[latefordinner]

so I've been thinking about the best way to present anarcho-socialism in this forum - obviously if I start with an axiom that most of you disagree with, then it doesn't matter how the arguments follow from there since by rejecting the initial axiom you have rejected all the following arguments. I think that arguments can be made for roughly-egalitarian anarchy in a variety of ways - both from a variety of "moral" approaches and from a variety of "consequential" approaches. (Likewise I think arguments against AC can be made from a variety of approaches - eg I don't think the "original aquisition" objection or the "future generations" objection to property rights have ever been adequately dealt with) However, for the purpose of this conversation I shall try to make an argument that starts from the one thing I'm reasonably sure anarcho-socialists and anarcho-capitalists agree on, and draw it out from there.

A rough overview of the argument is:

axiom: a stateless society is better than a statist society for maximizing freedom and liberty

first point: the problem of maintaining a statist society without moving back towards a state or ("states by other names") is a problem of maintaining some sort of social cohesion/social order

second point: this is only possible through having a community (communities)

third point: a viable community requires a rough egalitarianism in terms of economic equality

corrolary: contrary to Nozick's claims against any form of patterned distribution, this rough equality can be maintained (and has been maintained for thousands of years) in stateless societies

conclusions: in the presence of gross inequality the shared norms and interdependence that form the backbone of a community begin to breakdown and a stateless society can not be maintained. inequality is not necessarily a result of individual liberty, but is always a predictable result of capitalism. capitalism and anarchism are mututally exclusive - one must pick what they would prefer - a capitalist state or anarchy - if you want to argue that free market capitalism is to the great benefit of all humans be my guest, but recognize that it is not compatible with a stateless society.

so in essence, I hope to show not that egalitarianism is good or meaningful or beneficial in and of itself, but that statelessness is good and beneficial in and of itself and that rough egalitarian distributions are necessary to maintaining that condition of statelessness. In essence that rough equality is not the antithesis of liberty, but rather one of its bedrocks.

It may take me a few days to flesh out the argument. I have no illusions that any ACers will see the light, it is more a rhetorical exercise in being able to present a premise that you agree with and draw it out logically to a conclusion that you don't, rather than simply starting with a premise you don't agree with.

While I personally think there is a good argument for looking at anarchism's relationship with the State in light of much post-structural work around capilliary power, hegemony, ideology, biopower, the production of knowledge, rationality, etc and set anarchism in opposition to a wide variety of these things, for this argument I will be sticking pretty closely to the Weberian definition of a state - "that which has a successful monopoly on the legitimate use of force in a geographic area" - perhaps expanding it to highly concentrated and inequal amounts of force/power in a given geographic area (I do not argue that a condition where power is perfectly equal has ever or will ever exist, merely that there is some tipping point where a gross concentration of power begins to congeal itself into statist tendencies)