Anarchy could never work.

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The only other thing I should probably comment on, the "I don't feel that way, never have, therefor I find it dubious that everyone else is that different" is a bit dangerous. For example I can drink, lots, and never black out. I have friends who will black out. I can't can't say "If I can do it you can" and then act as if I'm simply strong and their weak - it doesn't work like that at all; that's nothing to say that anything is forcing me not to be willfully ignorant as I can technically do whatever I want and believe whatever I want, just that I wouldn't have a working model of the world in that area. Much like someone with diabetes of the right variety can't eat some of what I would - I technically could pretend its all in their head and that they're just like me, but it makes no sense. Yes, those are health problems, but you see things of a similar stroke - often - with other people. When you see people engaging in behaviors or having preferences that you can't even begin to understand, there's a certain point where you have to come to grips with the notion that they're outlook on reality, the way they're shaped, the order in which things process is simply different.

I'm an accountant, it something I can do reasonably well at but I could never be an engineer and for as as much as I tried with music, while I have decent ideas I could never fully engineer what I wanted to. Lots of the people who can engineer great sounds and even make it pro with music could never have done what I did in school, lots of engineers could never have done much with music or wouldn't have gelled with grasping accounting.

In that sense we have to be a little reticent about assigning our own ways of thinking, our own core values, and our own instincts to other people. To tell the truth I think I got myself in far more social trouble than ever when I tried to assume that people were doing certain things to conform but, really at heart, were like me. They were social blunders of a variety that didn't denote poor rote social skills but they denoted terrible theory of mind. Whether it was insulting people by saying things or making observations that were intelligent or analytical (which apparently lots of people get offended by) or by chiming in on conversations and veering them in odd directions - even slightly (I was being authentic and not going way off course but, what I find heartfelt doesn't work - I'm an alien). It seems like the only time you really start doing well with people is when you can take them for who and what they are and deal accordingly. As well, most people are *not* analytical first, they're emotion first. Its largely because of that that we can't pretend that what looks good on paper is the perfect thing. If the rest of the world was gone and I cloned myself 6 billion times I might be able to come up with a pretty good system for 6 billion techstepgenr8tions but short of that, I get it, human beings are a motley and mixed group and you can't count on them to do what they need to do often, let alone always. To look at it this way people are born, thrown into this, and enough people - feeling like it wasn't their fault to begin with - would just as easily say that they don't owe anyone anything and that its not they're fault that they're here surrounded by all of this. Some people have lots of remorse circuits, some have few, and you can have a wild array of everything under the same parents and the same genes and same upbringing. Its things like this that sorely make me doubt that anyone should personalize the world to themselves and then make up the rules on that basis.

I think the state is illusory in the sense that it emerged to meet human necessities as Socrates argued. Too many people want to dominate each other, and really the state is a kind of truce or agreement to protect ourselves from unwanted domination. Ideally, too many people, if they had their way, would subdue and take advantage of everyone else without any consequences. However, there are consequences, and that's that people fight back. So, we have basic agreements that if someone kills someone else, they get picked up by police, run through the courts and get locked away, because we don't want barbarous dominators to rape and pillage us even though we might secretly want to do the same thing. Its a kind of sociological truce or war treaty.

The problem with the state is it can be infiltrated by the very barbarians society created such institutions to protect itself from. They aren't the straight forward variety that's wielding war hammers on horses or slinging guns on motorcycles. On the other hand, they're a more deceptive variety that wields a brief case and sells a bs, family friendly image to get elected or get promoted. The reason why the state is so corrupt is its ultimately controlled by human beings that are subject to the same follies of human nature that are in everyone else on some level. There's a brat in all of us who wants to be the center of the world. We blame the state for our problems, and many people think that if we did away with it, everything would fix or correct itself overnight. However. its really just a reflection of human psychology as Hegel argued.

To have true anarchy, the abolition of all illegitimate forms of hierarchy, there would have to be a major change in the human psyche. The state would disappear on its own if people simply treated one another with love and respect. You say we wouldn't survive anarchy, because all these domineering types would be subduing everyone. However, that's not true anarchy. That's just the foundation of slaveship and kingship. This is why I disagree with anarchists who think that if we just smashed the system down, a utopia would grow in its place. The human behavioral patterns that precipitate into corrupt states and government will still be there and will surely produce another vile system of control and imprisonment. As the Russian and French Revolutions taught us, the system that rises out of the ashes of the old will most likely be worst than the previous. The real revolution isn't out there somewhere as Marx was inclined to believe. Its in the human heart, the self.

respectfully, none of these places have tried communism, and none of them have even been in any real sense, with the exception of the bolshevik revolution which as we know was hijacked in the early stages, working towards communism. all of the others simply followed the russian model. if we look at china as an example, the 1949 revolution wasn't even a proletarian uprising, rather the pla installed themselves into power as the outcome of a civil war.



from this comment, and going back to the initial premise of the discussion, it would appear that we can assume that you do think anarchism could work at least in some formulation and at some point in the future. the problem with the opinion you state here is that it is perilously close to the zeitgeister position. there are a lot of powerful vested interests that benefit greatly from the stratification of society on class lines and the inherent atomisation, alienation and de-politicisation of the proletariat that late capitalism has brought. pragmatism suggests, at least to me, such interested parties are highly unlikely to allow society to progress in the direction of egalitarianism. a lib-com society is not going to evolve on its own and i believe that marx was right in that violent revolution instigated by the proletariat is a necessary stage in the evolution towards such. the worry being that the further perpetuation of the system as it stands appears to make such a trajectory increasingly unlikely, but only time will tell and certainly most likely not during our lifetimes.




firstly the notion of capitalism as deliberately malevolent. to address this, i am sure you would likely agree that capitalism benefits the ruling and leisured classes at the expense of the lower classes. to those at the bottom, capitalism is malevolent, whether by design or not. i agree with your point that looking at it as an evil system presided over by a cigar smoking cabal of jews/masons/psychopaths is counter-productive and leads often to escalation towards fallacious lines of reasoning and enquiry (although i do believe there is a definite conflation between the increase of such ideas and the increasingly totalistic nature of capitalism since the late 70s/early 80s, replete with movements such as the zeitgeisters that combine the conspiracy mindset with radical politics, however scant and thin on the ground their focus on the latter may be).

however, the notion that those who succeed in the current system tend towards the sociopathic end of the personality spectrum is one that is bandied about often these days and it is a notion that i don't think it prudent to ignore. in some respects it is self evident.

on the point of the necessity to overthrow capitalism vs. something more progressive and egalitarian gradually evolving out of it, here i would simply say that a system that by definition - draws ruthless ego-centric types tending towards the sociopathic to the top, that has a very biased and weighted distribution of power and wealth that favours this small elite, and that has a totalising and progressive nature - is unlikely to wind itself down and evolve towards something that is effectively it's opposite. especially given the insidious nature of media, popular culture etc. which are products of the system itself and increasingly project notions of its own normalcy and sense of being a default position for humanity all the while dissuading the masses from thinking about life in general in any critical way whatsoever.

so while i do agree that we need to avoid falling down the futile path of delusional conspiratorial thinking, i also am mindful of the self-perpetuating nature of capitalism and the need to critique it from this point of view.



of course i respect your opinion however as stated above, i can only see capitalism going in the opposite direction. given that it is purely driven by profit and growth, what would motivate the system to move in an egalitarian direction? it never fully questions itself. true, it grants certain concessions in times of crisis to assuage and placate the masses and simultaneously further entrench its position, but these concessions are consistently self serving, and only serve to shift the disparities and inequities to another for the time being obscured vantage point.

and ironically many would suggest that the failings of the workers movement in russia were in large part down to those events taking place in a society that was not ready. i have read somewhere that marx himself suggested russia might be able to skip the stage of bourgeois capitalism but have been unable to find the primary source of this claim.



interestingly engels posited that it originated in an era of relative abundance, the onset of the agricultural revolution and the production of surplus resources.

to your second point, perhaps not capitalism per se, but certainly it is a contributory if we consider such entities as the education system and media as facets thereof. i.e. they came from "the system" as a whole. people won't be responsible if they are not given responsibility. they won't behave like rational, adult human beings unless they are respected as such. they won't respond to discipline if the discipline is forced upon them from above and they have little recourse to self-management and governance. people are what society makes them.



perhaps focusing too much on blaming "capitalism" is counter-productive, but it depends on whether you view "the system" as a holistic entity. perhaps you and sweetleaf are actually disagreeing over semantics. capitalism as it is implemented and has developed in reality might not conflate with a purely theoretical idea of it, however clearly when people blame capitalism they are blaming society as it exists now.

my belief is that people will not evolve as you suggest until they are truly free from coercion, truly empowered and given equal stock in society in terms of opportunity, wealth and influence. i don't see "capitalism" evolving into anything that would facilitate this.

interesting perspective, although i disagree with your first paragraph. i might expand on this later.

Ok, I'm interested in your critique.

Maybe I have little understanding of what you are referring to as anarchy.
I will ask you a few questions and perhaps I will have a better understanding. I am quite open-minded in learning about every type of political philosophy.

Does an anarchist society have any sort of government? Does an anarchist society have any laws?
What are anarchist views on human nature? Does an anarchist have any morals or ethics?
Do anarchists believe in democracy?

I have always thought that an anarchy society was chaotic and had no laws. If I am wrong please correct me.
This section in the forum is depressing for me because I hate arguing and sometimes I just want to learn.

I don't understand how some people can show no emotion while debating. Politics and humanity is something that makes me consumed with passion and emotions. The emotional detachment,apathy and over use of logic in this forum is upsetting.
I may be laughed at by everyone in this sub-forum for being over-sensitive but it happens in real life too.

Why does everything have to be a debate and not just a peaceful discussion?

again, i agree with you here. i wonder if you may have misunderstood my point with this, what i was getting at was that if a certain behavioural characteristic is considered human nature, then surely it would have to be evident in all, or at least the vast majority of, humans?

not to get too drawn into this discussion though, i understand that humans can exhibit what might be considered bad character traits. the point, however, is that by reason and rationale we can transcend the more base instincts. the issue that hinders this is poor living conditions, a society that is driven by ill-conceived motivations and lack of reasonable education.

I come to the same conclusion when thinking about anarchy. Problem is, this change you are talking about, I don't think it is possible. There can be some individuals that overcome their desires and accept their "limitedness", but i think it is unlikely that 100% of the people will become that way. So anarchy is possible but its probability is approximately zero.

Well, I believe in a central and state authority that esentially gets thinner, and thinner, and thinner, until federal government essentially becomes the Maytag repair man club (ie. its an add that jokes that they're refridgerators are so good that they're repair men are essentially passed out in their offices or playing solitair all day) and to where the standing army we have in case of threats would essentially be a club for geeks, fitness, and getting paid to play paintball all day.


How does TZM differ drastically from yours? It sounds nearly identical with the difference of technology.


Outside of avarice and love for domination, can you give some practical examples?


If we hit a place where production isn't even human necessary anymore, I have no idea what a suppressed proletariat could even give them. Enjoy Dickonsonian days of chimney sweeps, slavery, etc. just for the sheer love of nostalgia?


I would call this paranoia, not to make jest, I just think your 'prolatariot' are already on all power structures - poor, middle class, rich, etc.. They aren't overpowered and if and when problems really hit the public consciousness we have a way of moving into action already when we've had enough. The idea that any such solution that includes survival of the state and capitalism and the improvement of capitalism (for the lower and middle class) rather that the all out dissolution of capitalism means a slam-dunk victory for 'the man'; I call that a victory for humanity, a victory of classes working together, I call it evidence that the system changes, evolves, mutates, etc. to fit the people's needs. Fixed dogmatic systems can't do that without going against their founding tenets.


Firstly I live in the US, not in the UK or Europe so it may look very different over there than it does here. This assumption ignores meritocracy, ignores middle class and upper middle class job creation, and any examples of the self-made rich are attempted to be blown away by "Oh yeah? Well the legacy rich outnumber them!". The problem with the poor is this; if they can't produce something, if they can't be successful at something, as the system stands, it's a difficult matter figuring out what they're entitled to and what they're not. I do believe our first priority, aside from shelter, would be healthcare for all but - we would need much cheaper health care. How would we get there? BIG reform on the upper limits of malpractice lawsuits, the kinds of insurance premiums that doctors have to pay, etc.. What do we have stopping that? Unfortunately we have a cabal of lawyers in Washington who look out for their own kind.

Also on education, who do kids in the inner city have no chance? A couple things I can clearly bring up. First - the teaching is absolutely terrible, they have no chance because its pretty close to being an all day study hall. Also, we live in a 'liberated' society where you can't talk about cultural problems, can't take kids away from people who are utterly negligent, can't help the kids, can't help deadbeat parents, and the best part is when talking about the issues is even shouted down even when you're in the same ethnic group.


Okay, which paths to wealth and why?


Any possibility that since we were this as apes, this as cavemen, this as Clovis, as Mesopotamians, as Egyptians, as Babylonians, as Assyrians, as Persians, as Indus, as Mesoamericans, as Carthaginians, as Athenians, as Romans, as Byzantines, as feudalists, as early nation states, as mercantilists, as imperialists, as industrialists, as post-industrialists, as an information based society, that this is just what we always have and likely always will be to an extent? The problem with any outlook that claims that human nature is benign and that capitalism caused malevolent behavior or malevolent rationing - they have the full bore of history weighing against them and when they claim that we supposedly now no longer have scarcity and that capitalism has become the problem (the first we definitely know is BS - scarcity is quite alive and well) it really looks like an unfalsifiable 'God of the gaps' argument. Yes, people can point out small communities that have tried communism and made it work, yes you can point out Hebrew tradition of the like. They also enjoyed right of refusal, world wide government systems don't.


I'd say watch America, especially if not only Romney gets in as president but if the US starts picking up a lot of small government, tea party candidates. I know they're the howlingly mad laughing stock of the world - who would dare jest themselves to think they could shrink a government and tame/better capitalism other than a bunch of toothless hillbillies.

If that does pan out - watch the US closely. It would be a quick and dirty way of seeing whether what I'm saying about the malleability of capitalism is at leas true over here in the states. I say that because, the closest thing I can think of to a greed cabal - ie. the banks and the mortgage industry; Romney was one of the candidates talking often about how banks who are too big to fail are too big to exist and that laws need to be structured to encourage them to unmerge and get themselves back to efficient size for proper management. I know people howl at my naivity but, I'm not so much claiming that I believe him or that he can necessarily do it even if he can (not anywhere near 100% at least) - BUT - I can't handle people confusing cynicism with intellectualism, claiming that they know all of what someone is about before they know a thing bases on their own a priori, and then sort of goading everyone along with their pseudo-intellectual brow furrowing. If people claim something typically you still give them a chance to see if they can pull it off - if they can't you kick em out. If a republican majority meant that the democrats had to argue for better stuctured social programs with less fat or if the republicans had to give in to having a leaner armed forces; so be it. The deficit does need to shrink though and the ways of dealing with the mortgage industries innate problems (which favor the home owner too much in good times and the banks too much in bad) do need to be dealt with.


This is the problem with your notion of a revolution. Revolutions need leaders, leaders need to be charming and charismatic otherwise people just don't find them sexy enough. Leaders or, I love John Ralston Sauls terminology for this ilk 'rational heroes', are your Napoleans, your Hitlers, your Lennons and your Trotskys.



I'm going to give you a hypothetical scenario. A revolution that we can't describe occurred, the 'west' has been able to turn itself, successfully, into a network of libertarian socialist regimes or essentially cultures with communism, no money, and no government - just free sharing. How do you think the second and third world would be doing in terms of aid? What would we have as metrics to measure and score our ability to output? What would we have as metrics to quantify how much we need versus how much we can give away in aid? I see every sign that, outside of our wondrous consortium, the starving areas in the world - if they're in trouble now (though with some hope from the Gates likely soon to be Gates-Buffett foundation) they'd truly be f'd if we had no incentive to make more product, more produce, etc. than we ourselves needed.


The funny thing I have to bring up. What system did we have before capitalism? What system did we have before that? Before that as well? It seems like every sign points out that economic systems get better, not worse, but also they build themselves to deal with the problems and mistakes of previous systems. I'm saying that this idea of the 'system' poisoning people's ability to think outside the box enjoys a similar problem of regress, that history doesn't give us a much kinder and fairer system that was dominated and destroyed by capitalism, nor does it really give us a point anywhere before that where such a thing really happened. Perhaps the agricultural revolution and trading gave the people the idea of having an arbitrary storehouse of value so they didn't need an exact amount of perishables to trade for sheep or whatever it was that they couldn't guarantee the useability of or the matching of in time that set the whole road to capitalist slavery in motion. Regardless it seems like the only way you can have a system start from the top down to begin with is when its a radical departure experiment created by a philosopher.


Well, you can give people credit cards but, you can't guarantee they're adult enough not to run it up to full balance, not pay, and end up in court. It would be great if we had good classes about financial health and even gave kids some tantilizing peaks at what you can do when and as you get older to get rich. The problem with that - and I know my saying this will cause an uproar - in public schools capitalism is a dirty word. Yes, in America, many teachers, especially on the east and west coasts, think at least somewhat like you do. If they won't teach kids about how to master and harness a 'repressive, biggoted, racist system' then they simply won't and especially when you go out of your way to never teach minorities these things you get a wonderfully, albeit horridly intellectually dishonest, self-fulfilling prophecy.


I'd have to know if you believe in meritocracy at this point. Not 'nod nod wink wink' oppressor designed double talk 'meritocracy' but the real thing. Ie. - that people, if given the right tools, should be allowed to do what they will with them. That if they become adults they'll be treated like adults, if they don't, then they aren't. If we don't at least have that to go on, we'll be (in our anarcho-communist utopia) be giving the mentally disabled homes that they'll be burning down or be giving people things that will fall apart into disrepair simply because they can't act as custodians of even free property; they either don't have it in them, simply don't have the desire, or won't. Would giving people what they need to succeed in a real sense improve the situation drastically? Yes, but I'm still thinking on the order of a 60% or 70% improvement, ie. disenfranchisement is not the whole cause of these problems - its a big part but political inclusion is far from being everything there is to us and our behavior.


And this is vacuous. They won't respond to discipline if its forced on them and they'll also revel in the life-long vacation they're given if its not. Same thing could be said for people who respond well to discipline as it exists within the system. You'd get the impression that industrious people are industrious people, that lazy people are lazy people, that some people have the mental faculties to get a lot done, some don't and never will. Obviously you don't give people obligations or responsibilities that they aren't equipped to handle but then again that statement of common sense leads us right back to what you hate - stratifying society.



The thing about capitalism is this - its too big and unwieldy for anyone to truly have their hands on the joystick. When they do engage in some type of adventurism (typically via legislation) the system rips or tares and when that happens, the poor get poorer, the middle class get poorer, and the rich get poorer.


If the system I've described of naturally thinning capitalism as it reacts to vast leaps forward in innovation and production can't be done; I hope I'm wrong in my atheism for your sake and others of a similar mindset and that there is a life hereafter where such things abound.

I'm quite confident though that if a whole bunch of people get together right now and attempt to overthrow the governments around the world for communism that another form of.... non-communism as you and Sweetleaf describe it....is what we'd end up with.

certainly. it's taken me a while to get to replying to your post as this thread is moving rather quickly with some fairly long posts, and in addition with the forum being out of commission. but anyway here we go...



what it fundamentally decries is an authoritarian state and a monetary system as we have now. it has no third party government with members who exist only for the purpose of musing upon and passing laws etc. governance comes from the bottom up and efforts are made by the community to involve the whole community in decision making.

it has a groundwork of rules that are generally about preventing coercion and violence. they are not laws as such as they are not enforced from above or policed by a third party organisation employed specifically to enforce laws. they are enforced by the community.

in terms of human nature, i'll direct you to this slightly wooly article from a historic edition of workers solidarity, which despite a certain form of language that might be less than desirable does at least get to the point and prevent me having to type up another half a page long reply:
http://struggle.ws/ws91/nature33.html

yes, anarchists have morals and ethics. anarchist societies are based upon total freedom and most importantly freedom from coercion.

democracy is a difficult one. some anarchists advocate direct democracy, but i think there are arguments against democracy in most political camps. they do, however, believe in everybody having input in the decision making process and ultimately no decision being based upon the interest of one at the expense of another.



an anarchist society as proposed by anarchists would be anything but a chaotic every man for himself arrangement. there are many sources of information on anarchism but perhaps the wikipedia page on anarchism would be a simple and straight forward place to start?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism

and have a look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_communism


you shouldn't get too depressed about it, sometimes people are just very adamant in their own points of view being the right points of view, and can get a bit carried away. in most cases i don't imagine it's personal at all.



well i suppose i might be considered guilty of it, but i do agree with you, the forum should be a place where people can discuss things without the fear of being ridiculed etc. as i said above though, it's best not to take things personally, after all, the posters here don't know each other in real life, and it's easy to get would up and debate in an extreme way that might come across as aggressive.



because of capitalism!! !

personally i think this is unrealistic on the grounds of current huge disparity in terms of wealth distribution. if things were even a bit more equal, then maybe, but i don't see this happening at all. for this to happen, wealth would require to be more or less evenly spread. were this the case, most people would be about the same at least or better off than they are now, but a small percentage would plunge into relative poverty, and given that this few generally wield the more power under current arrangements, i just don't see this realistically happening. although it would be nice if it would.



it's the question of how we get there. they don't have any realistic strategy for achieving their goal, and appear to believe that we will eventually find ourselves in a utopia that emerges from the dust of capitalism. in fact i recently read on teh wikipedia page on jacques fresco that the three steps they perceive as leading to a utopia involve building a research centre, releasing a feature film, and building a theme park. highly unrealistic. the mega rich aren't going to just give up their treasured and powerful positions in society.



the things i list above are among the things that perpetuate the status quo. the perpetuation of the status quo is in the interest of the obscenely rich and powerful. to me this appears obvious, but if you can be more specific about what you want examples of, i'll certainly try.




your proposition suggests relative equal distribution of wealth. the existence of a suppressed proletariat allows the obscenely rich and powerful to maintain their position, quite simply.



the definition of proletariat, in the marxist sense at least, is the class of society that have no means of subsistence other than to sell their labour. certainly the poor, and perhaps sections of the middle class fit this description, yes. but obviously things are more complicated now than in marx's day. the rich certainly are proletaires, and upper middle class people who have borrowed beyond their means and need to work to survive don't either.



can you expand on this?



but capitalism can't work that way. it is founded upon the profit motive and upward mobility. in order for it to exist, their has to be an oppressed lower class. as stated elsewhere it can provide concessions for the lower and lower middle class, but never really to the detriment of the ruling classes.

and besides, classes are by definition antagonistic. the upper class relies on the domination of the lower class to perpetuate it's existence. this is a universal maxim of communism and anarchism, to destroy the class system.

and i don't see that anarchism is any more fixed than capitalism. quite the opposite in fact, as society is controlled by the people who comprise it and decision can be made on a local level to suit circumstance.




i'll have to truncate your post at this point but i'll try and get back to the rest of your points later today...

Do you think the disparities you see could at all be reflective of the disparities in human ability?


How do you get any kind of mass dialog when you won't even have a designated forum or someone to ration out who gets the floor, how long, and when? To even do that you have to give a certain people or even a few people the power or authorization to be arbitrators. Otherwise you have a whole bunch of people talking to each other anywhere and nothing coherent is coming of it, nor are the best points even necessarily ever meeting their best counterpoints.

Of course anarchists avec morals and ethics. And non-anarchists too. Problem is, some people don't, may they be anarchists or not.


Well so we can just try to make demcracy better.

It would help if we had a democracy to make better...

i'll answer the second half of your previous post before i look at your reply to my response to the first half of it...

firstly, meritocracy. capitalism as it is implemented in the modern western world doesn't represent meritocracy as it does not and never will provide equality of opportunity.

i'm not sure what you mean by middle and upper class job creation and how it relates to the discussion here.

the rich are the rich. self-made rich or not. the problem is disparity in distribution of wealth and resources, so they are as much of a problem as teh aristocracy (or whatever you call the perpetually rich in the us of a).



the uk has free health care for all. ok, it's not in a particularly good state at the minute, but this is in fact the fault of conservative policies introduced since the eighties in an attempt to make it more "market influenced".



these things are indeed problems. but the problem is that such demographics are neglected entirely because they are of little worth to the system.

on the issue of kids being taken away from parents, it happens fairly regularly in the uk and i believe in the us also. but the problem in general is poverty and lack of opportunity, both of which are not going to simply go away under the current system. no, they are more likely to become increasingly prevalent problems.



i'm unsure as to what you mean by this.



we have indeed throughout known history generally had poor systems of social organisation that have been more or less oppressive. but all of these eras and civilisations of which you speak are top down societies with a ruling class. are you suggesting that human nature dictates that wider human social organisation has the existence of a ruling class as a prerequisite?



i'm not saying human nature is benign. i'm saying human nature is widely varied, to the point that i believe it is difficult to pin down how much of it is human nature and how much of it is learned behaviour.

capitalism is partly responsible for scarcity in the current situation. it obviously must be when a tiny percentage of the population sits on a huge majority of the wealth. that much, i would think, should be fairly obvious to most.

anarchism is not a world system as such, a right of refusal is embodied in any truly anarchist philosophy. remember, the freedom from coercion is the first principle.



i self-consciously know very little about us politics. it's not something i follow to any great extent at all. so unfortunately this part of your post is largely lost on me. however, i would point out the hysteria that surrounded obama's elevation to the throne, and the disappointing dull thud that came of his reign.


i agree that revolutions need leaders. perhaps not in the same sense as you mean, though. but regardless, leaders, during a revolutionary phase, don't require to ascend to absolute authority, as befell the situation in russia.

as an example, i, and many others known to me, have no interest in folowing the charming and charismatic leaders of our contemporary society.



not to derail the conversation, but i and many others have deep reservations about the intervention of the west in the third world. as i recall you and i discussed gates before. as i say, i don't want the discussion to be derailed onto this huge topic, however it might be an interesting side point to spin off to a new thread?



capitalism, if you take it from it's origin as engels postulated, DID start as a top down system. the more influential and powerful members of the community laid claim on the surplus, and thousands of years later, here we are...



talking about credit cards is not talking about giving people actual, real and tangible responsibility for themselves and for their community. this is a false premise.



i do believe that people given should be given the privilege of earning respect from their peers for good works done, if you consider that meritocracy. i don't, however, believe that people should be rewarded materially to the detriment of others.



this is a hugely disparaging and discriminatory statement. especially given that it's likely that the majority of users of this forum would, under current legislation and social convention, be considered "mentally disabled". the "mentally disabled" need nothing more than a supportive, structured and stable environment in which to live. unfortunately by and large the current system deprives them of this, and they are at the mercy of paid employees who provide them with care. some of whom, i concede, are highly motivated, passionate and caring individuals worthy of praise. it is unfortunate, however, that some of them, a minority, perhaps, but still, a minority that, in a society that considers itself civilised, shouldn't exist, quickly develop contempt for those under their charge.

perhaps, before i go further, you could clarify what exactly you mean by "mentally disabled"?

much of the "don't have it in them", "lack of desire" or "won't" of which you speak is indeed the direct result of our current system. i know this from experience, working with such people on a daily basis, many of whom are very, very far from what the daily mail and it's ilk would have one believe.





anarchism isn't about giving an individual what they need to succeed. rather, it is about the success of the community en masse. regardless of how successful i am, it is always with a bitter taste if i risk being jumped on my way home from work by those whom society has failed.

and we aren't talking simply about political inclusion, we are talking about a level of meaning and worth in the life of a person.



it's not at all vacuous. the majority of people aren't equipped to handle real responsibility. and it is primarily because they grew up in surroundings that deprive them of real responsibility.

and your comment on the stratification of society seems somewhat prejudiced...



clearly, the obscenely wealthy tiny majority have their "hand on the joystick" to some extent. if not, you appear to be suggesting, based upon your earlier comments, that they are either simply grossly superior genetically than the rest of us, or it's all a matter of luck? seems unlikely.



i don't think it can be done. neither do i think your argument is particularly convincing. given that i share your atheism, hence my general outlook on the world.



the circumstances leading to it would be profoundly different from the circumstances that led to the last attempt at communism. but i agree with you to an extent. i think what would most certainly be required before any attempt at revolution would be the engagement and de-apathising of the masses.






i'll get back to your next post at some point, most likely tomorrow morning. i've had a skim over it.

explain how, exactly, this would be more of a problem in an anarchist society than in the society we live in at the present. i personally think it would be greatly less problematic.



perhaps, but given teh imbalance in power and wealth it seems highly, highly dubious that it would happen. but we can always dream, eh?