Quoth hrearden:
> > Not exactly. Anarchy (in the political sense, versus the "chaos, rape
> > and murder" hype) is the absence of _the state_, which is a very
> > SPECIFIC form of "government."
>
>
> How did you arive at that definition? Who defines the term that way
> other than yourself?
I "arrived at that definition" by seeing it used elsewhere, thinking
about it, comparing it with reality, and deciding it matched.
I wish I could lay claim to originating this fairly obvious concept,
but I can't. It's a fairly common thread. For more recent examples,
see "Political Power Beyond the State: Problematics of Government," by
Nikolas Rose and Peter Miller; or "On Governmentality" by Michel
Foucault, both from the late 20th century.
The fact is that individuals, for various reasons, choose (or are
forced by either circumstance or coercion) to affiliate with groups.
The fact is that those groups use various methods for developing rules
and institutions to "govern" (the word "govern" is derived from the
Latin "gubernare" and the Greek "kyberna," both of which mean "to
steer") the doings of the group.
ALL human interaction at the group level implies "government" or
governance," whether that interaction is temporary and voluntary (four
people deciding what kind of pizza to order -- see L. Neil Smith's
excellent essay on that subject), or allegedly permanent and overtly
non-voluntary (200 million people deciding by a 51-49% vote to put
people who smoke marijuana in cages). Even a trade between two
individuals could not proceed in the absence of agreed-upon rules of
contract (i.e. "governance") between the two parties.
Look into any variation of anarchist political theory, and you'll find
elaborated systems of government, whether those systems consist of a
network of agreements between private entities ("anarcho-capitalism")
or full-assembly democracy by workers' collectives
("anarcho-syndicalism") or whatever.
Some anarchists eschew hierarchy; others eschew coercion; some eschew
both. What they all have in common is that they reject the STATE -- a
particularly evolved hierarchal/coercive monopoly asserted and
enforced within a specific geographical area.
Tom Knapp
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