[Fwd: Re: anarchism]

[Michael Hoover]

> Katha:
> >> Sam wrote, commenting on the Hal Draper quote posted by Mike Yates:
> >> >The state and market "corrupt" human
> >> >nature, which is essentially benevolent, co-operative and social. 
> >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. 
> 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

Not all left-wing anarchists evince optimism about 'human nature'
(agree with Yoshie's use of quotation marks).  Malatesta wrote
something about not believing in general goodness of masses and 
he chastized Kropotkin for being naive.

Idea of 'human nature' is, however, central to anarchist thought and 
what differentiates right and left perspectives are (a bit crudely) 
'starting points': individual and social.  Former locates human beings 
as independent autonomous agents framing their own plans of life
outside society; latter portrays humans developing within community
and achieving freedom and individuality through it.   Michael Hoover