I stumbled upon this tonight and it really put me off. I know it’s old, and some of you may have seen it, but im wondering what you all think of Spangler’s use of ‘socialism’ here. I take it this is just a semantics issue, but he seems to be really torturing the word socialism to make it mean free market.
Exactly. He seems to be using the term too losely. I think in his mindset socialism is pure freedom and pure freedom would come from a real market. That however isn’t what socialism is. That’s why I said tha the doesn’t understand what socialism is.
“What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.”
these kind of blog posts cement the image of many anarchists as shallow thinkers you will never be on the same level as de Jasay, adorno or Cornelius Castoriadis.
It is mostly just a semantics issue. Spangler and others see radical libertarianism as being left-wing. There is a history of free-market anarchists calling themselves socialists; Benjamin Tucker and most associated with his periodical Liberty considered themselves to be the libertarian branch of the socialist movement, as opposed to Marxism, social democracy, and state-socialism in general. That usage of the word was pretty much lost when the 19th century liberty movement fell apart and the remnants helped form the Old Right. So libertarians have inherited the use of the word “socialist” to describe the state ownership of the means of production (or, nonsensically, using it to denote statism of any kind). What many in the ALL are doing is trying to bring back that usage, partially because of the abject failure of the libertarian alliance with conservatives.
For more on this, there is Tucker’s (admittedly dated) State-Socialism and Anarchism, and Gary Chartier has several articles on his blog on why he considers the libertarian project to be socialist, collected in the pamphlet Socialist Ends, Market Means.
More radical leftists and social anarchists than mainstream liberals. And the ALL is only partially about alliance with the radical left. If it turns out that such an alliance is counterproductive, then I suppose it will be dropped, and efforts will be focused on other strategies.
I don’t like it. Why should we re-brand ourselves as something we’re not in order to appear more attractive to others. If people didn’t like free market anarchism when it was called anarcho-capitalism, then they won’t like free market anarchism when it is called anarcho-socialism.
again, the problem is throwing words around. socialism is not simply worker’s ownership or good living standarts for everyone. it is the socialization of property. saying this is like sayng that you’re a biker just cause you work in a tire shop
There is a failure of working with statists period. That the ALL seems obsessed with left-right distinctions still, shows what an anachronism they are.
It’s hard to have a libertarian enlightenment, when you have people who can’t see the forest from the trees.
You need to understand that there exist a multitude of definitions for capitalism and socialism which entail several political, economic, and social factors in different combination. The ambiguity of the terms makes them useless. It is like speaking to word liberlaism to the average person and expecting them to associate you with Jefferson and not Pelosi.
