As for violence, I can certainly admit that I am opposed to violence, aggression, force, coercion, and power. They are all essentially what anarchism is not – violence and aggression means elevating yourself and your being to a level higher than the one you attack. I see no reason why you would have that right; I do not understand why anyone could ever have the right to use force on another human being.

The only exception to this rule is of course force and violence used in self-defense. If someone attacks me I am entitled to defend myself and even to use force to give a “blow back” to avoid being attacked again. I am not a pacifist, but I recognize that pacifist means are sometimes preferable to acting in direct self defense.

However, Voltairine’s comment is not about self-defense. It is not even about property. It is about my article and whether I have the right to claim I know anarchism and can tell what anarchism is and isn’t. I don’t have that right and I do not claim it. But I do have an opinion and I express it in articles and blog posts.

My opinion is that anarchists, in the traditional and “real” sense, are not chaos-loving destruction-seeking individuals. Anarchism is a peaceful but radical tradition of thought that preaches peace, liberty and prosperity. It is absolutely true that some anarchists are strictly opposed to all sorts of property, even though many of them tend to define property only in terms of landlordism or state-sanctioned exclusion rights.

I would however say that Proudhon was a proponent of property, even though the term often used is possession. He was a champion of the free market, which would liberate labor workers from the chains of capitalism (what anarcho-capitalists would call “state socialism”) and establish equality. Benjamin Tucker et al in the American tradition likewise claimed the freed market would effectively rid society of oppressive and exploitative privileges and establish anarchism.

Many anarchists today have for some reason adopted the anarcho-communist idea as the only “true” anarchism. I would certainly agree it is an anarchism, but I don’t agree it is the traditional/original nor the only kind of anarchism. It is very possible to be a proponent of private possession or property (depending on your definition, of course) and still be an anarchist. That is, essentially, the view of Proudhon and the “traditionalist view” in anarchism.

I share the view expressed by Voltairine as anarchists having a right to “reserve the power to use violence whenever they are chained.” But this statement totally misses the target – neither my article nor blog post are about this right. In both of them I discuss the people seeking nothing but chaos and destruction, who seek opportunity to act under flags of anarchism to burn, beat, tear apart, and destroy. Is this anarchism? Certainly not. Anarchism is about respect, peace, and liberty. Chaos, destruction, and violence are the opposites: disrespect, war, and slavery.

I find Per Bylund as compelling now as I did years ago when he first attached a dollar sign to anarchism: not at all. Like other anarcho-capitalists, he has for some time operated under the delusion that property is synonymous with liberty. Thus, he can make the statement above with a straight face. Who, if not anarcho-capitalists like Bylund, wants to occupy territory and replace the state with their own regime? That is precisely what property is, whether it be state property or private property, the granting of certain human beings absolute dominion over the claims of others in a given sphere of influence. Shame of Bylund for claiming moral high ground for propertarians who have always based their philosophy on threat of violence for any who transgress against their sacred property ideals. And no, I will not apologize on behalf of those anarchists who reserve the power to use violence whenever they are chained, whether those chains be made of metal or bills of credit enforced by the barrel of a gun. Bylund will resort to violence whenever his philosophy justifies it, what he calls defense is offense to those who don’t share his peculiar value system. But unlike him, at least I can admit that violence is part of my tool-set in maintaining freedom, rather than denouncing those I disagree with on completely hypocritical grounds.

Actually, I would say society cannot be planned, constructed and enforced. Society is simply what is when people interact, and as we know: people find ways of getting along as well as deal with dishonesty and crime. There is no reason for a top-down approach “making” a society, it is not only impossible – it is also undesirable, since it is in every sense immoral. Organizing society requires first elevating the organizers to a higher level than other people, which means hierarchy and power. If, on the contrary, everybody gets to organize society we’re talking of a bottom-up approach: anarchism.

I find this statement problematic. Although we can organize a society this way, there needs to be a mechanism to deal with those who would gain an advantage through dishonesty, and we’re back to the societies of today, with their invasive central governments.