[Figlio di Moros]

Exactly, otherwise how do you know where to go? What to do? Or how to defend? Ireland once was in a situation similar to anarchy where everyone was ruled by clan warlords but it failed when the british invaded. The same with Norway until it was unified.

So was New York State, until the 6 nations were united into one, and then the britts invaded,

The lack of a hierarchical highly organized structure lead to weakness.

*facepalm* Please tell me you're not another western New Yorker, least of all for calling yourself "upstate"....

[ninurta]

[]Exactly, otherwise how do you know where to go? What to do? Or how to defend? Ireland once was in a situation similar to anarchy where everyone was ruled by clan warlords but it failed when the british invaded. The same with Norway until it was unified.

So was New York State, until the 6 nations were united into one, and then the britts invaded,

The lack of a hierarchical highly organized structure lead to weakness.[]

*facepalm* Please tell me you're not another western New Yorker, least of all for calling yourself "upstate"....

First off, does it matter?

Second, no, Albany is eastern New York State

[Figlio di Moros]

First off, does it matter?

Second, no, Albany is eastern New York State

*sigh of relief* Good, we have enough crazies to turn around and be misrepresented by a left-leaning anarchist. By the way, the six tribes of the Iriqouis were situated from the finger lakes, just west of Syracuse, westward, with the seventh, the Seneca, joining them after the colonization period living near Buffalo and southern Ontario, or in other words, the six nations are western NY tribes.

[ninurta]

[]First off, does it matter?

Second, no, Albany is eastern New York State[]

*sigh of relief* Good, we have enough crazies to turn around and be misrepresented by a left-leaning anarchist. By the way, the six tribes of the Iriqouis were situated from the finger lakes, just west of Syracuse, westward, with the seventh, the Seneca, joining them after the colonization period living near Buffalo and southern Ontario, or in other words, the six nations are western NY tribes.

Ummm......I am neither an anarchist nor do I lean left.

And one of the main tribes, the mohawk, lived exactly where i do, the place where the easternmost, and most powerful of the 6 nations lived.

[Figlio di Moros]

Ummm......I am neither an anarchist nor do I lean left.

My bad... if I had smiley's, I'd be using the bug-eyed expression right now.

And one of the main tribes, the mohawk, lived exactly where i do, the place where the easternmost, and most powerful of the 6 nations lived.

And wiki proves you right... I could swear the other five tribes were stationed around the finger lakes, though(lives in Seneca nation).... *sticks foot in mouth*

[ninurta]

It's fine, I only know because I live in the heart of what was once the Mohawk Tribal territories, and I used to live near a museum i went to to learn about this stuff in school. I didn't expect you to know where tribal boundaries were, I was just noting that I knew where they were.

[JimmiBaez]

Of all the anarchists that post or lurk on this site I'm very surprised that none have mentioned the Spanish Civil War and it's voluntary militia.

http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Ar ... arhis.html
^The site lists a great amount of links providing very useful information on the Spanish Civil War, but lacks important information as to how the militias were organized. For that one should watch http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=w ... 3HQM6XdNtg Living Utopia. As I recall, the militias of Spain at that time were always voluntary and commanders/officers were usually democratically elected.

During the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), 2,800 American volunteers took up arms to defend the Spanish Republic against a military rebellion led by General Franco and aided by Hitler and Mussolini. To the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which fought from 1937 through 1938, the defense of the Republic represented the last hope of stopping the spread of international fascism... The Lincolns came from all walks of life, all regions of the country, and included seamen, students, the unemployed, miners, fur workers, lumberjacks, teachers, salesmen, athletes, dancers, and artists. They established the first racially integrated military unit in U.S. history and were the first to be led by a black commander... Self-motivated and ideological, the Lincolns attempted to create an egalitarian "people's army"; officers were distinguished only by small bars on their berets and in some cases rank-and-file soldiers elected their own officers. Traditional military protocol was shunned, although not always successfully.

[ninurta]

What do troops from a republic have to do with anarchism?

And more importantly, were those who fought against the fascist regime anarchists? And more importantly, where is their community now? Does it still exist?

[Figlio di Moros]

Anarchists ought to consider their military organization, considering they're 0-2...

[H8w0w8H]

What do troops from a republic have to do with anarchism?

And more importantly, were those who fought against the fascist regime anarchists? And more importantly, where is their community now? Does it still exist?

That is a shocking lack of knowledge

[ninurta]

What do troops from a republic have to do with anarchism?

And more importantly, were those who fought against the fascist regime anarchists? And more importantly, where is their community now? Does it still exist?

That is a shocking lack of knowledge

Well lack of knowledge on this certain thing, and is why I asked about it. Tell me more or give me something to read on it. Hey, at least I am not like some people and judge before i even know what I am talking about. At least I ask to know about something, now be a good samaritan and help me out, who knows, maybe I'll become an anarchist. I am for minarchy already, but only pro-state for defense reasons. Maybe I'll be pro-anarchy.

[JimmiBaez]

What do troops from a republic have to do with anarchism?

Allies, the question was 'How do you defend anarchism'. Having allies certainly helps, the Lincoln Brigade was made up of Americans and served as allies to the Spanish.

And more importantly, were those who fought against the fascist regime anarchists?

I don't see how this is more important, but yes. Most who fought against the fascist regime were some type of anarchist (anarcho-commie, anarcho-synd, etc.) Many police officers and soldiers who originally defended the fascist regime switched sides to defend the anarchists and the workers.

And more importantly, where is their community now? Does it still exist?

Please do some more research on anarchism and the Spanish Civil War, it's very interesting and not many people know about it. The revolution was eventually lost, it doesn't exist any more. When it existed, production was higher than it ever was and unemployment rates were lower as well. In fact, almost no one was unemployed at all. I recommend you watching Living Utopia, it's very interesting and check out the links I previously posted.

[H8w0w8H]

Tell me more or give me something to read on it. Hey, at least I am not like some people and judge before i even know what I am talking about.

The Spanish civil war was basically the quintessential tale of the failure of anarchism
basically you can sum it up with the story of the frog and the scorpion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog

anarchists be the frog the communists were the scorpion

The lesson is

never trust a statist be they left or right

[ninurta]

You've got my attention and interest on something I normally think is not a great idea, that says something. I am looking into it now.

[Suska]

House's supposition that what he calls commoners don't have the sense or ability to organize well and voluntarily is based on evidence given under very different conditions than anarchy. Plus it has the effect of proving itself by suggesting it be so when it needn't be so according to the will of the individuals and the quality of the society. That is; there is no such thing as a commoner in anarchy and there is such a thing as free will, which can only be influenced in the wrong direction by suggesting it is empirically lacking. There's no telling what may be possible.

I tend to think of the Greek Polis states before the classic era as essentially anarchistic, secondarily aristocratic and tertiarily democratic, that is; what was essentially true to them was natural anarchy, what was done with cities was a matter of filial loyalty/philosophical creativity and only after these were calculated was a democratic system in effect. Partly I deduce this by where they came from in historical periods and where they went to, which at a certain point was taken to higher heights by the Romans. Partly I deduce this from Homer, partly from mythology, and partly from what later philosophers also supposed. Even in Roman times there was such a thing as Saturnalia - an expression of Anarchy, which often lasted several weeks.

There was no formal hierarchy among the phalanxes. I read a good book that, if I recall correctly devoted a chapter to that. I think its name was The Greek Way of Warfare.

[H8w0w8H]

House's supposition that what he calls commoners don't have the sense or ability to organize well and voluntarily is based on evidence given under very different conditions than anarchy.

and aswell its completely contradicted by evidence the Vietnamese kicked the USA's ass and the Afghans kicked the USSRs ass
(admittedly they both had material support from the opposing protagonists in the other wars)

Karl Hess described the advantage anarchists have over statists this way:

The point is that bigness just doesn't work in business, government, or any other kind of organization. Capitalist or communist. Bureaucracy always screws the little guy it always makes his life worse instead of better. And it always gets in its own way. Look at our own armed forces if you want a textbook example of how much better decentralization can be than central planning. We used to win wars, you know back when John Wayne, chief petty officers, and sergeants ran our Army and Navy from the bottom up. That's the way we did it in World War Two-the one I was in-and we could have beaten Mars if its team had shown up. We hung loose, we had a lot of fun, we were tough, and we won.

By the time we got mired down in Vietnam, though, the American military establishment no longer expected its troops to think for themselves out in the field. Everything was directed by bookkeepers back in the Pentagon somewhere. The Defense Department had become a gigantic blundering bureaucracy. And our armed forces had gone to pot:

Unfortunately for us, however, the Viet Cong were still doing things the way we had done them thirty years before. They were organized from the bottom up. Their guys-who each only carried something like sixteen rounds of ammunition and a little bag of rice-could get in and out of a tight situation a dozen times while our soldiers were still waiting for an air strike or a hot meal to come up from behind. And you can't beat people like that the way we were fighting. You can't beat that kind of small-scale organization. We could have fought the V.C. with our bloated bureaucracy for a hundred years and still never won.

[DubiousDan]

In order to defend its borders, an anarchistic state must reach a level of competence beyond that delineated in current anarchistic theory.
At present, the only method generally comprehensible within anarchistic theory to my knowledge is a militia. A militia in the true, or Swiss, sense of the word. To implement such a militia is no small task and would require citizens of at least the Swiss level of competence. Citizens at that level of competence are rare indeed.

I can conceive of other methods, but the explanation of them would require topics upon topics because they go against all existing social political theory and against the fundamental myths of civilization itself. Taoism gives a basis for a few of them, but those with an understanding of Teh to that degree make a vary small set.

As an anarchist, I accept that anarchism is a viable proposition, but only for a subset of humanity. However, Humanity is the product of culture, so it is possible to make the subset the set. The probability of achieving that is rather low, however the other option at the moment would seem to be the extinction of Humanity. The probability of avoiding that destiny is even lower than the probability of achieving a viable anarchism unless the probabilities are merged. The flotative ability of the straw is minimal at best, but what else remains?

[telluro]

An anarchistic state?

[DubiousDan]

Telluro:

An anarchistic state?

The Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary.
State:

8 b: a territorial unit in which the general body of law is separate and distinct from any other territorial unit.

Me:
Yes, an anarchistic state would seem to be an oxymoron. I prefer the term stateless state, but it can be a bit confusing. However, to exclude government from an area, you have to set up borders. I could say an anarchistic social order, but that does not define borders. Anarchism can exist independent of borders, but that gets a bit tricky. However my use of the word state is consistent with one definition in the MWUB and I could wiggle into a couple of others.
The state has been the enemy of anarchism for so long that it is taken for granted that the terms are mutually exclusive. How then would you describe a geographical area controlled by an anarchistic mutualism?
Yes, the problem has never risen, at least as far as I know. There have been anarchistic social orders, but none that I know of have had clearly defined borders.
However, when you speak of militias, then borders certainly come into play. I will continue to use the term anarchistic state unless something better comes along. I’m open to suggestions, so if you have a better term, by all means offer it.

[telluro]

Fair enough, but what then is the different between a state and a stateless state?

This, I think, is the basic problem with anarchism, amongst secondary other. Once the state is removed, all efforts towards organization will lead to a new state. I think Plato/Socrates elucidated it best in The Republic. Organized society leads to state. True, a state developed from scratch will probably be more organic, direct, less beauracratic and corrupt, but still, it's a matter of development.