What is your opinion on Anarchism? Believes and nonbelievers?

Question

I was reading a website that was pro-anarchy so I'm curious...

If religious what is your opinion and how does it relate to religion?

If atheist/agnostic what is your opinion and how does it relate to your beliefs or lack there of?

Answer 1

I'm more into classic libertarianism. I like the concept of a government paving the roads and taking care of those who genuinely can't take care of themselves. I just don't like my government to extend beyond that.

I should say I'm an atheist and the above in no way figures into my atheist. They're two completely seperate issues.

Answer 2

I was raised catholic later became agnostic, and now am leaning towards atheism. Religion does have some effect on these political beliefs. Ill come back to religion later.

There are different types of anarchy, most anarchist you will find are also socialists. This confuses many because they think socialism is where the government controls everything and anarchism is no government at all. This isn't necessarily true, socialism aims to have economic equality, where anarchism aims for political equality. From this point of view they are two very similar schools of thought and many believe that all true anarchists are socialists, because anarchy meaning "no authority" in latin requires eveyone to be equal. So really anarchism could just be a direct democracy, since in this situation everyone is in fact equal.

But for a lack of a better word "market anarchists" go by this name, in this situation it is basically no government and it seems the obvious result is cooperations running the world.

As far as religion is concerned, I first believed that is was religion and anarchism are not compatible, but this is largely due to the fact that for so long my perception of religion was that of the very authoritarian catholic church. Other religions are very compatible with anarchism. Buddhism works very well with anarchism as the ideologies seem to complement each other. As far as Christian religions go, many quakers are in fact anarchists, and there is a large amount of people who believe Jesus essentially an anarchist.

This is a very brief overview of the philosophy, I advise making a trip to your local bookstore and buying a few books, Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States is a great book, some Noam Chomskey and any other writers you come across. Continue research online. Other names you may want to search in relation to anarchism are Libertarian Socialism, and Anarcho-Syndicism.

Anarchism is too vast a topic filled with so many different ideas of how it can be implemented that it can not be understood through an answer on yahoo.

Answer 3

Anarchism its an interesting concept!... its manifesto proposes the elimination of Church and State as the dominant organizations controlling our societies.
The principals is that human beings have an innate sense of good and wrong, so we should not need a overseer, (big brother) of any kind, to organize our society and our future.

I personally believe, that with a large amount of education it will become possible in about 2000 years.

Answer 4

Badgers and humans both are social creatures. It doesn't work too well for either of us. We get things done more effectively when we all fill supporting roles for each other, including at least someone in the guiding role of the overseer.

Then again, Communism doesn't work either.... at least not for humans. Egos too large, and the need to be more important than anyone else tends to flare up after a while and cause cheating and squabbling.

As such, human society tends to fall into the mongrel middle-zone between Anarchism and Communism... and is constantly dissatisfied with itself.

Answer 5

Anarchism is probably the most perfect political/social system out there - direct democracy, voluntary social responsibility, etc.

Unfortunately mankind's not there yet, but that just makes it that much more important that we strive for it and educate people about alternatives like Social Anarchism and the like.

Answer 6

The base of my beliefs includes the idea of "An it harm none, do as ye will." I don't think that's in sync with anarchy, but I need to do more reading.

Edited as I read up on Anarchy, I'll come back to this.

Answer 7

Regardless of your belief system, the anarchistic system would have the same outcome. Without a formal government, it would become survival of the fittest. The weak would be oppressed; the strong would feed on them.

Society organizes in some form. It is a natural order that someone must govern. I would rather have at least some control over who is in charge.

Answer 8

I believe in it as far as the fact that no kingdom, country or any other social political system is permanent. Things change all the time. Even our country will fall eventually, but even anarchy itself is not permanent, and order will come from the chaos eventually.

Answer 9

Like every other political or economic system humans have ever come up with, Anarchism works really well on a small scale (say, no larger than a neighborhood), and really, really poorly on larger scales.

Answer 10

The idealistic brand of anarchism that if there is no power structure there will be no motivation to commit crimes contradicts the Biblical principle that we are born sinners. So they're incompatible, one of the two has to be wrong and my belief is that the Bible's not the one that's wrong.