Anarchists Who Took the Commuter Train
longreads.com
longreads.com
- An example is May 1st, international workers day which was inspired by the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago.
- Another example is the Republican party! which was started by Socialists in Wisconsin.
- Or the fact that Abraham Lincoln corresponded with Marx (most Americans read Marx at the time) and one of his army generals distributed the communist manifesto to the public during the civil war.
- The writings of Thomas Paine were incredibly popular in the USA and abroad.
- Russian Anarchists like Tolstoy was inspired by American Quackers, who later inspired Gandhi.
- Influential thinkers like Chomsky and David Graeber are alive and American.
The connections are deep!
Read Tolstoy. He was chiefly inspired by the Quakers' nonviolence. In reality, the Quakers themselves were a heavily Republican group (insofar as they identified with government force at all).
While there are left-wing inspired (and somewhat developmental) incidents throughout US history, I wouldn't characterize the situation as either "strong" or "erased." On the contrary, the U.S. has accepted many people fleeing from failed or failing socialist states, which may affect the local popular understanding of true left-wing ideology.
Full disclosure: I grew up Quaker. The Quakers I knew were more like this fellow than Herbert Hoover or Nixon:
My point stands. The case that history has been forgotten by the left, in particular, is not made by false-mirror nor the article in question. It is implied that the left has some unique amnesia.
For what purpose, we are left to speculate.
Historically, anarchists have always fought authoritarianism. Anarchism often seems vague as an ideology because its foundation is not an ideal, but the rejection of the values that are at the core of the fascist ethos.
see also James C. Scott: "The Art of Not Being Governed, An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia" https://libcom.org/files/Art.pdf
YN Harari also makes that point by the way in his book.
Either God or the state of New Jersey appears to have a pretty dark sense of humor.
I... assume this is a typo? I had to reread a few times.
Later on, communists and anarchists would part ways, mostly during the Russian revolutions even though some diverged earlier.
But make no mistake, there is very little ambiguity in most historical anarchist movements: their ideals are socialists. The reason why a lot of them they rejected communism was not because of their socialist ideals, but because of the policies they implemented in practice, that were very authoritarian. Anarchists were very early considered political opponents by USSR. Censorship for instance is totally incompatible with anarchism.
While many people are aware of the anarchist influence and success leading to the Spanish Civil War, much less well known is the large anarchist region established in southern Ukraine fifteen years earlier, between 1917 - 1922.
This was centered around the figure of Nestor Makhno.[1] The armed forces defending this area had great success defeating various White armies and were allied with the Bolsheviks. Unfortunately, the Bolsheviks ultimately betrayed and destroyed the Makhnovshchina.
The utility of the term "anarchy" to mean "a nonexistent state" is actually an incredibly useful label, as the next closest approximation to that definition is probably the equally loaded "libertarian," so it's very unfortunate that it's effectively made to be synonymous with "radical socialism" in practice. We already have a descriptor for that: radical socialism. Why can't anarchy just mean the absence of a collective mandate?
Anarchy means "without rule", not merely "without the state". Please read up on the history of anarchism. Further, it's worth learning how capitalism without the state cannot exist in any meaningful sense. There are plenty of anarchist authors you can read on this point.
In regards to capitalism, there is a different discussion altogether. Very simply stated: capitalism is not a prescriptive ideology, it is effectively synonymous with "free exchange of time or resources among consenting transactors." While a central authority to enforce that people don't steal is a mechanism to stabilize a system of any kind, including capitalism, it is by no means necessary for a capitalist system to exist.
The best way to conceptualize capitalism is as an infinite number of procedural states instantiated between consenting individuals. I choose to work as an engineer for my current employer for the rate that they offered, and that is a procedural state that we've both consented to. No central authority is required to enforce this. If they don't pay me, I'll leave. If I'm not good at my job, they won't pay me. If a group of individuals decide that they'd like to collectivize their incentives and work on a commune together, the lack of prescriptive mandate present in capitalism is precisely what allows them to do so. You can structure your arrangements with other individuals exactly as you see fit, and the degree to which you are limited in your capacity to do so is what a capitalist would argue is the degree to which your system falls short of being a capitalist system.
For such a system to be easily associated with a term that claims to mean "without rule" is pretty understandable. It just turns out that the people that choose to as "anarchist" tend to like quite a bit of rules.
No. Both economists (even "bourgeois" ones) and sociologists disagree with this as a definition of capitalism. Please read up on the history of capitalism, which is a specific mode of production which arose in Western Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. People were freely exchanging and consenting to transactions before the advent of capitalism.
>The best way to conceptualize capitalism is as an infinite number of procedural states instantiated between consenting individuals.
Why would it be the "best way"? In fact, it seems like a very strongly ideological way which starts by conceiving society as merely an accumulation of individuals who then begin networking, rather than individuals which arise out of an already networked society. This is wonderfully convenient for the subjectivist-individualist viewpoint. On the point of consent, simply because one consents it does not mean that what is happening is morally right - indeed many slaves consented. Frederic Lordon in Marx and Spinoza on Desire elaborates the meaninglessness of consent when it comes to what we need to live and survive.
>If a group of individuals decide that they'd like to collectivize their incentives and work on a commune together
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the plight of the anarchists - not only is it an individualized situation which could not possibly extend to everyone, but it also insists that localised groups must still engage in the system of capital accumulation, at the very least to pay taxes. In anarcho-capitalist society they'd probably have to pay to rent land too.
>It just turns out that the people that choose to as "anarchist" tend to like quite a bit of rules.
Rules are not rulers.
That point aside, to take your point that "People were freely exchanging and consenting to transactions before the advent of capitalism." People were also successfully having babies before we knew how sperm fertilized eggs. Of course free exchange of resources existed before the formal definition of capitalism, the free exchange of resources is the foundation for society, but you're being beyond obtuse if you're looking to define capitalism as anything other than the laissez-faire free market. If you wanted to argue against a capitalist on the basis of whatever academic definition you're going off of, and that isn't what you effectively mean by the term, then you are very likely to be arguing about incongruent concepts altogether. And if you simply cannot accept my definition of capitalism, then please substitute the term with "laissez-faire free markets" wherever you see it in my argument, and please make your arguments accordingly.
This seems like you're being willfully ignorant of what capitalism actually means and using "academic" as a pejorative, as if for some reason actually gaining knowledge about the topic shouldn't be considered valid knowledge. Would you say the same thing about how mathematicians define "real numbers"? That it is merely an academic exercise? It is a term of art in economics and sociology, it does not describe merely a system of free exchange in general. Capitalism includes the concept of free exchange but it is not defined only as such. It's also not even used in the way you're using it, as an ideological descriptor - a capitalist is a very particular kind of person, in particular one who owns capital. It is not equivalent to "socialist" in this regard.
The arguments against capitalism generally also apply to "laissez-faire free markets", but other than that, a "laissez-faire free market" could not exist without capital due to the development of technology in the modern world.
Sure our ability to mitigate things like physical violence tends to benefit greatly from collectivizing interests, and at that point a distinction from a state is a blurry concept, but that is a problem that simply exists in any system.
Consensual transactions between individuals, however, are enough to provide an unbelievably stable society, without any need for central authority. Enforcement of the integrity of contracts can be enforced by the integrity and reputation of the individuals involved in a transaction. The fact that I continue to be employable, for example, is on the basis of my capabilities and reputation, and the degree to which I engage in behaviors contrary to my own positive perception would negatively impact my ability to continue transacting in good faith with others. At no point is a central authority or mandate a necessary component in the primary dynamics of these relations.
This is not the entire scope of the disputes that will arise nor the remedies that would apply nor the extent of the problem with this idea of yours.
For example, if a patient engages a doctor for a health remedy, and that remedy does harm to the patient, what is the remedy? If the remedy is that the doctor must compensate the patient for the harm, how does the patient prevent the doctor from reneging on the compensation? How is it decided whether compensation is due?