Ask an Anarchist

[Takhisis]

Yes.

I thought so, but not everyone does, so I thought I'd better ask to be sure.

Littering, defacing the Queen's currency, offering for sale a game bird killed on Christmas Day - the list goes on.

I was never sure whether the currency was Parliament's, like the Army, or Royal. Dammit I don't want to see Charles grinning at me from a tenner.

btw how would you make a bird last for almost a year?

 

[Borachio]

Littering, defacing the Queen's currency, offering for sale a game bird killed on Christmas Day - the list goes on.

I don't agree. We need to be very careful here, I believe. If no one thinks it worth while to take action to prevent it, it's not really a criminal act.

Littering is a prosecutable offence. People do get prosecuted for it, therefore someone has thought it worthwhile to take action.

If you look at the Queen's currency you will notice that it bears a copyright mark. So not only can't you deface it, theoretically, you can't even copy it. Which is outrageous!

There are no doubt some criminal offences which have "lapsed". In that no one is likely to get prosecuted for it anymore. But at some stage people thought it worthwhile to pursue the criminal.

What would be the point of a law against an action that no one thought, or ever had thought, was a crime?

Actually, I don't think writing a number (which I see quite frequently) on a pound note is a criminal offence; as far as I remember it, defacing the Queen's image is. So drawing a moustache on her face will bring the royal corgis snapping round your heels. Well... it could.

 

[Flying Pig]

Actually, I don't think writing a number (which I see quite frequently) on a pound note is a criminal offence; as far as I remember it, defacing the Queen's image is. So drawing a moustache on her face will bring the royal corgis snapping round your heels. Well... it could.

Taking metal off a coin is a crime, but you're unlikely to see anyone prosecuted for it, because the state doesn't feel that detecting nefarious coin-clippers is worth the effort.

 

[Tahuti]

Taking metal off a coin is a crime, but you're unlikely to see anyone prosecuted for it, because the state doesn't feel that detecting nefarious coin-clippers is worth the effort.

It sort of a British national tradition to have ridiculous laws that are not enforced it seems. However, I've also heard that the anti-sodomy laws that were used to prosecute Alan Turing were amendments made by Liberals to prevent the laws' proper enforcement.

 

[Takhisis]

It's called 'common law'. It's established by jurisprudence with Parliament occasionally sticking their noses in.

 

[Tahuti]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labouchere_Amendment

It was largely a parliamentary thing, in this case.

 

[Takhisis]

I meant the first part of your post.

 

[Flying Pig]

Common law is slightly different - all that it means is that if a court has ever made a decision in a particular set of circumstances, then all subsequent courts must make the same decision in the same circumstances. Sodomy was actually prosecuted and people were hanged for it before the Labouchere Amendment, since the time of Henry VIII, and probably before then, simply because people had always been hanged for it.

 

[Takhisis]

> if a court has ever made a decision in a particular set of circumstances, then all subsequent courts must make the same decision in the same circumstances

that's jurisprudence.

 

[Traitorfish]

I feel we may have wandered off-topic somewhat.

 

[Takhisis]

Yeah, we're discussing laws and regulations instead of how to start the revolution.

 

[timtofly]

You are being anarchist about keeping on topic.

 

[ParkCungHee]

If so, then how do I forcefully oppose someone without coercion aka using force to compel him or her to act or not act in a certain way?

Categories are abstractions, aren't they, so I see no general reason why they both can not be of the same category. Moreover, I see reason to group them together when we talk about how an ideology of non-violence deals with violence. But it is not something I'd insist on, I just find it a pleasantly simple and straight-forward way.

Well since Traitorfish wanted my two cents I suppose I could try to string together some of my thoughts on this.

Generally, I agree with you that that coercing someone into not raping someone is in the same category as raping someone, even if they're not equal examples of that category.

However, there are ways to 'forcefully' oppose someone attempting to commit rape without coercing them, the most obvious of which is to physically place yourself between a rapist and their victim.

Ultimately, if we get into it, however, violence and coercion cannot be properly understood in strictly physical terms. I've got enough experience with physical altercation to realize the categories of aggressor, victim and action do not stand up in a physical contest.

The purpose of non-violence is not to preserve the physical sovereignty of a body, which experience tells us is something we couldn't preserve even without interference on our part, but the inherent dignity of a person, even if they are in the course of raping someone.

 

[AvalancheMaster]

Speaking of non-violence, how do anarchist, and anarcho-capitalist in particular, address the libertarian idea of non-aggression principle? For me it is one of the reasons why I do not want to label myself as "libertarian", and am more reluctant to say I am "anarcho-capitalist". Isn't the NAP just a form of a social contract?

I know that the direct answer is "no - it's a principle" yet I think that most people who agree with NAP think that its existence will somehow magically stop violence and aggression. And, from what I have read on anarcho-capitalism (it is not a lot), it also fails to address aggression and violence as part of human nature.

 

[Traitorfish]

I can't answer directly, but I think it's worth distinguishing between non-violence and non-aggression. A proponent of non-violence refuses or is at least intensely reluctant to use violence against other human beings whatever the circumstances, but many proponents of non-aggression are intensely violent in their outlook, they just maintain the need for some degree of provocation as necessary condition. The degree of that provocation, of course, being defined by them.

Nobody who reserves the right to split your skull for failing to concede their absolute dictatorship over a patch of our shared earth can be called, with any honesty, "non-violent".

 

[Takhisis]

Maybe we should start by establishing a clear difference between violence and aggression.

 

[Perfection]

I prefer more leisurely violence to aggressive violence

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Just don't forget to bite the lemon.

 

[Wrymouth3]

Many people are terrified of anarchism because of unpunished crime committed by people. What do you think about this?

 

[Traitorfish]

They'd probably have a point, to be honest. I imagine that in an anarchist society, not many people would consider the sort of apparatus of retribution we have now to be worth their time or resources. It seems to me that they'd be more interested in preventing unpleasant things happening, which is pursued in a consistent and systematic fashion would only overlap with retribution in a limited number of cases. What I'd ask them is if this world of ours, this world of property and states and authorities and wage-labour, is worth whatever felling of well-being it is they derive from knowing that people who break laws are sometimes punished for it.

If they think it is, then I don't imagine I'd have much to say to them in the first place.