“For example, what happens to the Promethean/deviant/dissenter/einzige born and raised in, say, a racial separatist/culturally conservative/feminazi/paedophile/Muslim fundie enclave?”

Well, I came from something not too far from some of that, and look how well I turned out…

One of the sad facts of life is that you don’t get to pick who your parents are or what kind of environment/community you are born into. As a child, you have to follow your parents’ values or the values of your immediate community or primary reference groups. Then when you get older you can go do your own thing. That’s what I did.

Now, a larger, more important question might be what if there was a particular commune, city-state, province that prevented its adult members from leaving in the manner of some of the Stalinist states, or that tried to set up something approximating chattel slavery. Those who make such arguments are in my view ignoring the slavery and mass murder associated with the present system. Think of the millions in America’s prison-industrial complex or the millions exterminated in U.S. imperial wars. In a post-revolutionary, decentralized America, I think it is unlikely that communities approaching the level of repression of the GDR or the antebellum South would be very common, if such things existed at all. If such situations did arise, how should they be dealt with? I don’t know. I suppose we could implement the Lysander Spooner plan? http://lysanderspooner.org/node/38

“Also, what happens, post-partition, to those individuals who happen to reside in a zone which becomes home to a community incompatible, or worse, potentially dangerous, to who they are as individuals (or members of an unchosen group)? What if I, a melanite, happen to find myself surrounded by a group/tribe of white nationalists/neo-nazis/Hammerskins et al?”

Well, things like that can just as easily happen in the present system. Violent street gangs take over neighborhoods all the time. Yuppies take over gentrified areas previously inhabited by the poor and marginal people, and the PIGS start coming in to run off all the street people, evict poor people from low-income housing, shut down parties, youth clubs, lumpen businesses, etc. Communities that were previously relatively safe get overrun by crime. Situations identical to what you are describing are taking place in the present system:

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/january2007/220107mexicangangs.htm

These are not problems that are unique to anarcho-pluralism.

“And, taking into mind the eternal “war of all against all”, what’s to stop any of these communities, or any coalition thereof, from taking invasive action against community X under the pretext of liberating the besieged within community X? What’s to stop such a war happening for other reasons, such as resource acquisition? What stops some charismatic Ayatollah from persuading the Wahhabi Muslim community to wage war on Queertown, or the totalitarian humanists from trying to bend the Union of Egoists to their tyrannical rule?”

Again, it’s not like stuff like that doesn’t go on today. I generally lean towards the idea that an anarchist country would need some kind of decentralized militia confederation as a bulwark against internal civil war and external invasion.

For example, what happens to the Promethean/deviant/dissenter/einzige born and raised in, say, a racial separatist/culturally conservative/feminazi/paedophile/Muslim fundie enclave?

Also, what happens, post-partition, to those individuals who happen to reside in a zone which becomes home to a community incompatible, or worse, potentially dangerous, to who they are as individuals (or members of an unchosen group)? What if I, a melanite, happen to find myself surrounded by a group/tribe of white nationalists/neo-nazis/Hammerskins et al?

And, taking into mind the eternal “war of all against all”, what’s to stop any of these communities, or any coalition thereof, from taking invasive action against community X under the pretext of liberating the besieged within community X? What’s to stop such a war happening for other reasons, such as resource acquisition? What stops some charismatic Ayatollah from persuading the Wahhabi Muslim community to wage war on Queertown, or the totalitarian humanists from trying to bend the Union of Egoists to their tyrannical rule?

This is a very big dilemma for libertarians, indeed.

From what I read in Sheri Berman’s book on social democracy, ‘The Primacy of Politics’, the Swedish model was organized mostly around regulations and a differing, more democratic structure of the means of production (though by no means libertarian or bottom-up) than simple state-ownership. I wouldn’t be surprised if the America has more state-owned industry than Sweden in a few years (though not really having any industry to begin with doesn’t help.)

The elites do not like liberty because it stands in the way of their imposing from above what they conceive to be the highest good, and they correctly perceive that the masses neither want nor understand liberty. I am reminded of this passage from H.L. Mencken:

“The fact is that the average man’s love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice, and, truth. He is not actually happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely. Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage, and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty- and is usually an outlaw in democratic societies. It is, indeed, only the exceptional man who can even stand it. The average man doesn’t want to be free. He simply wants to be safe. . . .”

I realize this is both pessimistic and horribly elitist, but once this is understood, certain facts will no longer alarm, such as the patriotism of the Chinese despite its repressive government, or the popular sentiment about the AIG bonuses, where people were upset about the high pay of executives but not the least bit concerned about the government’s fleecing of the public which enabled it.

My challenge to anarchists, libertarians, communitarians, conservatives, radicals and progressives alike would be to ask yourself what kind of community you would actually want to live in, and where and how you would go about obtaining it.

This is the question that would inform genuinely radical strategy, instead of a strategy of perpetual reaction to statist encroachment. In many cases, these radical separatists are motivated more by disgust than genuine longing for an alternative. That doesn’t mean they can’t be encouraged in a more creative direction. But it’s probably the case that, until groups have decided on a realistic, representative vision of what they’d like to achieve as an independent society, they aren’t ready to start thinking about the strategies that get us there. Coalitions that eschew ideological conformity must make up for it with a strategic consensus that many separatists have not articulated to themselves, let alone as an organizational priority. But if we are to achieve a genuine transition from prioritizing the capture of state authority to prioritizing the devolution of state authority, it must be addressed.

Hell, I’d be hard pressed to say I’m at the point where I have a positive, comprehensive vision of what I want to achieve. I was actually making notes of this stuff just the other day to try to clear my head about what is an end vs. a means.