What about my means of production? I get the jist of an-communism but I don’t get the meat and potatoes. Is it okay for me to own a piece of capital equipment? As long as I don’t “make” someone else use it?
I was just giving a tired reply to a tired reply. I figured you don’t expect me to take your shit just as much as I don’t expect you to force me into labor.
You can already live down the street from a commune. I don’t think starting a commune is the entirety of what ancoms want, just like starting a business isn’t the totality of what you want.
For the most part, I’d say yeah, we could get along. But there are spots that are irreconcilable. Workers occupying a factory would be what you call aggression, whereas the removal of them by a PDA or police force would be what I call aggression.
I see… Thank you Birthday Pony, there is a pretty strong difference between our thought. I didn’t mean to get on you, I was just honeslty curious. Do you have any recommendations for literature better explaining an-communism?
I know. I didn’t mean to sound hostile, so I apologize if I did.
Quite honestly, the AFAQ is the most comprehensive introduction to Anarchism that I’ve ever seen. Even for its supposed “anti-individualist” slant, it explains, and gives credit to, almost every school of thought pretty well (with the exception of ancap, of course).
Oh no you didn’t, you’re fine.
Why no ancaps? Is it the whole hierarchical structures thing?
No worries, you’re cool.
Thanks!
The sections where the AFAQ critisizes other camps, like individualism or Mutualism, are well written articles, but not conversations that can ever have an end.
As far as its concerned with Anarcho-capitalism, however, there are a number of distinctions it makes that are pretty good. It criticizes Anarcho-capitalism from an anarchist perspective, where anarchism is meant as a rejection of all authority. In that regard, anarcho-capitalism does stick out.
What that says about the logical consistency or validity of the philosophy is close to nothing, but it does show what I think is an important distinction.
I think this is a fundamental irreconcilability as it deals with the premises for legitimate ownership of property. Hence I don’t think anarcho-socialists and anarcho-capitalists could really get along at all. They’d be constantly fighting one another.
Does “monopolise” mean use force to prevent you from getting a widget-maker of your own, or does it mean you complaining about how you don’t have one when I happen to get one?
It means complaining that my lazy ass neighbor gets health insurance while I work my ass of all day, and for what? Lazy asshole has a fridge, too.
As long as you’re just complaining, I have no problem. But that’s different from actually occupying something like a factory, isn’t it?
It actually means making love to a poster of Bill Gates for his entreprenuerial skillz.
Now you’ve suddenly stopped taking this seriously? Why in the world is that?
Just a tired response for a tired response. If I’m a commie that wants all your shitz, then you’re all top hat wearing capitalists and their fan boys.
Or we could take each other seriously and start talking about substantive things, but if we’re keeping it on the level of “you damn commies better stay off my lawn,” then I see no reason to respond at a level where I return respect for people’s ideas when they have no respect for mine.
You have quite the double standard there. Apparently it’s okay for you to criticize someone like me, but it’s not okay for me to criticize someone like you. I call you out on your apparent inconsistencies, and you 1) accuse me of failing to “respect” your ideas and 2) claim that all you’ve been doing this whole time is “respecting” mine.
Now I fully expect you to respond to this with a mere tit-for-tat instead of actually thinking about what I just said.
I’m sure it seems like a double standard to you. And I am more than willing to accept my part in the bad relationship I have with (most of) this board.
However, I can’t say ‘socialist’ without someone reosrting to “so you want to steal my shit, eh?” or something along the lines of me wanting to directly and personally assault someone or steal their things. In my first post here, I actually humored that line for a while and tried to explain myself on terms more widely accepted here instead of terms I’m familiar with. At this point, I’m not interested in engaging at that level. If someone wants to know, they can go to AFAQ or find another Anarchist.
As far as my interaction with you, I can say that FLL definitely respected you for quite some time. When you came over there our reaction certainly wasn’t “ah, so you’re an anarcho-capitalist. You want to force me to work in your factory, eh?” We immediately engaged on a philosophical level with you and did not resort to tired tropes and charicatures of ancaps. Even if our tone was hostile or tired, we didn’t jump from ancap to slavery, or anything analogous to the ridiculous leaps that have been made here.
I do sometimes see Chomsky say stuff like 'it’s not even debatable" or “which is something that is not even questioned by serious people”. Sometimes after saying something that isn’t even true. Whether it is in linguistics or politics. Which also annoys me more than when he uses hedges like “it seems to me…” after saying something that doesn’t have any research behind it or that might be irresponsible to say if it is proved wrong.
It would seem like people who love rationalism would not use that type of language. Whether what he is saying is true or not. There was a time during the Vietnam war when he thought that it was beneath him to use rational arguments, because he thought that the war was too evil to talk about. And that discussion amounted to either killing one amount of people or some other amount. As if that were the only choices, besides saying that war was simply evil evil evil. But I think that we need to use rational discourse to inform people what is or isn’t good about it. Rather than just charge at something with irrational language. However much I think the Vietnam war could have been avoided, I don’t think he gained much because of that type of discussion from Chomsky. Given that he made some rather vulgar claims, overestimating North Vietnamese and even sending them a letter saying how proud he was of them. Before seeing the mountain of skulls they had piled up.
Usually I think Chomsky might be right more often, if he used more applied philosophy rather than sticking to a narrative and some topics which seem way out of his league. Which is many.
Not sure who that’s addressed to, but as far as Chomsky goes, he’s just kind of a celebrity with some cool soundbites. Maybe check out the Chomsky Foucault debate. I’m pretty much with Foucault.
How do you think it’s not a double standard?
When you first came here, remember how I (for one) didn’t jump on you like that? On the other hand, it seems to me (sorry for the hedge here, John Ess) that you’re constantly demanding that everyone else here completely abandon any/all negative connotations they associate with the words “socialism” and “socialist” because… well, because you say so. Do I have it about right? You love those words but many people around here strongly dislike them.
When I came to the FLL, I did my best to adopt your (i.e. left-libertarians’) semantic conventions, because I wanted to engage you guys on a meaningful level. That didn’t work out very well, because I kept calling you guys out on your inconsistencies. Apparently you guys can’t stand that. Oh well.
And I didn’t resort to tired tropes and caricatures of anarcho-socialists, did I? But nevertheless, as time went by, the hostility level of many of you became more and more palpable to me. I wasn’t going to get banned, but apparently the idea was to make me feel so unwelcome to the point that I’d stop posting. At this point, maybe I should post there again just to prove that I haven’t actually been “scared away”.
In any case, I’m not hostile to you because of your ideology. I’m hostile to you because of your attitude. And as far as I can tell, you became hostile to me first.
Didn’t rely on tired tropes, eh? Let’s take a look at your first post to me on this forum:
“Basically, the semantic conflict breaks down to this question: are individuals in control of, and therefore responsible for (in a value-free sense), their actions? From what I see, anarcho-capitalists answer this question in the affirmative and socialist anarchists answer it in the negative.”
That seems like an assertion with some non-neutral definitions, despite your insistence later that despite semantic differences, socialist anarchists are denying reality…
“With all due respect, your dispute with the word “capitalist” is apparently due to an abhorrence at the notion that it could be used as a label for anyone who you approve of.”
That was from your first post. Apparently you haven’t liked my attitude since I started posting here and have assumed that my concerns are “purely aesthetic” since day one. But let’s take a look at my first response to you:
“By the way, I never thought you were a troll and welcome you back to the Forums whenever you’d like. If there are certain folks who are uninterested in discussing things with you, then just don’t discuss things with them.”
Here’s my response to your assertion that I simply don’t like the word capitalism being used to describe people I agree with:
“We could very well say that Kropotkin, Tucker, and Proudhon were all capitalists that said they opposed something they called “capitalism,” but would that do any good in really clearing up what they actually believed or said to oppose?”
And your response:
“I think you’re finding it difficult to hold to the definition of “capitalism” as “voluntary trade”, because you’re so used to defining it differently.”
Despite my insistence in that thread that the definitions provided were a strictly practical concern, you immediately projected your take on to it, no matter how many times I said that wasn’t what I was doing. Despite me even saying, “Hey, well, whatever, let’s accept that definition, what does that mean in regard to my question?” you kept driving home your arguments about language and how you perceived me to be too emotionally conencted to words. So I figured, hell, might as well have a debate about language if their not going to answer my questions.