> Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. It is really a very simple notion.
This can sound reasonable when you think of it in terms of, "most people behaving in a reasonable fashion, most of the time". But anarchists don't want to eliminate hierarchical use of force for most cases, but for all of them.
Any time I've heard anarchists try to explain how they would deal with the subset of people who are just real shitty in various ways, the responses have been either, a) in our utopia, you wouldn't have those problems, because hierarchy causes all of them, or b) increasingly convoluted and implausible-sounding ways to deal with crazy assholes without using force.
The other flaw with that example is that there is obvious social pressure. If you try to cut the line, people will likely confront you. Situations where there’s no social pressure are different.
During University, I was a believer in co-ops as a form of organization. I lived in and was actively involved in student housing co-ops. During grad school, I lived in a large house with 12 other people. I was the house organizer, and arranged for and paid for our internet service. Everyone else in the house gave me ~$5/mo.
Except one person, who opted out. This person was a self-described anarchist activist, and extremely active from what I could see (lots of anarchist events, protests, marches, etc.). Halfway through the year, I discovered they had just “borrowed” the password from someone else in the house almost straight away, and used the connection as much as anyone.
So the anarchist activist (who would happily give you an unsolicited lecture on how “self-organizing” works), couldn’t even self-organize with his 12 house mates, and instead let a bunch of broke students cover them. (And this person wasn’t under-privileged or anything. I’m pretty sure their education wasn’t self-funded.)
So, yeah — even if you limit an anarchist society to just the true believers, I don’t think it’s gonna work.
That is the failing of any devout believers who walk the line between delusion and reality so much, that they become unable to see their own actions from a critical point of view. Those with more grounded views I'd say tend to drift off from the extremity and channel their energy into something else.
It's sometimes a shame when the idea these believers, not just anarchists, present might be plausible yet they can't argument it in such way that would make sense to ordinary people.
Often of course it springs from some emotional experience that keeps the whole fervor running. I guess once it has become such a big part of their identity to admit that they are wrong, is an earth-shaking blow to their ego which makes its critical examination especially painful.
Yes, like decades ago, when the Senior VP of PETA thought all animal testing was wrong, unless of course it was to help her, because who else would fight to stop animal testing?
PETA Senior Vice President MaryBeth Sweetland on her use of insulin, which was tested on animals:
“I’m an insulin-dependent diabetic. Twice a day I take synthetically manufactured insulin that still contains some animal products — and I have no qualms about it … I’m not going to take the chance of killing myself by not taking insulin. I don’t see myself as a hypocrite. I need my life to fight for the rights of animals.”
—Glamour, January 1990
--
Such people, generally people on the extreme side of any debate, are often not rational. Not always of course, but.. often.
I am not sure that I understand your argument here: are you saying a person who is against animal testing shouldn't consume products that were tested on animals during their development? If that's the case I think that would be an unattainable standard of morality. Everything we are as a society and as individuals are in part thanks to our use of animals, and I don't think any PETA member denies this fact.
Even if this person abandoned all her belongings and moved to the middle of nowhere, all her knowledge is still the direct product of societies that have been using animals for (at least) the past 10,000 years.
I've never been a member or otherwise supported PETA, and I don't know how much good they accomplish, but I don't think this is a valid criticism.
Similarly, I'm not all that obsessed with stopping climate change, but I don't think there is a substantive criticism when people talk about Al Gore or whoever flying to climate conferences.
The fundamental reason I think purported hypocrisy is irrelevant, is that generally organizations and people who are trying to change the world are not part of a religion that is imposing a standard of personal morality.
There is always going to be human and animal suffering, and there's always going to be something made of hydrocarbons burning somewhere. The goals people have involve reducing the amount.
I mean I am vegan but I wear leather boots. I absolutely do not want leather boots but I work at a farm and do need boots. I found its very hard to find vegan boots and when you search for them you find boutique high fashion not work boots. I also drive an automobile which releases CO2 that is killing animals all over the planet through climate change.
I still think mass animal farming is grotesque and that we should end all factory farming immediately and seriously question our assumptions about animals as legal property.
Are you saying that in a world where life saving medicine requires animal products that those who use such a medicine cannot legitimately criticize the use of animals in science? It seems to me actually those with little choice in the matter have the most to make noise about. They need help from the rest of society to change the way the medicine is produced. They cannot do that themselves.
As a vegan I can completely understand why someone who believes in animal rights would compromise for life saving medicine. I also do not think you or anyone else has to be vegan, but I do think it’s important to talk about.
You cannot oppose all animal testing, say it is morally wrong under all circumstances, then ... because you're fighting to end it, say in your special little case -- it is OK.
PETA representatives have often said that killing animals, is not worth saving one human life.
Such broken logic indicates that this person thinks that they are special. They aren't, they could die tomorrow, and some other pro-PETA person could become VP. They are, quite literally, saying it is OK for countless humans to die, due to a lack of animal testing, but that for them?
It feels perfectly consistent to say that we ultimately need to end animal testing but it is okay to use animal products for your literal survival in the meantime. Perhaps they don’t have such a position. But it feels pretty wrong headed to me to mock PETA because a diabetic uses insulin rather than take heed to their very real and very important message about the abuse of animals in our society. It feels like you’re purposefully redirecting the conversation away from yourself because you do not want to discuss animal abuse.
> It feels perfectly consistent to say that we ultimately need to end animal testing but it is okay to use animal products for your literal survival in the meantime.
Out of purely academic interest, how are you not bothered by the clear contradictions in that logic?
I genuinely don’t see a contradiction? Let’s work hard to eliminate animal testing, even if that means developing new technology to solve the problems we’re currently trying to solve with animal testing. In the meantime this position would advocate to rapidly end all non-survival related animal products like cheeseburgers, while allowing some nuance for life saving medicine. Seems perfectly reasonable?
One is known as a universal; animal testing shouldn't be done regardless of the consequence. The other is a much weaker standpoint. You've taken the extreme condition of "cheeseburger" where most people would say there doesn't exist anyone who can't reasonably switch to a non-animal product - but what about cosmetic products which people use to help their self-confidence (acne treatments and what not), can those be tested on animals?
By what metric do you choose what's necessary and what's not in the meantime? Your own example of leather boots isn't directly survival related i.e. you don't die if you don't have them.
The final problem is that it's not an unreasonable hypothesis that there will be products which will always be needed to be tested on animals (such as medicines) - is it morally correct in your worldview that we continue to pursue such products?
I agree about the life saving medicine aspect - my wife was dying in the hospital and accepted medicine that we knew contained lactose (we're vegan). But I don't see leather boots as life saving — are you buying them second hand?
It’s a fair question. I wish people weren’t so downvote heavy for asking legitimate questions like this.
No, the boots aren’t life saving. I bought them the first year that I became vegan, when I was focused on adjusting to a vegan diet. I got a new job and looked around but couldn’t find any suitable work boots that were vegan. I actually still have not been able to find them. I will say that I was experiencing some ankle problems including an incident where my ankle gave out on stairs, so it was important for me to get good supportive boots.
Two years in and the boots are still working well, but it is super frustrating that I can’t find work boots made from canvas or whatever. I am very happy with my vegan diet but I know I have more work to do rooting animal products out of my life.
Edit:
That said my problem may have been looking for “vegan boots” or “canvas boots” rather than “vegan work boots”, which seems to return some helpful results, including this nice page from PETA:
https://www.peta.org/living/personal-care-fashion/vegan-work...
Since you bought them during a time of transition, I'd say that's not so bad. If you bought them new now I think it'd be more of a problem. And I am not a vegan that thinks you should just throw them away all of sudden - it's difficult to explain to people since they might see your leather boots and think you're a hypocrite, but better to keep them and wear them since you have them.
Thanks. I definitely don’t want to buy any more leather. Vegans might think I am a hypocrite but non vegans (so most people) probably wouldn’t ever notice that my shoes are non vegan.
Have you had the bliss of being frowned upon twice during covid ? by wearing a mask before others agreed, and then forgetting it (left in the car by accident kind) after society decided it was important ?
I have a similar story. I got weird looks for wearing a respirator to grocery shop in early March (but felt totally vindicated by some idiot coughing furiously in the middle of the store). More recently I had a hassle getting into a hospital to visit, due to said respirator being a "street mask". Luckily one of the more enlightened staff focused specifically on the concern of it having a vent, we were able to have a reasonable conversation where I explained and demonstrated how I fixed that, and then she remembered me after that.
That same staff member lamented that her sister had gotten her some N95 masks, but she was prohibited from wearing them. I can imagine if Covid continues much longer (as it will until we find a magic vaccine, as there is no societal will to contain it), enforcement of the rules will become even more mechanical and unforgiving. Glaringly suboptimal outcomes imposed by top-down structure is a tyranny anarchists take issue with. Although the group behavior around Covid shows why the ideal is ultimately impractical for everyone, I still consider myself a libertarian.
Isn't the most interesting part of the story missing, here?
A co-op doesn't magically suppress all problems and abuse.
It sets up a context where they can be dealt with without any "big thingie" (in most cases some government body).
Therefore what did you do after discovering the abuse, and what were the effects?
More generally anyone paying for Internet access should receive some explanation about why the gateway/router/hotspot/wotever password must be kept secret.
When someone abuses (be it a neighbor or a member of the co-op) you brief everyone authorized to access ("NEVER give the password") then change the password, hardening it if you suspect that it was discovered by bruteforcing.
If the freerider is in the co-op you may first explain the situation to him, then ask him to either pay his future share, or abstain from using this service. If you are unhappy with his reaction you may talk about it to the other members of the co-op when briefing them, maybe with a proposal (to give the boot to the free rider, to have everyone lesson him...) and ask for other proposals.
This situation (freeloader in the co-op) seems better to me than the classic one, where the freeloader is a neighbor. Confronting a neighbor may lead to unpleasant experiences (you first have to discover which neighbor is the culprit, he may try to deny or to punch you, or ack whatever you say then abuse again...).
I find it hard to believe you've talked to any real anarchists, or at least listened to them. People like Noam Chomsky deal with that question extremely head on. Below is what I said on another comment...
> Absolutely no form of government or system (anarchist 1000% included) will solve the problem of people being selfish or bad, all that anarchists contend (that I have seen) is that when there isn't those built hierarchies bad/selfish people don't amass power so everyone else can actually handle them on equal terms.
> Considering how Epstein was able to morph the whole political landscape to defend himself for over a decade, uh, any alternative can seem pretty reasonable.
Like half the comments on this thread are variations of "well bad people exist" and it's maddening because bad people exist in this system! And they're extremely powerful! We 100% do not deal with them largely because of the systems that are in place.
> when there isn't those built hierarchies bad/selfish people don't amass power so everyone else can actually handle them on equal terms.
This doesn't really ring true to me. In a society where hierarchy is removed, the bad people will form a hierarchy to create power. It being "not allowed" in that society doesn't mean it won't still happen, due again to the people being "bad" in the first place. Two bad people will form a group and use that to derive power over any non-grouped individuals. Or 10 bad people over smaller groups, etc..
This is the problem with much of the spectrum of political rhetoric in America, they're almost all somehow unrealistic in their basic, shared presumption of a world without some over-determining Other (a black box concept that is somehow causal of all social woes) is the goal: feminists, a world without patriarchy, anarchists, a world without hierarchy, Nazis and White Supremacists, a world without racial degeneration, so on and so forth).
Socio-political issues tend to be more complex in causal factors than political rhetoric can possibly bare.
Look at how conservatives re-evaluate the value of "BLM" at every opportunity since it represents all Black politics to them even though Official BLM is a distinct political group in the Black community of whom not every Black person agrees with the stated manifesto on their website, there being more than enough easily searchable YouTube videos to learn the opinion of various Black commentators.
> This is the problem with much of the spectrum of political rhetoric in America, they're almost all somehow unrealistic in their basic, shared presumption of a world without some over-determining Other
I mean, you can essentially formulate any world view that takes any clearcut stance into the in-group and out-group dynamic. People who are pro democracy are looking for a world without oligarchy/monarchy, making those who want to consolidate power around a few people as the out group. Etc..
Your argument can be applied in the same way to the current economic system in the US (capitalism). The free market capitalist system has the shared presumption that free markets are efficient and will allocate resources effectively. This shared presumption is unrealistic in that same fashion, since entirely free markets are not possible (market manipulation, monopoly, etc...). No reasonable anarchist will say their solution solves all problems, but they would argue their ideal society would be better and would solve problems we are faced with today.
Monopolies may happen because of superior technology (or better placement, in short, it's much better for the consumers) or because of politics.
If it's for superior technology, I think the monetary gain is justified. Also, in a world without patents or copyright, everyone is free to reproduce the technology, if they can.
For the market to be manipulated, you would need something that lives outside of market rules, namely politicians who can use violent threats to shape the market to benefit them and their friends.
In both cases, if we get rid of a government and we move law making and law enforcement in the hands of the free market, we end up with a system which is the closest representation of what citizens want.
It may not fair or just according to someone's ideals, but it would be a close reflection of what people wants and it would remove the form of violence which is most commonly perpetrated in the world: state initiated violence.
You tell me the rules and I’ll show you how your free market can be manipulated from within the rules. How do you propose to prevent things such as collusion (free association) and price manipulation.
All systems of economics are also systems of power. If the only system of power is the economic one than your economy is your de facto government.
If a structure for “governmental“ power is identical to the economic structure you have zero ability to fix abusive power imbalances when they eventually arise. It’s the same reason it’s good to have many checks and balances within government itself. Every structure has flaws, and any singular structure of power will have it’s flaws exploited unchecked.
The difference is that in practice, most "pro-capitalism" individuals are actually okay with the state taking on a wide variety of tasks on some level: military, police, roads, public schools, environmental regulations, labor and health codes, zoning, etc. Sure, GOP-controlled (or your local right-wing equivalent) areas tend to have less of these things, but less isn't the same thing as none.
In contrast, anarchists are usually opposed to having any state whatsoever. The ideology tends towards being far more extreme and uncompromising.
Actual feminists and anarchists have more nuanced views than you present here. (I confess I don't know enough "Nazis and White Supremacists" to say; perhaps they are just that simplistic. Nice implicit comparison, though!) It seems that upon hearing "let's have less X", you can't get past your instinct that X is the basis of all imaginable human life.
It is to your credit that you haven't had a similar reaction to those who oppose racism.
Hmmm, no, it's a false equivocation. What do you do with really bad / evil people who got caught doing evil things (there's enough evidence to put them in prison). I never heard a good answer from an anarchist.
You have to realize there are truly evil people out there. People who will assault innocent people, who will torture, who will rape, who will murder, who will do all of the above to a toddler. And will force the parents to watch. I don't want to live in a society where such people are simply let go, or get some bullshit therapy and let go.
I mean, do you like that those people get off now if they’re powerful? Or if a cop decides to do that either nothing happens or they get let go with a million dollar pension?
At least in a flat society you’d have an equal say to advocate for w/e you thought is just.
Personally for me, and many others who lean left, prison or death doesn’t sit right because it doesn’t address the root of the problem and it’s often used to quash dissent. This is perhaps what you find unsatisfying but if you were magically placed into an anarchist community you’d have more ability to advocate for what you thought was fair.
With no laws, no police, no jails, no courts, and no justice system, everyone on of those incredibly evil people mention in the prior comment goes 100% free to continue their reign of terror.
Yet, of course, that's exactly the same as some people who slip through the cracks of a justice system that catches many such people a year. Prosecutes them with attempts to be fair. Puts them in jail so they can't hurt others.
Yup. Because someone might slip through the cracks, well.. that's precisely the same as what the prior poster said!
The end result is, you need to be able to use violence, against those willing to use it against you. Note, that can be a last step, but without it?
Those who care not about stern looks, "talking tos", or cold shoulders will literally take everything you have, and kill everyone.
So now you fall to mob rule, lynchings, and what? Power of the strong man?
As soon as you organize, to provide for a response to organized thugs/criminals/rapists/murderers, you now have a government. That's how governments came into creation ; shared defense.
And you need that 24x7. And the people doing it for the community need to be paid. And you need a way to judge, and sentence, and on and on and on.
Why can't they establish their cooperation rules between them, using existing static material (contract templates...) if they want to, without any third-party (for example a government) being mandatory?
Second, it doesn't really matter. Two people working together is pretty much politics. It's government. It leads there. Cooperation requires coordination.
In any healthy small community everyone tries to, in order to keep a good reputation. In case of misunderstanding any third party appreciated by both parties may act as a judge/referee. The need for a government, especially central, only arises when the group isn't anymore a community but a large set of (on average) loosely related and interacting persons.
> Two people working together is pretty much politics. It's government. It leads there. Cooperation requires coordination
Coordination nor politics doesn't imply any government.
And thus you invented government. As soon as you have an independent third party deciding who is right, that's your judicial branch. And then you will need the police to enforce the decisions of that judge/referee.
And then when you start having insane judges who rule that raping a child is perfectly fine, you will want to stop it, and thus you will invent your standardized laws.
> As soon as you have an independent third party deciding who is right, that's your judicial branch
There IMHO is major differences between "a single government, dedicated to regulate" (which attracts people willing to control others, often letting the most unscrupulous gain power) and "any chosen third party".
Where most people are most of the time reasonable they will oppose insanity, if necessary forcefully.
People who are reasonable most of the time don't need that much laws to govern them. It's the cases of conflict, violence, murder, property ownership, property destruction, and other negative things that inevitably lead to the invention of government, judges, police, prisons. Every country in the world has them, and for multiple reasons.
You can organise without a government, using the free market.
Having competing law enforcement firms would bring competition to a state monopoly that does little to nothing to prevent actual crime and persecute tons of innocent people.
Most laws govern interaction between two or more people, how exactly are you going to have that work with privately selected sets of laws? Is everyone going to have a little glowing icon above their head so I know what
agency I'm dealing with? For N law sets, will we have N * N law set combinations when people from two different law sets interact? What about if there's three or four or five different ones at once?
Since 2001 we've spent $7T killing a million people and turning millions more into refugees. The only result is that the money was spent and the people are dead and in exile. This evil folly didn't make us any safer. The "really evil people" I can think of were the ones who did that. I don't want to live in their society, but what choice have I been given?
In an anarchic society with no government to protect people, the people would pay whoever likes this line of work to protect them.
A system of private law enforcememt could emerge out of anarchy.
The interactions between different law enforcement agencies (whether with simple agreements or third party private arbitration courts) and the different internal rules would create a market in which consumers are free to choose what laws make sense for them, or at least where laws converge towards what all people want.
"The Machinery of Freedom" contains a more in depth description.
As an addendum, in an anarchic society victimless crimes wouldn't be crimes so there would be significantly less people to imprison / execute / send to force labour camps.
> What do you do with really bad / evil people who got caught doing evil things (there's enough evidence to put them in prison). I never heard a good answer from an anarchist.
I think most anarchists believe in self defense. So in that sense the really bad people are self-eliminating -- they try to kill and instead they get dead, and then they don't bother anybody anymore.
Obviously this is imperfect, but it doesn't seem dramatically more imperfect than the status quo.
As a guy who doesn't want to have to fight to the death, your version seems much worse than the status quo. As a guy who doesn't want his wife and daughters to have to fight to the death, your version seems even worse.
You don't actually have to do the fight to the death, all you need is a society in which people are willing to do it. Because that provides deterrence, which eliminates most of the would-be murderers, the same as the existing system except that you don't have to deal with getting it wrong based on second hand accounts or corruption because the people handing out the consequences are the witnesses.
Notice that for the would-be murderers who aren't deterred by the threat of death, you have to do the fight to the death even under the existing system.
Anyone in any society will try to defend themselves from murder by any means available to them.
So if that's all the defense Anarchism has from murderers, it will definitely have more murderers than any society that adds any extra countermeasures.
Not necessarily. In a society where people are expected to run away and rely on the police to catch them later, more murderers may get away, because more of the victims run away instead of defending themselves but then the police never catch them.
It's obviously easier to "catch" a murderer while you're still in the room with them than after they have a ten hour head start and you have to depend on unreliable third party testimony to even identify them.
I mean, did they rob peasants or the lords of the land with their amassed stolen wealth...?
A community can decide to cast someone out, reprimand them, imprison them, etc. The whole idea of restorative justice can actually exist when a community is able to address it.
....any travellers. And the point is they were outside communities. Right now we take for granted that we can travel from point a to point b without worrying about such threats.
What the? A "community" which makes "communal decisions" is a form of government, not anarchism! How can you cast someone out, without gates? Guards? Walls?
How can you throw them out? Prevent them from returning?
Do you think the robbers will just stop, because you said "Stop!". I feel like you're trolling here. I could of course be wrong, but it feels that way.
I specifically said that "community" which makes "communal decisions" is not anarchy. You've simply claimed it does, then mentioned "governing authority", which is not entirely in line, now is it?
You're right on the strength of my argument, but you're wrong on anarchy not being able to create governments (in the M-W definition above). But I'm not going to argue this any more.
It doesn't work for everyone, no. But just like in 1800s Europe, when monarchists died off suddenly republics were obvious. I suspect much of the same will come to pass regarding systems of government tending towards anarchism and boomers.
Just because some political ideologies have their day, doesn't mean they all will. Representative democracies of the 19th century had been preceded by proto-representative democracies like the Parliament of England, they weren't a fully new thing at that point by any means, even at the large state level: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_of_England
There have been attempts at large, nation-scale anarchist communities, like revolutionary Catalonia, or Makhnovia, but the most fundamental problem they have isn't functioning well, but simply continuing to exist. Without a strong state, they seem to just fall over to competing states or forces. And this isn't very easily fixed within anarchism, because the whole point is to not have a state, and certainly not a strong one.
The most fundamental flaw for a large anarchist, state-equivalent community, is the inability to resist state or state-like forces both internally (revolution/civil war) and externally (other states invading or taking territory). While certainly anarchists theorycraft on how this issue can be fixed, out in the real world, well, it hasn't happened yet, so it remains theorycraft.
Even some of the real-life examples anarchists point to, like Rojava, aren't really very anarchist; Rojava still has plenty of police, for example, which is a very un-anarchist thing to have around.
This response has put me firmly in the "you need to think about this a bit, bantunes" camp.
Why?
The second you mentioned 'boomers', you mentioned what is very specifically an American phenomenon. It certainly isn't a Chinese, Russian, Japanese, South African, or, well, the "rest of the world" phenomenon. To me, this makes me think you are viewing the world from a US perspective, without any attempt to see things from outside that prism.
On top of that, the wild assertion that "boomers" somehow created an authoritarian government is beyond incomprehensible. While every generation has its flaws, yes every single generation, boomers were the hippie generation.
Yes, hippies. The "free love" movement, anti-authoritarian counter culture that quite literally existed in highly conservative Western post-war cultures. The level of protest, anti-materialism, anti-corporate stance which hippies took, particularly in the US, far, far, far outweighs anything seen in the decades since.
Of course, like every other generation since, for thousands and thousands of years, once they aged they became just like those they wanted to replace.
But, let's walk away from the fact that boomers = hippies, and hippies protested, fought, and died in protests en mass, and even enacted some real change. Let's look at the overall assertion here.
You're claiming republics were "obvious", and that this somehow sparked an instantaneous move from feudal, to republic. Yet in many places, these changes took literally centuries. And the powers of Kings were very gradually eroded, sometimes with blood, and other times with threat of blood.
Even "revolutionary" moments in most Western cultures were smaller stepping stones, each effecting smaller sections of culture about governing, and self-governing.
And really, suffrage for the "common person", for example, is less than 100 years old in many democracies. Like the UK, Canada, the US. In fact, for many cases, less than 50 years!
And this change was gradual too. For example, in the UK with Lords challenging the King's right to tax, creating the "House of Lords", or the modern Senate. Or, the allowance of freemen with significant land, or land rental, being allowed to vote.
It wasn't until 1918 that all white men in the UK could vote, and women/everyone else at 1928.
This was a gradual, step by step change, each transformative, but each fought for.
Now ... I have no doubt change will come, for there is nothing that ever remains static.
However, what you are suggesting is that people will simply "all get along". Literally, that is what anarchism suggests. For, you cannot compel people to leave, or stop them from doing things you don't want, if you do not use violence as an end tool.
If you have a counter to this, a realistic, logical, sensible counter to the idea that people will just all be nice to one another? I'd love to hear it.
> The second you mentioned 'boomers', you mentioned what is very specifically an American phenomenon.
I used boomer as a shorthand for "person rooted in the old ways" all over the world, not just US older citizens.
> Of course, like every other generation since, for thousands and thousands of years, once they aged they became just like those they wanted to replace.
Yes, they both sold out and are watching from the bleachers as things get progressively worse (rate of home ownership, food stamp usage, life expectancy). Don't tell me what they did in their early teens/twenties absolves them from criticism.
> However, what you are suggesting is that people will simply "all get along".
OK, this response has put me firmly in the "you need to really read about anarchism a bit, bbarnett" camp. Anarchism doesn't magically will away human tendencies to lie, cheat and want to have power over others. It simply turns the tables on illegitimate authority.
A 2 min browse over Wikipedia could have netted you:
"anarchists are opposed to irrational (e.g., illegitimate) authority, in other words, hierarchy – hierarchy being the institutionalization of authority within a society."
For anarchists, the centralization of political power is the cause of cronyism and ineffective representative democracy. Practical solutions include decentralization and strengthening of local power. As for police work, community policing and other proposals are part of anarchist manifestos.
It doesn't take a genius to realize democracy as it stands today has failed us. Stricter gun control, for example, is something the overwhelming majority of US voters want and yet it will probably never be enacted. The problem is centralization, the problem is authority without legitimacy. Anarchism doesn't want to abolish the rule of law, it aims to humanize it.
It has nothing to do with a mythical need to change human nature - in fact, it gels with it much more than the current status quo. Of course, like socialism, the word has been tainted over the years. But before you criticize it further as a "mad fantasy", you should probably know what it is you're criticizing. This is a good book to get you started https://www.amazon.com/Fragments-Anarchist-Anthropology-Para...
If you've read my other posts, and several others around here, then I think you'll see a consistent theme. That is, for anarchism to work, you need people to simply "all get along".
You do. You really, honestly do.
All of the methods which anarchists list to deal with rapists, murderers, or even just a guy that stands up and says "OK, the 10 of us have decided we're going to form a democratic government, and you're all part of it", don't seem to hold water.
For example, that last one. You live in a community with 100 people, under anarchism. Those 10 stand up. They state that they run the place. They have guns. Now what? And what if that number is 40 out of 60?
I've heard "shunning", "banishment", and I've heard "hired guns". I've also heard of "local police power", yet that involves government, in that, you need to pay and organize and on and on and on. And all your concerns leak therein.
I think you need to be honest with yourself. The "old ways" you speak of, are pretty much accepted by people 10 to 100. If you think that "most people under (what?) 30? 40? 25? believe in anarchism, you are sadly mistaken.
And there is a reason for that.
I've listed them, others have, but all you care to espouse is that "I don't like the current governmental system" and "we'll just handle it without organized government".
Your failure to see past your preconceived notions in this is a bit baffling.
> That is, for anarchism to work, you need people to simply "all get along".
For current society to work, we all also have to get along, right? I walk down the street nobody robs or kills me, my boss pays me at the end of the month, the power company supplies me with a service as long as I pay for it... aren't we all "getting along"? Of course, there are fringe players, but they are fringe. Anarchism doesn't magically assume everyone everywhere is a well-intentioned player for it to work, no more than capitalism.
> You live in a community with 100 people, under anarchism. Those 10 stand up. They state that they run the place. They have guns. Now what?
How would this be different under capitalism, if 10% of a community rose up with guns? Answer is the same as with anarchism: people would fight back. I don't understand how this is hard to comprehend. It's called Anarchism, not Pacifism. Do you really think anarchists just roll with the punches with everything bad thrown at them? How can you even think that's possible to propose as a system?
Anarchists don't believe, however, in a lap-dog class of the system as the Police exist today. Individuals can be chosen to serve or volunteer as community defense agents, since as I've mentioned _illegitimate_ authority is what Anarchism rails against.
> yet that involves government, in that, you need to pay and organize and on and on and on.
Anarchism is not 100% opposed to systems of governance - it only mandates they are fairer than the current ones. Community councils, if agreed upon by said community, are valid. Just not imposed on them.
> The "old ways" you speak of, are pretty much accepted by people 10 to 100
So was Feudalism - your point?
> If you think that "most people under (what?) 30? 40? 25? believe in anarchism, you are sadly mistaken.
Have I said that? I said as conservatives give away to newer generations, those will be more amenable to different systems of government (precisely because the current one isn't working for them).
> I've listed them, others have, but all you care to espouse is that "I don't like the current governmental system" and "we'll just handle it without organized government".
I don't think you can vote the Anarchists in and from Sunday to Monday we go from late-state capitalism to anarchism. It's a process, all deep change is - we're seeing the end of a neoliberalization process that started in the 70s.
But to think we're living in the best system we can because "it's accepted by people" is really poor, and a capitulation to a system that is visibly cracking. But don't mind me, keep hoping for incremental improvement and see where that gets us...
Look, I've read the above, and I doubt you're surprised that I do not agree. I don't think we'll ever convince each other of anything, really. Too far apart on basic concepts.
But I wanted to do you the courtesy of saying I'm done discussing, instead of just ghosting this thread.
I honestly don't understand how that is unique at all. It sounds like every government that has ever existed. Once you define the community, its mechanism of decision, and the reprimands and punishments, I'm not sure what's less government about this than current government.
AFAIK (at least in most European countries) such robbers didn't attack villages, and people willing to travel tried hard to do it in groups (pilgrims, merchants).
You now have nearly no way to escape your (Occidental) government. Wherever you go, whatever you do, whoever you associate with.
If you really believe you can change the power-that-be by voting let's say we disagree.
Escaping your government is easy. There are plenty of places on Earth you could go that have essentially no (functional) government. People tend to run from these places, not to them.
That said, I agree with your criticism of communism / anarcho-syndacalism: if you remove capitalism, you are moving power into party politics, which creates even greater inequality to what we have today and explains the horror of communism we've seen in the past century.
They most certainly are not. Some right-libertarians have convinced themselves that they are anarchists so that they can pretend to be radicals but that does not make it so. Anarchism and capitalism are incompatible, anarchism is a left-wing ideology that among other things, seeks the end of capitalism.
I don't know why you interpreted my comment as being a criticism of communism or anarcho-syndicalism (it was just a probing question to understand what somebody thought anarchism would look like), and neither does your criticism of those ideologies make much sense. I don't think you actually know what anarcho-syndicalism is if you think it involves party politics.
I figure that you imply, that you are the real anarchist or at least familiar with their way of thinking? I have a question for you then and please disregard if you are not a real anarchist.
How is the current system of any consequence for you to live the anarchy dream? Why can't you just ignore it and do what you wanted to do in the hypothetical anarchy? If I had these beliefs (i.e. the lack of social hierarchy and organized violence to uphold it) I would be very happy as I could immediately live in my ideal society by just ignoring the existing hierarchy and organized violence since all I could do about it in the true anarchy I can do already (i.e. submit to the organized violence or die challenging it).
Any ideal model can be used to describe the current state of affairs as its pathological case. In the ancap paradigm, the existing government can be viewed as a really powerful corporation. In a left-flavored anarchist paradigm, the existing government is a large scale social contract. Or as you've said, an othered government is just a hostile group to be avoided. What matters is the overall heuristic of trying to shrink the structures to be more local and manageable. Anarchism in all its various flavors isn't a prescription, but rather a rebuke of prescriptivism.
Concretely, most anarchists still have a sense of justice, possibly even a stronger one. Murdering someone and then succumbing to (possibly organized) violence makes sense. Smoking a plant and then being attacked does not.
Well, everyone has a sense of justice. Some people think that murder for "dissing" them or being too rich/white/gay/smart/stupid/etc is just and some think that smoking evil plants like tobacco is abomination and kills everyone who gets a whiff of smoke. We already have a solution for reconciling individual views on justice that works much better than what anarchists managed to show in their CHAZ/CHOP, for example.
This does not answer my question though. Why anarchists are not happy? Why can't they live in their desired society right now?
The current geopolitical situation prevents anarchists from living in their desired society because there is zero (or practically zero) free land to create such a society without it existing within a state that is not anarchist. This should be obvious.
That's my question! How is "free" land is different from any other? It's just a convention established by the government i.e. if you try to settle on somebody's land then eventually armed people will show up and make you go. So how is it different from the anarchy? Who will provide the "freedom" of the land and is incapable to do it now?
Consider a world where society lived by the anarchist principles. In that hypothetical world, most people self-organized in a large group where:
- They decided to democratically appoint representatives that flesh out large-scale agreements and called it law
- They decided it is necessary to have people dedicated to securing the lands where they live from both internal and external threats
... and so on and so forth, until they effectively self-organized into the equivalent of our current society.
Is there any difference between that world and ours? Why can't an anarchist assume that this is what actually happened (there's some merit to the idea) and be happy to live in an anarchist world, our world?
This is one explanation. The question I have is more of the "what are you going to do when some people will get together and apply concerted violence to you (not dissimilar to the way the government works right now)?". I have not seen a single attempt to answer this in the few hundred comments. It appears most anarchists do not even realize this possibility even exists.
Right-flavored anarchism (eg anarcho-capitalism, cryptoanarchism) addresses this question directly - a plurality of competing defense companies that would be incentivized away from actually fighting as it would be unprofitable.
Peasants didn't have much mobility between lords, therefore they were seemingly coerced. Would anarcho-capitalism as stated necessarily play out similarly? Who knows.
The core of anarchism is the heuristic of rejecting hierarchies and coercion. A negative doesn't make for a compelling mass movement, hence all the different flavors are attempts at imagining structures that could replace the current ones. They all have obvious potential failure modes, but the core remains - downsizing the structures of arbitrary authority.
This is exactly my impression too. E.g. the OP article begins with characterizing anarchists as out of touch dreamers: Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. Judging by the name of the site it appears to be a positive characteristic too, which adds to confusion.
Your comment isn't very coherent, and it's hard to assume good faith. Reading any anarchist philosophy will quickly lay out criteria for recognizing versions of justice that can actually be considered reasonable.
As for answering your question, that's exactly what my comment attempted but you didn't engage with what I said. You're effectively just arguing against straw men, and have invoked yet another with "their CHAZ/CHOP".
I get you, anarchists have some literature that describes their views on justice, I am fine with it. For all I care they might have some fashion magazines that provide guidelines on the reasonable attire for a sensible anarchist.
My question is still not answered by this and I don't see how is this related at all, to be frank. It's almost as if your answer is not quite coherent.
The reason I referenced anarchist definitions of justice is that you brought up a straw man version of justice that doesn't survive the slightest critique:
> Some people think that murder for "dissing" them or being too rich/white/gay/smart/stupid/etc is just
The problem with your initial "question" and subsequent replies is that they revolve around a sophomoric understanding that collapses the philosophy into meaninglessness.
What I said in my first reply:
> What matters is the overall heuristic of trying to shrink the structures to be more local and manageable. Anarchism in all its various flavors isn't a prescription, but rather a rebuke of prescriptivism.
You may have a hard time seeing this as the essence of anarchism, as it is a general desire shared among most people. But really, we've got lots of anarchist thought in our political discourse. Blue team: drugs, prisons, nondiscrimination. Red team: guns, taxes, business regulations. But we have very little anarchism in our actual political results, except for maybe ancap for big businesses.
If you read this thread, I am sure, you will find that you brought justice first. Neither I brought any straw men (is it some new trend on Tweeter because I have seen several people in the past couple months using "straw man" in some strange and unknown to me sense, all I know is a discussion technique of making a different argument for one's opponent and arguing it instead of the actual one. But nothing of this sort could be applicable here since I have not made any arguments, I am just asking a question).
So, to prevent any possibility of stramaning, are you now saying that anarchism is disagreement with some laws and not the rejection of the institute of government?
Every one of your "questions" has included your own caricature of anarchism. At this point I can no longer assume good faith. If you earnestly want to know the answer to your questions, then you need to do the work of understanding.
> I find it hard to believe you've talked to any real anarchists, or at least listened to them
True scotsman fallacy aside, what the top minds on anarchy think is not as relevant as what most people/anarchists understand of it, if we are talking about a non-hierarchical self-administering system, because performance of the system will approximate to the median (mis)understanding of them.
I've heard the reasoning, it just sounds like utter nonsense.
> when there isn't those built hierarchies bad/selfish people don't amass power
This is where the reasoning falls apart. What stops them from amassing power?
The responses to this question always sound really convoluted and 'reach-y', ala, "people just won't, like, do that, maaaan!" or "others will stop them, in a completely non-hierarchal way without any explicit use of force".
There are TONS of situations in real life where people are nominally equal, but in practice hideously unequal. The way anarchists talk just reminds me of what some feminist movements discovered in the twentieth century: removing explicit power structures and hierarchies didn't put everyone on equal terms, it just made the power differences less transparent and regulatable.
Of course, anarchists are free to say whatever they want: the very fact that there basically haven't been any state-equivalent anarchist communities existing for a long time in recent memory means they're free to theorycraft to their heart's content. You don't have to grapple with any flaws if your system doesn't actually exist.
I'd be interested to see an application of sortition as a government principle. It's government by random selection, similar to jury duty, and was used by ancient Athens.
Wikipedia lists out the disadvantages, so nobody is claiming it's a perfect system. But I think it could eliminate many of the problems with modern "democracy", including gerrymandering, lack of diversity, distrust of "deep state", lobbying. Everyone would feel included, and I think that's important. A big part of our modern problems are due to the feeling of being left out: racial and religious minorities on one side, less-educated on the other, which creates the huge chasm of us-vs-them that shouldn't exist.
Plus it would make government boring again, so we wouldn't have this widening gulf between citizens on party lines and 24/7 smear campaigns on the national news. News would actually report news, imagine that!
My main concern with it, is that black people (and BLM supporters in general) are routinely excluded from jury duty in the US, so if there's a system in place that could exclude people from sortition, that would be ripe for abuse
In less time than it takes to read those papers, a tyranny would rise in place of whatever power it succeeds, and that would be insurmountable monopoly.
Imagine the American government disbanding. The kingpins would be Silicon Valley and other West Coast Tech executives because of the sheer convenience afforded by us depending on their hardware (their ideas too) for most communication. People would adapt over time, but that's the issue: over time, people would adapt, not imminently. And the Tech executives would have far fewer barriers to implementing controls than the people would have the means to obstruct them.
I don't doubt for a second that Jeff Bezos would announce Amazon as a leader in "keeping us united as a society," while implementing a new policy in their warehouses that requires Safety teams to lash employees with a bamboo reed each hour if they have not met their rate.
The problem with anarchy, Libertarianism, socialism, communism, and so many similar-veined structures argued for is that these arguments so deeply idealize the end goal that they almost entirely are void of planned action during the transition.
We are physiologically engineered to take the path of least effort. Whatever minimal effort ensures the most survival. The downside to technology is an exponential drop in effort necessary for survival. We need look no further than how far off Reagan was about giving rich people more money in American capitalism (it worked until it snagged on steadily increased market instability, which has since caused massive crashes in 1987, 1996, 2001, and 2008, each time in different sectors and each time due to extremely risky and obviously absurd liability risks taken by the highest brackets of networth wherein any net loss on those decisions was guaranteed to be distributed, whereas any net benefit was guaranteed to be isolated in impact.) We can see this in social justice as well: Feminist organizers are struggling a lot right now after having envisioned a world where "misogyny" was eradicated, yet numbers across the board are going up... more sexual violence, more abuse, more online bullying, more conflicts with other civil rights' movements. The emphasis on a perfect vision has led some amazing women leading the movement to be targeted with abuse from other intersectional groups.
This is just a cursory perspective, and so much more nuance and detail is necessary to get a clear picture, but it is absolutely not as simple as saying, "Anarchy wants/doesn't want to abolish ___." Anarchy is one of a number of social philosophies that by nature are self-cannibalizing, and thereby illogical.
You're forgetting the real kingpins: the (ex?) military members who have the willpower, training and actual hardware to project the ultimate force - actual violence.
Your tech execs with all their modern technology can't do anything against a well trained, well organized group of people who will imprison or kill you if you don't do what they say. Or they can work together for an even worse dystopia.
That's anarchy. A few people will work out any issues with diplomacy, while most will band under some leaders and take what they want by force.
It's the same right now, except groups who have an oligopoly on violence (i.e. governments) are few and really big - everyone does what they say and in turn live in relative peace and decent conditions.
What you would get then is not a society that had evolved into anarchy by a natural process, and therefore had institutions appropriate to such a society. (Yes, a society that is a functioning anarchy will still have institutions. But none of them will have a monopoly on violence.)
What you would get instead would be a society that had evolved with a hierarchical set of centralized governments, which was then forcibly deprived of those governments, without restructuring all of the other institutions in the society that only exist in the first place because the society had centralized governments. Obviously this will be worse than either what we have now, or what we would have if we lived in a society that evolved into anarchy by a natural process. But that is irrelevant to the question of whether a society that evolved into anarchy by a natural process could be better than what we have now.
> Any time I've heard anarchists try to explain how they would deal with the subset of people who are just real shitty in various ways, the responses have been either, a) in our utopia, you wouldn't have those problems, because hierarchy causes all of them, or b) increasingly convoluted and implausible-sounding ways to deal with crazy assholes without using force.
I see similar bad/evasive arguments from prison abolitionists, who have recently been given a higher profile as part of the push to defund the police.
What are you going to do with criminals, ask them to please stop victimizing others? No prisons? Not even for murderers? Really?
Looking back through human history, at all forms of tribal and political organization at all levels of complexity, you will always find violence and war. Those are not consequences of modern society or government.
That feels like a non sequitur argument, we should strive to reduce prison populations without worrying about absolutist. We could drastically reduce the prison population and list of crimes without hurting anything, first thing is stop prosecuting victimless crimes like pot smoking. Release the people convicted of non-violent drug crimes. Release the people who were convicted of stealing 25$ from the quickimart. Give people post prison treatment, get them a starter job. Don't just look to penalize them again.
Just like saying we can't reduce nuclear weapon counts in the us because russia and china are scary and we need them to stop them, we could still drastically reduce the count of them by about 100 without changing that.
I think lots of anarchists are perfectly fine with putting some people in jail.
Chomsky usually defines anarchism [1] by saying powers and hierarchies have to justify themselves. Keeping people safe can be a reasonable such justification. The point is just that such powers should never be taken for natural, and always be questioned. If jailing doesn't probably make people safer, then it loses its justification.
Anarchists in general are quite negative to the prison system and often believes in alternatives, or at the very least tries to come up with alternatives (hard as that might be).
That being said, there are certainly situations where people with anarchism (or anarchism-like) beliefs have essentially jailed people. For example YPG/YPJ forces in Rojava certainly took IS/ISIL forces they won over as prisoners.
PS: Never ever heard of an anarchist that thinks the US prison system is anywhere near of justifying itself though, but that's probably something all radical leftists agree on.
> Never ever heard of an anarchist that thinks the US prison system is anywhere near of justifying itself though, but that's probably something all radical leftists agree on.
I don't think you have to even be left of the centre to realize the US jail system had serious flaws and need major reforms.
Just looking at the incarceration rates and the number of reoffences compared to international levels show that something is completely off.
> I think lots of anarchists are perfectly fine with putting some people in jail.
Huh, that's not what I've heard. Anarchists I've seen talking are very strictly against explicit hierarchies, and prison obviously is very much that, since bare minimum you have prisoners at the bottom of the hierarchy there.
That's sophomoric rhetoric. In USA Hierarchy is justified by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. That's not enough to satisfy anarchists.
>This can sound reasonable when you think of it in terms of, "most people behaving in a reasonable fashion, most of the time". But anarchists don't want to eliminate hierarchical use of force for most cases, but for all of them.
As a card carrying -archist, I think it should be pointed out that no -archy can be maintained unless most people behave reasonably most of the time, either.
I'm not sure what my point is, just that most people are reasonable, even government employees.
For a gov employee "being reasonable" may mean "respect the chain of command, obey, apply the orders", and when the Great Leader isn't "reasonable" this may quickly and massively lead to Bad Things, as seen for example in the USSR, in Nazi Germany, Cambodia...
When there isn't any fixed hierarchy (governments...), bad/selfish people don't amass power (counting on non-reasonable people who will blindly follow their orders) so everyone else can actually handle them on equal terms.
> Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to.
I just don't think this is true of humans. The good of is treat the ones close well but really don't treat distant people well. We are tribal by nature. Modern governments help restrain us from forming tribal lines and going to war with each other.
My issue with passionate anarchists is that I've never heard a compelling argument for why the situation won't develop into a government anyway. Without an uber entity there's all the incentive in the world to form an uber entity.
Anarchists that I have met are either daydreamers or deluded. It only takes 1% to ruin the whole thing for everyone. And likely they won't change, so you either have to murder them, imprison them, or let them become your leaders, otherwise your anarchic utopia won't exist for long. This is all starting to sound like how the 1% currently run the world, --sigh--
I tend to agree. Psychopaths are an unsolvable problem. People like them is “why we can’t have nice things”.
If it weren’t for psychopaths we would not need passwords or encrypted passwords or security protocols, etc, etc., because everyone would behave in good fashion. But we don’t so we can’t.
That said, locking people in cages, treating them with inhumanity and violence, then releasing them into a world where they now have a harder time functioning in society and finding legitimate work doesn’t sound like a genius plan to solve psychopaths.
That's an argument for having more humane prisons, not for abolishing prisons in the sense of "place where you are confined from interaction with the non-sociopaths until you can be less sociopathic".
Abolish the archaic punitive prison system. Focus solely on reform and rehabilitation. Return the right to vote to all federal prisoners. Abolish the most common driving force for violent crime: wealth inequality. Abolish the most common driving force for white collar crime: capitalism. Is that what you wanted to hear?
I don't think this is true. I highly doubt I'm a psychopath, but in my life I've still done things that required the threat of violence to stop me. For example, a while ago I was ticketed for speeding. I didn't like getting ticketed, so I am now more careful while driving, and while I like to think I was being safe before, I'm honest enough to admit that it's probably better for society that I drive more slowly.
And you know what? If the ticket didn't come with some threat of forceful punishment for no payment, I probably wouldn't have paid it, and I wouldn't be afraid of getting another one.
I also wouldn't pay taxes voluntarily, at least not nearly as much as I pay now.
I do these things because I am scared of the law. I don't think I'm unusual, and I don't think I'm a psychopath. So unless the threat model is only serious crime, I don't think psychopaths are the only issue. I think most people are not good players once a community grows large enough to afford anonymity.
> while I like to think I was being safe before, I'm honest enough to admit that it's probably better for society that I drive more slowly.
Why do you think this? Have you ever actually been in an accident caused by the speed at which you were driving? Have you ever had a close call?
If the answer to either of those questions is yes, then you shouldn't have needed the ticket to make you drive more carefully; you already had much better feedback.
If the answer to both of those question is no, what makes you think the government bureaucrats who drafted the speeding laws are better than you, the person who is actually driving and seeing the road and whatever hazards are there, at judging a safe speed to drive?
> I also wouldn't pay taxes voluntarily, at least not nearly as much as I pay now.
Would you pay them if you could link them directly to benefits? Goods and services provided to you by the government? For example, suppose you were told that if you didn't pay taxes, you would not be able to call 911 and have the police or an ambulance come if you were in danger or needed medical assistance? Or that the US military would not protect you if a foreign country tried to invade?
I think most people's aversion to paying taxes is because they believe most of that money does not actually provide a net benefit, but gets wasted on things that either benefit no one, or cost more than the benefits they deliver.
> I think most people are not good players once a community grows large enough to afford anonymity.
You have anonymity right here on HN. You seem to be having a reasonable discussion and being a good player.
Hahahaha. You don't really think that all "hackers" are literally psychopaths do you? That's rather an amazing way to view the world, to be honest. Does it make it easier to go to sleep at night to attribute insanity to everyone who does anything you disagree with?
Normal people can be pretty terrible towards each other if they are desperate, for example if there is a famine or natural disaster that no one is responsible for.
Yes in a sense but ultimately evolutionary equilibriums are the reason why. When everybody is a dove, being a hawk is very good, be it psychopaths, sociopaths or random opportunistic anti-social behavour.
It may be hard to believe, but most people only think about themselves and their family. And they'll do anything, with the justification being that "it needed to be done". They can have PTSD and nightmares afterwards, but in the moment they'll do anything.
People don't like to sit at a table and talk it out, and if the results are not to their liking, they'll just abandon diplomacy and switch to violence.
They're not psychopaths, that's just primal survival instincts.
Actual psychopaths and sociopaths are a minority, although a pretty powerful one since they don't care about your unwritten, unenforced social norms.
Hierarchical use of force is replaced with community use of force. In anarchism people have to take individual responsibility. There's no point saying "someone should do something about this", you're someone, do what needs to be done.
The interesting part is the reverse: If you believe that most humans aren't capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion, why would have a system were these people can be set up into a position of power over other people ?
Which seems contrieved, but ... gestures broadly at everything, everytime, everywhere.
> why would have a system were these people can be set up into a position of power over other people ?
Social power isn't something that can be created or destroyed, only redistributed and restructured. The point of government is to hopefully structure it in a way that funnels people's collective and individual desires towards useful efforts and impulses.
In any case, I think that most people have a baseline level of reasonableness for most situations. But it's useful to have government to handle the various edge cases, and define certain expectations.
More cynically, if some assholes are gonna have power over others one way or another, it's better if said assholes are in a relatively transparent democratic system, rather than just, like, warlords.
Really, the most basic criticism I have of anarchism is that it doesn't seem capable of meaningfully sustaining itself in the long term as a larger state-equivalent community. The most famous example anarchists seem to bring up is anarchist Spain, which doesn't inspire confidence in the ideology's ability to last more than a year or two if other state actors look at it the wrong way.
I'd say that the minority of assholes is less of a problem. The big problems are variations on the tragedy of the commons where the reality itself creates incentives for reasonable people to behave badly.
Funnily enough, as an anarchist, I never heard before that removing the government (or hierarchical use of violence) would remove violence from the world.
There are plenty of ideas on how to keep law and order in an anarchic society.
I recommend you to read The Machinery of Freedom (by David Friedman) or check out a summary here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTYkdEU_B4o
TLDR:
One way to keep order is having private law enforcement / private insurance you voluntarily subscribe to. This can be provided by multiple companies competing on the market.
These entities can agree between each other on how to settle disputes, use a third party private arbitration system or physically fight against each other.
A war between law enforcement agencies would be expensive and hard to predict, so I think these businesses would pick peaceful resolution over war.
How contracts are resolved by law enforcement agencies can become a selling point, letting consumers decide with their wallet what kind of laws they agree with.
Charities can collect money, voluntarily provided by citizens, and pay the fee required to protect people without money.
If you're an anarcho-capitalist, that's cool and interesting, but I think it's quite distinct from the more left-wing forms of anarchism people usually talk about (that revolve around self-organizing democratic cooperatives).
I actually like a lot of things about Freidman's work, but I don't think it would actually function. The issue is that at the end of the day it's still just armed gangs living in tension with each other. Peace is retained as long as it's more profitable than war, but that's no longer the case when one gang is stronger than the others. In our world, I think you'd pretty much immediately see Amazon Security Forces start annexing all their smaller neighbors, thus making ASF stronger so they can annex more and more. This scales up until there are just a few large organizations (ASF, Google Army, Exxon Defense Group, etc) who are equally enough balanced - or until there is only one. These large organizations have contiguous territories, borders, and monopolies on violence.
Anarchist just can't last. It's like try to make a sculpture of water. Even if you could shape it, it'll immediately move towards the lowest-energy state. Without something to stop them, the strong will immediately begin seizing power from the weak and ultimately culimnate straight back to governmental entities with monopolies on violence. Which is how we live now.
You make an interesting point, I don't think we'll ever find out without trying!
I think a central corruptible government is key to have massive corporations, I would expect the market not to be as centralised if starting a company were easier and if we didn't have regulations.
In case I'm wrong and we end up with a few massive competing law enforcement agencies, I still think it would be an improvement over the current system: law enforcement agencies would have an incentive at doing their job (unlike today, when more crime = people are less opposed to increase taxes and funding the police), competition would drive the cost of law enforcement down for consumers.
The government, in the end, is just an armed gang as well with a monopoly on violence.
>law enforcement agencies would have an incentive at doing their job (unlike today, when more crime = people are less opposed to increase taxes and funding the police), competition would drive the cost of law enforcement down for consumers.
No, they have an incentive to consolidate control over territory and eliminate competition. Those that 'do their job' will be outcompeted by those who simply conquer. There is no need to 'do your job' to get profits when you can just take physical power over the customer and take their money, take their house, enslave them as workers or sex slaves, etc.
The point is that these law agencies you're talking about quickly just become de facto governments (armed gangs with monopolies on violence). It would happen basically instantly.
Then we're back where we started, but without any of the gains we made since 1792.
Anarcho-capitalism is easier to justify because it doesn't have to answer the question of "what about poverty, exploitation, and abuse?" with anything stronger than "too bad for you". It's a lot harder to explain how you're going to eliminate material and social hierarchies without some form of legal hierarchy, which is why left anarchism tends to exist more as an organizing principle and a tendency within the broader (socialist) left than as an independent political movement.
I find this is the case pretty much anytime leads with, “As a <whatever>, I believe that...” Like they make it sound like because they identify as an anarchist or a libertarian or a Christian or a mom or whatever <blank> is, that that determines their big picture view of everything, and they have to contextualize everything in terms of that thing. They want to have something to point at and tell them what they should think about, and that because their view comes from their personal identity, rejecting the view means rejecting them on a personal level somehow.
Like, an actual libertarian (for example) should be able to make a good case for their perspective without making it sound like their chosen personal identity is somehow forcing them to see things in a particular way. People should think things because they are rational, not because they identify with an ideology that they allow to dictate their beliefs on the stuff that they haven’t done their homework on.
TL;DR you can identify a lot of bullshit and sloppy thinking if you listen to what someone says after they invoke the dreaded, “as a <blank>, I think that...” and anarchists are no exception.
For what it's worth, anarcho-capitalists substantially agree with this collectivist anarchist, but still consider police worthwhile for your edge cases. They just want to voluntarily pay for private policing instead of having a monopoly impose it.
I can't see private police existing as the main source of violence without the different private police forces waging wars over each other to determine who gets to police what district. I mean, in what way would private police be different from a Mafia?
Ancaps believe that street wars would be notably unprofitable, and competing "rights enforcement agencies" would quickly normalize their relations with one another, in the same way that we don't see Uber and Lyft shooting each other up.
> in what way would private police be different from a Mafia?
If you didn't like the service you were getting, you could stop paying for it.
I disagree. We currently have a system of law, and despite it not being perfect by any stretch of the imagination, at least governments ar subject to it and are incentivied to adhere to it in form and in principle for the most part. That would not be the case with a free market of private violence for-hire...
> in the same way that we don't see Uber and Lyft shooting each other up
But we don't see them shooting each other up because there's the Leviathan with the big guns telling them not to. We do for example, still see plenty of war between drug cartels, even though the wars are extremely unprofitable. Yet if you win one, you get to control much more space and you're suddenly a lot more profitable than before.
This argument sounds good in theory, but given that we've had wars before in history, it needs some explanation why states and individuals act irrational in that regard all the time, but these new companies would not.
> But we don't see them shooting each other up because there's the Leviathan with the big guns telling them not to.
Do you think that 7-11 is itching to shoot up AM/PM? Would you still buy your Slurpies there if they stared?
> We do for example, still see plenty of war between drug cartels, even though the wars are extremely unprofitable.
Drug cartels are an artifact of the state. There are no drug cartels without drug prohibition.
> Yet if you win one, you get to control much more space and you're suddenly a lot more profitable than before.
Would you keep paying for cops that did that? Or hire different ones?
> This argument sounds good in theory
It's not my argument, especially. I'm not an anarchist. :)
> it needs some explanation why states and individuals act irrational in that regard all the time
I think that's very fair. But I think you will find that at the bottom of mafia violence is rational decision-making. But private rights-enforcement is a different game with very different rewards for the actors.
> Do you think that 7-11 is itching to shoot up AM/PM? Would you still buy your Slurpies there if they stared?
Not while it lasted. But generally, that's what happened before the nation states took over the monopoly of violence and enforced it with an iron fist. You may not see two mega companies go at it (they'll form a cartel), but want to set up a new shop next to 7-11? Good luck keeping the flames from spontaneously erupting all the time.
We've had private right enforcement before we've had public rights enforcement, or rather, public rights enforcement evolved from private rights enforcement. You went to your local nobility who had a bunch of men to do the violent enforcement, and they'd settle disputes for you. Still: war.
I'm not convinced it's a good idea to go back to a system that we've abandoned for its many issues, injustice and general inefficiency. Now, if you throw blockchain in there, that's a totally different story, of course! ;)
> Would you still give Uber money if they were shooting up Lyft?
In the current context, no.
If street wars between rival ride sharing companies was the norm, then sure, maybe, along with everyone else. People are remarkably flexible when it comes to necessities.
Cabbies have been known to be racist as hell to black people for a long time, that didn't stop non-black people from taking taxis.
> The voluntary support of their subscribers.
Ah yes, and if they abuse others I'm sure their subscribers will withdraw their support, of course.
Curious, what's the ancap version of something like CPS?
> Curious, what's the ancap version of something like CPS?
I think this is the best question I have been asked in this thread.
As you might imagine, ancaps are very into this topic and have done a pretty good job of thinking through all the little details. The answer to almost all these questions is something like, "It would work just like it does now, but you would voluntarily choose who to pay for the service, instead of a government having a monopoly on it, so you could fire them if you weren't satisfied".
CPS seems like a genuinely difficult problem though. For that matter, it's a tough problem in the current system.
If you ran a rights enforcement agency, what would be the fall-out for you for interceding in a child abuse situation? Or for having one reported, but choosing to not intercede? What kind of liability would interceding expose you to? If you heard that in real 2020 America, Uber had directed its drivers not to report suspected child abuse, and Lyft had the opposite policy, would that influence who you hired?
> They just want to voluntarily pay for private policing
The idea of private policing being effective and reasonable is subject to the same ridiculous reasoning that anarchists use. At best you'd end up with some completely fucked up cyberpunk dystopian bullshit where corporations are governments in all but name.
Which leaves the poor to have to come up with other ways to get protection, which opens the door for a local "strongman", which turns into a type of government, rinse, repeat.
“Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to.”
My anarchist sympathies want this to be true but this is a demonstrably false fairy tale. Just look at how we treat the planet and other living things in the presence of lawful order. Why would you assume that we would act righteously in the absence of law? It is painfully obvious that we would act much worse under anarchy.
This is where I see one of the most striking arguments for anarchist philosophy. That is: It takes, and it took, an immensurable ammount of violence to make the status quo, 'lawful order' is a very shaky concept there. From this perspective it's way clearer that the unbalances and the unlawlessness of a big chunk of the "order" are themselves the sources of so much messed up stuff we have to deal with and try hopelessly to justify(ending up just evading cowardly). So to me anarchism is much more about recognizing dystopia already here and demistifying and dismantling that than some gaseous utopian end state. The way I see it, platonics are kind of irrelevant in this context.
Maybe if there's one, for me, then it'd be that humans already come from nature with capacity for self-determination, conflict resolution, sociability, organization. All those other structures mostly hijacks that and messes it up with imbalances, most obviously by abuse of power, hierarchy being the main instrument for making that. That power itself depended on (some): trust, sociability, harmony & etc to establish itself. I.e.: there are things which should not be decoupled, decouple it, you'll get dystopia. The more I research and get older(32 now) the clearer it is, IMO. Hardest part is getting past all the noise.
A very good introduction to this kind of radical(literally) perspective to me would be Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.
P.s.: by the way don't miss that anarchism in this sense is not the same as 'anarchy' as commonly understood. As Chomsky says in a video(youtube "chomsky anarchism"): anarchism would actually ammount to a highly organized society.
> humans already come from nature with capacity for ... conflict resolution ...
Um, I don't think so. Conflict resolution is the main obstacle to the viability of entirely voluntary ("anarchist") organization. That's why it's the self-defining function of any government, even the most minimal.
How often do you find yourself needing third-parties to arbitrate your interactions?
Because for me, outside some formal processes I do for my job, it has been well over a decade since I needed someone to mediate my interactions with someone else.
People are very good at conflict resolution. They only see the cases where it doesn't work out.
People are very good at conflict resolution because third-party arbitration is available as a last resort. They aren't nearly as good at it in e.g. the average Third-World country, where fair and impartial courts are not generally available.
Do you think Somalia is like some never-ending Stallone movie?
Business still gets done. People work, get paid, buy things without knifing each other. It is true that without recourse to state institutions, there is more non-state-sanctioned violence, which is kind of definitional, but also true in absolute terms.
But enormous amounts of daily interaction goes on with humans demonstrating perfectly normal abilities to compromise without killing each other.
This is another form of 'elite panic' - the belief that The Lord of the Flies is just around the corner if Officer Smiley stands down. People don't behave that way in reality.
Since there are a few places on the planet where anarchy sort of reigns like in Somalia, I would like to challenge my anarchic brethren to go try those places for even just 3 months and come back and tell me about their adventures.
First, you assume I'm an anarchist, simply because I'm trying to describe reality instead of pushing an agenda.
Second, you somehow think "scary place hurrr silly anarchist just doesn't want to admit..." is a killer argument. It is just slightly recast version of the "If you like communism so much then move to Russia" schoolyard silliness.
If you want to discuss how political theory intersects the real world, I love that stuff. If you just want to convince yourself anarchists are dumb, that's boring and I'm out.
Again this is taking the position that anarchism would need it's "government program" to justify itself and then maybe society could see about moving over to that program, I don't think that's the point, as I've argued in my previous comment.
The problem with Chomsky as a resource for anarchism is that 1) his anarchism is sui generis, and he doesn't tend to cite or be in conversation with other anarchist thinkers and 2) his anarchism is utopian, and he doesn't begin to outline a program to accomplish it. In practice he's really more of a social democrat whose vision of anarchism basically resembles a self-organizing social democracy with minimized state coercion.
Again this is taking the position that anarchism would need it's "government program" to justify itself and then maybe society could see about moving over to that program, I don't think that's the point, as I've argued in my previous comment.
I agree somewhat, but sadly I think it's stuff of decades maybe hundreds of years for culture & language to go and take more root, here in Brazil there was already a phenomenon of very close information control, semi-monopolies in communication, so, you know, the instrumentation of ignorance & misinformation here found veeeery fertile soil, people lost their shit.. I'm kinda into stoicism too so it's like "yeah you can't force ppl and getting stuff is complex so it's slow", and yes I'm into "persuading", I'd call it "communication" instead though, add to that you'll probably have less 'communication power' than the opposing forces for long periods if not always.. so, it's an spectacular challenge
> Maybe if there's one, for me, then it'd be that humans already come from nature with capacity for self-determination, conflict resolution, sociability, organization. All those other structures mostly hijacks that and messes it up with imbalances, most obviously by abuse of power, hierarchy being the main instrument for making that
What humans come from nature with doesn’t scale to the world and numbers we have built for ourselves (ie past Dunbar number). You can also train a neural net with pen and paper but can’t really build a product that can function in the real world.
All those structures are attempts at trying to test and train a particular architecture of collective intelligence that can scale to real world problems. Obviously all have failure modes and difficulties in innovating and transitioning, but they also have working proof of some degree of functioning. And the hierarchies they form are not caricatures of a tree data-structure, they are much more complicated topologies, because they are more emergent phenomena than conspiratorial captures.
Chomsky’s anarchism seem to define an end state without any prescription on transitioning or path dependencies in between. It also doesn’t have any demonstration on success with negative edge cases. If anything all utopias so far have devolved into dystopias, hence the hesitation.
Even with the most pleasant things in life we are prone to construal level fallacies. Going to Paris sounds awesome right now but my current excitement doesn’t match the moment to moment reality I will face; every minute of the long haul flight, the jetlag, sore feet from walking etc, I don’t even consider these. Our design documents never match our implementations. That is why I am wary of claims like “I can rewrite this system from scratch”.
The main thing is, anarchism is the only philosophy that it's dead-on clear that the structures can and should be questioned and that it can and should be reconfigurable, refactored and etc if we're going with programming terms. It's just democracy but pushed deeper. Anarchism embodies the liberal democracy & socialist ideals, it is coherent with classical thought & philosophy, as well as enlightenment rationality(in case you haven't noticed the current status quo is absolutely losing coherence and moving further from all that), it has also been paired w/ religious ideals.
The idealized citizen in liberal & classical democracy is an anarchist, a free person participating in the matters of the "polis"(city), the "free" distinctions has plenty of consequences if you really get into it, we're talking about people from antiquity here, what they were saying is that only free people could be trusted to participate, this immediately creates a problem of class distinction i.e.: people who owned land, that were free enough to be able to learn philosophy, etc. So, although implementation was imperfect from the start, the kernel is good.(btw I'm an antiquity geek in case you haven't noticed).
What I'm getting at is: there's no rewrite at all, actually, it would be maintenance, paying the tech debt and sticking to the vision. This hollowed out democracy we're with now is a joke.
> "> Just look at how we treat the planet and other living things in the presence of lawful order"
On the contrary, it' and indictment of the current law system, it has utterally failed to protect the environment and other living things, where-as anacistic organisations, charities and protest movement have done a lot for the environment. In fact they are the only ones that have done anything at all.
If a given CEO damages profits for the sake of environment, he can be removed as he is not fullfilling his legal duty, maximising profits. So even if a hypothetical environmentalist became the chielf of ExxonMobil, he wouldn't be able to do much.
> anacistic organisations, charities and protest movement have done a lot for the environment. In fact they are the only ones that have done anything at all.
This is not true at all. Protecting the environment isn’t just about actions like planting trees and buying up the occasional extra property parcel to dedicate as a land reserve. It requires government scale regulation to impose negative consequences on people and companies producing negative externalities.
You can argue that the government hasn’t done enough in this regard, but it’s demonstrably not true to claim that 3rd parties have done more than the government to regulate industry and build national park level land reserves.
This is the problem with most pro-anarchistic stances: They take too much of the current system’s benefits for granted while also assuming that less regulation would somehow produce a more regulated outcome.
I don’t understand the desire to put impossible theories of anarchy on a pedestal instead of simply making incremental improvements to the current systems.
Take the example of pollution. Say you're an employee of a fossil fuel cooperative. Is it in your interest to continue polluting? Yes, because you after all own some of the ressources of that company and control it. So what is the anarchist solution? Well, it's in the interests of everyone to stop pollution, right? So you'd need people to come together, decide that population is a concern, at least a good percentage of people, and offer you to be compensated for your investment in fossil fuels in exchange to stop polluting and find another job or not work in industry at all anymore. You might say that this is unrealistic, but for the government to do anything about pollution we needed hundreds of millions of people to protest and a majority of the people agreeing that pollution is a problem worth fixing. And if that doesn't work either, you elect and randomly chose people to supervise the elected with short term limits in order to have authority against pollution.
This is the anarchist solution to the tragedy of the commons in this case.
As for making incremental change, there are hard limits. There are existing power structures that will hamper you very strongly - the state, private interests, the corporate media, and so on. If you do incremental change that they don't like, they absolutely will use violence to prevent you.
So, the "anarchist solution" to the tragedy of the commons - the avoidance of centralized power - entails a majority of the population banding together and acting as some sort of agent, with the power to set rules and redistribute wealth? I see.
I think that you may be on to something here. It could have limited police powers and perhaps offer up and guarantee, a, I think we'll call it fiat trading systems based on dolloros (we'll call them). Also people can gather in small groups and elect a leader of sorts to travel to the town square and represent them so it won't be so chaotic when making decisions for the group...
No the anarchist solution is to remove the need for that pollution at all. Why frack when wind power works? Sure you don't get as much power but when the whole world isn't spending 1/5 of their day driving from home to office to modify spreadsheets, you'll find some power savings.
I don't think that's a fair characterization at all. To use a network analogy...
Central Planning: [1 Figure 1a]
Functioning Capitalism: [1 Figure 1b]
Anarchy: [1 Figure 1c]
The optimal design lies somewhere between the extremes. 1a seems to be an absorbing boundary condition, so we need stabilization mechanisms to keep the system running near optimal dispersion.
In the past, we had stabilization mechanisms like antitrust law, public jury trials for torts (as opposed to closed-door arbitration), and the tax code. All of these stabilizers have been severely degraded in the neoliberal era.
Elinor Ostrom come up with the 8 design principles[1] for dealing with the tragedy of the commons for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize. She concludes that top-down regulation doesn't work because of complexity and laissez-faire because private companies will try to maximize their profits. So she studied common pools and found out that if they missed these 8 principles between groups involved it would lead to depletion or conflicts. This I think is an anarchist solution to the problem only she called it polycentric governance.
> you might say that this is unrealistic, but for the government to do anything about pollution we needed hundreds of millions of people to protest
Hundreds of millions? The organizers of the biggest climate strikes (September 2019) estimated 7.6 million globally, and that's being generous. It's vastly cheaper, easier and more popular to enforce companies to reduce their pollution from their own funds than to pay to do it for them.
For that to happen though, you need a large portion of people to agree to do so. In an anarchic society where production is essentially communally owned, the cost to stop polluting is the same in the end.
> offer you to be compensated for your investment in fossil fuels in exchange to stop polluting
Do you even think about the obvious problems with this approach? Stick works. Carrot doesn't work, it just encourages more of the same. It's in the interest of everyone to stop shitting in the streets, right? But if I get paid every time I take a shit in the street, then ...
I am just making a narrow argument that the current system is responsible for the environmental damage lock, stock and barrel.
Do a mental experiment - imagine the only form of corporation we had was a cooperative, limited to 10,000 employees. Would you expect environmental damage to increase?
I feel it takes large, hierarchical organisations, where the decision-maker is very removed from the consequences, to create this level of environmental devastation.
Now imagine we went through the 70-year long history of environmental protection and did a score:
Proactive environmental action by the government /proper authority is evidence that the current system is working, 1 point for current system. If a government only acts after mass protests or public outcry, I take that as a point for the anarchic system. If there is mass outcry, and still no action, take it as two point for the anarchic system.
If we did the score we'd have to face the fact that most of environmental laws are only on the books because of some form of public outcry or protest.
You are free to argue that anarchism would be disastrous for our standards of living or crime rates, but specifically on the point of environment, it would probably do a lot better.
What is the basis for your belief that smaller groups of people will intrinsically care more about the environment than larger groups?
In an anarchic society, what mechanism would be limiting these cooperatives to 10,000 employees? How would this be enforced, and what would the consequences be for exceeding 10,000?
> On the contrary, it' and indictment of the current law system, it has utterally failed to protect the environment and other living things.
The fact that our laws have tried to protect the environment and 'utterly failed' is clear evidence that behaviour of individuals and corporations are not, by default, making good environmental decisions.
The idea that these actors, who are bad stewards of the environment when laws are compelling them to be good, would suddenly become good stewards of the environment in an anarchic system, is wishful thinking.
Counterpoint: The legal concept of fiduciary responsibility, and actual de facto laws, legally compel the board of directors and executives of for-profit corporations to produce profit for their shareholders.
There are even special laws for officers of publicly traded companies that make this compulsion even more strict add additional criminal charges for failure.
Now, obviously these laws aren't something most corporate officers think about when they get out of bed. But they absolutely do create powerful incentives and drive the culture of large corporations away from any consideration for ethics.
>absolutely do create powerful incentives and drive the culture of large corporations away from any consideration for ethics.
They absolutely do not. Corporate officers, especially at large corporations, are driven by personal profit, career success, etc. Fiduciary responsibility represents exactly what its name implies: the requirement that you act responsibly on behalf of investors/shareholders. If it was a powerful driver of corporate behavior, then we would expect different behaviors from privately run corporations (I believe that's actually most of them). I do not see that being the case.
> The legal concept of fiduciary responsibility, and actual de facto laws, legally compel the board of directors and executives of for-profit corporations to produce profit for their shareholders.
False. There are no laws that compel a company to produce profits for their shareholders. There is an economic _philosophy_ that argues that since the market economy is the bees knees, it follows that a company that has a higher profit is also 'better', but that does not make it a legal concept. [0]
Fiduciary responsibility in this case simply means that the directors should have the best interest of the company in mind. [1] In most cases shareholders want more money, so making more money is a natural result. But if there is a company whose single mission is to put a colony on Mars, then fiduciary responsibility compels the directors to only focus on that, even if such a colony would be less profitable than setting money on fire.
On the contrary again, look at the death of Lorenzo Anderson at the hands of the Seattle anarchist community.
I’m afraid at the end of everything that happens this year, the data is going to tell us that the only change the anarchists achieved was getting trump re-elected.
Anarchists obviously don’t think this will come about by itself, they simply believe that it is possible to organize society in such a way that the statement above holds true. Anarchists will generally argue that todays society prevents that from being the case (at least to a large enough degree).
The details of all this (strategies, how to make it work, etc) is at the core of a lot of anarchist theory.
That's what I find so weird about most criticisms of Anarchism. Anarchists like nothing more than building systems and methods, then seeing how they work or could be improved. The only way to differentiate different forms of anarchism is through the systems they think would be most effective, and the methods they think would be most effective to bring them about.
It's just a lot harder to build peer-to-peer systems than centralized ones, although peer-to-peer systems are ultimately the most resilient.
Yeah, it's really funny how anarchism has this reputation for disorganisation. The anarchists I've met are super nerds about what is good democratic process going down to intricate details of how it all should be organised.
I guess there is probably also a big difference here between actual anarchists and people who merely sympathise with anarchism (like myself), possibly mainly because they have an anti-authoritarian inclination (which alone, an anarchist does not make).
I see this when dispersed camping, simple things like cleaning up at the campsite before leaving. Most people don’t have a problem with it but there are small groups who don’t care about anything. Those small groups tend to ruin it for everyone.
You don’t see that at managed campgrounds because you will be fined.
State Parks and National Parks usually have zero tolerance for unwieldy behavior. National Forests are where you’ll see gunshot holes in signs and occasionally trash. I’ve seen entire burnt out vehicles in CA National Forests, it’s a little more wild west.
If the cleaners decide to 'educate' the non cleaners, would they be seen has (hier)archists now ?
The small group ruining things is akin to the broken window. It requires some kind of regular process / hygiene to maintain the system in a good enough condition.
>I see this when dispersed camping, simple things like cleaning up at the campsite before leaving. Most people don’t have a problem with it but there are small groups who don’t care about anything. Those small groups tend to ruin it for everyone.
As I understand it, an anarchist camping group (for lack of a better name) could still collectively agree on and enforce rules - in many ways still a "managed" campground, just with more shared ownership
Yes! But in a way that works via consensus and that doesn't establish unnecessary hierarchies. For example, you could have people coming in voluntarily agree to the penalties and have the primary stakeholders vote on penalties.
It often seems to me that when talking to people about alternative mechanisms for organizing society we end up just rediscovering our current systems from first principles. At times it feels silly but I think it's a great technique for educating.
I try to do this at work when a new engineer tries to argue that the current system is overcomplicated and there is an easier alternative. Just ask questions, point out edge cases and watch them gradually rebuild the current solution.
Doesn't always work, sometimes the current solution actually sucks. But more often than not they come to understand that by the time they're finished ironing it the details, their proposal is not meaningfully different from what we have.
Yes, in fact a managed private campground with fines is compatible with anarchy provided the owner doesn't have an effective monopoly on places to pitch a tent outside of their campground.
Even if they do have a monopoly, a large group with an effective monopoly on paying campers over some timeframe can negotiate an agreement for reduced or no fines.
Anarchy is about power relations. If they're relatively equal, it's anarchy.
Your assumption that people must behave better in the presence of authority - and therefore worse in the absence of it - is exactly the assumption that is under question.
True, but the real world is about compromises and lesser evils.
Formal authority is quite often better than arbitrary, informal authority. And make no mistake, humans are social, their natural congregations are hierarchical.
I'm not sure this is true. Not only were humans very loosely hierarchical essentially until the invention of agriculture, but anarchism doesn't advocate for arbitrary and informal authority, but for limited in any authority at all unless absolutely necessary, in which case it must be directly kept in check.
> Not only were humans very loosely hierarchical essentially until the invention of agricultur
Even if they were both this and peaceful then, this would only imply that we merely need to dismantle agriculture and the civilization dependent on it to return to that state, which I submit is an unacceptable trade-off to most people.
And even if it was acceptable to most people, it would take only a small minority opting out to retain the power to subjugate everyone opting-in and ruin the whole effort.
That doesn't follow from the principle. We don't need to dismantle agriculture or anything else, you can also have technological anarchic societies and indeed they exist.
What it means is that hierarchies are not necessary for human organization.
The Zapatista-governed area is at best parasitically technological (it uses imported technology, but neither creates nor maintains much of a technical base).
It certainly might be legitimately viewed as a step up for the most systemically disenfranchised, exploited, impoverished communities, but it's not a demonstration of a way that a technological society can be maintained.
That hierarchical structures became dominant after the invention of agriculture does not imply that agriculture necessitates hierarchical structures.
> And even if it was acceptable to most people, it would take only a small minority opting out to retain the power to subjugate everyone opting-in and ruin the whole effort.
Regarding humans being organized very loosely until agriculture personally I wouldn't consider that as a plus.
We're on HN, just think about the pace of human development before agriculture and after. We were pretty much doing the same thing for half a million years and then in 10000 years: rockets in space! ;-)
> And there are ways to have agriculture and industry and compounding scientific advancements without having rigid hierarchies, are there not?
Sure, the absence of rigid heirarchies with strictly top-down authority in favor of fairly fluid ones with something like circular authority where the top of heirarchy is selected and changeable by the people subject to it is a hallmark of liberal society, realized to varying degrees throughout much of the world.
They are hierarchical. All primates are. Agriculture just revealed the need for a level of social structure no other species on Earth could achieve before.
Regarding your follow-up question, maybe there are ways to achieve the same thing with a radically different social structure. The problem with social changes on this scale is that they are extremely disruptive. I'd rather reform and improve iteratively than rewrite the whole code base ;-)
You should consider the issues of iteratively improving the same code base, pushing to prod for hundreds of years!
Primate dominance hierarchies are weak, accountable, and constantly challenged, and not even necessary in humans which exhibit other behaviors depending on nature. As a consequences, hierarchy is not necessary in humans and not inherent.
That being said, there are ways to move into anarchism that aren't that disruptive as long as the dominant power structure doesn't decide to violently repress it. Syndicalism into market socialism into anarchism is a common one.
But as I said, it's possible to transition to anarchy. You don't need to do it in one bit push. The issue is when the underlying code base is so bad that there is nothing else, but we can certainly try incrementalism.
In theory, there's no reason you couldn't go towards and anarchic society via a million small reforms, but in practice you get executed for using your already existing rights if you state that your goal is to do such reforms.
Is it possible to transition to anarchy in a geopolitical environment of competing nation-states? How would an anarchizing state in the process of gradual self-dismantlement outcompete more centralized states in economic and military terms?
The way most small countries have survived in the past century is to rely on the protection of a larger state with a powerful military and/or on international treaty organizations (UN, NATO, OAS, etc.) which derive their influence from those state militaries.
Actually it does, just better training required. I believe the police in Germany is pretty good, but you need at least 3 years (not month) of training.
That's funny, I see people behave badly even with the authority all the time.
In general though, most people behave mostly good. The ones that behave badly probably would under any social construct. The people I know that got into trouble with the law were the same ones with antisocial tendencies in grade school.
I don't believe that the threat of government enforcement really encourages a significant proportion of edge cases to behave better.
Due to some unique circumstances, I actually have had the opportunity to see what a relatively anarchist society looks like in low-density areas. It honestly works about the same as it does under more supervision. When the occasional real problems develop, people band together and act as their own police force. What there isn't is a bunch of technicality type laws banning you from doing things that don't affect others.
This is all about Dunbar's Number; the number of people you can "know" in the sense of having stable social relations with. Its about 150 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number).
A society smaller than this can be effectively self-policing because everyone keeps track of how everyone else behaves. No money, police, laws or prisons are required because everyone knows what everyone else thinks of their behaviour and wants to stay on the good side of the community that they depend on. So its not a problem.
Once a society grows past Dunbar's number this system breaks down. You see people you don't know misbehaving, but they don't suffer any downside because nobody knows who they are. When you have to deal with people you don't know if you can trust them, but you do know that if they rip you off you won't have any comeback. So the communal trust breaks down and you start needing police, courts, laws and prisons.
In short, anarchism and "primitive socialism" are nice, but they don't scale.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes - who polieces the authority? Mind you an authority includes medieval kings and cobstantly warrrying feudal lords - they were legitimate authority of their time.
I would argue thay society today involve s less tyrany, less authority, and is more peacefull.
How do you behave when you yourself have authority? Would you stop respecting social norms and expectations if you did, and go on an egomaniacal power trip?
Currently I behave because it's in my interest to abide by laws, even those I don't agree with. If all authority disappeared overnight, I believe my best course of action would be to immediately assemble an armed militia so we could enforce a set of rules within a community that we believe are the best. I would still respect many social norms, but definitely not all of them. One thing that comes to mind is that "innocent until proven guilty" goes out the window. If I perceive someone to be a threat then I will use whatever means I have to neutralize them, rather than waiting for some kind of arbitration.
And this is why anarchy can’t and dosen’t work. 10 minutes later it will be replaced by a new feudalism led by people trying to make themselves king to protect their own best interests.
Right, so you agree that it's better for you to have very limited power and exist without authority, in which case you'd have to confirm to most social norms or suffer consequences, than for authority to exist and for people like you to accede to it?
Because in our system, if you were to accumulate enough authority it wouldn't be in your interest anymore to follow laws.
It's only better for me in an idealistic scenario where my local militia succeeds. If a bigger and stronger one comes around then my life could quickly become horrible.
It matters a lot if the authority is big enough that a random militia cannot topple them. A lone village can be raided with impunity, id the village is a part of a big country then soldiers will move in to protect them.
There is no reason to have such a small authorities. Anarchic societies managed to maintain armies strong enough to deter state actors. It comes with some small sacrifices, but it's still much better than otherwise.
In practice, your village can come to an agreement with other small villages and do military exercises together while still maintaining autonomy, and you can then maintain complex weapon systems and large armies.
I think it's very naive to think a local militia system of government would work like the game Top Trumps.
You'd still have a bunch of people thinking you are a jerk - the reason your life might quickly become horrible is because you've been a jerk to pretty much everyone by claiming that you need to rule them by force.
I'm shocked at how nicely this is wired into our brains. The slightest sight of a cop car in my surroundings cuts all desire to drive even near the speed limits.
I'd argue this shows that you are responding to the punishment, and have complete disregard for the authority (since you don't care to obey the rule when punishment is unlikely).
> Why would you assume that we would act righteously in the absence of law?
What is a demonstrably false fairy tale is that we don't act righteously when law enforcement is present. So asking what would happen in its absence seems irrelevant.
> It is painfully obvious that we would act much worse under anarchy.
Above you said it was "demonstrable" but now seem to be settling for saying it's somehow self-evident.
...
Fwiw I don't personally agree with the quoted statement, or rather I agree with only a narrow interpretation of it.
I don't think individuals are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion in all situations without having to be forced to. I do think groups are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without external force, given certain conditions: anarchism in my mind is about local* law enforcement rather than external.
Self-regulating organisations are possible, the only real condition is the removal of external incentives for those organisations to misbehave.
*By "local" I just mean internal/within proximity to the individual
Tens of thousands of years of human history. Feuding warlords, and slaves, rather than everyone acting together in unity.
> What is a demonstrably false fairy tale is that we don't act righteously when law enforcement is present. So asking what would happen in its absence seems irrelevant.
Well, we don't have mass rape, looting, or murder. One really needs to compare scale. Democracy seems to be a horrible system, and indeed the worst system, except for all the others (paraphrasing Churchill).
> Self-regulating organisations are possible, the only real condition is the removal of external incentives for those organisations to misbehave.
You're missing scale. SMALL self-regulating organizations do very well. The key condition isn't just about removing external incentives, but also about scale.
Once you're at some scale, you're guaranteed to have a few psychopaths who work to game the system to personal benefit. A key thing about small-scale is everyone can say "Adolf is a jerk. Let's swing clear of him." Large scale, he takes over Germany, and onto the world!
Likewise, large-scale, you're missing social incentives. Small scale, I can say "I won't steal from you, because you'll think I'm a jerk." Large-scale, try leaving your wallet in the train in almost any major city for 10 minutes.
Tribal culture was pretty good on isolated islands. It didn't go Lord of the Flies. That only happened at scale.
I've seen largish organizations sustain this for maybe a half-decade or decade, but never longer. At some point, game-theoretical organizational models take over, and things never go back.
> Tens of thousands of years of human history. Feuding warlords, and slaves, rather than everyone acting together in unity.
ummm, both of your specific examples are actually examples of those with power abusing it.
> ummm, both of your specific examples are actually examples of those with power abusing it
Precisely. Those are examples of how, unless you place explicit constraints on people's ability to amass power and abuse it, people will amass power and abuse it.
The whole history of progress in political systems could be oversimplified as a search for laws, structures, checks, and balances to prevent this from happening. In the absence of engineered ones, you revert into anarchy, which leads to individuals amassing power and abusing it.
Things like Democratic Structures, the Magna Carta, and the US Constitution were steps forward to prevent that. Heck, the rigid hierarchy of Ancient Egypt did better than the anarchy which came before. As a primitive form of government, it was incredibly inequitable, but you had far less theft and violence than before. That invention -- explicit governance structures and codified laws -- even in that form, allowed modern civilization.
If someone is allowed to amass power to to abuse others, it is not anarchy.
You seem to assume anarchy implies no rules, but fundamentally to ensure minimal rules the bare minimum is to shut down any attempt at aggression against others.
An anarchist would argue, however, that protecting society against aggression does not require a top down state.
There was a recent attempt in Capital Hill at creating an area where everyone was equal, and as I recall a bunch of people seized power and went on to cause havoc and violence...
How do you prevent someone from building too much power? Well, you need to cap their reserves of soldiers/hardware/supplies. In order to do that you inherently need a stronger entity to enforce those caps...
An early premise of anarchist movements was that there are already someone trying to grab too much power, namely nation states. As such a large proportion of anarchist thought is down to how to organise and build bottom up structures with the intent of matching and being able to counter and destroy the power structures of nation states.
Now ask yourself why you assume they'd be unwilling to build structures capable of resisting attempts to take power, when that is basically the raison d'etre for these groups.
> Now ask yourself why you assume they'd be unwilling to build structures capable of resisting attempts to take power, when that is basically the raison d'etre for these groups.
Not unwilling. Unable. Fighting against something rarely works to bring about productive change. Fighting for something is harder, but often does.
The French revolution brought about sweeping change across Europe in its aftermath. That the changes it brought were unpredictable is true, and that it took an aftermath that lasted for a long time to resolve the fallout too. But to suggest it didn't bring productive change is ludicrous.
And Animal Farm is fiction.
But if you're so sure it is unable, then it doesn't matter then - in that case these systems will never come to fruition, and so debating them is pointless.
Your history is confused. You're confusing the French Revolution and the American Revolution. Change in Europe came primarily due to a working example in America. America was, in a very real sense, a beacon of hope and freedom for the rest of the world.
The French Revolution in isolation was entirely regressive. It led to a lot of unpredictable chaos AND it slowed productive change. An ill-executed plan is a setback. You can see what the example of the USSR did to Communism.
I think I started this thread by saying we need to push FOR something positive, rather than AGAINST something. That's prerequisite to positive change. Pushing for something requires a plan. That requires discussion, debate, open-mindedness, and a mixture of pragmatism and idealism. Mostly, it requires a lot of deep conversation and thoughtfulness.
No, I'm not at all confusing the French Revolution and the American "revolution" (I always find it funny Americans consider it a revolution in the first place - it was nothing of the sort, it was a secession war that did nothing to upset the economic or class balance within American society).
While the American revolutionary war provided some inspiration, the path towards revolution in France involved political changes that had been brewing for a century, and its historically illiterate to suggest it was all, or mostly, a result of a "working example".
It also happened on the backdrop of the dissemination of enlightenment ideas from writers like the Genevan Rosseau, the French Voltaire, and English writers like Locke, who equally were an inspiration in America.
1789 also happened to a backdrop of some of the most severe inflation France had seen, after decades of social upheaval, for example. The revolution was a matter of survival for a lot of people, not middle classes upset over minor taxation, and it changed not just France, but Europe and large parts of the world.
Numerous countries, far outside Europe, still have legal codes incorporating large aspects of the Napeolonic Code that codified a large amount of the principles coming from the revolution, for example [1].
> The French Revolution in isolation was entirely regressive.
This is just pure fiction.
It's clear there's no point in debating this.
> I think I started this thread by saying we need to push FOR something positive, rather than AGAINST something. That's prerequisite to positive change. Pushing for something requires a plan. That requires discussion, debate, open-mindedness, and a mixture of pragmatism and idealism. Mostly, it requires a lot of deep conversation and thoughtfulness.
Most major change has come through protest and people rising up, nothing as naive as what you suggest here.
I really think you need to do some reading on what anarchism actually is before writing criticisms. It really isn't the thing you think it is.
> unless you place explicit constraints on people's ability to amass power and abuse it, people will amass power and abuse it.
Yes. Anarchism is about putting in place those constraints (via systems design rather than external enforcement since the latter requires amassing power in order to act as enforcer).
> Things like Democratic Structures...
You lost me here. Anarchism is democratic.
You seem to think anarchism is something emergent that existed before rules. It isn't. Anarchism is rules without centralising enforcement, not absence of rules. Feudalism in particular is the direct opposite of anarchism.
Please at least Google the term before you go and further.
Well, before my first post I reread the Wikipedia article.
I will mention there's a bit of a dance with definitions with some ideologies which I find irksome. This is true here. Yes, there is some definition which can dodge any specific criticism, but those definitions aren't mutually coherent or consistent. You either get problem A or problem B. You can't use one definition to address one and another definition for the other.
This is common of many ideologies. I've found this to be especially true when talking with feminists. They bounce between a push for equality (for example, abolishing employment structures which favor men), and a push for changes which favor women (for example, feminists in divorce law push for policies which favor the mother). When they get caught in a contradiction, the definition changes like a squiggly fish. That lack of rational, critical conversation translates into ineffective tactics, and a failure to achieve change.
Ya' gotta pick one definition. Then we can talk about it.
Since, ironically, you'd like me to find authoritative references before I talk more, here's one I found on Google:
anarchy
1a : absence of government
b : a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority the city's descent into anarchy
c : a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government
2a : absence or denial of any authority or established order anarchy prevailed in the war zone
b : absence of order : disorder not manicured plots but a wild anarchy of nature— Israel Shenker
> Those are examples of how, unless you place explicit constraints on people's ability to amass power and abuse it, people will amass power and abuse it.
They will always do this? What is the source of this knowledge? And I ask that in the literal sense, not rhetorically.
I would say it's the fact that despite humanity's initial state being anarchy, all over the world human society has developed along basically these same patterns.
I think it is more complicated than that, although I agree in some circumstances laws deter bad behavior. However many laws are passed to protect the bad behavior of the powerful. Moreover, under better environments people may organize themselves effectively with only cultural norms - not laws. Think happy families living together without any laws governing their behavior or tribes with cultural norms protecting a common grazing area.
As mentioned upthread though, there's a lot of reason to believe these self-regulating small societies work specifically when they're small - once you get to the point where you don't have a personal connection with everyone in your tribe, the social cost of acting out of the established norm decreases - instead of your close friends shunning you, maybe a few strangers think you're an asshole.
Anarchy doesn't mean "absence of law". Absence of law is anomie. One is often confused for the other, but there is a slight difference.
Anarchy is more about you and your community having the autonomy to decide your own rules, not a central authority. I believe "autonomy" is the key word here, not "law".
So I am playing a bit of devils advocate here, but then isnt the KKK a good example of Anarchy? The community agreed that part of the residents should not live there anymore, they made there own laws and tried to enforce them.
No, because the KKK itself represents a coercive power structure acting without the consent of those it attempt to enforce power over, which is inherently not anarchist.
If the KKK only tried to harass or harm people who had consented to be subject to them, then you'd have an argument.
This doesnt tally with the previous comment. Then you are saying anarchy has laws, but they cannot be enforced.
So your interpretation is no laws (which can be enforced): then how would you prevent the KKK in forming (violating your rule) without a government to enforce "no minority killings, please"
To call the KKK anarchist is to ignore that they had the tacit approval of the state and contained within their ranks many state actors. It seems odd to me to ask how Anarchism would prevent the rise of the KKK when the state permitted the creation of the KKK.
One view is to see the KKK as basically raiders/marauders who left their own communities to terrorize other communities. Without a state to intervene on their behalf obviously the affected communities would have to rise up in self-defense. So, what really happened? The state didn't intervene on the behalf of black communities. The state would've brutally put down any attempt to resist the KKK with force, black communities were not permitted to use force. The KKK were a state sanctioned paramilitary group carrying out a mission of terror with the aim of preserving the racial hierarchy at the center of the south's the social order.
You might ask "How would this be better with Anarchism?" but I find myself asking "How could it be any worse?"
No, I'm saying anarchy implies laws arranged by consent.
The existence of the KKK is not in violation of anything I suggested. If they want to be an abhorrent debating club, they should be free to.
But the moment they try to initiate aggression, it is justified for anyone to defend themselves, an anarchism would generally consider it justified for anyone to band together to defend themselves, against that aggression, up to and including e.g. creating militias or a standing police force.
The key points throughout are consent and voluntary association, and the ability to withdraw that consent at any time. Not absence of structure, but the minimal structure needed at any time, arranged by consent.
If anything, anarchists are obsessed with structure of society - that is why there are so incredibly many different anarchist ideologies.
I frankly find it bizarre that this is a difficult concept to understand, because conceptually it is very simple: Consider what happens if we delegate power bottom up, instead of appointing representatives who delegate power top to bottom.
In theory nothing needs to change other than that, if we believe that current systems accurately reflects the will of the people.
The reason we're even discussing this is that nobody - not supporters of anarchism or its detractors actually believe that current societies accurately reflects the will of the people.
But detractors assume that people will withhold consent to every structure they believe are needed to maintain a functioning society.
Ultimately it reflects a fear of democracy - a fear that most people will opt to let society collapse, and it's really quite odd to behold these arguments.
Consider that people are in charge no matter what. In the current system, you simply decide to trust others using coercion over the ability of negotiating voluntary agreements for acceptable behaviour.
If people can't be trusted, the current system is also flawed, and has far more severe failure points: get a bad leader, and bad behaviours gets enforced with the power of a nation state.
Anarchy is not absence of law, but presence of consent and negotiation at every level.
I don't even think many would, the problem is that it only takes a few. The damage that a dedicated antisocial hyperminority can do to a society that lacks rules and enforcement of said is significant... Even more so in an age where technology acts as a force multiplier.
The idea of how an anarchic society would be run is that you would need strong social norms, and people willing to use violence in order to prevent authority from rising, which effectively deals with small antisocial minorities.
And where in the world has it played out like this?
Instead of examples of peaceful anarchism, the history of the world is full of examples showing that those with the will to use violence use it for their own ends, form gangs, and militias, become warlords...
Sure, the Zapatistas, the Apoists, and a few indigenous anarchist groups.
Forming gangs and militias is difficult when the status quo is good for most people resulting the majority being willing to use violence to avoid being ruled by gangs and warlords.
The written history, the recent past. We can observe settlements from the past but know very little about the time before farming because there were few or no settlements, which is not actually that long ago. This "will to use violence use it for their own ends, form gangs, and militias" might only be because we ran out of resources and space and shifted from "mother earth provides" to "this is mine". At least, that's what a book I'm reading hints at, but again, it acknowledges very strongly just how little we know.
There isn't a going back to before possessions, obviously, but I'm also not convinced that a majority of us are dishonest by nature. Certainly enough that we need laws and enforcement, but what would happen if we manage to get to a point where there are enough resources for everyone and automatic systems do most of the necessary work like making food? Do we still need the same level of security just to protect ourselves from a few sadists or could we have a more anarchistic society? Can we embrace some of the ideas that those unhappy with our current society propose?
Honestly I feel like most of this discussion is a definition issue. One person will say "anarchism is great" or "that isn't what anarchism is, you have to picture it this other great way" whereas another will make different assumptions and conclude it's ridiculous. It's a bit like being in a communistic country talking about switching to capitalism and arguing that human nature's greed can't be trusted or something. Rather, it might make more sense to propose incremental changes rather than talk about a completely different society where (if we're all being honest) nobody really has any friggin' clue if it'll increase median happiness.
One thing that is clear from history is that forming groups is bad. Making this about us vs them (anarchists vs <insert other group>), left versus right, etc.) inherently causes disagreement when I think most everyone's goal is increasing the common good.
> One thing that is clear from history is that forming groups is bad.
Dividing groups and pitting them against each other is bad. Forming groups was the innovation that set our primate ancestors apart from their solitary mammal peers. None of us are as strong as all of us.
Humans vs competing species is different from humans vs humans, though. I think it's within our capacity to learn to do only the latter, provided there are enough resources to at least have a reasonable living. We'll need to make the 'western' lifestyle require only one earth for everyone.
This behaviour is most definitely promoted by capitalism, so I wouldn't be so fast to make it a general principle. In fact, all proof shows that humans are extremely cooperative and social when the going gets tough or disaster strikes.
I think it's really telling that this disaster-anarchism argument comes up so regularly. The question isn't how society functions during a state of exception, it's how it functions on day 2 after the excitement is over when things go back to normal.
It's like all other revolutions having failed the revolution has now been outsourced to hurricanes and floods. if you want to argue that capitalism or the status quo or whatever is bad, make the case how anarchism functions on an ordinary, boring day, that is to say how it organises regular life, that is the relevant question.
> humans are extremely cooperative and social when the going gets tough or disaster strikes.
2020 being a great example.
Jesus, this whole discussion is such a shitshow. Every time I hear about anarchism I keep wishing someone would explain to me how it all works, I expected a lot from HN users, but all I keep reading is fairy tails with obvious holes the size of Mount Everest. Like, did anyone even consider to think how you'd resolve the obvious market fallacies (which, despite the name, have nothing to do with capitalist markets, but simply with humans / rational self-interested agents).
It was an exaggeration. But there are enough humans who are not interested in fair behaviour, but only getting ahead at almost any cost, that the idea of an unregulated world is laughable.
How many hardened sociopaths can an anarchy sustain before it either collapses or becomes a mockery of its own self-direction and mutualism principles?
Is it not a good thing if there are no structures in place for those people to abuse to oppress others? We've seen states captured by murderous lunatics time and time again. It seems having structures in place for those kinds of people to abuse has worked very poorly.
As long as the concentration of power in the hands of nation states have been the foundation for most of the worst mass murders in human history, it seems quaint to worry that people arguing for making power shared and collective rather than allowing it to be concentrated will do worse.
Power is concentrated and delegated top down. That's the point. If I want to withhold consent to be policed a certain way, I can't, even if I only e.g. live and interact with people who similarly want to withhold consent (nobody would suggest that I would have the right to unilaterally dictate the rules if I interact with others who don't share my views).
So the problem is that the power is not collective other than the power to vote for who the power will be concentrated with. There's a massive disconnect there where, e.g. if we go by US elections, about half the population at any point are ruled by a system they have not consented to.
That is not collective power, at least not collective and shared power of the people, but of a majority at most (even assuming representatives do what their voters want them to, which is also a dicey proposition). Nearly every government in the world tries to limit this tyranny of the majority by legally protected rights to secure the minority against government overreach too, but the fact that they need to demonstrates how flawed this model is.
You assume a power vacuum, but nobody is suggesting a power vacuum, but power mediated by consent, negotiation and bottom up delegation rather than top down coercion.
As long as you're assuming a power vacuum, you're arguing against a strawman.
We have power mediated by consent. You cannot have individuals opting out of a societal system of laws or murderers will do just that.
> If I want to withhold consent to be policed a certain way, I can't, even if I only e.g. live and interact with people who similarly want to withhold consent
We have power enforced without any of kind of consent. We get to vote for our rulers, and ~half of us get ignored any given period. There's no consent there.
Your example of murderers just reinforce that you don't understand the ideology you're arguing against, and opt for arguing against strawmen instead.
You can have people opting out easily without the extremes you suggest. E.g. a murderer can not reasonably "opt out" because they "opted in" the moment they engaged with someone else without their consent.
Again the key is consent, bottom up organisation and voluntary association, not relinquishing all means of protection.
A more reasonable example would be that it is coercive to deny others the freedom to choose what they ingest. Even if it's drugs you don't like. If you want to organise on a small scale a drug free commune, that'd be reasonable. If you try to expand that to a country, it becomes coercive and unjust be nature of forcing massive upheavals of peoples lives, and enforced monopolies over large swathes of land if they don't want to live like that.
Which brings us to this:
> What do you think countries are?
Structures I have no ability to withhold consent from without uprooting my life and/or subjecting myself to another, which unjustly claim monopoly on power over large parts of land. Reject property rights, and by extension territorial claims of states comes part and parcel with all left-libertarian ideologies.
The coercive nature of the relationship means there's a power balance that precludes any reasonable claim of consent.
This highlights the typical left/right view of de facto rights vs. de jure rights. The ability to leave a country confers me de jure rights to extricate myself from the rule of a given state. But de facto I have no ability to find anywhere that provides the freedoms I want, because nowhere exist where they are available. A right wing view is that the existence of the de jure right means I am free. The left wing view is that the de facto barriers to achieving the goal means that I am oppressed, because real world abilities trump theoretical possibilities any day.
> A more reasonable example would be that it is coercive to deny others the freedom to choose what they ingest.
It's an excellent example to consider, since vaccines are in that category and some people's free choice to not take vaccines impacts the health of people who cannot take them for reasons of medical complication and now cannot rely on herd immunity to keep them safe.
> Reject property rights, and by extension territorial claims of states comes part and parcel with all left-libertarian ideologies.
While I like those ideologies for their moral purity, I think they fail in practicality for the reason you've just described: they're unstable. Another group with organized use of force and a willingness to take and hold territory displaces them, and then they get to define their actions as just in their moral framework, regardless of what the libertarians think.
How many hardened sociopaths can any system take before the same? Look at America right now, with a narcissistic psychopath installed at the highest level of a supposed democracy.
Systems built on mistrust of human nature (i.e. checks and balances) can take more.
The amount he hasn't been able to do in that position is testament to that. Imagine if the US had been an anarchy instead and he'd amassed enough same-thinking folk to take it over?
You should read about how Anarchy treats it's mentally ill before you decide they don't have a solution to that simple problem. The way we treat mentally ill in Capitalism is a crime.
The line you quoted doesn't say that people will act reasonably, but rather that they are capable of acting reasonably.
The interesting (and massive) problem is figuring out why some people act unreasonably in the same situation as someone else who doesn't. If it's something that can be addressed through mechanisms like the provision of healthcare, UBI, equality, or addressing inequality then perhaps society can be structured to have a very minimal government without the need for so many laws simply by making sure everyone is treated fairly and not left in a position where unreasonable actions are a solution to their immediate problems.
> addressed through mechanisms like the provision of healthcare, UBI, equality, or addressing inequality then perhaps society can be structured to have a very minimal government
The (most likely/obvious implementation of the) first half of that seems diametrically opposite of “very minimal government”.
Having a government that's there to do no more than take in tax receipts and spend the money on essentials would be minimal compared to what we have at the moment. Right now the government involves itself in practically every aspect of people's lives. It doesn't have to be that way.
But your minimal government wouldn't work. If you have taxes then you need a justice system to enforce collection of taxes. You'll also need a military to prevent outsiders from taking your treasury.
The provision of healthcare, UBI and the like is itself incompatible with "very minimal" government - each of those would involve government control over a non-trivial fraction of GDP. I'm not saying that these things aren't worth doing; some of them may well be. We should be mindful of the costs, however.
For that matter, anarchist thought hasn't historically shown much awareness wrt. the importance of, e.g. social capital provision, as enabled by voluntary "grassroots" institutions like churches and community clubs, as something that's incredibly effective at promoting reasonable, pro-social values and behaviors. (Some of these institutions necessarily involve various sorts of hierarchy and ranking, such that, e.g. a Scout Guide would rank higher than a newcomer Scout. Many anarchists would intuitively dismiss any such hierarchy as inherently coercive - despite the entirely voluntary character of these organizations.)
There has actually been a great deal of thought (and some practice) on provision of services and community grassroots organizations by some strains of anarchism. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism
However whether a bottom up, decentralized, participatory democracy still counts as government... I will leave up to the reader.
Tragedy of the commons, and the laziness of a false sense of security railings.
Basically; I agree with you, and I think it is because of the way people act in a society that seems structured.
People seem to think that if there is a crowd of people, then they are part of the crowd. If a crowd sees someone in trouble, then the people are generally found to be more reluctant to step up and offer help, compared to when they are alone (plenty of research seems to show this.)
I suspect this is a sort of commons tragedy, where we assume that a crowd must hold structure with “people who take care of that sort of thing”, or that someone who feels qualified will somehow step up.
From my own experience it also seems like people tend to relegate any issues to whosoever looks like they have any kind of uniform. (Even employees at shops, etc.)
Were it not the case, we can speculate that people who are forced to bear their own actions would be more inclined to act out their own moral and ethical leanings... rather than the implied relation that illegal = bad, and legal/not-illegal= good (or acceptable).
In a sense then, anarchy is when all that is legal encompasses everything that falls under a sort of Kantian categorical principle. While everything illegal is the universally opposite. (Basically where the extrinsic laws of society match the intrinsic moral values of all citizens.)
Consider there is how you want people to act and how you don't want people to act, to say that you are also reasonable implies that society collectively agrees with you, which would mean you are making a rule that everyone follows anyway. IF this isn't the case and you want people to act differently than they currently act then this is a social problem that can only be solved by engineering society to adopt your values. It just can't be done by dictating legally what people should do, some examples..
Prohibition; it works fine in countries that largely adopt religious values forbidding drinking.. but is impossible to be successful in countries who's society has not been engineered to accept it.
Woman's suffrage; laws banning women voting work fine in countries where the society already feel this way, in most western countries there would be outright revolt.
Even slavery can be legally enforced only to the degree society accepts it, from indentured servitude in societies that embraced laissez faire, to chain-gangs in societies that embraced philosophies of penance and damnation.
Rules and laws are only afterthoughts, put in place after society decides collectively how people should function. Because of this laws are largely superfluous to how individuals act.
I believe that the core issue is the size of the group. That small groups up to 100-150 people (where everybody knows each other personally) would be able to self-organize in an anarchist fashion. Going above that the us/them issues will increase, leading to a need for some type of government.
I think it's inability to work on large numbers of people is due to an even simpler explanation: the law of large numbers. One giant asshole can do a lot of damage, and with 1000 or more people, you can guarantee there are going to be at least a few.
Thomas Paine touches on this in his works. Every group past about 10 has a government even if it's just a patriarch figure. As the group grows, the government gets more complex and usually it's harder to represent everyone.
As Thomas Hobbes beautifully described what in his understanding would be the natural condition of mankind:
"In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and, which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."[1]
Societies exist as a natural evolution of human connectedness and dependence on each other. Laws as a natural evolution of complex societies attempting to find fair ways to settle disputes. Law enforcement as a natural evolution of societes that come up with laws that not everyone agrees to abide by. The idea that, were we to be left to our own devices would be model citizens is, as you very well put, "demonstrably false fairy tale". The fact that we have laws and law enforcement in the first place is evidence of that.
That being said, ever since I came across the works of Bakunin, Berkman, Goldman, Tolstoy, Camus, etc. as a teenager, I've considered myself very much an anarchist in the traditional and philosophical sense, but definitely not in the cultural sense. That is to say I don't believe that law and law enforcement are incompatible with anarchy: I do share the fundamental believe that all humans are created equal, and that there should be no hierarchies besides those that are natural and organic (e.g. my parents have certain authority over me in the family context, but my parents could equally become my students and I would have some academic authority over them in terms of mentorship, in my field of expertise). Organic hierarchies are the fabric of society and being human. We're not solitary animals, and hierarchies will always form in groups. We can agree that nobody should have any more rights and privileges than others based on claims of nobility, birth, ethnicity, gender, or any sort of social or cultural position, whilst at the same time accepting that in all human gatherings, certain group dynamics will emerge and that's okay as long as we respect each other as individuals and agree to abide by a common set of rules. But I definitely don't believe that humans are good by nature and that society corrupts us -- we are selfish by nature, self preservation has got us here. We're perfect at survival, even if that may mean taking another life, human or otherwise.
I read somewhere that mankind's success is as a result of our capacity for violence. Unfortunately it feels very accurate.
I think the whole point of the article is not insist that anarchy is a suitable organizing principle for society as a whole, but that pockets of anarchy already exist and perhaps we should consider allowing a bit more anarchy before we smother everything in heavy-handed power structures and legislation.
> Just look at how we treat the planet and other living things in the presence of lawful order.
Law isn't a basis for morality, and there's a lot to be said for how present (capitalist, consumerist) systems promote un-sustainability, despite many on an individual level rejecting those systems.
> Why would you assume that we would act righteously in the absence of law? It is painfully obvious that we would act much worse under anarchy.
You seem to be conflating anarchy with chaos (to be fair most people do, the word "anarchy" itself was probably used as an insult before it was even picked up by anti-authoritarian communists).
The weight of laws in our societies is so big that and it's meaning so large that it's probably more understandable if we say that anarchism doesn't want to supress laws [#]. One particularly good example of law system that couldn't be more anarchist is international law, the main point being that it's normative and not coercive. That's not saying it's not respected, indeed you may suffer consequent actions from some countries if you don't: from diplomatic troubles (moral judgments) to degraded economic relationship (exclusions) and ultimately war (use of force). The basic assumption is that every subject of international law recognizes that the other subject are sovereign entities.
International law is for me the proof that such organizational principles do work in practice, and it's a source of inspiration for thinking about anarchistic organization. Quoting wikipedia, all the right keywords are in there:
> [international law] is the set of rules, norms, and standards generally accepted in relations between [subjects]. [..] It establishes normative guidelines [..].
> The sources [..] include [..] custom [..], treaties, and general principles of law recognized by most [..] legal systems.
> [It] operates largely through consent, since there is no universally accepted authority [..].
The conclusion i'm hitting is that at the planetary level, we do live in some kind of anarchist system. For me it's the biggest lesson of anarchism: the main goal is to conquer the level of states, extending down from the international level and up from the inter-individual cooperative level. I could continue with the fact that this level of states is also the realm of private corporations, which then bridges with usual marxist cooperative production systems rethoric.
[#] The more precise statement would be that anarchistic principles refuse "the singleton" judiciary institution (one that assumes monopoly of justice, has jurisdiction over everything). Judges and courts may still exist, for example contracts could specify under which jurisdiction they may be disputed/upheld.
ps: don't criticize saying that international law is dominated by usa/western countries, that's another debate.
pps: I thought about this international-law example while i was reading Bolo'Bolo (by PM, free access). It's a really funny and thought inspiring short book. Its development on productive and economic relationships is really nice.
> Why would you assume that we would act righteously in the absence of law? It is painfully obvious that we would act much worse under anarchy.
Indeed, we know that (pace Rousseauian claims) man misbehaves not because some "system" has made him do so, but because he chooses to behave in such a manner, often knowing fully well he is choosing misbehavior. I think most of us, if we're honest, even if our moral understanding is variable, admit that we have acted in ways we knew were unjust before we acted.
To take this discussion further, government is a natural institution, i.e., one which follows from human nature and is natural to human societies for the sake of the common good (whether at the level of the family, the community, nation, the world, etc.). Part of what the common good entails is the administration of justice which requires an authority to administer that justice. In your example, if the problem is, say, industrial destruction of the common good that is our environment which we need to live (provided there exist better ways to secure the good produced by legitimate industry or legitimately permissible industry without that destruction), then the problem is a deficient law that fails to guard the common good.
Healthy criticism of authority is important because we know that those in authority are capable of choosing badly either through malice or incompetence. However, just at there is an excessive deferral and submissiveness some show toward authority that subordinates evidence and reason to authority, there is also a hostility to the very idea of authority. The latter is what rests at the bottom of anarchism. Anarchism in practice devolves into the rule of the powerful because no authority acts as a bulwark against power for the sake of the common good.
So on the one hand we have unbridled capitalism wherein the powerful dominate and exploit the weak, and on the other we have socialism which is the tyranny of government. Both converge at essentially the same point. In both cases, the powerful impose their "laws" on the populace for their own benefit. The empirical evidence corroborates as much and there is no sense in placing one's hope in either. The meat grinder of human existence on this earth is not to be abolished and the solution is not revolution. All revolutionaries are opportunists that prey on resentment, whether it is the product of envy or righteous anger, and parlay it into their own power. It also results in orgies of violence, dead bodies, and rivers of blood.
We are much better off engaging in good actions in our daily lives, many which may require pain, suffering, and sacrifice. All social action is the action of individuals for individuals. A society is only as good as its members. To many, that message isn't sexy. It lack the ecstatic grandeur or the messianic and eschatological satisfaction of what revolution seems to promise. They are like the woman at the well. There is a lesson to be learned here.
How do rules get enforced?
Who enforces them?
Who decides who enforces?
Do rule enforcers therefore have power over other people?
What if people, or large groups of people don't like the rules and refuse to follow them?
Everyone, and as the community grows they'll likely go form volunteer policing to some dedicated people paid via contract, as they used to be historically.
I think what you meant to say is that sounds like its just tweaks to the existing system
The antonim of reform is revolution.
It does not matter what you reform towars: You could reform democracy to nazism, or communism to market capitalism. In fact such reforms have happened before.
You could peaceeacefull and managed change of existing system is called
> It is painfully obvious that we would act much worse under anarchy.
You're rankly speculating, and that puts me in control of the board.
I choose Barcelona, 1936.
Now is the part where you read the relevant Wikipedia entry and attempt to find the intersection between the facts there and what I quoted from you above.
And just to keep the conversation focused: the inability to defend a city against an impending attack from fascists and communists is a completely different problem than the people in the city "acting much worse under anarchy."
That assumes that the presence of lawful order makes things better, which is sort of the whole question this article is about.
You can construct a pretty good argument that, say, absent the structures of "lawful order" around which large corporations grow, fewer people would be driving hours to work each day, drinking water out of plastic bottles, flying across the country on business trips, producing pesticides in Bhopal, piling up ammonium nitrate in Beirut, etc. I think most of us as individuals could lead happy and fulfilling lives and contributing to the advancement of humanity without any of that.
"I think most of us as individuals could lead happy and fulfilling lives and contributing to the advancement of humanity without any of that."
Your assumption is that we led happy and fulfilling lives before what we now call society, which is false. Bad harvest years would routinely decimate communities. Hunger also drove people to steal from others, many times violently (kill, rape, and ransack), and in the best case where they only stole your food, you were now left to starve because a famine affects everyone, and the victims were already on rations as it were.
Local spots of violence in the struggle for the very few resources that we had were very common place. As societies evolved, such conflicts for resources became more necessarily more complex (think bands, think small militias, think city-state armies, think all out war).
The main misconception I tend to see people have is that they somehow believe that our current condition is somehow different from the condition we were in. As if society was imposed on us and we became bad. We are society. Be it a community of ten or a community of a thousand. Good an evil are both sides of the same coin, it's just our nature.
> Your assumption is that we led happy and fulfilling lives before what we now call society, which is false.
No, that's not my assumption, and I'm confused why you think it is. I'm simply saying that I, right now, in our current state of society, am not driving a car to work or buying water bottles in my current happy and fulfilling life, and the only reason I did that previously (and might do so in the future) is because a corporation backed by our current form of government made it so that I needed to do that to have a happy and fulfilling life.
I didn't say anything about the state of humanity before modern society. You make some good points, but I don't think they have much to do with this particular discussion. You may well be raising a different good objection to anarchism, but it's not the objection I'm responding to.
But laws also enable rights for minorities, which the majority isn't free to trample over or ignore. To take one example that's particularly close to my heart, laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act can compel corporations to make their products and services accessible even if they'd rather not. I think I and many of my friends wouldn't have nearly as happy and fulfilling lives if not for that.
Maybe. Or maybe a band of like-minded people get together, arm themselves and take over the "individuals leading happy and fulfilling lives", declaring themselves monarchs and killing all those who oppose them.
Sure, that's a reasonable objection to anarchism, but that's also not particularly relevant to the question of whether individuals on their own will harm our planet, I think?
The thesis of the article is that anarchism is not particularly violent or exotic, but a natural extension of very common moral beliefs and practices. One could argue this is interesting in its own right, given popular depictions of anarchism, but the article goes even further, articulating an anarchistic view of human nature. You can reasonably disagree with this view, as others here have, but to criticize these "talking points" as "generic" seems precisely to miss the point.
The let me tell you more tactic is intentional. Longer sales copy tends to sell more. That is, the length of the sales copy is positively correlated with the conversion rate.
I have issues with this article and with anarchism, and I agree that some of this is sophomoric (not sure about sophistry though).
However, this article isn't really for you (or me). There are surprisingly many people who think that "anarchists" simply want to see the world burn and are promoting a society where their children are as likely to be murdered while out playing as not. This article is just saying that that's not the case.
It's obviously too hand-wavy to take us beyond that.
> There are surprisingly many people who think that "anarchists" simply want to see the world burn and are promoting a society where their children are as likely to be murdered while out playing as not.
Indeed. Anarchists clearly do not want to see the world burn, they just redefine "world" to be the few blocks that surround their home. And children are clearly safe when one subscribes to the correct private security service. If children are murdered, that’s obviously a violation of the contract with the security service that must be settled through arbitration.
This is such demagogue reasoning that it is hard to know where to begin.
A good indication of something being off is when it is trivial to rewrite the points to support the exact opposite point. I.e.
"Are You A Conservative? The Answer May Surprise You!"
"If there’s a line to get on a crowded bus, do you wait your turn and refrain from elbowing your way past others even in the absence of police?"
"If you answered “yes”, then you are used to acting like a conservative! A most basic conservative principle is that there exists an enduring moral order. Thus voluntary community is an important aspect of human life leading to reasonable understandings with each other and to treat each other with dignity and respect."
You assumption that being (the traditional kind of) conservative is the opposite of being an anarchist would be strange to many anarchists. Noam Chomsky has said that he considers himself a conservative in the traditional sense. Also see the essay by the '60s anarchist Paul Goodman called "Notes of a Neolithic Conservative".
I believe the parent comment's point wasn't about conservatives specifically, but rather that you can just change a word or two and insert any ideology you'd like by saying that since $ideology has [insert some words here] and therefore would also form a queue at the bus station.
You could say the same about ethical theories too. They all have a way of explaining what they would do when confronted with a runaway trolley or some silly thing like that. The fact that all political ideologies have a way of explaining why they would get in a bus queue just shows that asking someone about why they line up for a bus is a good way to find out about how they think about the world politically. It's just using a simple example to illustrate how anarchists make sense of the world. There are many people who (understandably) think that they don't live their life in an "anarchist" way, and this article is just showing people that there is probably a lot about their life which is consistent with anarchism. There is probably also much which is consistent with the principles of other ideologies, but anarchism is one of the least understood, so a simple exercise like this can be informative.
[That being said, as something of an anarchist, I don't share the Graeber's conception of anarchism but that's another issue.]
Hmm, I'm not sure I agree. I think this is more an indictment of artificially striated political beliefs than this article. I also believe that most of where conservatives and liberals disagree are in how to deal with exactly the sort of mechanisms that anarchy seems to say are the problems in the first place, i e. Bureaucrats, the military, police, law etc.
I think in many ways it's impossible to have this discussion with a U.S. audience.
The idea of force and violence being the solution to everything is deeply, deeply ingrained in U,S, culture. Simply suggesting that reason and cooperation can solve some of the problems we in the U.S. attempt to solve with more violence is usually met with the "starship troopers" ideology that violence is the actual source of legitimacy of all government.
And we do treat everything this way. We have a problem and declare war on it. War on drugs, war on poverty, war on obesity. That might sound like a tongue-in-cheek way to state a problem is serious, but consider that mindset an entire culture must have to make "war" be the perpetually used shorthand for the ultimate solution to every social problem.
And a large portion of the U.S. apparently has no concept of a social contract and a sense of cooperative action or "doing my part."
It's like violence and force is the only tool we have in the U.S. so every social ill is met with the further application of it, way beyond what is reasonable.
And it seems to be a one way trip. You can never suggest that we have gone too far. Apparently there can never be too many police, too much military spending, or too many people in prison. They only right answer is more of that, please.
We are teetering on the precipice of complete authoritarianism because of our culture and it's scary.
This is not a US specific problem. Pretty much any way you try to quantify this, the US looks similar to many European countries in terms of how the public feels about government uses of force.
For example, when asked how confident they are that the military will act in their best interests, Americans give similar answers to people in France, UK, Italy.
The US may be more partisan, with a larger portion of people on a side that can be identified with "increased use of force", but I don't think the US is qualitatively different overall.
This comment would've made more sense a decade or so ago. You say you can "never suggest we've gone too far" or "it's impossible to have this discussion with a U.S. audience" but the topics you raise have increasingly been a part of the public discourse in recent years. I agree that it's distressing to see how some people view the world w.r.t. these issues but I don't agree that applies to the whole country, or even the majority at this point.
I blame religion. Not all religion, not every religious person, and not exclusively, but looking back - there was a strong emphasis that "we're all awful people really at our core, and the only reason anyone is half decent to anyone is because they don't want to burn in hellfire" in my religious teachings (protestant Wesleyan, primarily).
I bought into that for a long time. Then I dropped religion, and realized I didn't really want to be an awful person, just as a rule of thumb. It wasn't too much of a jump to realize most people weren't awful most of the time, and it's only a handful that, for whatever reason, didn't get the memo. Even if many people manage to convince themselves otherwise.
War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. The machinery of government sets and enforces the drastic penalties. The minorities are either intimidated into silence, or brought slowly around by subtle process of persuasion which may seem to them really to be converting them. Of course, the ideal of perfect loyalty, perfect uniformity is never really attained. The classes upon whom the amateur work of coercion falls are unwearied in their zeal, but often their agitation, instead of converting merely serves to stiffen their resistance. Minorities are rendered sullen, and some intellectual opinion bitter and satirical. But in general, the nation in wartime attains a uniformity of feeling, a hierarchy of values culminating at the undisputed apex of the State ideal, which could not possibly be produced through any other agency than war. Other values such as artistic creation, knowledge, reason, beauty, the enhancement of life, are instantly and almost unanimously sacrificed, and the significant classes who have constituted themselves the amateur agents of the State, are engaged not only in sacrificing these values for themselves but in coercing all other persons into sacrificing them.
Bourne was a Progressive, but was a critic of WWI, a minority position among his peers. This led him to significant ostracism before his death from Spanish Flu. I find it almost undeniable that Bourne was correct, especially in the contemporary political situation. Progressive president Woodrow Wilson was jailing socialists for sedition, and his administration was thoroughly in love with its own power.[1] It stands to reason given what we've seen since that groups in the media, the academe and the state itself have explicitly adopted the warlike posture Bourne criticizes.
So I think you're right, but it's a phenomenon from the last century or so that had originated sporadically in the decades after the Civil War. The reductionist debasement of all problems into enemies vanquished by a conquering army is mostly an artifact of the constitutional structure we've had since then, and the institutional founts of power that sustain it.
> And it seems to be a one way trip. You can never suggest that we have gone too far. Apparently there can never be too many police, too much military spending, or too many people in prison. They only right answer is more of that, please.
Personally, I think it's not taken far enough. Leveraging force to eliminate ignorance would, I believe, benefit society. If we allow those who would push untruths for either personal gain or simply out of ignorance, what does society have to lose by ridding itself of them?
I don't understand anarchy. Take littering for an example. Would an anarchist system (oxymoron alert) have fines for littering? How about signs and a slogan? TV advertisements?
Another example: I regularly volunteer at conventions. Somewhere between 90 and 95% of people follow the rules without much prompting. 5-10% of people don't... but I sincerely believe that without volunteers watching, that number would go up sharply. Another reason people behave is the threat of their badge being revoked.
> "For thousands of years people lived without governments. In many parts of the world people live outside of the control of governments today. They do not all kill each other."
Hahaha no. Just no. People may not have lived under the control of formal governments, but there is always some sort of power structure. They may not have killed each other with systematic warfare, but small raids and personal violence killed a lot of people per capita.
---
Having said all that, I do think that internalizing the rules of society does far more than overt displays of power, like police or military parades; but I also think that the police play an important role in decreasing public crime. However, I also do not think that simply adding more police or increasing the harshness of enforcement will decrease public crime further.
Consider that your conventions do not require the power of law enforcement to be able to deal with most problems. You can self-organise to set rules, and show away people who refuse to comply.
Anarchists want more of that, and less of power imposed from above.
Proudhon, the father anarchism, was a mutualist - he wanted most functions of society to be contracted between people,the way a convention goer agrees to terms when entering a convention.
It's not no rules and no enforcement, but voluntary association and consent and stripping away coercion wherever possible.
> You can self-organise to set rules, and show away people who refuse to comply.
Aka "we don't need law enforcement, we can become law enforcement ourselves". And then you have law enforcement. Sounds like a reset more than an alternative.
Not quite so simple: this is what "community policing" is all about. Many portland protesters were there because they wanted the national guard out. National guard soldiers who didn't live there, weren't members of the community... Who could act shitty to community members with no consequence.
Sure, but that's a reset. "I don't like the persons who do the law enforcement, I want to become the law enforcement". And then, of course, not be replaced by somebody who doesn't like that style of law enforcement.
That would most likely quickly lead to massive segregation by any major criteria available, as "community policing" essentially means "no written laws, no recourse, we'll apply them as we see fit", ergo if you're not tightly aligned with the majority in your specific area, you're going to have a terrible time - so you leave for a place where they are more like you. Presumably while leaving your stuff behind to provide valuable "community resources".
I'm not saying that that couldn't be a good thing (homogeneity = less conflict), but I always get the feeling that there's a lot of magic involved ("we will find ways to come to consensus", "once we are free, all disagreement vanishes", which often sounds like wink wink and a few mass graves somewhere) and a lot of what is hand-waved away will present extremely large problems that will quickly make most people long for the stable, predictable and relatively tolerant society we have today.
> “I don't like the persons who do the law enforcement, I want to become the law enforcement"
IMO that’s an overly pessimistic view of those who push for community policing. In reality, it’s more like “we want people with stakes in the community’s wellness to police it, not those who see it as their daytime stomping ground.”
> That would most likely quickly lead to massive segregation
Really? Community policing = “no written laws”? You don’t think there’s a middle ground between “friendly neighborhood policemen” and Judge Dredd?
> if you're not tightly aligned with the majority in your specific area, you're going to have a terrible time
Right, because we currently live in a society that’s totally not segregated by wealth, race, culture, religion, sexuality, or political views. And clearly, the police system has been our bulwark against non-aligning minorities being persecuted! That’s what the protests are all about, right?
> Right, because we currently live in a society that’s totally not segregated by wealth, race, culture, religion, sexuality, or political views.
If local majorities set the rules and aren't constrained by the state in what they can do, you'll think back to these days as the glory when everything was (in comparison) diverse and people tolerated each other. Balkanization describes the effect of that kind of community policing. And you better be ready to adjust to local laws when traveling through the different zones.
The system a convention uses of having volunteers watching for bad behavior is actually already similar to anarchist concepts of community self defense.
Under an anarchist society, the folks tasked with handling these sorts of things would be volunteers elected by the community (in a con they're instead volunteers screened by the con committee). There would also be an expectation that, in public spaces, it's everyone's job to step in and stop a problem like, say, sexual harassment (which some cons also expect).
Having seen these principles in action at CHOP, I think it really does provide a better and more equitable outcome. However, anarchist systems do suffer from moving very slowly at times.
I posted this already to a different question, but tell me: according to what you said, isnt the KKK a good example for this? It came from the community, was supported by the community, also they were very outspoken against (falsely accused) sexual harassment.
Playing the devils advocate here, but I really would like to know why this is not an example of anarchy; of course answers like people will behave differently if there is no capitalism I find hard to accept without evidence.
The KKK enforces law outside of its community. It's not like they're involving black people in the decision of who gets lynched.
Anarchists are on the opposite end of the inclusion spectrum, even including the wrongdoer in the decision process for what the punishment is, when possible.
Thanks for the answer, but what does that mean practically? Anarchy is only for anarchists (which the correct mindset)? What about all the other people?
One of the fundamental ideas behind anarchy is that legitimate authority only comes from the community that authority affects.
So, say you live in an anarchist commune, but do not believe in anarchy yourself. You're still invited to the meetings where policy is decided, and while you're not forced to, there's a lot of peer pressure to attend. You're still subject to the group's decisions.
Say you completely disagree with this and want to go do something else. The commune tries to get you to attend a meeting about how to respect your wishes to be excluded, possibly sends a delegate if you refuse to participate in even that. They do their best to accommodate whatever it is you're trying to do, within reason (and anarchists are usually very accommodating). People who are extremely stubborn and to the point of being borderline hypothetical are a problem for the anarchist system, but in the end the solution is chosen by a bunch of humans thinking about the situation, and it's not like any other system has a better source of reasoning than humans.
This is starting to sound less like good-faith questions than it did when it started. Are you trying to poke holes, or are you trying to understand how this is something someone could actually believe would work? Are you asking yourself how your questions are resolved in existing power structures?
I never realised, but I think my trying to understand something works by trying to poke holes.
I generally found the idea of self governance very appealing, and didnt think much about it, since I thought people have figured out some good ideas how to make it work. When I was getting older, I got more doubts. My biggest doubt/worry currently is that these kind of ideas can actually prepare the grounds for (local) genocide. I am trying to figure out if these worries are justified and this concept has to be rejected for the good of minorities, or if the concepts are advanced enough and take human nature into account.
I do not know if this constitutes bad faith questioning.
Consider direct democracy. If the populous directly proposes and votes for explicit genocide.. how is that a failure of the system? That's democracy in action. To believe in Democracy fundamentally is to believe that The Will Of The People should be done, whether it be noble or heinous. You have to trust the people to make their own decisions and to learn from their mistakes after they have borne the consequences of their actions.
If you concentrate power then only a few get to decide on the matter of genocide. Don't you want a direct say against genocide?
Currently the people bear no responsibility for the actions of their government. They can always say "I just voted for him I didn't know he was going to do that." They are never culpable, never responsible. How can society learn under such conditions?
It's easy for many to ask "What if someone does bad?" under a proposed alternate political system while over looking that representative Democracy is just rebranded tyranny.
Instead of one king we have thousands. Kings of law, kings of the court, kings of action. The people who decide the system have no checks on their power. Once elected we have no hold on them, we can only say "Well we won't elect you again." But only after unjust law had been created. How can any person claim to speak for another? Don't you deserve a direct hand in shaping the rules and priorities of the society you live in? Why should you surrender that power to some random person? How much would you pay someone to undertake a complex and critical task for you without a contract? Would you pay them all of your share of power that is rightfully yours to shape the order of the world you live in-- receiving no guarantees in turn?
Taking littering: how littered is your home? Your work place? What about a Comercial Center? In an anarchy society, the littering is limited to your own property. Yes, you can live like a pig, as long as you don't litter properties of others. If you throw trash in other people property, you don't face a fine, but you will be expelled from the property and face a trial.
In our current society, littering is a problem in public spaces: streets, rivers, sea, etc. In other words: is a problem created by the government.
The main mistake of non-anarchist people is to believe that there are no rules in anarchy, or that it equates chaos or extreme individualism. But there are: the rules that people gives to themselves. An example: religions form anarchic structures. You can join and leave a religion at will, but they have a tight set of rules their members should follow. A power structure exists, but you can accept or leave it.
You might argue that a religion has a government, and thus it isn't "anarchy" according to the definition. But as I said, you can accept or reject the rules, and live under other religion rules, create your own religion or without religion at all. Anarchy equates to "stateless society based on voluntary associations".
The problem I’m having with this is that, while yes you don’t have to worry about the tragedy of the commons in your own home or church or place of work...it isn’t feasible to live your entire life outside the commons. How/where would one receive goods & services? How would one travel from A to B, and over whose infrastructure?
Infrastructure would indeed be communally owned, and the tragedy of the commons need not apply on communally owned property. An economist actually won a Nobel Prize for demonstrating actually how that happens :
"Political scientist Elinor Ostrom, who was awarded 2009's Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her work on the issue, and others revisited Hardin's work in 1999.[45] They found the tragedy of the commons not as prevalent or as difficult to solve as Hardin maintained, since locals have often come up with solutions to the commons problem themselves.[46] For example, it was found that a commons in the Swiss Alps has been run by a collective of farmers there to their mutual and individual benefit since 1517, in spite of the farmers also having access to their own farmland. In general, it is in the interest of the users of a commons to keep them functioning and so complex social schemes are often invented by the users for maintaining them at optimum efficiency.[47][48]"
Except infrastructure in most of the US is communally owned, and we had to institute authority and fines for littering.
While it's true that there exists some societies that have been able to overcome the tragedy of the commons (it's usually extremely small homogeneous societies), I don't think we have any evidence to suggest that it can provably be replicated to the rest of the world.
It's like suggesting that there exists some companies that are able to sustain themselves by being 100% WFH/remote, and therefore all companies should be able to sustainably do that.
If authority turns out to be absolutely necessary, that's okay. It just has to be limited and kept in check.
As for the tragedy of the commons being only transcended in small homogenous groups, that's stretching the definition of small and you can still have norms for larger groups without introducing tons of authority.
As for as some companies being able to WFH and others not, there are reasons that can be anaylized and propagated.
> As for the tragedy of the commons being only transcended in small homogenous groups, that's stretching the definition of small and you can still have norms for larger groups without introducing tons of authority.
I'm not sure what's more of a stretch: defining "farmers in the Swiss Alps" as as "small" community, or suggesting that what works for farmers in the remote Swiss Alps necessarily works for New York City or London or Amsterdam. What happens when people leave their cars parked on the sidewalk? What happens when people litter their dockless bike/scooter-share wherever they please, with no repercussions? What happens when a bicyclist in Brooklyn gets run over by an SUV? What happens if I decide that I like your house, and take it from you by force with my big gun along with my big goon friends, or perhaps even kill you for it? Hell, I live in Brooklyn where there are actual laws and policing RIGHT NOW, and there's still trash littered on the ground, dog walkers occasionally leaving their poop un-picked, and cars sometimes parked on the sidewalk: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.681231,-73.974329,3a,75y,334...
The devil is in the details, and the circumstances that make something work in the Swiss Alps are important, confounding variables. At best, the evidence suggests that minimal order can work in rural agrarian communities, and we see a lot of that play out in rural parts of the US and the EU already.
> If authority turns out to be absolutely necessary, that's okay. It just has to be limited and kept in check.
The vast majority of people agree with this. The contention is at what point this actually turns out to be "absolutely necessary", that's where reasonable people disagree. In an increasingly urbanized and globalized world, the point at which that happens has long since passed. The argument that the GP commenter made can probably rephrased as "anarchy doesn't scale".
I sincerely thought the author was joking at first. My lived experience is similar - some folks just genuinely act crappy just because they can, not because of "is actually caused by the systematic inequalities and injustice those armies, police, prisons and governments make possible."
Ironically, the more well-off are more likely to engage in explicitly anti-social behavior[1]...I'd hate to live in a world of anarchist Gordon Gekkos without an SEC.
Gordon Gekkos under Anarchy wouldn't be rich (because significant material accumulation is impossible without private property), so that wouldn't be a problem.
As for a tiny minority of assholes, they have been dealt with for millions of years using social norms and communal existence.
> I regularly volunteer at conventions. Somewhere between 90 and 95% of people follow the rules without much prompting. 5-10% of people don't...
This was my problem with the article. Yes, most people do act exactly as you say. But what if you get that entitled asshole who does actually cut in line? Because there are people out there who will do that. Now what do you do? Resort to mob justice?
There's a segment of the population that won't act that way towards others, and that segment is WHY we have those laws in place.
How many mass shooters are there in the US? How many in the UK? Much less (there are mass murders, terrorist attacks etc. but not very many mass shooters). The difference? Gun laws.
I'll never understand why so many people believe that if something isn't perfect, it's broken.
All one has to do is read a single article discussing law enforcement finding and preventing a bomb or a shooter to know that our laws are, in fact, preventing these scenarios. They're just not preventing all of the them.
And you know what? That's good. Freedom has inherent risk. I don't want to live in a society where we're so unfree that our laws are able to prevent all crime.
> All one has to do is read a single article discussing law enforcement finding and preventing a bomb or a shooter to know that our laws are, in fact, preventing these scenarios
I don't find articles like this very often. I do find many articles of cia and fbi failure, of the nsa trampling constitutional freedoms, of tsa failing 98% of audits though.
Okay but at what cost? Perhaps they're creating far more problems than they solve? To take from your argument, freedom comes with risks. If we have to risk the occasional sociopathic murderer and in return not have to worry about being shot by the national guard for the crime of standing on our porch, maybe that's a valid trade off.
A political agenda? We're here discussing politics. The bad faith version of what just happened is "look, slavery just works, ok? Is it cheap labor? Yes. Question answered."
To try to wade into this discussion with an absolute refusal to look at a broad picture of small pieces is nonsensical. How can you talk about preventing mass shootings with a simple statement of "yes, obviously laws and police prevent mass shootings?" You know what else does? A lack of guns. Or, maybe, really good mental health care and social welfare. Or, common sense gun control laws. Or... Etc.
By the way, I reject the notion that the FBI actually prevents these things. You look into the story and it's like, they found some vet with PTSD ranting about Jewish conspiracy theories on obscure web forums, then they reach out to the guy and foment him into a terrorist, then arrest him when he tries to buy a gun. Meanwhile 3 schools have been shot up by kids with guns.
Political agenda, come on. What an obnoxious thing to have said to me on this forum.
I have never believed in anarchism, as I don't believe that "human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to". But with COVID-19, I am seeing more proof than ever.
In my country (but I guess it's the same in most, except perhaps some Nordic countries) bars, pubs and discos only reduce seating or close indoor spaces when forced to by law, in spite of the evidence that they cause lots of outbreaks. A large chunk of people only started wearing masks when forced to by law, and take any chance the law allows to remove them. The government recommended remote work whenever possible but many companies just ignored it in spite of having many workers that could perfectly work remotely, and just implement it when forced by law. And so on.
Tell me again that "human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to"... it's not that "most politicians are selfish, egotistical swine", it's that many people are. I'd rather have a politician mandate masks or restrict bar/pub capacity (not because politicians are any better than the average person, but because they tend to have at least a bare minimum of education, access to advisors, some positive incentives -the next election- and no high stakes on the decision like, say, a bar owner) than have mask deniers and careless people spread the virus around by gathering in closed spaces without masks.
> it's not that "most politicians are selfish, egotistical swine", it's that many people are.
But you are saying this because you _agree_ with the politicians. You believe your preferred course of action is better than most peoples'. There are different viewpoints and pilosophies on what would work out best. There is disagreement on what course of action will get society through it and optimize future outcomes. It is egotistical, and poisoning the well, to call everyone else egotistical and selfish because they disagree with you and the politicians you support.
I think that people left to themselves _will_ disagree with one another, but will make decisions based on personal reasons, such as trying to get their business to survive, or to gain an advantage, or just because they don't particularly fear death, or any of thousands of other reasons. I may disagree with their decisions, but I'm careful about my own judgement of "what is rational" in someone else's circumstances, or even about my own knowledge of how they should optimally behave. There are too many politicians who believe they know how everyone else should do things. Certainty in knowledge is rarely real. The compromise is to let people decide for themselves.
>There are different viewpoints and pilosophies on what would work out best.
In this case, it mostly seems to be a difference between what Joe Blow says and what actual epidemiologists say. One of these is decidedly more valid than the other. I'm sure the experts disagree on some points, but these are details compared to the difference between the overall message they offer and what some self-centered goob or conspiracy theorist wants.
Even experts disagree. Countries have taken different actions precisely because of that. And even then, it can quickly devolve to "rule by experts" in every area of our life. I can listen to experts, I can learn from them, and I can make my own judgement call.
> difference between what Joe Blow says and what actual epidemiologists say
That's my point. It is a radical step to let Joe Blow, however silly or stupid I may think he is, to decide his own way of living. Maybe Joe Blow thinks I'm an idiot too for living the way I choose to do it.
That is quite an understatement, given that many experts made complete 180 turns contradicting what they said earlier.
But let's assume that they all agree on some point. Epidemiologists are still epidemiologists, i.e., people that know about diseases. They can inform you about how viruses spread, or what measures work best.
But they don't decide policy. Society needs to balance much more than just this epidemic. No intervention has zero unintended consequences.
Something that is getting clearer as numbers show more and more that the lockdowns so loved by the experts cause far more damage in other aspects of life, like premature death of untreated cancer patients, suicides, starvation, and so on.
> The compromise is to let people decide for themselves.
That's not a compromise. That's like saying "Some people like blindly shooting into crowds. Some do it to gain an advantage, some do it because they don't fear death, some do it for fun. Most gun wounds aren't even lethal. Sure, some people are opposed and think nobody should blindly shoot into crowds. So let's just compromise and say that everyone does what they want".
While I’m also not an anarchist, I don’t believe these are good examples. In fact, they could be an argument for anarchism.
With a lack of stimulus or even just in this economic system, bars and businesses in general are incentivized to stay open. They are being ‘coerced’ to stay open.
People started rejecting masks and shutdowns en masse after astroturfing and media convinced them to.
There are countries where orders were followed voluntarily and good results followed.
> With a lack of stimulus or even just in this economic system, bars and businesses in general are incentivized to stay open. They are being ‘coerced’ to stay open.
You could say this about any thief in any economic system, including the economy of survival (stealing food, shelter, etc). This is not a thing anarchy could solve.
> People started rejecting masks and shutdowns en masse after astroturfing and media convinced them to.
These aren't laws or government, and they would still exist in an anarchistic system.
> There are countries where orders were followed voluntarily and good results followed.
Yes, and there are no countries where no orders were required because people self-regulated.
Capitalism is fundamentally built on competition, it pits all participants against one another. It stratifies social bonds and breaks people apart because any cooperation represents unrealized exploitation.
Its why people are so miserable en masse, hostile, and chomping at the bit for targets to attack and hate. Its worse in America because theres almost no socialism at all to raise the floor of society - the country is buried in homeless and something like 1 in 5 persons is food insecure (probably higher now in the pandemic). If you fail in "winning" at capitalism to some degree you are supposed to feel fortunate shelters and soup kitchens exist. Sometimes. Society has broadly rejected them as the socialism they are and underfunds or destroys them where able.
Its also why drug addiction is totally out of control. Desperation and social isolation by our culture creates whole populations of people to be exploited by drug profiteers. Many other nations don't do this by catching people before they get that despondent or miserable and by helping (rehabilitation) rather than hurting (prosecution) those that get that bad.
The process is cyclic. The desperation feeds into the hate feeds into the predation feeds into the exploitation feeds into the desperation. But breaking out of it requires class consciousness that is opposed at every level - at the bottom by the animosity and inability to trust and at the top by the profits and power reaped through the harm done.
Stalin and Mao, and their successors, were totalitarian dictators. Trying to call the states they commanded socialist is as disingenuous as most other arguments in defense of capitalism. Its like saying the National Socalist German Workers Party was socialist or in the interest of workers. Instead it might just be that those of evil intent will co-opt the hallmarks and language in the peoples interests to undermine their efforts and seize power in their stead for their own tyrannical ends.
But yes, if you want to participate in a socialist revolution, make sure your movement isn't taken over by fascists.
They do if they are poorly run. The critique a socialist would make is that it is mechanically impossible to run a capitalist society in a fashion that reduces desperation to an appreciably low level. There are fewer theoretical reasons a socialist society should have this problem though practically any particular government and situation can get messed up.
If a socialist state fulfills its mandate to provide what it can for the betterment of its peoples condition than it would see many fewer cases of addiction than traditional capitalist economies with little or no socialism as a safeguard against destitution. See the Nordics, as per usual.
Resources are not infinite but human imagination is. We already produce more food than needed, there is hunger in the world, but not because of shortage but for multiple other reasons.
Main point is that humans are intelligent and we can choose where and how we compete or if we don't want to compete at all.
Holocene extinction is mainly because humans collaborated in much better way than any other animal can. Life might be build on competition but we see how powerful collaboration is.
> there is hunger in the world, but not because of shortage but for multiple other reasons.
That there's always been hunger in the world, even when we didn't produce more food than needed tells you production of food is not the resource limiting the distribution of food, other resources are. Even with all the imagination and collaboration of every communal government in the world to a scale never seen before in history, hunger is still a huge problem, because food is not the only resource, everything is a resource: time, interest, emotions, infrastructure, goods, distribution, people, communities, everything, and they compete with one another for our time and attention.
Everything is in competition, even your ideas and mine right now, and that's a good thing, but the first step to try and better our situation is to accept the reality of the natural world and not fight against it.
Just because you implement anarchism, you haven't automatically abolished capitalism. Bars would still be privately owned, and the owners would have incentive to keep them open in order to earn money to buy food (and protection etc).
In theory you could institute socialism in an arachic society. But that seems ... ill advised for anything larger than a small community. I can at least imagine socialism working in an exceptionally well organised state, but how would that work in a large-scale arnachy?
Money is just a concept. Whether that's governement issued legal tender, gold, cigarettes or coffee beans doesn't really matter. Silver coins were in use long before governments started stamping them.
Well, despite what anarcho-capitalists may say, in an anarchist society you would find it very hard to maintain capitalism as is familair to us today. This is because the State, and by extension its threat of violence, enforces private property rights. In a truly anarchist system where no other protection force evolves to reinstitute the government's role in protecting private property, you would have a very hard time building large amounts of capital. You may be able to control some small amounts of relatively private property (in addition to some personal property), but you absolutely could not maintain the current breadth of our global supply chain without the credible threat of violence from a large organization bent on maintaining private property rights.[0]
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[0]: Merely the threat of violence from a large organization, but not one with a goal of maintaining private property rights, is insufficient to maintain capitalist supply chains, because such an organization would naturally try to increase its own power through force. It would look more like a warlord, cartel, or small-time dictatorship with all of the corruption that implies than a smoothly working system of trade.
If you run a pub, either you're tougher than any challengers or you employ bouncers. Maybe you even have the local community on your side because they like how you run the pub.
The problem is if someone amasses enough capital to pay a gang of thugs to do his bidding. Then you can just take over properties, which earn you more money to pay more thugs. You can easily scale that to a global organisation. That's basically what drug cartels are. They run just fine, trade with other illegal organisations etc. It's just that the overhead of building infrastructure and providing security is enormous, so it only really works in extemely high margin industries like illegal drugs.
But according to anarchist theory, those thugs wouldn't do that because that would violate anarchy. This is the problem with most political theories. They assume near 100% compliance.
I think this argument loses a lot of nuance. The idea behind anarchism, I think, is that people will generally be good to each other and support each other when left to their own devices. In fact, if you think about it, the capacity for doing harm is only very large when you have highly centralised power structures. The fact that people aren't perfect and can do harm at all means, to anarchists, that we should not give the power to cause widespread harm to any individual or small group.
As for the COVID example, we are being told that the disease is spreading because of irresponsible people congregating in bars and salons etc. But if you look at the numbers, the main places that the disease is spreading is in workplaces like meat factories. People are not going to work in these places and spread the disease because of some "selfish, egotistical" inclinations. They are doing so because the society we live in has selfish people with a lot of power that are willing to get others infected for the sake of profit -- i.e. the business owners who are forcing people to work in unsafe conditions if they want to keep their jobs. I think this is further evidence that anarchism is a better approach.
> people will generally be good to each other and support each other when left to their own devices.
Yeah, and when doing so they create organizations with quid pro quo behavior and ultimately form new countries. Anarchy is therefore impossible. Not because we can't handle being left on our own but because we handle being left on our own by creating new organizations.
"the capacity for doing harm is only very large when you have highly centralised power structures"
I don't think this is true. Look at the Mongols. A few nomadic tribes got together and conquered most of Asia. They created a highly centralized power center by force but they didn't start out with one.
I don't think it was "highly centralized" compared to say Imperial China as an example. It was a bunch of nomadic tribes banding together. And there's no reason to believe all autocracy could be abolished and forever prevented from forming under (or outside of) an anarchist regime.
Here is the thing... a reasonable choice for an individual is not the same as a reasonable choice for a group.
A classic example is something like fishing. As an individual, it is entirely reasonable for me to catch as many fish as possible. I won’t put a dent into the fish population, and the more fish I catch, the better it is for me.
However, if everyone fishes as much as they want, the fisheries will be depleted. It is reasonable for an individual to fish as much as they want, but not for a society.
So why doesn’t everyone just fish less, because that is the reasonable thing for the society to do? Well, in an anarchy, I can only choose for myself. If I fish less, but everyone else still fishes as much as they want, then I will have less fish AND the fishery will still be depleted. I am worse off for no gain; it is clearly reasonable for me to fish as much as I can, since the fishery is going to be depleted no matter what.
Even if by a miracle everyone else agreed to voluntarily fish less, it would STILL be in my interest to ‘defect’ and fish as much as I want. My individual choice isn’t going to cause an issue if everyone else is already fishing less, so now I get more fish AND the fishery is fine.
Bottom line, no matter what everyone else does, my rational choice is to fish as much as I want. If everyone is rational, the fishery will be depleted.
This is known as a collective action problem, and is a type of prisoner’s dilemma.
You can’t get out of it through individual rationality. You have to approach the problem collectively.
All situations should be evaluated and re-evaluated at every instance, at every moment in time to account for new information and not only once at the beginning thinking it'll be the same forever.
Fishing as an individual its fine until too many people start doing it, then it becomes even bad for the individual. It becomes harder to fish, the fish get smaller, the prices drop, etc. Some of those things might be even good for society but not for the individual. At that point you've got to re evaluate your position, and even change your occupation. This is what happens all the time. Individual choices lead the way, society only acts after enough individuals have been affected, not before.
> Individual choices lead the way, society only acts after enough individuals have been affected, not before.
So you are saying there is no way to act with foresight? We can’t get together and decide to curtail individual choice so that we avoid a tragedy of the commons?
I don’t think throwing our hands up in the air and just continuing to destroy commons after commons is a good strategy.
While this may be true, you seem to be ignoring the prisoner's dilemma part of this... yes, society (and the individuals in it) will be better off if everyone cooperates, but as an individual, it is still always better to defect.
Imagine, for example, there are two companies that make widget foo. They are identical, except Company A charges less than Company B, but Company A pollutes a bunch.
As a society, we want everyone to buy from company B. We would all be better off.
However, that isn't my choice as a consumer. I either buy from B and pay more, and company A still pollutes (one person out of thousands doesn't change the amount of pollution).
Or, I get the cheaper thing from company A, and everything else stays the same.
Why wouldn't I shop at company A? My one purchase wont make or break the company, and it won't change the amount of pollution by any noticeable amount... but I will notice the cheaper price.
These examples all make company A and B as beings outside the community, and that wouldn't be the case. When groups exist outside of societies that are focused on gaining power over others, problems arise.
There’s precedent for human beings cooperating on matters like this to, say, prevent overfishing.
What makes you think such coordination would be impossible in the absence of a hierarchy that boils down to “obey these rules or we’ll put a gun in your face”? Most humans are reasonable and cooperative.
No, I am not saying the threat of violence is the only way to coerce people. I am saying there will need to be coercion of some kind, and relying on individuals making the best choices for themselves does not solve all the problems.
I think that’s the point of the article. There are better, safer, kinder, and more efficient ways of coercing people (with kindness and strong social ties and obligations and contracts, for example) than using top-down laws.
If you believe that the threat of violence isn’t the only way to organize a society’s rules, you’re most of the way there.
Violence isn't necessary 99% of the time, but the fact that it's available that last 1% is why it isn't necessary the other 99%. Some people are absolutely willing to exploit kindness, spurn obligations, and break contracts, if they can.
The fact that there exists a system of consequences backed by violence is what makes people follow social rules. Maybe the community's punishment for vandalism is a fine, or some kind of public service; I'm only willing to pay that penalty because of the threat of state violence being used against me if I don't. I'm all for minimizing the use of violence to enforce social mores as much as possible, but if it's not available at all, we start running into problems enforcing the milder, non-violent social consequences which we strive to use 99% of the time.
If someone attacks someone else and is sent to rehabilitative counseling, how do we make sure they go? In order to enforce the humane response, a violent response needs to exist as a backup.
There is a world of difference between believing that you, yourself, are capable of behaving reasonably without instructions, and believing the same for every single other person.
Some times, yes. And some times multiplied by however many people there are results in a lot of some times that people wouldn't be forced to in an anarchy.
It's not a "some times" statement, it posits that humans are capable of living reasonably without being forced. That people sometimes behave unreasonably is a different matter.
Not really. It is very relevant. You only need someone to behave unreasonable even once to destroy multiple peoples lives. There are enough psychopaths in the world to fuck up any kind of system that's not completely based on separation of powers.
I would posit that communism would probably also be pretty nice for most people, if it actually worked. So far it hasn't, and its pretty unrealistic that it ever will. That's also my stance on anarchy. Idealist, but unrealistic.
>Not really. It is very relevant. You only need someone to behave unreasonable even once to destroy multiple peoples lives
These things are true whether or not you believe humans are capable of living reasonably without being forced. Forcing people isn't stopping these psychopaths from destroying lives, and there's at least reason to believe it helps push them to action.
In an organized society a psychopath can kill a few in a murder spree. In an unorganized society the psychopath can gather and organize a lot of thugs to loot and burn millions of homes. Has happened many times in history. I know which one I prefer.
The gun argument actually works here, if you ban good guys from organizing then all organizations will be bad ones. And an organized group of people always wins against unorganized groups.
> In an organized society a psychopath can kill a few in a murder spree. In an unorganized society the psychopath can gather and organize a lot of thugs to loot and burn millions of homes. Has happened many times in history. I know which one I prefer.
I think this should be re-examined through the view of the ~1 million Iraqis recently murdered by one such “organized society”.
I don’t think the (violence-based) organization has the set of benefits you think it does.
When the good guys practices anarchy then the bad guys are free to create huge violent organizations. Our modern societies aren't perfect but violence is lower today than ever before.
"Thousands of raiders" don't magically appear, you prevent them by preventing the conditions necessary for thousands of people to unite with the goal of hurting others.
How does a power structure prevent it? Raiders are a result of people unable to live off their of own labor, generally as a result of the exploitation of others.
What examples of communism are you looking at that "haven't worked?" I really hope you aren't about to suggest the soviet union, that would be silly, considering it had a state, social classes, currency, and no general ownership of the means of production, and therefore wasn't communism.
Might surprise you to learn that communism is working this very day, on communes all across the world. Also, the basic tenants of it have manifested themselves in various civilizations throughout history.
>I really hope you aren't about to suggest the soviet union, that would be silly, considering it had a state, social classes, currency, and no general ownership of the means of production, and therefore wasn't communism.
Y'know, this is a fair point for a philosophical conversation.
It's a terrible point in a conversation about deciding how to actually organize society, however. You can't ultimately know what people's intentions are before the fact. How other people who claimed to have the same ideology behaved once they gained power is inherently relevant.
Let's turn this around for a second. Let's say someone comes to you and says "Hitler got fascism totally wrong". It's actually a really great ideology that Hitler violated by doing X, Y, and Z. Would you give this person power in the real world?
> d. Let's say someone comes to you and says "Hitler got fascism totally wrong". It's actually a really great ideology that Hitler violated by doing X, Y, and Z. Would you give this person power in the real world?
What? No! Because hitler got fascism perfectly right, and fascism is a terribly unethical way to organize government.
I meant specifically I am all about anarcho communism, it's happening and working right now in communes all around the world, has worked in the past, and imo is better than massive nation states forced to point nukes at each other on a hair trigger to sustain themselves.
Huh, out of all the potential responses, this is actually the one I wasn't expecting. Mostly because fascism is notoriously poorly defined to the point where experts can't agree on what it actually means. To the point where the wikipedia page on its various definition is quite a lengthy read ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism ).
While I agree with you on the downsides of the large, powerful nation states, My point was more about the rationality of outsiders to these ideologies. The reaction of "People labeling themselves this way enacted totalitarian governments during large parts of the 20th century, I probably shouldn't give any power to current people labeling themselves this way." are fairly rational.
Would you pay the same amount of tax as you do today if you weren't forced? Do you believe others would? Do you think that having taxes to pay for school and roads is unreasonable?
That is my point. I strongly believe taxation is absolutely necessary for a good society. This part should have been addressed in the article but he skips over it completely.
If you believe that every human should receive education and healthcare and be protected from criminals then you aren't an anarchist.
The principle of voluntary association addresses these issues. If your needs and wants were actually considered, you would be more willing to pay taxes.
"wishful thinking" alone isn't a good enough argument to consider the case settled. The American democratic system is "just wishful thinking," in reality powerful oligarchs control many of the day to day levers through lobbying and outright bribery, while other oligarchs slowly transform entire swaths of the population into willing sheep (rupert murdoch). But america still works, kinda, so it's not enough to say "it's just wishful thinking."
Ultimately the rulers of USA are decided by the people. You might have a lot of trickery and corruption behind the scenes, but every politician still needs to get votes from actual workers so they can't be too alienated. This isn't optimal, but it works well in theory and is fairly robust since if the system gets too corrupt people will vote in an unsanctioned candidate.
My point is that voluntary donations isn't enough to run much at all, even for organizations that the worker is in control of.
And a society needs roads. How would you ensure people pay for roads in an anarchist society? Would you have toll booths everywhere? That isn't economically feasible. Donations? As I said that isn't even enough to pay for a worker union, roads needs more than that.
Voluntary association, not voluntary donations. People need roads, when this problem is brought up they will be willing to pay for roads. If you are unwilling, you aren't part of the society anymore.
> People need roads, when this problem is brought up they will be willing to pay for roads. If you are unwilling, you aren't part of the society anymore.
That's how taxes work though. If you want to be part of society (have a job, employ others, own real estate or a business), then you have to pay taxes on those. After all, the well-being of the economy is a public good maintained by the state. If you don't participate in any of those ways, then you don't need to pay taxes. If you try to participate in society but don't pay the tax for doing so, you get punished.
There is no option to leave society and not pay those taxes, while that option is present in anarchism. You are forced to be a part of the state or you face strict punishment.
It's not a "road tax," if you don't choose to be a part of society, you can't be a part of the society. You are free to leave. The concept of "kicking people out" implies that they have some natural right to be part of that society.
> The concept of "kicking people out" implies that they have some natural right to be part of that society.
Thats still force, though.
You are just saying that the force is justified. But thats still force to physically prevent someone to have access to those roads.
It is force, in that you are physically, using a threat of violence against someone else, because you don't want them using your road.
I am not saying that this is morally wrong, or anything. I support the justified used of government force against others. But lets not pretend that this isn't force/violence.
> you can't be a part of the society.
It is not that they "can't". Instead, it is that other people will use violence/force against them, in order to prevent them from being a part of society. That is force. that is violence.
You can make the argument that the violence is justified. Which is fine. I absolutely believe that violence and government force can be justified. But justified force is still force!
> You are free to leave.
And if they refuse to leave? What are you going to doing about it? Answer: you will probably use force against them (although you may believe the violence is justified, justified violence is still violence!).
>You are just saying that the force is justified. But thats still force to physically prevent someone to have access to those roads.
These people aren't members of society. There's no real need to physically restrain them from the road because they don't have easy access to the road. We're not building roads to random strangers houses, and we can refuse their attempt to connect to our road.
>It is not that they "can't". Instead, it is that other people will use violence/force against them, in order to prevent them from being a part of society. That is force. that is violence.
>And if they refuse to leave? What are you going to doing about it? Answer: you will probably use force against them
There is no need to use force first. If you aren't part of the society, you have no home, and no access to food. They will either leave, join society, die, or use force to try and steal what they need. The only time force is necessary is in the fourth example, where they instigate the use of force.
> There's no real need to physically restrain them from the road because they don't have easy access to the road
And if they go there anyway?
What, are you going to setup a giant wall around society?
That's the point. You cant actually stop someone from being in society without using force.
> you aren't part of the society, you have no home, and no access to food
Sure they could have access to those things. There could be other people who choose to sell them a house or sell them food, in exchange for their labor, or other goods.
What are you going to do? Stop these other people from selling them food?
You'd have to use force to do that.
There would absolutely would be many people who would be perfectly fine selling them food or housing, in exchange for goods or labor. Or maybe even charity! That exists.
> They will either leave, join society
No, actually. The other possibility is that they refuse to leave, and other people continue to do business with them. Likely through engaging in trade with them for their labor.
You are not going to succeed with some sort of embargo against them, unless you plan on using force yourself.
> We're not building roads to random strangers houses
They don't need you to connect roads to their house. firstly, because roads are already connected, all over the world. And 2nd, they could just find someone who already has a house that is connected, and rent from them, by exchanging labor or goods that they have acquired.
Or maybe some people would perfectly be fine with letting them stay for free! Charity exists and is common in the world right now. I see no reason why it would stop.
What, are you going to send out "community" embargo squads, that follow people around, find where they live, and find who is hiding the secret tax evaders or something, so that you can enforce your embargo on both of them?
It would be exceeding impractical to enforce some sort of society wide embargo against people who refuse to pay taxes, because you are not only going to have to embargo the tax evaders, but you are also going to to have to embargo the people who refuse to follow your embargo. And then, what? You exile those people to? Who already have a house, and are already in the city, or connected to the roads, and are living in society, and the like?
Ridiculous.
You can't do that effectively, without using forces, lol
Or even beyond that, there could be a critical mass of people who refuse to leave society, and also interact with each other. IE, they still use your roads, but also trade with each other. And the trade between them is enough for them to sustain themselves (especially since they already get the benefit of the roads and stuff, but don't have to pay for it!)
>There would absolutely would be many people who would be perfectly fine selling them food or housing, in exchange for goods or labor. Or maybe even charity! That exists.
Really? You think that of a society that everyone together created the rules for, built for their own well being, and that they are voluntary a part of would be full of people willing to throw that all away to help someone who already spit in their face? I think you're wrong. This isn't helping the disadvantaged, this is helping those wishing to exploit you.
Why would the current concept of "charity" exist? It's current use is primarily for the rich to buy PR. If a member of the community is in need, the community will help them, they don't need people who's job it is to sweet talk others out of their money.
>What, are you going to send out "community" embargo squads, that follow people around, find where they live, and find who is hiding the secret tax evaders or something, so that you can enforce your embargo on both of them
We aren't discussing tax evasion, we are discussing people who openly refuse to be part if society. As they have openly done so, everyone in the community will know or will be told.
> would be full of people willing to throw that all away
People do things for their own benefit, and for the benefit of others, all the time.
For example, is everyone going to disown their friends and family, all for some nebulous concept of society? No, I don't think so. I think that many people's friends and family will be perfectly willing to continue to interact with someone who disagrees with the current state of society.
I certainly wouldn't disown any of my family members, for the mere fact of them engaging in some nebulous action of "rejecting society".
Family matters to a lot of people. You are not going to be able to convince all of a person's friends and family to disown them. Some people will still help out those friends and family
> This isn't helping the disadvantaged
I mean, you are straight up saying that you don't think these people should be able to have access to food. I think that there are many people who would say that they are disadvantaged.
You are not going to be able to convince everyone. Even if something like 10% of the population is willing to help out people who don't agree with your concept of society, that is more than enough to make sure that these people are still able to survive.
> this is helping those wishing to exploit you.
When it comes to friends and family, this just isn't a dealbreaker. Family members look out for other family members all the time, even when those family members are engaging in bad actions against them! This is very common! Family is very important to a lot of people.
As well as friends, to a less extent. I could not imagine any of my friends of family members disowning someone, because they don't agree with this definition of what society should be. Instead, people care more about their close relatives, and friends, than these high level concepts, a lot of the time.
> Why would the current concept of *charity" exist?
Because some people want it to? Even a small percentage of people disagreeing with you, is enough to make this work.
If your whole idea of society hinges on basically everyone in your society engaging in embargoes, that sounds pretty doomed to failure. Some people are going to disagree with you, and that is enough.
> If a member of the community is in need, the community will help them
Ok, but that argument works in my favor. There would absolutely be people who would consider these societal outcasts to be "people in need". And then this community of people, who disagree with you, would help them.
> we are discussing people who openly refuse to be part if society
But you have to target the people who disagree with you as well. Are you going to hunt down all the people who actually don't agree with you, and instead are perfectly fine with selling goods and services to them?
Or are you going to hunt down the friends and family members of these societal outcasts, for their action of helping out their freaking family member?
Not everyone is going to commit their life and soul to your cause. Many people would simply not care, and would instead be perfectly willing to trade housing and food for labor that these "reject society" people are offering.
Even more so, there is a monetary incentive to engage in trade with those individuals. People could make a bunch of money by trading goods and services with the societal rejects. Are you going to embargo these individuals as well?
That's a lot of people you'd have to embargo, if you are doing it against the people trading goods with them, for profit, as well as any of their friends and family who refuse to go along with your embargo.
> everyone in the community will know or will be told.
Finally, this statement is ridiculous. I live in a city, with a 500 thousand people in it. I could run into any of them, walking in the street, at any time.
Am I going to have to check someone's societal ID or something, before selling them something, or hiring them, or renting out a room in my apartment?
What does that even mean? Will you track me down, and embargo me as well, if I don't care about them rejecting society, and rent them a bedroom in my apartment anyway?
>For example, is everyone going to disown their friends and family, all for some nebulous concept of society
This isn't "some nebulous concept of society," this is the community that you have chosen to be a part of and are in control of. You say that you wouldn't abandon a family member, but what they are doing is akin to standing up and with a clear mind stating "I don't consider you family and want nothing to do with you." That is what "rejecting society" entails. You would not still blindly support that person.
>mean, you are straight up saying that you don't think these people should be able to have access to food.
These people chose not to have access to food. They are not "disadvantaged," they are facing the consequences they knew they would face for their actions. There's no need to immediately starve them, but they know they can't stay in the community if they won't be a member of it.
>Even if something like 10% of the population is willing to help out people who don't agree with your concept of society, that is more than enough to make sure that these people are still able to survive
It is not "my concept of society," it is something the society together builds. Yes, some people will disagree. They can build their own society and we can coexist.
Most of your arguments have put "me" as the ruler of this society and justify actions as them rebelling against me. This is not how the power structure goes. People may be willing to help those rebelling against "me," but they are less willing to aid someone rebelling against something they themselves chose to enact. Similarly, the punishment for someone harboring such an individual isn't my decision, it's something the community decides based on the circumstances.
> this is the community that you have chosen to be a part of and are in control of
Not everyone in the US lives in some 100 person small town "community". Instead, many people live in cities that have hundreds of thousands of people in it.
> That is what "rejecting society" entails. You would not still blindly support that person.
People absolutely still continue to support family members, all the time, even when they do "bad" things. It is extremely common. People care a lot about family. Yes, many people would absolutely still support them. I absolutely would continue to support them, as would many others.
And there is nothing that you could do to stop me from helping them, unless you are going to do something very impractical, like exile everyone who supports their friends and family as well.
> These people chose not to have access to food.
Doesn't matter. There would still be people who disagree with you, and would consider them to be disadvantaged, regardless of your opinion on the matter.
> they can't stay in the community if they won't be a member of it.
Of course they could still be in the community. They could still be in the community if they have friends and family who would be willing to support them. Which there definitely could be! People such as myself would absolutely continue to support my friends and family, even if they did this.
> Yes, some people will disagree. They can build their own society and we can coexist.
Or, they can continue to live in the same place as you do, and continue to support individuals who "reject" society.
> . Similarly, the punishment for someone harboring such an individual isn't my decision, it's something the community decides based on the circumstances.
Ok, and I am saying that people attempting to enforce punishment on every individual who harbors a friend or family member is going to be extremely impractical.
There are numerous motivations and reasons for someone to "harbor" others, and this "society" that you are talking about would require a near unanimous agreement on everything, which just isnt going to happen.
Instead, there would be a sizeable minority of people, who would continue to work with their friends and family. Why? Because thats what happens all of the time, in real life. People, all the time, continue to support their friends and family, even when they have done bad things.
>Not everyone in the US lives in some 100 person small town "community". Instead, many people live in cities that have hundreds of thousands of people in it.
Which can be broken down into numerous communities living together.
>People absolutely still continue to support family members, all the time, even when they do "bad" things
This isn't someone doing a "bad" thing, this is someone of full mind willfully saying they want nothing to do with the family. You think they'd still force their aid on them?
>And there is nothing that you could do to stop me from helping them, unless you are going to do something very impractical, like exile everyone who supports their friends and family as well.
You seem to still be under the impression that "I" am forcing my will. Decisions are made by the community, that these people are a part of. I'm not forcing people to sell out their friends, their friends are the ones rejecting their help. Your idea that people would still unquestionably offer help to people who have stated they do not want it and will not return it is just silly. If that happened in modern society, we would assume mental illness and barring that cut ties for at least some time.
All of your arguments resolve around someone committing some bad deed, and some faceless authority issues punishment on them. That is so far removed from what is happening, I don't know how to continue this conversation.
> Which can be broken down into numerous communities living together.
Lol, so now you are talking about ending the concept of cities? This is getting even more implausible.
> I'm not forcing people to sell out their friends, their friends are the ones rejecting their help
If no one is going to force people to sell out there friends then you need to understand that a lot of people would simply continue to provide support to them.
> Your idea that people would still unquestionably offer help
I am not saying everyone would. Instead, I am saying some people would. And some is enough. People absolutely can care a lot about their friends, family, and children, enough so as to provide unconditional support.
This happens all the time, in real life!
> that cut ties for at least some time.
Lots of people, right now, do not cut ties with family members, who do aweful things.
> willfully saying they want nothing to do with the family. You think they'd still force their aid on them?
I am telling you, that I would help any of my close friends or family, personally, for sure, as would many people I know, and you can't convince me otherwise to not help them.
This already happens, right now, in the real world!
I think that some people care a whole lot about their friends and family, and no argument that you make overrules this.
People, right now, provide massive amounts of unconditional support to many of their friends.
I absolutely would do that, for example, regardless of the arguments that are being made.
IE, I know many people that would never ever abandon their family, because they "rejected society", and that there is zero argument that people could make to convince them otherwise, because family matters to them.
>Lol, so now you are talking about ending the concept of cities? This is getting even more implausible.
No, I am not. I am discussing furthering what already happens, where cities break down into smaller sections.
>am telling you, that I would help any of my close friends or family, personally, for sure, as would many people I know, and you can't convince me otherwise to not help them
I am not trying to convince you, your friend said they don't want your help. If you continue trying to force it on them, you are an asshole.
>Lots of people, right now, do not cut ties with family members, who do aweful things.
Nobody has done an "awful thing". I'm done explaining this.
You keep making the same statements that don't even reference what I have said. I understand that friends and family are willing to stand by when their loved one does something bad. I also have friends and family. That is not analogous to what is being discussed. A closer example would be a family having an argument about where to celebrate Christmas, until finally someone breaks off and holds their own celebration.
If you don't believe humans are capable of living reasonably without being forced, you're only living reasonably as you're being forced or you view yourself as "special."
No. You think that there are some people incapable of living reasonably without force, and that group does not include yourself. Presumably they are the people that are incapable of living reasonably with force.
I think there are people who may be unable to act rationally in any situation, but I don't think force will solve their problems and I do think situations could arise where I end up as one of them. I think humans are largely a product of their environment, and most of the "bad" ones had experiences that made them act that way. They are still capable of acting rationally.
Superior to others is "special," even if you consider the majority to be superior.
> I think there are people who may be unable to act rationally in any situation
> They are still capable of acting rationally
Which one is it?
Why people act like the do is irrelevant to the system you are proposing. Or are you saying that abolishing all enforcement systems will cause everything bad in the universe to disappear?
Anyhow, I think we've milked this conversation for as long as it has capability to provide value, so perhaps we agree to disagree on this topic.
I believe through some accidents before or after birth lead to some people are completely unable to act reasonably. I don't think they are the people you consider "bad" but people with severe disabilities.
>Why people act like the do is irrelevant to the system you are proposing. Or are you saying that abolishing all enforcement systems will cause everything bad in the universe to disappear?
I don't think that the world is full of people who actively wish harm on others, and usually those people are trying to improve things for themselves. If we build a society based on making things good for everybody involved, these will be rare cases that society can address as they happen.
Put in simple terms, those people may currently be unwilling to act reasonably, but are completely capable in the right circumstances.
Because we're keeping each other safe from coronavirus. But I guess you caught me: we've replaced law and police with a virus that enforces our behavior on pain of death, lol.
>In my country (but I guess it's the same in most, except perhaps some Nordic countries) bars, pubs and discos only reduce seating or close indoor spaces when forced to by law, in spite of the evidence that they cause lots of outbreaks.
>The government recommended remote work whenever possible but many companies just ignored it in spite of having many workers that could perfectly work remotely, and just implement it when forced by law.
I believe an anarchist response to this would be these examples are not so much cases of people (generally speaking) going against expert advice out of choice, more that it is a few individuals in positions of power (pub landlords, business owners) exerting their will (for personal gain) on many other people who are not in a position to push back. Employees who heed expert advice risk their job security and healthcare in doing so. By removing hierarchies and power we may well see better outcomes than we do at present. That is, the behavior you are seeing is the effect of a political system and it is not necessarily true that these same behaviors will exist by changing to a different political system. If Anarchism in practice would not entirely end the behavior, it removes the innate incentivization of the behavior
What would the anarchist alternative be, provided everybody still needs to eat. Let's keep money as a simple placeholder for value. If the reasonable people wouldn't open the clubs, how would they make money? Okay, their landlords are reasonable as well, and don't charge rent. And their grocery store gives them food for free?
How would they determine who is so reasonable they get the reason-treatment of free food even if they provide no value themselves (no parties in their club etc).
A lot of anarchism sounds like some magical communism, where everything just works out, there's no conflict whatsoever and the (in communist countries) usually authoritarian governments wouldn't be required. If only one would let the people be free, they'd be happy, sharing, caring and all around nice people by themselves.
I get the fundamental appeal, I'm sure it can work in very small, very homogeneous groups (like a religious sect, or maybe a tribal group that has not or only been recently contacted). But at scale, and in the real world, it sounds naive.
To me it seems that you seem to be imagining anarchy only within the context of the current state of reality with the sole difference of anarchy being set to ‘true’. I think a world in which anarchy were dominant would be structured quite differently and involve humans with fundamentally nonviolent dispositions. My belief is that this is possible.
Are resources still scarce in an anarchist society? Then you will still have conflict. And changing fundamental biology is probably possible, but neither a quick thing nor an easy one.
"Humans will be biologically different once we live in a new society" gets filed under magic in my opinion. Communists tend to use that as an explanation as well, and it didn't happen, and not for lack of trying or lack of commitment, I believe.
I understand most anarchists favor very localized constructs in general, what's your take why we aren't seeing a lot of anarchist communities? Is it that there would still be "the state" in the world that surrounds them, collecting federal taxes and stopping them from governing themselves, giving themselves the kinds of laws they want etc?
The issue with your premise is in defining "behaving in a reasonable fashion". This is incredibly subjective. It also speaks to the ignorance that privileged people have in regards to assuming everyone else must also have.
In many cases, "Just close shop for two weeks (or maybe a year? Who knows...), and also you have to wear a mask all the time now" is not a reasonable ask. People have mouths to feed and bills to pay. Telling them to just shut off their income is a non-starter. And no, a $1200 stimulus check doesn't cut it. Banks still want their money.
"Okay fine, but why isn't everyone just wearing a mask? It's simple! insert judgmental angry emoji here"
Well, a lot of places ran out of masks (and toilet paper for some reason...) early on (thank you sensationalism + news) making it impossible to get one. Someone tried refusing me access to a grocery store that I went to to buy a mask because, guess what, I didn't have a mask (after multiple repeated attempts to buy one in my area). Tell me how this is reasonable?
Since then, it's really been a crapshoot for what you think the rules are for wearing one in public. Where I am, if you are outside, you don't need one, and no one is expected to wear one, but you keep your distance physically. If you go inside, you wear a mask - unless you are sitting at a table, then you don't need one, sometimes...? Every news outlet/friend/family member you hear from on the matter has a different take on what is standard procedure now.
A lot of the "reasonable asks" of people surrounding COVID are not actually as reasonable as they sound in a one sentence, "You have to close shop and wear masks now!" mandate from a politician.
It's hard for me to believe that a "fuck it.." mentality wouldn't evolve around the issue.
"Leaders" told everyone to stay home. People, largely, listened for a while. When the money ran out (or never existed to begin with) and no support came to sustain the situation but the messaging remained "stay at home" thats when people got mad and stopped listening.
Since the same leaders also said wear a mask, it went from "health experts trying to save lives" to "politicians trying to leave me destitute and homeless".
The US failed, as it always does, to provide for the needs of its citizens. So as the citizens usually do, they stopped listening. And in practice absolutely nobody gives a real shit - the people don't care and capital is eating future generations by the trillion. Everyones happy in the most perverted definition of happy.
Eh I’m not sure politicians am have proved in recent times to be much better.
And to that point, if you don’t trust your fellow person, why would you trust them to vote, or hold office? Why would you want them to wield real power?
We need to fix this country. It starts with us. Vote. Run for office. Stop accepting mediocre government.
No, and I think that the mentality that it might be naive is exactly what the problem is. I have no interest in a civil war. I have things that I care about. If the alternatives to me were civil war to "fix" things, or maintain the status quo, I'll take the status quo all day.
But I believe there are alternatives. Other countries have managed to elect smart people. There's no reason we can't.
The system is stacked against fundamental change. Its why for going on 200 years there has always been a movement to "fix" society through government that never actually seems to get much of anywhere.
The only time, in the US at least, anything has led to long term appreciable change in society for the betterment of the working class was when capitalism was in legitimate fear for survival in the face of communist revolutions the world over aside the great depression. The FDR generation didn't go from effectively total labor exploitation unbounded to 40 hour work weeks, unions, paid vacation, and safety regulations because the collective bourgeois woke up one day thinking their time had come by happenstance. Concessions were made to preserve the power structures that gave immense power to few at the cost of the many.
The civil rights movement was comparable where the most popular speaker in the country was espousing socialism and class consciousness and had to be assassinated to stop his movement adjourning organized aggression by the Black Panthers who also were mass murdered. But all that blood only managed to move the dial a hairs breadth toward liberty.
We will all be good citizens voting for one of the two choices presented us by our rulers this November, many of us going into the polls knowing the structural organization of said process means our vote is totally meaningless - first past the post, winner take all races down a scorecard of positions 90% of which you know nothing about but the letters aside the names, names you probably only heard in TV or radio ads inundating you for two months prior. Its a mockery of actual democracy and largely always has been - there is a reason the US was founded to have an electorate of white, land owning men.
> Its why for going on 200 years there has always been a movement to "fix" society through government that never actually seems to get much of anywhere.
I'd say this is just a convincing argument that we can't leave it to government to fix society then.
With respect to your points about capitalism. Yea sure. I think that to create a society that better respects the rights of workers and ensures that people live good lives. You'll see countries that are considered even more capitalistic than the US like the Nordics have really good government that they vote for and participate in, and they have great protections for workers. But they also pay for those things with higher taxes. The issue in the US is just that we don't believe the government can effectively do those things (and for decent enough reasons) so we just sit in this vicious cycle. Nobody wants to fix things.
> there is a reason the US was founded to have an electorate of white, land owning men.
Well there's a few reasons, but part of why we have a republic instead of a direct democracy is because the founders were worried about mobs of uneducated voters causing the government to do really dumb things. At the time the only educated people were white, land-owning men. If you can't trust your fellow citizens right now to vote, then I'm not sure why you'd trust them with even more power. To me it seems day in and day out I'm more and more convinced Americans shouldn't even be allowed to vote on account of how many dumb decisions we make. We don't deserve a republic or democracy. Fat, lazy, entitlement mentality for far too many.
I'm not far from your thinking but as sad as people's behavior was during covid, I wouldn't use it as a general case, it's a weird and wide crisis.
Also human groups of various scales differ. Some 20 people companies self organized.. larger group may not be able to do so.
This brings the question of the influence of education (both technical and emotional). A group a wiser and well balanced emotionally would behave very differently under a pandemic than a group of medium skilled in both.
So if you were emperor of the world, would you throw the political class and supporters in Sweden in prison for their unreasonable response to Covid as compared to the rest of the world?
Or would you throw the rest of world's leader's and supporters in prison as the opposite of that argument?
Are you personally willing to do this? If you ask a man with a gun to do it for you are you ever worried he will turn the gun on you?
Measuring our capacity for anarchist living in a cutthroat capitalist society is sort of like comparing an apple with a black hole.
You can come up with some vague emotional colors where they can seem similar, I mean they both exist, can be represented on paper starting with base geometrical shapes, but further analysis of their composition and parts reveals a lot of differences.
It’s not a given that bars and salons are a normal feature of a non-tiered trade society where finding efficiency has generally meant extreme division of labor (at the cost of labor market resiliency IMO).
Would we have loans and leases on bars and salons if society isn’t being reminded by media and their neighbors trading fiat currency “is the way”?
Would we have the same economic dread foisted upon us?
Why not brew communally, or otherwise, like in a maker space and share knowledge of the processes and experiences we enjoy individually rather than fetishize dead relatives more limited view of sound fiscal policies, and social pecking order?
Why do I need to care that somehow through some Machiavellian mind game there’s a monetary flow back to some investor across the world in me?
Dead people lacking an eother ignorant of, or severely lacking strong evidence, for things like economic success is coupled to skill (when obviously we can also see social governance prop up failed elites).
A PhD in physics means putting forth an idea that the world works a way it would given the absence of human existence.
Please explain then how PhDs in economics should be given the same esteem since they rely on a heavily indoctrinated by media, human society abiding social norms of police states that have only existed for a couple hundred years?
Where’s the free market when we’ve been willing to send in men with guns to protect the way since the beginning of the nation (Whiskey Rebellion?)
Can we do better without the coercion? We don’t know cause it’s always been there.
there's no world with humans in it that's devoid of power and coercion, so the premise of anarchism is irretrievably flawed. can it inform how we live in a power-filled and coercive world? yes, but not to any extreme.
Anarchism isn’t devoid of understanding of reality.
Anarchisms goal as a broad social meme is to not allow an official body that coerces the public towards further erecting of tent pole power structures within society. Like we have a Constitution and abdicate legislative work to a mythical free market, where an Amazon size entity can manipulate the labor and retail markets on a whim.
It seeks to establish a tent pole hierarchy based, at least the sources I agree with offer it something like this, and then within that it’s local communal rules. No influencers from DC enforcing proper life in collusion with their moneyed brethren on this coast, regardless of how the masses would spend their time.
But yes at the top it’s a tent pole like any other.
Trying to set aside physics itself isn’t the goal of anarchism. Don’t be ridiculous.
Pre-Columbus America’s are often mythologized as all hippie, but they were probably the purest anarchist society we can study.
Those who lived by the water fished and maintained the coast. Those inland made tools for doing that.
And we’re talking communities that could rival them contemporary Europe.
How complex we all think it is to change when really it’s just doing away with European notion of proper social hierarchy always leading back to a council of especially wise men whose wisdom was point guns first.
It’s an emotional attitude like capitalism. Neither are laws of physics. Just a personal attitude that one will not be a social control freak nor kowtow to them.
We have none of the old problems of logistical distribution. Why do we their old tenets and rules?
but ideologies, including anarchism, aren't roads to nirvana, they're far-flung points in a multidimensional mental space that map wholly inadequately to an even higher dimensional social space. they also systematically tend to lose nuance to fervor and identity.
for instance, while i agree that institutions (concentrations of power) can be dangerous, they've also done some amazingly good (and bad) things because of the power they coalesce. anarchism would say dismantle (large) institutions, and capitalism (or whatever) would say build 'em bigger and bolder! but the practical says do both in a chaotic, highly dynamic system of competing and cooperating interests, reaching a dynamic balance that's hard to rationalize beforehand.
yes, let's talk about these ideas and put forth observations and arguments, but in no case should be go all in on any one of them, including capitalism (which is also impractical in a pure, ideological form).
In Boston the majority of everyone I saw wore a mask before it was mandatory. The shame was (and still is) very strong for those who don’t wear one. I see junkies (drug addicts) who don’t give a fuck but I assume that’s because they have given up on life. All normal people are wearing masks that I can see.
And for a counter observation I saw lines out of nail/hair salons and bars in Atlanta the day Kemp dropped shelter in place at the beginning of May. I'd say I see 1 in 8 people wearing a mask anywhere that doesn't explicitly require it, and then people mostly wearing them improperly otherwise.
I live in a place where mask rules are not enforced. There is a growing split between places people gather without masks and places people gather with masks. Unless completely unavoidable I only go to places where everyone is wearing a mask. I think there is a similar filtering mechanism happening with everyone that prefers being around mask wearers, and those that prefer not wearing masks.
Seeing one place where people are not wearing masks is not a reasonable sample, and doesn’t show a complex story that is happening.
In the south, at some chains, even grocery store employees weren't allowed to wear them until the day after Trump said a mask or even a scarf would be ok:
So tell us, how many months of mask wearing would be "reasonable"? We're up to about six in my locale. Would twelve be reasonable? Eighteen? Until the virus is gone? That would require, most likely, eternal mask wearing, even with a vaccine. Why don't you lecture us about "reasonable" behavior some more.
>not because politicians are any better than the average person, but because they tend to have at least a bare minimum of education, access to advisors, some positive incentives -the next election- and no high stakes on the decision like, say, a bar owner
The “no high stakes” part is what’s the most interesting to me, but unfortunately in US national politics I think it tends to not be true. For a single bar, sure, but for massive corporations and industries there is far too much intermingling of private and political incentives.
If a population does not tend to follow expert advice and a politician is incentivized by an upcoming election, it seems more of a negative incentive for them to act according to rationality
Who said they they aren’t forced to. Specific individuals clearly can act reasonably on their own. It’s groups where you need control and systems of government influence those in power. Democracy’s clearly force winning some elections, but even dictatorship means relying on the military, police, and taxation etc.
Then you have an endless circle of force, which doesn’t really explain why governments can work but other systems couldn’t work. Because of course other systems would also contain circles of force.
A swedish rapper said in 1998; "Den enda sanna demokraten är anarkist", translates to "the only true democrat is anarchist".
Not meaning the Democratic party in the US but rather a literal interpretation of the two words. Democrat meaning rule of the people and anarchist meaning no leaders.
I was raised to believe in anarchism, and I still do at heart. But if it were ever to work we'd need strict and global regulations on centralized power that would need to be upheld by a coalition which would itself become a centralized power.
Because evolution itself is randomness unchecked. So a political ideology alone can't control when someone will come along wanting to exploit systems to break free and gain more power for themselves or their own people.
Anarchism does not mean no leader. It means no authority. Hence why it is fundamentally different than democracy because democracy implies an authority somehow attributed to the people (directly or indirectly).
> Because evolution itself is randomness unchecked.
Randomness unchecked is chaos. Evolution actually specifically requires a check, in the form of the organism's environment, which is what prunes the ineffective branches.
This is also so for human organizations. Without agreed upon rules to check undesirable traits we end up with Chaos.
> I was raised to believe in anarchism, and I still do at heart. But if it were ever to work we'd need strict and global regulations on centralized power that would need to be upheld by a coalition which would itself become a centralized power.
Murray Bookchin argued for this in what he called Democratic Confederalism, which would create a series of federated communes with the administrative tasks being undertaken collectively by the confederal network whilst policy would be dictated by the communes themselves. The confederal network would have the right to break up centralized power as it develops in one or several of the communes as well as protect human rights and prevent ecological destruction.
I break the word 'democrat' into demo and crat. 'Demo' meaning the people, the demos, the citizenry. 'Crat' as in hold in Greek. So, citizen-hold. Or alternatively, 'mob rule'!
Really, IMO, you want individual rule for each individual. No system, no groups - just individuals. Anyone free to do what they want as long as they don't harm another individual. Do unto others, and all that.
That would be a closer definition of anarchy for me.
Funny how any ideology can take our common beliefs and say: "See? You are one of us".
I didn't know who this guy was until he died last week and was celebrated as a great thinker. I am not familiar with his body of work. But if it's along the lines of "all good is on my side and all bad is on the enemy's side" he was not a thinker. He was just an ideologue.
Most people do behave "decently" in this sense. However some do not. Under an open system, these outliers will eventually eat the decent. It strikes me this is likely the exact journey we have come on to arrive where we are. We have created a structure in which the monsters can eat a certain proportion of us in order that we may not be eaten.
It’s even worse than that. Most people believe that they act decently. But to paraphrase Feynman, the easiest person to deceive is ourselves. No one (or at least vanishingly few) believe that they are the villain in their own narrative. And yet evil persists in the world.
I'm not sure that is true. While I don't know (or rather, I don't know that I know) anyone who's actually a villain of some sort, I know quite a few people in SEO affiliate marketing. Their businesses generally don't add any value, they buy links, use cheap copy writers that produce mediocre content often full of factual errors, Google eats it up like it was the best thing ever (because of the links they bought), people get directed to their sites from search queries and buy at the shops the recommend. They essentially inject themselves between Google and the shop, but they're not adding any value - if anything, they're reducing value (by influencing buying decision with lies - not just marketing "women will find you more attractive if you have this car", actual lies as in "this product can do X" when it can't).
And they know it, and when you ask them about it, they'll happily say so. They don't believe that they are providing a service, and they're not telling that to themselves either. Why do they do it, then? Because they get money for it. They are well aware that they aren't adding value, but they're doing it because it pays.
I don't believe that e.g. a thief, thugs or fraudster go around thinking they do nothing wrong or that they act decently. They know, they are fully aware that they are a net-negative to society. What I find more interesting in that regard is this: do they realize they are abnormal in that regard, or do they believe that everybody acts like them?
I think people rationalize. Stealing from faceless corporations who treat customers poorly is OK. Stealing from people who are “too rich”. People who “need to be taught a lesson.” People who create a narrative of their own victimhood.
I would say about the SEO affiliate marketers, that they would tell you that they’re no different than other marketers, they just operate in a specialized space.
That article doesn't actually support your argument. The dictatorship of the small minority is a case of simple accommodation, some people want things much more strongly than others and those things are not very costly to the majority, so they get universally accepted to reduce friction. It doesn't mean that intolerance wins, just that democratic societies are accommodating of minor but strongly desired things for certain groups.
It’s important to point out here that anarchists are not advocating for lack of organization; people are social animals and must work together to live. They are advocating for lack of power structures of domination and subordination.
Imagine there are two kingdoms on some continent. One is managed by some kind of democratic council, and resources are shared equitably; the other is ruled by a tyrant. Which one is more likely to make war on its neighbors? The tyrant, obviously- because the tyrant has something to gain by conquest (more subjects, wealth, and power) and the democratic society does not (assuming that the society stays democratic after the conquest, they now have to contend with the voices of a lot of angry new citizens). The same applies to any organization: an organization is aggressive and violent in direct proportion to how hierarchical it is.
There is a tragic principle of natural selection that plays out, however, if you imagine that continent and imagine a random arrangement of democracies and kingdoms, over time the kingdoms will make war and expand and the democracies will not. After a few hundred years, most of the citizens of the continent will be living under tyrants. And tyranny has to justify itself to its subjects, through religion or ideology; the subjects will be made to feel that obedience is virtue and that the king is a father figure and so forth. But popular freedom movements will constantly be popping up and have to be suppressed.
“Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. It is really a very simple notion.”
Having dealt with the dark side of humanity, there are lots of people who will not behave reasonably if left unchecked, due to one reason or another.
And there are a lot of these people. Some of them lifelong criminals, some of them even your friendly neighbor that keeps his yard looking really nice.
So you need a system of checks. You need some sort of enforcement arm that apprehend and deals violence to these people. You need some place, away from society, to secure these people. And now, you’ve more or less reinvented the current structure.
Whether we like it or not, violence is the foundation upon which society ultimately sits. The threat of violence keeps everyone inline. If you resist each step of the law, ultimately, you will be dealt violence.
You may choose to be a pacifist, and that is somewhat admirable, but you’ve really chosen to outsource the violence required to survive to other parties. Society provides us a useful curtain that covers the horror of nature’s rules.
I mean, flipping that on its head where does the "dark side of humanity" end up? Looking at all the police brutality, the Epstein's, the Koch brothers, the crappy politicians... I mean the crap really seems to float to the top of society.
In a society without hierarchies, an anarchist society, you still have groups and communication and working together, you just don't have people above you telling you something is OK or how it should be.
Absolutely no form of government or system (anarchist 1000% included) will solve the problem of people being selfish or bad, all that anarchists contend (that I have seen) is that when there isn't those built hierarchies bad/selfish people don't amass power so everyone else can actually handle them on equal terms.
And considering how Epstein was able to morph the whole political landscape to defend himself for over a decade, uh, any alternative can seem pretty reasonable.
I don't think it's realistic to believe that hierarchies wouldn't emerge one way or another. The hierarchy can arise in the form of a mafia, or in a more regulated way.
This was a fantastic essay by a first-wave feminist about the "tyrrany of structurelessness". The idea is basically that if you abolish formal hierarchies, hieararhcies will be established but they'll be informal ones, outside any system of checks and balances. It was dealing with a smaller scale that an entire political system, but it stuck with me and I think it's relevant here: https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
This same tyranny exists with money. The beauty of financial transactions as work and recognition is that there's never any ambiguity as far as your work being valued. In academia you have, on the other hand, things such as nebulous awards and recognition of placement on a publication. These things have real implications for career placement. That can be an analogous sort of tyranny, I think.
I very much doubt anyone will see this comment, but I can’t help scratching the itch - I am wrong on the internet! - of course this is second wave feminism...
Well, if you have an area of high inequality suppressed by an outside force I'm sure some "bad" groups could form because they want to challenge those outside forces.
If you have an example of a mafia formed in a stable area without inequality or hierarchies I'd be pretty interested. People in general like the path of least resistance and only turn "violent" when they feel they have to.
However, if your view is most people are just bad and will do bad things on their own then sure, perhaps you want hierarchies in place but I have no clue why someone would think the bad/selfish people wouldn't just rise to the top and just become worse.
"A stable area without inequalities" is a fantasy, there never was such a place. People is different, have different bodies, different minds, I never knew about any "stable area without inequalities".
I believe that most people are good, but there are also some people who are evil/psychopaths, and I don't see why they wouldn't organize a tyrannical hierarchy, they could use violence and other means to rise, I see it as a risk.
Examples of anti-hierarchical societies do exist (Catalonia, Paris Commune, etc).
The problem isn't so much that hierarchies just arise naturally, the problem is more that these societies aren't very long lived because they're pretty useless at defending themselves with violence.
It's not totally uncommon to find an anti-hierarchical company. It is almost impossible to find an effective anti-hierarchical military.
As far as I'm aware, both of those had hierarchical leadership structures. The Paris Commune was run democratically through universal suffrage, and the CNT-FAI had its own leadership structures. Now, these societies sought to minimize hierarchy, sure, but I think it's important to recognize that an entirely non-hierarchical society is essentially impossible.
> In a society without hierarchies, an anarchist society, you still have groups and
> communication and working together, you just don't have people above you telling you
> something is OK or how it should be.
Yes, and when it's bad guys, we call those groups "cartels" and "gangs".
When it's the good guys, we call those "governments". You necessarily need governments (and thus law enforcement and a military of some type) to fend off the bad guys and to maintain order (crime, settle disputes, etc).
As part of all that, be it the good guys or the bad guys, you need a solid leadership structure, or you end up with warring factions causing chaos or accomplishing nothing at all. Who is attracted to leadership positions? "Crappy politicians" and "the Koch brothers".
Anarchism, as described just doesn't work. Even in small anarchistic collectives of a dozen or so people, they inevitably start developing rules and leadership and governance structures.
Rather that abolishing the police and throwing away established systems, I would much rather strive toward iterative reforms of injustices.
> I mean the crap really seems to float to the top of society.
This is a somewhat bizzare argument IMO.
Even if you assume that sociopaths are over represented higher in the hierarchy, base rates force you to acknowledge that most sociopaths are at the bottom.
Anarchist societies certainly have rules and means of enforcing them, but the process of how the rules are radically more democratic than any liberal democracy. Look up EZLN or Rojava if you want to see practicing anarchist-like societies existing today.
I don't mean to be rude, but it frustrates me that whenever anarchism is discussed so many of the counter arguments are (intentionally or not) strawmen.
I think the main criticism is that centralizing the “legitimate” use of force to, as you say, “keep everyone in line”, is that you get all of the downsides of a violence-based society, and none of the upsides of freedom: such societies still enslave, torture, steal, violate privacy, and mass murder.
Indeed, we’re witnessing an unprecedented wealth transfer right now in the US as a result of such centralization of authority.
I’ve never met an anarchist that believes that by abolishing the state that society will become entirely nonviolent. It’s just a sort of standard “who will build the roads?” straw man: Policing doesn’t need police, and social contracts don’t need a statehouse.
The police are the ones who are practically preventing the redistribution of the wealth.
Without them, 1/30th of the vacant residential stock in the US would be filled with 100% of the homeless people in the US, for example. (There are approximately 35x as many vacant houses/apartments in the US as there are homeless.)
...until the major REITs and large private landlord corps hire private security to kick them out, with extreme violent prejudice to send a message, because who're you gonna call to stop them from brutal and unlawful eviction anyway, once you get rid of the police? It's not like the homeless can afford attorneys for eviction court.
> The police are the ones who are practically preventing the redistribution of the wealth.
Policing prevents, and makes possible, all sorts of things. It is a function of law. By abolishing policing you throw out the baby (the law) with the bathwater (laws that facilitate the concentration of wealth).
Please don't confusing abolishing police with abolishing policing.
Calling a random member of society to do entirely untrained policing in the US would oftentimes result in better outcomes than the current police in the US:
Yes. I don't understand why, in the case of socialists, do they believe that the gobernment can manage wealth and resources better than private owners.
And regarding anarchists, I don't understand how would they distribute scarce resources.
Norway. I live in Sweden, our police has gotten a bit worse lately but still very good.
USA has problems, but you don't solve them by becoming an anarchy but by fixing the issues it has. For example instead of 3 months police academy maybe do 3 years like most of the rest of the developed world.
There is a wide spectrum between a full-blown authoritarian state and anarchism. I'd argue that democracy in its various forms takes a large fraction of that spectrum. There is parliamentary democracy, semi-direct democracy like in the economically well-off Switzerland and direct democracy that is not in place at any state yet. Any serious summary about a form of politics will emphasize that certain preconditions on economy and society are necessary, otherwise it will not work. Example: after the UdSSR ended, there was parliamentary democracy and a free market economy. But it was incredibly unstable - now Russia is close to being an authoritarian state. China tried to prevent the same fault and instead opened only the economy in a first step.
That said, even for direct democracy things need to happen. A vast majority of the population would have to get informed about major political issues sufficiently well. Also there is not "the Anarchy", rather it's a mixed pool of in part incompatible theories, that can very well have democratic structures. I think there are good ideas, but obviously right now in 2020 nothing of this would work.
The fact that you gave an example of a situation where violence isn't necessary doesn't preclude situations where violence is still necessary.
Suppose somebody decides that they want your house, and they don't really want to share it with you. It's much nicer than the one they have now. You ask them to reconsider, and they politely decline. Now they are pushing you toward the door. What do you do? You can pretty much either let them do what they want, or not let them do it. "Not letting people do what they are determined to do", is, in some sense, the definition of violence. In this scenario, you could either enact it yourself, by pushing them out the front door, or you could leave it to professional violence-doers, such as the police. Either way the result is the same - the person is no longer able to do the thing which they still very much want to do.
The fact that there are lifelong criminals completely proves that the threat of violence is necessary - there are people who may never be dissuaded
from trying to hurt people. I fully support a restorative and rehabilitative approach to justice, but no amount of rehabilitation will let us release the golden state killer back into society. And as long as you keep him locked up, you are doing so through violence. The prison walls aren't really the thing keeping him in there - those can be subverted with enough patience and planning - ultimately it's the people in uniforms who will tackle him and drag him back in if he tries to leave.
No. Words have meaning. Violence's actual definition:
behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.
>professional violence-doers, such as the police
That shouldn't be their role. Violence just leads to more violence. They are breaking the laws they're paid to uphold otherwise.
>The fact that there are lifelong criminals completely proves that the threat of violence is necessary.
It doesn't. If it was, they wouldn't be lifelong criminals.
>there are people who may never be dissuaded from trying to hurt people
Then how does the threat of violence help? It doesn't.
> No. Words have meaning. Violence's actual definition: behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.
I was eliding what I thought was the obvious conclusion. But let me be more explicit. If someone is determined to do something, and you are determined to stop them, the result will be an escalation that leads to taking actions that hurt, damage, or kill the other person.
> It doesn't. If it was, they wouldn't be lifelong criminals.
You just restated the original assertion I responded to, again without evidence or argument. Why not try responding to the ideas I presented?
> That shouldn't be their role. Violence just leads to more violence. They are breaking the laws they're paid to uphold otherwise.
That should be their only role. The biggest problem with police is that they are doing a ton of other jobs that they are not qualified to do. A firefighter is trained to put out fires. A paramedic is trained to perform lifesaving medical procedures. Pretty much the only thing a police officer brings to an emergency is a gun. And most emergencies cannot be solved with a gun. A car accident can't be solved with a gun. A cat stuck in a tree can't be solved (except in the loosest sense) with a gun. A psychiatric emergency can't be solved with a gun. But a handful of emergencies can only be solved with a gun - an armed bank robbery, a terrorist attack. And many more situations can only be resolved because the authorities can wield the threat of violence. Consider a criminal investigation for instance. When the feds show up at your business to request financial records, they don't usually carry guns. But even though you may not want to give them documents that will incriminate you, that's still preferable to the investigators calling the police and seizing the files themselves while you sit in the back of the police car.
basically anarchy works as long as you ignore everything we know about the human nature, interpersonal relationships and the logistic that make possible for a section of the population to hyperspecialize and drive progress.
The problem with anarchy is that everyone must be a good anarchist for it to work. Our current society is also dependent on most people being good anarchists, but it's also more resilient against non-anarchists.
Also, removing state power structures will not remove all power structures. There will still be people with lots of material or social capital providing them with power.
My hunch is that in absence of laws and power structures most people will miss a social contract and will miss people telling them what to do. Basically it's less taxing on our minds.
Anarchism would mandate worker ownership of production, in the principle that ownership only ever derives from use. So factories and the like would be cooperatively owned, which makes it very very difficult for one individual to amass seriously outsized amounts of material resources. Combined with monetary policy that increases the velocity of money, the issue is fixed.
As for personal property, under the principle that you've worked for and use your personal property and that it doesn't result in a master/slave relation, it would be intact.
Mandate in this case is used in the abstract: in the absence of any system to recognise and enforce private property rights, and in the face of a society that sees coercion and aggression as pretty much the only things that are wholly and totally unacceptable, they cease to exist because they only exist in the first case through the state or other means of threatening force to enforce it.
It would be more precise to say that worker control in anarchism is a consequence of dismantling the system that enforces property rights.
Nobody is suggesting removing the systems that are actually protecting us. The argument is that a lot of the structures are not protecting us, but perpetuating oppression, and that if we invert the power pyramid, and power is only delegated by consent to the extent it is exercised in a manner that minimises oppression, then we're left with what people actually consent to be subjected to.
Using strong social norms and consensus. If the social norm is that hierarchy is not acceptable unless absolutely unavoidable, then a direct consequence is that the workplace must be organized cooperatively to follow that base.
How would anarchism prevent tribes, warlords, organizations, armies and countries to form? If you leave people to do whatever they want that is what they do, as can be seen all throughout humanities history.
A system which doesn't prevent people from doing that isn't a system, instead you'll get the first despot who is charismatic enough to unite the people.
Anarchism does not prevent tribes, warlords, organizations, or armies - it is the absence of such constructs.
If anyone is truly interested in applied anarchism, look to Somalia [0] and try to make a difference there. It's not all bad [1] [2], but I think there are many vastly superior alternatives.
Somalia really isn't a good example of anarchy, there was still tons of hierarchies. Anarchists aren't libertarians, they're not content to just topple the state, you still need to form anarchist governments and institutions. Otherwise that's just anomie
So what would happen to farming? Same like in Simbabwe? People were encouraged to take over farms, but somehow these people choose not to be productive; Simbabwe went from beiing the Cornchamber of Africa to famine.
Native Americans had no concept of land ownership. It's one of the reasons why they famously would sell land for a few beads, they had no concept of what they were actually doing.
The point is that it's possible to do. It doesn't mean we should, but it is possible.
He said, "If you and I can agree that we will both do our share of the work of the
world" -- that's the work 'round the Joe Hill House -- "If you and I agree that we
will only take what we need and put back what we can; if you and I can agree that
we'll care for the afflicted: and mostly, if you and I can agree that we won't hurt
anybody" -- all the things you can't get from the boss and from the state -- "then we
can begin to build between us that voluntary combination and get the work of the
world done without the boss and without the state."
Well, I've said that t'so many young people, especially lately, who get this idea
that anarchy is some kind of nihilism: "Oh you can't tell me what to do". No!
Anarchy, you've got to tell _yourself_ what to do because you've got to learn to become
your own best government. And believe me, you can do it better and cheaper than they
can.
Here is my argument against anarchism as some alternative to what we have.
We ARE living in the end state of anarchism. We know how people will organize when there is no existing coercive power structure; they will form themselves into groups with rules and laws and enforcement. How do we know this? Because it is what people have done, over and over and over, when in that situation.
If all of the government were to suddenly disappear, groups would start to form, power would collect and disperse and reorganize, and certain people who are very good at that game (or have the right allies) will rise to leadership. The end result will be some sort of stable-ish arrangement of groups who control different areas and... here we are.
I think you're right. But I also think that "anarchists" are actually after the stage where people "form themselves into groups with rules and laws and enforcement". They don't really want anarchy, they want a "reconstitution".
And I can understand why. There seem to be limits on how much a society can change after its constitution. It can change, but over time it carries more and more baggage. In order for significant change, a society has to be reconstituted. There has to be a rupture, a new chapter, etc.
I think anarchists are instinctively seeking the potentiality, the excitement that comes with that rupture.
You are ‘free’ to change groups, but most groups have a process for joining, and not everyone who wants to join is able. And you will have to move to that group’s territory.
Also, I am not sure what you mean by ‘no problems with it’.... this is an anarchy, there is no one to bring those problems to. Some people trying to conquer others is just a part of being in an anarchy. Some people want to conquer.
One piece of counter-evidence is the repeated story of online communities.
In the early days of the Internet there was Usenet (OK, so it started separate, never mind), a global community, or collection of communities, using text-based message broadcast. It was a nice, self-policing community where obnoxious behaviour was frowned upon, and frowning was generally enough. Every September a new cohort of university students discovered this wonderful resource, and sometimes took a while to learn the social norms, but peer pressure generally worked.
Then in the 90s the Internet started to become popular. AOL started distributing free CDs that let you access Usenet. Lots more people arrived on Usenet, resulting in the "Eternal September" when the social norms broke down and everything became chaos. Spam and flame wars drowned out serious conversation. Some of the communities within Usenet were able to continue because they were small enough to maintain their own internal cohesion, but increasingly these became exceptions.
I stopped using Usenet for discussion some time around 2000. There simply wasn't any point. Even the cohesive communities were abandoning it for private email lists and web sites.
> Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. [...] But it’s one that the rich and powerful have always found extremely dangerous.
So you're telling me they don't behave well on their own?
Also:
> Do you believe [...] that certain sorts of people (women, people of color, ordinary folk who are not rich or highly educated) are inferior specimens, destined to be ruled by their betters?
Doesn't really go well with:
> Do you believe that most politicians are selfish, egotistical swine who don’t really care about the public interest?
So, all are equally good, unless you're rich or a politician, in which case you're a pig. What could possibly go wrong?
No. This is not black and white. Case in point: Religion. Is it okay to prosecute someone for that? They choose it after all. You might say he was born into that, but same goes for rich children. I hope I don't need to argue on why prosecuting for a religion is a bad thing.
To be fair here, I don't think it's wrong in all cases to judge someone for his groups. If you say everyone in the KKK is bad, that's fine by me (and, FTR: I agree). But the hypocrisy irks me alot.
"Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it" (and similar) is a very common aphorism.
It's not an unreasonable position to take that we should dismantle these power structures (having extreme wealth or extreme political power), and it's not unreasonable to be cautious of those who seek to maintain those.
Zapatistas, Apoists, Chris Boehm's work which suggests many if not all (current) pre-industrial societies (implying all societies from 250 000 - 15 000 years ago) maintain anarchist-like societies.
As such, civilisation (and farming) and therefore hierachical societies account for 0.06% of human societal structures, measured by time.
Edit:
just for kicks:
“The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.”
― Murray Bookchin
You can have functioning anarchist societies with traditional values or with same minded -istas and -ists. Not with people with different goals and values. I don't think anarchism works in a modern heterogenic society.
Only with a organized government you can have Mormonistas, and Trumpistas living in the same neighbourhood with a Lesbian couple. Anarchism can't protect minorities against the will of the people. Government can.
> If there’s a line to get on a crowded bus, do you wait your turn and refrain from elbowing your way past others even in the absence of police?
> If you answered “yes”, then you are used to acting like an anarchist!
First, many people actually try to force their way into crowded trains to get a good spot earlier in my experience. It's not exactly forceful, but also not friendly or waiting-in-line.
Just because I behave that way doesn't make me an anarchist, or "acting like one". There's a long way from following some practices to believing everyone would follow those if not forced to.
Consider the difference between a faceless government and something with a face.
Faceless means impartial, once removed, not having skin in the game. Faceless means not having to take aside. Faceless allows more formality.
Face means somebody who knows you personally. Anarchism means a governing body with a face. People close to you. Society 'freely organizing itself' means politics and people gaining power with social influence. Instead of visible hierarchies, it means invisible hierarchies build from personal relationships.
I want more participatory democracy, more deliberative democracy, not anarchism. Modern liberal democracy with laws and principles and visible hierarchies allows individuals to separate themselves from the village, the mob and the social games involved.
Well, how does a technocratic government suit you? Entirely faceless, run by a bunch of 'scientists' that you can't even vote out, but who know what's best for you.
That's where we are heading. And many on this site are building that future.
There are no fixed solutions for organizing society. We don't know what it is to be a human (only strict ideologies are certain what humanity wants and what the goal is). Allowing changes and feedback is the key.
> There are no fixed solutions for organizing society.
Quite. But who says it is for anyone to organise 'society'?
You're missing the point of anarchism, I think. The only person you need to 'organise' and take responsibility for, is yourself. Most people look to government (not themselves) to take responsibility. And that is the problem.
Anyone who want's an good read which features anarchism, I'd recommend "The Dispossessed" by Ursula Le Guin. It's an incredible story in it's own right, and has a very complete description of how a completely anarchist society might function.
"If there’s a line to get on a crowded bus, do you wait your turn and refrain from elbowing your way past others even in the absence of police?
If you answered “yes”, then you are used to acting like an anarchist!"
No. This fails at scale. People are prosocial in small groups and in person but when this scales it goes away. This is a slight of hand the author is making to silently embed a false premise into the argument.
> Everyone believes they are capable of behaving reasonably themselves. If they think laws and police are necessary, it is only because they don’t believe that other people are.
I believe this is missing an important distinction between two kinds of law: common and statutory. If anarchists had laws, they would be common law, which simply represents accreted experience and wisdom about dealing with human conflicts that inevitably arise in any society.
I absolutely think common law is necessary, because it provides a long-term consistency and stability to human relations. Instead of individuals coming to ad hoc decisions about how to redress wrongs and grievances, they can rely on precedent which ensures some measure of fairness.
I completely disagree with this. Common law is still enforced. The issue is not the source of the law, but how the organ that enforces it gets the power to do so - whether it is imposed from above, or entered into by consent.
We already enter into agreements about which rules apply in situations not covered by law all the time.
The more you relegate to consensual agreements, the closer to anarchy you get,whether those agreements include 'refer to common law principles' or 'refer to this book of statutes'.
Anarchism is not the answer. Democracy and extreme transparency of governance is.
Anarchism doesn't start with the right question which is: "How can we maximize the total average good for all people". Anarchism starts with "How can people live without rules imposed on them by others?"
The idea that eliminating all rules imposed by others would produce maximal average good for people is suspect, and has no real justifications proposed for it. It assumes that every person could have the consciousness of what is in the best interests of everyone, and then would always choose to follow the guidance of such information.
Yes, apparently he died last week. The person said to be behind the phrase we are the 99% at the Occupy Wall Street movement. He was an interesting character.
My question would be: do anarchists really work as professors at the London School of Economics? And Yale? Aren't you a 'system man' at that point?
We all have to live in this system, it's unrealistic to think all anarchists should be ideologically pure and live in the woods off the land like Kaczynski.
I believe thinking and writing and getting these ideas into the mainstream can be a form of praxis. As Zizek says, sometimes the most revolutionary thing to do is nothing at all.
Absolutely. The system is pervasive and we have to live within it.
But should you embrace it? While Yale and LSE are no doubt great institutions, to my mind they are also up there as educators of those who go on to become the system's top managers.
Hotbed is right. The institution literally force grows radicalism. And yet, it is considered a top university.
The reason is that it helps to present what is in fact a false dichotomy. The radical thought they support is that within the Overton window. Nothing that would really shake up the ruling elite is expressed there. Like CNN and Fox news.
I suspect that if an anarchistan would be created within a lifetime it would 'revert' to some other well known political framework, either a democracy or a dictatorship.
If there was an anarchistan in recent history it was a probably Somalia and even there you now find a regular government.
A more appropriate example of "anarchistan" would probably be Catalonia during the civil war in the 1930s. It has been written and discussed by Orwell, Bookchin and many others. Your point is well taken though, at the end it did function as part of a "regular" democratic government before being crushed in the civil war both by Soviet backed communists and Franco.
Well, I suspect that David Graeber, who quietly self-proclaimed himself as one of the leaders of Occupy Wall Street, was one of those people designed to make 'anarchistan' a distant reality. He would take the energy invested in him and then faceplant before the finish line. By say, proposing that the left wing should be voted for.
He was in support of Corbyn etc - this is to say he was happy to work within the system. You might say that this is a pragmatic view - but really he represented a hard left view.
Anarchism is, by definition, no-leaders. Self-determination. Neither communism nor a libertarian position. So I think in practise he was in contradiction of the beliefs he purported to hold.
Libertarianism was conceived by the anarcho-communist Joseph Dejacque, who first used the term to call Proudhon, the father of anarchism a mere 'moderate anarchist, liberal but not libertarian'.
For about a century libertarianism was exclusive a far left ideology including mostly anarchists and libertarian Marxists.
> do anarchists really work as professors at the London School of Economics? And Yale?
I know a banker who is communist. It does not mean that he behaves like a communist in his actions, but he does in his words. From my perspective, he takes the best (or the worst) of both worlds: the quality of life of a very rich man who can afford living in the most expensive places and whatever leisure he wants, and the ability to punch down on the "lesser" people around him from his morally higher stand-point. Never under-estimate people's hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance, especially when what is at stake is exerting power over other people's lives. One can always find a way to rationalize one's crappy behaviour to try to lower the cognitive dissonance after the fact.
That's an incontinent position to hold and he must have high cognitive dissonance of schizophrenia. Except if he is duplicitously self-serving, ie happy to receive the payments but not the opprobrium that comes with a high paying system position.
You'd be very surprised how many socialists and communists there are in banking.
On one hand one of the things Proudhon and Marx agreed on was that driving down the cost of credit is an inherently radical act - the cheaper credit becomes the weaker the hold of employers over employees becomes, as it becomes easier to start for yourself.
On the other hand in finance you see the mechanisms at work laid bare.
Nowhere else than in finance and in far left groups have I seen the same extent of shared fear (AND optimism - people tend to be unaware the Communist Manifesto starts with fanboy-level praise for the advances brought by capitalism) about the long term societal effects of automation for example.
I'm not surprised. They see themselves as doing the best for themselves - that's anarchy, right? But they are prepared to harm others to do it. But even so, they want to be thought well of.
I guess bankers and communists share the idea of looking at 'the people' as a group to be governed and managed. Both are wedded to the system. I think communistic thinking is the idea that seems to have won, and (technocratic) governance is going to proceed with that as its basis.
It's a good question. Not specifically about the London School of Economics, because that was started by Marxist Fabian Society members 125 years ago, but about a lot of academia.
Of course anarchism is a resistance to rule by domination, not to systems and procedures. Some universities are no doubt power centers, though.
edit: anarchism means "no ruler." It's usually painted by people who think rulers are necessary as something like amorphism i.e. "no shape."
For me, Proudhon [0] said it best, 180 years ago (did a bit of tidying, e.g. de-capitalization, paragraphing):
> To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.
> To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.
> It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored.
> That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.
Edit: and I must include his canonical line, adapted for modern times:
> Whoever lays their hand on me to govern me is a usurper and tyrant, and I declare them my enemy.
I think an important thing that is lost here is that anarchists in practice do not advocate for removing all hierarchies. Just the most possible practically, which is a heck of a lot less hierarchy than we have now, and to crucially keep these hierarchies in check via rotations, direct democracy, and so on, to prevent any one person to accumulate much of any power at all; in essence making authority a painful chore.
In "The Hacker Crackdown" there is a quote from Gail Thackeray:
Fifteen percent of the populace will never steal. Fifteen percent will steal most anything not nailed down. The battle is for the hearts and minds of the remaining seventy percent.
Never mind whether its 15%, there is a minority of people who will steal, or perform other antisocial acts, if they think they can get away with it. If the majority of people see this happen without consequences then they will behave in the same way, partly because under those circumstances theft is a reasonable choice, and partly because of herd instinct.
So yes, I believe that human society does need a system of laws backed by enforcement. I don't need to believe that its everyone else who needs to be controlled and I alone am moral, I just need to believe that there are some people who need to be controlled.
"The first is that human beings are, under ordinary circumstances, about as reasonable and decent as they are allowed to be"
I'd like to try and understand Graeber's argument but I get stuck here. If you take one glance at history with all of its various wars, raids, riots, revolutions, etc I can't see how one could sustain this claim. For example, did Ghengis Khan act about as reasonable and decent as he was allowed to be?
This points to a larger problem I see with much if today's social commentary: taking the existence of an advanced civilization for granted. If you believe that today's society is inevitable and indestructible then you don't need to put any effort into sustaining it and can simply change anything you wish without worrying about the consequences to civilization.
No, when you remove repercussions lots of people go out and loot stores. And then thanks to the broken windows effect a majority of people will follow suit. People are well behaved today not because we are born decent but because we have grown up in a well functioning society with strict laws.
In reality Anarchism fails to address the fact that people behave different, there are people that is good, respect each other, work hard, look for themselves and their families...while there are others which just don't (pedophiles, rappist, burglars, scammer, etc.). Like there are people that prefer a 9-5 job vs serial entrepreneurs. In a world with such diversity of thoughts is naive to think that humans can behave in reasonable fashion. In a world where we all behave different a set of rules and structure is needed
> If there’s a line to get on a crowded bus, do you wait your turn and refrain from elbowing your way past others even in the absence of police?
> If you answered “yes”, then you are used to acting like an anarchist!
No, if you answered "yes", then that means you live in a society that maintains bus stops, and buses, and these buses are expected to come at regular intervals and stop right in front of the first person waiting in the line, and (for example) not stop fifty meters from the stop sign (and in the middle of the road), forcing everybody to run toward the bus before it takes off again, because there are five other buses and eight illegally parked cars between the bus and the stop sign.
In other words, being able to wait in line in an orderly fashion is not (only) the result of human decency. It's a result of decades of social trial-and-error, forcing people to (for example) not park at bus stops, and eventually convincing enough people that there is a working social system.
I guess one can build a convincing case for anarchism (I particularly liked Le Guin's take in The Dispossessed) but this example is a straight-up first world problem.
I have observed anarchists generally don't like being told what to do. That is not a judgement. Just observed behavior leading to an obvious conclusion.
To be fair here, I don't like being told what to do.
When the machinery of society is running well, lives are reasonable, etc... these people continue to advocate and agitate, but the masses will generally go with what is easy, reasonable.
It's all pretty harmless.
Now consider the case when said machinery is not running well, is unjust, and generally not reasonable.
Suddenly, that advocacy and agitation takes greater root. Screw being told what to do, essentially.
Society sees greater unrest and in general the basic social contracts come into question.
From whatever establishment happens to be in majority control point of view, anarchists and others willing to subvert are bad, harmful elements that should be avoided and or dealt with more formally.
Seems to me that is not harmful at all, may even be beneficial, a self correcting mechanism of sorts.
Anarchists are simply a necessary artifact of human nature.
The T-cells of society.
The remedy is not to condemn anarchists, or consider their ideas irrelevant.
It is to run society better. Make the basic deal sexy, compelling enough that people will accept being told what to do in return for a modest, reasonable, dignified life.
Edit: From discussions with an anarchist friend:
When the common man, labor, the basic, necessary classes are abused, overexploited, they are offended. It may be they are members of said class too. So there is clear self interest.
Agency really matters. Potential does too. Overly totalitarian society tends to labor to excess and snuff out being human.
Social democracy is largely comparable with anarchism. Rule by democracy, not by purse, or bloodline, army, or god.
This exchange seems to support my observations above.
Nice weekend lark! This discussion here, along with a couple I will have with others will prove interesting and informative.
If nothing else, I suspect many of us, if we are truly seeking info like this, will understand one another better.
While I believe a vast majority of people will behave reasonably without law enforcement, there's that small minority who wouldn't, and that's what the government is protecting us against. That small minority can do a lot of harm, think of an internet forum with 100 reasonable users and one troll, posting at a rate of 1 post per minute, just for the fun of it. That troll can easily ruin discussions for anyone else.
With that said, I agree with the anarchic notion of pushing power down, though. Push most decisionmaking power as low as possible. The higher you are in the hierarchy, the less power you should have. Make lots of small communities that self-organize and are very easy to leave, that last part is important. Accept the notion that some people are evil, no matter what you do. Instead of fighting against the incentives, embrace them. Those thinking about power grabs should know that, even if they succeed, it's trivial for nonconsenting people to leave, so it's not worth the trouble.
Any given level of hierarchy should only deal with two things, conflict resolution between lower level units that can't come to a voluntary agreement; and possibly removing units that disproportionately affect others from the hierarchy (not sure about that one). Internal decisions should be made internally. A higher level should only coordinate when absolutely needed.
In other words, members of communities should be able to do whatever they want, as long as they don't hurt other people. All voluntary agreements are fine. Only when something can't be voluntarily resolved, or when a member starts behaving violently, the community leadership step in to fix the situation. When someone grabs too much power and does bad things with it, either members leave, or other communities decide to stop associating with the bad one, which might cause members to leave. Same for all other levels.
I still have no idea what Anarchists want. In an ideal anarchist society are there laws? Who enforces? Do you pay taxes? Can you own property or you just build a house wherever you want and defend it? Is there money and who organizes it? Something like a big hydro dam, factories, ships - who owns/builds these and why? Even googling now gives no straight answer.
There is no "straight answer" as there are a variety of viewpoints that could he considered "anarchism" and their responses to these questions differ. This is true of whatever viewpoint you follow too, your personal beliefs differ from the accepted dogma at certain points.
In as small of a description as possible, anarchism generally favors a democratic city state.
To me, anarchism is simply an ideal view which is the opposite of authoritarianism. We all sit somewhere in between these two extreme points of view.
In that sense, one can lean toward anarchism, e.g. they value personal freedom and question unnecessary authority, but don't necessarily believe in a more extreme form of anarchy without government and so on.
I always wonder why nobody knows that. There are so much and long comments discussing this shit, but the simplest thing and explanation nobody seems to know or nobody wants to know.
This is a common rhetorical tactic used by people with unpopular ideas. They imply that most people just "don't understand" and would be on their side if they would simply become more informed.
The reality, in my experience, is that most people simply aren't interested in thinking deeply about social organization on a regular basis; and, of the people who are, most of them already understand your ideas and will disagree with them if everyone involved has the maturity to actually debate the issue in depth and say what they mean. No, I am not whatever label you want to apply to me. I may agree with aspects of your philosophy, but I probably disagree with others. But the vast majority of these groups don't want to hear it, because like Orwell said, there is nothing more maddening than someone who listens calmly, shows they clearly understand your point of view, and disagrees.
> Even if you decentralize society and put as much power as possible in the hands of small communities, there will still be plenty of things that need to be coordinated, from running railroads to deciding on directions for medical research. But just because something is complicated does not mean there is no way to do it democratically.
Aha! So, in order to organize in an anarchic society, maybe we should form some kind of democracy where people get to vote on things.
Of course, even if most people are good natured, managing and optimizing trillions of dollars of budget is difficult, so it would be good if we could elect representatives that could work in a small community of anarchists who can devote their attention to understanding these issues, and voting on them. We could perhaps call them "Congress".
WAIT A SECOND. I GET IT NOW. Anarachy IS big government!
What is really being discussed when the word anarchy is produced in contexts like this, is power. Those who see themselves as connected to power will of course vote no. Those who do not see themselves connected to power know enough to shut up about it.
The simplest expression of anarchist principles I've seen is that it is opposed to coercion. All else follows. This is very appealing but at any scale we find that people must be forced to be persuaded. If that sounds Orwellian, you're not wrong. Orwell was anarchist adjacent and a keen critic of the left. (Check out Homage to Catalonia.) Anarchy is a fig leaf for totalitarianism. It is a short step from the University diversity council to the reeducation camps. We need to be very careful that the political options we are advocating in the spirit of freedom and equity are not poisoned bait preying on our best instincts for fairness and care.
I consider myself an anarchist but strongly dislike this version or definition of anarchism. Anarchism is by definition a nonsensical political philosophy. How do you anarchistically implement and maintain anarchy. This obviously doesn't work.
For me anarchism is a personal philosophy. I choose to consider myself the only meaningful sovereign for myself. I acknowledge that states exist and that I might have very real consequences if I piss them off, I just don't believe they have any special moral authority and try to be the one at the end of the day that sets the rules for my life too the extent that I can.
I wonder why anarchists rarely critique the dynamics of FOSS, particularly those projects with no commercial backing. You have a bunch of people in a naturally leaderless setting who, at least apparently, want to cooperate and build something in an environment where violence is largely irrelevant, and yet:
>Are you a member of a club or sports team or any other voluntary organization where decisions are not imposed by one leader but made on the basis of general consent?
Well, yes, but what a pain! Everyone goes off in all different directions and boring stuff often doesn't get done. Sometimes I find myself wishing we had a dictator.
> For thousands of years people lived without governments. In many parts of the world people live outside of the control of governments today. They do not all kill each other. Mostly they just get on about their lives the same as anyone else would.
I hate to focus in on just one point, but protection from violence is really a core part of most people's demands from governance, and this description isn't true. Warfare is extremely common in societies without governments; the exact rate varies widely, but there are many known societies where 20-25% of adult men can expect to die fighting a war.
“Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to.”
No, pretty much everyone, even the staunchest opponents of anarchism, thinks human beings are capable of that. Anarchists are people who believe that people are not merely capable of that, but alo have a universal enough tendency to act in an irrationally altruistic manner without external constraint that external constraint is not necessary to prevent widespread harm inflicted by even a small minority of transgressors seizing opportunity for unjustified gain at the expense of others. I get that this piece is intended to be a less subtle form for anarchism of what the “world's smallest political quiz” is for libertarianism; propaganda to convince people that despite disagreeing with most substantive political positions taken by most anarchists they've ever encounter they are nonetheless closet anarchists, but come on.
"How many hours would we really need to work in order to maintain a functional society — that is, if we got rid of all the useless or destructive occupations like telemarketers, lawyers, prison guards, financial analysts, public relations experts, bureaucrats and politicians, and turn our best scientific minds away from working on space weaponry or stock market systems to mechanizing away dangerous or annoying tasks like coal mining or cleaning the bathroom, and distribute the remaining work among everyone equally?"
Somewhat interesting thought, but it does not sound anarchist at all. Who's going to do the turning of our scientific minds, decide which minds are the scientific ones, or distribute the rest of the shitty jobs? When jobs are being distributed, who is going to be paying or otherwise providing for the workers? This sounds a lot more like some kind of totalitarian communist state.
It depends on the social surroundings.
"If there’s a line to get on a crowded bus, do you wait your turn and refrain from elbowing your way past others even in the absence of police?"
Yes, of course, but mainly because it also works. When I went to a certain east asian country 10 years ago, I had to stop queuing like this otherwise everybody cut in in front of me.
I know a person who couldnt stop the normal queing and failed at getting a meal at mcD (never made it to the counter).
I don't know much about this kind of stuff, but if the natural kind of division of labour still exists in an anarchist society, some group would eventually be elected to act as those who catch thieves, rapists, murderers, con artists and the kind. Not every person nor group is suited for this dangerous job as a specially elected, trained and paid group of people, so the emergence of 'anarchist' police would be inevitable.
"For thousands of years people lived without governments. In many parts of the world people live outside of the control of governments today. They do not all kill each other."
>Do you believe that human beings are fundamentally corrupt and evil, or that certain sorts of people (women, people of color, ordinary folk who are not rich or highly educated) are inferior specimens, destined to be ruled by their betters?
Can´t I believe in the first one without adhering to the second?
In my younger years, I'd respond to anarchists espousing their theories by taking their wallet out of their back pocket or purse, and seeing how long it takes for them to threaten to call the police (it can take a surprisingly long time in a bar setting).
Benevolent anarchism does not scale. The more pluralistic a population, the more differences of opinion and disagreement on principles. The rule of law is one way to cast multiple subjective experiences into a single objective framework.
Look at any real life anarchist experience (CHAZ being the latest example): after a few days / weeks of chaos, the first thing they do is recreate the services that a state provide.
Humans having been living without so called governments or police for millions of years. The perfect anarchist world would have happened by now if it actually worked.
It did work. The main issue was agriculture, which made private property a source a power, which allowed some people to accumulate more power than others. As soon as we developped agriculture, it stopped being the natural outcome.
A question I'm asking myself is: "What would it take for anarchism to work?"
(See also: "What would it take for capitalism to work for everyone?")
Some ideas to consider:
1. @visakanv on assholes:
> Assholes make up about 1% of most groups, cause about 75% of the damage, and ruin everybody’s experience. [1]
2. Dale Pendell on a long-term formulation of anarchism he calls "Horizon Anarchism":
> I want to see the president, when it comes time to sign a bill, even if the bill may be necessary, to recognize—instead of being proud of every piece of legislation that’s passed—to recognize that it represents a failure of our collective social nature. And, instead of giving away all these pens with fanfare, he should light a stick of incense and say, “My fellow Americans, it is with deep regret that I must announce to you that, because we could not solve this problem on our own, we have had to enact another piece of legislation. Let us pray we can recover our senses and repeal it as soon as possible.” [2]
3. Another question to ask is "Why are some people willing to cooperate, but not others?"
Theories of developmental stages give us useful models to understand the prerequisites. What cultural, psychological, and physical needs must be meet?
I've found a good starting point in this area in Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux [3], which draws heavily on Ken Wilber's integral theory and other research on developmental stages that came before it [4].
Thanks for all the nice resources and good question.
I think a good place to look is also at Elinor Ostrom 8 design principles to deal with the tragedy of the common and David Sloan Wilson's multilevel selection theory [1]. They call is polycentric governance but it has a lot of related ideas.
[1]: https://evonomics.com/tragedy-of-the-commons-elinor-ostrom
I wonder how a similar essay for other ideologies would look like. Do you buy things? You're a capitalist. Do you keep some things the way they are? You're a conservative. Do you clean your room? You're a fascist. But I doubt someone would bother writing such essays, and if someone did, I doubt it would get upvoted to the HN frontpage. What is it about this that appeals to people? An ideology that feels edgy, but doesn't actually offend anyone?
I have definitely seen those kinds of essays, for all kinds of positions. It's a natural strategy of persuasion -- "See, you already agree with me 90%, so why not take the final step and join me?" The most obnoxious one I remember reading was one that argued "Do you believe in a world that can be understood? Then by this tortured logic, you are already a Christian."
Aside: "Do you clean your room? You're a fascist" is very funny.
I think it's an particularly interesting thing posted here at the moment because of the protests and the frequent demonisation of anarchism in the media.
But it's also interesting on hacker news because of the popularity of libertarianism amongst some here. It must be obvious how close anarchism and libertarianism are. In fact when I was first made aware of libertarianism many years ago it was regarded as a branch of anarchist thought.
Libertarianism started on the far left - Dejaque criticised Proudhon for being a 'moderate anarchist, liberal, but not libertarian' and went on to publish the first libertarian paper.
Parts of the Socialist League who counted William Morris, Friedrich Engels and Eleanor Marx as members were libertarian.
Right wing libertarianism first became a thing ca 1950s and was explicitly a project by Rothbard to bring together anti-authoritarian groups on both the left and the right.
The primary distinction tends to be that right libertarians see property rights as one of the things the state must protect, while left libertarians tends to see property rights as fundamentally oppressive.
“ Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. “
Lol you lost me immediately. This is essentially pretending anti-vaccers and other groups of people just don’t exist. Just because you’re in a bubble of educated, reasonable people, doesn’t mean everyone is like that, sadly.
I don't think these presuppositions make for a consistent anarchist. I think Rothbard's presuppositions in Ethics of Liberty hold up better: every person has full rights to their own body, the right to property, and the right to whatever they make with their body and their property.
Anarchism is not a single political or economic philosophy, it is a very broad school of thought. I would not agree that the most basic principle of anarchism is self-organization. For me the nucleus of anarchism is that all authority should be questioned and that power structures of all kinds (not just governmental/state) should be analysed and dismantled.
If this has piqued your interest, you may wish to look in to libertarian socialism, which is a narrower strain of thought within the anarchist tradition, which advocates citizens assemblies, worker co-ops, and fractal councils, among other specific solutions to some of the issues raised in this thread.
I'm pretty used to this sort of inverted 'No True Scotsman' (you know, if you believe <innocuous thing> then you're really a <follower of a definitely non-innocuous set of complex and frequently inconsistent and contradictory intersecting beliefs, norms and practices>) assertion about Christianity, Agnosticism, Atheism, Capitalism, Socialism, Fascism, Feminism, Objectivism, Belief in the Paranormal or UFOs, and whatever John McAffee is currently raving about. I will, however, confess to some amusement at seeing any careful parsing of the rules defining anarchism.
I believe that a small subset of humans are fundamentally evil and that these people are hungry for power and are therefore the most likely to get into positions of power.
If you keep any system running long enough, the scum will eventually float to the top. When that happens, you have to stir the pot. We need a reset.
Any political system which will shake things up is welcome. Communism? anarchism, capital redistribution, wealth tax, universal basic income...
Yes, they are both kinds of libertarianism[1], the main difference is that left wing reject private property (not personal property), which is argued that its existence will create power structures thus defeating the purpose of said libertarianism.
1: “One gratifying aspect of our rise to some prominence is that, for the first time in my memory, we, ‘our side,’ had captured a crucial word from the enemy . . . ‘Libertarians’ . . . had long been simply a polite word for left-wing anarchists, that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of the communist or syndicalist variety. But now we had taken it over..." - Murray Rothbard
Yes, libertarianism is quite close to anarchy or minarchy. It looks like such sentiments are very strong in places where goverment has failed their people for dozens of years, in comparison of Europe for example.
With the exception of anarchism being anti-capitalist.
Any ‘anarchist’ that is pro-capitalism is generally not regarded as anarchist by the wider anarchist movement.
Fun fact: befor the modern US meaning, libertarian used to mean anarchist-communist as a way around french authorities banning the word anarchist in the late 1800 if I remember correctly.
Is it just me, or does this text seems to pretend as if anarcho-communists are the only kind of anarchists and anarcho-capitalist don't exist? It doesn't seem to talk a lot about property rights, but some phrases about "the way society is organized right now" and "useless professions" are not what all anarchists believe.
Many people, for good reason, believe that anarcho-capitalism is an oxymoron. Wikipedia has a short section of some anarchist criticism of anarcho-capitalism [1].
Anarchists such as Brian Morris argue that anarcho-capitalism does not in fact get rid of the state. He says that anarcho-capitalists "simply replaced the state with private security firms, and can hardly be described as anarchists as the term is normally understood".
Similarly, Bob Black argues that an anarcho-capitalist wants to "abolish the state to his own satisfaction by calling it something else". He states that they do not denounce what the state does, they just "object to who's doing it".
That’s because all the other kinds of anarchism: anarcho-communism, left wing market anarchism, primitivism, syndicalism, individualist anarchism (unrelated to right-wing libertarianism), communalism, etc… they all agree that anarchism is fundamentally anti-capitalist.
Furthermore anarcho-capitalism has no connection to the wider anarchist movement (and is quite recent) and did not grew out of the anarchist tradition.
Reading this article it’s almost as if Graeber never looked at the world around him and saw how people behave when they see that law and order has broken down e.g. the London riots of 2010 where everyone ran to loot the nearest Foot Locker as soon as they realised no one would stop them.
Actually, a very tiny minority on the order of a fraction of a percent of people did so. The anarchist reply would be that in an anarchic society where it is the common interest that production goes smoothly, the 99.9% would have a vested interest in stopping the 0.02% that's looting and such riots would not happen, whereas in our current system private ownership means that there isn't much of a reason to go out of your way to protect some rich corporations property.
I (used to, pre-covid) see daily plenty people cutting bus lanes, so these exist, and what you going to do to protect society from them? even a stern look is not the anarchist way.
most sport teams have a captain and a trainer and most volunteer forces are under supervision of more experienced staff around here. sure they don't strictly command the squad, but they're the one responsible for organizing participant to minimize internal and external friction
that capitalism is unfair is so generic it's extremely disingenuous to make that critique as a sign of anarchism
there's quite a logical jump from "two wrongs don’t make a right" to "abolish the criminal justice system", which isn't about punishment to begin with in most societies.
"Pretty much every achievement has been based on cooperation and mutual aid" - pretty much most of the contemporary technological jump came from wwii, and the modern technological jump came from private holdings competing and one upping one another.
"Do you believe that human beings are fundamentally corrupt and evil" uh, there's psychopathology that need to be cured; how many people submitted to rehab vs how many people were forced into?
"certain sorts of people are inferior specimens, destined to be ruled by their betters? " of curse I wouldn't call them "inferior" and "ruling", but some people require continuous assistance or guidance. this question has been loaded with negative term to cause a certain predefined answer to seem the only right answer. ask yourself is someone with dementia would need a tutor to manage their finances instead and help them trough surviving in decent condition, and suddenly the answer is not as much black and white.
hope this is because it's a very short essay to a large introductory text, because otherwise is severely lacking both in arguments and the logic by which what's there has been built.
The standard reply is that social pathologies are caused by a pathological system. In that way it's not much different than Marxist apologetics. Unfalsifiable utopianism, and frankly, naive about human nature. There's just so much hand waving when it comes to concrete proposals. Blueprints? like what? Stalin himself would have been a fan a Parecon. I'll miss David. Debt was a really interesting book. But, if this is anarchism, our most visible anarchist activists today didn't get the message. We all practice Communism at the level of a family. And we all practice anarchism in a somewhat free society. But not all social systems scale. I do wonder why my favorite anarchists like Graeber and Chomsky and Zinn found their homes in academic institutions where most of their peers are fully capable of governing themselves. Call me cynical, but scratch a cynic and you'll find a disillusioned idealist, they say. It seems to me that if you scratch a social anarchist and you'll find a crypto totalitarian.
The major problem with anarchist and libertarian philosophies is being demonstrated in the US right now ... at least 30% of the population is willingly supporting a man with despotic intentions, seemingly to it's bitter conclusion. The secondary problem is there are always sociopaths willing to use that 30% for their own ends.
If what this article says is true, then anarchism will fail for the same reason libertarianism fails. They’re both exercises in ideal realities. They’re experiments with frictionless ramps, and ideal pulleys, and objects falling in a vacuum.
Both in physics and in society, the world is more complicated than “government is unnecessary” or “don’t tread on me”.
The fundamental nature of politics is that it’s about relationships of power- how power is exercised, who has power, who doesn’t, and what the relationship is between people or groups of people. Whenever one person or group of people is above another in some kind of power hierarchy, the same kind of dynamic develops, no matter whether it’s in a corporate office or medieval Europe or anywhere else- its always the same. The people on the bottom will always display resentment and resistance towards those who have power over them, because nobody likes having explicit or implicit violence threatened on them and being exploited or told what to do. The person or people on top will always display contempt and fear towards those underneath, contempt because in order to justify being on top one has to believe that they are superior or more deserving in some way, and fear because on some level they know that they are outnumbered by a lot of very angry people. They know that the sword of Damocles hangs over their heads. The discourse of the political right wing is therefore always going to be dominated by both contempt and fear, for exactly those reasons. The contempt manifests in talking about a “culture of victimhood” and “welfare queens” and “black on black violence” and “snowflakes” and the fear manifests in calls for law and order, more aggressive policing, border walls and increased military funding. But the source of the discord is the power hierarchy itself, whether it be racial or class or gender or whatever, and until that is abolished the same poisonous political dynamic will persist. It cannot be papered over by advocating for everybody to “just get along” or “give peace a chance”; that’s just one more way to tell the people at the bottom that they need to stop complaining and accept their situation. Even if the discord calms down for a while, it will inevitably bubble back to the surface again as resentment and anger build up, and fear and contempt to meet it. Only equality can resolve the conflict.
People mean different things when they say they're anarchist. This article describes a mix of libertarianism, humanism and egalitarianism that is quite admirable. But many anarchists are willing to use violence against anything or anyone they perceive as powerful or oppressive, and it's pretty easy to frame pretty much anyone you disagree with in those terms. There's a reason that anarchism is associated with violent stereotypes. I personally prefer to identify with values like egalitarianism and humanitarianism without a label like anarchism that is often associated with violence that I disagree with and don't want to be even remotely associated with.
Is there a name for this type of thing where you label yourself as something that everybody already understands, but then try to bait and switch the definition on them?
Anarchists: we don’t believe in anarchy! We believe in the human spirit and peace and harmony!
Satanist: we don’t believe in evil, we believe in love and treating each other with respect and kindness!
I see this pop up all the time in politics and it’s always kindof funny to me.
(I won’t go into specifics of places this is happening in politics right now for obvious reasons)
Well, satanism has always been about the irony, so I wouldn't call it a bait and switch. It's meant to be an obvious satire, showing off the obvious flaws present in judeo-christianity.
People often take satanism literally so they don't have to confront their own problematic belief system.
I imagine many anarchist movements follow a similar pattern.
Do you mean for non-native speakers? It seems like this bizarre “anarchy doesn’t really mean anarchy it actually means the opposite!” Sort of stuff would just further confuse somebody.
Funnily enough: this is why I think AI is so hard. How could you train an AI to be able to decode everything necessary to know if somebody means “anarchy lack of order” or “anarch: lots of order”.
It take SO much context to get that right. Like you have to make lots of assumptions about what the other person is thinking, what their background and political affiliation is. Very complex problem.
Anyone who has ever lived in a share house (or next to one) knows that without laws civilization will descend into absolute chaos and endless tit for tat revenge warfare.
Try parenting with anarchist principles.
At some point you run into limits. The point is, what imposes those limits? Physics, gravity, society or yourself?
Ideally the limits you put on yourself should mean you never encounter (negatively or destructively) any of the other systems of limits. But, not all people are capable of always limiting or controlling themselves, and no...that's not the fault of their being "arbitrary restrictions" or "ludicrous laws" and it's not a "reaction against meaningless oppressive authority", it's just people are not perfect and not always good at acting in a way that doesn't put them up against the other sources of limits.
Even if someone has perfect self-control. Who says they have perfect knowledge of the limits, which if they were to cross them would bring about their destruction or detriment, in any given situation?
You should be the source of truth and guide for your life, but I don't think you can expect to know everything and avoid all risks if you only pay attention to what you think is OK and ignore signals from elsewhere. I think you need to balance it with acknowledging that other people and society has some fucking clue about that stuff as well. It's not perfect either, but you shouldn't not factor it into your decisions.
If anarchists were so clever at charting their own courses, how come they end up getting arrested for stupid shit? I suppose they're "not true anarchists".
Anarchism does not suggest no rules, but voluntary association. A flat share is a perfect example in that if ypu don't like the rules you find other people to share with - the rules are not imposed from above, but the result of negotiation and entered into voluntarily.
I'm not an anarchist though I share some of the views, but so much of the criticism of anarchism comes from misrepresenting anarchism as rejecting all organisation and rules.
Different forms of anarchism favor different levels of organisation, but part of the reason why there are so many variations is exactly that they all believe in the existence of systems of organization and enforcement of rules.
I get that you see it that way. I think that might be shifting the goalposts of anarchism in the face of criticism, and I suspect the appeal to "zero rules" can be brought back later in less critical contexts.
But I appreciate the expanded perspective you've given me. So...voluntary association, but still having rules and organizing. OK, sounds alright.
How is that different to the current global system? I mean it like, I was born in country A, then traveled to country B and C, and discovered actually I didn't like the culture and rules in country A, so I came to live in countries B and C. I can go where I like to choose the system of governance that suits me. None of these countries are anarchist....If anarchism speaks more to the relationship between an individual and a system, and less to the system itself, is it really a system of organization that could replace a social/political system, isn't it more just like a "guiding philosophy" for some individuals? Or a way of describing a set of things that some people might do, even if they are not "anarchists".
It might be me, but anarchy seems to be having an identity crisis.
All of this was there from the earliest conceptions of anarchism.
The difference is one of degree. Moving to another country requires means to do so, and immigration procedures imposed on you by others that means inherently you have rules imposed on you wherever you go.
It also involves the state you move from imposing rules on you that you have never been free to consent to, and a central aspect of anarchism is to e.g reject that the state has a justifiable claim to regulate property in the first place, and so that unlike a flat share where you share a space that is actively used by others, the state attempts to monopolise commons with threats of force.
The degree seems to me to scale up. The sharehouse, the state. It's all the same thing. A sharehouse can be plenty coercive too. Parent - child ? Coercive. Personal relationships, they can be coercive too sadly. But "coercion" on the other side is just "the power of bad", it's psychology. Criticism and threats of penalties really do make people behave better. But it's complicated. Read "The Power of Bad".
And don't give me that complaints about immigration and means. An anarchist should be one for personal responsibility, choice, freedom and negotiation, should be able to bend reality to their will rather than complaining in the streets that it change, right? I guess I also wonder, what the hell do you replace the state with? I mean, states didn't just "magically appear" out of nowhere. They're born out of history of blood and death and suffering and overcoming endless civilizational challenges (Read "Why the West Still Rules For Now"), and I think there's a chance they're our current best solutions to the problem of organizing for stability.
If anarchism was a powerful personal philosophy, a couple rules and regulations would be not barrier. All is negotiation and anarchists are apparently adept at such. I don't get it. Sorry.
Why submit to the sharehouse bitch, but rail and wail against the state? I don't get it. It's the same dynamic. I think if you put the state on a pedestal over you, it's like a type of daddy complex where you are giving away your power. It's all just life. There's no getting around that's it's gonna be hard. Anarchists seem like they want to adapt and thrive, but then they're also complaining. I think their ideology has been misused and they're having an identity crisis.
I appreciate your responses and attitude and I'm not trying to be offensive to you. I'm tapping out of this discussion because I think it's a waste of time to discuss in this age, but I do appreciate your style. Best of luck to you both!
The biggest problem - people can't easily change countries nowadays (and even before borders, I bet traveling that far was cost prohibitive). So you end up in the situation where you have to follow rules of the contract, which you did not explicitly agreed to
If anarchists are anarchists, they shouldn't be cowed by "top down" rules, they should be able to find a way round them, to suit themselves, without destroying themselves. So that it's "not easy" to change countries shouldn't stop an "anarchist" because they're all about negotiation, personal responsibility and choice, and freedom right? Anarchists shouldn't be people crying in the streets how unfair it is that "big brother" is ruining their pathetic little lives. They should be the men and women of action, calculating and executing their next move for their maximum benefit, and possibly for humankind too.
And if it's voluntary, isn't everything voluntary? I voluntarily accept the social contract, or I end up in jail. I voluntarily accept the laws of physics, or I end up maimed or worse. Voluntary speaks to choice, which everyone has. But negotiated...I don't expect most sharehouses (or workplaces, or schools, or whatever) that you enter as a fresher will make their rules negotiable to you. But to another extent, in "advanced" society, the "law" is negotiable through he courts and lawyers, and blackmail, and in "less developed" society, negotiable through bribes and so on. I don't get where anarchism fits in.
It seems like, either it's something that doesn't make sense (no rules) but people believe it zealotly and use it as disguise for violence, or it's something that can work (rules and choice) but not something that works as some standalone organizing principle of a society that is somehow in opposition to the world today. I mean if anarchism is against society, isn't that oxymoron, because if you're anarchist, you can just exercise your choice and negotiate your way to a better situation for yourself? So you don't have to "change the world" just bend it to how you want it locally.
Am I being too sophist? I don't think so but I seem to be missing some point to anarchism. I might just not get what anarchism is, or maybe I don't want to get it. But it seems like it doesn't make sense to me.
It might be me, but anarchy seems to be having an identity crisis.
The anarchist response to the problems you describe is to advocate the destruction of the state as they see it as inherently an aggressive, coercive abuse of power.
Your attempt at describing everything as voluntary misses that when we talk about something being voluntary, we expect it to be free of coercion. The threat of jail is coercive.
This is a typical left-right distinction where the left are concerned with de facto ability to exercise choice where the right are focused on de jure technical possibility of exercising choice.
As such anarchists argue for the dismantling and destruction of coercive power structures that prevents people from having the de facto ability to exercise free choices.
I think you got downvoted for the last paragraph, because otherwise, your post has a solid point and I am sure describes worldview of many people.
I yet to decide for myself on the topic. Just a random thought related to your post - while not making a mistake appears to be important from the individual and perhaps humanity side, it is not necessarily important for there life as the whole (I don't know that, just one possibility I am thinking about).
You might agree with most of what I wrote, and disagree with the last paragraph, that's OK, there's plenty of room for diverse opinions, but then I guess my idea is not new to you, except the last paragraph which must be difficult for you to read.
I think anarchism might be one of those ideologies, that has been misused by rabble rousers to get foot soldiers to do street violence for some cause where the strings are pulled by higher ups. Probably this is a perversion of the true ideals of anarchists, so it's hard today to tell what those are.
But to anyone reading it who thinks of themselves as an anarchist, you'll down vote because it's true and instantly disproves your cherished anarchist ideals, so to protect yourself and your worldview from that you need to pretend it's wrong.
I get it and that's OK for you to do that for you. :) I'm not saying this here for you. I'm saying this here for me. It's a big world out there. Plenty of room for different opinions and experiences.
It's not possible to change people's minds on the internet. They change if they're ready themselves, nothing to do with me, or people respond with hostility to new/unfamiliar information, it doesn't matter if it's correct, like me saying anarchists get arrested for stupid shit, but then explained away as "not true anarchists". I'm not writing here to discuss with people or try to contribute to their perspectives. I'm just writing my points for myself. If people agree with me, I think it's low value because the idea was not new enough. If people disagree, downvote or fight with me, I think it's a waste of my time. Either way, it's a waste of time to engage with others online about ideas. But I think it's good for me to write, but not necessarily put it up here. Sometimes I do tho because I think I like to see my point recorded publicly. I guess that's just vanity, and meaningless. Maybe I should stop that. The noise of agreement or fighting is meaningless. What matters is to think for yourself. Who cares what other people think about ideas? They will be hostile if your ideas is outside their ken, and meaninglessly agreeable otherwise. Either way, your idea should have value to you in your knowing of it. It shouldn't be about them.
I realized I wasted so much time in the past "discussing" on online forums. Now I see it for what it is.
This can sound reasonable when you think of it in terms of, "most people behaving in a reasonable fashion, most of the time". But anarchists don't want to eliminate hierarchical use of force for most cases, but for all of them.
Any time I've heard anarchists try to explain how they would deal with the subset of people who are just real shitty in various ways, the responses have been either, a) in our utopia, you wouldn't have those problems, because hierarchy causes all of them, or b) increasingly convoluted and implausible-sounding ways to deal with crazy assholes without using force.