Anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism

[ginnyfizz]

You've only really been on the defensive so far, talking endlessly about what anarchism isn't – maybe things would turn out better if you describe what anarchy is.

 

I have been.

 

My apologies MB but this quote so precisely defines the intellectual hubris of imperstan that it screams out to be cherry picked. It says it all..he's a legend in his own mind dropping his Olympian pearls of wisdom to us poor drones if we only had the intellect to appreciate his self evident genius.

 

So are you going to say anything or are you just going to sit there?

 

Quod erat demonstrandum, Aurelius my friend. Imperistan, you have more or less told people to shut up and leave the debate, said things like "Goodbye", your hubris causing you to mistake people who disagree with you for people lacking in intellect.

 

@ Imperistan ... PIe in the sky is all you bring to the dinner table ... here's a hint, try bringing something substantial, something practical other than theory ... something I can analyse, take apart and put back together ... or does your theory only operate in the "we wish and hope that this stuff actually works" realm ?

 

My sentiments entirely Nintii. He has by his own account lived in the sort of society he idealizes. Let's see a description of how it worked.

 

You see I have this big problem with it all, of course this may be due to my simple mind. The way I look at it, however a group of people start out with the best intentions of not having a big state, sooner or later you pick the best people for the job, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, the doctor, builder...you get the picture. As soon as you do that, you start to have a structure. Humans being human, sooner rather than later they stop being altruistic (that ole limited altruism and strength of will strikes again) and start nicking things and even hurting each other. So you need means to resolve this. Oh whoopsie, we suddenly have a society! And so it goes on. Anarchism = impossible in practice, IMHO.

[Lisnpuppy]

 

 

Okay. Your opinion is devoid of any worth and fails to prove me wrong. Goodbye.

 

As for the rest of your silly post, I defer you to my past posts. I've already explained why the assertions you make are not right and as far as I'm concerned if you're not going back yourself up with anything nor actually acknowledge what I've already said then I have little reason to respond to whatever you post next.

 

 

 

Note to mods: Sorry if I'm "talking down" again, but I find it difficult to express my frustration against someone asserting that I'm wrong and they are right without backing themselves up, while ignoring my past posts that already respond to their assertions, and is generally just trying to effectively end the discussion for little reason in any other way than that. If she doesn't want to discuss this then she's free to leave the topic alone. Whether or not it wastes anyone's time is their problem, not hers.

 

 

@Imperistan--learn how to present your frustration without taking pot shots at other posters. You do not have to agree with them or indeed even answer them. In fact you can block members and never have to see what they post again. However you got one warning all ready from me about the tone of your post and yet you still know you have done something that requires you to leave a note for the moderators. Telling someone their post is "devoid" of any worth and "silly" not only is not a good way to debate (in fact its a really bad way to debate) but is also a personal attack. So, Strike One for you. ~Lisnpuppy (also since I have had to moderate this I will not be posting in it any longer as I feel it would be a conflict of interest to do so at this time.)

[dazzerfong]

OK, so back to debate, what exactly is going on? And for the love of God, no more Latin or big (ie. more than 10 letters) words!

[Beriallord]

The definition of anarchism is no central government, or organization on any kind of national scale. At best it would be localized factions of people who assume their own control over respective areas, usually people of like minded ideals, and maybe even racial or socio-economic status. During anarchy the ones with the guns make the rules, and enforce their own rules. In anarchy, anyone can be a dictator, they just need to have power and resources, and manpower behind whatever ideals they represent in whatever areas they inhabit or control. If a country as large as the US suddenly turned to anarchy, I'd imagine hundreds or possibly thousands of different groups of people teaming together to control certain areas based on similar ideals. This could mean very little law and order, or could mean very strict and heavily enforced rules in place. Lets say you are one of the most ruthless dudes in the area, and you got plenty of people around you who support you. People like this would do very well in anarchy, while what we know as the average person today would likely be victim to or forced to submit to rule by such characters. During anarchy, instead of 1 dictator, you got thousands of them. One could argue a democracy is no different in that respect, but there may or may not be elections during anarchy.

 

The colonial days of the American West was pretty much anarchy, there was no central government powerful enough to establish law and maintain order in most of the new territories. People could pretty much do whatever they wanted. Anarchy is open ended, it could go toward complete chaos and lawlessness, or some groups might form reasonable local systems in place, and have some form of fair and just law and order. Basically anarchy could be "all of the above" or "anything goes".

 

I looked into some history of Japan, and at times Feudal Japan was more or less anarchy, with power controlled by various shoguns in certain areas, these guys had the men and the swords, they collected taxes at the end of a sword. Fought with each other for land, power and prestige. No central control, and nobody agreed with anyone else, and wanted to fight, that was anarchy. Even though it wasn't complete chaos.

 

In all honesty I would prefer anarchy over the current US government. I tend to think I might do better under anarchy, because I have quite a few skills that could be very valuable during such a system. I don't consider myself an anarchist, I just hate the current system that much.

Edited February 19, 2012 by Beriallord

[Aurielius]

@Beriallord

I see your point but do you not think that proto american settlements ( before civilization caught up with them) were more a communal collective than an anarchical form? I was trying very hard to think of a society that might fit the bill and the closest that I could come up with is the Swiss farmers before the creation of the Cantons but even they were required to form a more conventional state due to the pressures from the Austrian Empire. I am reasonably proficient in terms of history but in all honesty am at somewhat of a loss to dredge up a really pristine example for us to examine. Now if someone could concisely define how it could be formed, under what conditions it could be maintained and lastly why it would not evolve or devolve into another format we might have a starting point. The essential problem that I see is that no matter where this new organism is located it will have external pressures from other states or governmental forms so isolation is not an option.

 

 

@Ginny

Abstulit qui dedit..n'est pas mon ami?

Edited February 19, 2012 by Aurielius

[ginnyfizz]

Ah oui, c'est ça. Although if truth be told I am at the moment suffering from a very bad case of in vino veritas so I must be circumspect...

 

I am still wrestling with the fact that where two or three, or more, are gathered together, you then begin to have structures as tasks get delegated to the appropriate persons. At what point are those structures too..errr...structured to constitute true anarchism? You see this is why I do not think that, with our modern expectations, anarchism could ever work practically.

[Nintii]

I did at one stage watch a most fascinating documentary concerning people living in various communities without big government watching over them and how they rose to the occasion but ultimately failed in their socialistic endeavor ... to date I cannot remember the documentaries name but I did find an article on the people in question.

Yes, I am well aware of this system being unable to be qualified in the anarchistic sense of total freedom from government, yet their self rule was truly amazing ... until ...

The socialist Kibbutz ... and I quote:

 

Israeli Kibbutzim and the Failure of Socialism:

 

Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker has a fascinating post on Israel's kibbutzim. The kibbutzim are Israeli agricultural communities initially organized

on socialist lines, mostly between the 1910s and 1950s. Originally, most kibbutzim followed strict socialist policies forbidding private property; they also required

near-total equality of income regardless of differences in productivity, and in some cases even abandoned specialization of labor. In recent years, Becker points out,

most of the kibbutzim have had to abandon these policies, due to the perverse incentives they create and their inability to to hold on to their more talented younger residents.

 

As Becker puts it, "nowhere is the failure of socialism clearer than in the radical transformation of the Israeli kibbutz." If a socialist experiment could ever succeed, it should

have done so in this case. Most kibbutzim were founded by highly motivated volunteers strongly committed to socialist ideology. For many years, kibbutzim had great

prestige in Israeli society, and many of the nation's early leaders were kibbutz members. After Israel became an independent state in 1948, the kibbutzim also benefited

from extensive government subsidies. Unlike other socialist experiments, the failure of the kibbutzim cannot be ascribed to lack of ideological fervor, inadequate resources,

or hostility from the surrounding "capitalist" society.

 

Despite these advantages, kibbutzim failed to achieve a high level of economic productivity, and even failed to retain the

loyalty of many of their own members. Over time, many kibbutz residents became frustrated with the perverse incentives created by socialism, and many also yearned

for the individual freedom and privacy created by private property rights.

Only by watering down or abandoning their comitment to socialism have kibbutzim been able to survive. If socialism cannot work under the highly favorable circumstances

of the Israeli kibbutz, it almost certainly cannot work anywhere.

 

Of course there is one advantage that socialist governments enjoy that the kibbutzim did not. Unlike a kibbutz, a totalitarian socialist state can use its secret police to

suppress dissent and force the people to work for the state whether they want to or not. This explains why Israel's kibbutzim have mostly abandoned socialism, while North Korea

and Cuba have not. When given a choice (as in Eastern Europe after 1989), the people of socialist states have rejected socialism even more decisively than most Israeli kibbutzim eventually did.

 

The failure of socialist kibbutzim does not prove that small, voluntary communities should abjure all communal property. To the contrary, scholars such as Elinor Ostrom

have shown that voluntary social groups can often manage common property resources effectively if they also have private property as well. In Israel itself, the less famous

moshavim have enjoyed much greater success than the kibbutz model. Unlike the original kibbutz, moshav members hold their land as private property and are paid at least

in part on the basis of performance; at the same time, moshavim also often have considerably communal property as well, managed by rules that try to curtail free-riding and

the "tragedy of the commons." Small-scale experiments in limited communal property can sometimes work. Indeed, they are perfectly consistent with free-market libertarianism,

so long as they remain purely voluntary in nature. By contrast, the kibbutz experience shows that experiments in full-blown socialism are likely to fail even under very

favorable conditions. A free society should not ban the formation of voluntary collectivist communities. However, their debilitating shortcomings provide a valuable lesson in the

virtues of private property.

 

end quote.

[Aurielius]

@Nintii

Well my feisty Afrikaner, you shot down the only other example that I could think of.. :confused:

[Lisnpuppy]

To Nintii (and everyone else for that matter)-- I realize you were copying a quote from another web page, however if it comes in as a large font that you can't fix..an easy thing to do is to put the quote in a spoiler tag that way it doesn't take up a bunch of room! Not breaking any rules just makes reading the threads a bit easier! Thanks! :thumbsup: ~Lisnpuppy

[WizardOfAtlantis]

the essential conundrum: if anarchy is used to gain freedom, and freedom is the possibility of doing, doing implies creation, creation is the making of something where there wasn't before, which is order in action, therefore anarchy is its own and immediate death and resolution.

 

This makes zero sense.

Well, that's ontology for ya. Being, you know...or in this case, the problem you have when your "Being" is based on a sort of "Non-Being". A Paradox is not a good foundation for a political movement.

 

I think you really need a new word to describe your Master Plan. You'll never be taken seriously with a concept called something like "organized anarchy". It is an oxymoron, even if you want to think it isn't. It doesn't matter if it somewhat describes what you are trying to get across to the world. You'll never sell it, even if it did make sense. You'd be better off, I think, playing on the horizontal part, even though it's admitted that you have to achieve verticality to correct the horizontal plane's inefficiencies.

 

Maybe something that has a "circle" idea in it, something encloses the best of horizontalism and expedient verticality (which, of course, geometrically speaking, it would, no?). You have to be able to manipulate people into liking your idea, especially when they don't get it. That's often the nature of the initial appeal (when that happens) of Anarchy/Anarchism to people, after all. Sounds cool and rebellious. Independent and unique, only it's not (onto-drum roll there).