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"b...but we can fix capitalism"
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2025
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Lefty Memes
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It's important to understand that anarchism is a bottom-up system of governance rather than top-down. Solutions to problems are discovered procedurally and organically by a society of individuals that agree from the outset to basic, simple rules which merely allow that process to occur: Stripped down, simply mutual respect and direct communication. Therefore if you try to understand anarchism as a pre-defined system like a democratic republic, your understanding will be frustrated. There are no singular answers to the questions you pose as there is no singular anarchist system. What is important and constant is that a group agrees from the outset to behave as a cooperative community of equivalent individuals. Anarchism is emergent, rather than prescriptive. And if you do not have that mutual agreement from the outset, you cannot yet do anarchism.
A solution to the group size issue you pose is nested communes, a proven system for scaling anarchist society. It's basically an inverted hierarchy: Hyperlocal communes of 50-100 individuals make all the final decisions right from the outset, on all matters that are destined to affect them. Then they send usually two messengers from their commune to a "higher" coordinating commune where they meet with the messengers from 25-50 other communes. These messengers are not "representatives" like in a democratic republic! They do not make new decisions. They are merely delivering their commune's decision. It is then the job of this coordinating commune to cohere all of the delivered decisions from their constituent communes, through a number of pre-decided procedural conflict resolution methods. If there are conflicts between commune decisions that cannot be cohered and resolved through these methods, the decision can go no further and the issue gets passed back to the constituent communes to discuss again. Messengers don't make new decisions without their home commune! The members of each commune know this, so they're aware that sending out decisions that are bullheaded / undiplomatic / selfish / uncompromising are likely to cause a lockup and be rejected, therefore are incentivize to come to decisions that are agreeable and readily negotiable in advance. They are likely to phone up the next commune over when they make these decisions to double check that they're on the same page, and negotiate changes to their decisions in advance. Many lines of direct communication are incentivized even before the messengers are sent to the coordinating commune. Everyone in this web is incentivized to be in dialog, or they could possibly delay getting what they want.
So, one coordinating commune can contain the regional consensus of ~5,000 people across 50 constituent communes. Once the decisions within that level 1 coordinating commune are cohered, if they also concern people outside of that 5,000 person region they can then proceed to a level 2 coordinating commune via another two messengers from the level 1! Same process as before, and 5,000 people grows to 250,000. The largest branch of governance in AANES, the Kurdish-led region of northern Syria, is a nested commune like this one (Liberal-style political parties exist in a separate, smaller branch). With roughly 4.5 million participants, they require IIRC 4 levels of this system and decisions can go from top to bottom (Or bottom to top, depending on how you see it) in a few weeks. AANES is liberalizing and top-down structure has been formalizing out there, re-colonizing the social sphere, but last I heard most of these communes still meet daily.
Oh and as for the "tragedy of the commons", that is a problem specific to capitalism and other hierarchical hoarding systems. If you ask an anthropologist they'll tell you that this problem literally does not occur outside niche situations where people normalized to capitalism suddenly find themselves outside of that system having to manage resources for themselves (Like a shipwreck stranding). It simply does not occur in societies that have not been introduced and normalized into hierarchical hoarding. In fact the sheep pasturing example generally used to illustrate the myth is a situation that was managed through anarchist-style mutual aid back when people really did have to communicate and cooperate with their neighbors to share a commons like grassland. Tragedy of the commons is straight up capitalist propaganda.
i am afraid that my worries can not just be hand waved away as if not part of human nature.
I see compounding problems in a purely bottom-up society. You can’t expect everyone to agree on all possible decisions at the outset and assume nothing will change. Human contrarianism alone makes it likely that decision “jams” will happen often, and I don’t see the incentive to compromise when a decision benefits the majority but weakens one commune. Why would the “damned” commune agree?
You cite anthropologists claiming the tragedy of the commons doesn’t occur outside capitalism. But from what i have seen, they don’t say it as such an absolute. At best, they show it can be less common or better mitigated in certain structures, but even then, it requires enforcement like informal peer pressure, which is the most benign but it’s also the weakest form of control.
Historicaly, the tragedy of the commons isn’t a capitalist invention; it’s a human tendency, though capitalism can amplify it. but societies have fallen due to abuse of the resources, extinctions of hunted animals and in fighting, fracturing, falling to the warlord without capitalistic influence.
You also point to northern Syria, but they do have the Asayish as an internal security force enforcing the will of the majority. That’s still a form of control over dissent and provides that same issues as a police force.
Finally, large public works like hospitals require hundreds of specialized roles to build and hundreds more to operate. I don’t see how you achieve that scale and coordination through purely nested, bottom-up communes without some binding authority. we can’t even get an agreement on vaccines and public schooling funding, or if children should be fed. and wile you could argue that these are effected by capitalism, the issue is primarily he different values of different individuals.
Oh I see. You weren't seeking information, you were seeking a debate. I have to admit I feel a little manipulated right now. I didn't reply to you for a day or so because I wanted to give you a comment that was both helpfully descriptive and reasonably concise. I spent about an hour of my time and energy on that comment.
I'm not interested in a debate about anarchism. It's a participatory system driven by material need. The potential utility of trying to convince a liberal subject of it's use if they're currently opposed is near zero. It's a waste of time, energy, and spirit. I do wish you'd made a better effort from the outset to indicate your intent. The world is full of staunch anti-anarchists and the internet is not where they'll be convinced otherwise.
If you feel like this is me losing the debate... Then yes, I just lost the debate. Tell your friends that you beat an anarchist in a debate about anarchism. Link them to these comments as your trophy. You're a winner.
i didn’t look to win an argument. it’s obvious capitalism has problems. seemingly needing to be completely upturned every few decades. but my fear was that anarchic systems would either require fighting human nature, which is a non starter, or would require such a small grouping, that the large projects we rely on would no longer be feesable, not to mention that people would also be tied to the land as surfs. the discussion around this critiqued capitalisms monopoly on violence, and i just don’t see any way around needing such a group, such as with North Syria.
there was no intention to deceive
Your reply was the first thing I read when I woke up this morning, my reply was the first thing I wrote. Maybe I was too quick to be crestfallen.
I did spend two long paragraphs describing the most common and proven way that anarchism scales. In a way that ties in and leans on some of the best aspects of human nature (Human nature is not a static thing, it's always contextual and conditional). Hopefully that wasn't too wordy and winded, I was specifically looking to make it concise while remaining decently foundational.
That organizational model is more than enough to manage the largest projects that anarchism pursues. But anarchism tends to not pursue projects of the same megalithic scale as hierarchical civilization though, as 1) many mega projects tend to be the result of desires for centralization and aggrandizement, either of an individual or an institution and 2) in a word full of hierarchy, anarchism often doesn't get the room to do so.
I'm not sure where the conception that anarchism ties people to the land like serfs comes from. What leads you to think that? Working anarchism definitely makes people directly responsible for their land and in the consequence of it's care, but it doesn't prevent travel or migration. The primary concern of anarchism is autonomy, it's not anarchism if you can't leave.