List of anarchists - help me out here

[Caleb]

This is the song Lennon wrote and performed at the Free John Sinclair rally.  When I first heard it, I was reminded of John Connell ... 

http://www.calebjohnson.org/JohnSinclair.mp3

[Caleb]

Chomsky is an anarchist of the libertarian socialist/anarcho-syndicalist variety. His problem is that he seems to think state socialism/welfare statism is on the path to libertarian socialism.

Pretty much, but here's an interesting (well, debatable) take on it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AFp8I26jHc

Ok, I hadn't got around to watching this take on it until just now.

I actually agree with him. There are so many different flavors of anarchism. Ancap, Ansynd, ancom, and on and on and on.  Each seem very mistrustful of the others, and accuse the others of some sort of underhanded secret statism.

But it goes back to this:  If you are an anarchist, you are against any state activity, and thus would lack any ability to collectively enforce your ideal on other people. If you believe in some form of collectively enforcing your preferred brand, then you aren't really an anarchist.

That's why I removed the title "communist" from my profile. I think that further distinctions beyond anarchist are not helpful.

But there is a flip side that i don't think this kid thought of: the potential for personal conflict between these two groups does exist, because of a disagreement as to the nature of landed property. an ancap, for instance, sees land as his right to possess as an extension of himself, and views grabbing at his land as a violent act, to which he may respond violently. an ancom views excluding others from the use of land as a form of violence, and thus will have no compunction in using land that is claimed by someone who has claimed too much. In this interaction, the ancom is at a distinct disadvantage, (because his "violence" is directed at a thing whereas the violence directed against him is directed against his person) and risks being put 6 ft under.

That's why I think the only differentiation beyond anarchist that matters is pacifo-anarchist or not.

[Caleb]

And just to throw another monkey wrench into the works, the land issue would eventually become moot. Here's why:

In the current (State-enforced) system, land is forcibly kept from being communized. The state, as it were, has a monopoly on the communization of land. The state can create a park, for instance, but YOU cannot. This is so because, once you die, the State will throw your land in probate and award it to another person, who will then decide what to do with it. If you create a park, you better hope that your son or daughter wants to keep it that way, because he will be able to forcibly keep the people who are using the park off the land once he inherits it.

But without a state to titalize land and award it to individuals, once a person had liberated his land by making it subject to collective use, then there would be no heir once he died, and that portion of land would be communist in perpetuity. Eventually, all land would be so liberated. After all, even the most virulent capitalist is subject to having a commie son, who would then liberate his land.  That's why anarcho-communism is the ultimate inevitable end of anarchism.    But there's no need for me to rub that in.  And hence no reason for ancoms to force the issue.

[Vitruvian]

But without a state to titalize land and award it to individuals, once a person had liberated his land by making it subject to collective use, then there would be no heir once he died, and that portion of land would be communist in perpetuity. Eventually, all land would be so liberated. After all, even the most virulent capitalist is subject to having a commie son, who would then liberate his land.  That's why anarcho-communism is the ultimate inevitable end of anarchism.

When a land-owner dies without an heir, shouldn't his land be considered abandoned and unowned, and hence subject to the ownership claims of other people?

[Caleb]

That's just it, when the landowner who has communized his land dies, he leaves no heir. But it will not be unused or abandoned. It will be in use by people.  So no one person would have any specific claim to exclusive use, except for his physical home itself.

You are still thinking in terms of boundary lines. But once people start sharing land, the boundary lines disappear. Think about your family. The family is a very communist unit. If you were going to divide your house between the family members (to emulate a capitalist scheme) who would get the bathroom? Who would get the living room? Who would get the dining room? Who would get the kitchen? The only conceivable part of the house that makes sense owning individually would be the bedrooms.

So picture a house that is ordered around a capitalist "room ownership" system. You own the bathroom, and charge me rent every time I use it. But I own the kitchen, and charge you rent. But let's say that I decide to communize the kitchen. I say, "hey, anyone can use this." Now, everybody is using the kitchen. Mom, dad, you, uncle bob, Kramer. If I die, there isn't really anybody to claim the kitchen because everybody is using it.

The thought that a plot of land that doesn't have an "owner" would be abandoned is only relevant within capitalist thinking. If I see an abandoned house, right now, I don't think, "Hey, I could move in there, fix the place up, and that would be a nice place to live!" I don't think that because I know that the land has a title and someone owns it, someone who would use violence against me if I did do that. But on a piece of land that had been liberated, it would be incredibly natural for someone to move into an abandoned house. His neighbors would think, "Oh, that's nice, Caleb is going to move in and fix up old Joe's place. That place has been looking shoddy ever since Joe moved to Debateland."

[Vitruvian]

when the landowner who has communized his land dies, he leaves no heir. But it will not be unused or abandoned. It will be in use by people.  So no one person would have any specific claim to exclusive use, except for his physical home itself.

Physical objects can be "used" only by a finite number of people at any one time.  At some point in the distant past, some person took first possession of an object or area of land, which object or land then became his property.  If the chain of ownership ever was broken, from that day to this, if the property was lost or abandoned, then it ceased to be property, reverting instead to an unowned resource.

Exclusive use is quite natural for mankind.  We take air, food, and water into our bodies, and incorporate each into our very substance.  If I inhale air, or ingest food or water, I use them exclusively until my body "abandons" them. 

[dalebert]

"Public Property" is an oxymoron.

[Caleb]

It sure is. That's why most ancom's despise the concept of property. "Property is theft" is a popular slogan.

I personally don't consider "land" to be property. Property is something that was created by man. And I'm not anti-property in that respect. The only thing is, that leaves us without a suitable word for describing landed "property", so be a little patient with me when I use "property" to describe land or use the phrase "public property". It's just that no other suitable word readily suggests itself.

I don't want this side topic to distract from the point that you were making, Dale, (or at least, since you posted the video, I assumed you agreed with the point)and that I essentially agreed with: and that is that this issue really is kind of meaningless. we're talking about where we go after the State is gone, and that point in time is still in the distant future. I won't live to see a stateless society. so arguing about these things, and creating divisions among others who mostly agree with us is sorta pointless.  I think it's beneficial to just use the title "anarchist" without adding any extra labels or trying to demonize people who have a little different brand of anarchism. as long as no one is using violence, then even after the state is gone, everybody should get along okay.

What does everyone think of Ralph Waldo Emerson? Some lists are calling him a "classical liberal" and others are calling him an anarchist.

[J’raxis 270145]

And just to throw another monkey wrench into the works, the land issue would eventually become moot. Here's why:

In the current (State-enforced) system, land is forcibly kept from being communized. The state, as it were, has a monopoly on the communization of land. The state can create a park, for instance, but YOU cannot. This is so because, once you die, the State will throw your land in probate and award it to another person, who will then decide what to do with it. If you create a park, you better hope that your son or daughter wants to keep it that way, because he will be able to forcibly keep the people who are using the park off the land once he inherits it.

But without a state to titalize land and award it to individuals, once a person had liberated his land by making it subject to collective use, then there would be no heir once he died, and that portion of land would be communist in perpetuity. Eventually, all land would be so liberated. After all, even the most virulent capitalist is subject to having a commie son, who would then liberate his land.  That's why anarcho-communism is the ultimate inevitable end of anarchism.    But there's no need for me to rub that in.  And hence no reason for ancoms to force the issue.

Once an insufficient amount of land remains for private use, what's to prevent someone from trying to buy some of the common land back for private use? Do you think people would universally reject such an offer?

[Caleb]

I don't know how I managed to hijack my own thread. 

I think the short answer would be this: There would be no one to sell out. No one would own the land, so no one could sell it.

I do think, though, that there would be opportunities for private ownership. It's just that they would tend to be away from civilization. Those would be the abandoned places that vitruvian is talking about. Abandoned because people wanted to join a larger communal area.

[J’raxis 270145]

I suppose it depends on how one defines private property. You seem to be operating under the assumption for property to be private, there need to be contracts, deeds, titles, and so forth. My definition of "private property" is simply a piece of land that is recognized (in any manner) to be exclusively for the use of one party (a single individual, group, corporation, &c.), and that this one party is willing to defend against those who try to use force to take it from him.

Using that definition, if a private individual offered something of value to the community in return for the right to put a fence around a plot of land, and the people around with an interest in that plot of land agreed to let him do so, he just "bought" that land.

And since you're a moderator, you can split this topic off if you like.

[Caleb]

I think people's private abodes would pretty much end up operating much the same. (The main difference being that you wouldn't have any title to your home, and if you vacated it for an extended period of time, someone else might just assume you were done with it and move in.  Your house would be considered a part of nature. Just like a bird's nest or a foxes den. And I can imagine that people would sometimes get bored and swap houses. They might even make monetary deals based on it.  People are always going to want a little privacy. I don't see communism as being designed to attack these little things that people worry about. Because most people are completely excluded from land ownership, the only thing they manage to attain (by fighting and scrapping their way through an unjust system) is a very small plot of land, and they are naturally very possessive about that amount of land, since that is not even enough to meet their basic needs for most people. But that tiny little plot of land with a little house on it is not land. It's only a shadow of land ownership or land use. And people are naturally protective of it, because it's all they have, because they have been excluded. But "land" is the earth, the source of all of our resources. It's the source of everything you need: food, clothing, shelter. and more.  And that has been what you have been excluded from, with the result that you end up not being able to provide for your basic needs without selling yourself as a slave to an employer for far less than what your actual labor is worth. The fact that you can choose your master doesn't change the level of oppression. I mean, right now you can choose to leave the US if you don't like it. But that won't mean freedom, just a new overlord. And it's the same with an employer: you can choose your boss, but unless you are content to starve to death or rely on charity or theft, you have to have an employer to even feed yourself due to the fact that you don't have access to enough land to meet your basic needs.

[KBCraig]

I think people's private abodes would pretty much end up operating much the same. (The main difference being that you wouldn't have any title to your home, and if you vacated it for an extended period of time, someone else might just assume you were done with it and move in.  Your house would be considered a part of nature. Just like a bird's nest or a foxes den.

You'll have a difficult time correlating peaceful anarchism and nature. Dens and nests don't just sit idle waiting for the next peaceful occupant to come along and move in. In nature, powerful usurpers don't hesitate to violently evict a tenant whose digs they desire. They're not at all concerned if the "rightful owner" dies in the process.

I'm pretty sure your Catholic Worker/Anarchist-Communist ethos doesn't really subscribe to this belief. If you did, you'd find Bush's Iraq policy acceptable, because it's perfectly in line with Nature.

[Caleb]

nice try, kev, but we are the caretakers of this planet, the ones made in the image of god. we are part of nature, but also sons of god. being part of nature doesn't give us an excuse to act like animals.

[dalebert]

But Caleb, you used animal behavior as an example of what's natural.

It may come as a shock, but I'm probably somewhere in between most ancaps and Caleb when it comes to owning natural resources. There's no getting around the fact that without a state declaring clear boundaries, notions of property get fuzzier. We can all declare what constitutes ownership of an area, but the reality is none of us is the the defining authority. I often here "whatever you can reasonably defend" but that's a cop-out that just goes back to "might makes right". Whether you own something shouldn't be based on your strength to defend it. As an analogy, if someone attacks my person, they have most definitely violated my rights whether I successfully defend myself or not. I understand that I cannot expect someone else to defend my rights, but how I defend myself has nothing to do with the existence of my rights.

On the other hand, some crucial forms of labor involve doing something to the land. If I build a house to live in, then I need exclusive use of the property it's on to continue to "own" the product of my labor. Same if I grow some crops. If I swim to an island and no one else has been there and I plant a flag in the ground, does that make it mine? Building a really big fence is only a extension of that. There's a little more labor involved, but the fence is just a declaration of ownership. I don't have the answer. I think it comes down to reasonable use.

I do however, think that exclusive use is crucial. It's part of property rights for the reasons above, i.e. if I build something, I need to own what i build. If I prepare land and grow crops, I need to own the results. Think about it. If I'm a builder, why would I keep building houses for other people unless I benefit somehow and who's going to pay for a house when they don't get to truly own it? If they move again, do they pay for another house or do they get to sell their house to help them afford to move? How is it fair that Caleb got to move into an abandoned house but when there are no abandoned houses near my new job, I have to build one from scratch or pay someone to build one and I don't get to own it? People aren't going to want to leave a house that they only own because they're occupying it. This would be incredibly destructive to a healthy economy.

I think it comes down to what's reasonable and there may be some dispute about what's reasonable and that's to be expected. It also comes down to at what point do people feel someone's claims to property have become unreasonable enough to use force, and not necessarily violence against a person (but possibly) but perhaps just a disruption of their claim to some property. For instance, if we've been building houses along a river and someone upstream claims a section and builds a dam. Most people would consider that unreasonable and that's a dispute that needs to be resolved. If the "owner" fails to resolve it, I don't think it would be unreasonable to destroy the dam. I don't want to go into any more detail than that because then it would seem like I'm trying to draw nice clear lines that don't really exist.