... I'm a bit surprised that they haven't already. It's not like it's difficult to piece together. I mean, I only just recently looked up the history of the

... Hm, well, the national IAP does list them under "State Party Affiliates" . Although it also says,

... For reference, the Independent American Party has been one of the most stable and resilient third parties in Nevada. They have the largest number of

... Too bad he was also a fucking fascist. I mean, seriously, dude arrested Anarchists by the thousands, threw us in prison based solely on their political

... In fact I'd be rather *less* embarrassed by connections to Reagan than to Wilson. Much as I detest Reagan, he did spend a lot less time destroying

... Well, this is going to depend on the leftist, and on the president, no? Although he was a Democrat and a Progressive, I find that I don't have trouble

... Well, probably depends on how you count these things, no? Like the rest of the post-Vietnam Cold War presidents, Reagan mostly held off on open invasions

Contemplationist:

I never disputed your point that from an anarchist perspective most state action is criminal. But thats irrelevant.

Why?

We cannot go singling out Israel for mild versions of anarchist-defined criminal acts which are carried out daily by every other state.

Speak for yourself; I am I can and I will. But who’s “singling out?” Good lord, did you think that I don’t condemn other governments when they go to war, build border walls, or impose military blockades?

I also reject that the ongoing blockade of Gaza is a “mild version” of military criminality. Given the material condition of people trying to survive in Gaza, under the conditions created by years of bombardment, lockdowns and blockades (inflicted by Israeli state policy, and enforced by the Israeli and Egyptian government’s militaries), this is, to be quite frank, an absolutely appalling bit of denialism.

Contemplationist:

Its extremely simple. Stop trying to kill Jews and you will live in peace.

I don’t give a damn about what happens to people who are trying to murder Jews; murderers have no right to expect a peaceful life. But what you don’t quite seem to notice is that people in Gaza are starved, imprisoned and blockaded whether they try to kill Jews or not. “The Palestinians” don’t try to murder Jews as a collective; only individual Palestinians — as it happens, a tiny minority, try to do that. But the Palestinians are punished and attacked as a collective. Your collectivist musing about “Who wants peace?” (the answer is, lots of individual Jews and Palestinians do; but none of them are given the choice, because war is conducted by governments and armed factions, which operate without individual consent) completely glosses over the fundamental issue of collective punishment, in the service of cheap collectivist rhetoric.

MBH:

So why should I think the guys with 20/1 leverage are dependent on the other guys?

Because the other guys have atom bombs.

And own plurality stakes in a lot of the banks that you’re claiming to be independent of them.

I say it would take B, C, and D to monopolize force. You say, well, B couldn’t do it on their own. As if I ever made that claim.

What you did was make an ambiguous claim — or rather, implied a claim, ambiguously, through the use of a rhetorical question — about “Citi, Magnetar, and a few other hedge funds” without specifying whether this was supposed to be about them acting independently, or as a cartel, or in some other way. If you meant to talk about a cartel specifically, I apologize for taking the wrong interpretation.

Just let me know when you’re willing to address B, C, and D as a cartel.

This is just special pleading; of course, we could have added most of the IP industry acting in a cartel with GE (GlaxoSmithKline, Time Warner, the RIAA, Microsoft, Apple, et al.), just as easily as we could speculate about a cartel of the financiers. But how does that overcome any of the reasons that I gave for thinking that one company would be unlikely to manage it? None of the reasons I gave for thinking that G.E.’s use of overtly criminal means would fail depends upon G.E. acting as a single company; if they were trying to posse up with the rest of the copyright and patent monopolists, they’d just be facing the same basic problems with the additional problem of trying to keep a large cartel together, in spite of the transaction costs and the strong economic incentives for cartelists to defect.

The same is true for the financiers. Add together as many bankrupt TARP suckers as you like; they’re still going to be dependent on a functioning government to marshal the resources you say they can marshal. And without government, they are going to face exactly the same problems in trying to maintain a cartel. They can cartelize easily right now because they are held in the cartel by a government central bank explicitly designed to cartelize them, and because government laws make defection from the cartel illegal. Without government, you wouldn’t have that. But with or without the cartel, they will still face exactly the same problems of (1) the direct financial costs of enforcement; and (2) the social costs of reverting to overt gangsterism.

MBH:

You aren’t very self-aware, are you?

Well, if I’m not, I’m probably not aware of my lack of self-awareness. So I’ll leave that up to others to decide.

However, I will say that you either haven’t read the essay very carefully, or else not attending very carefully to this conversation. The passage you quote argues that dissenters are genuinely free of all political obligations, not that they are in a condition of anarchy.

But in any case, if you did want to say the dissenter is living in anarchy (which I don’t), what would follow from that is that to the extent she’s living in anarchy, she’s not living under monarchy; the purported monarch is just a belligerent foreign head of state, to whom she owes no allegiance. Which would mean that a claim of “anarcho-monarchism” is still absurd.

Meanwhile, this conversation had nothing to do with whether or not revolutionary rejection of government makes for anarchy. It had to do with whether effective control over the State, by a power center other than the State itself, makes for anarchy. (In your original, it wasn’t corporations dissenting from the state that were supposed to undermine government monopoly; it was corporations allegedly controlling the state, which you insisted entailed that “either (a) the state doesn’t monopolize force or (b) there is no actual monopoly on force” and (because of this disjunction) legitimized the claim that we already live under “anarcho-corporatism” (rather than just plain old corporatism) right now. The parallel is with those who had similar effective control over the State in 16th century France (at times it was the landed aristocracy; in the age of Versailles, it was the king personally). Not with dissenters who had no effective control over the State, but (rightfully) rejected its authority.

MBH:

And if 100% anarchy is life entirely free from the rule of government, then we’re already in a virtual anarchy since the supreme court has tied government’s hands.

Man, you must have a different Supreme Court where you live.

Anyway, again, if I grant your theory about the relationship between government and corporations, how does that chain of command alter the fact that government is commanding? If I’m Earl’s bondsman, and Earl takes orders from his Overlord, it doesn’t follow that Earl is no longer ruling me. It just means that the way he rules me is partly determined by the Overlord. If the Overlord never directly commands me anything, but always has Earl do it for him, then Earl still has a monopoly of force, as far as I’m concerned. (Just as NBC still has a monopoly on their copyrighted shows. Even though they are a wholly owned subsidiary of G.E. Or Kabletown.)