Posted on 02/29/2020 5:07:47 AM PST by TigerClaws
Keep your powder dry
A good book to read about it is The Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff (if you can ignore the Objectivist pom-pom waving).
Will review. Many thanks.
Well, to be fair, being for less government to the extent of no government at all also = leftist as well. Just ask Noam Chomsky, Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, and the like. All three labeled themselves as anarchists, yet are still very much adherents to left-wing ideology. Heck, in Foucault’s case, he was against even Socialist people’s courts, wanting to get rid of courts altogether and have “popular justice” akin to the September Massacres.
“Second, although the economic right/left axis is important, more important is the authoritarian/freedom axis. In the end the economic justification of a totalitarian state doesn’t matter because the government is in charge of everything and the individual citizens are not.”
Not entirely sure about that. Chomsky, Sartre, and Foucault technically were for freedom, ie, no government at all, aka Anarchy, yet they were full-on leftists.
I don't know about the other two, but although Chomsky claims to be a libertarian socialist he always seems to promote a government solution to everything which is neither libertarian nor anarchist. Most of the street "anarchists" I've seen are really very pro-archist but they just want to be the ones in charge after a period of broken windows, burnt buildings and smashed heads. Once they take over they want the full power of the state to crush anyone who might even peacefully protest like the Tea Party rallies. Bernie's vision of democratic socialism does not allow for a democratic capitalism to be voted into power afterward.
Well, for Sartre, you can look up the following links regarding his anarchism:
1. https://web.archive.org/web/20170202203851/http://raforum.info/spip.php?article92
As far as Michel Foucault... he entered a blind debate with Maoists, probably the most extreme form of Marxists, and he basically said that even Socialist People’s Courts were too restricting on popular justice, and envisioned popular justice as not allowing for ANY courts at all, just unrestrained lynchings, as you can read here: https://web.archive.org/web/20141114060055/http://www4.uwm.edu/c21/conferences/2008since1968/foucault_maoists.pdf
And here’s the quote:
“Foucault: In my view one shouldn’t start with the court as a particular form, and then go on to ask how or on what conditions there could be a people’s court; one should start with popular justice, with acts of justice by the people, and go on to ask what place a court would have in this. We must ask whether such acts of popular justice can or cannot be organised in the form of a court. Now my hypothesis is not so much that the court is the natural expression of popular justice, but rather that its historical function is to ensnare it, to control it and to strangle it, by re-inscribing it within institutions which are typical of a state apparatus. For example, in 1792, when war with neighbouring countries broke out and the Parisian workers were called on to go and get themselves killed, they replied: ‘We’re not going to go before we’ve brought our enemies within our own country to court. While we’ll be out there exposed to danger, they’ll be protected by the prisons they’re locked up in. They’re only waiting for us to leave in order to come out and set up the old order of things all over again. In any case, those who are in power today want to use against us—in order to bring us back under control—the dual pressure of enemies invading from abroad and those who threaten us at home. We are not going to fight against the former without having first dealt with the latter.’ The September executions were at one and the same time an act of war against internal enemies, a political act against the manipulations of those in power, and an act of vengeance against the oppressive classes. Was this not—during a period of violent revolutionary struggle—at least an approximation to an act of popular justice; a reaction to oppression, strategically effective and politically necessary? Now, no sooner had the executions started in September, when men from the Paris Commune—or from that quarter—intervened and set about staging a court: judges behind a table, representing a third party standing between the people ‘screaming for vengeance’, and the accused who were either ‘guilty’ or ‘innocent’; an investigation to establish the ‘truth’ or to obtain a ‘confession’; deliberation to find out what was ‘just’; this form was imposed in an authoritarian manner. Can we not see the embryonic, albeit fragile form of a state apparatus reappearing here? The possibility of class oppression? Is not the setting up of a neutral institution standing between the people and its enemies, capable of establishing the dividing line between the true and false, the guilty and innocent, the just and the unjust, is this not a way of resisting popular justice? A way of disarming it in the struggle it is conducting in reality in favour of an arbitration in the realm of the ideal? This is why I am wondering whether the court is not a form of popular justice but rather its first deformation.”
You can also look at Sacco and Vanzetti, who were explicitly anarchists and killed people in the name of anarchism, and even Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who practically founded anarchism, demanded for destruction of capitalism. Heck, even Karl Marx stated the endgoal of Communism besides creating a classless society also entailed a stateless society, and specifically had in mind Robespierre’s Reign of Terror as an inspiration.
That’s why I disagree with the notion that anarchism is of the right wing or conservativism, being as much of a misnomer as Nazism/Fascism being right-wing.
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