sc94597 said:
Leadified said:
If you don't mind me asking, what caused you to switch from being an anarcho-capitalist to your current ideology?
|
It was a process. I took a class on political philosophy that slowly broke down my prejudices of other ideologies: feminism, socialism, progressive liberalism, etc and also allowed me to better critique my own ideas. Around the same time the "anarcho-capitalist" movement was being influenced (and influenced) the alt-right significantly, mostly through the ideas of Hans-Herman Hoppe. You'd see a lot of racist and nationalist bullshit thrown around. More and more you'd also find anarcho-capitalists whom rejected enlightenment ideals, not because they thought they were insufficient, but because they thought the enlightenment put us in the wrong direction and feudalism/absolutism would be preferable in so much as the feudal lords/kings didn't interfere with the peasants lives.This was obviously bullcrap. Overall there was a shift rightward in the ancap community, and while I didn't reject the ancap label, I thought many people whom labeled themselves ancaps were acting and believing things contrary to libertarian principles.
I was also very interested in what the economies of near anarchic societies were like at the time, reading about colonial Pennsylvania, medieval Iceland, the American frontier, etc, and they definitely weren't capitalist. At the same time I read a lot of stuff by Lysander Spooner, Roderick Long and other anti-capitalist lockeans as well as mutualists like Kevin Carson. Through Long's and Carson's work I read the work of other's at the think-tank C4SS (Center for a Stateless Society.) Particularly I read Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty.
There was a lot of stuff about the 19th century individualist anarchists like Benjamin Tucker, Voltairine de Cleyre, Josiah Warren, William Greene Batchelder, and many others who were radical individualist and radical anti-capitalists that stuck with me. Much more than anything an anarcho-capitalist wrote. Mostly because the individualist anarchist's theory and praxis was grounded in the world that we have today and wasn't so axiomatic based on debatable premises.
I then read some stuff from Ricardian Socialists like Thomas Hodgskin and John Gray who saw (classical) liberalism and socialism as two-sides of the same coin, unlike Marxists.
I finally ended my transition by rejecting objective morality and absolute property through reading Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Max Stirner. Both of these are probably my biggest influences currently, besides Benjamin Tucker.
Additionally I read stuff from Peter Kropotkin and Mikhail Bakunin to realize that anarcho-collectivists and anarcho-communists want most of the same things as individualists, and in many ways communism or collectivism can complement individualism in so much as neither is taken to an extreme. For example, when somebody is young an energetic asserting one's individuality is important. When somebody is old and content they might want the benefits of community. As long as everyone's free to choose.
This was all within the last two years.
|