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?

(1/?)

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/

https://c4ss.org/

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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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