Im immediately suspect of anyone who doesn't see the justification for an end to governance, in the long term and a philosophy of radical personal freedom in the face of oppression in the short term.
I am a democratic socialist in the orwellian sense and an anarchist in the 'no gods, no masters' sense, and I don't find anything about these two ideas that are incompatable.
The more national socialism is around, the more time I will spend focusing on purely anarchist actions and ideas because fascism must be resisted.
But in a functioning bernie sanders style republican form of demoractic socialism where my needs are met and I hardly ever encounter someone trying to get me to do something i don't want to do, I wouldn't have much need to go to the streets in rage and throw my life on the wheels of the system to slow or break it.
From a writing perspective, I find this article kindof all over the place, and could have used a better outline and narrative, it is pretty much a wall of paragraphs that is ultimately disjointed, like someone pointing at spots on a map at random rather than describing a journey. It could also use more illustrations of practical uses of these philosophies, and a solid summary paragraph at the end to sum it up.
Still, I enjoy seeing long content posts like mine that show people are thinking, most of what is on steemit is pretty short form and not involved.
When you get a chance plz check out my privacy workshop, I think you might like it, cheers!
I understand the arguments for ending government. I spent years writing on the topic of anarchism (libertarian socialism). Many of my past posts were on anarchism. The first thing that I should say is that I don't advocate fascism. The point of this post is that libertarian socialism, as expressed in the works of Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Bookchin, and Öcalan, does share the same principles and goals as social democracy. Even the democratic governance aspect is not altogether a departure from libertarian socialist principles. I personally advocate participatory democracy, ranked-choice voting, something more like liquid democracy, mixed with delegative democracy, and would like to have universal basic income and digital democracy in order to encourage more participation. I have a vision far more libertarian than most, and one that I believe would make one more free than anarchy would. If you live in Kurdistan or Mexico, anarchism would make you better off. But, in the U. S., I think a libertarian social democracy would be better for us than anarchism.
It is possible for someone to understand a philosophical position and disagree with it.
Also, I don't believe in "categorical imperatives" (absolute moral imperatives that stand alone). I don't believe in God or divine commands. All moral rules reduce to "hypothetical imperatives." Since Julie is your friend and you care about her happiness, you ought not to punch her. That's a hypothetical imperative. A categorical imperative would say 'you ought not to punch Julie because God' or something of that nature. This moral framework, rejecting categorical imperatives or moral absolutes that always hold true regardless of context, is part of what led me away from anarchism. Since poverty and suffering are bad and I want to minimize them, and social democracy with land value tax and universal basic income is the simplest solution and most likely to work, I ought to support a movement for such a libertarian social democracy over a movement for anarchism (which would require revolution, loss of life, and be more uncertain). Also, I'm partial to Rawlsian theory.
Imagine that there's a participatory democracy, with markets, universal healthcare, but also with land value tax and universal basic income (so that you know that you will always have the necessities taken care of and inequality will never be too much), and you get to help make decisions and policies tend to be progressive because of high quality education and voter participation. Such a system would have no poverty, little domination of man over man, and would be just as utopian as anarchy in my estimation. But, this system is easy to imagine: I can imagine Norway, Denmark, or Switzerland adopting land value tax and universal basic income. It would be easy to turn one of these places into the utopia I envision, but not to turn it into an anarchist society. Anarchy would require revolution, which means many deaths, a price too high to pay of it can be avoided. If one of my friends or my spouse dies in your revolution, the price is too high—they are irreplaceable—anarchy is not worth it.
I think good education and active participation of the people in politics is more important than form per se. Afghanistan without government was no better than Afghanistan with government. Why? Because the people are ignorant, have dumb beliefs, and largely behave unethically. With a populace like that, it doesn't matter what political system you have. A righteous tyrant might be better even, since he could crack down on the rampant pedophilia in Afghanistan. A righteous tyrant could also forcibly educate people in public schools. For anarchism to work, you need an intelligent populace that understands ethics and tries to do the right thing. If the majority of people are intelligent and moral, anarchism works, but social democracy would work just as well and be just as libertarian under such conditions. If everyone opposed hierarchy and domination of man over man, no one would be dominated—that would be just as true under social democracy as under anarchy. And, if everyone believes in dominating others, there will be domination—and this will be true regardless of whether there is or is not a government.
How is this for a categorical imperative: Don't be a slave.
I am not an 'anarchy now! burn it all down!' anarchist. That is absurd, and could not be implemented without forcing people's choices in a very un-anarchist way.
I am happy being an anarcho-syndicalist, which is I like to work on leaderless/bossless teams, and most of the time this is what I do. In my band for instance, there is no leader, no one bosses me around, I do everything in the band without any coercion.
Anarchy does not have to be systemwide, and it actually exists all over the place, even high level CEO's groups don't have any specific boss and they cooperate and no one gets coerced, some of the time.
I am happy with democratic socialism being the goal and next step in our time, I don't imagine police or armies being done away with, but as an anarchist that is my future utopia where none of those unpleasant things will be necessary.
Someone who says they are a capitalist, that means, basically, that this is their utopia and they lack imagination or are outright twisted.
Libertarianism as a next step is not sound, it is similar to the anarchist revolutionary who demands change now, even though even the half-decent things in society we have right now would be done away with.
Trump and stephen miller, they fancy themselves radical libertarians, grover norquist etc they want to drown the government through sideways means, so that it makes freedom, when it will just mean brutal tough love for the poor who will be continually be punished for their starting point in life, while industrial tycoons craft laws for themselves that are essentially helicopters of money falling on them. This is what we saw with the bailout in 2008 and I see no reason to think they would do differently.
This word libertarian, I do not think the people who use it are genuine and it is pretty obviously a trick of greedy people, who just don't want to have to care about anyone else.
That's why they hate socialism, socialism says at the center of society is not capitalism, it is society(lol, which should be obvious, but many are pretty thick headed). These people deep down don't care if someone else starves and don't think anyone should have to force them to care. It is a sick mentality and so I always argue against it.
These capitalists and libertarians rig the game, then when their side wins, they say things like it is the best system that has been tried lol. Weaponized ignorance is what the usa is right now, and I fled because I couldn't survive in it, because well, read what I write, I am not going to be popular in such an insane place, and I didn't have the luck to be born to a father that had money.
You can only rise in libertarian and social systems if you say what the people who started with the money want to hear.
And this could be what's happening on steemit now as well, as if yet another attempt at a new society was coopted on day 2.
For the record, when I use the term "libertarian," I mean left-libertarian. I refer to the rightwing ideology as "vulgar libertarians" or "right-libertarians".
i am not familiar with left libertarian, what do i need to know about it? how do you have a smaller government without the wealthy simply ruling by force and crushing the poor?
Left-libertarian, as in Peter Kropotkin, Murray Bookchin, et al. It generally refers to the anti-authoritarian left, like libertarian socialism, anarchism, democratic confederalism, council communism, etc.
I follow "civic republicanism" in defining liberty as "non-domination." This is a comprehensive definition of liberty, as opposed to the partial liberty of liberals (positive liberty, the freedom to do things) and right-libertarians (negative liberty, freedom from things). Taking this freedom as non-domination approach, I say government's task is to ensure the maximizing of liberty, which entails ensuring domination is minimized. People ought not to be dominated by gangs, politicians, bosses, monied elites, corporation, etc. The sole purpose of government is to protect people by minimizing domination, which would entail social libertarianism (drug use, "sodomy", prostitution, public nudity, etc. would be legal), but also entails an anti-interventionist peace-seeking/diplomatic foreign policy, and ensuring universal basic income to eliminate wage-slavery (domination by bosses), help prevent domination of women (who are often exploited as a result of their economic dependency on men), etc. And politics must be thoroughly democratic and participatory in order to ensure that people are not dominated by politicians or government. The term "left" denotes egalitarian, meaning equal distribution of wealth and power among the populace. So, my libertarianism, being based on civic republican "liberty as non-domination", is actually left-libertarian or anti-authoritarian egalitarianism.
ok, im on board with left-libertarianism then.
the corporate types are going to wine about being told what to do, but at this point I simply don't feel bad about telling these non-human entities what to do so they don't outright destroy the world.
Corporate types loves telling others what to do, so they just have to deal with being told to relinguish their power over others. :D