A true anarchist is not a knee-jerk reactionary against social convention for it's own sake. Not the one who screams 'no rules!', while trying to make everyone else follow theirs.
An anarchist has a code, a set of rules they hold themselves to, not anyone else. An anarchist is one who asks; 'who made this rule, and what purpose does it serve?' before deciding whether or not to follow it.
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An anarchist does not drive on the opposite side of the road just because what side to drive on has a rule. But they might treat a red light as a stop sign when there's little or no traffic.
Like models, rules are never universally right, but some are useful. Good rules are guidelines, that help keep us safe. Not policies to be policed, regardless of the likely outcome.
Following rules because they're rules is recorded in history as "just following orders". We know where that leads.
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A couple of days ago I posted about what being an anarchist means to me. Obviously given the way I defined it, I can't determine what it means for anyone else. A contradiction, yes. But one that holds space for flexible ways of understanding that can better respond to our constantly shifting situations.
One thing my freedoms-based definition didn't address though, was how I apply it to political economy. For example, do I believe that all legitimate anarchist politics is anticapitalist?
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So one thing I want to clarify is that although I see "anarcho-capitalism" as just fascism with better branding (Peter Thiel being an archetypal example of where it leads), I do accept that a person can be right-leaning economically, and still be an anarchist.
But there are limits, beyond which this becomes a contradiction in ways that are universalizing, and inflexible (again think of the neoreactionaries defending the freedom to deny others freedom).
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When people claim that property is an inalienable right - like freedoms of expression or association are - then "property is theft", as Proudhon famously put it. But as long as they accept that property is a social agreement, subject to negotiation and consensus, then "property is freedom" (a lesser known quote from Proudhon).
Having said that, being open to the idea of a place for markets in a free society does *not* make an anarchist right-leaning. It just makes them not a Stalinist.
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There is an entire movement of 'left-libertarians', anarchists who are pro-markets (or at least not anti-markets), but who understand themselves as part of a broader anticapitalist movement on the left. Examples;
https://marketsnotcapitalism.com/
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Left-libertarian is not a common term in Aotearoa, which I think is a shame. Because a lot of the principled, green-voting libertarians I met in the Pirate Party NZ see themselves as right-leaning, because they're pro-markets.
There's certainly no place for them in the bloody-minded, Marxist-Bakuninist groups who tend to dominate 'Big-A' anarchist movements here. For whom even I'm not left-wing enough to be trusted, or reliably welcome in their spaces.
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Again, this is a shame. Not to mention a strategic weakness for the left as a whole, because it leaves large swathes of young libertarians politically homeless. At risk of being recruited as Useful Idiots for ACT, and now also the Taxpayers Onion, the Free Speech Onion, and other reputation launderers for technofascism.
('Onion' because they're not unions in any meaningful sense of the word, and there are many layers obscuring what's really at their core)
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I joined Pirate Party NZ partly to build a home for kiwis with nascent left-libertarian leanings. But the source of PPNZ's utter tactical failure was not just being outmaneuvered by the deep pockets of Kim DotCom's Internet Party. Although in hindsight it seems clear that this was at least part of its purpose.
(Internet Party = "IP"; the clue to their anti-Pirates agenda was right there in the name, and in KDC's ongoing refusal to publish full code for his platforms under free licenses)
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The terminal flaw of the Pirate Party NZ project is that electoral politics is a dead end in NZ, unless you ally with an established party or Parliamentarian. Even with the significant resources of a Gareth Morgan or KDC, no new party has entered the NZ Parliament under MMP without a current MP involved;
* The Alliance had an ex-Labour MP
* Winston First
* United Future was formed as United, by MPs from both legacy parties
* Greens had 2 Alliance MPs
* Māori Party had Dame Tariana
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As I argued at the time, PPNZ would have been better to run only electorate candidates, and focus mainly on being a NORML of tech politics. An umbrella for a range of public campaigns for regulatory reform, and against reactionary tech proposals by Parliamentarians.
Essentially what I tried and mostly failing to do with Disintermedia.net.nz. Before facing reality and embracing its emergent nature as a blog and wiki-farming operation run by me, with support from allies.
But I digress ...
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Point is, the political homelessness of left-leaning kiwi libertarians is a problem I've wanted to see solved for a long time. With many new organising tools available, and the political winds changing unpredictably, I think it's time to try again.
If you're resident in Aotearoa (or part of the kiwi diaspora and still care about our activist politics), and you can see yourself standing under a left-libertarian banner at a public protest (with or without Guy Fawkes mask), get in touch!
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What I have in mind is an E2EE, private Matrix group where we can gather and start discussions. But there's no point starting a group space without a founding group, and I'm open to other ideas.
I did consider starting a community on Lemmy.social or PieFed.social. But much as I love the threadiverse, a Matrix room and its archives aren't tied to the apron strings of any 1 service. It's important we can speak freely, without any risk of a service operator being pressured to muzzle us.
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None of the existing threadiverse tools offer encrypted conversations. So an admin can always read them, even in a private community. Even if we trust them not to under normal circumstances, or they're a member of the group anyway, which would be the ideal.
Then, because a community remains permanently tied to the service where it's started, the admin of that service could be threatened with legal action (or kompromat) if they don't spy on us. I don't want anyone to be in that position.
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If I hear from at least 2 other people who feel really strongly that our country's political landscape needs this, it might be a goer. If at least a handful of others are willing to be part of the founding conversations, I think we can create something useful.
The initial conversations will need to define the principles, goals, initial structure, and so on. But that doesn't mean we can't address current events as a group from day O, within the limits of what a formless swarm can do.
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@light
> I have registered the domain 'reasonable.zone' and drafted it's rules/principles
Sounds like you'd fit in on LessWrong;
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bJ2haLkcGeLtTWaD5/welcome-to-lesswrong
> I wish there was a political party in this country that I could be sure shared my civil libertarian ideology
As many of my fellow Pirates found, the NZ Greens have been consistently better on both civil liberties and tech rights issues than our equivalent of the LibDems (ACT). Have you looked into the UK Greens since Zack became leader?
@strypey
>Sounds like you'd fit in on LessWrong;
I probably would actually. I'm not sure why I haven't joined yet.
>Have you looked into the UK Greens since Zack became leader?
Not really. I'm a bit disillusioned with politics after not getting any responses to my emails to my MP. I did get a response from that lord though, which was surprising.
@light
> What do you think?
I think you answered your own question when you said;
> That's not really enforceable, though
Not in an objective way. But you can put it in the ToS/ Rules of Engagement or whatever you call the founding manifesto. The great thing about being a moderator is, if you know it when you see it, you can moderate on that basis. People can squawk all they want, but at the end of the day, they're on your lawn ; )
@tijl
> labor market, informal community trade and community task/process coordination
Have you talked to any of the people building software around #ValueFlows? @bhaugen and @lynnfoster are the OGs there. This is what @Bonfire seems to be mainly about. IIRR my first contact with @mayel (1 of the core devs) was as the dev of a web platform for community timebanks (Ora?).
@wxhbxh
> Traditionally left-libertarianism is broader than this and includes the older tradition of libertarian socialism, which is very much anti-market
@KevinCarson1 would you like to field this one?
@KevinCarson1 agree. I don't think left-libertarian excludes what's being discussed here, only that it includes more than just market socialism, so is slightly misleading to equate them.
All libertarian socialism is left-libertarian in the original sense of the word libertarian. Before the term became synonymous with right-libertarianism (a trend associated with the rise of the Libertarian Party in the US), it described a lack of top-down control moreso than any particular stance on markets.
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Kevin might reply when his timezone hits daytime, or when time allows, or he may not. So I'll have a go.
@wxhbxh
> Traditionally left-libertarianism is broader than this and includes the older tradition of libertarian socialism
Intriguing. Got a reference that shows 'left-libertarian' being used as a catch-all as you suggest? The first time I came across 'left-libertarian' was in the context of the links I posted in the thread; 'left' as adjective, modifying 'libertarian' as a noun.
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'Libertarian socialist' I'm familiar with, but in this construction, 'libertarian' is the adjective, 'socialism' is the noun. These were socialists, arguing against the authoritarian direction of their Marxist comrades. Whereas the 'left-libertarians' are pro-market libertarians, arguing against the authoritarian direction of their Smithist (and increasingly Friedmanist) fellow-thinkers.
The two are adjacent and natural anticapitalist allies, but coming in from opposite directions.
@strypey I usually try to avoid using Wikipedia as a reference, but they have a fair amount of the history and their own references for further reading so I think it's appropriate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-libertarianism
For specific examples, iirc Bookchin uses the word libertarian in the manner described in the article in The Ecology of Freedom, though I don't have a page reference handy.
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@wxhbxh
> Bookchin uses the word libertarian in the manner described in the article
We seem to be speaking at cross-purposes. See the second post of those 2.
I'm aware that 'libertarianism' is a leftist tradition, a philosophical commons that the corporatist right has been trying to enclose since the 1980s (what genuine pro-market libertarians call 'paleo-libertarianism'). This is the core point of "left-libertarian" as an identifier.
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The use of 'libertarian' by anarchists is much older than Bookchin. The founding writers of left-libertarianism reference Spooner and Tucker. Who were individualist anarchists, but nevertheless saw themselves as adapting a left-wing anticapitalist tradition to the US of their time.
*Not* as defenders of capitalism, like the corporatists who have appropriated the term 'libertarian'. With plenty of assistance from the authoritarian left, and Useful Idiots on the libertarian end of the left
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But AFAIK "left-libertarian", as a construction, starts in about the 1980s. As an attempt to push back against that appropriation by the corporatist right. If you've got references that show this particular phrasing being used before then - not just libertarian as a leftist tradition but *left-libertarian* specifically - I'd very much like to see them.
@strypey
I gave you the link you asked for, demonstrating commonly accepted usage.
I never suggested Bookchin was the first to use either term and your explanatory monologue is unnecessary and insulting.
I find your shifting of goalposts strange.
If we agree that "left-libertarian" reacts to laissez-faire right wing use of the term as you've stated, the rest is semantics.
Excluding what you call "big A" (social anarchism) requires first ceding "libertarian" to the right. We shouldn't.
@wxhbxh we seem to be in heated agreement here. I'm sorry you're bothered by my offering some detailed context, to try and identify where we agree, and if there are actually any important disagreements to explore. No offence was intended.
Can I ask what you wanted to get out of replying in this thread? Did you get it yet? If not, how might I help with that?
But please save the flamethrower for fascists. We're all allies here, and we don't have the numbers to lose people to friendly fire.
@strypey thanks, I appreciate it.
My point was merely to remark that the exclusion of anti-market social anarchism seemed strange.
Didn't come in seeking to debate or to deny the legitimacy of your approach, apologies if I gave that impression.
I think diversity in tactics and theories of change is great to have, and FWIW I agree that we could use more diversity of thought on the left in Aotearoa.
Sectarian squabbles OTOH we could do with less of, I'm sorry that's been your experience.
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@wxhbxh
> Sectarian squabbles OTOH we could do with less of, I'm sorry that's been your experience
Thanks. On that note, the post I just made Quote Posting your somewhat heated post (I guess expressing frustration?) was just using it as an example of a style of discourse, it was *not* intended as an attack on you personally.
> My point was merely to remark that the exclusion of anti-market social anarchism seemed strange
Sorry I'm confused. What did you think was I excluding it from?
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My point was kind of the opposite. That it's strange and counterproductive that big-A anarchist groups tend to demonise and exclude anarchists who are anticapitalist but pro-markets, or even markets-agnostic (co-op folks, etc). I've never seen a good reason for this, and as I say, we don't have the numbers to be so sectarian.
Side note: I've been forgetting to pluralise 'markets'. A serious omission, as it subtly but significantly changes the sense of what's being said. I'll fix that now
@strypey thanks for the clarification
Was confused at the notification. 😅
Stressing I was only ever seeking to broaden tents, not police borders (I expect neither of us a fan of those) :)
I read your post as seeking to define the term in question more narrowly than I understood it. 🤷🏻♀️
Is a fine difference of opinion to have.
I was only upset by the manner of argument, not the (minor and inconsequential) disagreement.
And consider the issue resolved tbc
P.s. I much prefer Kropotkin to Marx
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@wxhbxh
> I was only ever seeking to broaden tents, not police borders (I expect neither of us a fan of those)
From your lips to my ears ; )
> I was only upset by the manner of argument
Sorry about that. I'm autistic and tend to react to confusing social interactions with infodumps, which are often interpreted as patronising lectures : { But that's absolutely the opposite of the intention, it's discursive bridge-building all the way.
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@wxhbxh
> I much prefer Kropotkin to Marx
The Prince is cool, but Proudhon is probably more capable of going toe-to-toe with old Karl IMHO. If I had to classify myself using the Economist-Implementer format, and old bearded white anarchists, I'd probably go with Proudonist-Gaeberist (not a great fan of Bakunin TBH).
I do respect Kropotkin's writing greatly though, as a forefunner of libertarian ecology, and even a lot of the network theory we use in analysing the fediverse, etc.
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@wxhbxh
> Would be remiss not to acknowledge the irony of my referencing Bookchin in a discussion of pointless sectarianism
Away with your social anarchism! We're all lifestyle anarchists in here. Go away or we'll hurl bagels at you from our side of the unbridgeable chasm : P
FWIW reading Anarchy After Leftism (Bob Black's rebuttal of Bookchin the Elder's pamphlet) was a huge influence on my thinking, as was Hakim Bey's TAZ etc.
@strypey I do respect Bookchin's theoretical work and agree with a good deal of his thought, but it's a shame that he never seemed to quite shake off the suspicion that fellow leftists were in league with the fascists he spent his youth fighting.
Re Kropotkin: if we're picking beyond the horizon of white-bearded philosophers of the Victorian era, then people like Fanon, Davis, Butler, Agamben more influential on my day-to-day political thinking.
Strypey
Light
~Tijl
Erin Church 
🏳️⚧️
Kevin Carson