Jeff Riggenbach hos Mises.org skriver over Peter Kropotkin (som døde for lidt over 90 år siden), og Murray Bookchin (som døde for lidt under 5 år siden). Artiklen er engelsksproget.
Begge var anarkister der på hver sin vis brød skarpt med de traditioner de var opvokset med.
Et citat fra artiklen, fra Kropotkins værk Mutual Aid ('Gensidig Hjælp'):
life in societies enables the feeblest animals, the feeblest birds, and the feeblest mammals to resist, or to protect themselves from the most terrible birds and beasts of prey; it permits longevity; it enables the species to rear its progeny with the least waste of energy and to maintain its numbers albeit a very slow birth-rate; it enables the gregarious animals to migrate in search of new abodes. Therefore, while fully admitting that force, swiftness, protective colors, cunningness, and endurance to hunger and cold, which are mentioned by Darwin and Wallace, are so many qualities making the individual or the species the fittest under certain circumstances, we maintain that under any circumstances sociability is the greatest advantage in the struggle for life. Those species which willingly abandon it are doomed to decay; while those animals which know best how to combine have the greatest chance of survival and of further evolution, although they may be inferior to others in each of the faculties enumerated by Darwin and Wallace, except the intellectual faculty.
Og et citat fra Bookchin:
Natural living processes atrophy and die to the extent that they are artificially restricted and caged within imposed regimens of force and restraint … whereas they flourish and progress whenever left to their own internal resources.
Artiklen giver et vink om hvorfor anarkistier af den typiske mainstream/'venstre' støbning bør være mindre fjendtligt stillede overfor 'højreanarkister' og libertarianere. citat:
In the 1960s, Barbara Branden famously responded, when asked what would happen to the poor and disabled in a libertarian society, that, "if you want to help [those people], no one will stop you." Kropotkin envisioned a human society in which more than a few would want to help those who were poor and disabled.
Der mangler ikke libertarianere og anarkokapitalister der igen og igen påpeger hvordan de velfærdsstatsansatte 'velgørere' ikke blot mener at de kan redde folk fra armod, men også at de har eneretten til det. Eksemplerne på frivillige (anarkistiske eller ej) velgørende og sociale organisationer der trynes eller decideret lukkes af statens myndigheder eller politiet igennem nyere tid er talrige. Det er nemt at se hvorfor: Et samfund hvor folk frit kan hjælpe hinanden vil overflødiggøre centraliserede socialtjenester; at slå ned på individuel og frivillig godgørenhed er blot at staten angriber sine rivaler.
Libertarianere og sympatisører med Kropotkins tanker går uvidende hand i hånd. Hvorfor så den gensidige fjendlighed?
