Posts Tagged ‘ anarchism ’

"Those who truly believe in a society with no masters and no slaves cannot provide a blueprint for how that society will work. If people are truly free to collaborate with whoever they wish and do so on whatever terms they voluntarily agree, then any blueprint for society is a completely worthless and possibly treacherous mind game. It but creates an illusion of anarchism being able to provide guarantees that are always impossible -- government or no government." (03/03/11)

"There are many enterprises desperately needed in order to smoothen the transition to a stateless society. Among the most important of them are agorist banking, insurance, arbitration, and defense. Yet, there are countless others that are often ignored." (02/28/11)

"The power-hungry will always claim they will exploit less than the other guy, and make the unstated assumption that exploitation is a necessity. But exploitation and rulership are not needed to maintain a peaceful and prosperous society of freedom." (02/20/11)

"If history teaches us anything, it is that war, like no other activity of the State, decimates anarchist movements. Not only does war create a breach in libertarian ranks (between those who endorse governmental involvement in war and those who don't), the State inevitably uses the patriotic fervor stimulated by war to crack down on dissent during times of military conflict. The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate the fundamental anti-war position of anarchism and to shew how the war issue divided and depleted anarchist ranks during World War I." (02/17/11)

"Per Bylund's most recent column on STR is titled Why Minarchists Are the Enemy. That's a pretty strong statement, especially as it identifies minarchists not as AN enemy, but THE enemy, and the text of his column reinforces rather than softens the message." (02/17/11)

"My proposition, then, is, that there is not a single natural, human right, that the government of the United States recognizes as inviolable; that there is not a single natural, human right, that it hesitates to trample under foot, whenever it thinks it can promote its own interests by doing so. The proofs of this proposition are so numerous, that only a few of the most important can here be enumerated." (written 1886; posted 02/15/11)

"But there is a problem with joining forces with minarchists; there is a fundamental difference that makes a minarchist-anarchist union utterly impossible. This difference is the principle of force and power -- the principle of government. It is our very core belief as anarchists that force and power is wrong; that any involuntary subjection is always comparable to the end of the world. We have a true passion for justice, while minarchists do not." (02/16/11)

"Anarchism doesn’t contemplate a Utopia, society without crime or unjustified force, but it does urge that we do away with the grant of authority that we now give the state to carry out criminal acts in the name of 'the People.' As dissatisfied Algerians and Yemenis are violently disbanded, sent back to their homes to endure the villainy of their countries’ elites, anarchism offers the promise of justice." (02/14/11)

"The feud between minarchists and anarchists has come to an end. Most of them just don't realize it yet." (02/13/11)

"If the Egyptian protests can teach us anything it is that even the most tyrannical governments rely heavily on a veneer of overwhelming popular consent. When just a small minority of individuals withdraw their financial and moral support, the jig is up. This is because the state neither has the legitimacy, nor the resources, to capture and cage large swaths of the general public. Instead, it relies upon two major tactics to maintain hegemony: instill fear and attack weakness." (02/14/11)

"The prospect of state collapse brings forth worries about a 'power vacuum,' an unrestrained state of nature where chaos rules until the strong take over. But chaotic conflict is produced by efforts to seize power and exert power over other people. It is not the rejection of rulership, but the struggle to achieve rulership, that creates deadly conflict." (02/10/11)

"Governments are like organized crime families, operating as 'executive committees' of their domestic ruling classes, enforcing the privileges and artificial property rights by which their members extract rents from the domestic population. These crime families deal with each other, establishing constantly shifting alliances of convenience and redividing the world between themselves, as their relative strengths shift." (02/10/11)

"In politics, the word power generally signifies the ability of an individual or group of individuals to influence the decisions of others. Authority is an attempt to legitimate the exercise of power to compel obedience or allegiance to the higher ranks. Anarchists reject authority in favor of individual autonomy. Anarchy means that individuals have ultimate decision-making power over their own lives, and the only social arrangements recognized as legitimate are those that are based on consensual cooperation." (02/12/11)

"The Coming Insurrection is an insurrectionary anarchist, or anarcho-communist manifesto first published in France in 2007. When Beck began talking about the work in 2009 he helped turn it into a best-seller upon its publication in English, specifically urging his audience to 'read this book' which he considered one of the 'most evil things' he'd ever read. At the time, an anarchist press collective responded to Beck with an open letter declaring: 'we're like you, except we support real freedom, and that's why you're afraid of us.'" (02/08/11)

"The classic definition of the State involves two elements: a coercive monopolization of defense services over a given geographic area, and the imposition of coercive revenue collection from all of the area's inhabitants. As Murray Rothbard has pointed out, even if taxes were voluntary, the voluntaryist must still oppose state control over protective services. By what right does the State prohibit competition in the production of security?" (01/05/11)

"I think I won’t be looking for a white-market job whereby I work half of the year to pay taxes. Rather, I’ll continue to work in the black and grey markets, and shop there when I can. If I am unable to make ends meet, then I say bring on the food stamps. If I go to the emergency room again, I’ll have the County pay for it. And then I’m going to rub it in the noses of those who work half the year paying taxes by reminding them that this is their system. If they don’t like it, they can always pull a John Galt and let the whole system come crashing down." (01/09/11)

"Like Marxism, anarchism developed just prior to and during the Revolution of 1848. This early anarchism was based mainly on the writings of Pierre Proudhon. But unlike Marxism, 'Proudhonism' was not a fully developed revolutionary anarchism. In many aspects it was gradualist and reduced class struggle to the formation of worker mutualist societies. (Proudhon was opposed to strikes) Most workers at this time were artisans and mutualism was natural to them. Anarchism's First Period would be roughly 1840 until the late 1860's." (01/07/11)