Are you an Anarchist?

[Tiggeroshii]

It definitely wouldn't surprise me here to see a few well rounded radicals at DU. I have, indeed found a good several Chomsky fans and Howard Zinn fans -be it in their sharing videos or articles written by the two. They are too, both self described libertarian socialists -a form of a anarchism straying away from the more traditional Emma Goldman or Murray Bookchin Anarchists. So I'm curious: How many of you guys subscribe to this sort of ideology and idealism? Be it through Libertarian Socialism or Anarchosyndicalism?

[TexasObserver]

1. Nope. Not even close.

Frankly, I consider anarchists to be children - undeveloped, overgrown teenagers.

Collective living by rules is the human way and condition.

[Tiggeroshii]

2. What do you make of anarchists of the likes from which I mentioned?

Intellectuals such as Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky? They too are a kind of anarchist, who would like to help redeem the horrid name people have given anarchism over the years. To clarify it, so to speak.

[TexasObserver]

4. Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky both have had a lot of good things to say.

I don't consider either to be anarchists or advocates of anarchy.

[Tiggeroshii]

8. Here's an article by Chomsky on the topic

Here he first rails against one type of anarchism: Anarchosyndicalism, and advocates a different kind of anarchy from which he dubs "libertarian socialism."


Noam Chomsky's "Notes of Anarchism" from 1970:

http://www.spunk.org/texts/intro/sp000281.html#bib10

To have a better idea of what anarchy is and what exactly it advocates, I would advise reading some other articles, one by the anarchosyndicalist, Emma Goldman, and the other by Murray Bookchin.

http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/goldman/aando/anarchism.html (Goldman)

http://libcom.org/library/listen-marxist-bookchin (Bookchin)

[Tiggeroshii]

145. Here's an interview where Zinn defends the word:

If nothing else, it is an enlightening conversation, as any kind of interaction with the man would be.

http://www.alternet.org/democracy/85427/

[bean fidhleir]

6. You should really clarify your knowledge - it's muddy and inaccurate

Anarchism means "the state of having no rulers", i.e. of being self-governed, of being democratic. It doesn't have anything to do with selfishly chaotic indulgence.

To anarchists, *we* are our government, or should be. Anarchism is the secular version of not needing priests.

Every day of the year, day in and day out, we demonstrate by our lawful, considerate behavior in the workplace, home, and street that we need no rulers over us, no "stern but benevolent father" controlling our lives.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Tiggeroshii]

11. Emma Goldman is very clear in her article.

I would suggest reading her as a starting point for the topic.

[TexasObserver]

14. Do you think you're the first person to worship a handful of writers?

The folly with your approach is that you think others will agree with you if they'll only read what you prefer to read.

Accept that yours is a point of view shared by few people, even few progressives.

You can't possibly dredge up any notion I haven't long since read, analyzed, and rejected. I reject anarchy out of knowledge, not ignorance.

[Tiggeroshii]

16. It's not my point of view.

I'm not an anarchist, and don't subscribe to the ideology. However, since I read the appropriate literature from which such ideology was derived(and took a political theory course involving the topic), I do feel I have a little bit of a better understanding than what you are demonstrating at the moment.

"You can't possibly dredge up any notion I haven't long since read, analyzed, and rejected. I reject anarchy out of knowledge, not ignorance."

What have you read on the topic? What do you know about it? And what intellectuals have guided your decision?

[TexasObserver]

22. Stop proselytizing. Accept that your point of view is not shared by most.

I don't play your game, you know, the one where you keep asking questions of those who don't agree with you. I don't agree with you. Accept it. Don't fight. Don't think it is your job to convince me your point of view is the correct one.

My experience is that those who talk about anarchy favorably are usually far down on the ladder of work, education, intellect, and accomplishment. When one is a grown up, one comes to understand the necessity of institutions, government, and regulation. When one isn't, anarchy sure sounds good.

[Tiggeroshii]

23. I asked those questions because I was curious.

Not because I doubted your claims, or in any way meant aggression.I do not intend to play any game, and I am sorry if I came off that way. I shared with you the few readings I've read on the topic, and shared with you my understanding of it. I was hoping that you too could refer me to articles on the topic that could enlighten my point of view. I do not subscribe to anarchism as an ideology, but find it a fascinating concept, and to an extent, appealing. If there are any particular intellectuals/authors who you think may be thought provoking or might add light to one side or the other: I would like to know.

Again, I am sorry if I at all came off as antagonizing or aggressive in any previous post.

[bperci108]

32. You don't need to apologize for anything.

And you are wasting your time.

Move along. Some get it; some never will.

The condescending arrogance, hubris and sense of "progressive" superiority some have on this board amazes me sometimes.

I guess Jerusalem Slim put it best: "Cast not your pearls before swine..." ;)




<edit: spelling. Haven't had my tea yet... *yawn*>

[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TexasObserver]

50. Thanks. I appreciate your apology and candor.

The apology was unnecessary, but your comments were coming off to me "but why?! WHY?!"

I don't think anarchy is a topic often discussed by people over 30, because by the time one is 30, the realities of running the world have begun to sink in.

[tama]

56. Well said

"Realities of running the world" - you do understand that any attempt to run the world - to put yourself in position of God and attempt to control nature - is lethally insane? Whether you are an old cynical fart at age of 15 or hippie child at age of 60?

[readmoreoften]

168. Except for people like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky. Both of whom are far less

educated and articulate and knowledgeable than you.

[Jed Dilligan]

121. Wow. You really get worked up over this.

Shall I expect your jackboot on my neck sometime in the near future?

[TexasObserver]

134. Wow. You don't understand "worked up"

Do you always imagine that those who disagree with you on a message board are interested in subjecting you to physical harm? Your comments would be laughable, except I know you take them seriously.

Why don't you get back to the topic and stop personally attacking me based upon your unwarranted paranoia?

[Jed Dilligan]

136. No, I was just having a laugh.

Carry on with your blood pressure and the steam pouring out of your ears.

[TexasObserver]

138. Laughing and scared at the same time?

You seem to be projecting your own anxieties.

Please get back to the topic - whether YOU believe in anarchy - instead of attacking me. Surely you have something to talk about besides me, don't you?

[Jed Dilligan]

144. I've commented downthread

You've given me nothing to comment about besides your combative and arrogant attitude.

[TexasObserver]

161. Well, this is the reason ...

... I had you on ignore so long, and why you're going back on ignore today. I repeatedly gave you a chance to talk about the topic and all you want to talk about is me. Time for you to go back to the ignore bin, with others who don't understand the difference.

[Jed Dilligan]

162. Show me one comment on this thread

where you don't do exactly what you're accusing me of doing.

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

272. FWIW

and we seldom agree on anything Im with you on this one...

Anyone who steps back and takes a full look at human history realizes that true anarchy (or even 'we are the government' kind talked about up thread) would destroy the minority rights that any enlightened society should have...

[readmoreoften]

166. Great. Why don't you "analyze and reject" for us? Please give us some of your "knowledge"

I'm very interested in hearing the knowledge you have that would dismiss Chomsky and Zinn's research. Please, articulate your ideas! I'm very eager to hear your first hand research on these matters since you're not a blind follower of famous writers.

Or is this just an ad hominem attack on a few kids you saw going to a punk show and some guy you knew in college?

[TexasObserver]

73. My knowledge is superb, and my thinking clear.

As for your post, I reject your criticism as unworthy.

[readmoreoften]

167. In fact your knowledge is so superb, you needn't even give us a rudimentary analysis!

Everyone should stand corrected. You're a fucking genius. The way you explained the geopolitical situation just allowed the world to unfold before my eyes.

[Kitty Herder]

186. Well said.

And what this poster has said has shown an astonishing lack on knowledge on the subject.

[SmileyRose]

137. I have to say

people are mostly considerate in the workplace only for fear they will be fired if they aren't. At home people are all sorts. Some considerate and lawful and some not. However, in the street, I must say, things are just downright rude. I don't a whole lot of lawful consideration going on where there is no fear of getting caught and punished by authority.

[bean fidhleir]

149. What you're describing is life in an authoritarian society where most people have no power

People raised to have -or who get by the (bad) luck of the genetic lottery- an authoritarian personality will kiss up to those with power and behave as badly toward others as they think safe. Running into one of those ...people... will certainly sour your day all out of proportion to what they can actually do to you.

But most people value the quiet life and are willing to rub along with other people as frictionlessly as possible. I think if you kept a notebook and sorted your daily encounters on a scale from active benevolence at one end to active malice on the other, you'd find that 99% fall into the no-relationship middle where everyone is simply trying to complete some transaction with minimum time and hassle. The clerks give you a meaningless greeting but they don't try to short-change you or pack your groceries with the eggs on the bottom, the person in the street doesn't try to bump into you and 99% of the time will apologize if they do, and so forth.

If you've never looked at the checkout clerk at the supermarket (or someone in a similar role) as a human being, it can be an interesting experience. Even rewarding. Simply saying "long day?" with feeling to someone who's tired and dull will suddenly produce a live human being where seconds before there was a virtual automaton.

With most people we pretty much get what we give, usually, don't you think?

[SmileyRose]

153. Huh

If you've never looked at the checkout clerk at the supermarket (or someone in a similar role) as a human being, it can be an interesting experience. Even rewarding. Simply saying "long day?" with feeling to someone who's tired and dull will suddenly produce a live human being where seconds before there was a virtual automaton.


That line was so offensive to me, on so many levels that I can't even get to the rest of it. Since I'm new here I think I'll just pass on the rest of the discussion.

[bean fidhleir]

154. Please accept my apology. Offending you couldn't have been further from my intention.

I said what I did in part because you expressed disbelief -based on your experience, I'm sure- that people behave well by nature, and partly because I've noticed, over the years, that almost everyone ignores people like checkout clerks. So many people have commented in print on the ignoring, one way or another, that by now it's almost proverbial.

I've never been socially adept, myself, and I've always felt regret about that -not least because of the trouble it's caused me by making me unable to conform to social expectations about how girls are "spozed to be". So I've intentionally tried to exercize what little social ability I have, and done my best to observe what other people do - or don't, in the case of clerks and people in similar roles. If you're insulted because you're a very socially skilled person who never ignores other people regardless of role, please remember that I don't know you and, absent better knowledge, can only guide myself by what I see in the behavior of people who are not you.

[SmileyRose]

157. Well what you said and

the very idea that a cashier is "lowly" my brain just said "WTF?". I've never lived in a culture that considers any job as "lowly". Even the family I work for takes their turn scrubbing down the bathrooms and the kitchen we all use. I guess I must have lead a protected life. You are definitely right though, cashiers take a lot of crap. Especially at gas stations and grocery stores. As if it's THEIR fault prices are going up.

A LOT people are just downright rude, in the stores, on the roads, stealing food right out of neighbor's garden and gas out of the neighbor's car. Anyone who's spent any amount of time on Atlanta freeways knows the rudeness isn't limited to just a couple bad apples. I myself, out of self defense, have had to be a little on the rude side now and again to get around someone too busy yapping on the phone to pay any attention to the driving.

Well anyways, that's where I'm coming from.

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

271. Anarchy is the ultimate

tyranny of the majority..

[tama]

41. Collective living by rules

is what anarchism actually means - or at least anarcho-primitivism. Rules of balance imposed on nature by nature. Not hierarchic rules of course, they are product of civilized greed.

Children are wiser than adults, of course. Children learn naturally, adults don't or only when learning is violently enforced upon them.

[TexasObserver]

49. No. Children aren't wiser than adults.

But I did enjoy the laugh. Thanks.

[tama]

62. You confuse intellect with wisdom

What is wisdom if not ability to learn, without force? Too bad that most children - who are born to limitless world, are forced to learn the walls and only the walls that cynical fearfull farts considering themselves smart have built for the protection of their egos and conceive as all of the world.

[TexasObserver]

64. No, you confuse naivete and knowledge.

When you have a job, a house, and a family, you'll understand these things better. Anarachy, like Trix, is for kids.

[tama]

69. What makes you think

I don't have a job, a house and a family? Cause I do, and more varied life experience you will ever know.

What I've come to realize is the simple - or naive - truth that human knowledge is all futile, humans can't improve nature wich is perfect as it is and all attempts will just cause more misery and suffering.

[AuntPatsy]

140. I firmly agree with you...when the innocence is lost it is such a shame, we should

pay more attention to our childrens voices, we just might relearn what we have obviously lost.

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

274. Kids are not 'innocent'

They are selfish, self centered, and self service from the first breath. They are lovely things and they capture your hearts but dont let them delude you into thinking they have this magical wisdom that we somehow lack..

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

273. "Children are wiser than adults"

Oh sheesh I hate this wishy washy crap people try to bring up...

Kids are not wiser than adults they have little regard for the feelings of others (my 18mo bites her 3yo sister, my 3yo takes toys away from the 18mo because she is bigger). A newborn baby is the ultimate ball of human selfishness and most people who have raised kids will tell you that...

My wife can have the worlds worst migraine and the kids will not go and play in their room so she can relax they demand, demand, demand...

Children only learn naturally because they have so much to learn every little thing for them is new and that is pretty cool. Many adults seek this out but its not as easy as our world is considerably smaller.

[arcadian]

99. Ironic that you have a child anarchist as your avatar.

n/t

[TexasObserver]

107. Not ironic at all. I changed it for this thread.

I changed it only hours ago, because of the childish pro anarchy comments on this thread. Those comments here are cartoonish, as if written for a joke and spoken by a caricature.

You do know this is the Democratic Underground, not the Anarchist Underground, right? We believe in elections. We believe in the rule of law. We believe that change is effected by getting political power from elections.

Let's have this discussion again in 15 years. We'll see where you come down then.

[readmoreoften]

169. So you admit changing your avatar to not look like a hypocrite in a thread.

You're right. It's important for someone as wise and brilliant as yourself not to appear contradictory. All the stupid children of the world might reject your sagacity.

[MicaelS]

177. Collective living by the rules?

And what are you going to do when a group of people doesn't want to live by YOUR rules? Are you going to use force against an entire group?

[TexasObserver]

181. Wherever there are humans, there is government.

We're not talking about MY rules. We're talking about society's insistence on structure. There will be government. The question is who will run it. That's why we Democrats support Democrats in nationwide races. We want Democrats to run the state and federal governments. We see government as a way to best address societal problems. We are the opposite of anarchists.

[Kitty Herder]

185. This is not necessarily true.

Have you heard of the Malay culture? They are one of the most peaceful cultures ever described. Among the Malay, no one may tell another person over the age of three what to do. They have a village head, but that person is not a ruler, more like a face for the outside world, a diplomat of sorts.

And then there are the Senoi from whom the Malay likely descended. They truly have nothing that even resembles government or rules. Perhaps I should say had. I don't think their culture exists intact any longer. They are, like some many other cultures, victims of the dominator culture.

[TexasObserver]

187. Sure it is. And it has been true a long, long time.

Your anomaly doesn't make the case. We're humans. We have governments. And as soon as one government is deposed, another replaces it.

[Kitty Herder]

188. My point is that other ways of living are possible.

If it has been done, and there is virtually no way of organizing a society that has not been done, it can be done again. Is your imagination too limited to see that?

[TexasObserver]

190. We're not discussing imagination. We're discussing fact.

The cloud chasers seem think that we thinkers cannot see the imaginative. We can, but we aren't lost in wistful delusions.

The history of human civilization is the history of governments being formed on basic levels, and advancing.

If you are a Democrat, you're committed to government as our vehicle of proposing and promoting change. Of course, if you're an anarchist, you may not be a Democrat.

[Kitty Herder]

191. What you call thinking is an excuse for not thinking of alternatives.

For not thinking critically about why society is the way it is and how it can be different. It takes all kinds of people, though, to make progress. Pragmatists such as yourself are necessary to help make the imaginings of the "cloud chasers" into reality. As long as the pragmatists don't try to keep the "cloud chasers" as you call us, from thinking about possibilities. That's hindering progress.

And as for the Malay and the Senoi, their way of life is indeed (or was, in the case of the Senoi) FACT. And the Senoi were only absorbed into the surrounding culture in the 20th century. It's not like they existed in the deep, shadowy past.

Oh, and no, I'm not a Democrat. But I usually vote for Dems as the lesser of two evils.

[TexasObserver]

192. The world is run daily by the pragmatists.

I'm merely reporting the status of the world - the way it is, the way it has been, and the way it will continue to be.

[Cerridwen]

270. Psst. Global warming, crumbling infrastructures, wars across the

planet, cultural clashes, people across the globe dying of malnutrition, a global economy sending out flashing red warning signals, sabre rattling and pissing contests between countries leading to yet more war and destruction and death.

So wait. What? Are you arguing for or against "the world {being} run daily by pragmatists"?

[tama]

198. Civilization is error

Civilization is a cancer trying to kill the host, Mother Earth.

Not all humans belong to civilization, not all humans are insane. Only civilized humans are suffering from a collective insanity.

[TexasObserver]

250. hahaha! This stuff is too funny!!

You're using a computer, internet access, and this venue to express your disdain for civilization.

If you really believed the things you espouse, you would be living in a small cabin somewhere, totally self sufficient, with no internet, no computer, and no message board.

[tama]

197. Typical

Those who present a universal theory about human behaviour and human communities don't change their mind when presented empirical evidence falsifying that universal theory. No, what they have is not universal theory but universal dogma, so they respond by calling you stupid.

[Kitty Herder]

Yep. Absolutely typical.

Oh, well. What can you do?

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

276. That model does not scale well

Seriously, you can get away with things in small independent groups that will not work with hundreds to millions of people...

BTW what happens if someone breaks the rule? are the banished? who punishes them?

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

275. Its not just humans

look at *any* communal species they all have some sort of order either a leader or a structure..

[Kitty Herder]

183. I think you're a litttle unclear on the concept. nt

[TexasObserver]

189. I'm clear on the concept.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and that is what afflicts those on this thread who think their expansive view of anarchy is the proper one. Those who give voice to such are like a cult, and they share the same central delusion. They seek utopia, a world where their opinions are taken more seriously than in this one. The fantasy of anarchy is simply their imaginary vehicle to that world where they're not at the bottom of the pecking order.

[Unvanguard]

285. You're right. It is.

Anarchists have no problem with "collective living by rules." What we object to is a social order where these "rules" are set up by a class of rulers or politicians, rather than by the people themselves.

[frog92969]

3. In my youth I was hard core anarchist.

But as I reached adulthood I found serious flaws in that theme.

[Tiggeroshii]

5. Was your choice to become and anarchist more of an entirely self directed, rebellious decision?

Or was it guided by the help of intellectuals and reading?

[frog92969]

7. Completely rebellious I guess.

Ignorant of the details I simply saw the world as fatally flawed.
Every group wanting control and freedom always being suppressed, usually for irrational reasons.

[Tiggeroshii]

9. There's much more to anarchism than that.

In some of the above posts, it's described pretty accurately, and in post 8, I gave links to a few anarchist intellectuals' writings that can shed more light into what it's all about.

on edit: I would suggest reading Emma Goldman to have a basic understanding of what all kinds of anarchism advocates. And then you'll have a better understanding of what Bookchin and Chomsky are talking about.

[frog92969]

12. Thanks, I see that there is more.

I live by the creed of do no harm, more accurately, don't initiate harm.
So I believe I could be trusted in such a society, like many (maybe most).
But there are alot of people who actually enjoy, or justify doing harm. And they could never be trusted.

[Tiggeroshii]

21. Well instiutions are not prohibited in such an idealistic society.

But it would need to be discussed, and decided on with how certain people may be dealt with. And such a point in it's construction is where many other basic concepts and ideas(ideally offered by everybody involved) which will likely be attributed into the gradual construction of an anarchist society. Anarchism is the transitioning stage into anarchism. A gradual reformation is what is proposed, it's how to perform this reformation of society that anarchists such as chomsky and goldman would be at odds about.

[New Dawn]

13. Nope.

There are some states that I support.

[Tiggeroshii]

19. What do you mean?

[bridgit]

15. Anarchy is a bourgeois concept only sustainable unless and until...

'the anarchist' insists upon governmental/legal remedy in the course of inheriting their rich parents land, possessions, or valued personal effects don't kid yourself, then so-called anarchy flys right out the window where it belongs: in thin, rarefied mid air


I would trade 'anarchy' for Arcology any day of the week http://www.arcosanti.org/media/publication/arcologynew06.html :headbang:

[blindpig]

39. Anarchism is socialism

less the state and the vangard party. These were the two major arguments between Marx and Bakunin, more tactical than philosophical. Much of what parades as anarchism in these days is indeed reactionary. Would-be anarchist would do well to get back to the roots.

Though I am by prediliction an anarchist, I am more interested in effectiveness than philosophical purity, this split in the socialist camp need be resolved or at least shelved for the common goal, the end of capitalism.

[tama]

44. Difference between anarchists and socialists

is that while a (Marxist) socialist/communist is waiting for the (right historical conditions for) revolution to start, an anarchist lives in state of constant revolution. :)

[blindpig]

51. tricky

Ya might wait forever, how can ya know fer sure? This is indeed a valid complaint of anarchist about communist, and it is recogonised in socialist circles that some old school commies are too 'conservative'. This tends to lead to 'parlimentary socialism', which historically tends to sell out.

On the other hand, timing is everything.:shrug:

[tama]

54. It's simple really

No better time to join an ecovillage or other intentional community, learning to live and living in practical and ecologically sustainable anarchy - not waiting for a revolution but becoming part of organic revolution growing from and at the bottom, than as soon as you are ready and life grants such an opportunity.

[blindpig]

61. the problem with that

is that the Man just won't leave you alone. Look what happened to the back to the land movement, look what happened to the urban gardeners of LA. For that matter, look what happened to the Black Panther, who, by proving alternative services, were separating the people from the system.

Organization and solidarity are necessary, the bastards aren't gonna allow any competing system exist that would make 'em look bad and they ain't playin'. Thus 100 years of redbaiting and the ruthless oppression of any people or state that opts out of the capitalist system.

[tama]

65. 100 years?

No, it's just 10 000 years of human error of civilization. No, I'm not expecting it to get better before getting much worse, but not a biggie from a larger scale. In any case, it's not the sudden stop, it's the fall... and enjoying the ride :)

[readmoreoften]

170. Maoists believed in perpetual revolution. That's why Mao Tse Tung provoked

all the school kids to attack the communist party leaders during the cultural revolution.

[bridgit]

63. If that were so; 'anarchism' would be called 'socialsim'...

"prediliction"? Right? By spelling even predilection otherwise/thus; one may not, as a per se natural occurrence be viewed as having become any more effective than one may have become philosophically pure by way of serendipity http://www.basquiat.com

Serendipity does not equal socialism in a world where anarchy is anything but serendipitous. When we/you and I drop apples, and they sail off sideways or up somehow counter to the laws and governs we do expect with great comfort and routine, I will post to you an invitation for Mahjong at my little getaway: BYOB!

[blindpig]

71. Sorry,

but I don't 'get' your post.

Here's what Bakunin had to say:

Mikhail Bakunin 1862

Where I Stand

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Source: Bakunin's Writings, Guy A. Aldred Modern Publishers, Indore Kraus Reprint co. New York 1947.
Downloaded with thanks from Endpage.com.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am a passionate seeker after truth (and no less embittered enemy of evil doing fictions) which the party of order, this official, privileged and interested representative of all the past and present religions, metaphysical, political, juridical and "social" atrociousness claim to employ even today only to make the world stupid and enslave it, I am a fanatical lover of truth and freedom which I consider the only surroundings in which intelligence, consciousness and happiness develop and increase.

I do not mean the completely formal freedom which the State imposes, judges and regulates, this eternal lie which in reality consists always of the privileges of a few based upon the slavery of all – not even the individualist, egotistical, narrow and fictitious freedom which the school of J.J. Rousseau and all other systems of property moralists, middle class bourgeoisism and liberalism recommend – according to which the so called rights of individuals which the State "represents" has the limit in the right of all, whereby the rights of every individual are necessarily, always reduced to nil. No, I consider only that as freedom worthy and real as its name should imply, which consists in the complete development of all material, intellectual and spiritual powers which are in a potential state in everyone, the freedom which knows no other limits than those prescribed by the laws of our own nature, so that there be really no limits – for these laws are not enforced upon us by external legislators who are around and over us, these laws are innate in us, clinging to us and form the real basis of our material, intellectual and moral being; instead of therefore seeing in them a limitation, we must look upon them as the real condition and the actual cause of our freedom.

Unconditional Freedom
I mean that freedom of the individual which, instead of stopping far from the freedom of others as before a frontier, sees on the contrary the extending and the expansion into the infinity of its own free will, the unlimited freedom of the individual through the, freedom of all; freedom through solidarity, freedom in equality; the freedom which triumphs over brute force and over the principle of authoritarianism, the ideal expression of that force which, after the destruction of all terrestrial and heavenly idols, will find and organize a new world of undivided mankind upon the ruins of all churches and States. I am a convinced partisan of economic and social equality, for I know that outside this equality, freedom, justice, human dignity and moral and spiritual well-being of mankind and the prosperity of nation, and individuals will always remain a lie only. But as an unconditional partisan of freedom, this first condition of humanity, I believe the equality must be established through the spontaneous organization of voluntary cooperation of work freely organized, and into communes federated, by productive associations and through the equally spontaneous federation of communes-not through and by supreme supervising action of the State. This point separates above all others the revolutionary socialists or collectivists from the authoritarian "communists", the adherents of the absolute initivaitve necessity of and by the State. The communists imagine that condition of freedom and socialism (i.e., the administration of the society's affairs by the self-government of the society itself without the medium and pressure of the State) can be achieved by the development and organization of the political power of the working class, chiefly of the proletariat of the towns with the help of bourgeois radicalism, while the revolutionary (who are otherwise, known as libertarian) socialists, enemies of every double-edged allies and alliance believe, on the very contrary that the aim can be realised and materialized only through the development and organization not of the political but of the social and economic, and therefore anti-political forces of the working masses of the town and country, including all well disposed people of the upper classes who are ready to break away from their past and join them openly and accept their programme unconditionally.

Two Methods
From the difference named, there arise two different methods. The "Communists" pretend to organize the working classes in order to "capture the political power of the State". The revolutionary socialists organize people with the object of the liquidation of the States altogether whatever be their form. The first are the partisans of authoritiveness in theory and practice, the socialists have confidence only in freedom to develop the initiative of peoples in order to liberate themselves. The communist authoritarians wish to force class "science" upon others, the social libertarians propagate empirical science among them so that human groups and aggregations infused with conviction in and understanding of it, spontaneously, freely and voluntarily, from bottom up wards, organize themselves by their own motion and in the measure of their strength – not according to a plan sketched out in advance and dictated to them, a plan which is attempted to be imposed by a few "highly intelligent, honest and all that" upon the so-called ignorant masses from above. The revolutionary social libertarians think that there is much more practical reason and common, sense in the aspirations and the of the people than in the "deep" intelligence of all the learned, men and tutors of mankind who want to add to the many disastrous attempts "to make humanity happy" a still newer attempt. We are on the contrary of the conviction that humankind has allowed itself too long enough to be governed and legislated for and that the origin of its misery is not to be looked for in this or that form of government and man-established State, but in the very nature and existence of every ruling leadership, of whatever kind and in whatever name this may be. The best friends of the ignorant people are those who free them from the thraldom of leadership and let people alone to work among themselves with one another on the basis of equal comradeship.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bakunin Archive | Anarchism

[bridgit]

95. No I'm sorry, 1862? "Would-be anarchist would do well to get back to the roots" indeed!!

an·ar·chism

1. a doctrine urging the abolition of government or governmental restraint as the indispensable condition for full social and political liberty.
2. the methods or practices of anarchists, as the use of violence to undermine government.

an·ar·chist

1. a person who advocates or believes in anarchy or anarchism.
2. a person who seeks to overturn by violence all constituted forms and institutions of society and government, with no purpose of establishing any other system of order in the place of that destroyed.
3. a person who promotes disorder or excites revolt against any established rule, law, or custom.

an·ar·chy

1. a state of society without government or law.
2. political and social disorder due to the absence of governmental control: The death of the king was followed by a year of anarchy.
3. a theory that regards the absence of all direct or coercive government as a political ideal and that proposes the cooperative and voluntary association of individuals and groups as the principal mode of organized society.
4. confusion; chaos; disorder: Intellectual and moral anarchy followed his loss of faith.

'an·ar·chy - 1. a state of society without government or law' is a stance generated in response to the common-lawless oppressions & disregards of Czars, and the crown jewels atop the heads of monarchs; or too the many tyrannies of blovacious words themselves meant to position new & improved products even to "revolutionary social libertarians think(ing) that there is much more practical reason and common, sense in the aspirations and the of the people than in the "deep" intelligence of all the learned, men and tutors of mankind who want to add to the many disastrous attempts "to make humanity happy" a still newer attempt."...1862 ain't new, it's old in fact it's Antiques Roadshow antique; a, again, and thank you for making my point imo: bourgeoisie platform ultimately intended to justify "a still newer" form of tenure.

As we may try to apply such matters to the present day, in response to g.w. bush, for instance, and the pernicious maladies he and his family and friends have foisted upon the world; I do not believe the answer is even less law, regulation, oversight, less enlightenment. But more timely, applicable, viable and illuminated versions oversight and governance.

The anarchists that I personally know, here in my orbit in 'now times' 2008, are young, naturalized American citizens from Poland. Understanding the utility civil' and common exchanges, they reserve their anarchy for personalized matters. Poland has a unique relationship to tyranny as well. And it is a joy to speak with my anarchist friends as regards contemporaneous stuff :)

[tavalon]

17. Nope, a socialist

and an egalitarian. By some things I've read, that qualifies me to call myself an anarchist, but since I believe in government and that government has as it's first and primary responsibility the care and feeding of each of its governed, I really don't think I qualify as an anarchist by any definition.

[Tiggeroshii]

18. I share your point of view.

And I feel many aspects brought about by leading anarchists should be considered in re evaluating how our society functions. I don't however believe that one, single ideology is suitable to execute by itself.

[tavalon]

20. Yeah, one of my partners is an anarchist

and out of deference to his opinion, I have read a bit about it of recent and some of it resonates but then, when I think about whether it would work on any larger scale then perhaps a medium size commune, I start to doubt.

[bean fidhleir]

75. But it already DOES work on larger scales: *worldwide*

How much of your day is not self-directed? How often do you obey when you're ordered to think a certain thing? How much of your life do you *voluntarily* give up to the control of your "betters"?

Not much, I bet.

How often do you cooperate with others for the good of all? How often do you seek to persuade rather than impose your will? How many people do you see as your peers and equals rather than as a different order of creature, exalted or demeaned by nature?

Lots, I bet.

Which means you're *practicing* as an anarchist, even though the ruling class works hard to keep you from realizing it.

That's what anarchism is: an awareness of yourself as rightfully having the same agency and worth as any other, neither more nor less except where particular skills are temporarily important.

[TexasObserver]

111. You are not using legitimate definitions of "anarchism" or "anarchist"

Let me explain what the terms "anarchism" and "anarchist" mean, and that will help you understand what it is you claim to believe in. When we want to know what words mean, we don't simply allow a random anonymous internet poster to define them. We use experts, who actually understand words and have a wide vocabulary.

From dictionary.com
an•ar•chism Audio Help ˈæn ərˌkɪz əm - Show Spelled Pronunciation Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. a doctrine urging the abolition of government or governmental restraint as the indispensable condition for full social and political liberty.
2. the methods or practices of anarchists, as the use of violence to undermine government.

From Merriam-Webster

Main Entry:
an•ar•chist
Pronunciation:
\ˈa-nər-kist, -ˌnär-\
Function:
noun
Date:
1678
1: a person who rebels against any authority, established order, or ruling power
2: a person who believes in, advocates, or promotes anarchism or anarchy; especially : one who uses violent means to overthrow the established order

[readmoreoften]

172. Oh! The great wise one pulls out the old Merriam Webster! The original source of anarchist thought!

But don't you think it's unwise to call gay people brightly colored or licentious? I think that's against DU rules. Plus a wise individual who is so knowledgeable and over thirty years of age much certainly know that Merriam-Webster is not the source of the "truth" of a word, but merely what it means in common parlance in the American vernacular.


from M-W.com

GAY:

1 a: happily excited : merry <in a gay mood> b: keenly alive and exuberant : having or inducing high spirits <a bird's gay spring song>
2 a: bright, lively <gay sunny meadows> b: brilliant in color
3: given to social pleasures; also : licentious

[bperci108]

33. That's sort of the camp I'm in.

I find much in the ideals I agree with (more in the A-S vein) but I have enough years of life experience to realize that such lofty ideals aren't really completely feasible in the Real World.

Is true Anarchism possible? I doubt it's any more possible than true Democracy or true Socialism.

But that doesn't mean that we idealists can't try to do what we can and let those ideals guide us in an imperfect system. :patriot:

[Tiggeroshii]

34. Yep.

I do long that there could be some sort of path towards egalitarianism or that one of these ideologies could somehow take us there, but until we get there, we need to do what we can to gradually improve our own system without mucking it all up.

[tama]

57. How feasible is Real World?

When it is plain for anyone to see that the so called "Real World" is about to self destruct having become too alianeted from nature?

[bean fidhleir]

26. Anarchism is not a synonym for chaos. That's the key concept here

I find very disturbing the number of people who say they're socialists, but seem to be authoritarians. I can't tell whether they just have never thought about it enough, or whether they really do want a Joe Stalin over them.

To me, socialism, democracy, and anarchism are all the same thing at bottom: people agreeing to live together as equals for individual freedom and mutual benefit. It boggles my mind that any adult would be looking for a daddy to run their life. How could they believe that they're an adult under those circumstances?

[Tiggeroshii]

28. Do you think it would it be accurate to say that somebody who believes in having

a dictatorship of the proletariat is a solid socialist? For the time of that dictatorship, there is clearly a reign of authoritarianism. I guess it's a kind of socialism spawned as a necessity throug Trotsky and Lenin's theories. Socialism in Europe definitely won't fit those characteristics (at least the transitioning stage). I mentioned Murray Bookchin earlier, and he does a fine job in pointing out the flaw of Marxists in his article I put in post 8. I feel that much of Marxism is very much distorting Marx's own words. But each ideology, at it's root has a specific goal, that is egalitarianism. Fascism, Communism and Anarchism all have a specific goal: Egalitarianism. Each however, differ on the role of the state in what would be the inevitable degradation of the state.

[bean fidhleir]

38. More the opposite, really. My impression (I might be being unfair) is that people who

prefer marxpeak aren't any sort of socialists at all.

If we accept that the minimun qualification for a system to be socialist is that the people who do the work own their "means of production" and therefore keep the full value of their work, how can the kind of setup the marxpeak people want -state ownership, with control vested in government bureaucrats- be socialism? The DOTP folks do a fancy little song and dance to justify calling their system "socialism", but Orwell had their number: "some are more equal than others".

Even when used honestly, marxpeak reflects a perception of a world that no longer exists, and barely existed even 160 years ago. It's a world of classism, in which a peasantry scarcely above the level of oxen is humanely led into a bright future by an intellectually-superior cadre that controls everything "for the people". Nice for the cadre, not so hot for the oxen. And of course it ignores real history: the "peasants' revolt" in 1381, the bitter denunciation of classism by the Levellers and Diggers in the 1600s, the "Peterloo" massacre in 1819, the politically-aware "mill girls" in the 1830s, et seq.

To me, real socialism is what Fr. Arizmendiarrieta push-started in Arrasate/Mondragón back in the '50s.

[tama]

46. Dictatorship of the proletariat

Let's keep in mind that when Marx spoke of dictatorship of the proletariat he meant dictatorship of majority (aka democracy) in industrial societies. This has lead to divide between those who take it literally and propose dictatorship of industrial workers (Leninists and trotters), and those revolutionary socialists who believe in dictatorship of majority, even if that means rural people. The fact that society has moved from early industrialism to post-fordism further complicates the picture.

[Tiggeroshii]

48. Haha

"The fact that society has moved from early industrialism to post-fordism further complicates the picture."

That's almost exactly what Bookchin was arguing in his piece railing against Marxism! He makes the point that Marx couldn't have possibly foreseen the places capitalism could take us, and thus implementing his theory today could be heavily flawed.

[Edweird]

233. Riiiiight, get rid of government, and we'll just magically get along.

Everybody will agree with everybody else and the sun will always shine.....
:eyes:

[tama]

254. Yes, magically. n/t

[DCKit]

24. Yes. I realized I was the Anti-Christ a long time ago.

But I'm lazy and refuse to do what "Daddy" wants. He's a real prick, in case you haven't heard.

[Tiggeroshii]

25. Who are your favorite anarchists?

[DCKit]

27. Sorry, I've never studied formally. Not a follower.

I may be one and not even know it.

[Tiggeroshii]

29. ah. You should read those people I linked to in post 8.

To see if you are...

[rucky]

208. Try harder!

The sooner those fundies get sucked into the sky...

[Edweird]

30. Anarchy is an adolescent fantasy.

It does not work.

[Tiggeroshii]

31. You should check out some the reading by the "leading'' anarchists.

I posted links to some of them in post 8. There's definitely some interesting things.

[Edweird]

133. Eh. I've got better things to waste my time on.....

[RoyGBiv]

182. Yes. they are interesting ...

Lots of intellectual discourse is interesting. Theorizing about time travel is interesting.

It's still absurd.

Zinn in particular is an excellent political scientist, a marvelous force for social justice, a mediocre historian, and a radical with his head in the sand. He ignores his own discipline in promoting himself as an "anarchist."

[tama]

52. Can't know without trying

But what we know for certain is that civilization based on eternal material growth on a planet with limited resources does not work. Yes, when I was an adolescent I read a lot of science fiction fantasy, and even when I grew even more childish did I realize what kind of fantasy this science fiction we are forced to live in really is. Given the choise between cancer (human civilization) and host (Mother Earth), what would a sane being choose?

[Edweird]

132. Yes, I DO know without trying. It's very simple really.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, "Nobody tells you what to do, you get to eat all the ice cream you want and you can stay up late every night"

The horrific reality of anarchy is obviously divorced from some peoples pipe dreams.
Anarchy exists in our world, on our planet, at this very moment.

Anarchy:"Absence of government; a state of lawlessness due to the absence or inefficiency of the supreme power; political disorder."

Failed State: a state whose central government is so weak or ineffective that it has little practical control over much of its territory.

Failed states = Anarchy

Some lovely places for you to "enjoy" some real life anarchy:
Sudan, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Chad......

You're going to tell me "But THEY'RE DOING IT WRONG!".
They are doing what their human nature guides them to do in the absence of government.
It isn't pretty.

[tama]

257. Chiapas, zapatistas n/t

[Edweird]

294. Purple Monkey Dishwasher n/t

[timtom]

35. Insofar as I am autodidactic

I resent most forms of authority. There are those who tell me something that instructs or informs. There are also those who desire to control me at some level. I leave it to the gentle reader to divine which of the two will be heard.

[Echo In Light]

36. At heart, absolutely

Given the enormous impact and daily coercion/indoctrination of the corporate/state and its culture, however, I certainly don't hold out much hope for such ideals of independence from centralized power to take root within the collective consciousness.

One perceives glimpses and flourishes of that anti-establishment mind here and there, so that's a promising aspect of the human condition ... although there isn't enough of a platform to reach people with ideas beyond the "reality" sold to people 24/7 by vested interests that seek to keep the public mind on a preferred course. You could argue that the web has opened that up a bit, others would say it works against tangible political organization. Depends on how you look at it.

[tama]

40. Anarcho-primitivism

Is the label I could not reject if thrown at me. But I don't believe the thinking and experience labelled "anarcho-primitivism" is really an ideology, it's just common sense - sense of wholes and sense of proportion.

[Stuart G]

42. MOst people do not know what an anarchist is.

No rules results in chaos. Always.

Anarchy assumes that people will act collectively in a fair and reasonable fashion. It denies human greed. In the end, anarchy allows the strongest meanest bastard to take over and install his/her rules. Odd intellectual construction that cannot work in reality.

[The2ndWheel]

45. So that's why human civilization is killing off the rest of the planet

It is the strongest meanest bastard out there.

[tama]

58. Human greed

What you don't understand is that human greed is a social product created by social and enviromental disorder based on greed, not an universal law.

There are other rules besides man-made rules. Anarcho-primitivism is about respecting natural rules and liberation from insanity of purely man-made rules based on furthering and escalating rule of greed.

[muriel_volestrangler]

124. Can you give some examples of 'natural rules' and 'man-made rules'?

Do you think that 6 billion people (expected to rise to 9 billion in 50 years or so) can co-exist without some man-made rules?

[tama]

199. Most likely

The rule of man will go down to 1 billion or less by the end of this century, before rule of man is abandoned and rule of nature accepted - with love.

Rules of nature are different from rules of man because rules of nature are unknown and ever-changing. All man can do is to accept them, listen silently and adapt with gratitude.

[Edweird]

241. It is clear to me that you lack a basic understanding of Nature.

If there are three of us and 6 sandwiches between us:
Humanity (Root word Human. Get it?)means we each have 2 sandwiches.

Natural law means I get 6 sandwiches because I'm bigger than you and can take them.

Nature rewards greed with survival.

You have to feed your pets small portions spread out over the day. If you leave a big pile of food they will "wolf" it down at one sitting. (see the nature reference?) That is Natural law. You have it pathetically and laughably backwards.

[bean fidhleir]

76. It doesn't deny human greed. It accounts for and thwarts it by human empowerment

Capitalism is a greed-based system. It supports the greedy, and makes it very hard for their victims to prevent being preyed upon repeatedly.

Anarchism (by which I include democracy and socialism), on the other hand, says that we're all the government, and therefore we all are fully impowered to act on our own behalf and for the common good.

So, while under kleptocratic capitalism we're forced to sit and wait for rescue by the authorities - who have no obligation to do anything for us - in an anarchic society any "strongest meanest bastard" is going to find himself overwhelmed as soon as his pathology becomes evident. Why would sensible people allow someone destructive to act out? Answer: they wouldn't, if they're sensible.

Publius Valerius was granted the additional name "Poplicola" - "Friend of the People" when, as the sole ruler of Rome after the untimely death of his co-consul, he passed a law saying that any man trying to make himself king could be killed with impunity by the first citizen getting close enough. Presenting proof of the victim's ambition would be a permanent, non-cancellable stay-out-of-jail-free card. It prevented kings for a long time, until finally the people forgot why they'd got rid of kings in the first place.

So in an anarchic society, the "strongest meanest bastard" would probably be killed, or at least thumped on the head and imprisoned, by the first citizens who could get close enough.

[Unvanguard]

290. Indeed. And you are among that group.

You're quite right: "no rules results in chaos."

Thankfully, anarchists don't believe in "no rules." Anarchists love rules. We hate rulers. We believe in self-rule: autonomy, not anomie.

Anarchy is order.

[xchrom]

43. as much as i admire chomsky on the one hand

i am conflicted about libertarianism -- even attached to socialism.

i take as one of my major cues public health and what it takes to maintain a society that protects it's citizens.

we have today both on the right and the left people who are mistrustful of institutions -- but without real 'reason'.

i am socialist -- and egalitarian -- but we need institutions that are effective, inventive and responsive to get where we all need to go.

[Tiggeroshii]

47. Everybody I mentioned above claim that is what Anarchism is doing

Anarchism would enforce an agreed upon number of institutions to be put in place. Anarchism requires institutions in order for it's goals to be met.

[xchrom]

53. yes -- i realize that.

but there is a vast misunderstanding about anarchy -- even understanding chomsky -- and he's still alive to explain himself.

many anarchists themselves spread unreasoning thoughts about political and social institutions that we need to grow a more effective egalitarian society.

take as an example the popular way people toss about the word 'authoritarian' -- and of course the accompanying grid that 'shows' who is what.

it's shallow reasoning at it's finest.

or people who shove 'civil liberties' at you like it's a religious icon that cannot be denied.

again they do so without serious examination.

[Tarc]

55. Today's "Anarchists" are just emo kids mixed with a Daily Show-fueled semi-knowledge of politics

Not really anything to be taken seriously.

[tama]

59. Funny that

I just realized that as far political thinking goes, I don't take anybody but (eco-)anarchists seriously. Why take suicidal maniacs seriously when you know you can't help them?

[TexasObserver]

68. Very accurate.

That's why I don't spend an hour a year discussing anarchy. This is my time for this year, and I won't discuss it again. It's a fantasy world that is only visited by people who have yet to enter the world of working adults who put in a 40 hour week and pay their own way entirely.

[tama]

70. Hah

Do you have any idea how bitter you sound, "world of working adults who put in a 40 hour week and pay their own way entirely"? I really don't understand why you put up that shit, if not in order to share your bitterness trying to make the lives of others miserable too?

[TexasObserver]

72. My life is quite happy.

I understand what personal success really means. Perhaps one day you will achieve a portion of what I have, and perhaps then you'll be a happier person.

[tama]

86. I'm sure you do

and I congratulate you on your happiness. I'm such a lowlife I don't even deserve the title of "person" and frankly, I do feel better without personhood. :)

[High Plains]

219. Or a dick n/t

[blindpig]

77. To a large degree you are right

and their 'gurus' are fucked up pseudo-libertarians. However don't write them all off, those street fighters at Seattle were the real deal, some of their philosophy might not pass some ideological smell test, but they got guts, something not to sneered at in the struggle.

[Breeze54]

60. No, I'm not a libertarian at all. They're just the RW in new clothes.

I'm a liberal democrat, who has demonstrated against RW policies.

[Unvanguard]

286. "Libertarianism" of the right-wing American variety

has nothing whatsoever to do with the anarchist political tradition, which is explicitly anti-capitalist (among other things.)

[gkhouston]

66. I only play one in GD:P. It's protective camouflage.

:hide:

[Starbucks Anarchist]

67. In name only.

;)

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

74. I'm an Anarchist of the Tolstoy/Gandhi stripe.

Pacifist, anti-authoritarian, troublemaker, with a bad attitude.

"Freedom is the absolute right of all adult men and women to seek permission for their actions only from their own conscience and reason, and to be determined in their actions only by their own will, and consequently to be responsible only to themselves, and then to the society to which they belong, but only insofar as they have made a free decision to belong to it." Mikhail Bakunin

[DefenseLawyer]

78. Ulli doesn't care about anything. He's a nihilist.

And yes, it is exhausting.

[Tiggeroshii]

80. Who is Ulli?

[DefenseLawyer]

81. You may recall his work

in Jackie Treehorn's classic "Logjammin".

[bperci108]

141. I wonder if he fixed the cable?

:P

[conspirator]

205. Ulli Kunkel? Her "co-star" in the beaver picture?

He's a musician, he used to have a group, 'Autoban'. Look in my LPs they released one album in the late seventies.

[Raskolnik]

108. Say what you will about the tenets of national socialism, dude

at least it’s an ethos.

[NashVegas]

79. I Think Anarchy Is a Nice Ideal, But Ultimately Unworkable

Because of uncontrollable factors; as an anarchist, if you were living communally would you accept a psychopathic within your midst? To be strictly anarchistic, you must, up until the point where one individual takes it upon their self to rid the tribe of the menace. Few people would be willing to accept responsibility for the moral dilemmas that would arise from such a situation.

[tama]

87. What is ultimately unworkable

is control. When will humans stop banging their head against the wall and realize this?

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

277. As soon as two folks dont want to go after the same thing..

ever..

[bean fidhleir]

90. No, why would anyone believe they "must" accept a psychpath?

By definition, a psychopath is anti-social (their current DSM IV terminology, in fact) whereas anarchists are the most pro-social people alive. Anarchists care enormously about the rights of others; psychopaths care nothing about those rights - to the psychopath they don't even exist.

So why would an anarchic community have to allow a psychopath entry or forbearance? Really, why?

[one mean sheath]

82. anarcho-feminist here.

how do you do?

[Wizard777]

83. Anarchy cannot exist. It's a self defeating arguement.

The only rule of Anarchy is that there are no rules. That eliminates the rule by which anarchy was created. End of anarchy. It's a self defeating arguement.

[bean fidhleir]

93. Unless you're just funning, you should update your knowledge. It's incomplete

to say the least!

[Wizard777]

98. If you think there is more to anarchy than that. Then you've expanded the true meaning of anarchy

until it has lost all form and is no longer anarchy. All you have to do is establish one rule and you no longer have true anarchy.

[anigbrowl]

102. A quick look at the dictionary will enlighten you

Anarchy (from Greek: ἀναρχία anarchía, "without ruler")

One doesn't need to adhere to a philosophy of pure individualism to be an anarchist. I think of it as a more mutualist ideal. As an ideal, it's not perfectly attainable, but then there is no such thing as perfect despotism either since no ruler, no matter how powerful, can control everything and everyone 24/7.

There's an interesting parallel in mathematics, specifically geometry. You might have heard of Euclid's 5th postulate, that parallel lines never meet. Unlike Euclid's other postulates, this one always annoyed mathematicians because it wasn't entirely obvious that it should be so. So a few centuries ago, mathematicians decided to prove it using the method of reduction ad absurdum; he began by assuming that parallel lines do meet, and set out to show that if this were true, as soon as you began doing calculations on that basis the results would start to contradict themselves and geometry would fail - that is 'proposition X must be true, because if it were not, things would make no sense'.

To their great surprise, geometry did not fail at all and eventually mathematicians deduced the viability of spherical and hyperbolic geometries, and realized that Euclid's 5th postulate was independent of the others. As Euclid stated it, it was only true on a flat plane, but not for other mathematical surfaces. This turned out to be a tremendously useful result, and led to new thinking about everything from ways of solving tricky problems to the shape of the universe.

This may seem terribly abstract, but I suggest that rather than considering whether anarchism is 'true' or 'viable', as if it were a logical proposition, it's more appropriate to think of it as a value. Economists use mathematical equations all the time to describe the behavior of economies; if you include 'personal authority' as a variable in such calculations, where pure despotism has a value of 1 and anarchy has a value of zero, then useful and interesting insights can be gained.

[Wizard777]

105. I agree with that to a certain degree. But the meaning of Anarchy dramatically changed in 1776.

We called it democracy. The beter par of the rest of the world called it Anarchy. We didn't really have a ruler. We had a leader. But not a real ruler. They don't come from amongst the people that are to be ruled over. Rulers are appointed and annointed by God and who are you to argue with Him? So yes there was a big shift in the meaning of anarcy after the establishment of America. Ironically enough. Meanings in the American language can shift and change with common usage. Which is another reason I say we don't speak English. We speak American. In the Kings english meanings can only shift or change at the whim of the King. Not by the common usage by the people like American does.

[tama]

125. When Greeks

Inventend "rule of the people by the people" and called it democracy (in Greek that is, not in Kings English or American), they didn't have rulers or elected leaders - they had officials drawn by the lot. It was really closer to anarchy than what today passes by the name "democracy".

And yes, they had slaves - human slaves instead of energy slaves of fossile fuel powered machine slaves.

But if you really want to look examples of anarchy in real life, look among the native tribes based on sharing instead of taking.

[anigbrowl]

100. Anarchy means 'without ruleRs', not 'without rules'.

Democracy and things like term limits are in themselves very anarchic ideas, the expression of which would have had you executed in many parts of the world not long ago. While I don't envision a future with no government and people magically just living in harmony, I do think that as technology becomes more and more embedded in our society (ie via internet and so on) we inch closer towards a system of true self-rule that allows for near-complete individual autonomy.

Anarchy may seem like an unachievable and therefore pointless goal in practice, but on the other hand the demonstrated impossibility of omniscience does not invalidate the search for knowledge. Just as we can learn much about the state and governance from studying examples of totalitarianism, we can also learn much by studying both the concept and examples of anarchism.

[Wizard777]

101. No it doesn't.. The dictionary is your friend. Give it a read.

[anigbrowl]

103. I think you should take your own advice. See my other post above. /nt

[bean fidhleir]

104. It's all Greek to you, eh?

anarchy
1539, from M.L. anarchia, from Gk. anarkhia "lack of a leader," noun of state from anarkhos "rulerless," from an- "without" + arkhos "leader" (see archon). Anarchist (1678) got a boost into modernity from the French Revolution. Anarcho-syndicalism is first recorded 1913.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=anarchy

[Wizard777]

106. I'm familiar with the etymology. But that's not exactly retained in the modern definition. See above

"Ruler" has been replaced with "political authority."

[TexasObserver]

114. YOU have the correct understanding of the word "anarchist"

The year is 2008. Not 1708, or 1608. Not in Greece, but in the USA. In today's world, where educated people study these things and agree on meanings, "anarchist" and "anarchism" are words that have a currency. Those of us who believe in dictionaries and formal educations know what these words mean. They can be looked up by anyone who isn't afraid to have their latest bubble burst.

It's difficult to argue with the willfully ignorant, because they do not accept knowledge as the base line for thought. But please continue arguing these points, so that the thread exhibits at least some rational, educated thought among the rabbit trails that lead to nowhere.

[tama]

126. Funny that

"The year is 2008. Not 1708, or 1608. Not in Greece, but in the USA. In today's world,"

There used to be times and places when knowing Greek was part of formal education, as was knowledge of history and humility before it, knowing one's roots as deeply as possible - but today it is only Today's Most Modern Americans that know best and all else is willfully ignorant.

Who can argue with the Ugly American - or rather, who wants to?

[TexasObserver]

129. Knowing history and the derivation of words is important. Knowing what words mean today is, too.

It's hardly the binary "either-or" choice you posit. Having knowledge and knowing the use of the knowledge are both important. If you enjoy chasing your tail, I can't stop you from doing so. I am amused by the overwhelming ignorance of those who think they've created a new understanding of anarchism.

[Unvanguard]

293. Nothing "new" about it.

Actual anarchist thinkers have never advocated "no rules" or "chaos."

Social anarchism advocates collective democratic associations, much like most anarchists in this thread. Individualist anarchism advocates a sort of non-capitalist free market. Both believe in rules. Indeed, both believe, in a sense, in "government"--as long as it is self-government, self-rule.

Just because the dominant ideologies of our society have difficulty conceiving of rules without rulers doesn't mean it's impossible.

[Unvanguard]

291. "words that have a currency"

Well, apparently not, because it seems to me that virtually every anarchist in this thread is disputing your definition.

But why would we let people who actually advocate something decide what it is they advocate? I mean, that would involve not making ridiculous straw men arguments... and who knows to what depths of reasonableness that would take us?

[anigbrowl]

173. Sorry, my understanding of it is as valid as yours

I'm European, not American, and I judge what something means based on my education and my own interpretation. If you want to project your own interpretation onto the word that's fine, but don't refer me to the dictionary and then complain when I point out it doesn't support your argument.

[bean fidhleir]

207. And "democracy" means "capitalism" today...to listen to certain people

But it doesn't really, any more than "anarchism"/"anarchy" means "chaos". *Authoritarians* claim anarchy means "chaos" because to an authoritarian anyone's freedom but their own is a bad, dangerous idea.

The words that mean chaos, lawlessness, and disorder are "chaos", "lawlessness", and "disorder".

Anarchy/ism means "no ruler", not no government or rules. Anarchism has government: the people themselves. Anarchism has "law and order": laws agreed to by all, and the order that arises out of everyone's desire for freedom.

Emotional infants, who don't understand where real freedom comes from, or who think that they're too special to have to behave in a responsible way (like certain trolls in this thread, actually) would fare badly in an anarchic community. Very badly.

[Radical Activist]

118. I think anarchism is most useful as an oppositional ideology.

It opposes oppression and top-down control in both the public and private sector (while libertarianism and state-socialism do not). Its powerful as an ideal to work toward rather than worrying about the final destination.

[cliffordu]

84. Nope. Too many big words to argue over.

[Tiggeroshii]

96. Like what?

[RandomKoolzip]

85. I'm a Liberal Democrat.

[Iggo]

88. LOL @ anarchists

Every now and then I walk into my office and announce that the police are rounding up the leaders of the Anarchist Movement. My co-irkers mutter things like "Good!" and "It's about time!"

It's little victories like this that get me through the day.

[tama]

91. LOL @ you

"Every now and then I walk into my office" - as in first loosing big way and then seeking bitter solace in little victories? ;-)

[Iggo]

92. Exactly.

B-)

[tama]

89. The basic confusion

There is "anarchism" in theory and theorizing anarchism is as boring as any theorizing. Then there is is anarchy in practice, and whatever it is and means (ecovillages are IMHO the most important anarchistic project currently), it sure as hell is not boring.

[LiberalPersona]

94. hell no

The idea of radical libertarianism scares me, more so than conservatism does.

[leftofthedial]

97. I am

now that we have a one-party system--the corporate party.

[galledgoblin]

109. democratic socialist, but I sympathize with some anarchist ideals

ultimately though, someone has to plow the streets in winter.

[tama]

127. For cars?

Then you not an anarchist, but ruled by cars. :)

[Sundoggy]

110. After today I feel like one n/t

[Tiggeroshii]

120. Why?

[lonestarnot]

112. Not an anarchist, but it is an interesting concept.

May I recommend a book? Ok, Yes I will then. It is a small number of pages with complex ideas. Bola Bola. :hi: and bye.

[On the Road]

113. I Would Not Consider Myself an Anarchist, But...

I think the worldview of writers like Chomsky and Zinn is an indispensable part of forming a healthy worldview. In order to think clearly, it's necessary to remove the patriotic glow and understand how the state acts towards its citizens and towards other nations. Much of that insight seems to come from the anarchist side.

Anarchy means different things to different people. Chomsky himself feels the need for stronger federal power in order to combat the power of private corporations. That does not sounds like someone who wants to rely only on local self-organization.

I have an MBA and am a manager at a large corporation. I fully appreciate the power of free trade and free enterprise. The long boom of the last twenty-five years is astonishing and has created tremendous good for hundreds of millions of people.

But the benefits are so unequally divided that many people, maybe the majority in this country, are worse off now than when Reagan took office. This is an absolute travesty, and it is where the perspective of anarchists, antiglobalists, and other leftists are essential. I am always glad to hear about protests against the WTO and IMF and like institutions, even if their voices are not heard loudly enough and even if the proposals are not always improvements.

The anarchist activists are a part of the solution because they widen the dialogue and influence the balance of opinion. But they do not have the whole story. Killing the capitalist engine of growth is not going to make things better for the average person. The system has to adapt and tilt the playing field the other direction. That is very, very doable under a Democratic president with a mandate.

[Tiggeroshii]

146. I truly appreciate this response

It's clear you understand the basic differences between the authors who I mentioned earlier in this thread. Goldman is an anarchosyndicalist who does not wants to eradicate any oversight by the federal government on trade unions and the like. Such a concept would probably require more revolution and a broader, more immediate set of changes. Zinn and Chomsky's views as you mentioned are far more of a gradual transition. And I, like you, see the importance in such persepctives in this crucial point in American history -even if I won't fully subscribe to them.

[AlCzervik]

115. Agent Mike, are you reading this?

they where bandannas to cover their faces and you think they're going to admit being one here?

[conspirator]

116. I am a modern anarchist. I define anarchy as a society were all men are inter-dependent and

self suficient.
Where no family has enough military or economic power to enslave others, because everyone is educated to be self-suficient and everyone has enough military might to dissuade others from trying to enslave them.
It's impossible to have a perfectly anarchist society with our current level of technology. We depend on other people for resources like energy. You cannot have your own power plant, yet. We also need others to build machines necessary for our survival, like a car, cause most of us don't know how to assemble one. This dependence on resources and technology that you don't master puts the working class in a weak bargaining position, and leads to a feudal society, where the ones on top control these resources and technology.
The way to a more just society is by empowering the little guy with as much useful knowledge as possible. That's why I am in favor of the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Because the same power struggle applies to nations. No country should be a colony of other country. If you want respect you need big guns. Otherwise you will end up like Iraq.

[Radical Activist]

117. Generally, yes.

I'm a big fan of Zinn and Chomsky. I'd like to see democratic principles introduced into the marketplace and I'm skeptical of centralized power either in government or the private sector.

[Jack_DeLeon]

119. To a degree yes, government is responsible for more deaths in the 20th century than anything else...

So I dont think a large powerful central government is a good thing, the role of that government should be to protect us from other governments and make sure our rights are protected.

I'm more for the states and local government doing more as they can be more responsive to the needs of its citizens and they can do the terrible things that a large central government can.

[Jed Dilligan]

122. I guess I like the idea of less power

Less power of people over people and over nature. That will happen naturally in the decline of our unsustainable system. It's something to anticipate, not advocate. It calls for spiritual, not political, teaching.

[tama]

128. Hear hear n/t

[Leopolds Ghost]

123. Depends on what you mean

I do agree with the criticism that folks have the right to personal
posessions. But they should give them away voluntarily. That is a
libertarian christian "socialist" (or more precisely, early church
traditionalist) position.

Interestingly, the Pilgrims who settled Plymoth Rock were hard-core
Christian Communists. They believed in forced redistribution of
wealth. I oppose communism -- it implies that wealth is important.

Which is indeed what the Calvinists and other anti-Marxists believe.
Marxism mucked things up by divorcing itself from the religiously
inspired wing of radical progressive thought. Which is sort of like
the Tibetans renouncing the Dalai Lama as an obstacle to a free Tibet...
religious leftists used to be a great inspiration in the 1300s-1600s.

[ThePowerofWill]

130. I am a bit of one i guess.

More of the European definition than the American though. Yes there is a huge difference as America has twisted the real meaning of Anarchism.

[Tiggeroshii]

148. The real meaning of anarchism remains

But peoples' understanding of it is skewed. I wouldn't be surprised if many people in Europe are simply more educated than Americans and have a better understanding of the theory behind the concept of "Anarchism"

[otherlander]

131. Not yet.

[Generic Brad]

135. I support anarchy...

but only if it is carefully planned and implemented with caution.

[Tiggeroshii]

147. that's what Anarchism proposes.

Anarchism of course, is the phase before anarchy, where measures are put in place that could lead society into an egalitarian stage: anarchy.

[Gabi Hayes]

139. anarcho syndicalist, baby

http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/grail/grail-03.htm

[Tiggeroshii]

164. Very nice.

Any favorite authors/intellectuals of the anarchosyndicalist breed?

[Xenotime]

142. I'm for anything except what we have currently...

It obviously doesn't work and needs to be changed. I can't imagine how some people sleep at night knowing that they have the blood of the suffering on their hands.

[LeftyMom]

143. I have authority issues, and anarchism appeals to that.

On the other hand, I don't know how one would get effective self-regulation in a population where people are generally apathetic, uninformed and herd-minded.

So either there would be a real nasty transition period where people raised to believe that thinking was somebody else's job either caught on or eventually got old and society was dominated by people raised in the new dynamic, or society would fail. Maybe that's addressed, I don't know, I'm not as well read on the subject as I could be. I should ask about that.

[bean fidhleir]

150. "people raised to believe that thinking was somebody else's job"

One thing for which there is A LOT of data from every social-science field is that people -adults especially- don't spend time/energy on things they can't do anything about, *but* when and if they believe the situation has changed, so does their behavior. It even applies to non-humans ("learned helplessness").

So if we change the situation, the majority of people who are now disengaged and apathetic will suddenly "wake up" as if by magic.

I find that a cheering thought.

[Echo In Light]

151. Sort of like the "100th monkey syndrome," so to speak

Baby steps. Yes, it's tedious, but the public mind is changing slowly but surely. We all have to take a breath and remember that from time to time. Public awareness is greater now than it has been since the 60s/70s.

[NoFederales]

152. H. Marcuse? His kind of Anarchy?

sp?

NoFederales

[Echo In Light]

156. Marcuse

Herbert's Hippopotamus: Marcuse and Revolution in Paradise

This documentary examines the turbulent life in California of political philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), author of One-Dimensional Man, Reason and Revolution and Eros and Civilization, among other books, professor of philosophy at the University of California San Diego, and a visionary and influential force for the student movement worldwide during the Sixties and Seventies. Blending archival footage, interviews, re- created scenes and voice-over narration, the video profiles not only the life of Marcuse but also the history of student protest and social activism. The video features interviews with Marcuse's student Angela Davis, former UCSD Chancellor William McGill, colleagues Fredric Jameson and Reinhard Lettau, and rare footage of Marcuse and former California Governor Ronald Reagan. Directed by Paul Alexander Juutilainen«
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5311625903124176509&q=herbert+marcuse&total=12&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

http://igw.tuwien.ac.at/christian/marcuse/odm.html

[baby_mouse]

155. Anarchy is too fragile. It will fail.

It depends on people not wanting to control each other, which is high fantasy.

[conspirator]

165. People want to control each other because resources are scarce, specially energy

Those who control the resources control others.
With tecnology advances maybe someday we won't have to compete for resources. Then anarchy will be easy.

[baby_mouse]

179. No, people want to control each other because it's wired into them.

People are control freaks. Even if there was a technological advance that provided sufficient resources to avoid competition, people would find new ways to fight over them because that's what people have evolved to do. I'm sorry, but I can't see how you're going to reverse millions of years of evolutionary advances geared towards getting ahead of the race.

[tama]

200. Not people

Only civilized people, people conditioned by the social order of civilization, which is short for 'man over nature', hubris of trying to control and use nature with technology.

[baby_mouse]

220. Im not really in favour of just ditching civilisation.

There's a view of civilisation amongst anarchists as somehow tainted and nasty. I don't really know why. I'm not at all convinced that just abandoning the masses to the whims of nature without some attempt at mitigation of its less pleasant tendencies (which attempts really would have to be centralised, considered according to rules and ultimately enforced in some way to be useful) would be very appealing to the masses or acceptable to anyone with any feeling for their fellow humans. The fate of the Katrina victims would be the norm across the globe in the face of natural catastrophes, rather than a ghastly failure of civilisation. There was a popular understanding in that instance that current American civilisation had failed, but I don't think I'd like to just throw the idea of civilisation away because it didn't succeed in that instance.

Also, civilisations bring peace. I hope you're not going to suggest that in the absence of civilisation everyone's simply going to go about their lives peacefully? The current factionalisation of Iraq should provide an example of what can happen in the absence of a Government. It's not just civilised people that want to control each other. It's just that they're generally the ones that do so most successfully, arguably with more beneficial results than the factionalised, tribal control freakery that abounds in civilisation's absence.

[tama]

251. Alas, we'll see

the limits of growth for the final growth based system. Show me a civilization that was not about war and conquer and ideology of man over nature that didn't collapse with enviromental catastrophy.

[muriel_volestrangler]

196. I'd agree that resources, and pollution, are aspects that anarchists need to address

and that I haven't seen done in this thread. Disputes about who gets to grow crops on some land, or whether it's OK for people to dig coal out of the ground and burn it, need a way of settling. And that way needs to look into the future and decide what's fair for everyone - global warming has shown us that. It's hard not to call any body with that sort of power a 'government'.

[tama]

201. One possibility

A self sustained village without leader and hierarchic power strucure learns that a neighbouring village is planning to dig coal to start again the evil of technocratic civilization. They have a communal discussion and come to the consensus to send a spokesperson to other neighbouring villages. After many talks several villages come to consensus to erase the village attempting redo of technocracy and do so, leaving their gardens go wild.

[muriel_volestrangler]

204. So you'd expect the rapid build-up of a military, then?

Erasing villages, or defending your village from erasure, will need that. It sounds rather like starting small states all over again. I'm not entirely sure that a system of inter-village wars is preferable to a large democratic state.

[tama]

210. False analogy

Correct analogy would be: "I'm not entirely sure that a system of inter-village wars is preferable to a system of wars between large democratic states."

And no, I wasn't thinking about build-up of a military. Just using sharp edged farming tools to remove a crop with disease. And I'd like to point out, very emphatically, what should be very obvious: that nothing is fool proof and I am a fool.

[muriel_volestrangler]

217. You're calling the people 'a crop with disease'?

:wow:

[tama]

252. So it seems. n/t

[baby_mouse]

221. An that's not an attempt to control them?

I think you've just contradicted a previous post.

[bean fidhleir]

206. Another possibility

The people (B) who don't want their air polluted by coal fires send delegations to talk with the people (A) who are planning to start up. They discuss the reasons A have for wanting to mine and burn coal, explain their own reasons for opposing it, and offer alternative ways for A to meet their legitimate needs.

Eventually B go home again, either to get on with their lives or to organize an intervention to overthrow the psychopaths who have somehow gained power in A.

[muriel_volestrangler]

209. Remember, from the point of view of a coal miner,

burning coal is part of controlling your own labour. Calling it 'psychopathic' seem a little extreme.

[tama]

211. No way jose

From the point of view of a coal miner mining coal inhumane slavery in the pit for the benefit of some hierarchic (=psychopathic) bureaucracy of a military-industrial complex. Not certainly controlling your own labour in any way.

You can't force people to mine coal or anything without first depraving them of their independence and liberty. Free men often rather die than endure slavery - as did native peoples of Americas.

[muriel_volestrangler]

216. So what about worker-owned collieries in the current system?

Like this one - where they put their own redundancy money into a buy-out, so they kept it, and their jobs, going for another 13 years after the private company that owned it said 'close it down'?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/southeast/sites/rct/pages/towercolliery.shtml

No, people can easily see coal mining, and other activities that involve pollution or exploiting finite resources (eg fishing) as justifiable activities that they'll undertake as a way of earning a living without being employed by a corporation.

[bean fidhleir]

222. "people can easily see coal mining {etc} as justifiable way{s} of earning a living"

There are people who see mass murder as a justifiable way to "earn a living" , too. But that doesn't mean the rest of us must accept their pathology.

Destructive acts shouldn't be performed unless there's no reasonable alternative, and then the global cost from cradle to grave should be FULLY accounted for and assigned to the activity. If that makes coal cost 5000 quid a tonne, so be it.

[baby_mouse]

229. Coal mining is morally equivalent to mass murder?

I think this "rest of us" that you're postulating might have an opinion about that.

"Destructive acts shouldn't be performed unless there's no reasonable alternative, and then the global cost from cradle to grave should be FULLY accounted for and assigned to the activity. If that makes coal cost 5000 quid a tonne, so be it."

Cost? I thought anarchies didn't have money!! At least, all the anarchists I've ever had dealings with (more than most, be assured) want rid of money *first*.

[bean fidhleir]

231. Please don't do that. It degrades the discussion.

The point is not whether two acts are ethically equivalent, but whether a community must accept some behavior merely because someone claims the right to behave that way.

As to money, I suppose there are some anarchists who don't like money, but I've never met one and am not one myself. Money is merely "tokenized labor", and is both useful and ethically neutral.

Where it all goes wrong is when people are not stopped from using money as a weapon, or to buy up other people's basic rights. That's a fatal mistake.

[baby_mouse]

243. What is it you're asking me not to do?

You've taken me aback, I must confess, as the comparison between coal mining and mass murder was made by yourself, not I, as far as I could see. I wish you had expressed your position in the clearer way as you did above the first time around.

Whatever, I guess, your meaning is what you would prefer to be addressed so I shall. Whether or not a community must accept a behaviour because someone claims a right to behave in a certain fashion is a fundamental problem in dealing with human beings regardless of how they organise themselves. I am unclear on how you feel an anarchic society can improve on a democracy in this matter. Your proposition, AFAICS, is that power should be devolved away from hierarchically placed powerful individuals and towards groups, but why? What is it about is model that attracts you? Do you propose that such groups are more likely to arrive at sensible decisions than these individuals? I cannot agree with this, if so, as I can see nothing to prevent groups making the same mistakes of prejudice as an individual, in fact, if anything they're likely to make more mistakes as you can't pragmatically train an entire village to be defense or prosecution lawyers. Perhaps you feel that the subtleties of civilised law are too complex anyway and we just shouldn't have them, relying on group instinct to manipulate the fate of the individuals comprising the group, I'm sorry but that's too alarmingly close to fascism for me and the only successful version I can imagine is composed of individuals sufficiently placid in the face of adversity and the necessity for compromise that they may as well enjoy the benefits of hierarchical civilisation as certainly no such individual could engage in the vices of such.

And now for money, well you're the first anarchist I've ever *met* that didn't want rid of money, so it's nice to see that the ideology has evolved somewhat. It was basically the primary focus for anarchy for myself and my anarchist pals back when I was an anarchist.

I agree with you on your final point in spirit but again, don't see how an anarchy, which is about avoiding using authority to dealing with things, is going to fare any better than any other system with any moderately considered approach to tackling the problem. How is a society absent of any individual authority on the abuse of fiscal instruments, trained and empowered to act on their training, going to be sure that they're not, for example, merely scapegoating the successful? To be sure, the capitalist system we currently inhabit is extremely bad at dealing with this problem, but anarchy proposes NO solution other than relying on the goodwill of those with sufficiently large sums of money and the common sense of those with less, expecting them not to offer their rights up for sale. How would you educate a populace in such matters? I don't see that oral tradition would cut it. Oral tradition favours myth and parable, not the considered intricacies of fiscal policy...

In order to solve societies problems with any efficiency you need authority, in it's original meaning, someone who is an *authority* on a *subject*. Someone who knows what they're talking about, basically. And there's no point in having such figures unless they are empowered to act on their knowledge, or they'll spend the entire time grappling with superstition, hysteria, muddled thinking, prejudice and the host of demons that have plagued humanity since the dawn of time. Any human agency working for change to the good will be opposed, and not through malice but simply through the ordinary and rather useless tendency of human beings to reject authority, or any other communicative mode, really, where this mode urges change or action.

[tama]

253. Seven generations

"Cost" as in a generation fouling up and their children suffering the cost.

And to my understanding anarchy is about letting other people decide for themselves, e.g whether to use money or not - as long as they don't put limits on others. "Don't do to others what you don't want done to you".

[tama]

263. Similar in Bolivia

Worker co-ops taking over mines abandoned by capitalist.

But in both cases it was the capitalist/imperialist that started the mine. Workers in those cases just continue to make a living the way they were conditioned by capitalism - or "archism".

[bean fidhleir]

213. I think the point might be that in an anarchic society, jobs exist to get necessary things done, not

to make money for the few. So unless there were no alternative to coal, coalmining would be classed with war, rapine and pillage, forest clearcutting, ocean-bottom scalping, etc.

[muriel_volestrangler]

215. 'get necessary things done'?

Who decides what things are necessary? Who decides the point at which harvesting wood becomes 'clearcutting'? That's the kind of thing I want a democratic government for.

[bean fidhleir]

218. An anarchic society *IS* a democratic government.

Do you perhaps mean an authoritarian government like the one we have now, where the elite few issue ukazy to the rest of us?

Who is it that decides what things are necessary right now? Whoever has money, that's who! Is that the kind of society you want? Where healthcare for ordinary people isn't necessary, but spying on us is?

SOMEone is obviously going to decide every question. Do you want that someone to be the few or the many?

My impression of you is that you're usually well over on the side of good sense, MV. Have you just not thought enough about this issue, or what?

[muriel_volestrangler]

225. I think the term 'anarchy' is being used to cover too much, in this thread

While tama uses it to mean independent villages that might combine at times to 'erase' a village they don't agree with, you see is as a properly democratic government, that would decide what jobs are and aren't necessary for the common good (and, if necessary, 'overthrow psychopaths').

[bean fidhleir]

228. Not really. We're merely using different examples. "Anarchy" is an abstraction, after all

Anarchy means no rulers. That's the basic, ground-floor meaning. It implies democracy, because if there are no rulers, then everyone is equal politically.

If you don't have rulers, how do you get communal things done? By democratic negotiation. Everyone who wants something done about issue A gets together and, if there are enough of them, they talk about it until they come to agreement. If there are too few, or they can't come to agreement, nothing gets done about A, too bad.

Once there's agreement, someone might be delegated to actually do A (run the postoffice, cut the grass around the library, be a judge, collect the rubbish, etc). That person then becomes part of "the government", but the amount of increased power they have is roughly zero. They're a delegate and a functionary, not a noble. They're performing a service for the community, not ruling over it. The power never for an instant leaves the hands of the community.

If Jane is the delegated dustman, she might have the "power" to tell you to have your bin on the pavement by Friday at 6am, but all that happens if you don't is that it doesn't get emptied. If she's the delegated judge, she might have the power to send you to jug without the option of a fine. But if that oversteps what the community expects, her decision can be overturned by the community and, if need be, she can be un-delegated. Neither dusties nor judges are members of any ruling class, merely citizens being paid to meet the community's needs.

[baby_mouse]

230. This is where it falls to bits...

"If she's the delegated judge, she might have the power to send you to jug without the option of a fine. But if that oversteps what the community expects, her decision can be overturned by the community and, if need be, she can be un-delegated."

Then she ain't a judge. What's she doing, if this is the extent of her power, other than expressing an opinion? What distinguishes her from any other member of the community?

If she's the same as any other member of the community and they overturn her decision and stick you in the box, what'd distinguishes them from a lynch mob? What PREVENTS lynch mobs?

[bean fidhleir]

232. You sound like you approve of the idea of a ruling class

What she's doing, as a judge, is spending her time performing a service. That's what makes her a judge - that the community says she can perform that service and they'll abide by her decisions unless she oversteps the bounds they set.

This is not the special, strange idea you seem to think. Do you suppose that a judge under the current system who is crazy enough to sentence a jaywalker to death is going to have their decision carried out? Of course they won't. It'll be overturned. The only difference is who will do the overturning.

Right now we live in an authoritarian society in which we are peasants with, effectively, no power. That was proven -again- yesterday, with the telco immunity.

In an anarchic society, *we* would do the overturning, unless we decided that we didn't want to spend the time watching the courts, in which case we could put an appellate system in place and watch *their* (lower volume) decisions. Or even have the same levels as today and only watch SCOTUS decisions. But the point is that *we*, not some ruling class above us, would be where the buck stops.

[baby_mouse]

246. What I approve of is trained professionals empowered to act.

If you wish to substitute the term "ruling class" for this then you are essentially paying semantic games. If you simply deny the usefulness of authoritative figures trained to act in the public good, then I think your position is sufficiently far from mine that there's little point in continuing the discussion. Some people know more about how to proceed through the minefield of problems that face humanity than others, simple as that. You may prefer a society in which every individual is trained well enough to judge for themselves how drains should be dug, tribal warfare should be fought and resolved, illness should be treated, fraud should be exposed and dealt with, propaganda dissolved, superstition and hysteria thwarted and so on, but this may prove more time-consuming than such a society's individuals can afford.

What she's doing, as a judge, is spending her time performing a service. That's what makes her a judge - that the community says she can perform that service and they'll abide by her decisions unless she oversteps the bounds they set.

If the community decrees what bounds she has overstepped, why have her at all? Why not just put all cases to the community? What happens when a small enclave of the community decides to stone her because she thinks their favourite uncle should go to jail for murdering the guy who assaulted him with a pick-axe him last week? What happens when the judge herself starts surreptitiously judging in favour of the farmer she intends to marry in cases where his land rights are under dispute?

Who reviews her cases? Where are her PEERS?

All you're doing is stripping out all the useful stuff, motivated, it seems, from a vague notion that it's somehow too complicated.

This is not the special, strange idea you seem to think.

There's nothing particularly strange or special about authoritative figures making use of their knowledge and power for the public good. Human history is replete with examples of the same.

Do you suppose that a judge under the current system who is crazy enough to sentence a jaywalker to death is going to have their decision carried out? Of course they won't. It'll be overturned. The only difference is who will do the overturning.

Why bother with it, then? You've just asserted in your jaywalking instance that there's no difference in result between an anarchic approach and a hierarchical one. What is the benefit in changing who does the overturning? If you're admitting that there's no functional difference, in that instance, why do you favour the anarchic approach? Why should an entire community be landed with law enforcement when their input adds no value?

I think you've missed a fundamental property of justice, the judge is dealing, *always* with *two* communities, not one, those contra and those pro. Judges and juries exist to resolve disagreements, to deal with problems where it is already established that there is NO consensus, not rubber-stamp decisions made by united communities. Your model only works when everyone already agrees on what's supposed to happen to the criminal. Setting aside the fact that this is an extremely unlikely scenario in any criminal case, your model has no need for a criminal justice system, populism apparently rules and the fate of the accused is guided, essentially, by the whim of the masses. This, to me, is amazingly bad.

You understand that in your model the majority of the judge's decisions would be contested by one side or the other? And that either side could claim an injustice if she didn't favour them, based on any number of emotionally charged criteria? She could be accused of favouritism? How would you decide which "we" gets to overturn her decision? The bigger "we"? No need for a judge then, and why should she bother? And what's to stop the bigger "we" from hanging the guy because he's black, for example? Who's going to stop us? Given that we are the enfranchised "we" absent a ruling class, who's to say that we're even wrong in hanging him because he's black? We can do whatever we like. Anybody attempting to stop us would be "authoritarian", which is bad.

Right now we live in an authoritarian society in which we are peasants with, effectively, no power. That was proven -again- yesterday, with the telco immunity.

No. That is not true.

I am not tied by circumstance inescapably to an agricultural economy nor is my accommodation provided by a landlord. I am not essentially conservative by nature. I am loyal to no *particular* model of stratified society, as was the case in Medieval Europe prior to the Black Plague and largely thereafter for some time. I live in 21st Century Scotland, a country made literate by the advance of the printing press and liberated from the endless toil of physical labour by the advances of industrialised agriculture. I am free to use my time to specialise and hone my skills such that I may choose my career, within the limits of my abilities and according the vagaries of the marketplace. My labor is expensive, not cheap, and my life is not subject to the whims of kings and knights seeking honour and glory. It is unlikely in the extreme that bands of marauders will ride past my cottage and set fire to its thatched roof, distracting me and my family long enough to steal my chickens. I HAVE no chickens.

I am not a peasant.

I wish you wouldn't call me one. It's a trick. It's an emotionally laden falsehood, basically, designed to stir up feelings of persecution and injustice. It's propaganda, spin, flim-flam. I wish you wouldn't do it. It makes me doubt your sincerity. I daresay you aren't a peasant either, although I could be wrong.

I distinguish between authoritarian societies, such as made up the bulk of Medieval Europe's culture, focusing on maintaining authority entirely for it's own sake, and societies that merely *contain* authoritative figures for the sake of the benefits that ensue from the same. Do you?

RE: The telco immunity ruling, could you explain to me how an anarchic approach would improve on the current situation? The wrong decision was made, assuredly. What is it about an anarchy that would prevent it from making the same mistake?

Let us be clear, the contentious issue is that it has been ruled that officials breaking the law to abuse the privacy of individuals will not be prosecuted. Why would the citizens of an anarchy make a different decision? Each citizen would have the power to affect the fate of every citizen. In such a society, what would privacy mean? How could we assume that privacy in such a society would have the same (extensively devalued, admittedly) currency that it has in ours? If all individuals have the right to know the ins and outs of all criminal cases, how could you expect them to take a claim of privacy violation seriously? If anything the kind of anarchy you describe would be even *more* likely to rule against the prosecution of these officials than the currently politically compromised democratic structure.

That the authority granted to the elected has been abused is, in my view, and I think yours also, unquestionable, but this abuse is a degradation of the abuser and the abused, not the concept of authority itself.

In an anarchic society, *we* would do the overturning, unless we decided that we didn't want to spend the time watching the courts, in which case we could put an appellate system in place and watch *their* (lower volume) decisions. Or even have the same levels as today and only watch SCOTUS decisions. But the point is that *we*, not some ruling class above us, would be where the buck stops.

Yeah. Why? What's better about this? Better decisions? Why? Quicker decisions? How? Less prejudiced decisions? Cough, splutter.

If you leave it to the community the BUCK NEVER STOPS ANYWHERE. That's the point. It just gets bounced back and forth until somebody shoots someone. That's why you give the right to enforce law to trained professionals able to take responsibility for the buck, and reward them accordingly. There has to be a *disinterested* party able to follow agreed principles established prior to any disagreement with a monopoly on force, otherwise feuds just go on forever and ever. The community, unless trained or indoctrinated not to, which indoctrination wil lhave to be maintined by figures in authority, I'm afraid, will assuredly conflate the aspects of each case with their own personal experience and "vote" accordingly. (I'm going to assume you'll put each case to the vote. If you genuinely believe that in each case the entire anarchic populace will have the same view as if by magic, I'm afraid you and I have views of human beings far too different for us to communicate on this subject effectively).

You appear to wish to exchange a society with, nominally at least, a standard by which the accused and their cohorts could measure their experience of justice, a standard enforced by a small number of trained professionals publically supposed to be focussed on maintaining the most clear and unprejudiced view of crime on a case by case basis, (whether they do or not, it is always more in their interest to remain disinterested to avoid as far as possible the accusation of favouritism and compromise of their position) for a society in which the accused may expect to be judged by a phone poll, whose participants will face no consequences whatsoever however they may vote.

Can you understand why I think this is absolutely appalling?

I suspect your faith in the ability of groups to manage themselves in an unprejudiced and effective fashion without the interference of what I'm guessing you would see as useless interlopers is related more to a reaction of outrage at the visibly widespread abuse of authority than any solidly considered positive examples of the success of your model. There is no arguing with the fact that the current figures of authority we toil under are useless, but that is *their* fault, not the fault of the position that they hold. What you seem to seek is the stripping out of all of society's checks and balances, all the work done over the centuries towards a rational view of society's resources and problems. The education that has revealed to you and I the unfairness of the abuse of hierarchical positions has come from other members of same hierarchical system, how will you replace this education and distinguish it from authoritarianism? In the absence of this hierarchical system, or indeed of any kind of hierarchy of ethics, a belief structure that holds there are some behaviours better than others, to what system of values would an anarchy tend? The pubic good? Why? Why should it? Any individual claiming any position to be better than any other can be pointed at and accused of almost anything. People in positions of authority must demonstrate that their positions are sound, people with no authority espousing opinions to the effect that one position is better than another aren't expected to be compromised by anything if they're wrong. The result? No incentive to get anything right, endless meetings and nothing ever getting done.

I should point out that you're talking to an ex-anarchist. What finally decided me on this issue was sharing accommodation with a hardcore revolutionary anarchist whose position on doing the washing up was: "we'll see who cracks first".

After several years of doing all the housework I gave up on him and anarchy forever.

[bean fidhleir]

267. It sounds like there's nothing more to be said between us.

We live, as it were, in different worlds.

[bean fidhleir]

269. Oh, and I'm sorry about your experience with the washing-up

but your experience is hardly universal despite what you might like to think. I'm sure you were living with someone who claimed to be an anarchist purely as a cloak for his personal irresponsibility. A real anarchist would have negotiated a rota with you or separated from you if you wouldn't negotiate in good faith.

Which is also, broadly, why I'm not going to try to continue discussing anarchism with you.

For a discussion to not be uphill all the way, it requires that everyone understand and accept that a political change places no natural laws at risk nor does it cause the upheaval of all previous ways of doing things.

So when you claim not to understand why an anarchic society would want to delegate the role of judge, or you try to impeach it by postulating unfairness in the judge or lawlessness in the community, I can only suppose that you think natural laws would no longer apply. Or that you're unaware that judicial unfairness and community lawlessness occur in the world you now live in, too. Or that you're being deliberately irresponsible in your partisanship. Whatever the explanation, it's a trap I'm not quite fool enough to walk into.

[tama]

255. What prevents lynch mobs?

You and you alone. Anarchy is not about escaping responsibility but accepting it fully.

[muriel_volestrangler]

234. Well, since you yourself have agreed with the statement

"the State Form is also an evil" in another post, then you seem to think there should be no state in which to practice democracy. And then we have someone else, apparently agreeing with the same post you agree with, using the Bakunin quote about "responsible only to themselves, and then to the society to which they belong, but only insofar as they have made a free decision to belong to it."

If you say "If there are too few, or they can't come to agreement, nothing gets done about A, too bad", then what if the miners don't agree to stop mining? Nothing gets done, too bad. It's a bit different from your earlier argument about removing the psychopaths. And according to Bakunin, the miners are at liberty to continue mining coal, because they haven't made a free decision to listen to those who object to burning coal.

So, we're left without states (because they're evil), but we want people to be judges, run a postal service, collect rubbish and dispose of it in the most environmentally sound way possible, and more.

Has anyone ever attempted any of those, without a state? Let alone in a world with over 6 billion people?

[bean fidhleir]

239. You're conflating things

I've never read Bakunin and hold no brief for him or anything he said.

You're mistaken about my putative agreement with "the state form is also an evil", since it's much too broad and indefinite a statement for me to take any single position on it. I don't even know what it's meant to mean.

I don't know what to say about people's responsibility to the political entity within which they live. "Love it or leave it" is a bit ridiculous, today, since there's nowhere anyone trying to "leave it" can freely go.

On the other hand, we already know it's a disaster to allow individuals to make up their own laws ("privi-lege") while living in a larger political space. I think the only way an anarchic state could solve that problem is by providing Lockean property to any dissident and cutting off contact. It might involve a lot of practical problems. On the other hand, an anarchic world would surely have plenty nooks and crannies for dissidents.

Which miners are you talking about, the community A or the few people in community B? And *WHY* wouldn't they agree to stop? There are indeed people who want whatever they want whenever they want it and think their desires represent natural law, but they usually get over themselves by about the age of 5. Not many people ignore the rights of other people; fairness is being shown experimentally to be a *major* human desideratum across all cultures (the "ultimatum game").

So there's no reason to accept that people would automatically dig in their heels and refuse to cooperate out of sheer bloody-mindedness. That's not even a behavior associated with our competitive, hierarchical society - the few who do that are considered ill-tempered cranks and treated accordingly.

As to people doing anarchy in our world - we all behave anarchically all the time, every day, even in that most feudal of all environments, the workplace. Even when we don't need to, we still do it because very few of us want to spend our lives throwing sand in other people's gears. It takes an unusual personality to spend a lot of time exercizing petty destructive power, and nearly everyone like that is an emotional casualty of our hierarchical, competitive way of life who could benefit from therapy. The rest of us cooperate voluntarily, practice self-control, behave pleasantly or at least neutrally, and get to spend 99% of our energy in ways that have a constructive payoff for us.

But politically and economically we're still under the thumbs of a ruling class, and I don't think I need go into detail about what that's costing us, day in and day out.

[muriel_volestrangler]

240. I think that's proving my point that 'anarchy' is being used to mean too many things here

you said post #214 was saying the same things as you; and someone agreeing with it quoted Bakunin. I am now very confused as to what form of state you're suggesting.

You ask "why wouldn't they agree to stop?" For roughly the same reasons that people currently don't agree to stop using coal - it benefits them, and the disadvantage is too far in the future and too remote from them (us?) to care. This goes not just for mining and burning coal, but all kinds of resources that can be overused (eg forests, fisheries) or activities that produce waste. But with governments that can produce laws about it, and enforce them, we have a chance to change the behaviour.

Yes, our everyday behaviour is frequently anarchistic - but there are laws and a system capable of changing and enforcing them that we can fall back on, in case of dispute. I'd like to see more of that at an international level.

[bean fidhleir]

242. My sense is that you're arguing against the current situation AS THOUGH it were anarchic

When I agreed with 214, it was to his general thesis: that anarchism is not an idealism and "human nature" is not butterflies and fluffy kittens. It's our nature to be able to make *radical* changes in our behavioral repertoires as individuals. Much more than any other species, we are products of our socialization.

When I use the term state in the sense of an anarchic state, I only mean the people as a group who have enough of the same interests to consider themselves part of the same political organism. People who have some confidence that anyone they meet is following the same rules. At any given moment that "state" might be a group and space as small as a neighborhood or as large as the planet, depending on the issue at hand (e.g., the local park or the progress of the climate disaster).

When you talk about the miners not stopping because carrying on would benefit them, you're still thinking in terms of a competitive world, constructed of artificial scarcity for the benefit of the few. That's our world today for sure, constructed to benefit the ruling class, but it's not an anarchic world.

An anarchic world lacks ruling classes. Without parasitic ruling classes, the rat race stops. There is no longer anyone who benefits from keeping people slaving away destroying the planet to make crap that nobody wants. Everything slows down. People turn to doing stuff that's real, not stuff that has no purpose other than a bigger yacht for some multi-millionaire. They grow food, they write software, they recycle houses, they provide services, they spend time being sociable. They loaf. The stock exchanges - casinos for the ruling-class aspirants - go away. Standing armies go away, because they exist only to enforce the competitive desires of the various ruling classes. The sociopolitical world *changes*.

And people like the notional miners stop risking their lives to get stuff with which to pollute the world. Because they no longer have to do it (presuming we have better energy sources). Who in hell would go thousands of feet underground every day to do horrible sweaty life-taking work if they're not being forced to? Nobody. A person would have to be crazy to do that voluntarily, wouldn't they?

Same thing with WMDs. In a world of political equality, who's going to allow some criminal lunatic to set up a lab to create WMDs? Would you? I wouldn't. I'd shoot the bastard and rely on my peers to understand and acquit me of wrongdoing.

We're living in a world where we're poorly-educated peasants being kept in the dark for purposes to which 90% of us would **never** give informed consent. We're stunted, and it's easy to see that. All we need do is compare ourselves to the elites. They're of no better genetic stock, but the advantages of their enriched environment are painfully obvious. We would have those advantages - if it weren't in the interest of the ruling class to keep them from us.

So when you talk about the advantages of having governments to enforce good behavior, you're again thinking in ruling-class terms. They want us to believe we need them. But we don't. We can be the government. We can enforce our own rules. We can *automagically* eliminate on the order of 80% of the crap behaviors the way Deming taught us: change the system. Change the system, the behaviors change to match. Take away the power of the greedy few, nearly all the behaviors that go into servicing them stop.

[muriel_volestrangler]

244. You're sounding pretty idealistic, to me

You start by saying "anarchism is not an idealism and "human nature" is not butterflies and fluffy kittens.", but then say:

"An anarchic world lacks ruling classes. Without parasitic ruling classes, the rat race stops. There is no longer anyone who benefits from keeping people slaving away destroying the planet to make crap that nobody wants. Everything slows down. People turn to doing stuff that's real, not stuff that has no purpose other than a bigger yacht for some multi-millionaire. They grow food, they write software, they recycle houses, they provide services, they spend time being sociable. They loaf. The stock exchanges - casinos for the ruling-class aspirants - go away. Standing armies go away, because they exist only to enforce the competitive desires of the various ruling classes. The sociopolitical world *changes*."

That's not the message of #214, nor of your opening sentence. It's idealistic. Given the chance to consume the products of an industrial society, the typical human does, and will work to do so, without being forced to by the ruling classes. You can see this in developing countries.

The thing is, miners don't do it "to get stuff with which to pollute the world"; they do it to get something which keeps people warm (and thus alive), or that provides very useful power. They hope that the pollution it produces won't be a big problem. If it were done on a small scale, we'd hardly notice it; but there's a problem when it's the basis for billions of lives. And when you say "presuming we have better energy sources", you're being idealistic again (though that's by no means limiting to proponent of anarchism).

"A person would have to be crazy to do that voluntarily, wouldn't they?"

Well, I gave an example of people who did, in #216. I didn't find your comparison of it to a 'pathology' helpful. But you really seem to mean that. And there's still the problem of activities that most people find acceptable, and even worthy, when done in moderation, such as fishing. In excess, it can cause environmental damage.

Would I shoot someone setting up a WMD lab? No, but I'd want to do something to stop them. But you can't seriously compare coal or fishing to manufacturing WMDs. They have benefits as well as problems. And when you want to set up a government to decide what's a problem, that's a state. You seem to be suggesting we can set up a governmental system at a moment's notice, tailored to whatever decision comes up. Given the near impossibility of getting people to agree on changes to governmental systems (eg how difficult it is to get a US constitutional amendment passed, or an EU treaty), I just don't think you can. We need a state with a set of principles and laws already worked out, as far as possible.

[bean fidhleir]

245. "We need a state with a set of principles and laws already worked out, as far as possible"

Does that mean we need a ruling class? That seems to be the stumbling block here. Anarchists like me say No, we don't. We can have as much of a state as we want to create, and we can have it WITHOUT having a ruling class. You seem to be missing or rejecting that part, but it's not clear why.



You call the idea that things would change "idealism", which I presume includes the concept "unrealistic". It usually does.

But for it to be idealism, you have to believe (and this is a placeholder for the giant laundry list that anyone at DU could produce) that BushCo lied us into mass-murder and crimes against humanity for no reason.

If it's "idealism" to believe things would change greatly without a ruling class sitting on our necks choking us, you have to believe that Bush could simply have said "I'm going to send the military over to Iraq to take over their oilfields. My orders will be to kill anyone who thinks about resisting, strip their country of its treasures, set up a puppet government, and squat there until the oil runs out. Oh, yeah, and our troops will take maybe 100K casualities but that's a price we're willing to pay". And everyone would have obediently nodded their heads and gone along because that's what the rest of us wanted to do anyway. So he needn't have lied. He just lied....because.

And similarly you have to believe that we DO want to be spied on, we DON'T want a safety net, we DON'T want healthcare, we DON'T want fair elections, we DO want to work 60-hour weeks, we DO want to be at risk of losing our homes (or want to not be able to afford one to begin with), we DO want a police state and on and on and on. You have to believe that even if we ourselves were in power, nothing would change.

But how could you *possibly* believe that and still be running around loose? How could you not have been led away by kindly people in white coats?



As to the coal and my genuflection about better sources, please be less literal if you can. You (or was it Tama?) were the one who started with the coal example, not I. I only followed along. It didn't have to be coal, it could have been anything.




As to people being willing to work to "consume the products of an industrial society", sure. So what? Are you claiming that, given the choice between 10 hrs work to buy for themselves vs 20 hrs to buy for themselves AND the ruling class that they're going to choose to support the ruling class? I hope you're not, because that would fly in the face of every scrap of data anyone has ever collected.

[muriel_volestrangler]

268. No, we don't need a ruling class

But the definition of a 'ruling class' isn't that easy to arrive at, and I'm not sure what your actually is; and since it seems key to your definition of anarchism, maybe we better make it explicit.

Is is made up of people who inherited more than a certain amount of money? Those who have more than a certain amount of money? Those who have used their money in a certain way? Those who get positions of power through nepotism?

It seems to me that "we can have as much of a state as we want to create, and we can have it WITHOUT having a ruling class" is not anarchism, but socialism. Others on this thread are still saying government is a bad thing. And I think you'll need tight rules to prevent the re-emergence of a 'ruling class', if it's based on how much money someone has.

"But for it to be idealism, you have to believe (and this is a placeholder for the giant laundry list that anyone at DU could produce) that BushCo lied us into mass-murder and crimes against humanity for no reason.
...
"

No, I don't see that that follows. I'm saying that your claim that without a ruling class, our collective urge to consume would 'automagically' disappear is unfounded, and idealistic. I'm not saying people naturally want war, naturally reject collective healthcare, and so on; I'm saying that we do, on the whole, want goods, and that can mean people may turn a blind eye to war etc., as has currently happened. But even if we reorganised so that a state's ability to make war disappears, the problems of finite resources and waste disposal won't go away with the removal of a ruling class. I think you are idealistically claiming they will - that our entire nature will change when there are no Rupert Murdochs around. Now, if you still allow a state, then we'll have decent processes to work through those problems; but I think we need a state, and the dictionary definition (and what others are using here) of anarchy is 'absence of government'.

[bean fidhleir]

279. I define "ruling class" in broadly the same way that, e.g., Bill Domhoff does

He uses different terms, usually Wright Mills's "power elite". He defines it as the cross-national intersection of three networks: "the corporate community, the social upper class, and the policy-formation network". In other words, the people who use their wealth and position to run the world for their personal benefit.


I think I mentioned previously that anarchism, socialism, and democracy are all the same thing at bottom.

In a world where there is no ruling class, everyone is by definition politically equal.

Where people are politically equal, we necessarily have democracy--or at the least, polyocracy ("polyarchy" in Prof. Dahl's lexicon).

The sine qua non of socialism is that the people own their own "means of production". Where people are politically equal, the majority are not going to tolerate differences in economic power that are not supported by differences in "virtue". (This truth was laid out quite bluntly by Madison during the 1787 Convention as a reason for putting barriers to democracy into the constitution they were drafting.) But even when the economic field is leveled to begin with, the law of entropy guarantees it won't remain level for long. Accidents happen, people lose what they have through no fault of their own. But loss re-creates inequality, which makes democracy impossible and begins to create a new ruling class, harming anarchy. So to prevent that harm, it's necessary to have an ongoing re-levelling. Which represents full-bloom socialism.




"I'm saying that we do, on the whole, want goods, and that can mean people may turn a blind eye to war etc., as has currently happened. But even if we reorganised so that a state's ability to make war disappears, the problems of finite resources and waste disposal won't go away with the removal of a ruling class."

I'll quote Greider here, from "Fortress America", p 172. Just after he recounts the results of some careful surveys ("Americans Talk Issues" http://www.publicinterestpolling.com/ ) about war in which 70-93% said that we should be spending our money and influence on the environment, peace, and true democracy, he writes:

Can this be the same American public we read about in the newspapers? The folks wh supposedly despise the UN? Who are bored by foreign affairs, oblivious to global problems, ready to withdraw from the world? Evidently not.

Or perhaps there are two quite different "publics" present in American political life -- one whose positive reflections are largely neglected and another whose fears or misgivings are endlessly massaged and amplified in order to energize political campaigns and causes. Certainly, the "progressive" public gets very little representation by political leaders of stature

It isn't virtue that keeps a ruling class in power, it's a mix of mystification and thuggery. They spend vast amounts of (our) money keeping us mystified about what they're doing and why, and if we're insufficiently gulled they send in the cops to start breaking heads and shooting us.

Get rid of the ruling class, and all that mystification stops.

As the surveys show, real information produces responsible choices. People aren't by nature stupid. We're *made* stupid by being mystified 24/7. But it's an imperfect process because it denies reality, and they can't completely insulate us from reality. We can get a glimpse from time to time of what's really going on, and we gradually build up resistance to the lies.

So it's common sense, not "idealism", to realize that they wouldn't need to relentlessly propagandize us if we were already willing to be human locusts, consuming everything in our paths without regard to the future. They do it precisely because we are NOT willing. Get rid of the ruling class, and we can start making our own choices for a change - which, as the surveys show, would be healthier ones.


"The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it."

[bean fidhleir]

281. There were 2 points you made that I didn't respond to, but should have

"And I think you'll need tight rules to prevent the re-emergence of a 'ruling class', if it's based on how much money someone has."

It is based on wealth, but not completely so (as I pointed out using Domhoff's words). And your point here is very well-taken. We don't want to eliminate wealth, we want to eliminate the *abuse* of wealth - Orwell's "some are more equal than others".

Jefferson showed us the way there: when political power is in the hands of a few, they can be bought or intimidated by those who have economic power. So to thwart that abuse, we principally need to de-concentrate the political power. Put it into everyone's hands, not the hands of the few. Then, as Jefferson joked, everyone would have to bribe or intimidate themselves.

If we ALSO deconcentrate economic power, the innoculation against the resurgence of a ruling class is as complete as short-lived humans can make it. If "starvation knows no law", it's also true that "who needs food has no freedom". We have choices -thus freedom- according to how securely our animal needs are being met




"I think we need a state, and the dictionary definition (and what others are using here) of anarchy is 'absence of government'"

Is it fair to argue with me about a position I don't hold? That isn't what anarchy means to any anarchist I know, and I have no intention of trying to defend it. To me and every other anarchist of whom I'm aware, "government" is merely the entity that manifests the communal will for communal purposes. It's our joint avatar, as it were. Which means that if we have no government, we have no society and are reduced to a Hobbesian "state of nature" in which life is nasty, brutish, and short, spent mostly trying to knock dinner on the head without falling out of the tree.

But because we need a government doesn't mean that we need a ruling class other than ourselves.

[tama]

260. Social conditioning

"Given the chance to consume the products of an industrial society, the typical human does, and will work to do so, without being forced to by the ruling classes. You can see this in developing countries."

There are still some "atypical" tribes that succesfully refuse any and all contact with industrial society. That means that when industrial society collapses and people depending on it die, not all humans die. Only the typical humans die.

[tama]

258. Sadly

the disadvante is not too far in the future but all over and everywhere, and the collapse of the hierarchic system based on fossile fuels is happening right now, before your eyes. Only starting now, getting worse day by day, year by year.

[tama]

256. Anarcho-primitivism

Tama just puts more weight on primitivism than anarchism. He does not really believe that a anarchistic community can function without service of a shaman.

[baby_mouse]

224. Oh cool, tribal warfare. That's great.

Sorry, but you get to do that only once, and then the delegations of of tribe B, sent next month to village C to try and convince them not to clear the neighbouring scrubland for crops because that's where the Bs catch their rabbits, get their heads cut off.

ALTERNATIVELY,

A, B and C band together. Representatives of A, B and C (and probably D and E as well) sit down and discuss all these issues and similar with the affected parties across all villages and try and establish a consensus, before any chopping or overthrowing. to make sure nobody does any chopping of heads, A, B, C and so on get their tribal members to volunteer to form a head-chopping force ready to chop off anyone's head that looks like they're going to do any overthrowing.

Consensus is reached. A, B and C agree that some members of each tribe will build their coal fires far away under steam turbines to provide the magic that is electricity (the technology for which is provided by village C), enabling all villages to have electric kettles. C will only clear half the scrubland and will give some crops to B in exchange for some rabbits, enabling a balanced diet for both. A get their hot stuff. B get their clean air. C get rabbits. Nobody gets their head chopped off and everyone feels very motivated to come to a consensus as a result of the head-choppers.

(Of course, bean fidhleir, if your position is that people just shouldn't be allowed electric kettles powered by nasty coal then this makes the solution impossible. Perhaps we could use wind-turbines, but the villages would need the expertise to do this. Ah-ha! Village X does wind-turbines. But why should they come all the way over to villages A, B and C to provide this knowledge? Also one member of village X has turned out to have bubonic plague. The plot thickens...)

[bean fidhleir]

236. Are you really so literal-minded that you can't go beyond the information given?

I'd have thought it obvious that the scenario where B starts organizing an overthrow of the people in charge in A is because A refused to consider any alternate way to meet their needs. In my mind that was implied by my statement that B would talk with A about alternate ways of getting A's legitimate needs met. You couldn't see that?

[baby_mouse]

247. Yes, it was obvious what you had imagined.

What was it about my post that led you to suspect I hadn't seen it?

You seem to be missing the point. It is the overthrow itself to which I object. You find it acceptable, I do not. I prefer a system in which A's refusal to cooperate with B is mitigated not by tribal warfare but by a centralised system held to some kind of standard by all. Whereas your system depends on the good judgement solely of the members of B, whom I distrust, given that they are ordinary human beings. You feel that if B is wronged B must enforce it's will. I say that it must NEVER be B enforcing its will, but a disinterested party held to a more widely accountable standard than those of B. That is where we differ.

It was, of course, entirely obvious how your scenario played out in your mind. It is, in fact, the way that scenario played out in your mind that I was taking issue with. How did you manage to find otherwise?

Your scenario is too nebulous to be meaningful. In reality A may have reasons for not considering alternatives that B, culturally, will not accept. What you are proposing is not a good enough society for human beings to live in.

[tama]

212. The other way around

Anarchy is the norm in pre-technocratic communities - or pre and post-technocratic societies. The more complex technology a civilization developes, the more dependent living becomes of tech-wizards of every ilk - until the civilization collapses because of the enviromental damage the technology caused. Since plough tech to fusion reactor tech the same story repeats until the final civilization: this global one.

[baby_mouse]

226. The British Empire didnt collapse through environmental damage.

Neither did Rome. And the civilised aspects of the lives of the citizens of these empires remained somewhat intact; much of the legislature continued. There was some environmental degradation of the British countryside through the advance of the Industrial Revolution but that's not the fault of civilisation itself.

The Aztecs didn't collapse, they were just conquered. They had a really good relationship with their environment, (although they were bloodthirsty maniacs).

You've decided, for some reason, that Easter Island is a perfect model for studying civilisation. This is strange, as they weren't particularly civilised. One might go so far as to propose that their collapse could have been averted if they'd been part of a civilisation with a less environmentally destructive myth structure.

The Egyptians had a civilisation that spanned millenia. It was entirely DEPENDENT on a good relationship with their environment.

Are you going to suggest that we simply abandon agriculture itself?

What do you mean by: "Anarchy is the norm in pre-tchnocratic communities"? What's a technocratic community? A community that doesn't use tools?

[tama]

261. Good questions

British Empire has not collapsed - quite yet. It's been taken over US and become the global empire, the final one that is now starting to collapse. After Brits cut all their forests they started burning coal, and then oil followed, and killing the planet. Compare North America before and after Europeans ruined it.

And no, I'm not suggesting we abandon all farming. Only civilized farming that cuts the forests and destroys the soil. Agroforests are not a new idea, it's just what needs to be relearned by the post-civilization survivers.

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

278. FYI

On North America...

There was plenty of killing and war going on long before Europeans came..

[LiberalPersona]

259. No

People have wanted to control each other since the dawn of civilization, even when resources were plentiful.

Conquerers didn't expand their empires for resources, they did it because they enjoyed the taste of power, or because they wished to integrate exotic new civilizations into their own, or they wanted to forcefully expand religious beliefs.

[conspirator]

287. No No No. Resources have never been plentiful. Not in the past nor now.

The problem is: when there is surplus resources, the population grows to use the rest of the resources.
And the part of the population that grows more, are the ones with less resources, the poor.
The leaders themselves, yes they are in it for the thrill of controling people. But armies no.
Why would you enlist to go to the front lines of the armies of gengis khan, and risk getting killed if you had plenty of food to live a happy live. I am sure Genghis Khan stayed behind his armies not in front of them. Just like bush* sits in his ranch while others do the killing in Iraq.
The cannon fodder in wars are usually people that need to fight to eat and to buy a few more things.
My point is: the ruling class won't be able to control the little guy once the little guy has a technology that enables him to have unlimited resources. What that technology might be, I don't know, it's still sci-fi.

[Greyhound]

176. Who do you want to control? n/t

[baby_mouse]

178. I want to control the fundies, for a start. I don't get to, of course, and am smart enough to know

that trying is likely to end up with a worse situation for me and them and everyone else but that's because I know the difference between a useless fantasy and reality. Vast numbers of ordinary people don't and just act on their control fantasies.

Nothing good would come from me having some kind of switch that could just turn fundies into more realistic people. But I don't find it all unrealistic to imagine someone like me who would act on that impulse if he or she could. You can exchange anything for the imaginary "mind-switch", vote-rigging, propaganda, all the way up to a military strike, in an anarchy where there's no centralised regulating mechanism working for the public good what's to stop everybody from just tearing each other to pieces?

[Greyhound]

235. The fact that so few people want to tear others to pieces combined

with the knowledge that there is no other authority and we have to tend to our business ourselves.

Also, without the power/control authoritarian structure you subscribe to, the fundies are incapable of causing the mischief they can now. There is no means to bend others to anybody's will.

[baby_mouse]

249. I don't buy that at all.

The fact that so few people want to tear others to pieces

:shrug: I don't agree with that.

combined with the knowledge that there is no other authority and we have to tend to our business ourselves.

This seems, to me, more likely to encourage tribal warfare than prevent it. There has never been any shortage of young people willing to die for causes, in any political structure. Why would the absence of an authority outer to any given tribe give them pause for thought before raiding a nearby, smaller, less well defended tribe?

I'm wary of assuming that my value system is congruent with that of my fellow human beings. Why should the citizens of an anarchy be .... nice?

Also, without the power/control authoritarian structure you subscribe to, the fundies are incapable of causing the mischief they can now. There is no means to bend others to anybody's will.

Well, except guns, I guess.

I don't see why a mitigation not successfully brought to bear on a public nuisance should be exchanged for no mitigation at all. And I'm not sure if I understand you, do you think the fundies would have less power in the absence of a centralised police force? These are people who blow up abortion clinics as it is. Do you think they would be more or less bold in the absence of the criminal justice system? I think more.

That the current structure favours them is the fault of the individuals currently placed in the necessary positions in that system, not necessarily of the system itself.

I favour a system maintained by *benevolent* authority that is held accountable to its subjects. I do not agree with the proposition that human beings are instinctively ethical or instinctively rational.

Assuredly the standards by which a society conducts itself can be perverted by the use of propaganda, hysteria and manipulation, but removing the system which purportedly maintains *any* standards seems to me a bit like beheading someone because they're a paranoid schizophrenic.

Thing is, greyhound, these three things you bring up, that people don't want to tear each other to bits, that the absence of an outer authority would give warmongers pause for thought, that fundies are better off under the current system than they would be in its absence, they're all *assumptions*. How do we test these assumptions? It might be rather difficult to reinstate the system, once knocked over, if we found that these assumptions were ill-founded.

Anarchy is all about *absence*, absence of standards, absence of structure, absence of objectives. Why is this better than the *presence* of *benevolent* standards, structures and objectives?

[conspirator]

289. Yes. With anarchy some nut guys may still want to shred others to pieces, but the big difference is

if they want to shred someone, they will have to do it themselves, because no one will be receiving orders from anyone.
So things like sending troops to kill inocent people to steal their resources won't happen anymore.
For example if b*sh and ch*ney wanted oil from iraq, they would have to go there themselves fight in desert. I think they would think twice before doing it.

[scarletwoman]

158. You'll find mostly statists on this board.

I don't give much thought to finding a political label for myself. My ideal would be the sort of social organization practiced by many of the pre-European invasion native tribes of this continent, yet I cannot see how that would work outside of a hunter/gatherer culture.

I'm mostly illiterate when it comes to political philosophy in any case, it's not an area of study that I've devoted much attention to. I've read plenty of snippets of Zinn and Chomsky and Goldman, et al, of course, and agreed with much of what I've read.

I find myself in agreement with various aspects of socialism, libertarianism, and anarchism; and over time I've become decidedly anti-statist. But choosing some sort of over-arching political theory with which to identify has never been my thing.

sw

[tama]

202. Anarcho-primitivism

is the current label we are given for feeling how we feel and knowing what we know, and I see no reason not to accept it.

[scarletwoman]

237. Why do I need a label at all? I simply live my life according to my principles as best I can.

I think I'll call it "Scarletwomanism". :)

sw

[tama]

262. Why?

No big reason. Only good reason that comes to mind is that if you want to see and meat others with similar principles, googeling e.g. "anarcho-primitivism" gives more results than "scarletwomanism". :)

[one mean sheath]

159. read up on it at least.

There are huge differences between true anarchy and what suburban Hot-Topic-clad brats like to think it is.
Even if yr not a fan, read about it, educate yourself. It's not all about chaos, disorder and destruction. It in fact requires a basic trust in your fellow human beings. And communal, collective, and cooperative living is a huge part of it - the system that we currently function under is based on and depends the idea of the "individual."
It's cool, I know a lot of people don't like anarchism, think it's dumb, useless, whatever. And I do not like an inherently harmful State. I don't like that the government we have is built and dependent upon a system of exclusion, oppression, and hierarchy. I think it's really unfortunate how apathetic and ignorant our general population has become content to be and how little importance is placed on supporting the communities we live in and local business. (This is not to say everyone, and I'm very thankful that there are politically aware and active people all over. But EVERYONE should be awake and facing forward.) And before you dismiss those crazy anarchists, stop and thank them for your 8 hour work day (this is not to say that this was the sole work of anarchists, but they played a huge role).
I've done my reading and studying and research on liberal democracy - if I'm going to actively speak and act against it, I need to know it, period. So I guess what I'm saying is don't knock it before you try it/get yr facts straight before you knock it.
I don't bust down the windows of Starbucks, though in my heart of hearts I'd probably love to; I work at an independent and local coffee shop down the street from a Starbucks and do everything I can to take the neighborhood business back. I don't sabotage corporate farms and food manufacturers - I do everything I can to buy local produce and dairy and from small and preferably worker owned/operated businesses. I don't slash car tires and throw sugar in gas tanks - I ride my bike everywhere. I don't destroy the property of politicians and businesses that support and perpetuate societal scum like heteronormativity, racism, sexism, transphobia, or any other form of oppression - I fight tooth and nail to organize, educate, and mobilize my community. And I bet a lot of you do the same things - something that I deeply respect and applaud.
We've been around for a very very long time, and we'll continue to be. Love us or hate us, we're not going anywhere and we'll never stop fighting. See you at the RNC. <3

PS: A favorite quote...
"Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness - and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe.
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling - their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.
Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."
- Arundhati Roy

[L0oniX]

160. I am a total fan of Chomsky and Howard Zinn.

[Soylent Brice]

163. i'm not necessarily an anarchist...

i'm a radical leftist universe worshipper. the universe works in perfect harmony, and it's existence is chaos born out of structure. my political ideologies reflect this structurally chaotic balance in the universe.

[NightWatcher]

171. I could do without a government, but I'm not a fan of some "DRO-based" anarchy models

like the ones espoused by this guy

http://www.strike-the-root.com/81/molyneux/molyneux2.html

[Forrest Greene]

174. I'm Not Sure. What Are The Rules? n/t

[Greyhound]

175. Chomsky and Zinn, two of the most brilliant living minds, are radicals?

Makes you wonder what you're not getting doesn't it? If it doesn't, maybe it should.

[Echo In Light]

180. "To be a radical is to simply grasp the root of the problem." - Zinn

It's likewise a question of access to information {what with reflexive obedience to familiar signals}, and problems of marginalization for those with unconventional views.

[BlooInBloo]

184. No, I'm literate.

[proud patriot]

193. I was , then I became a mom

Now I am the Authority x(

[GreenTea]

194. Fortunately, YES!

"Libertarian socialists" - Sounds like the republicans and Hitler's ideology....get fucking real...Who's conning whom?

[Tiggeroshii]

195. ?

[tama]

203. It's the original meaning

only later stolen by those who are possessed by their material possessions and swear by "private property" (protected by the Big Governement Military and Police).

[alcibiades_mystery]

214. I'm an anarchist, but anarchism is NOT idealism

Carl Schmitt lays out the normal (stupid) approaches: people who believe government is good believe that human nature is evil; people who believe government is bad believe that human nature is good.

Our challenge, and the anarchist challenge always, has been to think the other proposition: that human nature is "evil" (which is to say, conflictual), AND that the State Form is also an evil, and maybe for that reason.

Purveyors of State logic always, always, always portray anarchists as idealists, dreamers, and unrealistic thinkers, because purveyors of the State logic (including liberals, and this is why I am NOT a fucking liberal) assume that anarchists must believe in a fundamentally "good" (i.e., naturally cooperative and community-oriented) human nature. It's nonsense. The problem of anarchism has always been more difficult than that: a conflictual nature, AND a multitude without the state. There's nothing idealistic about it (indeed, real "anarchy" is the norm in human relations rather than the exception); it is a realist political philosophy.

[bean fidhleir]

223. Maybe they'll listen to you

I said the same thing and was ignored. Perhaps you'll have better luck.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

227. Very well said. Anarchism doesn't offer the "good germans" an out.

"I was only following orders", isn't in the Anarchist lexicon.

"Freedom is the absolute right of all adult men and women to seek permission for their actions only from their own conscience and reason, and to be determined in their actions only by their own will, and consequently to be responsible only to themselves, and then to the society to which they belong, but only insofar as they have made a free decision to belong to it." Mikhail Bakunin

[tama]

265. Yup

Constant revolution is not about escaping responsibility and leaving responsibility to others ("governement"), but accepting full responsibility. Freedom ain't easy - or maybe just too easy, too simple for the complicated mind.

[yurbud]

238. most on left who say they aren't anarchists only know the caricature

The bomb throwing radical who doesn't want any structure to government at all.

If they knew labor unions, co-ops, Wikipedia, and non-coercive international organizations are inherently anarchist, they would be as shocked to realize they are anarchists as Fred Phelps would be to find out he is gay.

The main problem with anarchism is the name has been corrupted even more than ''liberal'' (which deserves a different kind of bad reputation than the one it has).

[tama]

266. Well said n/t

[TexasObserver]

248. Anarchy will bring back unicorns! And magical ponies!!

This thread looks like a parody making fun of people who want to pretend anarchy is a utopian democracy. As a parody, it works.

[tama]

264. Bring back?

You mean unicorns went away and you haven't lately seen any?

[Lyric]

280. In an anarchist collective-living state, there are no such things as "rights".

Any attempt to define unalienable rights (for example, creating a Bill of Rights) removes the "anarchy" from the equation, because then you must have laws that enforce the rights you have established. Laws = government. Anarchy is not compatible with anything but the most primitive sort of government-by-rules.

The thought of living under ANY form of government that doesn't have a Constitution respectful of our natural rights, and laws to enforce its protection, is abhorrent and disgusting to me. Anarchy is fine for a group of five people trapped on a desert island. In a nation as large and diverse as ours, anything even remotely *approaching* anarchy would have one result - Might Makes Right. Those with weapons and paramilitary training would take and dominate by force, those with cunning minds would take and dominate by deceit, and everyone else would be left defenseless and used.

No thanks. It's the stupidest idea I've ever heard.

[bean fidhleir]

282. If you're going to follow precedent by building and repudiating a strawman, could you at least

put some ingenuity into it? It's tiresome to have you guys repeatedly say, as though reading from a script, "I know what you mean better than you do and it's a stupid idea".

[Unvanguard]

288. To the contrary, anarchism is the MOST lawful of societies, in that sense.

In class society, the powerful control the rules for their own private benefit, and when they fail at that, they use their influence to get away with breaking them. Note how, throughout American history, civil rights protections have been abused or ignored by those in power. Note Bush and the Republicans today. This is the old political problem of "who guards the guards."

In anarchism, founded on political equality, there is no political hierarchy: nobody is exclusive ruler, and therefore no one can use their political or economic power to get away with abusing others.

[NeedleCast]

283. No

Generally I find that people who claim to be anarchists are the same people I think will be the first to die should true anarchy ever descend upon us.

[Unvanguard]

284. Yeah, I'm an anarchist.

I have on and off primitivist sympathies, but mostly identify with the broad tradition of social anarchism. I tend toward anarchist communism, but like most of us I'm open to flexibility and diversity.

[Unvanguard]

292. For people who actually want to know what anarchism is:

An Anarchist FAQ

Also, this little gem I found some time ago: "Wait, You Guys Are ANARCHISTS?"

You don't even have to go to the trouble of opening a book... though admittedly a little more reading is required than with the dictionary.

[bean fidhleir]

295. *NICE* find, that "wait" one!

Very very nice indeed. Not that it'll change many minds, since too many people are in thrall to Authoritist dogma, but even a few is better than none.