Without Adjectives
Posted by Anna Morgenstern on Jul 4, 2010 in Feature Articles • 46 commentsIf you have an interest in a stateless society, you need to understand what the state is. Otherwise you could end up chasing shadows, and many self-proclaimed anarchists often do so, unfortunately. When you look around you, you can see examples of its handiwork everywhere. Every police car you see, the various “permits” and “licenses” when you go into a business establishment (once you start to look for them, you’ll see them all the time without even trying to …), and then the more subtle things. Now, you’ll notice I didn’t mention roads, or schools or traffic lights. These are all things that would exist with or without the state. The particular form they tend to take in our world however, this is the work of the state, as are the particular forms that all of our institutions and business establishments do. (Remember the “permits” above?)
But all of that is the trail the state leaves behind. So what is the state? Many people think that it is an organization sometimes called “the government.” That’s one piece of the puzzle, but it’s not the complete answer. The governments of the world act as a sort of administrative organization and enforcement agency for the state, they are necessary for its continued existence. But there’s more to it than that. In totalitarian countries, “government” and “state” seem very much to be the same, because the government controls everything so directly. In more liberal/libertarian countries, the differences start to emerge. One perspective I’ve found that sheds a lot of light on the state is to examine the Mafia. Is a “legitimate business” owned by the Mafia, really not part of the Mafia? Even if it’s not a money laundering front and is operated for a profit, it’s still basically part of the Mafia.
Now the government and the Mafia while they have similarities, have some glaring differences too. One big one that doesn’t get looked at is that government officials never directly get actual profits from their activities. In fact, most of their most prominent activities are non-profit, or run constant losses even if they do take payment. They get a salary, which is paid out of stolen money, but that salary is relatively fixed and not dependent on performance (for which I am sure they are quite grateful). So you have to broaden your gaze and see that these officials rotate into and out of “private sector” employment, and then it starts to make more sense. The businesses favored by the state are the ones that hire ex-government employees and vice versa. The fact that government officials are allowed to own stock (though that’s regulated to some extent) in private companies is another clue.
So why the pretense? Why go through this ruse of “public” and “private?” Well that’s it. That’s the state. The state IS the ruse. The state … is a social fiction. It is the myth of legitimacy. This myth is the thin black line that separates “the government” and its “private sector” attachments from any other Mafia. The fact that people believe that “the government” is legitimately allowed to kill and steal, and that when it does so, it represents something good and just, is what has allowed it to dominate the earth. And despite the secondary myth that the government exists to fight crime, it is the very existence of the government that allows the lesser Mafias to thrive.
In the past this myth of legitimacy was carried out through religion. As various religions were the “private sector” beneficiaries of government, they would preach that the state was the secular arm of their organization, devoted to enforcing “the lord’s will” on Earth.
While bunk in and of itself, at least they admitted the connection.
Nowadays, a new religion, that of “democracy,” legitimizes the state by claiming that it is “the people’s will” that they are charged with enforcing. (Even when the people seem to be quite against what the government is doing, ala the recent bank bailouts) Other flatulent high sounding ideas like “social order,” “tradition” and “public goods” are also used to weave this magic spell in people’s heads.
So now that we know what the state is, we know what Anarchism is. Anarchism, truly, is simply the understanding that the state is merely a social fiction and has no legitimacy. When you live that truth, you will not follow the law simply because it is the law. You will let your conscience be your guide. At that point you are no longer being ruled, though you might have crimes committed against you by the “government” and its lackeys. When the Mafia forces someone to pay protection money, that guy isn’t being ruled, he’s being robbed.
So what then is liberty? Liberty is the absence of crime. Real crime, crime that has a victim. Crimes that all persons’ conscience would acknowledge as such. A libertarian then, is someone who wishes to abolish (or more realistically) minimize crime.
Not all anarchists are libertarians (some Stirnerites come to mind), but most are, at least to some extent. But all anarchists understand that no one has any special authority to commit crimes that no one else has.
All political theories involve some level of crime. Someone is getting victimized for someone else’s benefit. The “liberals” (as we know them today) tend to favor a very mild, safe plutocratic regime — one that seeks to round off all of lifes sharp corners for the sake of making us all viable economic resources to exploit. The “conservatives” have a more dog-eat-dog approach in which the workers are set up to fight over ever more scarce resources; a Darwinian approach to maximizing our productivity. Ultimately, these are just differing livestock management techniques.
Ahhh but you say, this is an age of ascendant corporatism and collectivism. What about the political theories of the past? Classical liberalism was a sort of minarchist libertarianism. We must have this much organized crime (committed by the ruling classes), simply in order to fight sporadic, disorganized crime (usually committed by the lower classes). The problem is that leaves all sorts of “wiggle room” which leads to the liberalism we have now.
Classical conservatism / Paleo-conservatism is a sort of patchwork of ideas that claims that “this social order is good,” and whatever crimes we have to commit to keep that order are thus justified. It’s almost hearkening back to the ancient regime of religious statism, and indeed does attract a lot of religious types.
Both of these ideologies are a lot less totalitarian than modern corporate democracy, but that’s simply to be expected. They realized at some point that totalitarian control is counter productive … the host that does not thrive leaves little for the parasite. And so they developed political strategies that would allow the host to thrive, while still providing a decent feast for the parasite.
Nowadays we are seeing an attempt to use spurious financial-economics to min/max the amount of crime vs. the health and wealth of the population that crime feeds off. The predators have charts and graphs you see, and they are giving lectures on “how to get the most from your prey.” They also don’t think as long term as they used to, because they have thrown off sentimentality toward their children. (and could you blame them for that?)
Anarchism has, itself, broken up into many sub-divisions and factions. But in reality, all these factions are, are differing beliefs about what a stateless society will “look like.” All anarchists, that is to say, all people who understand that no one is authorized to commit crimes, have one goal if they wish to see their desired future(s) come to pass, which is to destroy the myth of legitimacy. This is the one way that one can smash the state. Now there are several strategies and methods that might be used to do so, but everything that does not attack the myth of legitimacy directly or indirectly is extra-anarchist. It is perhaps a strengthening of a social order that was hollowed out by the state, or a diversion of resources feeding the state, but no matter. Where we disagree as anarchists is less important than where we agree.
A lot of “left” anarchists will claim, for instance, that anarcho-capitalists are not actually anarchists. This, to me, seems like confusion about what capitalism means to anarcho-capitalists. By the light of what leftist anarchists mean by “capitalism,” anarcho-capitalists are not non-anarchists, they are non-capitalists. And the reverse holds true too. An anarcho-socialist is not the sort of socialist that an anarcho-capitalist thinks of as “socialist.” But all anarchists believe that the state is nonsense and has no right to assert some sort of magical authority to do things that you or I cannot.
There are pseudo-anarchists, yes, but they are the sort that end up cheering for this magical super-Mafia when their own pet issues come to town.
Having listened to the actual concepts (not just imaginations of their ideas) of anarchists of all stripes, I have come to the conclusion, as did Voltarine DeCleyre, one of my heroes, that I am an anarchist without adjectives. Let us dispense with the fiction of the state, and then let everyone try what they can, and we will see how it all works out.
C4SS Contributing Writer Anna O. Morgenstern has been an anarchist of one stripe or another for almost 30 years. Her intellectual interests include economic history, social psychology and voluntary organization theory. She likes piña coladas, but not getting caught in the rain.
Holy shit, Anna! You really should be one of the regulary commentators here.
Very well put.
"All anarchists, that is to say, all people who understand that no one is authorized to commit crimes, have one goal if they wish to see their desired future(s) come to pass, which is to destroy the myth of legitimacy. This is the one way that one can smash the state. Now there are several strategies and methods that might be used to do so, but everything that does not attack the myth of legitimacy directly or indirectly is extra-anarchist."
And of course the logical conclusion is that we who understand the state is an illegitimate criminal gang also have a right to protect our selves and are under no obligation to respect any of that gang's tyrannical "laws".
"But in reality, all these factions are, are differing beliefs about what a stateless society will “look like”."
I no longer believe that the matter is as simple as this. There are differing beliefs about what a stateless society means in the first place and what cultural preconditions are necessary to bring it about which are contingent on irreconcilable normative perspectives. I don't think that all inter-anarchist conflict can be waved off as merely differing predictions and subjective preferences about how to organize minus a state. Such conflict is partly based around what normative elements end up constituting a state, as well as the extent to which the question is reducible to one about the state in the first place.
This is a big part of the reason why I have problems with what is sometimes put foreward as the "without adjectives" perspective, since it strikes me as relativistic to a fault, and in my mind taking "thick libertarianism" seriously necessarily entails a rejection or at least a softening of this relativism. What's more, from a consequentialist perspective I don't think that it makes sense to advocate for the abolition of the state seemingly as an end in and of itself, completely irrespective of what it ends up "looking like". To me, such a one-eyed focus on abolishing the state is philosophically problematic.
Perhaps I should apologize for being one of the Alliance of the Libertarian Left's inside contrarians, but I don't have much choice.
Crime is when someone exploit other people, with help of the state or without the state. so…capitalists who call themselves anarcho are the same as present capitalists. Beside it, I think it is bad to exchange word – slavery – with – crime -, because it can make confusion to the people who are not anarchists, they will think about stealing of food as a crime, but stealing done by slaves is not the same as capitalist stealing of profit from salary of workers. I believe it is much better to use words which are more clear for people who are not anarchists.
"…government officials never directly get actual profits from their activities… They get a salary, which is paid out of stolen money, but that salary is relatively fixed and not dependent on performance…"
That happens not to be the case. That is, it is merely the recent stipendiary approach in the western world, less than two centuries old, that replaced the earlier fee based (or sometimes "prebendary") approach after it was successfully brought in as a reform in British India to reduce the scope for abuse. Earlier on, states let officials charge the people who had to deal with them or provided them with their own personal revenue bases ex officio, e.g. land they could get rent from while they held their offices – which they could sell to others when they retired or moved on. Think in terms of having a taxi licence, under systems where those command a premium because they allow drivers higher returns (as opposed to the original idea, which was to provide quality control and self policing without needing to fund the system).
I already read it a while back, around the time that people started realizing that your politics kind of suck and you get buddy-buddy with what are arguably authoritarians in the name of big-tent sessionism against the state. And part of my commentary on that from the beginning was essentially that the "without adjectives" relativism of well-meaning libertarians enables people like you, and that people like you abuse post-modern and nihilist themes to make a philosophical mish-mash out of incompatible positions. I really want to have nothing to do with that.
I find your "critique" to more or less be based on a distorted image and a reactionary view towards the New Left, explained through the lense of a problematic attempt to absolutely separate politics from ethics and culture. I think that anti-statism is a floating abstraction without specific ethics, and an untenable position with specific ethics but restricted to a political philosophy that doesn't take account its relations to a broader social philosophy. I think that social philosophy and political philosophy cannot be absolutely separated and claims to neutralize politics of social philosophy are misleading.
I fundamentally don't want to live in a society full of bigots – I think that there are reasons for opposing that in and of itself, entirely separate from typical political questions of state. At the same time, I think that such questions do relate to politics in that political outcomes are partly contingent on cultural atmospheres. I don't think that a society full of bigots and irrational fools will be a free society, no matter how much such people go on tirades about non-aggression, and that the "libertarian" arguments for them having territorially restricted communities is a "libertarian" argument for a city-state.
"By the light of what leftist anarchists mean by “capitalism”, anarcho-capitalists are not non-anarchists, they are non-capitalists."
This statement confuses me. How are anarcho-capitalists considered non-capitalists? Thanks!
[...] by Anna Morgenstern at Center for a Stateless Society [...]
Brainpolice,
“This is a big part of the reason why I have problems with what is sometimes put foreward as the “without adjectives” perspective, since it strikes me as relativistic to a fault, and in my mind taking “thick libertarianism” seriously necessarily entails a rejection or at least a softening of this relativism.”
I hereby challenge you to a debate. If you wish to accept my challenge, you can begin by offering a rebuttal to my critique of Long and Johnson’s rendition of “thick libertarianism”:
http://attackthesystem.com/should-libertarianism-be-cultural-leftism-without-the-state/
This article is excellent. Anarchists and libertarians unite!!!
No go remove the adjective on your Facebook and change it to just anarchist or libertarian. =]
Thank you for your reply.
“you get buddy-buddy with what are arguably authoritarians in the name of big-tent sessionism against the state.”
“Arguably authoritarian” is a pretty vague descriptive term. Do I politically collaborate and associate with people who are not 100% committed libertarian-anarchists? Of course. That’s absolutely necessary if real world objectives are to be achieved. I was very active in the antiwar movement regarding Reagan’s war on Central America in the 80s. Many of my closest associates were members of groups like the Socialist Workers’ Party, Revolutionary Communist Party, Workers World Party, left-wing Christians, etc. Then and now, I deplored the politics of most of those people. But collaborating with marginalized commie cults and crackpot Marxo-Christians against the much greater evil of genocide of the indigenous and lower class populations of Central America was very much a worthwhile endeavor. Let me ask you this: What do you do to advance the cause of anarchism in the real world other than posting philosophical statements on discussion boards and blogs?
“people like you abuse post-modern and nihilist themes to make a philosophical mish-mash out of incompatible positions.”
What are these “incompatible positions” that I have taken? You give no examples. Please elaborate.
“I find your “critique” to more or less be based on a distorted image and a reactionary view towards the New Left”
In what ways have I presented a “distorted” view of the New Left? What I was critiquing was, in part, what the New Left has morphed into, i.e. a totalitarian movement rooted in philosophical and ideological premises that are simply incompatible with anti-statism, e.g. extreme univeralism, radical egalitarianism, and which specifically shuns anti-statism.
“I think that social philosophy and political philosophy cannot be absolutely separated and claims to neutralize politics of social philosophy are misleading.”
Did I not specifically say in that essay that political philosophy cannot be separated from social philosophy? To quote myself:
“I would concur with thick libertarians that there is more to life than politics, that there are values beyond the political, that while liberty may be the highest political value it is not the only value, and that a libertarian political order is more compatible with some intellectual systems, philosophical beliefs and cultural foundations than others.”
“What might be some thick values, while irrelevant to the coercive authority of the state per se, that might be helpful as part of a broader foundation for combating actually existing states of the kind found in the contemporary First World?
1. A defense of the sovereignty of particular nations against imperialism, multi-national nation-states, and international quasi-governmental bodies.
2. A defense of the sovereignty of local communities and regional cultures against the power of overarching central governments.
3. “Ethno-pluralism” or the view that each unique ethnic group should have a territory where it is a demographic majority and with a political system representative of its cultural foundations. The Swiss canton system may well be the most advanced model of this type of any system currently in practice.
4. The view that cultural differences are best dealt with according to the principles of individual liberty, voluntary association, pluralism and peaceful co-existence where possible, yet where this is not possible localism, decentralism, secessionism, separatism and mutual self-segregation are likely the most preferable alternatives.
5. A distinction between natural or voluntary hierarchies and authorities, and coercive or artificial ones.
6. Recognition of the iron law of oligarchy, or the view that elites are inevitable, and an emphasis on meritocracy, as opposed to simply tearing down all authorities, institutions, and organizations, thereby creating a power vacuum that allows the worst to get to the top.
7. Recognition of the legitimacy of Otherness, and an understanding that true tolerance is not simply tolerating people one likes, but tolerating those whom one finds personally repulsive. Just as toleration of the Other is not synonymous with approval or agreement, so does tolerance of one’s self by the Other not grant the right to demand approval.
8. Recognition of the inherent inequality of persons, groups, cultures, nations, etc. and that effort to impose artificial or unnatural equality can only result in tyranny, chaos or stagnation.
9. Adherence to what traditionalist Catholics call the subsidiarity principle, meaning that problems are best dealt with on a decentralized basis by those closest to them, rather than on the basis of abstract solutions imposed from above.
10. Application of the insights of modern social psychology, which indicates that most people are herd creatures, and inevitably get their sense of right and wrong not from any innate sense of conscience or a rational evaluation of available facts, but according to cues taken from leaders, peers and perceived sources of cultural authority.
11. Recognition of the value of intermediary institutions, such as families, communities, voluntary associations, independent business and labor organizations, charities, philanthropies, private schools and universities, cultural organizations, and even private citizens’ militias as a bulwark against the all-encompassing authoritarian presence of the state, and the need to defend the sovereignty and legitimacy of such institutions.
12. Recognition of Acton’s dictum that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Of course, you may disagree with any or all of the above, but you cannot accurately accuse me of putting forth “a political philosophy that doesn’t take account its relations to a broader social philosophy.”
“I fundamentally don’t want to live in a society full of bigots”
Well, the dictionary definition of a “bigot” is “a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices. The correct use of the term requires the elements of intolerance, irrationality, and animosity toward those of differing beliefs.” If you don’t think liberals and leftists are capable of “bigotry” of this type, then apparently you’ve never spent much time in the company of such people. Of course, I think what you’re really saying is that you don’t want to live in a society with people who don’t share your personal values, preferences, or prejudices, irrespective of the relationship of these to politics or the state. Okay, fair enough. I prefer not to be in the company of either snobby, yuppie suburbanites on one hand or smelly, hippie, eco-freaks on the other. But I disagree that their existence is by itself un-libertarian.
“I think that there are reasons for opposing that in and of itself, entirely separate from typical political questions of state.”
Perhaps there are. As an illustration, I’m a Nietzschean philosophically and a Bakuninist politically. So obviously Christianity is not something I hold in very high regard. But I don’t consider the existence of Christianity to be un-libertarian by itself, nor do I feel the need to exclude Christians from anti-state activism. I would be first in line to defend Christians against attacks from the state, and I see cultural separatism as a means by which Christians and heathens like myself can peacefully co-exist without infringing upon one another. I might oppose Christianity in other ways, like through distributing copies of Bakunin’s “God and the State,” or Bertrand Russell’s “Why I am not a Christian,” or George H. Smith’s “Atheism: The Case Against God.” But I don’t see any need to bring that into my political work.
“At the same time, I think that such questions do relate to politics in that political outcomes are partly contingent on cultural atmospheres.”
I agree. For instance, Kropotkin once suggested that the reason individualist anarchism emerged in England and America was because it was an outgrowth of Anglo-American liberalism, whereas anarcho-communism was an outgrowth of the peasant traditions of continental European countries like Russia, Spain, the Slavic nations, Italy, and France that were essentially pre-industrial and much more attached to the old feudal order. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn suggested that religion played a big role in the development of classical anarchism, as it was in Catholic countries like those of southern Europe and Latin America where it became most prominent, with lesser appeal in Germanic or Scandinavian countries where Protestantism was dominant.
“I don’t think that a society full of bigots and irrational fools will be a free society, no matter how much such people go on tirades about non-aggression”
Well, “irrational fools” can come in all kinds of cultural, philosophical, or ideological packages. Some might argue that academic leftists who try to synthesize postmodern relativism with the extreme moralistic zealotry of the PC Left are “irrational fools.”
“and that the “libertarian” arguments for them having territorially restricted communities is a “libertarian” argument for a city-state.”
Well, what is a “city-state” but an agglomeration of individual or collective property owners interrelated with the “commons” (see Carson, Long, Carlton Hobbs, etc. on the possibility of non-state common property)? Are you saying that property owners should have no right of exclusion, or that free association is not contingent on the freedom to disassociate? How can anarchism exist if the principles of property, sovereignty, and voluntarism are denied? Are fundamentalist churches to be required to accept gays as members or clergy? Are anti-racist groups to be required to accept Ku Klux Klan members as associates? Your views on this seem incoherent.
Most anarchocapitalists or free market anarchists are also comfortable with the term voluntaryist, even considering it to be synonymous. But the vast majority of people in the world, and in history, who have called themselves "anarchist" are anarchosyndicalists (ASs) or anarchocommunists (AC's). Given that fact, "anarchy"–''statelessness"–must be distinguished as a separate broader term from "voluntary".
Both types of anarchy (voluntaryism and AS/AC) require, in pure form, absence of a state. But the AS's and AC's almost uniformly advocate for coercive democratic rule, and delegitimizing of people's choice to protect their lives and property. Any form of coercive democracy is necessarily oligarchy by the few who decide the issues to be determined and the particular method of democracy to employ. So, an emergent voluntaryist order can in no way be called "democratic". And yet, "democracy" is a fundamental principle and rallying cry to almost everyone who has ever called himself an anarchist.
Violence will always be a fact of life. In a stateless society, there will necessarily be violence between the AC's/AS's striving to enforce the mythical "will of the people" (meaning the will of the navigator's of democracy), and the voluntaryists who defend themselves from those invasions.
The overarching term "anarchy" subsumes incompatible beliefs. There is no escaping the intellectual work of determining the types of human interactions that should be legitimate. Anarchism does not accomplish that task.
Vikingvista,
"But the AS’s and AC’s almost uniformly advocate for coercive democratic rule, and delegitimizing of people’s choice to protect their lives and property. Any form of coercive democracy is necessarily oligarchy by the few who decide the issues to be determined and the particular method of democracy to employ. So, an emergent voluntaryist order can in no way be called “democratic”. And yet, “democracy” is a fundamental principle and rallying cry to almost everyone who has ever called himself an anarchist."
I can't speak for "almost everyone who has ever called himself anarchist" but an important distinction does need to be made between anarcho-communist and anarcho-syndicalist economic arrangements and liberal mass democracy of the kind we have at present. AC and AS are simply competing business models and competing theories of property rights. Most serious anarcho-syndicalists or mutualists will point to things like the Mondragon workers cooperatives or the CNT-run factory collectives during the Spanish Civil War as a prototype for their ideas, and anarcho-communists will point to things like the Israeli kibbutzim, the Slovenian workers councils, or an Amish village as their prototype. Just like the separation of church and state resulted in a proliferation of all kinds of religious beliefs and non-beliefs, so would separation of economics and state like produce widely varying forms of property and economic institutions. Liberal mass democracy, on the other hand, attempts to impose uniformity from the center in the name of abstract universals like "rights" and "humanity."
"Violence will always be a fact of life. In a stateless society, there will necessarily be violence between the AC’s/AS’s striving to enforce the mythical “will of the people” (meaning the will of the navigator’s of democracy), and the voluntaryists who defend themselves from those invasions."
It is indeed refreshing to discover someone in the anarchist milieu who understands that "violence will always be a fact of life."
"The overarching term “anarchy” subsumes incompatible beliefs. There is no escaping the intellectual work of determining the types of human interactions that should be legitimate. Anarchism does not accomplish that task."
This is why anarchism is not compatible with universalism, whether economic, cultural, or philosophical. For anarchism to work in practice, there must be many anarchisms.
"This is why anarchism is not compatible with universalism, whether economic, cultural, or philosophical. For anarchism to work in practice, there must be many anarchisms."
When this "pluralism" and relativism makesit to the point of acting as if all political, cultural, and ethical perspectives are compatible with anarchism, to the point where there really is no way to distinguish anarchism from anything else other than a completely vague declaration of opposition to "the state" (an opposition which depends on specific political, cultural, and ethical content to mean anything), there no longer is any "anarchism" left to speak of. It has literally become a completely meaningless concept. It's anomie. This is why I reject your ideology.
[...] on immigration , one on the battle between proprietarian anarchists or anarcho-capitalists and [...]
“What are these “incompatible positions” that I have taken? You give no examples. Please elaborate.”
The entire cluster-fuck concept of “national anarchism”. I think there is something about nationalism, in terms of its normative content, that is simply incompatible with anarchism. Likewise, I see you as appealing to concepts of relativism and tolerance to justify what effectively are absolutisms, only you propose them as *localized* absolutisms. This is what I mean when I accuse you of having a mish-mash philosophy. That’s what “third positionism” essentially is: an eccentric attempt to reconcile irreconcilable normative and political positions.
“In what ways have I presented a “distorted” view of the New Left? What I was critiquing was, in part, what the New Left has morphed into, i.e. a totalitarian movement rooted in philosophical and ideological premises that are simply incompatible with anti-statism, e.g. extreme univeralism, radical egalitarianism, and which specifically shuns anti-statism.”
In my mind, what you’re doing is creating a false set of options and misrepresenting egalitarians as necessarily statist. You pick the worst possible examples of egalitarians, and then use that as an image to bash social anarchists with, painting the libertarian left with a statist brush. You also conflate a global-totalitarian sense of “universalism” with cosmopolitanism (which is actually a form of pluralism). You seem to promote a form of “pluralism” that is really just the fragmentation of society into little territorial gangs.
“1. A defense of the sovereignty of particular nations against imperialism, multi-national nation-states, and international quasi-governmental bodies.”
While this seems “good” in the context of opposing internationalist forms of control, I see it as possibly just enabling nationalist forms of control. This is part of why I don’t see any value in the “national sovereignty” talk.
” “Ethno-pluralism” or the view that each unique ethnic group should have a territory where it is a demographic majority and with a political system representative of its cultural foundations. The Swiss canton system may well be the most advanced model of this type of any system currently in practice.”
Things like this are exactly what I reject about your ideology. It is contingent on territorialism, and such territorialism is the foundation of a localized state in my eyes.
“5. A distinction between natural or voluntary hierarchies and authorities, and coercive or artificial ones.”
While useful on the surface, I find this very question-begging. Some uses of this distinction end up being apologetics for what I’d consider to be something that inherently becomes “involuntary”, particularly intergenerationally.
“6. Recognition of the iron law of oligarchy, or the view that elites are inevitable, and an emphasis on meritocracy, as opposed to simply tearing down all authorities, institutions, and organizations, thereby creating a power vacuum that allows the worst to get to the top.”
The only use I see for the iron law of oligarchy is debunking the myth that just about any form of state, including representative democracies, isn’t fundamentally an oligarchy. But the “natural elites” position espoused by folks like Hoppe strikes me as conservative nonsense.
“8. Recognition of the inherent inequality of persons, groups, cultures, nations, etc. and that effort to impose artificial or unnatural equality can only result in tyranny, chaos or stagnation.”
I view this as possibly being a very dangerous and cliche rejection of egalitarianism. For starters, practically no egalitarian actually believes that nature is an equilibruim of ability. However, this kind of “iron law of oligarchy” position quickly devolves into a social conservatism in which existing inequalities are rationalized as “natural” when all of the social elements that perpetuate and exaggerate them are ignored.
” Some might argue that academic leftists who try to synthesize postmodern relativism with the extreme moralistic zealotry of the PC Left are “irrational fools.””
I would agree. But on the other hand, I likewise think that people who try to synthesize postmodern relativism with the extreme moralistic zealotry of paleo-conservatives and ethnic nationalists deserve the same critique.
“Are you saying that property owners should have no right of exclusion, or that free association is not contingent on the freedom to disassociate? How can anarchism exist if the principles of property, sovereignty, and voluntarism are denied?”
I’m saying that the kind of community-wide “exclusion” in such a “restrictive covenant” is inherently based on an over-extended property claim over an entire community – I don’t believe that communities can be “owned”. As such, by virtue of them being “owned communities”, I fail to see how it is consistent with anarchism. I fail to see how it isn’t a city-state. I’m saying that a one-eyed mania for a corrupted concept of “freedom of association” blurs the fact that some of what you’re might call “freedom of association” is actually a violation of other liberties.
I’m also saying that appealing to freedom of association to rationalize making people’s lives shitty, even if one supports it at the political level or does not advocate violence in reaction to it, is simply ridiculous from a general ethical perspective.
“I think there is something about nationalism, in terms of its normative content, that is simply incompatible with anarchism.”
That’s simply your value judgement, not a matter of logic. It’s theoretically possible to be, for example, an American patriot and still despise the American government itself or all governments. It worked pretty well for Karl Hess, Gustav Landauer, Pierre Joseph Proudhon (“this sacred land of Gaol”), Mikhail Bakunin (Slavic nationalist), and Peter Kropotkin (Russian patriot).
“I see you as appealing to concepts of relativism and tolerance to justify what effectively are absolutisms, only you propose them as *localized* absolutisms.”
Such as? I need more clarity as to what you actually mean, but my initial reaction is that you are grossly oversimplifying my views.
“In my mind, what you’re doing is creating a false set of options and misrepresenting egalitarians as necessarily statist. You pick the worst possible examples of egalitarians, and then use that as an image to bash social anarchists with, painting the libertarian left with a statist brush.”
I don’t think egalitarians are necessarily statist, just that most of them or at least substantial numbers of them actually are, given their history and track records. I also think left-wing egalitarian statists have much more power and influence in modern societies than more traditional kinds of statists or statists normally associated with the Right (e.g. theocrats, racial supremacists, monarchists, fascists, etc.) Therefore, egalitarian statists are a much more immediate and formidable enemy. I also argue that because social anarchists and left-libertarians have the same basic set of cultural values (e.g. racism is the ultimate sin, eliminating homophobia is the most pressing social issue, organized religion is the greatest threat to humanity, mass immigration is a wonderful thing, private discrimination against Groups Favored By Lefists is the ultimate horror) as left-wing statists and, more importantly, present day liberal elites and much of the mainstream society, there is no fundamental barrier to cooptation by the forces of liberal statism. As for these “worst possible examples of egalitarians,” some of these worst possible examples are becoming more and more the norm, while more traditional kinds of oppression are receding. This is in part why I identify the authoritarian, statist cultural Left as a primary enemy. Additionally, because egalitarianism does not naturally occur in nature, those who value egalitarianism as the supreme good will always be tempted to impose it by artificial means via the state.
“You also conflate a global-totalitarian sense of “universalism” with cosmopolitanism (which is actually a form of pluralism).”
I have no problem with a cosmopolitanism that is naturally occurring or voluntarily chosen. I think large cities, coastal or border areas, sea ports, and major commercial centers are always going to have a certain cosmopolitan character. Landlocked areas, more sparsely populated areas, agricultural communities, etc. are likely to be much less cosmopolitan. All societies seem to work this way. Also, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that liberalism developed among seafaring peoples like the English, French, or Americans as opposed to more landlocked people like the Russians or Germans. But what you left-libertarian guys advocate is clearly not mere cosmopolitanism, but full-on Jacobin universalism, e.g. Japanese must be anti-racist, Muslims must be feminists, Christians must embrace gay rights, Chinese must accept mass immigration, etc.
“You seem to promote a form of “pluralism” that is really just the fragmentation of society into little territorial gangs.”
Once again, that is a gross oversimplification and outright misrepresentation of my actual views. I simply favor cultural separation of irreconcilable cultures as a means of peaceful co-existence.
“This is part of why I don’t see any value in the “national sovereignty” talk.”
The value of national sovereignty is the same as the value of avoiding centralizing all power into the hands of a single dictator within a nation, and instead having power spread out among different institutions and layers of society. If you can’t figure that out, I suggest you go back and read your James Madison.
“” “Ethno-pluralism” or the view that each unique ethnic group should have a territory where it is a demographic majority and with a political system representative of its cultural foundations. The Swiss canton system may well be the most advanced model of this type of any system currently in practice.”
“Things like this are exactly what I reject about your ideology. It is contingent on territorialism, and such territorialism is the foundation of a localized state in my eyes.”
Well, which multi-ethnic societies in history or around the world have the greatest history of success when it comes to avoiding things like inter-communal warfare? The Swiss with their canton system, or centralized multicultural states like India, Indonesia, the Soviet Union, Communist Yugoslavia, etc.? We shouldn’t even have to debate this one.
““5. A distinction between natural or voluntary hierarchies and authorities, and coercive or artificial ones.”
While useful on the surface, I find this very question-begging. Some uses of this distinction end up being apologetics for what I’d consider to be something that inherently becomes “involuntary”, particularly intergenerationally.”
That’s a pretty vague statement. By “intergenerationally” are you seriously claiming that children can hold equal power in a family environment with adults? If so, that’s a pretty absurd claim.
“The only use I see for the iron law of oligarchy is debunking the myth that just about any form of state, including representative democracies, isn’t fundamentally an oligarchy. But the “natural elites” position espoused by folks like Hoppe strikes me as conservative nonsense.”
Elitism is the natural by-product of meritocracy. Any kind of functional society has to rank the intelligent over the stupid, the healthy over the diseased, the wise over the foolish, the educated over the ignorant, the competent over the incompetent, the irresponsible over the irresponsible, the productive over the parasitical, the sober over the drunk and addicted, the peaceful over the criminal, etc.
““8. Recognition of the inherent inequality of persons, groups, cultures, nations, etc. and that effort to impose artificial or unnatural equality can only result in tyranny, chaos or stagnation.”
I view this as possibly being a very dangerous and cliche rejection of egalitarianism. For starters, practically no egalitarian actually believes that nature is an equilibruim of ability. However, this kind of “iron law of oligarchy” position quickly devolves into a social conservatism in which existing inequalities are rationalized as “natural” when all of the social elements that perpetuate and exaggerate them are ignored.”
It’s a two-way street. Sure, artificially created and imposed existing systems of privilege can be justified in such a manner, but appeals to artificial equality can create systems that are equally if not more dangerous, e.g. Communism. Bakunin remarked that the plutocratic capitalist systems were unjust and exploitive, while the proposals of the Marxists would lead to brutality and slavery. The 20th century proved him right.
“I likewise think that people who try to synthesize postmodern relativism with the extreme moralistic zealotry of paleo-conservatives and ethnic nationalists deserve the same critique.”
Well, most paleo-conservatives are not postmodern relativists, but Aristotelians, Thomists, Lockeans, Calvinists, Hegelians, Kantians, etc. Adherents of moral objectivism or idealism, in other words. The European New Right are more influenced by Hobbes, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, or Schmitt, and therefore overlap with postmodernism in many ways, but rarely appeal to the kinds of absolutist morality of the Christians. They are more likely to see politics as an amoral power struggle.
“I’m saying that the kind of community-wide “exclusion” in such a “restrictive covenant” is inherently based on an over-extended property claim over an entire community – I don’t believe that communities can be “owned”.”
So you’ve never heard of a homeowners association, a gated community, an industrial park, a private university, an intentional or planned community, a contractually restricted neighborhood or business district, a monastery, a wildlife preserve, a gender-exclusive club for men or women, an ethnic association, Disney World?
“. As such, by virtue of them being “owned communities”, I fail to see how it is consistent with anarchism. I fail to see how it isn’t a city-state.”
As I said in the earlier post, a city can be an agglomeration of property owners and common areas. Governing power need not be vested in a centralized administrative bureaucracy.
“I’m saying that a one-eyed mania for a corrupted concept of “freedom of association” blurs the fact that some of what you’re might call “freedom of association” is actually a violation of other liberties.”
What are these “other liberties”? The right to trespass? To go where you’re not wanted? To demand the affirmation or approval of others?
“I’m also saying that appealing to freedom of association to rationalize making people’s lives shitty, even if one supports it at the political level or does not advocate violence in reaction to it, is simply ridiculous from a general ethical perspective.”
This statement rests on the presumption that your definition of “the good life” is universal, when it is clearly not. Some people want to live in a conservative religious environment. Some people like the sense of security that comes from group identity. Some women like being in traditional marriages in traditional families. Some people like the sense of security that comes from well-defined or even rigid group norms. Some homosexuals renounce their sexual orientation to take up religious devotion because religion is simply more important to them than sex. The same is true of celibate heterosexual priests or monks. Why do so many people join the military or even make careers out of it? It’s not because the pay is all that great.
“When this “pluralism” and relativism makesit to the point of acting as if all political, cultural, and ethical perspectives are compatible with anarchism”
That is not my actual position. I don’t think imperialism is compatible with anarchism, nor is Stalinism, or Nazism, or Khmer Rougeism, or Ayatollahism, or liberal mass democracy. And, yes, I do make a distinction between the kinds of overarching states we have now and sovereign local communities, even if the latter have institutions casually resembling a state or are organized along exclusionary or relatively authoritarian lines. With the latter, the exit costs are typically low enough to make membership in such communities de facto voluntary or quasi-voluntary. It’s much easier to simply leave an intolerant neighborhood than a continent wide nation-state.
“there no longer is any “anarchism” left to speak of. It has literally become a completely meaningless concept. It’s anomie.”
I would take the opposite position and say the kind of atomized individualism you seem to be advocating would be the epitome of anomie. You seem to be advocating a society of do-your- own-thing individualism where individual gratification is unhampered not only by legal authority but by human organizations, associations, relationships, obligations, values, and communities of any kind, and where no individual has any ties to anything beyond personal gratification. I don’t see how this could work in real life. For instance, even if all workplaces were run along 100% cooperative lines, there would still be work rules of some kind, and requirements for membership or conditions of expulsion. The same would be true for human associations of any kind, from sports teams to households to stamp collectors clubs.
I really don’t even understand how the kind of society you seem to be arguing for could even exist. It’s not really something I can visualize. So parents are not going to be able to discipline children who behave in destructive, dangerous, or antisocial ways? Who’s going to prevent them from doing so? I remember one of your left-libertarian associates once saying that he was not “free” as long as “one queer teenager has to sit through a Mormon church service” (his words). So what’s he going to do? Try to pass a law prohibiting families from taking the kiddies to church? So every kind of association anyone ever forms, whether business, cultural, recreational, educational, whatever, has to be open to anyone who shows up? Who’s going to enforce this? What about all of the things even anarchists and libertarians disagree on, and there are many? Plus, anarchists and libertarians are always going to have to share space in the world with other points of view? What are you going to do with these other people? Kill them? Put them in jail?
“That’s simply your value judgement, not a matter of logic. It’s theoretically possible to be, for example, an American patriot and still despise the American government itself or all governments. It worked pretty well for Karl Hess, Gustav Landauer, Pierre Joseph Proudhon (“this sacred land of Gaol”), Mikhail Bakunin (Slavic nationalist), and Peter Kropotkin (Russian patriot).”
It’s a *valid* value judgement based on my conception of what anarchism means in the first place. Nationalism *as a territorialist ideology* is incompatible with anarchism for philosophical reasons, as long as one understands the relationship between the state and territorialism. Your rationalization of “national anarchism” seems to be contingent on a certain view of land property that, in my eyes, can be rejected as leading to a state on consequentialist grounds.
“Additionally, because egalitarianism does not naturally occur in nature, those who value egalitarianism as the supreme good will always be tempted to impose it by artificial means via the state.”
This once again returns us to the false understanding of what egalitarianism is, along the lines of Murray Rothbard’s ridiculous arguments. Egalitarianism doesn’t presuppose that everyone is equal in terms of ability in “nature”. What anti-egalitarians generally do is take existing inequalities in society and *rationalize* them via a naturalistic fallacy.
“Landlocked areas, more sparsely populated areas, agricultural communities, etc. are likely to be much less cosmopolitan.”
We keep returning to this, but part of my whole point is that “landlocked areas” are a recipe for statism.
” I simply favor cultural separation of irreconcilable cultures as a means of peaceful co-existence.”
It isn’t a sustainable means of peaceful co-existence, and it’s a cultural retrogression.
“The value of national sovereignty is the same as the value of avoiding centralizing all power into the hands of a single dictator within a nation, and instead having power spread out among different institutions and layers of society. If you can’t figure that out, I suggest you go back and read your James Madison.”
“National sovereignty” is only decentralization relative to internationalism or globalism. Within the context of a particular “nation”, it is centralized. This is the exact same conundrum as “state’s rights”: it’s decentralized relative to a larger territorial entity but simultaneously rationalizes the power of a smaller territorial entity. This is the paradox of some forms of decentralization. I also don’t think that just because a state is particularly local means that it necessarily has less power; it could theoretically still be a complete dictatorship within that context.
“That’s a pretty vague statement. By “intergenerationally” are you seriously claiming that children can hold equal power in a family environment with adults? If so, that’s a pretty absurd claim.”
By “intergenerationality” I mean that a particular arrangement can start out “voluntary” and then become “involuntary” later on, particularly as people are simply born into the arrangement and it institutionalizes territorially. As for children and parents, I reject the idea that children have any inherent obligation to obey their parents or that their parents have an arbitrary right of absolute authority over them.
“Elitism is the natural by-product of meritocracy. Any kind of functional society has to rank the intelligent over the stupid, the healthy over the diseased, the wise over the foolish, the educated over the ignorant, the competent over the incompetent, the irresponsible over the irresponsible, the productive over the parasitical, the sober over the drunk and addicted, the peaceful over the criminal, etc”
There is a difference between making distinctions and being an elitist. Elitism entails a sense of superiority by virtue of an inherited rank. What some people rationalize as a natural meritocracy isn’t quite so simple as a representation of natural ability, particularly when we are talking in the context of socio-political systems and societies shaped by certain values.
“So you’ve never heard of a homeowners association, a gated community, an industrial park, a private university, an intentional or planned community, a contractually restricted neighborhood or business district, a monastery, a wildlife preserve, a gender-exclusive club for men or women, an ethnic association, Disney World?”
I think that such analogies are misleading when we are really talking about an entire city in which a particular individual or organization claims territorial sovereignty over it. This, to me, inherently constitutes a state by another name.
“What are these “other liberties”? The right to trespass? To go where you’re not wanted? To demand the affirmation or approval of others?”
The right not to be subjected to the arbitrary authority of another simply by virtue of being on their territory – a right which people who appeal to “freedom of association” in a propertarian context don’t adequately understand.
“This statement rests on the presumption that your definition of “the good life” is universal, when it is clearly not.”
No it doesn’t, but even if it did – SO WHAT? In either case, all it needs to rest on is the fact that I hold such values. Relative to such values, I can condemn treating people like shit. Whether or not the value of not treating people like shit is “objective”, I am epistemically justified in holding the position. You’re appealing to exceptions and differences to blur the fact that sometimes people are simply being treated like shit and there’s nothing wrong with taking a stance against it.
“You seem to be advocating a society of do-your- own-thing individualism where individual gratification is unhampered not only by legal authority but by human organizations, associations, relationships, obligations, values, and communities of any kind, and where no individual has any ties to anything beyond personal gratification”
I fail to see where anything I have said implies hedonism. In fact, it is precisely me who is advocating individuals actions being constrained by values, and it’s you who is poo-pooing that via appeals to anti-universalism.
“So parents are not going to be able to discipline children who behave in destructive, dangerous, or antisocial ways?”
It seems like you’re reacting to my view by portraying it in the opposite extremes, when I’m simply rejecting authoritarian parent-child relationships. Parent’s don’t have a right to arbitrarily control their children’s lives. How one goes from that to total license is beyond me.
” So every kind of association anyone ever forms, whether business, cultural, recreational, educational, whatever, has to be open to anyone who shows up?”
You seem to be stuck in a mentality of thinking of these things in an either/or box. Apparently either every piece of property is up for grabs and arbitrary tresspass, or we must recognize absolute territorial sovereignty and allow people to run rough-shod over others in the name of “freedom of association”. Sorry, but my ethics is much more nuanced and contextual than that.
I can't even express how much I love this piece, a great summation of the market anarchist position to send to my non-anarchist friends. Great, great work, Ms. Morgenstern.
Lots of great information in here. I like the descriptions of how anarchists and libertarians view crime.
It is from those definitions, though, that I think we see the issue between various anarchists, and how the adjectives can (though not necessarily do) matter. With "crime" being the hinge on the definition, we see the difference in how views on property and possession on one side may be termed crime by the other.
If one believes in individual or group property rights (on some level), then that person will see theft and vandalism as crimes.
If one believes in only all-humanity property, then that person will see any private use or acquisition as crimes.
Thus, these property questions thrust the other viewpoint out of anarchist definition by claiming that the other side allows people special authority to commit crimes.
—
Counterpoint to myself: perhaps they could still fit the definition, because both sides are essentially saying it's not _special_ authority to commit crime, since the other side is saying _all_ people have that authority to commit what their own side defines as property crimes.
"For anarchism to work in practice, there must be many anarchisms."
Whatever the meaning of "to work", anarchy would surely entail different anarchies. But just as you find it important to spread understanding about the state, it is no less important–and more fundamental–to do so regarding the legitimacy of types of human interactions.
The kibbutzim and Amish are good examples of voluntaryist communal organizations coexisting alongside nonvoluntaryist states. But people in those organizations choose (or are forced) to maintain peace at their margins by abiding with the unshared beliefs of those they interact with from the outside. That needn't be the case. As communists tend to do, they could as well declare that the claim of property by anyone is an initiating act of violence. This would be their justification for confiscations (from the point of view of the property owner), and declaring property agreements as invalid.
When interacting people have different views on the legitimacy of control over property, or abiding by agreements, there will be violence. There may be structure (like insurance or security companies, or in the case of kibbutzim and Amish–state police), for people to manage those contingencies, but violence will result nonetheless. Disbelief in private property needn't always manifest in the kind of overt violence commonly seen at anarchist demonstrations like at the G20. It may manifest in a more orderly employing of those structures.
And while you envision leaving room for people to choose to submit themselves to democratic decision making, or to choose to leave all property decisions to communal leaders, anarchocommunists envision a more uniformly communist society. They tend to be less sympathetic to those who wish to peacefully accumulate and trade personal property, than you are to people who wish to live without property.
The choice of state versus stateless, should be a consequence of one's understanding of legitimate versus illegitimate human interactions. Those who disagree on this latter more fundamental understanding can in no way be considered brothers in the cause of anarchy.
Vikingvista,
This reminds me of a question someone asked me years ago: "If an anarcho-syndicalist union staged a general strike for the purposes of obtaining means of production owned by an anarcho-capitalist corporation, whose side would you take?"
My response: "As a Stirnerite, I'd say let the company bring out its private police, thugs, and strikebreakers, and let the union bring out its militia, and from there they can have it out. Whoever is left at the end gets to keep the means of production."
Seriously, I agree with many of your criticisms of the "anarcho-communist" anarcho-leftoids, but I think it's a moot issue because their movement is never going to be anything in our modern societies. For one thing, they share the same set of cultural values as the elites. In fact, they are a parody of those values. For this reason, they will be easily coopted into the system over time. Ever wonder where all of the radicals of the 60s went? They're now establishmentarians, which was predictable, given the privileged class origins of most of them. They've since made their peace with capitalism and all of that, but they remain committed to leftist social radicalism, which is why we see political correctness making such rapid advances even in societies where neoliberal values dominate in the economic realm.
I'm pretty sure that if anarchism has any kind of future in the West, it will be an anarchism of a kind rooted in the radical decentralist ideas of the Rothbardians or the National-Anarchists.
Hi all,
"It’s a *valid* value judgement based on my conception of what anarchism means in the first place. Nationalism *as a territorialist ideology* is incompatible with anarchism for philosophical reasons, as long as one understands the relationship between the state and territorialism. Your rationalization of “national anarchism” seems to be contingent on a certain view of land property that, in my eyes, can be rejected as leading to a state on consequentialist grounds."
The problem is that this "view of land property" appears to be held by far more people worldwide than the myopic focus on abstract theories of property often found among left-libertarian circles. I could be wrong, but in my experience more people hold a certain level of support for territorial sovereignty than for some kind of atomized individualism (apologies if I am mischaracterizing your views). A viable anti-state movement should therefore take this into account. On a slightly tangential note, there is an interesting article on anarcho-tribalist property rights here: http://aianattackthesystem.wordpress.com/2010/07/…
“Nationalism *as a territorialist ideology* is incompatible with anarchism for philosophical reasons, as long as one understands the relationship between the state and territorialism.”
I don’t agree with that. Nationalism can simply mean identification or a sense of loyalty pertaining to a particular people, land, language, or religion, irrespective of what sort of political institutions exist, if any. The Icelandic Commonwealth is often held up by anarcho-libertarians as an anarchic prototype, yet it was certainly possible for the Icelanders to have a strong sense of national or territorial identity, even if the Allthing didn’t really qualify as a state.
“Your rationalization of “national anarchism” seems to be contingent on a certain view of land property that, in my eyes, can be rejected as leading to a state on consequentialist grounds.”
It can work either way. Nationalism can lead to jingoism, but it can also be a safeguard against external conquest or internal usurpation. For instance, the Swiss maintained their independence during the two world wars largely due to the fierce nationalism that gave them a will to resist. Many Americans will defend certain traditional liberties out of a sense of loyalty to tradition, history, the Constitution, etc.
“Egalitarianism doesn’t presuppose that everyone is equal in terms of ability in “nature”.”
Well, what definition of egalitarianism are you actually using? If you mean equal political and legal rights in the classical liberal sense, I agree with you. Modern egalitarians tend to oppose social ranking of any kind, which I think is a more dubious proposition.
“What anti-egalitarians generally do is take existing inequalities in society and *rationalize* them via a naturalistic fallacy.”
If you’re talking about systems of artificial privilege like plutocracy or the bureaucratic ranking of state systems, sure. Could you give some examples of what kinds of inequalities you specifically find to be illegitimate?
“We keep returning to this, but part of my whole point is that “landlocked areas” are a recipe for statism.”
What I mean by “landlocked” is simply territory not bordered by oceans or waterways, e.g Kansas as opposed to California. Most societies display a pattern where water-bordered territories tend to be more cosmopolitan than land-bordered territories.
“I simply favor cultural separation of irreconcilable cultures as a means of peaceful co-existence.”
It isn’t a sustainable means of peaceful co-existence, and it’s a cultural retrogression.”
So you don’t think it’s better for Muslims and Western liberal-secularists or Christians to have separate regions rather than battling it out for control of a central government? Are you not familiar with the Peace of Augsburg? “Cultural retrogression” in what sense and as defined by whom? I reject the linear view history implicit in statement like that.
“I also don’t think that just because a state is particularly local means that it necessarily has less power; it could theoretically still be a complete dictatorship within that context.”
So Iceland, Monaco, and Liechtenstein are just as powerful as the United States, China, and Russia?
“By “intergenerationality” I mean that a particular arrangement can start out “voluntary” and then become “involuntary” later on, particularly as people are simply born into the arrangement and it institutionalizes territorially.”
That’s true of any kind of value system. For instance, there have been documented cases of free-wheeling, dope-smoking, free-loving hippie communes where the children were subject to abuse and neglect. That can happen in any set of social arrangements.
“As for children and parents, I reject the idea that children have any inherent obligation to obey their parents or that their parents have an arbitrary right of absolute authority over them.”
Sure. If Dad tells thirteen year old Johnny to take gun and go shoot Mr. Smith next door, I think Johnny should disobey. I don’t think Dad is justified in raping his daughter on the grounds that she lives in his household.
“Elitism entails a sense of superiority by virtue of an inherited rank. What some people rationalize as a natural meritocracy isn’t quite so simple as a representation of natural ability, particularly when we are talking in the context of socio-political systems and societies shaped by certain values.”
If you’re talking about old-style aristocracies or plutocracy, then I’m opposed to those. As far as “socio-political systems and societies shaped by certain values,” you’ll have to be more specific. You may be interested in this interview I did recently with the National-Anarchist Women’s Blog: http://nationalanarchistwomen.wordpress.com/2010/06/22/feminism-women-national-anarchism-an-interview-with-keith-preston/
“I think that such analogies are misleading when we are really talking about an entire city in which a particular individual or organization claims territorial sovereignty over it. This, to me, inherently constitutes a state by another name.”
Well, I’m not really in favor of that either. Within the context of the present system, I would prefer breaking down municipal governments into systems of autonomous neighborhoods or districts of the kind suggested by Rothbard or Norman Mailer.
“The right not to be subjected to the arbitrary authority of another simply by virtue of being on their territory – a right which people who appeal to “freedom of association” in a propertarian context don’t adequately understand.”
This is rather vague. I don’t think you should take a machine gun to a kid who rides a bicycle onto your front lawn, but any kind of property is going to have limits on entry and internal rules of conduct. If you go in a bar, you can’t just piss on the floor. What would be an example of this “arbitrary authority” you are talking about?
“Relative to such values, I can condemn treating people like shit. Whether or not the value of not treating people like shit is “objective”, I am epistemically justified in holding the position. You’re appealing to exceptions and differences to blur the fact that sometimes people are simply being treated like shit and there’s nothing wrong with taking a stance against it.”
So what would be some specific examples of “treating people like shit” of the kind that you’re referring to?
“In fact, it is precisely me who is advocating individuals actions being constrained by values, and it’s you who is poo-pooing that via appeals to anti-universalism.”
Again, this is overly vague. “Constrained” in what way, and by what “values”? And what does any of this have to do with political and/or legal theory?
“Apparently either every piece of property is up for grabs and arbitrary tresspass, or we must recognize absolute territorial sovereignty and allow people to run rough-shod over others in the name of “freedom of association”.”
Once again, you are speaking in vague generalizations without offering any specifics. Running “roughshod over others” in what way?
I have published a good deal of material over the years upholding the interests of those most under attack by the state. Some examples:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/preston9.html
http://attackthesystem.com/why-the-radical-left-should-consider-secession/
http://attackthesystem.com/american-revolutionary-vanguard-twenty-five-point-program/
http://attackthesystem.com/beyond-conservatism-reclaiming-the-radical-roots-of-libertarianism/
http://attackthesystem.com/the-richmond-city-jail-as-a-component-of-the-american-police-state/
http://attackthesystem.com/the-politicial-economy-of-the-war-on-drugs/
http://attackthesystem.com/the-last-minority/
http://attackthesystem.com/the-best-argument-against-invading-iraq/
What I find interesting is that you “left-libertarian” guys seem to have no interest in any of this. Instead, you seem deathly afraid that someone, somewhere might use their freedom of association or private property for illiberal means or to “discriminate” along the lines usually proscribed by liberals. Like ordinary liberals, neocons, or statist-leftists, you think the fact that some people express disapproval of same-sex relationships or prefer to have racially exclusionary enclaves or private associations or practice some kind of conservative religion to be more threatening than even the state itself, the international plutocracy, or even aggressive warfare. I simply don’t share that value system. I think, for instance, that someone who sets up an exclusionary men’s club, religious denomination, covenant community, private business (not statist corporations), or whatever is perfectly within their legitimate rights politically and legally. Nor do I think they are giving any particular moral offense either. I agree with Rothbard:
http://mises.org/journals/jls/11_1/11_1_1.pdf
“Some neighborhoods
would be ethnically or economically diverse, while others would be
ethnically or economically homogeneous. Some localities would permit
pornography or prostitution or drugs or abortions, others would pro-
hibit any or all of them. The prohibitions would not be state imposed,
but would simply be requirements for residence or use of some person’s
or community’s land area. While statists who have the itch to impose
their values on everyone else would be disappointed, every group or
interest would at least have the satisfaction of living in neighborhoods
of people who share its values and preferences. While neighborhood
ownership would not provide Utopia or a panacea for all conflicts, it
would at least provide a “second-best” solution that most people might
be willing to live with.”
Something like this is the only kind anarchism that could exist in the real world, given the immense differences found within humanity, and the only kind that is reasonably fair to all contending points of view. You guys have the same fundamental values as liberals and neocons, except it’s expressed within the context of some vaguely-defined anarchic utopianism rather than with appeals to American exceptionalism or liberal internationalism. If holding up ethnic or religious outgroup prejudice as the ultimate evil or guaranteeing a free trade in gay sex and abortions are your highest values-otherwise known as “now”-then nothing fundamental sets you apart from the present system. You have a lot more in common with Elena Kagan than you do with Pierre Joseph Proudhon (check out some of his social views!!!). Therefore, I cannot see left-libertarianism ever becoming a viable anti-state movement given its common values with those of the present day elites and mainstream intellectual culture. Sad but true.
"""This reminds me of a question someone asked me years ago: “If an anarcho-syndicalist union staged a general strike for the purposes of obtaining means of production owned by an anarcho-capitalist corporation, whose side would you take?”
My response: “As a Stirnerite, I’d say let the company bring out its private police, thugs, and strikebreakers, and let the union bring out its militia, and from there they can have it out. Whoever is left at the end gets to keep the means of production.”"""
Preston, do you hold it as a normative assertion or as a de facto one? If we switched "means of production etc" for "Keith's Preston's body", would you still hold this answer?
PS: You and Brainpolice have made a nice discussion, I think both sides has good arguments.
Rafael: In my understanding, a Stirnerite will just say that it's a defacto assertion and try to avoid normativity altogether. I think that just demonstrates exactly why, while I initially was very intrigued and seduced by Max Stirner, Stirnerism is a completely useless philosophy for normative purposes. It will just try to describe power relations and assert the fact that whoever dominates will dominate, giving us no normative barometer with which we can judge the matter or establish an ethical and cultural framework of any particular kind. This is why Stirner's philosophy is technically neutral to any anarchy/statism question, being theoretically compatible with just about anything by virtue of its attack on normatives. Hence, Stirner can be appropriated, as he has been, for just about any political purposes – ranging from communist anarchism to fascism.
But I digress. In a nutshell, I have trouble seeing how anyone who is observant can't see that Preston's description of most ethnic nationalists is obscurantist or apologetic. Contemporary ethnic nationalists and "race-realists" often like to make themselves seem more innocent by describing their views as a harmless personal preference for association that has no real effect on others (when, as it manifests itself, it most certainly does have an effect on others and very likely involves some degree of territorial institutionalization and legal codification) and a simple appeal to "science" or biological determinism in place of more outwardly "vulgar" expressions of hate.
They generally tend to have a fairly conspiratorial view of reality in reaction to modern democratic liberalism in which they play the victim card themselves and paint the world as a big global playpen in which everyone is forced to associate (while violent antifas and political supression of speech are used as an (in)accurate description of cultural liberalism in general), and appropriate the cliche libertarian "freedom of association" mantra to cloak much more nefarious ideas. And there is the simple fact that it is used as a rationalization for treating people like shit by virtue of belonging to a particular social group. If one wants to invoke Derridian talk of respect for "the other", it most certainly isn't ethnic nationalists who can sensibly appeal to it.
Even outside of the context of politics, I consider the views of ethnic nationalists and "race-realists" to fundamentally be epistemically bankrupt. I don't consider it a mere "personal preference" in an epistemic null zone, since I think it is based on truth claims that are easily refutable. They don't understand the more contemporary realization that things such as race and gender are primarily "social constructs", aside from perhaps some largely irrelevant biological traits such as skin pigmentation. They generally make appeals to a sense of biological determinism and correlation/causation fallacies in an attempt to justify the presumption that the issues they see are innate. The *reasons* that they offer for separation are highly questionable.
As far as I'm concerned, either Preston has ideological blinders on or he's a very clever propagandist who borrows concepts and terminology from 19th century anarchism and contemporary American libertarianism in order to justify things that could easily be argued to conflict with libertarian anarchism in practise. He now writes for a paleo-"libertarian"/paleo-conservative blog which is filled to the brim with everything that was wrong with Murray Rothbard's later ideological and strategic shift. Perhaps Preston is a definitive product of paleoism, which was basically a blurring of the lines between libertarianism and traditionalist conservatism in reaction to the rise of the Democratic Party in America – which essentially cranked up the "crank" factor in contemporary libertarianism.
Rafael,
"Preston, do you hold it as a normative assertion or as a de facto one? If we switched “means of production etc” for “Keith’s Preston’s body”, would you still hold this answer?"
Martial struggle between individuals is no different from martial struggle between organized collectives. In the end, it all comes down to winners and losers and survival of the fittest.
Anna,
I'd like to add my appreciation as well and where have they been hiding you?
I really enjoy the perspective you bring.
A very interesting discussion, this. I ran across an old anarchists views on youtube. Beautifully put:
…skjærer gjennom og blottlegger kjernen…
Gah! Stupid iPad….
Link:
Sry, folks. Last try, then i'll give up…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR7dNntU5oI&am…
“But I digress. In a nutshell, I have trouble seeing how anyone who is observant can’t see that Preston’s description of most ethnic nationalists is obscurantist or apologetic. Contemporary ethnic nationalists and “race-realists” often like to make themselves seem more innocent by describing their views as a harmless personal preference for association that has no real effect on others (when, as it manifests itself, it most certainly does have an effect on others and very likely involves some degree of territorial institutionalization and legal codification) and a simple appeal to “science” or biological determinism in place of more outwardly “vulgar” expressions of hate.”
Ah yes, the “I just don’t trust ‘em” argument. Rather than going head-to-head with ethno-nationalists, national-anarchists, whatever, and actually engaging and arguing against them, simply assume they’re ‘up to no good’ and dismiss them from that standpoint. That way, the fact that they might actually be able to make some compelling and insightful arguments can be easily dismissed as a smokescreen for a covert fascist plot to rise up and exterminate the undesirables in the name of the Fourth Reich.
Ironically, this mentality is exactly the same as the rednecks quietly talking about a peculiar member of their community, such as a homosexual or other social outcast. “I just don’t trust ‘em,” one of the group says. “They dress all funny. They should stay away from my kids, that’s all.”
“They generally tend to have a fairly conspiratorial view of reality in reaction to modern democratic liberalism in which they play the victim card themselves and paint the world as a big global playpen in which everyone is forced to associate (while violent antifas and political supression of speech are used as an (in)accurate description of cultural liberalism in general), and appropriate the cliche libertarian “freedom of association” mantra to cloak much more nefarious ideas.”
Such as?
“And there is the simple fact that it is used as a rationalization for treating people like shit by virtue of belonging to a particular social group.”
You keep mentioning this concept of ‘treating people like shit’. Who is treating who like shit? Who justifying treating people like shit? What does it mean to be treated like shit in the first place?
“If one wants to invoke Derridian talk of respect for “the other”, it most certainly isn’t ethnic nationalists who can sensibly appeal to it.”
Derrida’s obfuscation is not something worth appealing to.
“Even outside of the context of politics, I consider the views of ethnic nationalists and “race-realists” to fundamentally be epistemically bankrupt. I don’t consider it a mere “personal preference” in an epistemic null zone, since I think it is based on truth claims that are easily refutable.”
Refute them, then.
“They don’t understand the more contemporary realization that things such as race and gender are primarily “social constructs”, aside from perhaps some largely irrelevant biological traits such as skin pigmentation. They generally make appeals to a sense of biological determinism and correlation/causation fallacies in an attempt to justify the presumption that the issues they see are innate. The *reasons* that they offer for separation are highly questionable.”
As I am not a scientist, I will leave aside the large body of evidence that actually supports ethnic differences beyond skin pigmentation. It’s not my area, or yours, so we should leave it to the geneticists and biologists to sort it out.
However, even if race *was* just a social construct, this does not invalidate separatist endeavours on the part of ethnic-nationalists. It is human nature to prefer the company of people with similar ethno-cultural backgrounds; Muslims hang out with Muslims, hipsters hang out with hipsters, rednecks hang out with rednecks. If race is no different from these socially-constructed identities, then what difference does it make if people choose to hang around other black people, or other Asian people, or other white people, and start to form political structures based around those communities?
“As far as I’m concerned, either Preston has ideological blinders on or he’s a very clever propagandist who borrows concepts and terminology from 19th century anarchism and contemporary American libertarianism in order to justify things that could easily be argued to conflict with libertarian anarchism in practise.”
Is it really that hard for you to just accept the fact that people have different viewpoints from you? People disagree. It’s the way the world works. Everyone filters reality in a different way; read some Robert Anton Wilson. It doesn’t mean they have ‘ideological blinders on’ or that they are ‘very clever propagandists’, it just means they’ve assessed the evidence and reached a different conclusion from you.
If you could specify how exactly the things that Preston advocates can ‘easily be argued to conflict with libertarian anarchism in practise’, that would be helpful. As you’ve said ‘in practise’, I would like some real-world examples if possible; resorting to abstract theories and vague generalities will not suffice.
Brain Police,
“(when, as it manifests itself, it most certainly does have an effect on others and very likely involves some degree of territorial institutionalization and legal codification)”
In some instances, that is true, but it’s also true of “the other side.” Do not the overwhelmingly majority of cultural leftists advocate very broad uses of the state to achieve their specific cultural or social objectives or preferences?
“They generally tend to have a fairly conspiratorial view of reality in reaction to modern democratic liberalism in which they play the victim card themselves and paint the world as a big global playpen in which everyone is forced to associate (while violent antifas and political supression of speech are used as an (in)accurate description of cultural liberalism in general),”
In some instances, for example, those are the right who see “the Jews” as fostering all sorts of social and political ills. But there are parallels to that on the Left. Those who see society as a “white male Christian patriarchal capitalist conspiracy,” for example.
“They don’t understand the more contemporary realization that things such as race and gender are primarily “social constructs”, aside from perhaps some largely irrelevant biological traits such as skin pigmentation.”
That’s the dominant outlook in the soft social sciences, like sociology and anthropology, which at present tend to be dominated by the hard Left, but it’s not the case in hard sciences like genetics, nor in sociobiology, nor in psychology or the cognitive sciences. Either way, it’s irrelevant to my arguments. Conflicts between cultural, ideological, and religious factions can be just as real as those of a particular ethnicity or race, even if one regards, for example, the claims of theology to be ultimately false or cultural values as human constructs.
“either Preston has ideological blinders on or he’s a very clever propagandist who borrows concepts and terminology from 19th century anarchism and contemporary American libertarianism in order to justify things that could easily be argued to conflict with libertarian anarchism in practise. He now writes for a paleo-”libertarian”/paleo-conservative blog which is filled to the brim with everything that was wrong with Murray Rothbard’s later ideological and strategic shift. Perhaps Preston is a definitive product of paleoism, which was basically a blurring of the lines between libertarianism and traditionalist conservatism in reaction to the rise of the Democratic Party in America”
I’m a generic or “pluralist” anarchist of the “without adjectives” tradition. I try to synthesize the better ideas within the various libertarian traditions,e.g, the variations of classical anarchism, indigenous American Jeffersonian liberalism, the Old Right of Mencken and Nock, Rothbardian libertarianism, what the French call “anarchism of the right,” and so forth into a comprehensive anti-state, anti-plutocratic, and anti-imperialist philosophy. The big source of the controversy with me is that I reject the Frankfurt School-inspired New Left paradigm that came out of the 60s and 70s that most left-anarchists and left-libertarians hold to (which tends to see everything in terms of conflict between traditional outgroups and traditional values or institutions within a radical egalitarian framework) as one-dimensional, archaic, and the foundation of a new kind of statism in its own right. In my view, the paradigm of cultural analysis offered by De Benoist is more relevant to the kinds of societies we actually live in. Therefore, I have incorporate the ENR critique into my own analysis in opposition to Cultural Marxism.
Excellent essay, Anna. I would like to extend a tiny bit on two of your comments.
First, the comment that the state is a fiction is well said. Or, to be more confident and therefore use words of fewer letters and one syllable: the state is a lie. The extension I would like to offer is that all collectives are fictitious. That is to say, every collective group, whether it is a family, a couple, a company, a corporation, a state, or what have you, is a lie. It is a lie to the extent that it asserts a collective will that is not the will of some individual in the group. It is a lie to the extent that it seeks to dominate the will of any of the individuals in the group.
For example, common property is a lie. There is no common property. There is either the property of one person, or the property of no one. Saying that the man and wife are "joined" in matrimony, even going so far as to say it is "holy" and invoking all that mysticism, does not make them one person. There is still a man and a woman, or in the case of other marriages, any number of persons of any choice of genders. These individuals still have separate bodies, separate minds, separate wills. To assert that everything of his is hers is simply to encourage her to hide things from him, and vice versa. Saying they are one person does not alleviate the difficulties if she hits him, or he rapes her. It may remove state-based legal resolutions on offer, but that is simply one lie extending onto another.
Joint stock companies are a fiction. Limited liability corporations are a fiction. Fiction serves a lot of useful purposes in the world, such as entertainment, amusement, distracting your enemies. But when it comes down to brass tacks, actions have consequences. No fiction, no amount of lying, sheds your responsibility for the things you do. Justice occurs when the consequences of negligence or crime are laid at the feet of the perpetrator who then makes the victim whole through compensation.
The other point on which I should like to extend a tiny bit is about classical liberalism. It has a lot of wiggle room because the nicest way to put it is that classical liberalism is based on two fallacies. Or, more realistically, two lies. These are the lie that governments involve the consent of the governed – that is window dressing as we all know; and the lie that governments serve to protect life, liberty, or property. Governments serve to separate the unwary from their property for the benefit of those who run the state.
Which is why I want no part of externally imposed coercive government. I am the king of me, and I seek to be king of no one else. I don't consent to be governed. And I certainly don't want the responsibility involved in governing anyone else.
Or to quote the song lyric, "He can barely run his own life, I'll be damned if he runs mine."
Since Anna is not answering me, can someone else tell me what she might have meant in this statement?
“By the light of what leftist anarchists mean by “capitalism”, anarcho-capitalists are not non-anarchists, they are non-capitalists.”
How are anarcho-capitalists considered non-capitalists? Anyone?
@LiberT – Leftist anarchists generally consider capitalism to mean something other than an unrestricted free market, or let us say that in the details of what they describe as capitalism, it is not what market anarchists would call a free market. So by their understanding of "capitalism" anarcho-capitalists really aren't capitalists. Capitalism is such a corrupted term anyway; very few people have a clear consistent definition of it, and those who do, don't really have many others who agree with them on it. And since terms are defined by usage (language is for communicating, not pontificating), it's not a very useful word unless you want to obfuscate things.
For a more erudite explanation of that:
http://mises.org/daily/2099#6
I prefer not to comment on my own posts. But since you asked twice I figured I'd answer.
Thanks for responding.
[...] recently came across this article at the Center for a Stateless Society by Anna Morgenstern, with which I generally agree. I [...]
Jim said: "For example, common property is a lie. There is no common property. There is either the property of one person, or the property of no one"
I say: That's bullshit, you're giving people a false dichotomy that BP was talking about earlier with Keith earlier on that property is an all or nothing business, that you either have large-scale propertarianism or it's an all or nothing land grab and a lot of people see it a lot more distinctively than such a narrow stance on property rights.
Property is a singular item not a collective, it's entirely possible for people to own it in common, although this does boil down to interchangeable private property this is clearly not strictly private property and instead can be passed off and used by many people justly by many more than just one person.
[...] Sem Adjetivos http://c4ss.org/content/3111 [...]
This page/thread raises the issue of the differences (or lack thereof) between anarchism and anarcho-capitalism, but lacks a clear description of what those differences might actually be. As an anti-capitalist anarchist, I believe these are the basic points of disagreement:
-Private and Public property (based on title) vs Personal and Communal property (based on use)
-Quid pro quo Exchange vs free giving
-Contracts
Not included is Money, which is implied by Capitalism's use of Exchange- any barter economy will inevitably develop a common currency (not necessarily fiat). Similarly, corporate hierarchy arises from contracts.
I think with some definitions it should be clear why these things are fallaciously assumed by capitalists, but implicitly rejected by anarchists.
Private property and Public property (which differs from private property only in that it's owned by the state instead of by individuals) are based on title, meaning that there's a piece of paper somewhere that says it's yours. It comes down to who you're going to believe; it doesn't matter if the property is actually being used or how it came into the "owner's" possession. Title-based property depends on a State-like enforcement organization to be the final arbiter, by force, of disputes of property ownership.
On the other hand Personal property or Communal property is based on who actually uses something- if you use it alone, it's your personal property (yes, you should be able to stop others from taking your stuff if you're not done with it yet! yes, you should be able to restrict access/use to your land, if you're still using it!); if you use it with any number of other people, it's Communal property, and will likely be managed collectively and by consensus (probably informally) (no one's going to take your house or your car- we will, however, take your factory, or rather the people that work there will; and the tenants of your apartment complex will take that, too). To say that "There is either the property of one person, or the property of no one" is complete bullshit. I'm in a house right now that is the Communal property of many people together (there's a piece of paper somewhere that says one of us owns it, like we give a shit about the government's opinion). Communal living is how humans are hardwired. The sooner we discard the idea of title-based property ownership, the better; it is capitalist (anarcho- and otherwise) and not anarchist.
Titular property is based on the purely-capitalist idea that you should get something when you give something. Only sociopaths and Christians really think like that. People are giving, helpful creatures. We help strangers and people in our communities all the time, expect (and recieve) nothing in exchange, and feel great about it. You May Already Be An Anarchist and so forth. Capitalism doesn't understand that kind of behavior and doesn't account for it; therefore, in that system, sociopaths rise to the top. Anarchism, on the other hand, thrives on it. Capitalists consider selflessness to be irrational. We understand that it builds a better world for everyone, ourselves included.
Exchange necessitates title-based property, because in a use-based/communal property system, changes in property ownership are involuntary: either you are using it (in which case you own or co-own it) or you are not. For exchange to be the rule, you have to be able to, theoretically, cross off your name as "owner" and write in someone else's, which is just silly.
Any philosophy that assumes that all 'real' economic transactions will be quid pro quo is not an anarchist philosophy.
Contracts: Whoever thinks contracts belong in an anarchist society is a fool. For a contract to mean anything, it has to have penalties for noncompliance; otherwise, it's not a contract (in my opinion), but just a way of keeping track of what people said they would do. "Penalties" necessitate some kind of enforcement regime. It seems obvious that it's anti-liberty for anyone to be able to effectively sign away their liberty, such as in the USA's all-indentured-servant military. (I see nothing anti-liberty about being able to *ineffectively* sign away one's liberty)
Contracts, title-based property, and exchange-based economic transactions are what makes "anarcho-capitalism" different from real anarchism. If mandatory taxation and law enforcement was eliminated, capitalism would disappear in short order as people returned to their natural methods of interaction and community-building. I hope we can hurry up and leave "anarcho-capitalism" in history's trashbin of crap ideas.
As you said, "penalties" require an enforcement regime. Since anarchism cannot, by definition, have such an enforcement regime (other than raw force, which is inherently limited without a widespread belief in authority), they cannot exist in anarchism.
The anarcho-capitalists, much like the anarcho-socialists, will find out, once the state dies, that their hyphenations will not function. Which was the ultimate point of my post.
[...] Without Adjectives [...]
"As you said, “penalties” require an enforcement regime. Since anarchism cannot, by definition, have such an enforcement regime (other than raw force, which is inherently limited without a widespread belief in authority), they cannot exist in anarchism.
The anarcho-capitalists, much like the anarcho-socialists, will find out, once the state dies, that their hyphenations will not function. Which was the ultimate point of my post."
Thanks Anna!!!!!!!!!!!!! I just read through all these comments and i came across many opinions that i do not hold, and that i would oppose. The point of this article though is that we, whether we're anarcho-capitalist, anarchist communists, anarchist syndicalists, market anarchists, or whatever we feel like calling ourselves at the moment, should focus on the Anarchist part; the part in all of us that desires to remove the state from our lives. Granted i see the pursuit of purging hierarchy, to the amount that we can ride ourselves of many of our culturally constructed ones, to be right up there with the abolishment of the state.
Preston,
I disagree with you about many things. Though, your desire to work within the realities of our world and not fall into Utopianism is refreshing and if anything did make me re-evaluate some of my more ideological standpoints. Though i feel, from reading your posts, you are very set in your own ideology and not very open to changing that. Not that you should, but being able to reevaluate why you think something is never a bad idea. Especially since we shouldn't be debating here as much as we should be trying to learn from each other’s views (also please don't ask me to give you examples, i'm just commenting from what i read, if i wanted to i could go back through all 44 comments and find them. I'm just being lazy right now).
All in all, thanks Anna for pointing out the things we have in common instead of trying to drive a wedge between people who have ideas in common; especially ideas that can be used to form a stronger block of humans who can forge their own future.
Good point. Another way that government officials directly profit from their activities is when "corrupt" cops just end up personally stealing part of what they confiscate. While officially frowned upon, such theft on top of theft is largely ignored and arguably is part of the systematic granting of privileges to those who serve the state.
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