[Coeurdechene]

Unfortunately, Jeff, the alternative is anarchy... The human animal needs some form of social construct to enable civilization to survive

Anarchy is not the preying of the weak by the strong (that describes much more accurately capitalism)... In a "political" or filosofical sense anarchy is the negation of the separate power, of representation, and the establishment a social construct based on other values (cooperation instead of competition,individual freedom,...) in anarchy power does not lie on a head of state or on a chamber people vote, power is exerted from the base upwards, with imperative mandate and only coordination purposed organization. That's why in an authoritarian, dominance based system anarchy is depicted as that endless hobbessian war. Authority based systems cannot understand that authority not only isn't needed but that it's prone to corruption.
THERE ARE alternatives to the system we live in, there can be a cooperative economy, a sharing culture, there are other ways of economic management and political decision making. This system has a Sibylline way of justifying itself, it just states it is the least corrupt without willing to try any other thing than the same old wrecked thing while it crushes anything and anyone who tries to build an alternative.

[magkelly]

The state already gets a fair share of our assets. It's called income tax. As for submitting to death vs law, I'm already doing that too. I live in a state that still has capital punishment. If I kill someone intentionally guess what they can judge me guilty and execute me for that crime.

Do I believe in capital punishment, I guess in all honesty I'd have to say it depends upon the person and the crime. I'd personally like to see execution saved for the very worst criminals, for the most heinous crimes, someone like Jeffrey Dahmer usually comes to mind.

But yeah, I'm already doing both of those things. It's already law so what's the big deal? You pay income tax, you commit a truly hideous crime you die. He will because Norway doesn't execute people anymore, but you think that guy who mass murdered over there should live? I don't know if I do. He moved down kids at play. For that I'm thinking he should meet his maker sooner rather than later...

[causey]

Anarchy is very much possible--when a catastrophic event causes human institutions to crumble (e.g., revolutions or natural events), when all civilized relations get forcefully suspended, human nature comes to light. Most often, the picture isn't a nice one; rather, it looks like a Hobbesian state. (Think LA '92 riots, Haiti, the French Revolution--or moments of it, Bolshevik revolution, etc.)

Granted, the anarchy you're talking about is not Hobbesian in nature; but then it looks more like a perfectly just community, that is, a community whose members are right and virtuous, who would not harm another for personal gain... The political problem is: how do you get from here to there? You say anarchy (in your sense) is an alternative, and it sounds as if it were an alternative project to be implemented by political means. How?

Anarchy is not the preying of the weak by the strong (that describes much more accurately capitalism)... In a "political" or filosofical sense anarchy is the negation of the separate power, of representation, and the establishment a social construct based on other values (cooperation instead of competition,individual freedom,...)

[Coeurdechene]

Most often, the picture isn't a nice one; rather, it looks like a Hobbesian state.

There has been great examples of cooperation too: like with the Argentinian Crisis back in the 00, or the Mackhnovshina in Ukraine during the Russian revolution
, or the Spanish social revolution of 1936. And from the end of the XIXth there's been people living apart, in anarchy, that have achieved incredible levels of cooperation and solidarity, the CNT or the FORA are great examples of it, heavily repressed, with scarce economic resources those organizations still managed to support a big toll of imprisoned, jobless, and strikers.
Hobessian situations have arisen much more from social groups trying to impose some kind of authority, not from those who negated it.
It sounds as an alternative because there are people out there building alternative resource production and living projects, squatted villages, production and consumption cooperatives outside the speculative "market" system. Then there's the values and the people who live and promote them. It all can start with small solidarity gestures, then expanding to the point where your own house turns into a place where people come and go, "open houses" where people with the same values can stay for periods of time. All this together with a resistance culture (maybe you have heard of "l'insurrection qui viendra"). Maybe that political anarchy will never be...i don't really care, what i care about is that there are people willing to try, people who do not live a "normal" life. With education, with socialization in a critic and open minded medium i believe things like the ones achieved here in the 30s are still possible.

[Jeff_H]

Unfortunately, Jeff, the alternative is anarchy... The human animal needs some form of social construct to enable civilization to survive. Without government, the average person and particularly the weakest among us would face grim lives indeed... And while this may be equitable in that the most strongest will get the mostest.. it is nothing but the law of the jungle writ large.

A government is, at it's core, simply a social contract and a framework which people chose to enable the most good for the most people. Unfortunately it is vulnerable to people who abuse and usurp the system for their own good, but that fact does not mean that government itself is flawed and that anarchy is preferable.

Mike

Mike, thanks for you thoughts. If I may, could I ask you to clarify what you mean when you use the word anarchy?

I think it's interesting that you believe in the absence of government that the weak would face grim lives at the hands of the strong. The people who are government are strong, not you or I. They help themselves to as much of what is yours or mine with no regard to our wishes. They subject us to whatever rules they decide upon regardless of any objections we might have. The visions I think you have of a world absent government are actually only possible because of government. In the absence of government, who would stop you from acquiring or contracting with someone else for the means to defend yourself or your property from aggression? In the absence of a certain class of people having the self declared so called right to boss you around and take your stuff, and having enough people believe that certain class has a right to do so, how long would it be until enough people banded together to prevent that? If there were a free market for defending yourself and your property, don't you think that someone, some company, would recognize a need in the market and the opportunity to profit from providing you and your property defense?

I know these thoughts challenge what is held to be conventional wisdom, honestly I do. But that makes them no less true. After all, conventional wisdom once held that the world was flat, that man would never fly, that the sound barrier would never be broken, that the atom could never be split, and so on and so on and so on. I think it's time for conventional wisdom about the necessity of doing evil to everyone in the name of keeping them safe from evil to go to the same place that those once common mistaken beliefs went; into the past of human history.

[causey]

Hobessian situations have arisen much more from social groups trying to impose some kind of authority, not from those who negated it.

And what are you going to do with those who are trying to impose some kind of authority? Or with those who in one way or another dissent on particular details of the anarchy? Or with those who at the end of a couple of decades of free exchanges of consumption goods manage to accumulate significantly more than others through work and skill and come to the judgment they are entitled to those goods? Execute them? Re-educate them?
More generally: what's going to warrant the stability of anarchy?

[MRRiley]

Jeff what you are describing, when you speak of people "banding together" is simply an embryonic government. As the society's needs grow more complicated the form of their government and the measures it takes to control or safeguard that society must grow corespondingly complicated.

Anarchy is the "absence of publicly recognized government or enforced political authority." The net effect is that the weak are at the mercy of the strong who have no societal limits on what they can do to advance their own interests or to curtail the interests of those they repress.

[redrockcoulee]

Jeff

There have been many examples of what happens in the absence of a government and usually is not pretty. As long as there is one person or group of people willing and ready to take advantage of the situation the rest are in fact at their mercy or must band together which is basically a government. Even small groups of people usually related such as native bands or Hutterite colonies have a simple government and live by agreed upon rules , majority decisions or the decision of a leader.

I do not live in the United States but where I do live the rules are made by many different groups, the federal and provincial governments and the local ones as well. Many regulations and rules are also made by the bureaucrats under strict guidelines (politicians do not decide where to put a solid yellow line on a highway). But I get to decide who is the government and can kick them out if they do not act the way I want them to (if enough people agree). But in my country or yours the few elected federal politicians do not decide everything that I can or cannot do and kill me if I do not do exactly what they want me to do. I can decide if I want to use a wide angle or telephoto lens or if I wish to ride my bike or who I marry as long as there is no harm to society, and many if not most other things.

Get rid of your government and yes you get rid of some annoying laws but also police and fire protection, courts and jails, laws against rape and murder. I could repeat Mike's last paragraph in Post 37 as well. Jeff you also effectively say we must believe in X because we agree to A. Still makes little sense to me.

[Coeurdechene]

If there were a free market for defending yourself and your property, don't you think that someone, some company, would recognize a need in the market and the opportunity to profit from providing you and your property defense?

And that can be the origin of privately owned police...wich is every bit as scary as state sponsored one. You cannot abolish state and let corporations stand since it would lead us tio something awfully similar to the world of Gibson's "Neuromancer".
State's authority and violence is no different from the one derived from "private" ownership and "free" market.

Or with those who in one way or another dissent on particular details of the anarchy?

Dissension is no problem...anarchy strives in dissension, grows out of it, evolves to better forms of organization if some basic principles of organization are kept. If authority is abolished and conflict is met and resolved through horizontal means there is nothing to fear from dissension (ultimately every individual is free to form associations that only last what their members are willing to maintain them, without any abstract being nor authority to enforce their existence, they only last till they are useful).
I'm not a "free market" guy...i don't believe in it since private ownership leads to accumulation, then economic power, then political power and authority...means of production should be operated collectively and managed by those who operate them (not by those who inherited them), individuals then produce according to their capacity and receive according to their needs with always the freedom to migrate, move. I've lived in places like that, and there is always conflict but the resolution is made by debate, work and not force.
As for those who want to oppress other human beings, as in the 36 they were given the choice to work individually on the land they could use by themselves without hiring peons..When they opposed violently they were met with violence (but i would agree with MalcomX there saying that resistance to oppression isn't called violence but intelligence).
The interesting thing about the collectivities here in the Spanish revolution was that they managed to supply enough for a whole milicia that fought in the front...those who were small owners usually finished by integrating the collectivity since they were not able to work the lands all by themselves and needed the collective force to work the fields.
The stability must be warranted as with every political system by a strong set of beliefs and an organized group of people willing to defend them. The difference between the anarchists and the bolshevicks lies in the absence of a personal title to power. The anarchists leaders were first moral examples, people like Durruti or Garcia Oliver didn't have any "rights" over the base they only served the organization and were respected because of their proven revolutionary and supportive attitude.

[Coeurdechene]

Anarchy is the "absence of publicly recognized government or enforced political authority."

Only if you use the word disregarding the filosofical and political developments that started with the usage of such word by Godwin.
Anarchy is more another way of organizing. If the state as we know it dissapeared that does not mean people wouldn't organize and live collectively...that's why that fiction of the "natural" warring society is so insidious. There are human groups that do not organize around a strong hierarchical organization and do not live in a perpetual state of violence towards the weak...that is Anarchy, the absence of a hierarchical political or economic organization.
In fact it is in these so called capitalist "democracies" that the weak is vulnerable...it's our "civilized" political organizations that cope and maintain dictatorships all over the world so we can consume comfortably.

[MRRiley]

Even Anarchists cannot agree on the meaning of the word "anarchy"... go figure!

[Coeurdechene]

Even Anarchists cannot agree on the meaning of the word "anarchy"... go figure!

No need to.
We are not monarchists under a dynasty or religious people under one god (although there are some christian and muslim anarchists, go figure ), we can work and strive with people who don't share an homogeneous credo but have some basic principles in common.
There are so many kinds of anarchists: Stirnerian, collectivists, comunists, ecologists, religious, sindicalists,...I could go on and on That's one of the differences with the "far left" groupuscules wich hate and despise each other as revisionists and heterodox "scum" (just attend to a Troskist meeting...they spend more time dissing other "marxists" than trying to build something XD).

[causey]

"means of production should be operated collectively"

Observation: There is no clear cut distinction between consumption goods and production goods. Its the usage that makes the difference. (Is a car a means of production or a consumption good?) This is important, since household goods may be used to produce various other things. Individuals might get entrepreneurial--they might distill alcohol in their basements, for instance, and sell it for a profit. (The E.U. recently forbade the household production of l'eau de vie in Romania. Do you think that stopped villagers from having their micro-production in numerous basements E.U. which officials can't control?)

"individuals then produce according to their capacity and receive according to their needs with always the freedom to migrate, move."

The obvious assumption here is that people will produce according to their capacity. What if they become lazy? What if a surgeon comes to the belief that his work is too strenuous compared to the work of a gardener? What if a number hard-working individuals become dissatisfied with the laziness of others and decide to keep what in their view is their fair share?
What if--perhaps some 200 years after the initial distribution--a father decides to leave the fruits of his labor to his sons? Is he going to be judged as an oppressor of the people? (BTW: would betrayal of the father by the sons be encouraged in that anarchical community?)
What if a group of people--probably discontented with how distribution is made in practice--decide to form their own society, whose rules are essentially capitalistic? Judged as oppressors?

Right now I don't have enough time for my questions, unfortunately.

[causey]

There are so many kinds of anarchists: Stirnerian, collectivists, comunists, ecologists, religious, sindicalists,...I could go on and on

... libertarian anarchists...

[redrockcoulee]

"means of production should be operated collectively"

Observation: There is no clear cut distinction between consumption goods and production goods. Its the usage that makes the difference. (Is a car a means of production or a consumption good?) This is important, since household goods may be used to produce various other things. Individuals might get entrepreneurial--they might distill alcohol in their basements, for instance, and sell it for a profit. (The E.U. recently forbade the household production of l'eau de vie in Romania. Do you think that stopped villagers from having their micro-production in numerous basements E.U. which officials can't control?)

"individuals then produce according to their capacity and receive according to their needs with always the freedom to migrate, move."

The obvious assumption here is that people will produce according to their capacity. What if they become lazy? What if a surgeon comes to the belief that his work is too strenuous compared to the work of a gardener? What if a number hard-working individuals become dissatisfied with the laziness of others and decide to keep what in their view is their fair share?
What if--perhaps some 200 years after the initial distribution--a father decides to leave the fruits of his labor to his sons? Is he going to be judged as an oppressor of the people? (BTW: would betrayal of the father by the sons be encouraged in that anarchical community?)
What if a group of people--probably discontented with how distribution is made in practice--decide to form their own society, whose rules are essentially capitalistic? Judged as oppressors?

Right now I don't have enough time for my questions, unfortunately.

Referring back to Hutterites they seem to have this worked out, all put in labour and all share the benefits. But they know that their system works only in limited situation so that when the colony grows too large they start a new one and divide the existing one in half with one half staying and the half moving on to the new one. It was explained to me by one of the elders that the man of the family throw their name into the hat and they draw names until they have the needed numbers.

Lots of systems or lack of systems work well until a critical number is reached. When I am by myself I have no problem reaching a consensus however when my wife returns home it is not as easy. If I was with one thousand other people it would be even that much harder unless we decided on a system to represent all the people with a smaller group and viola a government of sorts.


Still wondering who surrendered all their rights to one person to totally control them?