Something else I have been thinking about. If we were to engage in a thought experiment, how would social life look under an anarchist or communist society? — unimportant
I agree with boethius on the origins of police and while it's related I think it better in another thread? — Moliere
You're really saying that all the prisoners of the world not only deserve to be in prison due to their being unable to conform to the social contract — boethius
If you really believe all the states in all the world have a perfectly just imprisonment process and protocol, then I will present the evidence to the contrary. — boethius
and are a lost soul of little concern to me, simply digging yourself further into the darkness, the prison of your own mind, with every thought and fancy. — boethius
Please quote where I suggested this (or even mentioned it as a topic???????) — AmadeusD
Of course the main evil of police is the whole justice system of essentially disappearing citizens from the community and imprisoning them without possibility of work, generally in a process without any effective rights for the poor. — boethius
This is an utterly bizarre way of characterizing protecting wider society from the ills of people who cannot conform to the social contract. Exile is less humane, but more on-point. Would we want that? — AmadeusD
and are a lost soul of little concern to me, simply digging yourself further into the darkness, the prison of your own mind, with every thought and fancy.
— boethius
This explains you, I guess. — AmadeusD
If you don't actually believe it, then you are not interested in truth but simply feeling superior to your "idea of who prisoners are", and are a lost soul of little concern to me, simply digging yourself further into the darkness, the prison of your own mind, with every thought and fancy. — boethius
seems we should make a thread dedicated specifically to police. — boethius
If we then imagine many such communities developing and interacting with a devolved decision making structure that sorts out inter-community issues, even planetary issues, then the system can become quite large and sophisticated but maintain its communist nature. — boethius
it really almost happened with the fall of feudalism — boethius
You write pretty clearly when dismissing concerns about how just prison systems are, but then suddenly you have no idea what we're talking about when I point out your claim is essentially not worth responding to. And clearly you don't want to expand or support your claim, so seems you yourself agree that your claim is such vapid and empty propaganda that it's no worth responding to. — boethius
protecting wider society from the ills of people who cannot conform to the social contract — AmadeusD
The statement does describe me as well, of course the full statement without taking out the start which reads: — boethius
you yourself agree that your claim is such vapid and empty propaganda that it's no worth responding to. — boethius
However if you feel it would not get the attention it deserves in this one do not let me stop you making a dedicated one. — unimportant
To bring back an analogy this does strike me as sounding very similar to the open source idea of federation. With many jumping from X to Mastodon, apparently the Fediverse works very much how you just explained it, where there are smaller hubs of self-hosted servers with their own communities, which can also communicate with other hubs. — unimportant
I am not really familiar with the meaning of the term federation; only from Star Trek but it seems something I should learn more about! I recall it being used in The Conquest of Bread in the first few pages. — unimportant
That reminds me of another thought I had been having. In order to know thy enemy what is the history of capitalism and how did it avail over others that, as you mention above, could perhaps have come to be instead? — unimportant
Did capitalism exist before the industrial revolution? I am getting through The Conquest of Bread and in that I recall them indicating that it did indeed spring from that. Isn't that a difference between the Communist and Libertarian views? that Communists peg it as a recent phenomena due to our stifling ourselves with concentrated power and not using the technology in the right way whereas Libertarians wish to view capitalism as an extension of the natural order of hierarchical man and evolution and thus just, as such. — unimportant
I always felt things like people getting giddy about buying new cars or going on package holidays or the creme de la creme, christmas just somehow made me balk and bristle. — unimportant
Times when I have felt I had found my type of people is in counter cultures, perhaps another nod to small anarchist style communities, but sadly these seem to have been stamped out in direct correlation around the rise of social media. Any theories on this? — unimportant
Why is it that society at large sees no problem with this vapid existence and on the treadmill of working to buy useless things that doesn't fulfill them long term, thinking that the antidote to their ills is just to get more money to buy the bigger thing, and on and on? — unimportant
Why do most of society come to the defence of capitalism and say 'it isn't perfect but it is the best system we have' and just balk at any alternatives you might suggest as idealism at best or worse, dangerous and deviant? — unimportant
During the time of much of the anarchist classical anarchist writings were produced from what I can read of the social milieu at the time things seemed a lot more unsettled so were people a lot more open to these different ways of living at those times? Sure anarchism/communism was hated too then but there seemed to also be a lot more fervent followers whereas today people, while not happy with their lot, and there is general malcontent, they would blame anything but capitalism for their grievances. — unimportant
The state is almost sacrosanct and they will bicker back and forth about Left of Right under the current narrow band of politics they would dismiss anything more radical. — unimportant
Then why do so many people on this forum conflate anarchy with libertarianism - as in do whatever you want?Well, mostly anarchists and communists are both communists — boethius
It must be that the are using anarchy as defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, not as defined in your "Marxist Dictionary".Anarchy:
absence of government
b
: a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority
the city's descent into anarchy
c
: a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without [any] government [including socialist governments]
2
a
: absence or denial of any authority or established order
anarchy prevailed in the war zone
b
: absence of order — Merriam Webster
You're leaving out the part where the socialist goal is for the state to be the only owner of property - privately owned and not shared with the rest of the world. Government property isn't much different than private property in that the government still has to defend it by force.the end goal is the same of living in equal and vibrant communities without private property. — boethius
It must be that the are using anarchy as defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, not as defined in your "Marxist Dictionary". — Harry Hindu
Dictionary
Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more
anarchy
/ˈanəki/
noun: anarchy
1. a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems.
Similar:
2. the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government; anarchism. — Google citing Oxford Languages
You're leaving out the part where the socialist goal is for the state to be the only owner of property - privately owned and not shared with the rest of the world. Government property isn't much different than private property in that the government still has to defend it by force. — Harry Hindu
Then why do so many people on this forum conflate anarchy with libertarianism - as in do whatever you want? — Harry Hindu
All of philosophy is contained in language which Merriam-Webster provides guidance for using.Not all of philosophy is contained in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. — boethius
Sure, you can use symbols arbitrarily for your own private use, but if you intend on sharing your ideas, then you might consider using words in ways that others are using them (the common use vs your own private use). It would be like you trying to talk to someone else in a different language.Furthermore, a dictionary's goal is to list the most common uses of a word, and not many, if any, meanings specific to a tradecraft or discipline. — boethius
Sounds more like Libertarianism, not socialism. Libertarianism is for limited government that does not intrude on personal choices to voluntarily cooperate with other individuals while socialism/communism is for a more robust government that insists on imposing itself within and dictate every personal cooperative agreement. This is what I mean in that if you want to use a word differently it needs to integrate well with the way we use other related words, or else you'll find yourself redefining all words and creating your own language.2. the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government; anarchism. — Google citing Oxford Languages
And where does production occur if not within a territory you have to own to then say that you own the means of production within that territory? Why isn't the means of production shared with other societies? Because the means of production occurred within a certain territory and not another.Also an important caveat, property in this context is the means of production — boethius
Sounds more like Libertarianism, not socialism — Harry Hindu
All of philosophy is contained in language which Merriam-Webster provides guidance for using. — Harry Hindu
Sounds more like Libertarianism, not socialism. — Harry Hindu
Sure, you can use symbols arbitrarily for your own private use — Harry Hindu
There are endless additional meanings to words that have technical meanings in specific disciplines and tradecraft, colloquially referred to as technical jargon. — boethius
I wasn't arguing about which dictionary we use, only that we use a dictionary to guide our use of terms.And when the definition of a more authoritative dictionary is provided (the one Google uses and provides as the top result) ... you just dismiss it entirely and you know better than the English professors at Oxford. — boethius
I was referring to the first one. If you want to refer to the second one, that is fine. Neither definition mentions socialism or libertarianism. So it would now be necessary to define socialism and libertarianism to see where those definitions overlap with anarchy and where they don't.1. a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems.
Similar:
2. the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government; anarchism. — Google citing Oxford Languages
Indeed. Lots/most philosophers will take the general meaning of a word then run with it and just explain how they are going to be using it (hopefully). — unimportant
I wasn't arguing about which dictionary we use, only that we use a dictionary to guide our use of terms. — Harry Hindu
Let us look, however, at other cases from ancient Greece in which the word anarchy is used in a more distinctly political sense. There is, for instance, the single occasion when a Hellenic population appears to have matter-of-factly used the word to refer to its own situation: the Athenian ‘year of anarchy’, 404 BC. This is something of a curiosity, since the circumstances of that year were anything but anarchic. As a matter of fact, Athens was at the time under the very strong rule of an oligarchy — The Thirty — installed by the Spartans following their victory in the second Peloponesian war of that same year. Moreover, there was literally an Archon in place, installed by the oligarchs, in the person of Pythodorus. However, according to the historian Xenophon (c.430–355 BC), the Athenians refused to apply here their custom of calling the year by that archon’s name, since he was elected during the oligarchy, and ‘preferred to speak of it as the “year of anarchy”’.[7] Despite its counter-intuitive appearance, this first popular application of the word anarchy is very telling. It resonates with a mass symbolic defiance, refusing the recognition that a ruler was supposed to receive in everyday language. It was this defiance which led to the restoration of democracy in Athens the following year. — Anarkhia — What did the Greeks actually say? Uri Guron, Anarchist Library
Like...?This whole thing about dictionaries is obviously bad faith. There's plenty of concepts and meanings of words, in philosophy and elsewhere, that do not appear in the dictionary. — boethius
Which is exactly what I did. I'm asking for definitions of not only anarchy but of marxism/socialism in a thread named, "Differences/similarities between marxism and anarchism?"The good faith thing to do is either ask what's the definition of things for our purposes here, or then good faith research such as starting on the wikipedia page for anarchism or then a visit to the library to see if there's any philosophical resource on the issue. — boethius
That's nice. You've already provided a definition of anarchy that I thought you were happy with, and I agreed to. Now what about defining socialism and let's see where these definitions overlap and where they don't.Originally it comes from Greek "anarkhia" which literally means "without an archon". — boethius
Like...?
Even if there were we would still need to define those words to understand what each other means and to avoid talking past each other. — Harry Hindu
Which is exactly what I did. I'm asking for definitions of not only anarchy but of marxism/socialism in a thread named, "Differences/similarities between marxism and anarchism?" — Harry Hindu
↪boethius Zizek was mentioned briefly by you earlier, what are your thoughts on him? — unimportant
this Western global upper class is the last place to look for any systemic change. — boethius
Basic point of the analysis being that the global revolution, if it is to come to pass, will be mostly carried out by non-Imperial-beneficiaries mostly in poor countries. — boethius
Yup.
There are proletarians in the USA, but they are not beneficiaries of imperialism -- thinking here of migrant farm workers and prison labor as clear cut examples. — Moliere
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