Why do anarchists expect to be protected by law?

Question

Wrap your head around this one...

like the ones who demonstrate, but then want the police to intervene if chaos breaks out...

Answer 1

It depends on what kind of anarchist you're talking about.

I believe in the U.S. Constitution, but I would like to see an evolution toward anarcho-capitalism, as described by David Friedman in "The Machinery of Freedom."

The short description of anarcho-capitalism is that, instead of being forced to be a subject of one monopolistic government, you could choose to be a customer of one (or none) of several competing insurance/justice/security companies. Economic competition would force all the successful justice companies to adopt a similar set of laws - basically don't kill and don't steal. Any company attempting to enforce victimless crime laws would find itself at war with all the saner companies which would make its premiums sky-high so it would quickly go out of business.

The competing companies would be a little like the current federal system of competing state governments, except all the companies would cover the same territory instead of seperate territories like the states do. The southern states "went out of business" because they tried to enforce an extreme "victimless crime law" - slavery.

Private companies would have abolished slavery sooner and with much less bloodshed - bloodshed is bad for profits. To private justice companies, slaves would be potential customers. Ex-slaves would willingly work to pay premiums to a private company, whereas the slave-owners (and whatever stupid justice company allowed them as customers) would have to try to force the slaves to work. The Anti-Slavery companies would have an economic advantage over the Pro-Slavery companies. Nobody except slave-owners (1%) would be customers of the high-premium pro-slavery companies. All the slaves (the only source of income for the slave-owners) would become customers of the relatively low-premium anti-slavery companies. Instead of a civil war there would have been a financial liquidation of the slave-owners and their injustice companies.

Sorry about the incoherence of the above rant. To see a good explanation, read Friedman's book.

Answer 2

Anarchists are the law!

Seriously though, it depends on your definition of anarchist, but most supporters of anarchism aren't against order. Instead, they want greater participation in deciding what law and order is, rather than doing away with all laws and promoting chaos.

Supporters of anarchism believe in making more decisions based on an assembly of the people of a community, rather than trusting their fates to elected officials, who can be corrupted. The principle they follow is that of decentralized democracy - those most affect by a decision should have the most say in the decision. There would still be laws against murder, because the victim is most affected, and should have the most say over whether he dies or not. However, this same principle also means other laws would not exist. For example, you couldn't legislate that everyone must eat a certain way or recite some slogan, because the person doing it is more affected than everyone else.

Answer 3

This question is not very clear. Most anarchists want the police to stay well away from their demonstrations. So far as chaos breaking out, that usually means the police attacking the demonstraters. I can't think of many cases where anarchists would want the police to intervene in a demonstration -- perhaps a case where counter-protestors attack the demonstraters?

Anarchists reject illegitimate authority and hierarchy, such as the state and capitalism, in favor of voluntary, non-hierarchical self-organization. That includes organization for self-defense from aggressors. In lieu of such self-defense, they are left little choice but to rely on the state for protection or do without. So one can hardly blame them for relying on the state for protection, particularly as they are forced to pay for it anyway.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo/

Answer 4

The only chaos is from the police, ordered by the government, that anarchists beleive we would be better off without.

To be led, is to be exploited.

Answer 5

Anarchists expect to be protected by the law because we are prohibited from just pulling out guns and shooting people that piss us off.

Answer 6

Because they don't *really* want anarchy; rather, they feel that saying "I am an anarchist" sounds "cool".