This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Eric DVH: Allright folks, let's not start any fights about the peripheral aspects of anarchism here. All this trope is, is the confusion of anarchy with other things, particularly chaos, and a quick definition of anarchy. The following kind of stuff is just pointless internecine bickering, does not contribute to the trope's clarity, and doesn't belong here:
“Anarchists therefore advocate self-management, direct democracy and libertarian socialism. A few (anarcho-capitalists) disagree-they are not recognized by any other tendency.”
“Violence should only be the last, not first, solution.”
I myself probably agree with you on 99% of this idealogical stuff, and would happily weasel in a link to the Infoshop's Anarchist FAQ if I could justify it. Does this mean that I refuse to acknowledge moronic lunatics like the Libertarian Party as anarchists? No! They're a different type of anarchist than me, but they are anarchists (just, y'know, wrongheaded ones.)
Anarchy is a lack of hierarchical authority, nothing more, nothing less. Socialism, capitalism, nations, statelessness, atheism, religion, violence, pacifism, absolutism, relativism, technology, primalism, order, chaos… All of these things are external to anarchism.
Let's try to keep from putting words in anyone's mouth and stay on topic.
njyoder: Libertarians, in the common and modern sense, are definitely NOT anarchists. Libertarians believe in a small government with a military. Anarchists believe in no government at all. There are branches that identify as both, but they are tiny, fringe groups in the modern era. When talking about the U.S. party called the "Libertarian Party" (who comprise the vast majority of U.S. self-identified libertarians) they are simply for a smaller government, not an anarchistic approach.
This Page just seems to be a mouthpiece for anarchists. Plenty have made the argument, and rightly so, that the philosophy of anarchism inherently leads to chaos, but that's another argument. This trope page should be deleted, as it serves no purpose other than to argue over semantics. Whether you like it or not, "anarchy" has long since adopted the explicit meaning of a chaotic situation. Dictionaries recognized that common usage long ago.
It's true, there is a separate definition that refers to the philosophy called anarchy, but it's pretty obvious that when someone uses "anarchy" to mean "chaos," they aren't referring to the philosophy. That's why this page should simply be deleted. There is no trope to be seen here.
Eric DVH: When someone uses “anarchy” to mean chaos, it's like someone using “ironic” to mean bad or “phobia” to mean hatred. In other words, it's wrong, and thus merits a Did Not Do The Research trope.
Also, like I said before, anarchy and national governments have no necessary conflict, statist anarchists like SELF governance. Look at a referendum vote or citizen militia, that's anarchic. Some ALP members just want a smaller government like you say (sometimes called “minarchy,”) many want to break the USA up into a federation of statelets, and others truly wish to dissolve the government to form a “free state.” As noted above, they're all anarchists to varying degrees.
Turkish Delight: If modern society were still organized around absolute monarchies, and the word 'Democracy' was also freely used as a synonym for 'chaos', would that make it so? Dictionaries are not politically sophisticated things, and the 'common usage' of words can be used to put down political movements you don't like. This is a trope insofar as it's a subtrope of Did Not Do The Research, in which most writers don't understand the views of real anarchists and therefore portray anyone who wants 'anarchy' as being like the Joker from The Dark Knight.
Just A Lurker: Why does this page exist add some examples even just stating the page quote under a films tab would be enough but there is no examples right now this page is just anarchist porn saying we're not bad we're just misunderstood.
Mr Wednesday: Erm...so you add some fucking examples, maybe? Everyone's responsible for the quality of this wiki, not just the people who are described on the page in question. And it's pretty obvious anarchy is widely dismissed or misunderstood, thus jusifying this page's existence.
"...it's pretty obvious that when someone uses "anarchy" to mean "chaos," they aren't referring to the philosophy" - That's not what this page is about, it's about people thinking the philosophy means chaos, so the reverse or the inverse or something of what you describe.
Crawdaddy Joe: New here, so I won't do the editing myself because I'm afraid I'll screw up and want to sick to small changes before I do any major projects, but real-life examples of people being fooled by this trope could include the First Red Scare, among others things. Examples of why this trope is untrue could include examples of anarchistic societies, such as the Lepchas and Siriono, the Tolstoyan Communes, stateless Xeer-law Somalia (not totally anarchic, but stateless), Anarchist Catalonia, Anarchist Aragon, and various experiments in anarchic organizational structure, such as 'Utopia'. Also, various organizations in a non-anarchic society that operate more or less on anarchic principles, such as worker's cooperatives, mutual banks, mutual aid societies, the IWW, and skill-sharing groups.
Bio Tube: I think this page would be better off discussing a few concepts common to all branches of anarchism and listing the various schools. Not being familiar with most of them, I don't want to gut or unbalance the article so I'll just put a definition here:
Anarchocapitalism or voluntarism holds that the free market is not only the most efficient way to organize resources, but the only justifiable one. Currency, language, etc are whatever the market decides upon while private property is held to be the basis of all law(you do own your body), in accordance with the nonagression principle. Imagine the government as the mafia and you've got some idea of this mindset.
I think some people (including D. Friedman AFAIR) would disagree with the statement that 'chaos is anarchic' as they would point out the emergent patterns from such system. Regarding libertarianism: libertarians who wants to have state are called minarchists (and arguably are the most popular 'subspecie'). The other is called anarchocapitalism (although once an adjectiveless anarchist I discussed it with stated that it should be free market anarchism). Regarding Anarchism: IMHO the best definition is that anarchy is a system where there is no state (but it may include *volontary* hierarchic organisations). However various branches changes the definition to narrow it to include only 'the true anarchism' (for example AFAIR Anarchist FAQ include the social anarchism). Personally I describe myself as anarchocapitalis henc both libertarian and anarchist.
