I’m going to get some sleep, if anyone else is curious about anarchism the AFAQ often has answers for many of your common questions.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-anarchist-faq-editorial-collective-an-anarchist-faq-full
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Also people can always ask their questions in good faith in any of the
communities to have the chance for follow up questions.
I would only really recommend !anarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com.
Slrpnk is largely inactive, and has a post celebrating Chomsky .
And .ml is well .ml, not a good place for anarchists.
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Genuine question because my understanding of anarchism is cursory, but how does anarchism prevent ‘might makes right’ from being the prevailing ideology? If there is no system of laws, how do we protect against rapists and murderers? Does it require everyone to be armed to the teeth at all times just to protect themselves?
Also, how does anarchism ensure we can regulate food safety and medicine? Is the expectation that everyone produce their own food? How do we protect ourselves against the 1%? They have far more resources than the rest of us, so couldn’t they basically muscle their way to the top and cement themselves there, with no hope of being toppled without some sort of systemic change?
How does anarchism prevent ‘might makes right’ from being the prevailing ideology?
How does the world currently prevent that? It doesn’t, the largest states do as they wish to the smaller ones, and internally the states do what they wish to the citizens. Under anarchism you would defend your community and your communities would defend each other. You can see this in action in places like the Chiapas were communities defend themselves from the state and cartels.
If there is no system of laws
Anarchism is not a world devoid of rules, in fact it’s all about rules. Except these are rules mutually-agreed upon by members of the community rather than dictated by politicians with no interest in the well-being of the community.
how do we protect against rapists and murderers? Does it require everyone to be armed to the teeth at all times just to protect themselves?
How do you protect against rapists and murderers? How do you today, do you ring the cops and wait 30 minutes? Under anarchism the community would ensure its own defence, you and your neighbours and everyone else would be empowered to protect yourselves, and you would want to because its your community. At present you must wait for the bastards to show up and maybe do something to help, if not make the situation actively worse.
Also, how does anarchism ensure we can regulate food safety and medicine?
Why would you want to produce unsafe foods and medicines, there is no profit motive to cut-corners and you are only hurting yourselves.
Is the expectation that everyone produce their own food?
The expectation is communities would produce resources for themselves, and co-operate with neighbouring communities to share what’s needed.
How do we protect ourselves against the 1%? They have far more resources than the rest of us, so couldn’t they basically muscle their way to the top and cement themselves there, with no hope of being toppled without some sort of systemic change?
How do you protect yourselves against the 1% today? You don’t.
Under anarchism, you actively fight them.
I’m not sure anarchism could work as well on paper as it would in real life. I think close examples are when a country loses it’s hierarchical structure and the void is typically filled with extremists or the most violent and well armed individuals who than instate a new hierarchy. The people have a chance to establish an anarchist society, but are never able to or incapable of doing so.
If you look at governing systems like these as organisms. Anarchism is too weak to defend against stronger power struggles and will always be consumed from within and without by a larger status quo, just because human nature is to establish systems and group together. Eventually that grows so much conflicts on ideals on how the opposing systems should operate arise, one sees the other as counter to their ways and conflict eventually ensues.
Even in Anarchism there are different ideals on how it should be achieved. With those nuance differences that would eventually come to some immovable beliefs that would cause larger systems to develop to overpower differences.
A lot of people don’t want to govern themselves or be involved in the complexity of making community decisions. They’d rather have someone else do that and eventually that someone else becomes a leader and that path leads to a hierarchy.
I think the age of simplicity that Anarchism brings is left in the past of our evolutionary progress of organized systems. Great idea, but proven it will never hold because it’s more of a transitional state that will eventually grow into complexity it’s principles can’t answer anymore.
I think the age of simplicity that Anarchism brings is left in the past of our evolutionary progress of organized systems. Great idea, but proven it will never hold because it’s more of a transitional state that will eventually grow into complexity it’s principles can’t answer anymore.
Anarchism is the next step in that path. Instead of rigid systems that are immutable, anarchism is a fluidic organisational system that can adapt and respond based on the needs at the time. It’s biology vs circuity. One is etched into plastic forever unchanging, the other grows new branches and drops old as needed.
Simply by being here on the Fediverse you are showing a preference for this dynamic interconnected system over a rigid top-down controlled one.
but are never able to or incapable of doing so.
The Zapatistas have been capable for 30 years.
The sudden collapse of a state is not the ideal case for successful anarchist revolution, true. Pre-revolutionary Anarchism is like a fetus or a botfly larva, developing new functions and larger cooperatives over time while living inside a host. Growing more resilient until it is strong enough to survive without the host. If the host dies, wolves come to eat the host and the fetus/larva gets eaten too, but if the anarchist community grows strong enough to burst forth under its own power then it can resist other threats.
At that point they can still get bodied by something stronger or more powerful, but the same goes for every organism. Unfortunately for the past century the US has been going around the world murdering leftist movements like a housecat in a park with native bird species. When US hegemony collapses, the resulting power struggle could serve as a distraction for anarchist movements to burst forth and have no rulers above them, hopefully allowing them to grow strong enough to face whatever the new global power balance becomes.
That takes us outside the realm of anarchist historical examples, though a good analogy would be the anticolonial movements in Africa and south Asia that massively grew in power during WW1 and WW2, resulting in European nations having to decolonize afterward. Still, we can imagine anarchist communities continuing to grow to fill the available space and using their anarchic structures to be more productive and prosperous than capitalism or state communism (there’s a lot of research showing that happier, unalienated people doing what they choose to be doing are way more productive than people being ordered to do something until they are exhausted).
Through their prosperity and shared creed, anarchist communities across the world can be in solidarity to defend themselves against whatever passes for a hegemon in the post-US world, as the people of nation-states see their prosperity and pursue anarchic reform or revolution in their own countries. And so the entire world could become anarchist.
Even in Anarchism there are different ideals on how it should be achieved. With those nuance differences that would eventually come to some immovable beliefs that would cause larger systems to develop to overpower differences.
Anarchism grows when people agree to work together towards a common goal. When there is disagreement on how to move forward, people negotiate and hopefully find a way to join forces. Between communities with different methodologies, this is called a federation. If disagreement builds, communities can defederate from one another, and people can switch community if they want. Or disagreement can shrink and communities can intermingle to the point you don’t even notice which is which. Lemmy is an anarchic federation of admins (though the admins are unfortunately still the monarch of their servers).
So, given we are here talking on Lemmy across instances, clearly differences of opinion aren’t enough to blow up an anarchic federation. Association is voluntary but we all want to communicate despite our differences, and we all want to defeat reddit. An anarchic federation emerging in a multipolar post-US world would have threats aplenty to keep them unified in the short term, and in the long term their growing strength gives them the luxury of defederating over minutiae if they really want to without their societies collapsing.
A lot of people don’t want to govern themselves or be involved in the complexity of making community decisions. They’d rather have someone else do that and eventually that someone else becomes a leader and that path leads to a hierarchy.
I don’t want to clean the toilet either, but I’m gonna. Governance is a chore, and you don’t get to skip out on your chores because you don’t like it. And yes, charismatic leader-types exist, and it’s the duty of every anarchist to get those people away from power and to have structures that prevent them from gaining power.
First off, don’t accept a single-point-of-contact. Communities should always send at least two people as representatives to be taken seriously. Second, if they keep sending the same person, ask them to switch it up. Redundancy is healthy. Third, check up on them, and if their community is hierarchical, try to help them with that and don’t entrust their representatives with important tasks. Thus the hierarchy doesn’t spread and can hopefully be dissolved in time.
I think the age of simplicity that Anarchism brings is left in the past of our evolutionary progress of organized systems. Great idea, but proven it will never hold because it’s more of a transitional state that will eventually grow into complexity it’s principles can’t answer anymore.
Anarchism is more complex than hierarchy and more capable of handling complexity than hierarchy. The set of “simple rules” of anarchy are equivalent to hierarchy’s one rule of “listen to the boss unless you can become the boss”. Hierarchy is like trying to build an organism with only two kinds of base pairs, where anarchy has four. Anarchic structures are more complex, more flexible, more diverse, more capable of adapting to circumstances using the same volume of ideological payload.
Hierarchy has people out here living in western European-style housing in the tropics and impotently complaining about the heat. Hierarchy has people sleepwalking through life, permanently exhausted and unable to place or act on the staggering array of feelings they have because it doesn’t serve the interests of those with power over them.
But in anarchy? Those feelings are used. Our social instincts aren’t just reactivated, they are placed in a context where they do productive work. And like a human is more capable of throwing a rock at a target than doing the trajectory calculations for a thrown rock, so too are people more competent at local governance than at voting for a representative they’ve never met. People empathize with migrants face to face but can demonize what they see on TV.
Political issues that have plagued hierarchy for decades become solvable in hours when people are in the same room as those their decisions affect and left to make the choice for themselves. Little gets delegated to broader circles, so that by the time to former nation-state level governance, there is very little for representatives to do. People are just out there handling their own shit. Even globally relevant functions like the linux codebase or unit standardization can be staffed by the willing and adopted by the willing as they currently are, without intervention by a federal circle.
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Yeah I think this is the core problem that most people discussing anarchism, for and against, miss.
Outsourcing governance to authority is less work, on the surface. Of course, that then creates endless other problems, but the connection of these issues to outsourcing governance is not obvious.
If history proved one thing, it is that we as humanity had never a time when everyone would compromise with each other.
Communism on paper is fucking fire! In reality it is fucked up. And the main reason is us, humans. Doubt that Anarchy would be much different.
The part where people with better material positions consolidate power and influence, and exercise that power over the meek.
Or the part where greedy fucks “make their own decisions” that don’t factor in externalities or the impact they have to the common good. Resulting in things like the destruction of our natural environment and ecosystem.
This take is like when people try to shit on communism by describing capitalism
That’s not anarchy, it’s chaos. You’re maybe thinking of warlordism, aka ‘ancap’ or market libertarianism?
Anarchy is a lot of work for its participants. If you aren’t outsourcing management decisions about your life, neighbourhood, region, etc., you have to collaborate in making those decisions. If power is allowed to concentrate, your self-determined governing system collapses and anarchy, by definition, is lost. It’s a life of constant renegotiation.
Rojava is illustrative, as it’s established in a self-conscious anarchic process, and by all reports it’s great in many ways but a lot of daily effort, and is under direct assault currently.
There is no true anarchy because government emerges spontaneously from human interaction. “Anarchists” start to add these structures and fail to realize that what they are creating is just an idyllic state without using the word “state” because they don’t like it.
There is no true democracy, no true totalitarianism… no true scotsman?
No one on the inside of these systems thinks it’s idyllic, I can assure you, once they realize how much work and commitment it requires, and governance does not require privileged classes wielding centralized power to be a government.
You are conflating State with Government. They are synonymous but only similar, not the same. Self-governance requires a great deal of education along the way, and a constant flow of meetings and chores.
The first generation in restructuring both economy and governance makes a lot of mistakes. Propagandists point at this as though it proves non-viability, but that’s just deception.
Okay, fine, you got me, we’re just creating an idyllic state that is objectively better than capitalism or state communism.
So, you’ve got me to confess, what’s the next step in your master plan?
Is a system that requires a highly engaged populace to avoid organically devolving into chaos tenable? Seems even more perilous when considering the inevitable influence of hostile entities trying to encourage that decline.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no idea what to do here. I’m just hoping our current decline is slow enough that I can live out the next 20 years or so peacefully and then off myself while I still have the faculties to do so.
I think it’s tenable, yes. Dealing with destructive people needs to be at its core.
FWIW people said the same thing about democracy, humanism, etc., because one feature of ideology is that it naturalizes core concepts like authority systems.
The more individualist one’s culture, the more difficult it is to imagine a functional anarchy, I think. Trust needs to be a starting place, but some places, like the USA, have a fairly low level of trust, maybe not enough currently to make such a system tenable.
Compare how much environmental damage is done by anarchist societies versus governed societies.
It’s illegal for us to defend ourselves.
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It’s impressive how they can both destroy the environment and also not exist.
Putting words in /u/paultimate14@lemmy.world 's mouth, I’m guessing they are referring to Libertarian de-regulation type stuff, where we have seen that Capitalists will always choose to pollute or do other external harms as long as they don’t pay the cost. That’s not the same as Anarchism, of course, but as someone not well read on either ideology it feels like the outcome would be similar.
“As someone who has no idea what I’m talking about, this is what I would think would happen.” Is what you and basically everyone else shitting on anarchism is saying. You are all talking about anarchism like capitalism would still exist, which it wouldnt. “Anarcho”-capitalism is what most of you are talking about and it is almost universally ostracized by the anarchist community.
It is nearly impossible to talk to non-anarchists about anarchism I have found because it feels like yall can only look at one part of the picture at a time, and have then forget what you were just looking at when you change focus. Genuinely just read theory and learn about actual experiments into anarchism. I recommend “At the Cafe” by Malatesta, and the documentary “Living in Utopia” on Zoe Baker’s youtube channel. Those are what took me from being a communist to an anarcho-communist. “Conquest of Bread” by Kropotkin is also a great start. But I genuinely feel like it is impossible to argue with non-anarchists about anarchists unless they actually understand what anarchism is and the logic behind it. Something that can’t be properly outlined in a meme or comment thread.
Chief, I only suggested what I thought the other person meant. I didn’t make any statements of my own on the subject in question.
I am actually reading Kropotkin just now and I’ve perused the FAQ that is often posted here, but I’m happy for your other recommendations. I’m not sure of my specific leftist identity yet, but that’s something I’m working on.
Almost everyone in the world has lived under capitalism their whole lives, and the only other major economic philosophy we westerners really learn about in school is feudalism. It’s only natural that they (we) don’t immediately grasp other systems of living. Thinking about Anarchism or Communism or Socialism etc as an alternative in the abstract is one thing, but it’s not strange to me that that it’s easier for the student to think about one piece of society at a time. By default I think that would be by comparison to the familiar system.
I wrote too much again - a common problem for me.
Anyway, just chiming in to empathize but suggest patience for the 99% of humans that haven’t put as much thought into economic and political systems as you have.
Have a good one, or don’t. I don’t claim any authority over you! Lol.
I apologize for coming off as a agitated. Its hard to read a lot of these comments and not come away feeling that way. I am super happy to hear you are reading and educating yourself, and apologize for interpreting your comment the way I did. It is hard to keep track of who says what and that is where my confusion began.
I agree that socialism/communism is already a leap for people to understand as it breaks away from everything they have ever known, and anarchism is even worse in that regard. My frustration comes from the lack of good faith from most people when arguing in the first place. I can be patient with ignorance. I have a much harder time being patient with arrogance (which ironically ends up making me respond arrogantly). Like I said in another comment, it often feels like arguing with anti-vaccers or MAGAs because they both argue in bad faith and from a place of ignorance. Pair that with seeing it every day in almost every comment thread related to anarchism and it becomes very hard to not become bitter.
This is all to say I appreciate your response and I am sorry for the way I reacted to your comment. You are here in good faith and I let the negativity assume you weren’t.
Be sure those societies are reduced to almost no people, usually in lands that are deficient in natural resources in the first place.
Just look up for a counter-example. The Earth’s atmosphere is full of space junk now because for decades no regulatory body had the balls to tell private companies not to leave their shit up there.
Your issue is once again with capitalism, not anarchism
Dude is effectively arguing that capitalism is a natural phenomenon that emerged from human interaction. Itd be funny if it weren’t so sad
Another failure of the education system to put on the board lol
There is a regulatory body; if you try to defend everyone from these private companies, then the police will arrest you. The regulation protects them from us, but not vice versa.
Ironically, space junk doesn’t happen in a vacuum. 😜
Yes.
Too many anarchists (and Libertarians) are all “Your Laws are telling me what to do any taking away my free will an autonomy.”
Like no, the laws exist to stop idiots from doing stupid shit and harming others. Essentially ALL laws. The harm is not necesarily physical. It could be money, time, emotional, etc.
Essentially, at some point in time, se dumbass did something stupid, and it harmed someone else, and we, society, collectively came together and said "No, this is harmful, its not allowed, we trusted people to be good to eachother, they failed, now there is a law that “forces trust” with consequences for failing to keep that trust.
The real problem people have is that in many cases, the enforcement mechanism is not being used/is not working.
I would disagree with the “ALL” laws. Regulatory capture is a thing. There’s plenty of bad laws that exist to do things like keep new small businesses from entering into industries to compete, or to help the wealthy maintain power. I just view those as symptoms of the greater imbalance of society.
Laws are tools, and can be created and used for both evil and good.
I mean, I would love to know what laws are harmful to new small businesses that don’t also a amount to laws for “Don’t exploit your workers”.
The way tax laws are structured, big businesses generally pay much less taxes compared to smaller businesses. Non-compete laws are very much in favor of big business, as it prevents ex-workers from forming competitive smaller businesses in the same field.
Citizens United massively favors the interests of big businesses who can out-bribe smaller businesses, which allows bigger businesses to become monopolies to crush smaller businesses from out-competing them.
That feels like a way more solvable problem than removing laws.
Too many anarchists (and Libertarians) are all “Your Laws are telling me what to do any taking away my free will an autonomy.”
Do not confuse Anarchists with Right-wing libertarianism, only the latter is an advocate for complete deregulation and chaos.
Essentially, at some point in time, se dumbass did something stupid, and it harmed someone else, and we, society, collectively came together and said "No, this is harmful, its not allowed, we trusted people to be good to eachother, they failed, now there is a law that “forces trust” with consequences for failing to keep that trust.
That is what Anarchists do. Just instead of having a bunch of representatives who are corporate captured make those rules for them, A community will directly decide on those rules themselves, collectively.
The real problem people have is that in many cases, the enforcement mechanism is not being used/is not working.
Which is 99% of the time due to capitalism, as the rules are selectively enforced against the poor, and often never enforced at all against the rich and powerful.
The part where that random guy with a bigger gun than mine will start making decisions for me.
You mean what literally happens today where the US does whatever it wants? And the states with their guns makes the citizens follow its laws?
And how would anarchy fix that if nothing would change?
Who said nothing would change?
We currently live in a top-down system, where a handful of rich influential people decide everything. Anarchism is a bottom-up system where the people directly decide everything.
The same people who overwhelmingly voted this shitshow into power?
This shit show one, has the electoral college (an anti-democratic institution in the first place), and two is a system where a simple majority gets to decide who’s the leader (also not a democratic system).
Lastly, then what the fuck are you suggesting? Sounds to me like youbare saying “people are what got us into this mess in the first place.” So whats your alternative? Fascism? Monarchy? Cause if your issue is that the people are stupid and thus shouldn’t be trusted, then you are either a pessimistic/cynical anarchist or an authoritarian. One of which I can sympathize with. The other I have a hard time not punching in the face
But unless we kill everyone who has access to those big guns, they’ll still have access to them after the system changes. I agree that a change needs to happen, but I can’t really wrap my head around how we’re going to stop people with city-destroying bombs, who wouldn’t hesitate to use them on American soil if their lives were at risk. We either let them live, and keep their weapons, or we try to kill them and get taken out in a firestorm of mutually assured destruction. Taking about what we’re going to do after we’ve won that battle just feels like planning a wedding before asking someone out on a date.
Its a bottom up system
You are thinking of Communism mate.
There is more than one way to crack an egg, and some you can do at the same time. Hence anarcho-communism
Communism the thing with a vanguard party dictating the show and a top down state?
No, that is very clearly much not it.
The only way it would be better under anarchy is that you would no longer be shouldering the moral burden of participating.
In a democracy you need to come to terms with the fact that things are shitty. I held my nose and voted for Harris because YES she would have still allowed Israel to continue their campaign of terror against Gaza, but there’s a laundry list of terrible things that have happened under Trump that absolutely would not have under Harris.
To be an anti-democracy anarchist is to hide your head in the sand. To stand at the trolley switch without touching it, trying to convince yourself that the blood is not on your hands. Trying to pretend like we can sequester off pieces of this one planet into containers that do not impact each other.
It’s a great ideology for teenagers explore. To see things in extremes and think more abstractly without getting bigger down with the details of reality.
The only way it would be better under anarchy is that you would no longer be shouldering the moral burden of participating.
And instead would have the moral obligation to act.
In a democracy you give all power to act to others, who never do act. Yet you tell yourself ‘I did my part, I voted, it’s the politicians fault’.
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That’s a republic, not a democracy.
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There’s plenty of room to participate even in democratic republics. It’s not as if you just elect 1 supreme ruler and everyone else goes home. Thus even in democracy you are burdened with the moral dilemma of inaction.
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Yes, something like that. But in case of governments we have a few sources of threat, while without the governments we have millions sources of threat, half of which are completely crazy.
What extra sources of threats do you imagine with a people led system vs a ruling class led system?
The exact same threats exist.
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What you’re describing is the current state of the world
More like describing humanity.
Was there ever a time when it wasn’t like that?
At least with a centralized body, you might get lucky and get one that has the best interest in mind for the entire group. And they can use their bigger guns to scare away those who would not have the best interest in mind.
Of these options, the part where I don’t get to make your decisions, I guess. There’s going to be some guy who wants to shit in the drinking water, and I’m going to want to stop him.
But you do get to participate in those decisions. We are a troupe species, after all.
Anarchism has suffered centuries of propaganda convincing people that it is synonymous with unregulated chaos, rather than more organized than authoritarian schemes. If someone shits in the water, you and all the other people who rely on that water can rightfully observe that that person is impinging on your freedoms and security, and can deal with it using the endless decision making process you’re required to have to get things done in your region.
Freedom is absolutely relative, not relatively absolute. It’s defined and negotiated, not subject to impulse and ego. Under anarchism, you are not free to attack, or shit in drinking water.
So do I get to make their decisions for them or not?
If yes, the original post is faulty.
If no, they shit in the water.
I expect the original post is faulty because it’s a meme trying to be funny.
A community can collectively decide on rules, and collectively decide how to enforce those rules. If someone is harming the community and will not stop when asked, the community can decide to forcibly eject that person from the community.
So, yes, I (with enough backing of the community) do get to tell hypothetical-you that you can’t shit in the drinking water.
Yes. The difference between our current system and Anarchism is that it is much, much harder to create a system that does not benefit the everyone, since the people who are usually negatively effected by the whims of corporations or centralized power would now have the ability to directly have a say in how their local community decides on rules and how to enforce them.
There would also be no wealthy elites who can influence things, as there would be no mechanism or ability for an individual to accumulate vast resources or wealth.
Sounds reasonable as you’ve written it. I do worry about people’s over willingness to bend the knee, especially when they’re frightened or angry. It seems like someone with a strong personality could convince people to go along with stuff that benefits him more than them. But, no system is immune to bad actors and idiots.
But, no system is immune to bad actors and idiots.
Agreed. Though I think it would be particularly difficult for a strongman or strong personality to take hold in an Anarchist society.
If it was successfully implemented, and everyone is now receiving free housing, food, healthcare, public transport, and education all in exchange for 2 to 3 months of voluntary work (the rest being free time), I think it would be exceptionally difficult to convince that populace that actually they should actually go back to the old way where they work for him all year in exchange for some paper that would then give you access to those things which you already have for free.
I just think it would be almost impossible to put that genie back in the bottle, just as it would’ve been almost impossible for medieval kings and lords to bring back serfdom after mercantilism/capitalism was established.
But isn’t this going to create issues for minority if what its members want is reasonable but inconveniences the majority? I don’t want to come up with a specific example, but something like improved accessibility for a disabled person that requires resources and may be seen as unnecessary by most comes to mind
Afaik it’s one of the issues with democracy: how to define what is good for everyone when people have conflicting interests and groups are disproportionate
Minority groups or people with disabilities would be just as entitled as anyone else at a community meeting to determine what gets done. In Rojava, minorities get to speak first to ensure their concerns are heard by the majority, and issues can be worked out via consensus decision making, which would help ensure that the needs of minorities or people with disabilities are not ignored.
It’s funny because it’s wrong in an uninformed way, or at least an oversimplified way that expresses the common irritation of having to work with other people.
What if the water-shitters out-number the water-drinkers? This is a question about covid-19
Then a large effort is collectively undertaken to discover where the education and communication sectors failed so spectacularly, and a program to find out what is really bugging these folk, and see if they still want to participate in the system.
A large effort undertaken by whom though? The water-drinkers are presumably the only people who care. And what’s stopping the water-shitters from counter-“education” (falsities and propaganda)?
Don’t take this as “I’m just asking questions”. I mean, I am, but I’m not making any arguments or anything, I legitimately don’t understand how anarchism as a system works. How is it distinct from a direct democracy, if it is?
What if the water-drinkers out-number the water-shitters, but the water-shitters are the ones in control? This is a question about democracy
Then you are no longer talking about anarchism. Different thread.
edit: political_revolution@lemm.ee seems pretty dead… for now.
I’m going to want to stop him.
Good, do that.
Anarchy is ‘no rulers’ not ‘no rules’. If someone is going to do something harmful for the community, you don’t just let them. You are actively incentivised to stop them, because it’s your obligation as a member of the community.
Contrast that to today’s system, where if someone wants to release factory run-offs into the local water source you can’t stop them and they’ll
bribelobby some politician to let them do it, while arresting you for protesting itRight. That sounds like it could be fine. But it seems like it would (d)evolve back into rules when people get tired of re-arguing the same conflicts repeatedly. People would have arguments, write down or remember the results, look back at them when the same kind of problem comes up, and now you’ve reinvented common law.
Or be very susceptible to tyranny of the majority. “We all decided you can only have the shit-water, so you can leave or fight us all.”
The way it was phrased in the meme (which, admittedly, is only a meme) makes it sound like you’re not allowed to stop other people.
I’m fairly certain the anti-anarchism rhetoric instilled into people is a result of long seated anti-intellectualism propaganda and policies.
Some of the biggest proponents of anarchy I have met were professors.
In our current world, the rich and powerful have a vested interest in keeping the population uninformed. Think of how hard they tried to bury communism and socialism. Anarchy, the idea of self-governing, leaves them with no wealth, no power, and nothing to contribute.
It is exactly this, and the way people argue against anarchism (at least to me) is evidence of that to me. Every time someone comes into an anarchist space to argue why anarchism wont work they almost always admit at some point that they dont know what anarchism is. They admit they have done no research and thus are choosing to argue that anarchism cant work while also admitting they dont know what anarchism is. Its like MAGA arguing why tariffs are actually good (or honestly any subject MAGAs try to argue about) or anti-vaccine/anti-maskers arguing about vaccines and COVID. They come in and repeat the same misinformation like its fact and when you argue with them they have the memory of a goldfish and you just go round and round arguing about the same fucking points.
At the end of it all, if someone isnt willing to go out on their own to learn about a topic and the other side’s perspective before arguing about it, they probably arent going to listen to your evidence in the first place. These kinds of arguments are never in good faith and will never be productive.
The part where we all die, because a foreign army invades us, and no one is doom guy.
Saying this as a green anarcho transhumanist.
How do you expect there to be a “we all” to invade without “us all” being able to take on nation-states?
Daily reminder that the Taliban managed to send the US military packing by fighting from a cave with a bunch of scraps. Guerilla is incredibly effective at turning empires into dust if you start the guerilla prepared, which any newly independent anarchist commune would automatically be by virtue of being newly independent.
I’m not sure if I consider “Afghanistan during the Taliban guerilla war” a good example of ideal anarchist living. Nor what came after that for that matter.
No, but they serve to illustrate how a guerilla can defeat the largest state military in the world, which is what the concern was.
If you want to have exact historical examples of something succeeding before supporting it, you’re never going to be first at anything. And with capitalism murdering over a hundred million of our grandchildren per year, we don’t have the luxury of patience.
Maybe we should invade them first with our ideas and acts of solidarity, so that they have to focus their armed forces on quelling their local unrest.
For anarchism to happen ideally, I believe everyone in the world has to share the same values and mindset for it to work. That foreign army invades, because they don’t share the same peaceful and horizontal societial values as we do. In other words, anarchist values has to be planetary wide.
The best example of planetary wide anarchist community is the Fremen in Dune. They still have local cultural differences between the northerners and southerners but they all get along. But in spite of that condition, there is the problem yet again of foreign armies coming to invade, but from a different planet. This yet again requires the need for scaling anarchism to a universal level to prevent the threat of “outsider” invasion.
I would be an anarchist, but because of said reasons, we still don’t have the culture yet of wide scale egalitarianism. Having grown up multicultural, I know many cultures are hierarchical and competitive. Unfortunately, with the current paradigm, the threat of foreign armies invading anarchist societies is real.
Anarchists can organize and fight militarily quite effectively while still maintaining a bottom-up system, as demonstrated by the Anarchist militias of Makhno and Catalonia (and though not Anarchist, Rojava is an example of a decentralized army). The issue all Anarchist attempts have faced militarily is a lack of any allies on the world stage, allowing the authoritarian nations around them to crush them due to lack of supplies (or sudden betrayal of ML ‘allies’).
The part where you either assume people don’t have misaligned interests or that they do but they can resolve it in a rational way.
As a basic level everyone has the same interests.
Food, community, shelter, utilities (in the modern era)
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interests on these basic needs can still be misaligned
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I think a system where everyone has a pretty similar amount of power / influence is way better in dealing with that than systems where individuals are able to hoard power and resources to further their misaligned interests.
For me it’s that anarchists are moral purists which often dont align with a leftist slightly less radical or outside of their worldview, in a society that will likely never accept anarchism.
I believe in leftism now, as opposed to “not voting because voting means you believe in people ruling over you.” Which is the summary of many anarchists have told me.
Other than that I dont mind anarchists, but if we want change, participating in current society by voting and organizing now is the only way.
Gonna be honest, you sound more like a liberal, not a leftist. Liberals are not left, no matter how much they like to think they are.
Even communists aren’t electoralists who believe voting will bring about the revolution. And as any leftist would tell you, voting and especially campaigning is a waste of time and energy that could be better spent elsewhere.
If you want to spend 20 minutes in line to “harm minimise” or whatever fantasy you think it achieves go for it, no one is going to care. If you want to promote voting as a solution, that’s where leftists have an issue.
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Part of anarchism that bothers me is that without central authority keeping track of everything my ability to find specific help I need would be solely dependent on whether I or any of my friends know person with that particular set of skills.
Anarchism depends on free exchange of information, I’ll give a real life example from people without an anarchist ideology to make this more approachable:
I’ve recently installed an arch-linux based operating system, knowing that there is ArchWiki to depend on if i need guidance on specific issues, that is solely because the arch community tries to be helpful and documents almost every issue or thing one might need help with.
So now I, someone who’s new to linux (albeit with existing knowledge in software overall) and arch specifically, does not need to know anyone personally to fix my own issues.
Do note about this example, that this approach is limited by my existing knowledge and also by how accessible the wiki is, BUT, in other, simpler situations I wouldn’t be as limited in my scope.
TL;DR: as long as people can exchange information (ideas, recipes, etc) comfortably, we can expect they will, and we can depend on information sources (libraries, platforms, etc.) to hone our skills, fix whatever we need in the moment, or whatever else.
PS. All anarchists advocate for bringing about a reality in which we all have more free time, so that we may reap the fruits of this and many other aspects of life we want to improve, read about other ideas for a more in-depth explanation.
If you’re interested in more, read about Tool Libraries, I’d go into more details about all this but this comment is getting long enough :^).
I know what a tool is. And while I admire the ideals of renaissance men trying to become proficient in every possible skill, I would not trust a person who watched few videos and tinkered a bit with every single situation in my life.
I guess anarchism isn’t something I would be able to work with.
I admire the ideals of renaissance men trying to become proficient in every possible skill …
Look, maybe given the situation you would try to become proficient “in every possible skill”, most people will just focus on a few key ones, and maybe have a few auxiliary ones.
No one is telling you to put your life in the hand of a hobbyist, but if you had a big wooden table with a broken leg, would you rather buy a new table (seeing as actually finding someone who deals with woodwork in this economy is almost impossible), or go see a friend/neighbor/friend-of-friend who does woodwork as (mostly) a hobby, and trade favors with them in exchange for keeping your old table you are probably sentiment about for longer than expected?
Okay now do healthcare
What central authority pairs you with finding specific help today? When I need to find someone, I generally search online and connect myself with people I need to.
Internet, of course!
By central authority in this case I mean any list, forum, chat, collection etc. that gathers information like “A person X has competences Y and office in place Z with contact number Q”. Whoever manages, control that list becomes effectively able to dictate who and why should be accessible to public.
By saying that you search online you support Google, Bing or any other specific search algorithm as the global central authority
Internet is the definition of a decentralised information sharing system, though. If you don’t like your current search engine, you swap to another. If you can’t find the information you need on one forum, you go to another. If you have the information more accurate and up to date than the list you find online, you update it (if it’s in a wiki format) or contact its author to contribute.
Centralisation of the internet is the direct result of authorities trying to impose their will on people who didn’t consent to it.
You can also have wikis or defederated platform, you should know, you’re on one…
Nothing in anarchisms stops doctors / patients from creating a website / list where they collect contacts and provide them to their community. Same goes trades, IT specialists etc.
Yes, but wouldn’t whoever creates and manages that list became new equivalent of authority? They decide who is worthy to get on the list, and who can access it.
We’re on the fediverse, if you don’t like one server you go to another. Maybe you moved here from reddit? Systems can be created with anarchism in mind.
If the list is such an important resource that managing would give the person / people too much power, mechanism to mitigate that could be implemented either from the organizational side or from the technical.
Examples for organizational mitigations could be:
- management of the list rotates between members of the community
- the power to make decisions and the role of management could be split: the community decides on a policy, the people responsible only implement the policy
Technical mitigations might be:
- design the list to be decentralized, like the fediverse where multiple list exists, they get federated and noone can monopolize the knowledge
- list are maintaned similar to code repositories where everyone can make a copy, change it, fix it etc.
Also like… why would you do that in a world where nobody else does that? Growing up / living in a society where sharing, solidarity, equal access to ressources etc. are the norm, its hard to imagine this being much of an issue. There wouldnt be a profit motive, being in a position of power would be undesirable and maybe even looked down upon and you could spend your effort for something actually fullfilling. But even if that issue would pop up, a society attuned to a anti authoritarian life style would be easily challenging that situation anyway. When capitalism, the state, and hopefully other systems of power are out of the way, this small problem would probably get dealt with in a single meeting or mediation session. Because its so miniscule in the grand scheme of things.
The “not making decisions for me” part is a very Trump-like thing to say. Society only works by compromise.
A federalist democracy is probably the closest we get to a free society, and one difficult part of it is, that you have to make decisions for others.
The “not making decisions for me” part is a very Trump-like thing to say. Society only works by compromise.
Society only works by consent. If the people do not consent to the laws, they are authoritarian and should be resisted.
Any top-down system of governance will never be free by its very nature.
The only free society we will get is an anarchist one where people agree to work together and create rules that they can all abide by. Those who don’t want to abide by the communities rules can leave.
When I shoot a Nazi in the face, I am taking away his choice to shoot trans people in the face. If the Nazi does not consent to the law of not shooting trans people in the face, I will still shoot him in the face. If the Nazi argues that I am taking away his ability to make the decision to shoot trans people in the face, I will still shoot him in the face.
And if the Nazi argues that he is part of a community I am not in and that community has a law about shooting trans people in the face, I will still shoot him in the face.
Society only works by mutual aid. If you will not help me when I am vulnerable, why should I waste my time building a relationship with you?
Consent is secondary. A specific form of helping someone by creating a smooth exit with them if they don’t want to be there anymore. Which means it can be overruled if aid is more important. You can push someone out of the way of a moving bus without asking. You can raise a child who isn’t capable of consent yet. You can shoot a Nazi in the face.
Which unfortunately means that a community where people agree to work together and create rules they can all abide by is not necessarily in the clear. If that community produces far more CO2 emissions than their fair share, they are causing harm through climate change and should (IMO) be stopped. If they are on stolen land and refuse entry to native people, if they poison the river downstream, if they abuse children, if they put barbed wire fences across a natural area, if they factory farm animals, if they dry out a natural aquifer for frivolous consumption - if they raid the commons or cause harm to others in any way, they should (IMO) be stopped.
I’m ready to admit this is less free for those local societies than if they could pollute everyone into extinction. Anarchism isn’t about perfect freedom, it’s about abolishing hierarchy. You will attend the weekly meetings and you will help the community make informed decisions. You will avoid causing harm and you will avoid violating consent. Not because someone told you to, but because “everyone” told you to. Horizontal accountability, and horizontal enforcement if necessary.
The only free society we will get is an anarchist one where people agree to work together and create rules that they can all abide by. Those who don’t want to abide by the communities rules can leave.
That’s not anarchy. That’s some form of democracy.
Any top-down system of governance will never be free by its very nature.
That’s exactly the kind of logic bullies use to inflict their freedom on others.
Society only works by consent. If the people do not consent to the laws, they are authoritarian and should be resisted.
Real “I’m 14 and this is deep” energy here. Laws and governance of any kind are inherently rooted in consent to authority. Hell, even being a good citizen in an anarchy is about consenting to the authority of etiquette, basically the tyranny of empathy over free will. Authority invites resistance, arguing for resistance to authority simply because it exists is an empty nothing burger of a philosophy.
This all feels like a libertarian dog whistle to excuse politics lacking any empathy.
That is literally anarchy. You obviously do not know what anarchy is.
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Ngl, the bit about making decisions for myself is a part of anarchism I really struggle with. But that is precisely why I’m an anarchist — I understand that I struggle with this because I have been systemically deprived of the opportunity to develop my capacity to make decisions for myself, and I see the continuous practice of anarchism as something that can help me to improve that (as well as supporting others to do the same).
Freedom is haaaaaaaaard. It’s probably worth it though. I’ll let you know when I’m free.
Freedom to choose your path includes letting a friend, mentor, or math-rock decide for you
It is definitely them not being able to control you.
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