Re: is Debian an anarchist organization/project?
On Wed, 30 Oct 2002 07:22, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> I've heard some people saying that Debian is a good example of
> anarchy in action. If it is, how does that fit in with the statement
> mimeographed below? Maybe we aren't anarchist after all... What should
> I tell people who ask if Debian is anarchic?
We are not anarchistic in that sense because we are too sane. ;)
We have some anarchistic tendencies though.
> We hold these truths to be self evident: that all humans have the
> inalienable right to life, liberty, and the full product of their own
> labor.
>
> That this right to life presupposes that everyone has an equal right to
> benefit from and make use of humanities common inheritance, to wit, the
> land, air, and water of this earth, and all that they contain.
>
> That the right to liberty presupposes that coercion of one man by
> another is an indescribable evil. But liberty does not include one man
> taking what rightly belongs to all of humanity for his exclusive use,
> misuse, and non-use.
I think that those beliefs are common in Debian, but socialism can meet them
too...
> That all humans have an equal and legitimate right to defend their lives
> and their share of the human inheritance. No person or body of persons
> shall maintain a monopoly on such right to legitimate use of force.
> Bodies maintaining such monopolies today are called "governments".
The problem is that an individual or a small group of people can't oppose the
use of force that a government can provide. If a group of people have a
country then they need to defend it from other countries who would desire
mineral resources, agricultural land, etc. Disorganized people can't stand
against a modern army. Therefore every country needs an army.
> That governments are the cause, not the solution to the malaise,
> disorder, crime and poverty that plague society.
There are many parts of Africa without effective governments, they have much
more disorder, crime, and poverty than the first-world countries with heavy
governments that most of us are used to.
> That by abolishing government and private property we can better work
> toward a peaceful society where people live, play and work together free
Private property helps stabilise society. Ideally everyone would have some
property that they want to keep. This gives them an incentive not to do
anything stupid that could result in them losing their property.
> from fear of theft, murder, oppression, starvation, and homelessness.
> And by abolishing government and private property, we can all enjoy the
> unlimited wealth that this physical universe and our fertile human
> imaginations provide as an inheritance.
That might work for a non-technological society. It doesn't scale to chip
fabs capable of producing 50 million transistor CPUs that run at 3GHz, and
other similar technological production.
Being into technology we all depend on things that are not possible without
corporations. Therefore we can't oppose private property and companies.
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