Albert Meltzer

A mate of mine handed me a CD full of anarchist texts and audio recordings a couple days ago. That was nice of him.

One of those texts, Anarchism: Arguments for and against by Albert Meltzer (who puts forth a anarch-syndicalist view), has some wothwhile quotes:

"It may be in some technological society of the future, run by the State, in a sort of boss utopia, the working class will be displaced as a productive class. We see signs of that even today as large part[s] of the economy are closed down as unprofitable and people uprooted. There is a technology, still in its infancy but making great strides, which will reduce us, as a productive class, to turners of switches and openers of the scientists' doors; to secretaries and receptionists; to janitors and clerks; to domestic servants of the rich. Anarcho-syndaclists think such a society must be resisted."

"'Who will do the dirty work?'. This is a question society, not just the apologist for Anarchism, has to ask itself. There are dirty jobs which are socially unacceptable and poorly paid, so that nobody wants to do them. People have therefore been enslaved to do them, or there is competition in a market economy and the jobs became better paid (and therefore socially acceptable), or there is conscription for such jobs, whether by political direction or the pressures of unemployment. Sometimes the capitalist introduces immigration in the hope of cheap labour, thus putting off the problem for a generation or two. Or it can be that jobs don't get done and, say, the streets aren't swept anymore and so we get deluged with water shooting out from cars driven by gradutae pyschologists and step gingerly past refuse, clutching our theses on sociology."