>Justin Schwartz:
> > No, but as Mill pointed out, unofficial social norms can be as
>repressive as
> > state power. NB, since under anarchism there is no official monopoly on
>the
> > use of force, there's nothing but norms and other people with guns to
>stop
> > those who are offended at the violation of their favored norms to
>resport
> > to force.
>
>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.
>
It's only limited, in terms of force, by thesize of the private army uou can get together. 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.
>> > 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.
>
>"The anarchists" weren't supporting a return to hunter-
>gathering. The primitivism bit was brought to the discussion
>by Doug in the following exchange:
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.
>
>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.
>
>I should think so; evidently you believe human beings can get
>along only if one holds a gun to another's head.
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.
>
>Justin Schwartz:
> > . Otherwise you
> > have the free rider problem.
>
>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?
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 thesanction of going hungry and homeless to work, there would be a lot more.
>What's the necessary connection? Try again.
Uh uh, you try again. You just conceded my premise.
>>
>I think the idea of the State withering away, that is,
>becoming non-existent, is pretty explicit in Marx, who wrote
>the notes for Engels's book. This is the way Lenin took it,
>if Lenin is any evidence of proper Marxist thought.
>
>
Well, I was talking about Marx, who asks in the CGP what will perform the role of the state in communists society. So he didn'te nvisage the non-class-repressive functions of the state vanishing. I made this point in youthful days when, more enamoured of Lenin than I am today, I write a paper on State & Revolution and "proletarian democracy" that I never published, thank God. It would be embarassing to have to live that one down. But even Lenin though that you needed a post office (or example), which, presumably means that you need taxes to fund it, and ways to collect em, and penalties for nonpayment and evasion. anyway, I am certainly nobody's idea of a good Marxist, except for maybe that of a Republican lawyer friend, who thinks I am a fundamentalsit orthodox Marxist.
jks
jks
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