"The Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia... Practically every building of any size had been seized... even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted red and black... Tipping was forbidden by law..."

Seems like when anarchists get in power they act like their own caricature of a government. In any case, this hardly constitutes an example of a society that worked. Orwell himself admits that his impressions as a visitor were incorrect.

It DID work, and it scared the **** out of the rich and powerful all over the planet:

No, ACists are anti-slavery. It's the "just anarchists" that love slavery. AKA Anarcho-Slaverists.

A computer programmer, AFAIK, sits at a computer and writes code. This doesn't seem like it would change much in a stateless society (GNU licenses for all?). OTOH doing something like searching someone's home for a murder weapon, which seems to me a reasonable tool in investigating murder currently involves the state. Would the stateless solution simply mimic that which the state has chosen? Of course the question is unanswerable but I think that attempts to answer it are worthwhile, much like say Walter Block's diagram of how a free market in roads might work. Likewise, would powers of subpeona exist? What about perjury?

or what about something simple, like 'bringing a suspect in for questioning'

OP, there's really only one kind of anarchism, and that's AC.

ASists, AKA Anarcho-Syndicalism, AKA Anarcho-Slaverists, call themselves "anarchists", but the are about as opposite from real anarchism as you can get. They believe in using coercive hierarchy to enslave everyone. They basically want the world of Orwell's "1984". They believe in initiating force to get people to fall in line. It's an absurdly self contradictory and logically impossible belief system. They call themselves "anarchists" because they like to pretend that they believe in no government, but they also believe in no property, and we all know that a brutally tyrannical government is necessary to keep people from having their rightful property.

Someone could do that, but I don't see why that can't happen in a flat anarchist community. And also there are ways to deal with such an arms race in an ACist community, I'm sure you've read example solutions. Your criticism just doesn't seem justified to me. Whether ACism could work is obviously an empirical question, but I certainly fail to see the logical impossibility.

Right now there are 100s of recovered factories and other businesses, primarily in South America, where the workers have fought back against just this kinda scenario. Against the threat of the owner either locking them out, closing the business, mass firings and replacement workers, or moving the plant... the workers and communities "fired the owner", occupied the business, and restarted production under their own account. It doesn't do much good to invade some other worker's factory if you can't operate it, now does it? Once again, Google is your friend... try autogestion, or see the movie The Take[/quote]

I think the original question I asked was forgotten. I wasn't talking about one person coming and taking over the factory thus making it his property. I was talking about a different group of 100 workers coming and occupying previous workers' places. Since the factory doesn't really belong to anybody, would it even be legitimate for the old workers to attempt to use force against the new workers?

But that's exactly what I asked. How would those things happen without a government-like entity enforcing this? In 1936 Spain tipping was illegal. Who enforced this in the absence of government? How can anything be enforced in an anarchist community, given that coercive entities are illegitimate?

I am neither an ACist, nor a horizontal anarchist. But I think you haven't presented a good defense against the exact same criticism directed at horizontal anarchism. If there is no government, who is going to be enforcing the laws?

I would love a link to ACism being logically demolished.

We need to back way up here... that is if this chat is going to make any sense. First of all, do you understand what I am getting at when I say ACism and anarchism are not two "kinds" of the same "thing", and that it's a category error to compare them? If not, we need go back and revisit this issue.

If we're cool with that fact, then we need to move the questions about anarchism itself over to hoopman20's I Want More MissileDog thread. It's way to complicated to have two separate and unrelated conversations, especially when they use overlapping terminology in different ways.

Regarding the topic ITT: Why are there (allegedly) different types of anarchism... consider this. ACism requires the concept of 'ownership'. The concept 'ownership' requires enforcement by, and implies existence of, a government (or equivalent). Therefore, ACism is logically impossible.

Now if it's not obvious why ACism is a logically impossible self-contradiction, we need to discuss what the concept of 'ownership' really is. And this necessarily means revisiting the difference between property and possession, except in more depth. But that's OK, because we would have to go through this anyway in the hoopman20's thread.

And it's the key concept to grasp for most people to understand anarchism, and although simple, it can be tricky to get a hold of for a lot of people. In fact, P-J.Proudhon wrote a whole book about it way back in 1840, called What is Property? (full text).

I'm an anarchist and I do not want the government "abolished". That would be disastrous at this point. I guess that's why there are different types right there.

That's it in a nutshell, except you can say "wealth makes right" and you've encapsulated their entire philosophy.

In my understanding, anarchism opposes hierarchy, not broader organisation in and of itself. Why a hierarchy based purely on wealth should be considered desirable is beyond me, so I'm not an "anarcho"-capitalist.

That has nothing to do with what I said.

Besides which AC is an oxymoron.

I clearly disagree with this. You haven't given any justification for why only through government can there be private property. There are other ways to protect them than forming governments.

Chomsky LOL. He thought North Korea worked too, IIRC.

Anyway, even if Chomsky's assertions were true, nothing alters the fact at issue, namely that the anarchists in Catalonia were clearly acting like their own caricature of a government'.

What role does burning money play in establishing a just society?

Not yet. But given enough patience by both of us I can, guaranteed. After all, I would just be rephrasing what J-P.Proudhon wrote 172 years ago.

Is it worth our time and energy to go through the exercise? The first point I'd make is that what Proudhon meant here was a government, or equivalent.

I don't think anyone thinks it would work out well to just take it all away tomorrow.

How is AC an oxymoron. AS is an oxymoron because you can't keep people from having property without government, but unlike AS, AC is logically consistent.

Why go you insist on ignoring all of history? Ownership is natural. Even animals have ownership. Preventing people from owning things, OTOH, requires enforcement, which implies the existence of a government. Thus, AS is logically impossible.

And as always, AS is short for Anarcho-Syndicalism or "just anarchism" or Anarcho-Slaverism, not that crap that you try to pretend people are talking about to avoid the issue. No one is ever ever talking about that Borodog thing but you.

It depends on social norms. Powers like subpeona might exist, they might not. Bringing someone in for questioning might exist, it might not. I couldn't tell you for sure.

We have private investigators now, there would likely be some type of court system or arbitration. For most car accidents, insurance companies settle things before they get to court. A similar type of system might evolve. Each party would be represented by their own dispute resolution organization, and arbitration would decide the result (or it would be reached voluntarily). Investigations would be handled privately as well. Subpeonas might exist as a voluntary arrangement with companies or individuals that might exist. Perhaps there is a clause with your DRO that you submit to subpenas if someone you do business with is a suspect and they can prove beyond a certain level. It might look similar to what we have today or very different. But the difference is there would be many choices and it would be harder for one to abuse its power since there would be others to counteract them and they must compete for customers.

You get robbed, your insurance company pays you and tries to recoup the losses from whoever robbed you (if its cost effective). Perhaps the insurance companies work together and cooperate.

There are a lot of things with the state that would look the same. There are a lot that would look a ton different (victimless crimes would be too expensive to prosecute and not worthwhile, our judicial system would be streamlined especially for smaller cases). It would be very hard for anyone to be able to take over without the consent of a large number of people, which would keep them in line.

Maybe I need a more concrete example of a case that might be difficult to handle in such a system. Also keep in mind police do a pretty terrible job of actually finding perpetrators in crimes. A huge number of crimes go unsolved.

OP:

Because anarchism is non-utopian (it's non-uniform). Every organizational model (for example, democratic and anti-democratic) and every economic school (cooperative or competitive) will exist in anarchy. Anarchism doesn't ban any type of mutual agreement.

The arguing is nonsense to me also, BTW. I like the concept of "anarchism without adjectives" to avoid this...although many disagree. The goal should be to abolish the state, not abolish voluntary government (we often falsely conflate "state" with "government" because in a state they are the same thing; but they aren't in statelessness), social contracts, or one or the other economic school or organizational method.

And people from one side of the economic and organizational method always try to define the word "anarchism" in a monopolist way to disclude others...which in effect leads to a de facto state replacing the state. Not a good goal, imho.

Like someone suggested researching Bakunin...meanwhile that is NOT where anarchy began. It began (w/o a name) in 5th century BC. "An" means "without", and "archon" means "ruler". Archons were Ancient Greek tyrants, or officials of the city-state. The idea Bakunin or anti-market anarchism is orginal anarchism ignores centuries of ethical and philosophical development that led to Proudhon.

No markets or anti-markets existed back then...even feudalism hadn't been thought of yet.

We should learn to accept anarchism as a code of ethics not opposed to government or heirarchy per se, but a code of ethics and philosophy opposed to rulers (compulsory heirarchy as opposed to voluntary heirarchy) and states (compulsory government as opposed to voluntary government).

It's about eliminating coercion...not coercing people into OUR favorite version of society. Anything else creates a de facto state.

I'm open to allying with anti-market anarchists, voluntaryists, anti-heirarchy anarchists, etc....because if we end the state (monopoly on social contracts, laws, geographically defined, and compulsory) they can have their version of society and I can have mine, simultaneously.

No uniformity in organizational methods and economics is possible without coercion. I'm, above all else, against coercion. I wouldn't ban voluntary markets, voluntary heirarchy, etc., anymore than I would ban boxing or S&M sex. Boxing is not assault, S&M sex is not rape, and voluntary heirarchy and voluntary markets are not tyranny. Masochistic? Possibly...but not tyrannical.

Depends on what you mean by "equivalent". Equivalent in what respect? If the only similarity between the government and the new thing is going to be the fact that they both protect private property, then yes, but that would be pretty circular now, wouldn't it?

Alex, I'd just mention that AS is totally okay and congruent with anarchism, as is AC...if all participants are voluntary and the voluntary participants don't claim geographic monopolies in which to enforce a social contract.

I mean, we don't live in agrarian society anymore, so geographic monopolies just aren't necessary through coercion (the state sprang into existence at the end of the hunter-gatherer economy and at the dawn of the agrarian economy). Even anarcho primitivists (like my pal "Rabble Rouser") don't require these coercively held geographic monopolies.

So I can't believe that AS or AC is antithetical to anarchism. Both fit into the ethics of non-coercion provided they aren't trying to impose de facto states in the wake of abolishing the state itself.

That's a very good post and I'm glad other people think like me.

Likewise...now if we can just convince the rest of the anarchists we might have "solidarity" where it counts (on ending the state)