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Real question: what do anarchists expect society to do/become and why is it better?
Nuanced answers only
So if you ask a group of 5 leftists of any sort how they imagine society might be structured you'll get 6 answers. Anarchists are no different, it's difficult because it's off the map yeah?
The common thread is a society with no involuntary impositions of power and authority. That isn't no rules, many societies in the past and present have varying degrees of hierarchy and even within the same society the degree of hierarchy can change depending on what groups of people are doing.
you know how when you organise a family gathering nobody is "in charge" exactly? people select tasks they are suited to or feel it's their turn to do and go about doing them. People might choose to defer decisions to another person but always retain the ability to withdraw that consent and so on?
Anarchists imagine a society more like that, where when a person wants something done they assemble a group of people, communicate their ideas, reach a consensus on whether it should or shouldn't be done, if people agree then they organise themselves into a group to accomplish the task.
It's really not so different from how you probably conduct yourself most of the time. It's actually kinda rare for people to use coercive violence to get people to cooperate. Anarchists think we can all just take a few more steps towards being anarchists all the time.
As to why would it be better? well what feels better: cooking at a community gathering or working at a restaurant with your boss breathing down your neck?
This sounds a whole lot like the indigenous peoples of various lands until the imperial machines of war rolled them over. These days, I don't think you need a military budget rivaling America's, but I think some form of military defensive structures would need to remain in place to protect your massive hippie nation-state from opportunistic neighbors.
Ultimately this is the core problem as I see it - a hierarchical society will always be militarily stronger, practically by definition - and if history has taught us anything, it's that weak neighbors get eaten by their stronger neighbors.
Additionally I think most of these idealized community structures are overly optimistic about the likelihood of a charismatic leader coming along and getting people to follow them, and then not letting them withdraw that power. Anarchists talk about hierarchies without formal power structures, but what is actually stopping someone whose already effectively in charge from turning that power into something more permanent, especially if they've convinced the populace that they want that?
Its happened an endless amount of times all throughout history, and I really don't see why it wouldn't here. Ultimately it just seems like a fragile system that relies mostly on every single individual being perfectly rational and immune to the draw of populist leaders. Aka - completely unlike actual humans
Anarchists aren't unaware of these problems, if you're interested then there is a lot of ink spilled on the subject. Either from the perspective of actually existing anarchists or theoretical books.
Anarchists don't imagine some perfect static society but rather a set of evolving practices to guard against precisely what you're talking about. The less centralised things are the less vulnerable they are, and even if someone manages to start concentrating power that doesn't mean they're guaranteed to hold on to it for very long.
The history of the Spanish civil war might be quite interesting to you, as the anarchists had to fight the strongly backed fascists, obviously eventually they lost but they did pretty damn well! lots to learn there.
The less centralised things are the less vulnerable they are
I'm sorry, but how do you arrive at that conclusion? If I roll in with a giant, powerful military from my centralized state, how does being less centralized make your position easier to defend? The less centralized you are, the less capable of a coordinated defense you are, and the more likely it is that your territory will be conquered without being able to present a meaningful resistance.
And if you were referring to an internal threat from a populist leader, then that's assuming that the individuals involved don't let said populist leader make them more centralized for easier control - if you're just relying on the individuals always making the right decisions, then frankly you're doomed.
they're guaranteed to hold on to it for very long
Absolutely, and judging by history the typically dont. But a wannabe tyrant can do a lot of damage through their rise and fall, and tyrants have descendants.
, if you're interested then there is a lot of ink spilled on the subject. Either from the perspective of actually existing anarchists or theoretical books.
And I'm sorry but "just devoted weeks/months of your life to read anarchist literature" isn't a replacement for an actual rebuttal to my points, I have done some reading on anarchism, hence why I understand the concepts well enough to talk about them, but of course I'm not going to spend huge amounts of time reading up on a political system that I think is fundamentally flawed, and I've yet to come across any argument in your comments or others that actually negates any of what I've already said, most of it boils down to "we'll just figure it out bro, trust us"
The history of the Spanish civil war might be quite interesting to you, as the anarchists had to fight the strongly backed fascists, obviously eventually they lost but they did pretty damn well! lots to learn there.
Completely irrelavent scenario (and if it was relavent, the fact that they lost would support my point), the Republicans of the Spanish Civil War weren't from an anarchist society (nor were they all anarchists). They were residents of a non anarchist society who rebelled, using existing infrastructure created by the existing non-anarchist society.
The closest real analogue is what happened to the native Americans during the colonization (though even that is a very loose analogue, as many tribes were very very far from anarchic, though some were very very close to it), and we all know how that ended from our history books.
It's going to be basically impossible impossible to address this. You've asked incredibly broad questions and I'm typing on my phone with arthritic thumbs. Anything I miss or can't exhaustively lay out convincingly you'll just say "well what about that thing". Which is fair enough, hence why political theories can't be adequately explained in a few internet comments and why if you want detailed answers you can really only find them in books. I'm sorry, I'd have the same answer if you asked me to explain electromagnetism. Some things are just complicated.
I would say I'm not sure why you seem to think centralisation leads to superior manufacturing capabilities or agility in decision making. That isn't obvious to me, often in disaster situations we find the opposite with citizens mustering before states. Many models of anarchism are highly industrialised. It's not as simple as big military beats small military, look how badly the usa failed in its various wars since ww2. Even if that was true why then is the world not neatly rolled into one super state? factors other than military might superiority affect the desire for and feasibility of military invasions.
As to not having an exact answer for every conceivable problem: it's not like our society has one either. It's not designed, we're making this shit up and it is failing catastrophically to address challenges like power and wealth concentration due to technology, ecosystem collapse (we are in a mass extinction ffs), and climate change. Further it almost ended the world several times over during the cold war!
my dude right here is like "i'm typing with thumbs on a tiny device" while banging out "exhaustively," "convincingly," "electromagnetism," "centralisation," "industrialized," "catastrophically,"
god tier shit
<- ADHD
It’s going to be basically impossible impossible to address this. You’ve asked incredibly broad questions and I’m typing on my phone with arthritic thumbs. Anything I miss or can’t exhaustively lay out convincingly you’ll just say “well what about that thing”.
Well, yeah - when you're advocating for a very radical change in societal structure, with potential downsides ranging as far as actual genocide, I feel like it'd be irresponsible to not point out flaws perceived in the proposed structure (or - lack of structure - as the case may be). You'll forgive me for not just taking your word when you say "we've got it figure out bro".
why if you want detailed answers you can really only find them in books
The trouble with reading an argument in a book is that it's a one way conversation. It's easy to present an idea in a way that seems totally sensible, when you're the only voice speaking. I don't doubt that you've ready many anarchic books that make sense when you read them, but the fact that you and others are having trouble distilling those arguments in a comprehensive fashion here shows that the arguments made in those books were probably not as compelling as you perceived them to be when you read them, but were just presented well (likely with a bit of confirmation bias sprinkled in).
I would say I’m not sure why you seem to think centralisation leads to superior manufacturing capabilities or agility in decision making
History and modern economics? Can you point to a modern nation that is heavily decentralized with a greater industrial base than it's centralized peers such as China and the US? As for decision making, I'll grant you that on small scales a lack of centralization works in your favor. Trying to get 100 people to decide on something is a lot easier than 100 million, but when dealing with a military or economic threat from a centralized power, 1 million separate decisions made by groups of 100 don't actually help.
It’s not as simple as big military beats small military, look how badly the usa failed in its various wars since ww2
True, though guerilla warfare certainly wouldn't be unique to anarchism. And while I agree the USA has failed in pretty much all of it's military goals since WW2, I'd point out that the targets of those military campaigns were completely decimated by the time they withdrew. Small comfort to your anarchic society that they weren't completely conquered when every village has been drone striked into rubble.
I'd also point out that the failings of the US military since WW2 has infinitely more to do with the fact that none of our wars have actually had meaningful objectives. During the cold war, each one had the dubious unofficial objective of "embarrass the SU", the wars in the middle east were fought for purely economic reasons (whatever might have been stated publicly), which is a goal they did actually succeed in.
As to not having an exact answer for every conceivable problem: it’s not like our society has one either. It’s not designed, we’re making this shit up and it is failing catastrophically to address challenges like power and wealth concentration due to technology, ecosystem collapse (we are in a mass extinction ffs), and climate change. Further it almost ended the world several times over during the cold war!
I don't disagree with this at all - but the fact that the current systems aren't working well doesn't mean we should just ignore problems in proposed alternatives.And ultimately i don't see how implementing anarchism actually fixes any of the problems you describe, given that all the problems you describe are fundamentally rooted in the flaws of human nature.
Hell, Climate Change in particular is one that would be basically impossible to actually solve in an Anarchic society. Say I wanted to build a super-polluting factory in our anarchic society, I go out where there aren't any people currently living, use my own resources to build said factory, and start polluting. Whose to say I can't? Who would even know what I'm polluting? I don't disagree that our current society is fucked - but just because the current system is broken, doesn't mean we should toss it out for a half-baked one just because it's different.
oh yes, defensive militias are necessary. Communities need to be able to protect themselves.
Fortunately if we've learned one thing recently it's that modern nation states are extremely bad at fighting decentralised resistance. So you don't necessary need a giant mechanised army in order to be enough of a pain to make invading you infeasible.
The problem with this isn't military, it's that it doesn't work at scale. Even within a family unit it's hard enough getting six people to agree on anything, and that's when two of them hold power over the other four.
Of those tribes you mentioned that work how you describe, how many had more than, oh, 50 members?
No involuntary impositions of power and authority is the centrist position. The anarchist position should be no impositions of power and authority even if they are voluntary. A perfect example of voluntary power and authority is wage labor. By any usable standard, wage labor is voluntary. Anarchists should object to wage labor because it involves a hierarchy of alienation. This violates workers' inalienable rights, which are rights that can't be given up even with consent
When somebody asks for an intro to anarchism I generally don't feel it's super useful to get deep into the weeds of definitions.
The salient point is no "I'm your boss do what I say or you starve" maybe "You asked me to teach you, practice these tasks or find another teacher"
I am using the conventional definition of voluntariness. It is the people that are suggesting that wage labor is involuntary that are using unconventional definitions of the notion of voluntariness.
Even if this more expansive notion of voluntariness was coherent, it would not be an argument against capitalism per se because capitalism can have a UBI.
Hopefully, a teacher does not steal the positive and negative fruits of the student's labor
What if I'm really into impositions of power and authority though? Like REALLY into it??
It's fine, we don't kink shame here
Abolishing slavery did not prevent people from acting in a manner they wished. It prevented them from having the lack of rights of a slave. Similarly, preventing people from being wage laborers just means that that working in a firm would automatically confer voting rights over the firm and make management democratically accountable to the people that work in the firm
I think you replied to the wrong comment? I was making a sex joke lol
No involuntary impositions of power and authority is the centrist position.
Lol! No.
So, honest question, genuinely not here to argue but to learn: how is this approach scalable to a society of millions, or even billions? What are some thoughts on this?
It seems to me that any society in history that operates this way successfully consists of small groups of people living very differently than we generally do today, often sharing a common ethnic or familial bond or some common purpose. Although I'm sympathetic to anarchism in principle and in smaller groups, human society seems to have gone beyond any hope of a successful anarchic turnover long ago. Any breakdown of societal order seems to result in bad actors taking advantage, even when such developments seem positive at first. And any positive ahierarchical community that becomes too big eventually becomes corrupted it seems.
This is sort of way too big for a lemmy comment haha.
I think if you're interested then it's the sort of thing maybe best learned from books directly. Anything I try and write will be an extremely crude summary pre mangled through my own imperfect understanding.
You could read about what the CNT/FAI did to manage a war economy, they learned on the fly pretty quick. Conquest of bread is good to lay out the sort of fundamentals. Murry Bookchin's works are pretty influential. Other's probs have other suggestions.
I think if you're interested then it's the sort of thing maybe best learned from books directly.
I agree, thanks for the recommendations! Exactly what I was looking for.
Onya! Even if you end up thinking it's all a load of horse shit it's worth learning about. It's a very different lens to the hierarchical society (and long history of such) most English speaking people are used to.
Oh if you like reading just random essays and rebuttals and so on browsing anarchists library can be interesting too.
There are examples of libeterian socialist societies today (chiapas, rojava) and historically (spain, ukraine etc.). What's common with both is that they have to put up with relentless attacks from capitalists and fascists. Yet despite that they, in the case of rojava and chiapas, have prevailed.
If you think anarchism can only work in small communities then there are anarchist theories focusing on smaller communities, like Bookchin.
Revolution also isn't something that happens in a day and suddenly you have to re-strucure all of society. During and before the revolution you are already creating these anarchist structures so when you get to that point you are prepared. Working with mutual aid for example doesn't just help people now but train ourselves to live a different life based on solidarity. I believe that even if anarchism will never happen it still worth pursuing these different forms of organisation. This is partly because I am fairly confident capitalism, at least globally, will collapse. Climate change among other things will see to that. What will come after might truly be horrific but I believe anarchism is going to be the only real alternative to it if we want to live truly free.
You read Ian M Banks Culture series? The organization of the culture there seems pretty similar. (Though far future)
kinda? the society essentially has benevolent gods handling everything so idk what can be translated to our world
This seems very naive and superficial, which is, as far as I know, what other philosophers criticise about anarchism.
a group of people, communicate their ideas, reach a consensus on whether it should or shouldn’t be done, if people agree then they organise themselves into a group to accomplish the task
That's exactly how the state as a concept came into existence. How are we not currently living in the consequence of what people reached out of anarchy? It seems like we are already living what anarchists suppose will happen in an anarchist society.
It’s actually kinda rare for people to use coercive violence to get people to cooperate.
looks at human history What?
cooking at a community gathering or working at a restaurant
What does that have to do with anarchism?
I'm super exhausted but you're wrong about the state. The modern nation state comes out of the directorate post French revolution, and the proto state going back to like Ur and other early cities in Mesopotamia was based off slave taking by warriors primarily, enabled by appropriation of grain. Anthropologist James C Scott writes about this a fair bit, he's notably not an anarchist btw if that affects assessment of bias.
re coercive violence: I mean it in the sense that it is something individuals don't spend much time doing. Obviously when you look at millions of people over decades it happens but it is much much less common than consensus seeking. Think of the ?millions? of interactions people have and how few involve violence or the threat thereof.
What you misunderstand is that the same thinking you want to apply now lead to these first cities. They thought that was consensus then as well. We only in hindsight decided that, for example, it is unjust if people are enslaved or not allowed to vote. It still started with communities making up their rules and these grew. It's the same thing as what anarchists are proposing is the way to do it.
You just have to look at any society without police and a legislative to see that they all oppress those who are perceived as weaker. Usually it is kids and women who don't have rights in these communities.
no they didn't. They built walls to stop the population fleeing into the surrounding hills.
Re police I think you should look into the history of them. Peelan policing as an ideal has some neat ideas but it was still essentially a compromise with aristocracy. It's very interesting.
No police doesn't mean no safety shit. I have arthritic thumbs and my dog is freaking out in storm, Angela Davis writes interesting things about modern cops if curious. a bit usa centric but interesting nonetheless.
You need to revisit your anthropology. Complex societies like chiefdoms and states arise with the ability to own and accumulate private property which in turn leads to the ability to control resources.
I'm not an anarchist and don't know a lot about it, I just think it is important to discuss the matter on a sound factual basis.
Most people have a very flaws understanding of anarchism. It absolutely is NOT a society without rules, that's chaos and where the most physically powerful will rule, which is objectively a terrible thing and a big step backwards.
Anarchism is not really a system of government, but the philosophical belief that there should not be a heiarchy in societal laws. It can be applied in many different forms of goverment, most commonly with democracy but there are plenty of anarcho-communist out there. The gist is that systems that promote one group being shown favor, especially at the expense of another, should be dismantled. And what replaces it should be set up to serve and protect all people evenly.
This usually means police abolition and refocusing that energy on the underlining reasons people break "the law". Like providing a minimum level of housing, income and food to all.
I can't summerize the books succiently, but if you are interested The Dispossed and The Conquest of Bread deals with more examples.
Just echoing Ursula K Le Guin's The Dispossessed is an fantastic read. It does a great job of contrasting anarchism with hierarchical societies without really playing favorites.
Her entire body of work is just fantastic, honestly my favorite author. I just finished The Lathe of Heaven the other day and really appreciate her sociological approach to sci-fi.
She was also Alfred Kroeber's daughter, who, if you don't know, was one of the principal reasons why UC Berkeley has one of the world's premiere anthropology departments. In light of that, the environment in which she was raised, her body of work makes a lot of sense.
This usually means police abolition and refocusing that energy on the underlining reasons people break “the law”. Like providing a minimum level of housing, income and food to all.
Do these people really believe only homeless and poor people are hurting other people?
Of course no one believes that, don't make hyperbolic strawmen. But you can't deny that poverty definitely drives a nontrivial percentage of crimes, and we have plenty enough resources to end poverty. Let's do that, and the remaining actual sociopaths can stay in prison for life. (But also let's make prison no longer a place where we torture and enslave people.)
Many conversations I've had with leftist here on lemmy have resulted in them claiming that all crime is either a crime of greed or poverty. No hyperbole. It's infuriating trying to talk with some of them on these topics because they simply will not accept that there are other forms of crime or violence... No crimes of passion, etc.
That's only for economic crime, think theft. There can only be theft out of greed or necessity. The handful of cleptomaniacs that steal for personal satisfaction are such a small percentage that it's not worth discussing.
Anything like a crime of passion is probably murder or something along those lines. Less directly related to money.
No honest leftist I've ever talked to has denied that, but they're largely not relevant to the ideas around the restructure of society. Any system is gonna have an angry spouse making horrible choices.
Of course. No true Scotsman. Right.
No true Scotsman would claim I'm making that argument because they're full of it. I'm not claiming that those people wouldn't be real leftists. I'm saying they aren't real.
🤣
Crimes of greed and poverty make up the vast majority of crimes though. And hierarchical systems do a shitty job of preventing those crimes anyway (since they focus on individual punishment rather than communal restoration of justice).
How do you not see the irony here?
Can you explain it to me? Genuine question.
I state that there are leftist who try to claim all crime is of type X. It is blatantly obvious to everyone, except apparently leftist, that crime is not all of type X. You come in and say "yeah, but bro most is type X."
You can't leave it alone. This isn't a position you need to defend. Holy shit. That's not even the worst of it... The biggest problem is that most things of type X that are the worst for society aren't even crimes in most countries and yet you Lazer focus on the wording like it's a magic enchantment.
Totally missing the forest for the trees.
The irony, is that on a post I made about lemmy leftist making bad arguments about crime, you replied with a leftist position and a bad argument about crime. I can't make this up.
So, what is in your opinion the major reasonS for people committing crime? Or do you think it is evenly distributed, so you can't properly study that stuff.
And how would you personally prevent crime?
It is the easiest thing in the world to defend the status quo by pointig out that alternatives haven't been formulated to the most minute detail.
They won't because they can't. How to deal with people who aren't nice is one of the biggest flaws in anarchist theory. Because there is no way to see whether their theory of "people will all turn into nice humans without a state" is actually true.
It's basically an axiom of their ideology and some anarchists straight out reject all psychological or sociological theories that suggest humans aren't naturally good.
In my experience most anarchists either just live with the fact that violence has to be accepted (I would put Stirner into that group, for example).
Or they believe in vigilante justice. So neighbours watching and judging each other. Which only works - again - if you believe the absolute majority of people will not seek to exploit or overpower each other.
Who will put them into prison though and run the prison if there's no police?
Who will pay for the prison?
Prisons don't work.
But that's what the person I reacted to suggested:
Let’s do that, and the remaining actual sociopaths can stay in prison for life.
Restructuring society around principles of Mutual Aid and other forms of Cooperative systems. Participatory Economics, for example, is a promising idea.
The chief philosophy is a rejection of all hierarchy, but not a rejection of order or society.
Looking at the replies it seems anarchism is about having strong yet diverging opinions on the definition of anarchism
Ooh, just like libertarianism!
(Don’t tell the anarchists I made that comparison)
Libertarianism original referd to anarchism actually. The modern usage of ultra-capitalist nonsense comes from people intentionally redefining the word cause they were mad that Liberalism no longer referd to what they were doing
They're doing the same thing now with Anarchism, hence Anarcho-Capitalism.
Libertarian still means anarchist pretty much everywhere, the US is the only place I know where it doesn't. Ancaps don't really exist outside of the US too at least not in any numbers to be relevant.
To be fair, AnCaps are irrelevant in the US as well, the GOP and DNC swallow the vast majority of mainstream politics. Everything else meaningful is grassroots.
As a libertarian socialist whos about three steps away from anarchism. They probably are giggling at you.
Don't worry, there are anarcho-libertarians.
That's just the general leftist experience. From Marxist-Leninists to Orthodox Marxists to Anarcho-Communists to Anarcho-Syndicalists to Democratic Socialists to Left Communists (ICP flavor) to Left Communists (Dutch/German flavor) to Libertarian Socialists to Market Socialists to Marxist-Leninist-Maoists to Dengists to Council Communists to everything in between, each seemingly hates the guts of the others.
Ask any one from each of these and they will all have a general "worker ownership of the Means of Production is good" base, with about a million different takes on what that actually means and what that actually looks like.
In general, I think it's safe to say that democracy is a good thing, decentralization helps protect against Authoritarianism, and moving towards a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society is a good thing. Until then, people should learn and improve their understanding as much as possible, teach others, organize local communities and unions, and work on self-improvement.
I don't actually know all that much about it, but the anarchists that I know are all about communities and mutual support and stuff. So I guess they think government is bad and communities supporting each other is good.
Personally I wonder what they'd call it when a community gets really good at providing a particular type of support and they agree to pool their resources to efficiently provide said support to all members of the community.
Yes yes and then they discover that managing that shared pool of resources is quite the job so they all decide on a few key people to take on the task with specific roles. I think we're going somewhere with this!
So? Rotating certain roles in society is part of anarchist theory and common practice in anarchist organizations. Besides anarchists aren't opposed to assigning certain roles or managing resources. The point is how you do it i.e by actual democratic means.
But nobody is appointed any role for life or until a higher boss says so, this is the key difference. Also the decisions on that role are not done in a vacuum, they can't give orders and expect anyone to blindly follow it and never question. They have to be aligned with what the community wants, and if the person doesn't act accordingly anyone can step in.
Just how though? How does this get agreed upon without some threat of violence or top down hierarchy.
Consensus. And those who don't agree are free to separate and do their own thing based on their own consensus.
If you can't get the consensus/consent of the people your ideas will impact, you have no right to execute on those ideas.
Cooperatives do that. Hippie communities did it to some degree. Elected politicians swearing on representing the people who voted for them, in principle, should do the same thing.
And you know what would be great? If the truly anarchist communities where this actually happened were left to their own devices instead of being interfered by big bad countries who are afraid of "communism"
managing that shared pool of resources is quite the job
No, it really isn't... people have done that for millenia.
Not for the population numbers of modern nations, though. Managing a little town is one thing, millions of people is another.
Not for the population numbers of modern nations, though.
No-one is qualified to make decisions for that many people, Clyde - the limits of hierarchical power systems is pretty evident.
Managing a little town is one thing, millions of people is another.
Do you really think Biden himself decides which pothole in your street will be fixed today? Decentralizing power is not some arcane mystery.
You're basically describing a coop.
The thing is that these resources could get withdrawn in case that community can't won't supply that support anymore.
Personally I wonder what they’d call it when a community gets really good at providing a particular type of support
Most of them would say, "close enough."
Different
Some people are so negatively affected by society and its structures, literally anything would be better.
See: Brodie in Dogma.
Some people are very shortsighted and don't comprehend how bad it can get. No one living in a G20 country can accurately make this claim
Most people talking about anarchy just want to f*** some s*** up because they feel powerless or threatened or boxed in. But that's not what anarchy is or how it functions as a community structure.
A good way to think about anarchism as an actual community structure, as a commune, is to think about the native Americans pre colonization.
Anarchism is not the absence of societal or authority structures, it's freedom to create your own rules within your community and exist separately from other communities.
So each native American tribe had their own rules and their own territory and within that territory their rules were absolute, but 20 mi over other tribe had their own rules and territory and their rules were absolute.
It's actually pretty similar to the idea of having separate states that get to make their own laws in the United States(guns and prostitutes are fine in one state but get you years of prison in another), except that anarchy has only worked in small groups because unless you have strict rules within each community, one bad actor can spoil an entire community of 200 people.
So after your tribe grows too large(a state) it's unsustainable without smaller communities(towns) within your tribe using bureaucracy/authority to keep people in line.
Wrong. Most people who consistently only support hierarchy without logic or critique also support laws without basis
So after your tribe grows too large(a state) it’s unsustainable
This is just a baseless trope with zero evidence to back it up - there is no theoretical upper limit on horizontal organizing. None.
What is a baseless trope? It doesn't sound like you're using "trope" correctly.
There's no theoretical upper limit to many concepts, rendering that comment irrelevant, but anarchism historically has a practical upper limit on group size and proximity. You can't indefinitely grow your population without taking logistics and territory into account, and the lack of centralized resource management necessitates territorial expansion.
It sounds like maybe you have a question. You can ask that question.
rendering that comment irrelevant,
No, Clyde... you elevated this to "relevance" when you, with zero proof to back it up, proposed a theoretical upper limit to horizontal organizing.
You.
You can’t indefinitely grow your population without taking logistics
Oh gee... you used a big, fancy word like "logistics" that anarchists couldn't have possibly heard of in the more than hundred years of anarchist organizing and theorizing - I guess you completely owned them, huh?
More on that note in "The Dawn of Everything" by David Graeber and David Wengrow.
The book is flawed but in some points simply enlightening.
A dismantling of hierarchies of all kinds. No rulers, no masters. The people would manage themselves.
It's better because it's a society based on mutual aid instead of exploitation. There are different theories about how exactly it will look like or how you get there. But overall most agree that it's a non-hierarchical society, based on self-management and federalism. Decisions are made through direct democracy. If you want to read more there is a good chapter about it here Final Objectives: Social Revolution and Libertarian Socialism.
How will you stop people from exploiting others?
Well, that's the whole point of anarchism, really... dismantling the power structures that is enabling all the exploitation in the first place.
But when police is abolished what is stopping a person or a group from simply taking whatever they like from others? Or force them to do whatever for them? Exploitation doesn't just happen between corporations and "the people".
person or a group from simply taking whatever they like from others?
When was the last time you saw police stopping the rich from stealing everything that isn't nailed down?
If there were no laws and no police someone like Elon Musk could (and perhaps would) just bulldozer down whatever buildings are in his way when he wanted to build his production there.
Without laws and police I certainly wouldn't be safe on the street or even in my own home.
bulldozer down whatever buildings are in his way
Do you really think the police would stop a billionaire from doing whatever they felt like? Really?
I guess you don't know why they invented police in the first place?
Why do you think billionaires aren't currently just doing whatever they like? Or are you really think they are already doing that? Quite naive.
Why do you think billionaires aren’t currently just doing whatever they like?
I hate to be the one to break the news to you... they already are. See this...
bulldozer down whatever buildings are in his way
Show me a building that Elon couldn't just buy with his pocket change - and then bulldoze - whenever he damn well felt like it. He could easily buy the building you're in right now - and guess who would be the ones throwing you out of that building for him?
Quite naive.
Then show me how the police prevents Elon from doing whatever he wants. This should be easy for you - if there is any evidence to back up what it is you are saying.
Elon Musk had to discuss endlessly with the authorities in my country to find a spot he was allowed to build his factory in. When people protested he had to wait until the protest was over and couldn't just continue building because it could have been dangerous for the protestors. He has to pay a fine now and change his gray water waste handling. He doesn't just do it anyway because he know police and judge would arrest him.
Another example: a person owning casinos wanted to build a casino in the neighborhood where I live. He bought a property under false pretences and when the government learned he wanted to build a casino they denied that and forced him to pay a fine and now he will have to sell property again. The reason why he isn't just bulldozing down the building and build casino anyway is because he know police will stop him and his workers.
Shall I go on? There are thousands of things happening everyday that police and the state is doing. Who is going to stop rich or more powerful people if you abolish police and state?
By removing the legal means that enable exploiters, e.g. private proterty.
The legal means also protect property. Otherwise someone who is stronger can just take whatever they like from someone who is weaker.
I specified private property (absentee ownership), which is distinct from personal property (active usage ownership).
A house that I live in: personal property. A house I rent to someone else so they can live in it: private property.
That doesn't change anything, does it? What's stopping people from kicking me out of whatever place I am living in because they want it instead?
The self-defensive mechanisms established by the community I live in.
Anarchism doesn't mean that humans can't form societal structures. It just means that decisions are made bottom-up instead of top-down.
Hierarchical society doesn't stop anyone with "higher rank" from claiming my house e.g. to build a highway or coal mine.
How would an anarchist society stop someone from claiming your house to build a highway or a coal mine? "The self-defensive mechanisms" is just police again you just call it differently and it can do whatever it likes.
No, the self-defense mechanisms aren't the same thing as "police", since the former is structured bottom-up and the other one is top-down.
An anarchist society would be organized democratically so that the people affected by policies have a say in these decitions proportional to howeit affects them.
I think some anarchists are just angry. But "anarchy" as a type of government, means a society without leaders. (Anarchos means "without kings") just people living peacefully, helping each other, without anyone really needing to be in charge.
For more info read V for Vendetta. The movie didn't really cover this well, but the book makes it feel like the next stage of human evolution.
means a society without leaders.
You are correct... the word anarchos means "without kings." Kings aren't leaders, though... they are cogs of institutionalized power, just like CEOs and prime ministers. Nobody chooses to follow them - people are coerced into doing so through force.
So no... anarchists have no problems with actual leaders - they have plenty of examples of anarchist leaders themselves, Nestor Makhno just being one.
arent leaders necessary to organize everyone though? things like traffic for example flow better when they are lead by a central authority commanding the stoplights.
it doesnt even necessarily mean it has to be coercitive, i imagine most people agree with this particular example.
Useful, but not necessary. There are measures that can reasonably overcome the simpler answer of centralization.
Anarchism isn't simplicity, it's deceptively complex.
What are some of these answers?
Participatory Economics, Worker councils, worker self-management, Mutual Aid, Syndicalism, etc.
These structures can still exist in an anarchist society. The difference is the way decisions are made.
Hierarchical: top down Anarchist: bottom up
So the people choose to delegate the task of e.g. making sure the traffic flows properly to a group of people who carry out the will of the collective.
Currently, these people are chosen by heads of states, ministers, or some other level counted from the top.
how is this different from communism? it sounds pretty similar to lenins way of doing it
It's a form of Communism, hence Anarcho-Communism being the most "popular" form of Anarchism.
Communists typically side more with Marx over Bakunin, and believe in a state as owned and managed by the Proletariat being the best method by which to achieve the end goal of a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society.
Anarcho-Communists tend to side more with Bakunin over Marx, believing such a structure to be dangerous in and of itself, and seek more decentralized revolutionary change.
Anarchists additionally tend to believe Marx's analysis of Capitalism is good, but disagree on methods of achieving Communism. Anarchists aren't anti-Marx, but rather tend to be more post-Marxist.
Additionally, there are nuanced differences in Communist structures. In traditional Marxist belief, the Socialist State would build up the infrastructure for Communism before withering away and being maintained by a Communist society, whereas Anarcho-Communists tend to prefer systems of Mutual Aid, which are almost the same but just different strategy.
Well, since I'm an anarcho-communist: It is a communist (as in: a classless, moneyless society based on the principle: to each according to their needs, from each according to their ability) model of how the world would work.
That's not how Lenin did things, though. Lenin actively took power away from the sovjets and centralized decision making so that the bolsheviks made decisions top-down, not bottom up. Before the bolsheviks sabotaged it, Ukraine actually was organized in a very anarchist manner after the 1918 revolution.
I understand the party wanted to defend itself from foreign interference, something Ukraine was not able to do despite uniting with other eastern-european nations for defense. I see this as the main reason why we need socialist states before organizing the conditions for communism to happen.
How would you see such a large scale defense playing out in an anarchist society? I ask this with political interference, soft power and propaganda also in mind.
Would the USSR have survived for as long as it did if didnt have Ukraine as a "buffer zone" and a more centralized, hierarchical military? Are there anarchist answers to this?
Sorry, didn't study that stuff. I only have a birds-eye view of that era. I do know the anarchist critique of Lenin, though.
Can you elaborate on that critique?
Sorry, I'm afraid I personally can't. But I know an essay that can.
Servant leadership is also a thing
our current society's leaders are supposed to be just that,
I can tell you Anarchism is misunderstood. Sure, there are some utopians, but every political ideology has them. Personally, I believe syndicalism is the way to go, that's why I'm in the IWW. A federation of industrial unions with a focus on creating a culture of care and personal autonomy in the small scale could work. Sure, right now there's a lot of work needing to be done, but what can you expect after decades of repression?
Whatever Dennis the Peasant from Monty Python and the Holy Grail is talking about
This is a cool thread you've started. Thanks for contributing to healthy discourse on lemmy :)
Plans and policy can be scrutinized and actualised with transparency, but with governments, problems happen sometimes
They don't really expect society. Society relies on rules and common understanding, actual anarchy would lack society.
Anarchy is order. Rules and comon understandings are kinda central to anarchist theory. Anarchy is a common understanding.
It's also impossible. All you need to overthrow the whole system is a small group of dissidents.
How would they do that?
For example by positioning themselves along a river and demanding payment from anyone who draws water.
Or by crafting weapons and demand payment from anyone who doesn't pay.
Or seek control through other threats, like poisoning food.
Really, the possibilities are endless...
An anarchist society doesn't mean that the people of that society can't defend themselves in nonviolent and violent ways.
Furthermore: why would those "dissidents" even start such behavior?
Edit (addendum): Seriously: Do you really think that over 150 years of anarchist theory didn't think of those scenarios and how to prevent them?
plenty of bad actors doing evil suff today for a big variety of reasons. i think its safe to assume they will be there, even if they are not so numerous?
whats the theory on how to deal with this stuff?
Without private property, there isn't much ingentive to be malicious in the first place.
And as I've said: a community can defend itself without the need of command and control hierarchy.
Example solutions for the examples given above:
Since these assholes live in a community, diplomacy to sanction those people until they cut that shit out. But he concept of payment isn't really a thing in a "fully anarchist" society, since those would for example run on gift economies, rendering the concept of payment a bit useless.
Crafting weapons example: Same thing. But if diplomacy doesn't work, the weapons would have to be taken by force (i.e. by a voluntary, democratically controlled militia).
The food stuff: I'm again asking "why?". But in general: let's say that people can't stop the "evil" people from being a dick by sanctions or force: People just move away. That's how humanity did it back in hunter-gatherer times. I think it was this video which explained it quite well (but I might confuse it with another one)
What about things like rape or sexist crimes in general? What about crimes motivated by racism, ableism or a clashing of ideologies?
The only thing anarchists have to say about these things are a vague "the communities will handle it themselves" which sounds an awful lot like police again to me.
Just this time the police doesn't have to follow laws at all and it's basically my neighbours who will make up their own rules. This is a thought that runs shivers down my spine and not because of happiness.
If you claim that anything that resembles an answer to crimes is a "police", then you're talkino about something different than everyone else. The police as it exists today is there to fight class tensions and keep the current order of things.
Do youeknow how many cases of rape cases currently lead to a conviction? Compare that to convictions of people stealing food or not being able to pay their rent.
Crime will always exist. Currently, the way of preventing crime is by individualistic punishment, taking people away from the community they're in and the fear of the aforementioned. That is not the only way to "fight" crime. Handling crime as an injury of the community and focusing on healing that wound as a community is IMHO a way more effective way that enablino bullies to get a power high.
The police make up the law as they go all the time. Ever heard of "the blue wall of silence"? They cover for each other when someone steps out of line, because to them, group cohesion is more important than playing by the rules.
You seem to not understand what bottom-up decision making is.
how is such a thing like the aforementioned militias be organized?
assuming my country turns anarchist, how will we defend against imperialist nations? we cant just move a country over because someone else wanted what was in there.
You do realize that you can't seriosly expect an answer to such a broad question in a lemmy post, when whole books have been written about that topic and there is all but consesus on the specifics of the implementation, right?
First, the whole system is doomed to fail because a small group of "dissidents" could topple it, now The small group of dissidents becomes a whole imperialist nation. I think that's what you call "moving the goal posts". I will disengage if you keep showing not one gram of good will.
The militias are organized in a decentralized manner and will be accountable to the community (not a small group of superiors).
assuming my country turns anarchist
That's a cathegorical error right there. Don't knoweif you noticed it.
how will we defend against imperialist nations?
Again: quite a broad question. Allow me to point you to an essay with a proposal, if you're so inclined.
we cant just move a country over because someone else wanted what was in there.
That strategy is one of the strategies to be employed against small groups of tyrants in a nomadic society. Doesn't apply to all circumstances, but I never claimed it did.
Anarchist theory almost exclusively talks about political motivated crime they propose will stop when the state and all it's structures are abolished.
Non-political crime they mostly only brush over and suggest the communities will handle it themselves.
So no, they don't have a concept of how people are supposed to protect themselve from crimes that aren't politically motivated.
Anarchist theory almost exclusively talks about political motivated crime they propose will stop when the state and all it’s structures are abolished.
You haven't actually read any anarchist theory, have you? This is a fucking joke.
No, it's actually one of the most problematic points in anarchist theory. How to handle people who are cruel or who do not respect social contracts. The fact that many anarchists want to abolish police but than want to build a structure similar to police or do not discuss the topic at all is showing they don't have a solution.
Stirner for example basically ignores the topic. Kropotkin only addresses crimes which have the state as basis (property and political crime).
Please share which Anarchist theoretist formulated a concrete plan on how to deal with non-political crime in practice.
How to handle people who are cruel or who do not respect social contracts. The fact that many anarchists want to abolish police but than want to build a structure similar to police or do not discuss the topic at all is showing they don’t have a solution.
Again, you haven't read any theory, have you? Have you really never heard of diffuse sanctions? Stop embarrassing yourself.
That's because you can't over-generalize these things without gausing great injustice in the process.
The communities on a ground level know best how to handle crimes in the community. If you want laws encompassing everyone in every facet of life: go read a bible or something.
You are advocating for exactly that to happen. Many bible communities would rejoice in anarchy bevause then they can enforce all their fucked up rules again and kids who are born into these communities.... Well, tough luck I guess. Your community on the ground level decided it's okay to burn people as witches who have red hair.
Many bible communities would rejoice in anarchy bevause then they can enforce all their fucked up rules again and kids who are born into these communities....
Yeah, because religion didn't spread through conquest. /s
Your community on the ground level decided it's okay to burn people as witches who have red hair.
You have a really fucked up image of humanity, do you know that? You do know that Hobbes was wrong with his Leviathan, right?
In the real world practice of small-scale egalitarian societies, these people either get killed, or the group packs up and goes somewhere else. That's how humanity lived for the hundreds of thousands of years before we invented agriculture.
How we translate that into a contemporary agricultural context where private property and control of resources is a real force is beyond me, but I do think that we have to try.
These two statements seem at odds.
Agreed.
Why would you need hierarchical command and controleformalized power structures (the thing anarchist oppose) for society?
Rules and common understanding naturally emerge when humans live together. You don't need a king/chief/boss/god for that.
the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community.
You aren't anarchistic if you're organized, that's kind of the point.
That is simply not true. Anarchism opposes institutionalized hierarchies of command and control. There are anti-organisational cnrrents in anarchy but the vast majority of anarchists don't oppose organization. Also, thereshave been too many anarchist organisations in history to count.
Name a single non hierarchical society, I'll wait and you'll make my point for me.
- The CNT/FAI in 1930s Cathalonia
- Anarchist Ukraine after the1918 revolution
- The Zapatistas
- Many pre-colonial native American tribes, e.g. The Wendat
- Pretty much any immediate-return hunter gatherer people, e.g. the Hadza or the pygmy
Most of humanity cooperating is non-hierarchical. Any DnD group is non-hierarchical. There is a DM, but they can't stop me from saying "fuck you, that doesn't happen! My character kills Gandalf with their hypnotic tits!"
I don't get your point.
All of which developed heirarchy because all of society has heirarchy as heirarchy is a natural offshoot of society.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Catalonia
Controlled by a generaltariat and lasted less than a year.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symon_Petliura
Directed by Symon Petliura also lasted less than a year.
Famously named after Emiliano Zapata and lead by same who also specifically and repeatedly have stated they are not anarchist.
Native tribes are almost all communes lead by tribal counsel, I'm native so...
As for the hadza, maybe just maybe though I don't actually believe it myself I would have to see it in action but I can pretty much guarantee "conflict is rare" doesn't mean absent. "pygmy" aren't a thing, that's Dutch colonial nonsense which actually refers to any number of people distributed throughout the world.
Not at all, your example is junk. Who do you default to in dnd when there is a dispute? The dm because the dm is the authority and thus on top with players below, amusingly the dm guides are a higher authority.
Small-scale hunting and gathering societies do have a hierarchy, but the difference is that it's not imposed and because they are egalitarian, anyone can opt out of the hierarchy by simply leaving. Because private property doesn't really exist in nomadic hunting and gathering societies --you only really own what you can carry-- influence over the group is determined by merit rather than by control of private property and resources.
This is the system that humanity evolved to live in over hundreds of thousands of years, and that's why we like it so much and why you never see people deliberately leaving small egalitarian societies for larger hierarchical societies, though we do have hundreds of historical examples of people doing the opposite.
That said, agriculture is a trap in the sense that once we adopted it, we could and can never go back for a set of reasons that should be obvious. The task then is to most nearly recreate the system we lived in for 99.9 percent of our existence as a species, while still accounting for the fact that we live under a new set of parameters and can never go back to those that existed before.
As I understand it, this is the puzzle that some forms of anarchy set out to solve.
Imposed or accepted it doesn't really matter, similarly the person I responded to specifically referred to anarchism as nonheirarchical. What you described is communism or socialism, not anarchism.
If we "never see people deliberately leaving small egalitarian societies for larger hierarchical societies," heirarchical structure l society wouldn't exist. Similarly the hadza (an at least claimed non heirarchical/egalitarian society) constantly lose population to "modern" society.
That said, agriculture is a trap in the sense that once we adopted it, we could and can never go back for a set of reasons that should be obvious. The task then is to most nearly recreate the system we lived in for 99.9 percent of our existence as a species, while still accounting for the fact that we live under a new set of parameters and can never go back to those that existed before.
That's communism or socialism, not anarchy.
As I understand it, this is the puzzle that some forms of anarchy set out to solve.
It's not a puzzle though, a puzzle eventually fits together but anarchy simply doesn't.
All of which developed heirarchy because all of society has heirarchy as heirarchy is a natural offshoot of society.
Why do you think I always specify "command and control", when talking about hierarchies? What do you consider a hierarchy? Anarchists specifically focus on hierarchies of decision making power.
Controlled by a generaltariat
A delegate body that coordinates processes and that can be revoked if the community chooses to do so is something else than a boss who can fire you. Also: you probably skipped the part about "workers' self-management.
and lasted less than a year. Why is that relevant? Do you know why it lasted for such a short period? Is "being able to win against fashists on several fronts" now something we want to require every social system to have, because I have some bad news about parlamentary democracy concerning Weimar Germany.
Directed by Symon Petliura also lasted less than a year.
Lol, Petliura was a nationalist and opposed to the anarchist movement. (granted: I might have gotten the year wrong)
who also specifically and repeatedly have stated they are not anarchist.
They refuse to follow the european tradition, since "anarchism" is a mostly western political movement. The way they act in practice is however de facto anarchist as in bottom-up basic democratic.
Native tribes are almost all communes lead by tribal counsel
Again: I don't think we use the same definitions of hierarchy.
As for the hadza, maybe just maybe though I don't actually believe it myself I would have to see it in action but I can pretty much guarantee "conflict is rare" doesn't mean absent
Never claimed anything about conflicts being absent. I was making a claim of an egalitarian society.
"pygmy" aren't a thing, that's Dutch colonial nonsense which actually refers to any number of people distributed throughout the world.
Ok, didn't know that. Anthropology is not my main field, so please excuse me. However, virtually all immediate return hunter-gatherer societies are egalitarian.
Who do you default to in dnd when there is a dispute? The dm because the dm is the authority and thus on top with players below
What happens when a dm is such a dick that people don't want to play with them anymore?
Because to explain anarchism you have to continually hedge because the system does not work.
That's heirarchy. "a system or organization in which people or groups are ranked one above the other according to status or authority." I didn't miss it, it doesn't matter a union is either self management and yet still utilize a heirarchical structure.
It's relevant because a system that routinely fails in less than a year can't exactly be called a legitimate method of governance. Yes every new government is resisted to some extent, the success of a government against those odds is what determines how effective it actually is.
I imagine you did.
Nope. They say they aren't what you claim them to be, take their word.
: the classification of a group of people according to ability or to economic, social, or professional standing : a graded or ranked series
By either definition there is heirarchy in all but one of your examples and it is in effect a pre industrial society.
Conflict is unlikely to happen without a heirarchical structure.
Arguably yes, in practice rarely if ever.
Then the group leaves, because if the person at the top across in bad faith they people below have the choice of violent revolution or to simply leave same as any other government.
Sorry, can't porperly parse your comment anymore without further structure.
We disagree on fundamental definitions. Furthermoree you accuse me of bad faith by "hedging", so I see less and less reason to carry on arguing with you.
If you want, you can think that you "won" by slam-dunking some anarkiddie on the internet. Have a pleasant day.
You need to stop basing your political know-how on Mad Max movies.
That's not an argument that's a poorly disguised insult to wit, get fucked bud make an argument or stay quiet.
Also mad max had communism and thus society, shitty society but still.
a poorly disguised insult
No, Clyde... I made no attempt to disguise the insult.
Also mad max had communism
You need another insult?
You didn't say it straight out, you disguised it like a southern woman saying bless your heart. Similarly. ... Bless your heart.
You haven't actually made an argument, your simply being a loudouth douche, lots of bluster but zero substance.
You think this...
Also mad max had communism
...justifies some kind of argument?
You certainly seemed to think so when you brought up mad max in the first fuckin place. It's your argument dumb dumb, if it's idiotic it's because you're an idiot.
I guess that just went over your head entirely?
You know what? That's fine. I'm not going to be spending too much energy on this.
"Mad Max had communism"
From the same people who brought you "everything I don't like is communism"
You're moron. There were a series of communes, it's like 85% of the fucking movie ya dummy.
Ed: similarly I'm a socialist so your point makes even less sense cast in that light.
I gwess you missed the part of Fury Road where a political elite class had complete control over the means of existence for everyone else and literally owned breeding slaves.
Great communism, bro! /s
Ahh, so now it's mad max: fury road, even your cinematic choice is changing at this point. Yes the masked tubby fuck was an oligarch or arguably a fascist, however the female led group they're looking for the entire movie (you know the main plot) was a commune.
I do enjoy the shit talking from someone who's objectively wrong, wildly overconfident and hedging while trying to play flippant, it's adorable angsty teen shit.
even your cinematic choice is changing at this point.
You do realize that I'm someone else, right?
Doesn't say all change what I've said, and yes I know there are "three" people in talking to that all have roughly the same pattern of response so far down in a comment section that no one is adding third party votes for. I'm gunna bet all three are one in the same.
It might not change what you said, but I never claimed anything about Mad Max. Just thought it's funny to claim that "Mad Max is communist".
Ok, if you think that you're talking to one person with two alt accounts for some reason, I guess you're free to be wrong, I guess. I don't care to (and logically can't) prove that's not the case to your paranoid ass.
Agreed
To be fair, all entertainment media carries a political subtext, and Mad Max Fury Road had an interesting one - which is why it's one of the few AAA movies made in the last decade that's actually worth watching all the way to the end - but that's not the kind of thing you can discuss with the "if-you-want-anarchy-go-to-Sudan" crowd.
No anarchy doesn't necessarily mean no contracts it's about having faith in a society upholding contracts without a need to rely on a government. Think of crypto itself. Now imagine enabling humanity to enforce this degree of accountability in the real world.
Eat soup, apparently?
From a most basic standpoint, nothing besides awareness, because the way i see it the world is and has always been Anarchy. We can make as many complex laws, rules and regulations as we want but the fact is that people can choose to break them. The reality of crime is proof that in the end personal decisions will always be a higher form of authority. We are mostly ok because most people choose to follow laws and there is more good in people and bad.
The difference is that right now we seem to live in a world where people really believe that they are born as subjects to serve. the notion to "earn a living" is a clear example. No one is born by choice, we where given a body and a mind just like any other species and we did what we needed to to grow up and survive in the socio-geological location we happened to be in.
Anarchism