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ANARCHY

By N0574 in N0574's Diary
Fri Oct 05, 2012 at 07:29:36 AM EST
Tags: anarchism, individual, state (all tags)

Nazism has been justly called an attack on civilization. This characterization applies with equal force to every form of dictatorship; indeed, to every kind of suppression and coercive authority. For what is civilization in the true sense? All progress has been essentially an enlargement of the liberties of the individual with a corresponding decrease of the authority wielded over him by external forces. This holds good in the realm of physical as well as of political and economic existence. In the physical world man has progressed to the extent in which he has subdued the forces of nature and made them useful to himself. Primitive man made a step on the road to progress when he first produced fire and thus triumphed over darkness, when he chained the wind or harnessed water.

What role did authority or government play in human endeavor for betterment, in invention and discovery? None whatever, or at least none that was helpful. It has always been the individual that has accomplished every miracle in that sphere, usually in spite of the prohibition, persecution and interference by authority, human and divine.

Similarly, in the political sphere, the road of progress lay in getting away more and more from the authority of the tribal chief or of the clan, of prince and king, of government, of the State. Economically, progress has meant greater well-being of ever larger numbers. Culturally, it has signified the result of all the other achievements - greater independence, political, mental and psychic.

Emma Goldman, 1940


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ANARCHY | 11 comments (11 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
ugh like the whole thing about rei wasn't (none / 0) (#1)
by Del Griffith on Fri Oct 05, 2012 at 07:39:54 AM EST

traumatizing enough.

Plus the old man was clearly screwing these teenaged clones of his dead wife.

-------
I...I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. Because I'm the real article. What you see is what you get. - Me


There's this assumption (none / 0) (#2)
by boomi on Fri Oct 05, 2012 at 10:30:50 AM EST

that those inventions who allowed progress would have been achieved equally without authoritarian rule. The trouble with history is that we cannot change it just to try and see how it turns out. Actually we can only hope that our interpretations of the relics left to us gives an accurate representation. People routinely disagree how our ancestors lived.

So the anarchists claiming that theirs is the right way because it would have spared all authoritarian violence, they just ignore that we would have had individual violence in its place. That the inventors would have fared better under that climate is just an unproven claim.

With all my sympathy towards anarchism, I must accept that it is an utopia that humans may one day reach. It only requires domestication of our own species. And that's where most anarchists will bail. Not surprisingly.

i made a god out of blood (none / 1) (#4)
by LilDebbie on Fri Oct 05, 2012 at 12:38:40 PM EST

not superiority

My name is LilDebbie and I have a garden.
- hugin -

Civ (none / 0) (#5)
by tdillo on Fri Oct 05, 2012 at 03:42:13 PM EST

If you have total freedom, then you're going to be in the state where you are spending all your time trying to gather the means of survival.

Civilization provides the infrastructure that allows one the freedom to pursue activities not directly related to survival. It becomes easy to forget that when much of that infrastructure is invisible. You take the garbage can to the road in the morning and magically it is emptied when you return at the end of the day.

The market only functions when it is profitable to do so. The market also rewards those that would take advantage of you even to and especially to the point of enslavement.

Government that is subservient to the will of the people, that functions to provide for the citizenry equally is a good and wonderful thing.

A government that holds itself above it's citizens that provides for it's own benefit and that of favored persons is a tyranny.

The former allows individuals to truly be free, the latter leads inevitably to slavery.

I never knew someone actually invented the internet. I thought it was discovered and was always there like oxygen or something.
-Facebook User


ANARCHY | 11 comments (11 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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