CZ Talk:Anarchism Subgroup

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Forgotten where to endorse...

But I'll do so for politics.

Direct action

This needs to be disambiguated from direct action (military). Howard C. Berkowitz 19:45, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

"Libertarianism"

While the word "libertarian" is the synonym to the word "anarchist", nowadays another school of thought appropriated this term. May be someday one will create "libertarian subgroup"? It is obvious that "Libertarian parties", minarchists, conservatives have nothing to do with anarchism. And i don't mean market anarchism, but statist tendencies only. --Mirzhan Irkegulov 08:01, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Then this co-opting needs to be explained. As I mentioned, I have very little knowledge of the European schools of anarchism. Certainly since the mid-1960s, however, anarcho-libertarianism, in varying degrees, has been part of American libertarian theory and even practice.

The last term I would associate with libertarianism is statism. A "pure" anarcho-libertarian tends to want no government at all. Variants want extremely minimal government functions.

In the U.S., the Libertarian Party is not a strong force among extremely individualistic libertarians. Depending on who may be speaking, libertarianism may or may not be considered part of American conservatism. In the Tea Party Movement, there's a conflict between libertarian-oriented people that consider personal freedom to be the most important right, and social conservatives who want to control personal behavior. They have an uneasy alliance because both, in principle, want to reduce government.

Would you elaborate on the co-opting? Howard C. Berkowitz 08:10, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

What i'm trying to explain is that anarchism deals with the abolition of the state. Not minimization, not reforming, not improving of it, but abolishing. It is what you call "pure", and anarchism can not be impure, or it is not anarchism. There are, however, many theories of minimizing state activity, from "libertarian" minarchism to left communism (Marxist branch, which has similarities with social anarchism, but again, is NOT anarchism). So i think that everything that is about abolishing the state by direct action is appropriate here (be it agorism, left-libertarianism of Roderick Long and others, individualist anarchism of Tucker and Spooner, if we talk about "libertarian" anarchism), but everything that is about reforming the state should be elsewhere.

I am a social anarchist myself, so you may think i am biased, but this opinion is shared with those of my comrades, who are extreme market individualist anarchists. Our discussion is quite fruitful, so may be in future it would be even better to create an article like "Differences between anarchism and libertarianism" with sources from anarchist theorists. --Mirzhan Irkegulov 13:52, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Your definition may be pure from a European standpoint, but it's going to confuse American, and quite possibly other, readers. As a Politics and Military Editor, I'm of the opinion that "Differences between anarchism and libertarianism" is so critical that it must be in the top-level article.

I do know anarcho-libertarians that want no state, but they are rather rare.

Also, I have to ask you what you mean by abolishing the state by direct action. Both as a Military Editor familiar with that term in several countries, "abolishing the state by direct action" usually means "abolishing the state by violence or the threat thereof." There's a delicate line between defining terrorism and encouraging it, and having a non-state abolish a state gets fairly close to most definitions of terrorism, and indeed may be more appropriate in the terrorism article. Under current policies, advocacy in general is not appropriate for an article. Howard C. Berkowitz 14:18, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I find it very hard to picture any nonviolent way to replace a democratic state with anarchism, but I'm willing to hear ideas. Howard C. Berkowitz 14:18, 21 September 2010 (UTC)