Thye non-hierarchial system has been tried: The greeks direct democracy and Communism. Neither of them worked. Human nature is not cut out for that kind of social structure. It's a very nice idea, but people don't naturally behave in that fasion in any sort of and organized setting. This is why, from the very beginnings there has always been a chief of some sort: even insects operate on that model.

Collectivism is fine. In the '60s they were called Communes. I suppose there are still some in existance today. The trouble is people's natural tendency toward politics. And when in times of crises, the natural tendency toward leadership is instinctual as well.

Anarchy, literally means "no ruler" and will always be a social concept nothing more.

I can very well appreciate the idea of utpoia, but if it were a part of human nature, then we'd have it. Don't forget, in this world, the most peaceful and uphoric environments are kept that way by a top-down system that has consequences for infrations.

I don't think that we, as a society, are ready for it now. But, I think one day, in a post-scarcity environment, something as close to it could possibly come about. It's all about improving our relations with each other and understanding - post conflict.

As an aside, since you brought up human (and animal) nature, I would recommend Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (online book) by Peter Kropotkin which builds on Darwin's theory about how cooperation is every bit as vital as competition - in fact, even more so. Kropotkin, in case you don't know, was born of royalty but developed his ideas on anarchism-communism and set about observing animal and human interaction to further his theories (excerpt below):

In the animal world we have seen that the vast majority of species live in societies, and that they find in association the best arms for the struggle for life: understood, of course, in its wide Darwinian sense – not as a struggle for the sheer means of existence, but as a struggle against all natural conditions unfavourable to the species. The animal species, in which individual struggle has been reduced to its narrowest limits, and the practice of mutual aid has attained the greatest development, are invariably the most numerous, the most prosperous, and the most open to further progress. The mutual protection which is obtained in this case, the possibility of attaining old age and of accumulating experience, the higher intellectual development, and the further growth of sociable habits, secure the maintenance of the species, its extension, and its further progressive evolution. The unsociable species, on the contrary, are doomed to decay.

I also really recommend the link in my signature. If anything, it's at least interesting.

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I Will certainly take a look at your link. As to the future, I agree. There are too many people and we are growing. I think that the future will hold changes of the type you advocate: we're going to have be more cooperative and cultures are mixing so fast that governments are going to have to change to keep up with it.

I think plenty of people fully comprehend Marxism but they aren't stupid people. They comprehend that the poster for said Marxism is a crock of shit.

Its astounding how the propaganda for Marxism, communism, socialism etc is a bunch of people with smiles on their faces, when in reality the products of those societies ran to the US with a quckness.

All forms of socialism don't work.

Controlled economies don't work.

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Sic Semper Tyrannis



[/b]the left is always wrong[b[



http://www.myspace.com/swoop187muzic

You proved his/her point.

The discussion wasn't about how Marxism works (in fact, I'm not a supporter of Marxism). The discussion was about Anarchism vs. Marxism, there similarities and there differences. No one was talking about "controlled economies." Yet another straw man.

Ironic.

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You know whats ironic? Anarchism.

All brands of ideology has structure and well, Anarchism lacks structure.

Furthermore, anarchy are polar opposites.

* "No rulership or enforced authority." [1]
* "Absence of government; a state of lawlessness due to the absence or inefficiency of the supreme power; political disorder."[2]
* "A social state in which there is no governing person or group of persons, but each individual has absolute liberty (without the implication of disorder)."[3]
* "Absence or non-recognition of authority and order in any given sphere."[4]

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I dont comprehend how 'fairness' is synonymous with anarchy.

All forms of political social ideology is based on structure hence anarchy cant be compared to any of them..

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Sic Semper Tyrannis



[/b]the left is always wrong[b[



http://www.myspace.com/swoop187muzic

That's a problem when you try to apply dictionary definitions instead of philosophical definitions. There's plenty of information out there on what anarchism is ... hell, I've provided links (and the link in my signature). If you want to argue from a position of ignorance, that's your dime. Have at it.

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As I've mentioned before, I lean towards a Mutualist vision of an anarchist society (though I have some collectivist leanings as well), I thought it would be important to supply an introduction (online book) on what Mutualism is:

INTRODUCTION

Mutualism, as a variety of anarchism, goes back to P.J. Proudhon in France and Josiah Warren in the U.S. It favors, to the extent possible, an evolutionary approach to creating a new society. It emphasizes the importance of peaceful activity in building alternative social institutions within the existing society, and strengthening those institutions until they finally replace the existing statist system. As Paul Goodman put it, "A free society cannot be the substitution of a 'new order' for the old order; it is the extension of spheres of free action until they make up most of the social life."

Other anarchist subgroups, and the libertarian left generally, share these ideas to some extent. Whether known as "dual power" or "social counterpower," or "counter-economics," alternative social institutions are part of our common vision. But they are especially central to mutualists' evolutionary understanding.

Mutualists belong to a non-collectivist segment of anarchists. Although we favor democratic control when collective action is required by the nature of production and other cooperative endeavors, we do not favor collectivism as an ideal in itself. We are not opposed to money or exchange. We believe in private property, so long as it is based on personal occupancy and use. We favor a society in which all relationships and transactions are non-coercive, and based on voluntary cooperation, free exchange, or mutual aid. The "market," in the sense of exchanges of labor between producers, is a profoundly humanizing and liberating concept. What we oppose is the conventional understanding of markets, as the idea has been coopted and corrupted by state capitalism.

Our ultimate vision is of a society in which the economy is organized around free market exchange between producers, and production is carried out mainly by self-employed artisans and farmers, small producers' cooperatives, worker-controlled large enterprises, and consumers' cooperatives. To the extent that wage labor still exists (which is likely, if we do not coercively suppress it), the removal of statist privileges will result in the worker's natural wage, as Benjamin Tucker put it, being his full product.

Because of our fondness for free markets, mutualists sometimes fall afoul of those who have an aesthetic affinity for collectivism, or those for whom "petty bourgeois" is a swear word. But it is our petty bourgeois tendencies that put us in the mainstream of the American populist/radical tradition, and make us relevant to the needs of average working Americans. Most people distrust the bureaucratic organizations that control their communities and working lives, and want more control over the decisions that affect them. They are open to the possibility of decentralist, bottom-up alternatives to the present system. But they do not want an America remade in the image of orthodox, CNT-style syndicalism.

Mutualism is not "reformist," as that term is used pejoratively by more militant anarchists. Nor is it necessarily pacifistic, although many mutualists are indeed pacifists. The proper definition of reformism should hinge, not on the means we use to build a new society or on the speed with which we move, but on the nature of our final goal. A person who is satisfied with a kinder, gentler version of capitalism or statism, that is still recognizable as state capitalism, is a reformist. A person who seeks to eliminate state capitalism and replace it with something entirely different, no matter how gradually, is not a reformist.

"Peaceful action" simply means not deliberately provoking the state to repression, but rather doing whatever is possible (in the words of the Wobbly slogan) to "build the structure of the new society within the shell of the old" before we try to break the shell. There is nothing wrong with resisting the state if it tries, through repression, to reverse our progress in building the institutions of the new society. But revolutionary action should meet two criteria: 1) it should have strong popular support; and 2) it should not take place until we have reached the point where peaceful construction of the new society has reached its limits within existing society.

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