re: Is an anarchist on the left or right of the political spectrum?

quote:

---

a lot of anarchists call themselves capitalists

---

Capitalism exists without law. Capitalism is a natural state of humans. If you and I live in the year 1,000 BC and there is no govt, and I agree to give you five fishes that I just caught in exchange for your wolf hide you might say you don't have a wolf hide but Ooogah has one and Ooogah owes you for fixing his hut roof.
That = money. I go to Ooogah and explain that his payment to you is dissolved if he gives me the wolf hide. The 3 of us have engaged in capitalism.

quote:

---

Anarcho capitalist is very close to classical liberal like John Locke

---

Anarcho capitalism is a simply extreme libertarianism.
It's fascinating stuff.

What’s funny? It’s the truest statement in this whole thread.

quote:

---

leftists claim they can be anarchists but it doesn't really work out logically, because their version requires a will of the population, which requires force backing that will, which is a collective force (aka the state)

at least when right-anarchists speak, it's all about individual contracting, which fits in with the actual philosophy

---

I'd argue that both versions of anarchism require strong state, because I don't see how in either situation there wouldn't be a return to a tribal power dynamic, or what is stopping one individual from gaining too much power (such as feudalism) or one group gaining too much power (as in tribalism).

quote:

---

because I don't see how in either situation there wouldn't be a return to a tribal power dynamic

---

this dynamic is completely different when comparing mob rule to voluntary agreements

quote:

---

Fascism is a meaningless term re: left/right. But if you mean it to be right then nationalism is irrelevant to ideology.

---

In each fascist nation, Spain, Italy, Germany, Romania, and Austria, their shared common characteristic is ultra-nationalism, of the ethnonationalist variety developed after the Peace of Westphalia. They were explicit about their nationalism too. It was an essential aspect of their ideology. Mussolini said, in a speech from the 1920's that "We deny the existence of two classes, because there are many more than two classes. We deny that human history can be explained in terms of economics. We deny your internationalism. That is a luxury article which only the elevated can practise, because peoples are passionately bound to their native soil." Here he's making an explicit distinction between the international tendencies of the communist left, and retreating to beliefs about people and the soil.

To deny that nationalism, of a very specific variety, was an essential aspect of fascism is to be ignorant. Blood and soil are repeated in the speeches of Hitler, of the Iron Guard, of fascists to this day. Why you would deny this is beyond me.

quote:

---

Reactionary is also a meaningless term re: ideology. If you are a commie official in the USSR and you see it falling apart and you try to stop it you are a reactionary. Thus: reactionary = leftist.

---

You can find political reactionaries on both ends of the spectrum. But the political context of fascism arises from the end of the imperial system, and the revolutions in Russia and Germany, which were formative events for the development of fascism. The term is specific, developed in contrast to the term revolutionary, which in that time almost strictly meant communists. Removing that context, and inventing another one won't change the facts of history. Fascism was far more interested in social order than say the imperial system developed in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, though the parallel administrations developed in that empire make 1 to 1 comparisons difficult, as the Austrian administration was less interested in "Germanization" of its people while the Hungarian side was explicit about a Magyarization program for its subjects.

Regardless, fascists were political reactionaries to the rising communist threat, and many Nazi leaders became fascists fighting communists in the streets in Germany, during the revolution of 1918 and during the Hamburg Uprising in 1923.

quote:

---

Individual freedom is not a liberal idea. It is a classical liberal idea.

---

I know it is a "classically" liberal idea. You realize during the revolutionary period from the Glorious Revolution in 1688 to the French Revolution in 1789, the primary opponent of classical liberalism was conservatism, as exemplified by the conservation between Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke in the 1790's, which produced two great intellectual works. Classical liberalism was certainly to the left of the traditionalism that Burke espoused, and the development of the right and left wing as distinct terms came from the tension between liberal assemblymen and the conservative monarchy in the years before the deposition of Louis XVI.

Contextually, historically, and in practice, communism and fascism are not both "left-wing" in any sense, other than both having authoritarian tendencies. Communism certainly is left-wing, but fascism is generally considered right-wing. Lenin was the first to realize that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was difficult to realize, and he developed the idea that there needed to be a "Vanguard of the Revolution," which gave rise to his own position, as well as becoming the foundation upon which future communist leaders relied on for their power.

The basic political spectrum has an x and y coordinate. Call the middle the true moderate. Moving right from moderate you would have todays conservative (loosely) which is fiscally conservative (capitalist) and socially conservative. In the opposite direction, you have today's liberal, fiscally liberal (socialist) socially liberal. In the y direction, moving down from center, you would have fascists, who are fiscally liberal(socialist) and socially conservative. Opposite from that you have libertarians or classic liberals, fiscally consevative (capitalist) and socially liberal. This is the direction that ultimately leads to anarchism (anarchocapitalism), the freest form of government because their is no government. So to answer you question they cannot exist on either end. Anarchism cannot play nice with socialism or social conservatism.

quote:

---

Otherwise I don’t see what the difference is.

---

The reason you don't see it is because all forms of totalitarianism are the same under their clothes. Leftist govt is designed to control the lives of people because they cannot be trusted to make proper decisions on their own. Ayn Rand called it right a long time ago.

quote:

---

Anarchy as I understand it to be is chaos. Anarchists just take what they want without regard for the laws of polite society.

---

At this point, there is too much baggage with the word anarchy. Most right wing anarchists will say that anarchy means "without rulers", but that doesn't mean absence of law and order, or government. It means non arbitrary government, voluntary government, a private law society, or a society of covenants. Something akin to the way on which an HOA works.

But the term anarchy or anarchist is pretty much spoiled, so I think it's dumb to keep arguing about its "true meaning". The lolberts and lefties can have it.

quote:

---

But in practice, they yield the exact same results. We live in the real world not a text book.

---

Even if this was true, that doesn't support the horseshoe theory.