this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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Idk, I feel like a lot of these political terms have multiple definitions depending on time and context. The word "liberal", for example, has very different meaning depending on which political group you ask, not to mention its evolution over the course of history, and its meaning in different countries and political systems. There are many valid and important criticisms of anarcho-capitalism, but purposefully misunderstanding what people mean by the word isn't a very strong one imo.
I'm not purposefully misunderstanding it. Anarchism was founded on the ideas of rejecting Capitalism, the state via a monopoly on violence, and advocacy for structures like Mutual Aid. Capitalism is incompatible with anti-capitalism, and requires a monopoly on violence in order to maintain property rights.
The point here is that the Anarcho-Capitalist position is just a Libertarian Capitalist position where the holders wish to be cooler, basically. They redefine anarchism, the state, and hierarchy in order to uphold their views, it's just a leftwashed Libertarian Capitalist position.
Them redefining anarchism is precisely the point I was making. It's not impossible for there to exist different definitions of the same term; you don't have to agree with them to acknowledge their existence. And from that point of view it's not necessarily a self-contradictory philosophy, it's basically just fantasy capitalism. As I understand it, they are basically defining anarchism as opposition specifically to the state (as defined by its monopoly on violence). Rights to "life, liberty and property" are to be upheld by "decentralized" (and I use that term extremely loosely here) private enforcement agencies. Imo this is both unrealistic and undesirable, but it isn't inconsistent on a philosophical level, which tends to be the level most an ancaps argue from, since their ideology is incredibly impractical and idealistic.
On a more meta level I agree that it's just an alternative "cooler" version of libertarian capitalism for the edgier crowd, but that's not the point I was trying to make.
I understand your point, I just think that it's just cannibalization of terms and mutilating them for aesthetics. Terms change, of course, but actual anarchists never stopped using the terms they created correctly. It hasn't necessarily adapted over time so much as been cannibalized by LARPing Capitalists.
Its similar to the Nazis adopting Socialist aesthetics, despite being far-right fascists. The Nazis weren't Socialist in any actual way, and murdered Socialists, but wanted to cannibalize a popular term to gain support.