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?
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).
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.
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.
See Democratic Confederalism. https://youtu.be/BKRHyF78j2I?si=5tHIXPtGNI0jW5Jq
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/BKRHyF78j2I?si=5tHIXPtGNI0jW5Jq
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
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.
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.
Thank you very much for elaborating. I learned a lot. :)
The guy that wrote the book on cooperative evolution was a prominent anarchist. Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution by Kropotkin would answer your question in long form.
In short, though, anarchy practices horizontal organization (which can be less intuitive to many). So one answer could be that the little guys don’t let the big guy beat them each up with the stick - i.e., mutual defense.
I want to flip the picture, though, and point out that anarchists oppose capitalism because it produces hierarchy and inequality. In the anarchist view, the “guy with the bigger stick” is currently protected by markets and a police apparatus that serves to protect capital accumulation and other private property. Anarchism generally opposes the structures that are required to keep the “guy with the bigger stick” in power when he is vastly outnumbered, so your question is probably more relevant to our present-day systems than anarchist ones.
Person with big stick < A bunch of people with pockets full of rocks
Not when the big stick is made of enriched Uranium
Thats an interesting point. I‘ve read a lot of answers by now and I really enjoy how many different viewpoints and interpretations come together along with patterns of probably the core of the topic.
I’m not an expert, nor do I claim to be even moderately smart about things, but I would think anarchy devolves to other labels once there’s a bigger stick being used.
Edit: it might be a dictatorship, or a monarchy if the stick is jewel encrusted
This is correct. If society becomes a place where a few people are running everything by force it is not anarchy, even if technically there are no written down laws. A lot of anarchist philosophy is about how to achieve and maintain anarchy without it devolving back into hierarchical power structures. There are a lot of different ideas that have spawned their own subgenre of anarchy. I personally think some checks and balances combination of unions and community councils is the most likely to succeed. This is anarcho-syndicalism.
Answering the following question might help in clearing up misconceptions: what is anarchism to you ?
From there we can discuss whether or not your definition is correct, and address your question.
I was reading through this: https://anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionA.html#seca2 but I’m overwhelmed with the amount of content and just wanted to understand if other people have an “easier to grasp the basics” stance I could ask of them.
I would so much love a “lateral society” where you are not better or worse than the person next to you (open source was recently cited as anarcho communism example) but are encouraged to contribute what you can to public benefit.
But watching examples of decapitated states devolving in to warlord rule makes me think the idea does not really work.
Example: we have this problem with 3E in open source, where some people just aren’t educated enough on history and vile human behavior to put countermeasures in place and succumb to warlordism again (big company taking control in this case).
Just waking up so don’t have the brain power to give an in depth answer (Lettuceeatlettuce’s reply is god), but one thing jumped out at me:
But watching examples of decapitated states devolving in to warlord rule makes me think the idea does not really work.
The problem with looking at examples of anarchism (or communism for that matter) within a wider capitalist world is that capitalism despises competition and will do anything in its power to destroy it. So capitalist states intervene, either directly by installing a well funded and armed opposition to the anti-capitalists, or they indirectly create war in the region so neighbouring countries can destroy the project, or they impose sanctions making it impossible for the project to survive, and so on… The other option is that the “leader” (which shouldn’t exist) can’t help but be tempted by the power capitalism can offer (only) those at the top, and they turn on their own project, making it state capitalist themselves, leading to its demise (like the USSR). But that is because we’ve been socialised under capitalism for so long it’s hard to unlearn, not because greed and selfishness are “human nature”.
Remove capitalism entirely, and re-educate people with our natural instincts of cooperation and community, and things would turn out very differently…
Counter measures against warlordism would be crucial for effective anarchism for sure!
I think the easiest approach to anarchism is searching for Chomsky talking about it.
Yeah that’s a long read and the webpage as it is designed itself isn’t inviting, @Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml posted a great comment which might be an easier introduction. I’ll just select and copy paste paragraphs from your link that are relevant to understanding anarchism, but I do recommend allocating the time to read the whole thing if you’re interested in learning more :
anarchists consider it essential to create a society based on three principles: liberty, equality and solidarity.
Liberty is essential for the full flowering of human intelligence, creativity, and dignity. To be dominated by another is to be denied the chance to think and act for oneself […] Thus the society that maximises the growth of individuality will necessarily be based on voluntary association, not coercion and authority.
Equality is essential for genuine liberty to exist. There can be no real freedom in a class-stratified, hierarchical society riddled with gross inequalities of power, wealth, and privilege. For in such a society only a few – those at the top of the hierarchy – are relatively free, while the rest are semi-slaves. Hence without equality, liberty becomes a mockery – at best the “freedom” to choose one’s master (boss), as under capitalism.
Solidarity means mutual aid: working voluntarily and co-operatively with others who share the same goals and interests. […] without liberty and equality, society becomes a pyramid of competing classes based on the domination of the lower by the higher strata. In such a society, as we know from our own, it’s “dominate or be dominated,” “dog eat dog,” and “everyone for themselves.”
Anarchists do not believe that everyone should be able to “do whatever they like,” because some actions invariably involve the denial of the liberty of others.
Anarchists desire a decentralised society, based on free association. […] Only by a rational decentralisation of power, both structurally and territorially, can individual liberty be fostered and encouraged. […] anarchists favour organisations which minimise authority, keeping power at the base, in the hands of those who are affected by any decisions reached.
Addiitonally, this is a recommended read : Ruth Kinna - Anarchism: A Beginner’s Guide - https://files.libcom.org/files/Anarchism - A Beginners Guide - Kinna, Ruth.pdf
Some youtube recommendations : Zoe Baker (@anarchozoe) ; Anark (@Anark) ; Red Planet (@RedPlanetShow) ; AudibleAnarchist (@AudibleAnarchist1)
Thank you so much for this elaborate reply. I will check your sources out.
Anarchism understood as a proper model and not just “chaos” is about horizontal and distributed power structures.
The whole idea is that no single person or group has a monopoly on power. Now if you are asking how do anarchist societies prevent people or groups like that from rising up and forming monopolies of power, there are a bunch of different answers. Ultimately it’s about collective action and proper structure.
If your organization’s rules allow for a single person to rise up and take over, it isn’t formed correctly. It’s like the Fediverse, no one server or person gets to make the rules for all the other servers or developers.
Everything is federated by the choice of the instances and ultimately the uses. If they don’t agree with how any instance is being run, they can start their own and run it how they want, federating with who they want assuming it is mutual.
Anybody can fork the project at any time, build it different, start a new instance, run it how they want, etc.
You build into your society, mechanisms that resist monopolies of power. It’s like how your body’s immune system has layers of protection against all kinds of germs.
Another example, in typical small company the structure is top-down with the owner usually being a single person with universal power over all their employees. They can hire and fire whoever they want whenever they want. They can shut down the company or change how any part of it operates whenever they want. Nothing in that company structure protects the employees from abuse by the owner.
There is no magic bullet to protect against everything, just like how your body despite being healthy and strong can still succumb to cancer, infection, poison, etc. That isn’t a reason to just give up on being fit and healthy, because it is about improving your odds and trying to make your life on the average better.
I am five years old and I don’t understand anything you just said.
I was going to engage in some debate with this, but after your last paragraph I no longer find it necessary.
It illustrates one of the nastier, but also more important of life lessons. No system or even choice is going to be without its own flaws and vulnerabilities, they’ll just be different ones from system to system. So, it’s less about any one system being “right”, or even just “better”, but instead “appropriate to the circumstances/environment/goals”.
Once you acknowledge this, it becomes a lot harder to passionately defend any particular system, because you’re no longer as eager to ignore its own unique vulnerabilities. I believe deeply in democracy and freedom of information for instance, but I cannot bring myself to ignore that it creates a vulnerability for us that someone like Xi Jinping, with his powerful control over the local information space, simply does not experience.
Authoritarian systems, on the other hand, have to deal with the very basic fact that there is nothing divine or magical about that man on top, he’s as human as the rest of us. So, if you get rid of him, you may be able to take and keep his job. Where in a democracy you’d just have to face re-election within a few years.
Pros and cons, always, with pretty much everything. Then the next most important consideration imo is simply scale. Some systems work very well within very small scales, say, a small family. But when scaling these systems up, it can change the circumstances enough that their value changes.
To illustrate this I always like to use littering a banana peel. If just one person litters a banana peel, it is largely harmless. If, however, a million people litter banana peels all in one spot, you can actually create a potential problem where one did not exist before. Scaling the behavior up changes how we need to think about it. This has a lot of ramifications for business in the modern world, where scale is usually desirable. Also feeds into many civil engineering problems.
I don’t think you’re saying anything contrary but I wanted to make one point clear.
The democracy we live under is not unique to capitalism. In fact, our current system has less democracy than an anarchist system would. Also capitalism doesn’t have any requirement to be democratic. Whereas with anarchism, any dictatorship is directly against the core tenets of the system.
That being said, (I have not read enough theory to know for sure but) anarchism doesn’t necessarily preclude the idea of having managers or even CEO’s. It does preclude those positions having total power and control of an enterprise though. Dismantling the hierarchical structure of modern society doesn’t mean having someone be a coordinator of a larger group isn’t helpful. It just means that job isn’t given greater power or more significance than those being coordinated. Our current idea of a CEO is very dictatorial, but that’s not how it has to be.
I think it is important to add that even though no system is perfect and every system has it’s pros and cons, that doesn’t make them equal. As soon as we define goals, for example equal rights, some systems will be better equipped at achieving those while others might be actively hostile to them.
Oh, I never thought of the Fediverse being anarchic (anarchistic?), that’s a nice thought (then again servers are mostly structured hierarchical with admins and mods and users?).
I’m not sure how well it translates into societies, though. I love the principles of anarchy, I strongly believe that there should be no one ruling over or deciding for other people but I’m not sure this would work in reality since I can just see how the people with the “big stick” (armies) would just invade us while we’re endlessly debating what the best course of action is. I know this is a bleak outlook on the world but you can kind of see it happening now where Russia can just count on Europe and the US arguing among themselves (in their respective systems) while the dictatorship is just fucking shit up. I sure hope I’m proven wrong!
bear in mind here that i’m very much not well-versed in anarchist philosophy, but
servers are mostly structured hierarchical with admins and mods and users
i think even in systems like direct democracy (afaik a kind of anarchy because people directly vote on everything?) it doesn’t really scale and you end up needing to elect someone to make implementation decisions toward the overall goals of the society
the key is that it should be very easy to replace that person, and they should have no real “power” other than things that people would mostly come to the same conclusions about anyway - they’re an administrator, a knowledge worker, and their job is procedural
in the fediverse, we join servers whereby we agree to their rules. moderators and admins are a procedural role that is about interpreting and implementing those rules. we can replace them at any time by changing servers and our loss is minimal - less so on mastodon because of the account transfer feature! thus their power over us is always an individual choice and not something that is forced upon us either explicitly or implicitly
Servers are heirarchic, but heirarchy is optional; the lower level members are free to leave at any time.
thank you for explaining. This makes it a lot easier to grasp.
Do you have a source that slowly zooms in on the topic so I can read stuff that helps me get an idea of more concepts regarding this?
There’s a lot of classic books on anarchy. I think Peter Kropotato[sic] has a lot of stuff written before the Russian revolution that goes heavily into why capitalism and feudalism both suck.
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
Thank you very much! I will give it a read! Brilliantly put btw.
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.
Because no one knows anything whatsoever about actual anarchist political theory.
Anarchy as thought of by the wide and vast majority of people is simply a state of chaos and violence with no clear rulers.
What Anarchy actually is is fairly simple.
Root words derive from Greek.
An- Prefix: Without
Archon: Tyrant/Cruel and Ruthless Ruler/Undefiable Authority
Non insane Anarchists are always critics of the state, corporate structures of organizing the work place, most forms of organized religion, oppressive social norms and anything that creates and maintains any kind of hierarchy in society that results in oppression, impoverishment or cruelty to any particular group of people for illegitimate reasons.
Anarchy is essentially very similar in many ways to communism as Marx envisioned it, in that it is an idealized, as yet not perfectly defined goal of a just, egalitarian and democratic society that heavily emphasizes people being adequately represented economically in their daily lives as workers, as opposed to the standard liberal capitalist model where your boss essentially has authoritarian power over you in the workplace.
Both Marxism and Anarchism are highly critical of the profit motive and the ability of a very small number of people to own all or much of the capital (means of production such as factories) of a society, for very lengthy and detailed reasons.
A very common misunderstanding is what is truly meant by ‘private property’: most people unfamiliar with Marxism or Anarchism believe that Marxists and Anarchists believe that no one should be allowed to singly, individually own /anything/.
This is false. While many different adherents have different precise definitions, generally speaking private possessions are just fine until they get to the point of owning something directly and singly that has a massive impact on the lives of others should you choose to unilateraly use your ‘property rights’ in a way that is beneficial to you personally, but harmful to a large number of other people.
Further, Marxists and Anarchists both generally agree that ‘property rights’ as we currently conceive of them really only functionally exist for the rich and powerful, and are enforced via the power of the state.
Anarchism significantly differs from many later Marxist derived theories such as Leninism, Stalinism and Maoism that generally emphasize that in order to actually achieve an ideal, non capitalist society, one must create a massive state structure and place all power to reorganize a capitalist economy into a class of totalitarian economic organizers and planners, and that during this process the state is entirely justified in basically any means of crushing dissent it deems necessary.
This is of course heinous to Anarchists, who view a totalitarian state as essentially criminal.
What modern Anarchists, who are, again, not insane, usually support are working both within and outside of existing norms and government structures to meaningfully improve peoples lives amd expand their rights:
Mutual Aid: Direct Involvement in you local community to feed the hungry, house the unhoused, provide aid to the sick and displaced.
Advocacy: Doing what you can to promote ideas and views that will be beneficial to the masses, or to protect at risk minorities, both within existing formal societal structures like governments and businesses, and also within society generally.
Many modern Anarchists are also very concerned about the power if states and corporations to abuse the environment and curtail freedom of expression.
Anarchy also has another useful definition in the context of a world of nation-states:
Anarchy is that same common understanding of a world without rules and chaos, but the realization that this simply describes our current world given the history of actions of and between nation states, who often engage in many harmful acts against other nation-states and their populations, and rarely actually follow any rules or norms which are supposed, but i actuality rarely do, govern affairs between states. States will often do whatever they believe they can get away with that will benefit themselves, even if it means massively harming another state or group of people.
Finally, if you want to also be a modern technologically savvy anarchist, aka a cyberpunk, you can realize that the advent of computer and digital technology means there no longer exist any actually valid reasons, in very many cases, to actually pay for software, and that you should be an advocate of open source software.
So, in summary, Anarchy is not a state of chaos, without rules.
It is a very complex and nuanced political theory of advocacy for a more equitable and more just society.
No serious Anarchist believes that the world would be better if everyone was free to rum around and do literally whatever they want on an individual scale.
What exact kind of society do they propose?
Well unfortunately that differs wildly from Anarchist to Anarchist, but again, as with how Marxist socialism is but a /process/ of transforming from a capitalist society into an as of yet not perfectly defined communism, Anarchism is a /process/ and /method of analysis/ of how to transform into a better society for everyone.
Nice explanation! Thank you. I’m kind of getting the hang of it now. Very glad I asked.
No problem.
Well, crud. I guess I am much more on the side of anarchists than I thought…
Haha I’ve had the same exact realization while learning about what it actually is!
See, unlike the communist tankies who would at this moment chant ‘one of us, one of us’…
I will encourage you to aim to to good in an imperfect world where circumstances are often either morally gray, or involve complex factors that are non obvious, but very relevant and important, to learn moral and ethical theories and challenge yourself to actually answer ‘What is good?’.
I will encourage you to /never/ believe you have all the answers to everything, that there is always more than can be learned, and that there are very rarely one size fits all answers to unique and specific situations, and to know that admitting a mistake or error, and reflecting on why or how you came to be in error, is not the sign of a fool, but is the sign of a genuine person striving to be consistent froma starting point of incomplete knowledge and experience.
I will encourage you to challenge your own assumptions, but to be confident when confronted with rhetoric and theories that you yourself can prove are misleading, logically invalid, or outright justify atrocities.
As can probably be reasonably expected, there is an extremely wide range of Anarchist stances on basically the minutia of theory, as well as on what are and are not defensible or moral stances on specific current events or situations, and there are many Anarchist theoreticians who come from many different cultures and backgrounds, and many who focus much more on how Anarchist theory can or should apply to more specific features of our largely capitalist world.
I have tried here to outline the most broadly agreed upon ideas that… well again probably only really Communist Tankies would find fault with, they kind of have a whole history of incorporating anarchists into initial Social Revolutions, and then murdering them all after they have control of their newly acquired state.
They really do not like that Anarchists existed and still exist, they are very convinced, ironically, that they own the ideology that evolved out of Marx, when in truth prominent Anarchists such as Kropotkin and others actually both agreed and disagreed with each other on various issues, and helped form some of both of their views both by antagonism and agreement.
Anyway, entirely unironically:
Live Long and Prosper, and, the Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few.
A lot of people are. We have bad press, partly our fault and partly because we’re dangerous to systems of power and those who benefit from them. The cultural idea of power doesn’t mind if everyone swaps places or if things get turned upside down. The framework of thinking persists, everyone in the system understands it. It’s easy. Destroying it though, that means basically everyone has to unlearn a lot. It demands we see the beggar and the ceo as equals influenced by their situation and circumstances.
But also I think one thing to understand that a lot of people don’t is that there’s folks I’d call optimist anarchists, and folks I’d call pessimist anarchists. Optimist anarchists believe that we as people can build a better world together because people tend to want to help people and abolishing hierarchy is the best way to enable that. Pessimist anarchists believe that power tends to fuck with your head and make you a worse person. To them abolishing hierarchy may not result in a good situation, but rather that allowing hierarchy is too high risk. The optimist may say that a benevolent dictator isn’t as good for society as a benevolent society of equals. The pessimist would say that a benevolent dictator is rare at best and highly unlikely to keep happening.
Anarchy means nobody is in charge. As soon as somebody with a big stick says they’re in charge it stops being anarchy.
Kind of incredible that they asked for a simple answer and you’re the only one providing one in a sea of false information and extremely elaborate replies…
“Anarchy is an utopia where there’s no one in a position of authority because no one feels the need/pulsion to be in power, what you’re describing is outside these parameters so it isn’t anarchy.” would have been my version of what you said.
As an anarchist, I don’t think anarchy is a utopia, but the natural state of humanity.
Based on all of human history? No
Ever since we’ve been living in groups there’s been leaders and that started before homo sapiens and that’s the case in all of the animal kingdom.
Also by the definition of utopia, being an utopia doesn’t prevent something from being a natural state so I don’t know why you would oppose one to the other.
Your assertion runs counter to quite a bit of reading I’ve done on the social organization of prehistoric and native groups. Also most of the time people exist in a state of anarchy.
I feel this is relevant:
…proponents of communism have postulated that within the new society of pure communism and the social conditions therein, a New Man and New Woman would develop with qualities reflecting surrounding circumstances of post-scarcity and unprecedented scientific developmen … Among the major traits of a new Soviet man was selfless collectivism. The selfless new man was willing to sacrifice his life for good causes …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Soviet_man#Selflessness
Of course, arguably that project failed, so much so that ‘homo Sovieticus’ is now a pejorative:
Homo Sovieticus (cod Latin for ‘Soviet Man’) is a pejorative term coined to describe the average conformist individual in the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries. Popularized by Soviet writer Aleksandr Zinovyev, it gained negative connotations and represented the perceived outcome of Soviet policies. … Homo Sovieticus (cod Latin for ‘Soviet Man’) is a pejorative term coined to describe the average conformist individual in the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries. … Characteristics of Homo Sovieticus included indifference to work results, lack of initiative, indifference to common property, chauvinism, obedience to government, and a tendency to drink heavily. … traits like indifference, theft, lack of initiative, and submission to authority … Some argued that the disappointment of intellectuals in the Soviet project had negative consequences, contributing to elitism and an anti-populist stance.
Although this is definitely interesting, I dont see yet how it is relevant to anarchy. Feel free to elaborate.
In theory, if everyone has become selfless, there is no need for a man with a stick to create the rules or ensure compliance. No one will want to use a stick to push through rules which are to their advantage. People will simply cooperate with each other or help each other willingly where necessary.
Think of a group of friends or adult family, where people help each other and cooperate willingly, because they love each other. Hopefully you don’t need to threaten your partner to do their share of the household tasks. You do it because you want your relationship to succeed and want to support each other.
The USSR tried to create this new man with a stick, propaganda and indoctrination during the dictatorship of the proletariat phase. They never achieved fully realized communism, where everyone willing works to the best of their ability and helps their commune succeed and the commune of communes that is a truly communist society succeed.
Smaller anarchist communes and experiments will try to do this organically. Everyone chooses to try to do their best and help the rest of the commune. It sounds pie in the sky, but it’s not unlike what volunteer groups do. People believe in a common cause, and freely volunteer their time, because they believe in their shared goal, and enjoy working together.
Imaginary utopias remain imaginary. Anarchy is whomever is willing to brutalize others the most rules until someone worse comes along.
Eh no… It’s kind of ridiculous that you went from the first phrase that made sense and could have been the basis for a very simple explanation of what anarchy is to then describing something that has nothing to do with anarchy as being anarchy.
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.
For most of the history of capitalism, and in many cases still to this day, organized labor and various labor actions have been illegal, but it still happens.
True, but what organized labor does exist is supported by, and validated by government.
No. Organized labor exists in spite of the government. For example, in the US, sympathy strikes are illegal. Many jurisdictions have so called right-to-work laws which weaken unions. A union is its members, not the laws to which it’s subjugated.
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.)
One thing to keep in mind is that any kind of government is at risk of being the the group with the bigger stick. A dictatorship only works because the group that supports the dictator keeps them in power. A democracy can still treat some of its citizens terribly, and the structure of the government makes is harder to oppose than “the guy with the bigger stick”.
We have a better word for that. Dictatorship.
A lot of political theory is written in the societal equivalent of an airless room with a frictionless floor. It doesn’t take into account how humans work within the system, especially bad actors.
Which is why the only systems that have ever worked are mixed systems that account for human nature.
A 100% democratic system would have problems because nobody would have any experience or expertise, so people would govern based on ignorance. A 100% communist system doesn’t work because we don’t have a fair system to allocate resources, and as soon as someone becomes in charge of allocating resources, they allocate more for themselves. Even 100% authoritarian systems don’t work because a dictator has to sleep sometime. There may be a figurehead / leader in an authoritarian system, but unless that person delegates some power and control, they’ll be killed and replaced pretty quickly.
Historically the dictator one hasn’t worked well is because every last one has been an actual troglodyte, making moronic decisions after moronic decision. At this point I’m fairly sure only the people with a room temperature IQ want to be dictators. Like I’m sure they would get deposed if they gave out that power but that just hasn’t happened much.
