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> I find it endlessly amusing that communists or socialists would call themselves anarchists. I think this is just an example of socialists attempting to coopt

> I find it endlessly amusing that communists or socialists would call themselves anarchists. I think this is just an example of socialists attempting to coopt another movement. You'll be glad to know, then, that Proudhon, the first to self-describe as an anarchist, is also perhaps most famous for coining the phrase "property is theft". It's hard to imagine how socialists could be co-opting anarchism, given that both ideologies were born in the same intellectual climate and have, as a matter of historical fact, been associated time and time again. You said: "The workers taking over a company and kicking the owners and managers out to run it as a 'workers collective': Immoral. Using force to take property from others violates the NAP." Am I wrong in taking this to mean that you consider a workers' occupation an act of force? > I'm not insisting anything. I'm giving you the definition. I'm a Libertarian, and that is what we believe. I cannot apprehend the confusion of ideas which lead you to believe that defining a term, enumerating your own beliefs, and speaking for an entire political movement, are one and the same. > FWIW, wikipedia is a crowd sourced entity. It is not authoritative, and it is often quite biased when it comes to political topics that leftists have a strong opinion about. Do you object to my using of Wikipedia to simply note the existence of a leftist journal calling itself "The Libertarian" over a hundred years prior to the founding of the U.S. Libertarian Party? If so, feel free to read the French yourself: http://joseph.dejacque.free.fr/libertaire/libertaire.htm http://joseph.dejacque.free.fr/libertaire/libertaire.htm No engagement with my second-to-last paragraph, I see. I'm sorry to find that you're no more serious about your politics that all the other libertarians I've encountered. I had hoped you'd be willing to engage with the content of my argument instead of its dressings. I am disappointed to find that you are not. Edit: spelling.

nirvana 15y ago
"I'm sorry to find that you're no more serious about your politics that all the other libertarians I've encountered. I had hoped you'd be willing to engage with the content of my argument instead of its dressings. I am disappointed to find that you are not." The entirety of both of your responses consists of either inaccurate characterizations of what I've said, of history, or of me. You have, on more than one occasion made derogatory characterizations of me, and you close with the above ad hominem. This is a form of anti-intellectualism which I will not indulge further. I shouldn't have given you the benefit of the doubt, but unlike you, I am generous that way.
- cmhamill 15y ago
  I'm genuinely sorry that you feel that way.
  - nirvana 15y ago
    Those are not my feelings, they are the objective fact of reality. I'm sorry I wasted time giving you the benefit of the doubt when your only intention was to engage in personal attacks. If you were "genuinely sorry" for your actions, you would apologize for them.
    - amouat 15y ago
      Quite frankly, I don't see too much to take offence at in cmhamill's words. It really doesn't appear to me that there was an intention to attack you personally, although it was perhaps blunt in places.
    - thwest 15y ago
      If you want to raise the level of discourse on the internet is it your obligation to object to people's core statements, rather than ancillary fallacies that might surround them. Did you ever answer this from cmhammil? I simply ask you this: if the taking of property via force is a violation of your "NAP," what do you say to the implicit threat of force which establishes the principle of property in the first place?
      - derleth 15y ago
        If I make a chair, and I claim it as mine, where's the force?
        alextgordon 15y ago
        If I take the chair from you, you'll force me to give it back (or rather the police will, on your behalf). ...which sounds reasonable enough to non-anarchists. But consider something closer to our hearts: If I design an algorithm and patent it as mine, where's the force?
Androsynth 15y ago
You're arguing on semantics. Anarchy has been split up into sub groups specifically because it can be taken to mean multiple things. Now there are Anarcho-capitalists (American Libertarians), Anarcho-socialists, Anarcho-syndicalism, etc.
- cmhamill 15y ago
  Of course; virtually all arguments are semantics. I was simply looking for clarification into nirvana's intended meaning. That that involved getting into the semantics of anarchism/socialism/libertarianism/what-have-you is the nature of this kind of discussion. If I was concerned with finding the 'right' answer, or pushing my own political ideology (which happens not to be any of those currently under discussion), then I could see why we'd need to have a discussion about what 'anarchism' with or without adjectives really is. I was, however, only concerned with the history of these ideologies (as a former student of precisely this topic). I had hoped to probe into that by bringing up the diverging uses of the category libertarian in the broader history of European politics and the divergence of U.S. political categories from those. Certainly never meant to upset anyone.
- cynicalkane 15y ago
  You are technically correct, which Futurama calls 'the best kind of correct', but it isn't really. When you're arguing about what kind of thing a thing is, you can call that a semantic argument, but if you're trying to characterize something that exists in practice, this is different from fighting over dictionary definitions. (Interestingly, I got into the contrapositive of this argument on HN the other day: I tried to use a math term to mean something closely related to the standard definition, and people jumped on me for misusing it.)

nirvana 15y ago

"I'm sorry to find that you're no more serious about your politics that all the other libertarians I've encountered. I had hoped you'd be willing to engage with the content of my argument instead of its dressings. I am disappointed to find that you are not." The entirety of both of your responses consists of either inaccurate characterizations of what I've said, of history, or of me. You have, on more than one occasion made derogatory characterizations of me, and you close with the above ad hominem. This is a form of anti-intellectualism which I will not indulge further. I shouldn't have given you the benefit of the doubt, but unlike you, I am generous that way.

cmhamill 15y ago
I'm genuinely sorry that you feel that way.
- nirvana 15y ago
  Those are not my feelings, they are the objective fact of reality. I'm sorry I wasted time giving you the benefit of the doubt when your only intention was to engage in personal attacks. If you were "genuinely sorry" for your actions, you would apologize for them.
  - amouat 15y ago
    Quite frankly, I don't see too much to take offence at in cmhamill's words. It really doesn't appear to me that there was an intention to attack you personally, although it was perhaps blunt in places.
  - thwest 15y ago
    If you want to raise the level of discourse on the internet is it your obligation to object to people's core statements, rather than ancillary fallacies that might surround them. Did you ever answer this from cmhammil? I simply ask you this: if the taking of property via force is a violation of your "NAP," what do you say to the implicit threat of force which establishes the principle of property in the first place?
    - derleth 15y ago
      If I make a chair, and I claim it as mine, where's the force?
      - alextgordon 15y ago
        If I take the chair from you, you'll force me to give it back (or rather the police will, on your behalf). ...which sounds reasonable enough to non-anarchists. But consider something closer to our hearts: If I design an algorithm and patent it as mine, where's the force?

Androsynth 15y ago

You're arguing on semantics. Anarchy has been split up into sub groups specifically because it can be taken to mean multiple things. Now there are Anarcho-capitalists (American Libertarians), Anarcho-socialists, Anarcho-syndicalism, etc.

cmhamill 15y ago
Of course; virtually all arguments are semantics. I was simply looking for clarification into nirvana's intended meaning. That that involved getting into the semantics of anarchism/socialism/libertarianism/what-have-you is the nature of this kind of discussion. If I was concerned with finding the 'right' answer, or pushing my own political ideology (which happens not to be any of those currently under discussion), then I could see why we'd need to have a discussion about what 'anarchism' with or without adjectives really is. I was, however, only concerned with the history of these ideologies (as a former student of precisely this topic). I had hoped to probe into that by bringing up the diverging uses of the category libertarian in the broader history of European politics and the divergence of U.S. political categories from those. Certainly never meant to upset anyone.
cynicalkane 15y ago
You are technically correct, which Futurama calls 'the best kind of correct', but it isn't really. When you're arguing about what kind of thing a thing is, you can call that a semantic argument, but if you're trying to characterize something that exists in practice, this is different from fighting over dictionary definitions. (Interestingly, I got into the contrapositive of this argument on HN the other day: I tried to use a math term to mean something closely related to the standard definition, and people jumped on me for misusing it.)