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it's amazing what you do between a ref blowing a whistle and the action starting again.
even managed to find the bottle opener without missing anything.no need to 'log on' it's done automatically, the thread goes to the top of the recent posts so no biggie. what makes you think i got past the first line of your reply
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i'm not saying people don't want anarchism, but if you ask those people with bread taped to their heads demonstrating (or the students, or those in opposition) what they want it's freedom, choice and a better life.
where does anarchism fit in?I'll try and run with the theme from your Egyptian example, which is probably a fairly good illustration of the issues involved.
First up, what is anarchism, what it is not is a scene out of Mad-Max or some people in their early twenties in tight fitting black clothes smashing windows (like I say above, neither is communism good looking female art students in Che Guevara t-shirts and berets) - anarchism can be simply described as the rejection of the state as the solution to all problems and the organization of society on a more voluntary basis without the use of coercion or violence to get things done.
Egypt is the longest running experiment in statism, the world's first state, after more than 6,000 years of state rule let's have a look at the results:
More then 40% of Egyptians live on less than $2 (USD) a day.
70% of the population depend on food subsidies and handouts.
$2,740,000,000 (USD) - that's $2.74 billion is spent on bread subsidies alone, more than the total national spend on on health, more than the total national spend on education.
This breeds political corruption, cronyism and mass dependence on state handouts and destroys Egyptian agriculture as it's impossible to compete with almost free food.
The price of food jumped by a third (32%) in the last two quarters of 2010, as Egypt is the world's largest importer of wheat - mainly because state intervention has decimated it's own agriculture - this has hit them particularly badly, the trigger for the recent unrest.
As we have seen legitimate protest over a seemingly impossible situation was met with state violence, protesters and activists are shot, beaten, rounded up, imprisoned and tortured at will.
Once the protesters had shown that they would not submit to the will of the state the police and security services changed tact and began small scale attacks in various neighbourhoods, shootings, breaking into houses in small gangs and beating up the occupants, presumably to demonstrate the chaos that would occur if the state withdrew, but what happened when the state actually did withdraw, people simply gathered together and self-organized into groups to protect themselves and their own property from others. An example of the spontaneous order that emerges when the state withdraws.
It reminds me of that idea (not too sure of how true it is as I have not seen any actual data) where the removal of traffic lights actually leads to a reduction in road traffic accidents and people are not reliant on something else to keep them safe.
We could go into much more detail of course, but as a sketch we can see how far from being an irrelevance to the situation in Egypt, you could view what just happened in Egypt as anarchistic, the rejection of the state and people taking their future into their own hands, self-organizing (it's amazing to learn that the protest had no clear leaders) and so on.
But ultimately we all only really recognize state rule as it's all we have ever known, so people will busy themselves looking for the next man or group of men to rule over them as soon as they have got rid of the last lot.
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it's amazing what you do between a ref blowing a whistle and the action starting again.
: )
even managed to find the bottle opener without missing anything.
no need to 'log on' it's done automatically, the thread goes to the top of the recent posts so no biggie. what makes you think i got past the first line of your reply
:-)Fair enough. I wan't saying anything interesting, just that I didn't quite understand what the question was.
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[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KsvStAf5L0"]YouTube
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"....you crack to many jokes and you eat meat......"
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[QUOTE=teome;1962822Thatcher's plans were more inline with anarchy than the vast majority of the ideals of self professed anarchists that I have read about or come into contact with.
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complete and utter bullshit....how the fuck is lining the pockets of the rich in line with anarchist thought?......Thatcher and her fellow Chicago School of Economics devotees are all about concentrating power and wealth ever more in the hands of an elite.....the exact opposite of all that Anarchists espouse.....Crisis Capitalism in full effect...
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I can't wade through all that Mr Skull has said, but I found the observations about Egypt informative. Do you think that the sort of spontaneous order, that prevailed when publicly-minded militias seem to have condensed from nothing like bubbles in a fizzy drink, suggests that anarchism -statelessness - is immediately questioned when people will some order to exist in ad hoc ways - such as there in Egypt, or in the traffic-light example - that people desire order over 'chaos' so that statelessness can't really persist?
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Belgium hasn't had a government for about 9 months or so
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complete and utter bullshit....how the fuck is lining the pockets of the rich in line with anarchist thought?......Thatcher and her fellow Chicago School of Economics devotees are all about concentrating power and wealth ever more in the hands of an elite.....the exact opposite of all that Anarchists espouse.....Crisis Capitalism in full effect...
To say that
Chicago School of Economics devotees are all about concentrating power and wealth ever more in the hands of an elite
is utter bullshit. It's a school just like the LSE. No one with any intelligence wants more power and wealth in the hands of the elite. It just does't work and it's not sustainable as they are finding out in the Arab states. It's not in the interests of the "elite" (booo)
The comment shows just how biased your view is. There were many groups; They were academics not bond villains in underground bunkers. Maybe some did, maybe some didn't. It's just a rediculous statememt. And apparently you missed the "more in line with". Try reading things properly.
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Belgium hasn't had a government for about 9 months or so
Belgium has a fully functioning state, a police force, military, taxation system, education system (and so on).
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What is this 'Belgium'?
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Do you think that the sort of spontaneous order, that prevailed when publicly-minded militias seem to have condensed from nothing like bubbles in a fizzy drink, suggests that anarchism -statelessness - is immediately questioned when people will some order to exist in ad hoc ways - such as there in Egypt, or in the traffic-light example - that people desire order over 'chaos' so that statelessness can't really persist?
Skully, it's hard to work out what your question is from this post (for me at least).
Is this (below) the general gist of your question ?
'Do you think that the spontaneous order that forms when the state withdraws (like that seen in Egypt) suggests that statelessness is not desired ?'
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complete and utter bullshit....how the fuck is lining the pockets of the rich in line with anarchist thought?......Thatcher and her fellow Chicago School of Economics devotees are all about concentrating power and wealth ever more in the hands of an elite.....the exact opposite of all that Anarchists espouse.....Crisis Capitalism in full effect...
The idea that the Conservative's central goal is to line the pockets of 'the elite' is as much a conspiracy theory as the idea that Labour want to turn the country into a Communist Police State.
I would agree with teome's broader point that anarchism (anarco-capitlism) has far more in common with Conservatism than with socialism, not to say they are the same in any way - but if you remove the conspiracy theories (the Tories are all posh bastards who want to keep the 'people' down) there are parallels between Conservatism (especially around market forces, personal liberties, a smaller state and so on).
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A privy, yesterday.
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Stalinism also professed to be working towards the withering away of the state. Does this mean that Thatcher was both an anarchist (anarcho-capitalist) and a Stalinist?
No, Thatcher was not a Stalinist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessary_and_sufficient_condition
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About
Anarcho-Bicyclist Conference Manchester April 2011
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Odd that you logged on, searched out this thread, read my response and took the time to post and tell me you cannot be bothered?
Fair enough!