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?
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.
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.
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.
Anarchism isn't some cursory subject for me. Someone up thread mentioned Rojava as an example of something closest to an anarchist collective. I went there and lived there. What I found was voluntary trade which we commonly call capitalism. I find this to be compatible with anarchism when trades are made voluntarily and not say, by strong arm of government forcing how you trade with people or the strong arm of some "anarchist" "opening up access" to your capital.
I would consider "opening up access" to someone else's capital to be a kind of theft, in general, and not consistent with anarchism. When the capital in question is means-of-production that the workers have contributed to building, things are a bit less clear-cut.
Allowing workers to join the board, perhaps as a response to an all-out strike, might be a step towards worker's collectives.
It's much easier to articulate the objectives than the path.
I just checked out Rojava on wikipedia; it's a new one on me. Turns out it's what I have thought to be the Kurdish Autonomous Region.
I have heard that KAR operates on roughly-anarchist lines, and works well; I'm very interested in large-scale, working, contemporary anarchist and collective societies. The only other one I can think of is Catalunya, which is sometimes described as anarchist. It appears to me to be mostly capitalism with a strong public sector, along with some major collectivised industries. But I'm not familiar with how decisions are made.
I'm very interested to hear that you've spent time in Rojava.
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.
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.
I could be wrong but I infered on your other response you're ok with people keeping the fruits of their labor. If you're ok with them trading those fruits I'd call you a capitalist, not a socialist. Some of those fruits and some of those trades may be means of production, like a drill press or factory floor or whatever. Unless of course you're strong arming someone with violence to hand over some of those fruits.
I'm ok with socialism when it's done consensually. If a bunch of people want to go live on a commune, more power to them. It's when you come for the equipment and capital I use to manufacture things and feed my family, is when you're gonna start needing the commune comrades to enact violence if you want to steal that from me. And to do that seems.... coercive and non-anarchistic.
I'm OK with people keeping the fruits of their labour. Up to a point. When you get people using money to get more money, exponentially, until they've got so much they can't think of ways to spend it and start buying NFTs and building space rockets, it's gone way too far. So I'm good with keeping "fruits of labour" if that's what you need to live, subject to the constraints of tax policy.
My own political views are neither here nor there. I live in the UK, but I don't support Labour; I don't think Labour is socialist, and I do think they're authoritarian and militarist. I don't know how you can scale up anarchism from a collective to a nation; I do know when things are going in the wrong direction.
> I'm ok with socialism when it's done consensually.