Well, cool story, bro. But: > If you have a defense of the claim that Proudhon actually was a communist, even though he explicitly rejected key communist formulas, explicitly defended ideas (such as individual ownership of land, cost-price commercial exchange, economic competition, etc.) that they explicitly rejected, and in several places explicitly criticized communism and communists by name, *then I suggest that you bring that evidence forward.* Or you can just continue bullshitting without evidence. Your choice.

I am sure that you can. The question is whether you have read them with understanding. You may notice that the chapter I linked (from General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century) was not actually picked at "random," but rather because it includes an extended critique of one common formulation of communism (what Proudhon mocks as the "declension formula," "From each according to his [sic] abilities, to each according to his [sic] needs") and defends an alternative ideal (specifically cost-price commercial exchange). You might also read [Organization of Economic Forces](http://fair-use.org/p-j-proudhon/general-idea-of-the-revolution/organization-of-economic-forces) from the same book, if it helps to have a chapter in which Proudhon explicitly and repeatedly attacks "communism" and "communists" by name. If you have a defense of the claim that Proudhon actually was a communist, even though he explicitly rejected key communist formulas, explicitly defended ideas (such as individual ownership of land, cost-price commercial exchange, economic competition, etc.) that they explicitly rejected, and in several places explicitly criticized communism and communists by name, then I suggest that you bring that evidence forward. In the meantime, I will have to say that the reason I deny Proudhon is a communist is because I *have* read his work.

. . . [Yes, please, tell me more about how I've never read Proudhon because I deny that he is a communist.](http://fair-use.org/p-j-proudhon/general-idea-of-the-revolution/the-principle-of-association) As for claiming that [Shawn Wilbur](http://libertarian-labyrinth.blogspot.com/) has "clearly never read Proudhon," because he disagrees with your sweeping characterization of Proudhon, congratulations, you have uttered the most hilariously deranged and laughably ignorant sentence that I have heard all year; and it's early, I know, but I'm pretty sure that your record will last.

. . . "Forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old" is actually a phrase from the [Preamble to the Constitution of the Industrial Workers of the World](http://www.iww.org/en/culture/official/preamble.shtml), with the "structure" in question mainly supposed to refer to rank-and-file-run radical industrial unionism. So whatever it ultimately means, it's something that syndicalists of all sorts are very often committed to, and also not something that's supposed to be "rather than" radical unionization. To further complicate things, the predominant ideas in the IWW are not mutualist, but many mutualists are members (including myself). So if the IWW is taken as a representative of syndicalist ideas (which I think is fair, at least as rough guide) there are many of us who think that syndicalist ideas about strategy (focusing on industrial unionization, radical solidarity, and developing capacity to withhold labor power and exercise worker control at the point of production) are not necessarily contradictory with mutualist ideals about what a worker-owned free society might look like.

There are four links after the libcom news update, not two, and a fifth link to El Libertario's website, which has several years of back issues (unfortunately mostly locked up in big PDF blobs). I'm sorry you have trouble reading them; I agree that the formatting is a problem, and while I wish that El Libertario would post translations of everything and that it would all be formatted beautifully in HTML, they are busy people and we're not their primary audience. If you want to put in the time to learn more about the situation for yourself, then I've tried to give you some starting points regarding how social movements, and anarchists in particular have actually been treated in Chavez's Venezuela. (Starting with Anarchist comrades who have lived through Chavez's Venezuela, such as El Libertario and CNA.) If you can't make use of that citation, then it sucks that we're stuck in that situation for the moment, but I do have the sources, and it's the best I can do for you in the absence of more comprehensive translation efforts. I'll let rechelon speak for himself as to what he intended to imply, or not to imply. But when it comes to "Anarchists get arrested during protests everywhere," I will say, for myself, that I never claimed Chavez's government was categorically more brutal to Anarchists than, say, the United States government has been to comrades in Seattle, Philadelphia, Miami, St. Paul, etc. What I will say is that they are in almost every way *exactly the same* when it comes to locking up Anarchists. And that's a damning indictment of Chavez's government.

Here are some basic starting points on the Venezuelan government's repression of social protest, including the jailing of anarchists, dissident unionists and human rights observers. http://libcom.org/news/venezuela-43-arrests-union-march-maracay-12032010 http://www.nodo50.org/ellibertario/english/Why%20popular%20protest-ingles.txt http://www.nodo50.org/ellibertario/english/jails%20bars%202010.txt http://www.nodo50.org/ellibertario/english/campaignsocialprotest-2009.txt http://www.nodo50.org/ellibertario/english/On%20infiltration.txt I picked these out because they are what I found very quickly that was available in English. If you can read Spanish I would suggest picking up literally any issue of [El Libertario](http://www.nodo50.org/ellibertario/), which almost always includes columns and news updates about imprisoned comrades, prison support campaigns, etc., carried a regular feature on prisoners by the Cruz Negra Anarquista de Venezuela back when the latter was more active, etc.

Rothbard was wrong about many things, including wage labor. But this is a strawman. Rothbard doesn't claim that a contract can "alienate my will for eight hours." He claims that labor contracts cannot rightfully alienate your will at all, for any period of time. So one upshot of this is his explicitly stated view (see for example here: <http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/nineteen.asp>) that promises of future labor cannot be enforced, and that legal requirements of specific performance of a labor contract, even over limited periods of time, are illegitimate.

You might be tempted to call racist harassment the occupational disease of police. If not for the fact that it is their occupation.

He uses an *Alliance of the Libertarian Left logo image* several times during the discussion of "liberal-tarians," but seeing as ALL is an anti-electoral, left-wing market anarchist group, which is extremely radical on questions of both economic freedom and the existence of the state as such -- and since this image pops up allegedly to illustrate a discussion of, essentially, civil-libertarian and anti-war political Progressives (he mentions Ralph Nader, Naomi Wolf and Glenn Greenwald along the way), using a label that was actually invented to describe the views of a couple guys at Cato (Brink Lindsey and Will Wilkinson, in particular) who wanted libertarians to reach out less towards conservatives and more towards those sorts of Progressives, largely for the purpose of greater success in government elections, it is pretty clear to me that the guy is, to put it gently, speaking outside of his area of expertise, and has not understood the views he's alluding to. Moreover, there is a considerable world of left-wing anarchist efforts other than ALL which aren't even mentioned. (For example people associated with Food Not Bombs, CopWatch, the anarchist factions within Occupy Wall Street, publishing projects like the Independent Media Centers or Infoshop.org, or more ideologically-driven groups like NEFAC, etc.) There is actually a wide range of views here and I don't expect anyone to have a comprehensive grasp of all of it if they haven't spent a long time immersed in it. But it is important to note the existence of such "types" if your goal is to make a video about all the types of libertarians. On the other hand, it seems clear enough that neither ALL nor other left-wing anarchist efforts could have been seriously addressed in the video without seriously disrupting his ridiculously forced conclusion that the Presidential campaign of Ron Paul supposedly unites all forms of "libertarians." Because, in general, we want nothing to do with Presidents, nothing to do with campaigns, and nothing to do with Ron Paul. If'n it helps, [here's one of the ALL's websites](http://praxeology.net/all-left.htm), which may help provide some orientation on what this sort of thing is about and why the video doesn't actually address it.

He uses an *Alliance of the Libertarian Left logo image* several times during the discussion of "liberal-tarians," but seeing as ALL is an anti-electoral, left-wing market anarchist group, which is extremely radical on questions of both economic freedom and the existence of the state as such -- and since this image pops up allegedly to illustrate a discussion of, essentially, civil-libertarian and anti-war political Progressives (he mentions Ralph Nader, Naomi Wolf and Glenn Greenwald along the way), using a label that was actually invented to describe the views of a couple guys at Cato (Brink Lindsey and Will Wilkinson, in particular) who wanted libertarians to reach out less towards conservatives and more towards those sorts of Progressives, largely for the purpose of greater success in government elections, it is pretty clear to me that the guy is, to put it gently, speaking outside of his area of expertise, and has not understood the views he's alluding to. Moreover, there is a considerable world of left-wing anarchist efforts other than ALL which aren't even mentioned. (For example people associated with Food Not Bombs, CopWatch, the anarchist factions within Occupy Wall Street, publishing projects like the Independent Media Centers or Infoshop.org, or more ideologically-driven groups like NEFAC, etc.) There is actually a wide range of views here and I don't expect anyone to have a comprehensive grasp of all of it if they haven't spent a long time immersed in it. But it is important to note the existence of such "types" if your goal is to make a video about all the types of libertarians. On the other hand, it seems clear enough that neither ALL nor other left-wing anarchist efforts could have been seriously addressed in the video without seriously disrupting his ridiculously forced conclusion that the Presidential campaign of Ron Paul supposedly unites all forms of "libertarians." Because, in general, we want nothing to do with Presidents, nothing to do with campaigns, and nothing to do with Ron Paul. If'n it helps, [here's one of the ALL's websites](http://praxeology.net/all-left.htm), which may help provide some orientation on what this sort of thing is about and why the video doesn't actually address it.