dagrimreefah wrote:I'm sorry but wikipedia doesn't exactly qualify as a very credible academic source./cheapshot
What are your sources, Senator McCarthy and Fox News?
[edit: forget this, you've obviously thought about your personal philosophy a great deal, but I do wish that you wouldn't assume that I haven't thought about mine.]
Seriously though, I could give you plenty of stuff to read, but what's the point. This is an argument on the internet, and Wikipedia is generally right about the broad, common definitions of well-known terms.
dagrimreefah wrote:
But nevertheless:
Yes admittedly, originally the term "communism" was coined from an idealogy that DID originally INCLUDED a state ran society, and in theory would eventually evolve into a "stateless society" and all of that other good jazz. Still, communism is communism and it doesn't matter if wikipedia describes the flawed ideology the term was coined from, rather than what communism really is.
Socialism as a transitionary system is
not a belief that is shared by all variants of communism, which is what I have been saying; if you bothered to find out anything about anarcho-communism you would find that I haven't just pulled it out of my ass, like you seem to think.
dagrimreefah wrote:
The reason why that idea is flawed is because private property is not a human construct, but rather naturally occuring through the first appropriation of a good or thing in nature, or through barter. People are going to claim things and are going to trade things. The next logical outcome to that is people engaging in a free market and private property "rights". In order to abolish or completely control these things, you need FORCE. Particularly violent force. This is only accomplished through a centralized institution WITH A MONOPOLY ON VIOLENCE, or a state. So thus, as I said, your political belief is a sham and is a contradiction in and of itself, since a society without private property will not and cannot naturally occur, and its' people will inevitably need to be coerced out of their private property.
Furthermore, people will also inevitably have to be persuaded as well, namely through the use of statist and/or nationalist ideologies and war-making/percieved threats, as is shown throughout history.
I think that your axiomatic assumption that private property is always natural is actually wrong, which means I cannot accept your argument. It
may be true when resources are scarce, but I think that the goal of science and industry should be to create a post-scarcity society in which everyone's needs are satisfied, and I see no logical reason why this is impossible (although it seems to me that certain groups are constantly engaged in creating new "needs" for humanity, which is subverting this goal). Thus, I think that your "first appropriation" principle is an axiom which I do not think is necessary in what I think the ultimate human society should be.
Furthermore, in order to guarantee your oh-so-important private property in a scarcity based society, guess what you need? FORCE. Now you think that it is preferable to not have a central institution with a monopoly on force, which I completely agree with. But I would say that my philosophy is actually more self-consistent than yours, in that I envisage a society in which any use of force is unnecessary because everyone's desires are satisfied.
To be a self-consistent anarchist both you and I could not possibly persuade people through the use of force (which is partly why anarchism in any form has failed to have as major an impact on history as more aggressive doctrines). All we can do is talk. I am advocating a society in which there will be no economic motivation for any use of force; you seem to be advocating a society in which there is no monopoly on the use of force, but I'm not sure what you are suggesting beyond that. There are certain blueprints for anarcho-capitalist societies that I would prefer to any society existing in the world at the moment, but my personal inclination is towards anarcho-communism, for the reason I've given above.
Let's fight, like gentlemen.
