анонимный вопрос
I also spent quite a long time trying to figure all this out, but today, it essentially doesn’t matter. All anarchists differ from one another only by shades of their attitude toward private property, and all are more or less equally hostile toward the state. There have been repeated attempts in history to abolish private property first, and the state later. But even when such attempts were successful, it only led to all property ending up in the hands of the state, and in such a state, there remained no room for any kind of anarchist. Therefore, any sane anarchist now, even if they are an anarcho-communist thrice over, would prefer to start with the elimination of the state.
The state is not reducible to the current government, whatever it may be. The state is based on people’s conviction that not all people should be endowed with equal rights. In the view of statists, it is necessary for a certain part of the people to possess rights that others do not have, namely the right to violent coercion. This is needed to lead the mindless herd in the right direction; otherwise, humanity, deprived of guides, will do something bad to itself, such as cause a global catastrophe. A person who believes that humanity needs a guide who forcibly restricts others in their peaceful activities will reproduce the state even after the current government has been abolished. Moreover, such a person may even call themselves an anarchist right now—they might simply believe, for example, that the guide should be collective.
The more an anarchist focuses on how to organize their own life, the more of an anarcho-individualist they are. The more they are concerned with how collective interaction will be organized, the more of an anarcho-communist they are. The more they believe in entrepreneurship as the engine of any development, the more of an anarcho-capitalist they are.
Which specific label a person applies to themselves in addition to anarchism depends mainly on which books they have read, whom they have associated with, and which channels they subscribe to. In reality, the shade of their ideology depends on how much they believe in people. If they believe people are by nature evil and greedy, their anarchism will boil down to ideas about putting together a tough gang that won’t let itself be pushed around. If they believe people are more inclined toward cooperation and entrepreneurship, then their anarchism will lean toward reflections on horizontal interaction and free trade. And if they consider people to be simple and predictable, they will discuss the automation of management and the replacement of bureaucrats with scripts.
I have nothing to fight over with other anarchists. I will try not to let myself be pushed around. I will try not to get lost in the marketplace. I am not afraid of automation. I believe in people, and they mostly bring me joy.
