**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.

If it's pretty clear to you, then maybe you could make it more clear to us, too, by telling us what you have in mind by "right wing" when you say "right wing libertarianism." If, instead of writing "the legislative, adjudicative, and protective functions unjustly and inefficiently monopolised by the coercive State should be entirely turned over to the voluntary, consensual forces of market society," Long had written that he favors "the dissolution of government into the economic organism," would that strike you as "falling within the realm of right wing libertarianism in general"? Because as I see it, that's basically just a Frenchier way of writing what he wrote there. Or, if not, then what's the specific right-wing difference that places the former phrasing "within the realm of right wing libertarianism" and the latter phrasing outside of it?

uppercrust, I've been involved in the Anarchist social movement for 9 years now and attended my share of meetings. I've been a decided market Anarchist for about 7 of those years. (The latter 7. I settled on the free-market individualist and mutualist economic ideas *because* of my increasing commitment to social Anarchism, not in spite of it.) Has it occurred to you that if folks like me or Gillis are at "these meetings," perhaps it's because we've thought about it and decided that it's not actually "the opposite of what [we] market anarchists want in society"? Perhaps we have a clearer notion of what we want in society than you do? Maybe it's true that everything *you've* been involved with has been anti-markets. But perhaps also you might notice that however involved you may have been, "Everything I've been involved in" is not coextensive with the Anarchist social movement as a whole?

... Do you really think that the neoconservative agenda is particularly hidden? Virtually all of the prominent neoconservatives are professional writers

... Dan, While I enjoy reading aesthetics, and certainly don't have any objection to people articulating and defending the aesthetic criteria they intend to

... If people have property, they're welcome to build fences. Around their own property. They have no business building fences around *other people's*