[Fwd: Re: anarchism]

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Katha:
>> Sam wrote, commenting on the Hal Draper quote posted by Mike Yates:
>> >They
>> >reject the *means* by which these goals are accomplished in bourgeois
>> >society: through the state and coercion. The anarchists just believe you
>> >can have democracy, equality, security and freedom without a state,
>> >market or formal legal system. The state and market "corrupt" human
>> >nature, which is essentially benevolent, co-operative and social. Laws
>> >and restrictions on positive and negative freedom cause crime.
>
>That human nature is "essentially benevolent, cooperative and social"
>(if social means something other than "unlike cats and tigers,live
>together in groups") seems to me pure speculation. How odd that we can
>bash the idea that WOMEN are 'essentially benevolent" (peaceful,
>child-oriented, cooperative etc) -- but accept the idea that all human
>beings are so!
>  People "essentially benevolent"? As Woody Allen said, the lion can lie
>down with the lamb, but the lamb won't get much sleep.

In my view, anarchism as a political philosophy hasn't gone beyond the
social contract discourse and the idea of "human nature" embedded in it.
Anarchists (left-wing varieties, that is) disagree with Hobbes, Locke,
Rousseau, etc., only on the ground that the state & the market are to be
rejected, but anarchist dichotomy of human nature versus artificial
civilization (i.e. society conceptualized merely as a "social convention,"
as it were) puts a limit on their political thought and practice.

Yoshie