The Trouble With Socialist Anarchism

Subject: The Trouble With Socialist Anarchism Sat Mar 23, 2019 11:45 pm

The movie V for Vendetta has provoked public discussion of the meaning of anarchism. Murray Rothbard was an advocate of the stateless society, but he was never accepted by the anarchist movement and is still considered more a “capitalist lackey” than anarchist thinker. Indeed, anarcho-capitalism has always been considered an oxymoron by the self-proclaimed “true” anarchists.

The Trouble With Socialist Anarchism B-144

The Trouble With Socialist Anarchism B-144

Part of the reason is a general inability to understand different uses and definitions of words in the classical socialist and liberal traditions. Socialists refer to “capitalism” as the system in which the state hands out and protects capitalists’ privileges — and therefore oppression of labor workers. They don’t see that capitalism, in the classical liberal tradition, means rather a free market based on free people, i.e., voluntary exchanges of value between free individuals.

A deeper and more interesting reason is anarchism’s socialist roots. As shown in, e.g., the Anarchist FAQ, most — if not all — historical anarchist thinkers were proud to announce their ideas belonged to the progressive socialist tradition. The “founding father” of anarchism, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, was socialist; American 19th century individualist anarchists often claimed to be socialists; and the Russian communist anarchists Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin were obviously socialists.

There were however a few anarchists who were not explicit socialists, but they were few and relatively unknown if at all accepted as anarchists. The German egoist Max Stirner somehow managed to become generally accepted as an anarchist even though he never claimed to be a socialist. (He never claimed to be an anarchist, either).

More: https://www.eurasiareview.com/21032019-the-trouble-with-socialist-anarchism-oped/

The Trouble With Socialist Anarchism

The Trouble With Socialist Anarchism

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