>On 29/9/2002 2:25 AM, "lbo-talk-digest"
><owner-lbo-talk-digest at lists.panix.com>
>wrote:
>
>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>>> And doesn't this take 100% consensus? In a crowd of 1000, all you
>>> need is one wiseguy to cause trouble. Suppose you have a crowd of 300
>>> who don't agree with the other 700? This model of anarchism sounds
>>> like a fantasy of perfect transparency and harmony - a completely
>>> impossible fantasy.
>>
>> If I may translate your argument, I think it can be stated
>> more simply as "There will be sociopaths, and we need a
>> government to control them." (I take it you are not talking
>> about simple disagreements and misunderstandings, for which
>> there are obivously other possibilities of resolution than
>> government force.)
>
>Forgive the interjection, but the problem seems to have less to do with
>sociopaths than with people who disagree with each other irresolvably. The
>argument thus looses something crucial in the translation. Moreover, even if
>your gloss was acceptable, your implication would hardly be less
>alarming. Seen
>from one perspective, the characterisation of criminals or people who don't
>feel like accepting consensus as sociopaths seems to be quite a dangerous one.
And what's so "simple" about "disagreements and misunderstandings"? That's why I said the anarchist utopia is a fantasy of perfect transparency and harmony - there are no competing interests, no cultural or temperamental gulfs in ideology or preferences - none, that is, beyond minor ones that can be cleared up with conversation. It dispenses with coercion and conflict by imagining a world where all important differences disappear. Call me stunted and brutalized by the world we live in, but that seems impossible and undesirable even. It would require a pretty static world too, since change would have to inspire conflict. Don't you see anything productive about conflict, Gordon?
Doug