[kragen]

Something can be both an industry consortium and a DIY anarchist collective, like Linux; the Linux Foundation isn't Linux. It turns out that industrial companies don't appreciate being subject to monopoly rents any more than private individuals do! The GPL is undeniably very anarchist, and it serves as a kind of constitution that keeps the companies that participate in GPL projects from controlling them. Consider, for example, Oracle and LibreOffice, MariaDB, and Jenkins, or GitHub (now Microsoft) and Git.

The solution isn't to destroy capitalism or exclude industrial companies from participation. We tried that a century ago. It went badly, because, as it turns out, capitalism is better at limiting the damage done by ambitious psychopaths than the alternative systems are; if Beria had been born in Ohio maybe he would have ended up running a soap company or a division of GE instead of mass-murdering dissidents.

Similarly, the GPL (and, to a lesser extent, non-copyleft open-source licensing) reduces the damage selfish companies can do to software projects and the people and companies that depend on them.

We need to figure out how to do the same thing to drug companies and the FDA, because they are just killing far too many people and causing far too much needless suffering today.

[beaconstudios]

It's misleading to mix up anarchism and marxism-leninism. While both are anti capitalist, ML is the one where you're just replacing one hierarchy (economic power) with another (party membership). Anarchism is fundamentally against coercive hierarchy.

[kragen]

Anarchism is indeed fundamentally against coercive hierarchy, yes, and I apologize for not being clearer about that. That said, Emma Goldman and many other anarchists were delighted to be deported to Soviet Russia until their famous disillusionment; historically speaking, the mainstream of anarchism considered state communism more friend than enemy, until they saw how it worked out in practice. And my own experiences with nominally anti-hierarchical organizations have not given me great faith.

[beaconstudios]

I think a lot of people had a lot of hope in the Soviet Union, especially when there were actual soviet councils involved. It didn't take long to devolve into a regular dictatorship. After all the state was supposed to be a vanguard for the implementation of socialism but power begets power and in the end it existed to serve itself.

I think that's the main reason that most sane leftists* are some flavour of anarchist these days.

* not including social democrats/other liberals in the "leftist" bracket.

[notch656a]

How can one be both anarchist and leftist? Doesn't re-allocating resources in an unprofitable way for the owner require some sort of involuntary transaction, or would you expect owners of capital will all relinquish them peacefully? It seems like capitalism is more compatible with anarchism as capitalism can be contained within voluntary transactions.

[kragen]

It sounds like you would benefit from reading at least the introduction section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism.

[notch656a]

Oxford dictionary: noun belief in the abolition of all government and the organization of society on a voluntary, cooperative basis without recourse to force or compulsion.

That sounds compatible with mere free trade amongst men without any sort of socialism. Seems like leftism wants some involuntary reallocation of capital, but maybe I'm mistaken. If they don't I'd say they're just charitable capitalists.

[denton-scratch]

You seem to be confusing anarchism with libertarianism. Libertarianism is basically capitalism on steroids; it's an individualistic, "rules-are-for-little-people" ideology. Anarchism is any of several different kinds of non-hierarchical socialism.

For clarity, by "socialism" I don't mean Robin Hood socialism, taking from the rich to give to the poor; that's coercive. I mean that socialists aim for a more-equal society. So I'm saying that anarchists are people that aim for a more equal society, and hope to achieve that using processes and structures that minimise hierarchy.

[notch656a]

Capitalism isn't incompatible with anarchism unless you're speaking with leftist.

[kragen]

Anarchism is leftist.

[notch656a]

I consider myself anarchist in the sense I do not believe in the legitimacy of government. I do not have any leftist view whatsoever, but I think people should retain ownership of their property except through consensual trade. Does that mean I'm not an anarchist, or does that mean I'm a leftist?

[kragen]

I suppose it depends on what definitions you're using of words like "government", "leftist view", "their property", and "anarchist"; clearly at least one of them differs from the mainstream definitions. I suspect it's "anarchist", since anarchism (as normally understood) opposes coercive hierarchy more broadly than just the usual definition of "government", including things sometimes described as "property", but I can't know for sure; you might be using a nonstandard definition of "government" instead, for example.

As I said before, though, you might benefit from reading at the introductory section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism.

[notch656a]

I've looked it over. I understand leftists have a rich history of invoking anti-state ideology. I'm using the oxford definition of anarchism.

I'm not saying leftists can't exist in anarchism as some sort of pact or contract amongst leftist, in the sense of without coercive hierarchy. But I don't see how anarchism is inherently leftist. If leftism means socialism or some form of redistributing property involuntarily, that sounds coercive.

Voluntary exchange of property and capital is the opposite of coercion. It seems capitalism fits in neatly with anarchism.

[denton-scratch]

> I'm using the oxford definition of anarchism.

Which Oxford definition? You've cited "The Oxford Dictionary" up-thread. There's a bunch of online lexicographical resources that are unrelated to the OED, but trade on its name and reputation.

At any rate, a brief definition from a concise lexicon is no substitute for doing some proper reading on the subject. And even reading will leave you pretty confused about how it can possibly work; participation in an anarchist collective might blow your mind.

[denton-scratch]

It means you're an extreme libertarian, but no anarchist.

[notch656a]

That's just leftist gate-keeping of anarchism. A completely voluntary system of free trade isn't incompatible with a system without coercion. Note I consider something coercion when it is performed by violence by the aggressor, a victim can fight back and I won't classify that as coercion.

[denton-scratch]

It's only "leftist gatekeeeping" if you're wedded to the idiosyncratic notion that anarchism is not a form of socialism.

From the language you use, I suspect you are a USAian; the term "leftist" seems to be used mainly as a term USAians use to express their contempt for socialism. In most of the world, "socialism" is not a bad word. But the term "leftist" is often used by authoritarians to describe the "terrorists" they're using the army to suppress.