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| Community and government |
As the classical liberal thinker Wilhelm Von Humboldt explained: "While [emancipated individuals] would break all fetters in human society, they would attempt to find as many new social bonds as possible. The isolated man is no more able to develop as one who is fettered." This is an important tenet of libertarian socialism.
The reason for organizing our affairs in communes and assemblies would be to prevent one person from using another person as a tool, which limits the creativity of that person, and creates self-destructive social relations. What distinguishes this from a government is that anarchist institutions are not arranged hierarchically and are supposed to be subject to fundemental alterations when necessary. For example, representatives sent by deomcratic assemblies would have no superior rights to authority, as they would be recalled at any point with popular approval. Also, there would be no constitution, only social rules that would be generally agreed upon but subject to change.
The argument that establishing community limits individual freedom is legitimate, but as Humboldt astutely points out, too much individual isolation hinders creative development. It is in this tension between individual and collective freedom that we find the fundemental dispute within anarchism. But it does not follow from the fact that community can be restrictive that abstract individualism is a good idea.
Concerning the threat that govenment would creep into existance, this is a problem that can only be countered through the creation of an anarchist consciousness. As democratic theorist Robert Dahl points out, democratic institutions are fragile, but a democratic spirit can give them remarkable strength. The most oustanding shared characteristic of societies with long-lasting formal democratic institutions is the prescence of democratic values in a people's culture (although it is true that no society with a government can ever be truly democratic). A similar maxim would hold true about anarchist society.
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Posted by julio on 2008-09-14 20:55:45 | Rating: | Views: 47
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