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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#anarchists #anarchy

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/

https://c4ss.org/

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Markets Not Capitalism

@strypey I think it's a confusing choice to use this term to describe these particular strands of libertarianism.
Traditionally left-libertarianism is broader than this and includes the older tradition of libertarian socialism, which is very much anti-market.

@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?

@strypey @wxhbxh IMO libertarian socialism is a very broad category that includes all forms of socialism in which the means of production are owned and controlled by workers, and states are minimal to nonexistent. So everything from libertarian communism to syndicalism to market socialism would qualify.

@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.

@KevinCarson1 it may also be worth clarifying that not all market socialism is libertarian either!
I don't think I'd call Yugoslavia under Tito libertarian in any meaningful sense, for example.
@wxhbxh True. Of course I wouldn't call it market socialism, since the dead hand of the Party and the state banks limited the actual role of workers in self-management so much.