Quoth Mark:
> Hope this isn't off topic ("immigration" / "anarchism"?), but I
> was just thinking.
... and coming up with some good questions.
> Since technically anarchism (by the NAP ["good"?] definition /
> "anarcho-capitalism"?), cannot enFORCE itself (or be enforced) in
> societal terms, it can not ever have been "installed" or
> "legislated" or "employed" or "practiced" universally (as a
> system) by any large group of people anywhere. That's my comment
> on the world history of anarchism.
As with libertarianism, there are variant and competing definitions of
anarchy. The main thing to keep in mind is that some of those
definitions -- for example, the "chaos and murder" definition and the
"stateless cooperative society" definition -- have no more in common
than the definitions of the US Republican Party and the Irish
Republican Army.
Anarchism as the body of assorted political theories we now know came
into existence in the early 19th century, although it had roots in and
drew its name from -- it comes from the Greek avapxia, "without
archons" -- several ancient Greek constructions, notably those of the
anti-Platonist Zeno.
Modern anarchist political theory came into existence in reaction to
the evolution of the modern state, which itself came into existence
circa 400 years ago. It is absurd to treat (for example) medieval
Iceland as an "anarchy" in the sense intended by that body of theory.
It would also be absurd to treat the patchwork of competing state and
non-state systems that is Somalia as an "anarchy" per that body of
theory. However, both medieval Iceland and modern Somalia (and, for
that matter, a lot of much worse systems such as the Holy Roman
Empire) do offer examples of how governing institutions can come into
existence sans the state as we know it.
There _have_ been various experimental implementations of various
modern anarchist theories, some with less success (the Makhnovists in
the Ukraine, for example, who were pretty much slaughtered after
helping the Reds defeat the Whites in the post-revolutionary Russian
civil war), some with more (the anarcho-syndicalist "cooperative of
cooperatives" in Mondragon which has not only survived for half a
century, but maintained lower crime rates and higher production rates
than the state -- Spain -- surrounding it).
It would be correct, however, to say that anarchism has never been,
and will never be, implemented in some kind of "uncontaminated
laboratory environment." All we have to work with is the real world.
> But its history also seems to suggest something similar about its
> future. In terms of a formal political system, it doesn't seem
> logical - as "formal" and "political" implies universal
> enforcement. It doesn't seem like it can ever be anything more
> than individual decisions and informal agreements.
If anarchism never achieves "full implementation" or reaches all of
its goals, that will not be surprising. No state system ever has,
either -- and _every_ state system has included as features the very
worst features ascribed by anti-anarchists to theoretical anarchies.
> I suspect that, as history has shown, technology
> will further the autonomy of the individual and therefore the
> feasibility of good anarchy. Technology has always been the
> underestimated factor in the development of civilization and
> individualism.
Precisely.
> But it still begs the question: At what
> theoretical point do you, as a society, officially have
> anarchism? What if 999 out of 1000 members of a society make the
> informal agreement to observe the NAP, to the extent of
> eliminating govt?
I suspect that if 999 of 1000 members of a society reach an informal
agreement to observe the NAP, they won't worry themselves about the
one individual marching up and down the square and referring to
himself as "The Right Honorable President of the Republic" and
administering imaginary bureaucracies. He'll have the option of being
treated as a curiosity, or, if he gets uppity, serving as an
involuntary demonstrator of the stretching qualities of the human neck.
Personally, I doubt we'll ever get that far. Personally, I treat
anarchy as preferable to the horrors of the state because of its
_potential_ as an incubator for voluntary society, not as any kind of
utopia in which such society is automatically, painlessly and
perfectly achieved.
Tom Knapp
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