Is anarchism socialism?

[FreedomPhilosophy]

from Anarchism on Facebook

"Anarchism is an anti-capitalist political theory which aims to create anarchy, "the absence of a master, of a sovereign." [P-J Proudhon, What is Property , p. 264] In other words, anarchism is a political theory which aims to create a society within which individuals freely co-operate together as equals. As such anarchism opposes all forms of hierarchical control - be that control by the state or a capitalist - as harmful to the individual and their individuality as well as unnecessary."

 

 

Proudhon is noted as the originator of anarchist theory and was a socialist, however he defined anarchy as "order without power", but I'm not sure what he means by power. Because, the left anarchists think that capitalists have power.

What say you? Is anarcho capitalism an oxymoron? I think the original left anarchist theorists like Proudhon were sophists, just as lefties are now.

 

I'd like your thoughts on this as well

 

http://youtu.be/WIvn8qjyrzk?t=9m43s

 

[Rob_Ilir]

Like all theories putting forward 2+2=5, this one too is trying to convince people in a a non violent way, while saying that a non violent way is not preferable/possible.  

[Gaurav251]

a hierarchy doesn't equal to a statist system, businesses have heiriarchies such as the manager of a store and a CEO of a company and so on.

 

So imagine you dont want any sort of hierarchy and a business gets started up and decides to have a hierarchy where there is a person in a higher position of power and a person in a lower position of power, how are you going to enforce the no-hierarchy anarchy unless you use some sort of force to do it? I mean the only reason the state can tax and steal your money from you is because they have the guns, and the power, and the monopoly on violence to be able to do that. So how can capitalism fall into the same line as statism, or rather how can capitalism develop into statism in an anarcho-capitalist world if every one knows the consequences of statism?

[Camel Glasses]

Anarchism, taken from the Greek language, means 'no-rule' or 'no-rulers'. Thus we can conclude that is a political philosophy which rejects the state as what is the state but the ruler over us as individuals? What puzzles me is why collectivists which argue for coercion to be used against others in order to reach some egalitarian goal can call themselves anarchists when really they argue for the state to increase its power over us rather than for it to diminish. 

[LaissezFaire]

Rothbard's private protection agency, not to mention an private cities, resemble in many ways governments. Or, to put it another way, was Ayn Rand's ideal voluntarily financed government really a state? Even if it's not anarchy, lacking the power to tax would deny it the status of a government among almost all classical liberal theorists (who themselves had occasional sympathies with anarchism). The question of whether anarchism is socialism is best answered on two levels: one, overall values. These are often incommensurable, Nietzschean libertarians and English egoists will have more in common, regardless of their economic theories, than Syndicalists and Anarcho-Capitalists. Anarchism is a diverse tradition, nonetheless many classical liberal and radical works were anarchistic (or nearly so), such as Burke's Vindication of Natural Society. Proudhon was the first member of an identifiable anarchist tradition, but he was not the first to deal with concepts of propertarian societies, markets organization (by the way, Proudhon was a follower of Bastiat in most matters, he was a very special kind of socialist) or the elimination of all coercive features of the State.

 

Anarchism, more than its own movement, represents a certain inner logical tendency of radical movements at the fringes. There is an anarchist version of virtually every imaginable political philosophy, from communism to feudalism.

[Hannibal]

Rothbard's private protection agency, not to mention an private cities, resemble in many ways governments. Or, to put it another way, was Ayn Rand's ideal voluntarily financed government really a state? Even if it's not anarchy, lacking the power to tax would deny it the status of a government among almost all classical liberal theorists (who themselves had occasional sympathies with anarchism). The question of whether anarchism is socialism is best answered on two levels: one, overall values. These are often incommensurable, Nietzschean libertarians and English egoists will have more in common, regardless of their economic theories, than Syndicalists and Anarcho-Capitalists. Anarchism is a diverse tradition, nonetheless many classical liberal and radical works were anarchistic (or nearly so), such as Burke's Vindication of Natural Society. Proudhon was the first member of an identifiable anarchist tradition, but he was not the first to deal with concepts of propertarian societies, markets organization (by the way, Proudhon was a follower of Bastiat in most matters, he was a very special kind of socialist) or the elimination of all coercive features of the State.

 

Anarchism, more than its own movement, represents a certain inner logical tendency of radical movements at the fringes. There is an anarchist version of virtually every imaginable political philosophy, from communism to feudalism.

 

It would be a state because there would be no competition permitted. While funding would be voluntary, private police/courts/etc would not be permitted. The state would be the only organisation allowed to use retaliatory force.

from Anarchism on Facebook...

 

I've not followed up on the links or vids, but Anarchism tends to refer to the old kind of anarchy that you see in London on May day, where smelly youths smash up macdonnalds and starbucks shop fronts.  Hence the use of the terms Voluntarist, or Anarcho-Capitalist, to distinguish.

 

**edit** i've just noticed that my response may be entirely redundant. Feel free to ignore it

[LaissezFaire]

It would be a state because there would be no competition permitted. While funding would be voluntary, private police/courts/etc would not be permitted. The state would be the only organisation allowed to use retaliatory force.

 

I can see no reason to accept this idiosyncratic definition of 'government'. First of all, it's interminably vague, secondly, it fails as a primary: the legal authority to abrogate contracts and torts in the process of operations is what distinguishes the political means. The 'monopoly' characteristic is a peculiar stipulation of some libertarians, and is not even accurate to how States operate or the authority they claim; and the only reason to avoid calling a Rothbardian agency a government is Essentialism, the will to call it 'tr00 anarchy'.

 

You know what? Never mind, this is stupid. You people are mostly middle-brow moralizing cunts. You have nothing interesting to say, and everything you do say is wrong.