Looking for critiques of the below 22-page article by Shayne Wessler of www.forindividualrights.com.
http://www.forindividualrights.com/against_anarchism.pdf
A cursory reading seems to indicate a straw man, or straw anarchist, has been set up and knocked down.
tia, Skyler.
History supports this first statement since anarchism, if any ever existed, is always replaced by statist governments.
Supposing the object of misplaced anarchist hatred were to be eradicated overnight by some means,
then like a weed cut instead of pulled up by the root, it would just grow back. The values held in
common by the people would cause government to re-emerge overnight, and quite probably in an even
more virulent form given the fact that the American traditions instilled in government would have
been totally wiped out.
the dude means that if a powerful plurality of society decides it wants government then the anarchist can either deal with it, overthrow it, or leave it. But bitchin about it is pretty much a waste of time, unless you like complaining.
he has a point, if enough people want to screw themselves under government regulation and taxation, then that is their perogative. I mean if someone wants to live under a government isn’t that their right ?
I mean what right does anyone have to stop me from smoking cigars, eating steak, drinking whiskey, or chasing sleazy broads? There is not much the anarchist can do if enough people like government other than bitch and moan on a forum. I guess you guys don’t like violence, so good luck trying to change society to your liking.
And this statement from Wissler could be considered one of the many reasons why no anarchist societies exist,
Anarchism, in a single stroke, both addresses one’s precious energy to the actual enemy’s strongest
point – the legitimacy of government in principle – and in that same act, dissolves the power to fight it
by teaching one to shun organized political action.
IMHO, It would be nice if enough anarchists got together and formed your own country so the rest of us can see how that works — oops I forgot, anarchists aren’t supposed to get together, that would be government, and government is always bad.
Pardon my ignorance, but do anarchists respect contract rights?
What are “contract rights”?
Uh, no, government is an institution which claims a monopoly over the use of force over a given area. A collection of private property owners hardly fits this description, unless they actually create a state.
Way too long and wordy. I scanned it and it seems that his central contention is that anarchists (and Statists) mis-define government as a territorial monopolist of law and security whereas he defines it as simply any association that “formally identifies, enforces, and adjudicates the laws governing a given jurisdiction.” I find this quite disingenuous. While putting forward a pretense of being a stickler for definitions, Wissler has slipped in the concept of monopoly through the words “governing” and “jurisdiction” while asserting that it is his opponents who make the mistake of asserting that the State operates a monopoly of law and force. Jurisdiction refers to the extents of the authority of a court, in particular, of a government court. Government courts are territorial and hierarchical in nature - there are not a multiplicity of competing government courts to which a person may apply for justice.
Wissler is basically obfuscating and waffling on whether adjudication may be produced in a market of competing adjudicators or not. If legal adjudicators operate in a competitive market, then law is nothing more than the settlement of disputes. If, however, adjudicators have the power to compel patronization (as government courts do), then they are not adjudicators at all but dictators.
If he’s going to write 22 pages and expect people of an adversarial persuasion to read it, he had better cite some source material and answer it, rather than trying to reframe the debate in a vocabulary more favorable to his waffling and meandering arguments.
Damn crazy objectivists.
Clayton -
This is simply an argument from ignorance.
Are you trying to get us all to shut up? Or what?
If a person wants to be heavily taxed and regulated, how is he screwing himself over by living under a government? Conversely, if a person doesn’t want to be heavily taxed or regulated, how is he screwing himself over by living under a government?
Then what right does anyone have to stop me from smoking weed, drinking absinthe, or hiring prostitutes? Otherwise, this just looks like another attempt to shut us up. Good luck trying to change us to your liking.
First, to address the Wissler quote, how can one expect to fight the legitimacy of government in principle through the use of organized political action?
Second, I do support the idea of somehow carving out stateless niches in the world. I wouldn’t consider such places to be “countries” in the usual statist sense - but in the sense of “areas of land where people interact”, they certainly would be.
No it isn’t dude.
It is fact that there are no anarchist governments of any significance, and most if not all are replaced by statist governments.
Sorry that I have to break that to you dude.
Most libertarians I know say that the State is maintained by ideological support with death threats for taxation at the margins. Erase the cloak of legitimacy and it comes tumbling down. Of course, it’s not as simple as this since there is some game theoretical stuff at play. I’m sure 99% of North Koreans hate the government and I’m sure the government would collapse if everybody ignored it, but the state would kill off a good deal of the population and it’s not worth it to them to risk their lives. So I understand that the aggressive nature plays a large part in maintaining it.
From the conclusion:
If a government is reformed in such a way that it no longer demands taxes or forces regulations or has any monopolies, then in my opinion it is no longer a government. That is where minarchists go wrong in my opinion, they have a very optimistic and positive view of human nature with regards to collective organization, which in itself is not so bad. But when they are not very specific about the “mere semantics” as he says in the article, then they are disingenuous about the nature of man and organizations that resemble the state.
The guy pipes on about definitions but he seems to have a strange definition of the state himself. On the one hand he acknowledges that anarchists accept that a type of collective association could be formed under anarchism, then on the other he says that this means they must be consistent because this collective association is government.
hahahaha, Bit of a weak argument to set the grounds for a statement that anarchists are actually confused and not consistent and that they are not a true defender for Man’s Right’s because of this.
Yes it is. Read your argument again:
The phrase “is always” is a timeless statement. Hence it includes the future. However, the future is actually unknowable by anyone and everyone. So your argument is implicitly the following:
I don’t know whether anarchism in the future will (ever/always) be replaced by statist governments.
Therefore, anarchism in the future will always be replaced by statist governments.
This is a classic argument from ignorance.
On another note, how is the phrase “anarchist government” not an oxymoron?
One more thing - I take it that, since you didn’t respond to the rest of my post, that you concede my points? I believe it contains questions for you to answer, though. Can you answer them?
autolykos:
One more thing - I take it that, since you didn’t respond to the rest of my post, that you concede my points? I believe it contains questions for you to answer, though. Can you answer them?
lets correct one fallacy at a time.
sorry for the bad grammar, unintentional oxymorons, and bad choice of adjectives but semantic diversions, trivialities, and red herrings aside the point of my original post was that there aren’t any anarchist governments societies of any significance that exist today or yesterday past history.
the anarchist ideology or whatever you want to call it has a pitiful record when compared to statist any political system.
Is this a fact or isnt it ?
Dude dude dude answer the question dude.
I suspect that North Koreans are in a much worse way than most people in that their predicament is reinforced by powers that far exceed their combined economic productivity (even under conditions of freedom). The Kim Jong Il regime is a creature of the US militarization of the North-South border and it appears that a good deal of his government’s revenues come from involvement in dirty work - counterfeiting, drug and weapons dealing, etc. In other words, Kim Jong Il is just a classic gangster. But the fact that he’s not been toppled suggests to me that he has covert support from an external power… perhaps China but it is also possible that Western intelligence agencies work with him to maintain a status quo - after all, North Korea is the only thing separating US forces on the DMZ from China.
All the victims of colonialism are in a similar predicament. They are imprisoned by forces that are more powerful than their combined productivity… in other words, Etienne de la Boetie’s prescription for toppling governments* simply will not work for those trapped in colonies. This is also why slaves are generally unable to free themselves. But the disgusting irony of the situation is that Western colonizing powers are the very ones enslaving people while they strut around the world pretending to “free” people from slavery, as in the toppling of Hussein.
Clayton -
Here’s an itemized list of my responses:
Where did I correct your bad grammar?
Where did I engage in “semantic diversions, trivialities, and[/or] red herrings”? I challenge you to support this implicit assertion.
If your point was that “there aren’t any anarchist […] societies of any significance that exist today or [… in] past history”, then why did you use the timeless phrase “is always” in your original formulation?
Honestly, it depends on what you mean by “record”. For most of Homo sapiens sapiens’ time on Earth, its members lived in anarchic social groups. There’s also a distinction to be made between anarchist ideology having not succeeded in modern times and the notion that, therefore, anarchist ideology will never be able to succeed. Once again, the future is unknowable.
In any case, I, for one, have never denied anarchist ideology’s heretofore lack of success, so there’s nothing there for me to concede at this point. Your argument isn’t even about that, really. It’s about trying to predict (i.e. claim facts about) the future on the basis of the past. Anytime this is done, it’s an argument from ignorance, as I’ve already demonstrated.
Now, could you please respond to the rest of my original post?
Autolykos: In any case, I, for one, have never denied anarchist ideology’s heretofore lack of success, so there’s nothing there for me to concede at this point. Your argument isn’t even about that, really.
No that really was my point. So what are we debating ?
I agree with you that anarchism has a bad track record at best
Autolykos: Your argument isn’t even about that, really. It’s about trying to predict (i.e. claim facts about) the future on the basis of the past. Anytime this is done, it’s an argument from ignorance, as I’ve already demonstrated.
YOu mean there really could be a Santa Claus, unicorn, tooth fairy, and easter bunny !!!
My parents were just committing an argument from ignorance. just because they didnt exist in the past doesnt mean they cant exist for my kids.
Hooray. THe past doesnt matter !!! We can’t learn anything from the past, cuz it dont matter!!!
burn the history books !!! (my kids will love that one)
Hell, maybe Marxism or Luddism has a chance now. At least they existed as a failed experiment, but that doesnt matter, history doesnt matter
Hooray if your a follower of a failed system, imaginary system, or anything… past failure doesnt matter.
Hooray!!!
You know full well what you were trying to argue. Don’t play dumb with me.
Between the two of us, you’re the only one crying. Let me know if you need a tissue.
Brush up on your logic, kid. Otherwise, perhaps you’d like to, you know, make an actual argument instead of trolling.
Anarchic how exactly??
Every known hunter-gatherer tribe has a hierarchy. There is a leader or headman of some kind, and there are cultural & social mores and taboos that the members are expected to live by.
Please correct me if I am wrong, (and I’m sure people will), but from what I understand an Anarchistic society is one where there is no identifiable hierarchy, or no one individual or group is designated as a “leader”.
Even the basic family group is not what I would call anarchistic. And certainly not a tribe made up of several family groups.
Although I find that I identify myself more with the “minarchist” side of things –the following is what I personally believe and I do not speak for all “miarchists”.
Personally I feel that you have it exactly the opposite. From everything I have read on this site I feel the anarchistic point of view that has: “…a very optimistic and positive view of human nature…”.
People are greedy, selfish and lustful creatures. And I feel that sooner or later a person, group or organization within that anarchistic society will try and take power.
And I have read nothing that has proved to me that an anarchistic society won’t fall to an outside invasion from a more organized group that doesn’t recognize their “natural” rights.
The modern “democratic” state as we know it has been empirically shown to suck…
But all authority sucks. There are no utopias there are no magic wand solutions.
I believe that a “minarchist” Government would be sufficiently different from the system(s) that we have now, that at the very least I feel it is an option worth perusing and not just dismissed out of hand.
.500NE,
I am tracking with you.
I consider myself a minarchist too, although many anarchists on this site only know two extremes, either your an anarchist or a statist.
Your correct that human institutions are naturally based on heirarchical structures. so that means that anarchism is a utopian impossibiliity.
anyone with a modicum of military knowledge knows that you dont divide your forces and centralized command structure is most effective.
anarchists dont believe in centralized command or concentration of armed force so that pretty much kills this utopian system.
could they act decisively on the battlefield with a command by committee approach ?
could they take and hold large swathes of territory with a decentralized, ‘competitive’ free market model ?
the answer to both of these are NO.
Well, disregarding 9/11, I iz so glad we haz a centralized military to protect us. Oh, wait:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1767327/breach-of-the-week-how-the-pentagon-hack-was-done