George Cochon

Today we feature a picture of George Cochon. He was a leading anarchist in Paris in the late 1800's. I can tell from the comments that some of you are growing weary of Anarchy Week here at OPOD. To that I respond, if I had to suffer through poetry week, you can suffer through anarchy week.

I found it interesting that we had even more anarchist speak up yesterday in the comments. It makes me wonder, are there anarchist who are daily readers of this site, or do they just search the WEB for anarchist discussions to join in on. Either thing would be fine, it is just I am curious.

OK, yesterday I presented the hypothetical situation of my real friend Matt, and how he would conduct himself in an anarchist society, and I suggested that he would loot and pillage hapless anarchy book stores and coffee shops. The anarchists responded, in effect, that anarchists are not necessarily pacifists, and nothing in the anarchist creed would preclude them from organizing, arming themselves, selecting leaders, and defending their coffee shops and bookstores.

So, lets consider this for a moment. To keep things simple, lets say their little group has 10 people in it. For arguments sake lets say they put 40% of their people to work associated with the bookstore (culture), 40% of their resources to work associated with the coffee shop (food) and 20% of their people to work on defense of the little society (defense). Well, Matt can easily recruit a like number of rednecks into his little band of raiders, plunderers and pillagers. In this group though, 100% of resources are put into military training and arms making. They don't have to worry about wasting time on farming or that sort of stuff because they take what they need in raids. Now, when Matt and the Raiders go to war with Mr. Lemuria and the anarchist coffer shop and book store owners/patrons, well, it will be a massacre. For a real world analogy to this, consider Bill Quantrill's raid on Lawrence Kansas.


The sad fact is that it is easier to burn down a coffee shop than it is to build a coffee shop. People that spend their time building coffee shops can not adequately prepare to defend them against people who do nothing but raid, rob, and pillage. The sad fact is that we need government to provide the rule of law, and defense of individual rights.