Talk:Anarchism/Archive 23

message: (and proven not original research) by the Hoselitz quote above (among other things).  Furthermore, there was some agreement earlier to refer to Molinari (and Godwin) as proto-anarchists rather than anarchists - a solution that perhaps everyone can live with.  I.e. Gustav de Molinari was a proto-anarcho-capitalist, and should be included in the history as such. Hogeye
:  Whatever agreement there was must have been limited, I have expressed disagreement form the start that any particular sub-movement should claim predecessors in the general history.  The general history should be first and foremost about anarchism in general, and when it lists anarchists particular to any sub-movement it should be without interpretation.  Kev 6 July 2005 05:18 (UTC)
 Likewise, even those anarcho-capitalism opposes collectivist anarchism and some of traditional individualist anarchism, it's still anarchism. The reason for both cases is that both traditional individualist anarchism and anarcho-capitalism are opposed to the existence of a state and in favor of voluntary relations between individuals. RJII
:  None of the anarchists who came before anarcho-capitalism considered capitalist relations to be voluntary.  Kev 6 July 2005 05:18 (UTC)
 The sample was automatically generated by a search engine. I obviously had no control over it.  The argument that you should ignore dictionaries and encyclopedias and even past anarchist luminaries and, instead, take a poll, is ... not good scholarship. Hogeye
:  No one has suggested that past anarchists be ignored, nor even that dictionaries should be ignored.  Past anarchists should be referanced, dictionaries should not be used as a basis for an encyclopedia, which should prefer primary sources.  Kev 6 July 2005 05:18 (UTC)
  The claim is: they defined anarchism as anti-statist, not as anti-capitalist.  This is the third time Alba has demonstated a failure to grasp the difference between giving a definition and propounding one's philosophy.  Luckily, PP, EG, and PK had a better grasp.  Hogeye
:  Hogeye is using the absence of evidence against his claim in select passages as the presence of evidence for his claim.  This is a fallacy, but even if it wasn't there happens to be evidence in other passages of their text that each individual believe anarchism to be incompatible with capitalism.  That they did not state so explicitly in their definitions is irrelevant, they obviously believed it was entailed because beyond their one-liners they said as much.  Kev 6 July 2005 05:18 (UTC)
 "...we maintain that already now, without waiting for the coming of new phases and forms of the capitalist expoitation of labor, we must work for its abolition. We must, already now, tend to tranfer all that is needed for production—the soil, the mines, the factories, the means of communication, and the means of existence, too—from the hands of the individual capitalist into those of the communities of producers and consumers." — Peter Kropotkin, "Economic Views of Anarchism" (original emphasis). I'd refer to quotes from Proudhon and Emma Goldman as well but it isn't worth my time. Your argument is absurd and invalid. Bk0
:Proudhon was soundly anti-capitalist in his productive period; his later transition to "mutualism"/federalism (and, incidentally, Roman Catholicism) is irrelevant to anarchism. Trying to argue that Goldman and Kropotkin were capitalists is laughable. --Bk0 01:31, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Notes

message: This is a case of people being stuck in the past and wanting to keep everybody else there. Of course, anarcho-capitalism, is incompatible with "traditional anarchism." But, so what? This article is called "Anarchism," not "Traditional Anarchism." RJII
 By the same logic one could say that a flower is defined as a plant, but it isn't defined as growing in dirt and requiring water, so those things aren't necessary.  From a basic definition you draw obvious conclusions.  Anarchism is against hierarchy, therefore it will be against, for example, sexism.  Capitalism is yet another obvious thing that anarchism is against. Fatal
 You think all anarchism is collectivist anarchism. Traditional individualist anarchism does not oppose voluntary boss and employee relationships as long as they stick to the labor theory of value. Involuntary hierarchy is opposed, of course, but not hierarchy in itself unless you're a collectivist anarchist. Maybe you don't think traditional individualist anarchism is real anarchism? If so, you're wrong. RJII
 I don't know the exact numbers involved, but the libertarian movement is large and significant, with many publications and organizations (though, as others have noted, they're less prone to rioting in the streets and smashing things, which makes them less-often in the news; however, the local newscast in my area yesterday specifically mentioned the Libertarian Party as the instigator of a successful move to get the county to repeal its ban on Sunday liquor sales).  Within the libertarian movement, there are more minarchists than anarcho-capitalists, but anarcho-capitalism (often referred to within the libertarian movement as simply "anarchism", since that term has the meaning of "anti-government" with no socialist baggage in these circles) is widely recognized as the most pure and extreme form of libertarianism even if most libertarians decline to go that far themselves. *Dan*
 Actually all schools of anarchism are compatible with each other in the broad sense, all major things are the same, like the abolition of hierarchy.  And if you're one of these people that likes to use the word government because you think that excludes other hierarchy, i've got news for you, they're synonyms.  --Fatal 01:19, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Notes

message: RJ, you rv calling it a "meaningless term", but you fight the usage on the talk pages by saying that 1) it does not apply to individualist-anarchists and 2) that is vague and prone to misinterpretation. If you think the term is meaningless, then let's discuss that.
:By meaningless, I mean that it's subject to different interpretations. I'm not aware of any universal meaning of the term. And the Wikipedia article sure doesn't help. To me, it can mean a variety of things, differing levels of wealth among individuals as well as the employer/employee situation. But, that's just my interpretation. And you have yours. Nobody seems to know what exactly it is, if it's anything. RJII 05:22, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Social hierarchy is a lot more specific than simply saying that anarchism is against all hierarchy. Scientists studying behavior of animals use the term a lot; sociologists and anthropologists as well, without bothering to define it. A Google search turns up as much. It hardly needs its own special definition -- it's merely a compound word, formed of words most people understand. A society has politics; political hierarchy is certainly objected to by anarchists. What is the big deal? The term aptly describes what anarchists object to: a society in which some individuals have more liberties/rights/privileges than others. It doesn't in any way imply "equality", which I'm sure you would have an objection to. --albamuth 17:07, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Then what do you say to this, from the anarcho-capitalism article: "The traditions that object to the term anarcho-capitalism tend to use the term "anarchism" to refer to a particular group of socialist political movements, and use a general definition that includes rejection of all hierarchical social organization, rather than just the state. They regard the uneven distribution of wealth among individuals in a capitalist system as inherently hierarchical. Therefore, they see anarcho-capitalism as antithetical to the principles of anarchy."  According to you, this is wrong, correct? Uneven distribution of wealth is not social hierarchy. RJII 18:09, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The key phrase is the uneven distribution of wealth among individuals in a capitalist system. In a capitalist economic system, wealth bestows priviliges to the owners of it, according to anarchists. So I don't think that is wrong. --albamuth 03:53, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The only way you can have unequal wealth distribution is if you have private property. The reason that private property is opposed is because it leads to unequal distributions of wealth. These class distinctions in wealth are exactly what the communist anarchists oppose. And it's what they mean by social hierarchy. They say they oppose uneven wealth distribution in a capitalist system, with the understanding that a capitalist system has private property and that private property is the reason for uneven wealth distribution. Saying that one opposes private private property goes hand in hand with saying that one is for equal wealth distribution. I think the "social hierarchy" thing really only applies to the communist anarchism . Now that individualist anarchism is in the article it doesn't really apply. I know you've adjusted it to have a precise meaning, but I foresee problems because "social hierarchy" goes beyond that for anarcho-communists. RJII 04:47, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Without getting back into the whole "what is private property?" debate, the conclusion of "unequal wealth distribution = social hierarchy" may be drawn by some anarchists and not others, but it doesn't mean that those others don't oppose social hierarchy for their own reasons, as I was trying to demonstrate earlier, of the individualist anarchists. --albamuth 05:09, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Which is why saying anarchists oppose "social hierarchy" doesn't really communicate anything, but only confuses things. Some oppose it under one definition. Others don't oppose it under another definition. RJII 21:02, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Social hierarchy]] is a meaningless term?

message: RJ11, will you please provide documentation to prove your claim that Christian anarchists oppose tax resistence?  I can show that its founder, Tolstoy, supported tax resistence, as did many of the Quaker anarchists, so I don't agree with your generalization at all.
:Well, this is from Tolstoy's work "The Kingdom of God is Within You": "
Q. Can he pay taxes to such a government? 
A. No; he ought not voluntarily to pay taxes, but he ought not to resist the collecting of taxes. A tax is levied by the government, and is exacted independently of the will of the subject. It is impossible to resist it without having recourse to violence of some kind. Since the Christian cannot employ violence, he is obliged to offer his property at once to the loss by violence inflicted on it by the authorities.
-How's that? RJII 16:21, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Christian Anarchism 

message: I made a suggestion a while back of doing away with the "schools" concept for an evolotionary epistemological approach. This is how I envision it (chronological order):
:Section title: "Evolution of Anarchist Theory"
::Subsection: (example) Application to Feminism
:::Emma Goldman, blah blah blah, Lucy Parsons, blah blah in 1925, blah blah blah, identified patriarchy as blah blah blah, referred to anarcha-feminism, blah blah radical cheerleading...
::Subsection: Deleuzeian rejection of fascism
:::Gilles Deleuze blah blah blah desiring-machines blah blah pathological fascism
And so on and so forth. This solves the following problems:
1) the fact that anarchism really doesn't have "schools" in any reasonable sense, as every single anarchists' ideas are slightly different yet usually compatible
2) anarcho-capitalism is included without having to be defined as "anarchist or not", simply as a branch of thought that history has yet to reveal the outcome of
3) it covers the terms ("anarcho-primitivism", "anarcho-communism") as they come up in history without creating the misconception that they represent rival gangs of anarchists
4) the "History" section can be greatly reduced, eliminated, or merged, reducing article size and redundancy
5) the "Conflicts" can be addressed as part of the history of anarchism
6) people wishing to find out about the specific terms can still find them in the article
What d'ya'll think? --albamuth 04:26, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Instead of Schools...

message: Why the hell are you deleting that anarcho-communists and anarcho-syndicalists are for the abolition of private property?  You said something about them having a "stipulative definition." But, they don't have a different definition than anyone else. What's up? This is from an anarcho-syndicalist article "The primary goal of Anarcho-Syndicalist activism is to abolish the wages system through the abolition of the insitution of private property and the class-divided society it creates." --from anarchosyndicalism.net   They and communist anarchists use the term "private property" ...so that's exactly the term that should be used. You think they have some special definition? What do you think that is? RJII 05:32, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Just having 'private property' there is misleading RJ and u know it. Albamuth is spot-on when he talks of the stipulative definition -max rspct 13:19, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: How is it misleading? Neither of you guys have an explanation. Just B.S. RJII 13:43, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

text: Individualist anarchist Lysander Spooner defines: "the principle of individual property ... says that each man has an absolute dominion, as against all other men, over the products and acquisitions of his own labor." You say communist have a "stipulative definition." What is it then? Enough bullshit. RJII 13:46, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

text: In common use, property is simply 'one's own thing' and refers to the relationship between individuals and the objects which they see as being their own to dispense with as they see fit. Scholars in the social sciences frequently conceive of property as a 'bundle of rights and obligations.' They stress that property is not a relationship between people and things, but a relationship between people with regard to things. Property is often conceptualized as the rights of 'ownership' as defined in law.
So without explaining the anarchist separation of private property and personal property, simply stating that "X-anarchists are against private property" becomes misleading. Having to explain that for each section in 'Schools' would bloat the article significantly, so that nuance is better explained in the sub-articles. Even Spooner, as you quoted him, is using the term individual property -- tell me, does he mean private property, instead? This is another problem that could be solved with the suggestion I made above. --albamuth 15:37, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

text: Of course Spooner means private property. That's what private property is ..property of an individual. Maybe the problem here is that a few of you just don't know what private property is. What "nuance" are you talking about? Communist and syndicalists don't have another non-standard definition for private property. You say that but you are unable to come up with one. Private property is individual property  ..that which an individual has absolute dominion over. The reason communists oppose it is because it's not egalitarian ..it leads to different social classes. If individuals have property and wages they can keep accumulating that property and form a class division. That would be "to each according to his ability", and a violation of the maxim "FROM each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." I suggest you read this section of the anarcho-syndicalist FAQ  RJII 16:07, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Check out the private property article. Saying that syndicalists oppose all private property would mean to the average reader that no syndicalist would have their own pair of shoes, which is false, of course. I'm not arguing against your definition of it, which is a scholarly one, but the utility of using it in the article without extensive stipulation is misleading. --albamuth 16:20, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, if someone is so dense to think that the abolition of private property means people would be naked, then we can always say they want it to be replaced with collective property. How's that? RJII 16:25, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: But that's not how anarchists conceive collective property working. Nobody wants to share underwear, not even anarchists, and this extends to a great number of things. Remember the whole concept of personal property vs. private property? And personal possession versus collective possession vs private possession?  And what about the metaphysical, Kantian objection to the very notion of property? The whole matter is quite complicated. But go ahead and make whatever edits you want--I'd rather work on an complete article re-organization (see other section). --albamuth 06:29, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Nobody wants to share underwear, not even anarchists Let me just say, your experiences are different from mine. 24.243.188.29 18:20, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: stipulative definition of private property

message: I don't exactly know what happened, but it looks like TelemachusSneezed either accidentally or intentionally reverted this talk to an outdated version.  I'm reverting back now. Jpers36 03:27, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Accident: I saved and the stuff below appeared. Not sure what happened. When you guys revert backwards, do you just cut-and-paste the old material, or is there a special "revert to..." button I'm missing somewhere? --TelemachusSneezed 22:02, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you CesarB, for showing me the "art of reversion." --TelemachusSneezed 22:20, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reverting Talk Page 

message: Looking over the article in its present state, I feel that it devotes way too much space to the section on "Schools of anarchism." This is going to be very misleading to a reader who doesn't know much about anarchism, because it gives the impression that there's no over-all coherence to anarchist thought, when in fact there is. I've known a lot of anarchists, and none of them believed in capitalism, Christianity, racial separatism, or nationalism. I don't think that there's any question that Anarcho-capitalism, Christian anarchism, black anarchism, and national anarchism exist; that they have more members than could meet in a VW bug; and that they deserve their own articles. However, they're utterly unimportant when seen against the backdrop of anarchism in general, and IMO it's wildly inappropriate that "Schools of anarchism" currently takes up almost half of the whole article. I'd like to propose spinning off that entire section into a separate article, Alternative models of anarchism. And just to put my cards on the table, I'm a libertarian, not an anarchist, and my main focus on WP is articles about the history of racism in the U.S. I'm actually more in sympathy with Anarcho-capitalism than with mainstream anarchism, so I'm not suggesting this as a way of attacking ideologies I disagree with; I simply think the article is unbalanced and misleading in its present state. I think spinning off this content (as has already been done with the anarchism template) could really help to eliminate the constant infighting that has afflicted this article.--Bcrowell 16:22, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think the "constant infighting" is harming the article but helping it. There is no point in having a stagnant article for the sake of stagnancy. The article is is better than it was several months ago, and it couldn't have happened without conflict. I'm not judging your proposal, but to try to find ways to push disputes off into the corner is not the way to go, in my opinion. The quality and dynamism of the articles is more important than the contentment of the editors. RJII 16:42, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think the "constant infighting" is harming the article but helping it. I disagree. The NPOV template at the top of the article is an admission of defeat; it tells prospective readers that the content of the article isn't trustworthy, and I think it's true that the content of the article isn't trustworthy, because it's unbalanced. And even putting aside the issue of balance, the organization of the article is completely incomprehensible. For instance, the section on "Conflicts within anarchist thought" has random material thrown into it on the McKinley assassination, the Haymarket Riot, and anarchism's demonization in the press. In my experience, the first thing that happens when an article goes into a revert-war tailspin is that the quality of the article stagnates and/or deteriorates.--Bcrowell 17:00, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that that there's a lot of garbage as well as bad writing in this article. But, it was worse before. I think the worse parts are the sections that people haven't been fighting over, but neglecting ..like anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism. I've started to do a little work on those sections and have started to encounter some resistance (it didn't even bother to mention that anarcho-syndicalism and communism oppose private property, if you can believe it). So hopefully better things for those sections are in store. As far as it being unbalanced, you should have seen it before --individualist anarchism was ignored as if it didn't exist. Fortunately, I was able to get that section in. It looks like in the past this article was edited by people who thought all anarchism was collectivist-based. Feel free to work on any section that you think needs work. RJII 17:59, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: When an article is being fought over like this, it becomes very difficult to work on. The article gets locked a lot, the talk page is flooded with vitriolic personal attacks, etc. A dysfunctional article drives away people with fresh perspectives, who might otherwise have gotten involved in improving it. Personally, I wouldn't do any major work on this article while it was the subject of this kind of dogfight.--Bcrowell 18:20, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's been suggested that omitting the Schools" section and making the article history-based would reduce disputes and make the article more stable. Let's test that theory. Here is a sample history-based article: Anarchism/historical. Is this, more, less, or about the same in controversy?
It still needs to be organized better so particular concepts stand out, in their own subsection. Each subsection should start with the inculcation of the concept into anarchism, the history of it within anarchism, and end with either how the concept was dropped/replaced/merged/cemented in anarchist culture in the case of "history", or its current standing (controversy/conflict) in the case of contemporary anarchism. --albamuth 06:16, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposal to spin off "Schools of anarchism" section into [[Alternative models of anarchism]]

message: Revert to an outdated version happened again, this time by Bcrowell. Is there some sort of bug or hack that's going on?  I'm reverting back to the last version before the introduction of outdated material. Jpers36 17:31, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's a software bug. I added "Proposal to spin off ...," but then a whole bunch of old content got added on after it, so the sections were no longer in chronological order. I then took "Proposal to spin off ..." and shifted it back to the end. I'm totally baffled by the edit history, which doesn't seem to bear any resemblance to what I actually did. The diff between the 17:00 and 17:01 versions shows me reinserting the old content, which I didn't do. Weird!--Bcrowell 17:47, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

text: It happened again to me also. I'm reverting to the last unscrewed up revision. --TelemachusSneezed 22:00, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It happened to CesarB. Reverting. This bug is getting pretty annoying, so I reported it to Wikipedia on their bugs page. I'm wondering: each time it happened to me, I had opened up the edit box in a new window so I could more easily reference what people had discussed on the parent page. Is that when it happened to you, Bcrowell and CesarB? --TelemachusSneezed 22:09, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I had the bug too -- see the history and I had to revert three times. The key is when you click and it says "editing an out-of-date version", then it will bug out when you submit. Going back and hitting edit again seems to do the trick. It might have to do with the fact that these talk pages are so active and the diff history is super long. --albamuth 05:50, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reverting Talk Page -- Again 

message: Started it off, but I don't want to be the only one working on it. It needs a LOT of citation, quotes, and follow-through of sections. I simply reorganized the text on the existing article. Editing it made me realize how deficient in documentation/citation the existing article is. IMHO this is a good avenue for serious, scholarly work. --albamuth 03:54, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Anarchism/historical]]