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this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2026
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Memes of Production
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That would depend on how that local community collectively decides to operate. Most would likely opt for community consensus for something so serious, where an individual cannot forcibly eject someone from the community if there is not community consensus.
A state is a centralized hierarchy of power that operates in a top-down structure, where the people at the top of the hierarchy have the ultimate say on what happens to those at the bottom of the hierarchy.
Anarchism's goal is to decentralize power and make any societal structures as horizontal as possible. A local community would have final say on things that effect that local community, and if there are any people elected by a community to participate in a larger federated structure, that elected person is able to be immediately re-callable by the community that elected them if they fail at performing the duties they were tasked with. They would also be elected as a Delegate, not a Representative.
The question of majority vs. supermajority is not the question; the question is whether that process is the only means by which the society accepts casting one of their own out.
In which case most modern states aren't states at all.
Okay, but do you not realize this is how representatives in extant systems have defined themselves since time immemorial?
What makes this incarnation different?
Again, that's nowhere near how most representatives or representative systems would describe themselves, or, realistically, be described.
And... you don't find that elections, campaigns, measuring honesty or integrity of candidates, or political tribalism is something anarchist society will have to deal with?
You do realize that's the exact argument we use today in representative democracies, and most people shrug it off like water off a duck's back, right?
And why would the people not scapegoat their delegate for any issue they felt sufficient guilt about? "It wasn't explained clear enough, that wasn't what we meant (and you can't prove it was), we only meant it under very specific conditions, etc"
What is the difference, practically speaking, other than the Representative is now the PEOPLE'S Representative? And yes, that's intentionally invoking the coat-of-paint used by ML societies. Not to equate this anarchist polity proposed with MLs, but to point out that, just as MLs often dress up their structures as though they're new and innovative, oftentimes all they are is fundamentally the old structure with all of its previously flaws and failings - only now those flaws and failings are considered 'politically incorrect' to address.
... that's generally the exact opposite of how representative democracy describes itself, and, again, works.
... you do realize that many modern polities have recall elections available for any reason, right?
In what fucking way? Other than pointing out that many polities which do have instant recall even for the executive still plunge into wars and genocide, in what way does the 'delegate' stop people from making self-destructive decisions? Fuck, man, the Iraq War, unjust as it was, had, what, 80% approval in the general population when it started? Whose use of recall was going to unscrew that pooch?
You do realize that most wars are not started in the face of overwhelming popular opposition, right?
... right...?