Talk:Anarchism

Mises quote

Hello, this quote is currently attributed to Mises in the article, "the first anarchist in the history of human thought" in reference to Zhuangzi. However, the citation provided points to an article written by Rothbard in which the sentence, "The influential Chuang Tzu, a great stylist who wrote in allegorical parables, was therefore the first anarchist in the history of human thought", appears to be written by Rothbard himself and not attributed to anyone else. Does someone have the citation for the quote by Mises, or was this a mistake? Thanks Evidenceplease (talk) 17:17, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Been a couple weeks with no response. I'm going to assume it was a mistake until there is reason to think otherwise. Rothbard was certainly not the first to suggest that anarchist tendencies could be dated as far back as Taoist figures, nor that Taoists were the first anarchists. Off the top of my head I know that Edward Abbey, Rudolf Rocker and Kropotkin all made similar claims previously. Further, others (like various primitivists) have suggested even earlier instances of anarchism dating to pre-history. The claim to anarchism that stretches back farthest in history that I can find would be from Kropotkin, who argued that "we can therefore say that from all times there have been Anarchists and Statists". Kropotkin claimed this in addition to specifically referring to Lao-tzu and Zeno, as well as having written 75 years before Rothbard, so he would seem a better choice to be quoted here. I'll go ahead and make this change in a couple weeks, unless there is good reason not to do so. Evidenceplease (talk) 17:27, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

First paragraph

In the first paragraph of the article there is a sentence that reads: "Proponents of anarchism (known as "anarchists") advocate stateless societies based on non-hierarchical[3][9][10] voluntary associations."

This simply is not true. Voluntaryists, specifically, advocate an entirely voluntary society. Many anarchists including anarcho-communists and anarcho-capitalists believe in varying forms of coercion. As a matter of fact I believe ALL other anarchist schools of thought would all use some kind of force or other with the installation of a centralized system so voluntaryists are the only anarchists that advocate a society based on voluntary associations. Elodoth (talk) 00:05, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

>> "based on voluntary associations" is not synonymous with "advocate an entirely voluntary society". Also, if we're talking about anarchist schools of thought that explicitly advocate entirely voluntary societies, we need to provide citations or refer to thinkers who've proposed this. (Ahwoooga (talk) 19:49, 4 December 2011 (UTC))

I have read many major works on anarchist history by main anarchist historians such as Max Nettlau, Daniel Guerin and George Woodcock and works on both anarcho-communism history and individualist anarchism history and I have done this in the english, french and spanish languages. In all of theses I never found the word or a supposed section of anarchists that call themselves "voluntarists". I don´t know from where User:Elodoth gets the word "voluntarysm" but it seems to me it is definitely not something coming from anarchist history and tradition and I don´t see it in contemporary anarchism either.--Eduen (talk) 06:14, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

It would be useful to see the sources that Elodoth is reliant upon for these suggested edits. Fifelfoo (talk) 06:21, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

History/Origins/Para.1

I don't know about this topic so I can't fix it myself, but the following (run-on) sentence is nearly incomprehensible:

"Such a distinction reverberates subversive religious conceptions like the aforementioned seemingly anarchistic Taoist teachings and that of other anti-authoritarian religious traditions creating a complex relationship regarding the question as to whether or not anarchism and religion are compatible."

Can someone please fix that gobbledegook so that it makes some sense? This is Wikipedia, not your Masters' thesis; write for a general audience, please. 24.210.212.158 (talk) 15:14, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

"anarchist themes can be found in the 6th century BC, among the works of Taoist philosopher Laozi,[43]" <--The source [43] [1] states only: "At the same time it evidently found its expression in the writings of some thinkers, since the times of Lao-tsze, although, owing to its non-scholastic and popular origin, it obviously found less sympathy among the scholars than the opposed tendency." The source does not state that anarchist themes can be found in Laozi's works, as the Tao De Ching is anything but an anarchist work (道德經沒有). 71.33.177.109 (talk) 16:47, 29 December 2011 (UTC)12/29/11

Anarchists Defendants in North America

With the rise in visibility for anarchism/anarchists in contemporary politic discourse, it seems to me that there should be a page or subcategory of "anarchists defendants" chronicling the history of north american anarchists brought to court by the state or other parties. Does anyone have experience with wikipedia that could help? There are both contemporary and historical articles elsewhere on wikipedia that detail these specific cases, and it seems notable and relevant to compile summaries of each onto one page, and link to it in the "anarchism" category portal. (Ahwoooga (talk) 20:50, 4 December 2011 (UTC))

Ahwoooga, that sounds like a promising project. Might I suggest you join us over at the Anarchism Task Force and we can hammer it out? (The usual process is to write the separate article, and then summarise it in the main Anarchism article once it's finished). Regards, Skomorokh 20:56, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I would keep different countries separate. TFD (talk) 18:43, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

If anyone is interested in working on this, i created a user-page draft for this, it exists here: Anarchist Defendants in North America (draft) (Ahwoooga (talk) 08:25, 8 December 2011 (UTC))

While some of the people on your list are clearly anarchists (Sacco and Vanzetti, Emma Goldman), others are not normally described that way (MOVE, the Unabomber). It seems that any list would have neutrality problems. Also, all the persons/groups listed are Americans. TFD (talk) 16:32, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Lawless and chaotic

I'm sure wiki editors are aware of this but not often the general public. The words anarchic, anarchist and anarchy in this article relect a more formal usage. However, in common useage they are most associated with lawless and chaotic behavior or they are used as pejoratives. To avoid this morphing from formal defiinitions, I sometimes hear people now useing anti-hiarchy or anti-hierarchism. I certainly think a cautionary statement should be included in the introduction. To prove my point, here are some thesaurus and dictionary examples from Encarta ® World English Dictionary © 2005 Microsoft Corporation, which probably commonly used.

Thesaurus; anarchist insurgent, nihilist, rebel, revolutionary, terrorist Dictionary; anarchic adj 1. lawless: showing no respect for established laws, rules, institutions, or authority 2. chaotic: characterized by a lack of organization or control 3. encouraging anarchy: likely to cause the overthrow of a formal system of government or a breakdown of law and order anarchist n 2. lawless person: somebody who tries to overthrow a government or behaves in a lawless way anarchy n 1. chaotic situation: a situation in which there is a total lack of organization or control Abject Normality (talk) 14:47, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Anarchism vs. Anarchy

Can we please have a section explaining the difference between these two similarly named terms? I, for one am quite confused to what the distinction is.--Coin945 (talk) 02:26, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Anarchists of course are the people who want to create and propagandize for the social situation called anarchy. Anarchy means human relations without hierarchy. I think we could include the definition of "anarchy" in the "Etymology and terminology" section. --Eduen (talk) 07:19, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

I didn't mean the difference between anarchists and anarchy - that is simple enough. I meant the distinction between Anarchism and Anarchy - something which is discussed at these (albeit non-notable) websites [2][3][4]. Despite the examples being from non-notable sources, I think it is an important enough notion to include in the article, for anyone trying to get an overview of the concept.--Coin945 (talk) 03:32, 16 December 2011 (UTC)