Happy May Day!

Scott Adams strikes me as a mixed bag: at times providing insight into the complex and pervasive issues of authority, hierarchy, and institutional alienation; at other times brushing aside the complexity to support a sort of sweeping, bold insularity and ignorance - and then reveling in the audacity. Luckily, his comics can be read in both senses, and it's the former sense which I find fitting for today's celebration of labor:

Not terribly far from the truth.

In other news:

Finally, this quote from Benjamin Tucker sets the tone for a new, free market defense of direct action:

Let Carnegie, Dana & Co. first see to it that every law in violation of equal liberty is removed from the statute-books. if, after that, any laborers shall interfere with the rights of their employers, or shall use force upon inoffensive "scabs," or shall attack their employers' watchmen, whether these be Pinkerton detectives, sheriff's deputies, or the State militia, I pledge myself that, as an Anarchist and in consequence of my Anarchistic faith, I will be among the first to volunteer as a member of a force to repress these disturbers of order and, if necessary, sweep them from the earth. But while these invasive laws remain, I must view every forcible conflict that arises as the consequence of an original violation of liberty on the part of the employing classes, and, if any sweeping is done, may the laborers hold the broom! Still, while my sympathies thus go with the under dog, I shall never cease to proclaim my conviction that the annihilation of neither party can secure justice, and that the only effective sweeping will be that which clears from the statute-book every restriction of the freedom of the market.

Enjoy the day in freedom and solidarity!

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Written on Tuesday, May 01, 2007