Why I Am An Anarchist

http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/anarchist.html

by geoka9 • 16 years ago

22 49 16 years ago

lukevdp3• 16 years ago

Just because a government can possibly turn ugly, it doesn't mean that no government is better.

The argument is akin to "beef can give you food poisoning, so we should eradicate all cows".

Everyone hates paying taxes... But anarchy? Come on. The fabric of the society that has advanced so far in the last 300 years is built on, at the very least, property rights and stability

face• 16 years ago

I do not think he is arguing against property rights. I think that forms of anarchy allow for property rights and other individual liberties.

iskander2• 16 years ago

Can you explain more? How can property rights and individual liberties be secured without the police?

astine3• 16 years ago

In theory, but not practice. Hobbes particularly, makes the point that without government, property rights are largely unenforcible. The strong will out.

steveklabnik10• 16 years ago

ESR might not argue against property rights, because I'd bet he's an "anarcho"-capitalist. All other forms of anarchism don't believe in property, but ancaps do. This is why you'll often (well, in anarchist discussions, anyway) hear that "ancaps aren't anarchists."

lukevdp3• 16 years ago

I thought that as soon as you start introducing rights, you're talking about a libertarian

naner• 16 years ago

The argument is akin to "beef can give you food poisoning, so we should eradicate all cows".

Or "beef can give you food poisoning, we shouldn't eat beef". Actually, it sounds like he is saying "beef always eventually leads to poisoning" so I don't know if your analogy holds up at all.

Anarchy doesn't mean no authority, it just means the least amount of justifiable authority. People always associate Anarchy with chaos and lawlessness, which is not correct.

We will never see an anarchy society in our lifetime, though. This is more an exercise in idealism. e.g. the only type of political system that is ethically justifiable is anarchy.

steveklabnik10• 16 years ago

> The fabric of the society that has advanced so far in the last 300 years is built on, at the very least, property rights and stability

And an anarchist would suggest that that's exactly why the problems that we have have manifested today.

Anarchism is something that's hard to have an actual discussion on. The word has too much baggage. Anarchists are viewed as utopians, there's been a lot of inter-faction arguing, and politics are frankly boring. The modern anarchist movement hasn't been able to connect their message to anything that's relevant. As much as I dislike CrimeThinc, they make a really good points in "Your Politics are Boring as Fuck"[1].

Even if you don't think that ridding the world of rulers is a good thing, fundamentally, anarchism's message of truly caring for people still holds value. Groups like Food Not Bombs, Homes not Jails, and many cooperative organizations do a lot of good in the world. You might be surprised to find that even the Black Bloc isn't just a bunch of kids breaking things, though this is endlessly debated every time the G20 comes to town.

1: http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/selected/asfuck.php

iskander2• 16 years ago

>The modern anarchist movement hasn't been able to connect their message to anything that's relevant

What is the message? I usually just hear unfocused discontent. Saying "Grrr evil government" makes for a fun sense of solidarity and good conversation as you try to screw that cute girl from your collective. It doesn't, however, lead many people to thinking up scalable alternatives to government.

It seems to me that "Anarchism is something that's hard to have an actual discussion on" because most anarchists are either focused on (1) a perpetual oppositional stance to government (fun for them, but what's there to discuss?) or (2) creating or helping a small community. The second category is laudible but still offers almost nothing in the way of big-picture political solutions.

geoka9• 16 years ago

I like to consider myself an "anarcho-democrat" in the sense that I favor democracy and free market for all practical reasons, while recognizing that the state is a necessary evil, which needs to be distrusted, checked upon and controlled by the people as much as practically possible.

steveklabnik10• 16 years ago

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Minarchism

iterationx2• 16 years ago

If there was no government then gangs would take over.

pbourke3• 16 years ago

this was downvoted, but it is true. Look at Somalia.

raganwald• 16 years ago

Exactly. Let's kill the farmer, that way we animals can run things for ourselves.

steveklabnik10• 16 years ago

First of all, Somalia is not a great example of anarchy. All anarchists recognize that there needs to be significant social change before anarchism could happen; just toppling a government without changing the people leads to very, very bad things.[1]

Secondly, Somalia has done really well without government, depending on who you ask. There are studies that show [2] that it's only after the UN started screwing around and trying to impose a state that it stabilized into smaller, community-level governments. I'm no expert on Somalia, but you also have to recognize that when the institution of a state is recognized as the default condition, even a successful transition to anarchism would be talked about as 'failed.'

1: http://c4ss.org/content/2859

2: http://www.independent.org/publications/working_papers/artic...

e40• 16 years ago

In this day and age, I think it would be corporations. The void left by no government would be filled by the second most powerful entities, and those are most certainly corporations.

When I read "Market Forces" (scifi) I thought, very entertaining but completely unrealistic. In the absence of government, maybe not.

iterationx2• 16 years ago

Maybe Halliburton or Bechtel or Blackwater, they have the biggest weapons

astine3• 16 years ago

If there was no government, there would be no corporations. A corporation's power is dependent on the social framework a government creates. To give an example of what I mean, modern currencies are fiat, that is, they have value because various governments have declared them to have value. With the collapse of government, one of the chief sources of power for corporations, their immense liquid wealth, would become meaningless.

That's not to say that corporate entities wouldn't be able to adapt and fill the power vacuum, but they wouldn't resemble corporations as we know them today, and they likely wouldn't resemble some of the silly concoctions that you sometimes see in SF (_Venus Incorporated_, etc.)

duncanj2• 16 years ago

I was a little disturbed by the glib comparison between Nazi Germany and the IRS. Also, I think there are a lot of people who do not "suffer" under a redistributive welfare state, but rather suffer less than they would without the redistribution.

ryandvm• 16 years ago

My take on the article is that the author is basically advocating less powerful central government. What he fails to recognize in the article are that strong state and local governments are part of the balance that the Constitution put in place and they work quite well.

Indeed, not only is strong local governance a good preventative measure against the unlikely military coup, it works for all kinds of things. Want socialized healthcare? No reason your state can't do it. Don't want a national war on drugs? California is about find out if one is actually constitutional.

When you have states with economies that are larger than most countries, there is no reason to be bumping so many responsibilities up to the federal level.

swombat3• 16 years ago

A pretty poor argument for gun ownership...

If this was the case, then personal handguns should be made illegal, and assault weapons should be available to all with appropriate training.

Handguns aren't going to do much if the US government decides to ethnically cleanse a state.

pavel_lishin2• 16 years ago

I don't think assault weapons would do much, either. Don't bring a machine gun to a tank fight.

swombat3• 16 years ago

Machine guns are pretty handy for guerilla warfare.

Tanks, not so much.

mithaler• 16 years ago

I don't know about 1934, but this is what the ballot looked like in 1938. http://danariely.com/2010/10/05/hitler-nudge/

In any case, he doesn't answer the central question that arguing for anarchy inevitably provokes: once we take away the power monopoly of government, what's to stop someone from seizing power by force and being far worse than any government that preceded them?

The problem with the Hitler example is that that's pretty much exactly what Hitler did. Weimar Germany was far from a model of sane government; it felt powerless after the war, it was crippled economically and it lacked real leadership. The spirit of nationalism that had made Germany such a powerful force before WWI had been broken by its defeat, and Hitler took power by stepping in to fill the void that it left.

In other words, the Hitler example is exactly what a sane government prevents. The problem there wasn't the fact that there was a government in power; it was that there wasn't one. Anarchy was the problem, not the solution.

seles• 16 years ago

Another problem with democracy: lets say there are 9 people and there are some dishes that need washing, one could propose a vote to make Bob always do the dishes every time for ever. If everyone votes in their best interest then Bob is screwed. Obviously this is not fair and people would hopefully have the sense not to do this, but you can't count on people to be "fair" or even know what fair is.

This dilemma already exists, one examples is welfare. Now you may agree or disagree that welfare is good or bad, but surely there is some degree of welfare that is too much, and it will reach this limit eventually if it already hasn't.

I liked the quote: "...democracy is a terrible form of government, but eight times better than any other." -Winston Churchill

I do not agree that anarchy is the solution, although democracy has it's flaws, it does indeed seem eight times better than anything else... Or at least anything that could practically be done. I think the ideal solution would be to create a very basic set of laws that guarantees individual rights. And make any form of new laws impossible.

But how practical is this idea? The only way I can see it happening is if some rich dude buys an island and puts investment in it to get its economic foundation going. Yes I know crazy idea.

zimbu668• 16 years ago

People have advocated man made islands that would reside outside the territory of any nation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading)

Sealand is an interesting example, some sort of British military base on a platform in the North Sea was claimed and declared an independent country, with little recognition by any established countries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand)

tlots• 16 years ago

It is interesting to draw a parallel between the philosophical idea of utilitarianism and democracy. Particularly in the sense that what is best for the 'greater good' is not always ethical.

Example: Take down a plane full of people to save a building full of people?

nooneelse• 16 years ago

Welfare systems don't come with peoples names in the legislation, like "Bob always does the dishes". They are based on other properties which any citizen might sometime have. So they are more like, "the person who has least recently done the dishes (provided they are not now sick or injured) does the dishes." Welfare is not an example of the kind of democratic fairness dilemma that you raise with the Bob-always-does-the-dishes solution.

james2vegas• 16 years ago

s/anarchist/(anarcho-capitalist|right libertarian|Libertarian)/

Why I Am An Anarchist

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