[notch656a]

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.

[denton-scratch]

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.

You mean, when you can opt out, apparently.

[notch656a]

>You mean, when you can opt out, apparently

Yes precisely, this to me is the essence of anarchism. To have the free will to opt-out or opt-in to any voluntary exchange without coercion. To keep my factory floor if I like, and if people voluntarily want to buy enough widgets from me that I can build a space ship, that is great for everyone because I've given the world lots of value and they've voluntarily given it back to me in exchange for that value.

It's really strange to me that leftist anarchists and capitalist anarchist are such bitter enemies. I think both can survive under the banner of a system without coercion. Anarchist socialism is merely what happen when some group of people consent to each other to share their resources. Those that don't consent and want to use free trade instead look more like capitalists can continue to do so. Personally I pick the latter because I think it will bring me more prosperity, but I'm very live and let live and can see both ideologies living peacefully side by side so long as no one coercively tries to take the property of another.

[denton-scratch]

> It's really strange to me that leftist anarchists and capitalist anarchists are such bitter enemies

Not enemies; I don't have bitter enemies. I just see opposition to capitalism as a pretty fundamental aspect of anarchism. I'm not gatekeeping "anarchist". I see you as hijacking the term; a capitalist anarchist is not an anarchist, it's a libertarian, or an individualist. I think you know this.

I think your persistent claims that small traders are capitalists is disingenuous. There's nothing against trade in anarchism or in socialism. Trade is not the same as capitalism.

I'm afraid I don't like being referred to by you as a "leftist" - nobody calls themselves a leftist. That's a term used by people who dislike socialism and want to portray socialists as "bad". So I think I will not respond to this thread again.

[Edited for grammar, mainly]

[notch656a]

>So I think I will not respond to this thread again.

Ok, you won't be missed (nor remembered), pathetic leftist gate-keeper of the word anarchism. Hopefully you find a True Scotsman worthy of the title.

[kragen]

You are of course free to use words to mean whatever you want, but if you choose to use "anarchism" to mean a non-leftist ideology, you should expect that most people will misunderstand you; in some cases that can slide into deliberate deception, though I don't think that's your intention here. You aren't the first, of course; Rothbard and arguably Spooner understood anarchism in the same way you do, though Spooner belonged to the First International. But when you slide into attacking people as "pathetic" because they use the word in its mainstream sense, you're tempting people to label you as a troll. Please don't do that.

[notch656a]

Edit: My apologies to Kragen for the stuff I misattributed to him. It was a long back and forth thread between us two and I didn't realize you had interjected at the end. My mind was locked into thinking I was in conversation with denton-scratch.

I admit my use of "pathetic" was self-defense from being accused of being a hijacker, which I found to be a personal attack against something objectively untrue based on the Oxford English definition of the word "anarchism."

[notch656a]

Oh so you are back. You're a liar too. Pathetic. I use that word because of your gate-keeping, not because of your brand of anarchism.

> choose to use "anarchism" to mean a non-leftist ideology

I thought using leftist was offensive (even though I didn't mean it offensively) and you asked me not to? You're a hypocrite too.

>you should expect that most people will misunderstand you

I expect you will misunderstand because of your willful ignorance of the term. Calling it 'hijacking' is a lot different than calling it different from whatever looks mainstream to you. There is no mainstream brand of anarchism, it's an ideology without coercion that can manifest in many ways.

Spare me the speech about politeness. You called me a hijacker of a term and say "I think I know this." No I do not, in fact I know the opposite. I think you're an arrogant and self-serving keeper of the word anarchism, one who tries to hide their vulgarity in pretty language and has the gaul to act like a victim for a curt retort.