Topic: If Anarchy can work, how come there are no historical records of it working? - page 4. (Read 17155 times)

Well, of course not, but at least it's a start.  What you seem to be railing against could be either corporatism (i.e. fascism) or merchantilism, or both; but it's certainly not capitalism in it's natural form.  Both of those could be considered corrupted versions of capitalism, so I can see the confusion, but one should be willing to start with first principles. 

The first principle is this...

Who owns you?  Is there anyone who has a greater claim upon your body, thus your life, then yourself?  If we cannot agree that I own myself and that you own yourself, as nominally free adults, then we can't proceed.

I don't need a dictionary to spin, arm out, pointing in all directions, referring to the neoliberal capitalism rampant today, the capitalism that built railroads or the capitalism that came out of the dissolution of landed nobility.
I go to a commune or a co op and I see hippies, but I also see a basic building block for society.  I'm as much a communist as Bakunin.
Unions are a building block, too. Within capitalism, they devolve into union bosses and halfassery.
A guild or syndicate, on the other hand, are not subservient to a capitalist proprieter.
Edit: Can we talk about Slavoj Zizek now?
Capitalism- an historical era where the means of production and products belonged exclusively to moneyed entrepreneurs, state officials, and speculators due to state protection of legal claims to privateized property.
There, does that not cover both communism and capitalism as they have always existed?

What?

My error on your stated gender aside, you don't know what capitalism is.  You can't define it in a coherent way.  If you could, I'd have something to work with.  In it's simplist form, capitalism is defined as private possession and control of the means of production.  It's really much more complex than that, and forms naturally from a known set of naturally arising default rules of humanity; but you have to start somewhere.  But capitalism isn't a political system.  Despite claims to the contrary, capitalism existed even in the Soviet Union at all times.  And I can prove that.  There is really no way to avoid it completely.


Who are you talking to here?  If you are still talking to me, I don't see 'reds' anywhere.  I've never even met a true communist that I'm aware of.  Forums on the Interent are the only places I've ever had conversations along these lines, and I've lived in Chicago and California. 

politicians never let pesky things like reality get in the way of plundering us making our lives miserable surreal better.

It may not work, but folks are working toward it anyhow.
Marx/Engels may have had a more profound effect on US politics than many of his contemporary presidents.  Seems like we are following his playbook more than not:
http://www.libertyzone.com/Communist-Manifesto-Planks.html

Well, really Engels. Marx got the credit, but Engels was the brains of the outfit. Just couldn't write for shit, and good ol' Karl could

But yes, that was his goal. His means, however, don't work. He is elegant though. The communist manifesto is beautiful. Seductive, in fact. Unfortunate that it's core program just don't work.

I think his more anarchic contemporaries such as Bakunin and Kropotkin were closer to something real, but again their systems require that no one has any different ideas, thus it requires coercion and top-down hierarchies, while denouncing them.

(yeah, still here. Got delayed another day. Moving was so much easier when I didn't have a family )

He did, but Communism ends up requiring a State. That Dunbar number means that outside of a small community there are no common goals.
Henry Hazlitt wrote a fine critique of a Communist State, and explained why it is inevitable, in Time Will Run Back. An entertaining read, if you like discussions of economics (which I assume most of us here do).

On communism.
Marx also expected communism to result in a stateless world, and the withering away of the state, as people worked toward a common good without coercion, and that the state would disappear out of obsolescence, yes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withering_away_of_the_state
Seems naive today, but that was his idea.

Capitalism (private ownership of the means of production, voluntary trade of products and services - including those privately-owned means of production) works just fine in a stateless world.

Specificly, any social structure is stable to Dumbar's Number (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number) but this has more to do with the fact that members share values and futher tend to value those relationships.  Beyond Dumbar's Number, only certain types of societies are stable, and all of them are either dependent upon human nature or maintained by the threat of force.  There is literally nothing in between that is stable beyond 3 generations.

That reason is affluence and the ability and encouragement to exploit.
http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secC2.html
If ancaps arent utopian, anarchists arent either. An ideal world is a stateless world. capitalism and communism are impossible in a stateless world.

Now that you have me off ignore, let me save you some time next time you get pissy with me:

<------ unignore button                                                                                                  Show post---------^

You won't have to take me off ignore to read what I've written.

And nobody has ever said that anarcho-communism doesn't work. In fact, it works great - for small, close knit groups like a particular city's gay community. Get beyond that "us," however, and it breaks down fast. Until it's no longer communism, or no longer anarchy.

I took you off ignore to read this? WTF?
Not off topic example of anarchy working: Queer squats in urban decay. Queer zine libraries. I can go on, and on.

Which is anarcho-communism with more glitter and assless chaps. (or tattoos, plaid and denim, depending)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-queer

Black and pink flag o'er here!

Confirmed for scab union boss.
My gender's on my profile. I'd prefer kiddo. That "I dont know what capitalism is" is your whole arguement.
Capitalists see reds everywhere.

For a start Ancaps are NOT utopians.

Yes, I am enslaved.  Here's how I define slavery.  Being forced to give up the fruits of your labours.  Having authorities tell you what you can and can't do, where you can and can't live and under what circumstances you will be permitted to earn money.    All of this comes not from any justified authority, merely from historical tradition which when you examine it closely is revealed as complete BS.  ie.  the situation we are in right now that ancaps seek to extricate ourselves and everyone else from.

And what does it matter if an ancap is an employee or self-employed?

If the real people are dancing and living in the rain-forests why not go join them?  Is it because it is a life of virtual poverty?  There's a reason most people don't do that kind of thing anymore.

I hate that phrase.  I was never a communist or socialist if you prefer.  I knew it was nonsense even back then before I learned anything about libertarianism.

How about this,

If upon learning of libertarianism you don't embrace it then you have no heart and it doesn't matter what age you are. 

I like that better.  I left "not having a brain out" deliberately.

And if you are a capitalist collectivist (collectivist capitalist) at 60, you are somebody without any knowledge about history.

I know all these utopian and ahistorical arguments of the so called ancaps very well, and I found, that most of these enthusiasts are employees, not self-employed. They even don't realise, that they are enslaved. They are too busy to think, while the real homines sapientes in the non-business-doing communities in the rain forests are dancing and living. This enthusiasm with production, markets and trade within a worldwide hypercollective has its origin in the christian labor (slave-) ethos, and the ancaps are unfortunate victims of this collectivist religion which is destroying the planet with exponentially increasing speed. Collective, suicidal folly in perfection. The opposite of this collective, sucidal folly is represented by tribalism, where we find no growth and no expansion, either economically or territorially.

BTW, if you have ever heard the statistic that many unions put out about how a part-time employee at Wal-mart is so much more likely to be collecting welfare or some other government aid while working than, say, Target.  (often referred to as the 'working poor')  The legal assistance benefit is the reason why; because in many states (particularly California) a single mother is eligible for a great deal of government aid at a much higher annual salary than, say, your unemployed white male under 40.  The legal aid department was very good at identifying aid programs for which these part-time single mom's qualfied for.  It's not that the part-time single mom's who worked at Target didn't qualfiy, they just didn't know to apply.  My wife never qualfied for any of that crap because she was married, I was working full time, and she's white; but she did know a few cashiers who were able to get something along those lines even in Kentucky due to the help of legal aid.  My wife wouldn't have wanted a handout anyway, but learning about that perk and how it's commonly used greatly affected my perspectives regarding Walmart and the trustworthyness of the propaganda that spewed forth from my union.  That revelation might have been the turning point for me; as I was once a Democrat so blue that I was a county delegate to the Demcratic Party's state convention.

Hell, as a still younger man, I was a card carrying Green!

If you are not a communist at 20, then you have no heart; if you are still a communist at 40 then you have no sense.

And I know from first hand experience that while Wal-Mart is decidedly anti-union, it's a very good employer. Reasonable pay, very nice benefits. And no other breakroom I've ever been in has had rotisserie chicken up for grabs in it - even occasionally.