Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.

Depends what you mean by "anticapitalist anarchists." I think that people get really bent out of shape over semantics, I've seen more than one argument that essentially boils down to varying definitions of what is "capitalism," with both sides talking past one another...

You could classify me as either, I suppose, but from your POV I'm probably a free-market anarchist. Many people assume that the current market is capitalist in essence (I don't think that it is) and most of these people consider themselves anti-capitalist. When you encounter one of them, and proclaim the virtues of Misesian capitalism, all they hear is "capitalism," and they fall back on wrong preconceptions, loaded terminology, etc...

re: anti-capitalism anarchists, I'm not entirely sure where you'd want me to begin. We support the maximization of capacity for choice (for everyone). This doesn't mean centralization or collectivity, a la Communism or Socialism, but it is something of a positive definition of freedom. When an individual doesn't have enough resources to do much of anything or even live, and another individual can turn over some of their wealth (minimally impeding their own capacity for choice, but deeply improving the other's) that's a good thing.

Simply put, Libertarian-derived forms of Anarchism place their emphasis on an Ethical system to negotiate between conflicting desires, Social Anarchists place all those desires as deriving from a larger Moral imperative.

"Social Anarchists reject all power as inherently evil, classically asserting that the pursuit of control is itself controlling. Freedom -- both social and psychological -- is seen as dependent on empathy and the dissolution of social psychoses. Historically anarchism emerged as a particularly rigorous branch of utilitarianism where choice replaced pleasure as the moral good. As a result, ends and means are deeply interconnected in anarchist theory, but rarely one-to-one."

There's a good overview here:

http://humaniterations.blogspot.com/

David, I think you hit upon exactly the issue I have been having. There is so much confusion over the terminology, and that's especially problematic when having a philosophical conversation, because everybody in that conversation likely thinks of him/herself as educated, so they won't stand to have their terms defined for them by somebody else.

The fascination for me comes in seeing somebody like Chomsky, who is undeniably a brilliant man, supporting notions like libertarian socialism. Setting aside the European/American conflict over defining “libertarian”, I just can’t square this Chomsky quote:

“a consistent libertarian must oppose private ownership of the means of production and the wage slavery which is a component of this system, as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken and under the control of the producer,”

...with any kind of consistent system of ethics. I mean, taken at face value, social libertarians would oppose my right to hire a man to cook my food in my kitchen. I don’t see how an anarchist could feel that they have the authority to interfere with a consensual agreement between me and a man with cooking skills. To assert that they do have that authority would be to promote themselves above both me and the chef in a political heirarchy – the definition of anti-anarchist behavior.

I need that type of concrete example to really recognize why I don’t agree with some of these things.

William, from what you describe, it sounds like a system that would depend on the altruism of everybody involved. That sounds great if it’s a small number of friends or family living together, but on the surface I don’t see how it could be a viable means of 6billion+ Earthlings dealing with one another. This is exactly the type of thing I meant when I said I find anarchists to be fascinating, compelling, and completely impenetrable.

I really appreciate the link. I haven’t had much chance to go through it this weekend, but I will be making time to do it very soon.

You may want to take a look at:

http://www.spiralnature.com/phil/anarchy/toknow.html

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