Anarchist take on gun control

...shouldn't make flippant comments?

What you thought is one thing. What I was doing is another. Each of the components of my amalgam have either been advocated on this list or exhibited on the list. Shouting people down with insults and wilfully erroneous summaries of what they have written is apparently par for the course, in answer to your 'eh?'. Similarly, reverting to witty irony (preserve of the aspiring middle class...see Billig 2005 for more on this) to attempt to negate valid points (tut tut Fred West).

As for noncing, I don't recognise this word as anything other than a Scare Word from the tabloid mentality. Perhaps you should define it: are adult-child sexual relationships forbidden in the anarchist society...or just those that are based on coercion? If the latter, I think the word is 'rape'.

I didn't complain about people being pro-trade...I just thought that the vision that people were painting bore a lot of resemblance to what we've currently got: laws, trade inequities, "society" (ie the State) controlling what people can or cannot do and seeking to sanction people who go against the 'law'.

(oh we got a live one here! should be fun!)

it's not too hard to get consent from a 10 year old, it is however impossible to get meaningful consent to sexual relations as an adult due to the inherent power relation.

So in short, no you won't be allowed to nonce kids.

I don't like to put words in people's mouth so I'm wondering if this statement means you think there are situations where an adult and a child having sex could be other than coercive? Or was I just reading into it badly?

If you do think there could be consensual sexual relations between a child and an adult I'd beinterested in your thoughts on it as thats an argument I've never heard before.

i'd be interested in whether he thinks there can be consenual sexual relations between a human and a bear!

Revol, your open hatred for anything liberatory in society does nothing but shut down honest debate. Your childish antics are in fact as oppressive as the state itself.

Hush.

ok like i said i didn't know if you were joking or not, sorry if i misread but there's always this fella: to clarify matters

if we define child as someone incapable of giving informed consent, i fucking hope it's forbidden.

anarchism does not mean 'no rules' and forbidding child abuse isn't any more authoritarian than hitting some guy who's trying to bottle you. i mean you seem to suggest rape would carry some sanction, unless i'm misreading, and so be 'against the law' however you want to paraphrase it.

Child-adult sex? Well, it doesn't do much for me. Perhaps we should leave the flippancy to one side....

The reason I raised this point was because of the "noncing" comment made earlier (in essence, there is no way this would be allowed). It reminded me of a anarchist discussion group I went to some years ago in Spain where the topic was "Free Love". I thought FL was getting it on with all and sundry...but then somebody raised the issue of adult-child sexual relationships. Could there be consensual sex between a child and an adult? I have no idea. In the current society that I live in, I'd say no...but, as has been mentioned on another thread, the individual in society is a social construct who is shaped by --and shapes-- the society and the culture in which they find themselves. So, might it be feasible in a future society that is, after all, as different from the current set up as you're likely to find? Possibly.

The real point I am trying to make is that this thread seems to be mainly about what should be banned, controlled, punished and legislated for in an anarchist society.

From my point of view, I would be against any sort of relationship, sexual or other, that was based on coercion. I imagine that in an anarchist society, the people would sanction this sort of behaviour. I don't think that this is the same as legislating. Legislation is usually understood as some sort of codified laws which are usually written down and which are then applied by a certain class of people. An anarchist society would presumably not want this kind of thing to happen. I imagine anarchist "law" as resting heavily on common sense and not requiring codification. I imagine that infractions of such "law" would be met either with spontaneous retribution or the measured and positive action of the community that had suffered as a result.

So, if we mean that coercion and violence against the greater number of people in an enlightened, anarchist society would be resisted and repelled, then I am in agreement. My concerns were more about how this thread was coming up with all the tabloid cliches: "we're anti-dealers, anti-nonces" blah blah blah. Surely, we are anti-coercion and anti-oppression (although from the general tone of these talkboards, I realise that that may be up for question)?

PS. I don't think I'd ever consent to being shagged by a bear...although in the new world, who knows?

I'm having problems reading your post, it seems to be written in some sort of Care bear dialect.

1. The subject of the thread is anarchist take on gun control so I'd imagine there wouldn't be much surprise if it ventured into other difficult issues around the same concept ie what limitations on the freedom of the individual may be necessary for the freedom of the collective group. No?

2. I gaurantee you won't be invited.

PS. You dodged the question on pedophilia without actually giving much of an answer.

In some parts of the world that could be interpreted as guilt!

lynch the nonce!!!111!!1

I speak Care Bear and am unlikely to be invited into a caring relationship with a bear? Maybe this just isn't my revolution.

Quoting yourself isn't much of a clarification.

You have no idea, in the future it may very well be fine, your uncomfortable with social limitations of any kind including on pedophilia, but you're against coercive relationships although you can't really say what that would mean?

that kind of soft headed drivel drives me insane.

But did I translate it right?

patchanga:

I think legislation would be essential. That's because legislation spells out or codifies society's agreement on whatever the rules are. If it isn't allowed to hire people to be your wage slaves -- to work in some venture doing things but not having an equal right to a say in the decisions -- then this needs to be an explicit rule.

The social, collective self-management of a society is NOT enhanced if individuals can simply "sanction" (engage in violence against) others on their personal whim, without any authorization of a democratic public institution. Moreover, the vigilante conception ("spontaneous retribution" -- and how do you ascertain "spontaneously" someone's guilt, hmm?) of rule enforcement is not necessary for a classless society and would be likely to be quite destructive. It would be liable to being manipulated for purposes of personal revenge or factionalism. There needs to be a publically controlled institution that must adjudicate any and all accusations of violations of the society's agreed upon rules. There needs to be standards of proof, and proof needs to be presented. In other words, there will need to be trials to deal with accusations of criminal conduct. This is necessary precisely in order to protect the freedom of individuals in society, including the freedom of cultural and political minorities.

Moreover, forensics and investigative work, in regard to criminal actions, is a necessary form of work, and there is no reason for it not to be organized as a self-managed work group just like any other form of work. No reason for these people to have guns, tho.

If you don't like the word "law" for the basic rules that have been approved by a society's legislative authority (which might be simply a mass assembly in the case of a small town, or a plebiscite of numerous such assemblies for a city, or a congress of delegates, or whatever), we can invent a new word, call it an "ordinance" or a "public mandate" or whatever. It will still be an enforceable rule.

I'm not sure that banning civilian ownership of guns is going to solve the problem of murder and gun violence in the USA. How do you get the guns out of the hands of the criminal subculture? The murder rate in the USA is four times as high as Canada but the gun ownership rate in Canada is as high as the USA (both countries derive from a white settler "frontier" culture). The murder rate also varies regionally in the USA. The southern states have the highest murder rate, and the northern tier of states along the Canadian border have the lowest (and are more likely to NOT have the death penalty...so deterrence isn't the issue).

t.

You didn't ask for clarification. You said that I had evaded the question by providing "not much of an answer".

You're powers of precis are somewhat lacking. Nowehere did I say I was uncomfortable with social limitations. Nowehere did I say I was uncomfortable with limits being placed on paedophilia. Nowehere did I say I was unclear what constituted a coercive relationship. You're arguing with what you imagined I said.

gatorojinegro
It's always difficult to hypothesise too much about the future society when we are plainly very far from it. I accept what you say about the types of laws etc that may exist. Looking at the Zapatista zones, infractions are dealt with in community assemblies and the focus is less on retribution and more on righting your wrong. I see nothing objectionable in this at all. Obviously, people who offend the community in whatever way need to be held accountable for their actions - but I'd still be wary about having any sort of a codified law. Where I work, we have a grievance procedure, but we don't have a list of possible grievances or causes of grievances. If somebody feels aggrieved by anything (in theory) they can raise a grievance which will be investigated in a set procedure (needless to say, it is investigated by the bosses, so I'm not advocating an exact replica). In short, the procedures for dealing with a problem are established and set down, but the problems don't need to be. This is, I would suggest, far more in keeping with a libertarian approach. It allows each case to be judged on its merits. It avoids the risk of law enforcers. It's a clean break with the current system --necessary because the current system has so many other disagreeable aspects that are intrinsically bound up with it.

Back to theoriginal question about guns: I was a bit too flippant perhaps in my original reply. As far as I'm concerned, 'gun control' is questionable when the people controlling the guns are the enforcers of law and "order" in accordance with the dictates of the political class. Somebody asked whether I was suggesting that we should just ignore the government. No. I'm saying that if anarchism strategy is about raising people's awareness of the values of direct action, relying on the government to control things is hardly the way forward. Much better to close down the gun shops...or at least be seen trying to do just that.

This is my first time posting here, but I just want to say that I don't see why any person or group with revolutionary politics would actively encourage their class enemy to restrict possession of weapons and thus allow them to further consolidate power...

Also it seems like there are two (or more) discussions going on at once; one about whether anarchists should support gun control now (as the original post seemed to be asking) and another about whether gun control would exist in a libertarian communist society. The answer to the first question seems pretty damn obvious, however I'm personally not too sure about the second.

It is a very old thread, so I am not sure that you will get much interest. The last post was over two and a half years ago.

I think that the whole thing about the 'right to bear arms' is an American cultural thing, which doesn't at all resonate in Europe, where most people have a very different attitude towards firearms, not one that considers individual liberty, but one that considers the welfare of the collective.

I live in a country where people have a tendency to shoot their guns in the air after finishing matches, which often leads to people being accidentally killed on their balconies. I can see that as one reason why people would argue for restriction of firearms.

The question of revolutionaries attitudes to state control is a different one though.

Oh, and welcome,

Devrim

Communists should support the arming of the working class because any other position means they support the disarming of the working class by the ruling class, nuff said.