so to give an example of what mjkidd is saying lets say that there's an MD donut shop co-operative that works for two years, until the naive ACists come in and open up a donut shop and find some so-called "wage slaves" which is put into place by a capitalist, with a manager, and everyone else is better off and they take sound money. the co-operative offers a worse product for script money. MD if this highly unlikely situation would occur, would you rather:

1) attempt to trash the naive ACists business

or

2) form a new co-operative somewhere else

You guyz really have a problem distinguishing between charging by the hour, a wage, and the wage system. Charging by the hour, say a self employed plumber, is not wages at all. Taking a wage, outside of the wage system, can be consensual. As I have blogged several times, a hierarchical and coercive relationship is all cool, as long as it always remains consensual. The wage system is coercive, and evil beyond imagination.

The reason why you dudes go off on these idiot... ZOMG WILL THE ANARCHIST STORMTROOPERS STOP LITTLE JEFFY FROM EARNING MONEY FOR SUMMER CAMP ZOMG, childish nonsense cop type stupid idiotic questions is two fold... I TOLD YOU DON"T WORRY ABOUT A TINY PICTURE OF A DEAD DOG WILL NIBBLE YOU TO DEATH, ZOMG. One you just simply cannot imagine a world without leaders, without governments, without cops. You've spent your whole life always looking over your shoulder for big brother, always asking for permissions, being scared to DIY. Why does all your questions start out "Would I be allowed..." and end up "... to practice capitalism?". ZOMG.

But the real problem youz dudes got is you have no understanding of this one little word... coercion.

I just re-read my last post here in the "AS" thread (and LOL at whatever "AS" means to ColbertFan). I would like to apologize for singling out mjkidd as I did. He is one of nicest poaster here, and might not have been following the tread above. Sorry about that dude, my bad!

If you scroll up in ITT I have already stated several times that I have no interest in this whole "anarchist police of the speculative future" non-sense. And I really don't care for the personal nature of all these kinds of idiotic questions.

The question that should be asked is why anarchists despise the wage system, what is the nature of coercion, and how this all ties directly into a world without leaders, a world of autonomy?

The bigger question is why anarchists are against things like slavery, indentured servitude, sharecropping, the wage system, rent, loans at interest, and other forms of violent usury. What do the things on this list have in common (besides being the technical, if not popular, definition of capitalism)? Why would anarchists consider them all immoral for the same reason?

Well, I think we've figured out one thing about ASland.

Questions don't get answered. Deflected maybe, but definitely not answered.

Sad really, MD. You had someone seemingly interested in learning, and you couldn't answer his (or anyone else's) questions. If you want to convince people, that's about the worst thing you can do.

I disagree. That is probably almost exactly what would happen if 2p2 took over the world and went all anarchical.

So, not one Monty Python joke in this thread? Was it too obvious, or is this all just some farcical aquatic ceremony?

Who ColbertFan? He wasn't interested in learning... scroll up. He stated that (a) anarchism incorrectly means only "no government" (b) he is not going to be bothered with thinking about the meanings behind words (c) he is not going to bothered to look at anything on the interwebs (d) that he can't imagine anarchism at all anyway, claims it's fantasy to begin with, and (e) claims anarchism isn't real and has no history.

Scroll up... and then he refused to discuss his farcical premises, and instead prated on and on and on and on that I must just make something up for him out of thin air... and then the idiotic "anarchist police of the speculative future" started.

Scroll up... clownassasin and Not_In_My_Name called ColbertFan on his trollish dishonesty long before I even started poasting ITT.

If anyone cares, we can continue on without ColbertFan... but so far we haven't even agreed to even start having an intelligent chat. And BTW, I'm not trying to change anyones opinions. I love you guyz! Don't ever change! I like this one better. From http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071853/quotes...

Woman:..... Oh. How do you do?
King Arthur: How do you do, good lady? I am Arthur, King of the Britons. Whose castle is that?
Woman:..... King of the who?
King Arthur: King of the Britons.
Woman:..... Who are the Britons?
King Arthur: Well, we all are. We are all Britons. And I am your king.
Woman:.... I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective.
Dennis:..... You're foolin' yourself! We're living in a dictatorship. A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working class...
Woman:..... Oh, there you go bringing class into it again.
Dennis:...... Well, that's what it's all about! If only people would...
King Arthur: Please, please, good people, I am in haste. Who lives in that castle?
Woman:..... No one lives there.
King Arthur: Then who is your lord?
Woman:..... We don't have a lord.
Dennis:...... I told you, we're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to be a sort of executive officer for the week...
King Arthur: Yes...
Dennis:..... ...but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting...
King Arthur: Yes I see...
Dennis:..... ...by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs...
King Arthur: Be quiet!
Dennis:...... ...but by a two thirds majority in the case of...
King Arthur: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
Woman:.... Order, eh? Who does he think he is?
...
Dennis:...... Come and see the violence inherent in the system. Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
King Arthur: Bloody peasant!
Dennis:..... Oh, what a giveaway! Did you hear that? Did you hear that, eh? That's what I'm on about! Did you see him repressing me? You saw him, Didn't you?

Spladle, you are the all time nut low poster.

LOOOL

This thread is better than porn for anyone who thinks all forms of anarchy is nutballs. It's like when we used to take a giant shovelfull of one fire ant hill and dump it on another, then watch them go at it.

I just read this entire thread, and I must say that MissleDog is the most thoroughly annoying poster I've come across in a long time. And I say this with full acceptance of any infraction a mod wishes to dish out to me. The ratio of evasion/lunatic rambling to content is truly staggering.

as wrong as he may be, i like missiledog and enjoy his ramblings. i dont find him annoying at all

its hard to dislike someone who actually has a heart around here

The most annoying part (aside from the ramblings - the inability to write concisely is an incredible vice which at this forum is treated as a ****ing virtue), is that he refuses to answer questions for like a hundred posts. If you don't want to talk about the political ideas you believe in (which as far as I can tell, is just rule of the majority, lol), GTFO the political forum.

Hey no problem

Well I think people ask because not only do we not understand what you think your ideal world would look like, we don't understand how that world would come about. Would it arise because enough people considered it to be the the sort of world they want to live in? Certainly I would imagine you would think that strikes and other collective labor actions would be appropriate...what about more violent methods? Some anarchists think that violent action against the bosses is justified, right? What do you think of that sort of thing?

Well that is pretty much exactly what I was asking. If a guy who owns his own business wants to hire someone at a wage that the guy being hired wants to work for, well, not very many people would define this as a coercive relationship or something to be despised. So I think it is reasonable to ask why you think this is a coercive relationship (if indeed you do).

Again, most people don't think that loans at interest or the wage system are equivalent to chattel slavery. So yeah, why do you think this?

Scroll up... I patiently answered a ton of reasonable questions ITT. Count up who has contributed content ITT, that would be me. And I have offered to answer any reasonable questions people have. What do you folks want me to do?

If you want to discuss why anarchism is moral, cool! If you want to discuss the history of anarchism, cool! If you want to discuss the theory and practice of anarchism cool! If you want to discuss what anarchists are doing today, cool!

But I don't have a personal "theoretical AS society". Why would I, I live in the real world. And anarchism is not some kind of national liberation movement anyway, so talking about a whole society has already missed the point. And as I have blogged here before, what difference does my own personal beliefs make? I'm just trying to explain stuff that better writers than me have written about long before we were born. And I really don't care for the way you guyz try to make everything a personal STRAWMAN dick swinging contest, or whatever. Anarchists don't spend a lotta time dreaming of the sweet-by-and-by. IDK, I know history. And again, why would we waste time on idle daydreaming? We live in the real world, and we organize bottom up and go from there anyway. There's real, useful, and important organizing to do right now today. One last thing... I CAN'T TELL THE FUTURE AND I AM NOT A CYBORG ROBOCOP!.

The poast I made a few up where I apologized to mjkidd, I suggest some relevant questions. Sure, I'll give my thoughts on those kind of questions. But if you guyz insist on asking me TO TELL YOU THE FUTURE BECAUSE YOU MUST BE A CYBORG ROBOCOP, expect to be ignored or ridiculed.

missiledog,

Anarchism is a political movement, right? Political movements are formed to work towards a goal -- they want to change society in some way. What is the goal the anarchist movement is working towards?

See, now this is a cool question. And mjkidd's Q's two poasts above are very good also, and I won't ignore them.

Anarchism is a Social Movement. Political movements want to change regimes, anarchism wants to eliminate regimes. The goal of anarchism is simple...

No leaders, no followers, a world of autonomy... Opposition to hierarchical and coercive relationships.

I've read the whole thread and I have a few questions for MD.

You cite the Spanish syndicates as an example of succesful ground up cooperation but don't they exist within a state organised from the top down and therefore any perceived success must acknowledge this?

I guess what I'm asking is are there any pure (or close to ideal) real-world examples of anarcho-syndicalism?

Also, I'll readily admit I'm having difficulty imagining a world without our current capitalist/heirarchical/statist structures, as are many of the posters here who seem to vent their frustration by calling you annoying, is there any literature you can point me towards to help me suspend this way of thinking or does it have to be learned over time?

Thanks in advance.

MD,

Have you considered that some people prefer to be followers and would not like a world without leaders?

like making a movie, you have the actors, the stagehands, the directors... they don't rule/d. they just lead/follow.

Grunching.

Not sure if it has been mentioned yet but Co-operative business is huuuuge.

http://www.ica.coop/coop/index.html

Grunching; I'm sure this has probably all been explained already.

Anarcho-socialists are philosophical libertarians; they believe in the non-aggression principle. They differ from anarcho-capitalists in that, to one extent or another, they do not believe in the private ownership of the factors of production, most importantly land. They view private land ownership as inherently aggressive, and have some very good arguments for that view. To them land is properly the property of society, and fencing parcels off for private ownership is theft from society. The problem with this, of course, is that if land cannot be privately owned, it cannot be allocated economically by the price system, and it's productivity will then be severely limited.

Collective land ownership is fine for small, technologically primitive groups where the alternative possible uses of land parcels are few and it is at least possible to achieve social consensus on land use. It's utterly impossible and disastrous for large, technologically advanced societies where the number of alternative uses for land parcels is enormous and the possibility of achieving consensus on land use is essentially nil.

Whether the ASists are right that private land ownership is theft (I think they are wrong, but that's just, like, my opinion man) is a separate discussion. I've said before that if you live in a society with a social norm of private land ownership, going around cutting fences you will get in trouble, and if you live in a society with a social norm prohibiting private land ownership, going around fencing off parcels and forceably keeping people out of them you will get in trouble. But what the ASists should recognize at a minimum is that actually implementing their ideas would require the deaths of the vast majority of human beings. That's not to say they advocate doing the killing, by the way. Some ASists understand this and think it would be a positive thing, but I don't think that's representative of most ASists.

You also have to understand where a lot of the property violence of the AS movement comes from. They view private property as inherently aggressive, hence they are just using defensive violence on behave of society and not violating the NAP, similarly to a property owner using what he considers defensive violence to eject aggressors from his private property. Of course this is usually just an excuse for rebelious kids to break ****.

It's an interesting and deep topic. You definitely should not reject AS out of hand as crazy or stupid. It is very, very close in a lot of ways to anarcho-capitalism. Anarcho-capitalism gets the edge imo because private ownership of land is natural, just, and economically superior.

ITT borodog making a far more simple and elegant argument for AS in one post than a whole page of MD spew.

But he didn't mention the minority opulent or redefine the word coercion or anything!

Actually Borodog makes some good points, and I was actually shocked that he thought out some content, instead of the usual drive by trollish one liner. And of course there is a teaming pile of manure mixed in. Since his post wasn't directed at me, I wasn't planning on responding, but I could if anyone cares.

Well I'm off to court today, hopefully not to jail. One thing I know for sure however, is that I will have contempt for the court. I always make sure to post copies of this little speech. This quote is lifted from Zinn on the interwebs, but I added in the end of the quote that Zinn truncates...

In San Diego, Jack White, a Wobbly arrested in a free-speech fight in 1912, sentenced to six months in the county jail on a bread and water diet, was asked if he had anything to say to the court. A stenographer recorded what he said:

The prosecuting attorney, in his plea to the jury, accused me of saying on a public platform at a public meeting, "To hell with the courts, we know what justice is." He told a great truth when he lied, for if he had searched the innermost recesses of my mind he could have found that thought, never expressed by me before, but which I express now, "To hell with your courts, I know what justice is," for I have sat in your court room day after day and have seen members of my class pass before this, the so-called bar of justice. I have seen you, Judge Sloane, and others of your kind, send them to prison because they dared to infringe upon the sacred rights of property. You have become blind and deaf to the rights of man to pursue life and happiness, and you have crushed those rights so that the sacred right of property shall be preserved. Then you tell me to respect the law. I do not. I did violate the law, as I will violate every one of your laws and still come before you and say "To hell with the courts." ["I despise you. I despise your order, your laws, your force-propped authority. Hang me for it."]

The prosecutor lied, but I will accept his lie as a truth and say again so that you, Judge Sloane, may not be mistaken as to my altitude, "To hell with your courts, I know what justice is."

so it's like a cat?

BTW, who keeps the bakery maintained? Fixes the ovens, keeps the place clean, orders supplies? What stops one of the bakers from taking "too much" when they "keep a little" of the profits?