Anarchists Of The World, Unite!

Anarchy has a very small half-life.

There's a sort of "purity" at that blog that amazes even me.

It sounds like postmodern claptrap to me, Kate, thus
illustrating that a little learning is a dangerous thing.

Oh, I don't think you can blame any of that on "learning".

Maitre...allow me to correct you..

'a little knowledge is a DANGEROUS thing'..and i quote further...

'drink deep or taste not the Gorean/Pierian spring
shallow draughts there intoxicate the brain
while drinking largely sobers us again"

Her "argument" brings this to mind.

anyway i agree...true democracy...the agora in full spate and cry is VERY messy..it is never a formulaic resolution of conflict but a(and i hate to use the word but a 'dialectic' process)which requires patience..and of course time...

Well, Kate, she learned that Anarchist is a perennially
trendy word. The problem is, apparently that's about it.

Roger that, John, I corrected it just as you were correcting
me. Of course, it was also in part two thereto that he wrote:
To err is human, to forgive divine. ;-)

I find it entertaining that she seems to see no inherent contradiction between "maximizing personal liberty" and "authority devolved to the local level and exercised through direct democracy". But then these kind of pie-in-the sky armchair politicos always seem to think themselves terribly smart when they "discover" something Enlightenment philosophers figured out three hundred years ago.

We had a local "barter network" congratulate themselves endlessly on solving the problem of "I want to trade with Bob, but I don't have anything Bob wants" with the introduction of "barter dollars". Good job, geniuses, you've successfully invented money. ::facepalm::

Very droll, EBD ;-)

She also reminds me of these anarcho-syndicalist communes.

I noted that one of our little anarchist's first links was to 'Activist Teacher' who headlines his most recent post with "Mainstream Mindf**k...." and goes on to say:

"Whose problem is an overly large public debt? Simply zero the debt. Or if the lender is the public purse then zero the interest on the public part of the debt. If the result is that private banks will refuse to lend more then the result is that private banks will have lost their instrument of extortion. The state can print its own public money and lend it where needed on a basis of trust."

So, HIS version of gov't will lend out money to those they 'trust' to pay it back (yeah, right) while HIS gov't can simply zero the debt they themselves create.

And we allow such people near our children!

Thanks Vitruvius and EBD for the MP, much appreciated.

At first I felt I was reading something written by Iggy, then after further attempts I realized I was giving attention to some kid who just smoked a doobie.

Speaking of anarchy, my early Christmas present was a toque my wife knitted for me with the anarchy symbol on it. She posted the picture of it on Facebook and everyone was joking that it meant the "A with a hole in it". I can only assume she loves me and supports my wish for less government,...I hope that is what she meant :)

Well if she were a true anarchist she wouldn't be writing anything. Its hard to write a cogent sentence with no rules of Grammar, Spelling etc.

Quite so, Joe, and that's related to my first comment in this entry. Anarchy, pure anarchy, is nothing. Nothing doesn't exist. Ergo, pure anarchy doesn't exist. Humans are systemic creatures. Thus they self organize, and remarkably quickly. If you have any organization, you don't have anarchy. Anarchy doesn't exist.

My wife's paternal family had some interaction with Nestor Makhno's band of anarchists in 1918 and 1919 near Zaporozhye, Ukraine, on a couple of occasions. It was not a good thing. Once a bullet creased her grandfather's forehead and on another occasion, a small band of Makhnovste rode into the village and wanted to shoot the village administration. My wife's grandfather was the mayor at the time and only the fact that his father had saved this sub-leader's father's life in the late 1800s, deterred the man and he and his group rode out of the village.

Makhno is a sort of patron saint to these people.

I believe that the definition has been diluted for years.

BTW, the 'Activist Teacher' is none other than Denis Rancourt, a physics prof from the U. of Ottawa who was recently fired.

He's best known for awarding all students an A+ because grades, are of course, meaningless and a construct of the patriarchy.

One wonders: Why not then assign everyone a 'D' rather than an 'A+'? Perhaps because a meaningless 'D' would be an affront to his students while a meaningless 'A+' is deserved.

Anarchy: it's all about jamming a stick in the spokes of anything meaningfull.

If Makhno lead a band, it was not anarchy.
Anarchy must, by definition, be leaderless.

"Anarchy" is like peoples' democratic republic: it means communist dictatorship.

Vitruvius @ 12:25 "If Makhno lead a band, it was not anarchy."

That is why he did not get along too well with "pure" anarchists in western Europe. At one point in 1919, he had upwards of 10,000 men. He fought against the Petliurists, the Reds (when he wasn't allied with them), but mostly against the Whites.

Understood. So anarchy is a word he and all of them use[d] to describe
their fradulent hiding of their own personal responsibility in the matter.

Kate writes in the update ~ This is an anarchist.

Brilliant.

Still and all, though, the half-life of bureaucracy-free
is only marginally greater than the half-life of anarchy.
Far as I can tell, humans just don't work that way.

say it together now---"We're all individuals" and again.

Sure, yet we're clumps of individuals too. One has
to use all the cards to play the hand one's dealt.

Looks like there is complete anarchy in anarchist academia as they can't even agree on the definition of "anarchist". As a teenager I used to call myself an anarchist as this seemed to be the closest established belief system to my seemingly innate hatred of government and bureaucracy.

After dealing with "anarchists" when I first moved to Vancouver, I realized I had nothing in common with them aside from a shared hatred of authority but they seemed to despise business more than government. Under the nosology of the article that started this thread I would be described as an anarcho-capitalist which seems to be a pejorative term in the anarcho-socialist lexicon.

Vitruvius has a more rigid definition of anarchy which is something that does not exist in real life. Humans are social animals and thus some form of social organization will occur whenever people are put together in groups. I happen to like self organizing systems and prefer to work in such groups where individuals with common interests come together and work in loose associations. There seems to be another human tendency and that is to bureaucratize informal human groupings which is more likely to happen in larger groups than small groups. The best way to perform a particular task may be through a rigidly structured hierarchical system which I have no problem with as long as all participants join such a group of their own free will and the group has a clearly defined purpose which doesn't change except with the consent of all participants.

The perennial fascination of young people with socialism something that I've been been pondering for decades as I went through a (fortunately very brief) socialist period. For a while I was part of a loose collective which consisted of a fluctuating number of people who had access to a shared house and, as I didn't live there, I'd make sure I brought enough beer for everyone if I happened to drop by. One of the "leaders" of this collective was a Che Guevara idolizing socialist whose main employment seemed to be periodically going to S. American countries as the representative of one organization or another to help organize peasants although I suspect he greatly facilitated his income with drug smuggling which was much easier to do in the 1970's.

We had very long discussions about politics and one of the disagreements we had I didn't resolve until 30 years after our talk. One day after a communal dinner and lots of beer he pointed out how everybody in our "collective" got along beautifully and this was an example of how society should be organized. I agreed with him that we certainly did get along famously, but didn't agree about extending the type of socialist model to the rest of society. I just had a gut feeling about it and couldn't articulate why at the time.

What struck me a few years ago is that the reason socialism doesn't work is because it scales very poorly. Capitalism scales very well and it is a dynamic self-organizing system which produces as good a solution as one can get to matching peoples wants with sources that can satisfy those wants. Families are socialist systems and our loose collective was also socialist but it was small and self-selected.

Thus far I haven't had a single self-declared socialist come up with an argument against my pointing out socialism's scaling problem. Since socialism is essentially not practical in large groups of people (sort of like using a bubble sort algorithm for datasets with millions of elements) the only way that it can deal with the resultant problems in a country size group is to devolve to a totalitarian dictatorship.

So there's nothing wrong with socialist social groups that are small and the maximum size that works is likely the size of the largest successful Israeli kibbutz. The socialist groupings have to be small enough that people can easily leave them if they are dissatisfied and also need to be embedded in an anarcho-capitalist substrate for the system to function optimally.

I prefer "libertarian" to "anarcho-capitalist" but the terms are isomorphic.

I certainly don't think that libertarian and anarcho-capitalist are isomorphic, Loki; speaking as a founding member of the Libertarian Party of Alberta in 1972, I see myself as a minarchic- free- marketist, and most definately not as an anarcho- capitalist. Still, I agree with the general points you are making. Arguing about words like this, which is what Molly was doing first supra, is pretty much silly, unless you are doing it for fun, and including lots of Monty Python Philosophy links ;-)

Old Women! MAN!

Anarchism does indeed have a very short half-life.
Albania descended into anarchy after the communist regime colapsed in the 90's. The result was chaos....rampant riot and looting....NATO descided to interveen....the first unit was the Italian Bersigliari (a penal regiment noted for brutal valour) and after landing at the capital restored order without firing a shot.....Albanians may be revolting people but are not stupid. Anarchy lacks any capability/structure to defend a beach....or a city.
Soamalia devolved briefly into anarchy but society and nature abhor a vacuum and the vacuum was immediately filled by tribalism, gangs and warlords---primitive social structure.
Government must exist but be minimal.....socialism always means BIG INCOMPETANT, INEFFICIENT GOVERNMENT....and TOTALITARIAN dictatorship.

The left's list of illegitimately co-opted words like "green" and "liberal" is long and egregious enough, but the list of meanings - i.e. thoughts - that have been illegitimately and connotatively co-opted is greater still. Leftists care about other people - which puts conservatives in rather stark relief. Leftists believe in "justice," (say that one loud) - as opposed to, say, po-facedly getting in justice's way for unjust reasons. A leftist is someone who believes in peace, so you know what that says about conservatives. And the left believes in human rights, ergo...

Kate's right: Anarchy IS preferable to Marxism. And based on the built-in ineffability of what it means - it's not like "love," or "green" - it's still up for grabs; in an era of rampant word-theft, it might be one of the few remaining words available to, umm, reel inand put behind our backs. I mean, if you're part of an armed group who individually can't string two coherent thoughts together, and you disrupt an incursive socialist assembly, that makes you an anarchist in the - then-Statist - vernacular. Plus, if Molly Mew approaches to confront you, someone can lure her off to the side and neutralize her with a decades-long discussion...

Re "Green": in my experience, 'conservatives' do more personally towards greening of the planet via their own backyards than do self-professed "Greens", who often admit to not having a "Green thumb", hehe ...

Anarchy IS NOT preferable to Marxism.
Anarchy is as bad as Marxism and neither is "good for you" because the later wants to regulate your life completely and the former rejects any rules.

With all due respect, Ella, Anarchy would always be preferable to Marxism. To reject the utter and complete regulation of one's life by others - Marxists, in the chosen example - who have different ideas isn't a perfect analog to rejecting "any rules" within one's own chosen ambit, whether that be family, friends, or community.

Refusing to recognize and obey a Marxist authority is a preferable state to that of obedience to Marxism, even if the intractable one is incapable of making a coherent/compelling case for his resistance, or positing an equally compelling counter-assertion as to who should rule.

Ineloquence, dissipation, and unwillingness to make world-rules for others is a natural resting-point, whereas Marxism is constructed, tribal aggression.

Mrolly is lost in hre own words; asea in an ocean of unknowing. Anarchy can only be s temporary state between overthrown authority and a newly installed thugocracy, banditry or gangsterism.

For all the theorists of anarchy of the late 19th and early 20th century, they were out of touch with reality and achieved nothing but youthful vainglory.

Libertarianism is the only option, regarding the state as a necessary evil; thus it should be held to the minimum, which is to hold the thugs, bandits and gangsters at bay.

No matter what kind of system you have, or think you have, SOMEONE will be giving the orders.

I'm a liberterian, but I've been checking out canadian anarco-capitalist Stefan Molyneux youtube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/stefbot

The dude got some interesting points and he's anti-state not anti-law. I'm still a miniarcist though ;)

The Tea Party movement in the US is much closer to the anarchist ideal than many of the actual anarchists I hung out with 20 years ago.

That blogger's lousy definition of anarcho-capitalism gives her away. "Peasants"? The hell? And the whole couple of sentences is completely flawed. So.

However, some posters here are equally confused. The anarchy this woman is talking about is not post-uprising 'chaos'; that is the vernacular understanding, but Anarchism (capital A) is a political philosophy like Marxism.

Although I think the world would be a better place if the right became anarchist - let's start with stating loudly as possible in those crappy lineups at airport security that "I am not a terrorist!"

Anarchist - a communist with a leather jacket and a bad haircut

It never stops to amaze me how much smokers INSIST the tobacco smoke that they just exhaled has to be inhaled by someone else.

I have a neigbour who smokes many cheap sigarets, those stinky ones who allegedly have rat tails ground into the mix by the folks on reserve. He does not do that in his home, no! He prefers to sit on his porch and smoke 2-3 sigs on a nice windless night. Whole neigbourhood stinks of burnt fingernails as he enjoys puffing.

This is a kind of person, whose right you, Kate, choose to defend. I know, I know - tough luck for me, I should move and stuff...

You choose to defend the right to order trans fats. Obviously you would oppose any ban on MSG too as those two share essentially same goal - making food cheaper. It would not matter to you that for example for me enjoyment of life is completely ruined by use of MSG in food industry. I can no longer eat foods I love since I was a child.

You are a monster, Kate. I have to say it even though I share the same conservative individualist views as you (of course if you are genuine about that).

I'm in favour of people owning Rottweilers, too.

Take that.

Rottweiler or corsino, I could not care less. Why do you insist that people have a right to poison others?

Boy, Aaron sure is in favour of individual freedoms except when it inconvienences him ;)

So, smokers should be banned from smoking outside?!?!? wtf, where are they supposed to shorten their lifespans then. Banning transfats is the equivalent of promising rainbows and unicorns to solve the obesity problem. Finally as for MSG, everyone needs to purge their systems with a good bout of diarrhea now and then (don't they)?

You have no idea what MSG is doing to you. Education is the missing part.

I was struck by this item, in part because I have been, as part of a hiring committee for a professorship, run across an application by a well known US professor who self-identifies as an anarchist. His "anarchism" hasn't prevented him from entering fully into academic administration, the grantsmanship game, and all of the petty politics of academia. The more I studied his file and, with the aid of my research assistant, young Master Google, a picture emerged of a pretty cosy network of "activist" professors who were deep into pretty traditional academic log-rolling. Some of them, too, claimed the "anarchist" label, even as they served as Deans and other bum-boys of the Man. On the other hand, several showed their bravery and commitment to the cause by signing a petition in support of William Ayers.

They were chancers and opportunists in the 1960s and haven't changed a bit.

Looking at the picture of the cute wildebeests, I'd say that there are far more anarchists out there, albeit for different reasons that what they would say.

There ought to be a law against people trying to control each other.

This reminds me of the teenager's perennial cry:

"I want to be different...JUST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE!".

So sad.

From Loki at 1:15 - "We had very long discussions about politics and one of the disagreements we had I didn't resolve until 30 years after our talk. One day after a communal dinner and lots of beer he pointed out how everybody in our "collective" got along beautifully and this was an example of how society should be organized."

They got along beautifully because they were a self selected group of people, and anyone who didn't feel they belonged could get up and leave any time they wanted to. If they try to organize the whole country like that, results may vary.

Aaron I consider you a threat to my health and well being.
I smoke to protect me from that arch-toxin....second-hand smoke. You would deny me that.....
It has been proven with "peer-revued science that second hand smoke can rip the crome of a LADA bumper 2 blocks upwind.
BTW I can also piss off my porch.

edit: CHROME