Anarchism

I thank you for the link. It's been a good read, although I still fail to see how anarchy would work in practice (kinda like communism, I guess).

The following, for example:
*"And, just to state the obvious, anarchy does not mean chaos nor do anarchists seek to create chaos or disorder. Instead, we wish to create a society based upon individual freedom and voluntary co-operation. In other words, order from the bottom up, not disorder imposed from the top down by authorities. Such a society would be a true anarchy, a society without rulers."

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  When co-operating you are creating an entity which will lead by its numbers and/or presence. Okay, so it again lacks an official title, but it will be the one that leads. It'd be a democratic mini society. Others might not follow it. They'd make up their own click. Then you'd have, in essence, two warring factions (no blood needs to be shed, but there'd still be at least those two groups).
  
  

This is a good point, and there is always a danger of groups of people disagreeing and that disagreement becoming a bigger dynamic that overshadows potentially much deeper commonalities. I can only speak for myself, but i'd imagine that in an anarchist society, poeple would not feel the need to bludgeon others into submission like we do in wars between states now.

For example - in the Spanish civil war (especially in 1936-7), huge swathes of the country were run collectively by anarchists. Instead of going down the Bolshevik route of coercing people into collectivising against their will, they would persuade farmers or workplaces to colelctivise voluntarily. if they didn't, they were given a reasonable-sized plot of land separate from the collectivised areas to do with it whatever they wanted. Many of those people eventually realised that they were better off joining the anarchists and colelctivising, because co-operation was clearly better for their self-interest than 'go it alone' forms of competition between different viewpoints.

So in an anarchist society (and in anarchist organisations and collectives in the here and now), difference is dealt with in a way that emphasises the benefits of co-operation, without the use of coercion. Anarchists emphasise mediation and consensus-finding between differing viewpoints. Of course, you will get the occasional person (or group of people) who will refuse any kind of mediation or co-operative practices, but like the Spanish example, their decisions to act in this manner will often result in them being worse off for it.

So, what am I not getting? I really believe anarchy will not be a permanent state. It might be the state of things for a while, but it won't last -- it'd, well, evolve.

I am not trying to diss you or others that believe anarchy (in the form described in the FAQ) would be good for us. It's just that I really can't get my head around the concept of permanent anarchy.

You've actually hit upon something really important. You're completely right that anarchy would not be an unchanging utopia in which everything is perfect forever. There will necessarily be change over time, and there will necessarily be difference across space. The mistake that many socialists made was to try to forge blueprints for an unchanging utopian future that would carry on for ever and ever amen. They were setting themselves up to fail, especially because they tried (e.g. in USSR, China, N Korea) to take over the isntitutions of capital and the state in order to try and make it happen.

The thing with anarchism as a philosophy and a practice is that it refuses to conform to a fixed utopian blueprint for the future. Sure, anarchists have key principles that lay the foudnations for how people (inter)act, but many anarchists emphasise the importance of process, and learning-by-doing.

Rudolf Rocker (an east-end Jewish anarchist in the inter-war era) said that "I am an anarchist, not because I believe anarchism to be the final goal, but because there is no such thing." He recognised that as society develops, new social, organisational and cultural forms will develop, and new ways of living and relating must be developed in response. Just as capitalism has developed in different ways over the 300 or so years that it has been the dominant economic system, anarchy would develop likewise. In fact, Rocker, and other anarchists, believe that capitalism and institutions of authority (e.g. the state) actually impinge upon invention and creativity because they reduce possibility to profitability. Their replacement with a co-operative or communalistic society would potentially allow far greater freedom for future technological, scientific and social development.

gets off soap-box