Gordon:
> >This state of affairs seems inferior to State power with
> >regard to coercive capability, e.g. killing a whole lot of
> >people at once, and therefore possibly preferable.
Justin Schwartz:
> It's only limited, in terms of force, by thesize of the private army uou
> can get together.
Precisely. In a viable anarchist culture, when you start to collect a private army, people are likely to interfere (since they can't refer to problem to the cops). I'm assuming here, of course, that at least some humans are capable of autonomy, admittedly a dubious proposition. But as I said previously, I see no other hope.
Justin Schwartz:
> You ever see The Postman? I think the first part, with
> small nice communities terrorized by lawless warlords, without the sappt
> happy ending, is a pretty good description of how anarchsim would work in
> practice.
It's just a movie. I don't think I want to argue with a movie. Give me forty million dollars, though, and I'll make a movie where anarchism prevails and everyone is happy. Or at least I'll be happy.
Justin Schwartz:
>>> Well, sunce the anarchists here are supporting a return to
>>> hunter-gathering
>>> while maybe scavenging the detritus of technological civilization,
>>> primitivism seems to be indicated.
Gordon:
>> "The anarchists" weren't supporting a return to hunter-
>> gathering. The primitivism bit was brought to the discussion
>> by Doug in the following exchange:
Justin Schwartz:
> Well, that's how it started. But be that as it may. I don't see how,
> without enforceable rules to govern conditions of cooperation, we can have
> high or any technology. What happens when many people like me and Chuck bug
> out of work? Or when you can't get suppliers to deliver because there are
> no contracts to enforce? Etc.
Well, we know people can have _some_ technology without the State, because pre-civil people invented and developed things like agriculture, the wheel, the bow and arrow, and so on. So then the question becomes how high we can jump, and we have to ask that on the way up. Certainly, small groups have been able to cooperate in advanced technology because they wanted to, not because someone forced them to. Possibly much larger projects could be carried out in this way, untainted by blood and the tears of prisoners and slaves. And if not, maybe we could forego them. I don't want to go to the moon or have a videophone at the cost of enslaving millions of people; I'll try to do without.
Justin Schwartz:
>>> And as for total socail breakdown, what
>>> else do you expect if you have no mechanism for making enforceable
>>> collective decisions, no rukes for interpreting the norms (no laws, that
>>> is, no lawyers, no courts), and no recoyrse against the use of force but
>>> force? You mention Hobbes below; he comes to mind.
Gordon:
>> I should think so; evidently you believe human beings can get
>> along only if one holds a gun to another's head.
Justin Schwartz:
> Not at all. Liberals and Marxists, indeed any advocate of the state, holds
> that mostly people cooperate because of socialization--opinion, as Hume put
> it, consent, in Gramsci's terms. But there are disagreements, conflicts,
> shirkers, cheaters, violent people. These things require, ultimately, if
> negotiation doesn't work out, the gun to the head. But that isn't to say
> that the gun is the only way to enforce cooperation. It's just a necessary
> condition.
Not just the gun to the head, either, but the permanent, institutionalized gun to everyone's head, occasionally fired for fun or profit -- the State. But people do cooperate in the absence of the State.
Justin Schwartz:
>>> . Otherwise you
>>> have the free rider problem.
Gordon:
>> This does not look to me like a demonstration, much less a
>> proof. There's lots of free riding in the high-tech world.
>> So why do people have to be coerced to produce high technology?
Justin Schwartz:
> This concedes the point. Of course there is a lot of free riding. And if
> people weren't forced by the ultimate sanction of fines and prison to pay
> taxes, or by the sanction of going hungry and homeless to work, there would
> be a lot more.
I thought "otherwise you have the free rider problem" meant "otherwise you have the free rider problem, which destroys the enterprise/project/institution/industry." If then I adduce the existence of much free-riding without the accompanying dissolution, it seems to me I've given a counterexample, not a concession.
If I believed as you do, that high technology necessitated coercion (slavery), the only moral thing I could do would be to become the primitivist you wished to see me as. No wonder I, being a city boy, am unwilling to believe this. Fortunately no one has yet shown any necessary connection. Nor have they dealt with the bad history and worse prospects of the State -- the inevitable outcomes of its most basic principles.
> ... [ Uncle Karl deleted ] ....
-- Gordon