I’m politically agnostic and have moved from a slightly conservative stance to a vastly more progressive stance (european). i still dont get the more niche things like tankies and anarchists at this point but I would like to, without spending 10 hours reading endless manifests (which do have merit, no doubt, but still).
Can someone explain to me why anarchy isnt the guy (or gal, or gang, or entity) with the bigger stick making the rules?
My impression from talking to and reading stuff by anarchists is that the idea is for culture to serve in the place of sticks and rules. As for the mechanics of how this works, what such a culture would need to achieve to succeed and how it could do so, frankly most of them seem to take it on faith that this will be the easy part and naturally fall into place as soon as their oppressors are no longer mucking things up.
Which is a shame because I think it could be totally plausible and worth seeking, if you worked through the game theory and sustainability-over-time issues, despite being a monumental challenge and being about something as crudely understood as collective psychology. Human society is a system, and systems can be designed lots of different ways. It could be possible to have a culture that is powerful or clever enough to allow for a large population to function without a controlling state beating people into line.
Not directly related to this comment but I also want to mention and recommend the book The Disposessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, really thoughtful novel about anarchism.
Anarchy is generally assumes that people will naturally cooperate without arbitrary distinctions. In practice most anarchists are mostly anti centralization. The smaller the political entities are the better (singular persons if you take it to the extremes).
The world itself is anarchistic. Each counties has its rules but international politics have no governing body (the UN doesn’t really rule over every state, just serve to mediate discussion). The country with the biggest stick would probably be the US, but they haven’t conquered Canada or Mexico, let alone everyone else. Other players like Russia or China have influence too.
While the US does have a lot of soft power in influencing nations, they certainly aren’t making the rules for other countries and puppeting them.
While the US does have a lot of soft power in influencing nations, they certainly aren’t making the rules for other countries and puppeting them.
This is a very rosy eyed statement. The “soft” power is the visible part, just the tip of the iceberg.
While the US does have a lot of soft power in influencing nations, they certainly aren’t making the rules for other countries and puppeting them.
South America would probably disagree.
That was true in the 60s, but now most south American governments are ostensibly anti-american but need to be in okay terms with america so that they can trade internationally
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Saving this for later, as I want to hear responses as well.
I’ve got the perfect podcast for you Philosophize this. This topic is covered in the last two episodes.
I actually came here to comment the same thing. For any philosophy question, be it a person, or an ideology ‘Philosophize This’ is one of my first stops every time. Stephen West (i thonk thats hos name) explains things so well, and respectfully no matter who he’s talking about.
And i’ve only caught one of his episodes on Anarchism, but it was packed full of really useful information for an initial basis for understanding.
Anarchy in our reality is basically just warlordism. But when people talk about being an anarchist, they usually mean something like anarcho-syndicalism or anarcho-capitalism.
I’m not an anarchist so I’m not going to do well explaining it but usually, the “anarchy” part is a step towards a larger transformational goal. No one is an “anarchist” in the sense of wanting society to collapse. The “anarcho-“ part is them saying a layer of power (like the nation state, for instance) is unnecessary.
Every now and then Lemmy has an actual discussion like this that gives me hope that it can become more than just an idiotic link aggregator. Thanks!
I don’t see a good lemmy community to learn more about anarchy. Am i missing something? I know about sources online, but it would be nice to read what actual people have to discuss.
I found these communities for you, did you check them already?
!anarchism@lemmy.ml, !anarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com, !anarchism@slrpnk.net
Great! No, they didn’t pop up when i used the search function of lemmy, only some tiny or dead ones
I’m not sure how to link for lemmy, but you can try:
https://kbin.social/m/anarchism
https://kbin.social/m/anarchism@lemmy.ml
https://kbin.social/m/anarchism@slrpnk.net
https://kbin.social/m/anarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
https://kbin.social/m/leftism@lemmy.world
https://kbin.social/m/anarchism101@lemmy.caTo link for lemmy, do !community@instance
Example: !anarchism@kbin.social
There’s !anarchism@lemmy.ml and !abc@slrpnk.net
Thank you!
Organized labor is the biggest stick. If workers organize themselves based on an anarchist basis, they can potentially wield this stick very gracefully to ward off or even preclude the entities that would dominate and exploit them.
The end goal is basically the same as Marxism: a stateless, classless society. It’s a fair question as to whether the anarchist route that forgoes an interim worker state is viable.
Huh? Organized labor can only exist when laws protect them. Otherwise companies will always find scabs, and eventually, willing long term workers.
If organized labor is the law, then they are government all over again.
Not saying positing labor as a governmental body is a bad idea.
What are laws other than agreed upon tenets to live one’s life by? We write them down and have a big grandiose way of announcing new legislation currently, all anarchists would do is make sure that those are baked into the social contract. Anarchists and Marxists would be the first group of people to enshrine worker protections into their society.
My point is that a governmental body, an enforcer of the social contract (whatever social contract the group wants) is required. I.e. someone with a stick.
True, but what organized labor does exist is supported by, and validated by government.
Lol sure. Any examples of organized labor existing in the absence of government, where that group themselves does not become the enforcing, power projecting government?
What you’re describing are the symptoms of imperfect government.
The absence of government is a power vacuum that will be filled. Things like labor organization require structure, and if they have to do not have it, if they persist, they become government. (Enforcement, power projection, etc.)
What if the workers disagree with each other? I’ve had the same question as OP for a long time with no answer.
So most of the time I talk to self proclaimed anarchist they’re actually Anarcommunists which can be broadly described as “From each their ability, to each their need.” If a conflict such as workers disagreeing arises, as it’s been described to me, a representative community council would arbitrate the disagreement and everyone would see to it’s enforcement. Personally I find it rather naive because it excludes resolving disputes between communities and focuses on incorporating communities together to settle disputes. Which is fine so long as the communities are willing to incorporate each other’s welfare into their considerations.
At that point, it isn’t anarchy as a “representative community council” with the power of enforcement is just another name for “state power”.
Of course I don’t think anarchy can truly exist in anything but hunter-gatherer societies either so it is a moot point.
Disagreements are bound to happen. Ideally, this hypothetical anarchist society would need to have a system in which to air grievances ethically and then a public forum to determine the viability of integrating the new idea or revising an old idea that folks find objectionable. Rooting out bad actors would be the challenge, not the good faith compromises required to get everyone on the same page.
If you think that all sounds like a lot of work for every single disagreement, I would counter that point by saying this hypothetical anarchist society isn’t interested in creating wealth out of thin air, nuclear proliferation or the military industrial complex, or real estate scams.
Thanks for the response. A more focused question might be: how can an anarchist society reasonably resist authoritarianism? And doesn’t the whole scheme rely on greed not being a fundamental component of humanity?
I’m not the smartest guy or the most well read or what have you, but the idea is basically that whenever someone becomes overtly greedy or authoritarian, the mutual benefits of co-operation kind of ensure that this is a non-issue. Everyone that’s co-operating would simply choose not to co-operate with that person, or that organization, and then they end up not getting very far. Maybe if it turns violent, then the same thing happens, just in that everyone kind of mutually crushes the organization, or dissolves it, or what have you.
You know I think the point most people fire back with is that authoritarianism tends to be thought of as like, more effective, right, because they can “make the trains run on time”, or some such nonsense, but I think they’re just conflating this with the idea that authoritarianism is more effective in a crisis, which is partially why authoritarianism is constantly inventing crises to combat. The idea, basically, is that if you have a singular leader, you can pivot and accommodate things more easily, make judgement calls easier, and you gain a capacity for rapid response. This is, you know, questionable, things end up being more complicated in practice, and leaving everything to a singular point of failure is a pretty easy way to make a brittle system. At the same time, even were it completely true, it’s still only true for the short term, that it’s more effective for short term gains. Long term gains, mutual co-operation, is much more effective.
Basically, the refutation is that greed isn’t really a fundamental component of humanity insomuch as it is a choice, and anarchism tends to think that greed is a pretty bad one. Not only for everyone but the greedy, but just generally, for mutual, long term gains. If you change the environment significantly enough that you can ensure this is more overwhelmingly the case at the macro scale, then you’ve kind of “won” anarchism, in a sense, you’ve won the game.
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In a “pure”, transformed anarchistic society the large majority of people would subscribe to the idea of classless, stateless society where people act on their own responsibility or through voluntary associations and seek to reduce or even end violence and oppression. In such society only the minority would be willing to wield the big sticks of oppression.
Also in such society, the majority would obviously rise up against such attempts at pure fascism. Even though the basic ideology of anarchism is rooted in pacifism and non-violence, it doesn’t mean anarchistic societies would simply give up the their ideology, roll on their back and surrender when faced with violence.
Also, I personally believe, that the way to the transformation from our current society to anarchism is only possible through means of revolution - and revolutions are very seldomly non-violent.
I know you didn’t want to read long manifestos, but this is probably worth a read: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-how-nonviolence-protects-the-state
The real answer is of course far more nuanced than this post, but I tried to keep it short and readable
I would just like to point out that it’s not possible to be politically agnostic. Besides political stances or ideologies not being religions, everyone has some point of view on at least some issues, be they societal, financial, etc.
People tend to think of anarchism as a power vacuum. As soon as a charismatic person comes in they’ll start gaining more and more following. But that’s not really how it works. Anarchy is about filling that vacuum with everyone. If a decision needs to be made you bring in everyone the situation effects to make it. You start at the level of a household to neighborhood to watershed to biosphere. A charismatic wanabe tyrant will be frustrated every step they take towards getting more power.
Anarchists develop structures and agreements that discourage concentration of power. They enable people to guide their own lives and improve their communities. When violence occurs, when agreements are broken the community decided what is too be done.
All that assumes you’re already there. One of the primary differences between anarchists and MLMs (Marxist Leninist Maoists) isn’t necessarily their longest term goals, it’s the means by which they reach them. MLMs believe that they must use the state, capitalism, and by extension coercive control in order to reach those goals. That brings the risk of capture and co-option of those structures. They’ve also accomplished incredible feats of human uplift so I wouldn’t say their position is without merit.
Anarchists see the revolution coming about through a unity of means and ends. They create a better society by building it while the old one still stands. Their groups are horizontally organized. They create organizations to replace food production and distribution; and devlop strategies for housing distribution (squatting).
Anarchists develop structures and agreements that discourage concentration of power
MLMs believe that they must use the state, capitalism, and by extension coercive control
Are these not different words for the same fundamental concepts?
I fail to see how “the state” and “capitalism” aren’t just a more developed form of “structures” and “agreements”. And if the community decides punishment is an appropriate response to breaking an “agreement”, how is that any different from “coercive control”?
And if you’re community gets large enough (say even like a couple hundred people), how are any decisions gonna get made even remotely efficiently?
Feel like you’re a hop skip and a jump from a representative democracy. And as soon as bartering becomes too inconvenient, I’m sure a new “agreement” still be made to use some proxy as a form of current and boom now you’ve got capitalism too.
I think “more developed” is not great here. It’s assuming because it’s the most common currently and supplanted more anarchist methods that it is better. States and capitalism have benefits that anarchy does not. You can not engage in an anarchist invasion. You can not extract value from a country using colonialism in an anarchist society. This enables capitalist and state control to expand and eventually control the land that anarchist, chieftain led, and other pre state communities once controlled [1]. Capitalism and the state conquered and coerced until it held an almost universal control [2] but that doesn’t mean it’s better to live under.
One of the agreements I have in mind is trading what a farm’s workers need: insurance in case of bad harvest, tools, infrastructure, education, labor, etc for what a city or town needs: food [3]. The “punishment” for breaking such an agreement is not violence. The result is the end of the agreement. That is not coercive control because the other can go to someone else for the same need.
It probably wouldn’t be efficient at large scales [4]. That’s why you make small decisions among those the decision effects. A group might elect a recallable representative for their watershed council and the meeting notes would be distributed to everyone who wanted to read them. However, most decisions about a workplace or neighborhood could probably work by assembly [5]. It is a kind representative democracy but the purpose of anarchy is not ideological purity. The point is creating a society that eliminates as much oppression as possible and enables the most freedom possible.
Bartering, as large scale economic system, is a myth. Gift economies, slavery, stateless communism, and more were far more common. Barter between communities existed but it was the minority of economic activity. The economy I suggest has more in common with Anarcho Communism. To borrow a phrase, “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.”
- The exceptions are legion but they don’t exactly control a lot of land. The San are an example.
- Worshipping Power does a good job examining the transition if you’re interested in reading more.
- Each of those line items could be spread across a miriad of organizations and communities.
- The current system is only efficient at funneling money to the top so I’m not that worried.
- These are just possibilities but I think it’s a workable structure that I would describe as non-heirarchical.
See Democratic Confederalism. https://youtu.be/BKRHyF78j2I?si=5tHIXPtGNI0jW5Jq
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I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
It is true libertarianism in the older socialist sense. It assumes most people will act in their own self interest. It assumes that most people are at their core social. It asserts that the structures of capitalist control: isolation, bigotry, corporate media and more have convinced people to act in destructive ways that neverless enable their survival. Capitalism also enables unempathetic narcissistic people to gain unjustified control over all of our lives.
Power vacuums demand to be filled. Anarchism leaves no openings. When early states began encroaching into stateless societies they had an easy time with patriarchal and other heirarchical societies. Bureaucracies and tyrants were easily subsumed by dethroning a leader and implanting a friendly local. Anarchist societies were another story. They were not habituated to authority, they fought tooth and nail to maintain their anarchy. I don’t have access to my books right now but in a couple days I’ll drop an excerpt from Worshiping Power that goes into detail on a couple of examples.
Humans have long memories when they want to. Some of the longest surviving cultures are very egalitarian. The San peoples of Africa for instance. Oral traditions have long told stories that impart moral lessons about how to treat the environment, animals, and other people. Anti-authotitarian traditions and education are quite effective. The idea that a person can own a hundred acres was, and could be again, as absurd as claiming a pig can fly not all that long ago.
You site a tribe of 65,000 primitives in Africa in a conversation about the modern, internet level, instant communication, spacefaring society of eight billion people. Their culture doesn’t scale.
You may have the right idea but you’re on the wrong path to proselytize for it. Eight billion people can’t return to a hunter/gatherer society and squat down in the dust to grind grain on a rock for dinner.
I’m definitely not advocating for a return to hunter gathering. Billions would die. But I do think they have things to teach us.
Anarchism leaves no openings.
The way I see it, anarchism leaves nothing but openings. Your egalitarian paradise only needs one family to want to seize power gather weapons and find like minded people to form a feudal military organization and they can start picking off and dominating families one by one. Individuals would not be able to stand against this centralized power and the time it would take to meet, agree, and mobilize a militia wouldn’t help.
It isn’t that anarchism evolves into feudalism, it’s that it takes centralized power to resist centralized power. And as soon as you start concentrating power, having a standing army with wages, or other centralized systems to pool community resources, that’s government. Even, yes, a descentralized non-capitalist deregulated egalitarian democracy.
It doesn’t bother me that people want this kind of system, it bothers me that people want to call this simplified form of community governance “anarchy” which is by definition “the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government” because as soon as you start imposing rules like “we can expell a murderer if everyone else votes to” it becomes a simple form of communal government and the definition no longer applies.
Long lived anarchist societies [1] have traditions and structures that resist this sort of thing. Morality tales, traditions that shame those who aim to put themselves above others, and a tradition of armed self defense serve to prevent subversion from within. These things tend to be frustrated early. If your neighbor gets “picked off” or joins a cult of personality are you going to sit around and wait for it to happen to you or are you going to get your neighbors together and put a stop to it. You’re right that individuals cannot stand up to such a threat, that’s precisely why they’ll form a militia to stop it. Ideally such things can be resolved with words but violence is a perfectly rational response to such a threat.
Centralized power is actually pretty bad at holding ground and subjugating populations. They have to build whole expensive structures of social control to ensure soldiers will fight. As soon as that structure is less convincing than a losing fight they run. The people being subjugated need no such structure. They have every reason to fight to protect themselves, their family, their community, and way of life.
Nothing I’ve described goes against your definition. A group of people deciding not to feed, house, or allow someone to stay in their midst is not a heirarchy. It’s also not government. Just as a group is free to associate it is also free to disassociate.
- They have long existed and some still persist. The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow talk about several.
So let’s say we do it. We transform our country and it becomes everything you hoped and then the neighboring country invades. How does the anarchist society stand against that? How do they have a militia that can operate beyond the immediate resources of each member (beyond begging door to door)? How do you maintain supply lines without people doing that full time? How do you buy supplies without taxes to pay for them? How do you administer supplies without someone doing that full time? How do we respond to rockets fired into our territory? Does Bob have an anti missile system in the barn?
It just seems like a nice idea but too fragile to succeed.
Libertarians just want the person with more money above the ones with less. It’s a very hierarchical system in favour for assholes (people stealing or inherit a lot of money).
A charismatic wanabe tyrant will be frustrated every step they take towards getting more power.
To be fair, this goes for everyone, not just a tyrant.
I see the concept but unfortunately it runs against human nature: humans have an inherent need to follow someone and the emergence of cliques among people result in power struggles for the benefit of their own group.
This is proven incorrect. While many societies throughout history have been heirarchical, many were egalitarian and rejected heirarchy. Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution, Worshipping Power, and The Dawn of Everything all talk about various early societies many of which reject authoritarian structures. One still existing group of egalitarian societies in Africa is called the San, by all accounts they’ve been around for millenia. I’m not aware of a long lasting egalitarian industrial society but the idea that human beings are incapable of living free from some authority is simply untrue.
Isn’t that just a liberal social Democratic system for people afraid of the words social and liberal?
Anarchists creating structures and agreements isn’t anarchy anymore, its… well… government.
I’m not very political or versed in the science about them, but does anarchy exclude guidelines and collaboration? I’d have thought it would enhance those things.
If there isn’t anything enforcing rules and laws, a government would be informational, making guidelines based on what people found to work best. Like a giant kickstarter paired with Wikipedia.
Many guidelines will be followed. Like, boil your chicken before eating it. Good to know, and most will do it. Some won’t, for whatever reason.
Think village assembly, fund-raisers, donations.
I might be completely off here. In my mind, people work great together, until there are rules to exploit. The best of us always comes out despite enforcing structures.
Anarchy is liberal in the sense that it pursues individual’s freedom not only from oppression but also to act in ways that enrich themselves. It does not require total chaos as it’s detractors have tried to characterize it since the term was coined.
Anarchy is social in the sense it accepts human beings are almost always better off in groups and that society’s goals should be for the betterment of all.
It is democratic in the sense that people come together to make decisions; although, consensus is perhaps a better descriptor. Democracy has an association with first past the post voting and decisions that bind those represented.
It is not a liberal social democracy as that tends to be used to describe a capitalist society with strong social programs, a beauracracy, and police state. They also tend to be supported by colonialism abroad or petrochemical extraction but I suppose that’s not necessarily a requirement. I would agree that such a society is not anarchist.
Structure is not heirarchy. A collective farm is a structure just as much as a factory farm. An agreement where a farm exchanges food for labor, infrastructure, medicine, education, and tools from a city does not preclude anarchy. Either side breaking that agreement when the other begins acting in bad faith is not oppression or a police state.
It is, a lot of people just have pseudo mystical beliefs about how people will act when there is no state. They like to imagine everything bad about humans is capitalism/the state/insert Boogeyman, not that the state and laws exist because we tried the alternative and no system at all always does work out to might makes right. A warlord always moves in to fill the power vacuum.
Some people are bastards and any system you create has to be created with the explicit assumptions that people are bastards. Some people just want to believe no one is a bastard or that there are not enough bastards to hurt the reasonable people. I think those people are wildly optimistic, and removing power structures does not remove the temptation to exert power or the ability, only one specific means.
I agree in principle. Yet I think there is no one alternative but a lot and I dont think we have really tried them, especially not given the technological advances we are making. While not sold on anything yet, I’m definitely not a fan of the status quo.
I’m also not saying capitalism is inherently bad but the current state of it is so severely corrupt that nobody should defend it imo.
Agreed. Capital, states, etc all have issues in the same way. I just think the state can work for the people and I’m not convinced of the alternative. Both libertarians and anarchosyndicalists have some wild basically religious ideas about how everyone will basically just work together and not dick each other over because of… Social norms, I guess? I just have a hard time believing it.
I seem to get mostly the same answers for why other forms of government dont work: some people are dicks.
In our current form we have the same issue.
Do you see how the problem are not the form of government but the sort of „dickish“ people.
We dont teach our kids about the dark triad in school afaik and its not illegal to treat someone like shit as long as you dont break laws. That way we peoduce traumatized people who might become abusers themselves.
Maybe we should revise if our „clear cut“ laws are the right thing. Maybe we should abstract from the basal „you shall not steal“ and other basic rules on a case by case basis. With the power of technology, that sounds achievable.
