An “Anarchist-Collectivist”
And “Every Individual is part of a Collective” means “Shut up and like your Socialism!”
Heh, even anti-rights “Progressives” are getting sick of the “Progressive” moniker.
Also I’ve never heard of this dude. When I first saw the image I thought it Giovanni Ribisi after a LOOONG bender. I Googled his name, and even Google and wikipedia say he’s a nobody.
Sorry loser, I’m not part of your “Collective”, Fuck off!
I had a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea of an ‘anarcho-socialist.’ Socialism sounds like a great thing if you’re 16 and your political sophistication rises to the approximate level of a John Lennon lyric, but history proves that socialism can only persist in the presence of a really powerful and oppressive central authority.
Thing is, people didn’t know that in 1908 or whenever. Socialism had never been tried on a large scale, and so the ‘anarchists’ of the period could be forgiven for some mistaken assumptions about the forms ‘spontaneous society’ might take. Nobody ever tried that, either.
Now it’s a century later, socialism has certainly been given a fair try and has been exposed as the horror it is. No more excuses, but we still have silly people running around claiming that anarchism can lead to collectivism. I don’t know what a real lack of rulers would bring on a large scale. Personally I don’t believe such a state could exist for long, but if it could the result almost certainly wouldn’t be any form of hardcore collectivism. That seems to require guns pointed at people’s heads.
The Early 20th Century Socialists like Hitler, Mao, Lennin, Castro et al were really more Anarchist revolutionaries at heart, using the Utopian Ideals of National Socialism/ Communism as the means to gain support of the masses. I guess you could call them “Anarcho-Socailists” but really they were just anarchists who once they toppled the governments of their various countries became military dictators under the guise of Socialism/Communism.
It was all a ruse to lead the people into the cage they built on the ashes of the former society.
I think he kinda needs to look up what the term “Anarchist” means.
You can’t really be an anarchist and honestly argue that living in a collective is right and natural.
s
Everybody here seems to be assuming Lengel is talking about government when he uses the word “collective”. He may have been talking about voluntary collectives such as private schools or vigilance committees aka neighborhood watch or any kind of voluntary association such as Tocqueville was writing about in “Democracy in America”. In that case there would be nothing to complain about.
As to anarchist society, it would be even MORE dependent on collective action (voluntary associations) than present.
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“Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions, constantly form associations. They have not only commercial and manufacturing companies, in which all take part, but associations of a thousand other kinds – religious, moral, serious, futile, extensive, or restricted, enormous or diminutive. The Americans make associations to give entertainments, to found establishments for education, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; and in this manner they found hospitals, prisons, and schools. If it be proposed to advance some truth, or to foster some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form a society. Wherever, at the head of some new undertaking, you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association. I met with several kinds of associations in America, of which I confess I had no previous notion; and I have often admired the extreme skill with which the inhabitants of the United States succeed in proposing a common object to the exertions of a great many men, and in getting them voluntarily to pursue it. I have since travelled over England, whence the Americans have taken some of their laws and many of their customs; and it seemed to me that the principle of association was by no means so constantly or so adroitly used in that country. The English often perform great things singly; whereas the Americans form associations for the smallest undertakings. It is evident that the former people consider association as a powerful means of action, but the latter seem to regard it as the only means they have of acting.”
— de Tocqueville, “Democracy in America”