Milton the Anarchist Re: "post-leftism"

[Gordon Fitch]

"Gordon Fitch" <gcf at panix.com>:
> > Are we done with the lack of airplanes already?  I thought
> > that was a really interesting subject: the proposed necessity
> > of coercion to produce even medium-high technology and what
> > that might imply about the forms human societies can take.
> > The argument ought to run something like: "You can't get the
> > necessary surpluses without appropriating them, by force if
> > necessary, from the dull-witted worker, who is unable to
> > understand the need for them" or something like that, maybe
> > put more politely.  No?  We can have anarchist airplanes
> > after all?

Ian Murray:
> Well, one can redefine just about any transaction as coercion, even
> those under an anarchic post political economy. Just look at Oliver
> Wendell Holmes and Robert Hale's work. Brad's nautical example was
> the tip of an iceberg of problems. But don't take my word for it;
> check out Jack Hirshleifer's "Anarchy and It's Breakdown" in ""The
> Dark Side of the Force: Economic Foundations of Conflict Theory."
> 
> There's no *necessary* connection between coercion and force when it
> comes to appropriability; and whatever modes of appropriability a
> society chooses, groups who think they are made worse off by the
> transactions relative to some other feasible arrangement of
> appropriability will be able to assert that coercion was involved.

If everything is coercion, then nothing is coercion, and the
recent apparent objections to Pol Pot, as well as the likening
of anarchists thereto, seem to be vacuous.  I actually meant
to refer to something, however.

-- Gordon