Political Theory

Re: Anarcho-Socialists

fezwhatley — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 06:10:20 GMT

BP, i think you were benign and constitent throughout this thread, good job. i still think all the anarcho-sydicalists that i've encountered can go fuck themselves, includes this guy from boston i met a couple weeks ago who was wearing a Mao Zedong t-shirt

Re: Anarcho-Socialists

Conza88 — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 15:09:57 GMT

Nick. B:

LOL! Yeah but the real sad thing is that most of these idiots don't even know that Marx never really worked a day in his life, he always mooched off his father or Engels, and in his day wasn't considered that great of a socialist theorist. While Mises had his house burnt down by fascist and inspired F.A. Hayek, a nobel prize winning economist, and Rothbard was in his day was in fact very respected in his fields and had some of his essays published in very respected magazines and newspapers. Basically they follow a moocher who wasn't relevent at the time of his contempories; while we follow a man who was respected when he was alive and already is gaining a following worldwide.

very good...

Re: Anarcho-Socialists

Nick. B — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 13:45:25 GMT

Conza88:

Nick. B:

GilesStratton:
The fact is most anarcho communists are children with a Youtube account who don't get out enough.

Funny, thats how they see us. Even though it seems that many of us just have normal lives and are busy getting an education or running our small businesses.

Exploiters! Wage slavery! Normal lives?!? NO capitalist has a normal life! It is full of riches and excesses, all that profit and GREED, all that moniesss and EVILz1!1!! Karl Marx was dirt poor, no-one would publish him... Then you have Mises, and Rothbard - filthy rich!!!

LOL! Yeah but the real sad thing is that most of these idiots don't even know that Marx never really worked a day in his life, he always mooched off his father or Engels, and in his day wasn't considered that great of a socialist theorist. While Mises had his house burnt down by fascist and inspired F.A. Hayek, a nobel prize winning economist, and Rothbard was in his day was in fact very respected in his fields and had some of his essays published in very respected magazines and newspapers. Basically they follow a moocher who wasn't relevent at the time of his contempories; while we follow a man who was respected when he was alive and already is gaining a following worldwide.

Re: Anarcho-Socialists

Conza88 — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 13:16:24 GMT

Nick. B:

GilesStratton:
The fact is most anarcho communists are children with a Youtube account who don't get out enough.

Funny, thats how they see us. Even though it seems that many of us just have normal lives and are busy getting an education or running our small businesses.

Exploiters! Wage slavery! Normal lives?!? NO capitalist has a normal life! It is full of riches and excesses, all that profit and GREED, all that moniesss and EVILz1!1!! Karl Marx was dirt poor, no-one would publish him... Then you have Mises, and Rothbard - filthy rich!!!

Re: Anarcho-Socialists

Nick. B — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 11:55:34 GMT

GilesStratton:
The fact is most anarcho communists are children with a Youtube account who don't get out enough.

Funny, thats how they see us. Even though it seems that many of us just have normal lives and are busy getting an education or running our small businesses.

Re: Anarcho-Socialists

hayekianxyz — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 10:58:12 GMT

Jon Irenicus:
At a grander scale, anarcho-communists will form their communes, perhaps trading with other enclaves, perhaps visiting but it is unlikely they'll reside in them. Why should they when they can put their vision into practice? So I do not think arrangements such as restrictive covenants would be difficult to put into place at all. It's just necessary to realize it need not encompass an entire city, and that dissociative preferences need not entail isolationism.

I see anarcho communism quickly dying without the state. From what I can tell most of them only favour this type of organisation because they're deluded enough to think that it can work. When they try to implement it only to see that it fails and they're living in far less prosperity than their capitalist neighbours, I'd hazard a guess that despite their rhetoric they'll choose material wealth over some silly notion of equality.

The fact is most anarcho communists are children with a Youtube account who don't get out enough.

Re: Anarcho-Socialists

C.H. Hellstrom — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 10:45:58 GMT

Jon Irenicus:
I count them as individualist anarchists anyway, and they are respectful of property rights.

Definately debatable if you ask me.

Re: Anarcho-Socialists

Jon Irenicus — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 04:59:17 GMT

I count them as individualist anarchists anyway, and they are respectful of property rights. But no, BP2 was referring more specifically to societies in which communists for instance are expelled. My point was that this can be achieved by way of restrictive covenants and the like, and that if the preference for dissociation is strong enough, that this will in fact come into place. It need not encompass a whole city even; just segments of it, though I guess it's possible one could even see whole cities governed by interconnecting networks of such covenants. I also think most people will gravitate to communities servicing their preferences, and their view of the good life, so that conservatives will live apart from liberals and so on. Trade will still go on, and I would venture some commercial centres will be open to everyone. Those who dislike this can stick to enterprises in their own communities.

At a grander scale, anarcho-communists will form their communes, perhaps trading with other enclaves, perhaps visiting but it is unlikely they'll reside in them. Why should they when they can put their vision into practice? So I do not think arrangements such as restrictive covenants would be difficult to put into place at all. It's just necessary to realize it need not encompass an entire city, and that dissociative preferences need not entail isolationism.

Re: Anarcho-Socialists

Nick. B — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 04:04:13 GMT

Jon Irenicus:

My point is that such restrictive covenants won't be libertarian in the absence of unanimous consent to them; they will be coercive institutional discrimination. Otherwise, integration will occur at the margin, and there's very little that can be done about that short of coercion. The entire thing is predicated on literally everyone in the community agreeing to be restrictive to that degree, which I find to be close to impossible, particularly as the generations pass by.

Not really. Just particular segments of a given community. I'm not sure where the problem is, most likely people who differ in their preferences will not approach such a community to begin with, unless they don't mind living there as guestworkers perhaps or something of that sort. That pretty much rules out commies - again, if their ideology is so great, and they have the opportunity to live in a commune, it speaks volumes against their confidence in it if they insist on living in capitalist societies.

Well I think we can rule out Communist. But what about Mutualist? I think they'd make good allies...at least on the left.

Re: Anarcho-Socialists

liberty student — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 04:01:44 GMT

Commies don't want to move out on their own. They need someone else to supply the capital goods that oppress them and exploit their labour. I mean, really. You can't be a good commie unless you are crying about exploitation. Unhappiness is the natural state of the exploited proles.

If they leave, whose capital goods will they use? We already know the commie system of capital is flawed and unsustainable...

I figure they are waiting around until they cantake away the capital goods, LIBERATE THEM, from the evil and vile capitalists and factory owners, then they can take the factories, and the owners cars and houses too, since it's all product of exploitation.

You see, they never have to establish a commune. That would be risky and hard work.

Re: Anarcho-Socialists

Jon Irenicus — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 03:20:47 GMT

My point is that such restrictive covenants won't be libertarian in the absence of unanimous consent to them; they will be coercive institutional discrimination. Otherwise, integration will occur at the margin, and there's very little that can be done about that short of coercion. The entire thing is predicated on literally everyone in the community agreeing to be restrictive to that degree, which I find to be close to impossible, particularly as the generations pass by.

Not really. Just particular segments of a given community. I'm not sure where the problem is, most likely people who differ in their preferences will not approach such a community to begin with, unless they don't mind living there as guestworkers perhaps or something of that sort. That pretty much rules out commies - again, if their ideology is so great, and they have the opportunity to live in a commune, it speaks volumes against their confidence in it if they insist on living in capitalist societies.

Re: Anarcho-Socialists

majevska — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 01:39:57 GMT

I think all one needs is a passing familiarity with the history of the modern libertarian movement to realize that any alliances with the so-called left or right can never bear much fruit in the long run. At certain times and places, fleeting instances of cooperation and solidarity can be useful, but become dangerous once they've outlived their purpose. This is because the very nature of such alliances can never be anything more than "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." When libertarians get suckered into believing otherwise, the results usually aren't what the suckers expected. The worst is of course when the suckers don't even realize they've been duped and go on for years and years furthering someone else's agenda.

It's perhaps a tad ironic to use something Reagan said in a post like this, but he was spot on about "up and down" being more important than right and left.

Re: Anarcho-Socialists

Brainpolice — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:27:27 GMT

C.H. Hellstrom:

Brainpolice:

Again, ideological support for private property is not necessary for one to act in a way consistant with the NAP, and neither does ideological support for private property necessarily mean that one will act in a way consistant with the NAP.

You are contradicting yourself, and it's getting annoying. On one side you say that anarchism (or what you consider to be anarchism) recognizes individual rights, and on the other you say that one can be an anarchist without accepting the validity of private property.

My above post explains my perspective more in depth.

I haven't contradicted myself, we seem to be talking about somewhat different things. In order for an ideology to count as anarchist, yes, it must recognize individual rights. This does not mean, however, that one must have an anarchistic ideology to function as an anarchist or to function in an anarchistic society. Neither does it mean that those who have an anarchistic ideology will necessarily behave in a way that is consistant with it. Someone can reject anarchist ideology and function in 100% accordance with the NAP as an individual, and someone can accept anarchist ideology and function in contradictionto the NAP as an individual. In short, there almost never is a coherant connection between one's ideology and one's behavior.

Furthermore, even if one does ideologically accept the fundamentals of individual rights, from that point onwards there are endless conflicts in terms of interpretation and application. For some examples, libertarians can't even agree among eachother if it's okay for the state to restrict migration and close its borders, wether or not abortion violates the NAP, the legitimacy of corporate limited liability and intellectual property. Minarchists have convinced themselves that they support individual rights and then go on to propose a state, the greatest rights violation possible. So I think in some sense it is definitely an oversimplification to say that it's a matter of "you either accept individual rights or you don't".

Re: Anarcho-Socialists

C.H. Hellstrom — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:18:01 GMT

Brainpolice:

Again, ideological support for private property is not necessary for one to act in a way consistant with the NAP, and neither does ideological support for private property necessarily mean that one will act in a way consistant with the NAP.

You are contradicting yourself, and it's getting annoying. On one side you say that anarchism (or what you consider to be anarchism) recognizes individual rights, and on the other you say that one can be an anarchist without accepting the validity of private property.

Re: Anarcho-Socialists

Brainpolice — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:54:09 GMT

I would propose that most people, regaurdless of their ideology, more or less follow the NAP in their day to day lives (and even ideologically support it on a personal level). This indicates that the connection between one's ideology and one's behavior is often severed. People tend to expect others to enact their ideologies for them, they rarely behave in a way that is consistant with their ideology. I doubt that most people would be willing to take the personal risk necessary to go through with stealing other people's stuff or shoot others in the process of trying to gain their stuff, regaurdless of their ideology. The state is what presents them with a mechanism and oppurtunity to have others violently enforce their ideology for them. I think it's wise to try one's best to judge people on the basis of their actions as opposed to their ideologies, considering that the two are rarely coherantly connected.

This is what I mean when I say that one can ideologically reject private property without violating the NAP. Someone can proclaim how much they hate private property and how much they want everyone to live on an ant farm all they want until they are blue in the face, but their behavior often indicates otherwise, their behavior implicitly supports private property and generally peaceful interrelations. I think that without the ability to externalize the responsibility for acting on one's ideology onto an institution like the state, violent conflict among people in society with different ideologies is disincentivized. To take the opposite viewpoint, to me, would be to fall back on a Hobbesian vision of what anarchy is like. I think that when it comes down to it, people tend to follow economic incentives despite their ideologies, and to take it one step further, I think that over time the following of economic incentives makes cultural and ideological differences increasingly irrelevant.