Are anarchists considererd left wing? Anarchists and especially anarcho-capitalists have a lot of overlap with libertarians. If you talk to a serious anarchist, they sound like they are against big government and other authority structures. The far left is suppsed to be communist, which seems the opposite of anarchy.
All anarchists are left wing, the majority of which are communist (some are mutualist). Anarchism has always been an anti-capitalist movement (I guess it's fairer to say, it's an anti-unjust hierarchy movement), it's only been co-opted by propertarians ("anarcho"capitalist) in the past 50 years. And even then, that's largely localized to America, outside of America libertarians have always been anarchists (communist anarchists that is).
You should read Pyotr Kropotkins "The Conquest of Bread" and Alexander Berkman's "What is Communist Anarchism?" if you'd like to know more about anarcho-communist ideology. Or if you'd like to know more about mutualism (essentially a workers run system with a market), then check out the works of Joseph Proudhon.
I'd also argue that anarcho-capitalism and right-libertarianism are not anarchist in any sense, as they uphold the inherently hierarchical system of capitalism.
I think you have a fairly narrow view of anarchism.
> I'd also argue that anarcho-capitalism and right-libertarianism are not anarchist in any sense, as they uphold the inherently hierarchical system of capitalism.
In what way is capitalism hierarchical, except in an ad hoc way that is constantly redefined based on the current needs of the people interacting?
I'd recommend you check out those books because they explain it far better than I or anyone else could hope to in a single comment, but it essentially comes down to the capitalist/worker divide. The capitalist will always be on top, and the worker will always be subservient to their interests. That is how it is hierarchical, because there will always be the capitalist class imposing it's will on the working class, and so anarchists and communists hope to abolish the class system. However the two groups disagree massively on how to achieve that abolition.
Capitalism is more about a few controlling the means of production than it is about market activity. People tend to think of it as a market economy but it's really about who has power and reaps it's rewards.
Actually what you're describing is just the fact that the word "capitalism" is used to mean markedly different things by different groups of people, which makes it a bad word to use in discussions between people with different perspectives.
Karl Marx's definition of "capitalism" is very different from Ayn Rand's definition of "capitalism". And both of them are very different from the "capitalism" that describes the economy as it actually exists in the present day.
Both the far left and the far right advocate a stronger control of the government over citizens, and in doing so they distance themselves from anarchism.
Marx had big beefs with Proudhon and Kropotkin - they were not imitators or wannabes - exactly because he was willing to prescribe a dictatorship and they were not.
Dude his comment is like a paragraph and a half long. At least finish reading it before disagreeing with it. Like you, I think he's _wrong_ about Ancaps not being "true" anarchist (or Scotsmen...), but it's not like he didn't address them and isn't aware of the concept (he addresses them in literally the next sentence! Jesus). Smugly linking the Wikipedia article is entirely unhelpful for anything except revealing that you didn't bother reading for more than 6 seconds before rushing to reply.
>I think he's _wrong_ about Ancaps not being "true" anarchist
I don't believe they aren't "true anarchists", I believe they aren't anarchist at all. They aren't even in the realm of consideration of what constitutes anarchist. Their ideal society would end up corporate feudalism.
By this metric, one can say that e.g. anarcho-syndicalists aren't anarchist at all, because their ideal society would end up as lots of small but totalitarian communities. Of course, the syndicalists themselves would dispute this, but then ancaps would also dispute your "corporate feudalism" claim.
The real difference here is philosophical. Right-wing anarchists believe that private property is a natural concept that exists independently of power hierarchies. Left-wing anarchists believe that's an artificial concept that requires such a hierarchy to enforce, and doesn't exist without it. Hence ancaps believe that absence of government will result in a capitalist utopia, while traditional anarchists believe that it would result in a socialist utopia. These two viewpoints are irreconcilable, because the fundamental premise is not just different, but literally opposite.
However, insofar as both groups believe that their ideal society is characterized primarily by the lack of a power hierarchy (and all other things, like unrestricted property rights, or complete lack thereof, simply follow naturally from that), both groups are "real" anarchists.
> I don't believe they aren't "true anarchists", I believe they aren't anarchist at all.
Yea, that's what I said. Putting "true" in quote marks was me dismissing the notion that you can redefine words because you don't like their current definitions.
Actually if you look at the history of anarchism you'll find it was the ancaps who tried to redefine the word, not the other way around. Murray Rothbard, one of the founders of anarchocapitalism literally says this almost verbatim.
‘One gratifying aspect of our rise to some prominence is that, for the first time in my memory, we, “our side,” had captured a crucial word from the enemy . . . “Libertarians” . . . had long been simply a polite word for left-wing anarchists, that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of the communist or syndicalist variety. But now we had taken it over. . .’ [The Betrayal of the American Right, p. 83]
The left/right dichotomy doesn't work with anarchism since it doesn't necessarily have to be on either side of that spectrum - generally based on ideas about economy and not social structures or hierarchies. It can display features usually attributed to left wing ideologies (fight for equality, emancipation, fair society, freedom of speech, freedom of (and from) religion, self organisation, bottom-up communities, etc), as well as right wing ones: small (or no) government in the sense of a state and an establishment, fewer coded laws, no monopoly of power/rights by one group or institution (e.g. right to bear arms), free market, etc.
You might say that anarchism is the left wing on a spectrum where authoritarianism or absolute monarchs are considered the right wing. Anarchism is anti discrimination (pro egalitarianism) and by definition is against racism, sexism, nationalism, fascism, etc. It's not because it's "left" like socialists or (socialist) progressives are, but because of the hierarchies it is ideologically opposed to. Its main objective is a society free from imposed and unnatural hierarchies.
Edit: what I'm trying to say is that no one-dimensional linear scale that goes from left to right on which you can place all ideologies and compare them.
Your free market part is where you'll find the clash. Any anarchist would say that a free market is inherently oppressive. The only place a "free" market would work is in a mutualist economy, and even then, that requires worker ownership over the means of production.
The sticking point is not so much free market - mutualists are considered anarchists by other anarchists - but other, major, aspects of capitalism, mainly private ownership of the means of production and the use of waged labour, where owners hire others to work on or with their property - those are outright incompatible with anarchism, outwith the anarchocapitalists whose 'anarcho' credentials are disputed.
And how exactly do you aim to stop a free market existing?
Because I strongly doubt any political change will get everyone to work for 'common interests', and a fair few product creators, service owners, artists and others will try and sell their work anyway.
How do anarchists plan to avoid this? What about the people who don't want to own the means of production and are perfectly fine with working for others for a wage? What would stop people competing with each other to get more money and resources?
Personally I'm a fan of a workers run syndicalist economy. There are other options, like a workers run market economy, or an outright collectivist gift economy.
The question is, how would you enforce that, if some part of the populace just decided to recognize property rights, and structured their part of the economy accordingly?
They never were TBH, capitalism is inherently hierarchical and a system of entirely private enterprise would resemble corporate feudalism, not an anarchist society.
> The left/right dichotomy doesn't work with anarchism
It works the same way with anarchism as it does in general; that is to say, it captures a real and major axis of variation among anarchists but not the only one. It actually works a little better with anarchists then it doesin general, because “anarchism” limits one of the other significant axes of political variation that exist in the wider society.
I truly don't understand why people try so desperately to shove politics into a one-dimensional axis, _even in a comment that's pointing out how inadequate it is!_
Politics is complicated, but the two-axes model is a lot less laughably simplistic: left/right, liberal/authoritarian. To drastically oversimplify:
left-liberal: Bernie Sanders, sort of
left-authoritarian: full communism
right-liberal: libertarian
right-authoritarian: paleocons
This is just off the top of my head, has some issues, and is _still_ oversimplified[1], but you can already see how much less than the one-dimensional model it smushes together fairly-mainstream groups that have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
Anarchists are very much on the left, and big parts of the left (and the right) these days very much dislike liberals.
[1] For example, anarcho-communism doesn't fit very well into this. Ancaps fit (sort of) on the right-liberal side.
I believe the answer is quite simple - the two major US parties would like to maintain their duopoly and allocate a considerable fraction of their vast resources towards pushing that narrative and smearing anyone who tries to act outside it.
The acceptance of the left-right paradigm by half the US voter base looks like little more than a successful propaganda campaign by the incumbent political parties.
Two dimensions is certainly better than one, although I note that almost nobody would self-identify as "authoritarian" which makes half of the chart a bit useless.
The vast majority of people, at least in western countries, agree with the basic assumption of (classical) liberalism, which is that "people should be allowed to do what they want, except...". For the most part people just differ on what comes after the "except", whether it's "sell harmful drugs" or "exploit workers" or "use hate speech" or "burn coal" or whatever other grab-bag of activities a certain individual has decided are sufficiently harmful to outlaw.
It doesn't fit neatly into the left-right divide. If you look at the political spectrum as a 2 dimensional grid with (0,0) in the center, the limits are -10 and 10, and economics on left/right and authoritarianism and libertarianism as up and down, anarchists would be (x, -10). You can basically plaster any economic system on top. IMO, they do tend to the extremes of communism and full on capitalism because it's not very practical to have a mixed market economy like ours without a government entity to do regulation.
> The far left is suppsed to be communist, which seems the opposite of anarchy.
Communism: weak central government, strong communal (local) democratic decision making - let people make decision that effect them directly (locally).
You may be thinking of the old-fashioned idea of a socialist state as a "tyrrany of the many" as a transition from an armed uprising towards a communist state?
In terms of political theory, communism has always been (a somewhat utopian) theory that shares many ideas with anarchism. I like to think of communism as slightly more pragmatic, in that there's somewhat of an acknowledgement that there needs to be a agency that holds a monopoly on violence (a police force) - as a last resort to mitigate anti-social behaviour.
But if one reads eg Rosa Luxembourg, the lines are very much blurred between the two.
There's a tendency to spend time arguing that the various socialist states that where formed by communist parties were communist, because they were ran by organizations that labeled themselves (and indeed were) communist - I don't think such discussion is much more fruitful than discussing how the US attempted to "liberate" Vietnam, or institute "democracy" in Chile.
Anarchism can be considered either left or right, as its a completely orthogonal ideology to what is typically considered left and right wing ideologies. Libertarianism is just a form of minimal government, but not anarchism.
Left and right are not really well defined ideologies[0]. They're just archaic and lazy ways to generalize political stances.
> Anarchism can be considered either left or right
Nope. It is always socialist/anti-capitalist. The name as been wrongfully appropriated by anarcho-capitalist, a contradictory term. They are merely for no-gov't-capitalism; which it against pretty much every anarchist principle (anti-oppression).
> Libertarianism is just a form of minimal government
Yes.
> Left and right are not really well defined ideologies[0].
Indeed. But pro-private-property-ad-inifinitum and against it are well defined (and largely overlap with true-left and true-right). Problem, nowadays many that subscribe to capitalism may call themselves "social dems", and thus get a little "lefty" vibe going, thereby diluting the term.
I suggest you read at least the start of "An Anarchist FAQ". It is specifically dedicated to explaining why "anarcho-capitalism" is not anarchism.
From Introduction [1]:
"We should also indicate the history of this FAQ. It was started in 1995 when a group of anarchists got together in order to write an FAQ refuting the claims of certain "libertarian" capitalists to being anarchists. Those who were involved in this project had spent many an hour on-line refuting claims by these people that capitalism and anarchism could go together."
It is pretty obvious that so-called "libertarians" (Rothbard et al., who argue for absolute private property) are not anarchist, but now that David Friedman's ideas and "Machinery of Freedom" book becomes popular and he calls himself "anarcho-capitalist" it became necessary to explain why "anarcho-capitalism" is an oxymoron again.
There is a long tradition of market anarchism, and even Agorsim (see Samuel Edward Konkin III) can be considered to be anarchism in my opinion, but "anarcho-capitalism" is not.
Ideology is maybe not scientific or evidence-tested well enough to model the world well enough to take it as seriously as we really do.
There exist libertarian socialists. Libertarian communists. Anarcho-libertarians. You can be whatever you want.
And that may sound silly to you, but the reality is that everything is like this. America is a mix of socialism, capitalism, some new version of authoritarianism, and at least somewhat mercantilist even though we dont admit that we loot resources from weaker countries. In the past we were much more federalist and what would be described today as libertarian, really.
Obama has some quote (that I cant find now) about how ideology isn't as good as pragmatics. He said something like "my ideology is just that everyone should have equal opportunities, dignity and freedoms, and we should try to maximize those, so just ask ourselves what is the best way to do that?"
Hopefully this is not crossing the line in being too snarky, but the trend in identifying with political ideology looks like it is filling the void that religion left behind. I mean, come on, they're both unscientific, morally pompous doctrines to be a part of and get your heart pumping for.
It's pretty confusing, but it seems to me that the uniting factor between the anarchists and the statist left is a common belief in human freedom from hierarchical structures, but each chooses different method to implement it.
This is very much the truth, anarchists and communists want the same thing, a communist society, they just disagree fundamentally on how to do it. That's why you see them join forces and fight together, like in the Russian Revolution and Spanish civil war
Both left-anarchists and right-anarchists (anarchocapitalists) tend to deny that the others are "true" anarchists.
In my view the main difference is not in their view of what should happen, but rather in their impossibly rosy assumptions of what happens next. Left-anarchists assume that if you get rid of the government the world becomes a left-wing utopia, while right-anarchists assume that if you get rid of the government then the world becomes a right-wing utopia.
To me, neither of these scenarios seems more likely than the other.
> Left-anarchists assume that if you get rid of the government the world becomes a left-wing utopia, while right-anarchists assume that if you get rid of the government then the world becomes a right-wing utopia.
I'd say you're strawmanning both sides here, left anarchists know the state grows out of the conflicting class interests of the working class and capitalist class, and that abolition of the state necessarily requires abolition of capitalism. Propertarians believe that if you got rid of the government, the free market will sort things out because it's the gov. interference in private enterprise that causes societies conflicts. Neither believe in a magic switch or anything.
> left anarchists know the state grows out of the conflicting class interests of the working class and capitalist class
> Propertarians believe that if you got rid of the government, the free market will sort things out because it's the gov. interference in private enterprise that causes societies conflicts
I think you've just given a slightly better summary of the magical thinking of each, rather than fundamentally disagreed with me.
Right-anarchists believe that destroying the state will finally allow capitalism to thrive, while left-anarchists believe that destroying the state will destroy capitalism too.
Partially this disagreement is simply about the meaning of the word "capitalism", though, which both sides chuck around unexamined without bothering too much about the fact that they have completely different definitions of this word, and that neither definition really matches what the man in the street means when he uses it.
> Partially this disagreement is simply about the meaning of the word "capitalism"
Does it, though? If you use the classic Marxist definition of capitalism as "private ownership of the means of production", I don't think either ancaps or left anarchists would fundamentally disagree with it. And both would believe, based on their premises on property (natural right vs social construct), that removing the government from the equation would result in their desired endgame wrt capitalism based on this definition. For left-anarchists, if you remove the government, you also remove any and all private property rights, by definition (since they're a creation of the government) - obviously, this would include property rights on the means of production, and such a society would then not be capitalist. Ancaps, OTOH, believe that governments impede natural property rights, and thus a society without a government would have the strongest possible private ownership of the means of production - i.e. capitalism in its purest form.
