This is about personal preferances. Some people, on both sides, tend to assert their personal preferances as if they are an imperative or norm or as if they are anarchism as such. The attachement of any system or ideology to the prefix of “anarcho” makes it about personal preferances. This isn’t a question of truth, it’s a question of wether or not one is willing to recognize other people’s personal preferances as something they can voluntarily pursue and wether or not one treats one’s own personal preferances as a political dogma or just their choice for how to interact in a stateless society. As long as it’s voluntary, who gives a shit? The expressed prejudice in this thread against anything with a socialistic stigma is no better then the prejudice held agains anything with a capitalistic stigma. In other words, while ancaps are constantly strawmaned, many of you are doing to the same thing to others, you show no genuine understanding of other anarchistic philosophies and appear prejudiced against it.
The point remains. He was a 100% voluntarist before Tucker.
You mean ‘defense’ as in national defense ? No, that’s not the case. He advocated the abolition of the state because he saw it as the source of all evils. See “The production of security”
Yet that’s exactly what he advocated ?
…that’s an unclear charge against him.
This is getting rather boring. You’re going in circles, obfuscating the truth, posting red herrings and just ignoring whatever truths you find to be inconvenient.
The truth is this, there are certain things implied by anarchism (private property). If I have the right to private property and an anarcho communist recognises this as legitimate he recognises private property in and of itself to be legitimate and hence he has to refrain from coercion me or abusing my property. In which case he isn’t an anarcho communist, he merely has a preferance for living in a commune. In which case his desire to live in an egalitarianism (which is incompatible with libertarianism, hence it makes no sense forming alliances with these individuals) society ranks above his desire for material posessions and other aspects of a free society. Nonetheless these societies will be soon disappear, as a result of material prosperity of the rest of society and their shunning of all things egalitarian.
On the other hand if he didn’t respect the property of the capitalist, he isn’t an anarchist. And as such it makes no sense allying with him.
As I said, you can either reject or accept private property. You try to get around this however you want by claiming voluntaryism but most of the applications of private property you propose lack coherence. You claim the high ground of voluntaryism incorrectly. One cannot make a voluntary contract exchanging a unicorn for a square circle. Either the “anarchists” respect my exclusive control to my legitimately acquired property or they don’t.
And this is the whole point that BP has been trying very hard to ignore.
Of course, according to him “tthat’s just a matter of a opinion and preferance”.
No it is not. The dispute is not about preferences, such as chocolate vs. vanilla. It is about facts, such as chocolate is not vanilla. Enormous difference.
This is irrelevant, false or both.
Then you are saying that every ideology with anarcho as a prefix, all agree upon the same facts about property?
No, again, you are constructing a strawman. How many times have you labeled me a conservative, when, at least I knew, it was totally baseless? You tried to attack my preferences, preferences I had not specified without attacking my facts. I’m possibly the most tolerant person here, as long as the facts are solid. I’m not gay, but I’m cool with gays. I’m not black, or Chinese, but I have no issue with people who are. I’m an atheist, but I can handle theists.
Tolerance of preferences are totally different than the facts.
If everyone believes voluntarily that the sky is purple or that strawberries are poisonous, that does not make it so. I give a shit. It’s a big deal when we’re talking about something as fundamentally important as a common understanding of property, which I believe all rights are derived from. It’s a real big deal.
Pretty good, I agree.
Pretty bad, I disagree.
Indeed, yet how many of the collectivist anarchists support private property rights? I’m not speaking of mutualists here who are individualist anarchists. The funny thing is that market anarchism/anarcho-capitalism evolved out of the individual rights part of the anarchist movement, yet the collectivists among the anarchists have the gall to say we’re not true anarchists.
I’m referring to the ones who reject rights, or at least individual rights.
No, if they don’t acknowledge individual rights they don’t have the means to justify their actions. Their system cannot even get off the ground.
I’ve yet to hear of an anarcho-capitalist claiming that the collectivist branch of the movement needs to have capitalism forced upon it.
Sorry, your personal interpretation of property is not inherently implied by anarchism.
I’m saying that there is no legitimate double standard here: your viewpoint likewise reduces to a personal preferance for exclusivity, not an imperative.
And no, at which point, he IS an anarcho-communist, because all anarcho-communist means is that personal preferance (commune) + the context of anarchism. They do not cease to be an anarcho-communist as soon as they act in a voluntary way.
I’m sorry, this is just pontification on your own conservatish dislike for egalitarianism, and the idea that society as a whole will share your personal preferances is once again rearing its ugly head. Egalitarian outcomes and preferances are not incompatible with libertarianism, in the context of libertarianism they are just something to voluntarily pursue. This shouldn’t be that hard to understand. Your dislike for egalitarianism is a personal preferance, not a libertarian imperative.
The square circle or unicorn analogy isnt relevant to what’s being discussed, it’s just a rhetorical pot shot.
Yes, it is. In the context of anarchism, these things reduce to personal preferances for how to organize, no different than chocolate vs. vanilla. If there is a demand for syndicalism, for example, those who have such demands and those willing to appease such demands will provide it. Syndicalism, in this context, functions as a personal preferance.
It is not irrelevant, and it most certainly is not false. You have anarcho-syndicalists saying that it’s their worker councils and unions vs. the evil capitalists, and you have anarcho-capitalists saying that it’s their wage labor and large firms vs. the evil socialists. There is a tendency on both sides to treat one’s prefered form of organization as the be all and end all of what anarchism is.
I’m saying that every ideology that is genuinely anarchistic embraces voluntaryism as a norm, and hence disagreements of that nature are kind of rendered irrelevant in a sense.
Well I for one disagree with your premise as it is, since I don’t think all rights come from property.
As I said above:
Private property is by its very nature unegalitarian. Egalitarianism is a fundamental idea behind the redistributionist welfare states, which tries to abolish the differences between productive and unproductive etc. In essence it is a philosophical idea that stands for human sacrifice. Or as Sumner said in “What the Social Classes Owe Each Other:
“… All the schemes for producing equality… produce a new differentiation based on the worst possible distinction — the right to claim and the duty to give one man’s effort for another man’s satisfaction. We shall find that every effort to realize equality necessitates a sacrifice of liberty.”
And my point is that we are no better then them when we make broad declarations implying that only anarcho-capitalism is true anarchism and that all social anarchists are just regular commies.
I disagree, I think people can form plenty of systems without any rational ideological backing.
That’s basically what half the people in this thread are saying, in effect, or by the very least, they’re advocating purging such people from society as a whole (which I wonder how they intend to accomplish without violating their own claimed principles).
Being anti-egalitarian isn’t necessarily “conservative”.
What is it you disagree with? That capitalism is more productive than communism? Or that people in an unegalitarian society will be unegalitarian?
It does not necessarily follow from the fact that someone is an egalitarian that they favor the state; in fact, if they do favor the state, they are contradicting egalitarianism. My own claim is that a society without a state is inherently more egalitarian than current society in some respects. Does this make me an evil statist who condones violence and wishes to eradicate all differences between people? No. It by no means necessarily follows from the fact that one desires more egalitarian outcomes that one opposes liberty in the process. There is no reason why liberty cannot be a tool for bringing about benefits for the masses to a degree that produces less heirarchical outcomes.
I don’t think I’m being particularly irrational by saying that I find it in my self-interest to be in a society and association with generally, healthy, wealthy and wise people. This means that “egalitarian” causes (such as ensuring that people have a decent standard of living, have healthcare and education, etc.) are to my benefit and are something to be pursued in a free society. Nothing about this contradicts market anarchism or libertarianism.
Now I’m just talking about anarcho-communists - In what way aren’t they just advocating a different strategy to achieve communism?
Who cares? Let them achieve communism - for themselves, on a small scale.
That is not what I wrote. Chocolate vs. Vanilla is preference. Chocolate is not Vanilla is a fact.
Again, that is not what I have written. I have no issue with different systems of organization. I do have issue with different sets of facts.
Can you not see how people holding opposing facts would have fundamental issues?
Property disputes are not irrelevant. I can’t believe you’re trying to pass this off.
You can disagree, but only one of us can be right. We might both be wrong, but your preference to disagree, doesn’t mean there is a second set of facts.
This is exactly what I have been getting at. So much trying to accommodate disparate groups, that facts are now no longer considered sovereign or relevant. This is the danger of watering down your ideology, making it flexible enough that almost anyone can fit into it.
Here is one for you. Please try to answer it honestly, evasion wastes everyones time.
I claim to own some property behind my house, I have built a pen for my dog and a shed to store my tools on that portion of land. Anarcho-communists come along and they don’t recognize my title when I come out to ask them why they are camping behind my house. They’ve begun rifling through my shed because they also do not recognize my ownership claim on my tools according to their “preferences”.
So do I own my tools, and the land under my shed, or do I not? Who is right and who is wrong? Because clearly, we can’t both be right when working from conflicting facts.
I think it’s pretty clear AnCaps and Anarcho-Communist can not be allies. They hate private property; we feel its essential. They want an “egalatarian” society; we don’t. They want an end to division of labor; we’ve realised that it’s vital to any modern society. Also history has shown that Communist of all stripes make the most crummy of allies. As far as anarcho-syndicalist goes, well their belief of “direct action” makes them violent against anybody who disagrees with them, a group we can never fully trust, and trust is something you absolutely need in an alliance. Our best bet is with Agorist.
I’ve met a few ancoms/ansocs who are reasonable and can be converted to a basically ancap position, though they do prefer to call it something else like “market socialism.” Which brings me to the point… approximately 93.5% of the breath/ink/bandwidth &c in these sorts of discussions is nothing but semantic wordgames.
The lefties balk at the “C word” and rightists at any mention of socialism. Of course, if the libertarian use of “capitalism” to mean voluntary exchange is antiquated, the left ought to toss “socialism” into the dustbin as well since no doubt “market socialism” is considered a contradiction in terms by most of the population. Then you’ve got the ansocs who do a silly dance around the word “property” insisting that what they advocate is “possesion.”
I find it all very frustrating…
First of all, why are they called “social” anarchists? Because they’re not economic anarchists? Or what? And secondly, provided their societies are wholly voluntary, they’re certainly legitimate. The point being, that they need to at least acknowledge (not necessarily endorse) individual rights to begin with.
Yes, that is why I mentioned contractarianism. However, if their ideology involves going around “expropriating” capitalists (i.e. does not acknowledge individual rights), sort of like how certain randroids want to unseat governments they dislike, they’re really not anarchists at all.
By way of covenants? It may be difficult, but it’s certainly possible. Moreover, what would such individuals be doing in an anarcho-capitalist enclave? There is no “society” to speak of under anarchism, just societies, and it is not impossible that some will restrict access to collectivists by way of agreement, at least in segments of them (e.g. gated communities.) The same could be true of communes (which gasp means they will be acting as exclusive joint-owners of their commune!)