Bizud

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-making "Rather than simply list known alternatives, debate for a short time, vote, and then accept or reject by some percentage of majority (say 50% plus one, or 2/3), a consensus decision-making process involves identifying and addressing concerns, generating new alternatives, combining elements of multiple alternatives and checking that people understand a proposal or an argument. This empowers minorities, those with objections that are hard to state quickly, and those who are less skilled in debate. Therefore, consensus decision-making can be seen as a form of grassroots democracy." Trade among small communities is impossible? Smaller communities can't form federations to enter into negotiations with other federations where geography prohibits direct trade?

Is liberal democracy the final mode of human organization?

I assume you're speaking of the decision-making process? Generally, depending on the issue, I would imagine assembly, discussion, election of committees to study the issue in depth and present recommendations to the community at large, more discussion, and then either consensus or more discussion and investigation. Or maybe a vote.

Such as?

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Anarchism, in the sense that every philosopher who has called himself an anarchist ("anarcho-capitalists" - nonexistent before the 20th century and virtually nonexistent outside the United States - notwithstanding) has used it, does not refer to the absence of governance. Since most of your post is based on that flawed assumption, there's not much point in responding to it, except for this: I never mentioned plebiscites specifically, but there have been many examples of societies that have governed themselves by means of local assemblies. Barcelona during the spanish civil war, for example. Freetown Christiania in Denmark is another. This is rubbish. Why do we need someone to blame? In a society where there are no "leaders," a society run by the participants, the people of the society would indeed have to accept responsibility for bad decisions. Why would this lead to chaos? Individual people can make mistakes and accept responsibility for them just fine, but groups of people can't make mistakes and accept collective responsibility?

Well, the Greens are perfectly content to let people think they're a leftist party. That's not corrupt, but it's hardly honest.

Anarchists have always described themselves as democrats. "Democracy" means "rule by the people." In fact, if you read the writings of the foudning fathers of the US, they don't describe the society they were building as a democracy. To them, a democracy was "mob rule." Yes, an anarchic society would also be democratic. More specifically, it would extend democracy to include democratic control over the economy, and would eliminate the concentration of power in the state. In a true democracy, you don't say "okay, let's pick five people to run the society for us, and then we'll choose again in five years." You say "okay, let's all two-thousand of us get together and make a decision as to where we're going to build the new school." This is, again, an oversimplification.

Once again we're plagued by a misunderstanding of what is meant by "anarchist." To simplify, I'm thinking of communities where there is governance, but all citizens are active participants in it. Thus there's no reason to suppose that there would be no way of protecting the weak from the strong.

That is the concept of anarchy as I understand it, and as expressed by Pierre Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, Noam Chomsky, and countless others. The so-called "anarcho-capitalists" are a very small group compared to other anarchists.

We appear to be talking about two different things. I'm talking about this anarchy.

Enlighten me as to the contradiction. How so? If "progress" means that our children are expected to live in a different world than ours, I see no need for it. The vast majority of our problems are caused by imperfect social institutions. Sure, curing cancer would be nice, but everyone knows we could end poverty tomorrow if we wanted to. Which would save more lives? Even still, however, I see no reason why such a society would impede scientific progress.

Public opinion polls suggest the Canadian people heavily support most aspects of the NDP platform. True, if you ask people if they want their taxes lowered they'll say yes, but ask them to rank their preferences for how money should be spent and most rank health care, education, and the social safety net well ahead of tax cuts. It's somewhat puzzling, then, that people with these beliefs still vote Liberal and Conservative. The former have been slowly dismantling the institutions that the overwhelming majority of Canadians want and are immensely proud of for over a decade now, and the latter complains that the liberals aren't doing it fast enough. Similarly, most Canadians oppose further integration with the United States - yet the Liberals have been slowly moving ahead with their integrationist plans anyway, and the Conservatives, again, want to move even faster. Anybody but Libs or Cons.

To supporters of the status-quo, I offer you a challenge: Provide a philosophical justification for the nation-state, as opposed to other forms of societal organization (such as a feudal state, federation of anarchist communities, one world government, etc.)

An elementary truth: Power corrupts. Few would disagree. Therefore, a just "system" would eliminate power, or disperse it evenly among all so that none would have power over another. Why would I be happy with any nation-state having hegemony over the others? I don't even think nation-states should exist.

All of this ignores the existence of relatively successful societies - in and around Barcelona in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, or in Hungary during the 1956 revolution - that were quite anarchist in character, with workers' and neighbourhood councils and collectivisation of industry and agriculture. These societies might well have failed in time, but we'll never know because the powers that be (Bolsheviks in both cases, aided by Fascists and Liberals alike in the case of Catalonia) perceived these social revolutions as such threats that they were attacked and destroyed. Anarchism, to me, represents a commitment to seek out, challenge the legitimacy of, and ultimately dismantle concentrations of power and institutionalized hierarchy. More specifically, I think an anarchist society might well be nothing more than a federation of smaller communities, each self-governing, with neighbourhood councils, democratic control over production and investment, and workers controlling their own workplaces. Those interested might want to read this: http://www.infoshop.org/faq/index.html Finally, calling libertarianism a branch of anarchism is ludicrous. Libertarianism is the current (American) name for what was called in the 18th century "liberalism" (and still referred to, outside the United States, as "classical liberalism." Anarchism, in the sense that every (non-libertarian) anarchist uses the word, is a movement that really took on its present form around the same time, and had its most significant impact on the socialist movement (the original program of which was simply "workers controlling their own work"). Incidently, in continental Europe, "libertarianism" refers to anti-statist socialism.