I have been thinking about collectivism and statism and whether you can be one but not the other. I think you can and it could look something like this:
A non-statist collectivist might be a classical left-leaning anarchist (not an-cap, major distinction there), meaning someone who rejects state oppression but still believes in societal classes and ethnic/religious groups counting for more than the individual.
In other words the classic "Once the bourgois state is gone, we'll share everything with everyone and nobody is allowed to exploit anybody else", meaning a strict set of oppressive rules but somehow no one to enforce it.
An individualist statist could identify as, say, as a "classical liberal", what an-caps would call a "minarchist", so someone who genuinely believes that the state can be used to protect individual rights and liberty if its power is handled by "sensible people".
I belong to neither of those meta-groups, I think that the biggest motivator for humans isn't money per se but power, status, and dominance. Therefore, in order to facilitate peaceful co-existence, coercive tools like states and "legal violence" which people might use against one another should be limited as much as possible, leaving economic success and communal respect as the only paths to societal status, both of which have a positive effect on every life they touch rather than re-distributing good things from a pre-determined loser to a pre-determined winner.
What do you reckon?
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Replies (2)
The first example, a non statist collectivist sounds like a traditional hippie. These collectives hippie communes are inherently unstable.
Another example might be some monasteries but not all as most have a clearly defined hierarchy. Practically micro states.
I think your second example the individual statist, maybe a period we go through if we're able to kill off central banking. The state may shrink in scope and expand efficiency compared to it's previous capabilities. Creating a sort of long tail period of mostly trusted/respected state. This time would be characterized by "statist individual" paying taxes with bitcoin.
Sure, stereotypical hippie communes pretty much are left-anarchist societies that fall apart as soon as someone has a different idea of how to live properly because their systems aren't based on individual rights and voluntary association but on compulsive collective action which, in turn, cannot be enforced.
Monasteries tend to have rather rigid rules which are enforced via ostracism but membership is voluntary, so I guess it is in fact an example of working stateless collectivism, if you're into the whole Jesus thing of course 😄
And I agree, even though I consider myself to be an an-cap, I find a minarchist state to be infinitely preferrable compared to the systems in place at the moment, and much easier to sell to regular people who feel that the state should at the very least act as a "night watchman".