Sure. Leaving out also 'Singularity' which can be interpreted several ways.
As I understand it Proudhon is recognized as the first to call himself an Anarchist - because he called himself that where other people used the word only in the derogatory sense of someone who didn't like the government and had no better solution that to try and assassinate it. Thats how the word had been used and still is popularly, such as in the game Civilization which depicts Anarchy as a brief period of chaotic in-fighting.
"Absence of government; a state of lawlessness due to the absence or inefficiency of the supreme power; political disorder."Even a cursory review of Proudhon will show that instead he held it up as the ideal. Remember, he was a contemporary of Lenin (they were friends but had a falling out), and rejected violent means (rejected Lenin's revolution). So now that there was a term for a government of voluntary commonsense community people started seeing where it applied and it turned out
it could apply strongly or weakly all over the place, for instance in anthropology circles talking about the way primitive tribes were and are.
Proudhon said,
"Whoever lays his hand on me to govern me is a usurper and tyrant, and I declare him my enemy" also:
...
"Then what are you?"
"I am an anarchist."
"Oh! I understand you; you speak satirically. This is a hit at the government."
"By no means. I have just given you my serious and well-considered profession of faith. Although a firm friend of order, I am (in the full force of the term) an anarchist.So first of all there is a difference between "chaos and looting" as Anarchy - which is still Anarchy, but just like Democracy as "voting for selfish benefit and against disliked others" its also has its ideal and deliberate form.
Among the list of things the professed Anarchist believes in there are several common themes.
Voluntariness/mutuality/common-sense cooperation : necessary things where no one is forcing the matter, bureaucratizing (ritualizing/habitualizing) ... telling everyone what to do.
Chomsky doesn't say a lot and I think rightly leaves the matter fairly open - politics lends itself to both cynics and the OCD crowd who adore rulemaking so there's always someone around to say it won't work either because of (their opinion of) human nature or because they can't see what a blank rule book means. So there are usually two arguments for Anarchy attacking these points. 1) That human nature is capable of orderly Anarchy (we don't need to be told what to do) 2) That we would figure out what needed doing and do it as opposed to constructing or adopting a hierarchy of people who supposedly know these things, who would then hire managers and so on and eventually create a policy and law that everyone must live by. In Anarchy there's a lot of room for discretion, but it reduces every political question to what actual people need and want, to individual thought and conduct.
My position is not strange to any of these concepts of Anarchy, but I focus mainly on the fact that it rests on the individual rather than network of relationships. I say that what people who are not Anarchists want is basically OCD and ignorance because my opinion of human nature is that wherever it is not self-improving it is essentially incoherent. So, the only people who want a scaffold of rules are rule makers and the only people who accept rules are intellectually passive. These people use rules in the way an adolescent uses GI Joes and Barbies - as if this world were full of minions to be dressed up and ordered about. At any rate it comes down to whatever it is people do to avoid doing things they regret or get resented for - while at the same time getting things done. Doubt it as you like on whatever grounds its really just a matter of people not finding it very interesting to mess with other people because they can take care of themselves without pushing other people around. Everyone else is insane, but should they take it upon themselves to improve their lot with their given assets they would find that not only do they not need what other people have, but that as long as we're cooperating we all have more than we really need and the possibilities are enormous.
Systems of cooperation depend on the cooperation - not on the system. At the point at which everyone is cooperative you can make a rule or not, but it doesn't have the same over-seer character. It should not generate a bureaucracy, it should not generate a hierarchy, if it does it is diverging from cooperation and must be reviewed on that basis, but generationally its always the same deal. There are no rules, people don't inherit laws from the previous generation, everything depends on the individual first and second on their degree and manner of cooperating.
Libertarian Minarchy is Anarchistic because it reduces rulership-clutter, that is; the confusion and disconnection brought on by overdeveloped bureaucracies. We might not know who to talk to, we might have forms to fill out, and ultimately they might get filed in the shredder. This is not cooperating.
There are other positive uses of the term civilization, famously, Gandhi, when asked about "Western Civilization" replied he thought it would be a good idea. To be civil is to operate with at least minimal degree of cooperativeness - to not kill people and take their stuff for instance. Your depictions of civilization as parasitic power structures describes the habitual and enforced form of civility, which is unnatural and tends toward the bureaucratic. But the question here is about people and human nature and social conduct which is wide open, but certainly enough - where people cooperate they benefit, where they don't they fight. Really, the highest form of civilization is voluntary cooperation. Not that you could depend on it habitually or that by it we are fed, but it all comes from what in psychology is called being 'social' and what is in philosophy being enlightened and is in pragmatic terms being of use to yourself in terms of happiness and cooperation with others.
"Anarchists are those who advocate the absence of the state, arguing that common sense would allow people to come together in agreement to form a functional society allowing for the participants to freely develop their own sense of morality, ethics or principled behaviour." - Wiki
There are permutations into political systems which we could talk about, Anarcho-syndicalism and the rest. There are permutation into philosophy which we could talk about, how to not be insane for instance. But Anarchy is first and primarily voluntary cooperative effort, as soon as it becomes a system Anarchists need to watch very carefully to avoid making it a habit or something imposed.
Beyond this review also sits the debate about whether or not any sort of approach to Anarchy is possible because either people are insane and don't realize the all-around benefit of an equality commonwealth, or because people are passive and can't stop hitting the Statism button over and over even though it always leads to the same results - its just like alcoholism, it makes people numb, it makes people surly and violent, it makes people selfish and unduly proud etc. Money isn't even an issue in Anarchy, if people go into an Anarchy with stratified wealth as we have today it either wouldn't be long before they'd invested it all - assuming they are decent Anarchists you wouldn't need to steal from them. All questions about how a system-less system would work depend on realizing the cooperation aspect. Once you have cooperation and insist on it being voluntary, then you can work out with what you have what you need and how to get it.
Minarchy is a characterization of a political goal not a matter of nostalgia.
We are not trying to return to the 19th century, but fulfill the timeless goals of all political progress. It isn't nostalgia. Far from it, Anarchy abandons all sorts of tradition.
Property and wealth in an Anarchy is meaningless except as a relative matter of nations and foreign trade. Internally, there's no need or want that a sane person can ask for that can't be accommodated somehow eventually provided cooperation. In political discussion we often speak of abundance as a far off goal, but we've had abundance for a long time, we just don't consider ourselves part of a equality commonwealth - which is all well and fine if what you want to do is devour your nation and move toward a civil war. When people get serious about having to live with each other with no wilderness to run to, with nukes in everyone's bunker, with the unrealized potential sitting right there in front of us, well we deserve what we make.
The issue boils down to one thing. Having studied Buddhism extensively I characterize it as enlightenment. Anarchy is the political expression of Nirvana. We want this not as a high aspiration, but as an end to suffering. If people can embrace a spiritual or at least ethical and productive path then some form of Anarchy will be the goal.
- By Potemkin
- By paeng
- By Pants-of-dog