Metropolis

repeal’. And so in the process of liberating people from the arbitrary force of the State, you are increasing the size and power of the State. Of course, many of the rightists calling out the left on this are immense hypocrites, but that does not change the facts. I am one of those heterodox nomads with roots in the far left who has grown to view Chomsky less as a radical than as a dinosaur. I say that as a sort-of analogy, but his favoured Anarcho-Syndicalism is a good example of how confused leftist Anarchism is. A mass system of direct democracy, common ownership of the means of production, with a bureaucracy of workers councils and a web of labour unions being used to manage and cast judgment. For me it is hard to see why they bother to distinguish this as ’Anarchism’, when it is more or less ’participatory’ or ’direct democratic’ Communism. But after considering myself an Anarchist for some years, I realised that this is the most common approach. If not exactly that, certainly something close to it. Myself, I cannot follow suit, for this embraces so many of the elements that I find problematic with the current system fixed ideology, formal government, mass society, bureaucracy, the valourisation of work. To again quote Landstreicher10 (who was in context referring specifically to Syndicalists), Anarchists of this inclination ”may talk of abolishing the state, but they will have to reproduce every one of its functions to guarantee the smooth running of their society.” A significant number of those who claim to be against the State are really against only a certain form of State – that ofminority rule andminority privilege. If Marx’s dream of a functioning ’dictatorship of the