On Wed, Oct 30, 2002 at 11:58:33AM +0100, Emile van Bergen wrote:
Not really. Under anarchism, the means of production would be in the hands of the people. So if they didn't have food to eat it would most likely be their own fault for not working, in which case let themstarve.Ah, yes, the ethics of the jungle. I'm personally not in favour of that.
You did snip the last part of that paragraph, which said just the opposite: that the chances of people with food letting others starve is extremely slim. You'd have to WORK at going hungry.
If each person has the weaponry to take out 10 other people, people will be pretty polite to each other.Again, that's just the right of the strongest. Everybody defends himself with his own weapons. I don't think that builds a good society.
No, but it's a necessary precondition to preventing accumulation of power. If an individual can take out 10 others, than it will take more than 10 people to overwhelm and coerce him by conventional means. It raises the stakes for which people will feel it is worthwhile to try a little coercion on their neighbors. Defending yourself with your own weapons doesn't build a good society, but it provides a good base on which a nice society can be built.
So tell me then, how would an anarchist society defend itself against a few hundred people teaming up to excercise power over their neighbors, with their weapons that each can take out ten people each, as you say? I think you'd have one continuous civil war over the resources that /are/ scarce.
The answer to that is simple; if 100 people banded together like that,
1000 would rise up to crush them. An armed populace is deadly to the
aspirations of those who are greedy.
Jonathan
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