Anarchism and Nationalism are two ideals on opposite sides of the spectrum. I believe that both ideologies are as dangerous as one another. Anarchy leads to chaos and Nationalism leads to the state being placed before the indiviual, hence Fascism.Which one is the lesser of these two evils?
Could you explain how nationalism is the exact opposite of anarchism?
I always thought that totalitarianism is the opposite of anarchism–they are both types of rule, but are on the opposite ends of the up/down spectrum of the political compass.
Nationalism is more of a social/military policy than an actual type of rule.
In order to live in anarchy, all must agree to peacefully coexist. Anarchy doesn’t lead to chaos, violence as a means results in chaos.
Anarchy and chaos are not synonymous, despite current misuse of the word.
Totalitarianism is the result when groups decide to live at the expense of others.
Anarchy is the result of all agreeing to live in freedom.
The amerikan west was populated by those seeking to free themselves from the constraints of rule by force. Anarchy was the result. It lasted until well into '30’s. It was killed off by the ever increasing reach of those willing to sacrifice honor for power.
wrong white eye
the amerikan west was invaded by european butchers who knew nothing but genocide from day one.
-Imp
Yep, just as the Europeans did in sub-saharan Africa, the Middle East, most of the Southern American continent, and just as the US has done in bits of east Asia of late. Seems to be a habit we’re developing.
Freedom hasn’t a thing to do with it. If there is no state and therefore no static government then what prevents me from exercising my freedom to ride up and down the street on the back of a truck, stark naked, playing ‘smoke on the water’ really badly at a deafening volume? Who defines what is reasonable, acceptable, tolerable behaviour in the anarchistic system? This question has never been answered without entailing some sort of hypocrisy because, by definition, any restraint on my behaviour will entail some sort of non-peaceful encounter and restrictions being placed on my freedom. Just like under ANY other system, whether we be talking about benevolent dictatorships (Fidel Castro, to some extent) or liberal democracies (Australia, US, UK etc.) or any point in between.
While agreeing that the whites have only victory to be proud of, not all of those folks were evil imperialists, the first ones ashore were fleeing religious persecution by the powermongers of their day, but when confronted with the freedom to act right, they turned into what they fled.
We must lend definitions if we are to converse, all can be negotiated until an agreement is reached.
Anarchism is the absence of government.
Government is the response to the bad actions of a few.
Vigilantes don’t raise taxes, if they did, we’d call them ‘the government’.
If you support the government option, you support the enslavement of all that can be named ‘citizen’.
If you support anarchism, you, and your neighbors will not tolerate the negative acts of others, and will do what needs to be done to stop the bad acting.
So,…
Nationalism=slavery
Anarchism=freedom to be good
Either you can put on the iron restraints of letting others rule you, and all pursuant corruption, or you can bind yourself with the knowledge that you are a good person.
I find the choice incredibly simple, though not easily seen.
You, of course, must decide for you.
You can do that only so long as you don’t anger the store owner, who doesn’t have to sell you food, or the homeowner who has repeatedly warned you to keep your smoke to yourself. His/her options remain open, you are interfering in his tranquillity, mitigated only by the ‘public ness’ of the streets. If all the neighbors on the street decided to take more drastic measures, some would call it democracy. They, in turn, would suffer the judgements for their actions.
The restraints involved could be defined by: Cause nothing that is difficult for another to expierience.
Following this maxim leads to a peaceful co-existence with a minimum of restraints.
And, yes, I do recognize the lack of freedom to be evil, sorry about that part, but do you really want to be troublesome in an otherwise perfectly peaceful world?
[url=http://www.freedomnowok.org/Frog.html]Can you define what compels you to have a dictator?
I know it has to be more than ‘well, that’s how it’s always been’, which is not correct, it’s been like that only since the first one seized the power.[/url]
they don’t even have that… yes, every single one of them was an evil invader… especially the ones fleeing religious persecution…
you have too much faith in the goodness of humans… stab you in the back everytime…
-Imp
Only the bad ones,…
I’ve no idea what you mean by this second statement. Government seems (only seems) to have originated in the need to protect trading routes.
The government takes away my choice as to whether to pay taxes but gives me the option of free healthcare and education. That isn’t enslavement, it is negotiated freedom/power. All political philosophies (including anarchism), all politics, are a negotiation regarding freedom/power.
What ‘needs to be done’? Who are you to define what needs to be done when you advocate a system where everyone has the maximum freedom to define right and wrong? You cannot advocate anarchism and start prescribing the rules for other people’s behaviour without entailing contradictions.
You’ve not shown the connection. I repeat: All politics (including anarchism) are a negotiation regarding freedom/power. You are trying to turn a practical issue (government, politics) into an analytical issue, one that contains truth by definition. There’s no necessary connection and you haven’t even demonstrated a reason for provisionally accepting a connection. Kropotkin was a loon.
I don’t believe that I’m a good person, necessarily. What, in your system, is to stop me from, say, beating someone up and filming it on a camera phone?
Right, and I decide that everything you advocate is wrong if not utterly nonsensical. Where does that get us?
So if I break the rules of tranquility then everyone else breaks the rules of tranquility in order to punish me then everyone else breaks the rules of tranquility to punish the ones who punished me, and then everyone else breaks the rules…
Under your suggested binding of ‘the publicness of the streets’ anarchism would equate to chaos as soon as anyone broke the rules.
One further point - who defines the rules in this system if there is no state?
That rules out an awful lot of good things. A bit of pain and difficulty is unavoidable, under your laws we’d all be guilty, rather than all be good as you claimed above. I think you are very, very confused.
How do you enforce the following of this maxim? With restraints. Oh, but we can’t restrain anyone because that’s a denial of their freedom, which makes us as guilty of breaking the maxim as them. But we can’t just do nothing. Oh, what are we to do?
This is all astonishingly simple and I’m surprised you haven’t considered it before. You seem to think that political philosophy stopped with Rousseau, and seem to have skipped Marx and Mill altogether.
If I get bored, which I will.
I’ve nothing against dictators per se. It depends entirely on what they do with their power. Are you familiar with Joseph II of Austria?
Protecting the trading routes from the bad acts of robbers. Governments are instituted to protect the free associations of it’s citizens, they just devolve into tools for those willing to use the power of the office to line their own pockets.
It’s that taking that is the enslavement, if I locked you into a cage will it matter that I give you cable and one meal a day? Are you any more the master of your own destiny because I throw you scraps? Hardly, you are my bitch, you will toe my line, or you will get the hose! (Get it?)
Open your eyes, buddy, when choices are removed, slavery is the result.
I don’t recall negotiating anything, only being told how things will be, hardly a choice there.
Unless I have the choice to tell you no, without repercussion, it’s not really a choice, is it? It’s doublespeak.
There is no contradiction in any action you take to safeguard your, and those you love’s, tranquility.
What you choose to do about those that act to the detriment of your life is up to you, you will move along the evil/good scale in proportion to your acts.
Politics cease to be a force in anarchy where the primary objective is freedom of association/non-association. When groups have no more power than the individual, mob rules don’t apply.
Who, excactly, did I surrender my sovereignty to, that now I have to ask for it’s return?
Haven’t had the pleasure of reading Mr. Kropotkin, but clearly his prescriptions are working no better than anybody else’s.
World Peace in 20 words or less!
You will find someone that will put you back into your place, until then, run amok, for tommorow you die!
anarchistangel,
As a utopian model, anarchy sounds wonderful until there is a conflict of interest borne out of different perspectives. It is no accident that anarchy has never succeeded in any model - up to and including the eastern US communist communes of the 1920’s to the ‘hippie’ communes of the 60’s and 70’s. There have been many other anarchist attempts all over the world since the early 19th century. None ever succeeded.
Seems that there is always a need for someone to receive a bit more power, a bit more material goods- at someone elses expense. It isn’t to say that the theory is wrong, it just can’t be applied to humans. 
Regardless the social ‘system’, coercive behavior seems to be endemic. Anarchy requires that everyone agrees to act in non-coercive ways toward their fellows. A tall order indeed, and yet to be demonstrated.
JT
The problem is not in the different desires, but in the way one chooses to attain them. As long as violence is the accepted means of ‘ruling’ a population, violence will be the result.
Why do you wear a seatbelt/pay tax/don’t pop firecrackers in town/etc,…? Because a man with a gun will come spankyou/kidnap you(for your own good, of course,…),…
Which is as it should be, if you become a nuisance, that shouldn’t be tolerated, and handled how those that suffer your cretinism see fit.
The problem begins in trying to force religious morals on others, how would you like it if satanists ran the place?
I would guess that the communes, just as with any system, fell because those that did the major share of the work stopped proping up those that just wanted to run their mouths.
Atlas shrugged, as it were.
anarchistangel,
On the one hand you note that violence begets violence. Moments later you point out that a ‘nuisance’ has to be dealt with. All of this is true, but your solution still remains coersion. The base theory behind anarchy implies self-control so that no one is ever a nuisance. Discipline must come from within each individual, and not from an external coercive force.
Until humanity can find self discipline, anarchy is impossible.
JT
Self-disipline comes from within, the reason I don’t pilliage the neighbors is that I know that the other neighbors won’t tolerate such behavior.
Once everybody’s neighbors are self-sufficient these problems will not exist, which opens a new can of worms.
It’s not coercion for me to defend myself from your attack.
If you send a man with a gun and a car with flashy lights to interfere in my freedom(for any reason that doesn’t involve harming another), killing you, and him, are not murder, but self-defense of my right to live free from your coercion.
Do you plan to let satanists practice their arts even when it involves the sacrifice of a willing participant? Are you going to let the fighters fight, the promoters promote, and the broadcasters broadcast live fights to the death with various weapons?
Or, are you going to use coercion to stop these folks from chosing their choices.
You draw the line, I’m only asking to defend myself from your(whomever’s) attempt to make me follow your ideal lifestyle.
You do advocate the forced adherence to seat belt laws, taxes, speed limits, etc,…? Toe the amerikan line or be hung, right?
All I’m saying is you live your life, I’ll live mine, and if we meet, we’ll nod and say ‘howdy’. Any more than that requires an effort at peaceful co-existence, or an effort to ignore each other.
If you don’t like people that fight their dogs, then change the channel,…don’t send in the militia.
And, for the record, anarchy is synonymous with an absence of a central authority, it has nothing to do with the particular behaviors chosen by those lucky enough to live free from the coercion of mob rule, despite the attempts of those using it to force change in who the ruling elite will be.
The rice farmer of Viet Nam didn’t care who collected the taxes, he just wished that neither of them would rape his daughter.
If the current ‘anarchists’ took over by force, the new boss would be no different than the old boss.
Dear AA
I don’t think money is always the bottom line. Some people abuse power simply because they can, to prove to themselves something about that power they hold.
Yes, because it’s all a matter of degree. The slave who is locked in a cage and left to die, or the person who is tortured until they die, or the person who is sexually molested until they kill themselves, they are all in a worse position than the slave or prisoner who is fed and sheltered.
You seem to think that you aren’t free unless you can do whatever you want, whenever you want, with no restrictions, caveats, consequences. This is a ludicrous idea to bring to the negotiating table because it is a position which allows no negotiation. Either you get exactly what you want or I’m enslaving you. Hardly a mature political philosophy, surely even you can see that.
Ooh, I like it when you play bad cop. But more seriously - see above.
Kindly don’t resort to hackneyed metaphors, I’m sure you can express yourself more elegantly than that. You seem to think that certain freedoms exist as a given. Tell me, when you were thrashing around in your mothers arms did you have the freedom to reject the oppression of her breast? If not, why think that freedom is now a given, a must, an inherent principle and part of the process?
You can ignore what you are told. You can subvert it. You can play the game only so far as you need to in order to accomplish the relative freedom to pursue other goals. You can fight the person telling you what to do. Plenty of choices. If you are too weak to take them then don’t blame the others, blame yourself and grow stronger.
Don’t bandy around Orwellian terms unless you have the knowledge to reinforce them. Again, unless I have this choice without repurcussion. The point is that in this life there are ALWAYS repurcussions. Politics couldn’t exist without repurcussions. What the hell is a policy, an aim, an ideal if not the desire to achieve a particular outcome?
You’ve not even considered the most obvious logical consequences of your argument, you’ve not even tested them. Why? Because you believe that it is your right to believe whatever you want, unconditionally. No matter how stupid, illogical or irrelevant. If that’s the way you want to play the game (basically being a relativist but politicising it in the most basic way and labelling it anarchism) then good luck, but I genuinely have nothing I can say to you that will make any sense.
Groups inevitably have more power than the individual. The most primary basis for power is violence and pain. Unless you are a Jeet Kune Do master you’ve not got much hope against a mob baying to burn you as a witch/torture you as a criminal/execute you as a murderer etc.
Who enforces the rule that groups have no more power than the individual, in this anarachistic utopia you envisage? The govt.? Whoops, no, there’s no government. The judiciary? Nope, got rid of them because they were nasty, oppressive institutions. The police? Well bugger me rigid if we haven’t got rid of them as well. Whaduyuhknow?
You never had it in the first place. When you were mewling and puking and fascinated by the prospect of getting your big toe in your mouth you didn’t have this sovereignty you now seem to claim as inherent. If it were for politics (of some kind) you would be dead. It’s as simple as that. Humans are born prematurely (Lacan). I’d say they also live prematurely and die prematurely. Am I’m not joking. Well, I’m not just joking. Humans at birth are unable to survive. Compare that to a baby crocodile, or turtle. Do you see it yet?
He had some good ideas that in early 20th century Russia probably would have been of great benefit. I find it hilarious that socialists and anarchists of many stripes today still cite him as a father and teacher. But then again, most of them are still reading the fucking Communist Manifesto. White trash.
No, tomorrow I have my hand measured for my iron-plated glove. And I get a Hammer and Sickle tatooed on my left temple.
I once went into a kebab take-away at maybe 2 am, in Fallowfield in Manchester. We orderered our food and mooched about observing the fascinatingly innaccurate pictures on the menu lit up on the wall. The girl I was with at the time was wearing a coat with, among other badges, an original Soviet brooch attached. It was a present I’d given her, bought in the days when I was a card carrying Marxist. I still adore the aesthetics of the CCCP and even the Nazis, however much distaste I have with their ideas and practices.
The gentleman behind the counter asked us if we were communists. Now, in the US this would obviously usually be asked in a courtroom or at gunpoint, but over here it’s something to which you can admit. But not to a man of dubious ethnic background who you’ve only just met and who is serving you food. But on the other hand had we said ‘yes’ we might have got free food. I told him we were not communists, and tried to forget about passwords and secret handshakes.
He asked me if I preferred Marx or Engels. Now both were bourgeois hypocrites, Engels inherited his money, Marx leeched it from Engels. I didn’t make mention of this, still frightened that the man might be a gun-toting communist who could easily take offence. I mumbled something about Engels being the more convincing writer and hoped for some sort of distraction. Fortunately he was called back into the kitchen and the potential bananaskin turned into a heavy chicken donna kebab.
Yes. to some power is crack, to others it’s food, girls, and gambling, what ever your pleasure you can have it if you acquire power.
That is exactly what I think, and it is not negotiable, if you interfere in my life, I will act to perpetuate my freedom, as all free thinking folks should. You do not own me. You might think you own a child (you don’t), but you sure don’t own any adults. I must be free to be as stupid as I please. Only then can a person learn what they need to learn to not be so stupid.
As for responsiblity for my actions, I’m all for that, too. If I cause harm to another, I got that coming in return, from whom is debatable, but you can’t cause evil to come into existence without getting an evil reward in return.
I’m sure that would’ve been funny, if I was literate enough to understand metaphors,…
If I am not your slave how could it be any other way?
I have no need to pilliage my neighbors, I live the life I want to lead. The power ignores me, I ignore them.
Take your policies and jump in a lake,…feeling the need for some repercussions, yet? You don’t own me. If the choice I have is don’t do whatever, or have you take control of my life from me, I might as well hang myself, pacifists don’t win wars.
You are correct, sir, evil does get it’s day when it forces the issue, but 97% of the folks in the world do not wake up plotting against their neighbor’s wealth. I know the current intellectuals think that violence is an acceptable means of enforcing whatever, but they won’t win the day, more people just want to be left alone to chase their crack than want to participate in politics. Politics will die due to it’s deceptive nature, doublespeak is an illusion, the smoke will clear, the mirrors will be exposed.
Crime will disappear when it is no longer needed to support the politicians, lawyers, arms dealers, and news channels.
I was tempted to pass on this one, but…what exactly does being dependent for a time have to do with knowing that one is a slave to a system designed to keep the poor poor, and the rich rich?
Just because I can’t feed myself doesn’t mean you get to rape me. YOU might not consider that an important fact, but you DON’T own the babies you spawn.
Yeah, I wasn’t impressed by the success of those philosopers that proceded me, either. Not one of them could simplify their ramblings enough to spawn a popular outbreak of world peace,…slackers.
I’m thankful that you have grown out of your penchant for total government control, now if you’d just realize that 1% slavery is still slavery, I think we could peacefully coexist.
Thanks for taking the time for me.
Dear AA
You are still confused between your right to live the life you see fit and the compromises necessary so that your maxim may become a universal law. You are familiar with Kant’s imperative that we should treat people as ends rather than means, I take it?
And you can take power by force and subversion. It is that simple. If the illiterate agricultural peasants of France can cause a revolution then so can you. They had less choice than you but did they sit and moan? No, they chopped of Louis’ head.
This is your first massive logical error. If everyone acts to perpetuate their freedom then you will get conflicts. What happens if 3 people all want to eat the same steak? Who or what arbitrates in conflicts between people’s freedom? Either nothing arbitrates (in which case violence is the bottom line, as ever) or something arbitrates, in which case you’ve contradicted your own principle.
And don’t bring up ‘free thinking’. All though takes place in language and language is an inherently social construct that the individual has little choice over. There is no freedom of thought, it is a pseudoconcept invented by individualists.
Perhaps not, but nor do you own me. Therefore you preventing me from exercising my freedom to oppress you is actually an oppressive act by you against my freedom. By your definitions this is the case. And that’s why this narrative of emancipation you’ve written is paradoxical lunacy.
Not at all. Necessity, the gun to your head, that’s what makes people learn most effectively. If I really really want, say, a particular job and I need a qualification to get it I’m much more likely to learn a lot while studying or working for the qualification than if I’m granted it simply because I want it and because my individual freedom dictates that I should have everything I want.
Try again, this freedom you hold to be so precious and which is the foundation of your argument is utter bullshit. The consequences of the principle you offered lead to paradoxes which can only be resolved by contradicting the principle.
Who administers such a punishment/retribution? As I pointed out, if you’ve got rid of all institutions of authority then you cannot uphold any kind of order. I could beat the hell out of you with a stick and you’d have no recourse to justice, because otherwise that is you oppressing my freedom to beat you.
Again, you stated the principle that any restriction on a person’s freedom enslaves them. Now for the sake of argument I’m using ‘oppress’ instead of ‘enslave’ but I’m sure you see the paradoxes such a principle brings up.
You said ‘Open your eyes, buddy, when choices are removed, slavery is the result’
We are all inherently bound to one another by the fact that we cannot survive into adulthood without dependency on another. Like I said, Humans are bore prematurely. If this freedom was inherent (and inherently valuable, as you contend) then you have to have had it from day 1. You didn’t.
I’ve shown you that this notion of my individual freedom as inherent and sovereign simply does not fly, I’ve also shown you how it isn’t inherent. As to sovereign - well, that’s something chosen, something constructed, just like the sovereignty of the British state. It is something negotiated, rather than necessary.
I never said pillage your neighbours, I said grow stronger. I mean spiritually as much as anything else.
Jumping in the lake has repurcussions.
That isn’t the choice you have. I listed the other options in my previous post and was very positive about even the relative freedoms we have in present day society. You’d rather whinge about the things you cannot do (for whatever reason) than celebrate the things you can do. You would rather renounce life than affirm it. Read the Durkheim quotation in my sig line.
Whoah, nelly. Where the fuck does evil come into it? You’ve got this antagonistic view of life whereby the individual = good and society = bad no matter WHAT formation of society we are talking about. There is no inherent good to individualism or societalism, to libertarianism or communitarianism.
You believe you are thinking for yourself but actually your obsession with your own freedom (as you perceive it) is, as Nietzsche pointed out, a tool for the ruling classes to keep you enslaved. That’s right, your frustration because you feel something is owed to you that you haven’t got keeps you argung anf bitching and moaning and prevents you uniting with your peers to cause revolution. Nietzsche spotted this over a century ago, that the so called ‘free thinkers’ were simply enslaved to a set of opinions they themselves labelled ‘free’.
You are the textbook example of someone enslaved to the notion of individual freedom.
Yes of course, primitive ontology for the politically redundant. This isn’t real, what I say IS real, soon we’ll see the real for what it really is. I’ve heard it all before and it was bollocks then and is bollocks now.
You would not be alive right now if your parents had decided to throw you away and let you rot. Where’s your sovereign individual freedom now?
Don’t be silly, crime will never disappear. There’ll always be some fuckwit who simply rebels for the sake of it (what I suspect you are doing) and beat someone up or chops someone’s penis off or rapes somebody.
You aren’t a slave, you are simply claiming that you are a slave and keeping yourself a slave. You have options, even if they don’t appeal to you as well as some others you might like to have.
My point is that this sovereign individual freedom on which your whole argument rests is nothing but a concept to which you are enslaved.
Precisely. Just because you cannot fight doesn’t mean I have the right to do whatever I like. Thankyou for admitting this. Clearly you are starting to realise that my freedom isn’t as inherent and sovereign as you make out.
And you think your policy of letting everyone do whatever the hell they like will bring world peace? You are an idiot or a lunatic if you think that.
If nothing is stopping me from commandeering a few nuclear ICBMs and setting up my own country (I’ve always fancied a chunk of Mexico, or possibly an island in the mediterranean) then nothing would stop me from doing that. And I’m not the only one.
Have I sausages! Like I said, if there were no international law, no judiciary, no police or government then I’d happily start my own country using violence to protect myself.
And If you’d realise that this sovereign individual freedom isn’t sovereign, individual or liberating then you’d be much happier. I’ll try to dig up a post I made some months back about the enslavement to individual freedom notion - it’s one of Nietzsche’s best bits of work.
human beings will always live in an anarchaic society. before law or governments, whoever owned a weapon and land had power over others. different groups continued to fight each other and continue to fight each other for power today, nothing has changed since human beings came into existance. We have always lived in anarchy.
No equal law means anyone can do whatever they want if they have more power than those around them, those that have power will rule over those who do not, sounds like a goevernment to me.
The un tried to do something but it’s a national government made up of anarchaic organisations.
Whoever has power has controll. That’s the law of human nature.
Dear mm,
I’d say we’ve always lived in conflict, if that’s what you mean by ‘anarchy’. There has always been the struggle for power, regardless of whether or not it took a legalised, institutional form or not.
To me it just sounds like the age old battle between the strong who would happily vanquish everyone else and the strong who have pity for everyone else. The weak grumble and bicker amongst themselves, now more than ever thanks to the controversy-seeking tabloids.
Control is rarely if ever achieved. Having power is one thing, mastering it another. The powerful are of course those whose desires are most often satisfied (somewhat axiomatic, I know) but they are also those whom everyone else blames and seeks to fight.
yes it is the age old battle. Always will be. laws of human nature.
No one can claim to speak for good, they can only speak for themselves.
so i think that society would be better off if every human had some basic rights. Any political organisation willing to violate those rights would not be allowed to have any influence of or enter into a law making situation.
The thing about anarchy is that it is a contradiction in terms. Like a particle of matter being a particle of antimatter at the same time, something not possible in our universe.
Anarchists are a society of people whose law of state is that there should be no law of state. If they want to abolish society they have to abolish themselves.