Talk:Anarchism/Archive 8

message: In a minute, I'm going to overhaul this section. I'm going to condense the "political organization" into the introduction, and then follow up with subsections on economic and social organization. I'm going to treat "political organization" as synonymous with "regulation of violence". In fact, the idea of "anarchist political organization" is rather oxymoronic. AdamRetchless 23:36, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: How would they regulate my violence w/o coercing me?  Sam Spade 23:48, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Bribery? I dunno. I look forward to seeing the section. Hm. Speaking of which, at some point I should finish the types of anarchism section. I never did put in anarcho-capitalists and libertarian socialists. Snowspinner 23:59, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow, good job Adam. And I see no reason to wait, snowspin. Sam Spade 00:57, 11 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The reason to wait is called "My Masters Thesis" Snowspinner 01:03, 11 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Heh, sorry. For some reason I thought you ment you were waiting for the page to settle down or some such. Until the wiki starts paying us, we can't exactly be demanding a very high priority in each others scheduling, can we? Anytime would be just dandy ;) Cheers, Sam Spade 01:06, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

text: Thanks Sam. However, I'm a bit uncomfortable with my inability to document my statements. I'm basically working from a synthesized memory of a bunch of reading and discussions from several years ago. BTW, when I do Google searches for "anarchism and X" I am often directed to Spunk Library. Spunk has been around for a long time, so I'm going to add it to the article somewhere...AdamRetchless 11:53, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

text: When I spun Political Economy out into a seperate article, I had a very useful list of topic headings for people to backfill.  Mostly it was associated with communist-anarchism.  If someone wants to resurrect those points (particularly wages for housework which someone has removed!  sounds a bit sexist.)  Also, the removal of these topic headings has changed my PE article from the Political Economics (as a discipline) argued about by anarchists, to the Political Economics (as a social structure) argued for by anarchists. Fifelfoo 22:54, 11 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: To be frank, I welcome any explanations in this area, at least until someone has quotes handy. Citations are great, but without some specific objections I am plenty happy to have your wording, and anything suggested by Fifelfoo (or whoever) included. This is the area perhaps most confusing to non-anarchists, and would do every reader a great service in its signifigant enlargement. Sam Spade 23:13, 11 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Conceptions of anarchist society 

message: I came across this interesting resouce, called the Anarchist Projects Network . It is basically an attempt to increase communication among anarchists and let each other know what they've been up to in the real world (as opposed to theoretical work). It looks like it could be helpful for describing what anarchism is about, but it is rather limited, as all of the projects are in North America. It occured to me that anarchist traditions and networks will tend to form in a regional context, and that it may be worthwhile to expand on the character of anarchism in different parts of the world. So far, I'm only familiar with what's going on in North America and Europe. I've heard nothing of South America, India, East Asia, Africa, or the Middle East (tho I have met an Islamic anarchist born in the Middle East). Would it be good to have separate articles for each region? How would we organize it? Maybe we should just have a "see also" section for anarchism in various parts of the world. Any thoughts? AdamRetchless 22:51, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I think any additions you make are likely to be beneficial. Sam [Spade] 03:10, 22 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Regionalism

message: I highly question the inclusion of this in "historical examples of successful anarchies".  Not only is it true that the Zapatistas do not call themselves anarchists, but the article even indicates that they are structured along rule by an elite.  Calling "good government councils" fluffy bunnies with pink ears would not change the fact that these "councils" enact laws, that these laws are in turn enforced upon unwilling participants who may or may not have participated in their formation and are then subjected to their dictates.  Government, law, and rule by elite council does not all wash away just because they claim to be following "the will of the people" anymore than it does in states like China or did in the Soviet Union.  I propose that this paragraph be either seriously qualified or modified in order to express that certain aspects of the Zapasita movement are similar to anarchism but not actually anarchist per se, or that it simply be stricken altogether.  Kev 19:00, 28 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that's essentially what I did say. --Tothebarricades.tk 05:21, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:   It goes a little overboard in implying that Zapatistas are anarchists in everything but name.  I've tried to fix it up a bit, but I still think the entire passage is inappropriate given the fact that it is under the heading "historical examples of successful anarchies" and this example is expressly not an anarchist one.  Again, pointing out similarities is fine, but putting this in the successful anarchies section implies a lot more than similarity.  Anyway, I'll leave it up to see if anyone else raises this objection or has an easy fix. Kev 09:49, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities 

message: That is the question, as I see it. Sam [Spade] 18:16, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: That's only some of it. And I don't think you'd get any real sense of agreement on which side of hte debate represents which type of freedom. I think the larger issue is really derivation of rights, and, more specifically, which rights are innate human rights and which rights are granted through a social contract. (With an eye towards the anarchistic belief that any social contract is invalid) Snowspinner 18:56, Jun 21, 2004 (UTC)
' Helvetius expresses this point clearly: "The free man is the man who is not in irons, nor imprisoned in a gaol, nor terrorized like a slave by the fear of punishment...it is not lack of freedom not to fly like an eagle or swim like a whale." ' Sam [Spade] 19:01, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds like neo-liberal/Libertarian propaganda to me.  As such, it doesn't have anything to do with anarchism (at least any sort that's not anarcho-capitalism).  I don't see how the liberty to be who you want to be (personality wise, since it's obvious we all have physical/mental limitations and this doesn't limit our liberty) and the liberty to be free from coercion are different.  One thing I did notice about the articles is that the freedom from coercion bit mentioned government coercion, as if the government was the only social institution capable of being coercive, which makes me really suspisious about the people that buy into this particular dicotomy.  The ideas of rights/social contract/innate rights are also classical liberal in origin, and wouldn't be a valid way of describing anything about left-anarchism (rights and liberty are two differnt things).  So the idea of a derivation of 'rights' is would be erronious as well. millerc 20:07, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Positive liberty]]/[[Negative liberty]]