Anarchy and Anarchism - Webester's dictionary Definiton

Of course it's only partially true, notice how it doesn't describe what Anarchist philosophy really entails, or any prominent Theories? Its funny you brought this up because we did the same thing just a few days ago during an argument with a friend over Chomsky and had no satisfactory definition in three separate dictionaries. Which of course promotes disinformation to the masses as to what Anarchism really means and stands for.....no accident by the way.

 

To me those seem pretty good. Anarchism definition I have no objections to, in a perfect world it would hold some references to prominent anarchist theories and writters, but as it is I can't find any serious flaws...

The definition of anarchy, as most I don't like the chaos and disorder bit, but don't find it that bad overall, sure a bit simplistic but not malicious...

 

It seems critical, as more and more block-heads show up here wanting to argue about it.

 

Now to add a litle fun to this thread. Some pretty common books in Serbian have this to say...

Milan Vujaklija's lexicon of Foreign words and terms has this to say about anarchism: ideology opposed to Marxism, a burgeois theory that asks for unristrected inividuality of a person in a society without power, laws or authority. Founders: Bakhunin, Proudhon and Stirner

About anarchy: lawlessness, a state of society in which rule of law is completely non existatnt and any authority is also non existant, figuratively complete disorder.

But to top it off, the definition of an anarchist: A person that supports the opinion that current social and political system should be destroyed. A person that strives to overthrow the current state of society by any means possible without any consideration and seeks to impose a state of complete lawlessness.

Prosveta's encyclopedia has this to say:

Anarchy: Lawlessness, Disorder, Theory according to which any authority or power is rejected, and absolute freedom of a person is promoted...

Actually to my suprise the entery on anarchism is quite long and detailded, talks about origins of the term, Proudhon, Bakunin's role in the first socialist internaional , then goes on to talk about various barancehes of anarchism like individualism, Proudhonism (whatevere that may actually be) and anarcho communism. Even mentions organisations like IWA... (pretty good even if little biased at moment and predictably simplistic)

But to my suprise it even has a relatively large enetery on anarchosindicalism but it's mosltly criticisong it from a state socialist perspective and talking about how CNT's actions contributed to fascist winning the spanish civil war... (there are many reason why I'm not a fan of anarchosyndialists, and find some of the criticism to be valid but most of it is written with bad intent and out of context )

 

I remember getting suspended in 8th grade because I got in an argument with my English teacher over the definition of Anarchy because it was one of the vocabulary words that week. Of course the definition was chaos and disorder and all the lovely things of that sort, and I felt like I had to set the record straight because I didn't want my whole class to have this socially conditioned false idea of anarchism. She obviously had to teach the curriculum otherwise she'd be fired, so she had to argue back. What a mess. I hate how they try to create a preconceived notion of it for children to take advantage of the developmental stage of their learning process, but hey, I guess that's just state propaganda for you.

 

Tax payer's dollars, at it's finest, Jesuscrust

 

You hear or read up on the Texas school board choices of literature and curriculum yet? Scary shit.

 

Bananaman wrote:

could you elaborate on this and/or tell us what form of Anarchism you prefer?

 

I have a hard time considering myself anarchist nowadays. If you ask me weather I believe in capitalism the answer is no. As an expansionist system capitalism is not sustainable and something has to be changed. I for example could never understand why do the always talk about economic growth, as if a certain level of trade is not enough... I do believe that mutual aid can achieve a lot and that personal responsibility is far better than any forced authority.

But, to get to the point. I base a lot of my opinions on personal experiences, sure that can sometimes be misleading and at first lance simplistic. But, such as my personal experiences are I must say that I have yet to meet anarchosyndicalists who are doing anything worthwhile, or promoting true anarchism for that matter. In a lot of ways they seem to be stuck in the 19. century social theories about class struggle promoting general strike as the means of revolution and workers taking over the factories. They also like to romanticize about Spanish civil war, to a level that makes it look almost as if it was a religion or something...

In my opinion sustainable lifestyles and technologies are far more important than what anarchosyndicalists preach. The lack of environmental awareness and denying the usefulness of vegetarian/vegan lifestyle is what really bothers me. There is probably more I could add but let's not keep it too long...

 

Er no.... what about it?

 

Its annoying how so many people have absolutley no idea about Anarchism. Everyone believes its just a bunch of lawlessness and killing, they think its a excuse for crime. What they dont understand is that THEIR government and THEIR capitalist market it whats driving these people to commit these crimes.