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This is an archive of talk posted at Talk:Anarchism. I would be useful to read this before making changes to Anarchism, and understanding why the page looks as it does now. Sam 10:19 Jan 18, 2003 (UTC)
Note: More (old) talk can be found in Talk:Anarchy.
I do not understand why I am being censored and oppressed. The libertarian socialists are trying to change every point at which the anarchist page says "anarchist" to "libertarian socialist" apparently they are trying to get everybody to call themselves libertarian socialists.
This is not right.
They are deleting numerous changes I have made to the anarchist website. For instance, I have taken several of the points at which one group or another has said, "anarchism is really libertarian socialism" or "anarchism is really socialism" and I have merged them all together into, "Anarchists tend to agree with socialists".
This is not sufficient for the libertarian socialists who are totally opposed to an actual anarchist trying to create a quality explanation of anarchism. For instance, somebody stated that anarchists are opposed to all forms of authority. This is not true. An anarchist later on did state that anarchists do not oppose all forms of authority but isn't that a little confusing? Should visitors to wikipedia be forced to weed through all of these contradictory statements?
Anarchists are opposed to totalitarian authority. Any authority that is totalitarian they oppose. Furthermore, they view the US political system as totalitarian.
But somebody doesn't want me to note that. They want it to say, "anarchists are opposed to all authority" because thatll show the reader that anarchists are fundamentalist and extremists and everybody should hop over to libertarian socialism...
- This entire argument would go away, if, Lir could write a page - on the talk page for now - as to what he is getting at. Then we could put down the knives and back away from the 'pedia. Dobbs 01:33 Oct 3, 2002 (UTC)
They are not addressing even one point at which my changes were incorrect. For instance, if you read about a political party would you want to know where it has a following. Anarchism doesn't have a big following in Kazhakastan but they do have a large following in Japan.
I added information such as this-but it gets deleted. Why? I suspect the deleters are not even reading my changes but deleting on some immoral principle. They have been calling me a noobie. They are the noobies. They apparently don't want to create an online dictionary where people that know about the subject can show up and point out obvious things like, "If anarchists feel that there is a notable difference between anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists, anarchosocial-communists, anarco-communists, anarcho-socialists, red anarchists, green anarchists, anarcho-feminists, and the like YOU BETTER BELIEVE they don't consider themselves to be libertarian socialists, regardless of what the libertarians think.
Somebody has actually said that Ive changed the text to align itself with libertarian socialism. I have hardly done so! The test originally is worded that way. In continuance of that is a result of the previous wording.
Anybody who says anarchism means, "no government whatsoever" doesn't no what anarchism is. Anarchism believes in self-governance.
- Lir, there are a bunch of different issues here. First off, nobody is trying to oppress or censor you; we are asking that you participate in the community in the same way that everybody else who edits here is asked to participate in the community. Read the comments, have a discussion on the talk page, et cetera; these are the rules that we live by here; otherwise, we could get nothing done.
- Secondly, nobody here calls themselves a "libertarian socialist" in ordinary life. Most of the people who edit libertarian socialism in everyday life call themselves "anarchists". However, a lot of other people who disagree with the basic premises of what most people call anarchism also call themselves anarchists. So, for the sake of avoiding confusion (it seems to have done the opposite, unfortunately), we have moved most information on what we know as "anarchism" to "libertarian socialism".
- Next issue, does "anarchism" (in the popular conception, what we're calling libertarian socialism) oppose all authority, or just totalitarian authority? Noam Chomsky say he opposes "illegitimate authority"; that's a phrasing I like quite a bit. Why don't you come over to the libertarian socialism page and edit it with us? DanKeshet
I AM BEING CENSORED! NOAM CHOMSKY AGREES WITH ME! ILLEGITIMATE AUTHORITY IS TOTALITARIAN!!!!!!!!!! DO I HAVE TO GO LOOK THROUGH MY EMAIL AND GET HIS ADDRESS AND PHONE NUMBER FOR YOU? WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY ENTRY? IS THERE ANYTHING ACTUALLY WRONG WITH IT? YOU ARE ALL IN THIS HUFF OVER WHAT? WHAT IS SO WRONG WITH IT?
The document used to read, "Anarchists oppose all government." It now reads "Anarchists support self-government". If you don't agree with this you DONT UNDERSTAND ANARCHIST THEORY
- As far as I can tell, the above statement regarding "oppose all government" vs. "support self-government" is wholly false.
love the boss totally or not or be governed by some other nut with an english d ,come on can you not sit down and try to agree we need a better system in place a system that will respect us all no matter what or who we are , that respects our right to argue or not and respects whether we and this is a hard one for you middle cllassers are educated or not because most of us are out of school by 18 i try only to represent (trade unionists)or empower people not lead them not be an authority for them to look to but to help them gain enough confidence to say no when they have to.Authority sucks and has always sucked ,when somebody tells you what to do its wrong wheteher they be a political hack (chuckle chuckle on this page same old dark place to fall into)a boss , an intelectual and worst of that thing they call " a leader".We all have to deal with these sorts of ego trips in life and its sad but one day we will change it all but it needs to be done from the ground up and it will be a slow process it will be a evolutionary process there will be no quick big revolutionary change the golden age will be in our distant future and we all must demonstrate our willingness to put down the markers that will change all around us however small that contribution is. tom o' rourke
I just moved my more detailed discussion of libertarian socialism & anarcho-capitalism to libertarian socialism and anarcho-capitalism. My proposal is as follows:
- The anarchism article will discuss the different understandings of the term anarchism, and the disputes over the proper meaning of the term. Anarchy should I think just be a pointer to this.
- Libertarian socialism should discuss libertarian socialism, including arguments for and against, the different varieties of it, and what a libertarian socialist society should look like. Traditional anarchism should be a redirect to this.
- Likewise, anarcho-capitalism should discuss the same stuff for anarcho-capitalism.
- Here here! Dobbs 01:33 Oct 3, 2002 (UTC)
In response to your points,
1. There must be some common ground, or different groups wouldn't lay claim to the same word. And the common ground is the "abolition of civil governments". If you believe that to be incorrect, then find the correct common ground.
- Well, yes, both agree that anarchy involves "abolition of civil governments", but they have completely different understandings of what "abolition of civil governments" means. And a lot of anarchists would say it is much more than that, that it involves the abolition of all coercion, though again they disagree on what constitutes coercion. The common ground is more superficial than deep. -- SJK
2. The discussion of anarchy isn't that in-depth, but it doesn't need to be. Everything that is said about the term in your version of the anarchism page is said on the anarchy page. But succinctly. If you feel more needs to be said, then go ahead, and expand the anarchy page.
Finally, my version of the beginning doesn't eliminate any information. It just eliminates verbiage. Please demonstrate what information my version leaves out.
p.s. Is libertarian socialism actually a term libertarian socialists use, or do they call themselves anarchists?
- They call themselves both. Historically, some prefered one, others prefered the other; anarchism seemed to be winning out, but then since anarcho-capitalism has come along they've started using libertarian socialism as a term to distinguish themselves from anarcho-capitalism. (They use other terms as well, e.g. left anarchism, or just 'real anarchism') -- SJK
I'd just like to say that I think it was a bad idea to merge Anarchy into Anarchism. The separate Anarchy entry made it much clearer what the use of the word was. Also, by merging the two there is now content on the Anarchism page that doesn't really belong there. For example, talking about the use of the word "anarchy" by punk rockers, etc. is ancillary to the "anarchism" entry. In general I advocate more distinct entries, not fewer. If you have two related concepts, and one is wholly subordinate, then I advocate them being under one entry, which would imply subpages--e.g. ethnic nationalism belongs under nationalism (but people like Larry Sanger hate subpages, so that won't happen), or redirects (like "happy" to "happiness"). But most of the time concepts are related but neither is wholly subordinate. And Anarchy is not wholly subordinate to Anarchism. I think redirects should mainly be used for misspellings. --TheCunctator
I don't think the bit about punk rock is at all misplaced on the "anarchism" page; it's simply a philosophy or an ideology like the others. It seems that this is the extent of our disagreement. If I believed that anomy was in a different class of topics than anarcho-capitalism, than I'd think they should have seperate pages. If you agreed that anomy was just like a-c or l-s, then that would make this just like "happy" / "happiness". Am I right? --DanKeshet
Anarchy and anomy are not indistinguishable concepts. "happy" is the adjectival form of "happiness". Punk rock isn't simply a philosophy or an ideology like the others; rather, there's a pretty big difference between political ideologies and music. However, I want you to know that I can also buy to some degree the argument for merging them. I just think that people here have been getting a little too merge/delete happy recently and lean towards separate entries. In other words, the extent of my disagreement lies in the philosophical grounding of wikipedian ontology. --TheCunctator
I didn't mean to say anarchy and anomy are indistinguishable; only that seeing how a bunch of groups are laying claim to the word "anarchy", anomy has as much of a claim as any other. --dk
Libertarian socialists and anarcho-capitalists view each other's ideas with hostility. Proponents of each of these two theories tend to claim that theirs is the only true anarchism, while the other position is not anarchism at all, because it opposes a wrong notion of power ('archos'). On the other hand, libertarian socialists consider themselves as part of the collectivist movement, while anarcho-capitalists consider themselves as classical liberals - this shows that the opposition between collectivism and individualism in matters of political economy is indeed more essential than the question of the existence of government.
Many libertarian socialists argue that anarcho-capitalism should not be called anarchism at all, due to the much older use of the word to refer to libertarian socialism. Anarcho-capitalists argue they have just as much right to the word as libertarian socialists have, and that their anti-statist tradition is actually older and more coherent. Individualist anarchists could arguably claim they are the oldest anarchist tradition, but they care little for such macho "length contests" about the age of traditions, since they don't feel like they are part of a collective they must defend.
- I just don't know what to make of this. I've read a considerable amount of libertarian socialist literature and rarely if ever found the term "collectivist". As far as I can tell, collectivist is an adjective used almost exclusively by anarcho-capitalists. I can understand why we should explain the differences between libertarian socialism and anarcho-capitalism, but these paragraphs need to be seriously rewritten for them to be useful at all.
-Which one of these denotes everyone being in charge?-Adrian
The reason I put this distinction in:
" * Anarcho-socialists (Libertarian Socialists) believe that all forms of hierarchy must be eliminated. Anarcho-capitalists believe that all forms of coercive forms of hierarchy must be eliminated, thus employer / employee relationships may be preserved, as they are freely entered into contracts."
is that I reject the idea that anarcho-socialists find "non-coercive" hierarchy acceptible. While all anarcho-capitalists I know reject the church (in this specific sense I am refering to the Catholic church, because all of the older (and primary authors for this *modern* anarchism debate) European anarcho-socialist writers either railed against the Orthodox (the Russians) or the Roman (everybody else, but the Spanish really come to mind) church), they do not deny the ability of someone to join the church if they felt like it. (Presumably because they feel in matters of human purview, coersion is wrong - but still believe in subordinance to a divine creator). Anarcho-socialists are against the church for the same reasons they are against the government, hierarchal control. And this goes for almost all social organizations - syndicatilism (? - need more coffee) notwithstanding.
As to the statement earlier in the thread: "Well, yes, both agree that anarchy involves "abolition of civil governments"" is incorrect. To contrast (from directly above): "this shows that the opposition between collectivism and individualism in matters of political economy is indeed more essential than the question of the existence of government." is much closer to the truth. Anarchists are ALL for civil society. All anarchists believe in spontaneous order, as opposed to coercive imposed order. Particaption of an active civic is essential to have a functioning civil society. This society will create and impose sanction for transgressions of the order agreed upon. To illustrate, neither anarcho-socialists or anarcho-capitalists allow murder to go unpunished. This is "government" (granted not in its traditional sense, if you can't stand the term use something equivalent), no matter how you slice it. Whether these norms be based upon collectivism or individualism is the real issue.
Finally, (whoo hoo!) punk rock adopted symbology from the anarchist movement, but that was where it really ended.
(Apart from Crass (see their website) and the anarcho punk scene I would argue... I intend to cover anarcho punk in more depth than that little stub I've put up so far, but it's a start.... quercus robur )
Punk rock is about disorder. It (as a movement) was concerned with the destruction of 'norms' in society. They rejected such basic ideas as "doing well for yourself" or "be good at what you do". For example, musicianship (based on 'norms') was rejected as being to studied, and therefore false. It was more important to express oneselves, in any way (positive or negative, constructive or destructive, peaceful or violent) desired. The resulting deconstruction and destruction of those norms would presumably result in a better society, or at least a society in constant revolution (and end in and of itself). This concept of constant revolution has been seen in many other, non-anarchist traditions. as for what happened after the destruction of society and its norms, punk rock never concerned itself with. Anarchism, for the most part in literature, deals very little with the "destruction" part, and jumps right into how the new order will be. I feel the reference should be moved, and the references to its anarchist symbology and self-identification contrasted to how more 'doctrinaire' (yikes! THAT came out of my mouth!) types feel about it.
- Dobbs 14:40 Sep 5, 2002 (PDT) hope I did that tag correctly!
I must admit, I know punk more from what it's not (other than an appreciation of the music) than what it is. As you seem to have an interest, please lead. Where do you think the definition (and the differences) need to go from here? Dobbs 05:14 Sep 6, 2002 (UCT)