servers with USB keyboards

[Mike Meredith]

On Wed, 6 May 2009 10:29:55 +0300, gsm at mendelson.com wrote:
> On Wed, May 06, 2009 at 08:04:58AM +0100, Mike Meredith wrote:
> >0: There are revolutionary anarchists who believe in revolution to
> >get
> >   to the anarchist society. This is a rather specialised form of
> >   evolving an anarchist society from a failed state. And was
> >   particularly popular at the time of Tsarist Russia which
> >   interestingly enough is the form of society you get if you leave a
> >   failed state such as Somalia to stew for several centuries.
>
> I don't know where you got that. The major players in the first

Through reading a dozen or so books on the relevant periods in
history. Note I didn't claim there was any form of "anarchist state" at
the time. The "particularly popular" comment was in relation to which
strands of anarchism were popular with anarchists at the time.

> After the Czar was removed from power, and probably murdered, the
> white army was disbanded, and a democracy was created, with a
> president in charge.

In fact the white army was kept going well into the 1920s and strictly
speaking only came about in 1917 when the Tsar was killed. One of the
armies you left out was the Ukranian (and anarchist) Black Army.

> Lenin was not satisfied with a democracy, did not disband the red
> army and within a year had a second revolution replacing the
> president with himself and the democracy with a communist government.

The red army didn't come about until Lenin was in charge, and Lenin was
(until the second revolution in October 1917) was merely the leader of
a faction of communists (the bolsheviks) which wasn't even particularly
important. The democratic government was made up of numerous factions
including various different flavours of communists and anarchists.

> At no time was there anarchy in Russia.

Well depending on your definition of anarchy ...

I'd say that the Russian civil war after the second revolution with
multiple armies all fighting probably comes close to what Somalia is
like today.

As to any "anarchist societies" that may have existed, well the theory
is that primitive anarcho-communism was pretty much what was practised
in peasant villages in Russia. The "government" that they had was
merely interested in taking the rent and not providing any basic
services such as law enforcement ... that was done by the peasants
themselves.

And the "soviets" that took control of factories, farms, etc. would
have been a mixture of different communists and anarchists.

> There was anarchy in parts of what was the Soviet Union, after it fell

Don't mistake the dictionary definition of anarchism with what
anarchists define it as. In some ways it's a shame that anarchists
stick with the "anarchy" label, but I guess they're stuck with it.

> It all depends upon where you draw the line between anarchy and a
> barely functioning central government.

There's no reason why anarchism cannot co-exist with a fully
functioning central government. For example, why can't a corporation be
run on anarchist lines (i.e. a "worker's co-operative") ? As it happens
my brother works for a large retailer that is in many ways a worker's
co-operative and the retailer is pretty successful (and is over 75
years old).



--
Mike Meredith (http://zonky.org/)
'I met the well connected, the powerful and the rich; I saw little to
envy or, indeed, much to admire;B we were being lionised by a class of
society with which we had little in common'B --- Edmund Hillary