I am not primarily a structuralist. Any form of organization is no better than the morals of the people who form it. Does that mean anarchistic organization requires angels? Nope. It only means that anarchy can only be preferable to more criminal types of organization — such as states — if it's operated along more ethical lines.

I believe ethics have a utility and a practical value. If that makes me a utopian, so be it.

Neil

Look, I'm a libertarian through and through, but I think your rhetoric here needs some improvement. Anarchism will not function or come to pass because we just wish that people were more honorable. While there are honorable people out there (and I certainly don't buy the notion that all corporate employees are self-centered, greedy, unethical bastards) there are a *lot* of those who lack such standards.

This is more of a rhetorical analysis than anything else. I like the sentiment here, but it's not going to go over well with anybody outside of C4SS.

I know this response is a little late but just wanted to say I enjoyed the POV you brought up. The more diverse and open the greater discussion is concerning all non-state options, the more we all benefit at the end of the day. My thanks to you sir and my thanks to C4SS for publishing your thoughts.

mac

What Yeats certainly, and Lewis and Baxter probably, meant by "mere" was the older meaning of the word, which was "pure." What Yeats meant by "anarchy" was, as you point out, the popular but erroneous meaning of "chaos." Hence, pure chaos. Lewis likewise (I haven't read the book) probably meant pure Christianity. But I like the adoption of "mere anarchy" in our sense, the positive one of pure freedom. It's anarchism with an adjective, but without the ubiquitous prefix. We could also adopt and transpose into our terms as a rallying cry, "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold," which shall indicate, not entropy and anomie, but secession and the collapse of centralized power.

In my Econ 101 class I prefaced a paper on the Austrian theory of the business-cycle with the quote, "Turning and turning in the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer."