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In reply to the discussion: someone help understand Anarchy. How does it work as a government? Is it just libertarianism? [View all]The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)9. The human mind is a weird place
http://www.context.org/iclib/ic07/schmoklr/
In nature, all pursue survival for themselves and their kind. But they can do so only within biologically evolved limits. The living order of nature, though it has no ruler, is not in the least anarchic. Each pursues a kind of self- interest, each is a law unto itself, but the separate interests and laws have been formed over aeons of selection to form part of a tightly ordered harmonious system. Although the state of nature involves struggle, the struggle is part of an order. Each component of the living system has a defined place out of which no ambition can extricate it. Hunting- gathering societies were to a very great extent likewise contained by natural limits.
With the rise of civilization, the limits fall away. The natural self-interest and pursuit of survival remain, but they are no longer governed by any order. The new civilized forms of society, with more complex social and political structures, created the new possibility of indefinite social expansion: more and more people organized over more and more territory. All other forms of life had always found inevitable limits placed upon their growth by scarcity and consequent death. But civilized society was developing the unprecedented capacity for unlimited growth as an entity. (The limitlessness of this possibility does not emerge fully at the outset, but rather becomes progressively more realized over the course of history as people invent methods of transportation, communication, and governance which extend the range within which coherence and order can be maintained.) Out of the living order there emerged a living entity with no defined place.
As people stepped across the threshold into civilization, they inadvertently stumbled into a chaos that had never before existed. The relations among societies were uncontrolled and virtually uncontrollable. Such an ungoverned system imposes unchosen necessities: civilized people were compelled to enter a struggle for power.
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someone help understand Anarchy. How does it work as a government? Is it just libertarianism? [View all]
Bucky
Apr 2016
OP
Some of the smarter ones seem to get it, but that doesn't seem the way to bet. nt
bemildred
Apr 2016
#36
Anarchism is much closer to libertarianism than to socialism. If you say "everything that impacts
pnwmom
Apr 2016
#24
Maybe the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another
tralala
Apr 2016
#38
The basic idea, as I understand it, is that left to their own devices small groups of people
Warren DeMontague
Apr 2016
#22
So far, this is one of the better and more adult threads we've had here in quite some time.
Hekate
Apr 2016
#23
Libertarianism is the OPPOSITE of anarchy. Libertarianism is getting government thugs to
MillennialDem
Apr 2016
#32