Can anyone find a positive, or even neutral use of the word “anarchy” before the 19th century?
Is there any reason to use the word if in its modern political context if:
a) If the word came about as a word to directly to undermine capitalism and property
b) there are a million forms of loopy groups that all use the term and they all seem to contradict each other (except perhaps in their hatred for all things bourgoise) and the use as a “pro capitalist” term was a late addition.
nah. Rothbard apparently used it to try and form an alliance with the left, and it stuck. i think we are long past that, and the alliance didn’t even work. despite being true to its etymology, we need a different word.
voluntaryism misses the point, as does the NAP, because these merely boil down to reassertions of a given property rights scheme. every socialist is a voluntaryist and adheres to a NAP; it is just a different definition of voluntary and of aggression! the real action is in how one defines voluntary and aggression, and then we are back to property rights schemes. these are feel-good terms that really tell the audience nothing new. they are circumlocutions masquerading as novel assertions.
again, these terms merely reassert a property ethic but dress it up as if they actually saying something new. this is a common hand-wave in many fields, even physics. the utility of it for the presenter is that she can utter something that rings well in the ear and sounds obviously good, but is really a backdoor cowing of the audience into accepting her underlying system of property rights. that a socialist can1 use the same words in defense of her ethic oughtta be a red flag.
1and does: “taxes are voluntary”
I thought Rothbard was against the use of the term. “Anarchist”. He preferred anti-statist instead.
The word to me seems to be used primarily to prompt attention. It’s a powerful word and a good way to throw someone off beat. Especially to those who live in the left/right false dichotomy.
ZB,
The definition of aggression used by adherents of the NAP is very clear. And thus, it isn’t a term someone else can use, unless they define aggression differently.
But any use of language which deviates from a particular meaning will have this problem. I can call a dog a popsicle, are you going to argue that the word popsicle is somehow at fault for that mis-categorization?
Anarchy is apolitical. I prefer to think of it as it is meant to be understood. An-archy. Without rulers.
The same people who abuse anarchy, also abuse capitalism and property, so how many words you wanna surrender Bill? We can play this game all day long, the spazoids can hijack a term, we yield it. They hijack another, we yield it. We can play this game ad infinitum.
I prefer voluntaryist myself. But I like razzing people with anarchist.
A similar discussion at The Daily Bell today, coincidence?
I will make my same post here as I did there, in reply to the suggestion to use “voluntarism” instead:
“A satisfactory alternative…that accomplishes this goal is “voluntarism”.”
I would agree, this is a wonderful term and is quite descriptive. However, I still choose to not let go of the term “anarchy” in the true meaning as TDB has described, and as I have used the term here in the recent past.
Perhaps I am hard-headed, but I like to think my reasons run deeper. We have lost too many words that describe liberty and freedom. These have been lost to new definitions, co-opted to a) make the discussion of liberty difficult due to a lack of vocabulary, and b) replace liberty with the state, because those co-opted terms are now defined in state-enabling ways.
Imagine the term “voluntarism” takes hold, in the way you define it. Is it so difficult to see the state turning this to its advantage? We will soon find ourselves “volunteering” for many state dictated obligations (aren’t our income taxes already described as “voluntary”?). We will “volunteer” for national service, in the spirit of volunteerism that our patriot (there is another co-opted term) forefathers held. This is in the great liberal (there’s another one gone down the drain) tradition of our country.
Somewhere we have to say words have meaning. We shouldn’t have to make up new ones just to have these stolen from us as well.
my point was that voluntary and NAP echo nicely in the ear but they are not self-explanatory terms that themselves trace out an ethic, even if some seem to act as if they are. since it all comes down to having the state or not, why not focus on that? i think it is much harder to misinterpret “state” or “large central government” than to misinterpret “voluntary” and “aggression” or “coercion”.
Self-defeating uphill battle, I’m afraid: European anarchists grow more violent, coordinated.
Just because they don’t work for you, doesn’t mean they don’t work for others. Your values are only your own.
That’s not all that it comes down to. It comes down to the use of force. Not only institutional force.
We can’t control whether or not people misinterpret us. All we can do is be as precise and explicit as possible. I don’t think a lot is gained by using the right words to express the wrong thing, when we can use the right words to express the right thing.
I don’t think it is self-defeating. I don’t have hard numbers, but I am pretty sure I have helped direct a couple dozen people to anarcho-capitalism.
to argue, that some words are not enough self-explanatory is kinda stupid. There is no one single word that can explain any of my views on ethics or liberty. There is no single sentence that can do that either. It has to be whole paragraph so that the other person could get what I mean, when I say, that I don’t believe in state etc. And even that wouldn’t be enough. So labels are just that - labels. They can give a sterotype, but not explanation.
Vis-a-vis unfriendly ideologies my route of attack is straight to the state. Whatever gets me there fastest. Saying “anarchy”, pointing out corporatocracy, showing the gun in the room, etc.
I feel like its a race because you can’t let them talk about their little self flattering pet reasons for being a republocrat. Gay marriage, the minimum wage, and other hot button issues are too convoluted and heated to be good starting points. People build their self image around how freaking compassionate they are for handicapped minorities. I always try to derail them “Should the USG increase the minimum wage in Canada? No? Because Canadians have a right to choose for themselves what wages to set. Why don’t Americans have that luxury? Why do you own Americans? I won’t attack you, why will you attack me?”.
So yeah, whatever gets you out of the mainstream framework as soon as possible. I’m usually comfortable going with anarcho capitalist, but I’m not always the one initiating the conversation.
Whatever you call yourself, you have to have guts. For me, politics is utterly serious. Holding your ground is do or die.
I’m finding that “Rothbardian Anarchist” is growing on me.
I am not ashamed to call myself an anarchist. I do not care about the negative connotations.
Anarchy is apolitical. I prefer to think of it as it is meant to be understood. An-archy. Without rulers.
The same people who abuse anarchy, also abuse capitalism and property, so how many words you wanna surrender Bill?
I’ll signal this sentence out as it seems the best representative to what I am trying to say:
The actual classic Greek term, which I will concede we may not have to care about, is meant to be used in the context of undesirable social chaos and disorder. That is the more proper classical meaning. Furthermore, I think it was used this way in the West until at least the 1800’s. I already suspect the undermining of the word has caused so many “hyphenated” types of the word “anarchy”.
When the term was used in a political fashion to imply a positive outcome; it was done by leftists who were inherently anti-capitalist and perhaps anti-property from the start. I won’t say that some were not amazing people or not worth noting or drawing inspiration from (such as Benjamin Tucker), I just don’t know if we are in this tradition, and the word was used too late.
From my personal experience, outside of this site, it has been an uphill battle to start even with the term “market anarchist”, much less “anarcho-capitlaist”.
What if undesirable social chaos and disorder is slavery and a system of institutional theft/violence?
Anarchy is a condition, not a system. You should be wary of calling yourself an anarchist as it can mean all sorts of things and nothing at all.
just like any other word.
What if undesirable social chaos and disorder is slavery and a system of institutional theft/violence?
I think the classical Hellenistic mind may just call that tyranny as one who “rules without law”.
Example: there may have been accusations that Athenian Democracy was an anarchy, but no Athenian would claim that term because the inherent word “anarchy” meant bad, just as much as tyranny or bad meant bad
I may be able to get a little more in depth as to how I think the Hellenistic mind used words and how they evolved, hell it would be fun for me, but I think that may be straining from the over all point, and any explanation I gave would be that of a mere amateur. Main point being, that all people until the 18th century used the term that way, and it is possible that word should not have been undermined.
If I wanted to state that all government as government is known are bad for example, it may just be best to say you are choosing between anarchy and tyranny.
Anarchy is a condition, not a system. You should be wary of calling yourself an anarchist as it can mean all sorts of things and nothing at all.
So are you agreeing with what I was saying, or am I reading you wrong? I am reading your sentence as perhaps a more clear concise way to put what I just stated.