Anarchism

[Josh Braun]

Anarchy means "without ruler", it doesn't mean chaos, and disorder.

 

Governments are naturally oppressive, which John Locke talks about in one of his essays on the contract between man and government. The only way to get rid of this oppression, is to not have a government.

 

There are many types of anarchism such as anarcho-communism, anarcho-capitalism, and anarcho-syndicalism. I feel that the best type of anarchism is anarcho-communism in a smaller community. That way everyone is equal in pay and social status, unlike with capitalism, and the people work for the greater good, without the natural oppressiveness of a government. It would be a direct democracy where the people run this shit for themselves.

 

Are governments necessary? Should we have an anarchist state? What would be the best type of anarchism? Is anarchism better than a government?

[Braeden the conquerer]

Anarchy figures brilliantly into minds made useless by depressents.

[Josh Braun]

How come? What makes it work better in the mind than it does in practice?

[Katie P.]

It seems to me that anarchy has the same problem as communism: both are great ideas on paper, but fall apart in practice.  I don't know much about anarcho-communism, but I assume it's like a combination of anarchy and communism.  (And yes, I know what assuming does... ;D)  Communism, when put into practice, (basically) becomes an excuse for repressive one-party governments that end up taking everyone's money.  And in anarchies, the lack of government-based law enforcement agencies (or heck, the lack of any laws at all) would surely lead to the ubiquitous "bad" people--aka murderers, arsonists, and other psychos--running free, wreaking havoc as they go.

 

All in all, what I'm trying to say is that although anarcho-communism is a wonderful idea, it will never be successful due to...well, human nature.

[Josh Braun]

I get what your saying, but I think it could work if it's not abused and if you get the right people who lay the foundation. America wouldn't be the same if we had crappy founding fathers. In fact, America was the first democracy since Athens and even in Athens only about 33% of the population was allowed to vote. What I'm getting at is maybe it just seems insane or not likely, but it could happen.

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

Erm...no. America was not the first democracy since Athens. The Isle of Man had a Parliament for far longer than that, and the UK had one at the time of the American revolution.

[Josh Braun]

Seeing as America exists because of Taxation without Representation, I'd say that the UK's democracy was greatly flawed back then.

 

This is what happens when you have nationalistic conservatives writing textbooks for the greater population of the U.S.

[Katie P.]

Don't forget about the Isle of Man! ;D

[Josh Braun]

Never heard of it haha

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

 Seeing as America exists because of Taxation without Representation, I'd say that the UK's democracy was greatly flawed back then.

The US's democracy was equally flawed. Voting was similarly limited, you needed to possess property to vote, yet everyone was still taxed. So I'd say you had the same problems.

[Josh Braun]

Unless I'm mistaken, didn't the parliament originally only contain lords and nobility?

 

Almost everyone back then owned land, except slaves.

[Vertigo_One [Ops Mod]]

You still misunderstand. It was limited to the amount of land you owned. You couldn't just have a house.

 

The Parliament did mostly just contain nobility and gentry, but the point I'm making is that the US elected representatives were pretty much as bad. It wasnt untill well into the 1800's that either country had a vaguely representative government.

[Katie P.]

Okay, so I guess anarcho-communism would work if all the people in a community agreed to it.  But doing something like turning the United States into a million little anarchist communities would (in my opinion) be a complete disaster.