Pretend anarchists give real ones a bad name
All the recent news about so-called anarchists getting violent at the Republican National Convention is really bugging me. Despite popular opinion, anarchy and anarchism have nothing to do with chaos and violence, and these nut jobs are not anarchists. True anarchists (like us hardcore libertarians) support the abolition of government (i.e. a group of people with a monopoly on the use of force in a geographic area). True anarchists look for the day when individuals are free to interact voluntarily and prosper without having force initiated against them by an organization claiming to have a legitimate sovereign power to make and enforce laws. Now these punks breaking things and lighting fires in the streets are not true anarchists because their goal is the destruction of capitalism and the free market. But since the free market (to the extent that it still exists in this country) is simply the natural way that individuals spontaneously interact and produce and exchange goods and services in the absence of government force, the destruction of such an arrangement necessarily entails the initiation of force against others and the establishment of some sort of unimaginably powerful government to prevent people from continuing in their natural, free interactions. So, these 'anarchists' protesting at both the GOP conventions and some Democratic events (and nearly every free trade meeting) are about as far from supporting actual anarchy as possible. They are, in fact, totalitarians. What's funny is they don't realize how similar they are to the political parties they're protesting. It's the Libertarian Party convention at which they should have been protesting back in April (but of course no one but C-SPAN even covered that).
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September 4th, 2008 - 19:58
Or perhaps libertarians that call themselves “anarchists” give libertarians a bad rap. For me, the recent news is just more evidence that you don’t do yourself (or libertarians generally) any favors by calling yourself an anarchist. Of course, don’t listen to me, but Murray Rothbard considered the question: Are Libertarians ‘Anarchists’? And after discussing the different types of anarchists – left-wing anarchists (collectivists of various sorts) and “individualist anarchists” – he came to this conclusion:
We must therefore conclude that we are not anarchists, and that those who call us anarchists are not on firm etymological ground, and are being completely unhistorical. On the other hand, it is clear that we are not archists either: we do not believe in establishing a tyrannical central authority that will coerce the noninvasive as well as the invasive. Perhaps, then, we could call ourselves by a new name: nonarchist. Then, when, in the jousting of debate, the inevitable challenge “are you an anarchist?” is heard, we can, for perhaps the first and last time, find ourselves in the luxury of the “middle of the road” and say, “Sir, I am neither an anarchist nor an archist, but am squarely down the nonarchic middle of the road.”
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard167.html
September 4th, 2008 - 23:06
Ah, Linda–always helping me see things in different lights. Of course, one should keep in mind, when quoting that Rothbard piece, that he wrote that in the 1950s; and by the early 1980s he was using the terms “libertarian” and “anarchist” rather interchangeably.
Rothbard’s opinions aside, I’m just doing my little part to reclaim (or perhaps claim for the first time?) the term “anarchist” for those utterly opposed to state coercion.
September 5th, 2008 - 08:04
I read a blog post the other day about the destruction of property. The indivudal stated that the acts committed against property are not violence, merely vandalism. I argued, clearly the act of throwing something at a window or setting something ablaze for the mere purpose of destruction is a violent act. Vandalism is spray painting something or throwing a rock thru a window of a vacant building. I continued, the form of anarchy that I follow is not a lawless system. There are immutable laws, natural laws of life, liberty and property. Lawlessness for the sake of being lawless does no one any good. What pissed me off even more was a report of someone breaking a window with the yellow shirt with the “Don’t Tread on Me” snake.
Granted the protesters have every right to protest the ideals of both the Republican and Democratic party. But those who are for the willful destruction of property just to try to cause chaos does no one any good in convincing people of their ideas. The reports that I have read of the police response has been outrageous. They have even arrested credentialed journalists. One AP photog was bashed over the head by the police and promptly arrested.
Its funny how the press praises those protesters in other countries with whom their leaders are seen as tyrants, but in this country protesters are seen as wacky individuals. If a tyrannical government in Venezula can respond in a much more peaceful manner than what the St. Paul police have done, its a real shame and terrifying prospect for our country.
September 6th, 2008 - 15:10
Yeah, I saw that bit about them using the “Don’t Tread on Me” symbol. They do grave injustice to what the symbol represents, seeing as how they are aggressing against others.