Defending your status as "true anarchist"
Recently, I've posted some decently re-usable material on ASC (which not everyone saw because they were posted deep in threads not many visited) that might be useful if you ever get caught in a side argument over who's a "true anarchist". The first one is in the spirit of the spam solution rejection form letter and my statist idea rejection form letter. It's a form letter to keep you from having to build up the same arguments over and over. Note that it's kind of incomplete, and could use some input on the heterodoxies of the historical "true anarchists". I know I haven't listed everything, so if you can think of anything they believed that goes outside of what the "true anarchists" say that anarchists can believe, or any kind of improvment whatsoever, be sure to bring it up, on the forum or in an email to me. I know I haven't listed everything:
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You are trying deny certain
( ) individualists ( ) capitalists ( ) propertarians ( ) racists
the title of "true anarchist" due to their support of:
( ) wage labor
( ) interest
( ) rent
( ) profit
( ) inheritance
( ) alienability of certain rights
( ) division of labor
( ) marriage and/or family
( ) religion
( ) voluntary segregation
( ) egoism
( ) private defense agencies
( ) non-communal lifestyles
( ) markets and/or currency
( ) hierarchies and/or non-egalitarian arrangements
( ) non-violence
( ) violence
( ) sexual restraint
The following "true anarchists" would disagree with you and/or support some or all of the above:
( ) Pierre J. Proudhon (supported some forms of private property, limited interest, inheritance, unequal marriage, anti-Semitism, hated communism)
( ) Max Stirner (supported egoism)
( ) Josiah Warren
( ) Emma Goldman
( ) Voltairine de Cleyre
( ) Herbert Spencer
( ) Auberon Herbert
( ) Errico Malatesta (supported the right of secession and coexistence of different economic forms)
( ) Lysander Spooner (would not interfere in wage/profit contracts, supported private defence agencies)
( ) Benjamin Tucker (would not interfere in wage/profit contracts, supported private defense agencies)
( ) Peter Kropotkin (considered individualist anarchism part of anarchism)
( ) Mikhail Bakunin (supported anti-Semitism)
( ) Leo Tolstoy (supported non-violence, sexual restraint, renting out of land as long as the owner paid the community for the privilege)
( ) Murray Bookchin (supports radical voluntary decentralization)
The above beliefs are legitimately within the range of anarchist thought because:
( ) preventing the above from happening itself requires a hiearchy.
( ) the above ideas don't coerce anyone into going along.
( ) in the above system, anyone would be free to opt out.
( ) your system requires the same amount of violence to sustain.
( ) they merely differ on what constitutes a "ruler", which "true anarchists" debate anyway.
( ) they merely differ on the cause of concentrations of power, which "true anarchists" debate anyway.
( ) they merely differ on what the true value of someone's labor is.
( ) within the above proponent's desired system, you could set up whatever socialist arrangements you wanted; you merely couldn't coerce people into joining.
Your complaints are actually ironic because:
( ) you reject private ownership, yet claim the right to own a word.
( ) you are objecting to the non-violent actions of another, when normally you think non-violence justifies the act.
( ) you would probably consider Christians silly for claiming that their own sect was the only "true" form of Christianity.
( ) you readily admit that your system would require the agreement of a large fraction of the world while the above would not.
( ) rejecting private property ultimately justifies a "war for oil".
( ) propertarian objections to the State precede socialist objections historically (see Edmund Burke's A Vindication of Natural Society and Étienne de La Boétie's Discourse of Voluntary Servitude).
( ) declaring your allies to be enemies of the revolution is pretty Leninist.
Based on what you have posted, this is what I think of you:
( ) You need to take a less narrow view of what anarchism means.
( ) You have no right to complain, since you're a statist yourself.
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The other weapon in your arsenal is the "fish story" posted in the Wikipedia wars thread. It goes like this:
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For many years, the utility of fish in the oceans was rarely questioned until a seminal work, What is Sealife?, was published. In it the author, whom we'll call PP, strongly attacked sealife and advocated the extermination of it. He called himself an anicthist, from the Greek "an", meaning "absence of" and "icthus", meaning "fish".
His followers railed against fish, anemones, whales, sponges, barnacles, and many other ocean-dwellers.
Later on scientists found out that, contrary to how people used the term, a "whale" could not rightly be classified as a fish. They have hair. They breathe air into lungs. They breastfeed their young. They are warm-blooded. Their ancestors were even land-dwellers! That they happened to live in the ocean was not meaningful for scientists - they base their classifications on the structure of an organism, not where it resides.
Soon after, a new movement formed, whose proponents called themselves anictho-whalists. They considered themselves to be anicthists because of their thorough attacks on all fish. But they were very supportive of whales because, although one could easily be tempted to call them fish, they were clearly distinct.
Traditional anicthists were livid. "How can you support whales????" they asked. "You're spitting on the whole anicthist movement! Anicthists have always been strongly against all forms of sealife!"
"But," replied the anictho-whalists, "we're not claiming to be part of the traditional anicthist movement. And if you read any dictionary, which captures the normal usage of the term, you'll see we meet it because we're against fish."
"Oh, sure, if you want to narrowly rely on dictionaries to reflect meanings of words! "
"Um, yeah. And in fact, the original anicthists, like PP, defined anicthism in itself to be anti-fish, not anti-whale."
"That's because any moron who read What is Sealife? is going to walk away opposing whales, and only an idiot would think PP favored whales!"
"Of course he didn't favor whales - we're just saying he didn't define anicthism as anti-whale."
"What the hell is the difference anyway? How can you count something that LIVES IN THE OCEAN, HAS FINS, and even BREATHES UNDERWATER, as 'not a fish'?"
"There's nothing wrong with living in the ocean or having fins. It's the scales, the gills, the lack of hair that's a problem. And whales don't breathe underwater - that's a flawed inference based on a flawed understanding of an ocean tainted with fish. Just because an organism is underwater for a long time doesn't mean its breathing down there."
"Oh, and the sperm whale stays underwater for two hours without breathing, right?"
"YES!"
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For those that don't see the parallels, here is one possible translation:
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For many years, the utility of government was rarely questioned until a seminal work, What is Property?, was published. In it the author, whom we'll call PP, strongly attacked property and advocated the abolition of it. He called himself an anarchist, from the Greek "an", meaning "absence of" and "archon", meaning "ruler".
His followers railed against government, property, hierarchy, coercion, usury, and wage labor.
Later on economists found out that, contrary to how things appeared, laborers actually did earn their marginal value except in cases of artificial intervention. This is because if it were possible to exploit a surplus value, the labor would be bid away at a higher price. That some entrepreneurs do make profits was not meaningful for economists - they base their findings on average profit, not highest profit, which is never guaranteed.
Soon after, a new movement formed, whose proponents called themselves anarcho-capitalists. They considered themselves to be anarchists because of their thorough attacks on all rulers. But they were very supportive of private capital ownership because, although one could easily be tempted to call such owners rulers, they were clearly distinct.
Traditional anarchists were livid. "How can you support capitalism????" they asked. "You're spitting on the whole anarchist movement! Anarchists have always been strongly against all forms of hierarchy!"
"But," replied the anictho-whalists, "we're not claiming to be part of the traditional anarchist movement. And if you read any dictionary, which captures the normal usage of the term, you'll see we meet it because we're against government."
"Oh, sure, if you want to narrowly rely on dictionaries to reflect meanings of words! "
"Um, yeah. And in fact, the original anarchists, like PP, defined anarchism in itself to be anti-state, not anti-capitalism."
"That's because any moron who read What is Property? is going to walk away opposing capitalism, and only an idiot would think PP favored capitalism!"
"Of course he didn't favor capitalism - we're just saying he didn't define anarchism as anti-capitalist."
"What the hell is the difference anyway? How can you count something that PROMOTES INEQUALITY, HAS HIERARCHY, and even REQUIRES PEOPLE TO LIVE IN POVERTY, as 'not a ruler'?"
"There's nothing wrong with inequality or hierarchy in themselves. It's the forceful imposition of them that's a problem. And capitalism doesn't require people to live in poverty - that's a flawed inference based on a flawed understanding of a market tainted by states. Just because people live under poverty now doesn't mean the capitalist is causing it."
"Oh, so the plight of the working poor today has nothing to do with, say, capitalists treating them like dirt, right?"
"RIGHT!"
