So this is the begining of my contribution to the global political blogosphere. I suppose a good place to start is by outlining a few of my beliefs and ideals. Always a hard thing to do and i have no doubt that this attempt will be misleading and incomplete in the extreme. But, hey.
Everyone like's short and easy to remember definitions (what did you think racism was about?) so the tag i would use to describe my political views is: Anarchist. Now there are a lot of misconceptions about anarchism. In fact my views about it probably bear little or no relation to the official definition (that's gotta be an oxymoron). So i'll try to be a bit more specific for clarity's sake.
For me, anarchism is not about destroying the state in some big revolution. Neither is it about violence or harmful behaviour to anyone - no matter the justification. It has nothing to do with apathy or, for that matter, nihilism.
To give you a better idea of my point of view let's first talk about utopia. Now you may know that Utopia was a book written by a guy called Thomas More in the 16th century (or maybe 17th - i forget) attempting to describe a perfect society using the device of an heretofore undiscovered island community. This book fitted neatly into a long tradition of utopian discourse dating back to the days of Socrates - and probably beyond. In the vast majority of these works the proposed perfect society was an ordered and deeply mechanistic one in which everyone obeyed the laws and worked long and hard for the benefit of that ultimate entity: the State.
This is pretty much what i would consider the socialist ideal. The state giveth, the state taketh away. It gives security and stability at the price of liberty and individual identity. (This is shown brilliantly by the genius of Aldous Huxley in 'Brave New World'. ) Marx believed that capitalism was merely a stepping stone between the feudal and absolutist governments of the past and this precious paradise of state superiority.
My idea (original as a hollywood blockbuster though it may be) is that rather than moving towards a more ordered, more centralised and more controlled society, we are in fact moving in the opposite direction towards a society based above all on the individual. In this society the values of personal freedom, personal identity and personal responsibility (not to the state but to other individuals) would be at it's heart.
Also i should point out that i don't approve of the idea of some glorious revolution to cast off the shackles of oppression and kill anyone who doesn't like it. Rather i believe that this is a state towards which we are already moving and any attempts to speed up the process will probably end in disaster, merely prompting a re-assersion of state authority (like germany in 33, the reichstag burns and nobody is free).
So there's the bare bones of it. I'll hopefully pad that out along the way along with examples from the happening world.
Feel free to comment and tell me how much of an idiot i am. I won't take offense.