From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 00:10:04 +0800
To: Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>
Subject: Re: The Inducement of Rabid Anarchism in Certain Materialists...
In-Reply-To: <19970514112959.12839@bywater.songbird.com>
Message-ID: <3.0.1.32.19970515211039.005f2e68@popd.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>> > That's not *my* definition, it's *the* definition, as described in a
>> > standard, reputable dictionary.  I realize that you have your own 
>> > private definition of the term, that you share with your friends and 
>> > an esoteric community.  

Sigh.  Calling something "*the* definition" of anarchy, when it's not
the definition anarchists use, doesn't cut it.  I realize that 
statists have convinced lots of people that "anarchy" means
"a bunch of bomb-throwing terrorists are going to run down the street
and kill your mama", but that's because they want to be in charge -
or at least have SOMEBODY be in charge, since they don't trust people
to act civilized without rulers who'll kill them if they don't behave. 

Whether you think anarchism *will* lead to bomb-throwing terrorists,
or in general whether it's a good or bad idea, is a separate argument.
But anarchists _ought_ to own the definition.  (Now, if you want to
split the anarchists by bringing up the propertarian vs. non-propertarian
issue and discuss whether "no property" is part of the definition
of anarchy or only a popular anarchist view, you'll end up with chaos (:-)
Around here you'll find mostly arachno-capitalists who think that
property is just fine, though not everyone agrees.
Over on soc.culture.anarchism, you'll find a lot more non-propertarians,
and an on-going squabble about Libertarianism.

One of your more interesting comments was on whether you can separate
the concepts of society and government - a fairly common view of 
government is that it needs to have a monopoly on the use of force to
preserve order, and therefore needs to have tax funding to exist,
and since you've got it around anyway you might as well use it for
things that are easiest to do in a centralized manner, and to do
things that require either social cooperation or lots of money;
a society like that will find government intertwined in its civil affairs,
and people will get out of the habit of organizing their own actions
without using government as a focus.  Other societies have used 
religious organizations to perform many of the same social functions -
if everybody's getting together weekly anyway, might as well talk about
the problems that have been going on, and raise the money needed to
feed the poor and patch the meetinghouse roof.  And other societies
have just done these things on a more individual basis, especially
in sparsely populated areas where there aren't outside invaders.
Of course, now that governments have taken over most of the world,
it's hard to find a place without outside invaders...

But people are still going to teach their kids what they need,
and people are still going to keep most of their agreements with
their neighbors, and they're still going to help each other resolve
arguments about the agreements that weren't kept, whether that
resolution is done by an armed posse, or by the offender's family
paying off the obligation in cattle, or by shunning people until they
do the right thing, or refusing to give credit to known deadbeats,
or whatever.  Government's only one choice.

#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp
#     (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies.  Thanks.)