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The reason it is likely impossible, is because it would require, not only a revolution, but a worldwide revolution. The odds of that revolution being successful in the first place, is effectively zero. And the likelihood that such a revolution, even if possible, could ever be sustained, is even less probable.
As long as any fiat currency is allowed to exist, no one is safe, and you'll inevitably end up right back where we are now. And the whole purpose of these systems, is because they have produced great power for those who have used them.
Basically, as long as any power exists, then power will consolidate, and exploit, and rule. And the truth is, you simply cannot destroy power, nor does libertarianism even want to.
I'm not sure you understand anarchism as an apolitical concept because...well...it is an apolitical concept.
Somehow "maintaining" it or creating hierarchical power structures is not the point...as you noted...it is to change the perception of the value of these concepts.
Marx saw communism as a philosophy. He believed social interactions would change hearts and minds. While I disagree with how he thought the transformation would take place I believe he was correct that a basic principle to build upon could in fact build one's framework for how to conduct oneself and effectively change everything from there.
This is why T0103E constantly talks about changing the one flawed founding principle of statism (force) and seeing how it goes from there.
Difficult? Yes
Impossible? Maybe
But you just don't give up because the basis of your argument is the means not the ends. That's the point of our philosophy.
I'm sure most folks (and nearly all statists) don't understand this because they are still serving the ends and not focusing on the means. That's why we come off as naive or uncompassionate or emotionally aloof.
Once you give yourself to the means you're able to be satisfied by that alone.
Do you believe those in power can enslave humanity if nobody recognizes their right to rule, including the people who carry out their orders?
What I mean is, the right to vote is far less valuable than the ability to influence. Those in positions to influence, control society. But how does one get into a position to influence? And what kind of man even wants to?
"The people flatter themselves that they have the sovereign power. These are, in fact, words without meaning. It is true they elected governors; but how are these elections brought about? In every instance of election by the mass of a people—through the influence of those governors themselves, and by means the most opposite to a free and disinterested choice, by the basest corruption and bribery. But those governors once selected, where is the boasted freedom of the people? They must submit to their rule and control, with the same abandonment of their natural liberty, the freedom of their will, and the command of their actions, as if they were under the rule of a monarch." - Alexander Fraser Tytler, 18th century.
Every society, since the very beginning, has been a slave-society. No society could exist without the forced labor of the masses. Which is why I've said repeatedly in this thread, that men have never come together except by force. There is no government, except a government by force, and always ruled by a minority of the most-influential men(IE those who sit in positions of power, either because of their "noble birth", or because of their accumulation of wealth, among other means).
The very notion of a republic, is that the people can't be entrusted with power, and so they should elect representatives, better and smarter than them, to rule them. These men are a kind of aristocracy, a nobility, which the founders called the "natural-aristocracy".
But who are these men, and what do they want? And are they even the best men? And do they even hold the real power? Or are they merely an illusion?
"Nor were the superior classes in the actual enjoyment of a rational liberty and independence. They were perpetually divided into factions, which servilely ranked themselves under the banners of the contending demagogues; and these maintained their influence over their partisans by the most shameful corruption and bribery, of which the means were supplied alone by the plunder of the public money." - Alexander Fraser Tytler, 18th century.
Which leaves us with the real question that must first be answered. What problems does democracy solve? Why has democracy taken over the world? Who actually controls democracy?
This is why T0103E constantly talks about changing the one flawed founding principle of statism (force) and seeing how it goes from there.
I would fully agree, force is the fundamental flaw in everything. But how do you get rid of it?
The truth is, there could be no society without force. Or at least, you could never have anything more-advanced than small agricultural villages without force.
Libertarianism still relies on force. But why should anyone feel compelled to obey it?
The goal of libertarianism is not to eliminate power, but rather to limit it to some arbitrary extent. But not even libertarians can agree on what that extent should be. And from the perspective of an anarchist/voluntaryist, libertarians are statist scum.
Humans are by their nature tribal. And without something to bind them together, society would fall apart into a near-infinite number of communities, all distrusting of each other.
Not sure who told you that...but anarchist libertarians/anarcho-capitalists/voluntaryists or whatever you want to call them believe in defensive force. I mean, I am one so you'd think I would know.
And yet you don't, probably because you can't even make up your mind what you are. You are simply making labels up.
"In a pure democracy of equals -- all of whom are, however, considered incapable of self-restraint on behalf of the common welfare, their liberty tending naturally toward evil -- who would be the true guardian and administrator of the laws, the defender of justice and of public order against everyone's evil passions? In a word, who would fulfill the functions of the State?
The best citizens, would be the answer, the most intelligent and the most virtuous, those who understand better than the others the common interests of society and the need, the duty, of everyone to subordinate his own interests to the common good. It is, in fact; necessary for these men to be as intelligent as they are virtuous; if they were intelligent but lacked virtue, they might very well use the public welfare to serve their private interests, and if they were virtuous but lacked intelligence, their good faith would not be enough to save the public interest from their errors. It is therefore necessary, in order that a republic may not perish, that it have available throughout its duration a continuous succession of many citizens possessing both virtue and intelligence.
But this condition cannot be easily or always fulfilled. In the history of every country, the epochs that boast a sizable group of eminent men are exceptional, and renowned through the centuries. Ordinarily, within the precincts of power, it is the insignificant, the mediocre, who predominate, and often, as we have observed in history, it is vice and bloody violence that triumph. We may therefore conclude that if it were true, as the theory of the so-called rational or liberal State clearly postulates, that the preservation and durability of every political society depend upon a succession of men as remarkable for their intelligence as for their virtue, there is not one among the societies now existing that would not have ceased to exist long ago. If we were to add to this difficulty, not to say impossibility, those which arise from the peculiar demoralisation attendant upon power, the extraordinary temptations to which all men who hold power in their hands are exposed, the ambitions, rivalries, jealousies, the gigantic cupidities by which particularly those in the highest positions are assailed by day and night, and against which neither intelligence nor even virtue can prevail, especially the highly vulnerable virtue of the isolated man, it is a wonder that so many societies exist at all. But let us pass on.
Let us assume that, in an ideal society, in each period, there were a sufficient number of men both intelligent and virtuous to discharge the principal functions of the State worthily. Who would seek them out, select them, and place the reins of power in their hands? Would they themselves, aware of their intelligence and their virtue, take possession of the power? This was done by two sages of ancient Greece, Cleobulus and Periander; notwithstanding their supposed great wisdom, the Greeks applied to them the odious name of tyrants. But in what manner would such men seize power? By persuasion, or perhaps by force? If they used persuasion, we might remark that he can best persuade who is himself persuaded, and the best men are precisely those who are least persuaded of their own worth. Even when they are aware of it, they usually find it repugnant to press their claim upon others, while wicked and mediocre men, always satisfied with themselves, feel no repugnance in glorifying themselves. But let us even suppose that the desire to serve their country had overcome the natural modesty of truly worthy men and induced them to offer themselves as candidates for the suffrage of their fellow citizens. Would the people necessarily accept these in preference to ambitious, smooth-tongued, clever schemers? If, on the other hand, they wanted to use force, they would, in the first place, have to have available a force capable of overcoming the resistance of an entire party. They would attain their power through civil war which would end up with a disgruntled opposition party, beaten but still hostile. To prevail, the victors would have to persist in using force. Accordingly the free society would have become a despotic state, founded upon and maintained by violence, in which you might possibly find many things worthy of approval -- but never liberty. - Mikhail Bakunin, 1873
"If we are to maintain the fiction of the free state issuing from a social contract, we must assume that the majority of its citizens must have had the prudence, the discernment, and the sense of justice necessary to elect the worthiest and the most capable men and to place them at the head of their government. But if a people had exhibited these qualities, not just once and by mere chance but at all times throughout its existence, in all the elections it had to make, would it not mean that the people itself, as a mass, had reached so high a degree of morality and of culture that it no longer had need of either government or state? Such a people would not drag out a meaningless existence, giving free rein for all its instincts; out of its life, justice and public order would rise spontaneously and naturally. The State, in it, would cease to be the providence, the guardian, the educator, the regulator of society. As it renounced all its repressive power and sank to the subordinate position assigned to it by Proudhon, it would turn into a mere business office, a sort of central accounting bureau at the service of society.
There is no doubt that such a political organization, or rather such a reduction of political action in favour of the liberty of social life, would be a great benefit to society, but it would in no way satisfy the persistent champions of the State. To them, the State, as providence, as director of the social life, dispenser of justice, and regulator of public order, is a necessity. In other words, whether they admit it or not, whether they call themselves republicans, democrats, or even socialists, they always must have available a more or less ignorant, immature, incompetent people, or, bluntly speaking, a kind of canaille to govern. This would make them, without doing violence to their lofty altruism and modesty, keep the highest places for themselves, so as always to devote themselves to the common good, of course. As the privileged guardians of the human flock, strong in their virtuous devotion and their superior intelligence, while prodding the people along and urging it on for its own good and well-being, they would be in a position to do a little discreet fleecing of that flock for their own benefit." - Mikhail Bakunin, Rousseau's theory of the state, 1873.
What I mean is, the right to vote is far less valuable than the ability to influence. Those in positions to influence, control society. But how does one get into a position to influence? And what kind of man even wants to?
"The people flatter themselves that they have the sovereign power. These are, in fact, words without meaning. It is true they elected governors; but how are these elections brought about? In every instance of election by the mass of a people—through the influence of those governors themselves, and by means the most opposite to a free and disinterested choice, by the basest corruption and bribery. But those governors once selected, where is the boasted freedom of the people? They must submit to their rule and control, with the same abandonment of their natural liberty, the freedom of their will, and the command of their actions, as if they were under the rule of a monarch." - Alexander Fraser Tytler, 18th century.
Every society, since the very beginning, has been a slave-society. No society could exist without the forced labor of the masses. Which is why I've said repeatedly in this thread, that men have never come together except by force. There is no government, except a government by force, and always ruled by a minority of the most-influential men(IE those who sit in positions of power, either because of their "noble birth", or because of their accumulation of wealth, among other means).
The very notion of a republic, is that the people can't be entrusted with power, and so they should elect representatives, better and smarter than them, to rule them. These men are a kind of aristocracy, a nobility, which the founders called the "natural-aristocracy".
But who are these men, and what do they want? And are they even the best men? And do they even hold the real power? Or are they merely an illusion?
"Nor were the superior classes in the actual enjoyment of a rational liberty and independence. They were perpetually divided into factions, which servilely ranked themselves under the banners of the contending demagogues; and these maintained their influence over their partisans by the most shameful corruption and bribery, of which the means were supplied alone by the plunder of the public money." - Alexander Fraser Tytler, 18th century.
Which leaves us with the real question that must first be answered. What problems does democracy solve? Why has democracy taken over the world? Who actually controls democracy?
Democracy solves nothing, and you could is argue the worst form of government because it gives people the illusion of control.
And yet you don't, probably because you can't even make up your mind what you are. You are simply making labels up.
Those are all different names for the same thing. I don't care what label people use, and it's kind of irrelevant to my point. I, along with the people who share my views, are not against all force. We're against the initiation of force.
The goal of libertarianism is not to eliminate power, but rather to limit it to some arbitrary extent. But not even libertarians can agree on what that extent should be. And from the perspective of an anarchist/voluntaryist, libertarians are statist scum.
It seems they want to put all the power and influence in the hands of the richest property owners with nothing to limit their power but good faith. I don't like government much but powerful private individuals often are just as authoritarian and unreasonable.
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