Talk:Anarchism

Since I did a major rehaul of this part of Wikipedia, I also archived previous discussion. See Talk:Anarchism/Archive2 for older discussion and Talk:Anarchism/Archive1 for even older discussion. -- Faré 00:05 Apr 29, 2003 (UTC)

major rehaul was done on this page. Do the other editors agree about it ?

It looks like the article was deleted. In addition, the majority of anarchists do not oppose rules, but rather rulers. I have doubts that Fare actually read the article before he deleted it. The previous article said that anarchy was not anomie, this says that it is anomie. (anon)

I admire your ability to, without reading through the two archives, assess Faré's actions regarding this article. Kingturtle 06:20 Apr 29, 2003 (UTC)

I admire your ability to determine what (anon) did or did not read without her telling you. In any case, this new version suffers from severe problems, not least is that it balkanizes the text into a dozen different articles. This always makes articles harder to edit, introduces redundant text, and is generally much harder to read (constantly having to switch back and forth). Since Faré has not really justified the new form of the article, would s/he like to do so? Alternatively, if s/he wants to work on this version, it could be moved to Anarchism/Temp[?]. As it stands I am opposed to the article in its current form. Graft

The new version needs a lot of work, but, after an intial reaction of "what the fuck have you done?", I think this could be a step in the right direction. Let's review:

For some time, there has been a consensus that the anarchism page (this one) should disambiguate between the various forms of anarchism -- libertarian socialism or "traditional anarchism", anarcho-capitalism, anarcho-primitivism, green anarchism, etc. However, I don't think any of us wanted this page to just point to the others: we wanted this page to discuss the primary similarities and differences between the ideas and the ways in which they relate. So we didn't want a disambiguation page that just listed the various theories that were called "anarchism". We wanted an in depth disambiguation that pointed out the differences between all the theories and ideas.

Before this "major rehaul", we had an article that mainly dealt with different theories, explaining (quite well) the differences and similarities. There was also some history and a brief description of what anarchism is not. I felt the structure was getting a bit out of hand, though: there was so much to say, and with many different people adding bits here and there, it was becoming slightly bulky, the history caught up between descriptions of libertarian socialism and the others, the section on philosophy shoved in the middle.

Our problem with this article is not the content, but the structure of the content. This is the one problem we have not yet resolved. Currently, we seem to be writing a book, and it looks like it will take the form of a series of essays. Is that what we want?

Seperate articles

This new version has made a start at a 'contents' listing and seperate articles on seperate subjects. But how do these seperate topics deal with the problem of what we mean by "anarchism"? For example, Spanish anarchism[?] will no doubt refer to anarchist communism (libertarian socialism) and anarcho-syndicalism as "anarchism", ignoring the fact that some people think anarchism is a capitalist thing, which could easily confuse. Normally, someone writing on Spanish anarchism would be writing for an audience familiar with anarchism as a socialist theory, not a capitalist one. But here we are writing for a general audience, which is something which is not often tackled by anarchists, at least not when discussing anarchism itself in such depth and from a neutral point of view.

Another problem with these article is the question of titling, particularly the Anarchism/etymology page: I understand that this naming format is not advised for various reasons. Someone said, quite rightly, that it makes perfect sense in computing, but not in an encyclopedia. On its own, that article title would suggest an article on the relationship between anarchism and etymology or something along those lines, which is quite bizarre to say the least.

However, I do think that, despite these problems, the seperate pages may well be the best way to go about developing this subject on wikipedia. I think the first thing we should be doing, though, is deciding exactly what the structure of the anarchism articles should be. A bit of research and comparison may be in order: perhaps if we look at encyclopedic structures and at how similar topics/problems have been handled on wikipedia before. If a similar problem hasn't been encountered, and we can sort this out, we may be able to set a useful precedent on wikipedia.

So how about we brainstorm a structure for these articles? --Sam 19:00 May 4, 2003 (UTC)

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Libertarian Socialism might propose collective management, but "collective management" links to Collectivism. This is confusing since Collectivism is the name of the economic system that Bakunin advocated; Bakuninist collectivism is related to but different from libertarian socialism. What is more, Collectivism does not describe Bakuninist collectivism at all; it only describes corporatism and state capitalism. Most libertarian socialists want decentralized planning, not central control (and none want corporatism or state capitalism). Perhaps instead it should say "libertarian socialism proposes self-management[?]" (or "decentralized planning[?]"). -- bpt 02:15 May 3, 2003 (UTC)

I think that the problem is with Collectivism, that should be disambiguated between the general meaning of collectivism (any theory proposing compulsory collective management) and the particular theories that have gone under that name (i.e. movements like Bakunin's that were collectivist but opposed the Marxist movement). -- Faré 08:47 May 3, 2003 (UTC)

The description of libertarian socialism now links to self-management, since this is perhaps the most important thing about a libertarian socialist economy, and because Collectivism currently has little to do with collective management or with Bakuninist collectivism (which is only one kind of libertarian socialism). -- bpt 23:12 May 3, 2003 (UTC)

I nevertheless think that (1) Collectivism should be rewritten, and (2) there should be a link from the blurb about left-anarchism to collectivism. -- Faré 16:33 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

As for the structure of the article, I don't have anything better to propose than what I did currently, but and don't want to ever see again the mess of information grown over information "anarchically" (haha) where readers are lost in biased destructured information. Considering the diversity of anarchist movements, the reader should be able to distinguish who thinks what, or else, he will see a lot of contradictory claims and conclude that anarchists are just incoherent loonies who hold all these claims simultaneously. Short introductory material plus focused articles is the way to go. -- Faré 16:33 May 5, 2003 (UTC)

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I'd like to suggest the rewording of this paragraph ... -> "On the contrary, the anarchy sought by anarchists is the absence of hierarchy, power and authority, which the anarchists consider as immoral, oppressive, detrimental, and sources of violence, disorder and misery. Anarchists claim that human relations should be based on voluntary associations only."

I don't think it is accurate enough. Power is not inherently immoral. For example, workers on general strike is a practise of power. Anarchists oppose the abuse of power, which is always the result of heirarchies of authority and control.

I'm proposing the quoted section be replaced with this ... -> On the contrary, Anarchism is the ideal that society should be organised without social, economic or political structures or relationships that have been constructed on hierarchy and cohersive authority, domination or exploitation. The anarchist believes that these types of structures and relationships always results in some form of suffering, repression and fear. For this reason they are fundamentally unethical and destructive, and need to be abolished.

So what's the feeling about it? -- asger 14 May, 2003

Do you feel like an anarchist? I think that anarchist literature should be consulted as to whether the term "power" is adequate - but it seems to summarize the concept well to me. Now, even Murray Rothbard makes a distinction between "Power over Man" vs "Power over Nature", opposing the former, promoting the latter. In any case, your paragraph seems much too convoluted to me, and doesn't tell as much. The ideal is to keep things simple. (sp: it's "coercive") -- Faré 22:15 16 May 2003 (UTC)

Oh, and if really a discussion on this topic was necessary, it should be moved to a different page, for instance named Anarchism and Power[?]. -- Faré 07:08 17 May 2003 (UTC)

Where did all the text get moved to? Surely some of it was relevant to this page. Pizza Puzzle

Which text are you talking about? The text in the current Talk? Well, it's right here above you. I was talking about not adding any stuff to the current article, and moving any stuff putatively added to the article from there to a different page. If you want to start a page on Anarchism and Power -- go ahead!