Transcending Anarcho-Semantics

re: Transcending Anarcho-Semantics

Ahueytlatoani — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 02:34:17 GMT

Great work! I happen to believe all Anarchists could live peacefully among one another.

I see that an Anarchist society would be a merging of Laisse-Faire Capitalism and Classical Socialism, with people free to trade or give as they see fit. This is the idea of a Free Market. In all, a society Free of Government coercion would contain similar elements of both Free Market Anarchism and Anarcho-Socialism.

Just because I like seemingly contradictary terms, I consider myself a "Free Market Marxist," in that I believe a Marxist-like Utopia can be achieved ONLY through a totally Free Market.

re: Transcending Anarcho-Semantics

anarcho-mercantilist — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 02:53:43 GMT

The anarcho-semantics problem causes massive numerical misunderstandings and problems between the anarchists who emphasize individual autonomy and the anarchists who emphasize communal collaboration. This serious problem commonly results in misunderstandings and confusion, in which those devolve into flame wars and partisian camps. The confusion blurs the identity of both camps, and synthesizes complex phenomenon. Each respective camp developed its own esoteric language and specific choice of associations. Those who emphasize the community, often discredit free-market theory as a scam for privileging the already well-off, thus curtailing their rationality away from studying free-market theory. They believe that the free-market creates negative conditions for workers and people of meager means. Thus, they despise proponents of the free market of supporting the privileged elite. Their anger motivates them to bait those who emphasize free-market or the individual. Furthermore, they view that anti-authoritarian communal positions inherently contradicts free-market theory, thus demonize those who support free-market theory.

Some proponents of individual autonomy display these characteristics when supporters of community cooperation attacks them. Some truly apologize for the conditions and privileges in question, and thus they don't even need to bait into playing such a role, which became called as "vulgar libertarianism" by opponents. Others do not emphasize privileges that much, but supports of the community discredits them. They function in a mild sense of "vulgar libertarianism." And still yet others have no such intentions and have no choice but to repeatedly attempt to clarify what they support and that they actually do not favor or defend the conditions and privileges in question.

The individualist-oriented supporter and the community-oriented supporter paradoxically opposes the same privileges, but from a different angle and use different terminology. However, the general tendency in political discourse attacks people even who defend these things, consequentially erecting a gigantic straw man of their position. They have no choice but to continually clarify that a genuinely free-market should not conflate with the currently-existing system. The community supporters continue to mistakenly act as there current exists a free market, and hence continues to point to blame free-market theory as supporting a status quo, which they use as one-sided debate.

The individualist supporters think that supporting the community would result in negative working conditions and regulatory capture. From their perspective, the worker activists merely engage in apologetics for interventions on private lives. In their worldview, they conflate workers' rights and state intervention . Thus, anyone supportive of improving workers' conditions appear to oppose free-market theory. As a consequence, they may tend to bait those who workers' rights into defending such things, including the violent states that operate under the name of "workers' rights". Furthermore, any attempt to create a link between free-market theory and workers' rights has shunned by supporters of individual rights as a contradiction in terms, and they demonize those who do flirt with such a combination. In response to such attacks, those who support workers' rights and the community function in a number of ways. Some of them truly advocate state intervention and violent revolution, thus one should not support them. Others do not necessarily have such intentions but nonetheless allow themselves baited on and off into playing such a role. And still yet others have no such intentions and have no choice but to repeatedly attempt to clarify their positions and that they actually do not favor government control or any kind of overt violence.

In a nuanced analysis, it feels interesting that the most honest and honorable people from both of the free-market theorists and the workers' rights camps tend to overlap in their desired ends. Both believers actually share many goals, such as the improvement of living standards for the masses, general prosperity, peace and cooperation. But the warped nature of the contemporary political spectrum has skewed and polarized their associations and alliances, pitting them against eachother while pushing them into alliances with groups that theoretically they should oppose. Thus we free market theorists allying with cultural conservatives and workers' right activists allying with those who support the beliefs of Marx and Lenin. And we see workers' rights activists spending more time criticizing free-market theory than they spend criticizing authoritarian states such as the Soviet Union and cultural conservatives. When the semantic ambiguities and partisan misunderstandings have whittled away, a diverse group of people with commonly good intentions who happen to use entirely different terminology and conceptual angles to describe, support and oppose practically the exact same set of things would develop, and beyond this it boils down to little more than a matter of personal preference. Both oppose the current-existing system and its negative conditions and special privileges. The concepts and systems that they use to describe what they support and oppose varies, but the essential content of the matter appears surprisingly similar. Both groups do not behave completely identical, but their true beliefs appear closer as the semantics and the contemporary politics involved would suggest.

re: Transcending Anarcho-Semantics

anarcho-mercantilist — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:09:58 GMT

The definition of a free market is an association in which all exchanges of goods are unaggressed by other agents.

However, anarcho-communal associations, such as the traditional family, are not free-markets. In the traditional family, members aggress each other to encourage production. Strategies that the members use include groupthink and peer pressure.

Theoretical free markets in the real world are impossible. The baisis of free markets is the volitional (non-aggressive) exchange of goods. As aggressibility is subjective (as in differing interpretations), various interpretations of what constitutes aggression would undermine the theoretical free market.

Those who judge that the internal structure of the traditional family as aggressive would likely categorize the traditional family as an aggressive institution. Even though certain anarcho-communalist associations are internally aggressive, these may be interpreted externally as non-aggressive since the associability is voluntary for the members.

In the real-world free-market approximation, different cultural institutions would set various etiquettes that formalizes the definitions of the actions which constitutes aggression. For example, while various faux pas such as not saying "thank you" may be aggressive in some Western cultures, it may not be that way in others. As long as the various etiquettes are formally defined and are purely contractually agreed, this does not contradict the principle of non-aggression, even if "harsh" punishments are taken to prevent etiquette violations.

Anarcho-communal associations, not to be confused with anarcho-communism, should coexist peacefully with free-market associations.

re: Transcending Anarcho-Semantics

anarcho-mercantilist — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 20:22:15 GMT

Thus, it is simply 100% false that the two groups are defining words differently. Both are defining 'capitalism' and 'property' the same way. Some market anarchists get really cranky when I point this out, but they never, ever make even a feeble attempt to refute my claim.

That's a pseudogeneralization. What you meant is that "all of the self-identified social anarchists that I know are opponents of the free market."

re: Transcending Anarcho-Semantics

Nitroadict — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 04:49:36 GMT

I actually somewhat agree with the criticism thrown at the term anarcho-capitalism by the likes of Infoshop, etc. (mainly since many "an-caps" tend to be minarchists & vulgar libertarians; I'm not alone in thinking that there has definitley been a co-opt of the term anarcho-capitalism).

Also because capitalism & anarchism are not necessarily compatible (only so much as voluntary activity & competition would allow for capitalism to occur in a stateless society; I'm of course using the definition of capitalism in terms of the concept "capital", not "state capitalism"), just as much as free-market & capitalism are not necessarily compatible (a free market would have various competing economic ideology aside from capitalism, in so far as due to competition & which idealogoy a majority of individuals would favor & utilize)

HOWEVER, it is very annoying that the same places seem to be also breeding grounds for various misconceptions that more or less equate market-anarchism as anarcho-capitalism in different clothing (I came across this very heavily at this article's comments @ infoshop: "Market-Anarchists@ The RNC" news.infoshop.org/article.php . It's a shame because the article was pretty good / encouraging).

At this point, specifically as the further I get further into Todd May's "The Political Philosphy of Post-Structuarlist Anarchism", I think all flavors of anarchism / radical libertarians should unite under a federation for a stateles society, while each flavor continues to further their own agendas, with the federation for stateless society serving as an informal meet-up where flavors can debate one another on the minor but signifigant details that divide the flavors, such as the concept of property.

The federation would be really loose though, obviously. Personally, I already see certain flavors that have recently emerged (I hope I'm not wrong in thinking mutalism is fairly recent) helping to try and bridge the gap between older,established flavors.

I wouldn't want to leave up to chance that somehow, newer flavors will emerge & eventually establish idealogical bridges amid older flavors, but I don't see it unreasonable. Has anyone else thought about this or noticed this with certain anarchist philosophies?

One thing that has intrigued me with post-structuralist anarchism is that it (or at least Todd May) addresses the concept of power being purley repressive & the assumption of humanism on anarchism's part.

I would be a bit more specific in my tangental points above, but I still need to finish the paper & have already diverted my comment off-topic enough already, lol...

On topic, I agree with what Mike said; the divisions of philosophy between the various anarchisms can serve to prevent progress towards the stateless society, which is where the disagreements would be better addressed since they would become quite real rather than purley restricted to a hypothetical space (that is not to say that the issues shouldn't be discussed anyway, though).

re: Transcending Anarcho-Semantics

Mike — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:52:29 GMT

I have to throw in with Cork here, though also with a nod to Nitro's statement about "100%".

I think it is without question that there are major differences of opinion on what constitutes not property, but just property. And from this gap stems much division.

I also believe that there are many anarchists who make unfortunate utopian errors and advance counterfactual conceptions of how people might act in a stateless society. Imagining that greed and avarice will disappear might make for nice fiction, but doesn't tell us much about the real world.

Those things said, I'd circle back and say: hey, maybe we do disagree. When we get done smashing the state, maybe we can work together to figure out what works and what doesn't. What certainly doesn't work is the endless variations of the No True Scotsman fallacy ("no true anarchist believes X") I see thrown around... and I would point specifically to the infoshop.org anarchism FAQ's attack on anarcho-capitalists in that.

re: Transcending Anarcho-Semantics

Nitroadict — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 05:26:57 GMT

Oops, huge mistake in my previous post: I meant "...as long as said socialist anarchists *did not* force their concept of private property.".

lol, a bit embarrassing methinks...

re: Transcending Anarcho-Semantics

Nitroadict — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 03:07:12 GMT

The phrase " 100% false" is 100% dubious; BP is absolutely on spot with regards to the confusion of semantics in an argument, but I think the overall point would be via the pluralism of liberty & free-association, as long as said socialist anarchists did force their concept of private property onto the market anarchists, and visa-versa, there would be little to no problem other than ocassional arbitration to clarify between various individuals or collectives of said philosophies.

Of course, I remember this popping up in one of the Mises groups concerning how would one solve the various differences between idealologies, which would probably involve a meta-politic brainstorm & solution, and the only thing I could come up with is arbituation.

But even then, that is not a satisfactory answer, and you would still have somewhat of a point, Cork, over the possible different aims over the same definitions over terms.

I think the desire to build bridges, in the realm of argumentation, is realistic & possible, and perhaps vital. I don't think BP meant to wholly prescribe an entire solution of a bridge between various ideologies. I think anyone who even bothers to claim such is being fairly Utopian (or naive) on their part.

re: Transcending Anarcho-Semantics

Cork — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 05:25:51 GMT

I understand the desire to build bridges, but once again, I strongly disagree that this is all a dispute over semantics. Socialist anarchists want to abolish private property, market anarchists don't. And no, they are not defining private property differently. Both groups are defining it the *exact same way.*

infoshop.org/.../secB3.html

www.struggle.ws/.../refuteAC.html

If this is not enough evidence, feel free to read every piece of left-anarchist literature published in the last couple hundred years. Start here, if you like.

dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives

You nailed it!

Jeremy — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 04:42:04 GMT

This is one of the clearest formulations of the problem we continually encounter that I've ever read. Well said!