- Anything Else -

Is it?

Posted by: Dr. Cruel on July 08, 1999 at 11:01:48:

In Reply to: But this is... posted by Red Deathy on July 06, 1999 at 15:52:44:

Let us get what we are arguing about clear, shall we?

There is a mechanism used to deal with conflicting personal interests. It is known as society, and the rules system that derives from that society is called culture. What is advocated by the anarchists, in a utopian sense, is the abolition of the codified form of this rules system (I say 'utopian' here for a reason; in practice so-called anarchists use the power vacuum resulting from a successful revolution or coup to set up their own personal, extremely Hobbsian despotry. Usually, a personality struggle amongst the leading figures soon follows). The principle is that, so long as the 'elite' is discarded, there will be a resulting utopia - or, at least, a substantial improvement in happiness and general well being amongst the majority.

Make no mistake. Government, as such, is a protection racket. Your membership is only voluntary in a token sense; one ultimately joins a society to be spared the depredations of competing social orders, at the very minimum. The situation in the Balkans is a prime example of this - one may despise being forced to join a faction, but the alternatives are far worse. Indeed, one's membership is assumed by the opposition, whatever one's stance may be.

How would anarchism work in practice? How could it? The very means advocated toward bringing such a state of affairs about serve to make the realization of such a system all the more impossible. Anarchistic systems do not need a codified system of laws to maintain them, nor a heirarchy, because the level of trust and common action among the membership is strong. And how does one bring this about? By attacking the social network that exists? By striving to pit people into opposing camps, then playing them against each other? In an attack against the one means by which people might learn to deal with each other outside of a brutal, zero-sum game - namely, through free markets, and via the capitalistic system?

Hoping that there is no Britain (or U.S.) might amuse the anarcho-statist within us - that barbarian that struggles against the civil domestication forced upon it - but does nothing to win converts amongst the British (or Americans), except of course amongst the disaffected. These of course are the natural allies of the revolutionary and the petty tyrant. I would think that, in the name of making such a dream into a reality, one would strive to encourage others to be worthy of such an anarchistic arrangement.

But that wouldn't nearly be as much fun. Would it now?


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