Talk:Traditional anarchism

Title
Traditional anarchism is a poor choice of words since anarchists usually find themselves working against tradition. One might be forced to say that "traditional anarchism eschews tradition, including its own" .... Unreformed anarchism would be better since anarchists reject the notion of political reform. It would also be funny though I find I cannot explain the humour in it. Probably just the meta-syntactic thing. -- RichardKulisz

''Perhaps there is a better forum for this type of debate. I'm not the least bit interested in debating with you the truth or falsehood of these claims. I am only interested in seeing that everything gets stated in a neutral, encyclopedic manner.''

''I think you might achieve some personal growth if you came to understand and respect that the vast majority of serious political scientists and economists, those who have thought seriously about these issues, disagree with you. That need not mean that you are wrong, of course, but it does mean that you should drop the pretense that your opponents are either ignorant or irreducibly ideologically unconvincable.''

''But none of that has to do with the wikipedia. There is no need for us to settle debates about the truth of anarchy. What there needs to be, though, is some understanding from you that an encyclopedia is not the appropriate forum for you to promote your ideology.''

You can't define the difference between description and honest advocacy because there isn't one. Your "neutrality" is just a cover for pushing the mainstream ideology, which surprise surprise gets the special status of not being treated as an ideology.

As for economists and political scientists, they are bought wholesale by rich capitalists. I don't give any credit to people dumb enough to claim that war is a good thing, as free market economists do. And there's a serious problem when some of the best political science in North America is done by a linguist. I'm hardly going to respect academics that have forfeited their duties to an outsider in favour of selling themselves to the highest bidder. I have no idea what kind of "personal growth" you're talking about but given what you say is required to achive it, I know I want no part of it.

"[I]f there is a body of theory, well tested and verified, that applies to the conduct of foreign affairs or the resolution of domestic or international conflict, its existence has been kept a well-guarded secret, despite much pseudo-scientific posturing." -- NoamChomsky, the linguist in question

The only argument you can make which I would accept as valid is that facts about corporations belong in an entry on corporations and not on anarchism. You have conspicuously failed to make that argument. I can just imagine how horrified you would be if I described in explicit detail exactly how psychopathic corporations are on ModernCorporation. Further, if you were neutral you would limit yourself to editing in "Anarchists believe" and not threaten to insert something equivalent to "but they are completely wrong since nobody believes them blah blah blah". I do not for a single second believe your pretense at "neutrality".

You also wrote:

''No, not really. I don't care what the ideology, it should not be presented. Note the difference between stating facts about an ideology, and stating that the ideology is fact. This goes for all ideologies.''

So you don't care what's written so long as there are sufficiently long disclaimers and any insight is couched in super-bland language? But that just promotes the view that all political philosophies are "unreasonable" and causes people to become apolitical. And that's the problem right there. Apoliticizing people is not being "neutral", it's promoting the dominant ideology. I've tried to write in a bland "neutral" style before and I only got disgusted at how dishonest it was. "Don't look at the man behind the curtain people! Nothing to see! Move along!" People can observe the different non-standard ideologies like animals in a zoo but oh horrors if they start believing any of them! Like I already said, the most twisted and biased libertarian tripe is infinitely more insightful and informative than the bland apolitical tripe you seem to want to promote.

Probably against my better judgment, I'm going to reply to you, Richard. I think you simply fail to understand some things. You might not be capable of understanding them yet, but I'll give it a shot. I'll try to explain these things once, and then let you go on believing whatever it is you want to believe.


 * You can't define the difference between description and honest advocacy because there isn't one. Your "neutrality" is just a cover for pushing the mainstream ideology, which surprise surprise gets the special status of not being treated as an ideology.

This claim is completely unjustified, and frankly, it's just silly. Why is it that a description of what people believe, without explicitly advocating any particular belief, is "a cover for pushing the mainstream ideology"? I'm not aware of covering for anything, and I hope I'm a smart and honest enough person to be able to see if I am. Many people--many philosophers, for example--are very capable of writing encyclopedia articles (see, e.g., my favorite encyclopedia, The Companion to Epistemology) that fairly present various views without advocating any one of them. But some of these philosophers hold extreme views of one sort or another. Certainly they don't mean to be plugging for "the mainstream ideology" (or whatever the mainstream view on the question at hand is). And none of their audience would be so silly as to assume that they were advocates for "the mainstream ideology," either. If you think so, you simply don't understand the dialectical dynamic that's going on.

When you're writing for mature adults who can think for themselves, it simply insults their intelligence to assume that presenting views neutrally, or unbiasedly, will cause them to think that you are plugging for "the mainstream ideology." Even more it insults their intelligence to presume to be writing an informational article which openly attempts to influence their views, as though the text from which they would most be likely to form their views would be an obviously biased encyclopedia article. That's not what most people use encyclopedias for.


 * As for economists and political scientists, they are bought wholesale by rich capitalists.

I don't even know what that means. Do you mean that they are all paid by corporations for advocating capitalism? If so, that's silly. First of all, they don't all advocate capitalism, and second, of course, they aren't all paid by corporations. Many of them work for universities or as independent consultants, writers, and thinktank operatives. More importantly, you insult them by assuming that they do not--whether due to inability, greed, coercion, or whatever other reason--use their own brains in deciding what to write.


 * I have no idea what kind of "personal growth" you're talking about but given what you say is required to achive it, I know I want no part of it.

No, Jimmy meant it quite literally, and I understand exactly what he means. You have to start treating your opponents as living, breathing human beings with brilliant brains of their own, not as automata. One of the implications of this is that these people deserve your respect as living, breathing human beings with brains, sometimes brilliant, of their own. They may not deserve your agreement, you don't have to like them, and you can even think that they're corrupt or evil for advocating the wrong thing. But don't treat them like mindless, idiotic automata.


 * So you don't care what's written so long as there are sufficiently long disclaimers and any insight is couched in super-bland language? But that just promotes the view that all political philosophies are "unreasonable" and causes people to become apolitical.

This is another fairly straightforward non sequitur. By assuming that people will form their political opinions based on what you have written in an encyclopedia article for Wikipedia, you fail to respect the fact that they have brains of their own and can make up their own minds, thank you very much. They will, most of them, be able to spot your propaganda as such immediately--part of being educated involves being able to spot it, after all. If they're at all educated, and they happen not to agree with you, they'll simply be nauseated. Your cause will not be advanced.

Disclaimers, hedging, and so forth does not necessarily make writing bland. Propagandizing certainly does not necessarily make writing interesting (quite the opposite, for me).

Obviously, anyway, writing from a neutral point of view certainly does not have a tendency to make people "apolitical." Why would it? That's an empirical question; where's your data? I'm very skeptical. And quite the contrary, I would say that transparently propagandistic ways of presenting political views has a way of turning people off to thinking about politics. If, as in many people's college careers, they are exposed to nothing but partisan screed when it comes to politics, those who want to rely as much as possible on their own native reason to decide what to think are necessarily turned off.

--Larry Sanger

I find it amusing how you can accuse me of insulting the intelligence of educated and "brilliant" people while you simultaneously insult the intelligence of uneducated (and presumably "dull") people. You assume that if someone believes my plain words then it is because they are stupid, uneducated and propagandized. Your target audience is the middle-class and academics while mine is "lower", the real people with real concerns. Economists who talk incessantly about irrelevant social constructs like the stock market, instead of real concerns like famines and poverty, bore me to tears. And I propose that the political and emotional disengagement of academics (only academics buy the myth of the radical academic) makes them into something less than real human beings. If "partisan screeds" turn college students off then it is merely because they feel threatened by real emotional engagement (which entails real commitment) instead of the abstract airy fairy game called 'politics' that is so common in academia and which costs academics nothing.

My position is backed up by ample facts and most students of propaganda (including the likes of Jacques Ellul and Noam Chomsky). Far from education being about detecting propaganda, it is nothing but a system of indoctrination. Further, the highly intelligent and educated are inherently easier to propagandize than the rest of the population, even before you factor in the massive (professional) arrogance you have displayed.

I have no wish to disengage myself emotionally or politically. When I read about gross exploitation and injustice, it awakens a core of anger and hatred in me every single time. It isn't because I'm stupider or less intelligent than you are but simply because I haven't grown the apathy you seem to possess (or at least are accustomed to from your peers). This is something I like about myself and I will hardly "grow" to change it. Nor do I have any wish to engage in the dishonesty of emulating the walking dead. And hence I have no wish to use emotionally void language (which is the only meaning of "neutral" I can discern). The idea of arguing in an insanely calm manner about the "flaws" of democracy (to give one example) strikes a note of horror in me.

Now, if you tell me that encyclopedias are inherently academic and middle-class artifacts then I am prepared to accept your judgement on the matter. You would be confirming my suspicions. In that case, I would limit my participation appropriately. -- RichardKulisz

Richard, you still aren't understanding, because you are too full of yourself and stubborn to even try to understand what I said; and you have totally failed to demonstrate that you have. I don't see any point in talking to someone who isn't going to make the effort of meeting me halfway.

Once again, more evidence that we should just write articles instead of engaging in this sort of pointless, sophomoric mental masturbation. If you don't want to do so, Richard, and you prefer to engage in the above sort of ranting on this wiki, I would suggest you stop wasting our time and "limit your participation appropriately." -- Larry Sanger


 * This usage is geographically limited to Austria and the Anglo-American countries.

That's not true: In Poland Anarchism means Anarchocapitalism, and other forms of Anarchism are considered to be only of historical interest.


 * Since the beliefs and actions of
 * AnarchoCapitalists are rarely compatible with those of traditional anarchists, traditional anarchists do not regard the
 * AnarchoCapitalists as anarchists.

And vice-versa.

Btw. trying to take over all Anarchist tradition by Anarchocommunists is pissing Anarchocapitalists, so don't do it. I think that wikipedia shouldn't use 'Traditional anarchism' term at all. --Taw

I agree with what you say about Wikipedia not using the term 'traditional anarchism'. I have never heard it before, and it is probably not very neutral. I think the term libertarian socialism is better, and so I am going to move the contents of this article there. -- Simon J Kissane

Simon, can you provide a reference or two that the term "libertarian socialism" is in very wide use? --LMS

Okay, try http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1931/secA1.html#seca13 Its certaintly much more common than 'traditional anarchism', which I think was coined by someone on Wikipedia. Or maybe we should use left anarchism instead? But whatever we use, I don't think it should be 'traditional anarchism' -- SJK

See also punk rock and Crass.

Moved from the old /Questions subpage:

I do not know all that much about traditional anarchism, but I would like to learn.

I find it fairly easy to envision the social systems proposed by laissez-faire capitalists (minarchists) and anarcho-capitalists. I find it fairly easy to envisionthe social systems proposed by communists or socialists (central planning and all that). I do not know, though, what is meant by the claim to be opposed to all hierarchy or social structure.

Perhaps a concrete example will illustrate what I do not understand. At home, I have a television. Let's suppose that you do not have a television at your home, and that you want one. Suppose further that you decide to take mine. What happens?

Lassez-faire capitalists say that I should call the cops. Anarcho-capitalists say that I should call my private defense agency. Communists generally are not opposed to personal property (just private ownership of the means of production, which we can suppose my television is not), so I guess they would say to call the cops, too.

I ask this in all sincerity, because I do not know the answer.

You report him to whatever cooperatives you and he belong to. Acting in an unethical and immoral manner can have a wide range of repercussions. Human beings are naturally interdependent and anarcho-syndicalists use these interdependencies without recourse to an artificial hierarchy like the justice system or police.

I'm trying to explore how this differs from anarchocapitalism, exactly. DavidFriedman would answer my question in exactly the same way as you have, as far as I know.

Then he is not an anarcho-capitalist.

As far as I know, he is the anarcho-capitalist.

Anarcho-capitalism is based on formal rules and absolute property rights. Humans are treated as objects and the "marketplace" rules supreme. Anarchism is not based on formal rules but on democratic control. It is not possible under anarchism for a person to surrender, transfer or sell their rights. If working in a cooperative gains you the right to participate politically (eg, by voting) then this right is inalienable (ie, non-transferable). Under anarcho-capitalism, everything is mere property and not a right at all so it is possible for you to (be forced to) sell all of your property away (eg, in order to avoid starvation). This leads only to totalitarianism.

A classic argument against cooperatives by anarcho-capitalists is precisely that it is irrational to have all one's stock in one company (your own) and so workers would seek to spread their risk by diversifying their stock portfolio. Of course, this is precisely what Anarchism makes impossible. In order to lessen your cooperative's risk of failure, people are forced to engage in mutual aid. Mutual aid is direct and transparent, one human to another, or one cooperative to another. The workings of the stock market is completely opaque and anything but direct. The stock market is also completely artificial.

Anarchists and socialists in general operate under a completely different mindset from capitalists and other right-wingers. An anarchist would ask whether it was fair for you to be deprived of the use of your television. A capitalist would ask whether it was fair for your television to be taken away from you. Anarchists are concerned about outcome whereas the right-wingers are only concerned that your neighbour did not obey the law and submit himself to the authority of some arbitrary rule system. Right-wing notions of justice are bureaucratic in nature.

The difference underlying different political ideologies are psychological. The right-winger seeks a well-ordered system which degrades people to the status of objects and society to the status of a machine. They find security in that. Whether they're the ruler of the world or a beggar living in squalor doesn't matter so much as that there be a rigid system with well-defined rules. Left-wingers are appalled at this scenario and usually seek to change it by putting themselves in power and playing benevolent dictator. They're just as obsessed with having a well-defined system as the right-wingers, just that instead of the rules being to their benefit they are concerned that the rules should be in others' benefit. Anarchists want to annihilate the system completely and replace it with humanistic relationships.

Under anarcho-capitalism, you go to your protection agency (which you may or may not have depending on whether you're wealthy enough to afford one) and they look at your contract. Under anarchism, you go to your co-workers and colleagues and they ask themselves whether you're a total asshole who deserves to lose his TV. They don't help you because of some contractual obligation, because it's written somewhere in some big book that they have to do this whether they want to or not. They do it because they like you and have sympathy for you, or because they pity you, or even just because people have to stick together if they don't want the world to be a living hell.

It is extremely common nowadays to think of humans as machines and of society as a machine as well. One's body isn't a holistic whole, it's just some machine with certain capabilities and requirements. If the blood sugar level is below the design specifications then people increase their sugar intake. If it seems to wear out then they go to a mechanic in a white lab coat who'll do a yearly inspection and may order some maintenance work. People don't have friends anymore, they have colleagues and acquaintances. They no longer speak, they communicate, like computers. They no longer move under their own power and control by walking or cycling, they are transported from point to point by self-propelled tin cans inside of which they are strapped and buckled.

People are not machines and they shouldn't be treated as such. Contracts, laws, bylaws are all so much junk that degrades human beings. They are the basis of anarcho-capitalism and what make it fundamentally anti-human. Markets are not "natural". Laws are not "natural". They are profoundly artificial, through and through. When David Friedman says that it is "natural" for people to have their choice of protection firm, he's speaking in a context (the contracts and laws that make a market) in which the term 'natural' ceases to have any meaning. The situation is so thoroughly artificial that nothing could possibly be natural anymore.

The anarchist conception of the ideal society is intuitionistic and can't deviate much from an equally intuitive conception of justice. The anarcho-capitalist's conception of the ideal society is formal and systematic. And somewhere in their analysis, the anarcho-capitalists have screwed up.

A better example than the theft of a television, is the appropriation of a handgun. Suppose my neighbour has a handgun and while he is away I break into his house, take it then destroy it. A handgun is a possession but it is not a legitimate possession. If my neighbour goes to my cooperative to complain about my behaviour, I will defend myself by pointing out that the only purpose of a handgun is to murder people. In all likelihood, neither my nor his cooperative will have any objection to my behaviour. It may even inspire other to act likewise. Supposing that my cooperative had a problem then I might simply move to another, saner, cooperative. The same thing would occur on the level of cooperatives in the broader society. And it is extremely likely that the medical coops (which I presume are against guns) would triumph over gun coops, since the former provide a valued service to society while the latter do not.

Under anarcho-capitalism, the situation is very different. If I stole a gun and destroyed a gun from someone then I would face some hostile protection agency. Since this agency uses guns, they are unlikely to be sympathetic to my case. And since police are authoritarian in nature and mindset then they would not be sympathetic to an anarchist who "took the law into his own hands". Even if this were not the case, even if they approve of my behaviour, they would still be obligated to retaliate against me. This is why anarcho-capitalist justice is bureaucratic in nature. The difference between a protection agency performing a service for a client and a cooperative helping out a peer is also important and illustrates why anarcho-capitalism is fundamentally authoritarian.

I hope the above isn't too polemic. If it did then I did not mean it to. This is simply the only way I know of to express my point of view. -- RichardKulisz

You have expressed yourself very well. I've just decided that you don't know anything at all about anarcho-capitalism. :-)

What do you do when somebody steals your TV? Under every system, you call the cops. The question is, who are the cops? In a minarchist or state socialist society, the cops are basically like the cops we have today in countries like the USA and the EU, at least as far as retrieving TVs is concerned. But anarchocapitalist or anarchist cops would be different. Indeed, anarchocapitalists and anarchists surely bristle when I say that there are cops in their societies. They are not like today's cops, but that's what the word "cop" would mean in such a society.

Under anarchocapitalism, you call up your private defence force, as we know. These are like private security guards, or as we call them today, "rent-a-cops". It should be clear how they work, and I would guess that anybody that can afford a TV could afford a minimal level of rent-a-cop security.

Under anarchism, and particularly anarchosyndicalism, society is organised into strong social units that are anarchist because of their organisation, nonhierarchical with direct democratic control. If you live in a community, then your community has cops, for the same reason that today's small towns do. If you follow the anarchist model faithfully, you won't hire professionals from outside of the area, and the cops won't be spread out over a large area. So your cops will be your neighbours, and they will know you, and they will know the thief if the thief is from the community. This is the difference from today's society, although it's not that different from some of the small villages that are now vanishing from the Western countryside.

Thus the "humanist" approach that Richard blathers about. He describes rounding up his buddies, making it sound like vigilantism, but even if no cops are officially hired (a nebulous notion at best in an anarchist society), like with a volunteer fire brigade, you'll know who to go to.

But no matter what, all these people will be "cops". What else would you call them?