Different Schools of Anarchy

[AnonymousSpeed]

Yo.

So, there are different schools of anarchy in the world, right. You got this Authoritarian-Anarchist vs Left-Right alignment chart that exists for memes and whatnot. Real talk, though, if anarchy is the absence of government, like...what's the different between anarcho-anything and anarcho-anythingelse? Were any particular school to realize it's end goal for the state, which I presume is it not existing, would it not be the exact same state that all the other schools want?

I'm confused, friendos. Please help.

[Tryhard]

anarchism is the rejection of hierarchies and power structures. this mostly finds itself on the left-wing because capitalism is seen as a hierarchy by most anarchists, and it is distinguished from anarcho-capitalism and right-libertarian anti-statism because of this.

Edited April 29, 2019 by Tryhard

[Armchair General]

They're all the same to me: It's kind of hard to take them seriously when it means that I seriously need to invest in a electric fence if they get their way.

[Ertrick36]

I'd say "different schools of anti-statism", because pure anarchy is hardly much of an "official" thing, nor is it something people can really have different philosophies on.  Anarchy is the complete and total rejection of all governmental structure.

There are likely different theories as to what would happen in an anarchistic state, two of which are based upon the worst fears of the political left and right; some believe society would dissolve into a community of sin (fear of the right), some believe it'd turn into a "dog eat dog" world where the strong destroy the weak (fear of the left), and then there are those like me who believe that human society would not persist with total anarchy for very long without reforming some governmental structure (even if it's a basic village hierarchy).  But regardless, total anarchy is just the absence of government and law - there's no variance of anarchy, as there is nothing to draw variance from aside from going the opposite way (authoritarianism).  People would be left to their own devices to decide right from wrong, and that's about as close to anarchistic variance as you'll get.

But anti-statism is different in the sense that it seeks to end most functions of government beyond the basic necessities.  In that sense, there are variances, because there doesn't need to be a complete lack of government.

I don't think I fall under either of these, though.  I used to be of what I think was an anti-statist mind, but that was when I was an edgy teenager who knew literally nothing about government except all the horrible things authoritarian leaders did.  Now that I'm better educated and know what governments can actually do for us (especially a lot of the stuff I take for granted, such as a prison system, emergency services, and regulations that keep corporations from completely screwing me over), I think we'd all be worse off without government.

In terms of those political charts, I think those are just fluff.  You can't boil down the culmination of one person's opinions to being on a particular point on some arbitrary graph.  Hell, you can't really quantify one's opinions.  You can't say that "oh, well your disdain for gun control makes you far more conservative than your support for gay rights makes you left", or that "you believe this, and this, and that, so in general you're precisely this far left leaning and have such-and-such amount of anarchistic leaning".  People are more complicated than a two-dimensional graph, and subjective matters can't be quantified.

1 hour ago, Armchair General said:

They're all the same to me: It's kind of hard to take them seriously when it means that I seriously need to invest in a electric fence if they get their way.

You'd need to invest in it, and you'd also need to provide your own power for it, operate it yourself, and probably carry some kind of automatic weapon on you anyway because you sure as hell won't be able to call on the cops all the time and there's no way you can keep to a perfect schedule of keeping your fence up and running all the time alongside all the other things you need to keep running.

Oh, and don't forget about how you'd probably need to provide your own food and water or hope that people selling that stuff aren't gonna ask for everything you own including the shirt on your back (or if they do that you could take all they own at gunpoint).

Or how every prison would be a private prison, meaning that they all have their own rules and regulations regarding how wardens and prisoners can be treated, as well as the fact that you could get imprisoned for little reason more than you pissing on the fence of some cattle baron or spitting on the shoe of someone with a better gun than yours (as the people who are stronger and more powerful are the ones who would dictate these things).

Doesn't anarchy just sound like so much fun?

[Johann]

1 hour ago, Ertrick36 said:

I'd say "different schools of anti-statism", because pure anarchy is hardly much of an "official" thing, nor is it something people can really have different philosophies on.  Anarchy is the complete and total rejection of all governmental structure.

It's more nuanced than that. The most common perception of anarchy is that concept of "every man for himself" sort of government-less chaos, but it's not even defined by being strictly anti-government. More accurately, it's an ideology of resistance against power structures, which can be applied to varying aspects of society and in a multitude of ways. Being anti-capitalist, for instance, is a form of anarchy, but it doesn't necessarily mean being against government, or even the exchange of goods/services for money, for that matter.

Brief introduction on the subject: