[ZeroGravitas]

The cited article quotes Kropotkin talking about ants and how they cooperate. It says if an ant does not cooperate by sharing food, they are treated as an enemy.

This is what he meant by mutual aid.

> Kropotkin was fascinated by how ant cheaters (those who refuse to dispense aid) are dealt with: “If an ant which has its crop full has been selfish enough to refuse feeding a comrade, it will be treated as an enemy, or even worse. If the refusal has been made while its kinsfolk were fighting with some other species, they will fall back upon the greedy individual with greater vehemence than even upon the enemies themselves.”

A 19th century Russian prince that became a socialist perhaps thinks of something different when he thinks of "beaurocracy" or "government" than a 21st century HN reader does.

[_0ffh]

Yes, I know. I read the article. I also think it is sensible to be aware of cheaters and treat them accordingly, though we're not a haplodiploid species. Bear in mind that dealing with cheaters must not be taken as an excuse for violence or robbery.

What is your point regarding my answer to gp post? I didn't even mention the words "bureaucracy" or "government". Rest assured though, that I despise them both.

[ZeroGravitas]

The article used those terms, in a way that cast Kropotkin in a "right libertarian" light which struck me as anachronistic given his time period.

Your comment seemed to echo that, talking about some Anarcho-capitalist libertarian ideal buzzword society, linking that to his anarchism and then further attaching the generic word 'capitalist' to it.

This felt like a stretch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

> Anarcho-capitalism is also distinguished from anarchism, an anti-capitalist movement that opposes unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, and social anarchism, a branch of anarchism that sees individual freedom as interrelated with mutual aid. Unlike anarchists, anarcho-capitalists support private property and private institutions. Anarcho-capitalists also reject the libertarian socialist economic theories of anarchism, arguing that they are inherently authoritarian or require authoritarianism to achieve, while believing that there is no coercion under capitalism. Despite its name, anarcho-capitalism lies outside the tradition of anarchism and is more closely affiliated with capitalism, right-libertarianism, and liberalism

[_0ffh]

I'd like to point you to a detailed rebuttal of this claim in text [1] and video [2] form. Wikipedia should not be anyone's only source.

[1] https://springtimeofnations.org/2021/04/yes-ancaps-are-anarc...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJb2-bsWP6Y

[ZeroGravitas]

Having an obscure historical claim to a word commonly associated with people who you disagree with is the best kind of Technically Correct, but not great for communication.

I was mostly trying to point out that there are disagreements about what "anarchist" means and avoid confusion.

[_0ffh]

> I was mostly trying to point out that there are disagreements

I've got a feeling you hit the nail squarely on the head there! =)

I didn't quite catch your meaning.

[jostylr]

This seems like a horrible notion of how to run a human society and is shocking if that is a foundational observation leading to his anarchist outlook. In a capitalist society, someone who refuses to share also fails to thrive as much as they could (natural consequence), possibly falling into poverty. But there is no need to violently rip them apart. In a society in which all is given freely, the only alternative for lack of cooperation would seem to be active punishment, either violence or some kind of exiling.

Even if one is okay with punishing those who refuse to work for the good of all, when does it get invoked? Who decides? What if there is a mistake in that notion?

And this is in the context in which work is generally simple to observe and equate. In a modern society, work is very unequal. How do you figure out appropriate levels of working across nursing, serving coffee, working in a sewage treatment plant, mining, farming, teaching, walking dogs, long-distance hauling, programming, managing, etc. Who would make those decisions? Do you have agreed upon shifts? If someone shows up late or doesn't show up, is there some consequence meted out by someone?

In an economic system, one has the price system where all of that gets figured out. If you think you are underpaid in such a system, you can seek to get paid more by doing something else. If you think someone is overpaid, you can undercut their prices. If you don't show up for work, you don't get paid. This creates the changing conditions that lead to better allocation of resources, including labor. It is unclear how this could work in a society where everyone just works for the betterment of society and the fruits of all labor are distributed "equally" (things are not equal, so someone has to decide some kind of price-equivalent system for this, I presume)?

[DubiousPusher]

> Who would make those decisions? Some anarchists have everyone vote on such matters. Some have a legal system that is elected.

> Do you have agreed upon shifts? Yes. These are established by vote of the workers.

> If someone shows up late or doesn't show up, is there some consequence meted out by someone? Yes.

Rather than using prices to set which work is desirable people vote on it. Some anarchist societies today distribute undesirable work across the entire community. Everyone takes one cleaning shift a week for example.

If you're curious, you should read The Dispossessed. I especially recommend that book because it does not paint a utopian picture of an anarchist society. And most anarchists will be honest that you will loose benefits moving from a capitalist-statist political economy to an anarchist one. The goal in moving to an anarchist society is not to create a society where individual access to material wealth is the same as in a capitalist society. The goal is to create a society in which the unstated forms of domination that exist in "free" societies today are weakend.

[ZeroGravitas]

There's all sorts of interesting arguments about how various libertarian societies would enforce their non-aggression, property rights and contract law etc.

It's very lazy to claim that any society doesn't have this requirement.

Also, anarchism (or socialism) and markets are not necessarily mutually exclusive, there's many different types, though some of those may claim they are exclusive and only theirs is the true anarchism/socialism.