General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Your thoughts on the philosophy of Anarchism... [View all]Selatius
(20,441 posts)You elect a Congress to represent you. They writes the laws, and the President signs them into law or vetoes them.
An anarchist would propose several things to that arrangement. Mainly, he would propose ways to decentralize that power, as opposed to centralizing that power. He may propose the ability to recall the legislator or President if the people wish to exercise that authority. He may propose the ability to call a referendum on an act of Congress. He may even propose the ability to pass laws through an initiative process despite what Congress would say. All of these proposals serve to decentralize power and give some of it back to people.
Somebody who has studied anarchism would not support the absence of any rules. They merely support the decentralization of rule-making power and the over-turning of rules derived from excessive centralization of rule-making power. Anybody else who advocates nothing short of chaos is silly, not to be taken seriously, and likely ignorant of the history of left-wing anarchism.
They are advocating anomie, not anarchism.
Whereas a state socialist would say that it is best if the government established a single health insurance entity owned by the state to give everybody affordable health care without tacking on a profit mark-up like a private entity, a left-wing anarchist would likely propose the establishment of a health insurance co-op, also non-profit, as an alternative to for-profit health insurance. Provided the health insurance co-op becomes large enough to provide economies of scale to its participants, both avenues would achieve the twin objectives of removing the profit mark-ups on the costs and also providing wider coverage than previous. Admittedly, a single national health insurance co-op would be harder to establish than single-payer health care in a functioning republic, but I wouldn't exactly call the US functional the way the Founders had anticipated.
Daily examples of socialism outside the government proper would be a credit union, essentially a bank owned by its depositors, or a labor co-op, a business enterprise owned by its respective employees. These are pretty common examples of socialism that people don't recognize as "socialism" in the traditional sense.