Would a murderer agree that he is giving his power up when he murders? I doubt it. He would still fight for his right to vote and live.

I think situational power imbalances exist in all societies. I still fail to grasp how you're describing an anarchy, or what makes it special. It sounds to me like an anarchy is like any other society except the democracy is extremely direct and the rules, laws and standards are subject to change at any time. Sounds scary.

do you understand?

also would you like a free book? its really good

ok dude. I am not articulate enough to describe this to you.
I can certainly reccomend some reading material

No thanks, I've already read a bit about it. As for the book, I'll also have to decline... got too many on my list already.

Sicarius, your argument is falling apart. If you have an anarchist society that embodies different power levels 'situationally' then it's already not anarchism. According to your arguments I can then infer that you are not really an anarchist.

Get a life (and work).

He's a situational anarchist. Hmm, I like the sound of that.

ok - I was thinking about this some more, and I think the confusion was the very first assumption, that anarchy is the stripping of "power", and it's too easy to see how that leads to contradictions way too quickly, to where it doesn't even seem possible for anarchy to even exist as a theoretical concept in a pure form. That just didn't feel right to me, because it's clearly possible theoretically, if not practically.

The problem is that anarchy is not the absense of "power", it's the absence of "authority" in the civil or legal or governmental sense. Using that definition, then anarchy is NOT the same as panarchy. because it's authority in a legal sense, rather than power in an influential sense - that's where the contradictions kept coming into the argument, I think.

So without civil authority, you are still going to have some people in the community who have more influential power than others, and you can also resolve the criminal issue without breaking the definition of anarchy. There is no civil authority, but a crowd has more power than an individual, and if they want to banish him or kill him for his crime, they will most likely do just that. And yet, there is still no legal authority for them to carry out the "sentense" there's just the fear of physical harm by the crowd to keep the bad guy away or to keep him in line in the future

your right gobble, neither me or the thousands of other anarchists I've met from around the world are really anarchists. I'm really glad some guy on a game website can set us all straight.

Phil, thanks for giving this more thought. I can agree to use the word "authority" instead of "power" but I still think that we come to the same contradiction. In the example of our criminal, I think those who have the power are also wielding authority over the criminal. After all, someone also has to decide what constitutes a crime. And who can make that call except a person or group of people who have authority over the person or (smaller) group who are proponents of the crime in question. I don't see how power doesn't equate directly to authority.

The authority in anarchy may not be written down, in a legal sense, but that doesn't mean it's not there and that laws don't exist. Rather, I think the laws of an anarchy DO exist and are just unknowable unless one can tap directly into the collective opinions of the members of the community, to predict the outcome of any given dispute. I don't think this is possible.

Sic, your sarcasm really doesn't help. I can call me and my legions of pals paper cranes but that doesn't make it so unless I can defend this label. We're desperately trying to make sense out of "anarchist" and it's just looking like you are simply a Primitivist, not an Anarcho-Primitivist.

thats really not something thats up to you.

if I say I am, and all the others who are agree that I am, well then I am.

I have found that even among Anarchists, they do not have a clear definition of what constitutes an anarchist other than the fact that they all believe in no governments.

There has always been war, Sicarius, as long as there have been humans. Even gorilla family groups conflict with other groups. When you throw smarter humans into the mix they create weapons and install hierarchy. From there you have external threats and thus government. Government is completely unavoidable, it's in our genes.

You mentioned the people would have to decide what to do with a murderer. How was the murderer caught? Who caught him? Who decides what is the right thing to do with him? What if people disagree? How does the society enforce the legitimacy of their system? How does the society respond to foreign threats?

Also I honestly don't believe food was in abundance. All animals have ever done is compete for resources, and this is all humans have ever done. There is always some hungry jealous nomadic tribe lurking on the border of your anarchist farmlands.

Every time I posit this, you seem to ignore me, or assert that there is exactly contrary evidence to accepted historical record.

Thuc - you're quite the pessemist. Can't you believe for a second that life was better before civilization? You're bringing us down!!

sorry thucy but theres not much I can say to government is in our genes.
what do you want me to say? no? I'm not a geneticist.

I'm not going to go into how hypotheticaly a hypothetical murderer was caught.
each community would be a reflection of the people living in it, so I'm sure each community's response would be different to each situation.

also you say you dotn beleive food was in abundance. well the evidence to the contrary is strong but I think you've already decided what you're going to believe.

sometimes arguing with you is like arguing with a religious fundamentalist. "I beleive" "I feel it in my heart" "god did it"

also I think its common sense that it was not an intelligent person who installs hierarchy.
intelligence is egalitarian

Sicarius, please point to the evidence that food was in abundance for any significant period of time, such as two generations. If there is ever an abundance of food, it creates an incentive to increase population until such an abundance doesn't exist anymore. Every animal in the world reproduces such that the population exceeds it's carrying capacity and they must compete for the scarce resources until the population is back under the carrying capacity of the environment. The evidence has always pointed to scarcity and subsequent competition. If you ever want the possibility of an abundance you're talking ridiculous technology to the point that we can sit around while robots do all the work... but even with that ridiculous hypothetical I'm liable to think there will always be scarcity.

No, it was a more intelligent/strong person who "installed" a hierarchy. I'm not sure governments are in our genes, but I do know that social hierarchy is absolutely in our genes. Every social animal has a hierarchy. Our large brains are in great part due to increased pressures to have a better understanding of social interactions. There's a statistical correlation between brain size and how many people you can fit into your conceptual social hierarchy. Surely you'd agree in a anarchic society certain individuals would have much more influence than others... in the end, the "government" of your anarchy might just be those people.

If food was in abundance, then why in the world would people have wasted time storing it and bothering with agricultural experimentation?

I have only theories not answers