Libertarian Labor Review #13 Winter 1992-93, pages 33-39 MARKET ANARCHISM? CAVEAT EMPTOR! Review by Jeff Stein A Structured Anarchism : An Overview of Libertarian Theory and Practice by John Griffin. Freedom Press (84b Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX, U.K.), 1991. 38 pp., One pound. In A Structured Anarchism, John Griffin argues that an anarchist communist society, while a desirable goal in the distant future, is not practical in the short-term. This is because 1) people accustomed to a capitalist society aren't culturally prepared for it, and 2) the modern economy is too complicated to organize without the "self-regulation" of a market system. Therefore Griffin calls for a series of short term compromises to be made with classical liberal economics, and dubs this "collectivist anarchism". Griffin, unfortunately, doesn't understand collectivism nor economics in general. He manages to garble and lump together the views of Proudhon, Bakunin, and Malatesta. Bakunin was the only collectivist of the three. Proudhon was a mutualist and Malatesta, an anarchist communist. Besides mistakenly lumping them all as "collectivists," Griffin makes an even bigger error by equating collectivism with "market anarchism." Collectivism, however, was not based on a market economy, but on a federally coordinated system of "honest exchange" of products at their labor cost. In a market system the prices of products are determined according to their relative scarcity (ie. the "law of supply and demand"). These are not the same thing. Time and again, whether on the issue of markets or money, Griffin proves he is in no position to lecture other anarchists about their shaky grasp of economics. For instance, on page 22 he writes, "The extraction of large amounts of unearned income by the capitalists is a source of inflation, since too much money is generated to buy the available goods, thus encouraging price rises. Any inflation in a collectivist [sic] economy will not be aggravated by this spurious money growth, since those who operate it are remunerated only for work done." The extraction of value by the capitalist out of the workers' gross product has nothing whatsoever to do with the money supply, since the capitalist does not print his/her own money. (In effect, Griffin is saying that a robber creates money when he steals your purse.) If what Griffin was saying were true, the history of capitalism would be one long inflationary spiral, without periodic economic depressions. On the contrary, capitalism, if not interfered with by the state, tends towards economic depressions (which cause deflation), since its constant drive to reduce workers to low wages and unemployment has a depressive effect. In reality, the individual capitalist has very little control over the money supply, which is a source of constant consternation to the pro-laissez faire monetarists, like Hayek and Milton Friedman, so oddly respected by Griffin (p.23). The monetarists, however, do not suggest that the money supply be set according to what has been produced, since according to them only the market can determine the "true" value of these products anyway. What the monetarists argue is that the state should increase the money supply at a constant rate, so the capitalists can plan ahead without having to worry about whether the state economic planners will overreact to some minor market "adjustment." According to classical laissez faire theory, business cycles are inevitable and the market eventually corrects itself. As for the effects these cycles have on working people and the poor in the meantime, Hayek and Friedman could bloody well care less. We should not forget the role of the "Chicago Boys" (a group of Friedman's disciples) in running the economy of the ruthless Pinochet regime in Chile. Griffin should freely choose his mentors more carefully. The state has always played a key role in the capitalist market and monetary systems. First its role was as a defender of private property, strike breaker of last resort, and as a foundation of a (somewhat) stable currency. More recently it has acted as a "pump primer," business subsidizer, and money lender of the last resort. The so-called "Keynesian revolution" in capitalist economics was not the beginning of the state's role in the economy, just an attempt to better play that role in hopes of making a more smooth running system and to stave off its collapse. Griffin himself admits that "the manipulation of the market by both the State and the Capitalists make the so-called 'free market' unfree." (p.24) Yet by making this admission, Griffin has inadvertently undermined one of his own arguments. On the one hand he attacks the anarchist communist position because "it lacks empirical justification from modern technological societies: it is not enough in my view to dwell on its great ethical strength, and gloss over organizational problems." (p.24) But on the other, he doesn't hold his own doctrine up to the same standard. It may be true that the market system "works" (perhaps in the since that the inhabitants of Europe and North America haven't all starved to death so far), but as he admits it is not a "free market," and thus cannot be used to accurately predict what might happen in an anarchist version. What of the many problems which would result when the state no longer plays even its "limited" role in the laissez faire sense? Who, for instance, would issue money in his anarcho-market economy and guarantee its value? Although Griffin cites Malatesta to back-up his claim for the necessity of money during the transition towards an anarchist economy, he apparently missed the Malatesta's admonition that "one should seek a way to ensure that money truly represents the useful work by its possessors..." (Malatesta: Life and Ideas, edited by Richards, p. 101). Griffin, in spite of his enthusiasm for money, doesn't address this problem. Unlike the anarchist communists, what Griffin lacks in empirical evidence and practical concern for organizational problems, he can not make up for with "ethical strength." For in his conciliatory approach towards market economics, he is prepared to sacrifice even the most basic anarchist principles, including the abolition of wage slavery and an end to the private ownership of the means of production: "I think we have to face up to the fact that if some people want to be employed and others want to employ them, then wage labor will continue. Recourse to coercion by anarchists not involved should in my view be regarded as a 'cure' which is worse than the disease. As long as libertarian cultures constitute the dominant socializing force, I do not think that the presence of small scale capitalist enterprises is very important." (p.30) Perhaps Griffin does not understand the implications of what he has written. We are not talking about economic individualism, self-employment or family businesses (which as long as they don't employ non-family members, are not capitalist). The only reason workers want to be employed by capitalists is because they have no other means for making a living, no access to the means of production other than by selling themselves. For a capitalist sector to exist there must be some form of private ownership of productive resources, and a scarcity of alternatives. The workers must be in a condition of economic desperation for them to be willing to give up an equal voice in the management of their daily affairs and accept a boss. Wage labor would not be tolerated in an anarchist society anymore than extortion or blackmail, no matter how much the perpetrator might claim the victims "asked for it." It would not take any "coercion" to get rid of wage labor either, as long as the condition for possession of any productive property is that all workers be given an equal voice in management. If not, the facility in question is given to some other group that will run things democratically. To the extent that A Structured Anarchism was meant to stir controversy, it has succeeded. If it was meant to lay the foundation for a more practical anarchist economic alternative, it is a botched attempt. Griffin's "collectivism" might more accurately be described as watered down mutualism mixed with laissez faire liberal ideology. Recent Books on Spanish Anarchism Reviewed by Jon Bekken Anarchist Ideology and the Working-Class Movement in Spain, 1868- 1898 by George Esenwein. University of California Press (Berkeley CA 94720), 1989. Esenwein offers a rare English-language look at the origins of the Spanish anarchist movement. He argues against the "millenarian" approach (viewing anarchist as a prepolitical, incoherent movement almost religious in its emotional appeal) that dominated academic research into Spanish anarchism until fairly recently, instead focusing his attention on the evolution of movement ideology from the September Revolution of 1868 through the aftermath of the Montjuich repression, which forced our comrades underground. Esenwein situates Spanish anarchism in working-class associational life, and anarchist ideology within broader theoretical debates in the European socialist movement, demonstrating that anarchist ideas gained substantial influence within only two years of their introduction. The anarchists plastered street corners with revolutionary manifestos and published newspapers and pamphlets to spread their ideas throughout the country, reading them aloud for those who could not read. The movement quickly developed its own holidays and cultural traditions. Each November 11th, for example, Spanish anarchists commemorated the Haymarket martyrs and others fallen in the struggle against capital and the state. Commemorative meetings were largely devoted to readings of prose and poetry dedicated to their memory, and to revolutionary songs. Like the anarchists' May Day demonstrations, these meetings aimed less at mourning the dead than on continuing and expanding the revolutionary struggle. Anarchist ideas focussing on direct action, class struggle and revolution, quickly came to dominate the Spanish labor press. Although the Marxists eventually built their own organizations, they were far less influential. Esenwein demonstrates that even though he never set foot in the country, Bakunin was deeply involved in organizing the Spanish movement through correspondence and the brotherhood of his comrades. "Beyond doubt[,] their adherence to Bakunin's program contributed greatly to the FRE's ability to flourish... and to survive the harsh circumstances of repression" (p. 224, n. 15). The Spanish movement was shaped in adversity, often forced to go underground to survive repression. The Federation was outlawed between 1874 and 1881, encouraging a turn from strikes and other mass direct action to individual acts of "propaganda by the deed." This, in turn, provided a pretext for further repression against workers' movements. The anarcho-syndicalist movement developed during this underground period, seeking a way out of an increasingly tenuous illegal status while maintaining their revolutionary values. Esenwein chronicles the debate between collectivist and communist currents, and the eventual triumph of 'anarquismo sin adjectivos,' an attempt to sidestep the entire debate in favor of an all-inclusive movement. Spanish syndicalism developed out of this tendency, quickly coming to dominate the anarchist movement. It was only with the emergence of the CNT, Esenwein argues, that anarchism developed a mass following among the working-class. But in the latter quarter of the 19th century, anarchists developed the ideas and organizational forms that "enabled [them] to combine successfully trade unionism with the general strike tactic... [making] anarchism a formidable social and economic force in a rapidly modernizing Spanish society" (p. 215). Esenwein relies heavily on secondary sources and memoirs, making relatively little use of movement newspapers and other contemporary sources (perhaps not held at the Hoover Institute, where he is employed). Nonetheless, his extensive endnotes are often informative and correct much misinformation spread by less careful historians of our movement (even if he is too quick to accept Jos‚ S…nchez's weakly documented claims of anarchist atrocities during the Spanish Revolution). While Esenwein is clearly no anarchist, it is difficult to argue with Paul Avrich's assessment (printed on the back cover) that this is "an outstanding history of Spanish anarchism during its formative decades in the late nineteenth century... the best treatment of the subject in English." Spain 1936-1939: Social Revolution--Counter Revolution, edited by Vernon Richards. Freedom Press, 1990. This volume, released as part of Freedom Press' centenary series, brings together 75 short texts, most originally published in the journal Spain and the World. The selections include first- hand accounts of the revolution, reports on meetings and demonstrations in favor of the Spanish workers' struggle, reports of speeches by CNT and FAI figures justifying their compromises in accepting government posts, testimonials by non-anarchists on the constructive work carried out by our comrades in society and on the battlefield, and two poems by Herbert Read. This volume is not a history of the Revolution, rather it is composed of reports from the front written in the heat of battle. As such, they provide invaluable contemporary glimpses into various facets of our Spanish comrades' struggle, though not always the depth and detail we might prefer, especially in the material on the collectives. (Fortunately, Freedom Press also offers Gaston Leval's detailed Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, Jose Peirats' Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution, a detailed report by A. Souchy and others on The May Days: Barcelona 1937, and Vernon Richards' controversial Lessons of the Spanish Revolution. Interested readers may also want to look at Sam Dolgoff's collection, The Anarchist Collectives: Workers' Self-Management in Spain, published by Black Rose Books, and David Porter's moving anthology of writings by Emma Goldman, Vision on Fire.) Very little of the material in this collection comes from the Revolution's early months, for the simple reason that Spain and the World did not begin publication until November, 1936. So this is almost entirely a chronicle of a revolution under attack, both by the fascists and by its allies-- the socialists, republicans and, above all, the communists. Although readers unfamiliar with the Spanish Revolution would do better to begin with one of the books mentioned above, this is a useful supplementary volume. Particularly interesting are the brief portraits of several anarchist militants, Italian anarchist Camillo Berneri's views on the dangers posed by the compromises the anarchists made with their Marxist "allies" (who never honored them), and reports on Spain's ultimate collapse and the appalling treatment of Spanish refugees at the hands of the French Popular Front government. In Spain our comrades demonstrated that anarchism not only offers a powerful critique of authoritarianism, but more importantly that it offers a strategy for reorganizing society along libertarian lines. That they were ultimately defeated is no disgrace--what was disgraceful was the treachery of the "democratic" governments, marxists, and others of their ilk who demonstrated that they preferred the triumph of fascism in Spain to a workers' revolution. Reviewed Briefly Winning the Class War: an Anarcho-Syndicalist Strategy by the Direct Action Movement. DAM (Box 29, SW PDO, Manchester 15, U.K.), 1991, 28 pp. This pamphlet, published by the Direct Action Movement, the British affiliate of the IWA, makes the case that the British trade unions have generally hindered workers' efforts to defend their living standards from the onslaught of the employers during the Thatcher era. This is not because, as the various Marxist sects argue, of the ineptitude of the trade union leadership, but because the trade unions have been designed to be "an important part of capitalism." Instead, the DAM advocates the organization of "a new and altogether independent workers' movement... revolutionary unionism" with "the aim of creating a free and classless society, based on workers' control and the satisfaction of human needs" (p. 4). Winning the Class War signifies a departure for British syndicalism. At the turn of the century, British syndicalists (with the exception of a tiny British IWW section) generally followed the practice of trying to revolutionize the Trades Union Congress by "boring from within." The present generation, however, argues that clearly the TUC has had its day, and that the left-wing tradition of "rank-and-filism" (i.e., the old "bore from within" strategy of trying to reform the trade unions) proved to be a dismal failure during the 1980s. Parts of Winning the Class War read almost as if they came from the IWW's One Big Union pamphlet. For instance, on page 4, the DAM clearly argues for the One Big Union concept: "The working class needs to take stock of the new situation in which it finds itself, and needs to organize itself as a class if it is to fight for its interests against the bosses." Faced with the problem of organizing a revolutionary union movement from scratch, the DAM does not suggest building them overnight, but building "industrial networks" as a first step. The DAM makes an important distinction between industrial networks and "rank-and-filism." Industrial networks "maintain their independence and identity" from the trade unions by encouraging "general workplace activity ie. workplace meetings, strike committees, etc, outside of the sphere of influence of the unions and other 'interested' bodies, like the political parties" and have as their ultimate aim not trade union reform, but "to create an anarcho-syndicalist union" (p. 19). The most historically successful of all syndicalist movements, the Spanish CNT, combined the best elements of anarcho-syndicalism and the IWW's "revolutionary industrial unionism." The British syndicalists have clearly begun to recognize this fact, and are now seeking to apply the lesson to their own conditions. This makes Winning the Class War a worthwhile pamphlet to read for workers in any country. [JS] Mapping Hegemony: Television News Coverage of Industrial Conflict by Robert Goldman and Arvind Rajagopal. Ablex (355 Chestnut St., Norwood NJ 07648-2090), 1991, 258 pp. Goldman and Rajagopal examine the ways in which television newscasters shape public understandings by scrutinizing CBS News coverage of the 1977-78 coal miners' strike. The analysis is presented in terms of an ongoing sociological debates around ideology and hegemony (which attempts to explain how particular ideas, such as the notion that workers are a special interest, come to be widely accepted as common sense), which makes for some rather difficult slogging in the early chapters. As the authors note, the media rarely report on labor issues except in the context of strikes and violence. The media show little interest in working conditions, health and safety, or routine labor struggles. The authors have looked at every report aired on the strike on CBS News to examine how CBS portrayed mine workers, the union, the government and the bosses. To illustrate how these portrayals represent choices--rather than some objective picture of events-- they also examine coverage in local and other newspapers. The strike stemmed from efforts by miners to gain control over their union, gain relief for black lung victims, defend their embattled health care system, and reverse a long-term decline in union power. In the 1970s, miners increasingly resorted to wildcat strikes over health and safety and other issues (the courts, of course, regularly issued back-to-work injunctions even though the miners had never signed a no-strike agreement). The operators, meanwhile, demanded the right to fire strikers, to slash health benefits, etc. After miners rejected a sell-out contract, Democratic president Jimmy Carter issued a Taft-Hartley injunction to force them back to work. But fewer than 100 of 160,000 strikers obeyed the order. CBS aired several pictures of angry miners throughout the dispute, but rarely reported why miners were upset or what they wanted. The network did give as much air time to miners and the UMW as to the coal operators association and the government, but this was because the operators preferred to keep a low profile and so generally refused comment. (Indeed, the bosses were virtually invisible on CBS--workers went on strike, workers defied the government, workers threatened the nation's energy supply, etc.) And miners were rarely allowed more than a few seconds to make their case, were shown in tight close-ups in off- the-cuff settings. Rank-and-file miners appeared in interviews averaging just 9 seconds, while UMW, industry and government officials averaged 15-20 seconds per interview. It is, of course, easier to express coherent, compelling arguments in 20 seconds (and Carter once got more than 2 minutes) than in "interviews" ranging from 2 to 16 seconds long. "Though ostensibly impartial on the surface, the terms of presenting the issues have been stacked to privilege the interests of capital.... The neutrality the news media seek consists not in a bias toward any particular fraction of capital, but in depending on, accepting and promoting the interests of capital in general" (177). Although CBS did several human interest stories on the miners themselves that may have increased public sympathy, it never allowed them to speak about the underlying issues. Network coverage created "balance" by portraying strikers in a battle not against the bosses, but against the public (and against their union). Government intervention against the miners, then, is shown as necessary and inevitable. While miners were shown, their story was not told-- and indeed cannot be told within the constraints of journalists' ideas as to what constitutes news, whose ideas are newsworthy, and how information should be presented. Not all viewers necessarily make the same interpretations of the reports they see, of course. But Goldman and Rajagopal argue that while it is theoretically possible to read these reports in any number of ways (such as, for example, as evidence of anti- labor media bias), certain meanings are preferred, and more readily available to audiences. I suspect that had Goldman and Rajagopal looked at a more recent dispute, they would have found much more one-sided coverage (and also much less coverage--labor has practically disappeared from the news, and even presidential candidates today are rarely given more than a few seconds to spread their lies). But they have done a thorough job of demonstrating just how the patterns of media coverage (which pervade all news) serve to refocus, distort and mislead--even as journalists proclaim and believe that they are objective and unbiased. [JB] Not Beyond Repair : Reflections of a Malaysian Trade Unionist by Arokia Dass. Asia Monitor Resource Center (444-446 Nathan Road, 8-B Kowloon, Hong Kong), 1991. 177 pp., $14.50. Arokia Dass, a former rank-and-file insurgent and presently an official of the Malaysian autoworkers' union, gives a history of the Malaysian labor movement. Dass is critical of the labor unions in his country for being bureaucratic and dominated by the state and the employers. He also accuses the ICFTU, the AIFLD, and the Japanese unions, with being pro-employer and undermining militant unions in other countries. The author suggests that the solutions to the problems of Malaysian labor are more shop-floor union democracy, direct worker-to-worker contacts between countries, and a labor party. Although Dass is clearly a marxist, he suggests that marxism is as much in need of repair as trade unionism. He demonstrates that marxist analysis does not fully explain the labor situation in Asia, where capitalism and the state can at times have conflicting agendas, and strongly rooted cultural traditions provide an added political dimension. Unfortunately, this does not prevent him from aligning himself with the communist- dominated WFTU, which he claims is an international center "free from political ideology," nor from apologizing for the failures of central economic planning in eastern europe. In spite of the author's ideological blinders, there is some interesting information in this book. The role of labor regulation and selective repression of radical unionists in creating a docile labor movement is explained very well. Dass also shows how workers have been betrayed on numerous occasions by nationalist politicians, who are unwilling or incapable of providing effective resistance to multinational corporations. [JS] From The Ground Up: Essays on Grassroots & Workplace Democracy, by C. George Benello. Edited by Len Krimmerman, Frank Lindenfeld, Carol Korty and Julian Benello. South End Press (116 St. Botolph St., Boston MA 02115) $12.00. George Benello was an anarchist of sorts, active in the New Left and then the workplace-democracy, peace and green movements. He was part of an American decentralist movement that included Paul Goodman, Lewis Mumford, Ralph Bosordi and others often mistakenly labelled as anarchists (though there certainly are similarities and borrowings to and from). Towards the end of his life, Benello wrote a series of essays in the "Libertarian Municipalist" tradition which are the book's weakest, and which he never published during his lifetime--perhaps because he recognized their many contradictions. In these essays, Benello criticizes the "wasteland culture" and attempts to articulate a strategy for confronting a system that "works all too well [writing in 1967], and in the process grinds up human beings" (p. 20). Although it is easier and more efficient, in the short run, to organize hierarchically, Benello argued, such social arrangements are undemocratic, deny people the ability to realize their potential, and ensure that basic social needs will go unmet since elites need not take them into consideration. Many of the early essays in this collection address aspects of participatory democracy and federalism, and how these might be realized in practice: A movement striving to bring to life viable and effective models of humanized work, capable of creating useful and consumer-oriented products while utilizing a high level of technology, would strike at the heart of the corporate system... It could appeal to the new consumer and ecological consciousness... to the growing group of unemployed or those employed in positions below their skill and education level. ... A movement creating not only jobs ut also self-determination and freedom in work, committed to producing goods with integrity and usefulness, would not only appeal to basic material needs, but would also provide a live basis from which a critique of both the dehumanization of work and the falseness of current consumer values could be made... (p. 85) Benello pursued this objective, for the most part, through efforts to create self-managed enterprises which he saw as a means both of meeting real needs and of demonstrating the viability of democracy in actual practice--an issue which is addressed in several of the essays reprinted here. Those essays discuss self-management as both an objective to be struggled for and a means of struggle whereby workers can educate themselves in the skills necessary for a democratic economy while carving out a space relatively autonomous from capitalist relations. Benello considers the role that unions might play in such worker- controlled enterprises, offers his take on the Mondragon network and the lessons it can offer North American workers, and provides useful (if brief) reflections on his involvement in the Federation for Economic Democracy and the Industrial Cooperative Association. These essays are among the collection's strongest. Unfortunately, the editors proceed to include essays on the "decentralist" potential Benello saw in nuclear free zones and efforts to develop local tax and economic policies reminiscent of Bookchin's libertarian municipalism. To his credit, Benello did not publish these no-doubt exploratory writings. The book concludes with commentaries on Benello's thought, some of which implicitly or explicitly defend centralism and hierarchy, or argue for working "within the system." The editors conclude with an essay reasserting the importance of Benello's thought in terms far less cogent than those advanced by Benello himself. [JB] Freedom to Go: After the Motor Age by Colin Ward. Freedom Press (Angel Alley , 84b Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX), 1991. 112 pp., 3.50 pounds. Colin Ward points out that our dependence on the private automobile makes the freedom to travel an illusion. People do not choose to travel by car from a variety of alternatives, since those alternatives are rarely there. Government transportation planners and corporate investors have foisted the automobile upon us. More energy efficient, less dangerous, and less environmentally damaging forms of transport, like rail or boat, have been starved for investment, while billions are spent on highways. Ward stops short of suggesting that only by doing away with a profit-oriented transportation system can we go beyond the automobile age. Rather he ends by offering some reforms which "people of any political complexion can agree with." These include a moratorium on new road construction, greater railway investment, low-cost or free mass transit, traffic limits in towns, and minibus cooperatives for rural areas. Freedom to Go is a well-written primer for anyone interested in transportation alternatives. [JS] Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism, edited by Irene Diamond and Gloria Feman Orenstein. Sierra Club Books (730 Polk St., San Francisco CA 94109) $14.95. This curious anthology brings together 26 essays that, despite the all-embracing title, are drawn from a very particular, spiritualist, current within ecofeminism. As a result, most of the book reads more like a theological than a political text. In this context, reformists like Charlene Spretnak and mystics like Starhawk are among a very few authors who seek to come to grips with the actual, material conditions that are destroying our planet and our humanity. Spretnak raises the question of power, arguing for the importance of improving health and economic conditions and involving "women at the regional level... with the planning of population-control programs, health care, education, and non- exploitative small-scale economic opportunities" (p. 12). This may not seem, and is not, particularly far-reaching. But it is a refreshing contrast to such nonsense as: "in ancient times the world itself was one. The beating of drums was the heartbeat of the earth.... everything was done in a sacred manner..." (p. 33) Starhawk's essay, "Power, Authority and Mystery" argues for an "earth-based spirituality" grounded in the interconnectedness of the earth. She analyzes the Livermore Action Group's campaign against the U.S. weapons lab; discusses the need to address questions of sex, class and race; and argues that we must reject apocalyptic rhetoric in favor of approaches that allow for hope, for human agency, for organizing. Her analytic metaphor is grounded in the economy, which, she argues, "reflects our system of values, in which profit replaces inherent value as the ultimate measure of all things." If the "anarcho-pagans" invading our movement in recent years thought as sensibly it might be possible to work with them. Other worthwhile essays include those by Ynestra King and Vandana Shiva ("Development as a New Project of Western Patriarchy"). But while the book may prove useful for those trying to get a handle on the gibberish spouted by many new-age "ecologists" and "anarchists," those seriously interested in reweaving the world would do better to look elsewhere. [JB] Work, Politics and Power: An International Perspective on Workers' Control and Self-Management, by Assef Bayat. Monthly Review Press (122 W. 27th St., New York NY 10001), 1991, $18 (paper). Too often, the literature on self-management assumes that only in advanced capitalist societies can workers aspire to exercise control of the production process. Bayat argues that experiments with democracy in the workplace are a central part of workers' asserting their humanity and transcending meaningless work, and that such democratization is possible even in Third World settings. In this, he is surely correct. However, Bayat's argument is undermined by a fairly doctrinaire Marxist approach and by his often superficial descriptions (drawn almost entirely from previous studies, the details of which he only rarely provides) of the experiments in "workers' control" that he discusses and compares. Bayat does recognize the importance of power relations in industry, noting that a mere transfer of ownership is not sufficient to overcome the powerlessness intrinsic in existing work methods, technologies, and separation of technical expertise from the shop floor. Ultimately, this requires a transition from private to social ownership, Bayat argues, although workers can gain some control even in the context of capitalist societies. His definition of workers' control is wide-ranging, from defensive struggles to maintain conditions to efforts to seize direction of the enterprise. It includes both rank-and-file efforts and strategies where employers or the State grant limited "control" or participation rights in order to defuse broader demands. The bulk of the case studies Bayat considers fall in the latter category. Bayat divides his many case studies into three categories: conditions of dual power (Russia, Algeria, Chile, Portugal and Iran), socialist states (China, Cuba, Mozambique and Nicaragua), and populist regimes (Egypt, Tanzania, Peru and Turkey). For those less wedded to Marxist doctrine, the distinction between the latter categories ("populism here denotes the nationalistic ideology and development strategy of a regime which relies on the support of the popular classes [workers, peasants and 'the poor'] as its social base, while it pursues a capitalistic economic policy within the framework of an authoritarian state" p. 130) will be unclear at best. Thus we see the unlikely prospect of a discussion of "workers' control" in Cuba during the very period that the government was ruthlessly suppressing all independent working-class organizations, or of "workers' control" in Nicaragua at a time when co-operatives and unions were subject to government registration and approval, and were prohibited from criticizing the government or demanding better pay and working conditions. Bayat brings together a great deal of information on participation schemes in several countries, but these are often more akin to quality-of-worklife programs introduced by union- busting employers in the U.S. than to genuine self-management. Nonetheless, he demonstrates the very real desire by our "Third World" fellow workers in countries throughout the entire world to control their workplaces and their worklives. This surely gives us reason to hope, and indicates that the bosses' current global offensive may well ultimately meet with defeat. [JB] Strip the Experts by Brian Martin. Freedom Press (in Angel Alley, 84b Whitechapel High Street, London, E1 7QX), 1991. 69 pp., 1.95 pounds. This is a humorous how-to manual for anyone engaged in a propaganda campaign where the other side has all the "hired guns" (ie. academics, well-known professionals, etc.) to convince the public they have a monopoly on the truth. Martin shows how to go about discrediting the "experts," although sometimes his value- free approach can be disturbing. For example, Martin's main reason for arguing against character assassination seems to be that such tactics might "backfire," not that they should be avoided on principle. [JS] CORRECTION Our review of The Anarchist Press in LLR #12 stated that Love & Rage had "eliminated much of the nationalist cheerleading that marred its early issues.... [and] is no longer an embarrassment to our movement." After those words were written, but before we went to press, they published an untrue account of the IWW's 1991 assembly including groundless accusations against a member of our collective (refusing to publish his response). More recently, they published a lengthy article celebrating Black nationalism. Thus, it appears that our relief may have been premature.