That's not *my* definition, it's *the* definition, as described in a standard, reputable dictionary. I realize that you have your own private definition of the term, that you share with your friends and an esoteric community.
Sigh. Calling something "*the* definition" of anarchy, when it's not the definition anarchists use, doesn't cut it. I realize that statists have convinced lots of people that "anarchy" means "a bunch of bomb-throwing terrorists are going to run down the street and kill your mama", but that's because they want to be in charge - or at least have SOMEBODY be in charge, since they don't trust people to act civilized without rulers who'll kill them if they don't behave. Whether you think anarchism *will* lead to bomb-throwing terrorists, or in general whether it's a good or bad idea, is a separate argument. But anarchists _ought_ to own the definition. (Now, if you want to split the anarchists by bringing up the propertarian vs. non-propertarian issue and discuss whether "no property" is part of the definition of anarchy or only a popular anarchist view, you'll end up with chaos (:-) Around here you'll find mostly arachno-capitalists who think that property is just fine, though not everyone agrees. Over on soc.culture.anarchism, you'll find a lot more non-propertarians, and an on-going squabble about Libertarianism. One of your more interesting comments was on whether you can separate the concepts of society and government - a fairly common view of government is that it needs to have a monopoly on the use of force to preserve order, and therefore needs to have tax funding to exist, and since you've got it around anyway you might as well use it for things that are easiest to do in a centralized manner, and to do things that require either social cooperation or lots of money; a society like that will find government intertwined in its civil affairs, and people will get out of the habit of organizing their own actions without using government as a focus. Other societies have used religious organizations to perform many of the same social functions - if everybody's getting together weekly anyway, might as well talk about the problems that have been going on, and raise the money needed to feed the poor and patch the meetinghouse roof. And other societies have just done these things on a more individual basis, especially in sparsely populated areas where there aren't outside invaders. Of course, now that governments have taken over most of the world, it's hard to find a place without outside invaders... But people are still going to teach their kids what they need, and people are still going to keep most of their agreements with their neighbors, and they're still going to help each other resolve arguments about the agreements that weren't kept, whether that resolution is done by an armed posse, or by the offender's family paying off the obligation in cattle, or by shunning people until they do the right thing, or refusing to give credit to known deadbeats, or whatever. Government's only one choice. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp # (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)