Well then, in order to cut off that line of defense, I'd say that in a truly anarchic society, if some anarcho-capitalists decide to invent a form of money, there's nothing authoritarian about it. Anyone can choose to ignore it.

Money, in its origin, was entirely voluntary and an invention of private enterprise for private purpose.

WarOnIgnorance: See your post #59. I have never needed any fences replaced.

That's not how the first road emerged. In fact, that is historically but a recent development. The very first roads simply emerged spontaneously through continuous and concurrent use of the same way from A to B. The next phase was motivated by trade and warfare. Leaving warfatre aside, trade would remain an obvious incentive for better accessibility, but that needn't be in the context of capitalism.

As mentioned before, or elsewhere, a prerequisite for anarchism is general education, the real thing. Your community shows typical behaviour of uneducated people who have relinquished personal responsability to third parties. Their powerlessness is externalized through bitching. Real participative systems do not show this behaviour.

No, it's cultural artefact.

The Soviets ? The arch-authoritarians ? A perfect example of the failure of authority-based systems if you ask me. You appear to be amalgamating recent developments such as Parecon with classical anarchism.

Corrected. Scuse me.

Anarchism has nothing to do with anarcho-capitalism. As the word indicates itself AC is merely a variant of capitalism. Nothing is 'free' in anarchism, everything is collectively owned, and even the word 'owned' loses the connotations it has in a capitalist view.
Dropping the monetary system would actually be a giant leap forward. The money system reinforces inequality, slavery, exploitation, and so on. In a monetary system it is necessary to have poverty. Anarchism is not to the benefit of the happy few, but to all. And that includes the people that are momentarily exploited to make Western affluence possible.

Dirt pathways emerged spontaineously through continuous usage of any given way from A to B. These types of naturally produced 'roadways' are mostly useless for anything save animal powered vehicles.

But that's not the type of road we are talking about here. We want smooth pavement with guard-rails and helpful signage - and maintenance! That is the production of large scale enterprise. And if this isn't state financed through taxation, it MUST be a private consortium drawing tolls for usage. How else could such a thing exist/operate in an anarchic society?

And I must say, it really does look like you do propose for society to go backwards in time! We have to give up our cars and paved highways and vast telephone network? Perhaps take up horses and buggies again so we can trod new dirt pathways that require no upkeep or management? This is what seems necessary for anarchism to have any chance to function as a system.

Now this might be a darn good thing on environmentalist grounds, or with some utopian ideal of 'authenticity' by living off the land directly, but I respectfully submit that just won't cut it for our 6 billion planetary population!

Real participative systems only include willing participants.

And who's going to pay for and provide this large scale general education?

Are you using a Marxist-like law of history to say that capitalism must create the tools to enable the next evolution in the mode of production?

That is highly disputable.

Yes, authoritarians certainly, but the form of management they used was the committee. Those committees had huge authority, yes, but the core form of government in the USSR was exercised through the committee format.

This committee form of decision making is contrasted with both the entrepreneurial model and the democratic model which do not run necessarily by actual committee decisions.

I'm sorry. After re-reading what I quoted of your post re my reply, I realize that the reply was only directed at your comment about failure to see hierarchy as absolutely essential. And for that part, I'm assuming that people in any kind of community, or outside any community for that matter, are similar as far as their abilities and needs are concerned. I made no assumption as to values, only as to the tasks that any living organism, including Homo sapiens, needs to undertake in order to remain as a living organism.

Anyhow, values and morals are of course part of those needs since they seem to be the building blocks of social interaction. Values and morals varies, sure, as do diets and mating preferences, but the existence of values and morals is exactly the same no matter what people we look at.

What is materialistic inclination, anyhow? Do we say that the 1930 version of headhunters in Borneo were materialistically inclined? They apparantly collected artifacts that at least for the uninitiated seems totally materialistic. Others will probably be inclined to use other designations. And so, is our need for acquisition of material wealth really superfluous to our well-being and therefore, along several social detours, survival?

Firstly, I would suggest that you define what is beyond necessary for survival. As it is, you seem to be doing what I was just accused of myself, namely assuming the truth of a premise in order to argue the conclusion. Second, if acquisition of material wealth is able to make 6 billion people cooperate in one big community, I would rethink what it takes to incline people to cooperate.

I'll try to be a bit clearer: America is a hyper-materialistic society in which people are commonly referred to as consumers and a majority of the people are addicted to either one or more substances and/or to a wide range of behaviors, such as sexual intercourse, gambling, spending, etc. Addiction is antithetical of freedom, so a person who places great importance on freedom will therefore be averse to materialism, which is the root cause of addiction. Materialism fosters these types of disease because it trains people to think that human beings can find happiness via the acquisition of material wealth, which is not at all the case. The need for love, for example, cannot be satisfied with diamonds or fur coats.

As I previously stated, the sort of people who're inclined to live in an anarchist community are people who place great importance on freedom and would be averse to materialism and it's corresponding values. IMO, the simple fact of being free of materialism would confer a quality of mind that would lend itself to living in a society based on cooperation rather than the acquisition of material wealth.

Lastly, I'm not advocating Luddism. There's nothing wrong with enjoying the wealth of this world. What I'm speaking to is the tendency to become unbalanced, which in turn leads to disease.

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Is everything collectively owned or collectively used? It is really sounding like you are discussing anarcho-communism.

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This is EXACTLY what I'm also thinking.

I know government is bloated in a lot of areas, but it is necessary. There is no way you can get six billion people to operate in an orderly, rational fashion without some kind of regulations. We haven't even touched on how much more difficult religion would make this.

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Did WOI suggest that anarchy on a global scale is feasible at present?

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Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?

--Hunter S. Thompson

I've seen it (anarchism) work for limited periods on small projects e.g. I knew a group of women in the 1980s anti-nuke movement in Britain who'd drive out from Salisbury to lie down in the road in front of these when they popped out from Greenham Common - then a U.S. nuke airbase on British soil - to menace the former Soviet Union. The women caused the military a massive headache and helped enflame public opinion.



They used 'consensus decision making' (CDM) to reach decisions. They'd sit in a circle and debate matters until they all agreed. They were committed anti-nuke activists so had that in common to start with (limiting the opportunities for disagreements). But they'd fight over tactics and sometimes debate for hours until everyone was happy. In the end the USSR collapsed, the nukes left and the group - it's job done - broke up.

The main problem imv is the rejection of democracy by some (but not all) anarchists as a dispute resolution mechanism. It means organisations are paralysed while members wait for a consensus to emerge. As someone else said, you often can't wait - that bridge needs building NOW, that epidemic required a vaccine YESTERDAY...

The obvious way round the 'tyranny of the majority' problem – a major anarchist sticking point - is a vigorous bill of rights which guarantees fundamentals and is very hard to change. But many anarchos will still dig their heals in, and refuse to abide by collective decisions, even those lubricated with democracy. Groups containing such anarchists need mechanisms for dealing with them. They can’t just be allowed to freeload.

Both, but only the latter remains meaningful.
I'm arguing my line of anarchism. There are no obligatory aspects, safe for the obvious ones of no rulers, no hierarchies,... It's precisely this freedom for the individual that sets anarchism apart from hierarchical societies where submission of individuality is unavoidable.

Why the 'must' ? There are endless possibilities in between the State and the individual. It's perfectly possible to organize things on intermediary scales. It's only in totalitarian states that the State is the only other option. Much, if not most, of what people do presently is already on the intermediary scale. This very forum is an example. Much of it rests on voluntary cooperation. Or take the operating system Linux, which is a very large and succesful story, entirely based on voluntary cooperation. Torvalds keeps a bit of a say in kernel matters, but other than that it's a prime example of self-organization, without any financial incentive.

Please quote me on saying anything that would lead to this conclusion. None of the mentioned articles needs to be given up. Do we all have an interest in keeping these things ? I'd say yes, so there's your incentive to keep them in working order, or even to ameliorate them.
Having said that, some of the things that are deemed as 'progress' are untenable in the long run in any case. On a planet with limited resources the present way of life of the affluent will collapse, no matter what the sytem is. Anarchism is the most viable and humane alternative for when that collapse occurs. The alternative is anarchy

See above. The present system is no option either, especially with an ever growing population and subsequent taxation of resources.

Exactly.

Everyone who takes an interest in education, which should be just about everyone, if they're educated themselves.

LOL, no. The big hurdle is not the postrevolutionary organization. It's making people aware of their true potential. It's no accident I mentioned Nietzsche. What we need are people who are beyond the insecurity and self-effacement brought upon them by authoritarian systems.
And that is a challenge in any stage of history, regardless of what the current fad is.

Feel free to dispute. If submission to authority were an innate property of homo sapiens sapiens, how could the very concept of anarchism emerge in the first place ? Likewise for (classical) liberalism, which also curtails authority. In more than one sense, one can view anarchism as the logical advancement on liberalism. First we take the kings, then the aristocrats, and then the remaining ruling elite

Your classification of formats is not along lines that are relevant here. All three of them are still hierarchical. Any format used in anarchism would be basically different because it would not be based on authority. The Soviets were the enemy of anarchism in every way, including on the field of battle (Ukraine, Kronstadt).

Pray tell, where do you see this 'orderly, rational' fashion presently ? It's not there unless one takes a very selective view of global matters. Whole continents are subjected to plunder, hundreds of millions live on the brink of famine, the very habitat of the human species is jeopardized, wars that negatively affect hundreds of millions are started on the whim of an individual, or a handful of people. If that is the rational approach, I much prefer the 'irrational' one.