Anonymous #moonbat

Anonymous #moonbat anarchistnews.org

I have no idea if this is supposed to be a joke or not. I surely hope so, because it's been giving me the best laughing fit I've had in years.

Leo, I'm over the age of thirty, have two kids, work a job, support my family, and live in a great amazing apartment. I also support stealing from bosses, wrecking capitalist property, robbing banks, attacking the pigs, and countless other illegal acts.

Your article is ridiculous, and I'm happy to be the first person to comment on this waste of pixels on my computer screen.

Can we settle this once and for all? Anarchism, by it's definition, is an illegal ideology. There is a law in the United States, known as the sedition act, that makes it illegal to work, agitate, or organize against the existence of the United States government. If you could somehow that anarchists don't want to attack the existence of the U.S. government, even in purely verbal terms and through literature, then, I'm sorry my friend, you're not an anarchist. You're a social-democrat.

Whether or not you think it's a good idea to attack capitalist property or not, or to engage in clandestine acts, to argue that anarchists should break the law or engage in illegal action is to negate anarchism itself as even an ideology.

Revolution isn't legal. It's not safe or pretty or easy to fit into some comfortable box. I'm sorry you have decided that you want to fit into some secure comfortable life now that you're almost thirty, but for most of us in this country, we don't live a comfortable or secure life. We struggle as it is against precarity and a precarious life. That will be our reality for as long as we can work. It's not like I can retire. When I'm no longer able to work, I can either die, or live illegally.

Dearest Leo, your privilege disgusts me. Because really, that's all this post is, just a privileged brat's rant.

12 comments

old comment by Salami

Anon here seems to be operating on the stereotypical no structure free-for-all definition of anarchy. When really there's so many flavors of them!

Take anarchocapitlism for example. This system opposes obligatory state and the idea of aquiring property through agression and fraud, instead proposing that people acquire it through hard work or voluntary exchange. It supports a mostly unfettered free market, and most also have made a vow not to engage in any aggresion, coercion, or destruction of property. They believe that all people are the private owners of themselves and are most protected, happy, and free when they have the absolute right to control the transfer of their property. On the flip side, they don't support any sort of judiciary system, instead letting the people sort it out amongst themselves.

https://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Compare that to social anarchy. They also oppose the obligatory state, but want to base their societies on mutual aid rather than respect for private property. This means declaring everything social property rather than private property. Its rather broad but includes subsets like anarchocommunism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_anarchism

As you can see, both are forms of anarchy, but each are different in their own ways. What's my take on the matter? I can sympathize with anarchy. I find the US to be overregulated, which has done not a lick of good in terms of preventing loopholes. When you treat everybody like idiots that need the most obvious things stated to them when really only a minority of the population needs it, you encourage people to act like idiots and also encourage the idiots to get creative. It also forces law enforcement to focus on relatively minor crimes when they could have spent that time helping to enforce acceptance of LGBT+ or other serious problems. Seriously, waging wars on drugs instead of trying to help drug users will always be BS. So will jailing somebody just for being caught stealing a single pack of gum. Or racial profiling. So I think it would be beneficial to scale back a lot of regulation. But you can't remove all laws or else the moment a bad person enters the picture, the system would be unequipped to deal with it. There's a reason no objectivist society has ever succeeded, and that's that when given absolute freedom, people tend to use it in the worst ways. The most successful anarchies, like some tribal societies, all have had respected leadership, military, and judiciary systems in place.

Ergo, anarchy may be about eliminating any obligation to a state and unfettering the free market, but its also about personally chosen moral codes for the good of the individual or mankind. And that usually means no aggression, no abusive use of force, and no destruction of anything.

old comment by Salami

@Shadowbell

Anarcho-capitalism isn't anarchist at all, it's basically fascism with extra steps

How is anarchocapitalism fascism? Whereas fascism is authoritarian, anarchocapitalism rejects any form of government in exchange for a group agreement to respect private property. Fascism encourages jingoism and building a powerful state (often by removing the so-called "undesirables"), while anarchocapitalism rejects the notion of any kind of state and would find nationalism unappealing (though societies with that system in place would probably be powerless to stop people from forming group identities that develop into fascism). And rejection of the state is a key requirement for anarchy. Now, I do agree that anarchocapitalism alone does not a good system make, but it is not fascistic. Its more closely compared to libertarianism minus any governmental institutions in exchange for being completely regulated by the will of the people.

old comment by Salami

@Shadowbell

The point of anarchism as an ideology is to eliminate hierarchies. Ancapism does exactly the opposite, shoring them up by eliminating any recourse for the less powerful. And many leading anarcho capitalists have indeed advocated the "removal" of "undesirables." Within a short time, an ancap society would inevitably become indistinguishable from a fascist one.

The point is the intention. Anarchocapitalism seeks to eliminate hiercarchies by freeing individuals from the aggression and coersion of the state. Non-extremist ancaps would not advocate removing undesirables, and even so, the key difference from fascism is that fascistic political assassinations are state sponsored or encouraged while ancap political assassinations are done of the individual's volition.

In execution, ancap would not work out well long term. Political assasinations are seldom a good thing for anybody. But that makes ancap a bad system, not an example of fascism or proof that ancap isn't truly anarchic. When a society founded to be ancap starts acting fascistic, then it has ceased to fulfill the stated goals of ancap and has therefore transitioned to fascism.

Much as people balk at it, it is human instinct to form hierarchies. Successful anarchies have dealt with the issue by making the hierarchies completely merit-based rather than based on money, skin color, etc. You might consider them soft anarchies, but nonetheless that proves that anarchy is about the rejection of the state and not necessarily about rejecting all hierarchies.

old comment by Nemo

Regarding anarchocapitalism, no I do not think the ideology is fascist. That said, I don't think it would last long if implemented before it turned into something else. Possibly fascism. The same is true for any form of anarchism.

Anarchocommunism is an oxymoron, as in a society with no state, who makes sure that everybody hands over all their property to be distributed to everyone? Who does the distribution? In practice, you'd have a self appointed mob doing everything that government does now, except that it would be a mob and so it'd be done badly and with a greater likelihood of violence against undesirables. The same is true of anarchofascism, the only difference between the two system really being who the undesirables are.

Anarchocapitalism, by contrast, is not an outright contradiction, as you could have people engaging in business as they see fit without any sort of government, but it would break down quickly by some means or another. For example, who prevents people from hurting each other or ripping each other off? The person with the biggest stick? Congratulations, you have a government now. It might not call itself a government, but it acts as one nonetheless.

old comment by Salami

@Nemo

Regarding anarchocapitalism, no I do not think the ideology is fascist. That said, I don't think it would last long if implemented before it turned into something else. Possibly fascism. The same is true for any form of anarchism.
Anarchocommunism is an oxymoron, as in a society with no state, who makes sure that everybody hands over all their property to be distributed to everyone? Who does the distribution? In practice, you'd have a self appointed mob doing everything that government does now, except that it would be a mob and so it'd be done badly and with a greater likelihood of violence against undesirables. The same is true of anarchofascism, the only difference between the two system really being who the undesirables are.
Anarchocapitalism, by contrast, is not an outright contradiction, as you could have people engaging in business as they see fit without any sort of government, but it would break down quickly by some means or another. For example, who prevents people from hurting each other or ripping each other off? The person with the biggest stick? Congratulations, you have a government now. It might not call itself a government, but it acts as one nonetheless.

Pretty much what you just said.

It should be noted that anarchocommunism is the end goal of Marxist communism-- Marx held that you needed a series of dictators to prepare and guide people down the path to no longer needing the government to be willing to share their possessions and land equally and freely. In execution, however, the type of person who claws his or her way to the dictator role tends to like or crave power, money, prestige, palace, and privilege too much to give up the supreme ruler role so easily for the glory of the communist revolution-- as the famous expression goes "All are equal but some are more equal than others."

old comment by Anon-e-moose

capitalist property

Is your military privatised...?!

(*Crickets chirp*)

...thought not.

'We practically are the military'

-Dick Jones (Ronny Cox), "RoboCop".

And he was the senior VP of Omni Consumer Products.

With emphasis on was: after OCP tried to privatise Detroit's police department. I'm sure the irony of he being thrown out of the OCP Tower via the blasts of the Auto-9 wielded by that private company's ultimate expression of that corporate policy - when his humanity had reasserted itself over the company's programming of Murphy's mind - isn't lost on you.

Your 'privilege'? As Bixby Snyder would say, 'I'll buy that for a dollar! Nya-ha-ha-ha-ha!' [/Doug Piranha-levels of sarcasm]

And no Doug Piranha required when - in the sequel - one of the prototypes of that which would replace Murphy pulled it's own head off.