Letters to the Editor
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Cabdriver, you have no idea what you're talking about
I am a pacifist anarchist, not a, uh, vendettist.
Your scenario, "played out under practical "real world" conditions of 21st century style anarchism," would be impossible in any form of 19th, 20th, or 21st-century anarchism.
In theory, the first stage could happen.
In theory the second stage could happen, noting that the corporate form is a state subsidy, and the local community may not recognize any special status for the corporations.
However, the third stage would be more problematic, no protection agency, public or private, would have any special rights; their members would have the same rights as any local individual, or any community militia members. To protect themselves, the members of such an agency could (1) handle investigative tasks and leave touchier stuff to the community militia or (2) request searches, or permission, from the community militia and/or targets' protection agencies and/or respected neutral parties. If the first protection agency threatens murder, the community militia and/or targets' protection agencies and/or respected neutral parties *may* target the first protection agency and *will never again* approve the first protection agency's search requests.
And the fourth stage, execution, would not happen, as it would leave the protection agency a band of murderers, at war with the world. Some people may shoot back. Other people may just burn their stuff. Going to war with the world is friggin' stupid. I imagine most groups would stop beforehand.
Most anarchists would find your scenario even less plausible:
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1931/secI5.html#seci58
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Civil disobedience as civil mediation
On one hand we have an administration and law enforcement which routinely acts above the law. We have unlimited spying, official lies, unwarranted use of force, indiscriminate roundups, torture, and, well all the rest, including the criminalization of political thought.
On the other hand, we have those who had given up on the system even before 9/11, and who can rightly say "we told you so." The Iraq war was a bad idea. The environment does matter. Trade agreements were not fair to workers or the natural world.
Both of these sides are trapped by their own thinking, and both need the other. The federal government is increasingly illegitimate at home and impotent abroad. Society needs government power to organize solutions that those who sport black bandanas have not managed to achieve, not even in their own backyards.
That's the powerful role of mediation that civil disobedience needs to occupy. There probably hasn't been a greater opportunity for a movement since Rosa Parks kept her seat.
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mte...
"However, the third stage would be more problematic, no protection agency, public or private, would have any special rights; their members would have the same rights as any local individual, or any community militia members..."
Spare me the theorizing. Is that how the breakdown of central government has worked out in cases like Waziristan, Somalia, Liberia, or the Colombian countryside?
Given a set of conditions like that, it doesn't matter what you want. It doesn't matter what reasonable and moral people want, or what mothers, children, or the elderly want. It doesn't matter what the vast majority of "the community" wants. What matters is the views and mandates of those who have superior firepower & cold-blooded skills required to annihilate anyone defined as the opposition, down to the faintest whisper of dissent. Meet the new boss...the regional warlord. He'll teach you what you need to do to survive...point the rifle over there and pull the trigger, that guy over there is being used for target practice. And if you don't, you'll join him.
It's like that.
Nonetheless, I'll grant that the scenario of my earlier message is far-fetched, in some respects. For instance, it would be highly unlikely that the electric power grids would be in working order, much less the high-technology facilities of a modern university.
In gold rush era San Francisco, the most benign historical case of anarchy of which I'm aware, the potholes grew big enough to drown mules. A dozen eggs were worth $10-50 c.1850 U.S. dollars in gold dust. One apple cost $1-5 dollars. plywood boards stretched between sawhorses were rented out as beds for overnight lodging. People slept with one eye open and pistols in their hands, of course.
The arrangement undoubtedly had its adventurous aspects, especially for young, able-bodied young men in the appropriate mindset. You know...just in from the gold fields, ready to be somebody and/or beat somebody, prowling the muddy streets with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a Bowie knife in the other, not a cop in sight, looking for a whorehouse...paradise on earth.
But it was no place to raise a family. And it couldn't last. It was intolerable. http://www.sfgenealogy.com/sf/history/hbtbcidx.htm