Stop Me Before I Vote Again

for many of us, certainly myself, anarchism embodies a radical skepticism and cynicism that comes from a belief in the totally ineluctable reality of the oppressive state.

IOZ

For that is the mark of Russian autocracy and of Russian revolt. In its pride of numbers, in its strange pretensions of sanctity, and in the secret readiness to abase itself in suffering, the spirit of Russia is the spirit of cynicism.

Joseph Conrad

Oh boy Fred. You are doing battle with definitions. Oh boy. What a hero!

Go count some pennies, economist boy.

You know, Freddy, that "economics" as practiced by you and op is just as shapeless and nonsensical. I guess you two are childish and useless too.

There you go.

"Does anyone have a better definition of anarchy that I have missed? "

Yeah, anything vaguely scholarly would do. How about the recent "Black Flame v1" by Lucien van der Walt & Michael Schmidt?

Excerpts:

"It is our view that the term anarchism should be reserved for a particular rationalist and revolutionary form of libertarian socialism that emerged in the sec­ ond half of the nineteenth century. Anarchism was against social and economic hierarchy as well as inequality—and specifically, capitalism, landlordism, and the state—and in favor of an international class struggle and revolution from below by a self-organised working class and peasantry in order to create a self-managed, socialist, and stateless social order. In this new order, individual freedom would be harmonised with communal obligations through cooperation, democratic decision making, and social and economic equality, and economic coordination would take place through federal forms. The anarchists stressed the need for revolutionary means (organisations, actions, and ideas) to prefigure the ends (an anarchist society). Anarchism is a libertarian doctrine and a form of libertarian socialism; not every libertarian or libertarian socialist viewpoint is anarchist, though."

-page 72

Also from Afaq:

"Anarchism, therefore, is a political theory that aims to create a society which is without political, economic or social hierarchies. Anarchists maintain that anarchy, the absence of rulers, is a viable form of social system and so work for the maximisation of individual liberty and social equality. They see the goals of liberty and equality as mutually self-supporting. Or, in Bakunin's famous dictum:

"We are convinced that freedom without Socialism is privilege and injustice, and that Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 269] "

- http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secA1.html#seca12

anticapped,

I agree with both of those definitions, and linked to the second one in my post.

Stop posting.

I'm staying. I'm finishing my coffee. Enjoying my coffee.

I think of myself as an anarchist, and I think all arguments over definitions and specifics are basically bullshit. Anarchism, or the state of being free of external authority, is the natural state of human beings, each of whom are provided with an internal empire and a brain to rule it with. We have been enslaved and plundered for at least 5 thousand years by those who would have us forget this. The future state of mankind is impossible to predict, especially if we do become independent of the fantasy that we need to be controlled. Who can say how we'll behave, what rules we'll decide are necessary, when we are no longer imprisoned by fears of crime, unemployment, terrorism, etc.? We are still a materialistic society, and materialism, already refuted and disgraced, will never last. Noone can know what we'll be thinking when our minds are no longer flooded with that infotoxin from birth. I look forward to it myself; in every little way I find that I can liberate myself in the here and now, I happily make the effort.

JP does us the favor of raising the other profound non-starter in anarchism: sheer material reality, including the materiality of the human brain.

JP writes that "Anarchism, or the state of being free of external authority, is the natural state of human beings, each of whom are provided with an internal empire and a brain to rule it with."

To the extent this means we aren't necessarily born into fascist dictatorships, it is trite but true.

To the extent it is actually a claim about what babies are born into, it is simply thoughtlessly wrong:

Authority is pre-existing knowledge and skill. It can be (and certainly tends to be) exploited and converted into power and exploitative behaviors and arrangements.

Every human being is utterly, uniquely dependent on being born into circumstances that include active and interested providers and appliers of personal and cultural authority. Encountering authority is how we learn to walk, talk, eat, sleep, and participate in whatever group life is on hand. Without such authority, we die. Without enough of it, we literally become socially retarded and bio-mechanically disabled.

The other thing that anarchists routinely ignore is the evidence that we talking monkeys can only possess and maintain intimate knowledge of a few hundred other individuals at a time. The obvious upshot is that kinship society is extremely likely if not impossible on a planet with billions or even hundreds of millions of us trying to find a sweet spot for sustainable but modern, science-and-technology-enriched life.

The state is not magic. It needs to be embedded in democratic consent and control, just like all other social institutions outside the personal household. But it does have legitimate functions even then.

He said, as he went to check the mail and help his son figure out how to take advantages of his public teachers' efforts to get him to learn algebra and how to write an essay and how to read sheet music and play a guitar.

The state is not magic. It needs to be embedded in democratic consent and control, just like all other social institutions outside the personal household. But it does have legitimate functions even then.

But such a state is just as fanciful and radically different to the modern nation-state* as any utopia anarchists are accused--accurately or otherwise--of advocating.
Re: "legitimate functions": one could argue a prison or concentration camp have legitimate functions too (perhaps taking better care of their inhabitants than a capitalist society); but no one argues fulfilling those functions is contingent on having concentration camps.

*The product of a small group setting out to dominate the rest.

I argue that there are certain basic, defining functions of a State (monopoly on legitimate violence) that cannot be fulfilled by anything other than a State, and upon which the existence of Law is dependant.

Well, this is precisely it, isn't it? There would be no monopoly on force in an Kropotkin's society, and therefore no uniform, enforceable law. There would instead be a system of voluntary associations created for the mutual benefit of the involved parties, and probably ad hoc communitarian solutions to problems (like your murderer) as they arose. Authority might be constituted temporarily to achieve a needed end, and then disbanded. Would such a society be totally peaceful and free of death? Absolutely not. The argument is simply that it would be much freer, and the potential for mass murder, oppression and dispossession much smaller. This position seems to include both a certain optimism about human beings and their capacity for cooperation, and a pessimism about human beings when given power over each other. It also demands a confidence in one's own ability to navigate a world with substantially less authority. I don't see how any of this is "juvenile".

You can argue that those functions are not desirable, or are outweighed by the inherent evil of the state, or the evil of the foreseeable behaviour of any state, and although I disagree, I have to at least acknowledge that such an argument would be valid, even though it is, in my opinion, unsound.

I'm not sure how an argument can be both valid and unsound--my dictionary says they're antonyms. Anyway, you can disagree with the argument that the evil of the state outweighs its good, but I for one would love to see your cost/benefit analysis.

(I forgot to enter "hillary" the first time I hit "post", so I apologize if I repeat myself)

PW usefully replicates the anarchist insistence on and either/or definition of the modern state. In this, the choice is either to say that the state has not changed a bit since it was a naked arm of the king, or to accept it all as legitimate.

Legitimacy derives from the consent of the governed, and the consent of the governed always has both structural and qualitative aspects.

At present, the range of modern states that exist are all (or nearly all) particular blends of arbitrary power and democratic choice. The US public does not wish to close down the US state, despite the claims of some demagogues, who themselves do not wish that close-down. Partly, this is due to brainwashing. Partly, it is due to actually legitimacy, actual freely chosen and preferred service-provision.

The claim that a maximally democratic state state "is just as fanciful and radically different to the modern nation-state"?

Dspite the huge amount of struggle still required, that is false, for the above reasons.

Also, it is logically wrong. There has never been and never could be a stateless world or nation-state, or region or even county or town, for the obvious reason that size brings complexity that requires bureaucracy. We are perhaps 25 percent of the way to running that bureaucracy with genuine fairness and consent.

We remain zero percent of the way to stateless modern societies -- and we always will be. Because those are impossible.

Obviously meant "modern" in that "has never been" statement up there.

If people want to back to hunting and gathering/band life, that's fine and perhaps even our fate as a species, prior to the solar burn-out. Personally speaking, I'm not willing to revert that far back just to rid myself of the Post Office. I suspect I'm in the vast majority on this.

"I look forward to it myself; in every little way I find that I can liberate myself in the here and now, I happily make the effort"

self liberation ???? as in ???

"Authority is pre-existing knowledge and skill"

that might go too far
surely
pre existing and coincident existing society is the collective repository and the mind building factory that programs new brains

to question simultaneously
the entire complex and contradictory
fabric
of this existing social inventory of memes
is ...doable by any " unit of the network "
vide our precious crocodile oxknot

all authority is conditional
at the unit level
as the great hume notices

but can one say one freely wills
one's beliefs and disbeliefs ???

the state is the legit killer
at the core of a class society
it is a dictatorship out of necessity
if that social formation is to reproduce itself thru generations of raw new units

how ever it might get itself packaged
and combined and contained inside wider
sunnier sets of collective institutions
the essentially dark core of every state
is all about naked force
legitimized
by the circularity
of its own system of lawfulness

at its heart
its all about
prisons
gulags
work houses
exiles
executions

class terror !!!!

the point of all this horror
is to have effective means
to process the correct set of people
thru these terror institutions

if you can't stomach this
be an anarchist or a jehovah's witness
or seek enlightenment by a journey to the center of your mind
-- i hope for you there's no state waiting for you in there

George,

I agree with almost all of your comment. That's probably how the argument would unfold. In this post I was only arguing that anarchists have to be willing make the argument that you are describing. I promise to take it up, I just don't feel like getting right into it at this particular moment.

"I don't see how any of this is "juvenile"

It's not really. In that post I was kind of conflating it with the behaviour or argument style of some anarchists.

"I'm not sure how an argument can be both valid and unsound--my dictionary says they're antonyms."

Validity just means that the truth of an argument's premises logically guarantees the truth of its conclusion. The form of a valid argument makes sense.

Soundness refers to whether or not the premises are actually true. Your argument could make sense (be valid) but at the same time, if the premises are false, then it is unsound, and won't be true.

fb
i think you cottle the state when you think it can reform itself into ever more genteel meliorism

let me put it this way

the state might well refine itself
for a period
if the underlying economic system
didn't morph to fast
kick up too much class conflict etc
but ...at some point ...

if you look back from here
at twentieth century europe
with its two wars
its revolutions and counter revolutions
before Clio yielded up
the relatively benign state structures
we call social market systems after WWII

it would appear the course
that leads to an improved state system
may travel thru much blood spilling

a course that proves nasty protracted and alas
if we observe the last thirty years
apparently subject to retrograde "correction"

perhaps one nasty class state
can only be sublated
by another nasty class state
---------------------
"anarchists stressed the need for revolutionary means "
unfortunately revolutionary means
here are outcomes
they have no notion of course of means

no effective revolutionary party
and of course
no revolutionasry state

the collapse of the old state
only poses the opportunity for replacing it
with a sociall revolved system

what if the institutional aims
of the revolution movements
can only be implemented and secured
by a revolutionary state
that is a nasty class dictatorship
willing to use force to attain and retain its objectives

if we look at history
we see some anarchos when reality throws a fork in their face
converting to rev statism
and others ...not converting

"We remain zero percent of the way to stateless modern societies -- and we always will be. Because those are impossible"

i think that gets the thrust
a bit off course
unless you define modern society
too narrowly
or state too broadly

voluntary association as the sole means
of co ordinated action is patently silly
so long as serious consequences
to lots of folks
follow from the to be or not to be
of the association
the theory of public goods
suggests there are goods that are both non rival and non exclusionary
but cost something to produce
that we need a state properly defined
to provide effective force here
well tribal society doesn't have a state
and yet complusion is effectively part of tribal dynamics

The state and the present billions, not to mention the hieroglyphics we trade here -- all derive from agriculture. It's been a contradiction from the start.

Op-san, by "modern," I mean two things: 1) science/technology in the good sense (though one always senses that "anarchists" are always just-barely restraining themselves from launching into a science-is-male-knowledge tirade), and 2) societies composed of actually existing numbers of us humans.

Kinship relationships are impossible in both areas, but extremely and especially in regard to #2.

How is this even an issue? It simply isn't.

I have no objection at all at using anarchy as a never-really-attainable target. Kind of like democracy for ultra-purists.

But, come on.

And, yes, tribal societies will leave your ass in the desert, if you cross their norms.

We live in pre-history. That much is clear.

"all derive from agriculture"

yup
but only after a long series of stages
of institutional evolution
that includes
among its evolved structures --in no oreder of importantce -- :

ones that consistently produce a surplus product thus
liberating a section of society
from producing its own subsistence

feeding the actual producing class
primarily on animal fodder

using access
to the queen of production factors
arable land
as the lever of exploitation

setttle the little toilers
down to a spot
and
bunch em together

and yes evolving
a self reproducing hierarchy

"fb
i think you cottle the state when you think it can reform itself into ever more genteel meliorism"

Well, I don't think that it necessarily will, or that one specific state necessarily will, but I do think that the state can take a better form. I don't think that it will reform itself, and I'm not ruling out a lot of conflict or revolution.

" I do think that the state can take a better form"

i'd agree if you'd limit that to a period
in the reign of a particular successor state structure

History shows that non-states cannot compete with states. Debating the merits of anarchism in theory is rather like debating whether wars should be fought with nerf bats: you'd have to show me a war won by the Nerf Army before I'd really take the question seriously.

stillnotrex

concise

So it's all about wars. Got it.

That's why anarchic peeps beat the Mighty USAns in Vietnam, eh? No state, no regular army, still winners. How the fuck?

You chickenshit Marxists are such pussies. Bet none of y'all ever played a sport.

No, chess doesn't count.

The NVA were anarchists? That's news to me. What are you, 15 years old?

Oh look. A failed attempt at snark, ill-informed, and using straw-men. Surprise, that's what that is. Nearing shock, nearing shock-with-awe.

Hey Mark Fuhrmann, how about remembering "definitions" being Bethune's gambit here.

WTF? This gibberish doesn't even make sense on its own terms, to the extent that it has any. "Anarchists" didn't beat anybody in Viet Nam; if you're thinking of the Viet Cong, (a) they weren't anarchists and (b) they were pretty much exterminated by the US and South Vietnamese military.

And the "Mark Fuhrmann (sic)" reference is completely from outer space.

"pussies" LOL. Well...op does rely quite a bit on "faggy" poetic forms in his missives. In Charles' manly classroom (he is, of course, a "teacher," not an "educator") free of pop culture, such will be slapped down in favor of fervid revolutionary physical training. How much can you bench, Charles"?

Fuhrmann digs the CIA's revised history of Vietnam. That's impressive.

Brian reveals a gender-questioning identity without admitting it openly.

And neither commenter has anything to offer save rehabilitation of Bethune's antipathy toward us juvies.

Bueno. Tequila all around! Los cazadores son ganadores.

I agree with stillnotrex too: arguments over the merits of anarchism are largely academic. I, foolishly no doubt, sometimes feel a need to defend an abstract ideal, not unlike others hereabouts.

I still think anarchism, even in the absence of any chance of realization, is useful as a stance of radical skepticism toward authority. I think it also goes well with a happy cynical defeatism. So I agree with IOZ as well.

Charles: I have no problem admitting skepticism towards "gender identity". Hence, I find the post in question risible.

When, however, will you admit the little totalitarian beneath your anarchist camouflage? There's a lot of obedience and demands in the missives of M. Oxtrot.

Brian, you have failed again. Accusation is not tantamount to proof. It doesn't even start the proving process.