The Beauty of Libertarian (not to be confused with….)
Economic and Court Systems

I would suggest that in a democratically run voluntary economy,
so-called ‘free riders’ would have trouble accumulating goods
and so would have to adopt a semi-nomadic lifestyle. This is
because if they lived in the same place for long they would soon
be known by the local producers/ distributors who have the choice
(in a voluntary economy) of withholding certain goods and services.

Ditto local trouble makers.

I think this would allow an elegant solution to justice in the form of
“Libertarian Courts” (although the absence of one does not negate
the existence of the other). This is a consensus-based form of justice,
where a decision on the solution to a crime would include the
agreement of the accused. Otherwise, they would be run more or
less like a ‘normal’ court of law.

If a decision is not made, for example because of lack of evidence
or the proposal of a harsh sentence, another LC would be
established consisting of different ‘peers’.
If no decision is made, the ‘case’, as it where, could be dropped,
with the perpetrator apologizing to the community/ victim or the
victim’s family forgiving them. Or the process could start all over
again. After an amount of time, the tedious nature of repeated trials
would be equivalent to a prison sentence without the perpetrator
being isolated from normal (as opposed to criminal) society. As
a last resort, the perpetrator would have every freedom outside
of a trial period (during which they could be ‘restrained’ by
economic means) to move to another area.

Individualism and Collectivism

Collectivism can mean Socialism or common ownership/opportunity,
but it can also be the artificial community which is much greater
than one's self-a mass society if you will-so beloved of the Right;
being Nation, State, Market and Church if you will.

So Rightists are Collectivists, in a similar way to Liberals, and
especially Leftists, being Individualists-in favour of an artificial
Individual-so that Stirner*'s Union of Egoists is very much with
us in the form of all those minor Trotskyite sects.

There's definitely an Egoistic nature prevalent in many Leftists
(this can be seen in relation to leftist sectarianism in comparison
with conservative support for Fascistic regimes-Mussolini, Suharto,
Pinochet) in the way, for example, that they don't like being wrong
as for them this is a personal insult.

Conservatives, on the other hand, seem to think everyone thinks
like they do, so therefore the problems in society are all, or mostly,
due to crackpot liberals or extremists having too much say.

This is exemplified in Conservative blogging, working on the
assumption that as they have the truth, which is known to everyone,
they have only to articulate this and everyone will see the truth for what it is.

Conservative support for the prison system and the police is
a particular example of “The Individual versus the Collective”
with Conservatives on the side of the “law abiding” Collective.

This is not to day that crime can be justified (why call George
Bush a War Criminal?), but putting someone prison for an affront
is akin to assaulting someone for an affront-most people would
focus on what has happened to them, not what they have done.

Put another way, the family of a murder victim would not be
expected to sympathize with the killer, they are going to mourn
their loss. In other words, focus on what has happened to them.

There may be arguments for placing someone in solitary
confinement, but this has two counters: 1. How would you expect
an individual to be able to function in society on release (or before)
after this kind of isolation? and 2. This isn’t much of a deterrent if
you are living in violent or poor surroundings or have to work
excessive hours in a low paid job.

The upshot of this is that the individualism of the Right
(in terms of their unquestioned support for capitalism/markets-
a shallow individualism if ever there was one) is
contradicted by their Collectivism, while collectivism of the Left
is contradicted by their Individualism.

*Stirner was an "Egoist', but was a lot more 'fluffy' than was made
out (so far as I can gather), and fitted in with the 'European
Individualism' of William Godwin and Leo
Tolstoy-sort of voluntary individualist gift economy.

You also have Mutualism, bit more market-oriented and the
'American Individualism' of Benjamin Tucker et al. Bit confusing really!

There's also:
Queer
Fem
Communist-Kropotkin, Bookchin
Collectivist-Bakunin
anarcho-communism -Berkman, Goldman, Malatesta
syndicalism (tho often disputed as is mainly a method)
primitivism-Zerzan
Green/eco
Indigenous/ist
post-Left –Black (Bob)
post-Anarchy –Bey (Hakim)
"anarchy"ists
Anarchs
and (completely at odds with what Anarchists stand for) Nationalism

Inclusive many of the above is “Pananarchy”, which could still be
considered outside regular anarchy, ditto Platformism and
Council-Communism.

Where do I stand? I suppose communist/collectivist/syndicalist, but
the best description is "without adjectives" or possibly "antimonist"
-nothing is absolute, and I am critical of
sticking to various strands.

Criticisms of anarchies:

OK, lets get an-prim out of the way first-the critique of "mass society"
is only really applicable to Individualist Anarchism
(and 'American Individualism', Libertarianism and 'anarcho-capitalism')
as associations of communes/ workplaces are associations of
societies,which roughly boils down to societies where everyone knows each
other and can judge social policy accordingly. There is a general tendency
overall with these ideologies in that, although they differ and some can be
accused of perpetuating a scarcity mentality (Deep Ecologism) more than
others, the methodology is ultimately the same is to achieve these kinds of
societies requires a kind of global non-cooperation.

http://www.primitivism.com/mass-society.htm
Against Mass Society by Chris Wilson

Anarcho-communism without individual autonomy is, well,
Communism
(or, 'we'd have achieved communism by now if it weren't for those
damn Communists').

One should be the judge of one's labour, no-one else. This is
perfectly compatible with Negative Freedom (and if you think
about it, the only way Negative Freedom can occur in a Society)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_communism
Anarchist communism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Workerism/ Autonomism should not be confused for Anarchism
as it basically boils down to 'be a Good Communist and Get a Job
so you can help bring down Capitalism',
which then starts to sound like Lifestylism (which boils down
to bringing down the system by being dependent on the system,
ergo same critique)

Anarcho-capitalists are even more inconsistent then An-Prims.

They have the same critique of State Capitalism as Anarchists do,
but private prisons and private police forces are even worse
than state prisons and state police forces!

There have been some support for Mutualism and
Worker's Co-operatives, but if this is all genuine why suffix capitalism?
You're anti-capitalists right?

Syndicalism/Council Communism-obviously these and more
are more Democratic than State Capitalism, but, by this definition, what
does it mean to have only a very small minority of the population actually in
favour of Democracy?

Thoughts and ideas on Anarchy

Why, what is and what isn’t anarchy?

Arguments for all come under:

1.The "anti-civilisation" argument,
2. Arguments asserting that the State represents and
promotes a monopolistic economic power structure
which would vanish in the State’s absence and
3. “The Individual versus the Collective”, including
violence, prisons and justice.

(1) OK, one thing anyone who knows anything about history/
archaeology will know that civilisational-heirarchical
systems do not last. Civilisations and Empires collapse.
America's will, ours will as well.

The question is: how do you stop 'civilisation' (defined
here as any monopolistic economic-power structure)
asserting itself and starting the whole cycle again?
More importantly, how do you prevent something worse
than the current system from asserting itself?

OK, so if we define the absence of any unsustainable
monopolistic economic-power structure as ‘anarchy’,
what forms of anarchy are possible?

(2) First of all, any monopoly is (a state-requiring)
government when you think about it-for example a
central bank, ruling out any Freidmanite form of so-called
anarchy. Still, could Libertarianism be a viable form of
anarchy, taking on board the argument that taxes are
theft and government should be as small as possible?

For example, public services-you could make the
argument (which I'm hardly convinced by) that having
certain services being state-run reduces the wages
of public sector workers, in other words wages for
important services (sewage, road maintenance etc)
may be higher if they are “outside state control” (whatever
that means, which in this case means “the market”).

This would maybe be argued by your Libertarians and
"anarcho-capitalists", some of whom believe in private
police forces (which are still police forces, 'cept even
less accountable), some in a voluntary state, and others
in a minimal state. None of which take directly into
account issues concerning homelessness, poverty and
ecological collapse, so these types tend to be on the
outside of anarchism and aren't generally
considered Anarchists.


What about corporations?

Multinationals are too powerful to be restrained by any
state, but not so powerful that they don't need the state
or haven't already super-ceded it as some commentators
claim will occur.

One of the reasons corporations support the state is
simply because they employ, in real terms, fewer workers
globally over time so, in order to protect them from the
masses of workers and peasants outside of the corporate
system (as full, global employment would negate profits),
economic monopolistic state-capitalism is then required.

(3) An example of this is the "war on drugs"-the drugs
trade requires very little capital for its gains, but the effect
of the WoD is to push small-scale producers right to the
margins, while, through the global policies of neo-liberalism,
they cannot afford to produce anything else
(thinking mainly of coca and opium).

w

http://libcom.org/forums/news/hands-john-bowden


libcom=Daily Mail=Abu Hamza=BNP=MI5=Police Federation=
New Labour=Republicans=Christian Fundamentalists=Nazis?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7416257.stm


Answers on a postcard to:

Only Joking
Pisstake Lane
Notserious

Libertarian Republic of Whateverness

Murder isn't funny, but neither is taking the piss out of long
and/or politicised sentences

Furnace

Hell

Napalm

Dry/ Humid

Radiation

Shade

Sunburn

Drinking more soft drinks

Staying indoors with the curtains closed

What happened to mild weather?

Solar power anyone?

(27.7.2006)

1. A detached personality

A detached kind of love

A detached kind of God

A dispassionate observer

2. An obsessive personality

An obsessive kind of love

An obsessive deity

A participatory observer

3. Participatory love

Participatory God

Participant observer

Slave mind, base emotion, observational democracy

(27.7.2006)

Prisons - are they too cushy?

"This story is taylor-made for the Daily Mail.
Did they commission it?
Many prisoners are people with mental health
problems, backgrounds of failed education
and broken, disfunctional home lives, and
consequently have poor prospects of a decent
home or work.If they end up in prison, maybe
they do like it there because they get the
attention, care - in the sense of having their lives
organised for them - and structure they don't get
outside. It's tough having to take responsibility,
and you need skill and confidence to fit into
our society. They've escaped into jail, no wonder
they're happy there." -a poster ('steady on') on
http://boards.msn.com/UKNewsboards/thread.aspx?boardid=770&ThreadID=644611

I think the point is: what kind of deterrence is
prison when life on the outside for many people
is so precarious,poverty-ridden and not to mention
violent, so that it is quite rational to commit
a crime to be free from all that?

The deterrence argument for prison falls flat on its
face when we are faced with the reality of outside
poverty and violence.

I would assert that, therefore, increasing the prison
population actually increases crime simply due to
certain communities being depleted of male role
models (admittedly thats using the Daily Mail's
argument against them but supporters of prison have
no idea of the social costs, and I've not even started
on the Amercan prison system, which both Labour
and Conservatives seem to want to emulate for
shallow political gain)

The whole talk about and support for prison, reminds
one of Perlman's Leviathan critique of civilisation;
because unthinking support for prison will lead to
its inevitable continued growth.

If any campaign is to be made out of this, it is for less
reliance on prison and shorter sentences in favour of
rehabilitation (community service has less recidivity)
and drug treatment/counselling, and we need to
seriously reconsider the idea of drug prohibition.

The main problem with rape is lack of evidence
and the fact that a large proportion of society at large
believe that rape is somehow acceptable.

Statistics from various countries are shocking: two women
a week are fatal victims of domestic violence in the UK, a
fifth of South African males consider participation in gang
rape an acceptable part of a nights jollies (a similar
proportion of Russian males hold similar views) and one in
two American women will be raped or suffer an attempted
rape in their lifetime, not to mention the long-term social effects
of imprisoning an increasing proportion of the population
(over 1% in the US).

It is obvious that social attitudes need to change first.

A short answer for murderers and rapists is that they
need to be locked up for their own protection, but
there are inherent problems in locking people up
on a large,concentrated scale as it normalises their
crimes-we've all heard about threats made to child
murderers inside but what about what everyone
else is in for?

The only solution I can come up with is a prison of
sorts where most of the 'inmates' are members of the
public who can come and go as they please, but are
there to teach the minority of real offenders/inmates
good behaviour etc.

In Christiana Freetown (Copenhagen), there is a
general agreement: no guns and no hard drugs.
Cars are also prohibited. Similarly, there is a
complete voluntary ban on alcohol and other drugs in
Zapatista-controlled territory (Chiapas, Mexico). In
Anarchy particular neighborhoods could put signs up
saying what is and what is not acceptable. Anarchy
has the potential to be very ordered in this way.

Problems involved with drugs etc would certainly be
reduced if no-one can make a profit out of them.
In the last result if individual worker/producers don't
want to make the effort in producing drugs etc they
don't have to,conversely the supply to addicts or
trouble-makers can be restricted on an individual
basis by a simple refusal to serve.