> Most consider him an anarchist, I was using him as an example. I get that, but if you put someone forward as an example it seems odd to complain when people take him as one. That said, what I wrote above was deliberately framed in terms of general criteria (i.e., that bit about affirming or denying that "an Anarchist" is a "socialist") rather than a specific claim about Stirner because I didn't intend for it to rest on any claims about Stirner's being or not being an anarchist, and I'm quite familiar with some of the nomenclature problems involved. > I can name various others who would be unknown outside of the individualist anarchist and egoist anarchist community. Well, sure. You get some very explicit statements on this from folks like Sid Parker, or the crew at The Sovereign Self, for example. > Socialism itself has a common idea that is central to it's beliefs, Maybe. But I don't know that that needs to be the case. "Socialism" may be a family-resemblence concept, or a number of distinct family-resemblence concepts, rather than just one thing. > specifically it has a sort of morality. Well, I don't know about that. Do you mean that "Socialism itself" is based in an explicit appeal to morality, or that it does this on the sly, without acknowledging that that's what it's doing? Because if you mean the former, there certainly are people who want to call themselves socialists, who would specifically deny that -- Marx and Engels being a couple of obvious and notable examples. A lot of syndicalists, too. (M&E wanted to claim that their predecessors were more or less all moralists, but that certainly wouldn't be the first ridiculously inaccurate claim they made about their predecessors.) > I've yet to see a definition of socialism that one can apply to Stirner, if one ever comes about I'll gladly say that he fits under that definition but I wouldn't label him one for the single fact he never called himself one. O.K., fair enough. So just to be sure I understand, your reason for thinking that he doesn't qualify for, say, Tucker's understanding of "Anarchistic Socialism" is because you think he doesn't show enough concern for (macro-scale?) economic issues to think that that was really a live question for him? Or something like that?
O.K.; that's fine. (The only thing I'd be inclined to quibble about is that I think those leftist modes are an essential *part of* a freed market, not external counterbalances to it.) In any case, though, my point is just that that seems to be a different sort of account of what "capitalism" is and how it works than you get from the way it is used by, say, Rothbard, or David Friedman, or Kinsella, or Daniel D'Amico, etc., at least if we trace out how that notion actually gets deployed in argument. Now, maybe that's a reason to say that you're not an anarcho-capitalist after all; or maybe it's a reason to say that whatever you mean by "capitalism" is just something different from what other anarcho-capitalists have meant by it, etc. My main concern is just that it is important to note and keep track of the conceptual difference.
Well, when your conversation partner refers to what Stirner actually wrote, and you refer to what An Anarchist FAQ says about Stirner, who you haven't read, this is not exactly a matter of you quoting "a reference" and your conversation partner failing to. If you want to read it for yourself, the main passages on Proudhon are in the "My Intercourse" section of "The Owner," around p. 328 and the following pages of the Byington translation (online here: http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/stirner/theego14.html#pp328 and probably elsewhere). There are some other references to Proudhon scattered throughout the text. The criticism specifically has to do with Proudhon's views on property and possession, which he claims are "continuations and consistent carryings-out of the Christian principle, the principle of love, of sacrifice for something general, something alien. They complete in property, e.g., only what has long been extant as a matter of fact -- to wit, the propertylessness of the individual." There are also some occasional jabs at what Stirner takes to be Proudhon's views on religion, although I'm inclined to see those as not particularly important. The main discussion of "Socialism" in general is in the section on "Social Liberalism," around p. 152 ( http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/stirner/theego7.html#pp152 ). Stirner later lists Proudhon among the "parsons" (alongside theologians, liberals, schoolmasters, etc.) when he says "But the power of thoughts and ideas, the dominion of theories and principles, the sovereignty of the spirit, in short the -- *hierarchy*, lasts as long as the parsons ... have the floor." Anyway, you can read through his reasons for saying this if you want to; it's all available online. Whatever you may think of his take on Proudhon, or on "Socialism" as he understands it, I think it is quite obvious when AFAQ tries to treat this as simply a matter of "attack[ing] state socialism, not libertarian socialism," that has a lot more to do with what the authors of AFAQ look for in a philosopher than it has to do with what Stirner wrote. Stirner's attacks there actually have nothing to do with the state; they have to do with what he sees as the subordination of the individual and her ownership to the alien demands of social relationships and social institutions (which may include *but are in no way limited to* politics or the state). Whether or not his criticism of Proudhon, or of "Socialism," is particularly acute, or particularly fair (and I have my own views about that), it serves nobody to prevaricate or dissemble about what he actually wrote.
> The problem is you're assuming he was an anarchist, ... That seems like an odd thing to say. *I* didn't say that Stirner *was* an Anarchist; you did, above: "Not all anarchists are socialists. For example, Max Stirner was an egoist anarchist ...." My own view is that it depends on what you mean by "anarchist;" certainly if we are going by self-identification, he never identified as one. There may be other reasons to apply the label retroactively; but if so, of course we'd best be clear that that is what we are doing, etc. etc. I agree with you that Stirner was explicitly critical of socialism, and not just of state socialism. The common AFAQ line that he was only criticizing state socialism is like a lot of common AFAQ assertions about individualists -- it has a lot more to do with how the communist authors of AFAQ want to present The Tradition than it does with what the folks in question actually wrote, and ends up with assertions that have a lot more to do with team sports than they do with the careful assessment of arguments. Certainly I agree with you that Stirner's comments about Proudhon in the section on The Owner (on property and possession, etc.), and on "Socialism" there and elsewhere, could not honestly be read as an attack only on *state* forms of socialism; they have primarily to do with what Stirner thought (rightly or wrongly) to be implied about the relationship that they seemed to demand between individuals and *society* (specifically not limited to the state). I'm not sure I grasp entirely the distinction you are trying to draw between "philosophical" and "economic" definitions of socialism (in part because I am not at all sure that there is any single philosophical approach or economic school that all forms of socialism have in common with each other). But I agree that there seem clearly to be some senses of the term "socialism" which it would be quite a stretch, or simply impossible, to fit Stirner's views into. (It becomes more complicated with some people, e.g. Tucker, who claimed to be drawing on Stirner's thought.) But that's really my point here: if we want to determine how much of a stretch it is, and *why*, it's going to be useful to spell out what we mean by the term, rather than presuming that this is obvious to all, or shared by everyone in the discussion. Even if there is *no* plausible sense of the term that could fit Stirner's views (and I'm certainly open to that possibility), the *reasons* that you'd give for denying the fit are going to differ from case to case. (The fact that Stirner could not be described as a "Socialist" in the political sense is, for example, much more obvious, and much less interesting, than the fact that he probably could not be called a "Socialist" in what you call the philosophical sense.)
I think it might be worth taking some time to ask what "Socialism" is when we are asking whether or not a particular anarchist counts as a socialist. Just as an example, for a while (roughly 1900s-1920s) a number of anarchist *communists* would specifically deny that they were Socialists, and would present the position of the "Socialists" in articles (see for example [this by Harry Kelly in Mother Earth](http://fair-use.org/mother-earth/1908/02/anarchism-a-plea-for-the-impersonal)) as something radically different from what they supported. Now you might point out that the "Socialism" and "Socialists" they were talking about had a rather narrow and specific meaning -- they were often talking specifically about partisans of either of a couple political parties, either Debs's SPA or De Leon's SLP. In any case it seems to have meant something different for them than what "Socialism" meant for, say, Proudhon, when he identified himself with the socialist movement. And you'd be right about that. But since questions about the meaning of the term can shift and drift and expand and contract like that, it does seem like it would be a good idea to say a bit more about each of us means, when we affirm that an Anarchist is a "socialist," or when we deny it. Also what our standards are going to be (does self-identification matter? how about relationship to the socialist movement of the time? etc.). Rather than simply presuming we're all on the same page, just because we are using the same word, and pushing ahead on that basis.
> that being said, the shift in the term "libertarian" is much more recent, and something rothbard explicitly gloats about, and certainly CATO etc played no small part in propagating this new set of terminology . . . That is a more recent shift, but not *that* much more recent -- you see it for example in the career of folks like Charles T. Sprading (as early as 1913, his book "Liberty and the Great Libertarians" could include folks like Paine, Jefferson (?!), Herbert Spencer, Abraham Lincoln (?!), Henry George, John Stuart Mill, etc. alongside Tucker, Spooner, Godwin and Kropotkin), and you then see it picked up and heavily promulgated in more or less its contemporary meaning by Frank Chodorov and especially Leonard Read by the 1940s. By the time Cato came along in 1974 this had already long been the case -- although of course Cato's prominence in the public-affairs newsmedia helped cement what had already been the case, etc. etc. (Although, I suspect, the creation of the Libertarian Party at about the same time had at least as much to do with that as Cato did.) Anyway, I agree that the Nolan Chart kind of sucks and that whole cluster of ideas can make it really hard to discuss anti-capitalist libertarian viewpoints. The consolation I try to take from all this is that there is some opportunity to use these kind of terminological tangles to your advantage -- to use phrases that seem deliberately paradoxical, even though they really aren't. Because part of the reason I do go around calling myself a "libertarian leftist" and a "free market anticapitalist" and all that is that, besides being accurate, it also helps to provoke a question, and prove a point. The fact that these labels seem like a big, crazy contradiction can actually be made to work in my favor -- because it gets people curious, and provokes them to ask "What the hell do you mean by that?" And then I get the chance to explain.
I'm no fan of Charles Koch but the shift, or contraction, of meaning for the term "socialism" -- which had a very wide range of meanings in the 19th century, but now is often used to mean more or less exclusively "state socialism," or "state control of the means of production," or just "regulatory welfare statism," or just "statism" simpliciter -- is not really something you can pin on him. That linguistic shift was already well in effect by the 1920s. You can see it in Mises's book on "Socialism," but also even within the anticapitalist anarchist movement itself -- so for example in 1908 you have the communist Anarchist [Harry Kelly writing an article in Mother Earth where "Socialism" is repeatedly used to mean a state-socialist program distinct from anything the Anarchists advocate](http://fair-use.org/mother-earth/1908/02/anarchism-a-plea-for-the-impersonal). (The rise in popularity of Debs's Socialist Party of America, as well as fallout from the split between the Red and Yellow IWW, both no doubt contributed to this.) And there are moves in that direction at least as far back as [the 1890s](http://fair-use.org/benjamin-tucker/instead-of-a-book/armies-that-overlap), although folks like Tucker tried to resist the shift. Anyway there is no doubt that this kind of thing has blinkered a lot of thought and is worth trying to linguistically jam or explode where possible. (There's a reason I pass out copies of Tucker's "State Socialism and Anarchism" everywhere I go.) But the "newspeak" here is hardly very new, and it's certainly something that was already well entrenched long before the Koch-bros ever came onto the scene.
> You speak as if you're the author, Because I am. Or more precisely, the co-author of that passage (with my co-editor, Gary Chartier). The "Charles W. Johnson" on the cover of the book is me and the website you're probably reading it on (radgeek.com) is my website. So I don't mean to be overbearing about this, but I do think I can speak from some expertise on what I might have meant when I wrote that line. > the quote I gave explicitly says "politically imposed...", which is a stretch to suggest it's not referencing government. You are completely misunderstanding the point. Of course the reference to "politically imposed ... interruption of the free operation of exchange and competition" is a reference to government. (As is my reference above to "regulatory coercion.") However, I will repeat what I said before: the issue being discussed in that line is an issue with *government interruption of market coordination*. The problem, again, is the *lack* or the diversion of a certain kind of peaceful social coordination. Government is here doing the interrupting, not the coordinating. The point is not primarily about whether the regulating is, or is not, the result of collusion between government and businessmen. (It may well be. But if it were not, that wouldn't change the point that we are making about "coordination problems.") The kind of coordination I'm talking about is not the kind that goes on among members of a successful cartel. In fact the kind of cartelization I mentioned above was specifically mentioned because it is dependent on government privileges for its success, and will generally be unstable or unsustainable in a freed market. As for union strikes, if severed from government labor laws or legal recognition (=), they are *a part of* the competitive market process, not an "interruption" of it. People of course have every right to withdraw their labor power if they see fit to do so -- to hold back, to quit, to drive hard bargains with would-be employers, and -- if they want to do so -- to do it en masse. The operation of free trade and competition is a matter of being able to say "No sale" quite as much as it's a matter of saying "Yes." (= Which is specifically discussed in the book, and advocated in, e.g., Kevin Carson's chapter on "Labor Struggle in a Free Market") > You have brought up a very good point, but I still think these words were carefully woven so as to allow a form of government that would be free of capitalism. O.K. But I happen to know that you are wrong to think that. And if you actually read the essays in the book, all of which are by explicit anarchists, and which repeatedly call for absolute laissez-faire and the abolition of the state as such, it should be fairly obvious to you that you are wrong.
> * coordinated grassroots activism > * vigilante gang > > You say potato, I say potato. Well, except of course that one kind of coordinated social activity is violent. And the other is not. Which seems to me a rather more important difference than tomayto / tomahto. In any case, it has something to do with why your "presumably through violence" was a completely unwarranted and really pretty insane presumption, given what I had written; and why that section of the book argues has many arguments in favor of the former and none in favor of the latter. At least, as far as I can tell. If you have a specific example from the book where you think gang violence (?) is being defended, feel free to cite it and we can discuss that.
> This subreddit is surprisingly good at avoiding that, but in my experience, most discussions between market anarchists from different "camps" tend to amount to little more than which words are good, which words are bad, and showing which "team" one belongs to by arguing what the words "really mean", and using strawman arguments based on one's own definition of a word while being fully aware that the other person defines the word in a different way. I agree that all of these things happen, and that it really kind of sucks. > Since we are all aware that people define these terms differently, we should also be aware that any statement containing one of those words is an empty statement containing no information. I don't see how that follows at all. It seems to me rather that the information contained in the statement is dependent on what the person making the statement meant by the critical words (by "capitalism," or "socialism," or whatever). Now that might leave the meaning of the statement a bit mysterious -- if there were no way to solve the mystery of what the writer meant by the critical word in the statement she wrote. But it seems to me that there are ways of figuring that out, and acknowledging it -- you could try to glean it from context, you could try to glean it from the use that is made in argument, you could make a distinction between different senses and try out each alternative to see what makes for the strongest argument or the most plausible statement; or if all else fails you could just ask. Can I suggest that just putting yourself out there in your own terms, and then trying to develop and encourage skills for exploring ambiguities, negotiating mysteries and conflicts over the meanings of words, etc. after the fact -- really, more or less ad hoc, as the situation requires -- is probably more likely to help good conversations happen than ex ante policing of vocabulary for "wrong" words? I mean things like using conceptual distinctions, subscripts, etc. to work out an ad-hoc common language, or or "what-you-call-X, I-call-Y" sorts of rephrasings and good-faith efforts to restate your interlocutor's position in your own terminology or to put your statements into theirs; trying out a number of alternative meanings of terms ("If by X you mean A, then ....; if by X you mean B, on the other hand ...") if one of them may offer a more charitable interpretation; and cultivating a certain attitude of tolerance and charity, and a basic willingness to just stop and ask if you're not clear on what somebody meant, or to make a good-faith effort to help other people out if they ask what you mean. Because it seems to me inevitable that this sort of thing is going to happen -- certainly even if you completely ditch "socialism" and "capitalism" there are plenty of run-ins still to be had over terms like "profit," "redistribution," "rent," "interest," "competition," "work," "commodity," "cooperation," "capital," "property," "possession," "spontaneous order," "business," "entrepreneurship," "market," and a million other common terms of debate that I could think of, and it seems to me likely that these kinds of problems are going to be problems that keep recurring all the way down no matter how much you try to specify or stipulate or rephrase. If we need to chuck out less useful terms, or mint new language, then we'll get to that in the process of trying to understand the words we started out with.
