... The "per se" is something that you added, not something Kevin wrote. Do you really not know of any examples in which writers at Mises.org (depends on the

**simplegreens:** > What is a country if not it's government? I think that the answer to this ought to be obvious to you on reflection. I'm part of the American country. I'm not part of the U.S. government. The Mississippi River is part of the American country. It's not part of the U.S. government. Etc. The government is a definite institution with limited membership, defined rules of decision-making, and an immense amount of power over everyone and everything else within the country. The country is a loosely-defined, wide-open expanse of land, places and people which encompasses much of a continent, several of the world's largest cities, and a constantly-changing population of about 300,000,000 people or so, coming and going. The flag is the flag of the government (specifically, the federal government; there are other governments in this country, too, with other flags). The country was here for thousands of years before the government claimed the right to rule, or started waving its military colors around. > since our government is elected, and since we pay taxes into the system to support the system, it very much does represent us Well, say I don't vote and I stop paying taxes. Then do I get to opt out of being "represented" by this government? Or are they going to keep on inflicting their "representation" on me whether I want them to or not? If the latter, then it is silly to act as if I'm somehow agreeing to the arrangement by voting or paying taxes. Doing X only counts as opting in to an arrangement if declining to do X would have been counted as opting out. If you want to say I'm obliged to obey and there is no way for me to opt out, you can argue that position; but then you ought to stop talking about "representation" and my "deciding." My decisions are irrelevant if they won't take "No" for an answer.

**simplegreens:** > What is a country if not it's government? I think that the answer to this ought to be obvious to you on reflection. I'm part of the American country. I'm not part of the U.S. government. The Mississippi River is part of the American country. It's not part of the U.S. government. Etc. The government is a definite institution with limited membership, defined rules of decision-making, and an immense amount of power over everyone and everything else within the country. The country is a loosely-defined, wide-open expanse of land, places and people which encompasses much of a continent, several of the world's largest cities, and a constantly-changing population of about 300,000,000 people or so, coming and going. The flag is the flag of the government (specifically, the federal government; there are other governments in this country, too, with other flags). The country was here for thousands of years before the government claimed the right to rule, or started waving its military colors around. > since our government is elected, and since we pay taxes into the system to support the system, it very much does represent us Well, say I don't vote and I stop paying taxes. Then do I get to opt out of being "represented" by this government? Or are they going to keep on inflicting their "representation" on me whether I want them to or not? If the latter, then it is silly to act as if I'm somehow agreeing to the arrangement by voting or paying taxes. Doing X only counts as opting in to an arrangement if declining to do X would have been counted as opting out. If you want to say I'm obliged to obey and there is no way for me to opt out, you can argue that position; but then you ought to stop talking about "representation" and my "deciding." My decisions are irrelevant if they won't take "No" for an answer.

> So in the writer's opinion only white people are racist? Maybe, but what the author said in the article is that only *non-*white people can *experience* racism. (The claim was about the receiving end of racism, not the inflicting end.) Which, whether true or not, is a distinct claim. Presumably, the claim about experiencing racism would still be true if there are some POC who inflict racism on other POC.

**mattkerle:** > please tell me how you intend to have a society with computers, internet, mains power, clean water, sewerage systems, medicine, universities et al, without having someone in charge Come on, really? Who's "in charge" of computers? Of the Internet? All the things you mention require large-scale cooperation. They don't require any one person or group of people to be "in charge." Unless you think people can't co-operate except on command. But why think that? People co-operate consensually all the time, without being forced to, for all kinds of reasons.

**10Nov1775:** "human government is the only demonstrable thing that has reduced human suffering on a large scale." Really? Human governments killed about 400 million people in the last century alone. (Through government wars, genocides, terror-famines, concentration camps, gulags, colonizations, occupations, counterinsurgencies, death marches, massacres, reigns of terror, et cetera.) Along the way human governments committed the largest and worst atrocities ever known in the history of humankind. Meanwhile, private individuals and private institutions invented rock and roll, developed the birth control pill, created Google and discovered a vaccine that saved millions of children from being crippled by poliomyletis.

**uppercrust:** > ... when an organization you are a part of takes actions against markets, will you just join in and say, "I don't believe in this?" Could you give me an idea of what you have in mind when you think of an Anarchist organization "taking action against markets"? I've been in lots of Anarchist efforts that had something to do with undermining capitalism, or corporations, or providing positive alternatives to commercialized relationships. (I do local organizing for the IWW, Food Not Bombs, have helped organize anticapitalist (A) conventions, etc.) But I didn't see any of these as being "action against markets," because I don't see capitalism, corporations, or commercialized relationships as being identical with "markets." Markets are a lot broader than that, and like many market Anarchists I believe that the shitty stuff you see in actually-existing markets today comes about because of the direct and indirect effects of political privileges granted to capitalists and political rulers. Anyway, give me an example of an action and I'll let you know how I'd react to the proposal. > antithetical to the idea of a world that doesn't glorify the rights of private property. I don't know what you mean by "glorify" here. Is it supposed to mean something stronger than just "defend the legitimacy of"? If so, what? If not, then I agree that market Anarchism is antithetical to rejecting the legitimacy of private property. But again, I deny the claim that rejecting the legitimacy of private property is identical with Anarchism. It sounds to me like you're trying to build some fairly specific tenets of communist Anarchism right into the definition of Anarchism itself, but without giving an argument in favor of it. But it seems to me that that's precisely what you need to argue for, if you want to claim it.

**uppercrust:** > The idea of private property as being the foundation of freedom, liberty, rights, etc. is what makes it right wing. Well, O.K., but now it seems that you're mashing together the two quotes, whereas I was simply asking about the second of two distinct quotes. The second quote doesn't say anything about private property. I suppose you could take that as part of what "market society" means; whether you'd be right or not depends on how you're using the term "private property." In any case, when Proudhon writes about "the economic organism" keep in mind that *he* counts among "its principal forms of activity" "Division of labor," "Commerce, the concrete form of CONTRACT," "Competition," "Credit," and "The equilibrium of values and properties." If the reference to "market society" makes Long a right-winger, then it seems like all that business ought to make Proudhon a right-winger too. Do you think that he is? If not, then where's the difference? If so, then I wonder what "right-wing" means to you -- if not just a definitional claim that anyone for property or markets is *therefore* in some sense "right wing." > It is an individualist idea, Sure; Long is an individualist Anarchist. But are you claiming that individualism, just as such, is "right wing"? If so, why? (The Right-wingers I can think of -- royalists, fascists, nationalists, etc. -- are rarely much interested in individualism.) > a territorial one, Well, no. Long's notion of how government would be dissolved into the economic organism includes, among other things, an explicit *rejection* of claims of territorial sovereignty. On his view social order would be maintained by forms of social organization that are overlapping and associational, not based on geographical monopolies. > and it ignores the fact that we are social creatures that thrive and survive on sharing. What makes you think that markets and private property are incompatible with either sociality in general (!) or "sharing" in particular? Markets are a form of human social interaction, and in real-world situations they inevitably involve all kinds of gifting, sharing, and all kinds of other alternatives to strict cash-on-the-barrelhead exchanges. (In fact, the less government is involved in regulating, regimenting and formalizing them, the more they tend to involve these kind of messy, friendly, ad hoc, cashless, non-commercial, etc. arrangements.) > Anarchism is system based on sharing, Maybe Anarchism as you understand it is. I have no beef with "sharing," personally, but I don't know about systematizing it, and Anarchism as *I* understand it is based on freedom of association and the rejection of all forms of domination, coercion, and authoritarianism. Which may involve sharing, or may not. "A system based on sharing" sounds more like a (very) rough definition of communism to me than it does like a definition of Anarchism. Of course, you might think that Anarchism *requires* communism to be consistent; but not all Anarchists agree with you on that one (Proudhon disagreed, for starters; Tucker; de Cleyre, whether early or late; etc.), and it seems like a bit of a fast one to try and build it into the very definition of Anarchism.

Could you say something about why you think that when tools or factories (say) aren't privately owned they aren't "capital" anymore? Is this supposed to be a definitional claim (i.e., something has to be privately owned in order to count as "capital")? If so, what's the definition you have in mind and where did you get it from? In most of the economic literature that I'm familiar with (both anti-capitalist and pro-capitalist), "capital" is most often used to refer to goods that you make, not for their own sake, but in order to make a lot of other goods with them; things like hand-tools, machines, factories, long-term work spaces, etc. Which you can have in either an a mutualist, or a collectivist, or a communist, or a capitalist sort of arrangement, and any number of other arrangements; the differences have to do with who has access to capital and under what conditions, not with whether or not capital exists in such a society. Of course, if you don't have absentee ownership of the means of production, then you don't have capitalISM any more (at least in one common definition of that word). And maybe that is impossible, or unsustainable, without a state. Is that all you meant to say? -- But if it is, david_z's statement above just wasn't about *that*. It was about *capital* in the sense of *capital goods*.

MBH:

The police officer does not even implicitly claim property rights over the owners of the Cafe.

Really? Last I checked, police officers both claimed and actively practiced a prerogative to force their way into Anarchist spaces (breaking down doors, storming, etc. if necessary), rifling through and confiscating our shit, and hauling people out of the place in chains. You may be aware that 8 Anarchists in the Twin Cities are, still, facing an extended court trial and possibly years in prison based on exactly this pattern of police invasion and occupation. This is an actual widespread problem for real people in the real world, whereas the Klan busting into black-owned stores for purposes of abduction, vandalism or petty intimidation is (now-a-days) mainly a hypothetical, and where it does happen, is hardly ever carried out with the degree of violence or utter impunity that police “raids” routinely are.

In point of fact, while we’re here, it should be noted that, while Klan violence and harassment does certainly still exist, the average black American is also by far more likely to be harassed or attacked by uniformed police officers now-a-days than they are to be harassed or attacked by robed Klansmen. (For reasons which have, primarily, to do with dehumanizing and regimenting racially and socioeconomically-selected victims, in the interest of upholding police authority and the social control of the ruling class.)

I’d call your attempted comparative analysis insane; but “insane” would suggest the conclusion is arbitrary, whereas what you’re saying is actually the exact opposite of the real-world situation.