Yesterday I took part in mini-debates on the subject, where in my opening statement I expressed an interesting thought that I hadn’t encountered in other sources before, so I’ll post it here, unedited.
The state exists in people’s minds: exactly where all ideas exist. Similarly, all ideas about how society should be organized exist in people’s minds. Therefore, the only way to overcome the state is to instill in people a complete conviction that this crap is not needed.
It is far more interesting what ideas can replace the idea of the necessity of the state. In small communities where everyone is more or less acquainted, relationships are more often built on various collectivist values—it’s more convenient. In families, communist relations usually dominate. Similarly, communist relations prove quite natural for anarchic communities as long as they remain modest in size—even if that society shares ancap ideas. Ancaps give free public lectures, donate to each other for various projects, and volunteer so much it’s mind-boggling. Where, one might ask, is the cold world of pure profit, the maximization of profit, and other purely theoretical constructs? It’s all cooperation and the joy of joint creativity. Therefore, paradoxically, ancaps develop a strange doublethink in themselves, where the market is supposed to settle things, but for some reason, mutual aid does.
As a community grows, ancaps naturally need to mature, learn how to make money by satisfying market demand, and establish coordination between specialized organizations—but, of course, bypassing state restrictions. The world of ancom, warm and cozy, falters when scaling in the face of complex division of labor, competition, and other things unpleasant to a child’s mind. Ancom is already felt within small communities today, and therefore seems utterly real. Ancap can be traced in individual phenomena, such as the world of cryptocurrencies, black markets, and the like. A certain level of abstract thinking is required to see in this the engine of the future world order.
So I see nothing particularly terrible in the fact that people begin their acquaintance with anarchy specifically with anarcho-communism. The wider the movement becomes, the further it will move away from its original ideals and approach ancap. Many ideological ancaps started as communists. The most famous example is, of course, Hoppe. Examples of the reverse transition are hardly observed. Therefore, I wish for this community, without losing harmony with the real world, to eventually master the entire aesthetic of capitalist relations as truly just.
