G20: Hardcore of anarchists clad in black behind the violence

What we in Maturin Towers really dislike about this story, apart from the criminal violence, the apparently needless death of someone involved, and the destruction of property, is the use of the word 'anarchist'. These hard-core black-clad 'collectivist communists' want a world in which a horrible world-girdling state will inevitably enforce their rules of 'anarchy' as they recombine with their brother Marxists. This communist recombination, if it ever comes to pass, will involve a dreadful melange of socialism and environmentalism, combined with witless property theft on a monumental scale, a rolling back of the division of labour, and the driving of humanity back into a population-destroying stone age.

These two forces of (collectivist) Anarchism and Marxism are two sides of the same evil communist coin. They are like Sauron and the Ring. They are indivisible. If there is any inevitability about communism, it is that these two facets of the same stupidity always come together to visit their witless violence upon everyone else if either of them ever gets a sniff of power, as witnessed in both Russia and Spain, in the first half of the twentieth century.

What is interesting about this paper-thin separation between the two, however, is that one half of the beast is clearly able to see the most important flaw in the other half of the beast. This is typified by the decades-long spat between Marx and Bakunin, the main nineteenth century representatives of the beast's two halves. Here is the flaw in (collectivist) Anarchism, as spotted by Marx:

=> If you ever did manage to remove the state, O Brother Bakunin, how would your version of communism stop the creation of independent territories peopled by like-minded believers in natural-law property rights, who would become heavily armed and defend these territories with a nexus of contracts and arms based upon the pursuit of 'life, liberty, and property'?

How, indeed? We in Maturin Towers would relish the opportunity for the creation of hundreds of Hoppeian micro-territories, that for instance the breakup of the United States would create. Even today, history has left us with a few such City 'states', which would form the blueprint models for our new myriad of micro-territories, including Luxembourg, Dubai, Monaco, Singapore, Andorra, Hong Kong, Lichtenstein, etc.

This flaw is equally well-matched by Bakunin's retort to dear Karl:

=> If you ever did manage to remove the 'capitalist' state, O Brother Marx, to replace it with a socialist state, then how would you stop this new state being peopled by merely a different set of oppressors? How would you then stop the subsequent class conflict between a new class division of rulers and ruled? How would you stop your version of communism becoming nothing more than a swapping of chairs in the endless war of class conflict always created by a state?

Once again, how indeed?

As we see here in Britain today, and saw quite clearly in the old Soviet Union, all modern states are composed of tax eaters who live on the backs of tax generators. The two groups always enter a class conflict which is only assuaged when the tax eaters can use some spurious ideology, such as democracy, to mask the otherwise brutally clear division. This process is made, if anything, worse, by the replacement of a 'capitalist' state by a 'socialist' state, with the nomenklatura and the apparatchiks of a socialist state always being clearly visible as a separate parasite grouping sitting upon the backs of everyone else.

This separation is far less clear here in 'The West', with many tax eaters being of the hilarious opinion that they pay tax, and many tax generators being of the mistaken opinion that the tax eaters are their servants.

What was interesting about yesterday's demonstration, however, was the way it focused upon the Bank of England. This is quite clearly a state institution. And although the Anarchists and Marxists surrounding it yesterday will be very fuzzy in their thinking about this, they inadvertently stumbled upon the state body primarily responsible for this current financial crisis, along with its brother central banks, via its ability to create state fiat money out of thin air.

As well as democracy, the linkage between bankers, central banks, and the state, does throw an enormous blurring around the central class conflict between the tax eaters and the tax generators. This targeting of the British state's central bank may have been an unconscious realisation that central banking really is the knot at the rotten heart of the problem (although to be fair, it is difficult to think of another location more symbolic of the British banking system than the Bank of England).

To gain a first-hand perspective, we did send a correspondent along to witness the event. However, he got side-tracked and decided to buy a new suit, instead. He told us he was worried what he would say if the police asked him if he was an anarchist.

Because he believes himself to be proper anarchist; an anarcho-capitalist anarchist in the clear Austrian School of peace, liberty, and prosperity, rather than an anarcho-socialist anarchist in the confused Marxist School of violence, enslavement, and poverty.

He believes in the 'Totally Voluntary Society', rather than the 'Totally Compulsory Society', but was worried the British police would find it hard to spot the chasm-like difference between the two different sorts of anarchists.

Isn't it strange that two such separated groups, with with such completely different opinions about virtually everything under the Sun, should share the same name?