Prosthetic Conscience

Cynthia McKinney was an awesome legislator, and is a great candidate for the Greens. But after listening to McKinney and Clemente on Democracy Now on Monday, I’m pretty puzzled by the choice of Rosa Clemente as VP candidate. I didn’t have the negative reaction (to her accent and errors she made in the interview) that some of my friends did, but I did kind of go, “huh?”

This is an article by Peter Gelderloos, and I agree with about half of it. To wit, consumption of meat under capitalism, and consumption of meat under a traditional economy are very different things, and veganism under capitalism is more like consumption of meat under capitalism than it is like veganism under a traditional economy. If that’s clear at all.

Peter is a very, very smart guy, but belongs to a tendency in anarchism I generally disagree with (to use the vulgar label, lifestyle anarchists). I’ve read his book, How Nonviolence Protects the State, and found it interesting and important, but very flawed. One day, I’d like to produce a critical response to this book focused on nonviolent strategic theory, but I can’t put the amount of work into it that would be needed to do it justice right now.

There’s an extended review/response to the book at Our Tragic Flaw, but I don’t know yet how closely this response would be to my own. My feeling is that the failures of nonviolence are strategic failures, not tactical ones, and a “diversity of tactics” will not help you if your movement is fundamentally lacking in strategy.

A fanfic in which Hogwarts gets the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor it truly deserves.