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this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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Real question: what do anarchists expect society to do/become and why is it better?
Nuanced answers only
So if you ask a group of 5 leftists of any sort how they imagine society might be structured you'll get 6 answers. Anarchists are no different, it's difficult because it's off the map yeah?
The common thread is a society with no involuntary impositions of power and authority. That isn't no rules, many societies in the past and present have varying degrees of hierarchy and even within the same society the degree of hierarchy can change depending on what groups of people are doing.
you know how when you organise a family gathering nobody is "in charge" exactly? people select tasks they are suited to or feel it's their turn to do and go about doing them. People might choose to defer decisions to another person but always retain the ability to withdraw that consent and so on?
Anarchists imagine a society more like that, where when a person wants something done they assemble a group of people, communicate their ideas, reach a consensus on whether it should or shouldn't be done, if people agree then they organise themselves into a group to accomplish the task.
It's really not so different from how you probably conduct yourself most of the time. It's actually kinda rare for people to use coercive violence to get people to cooperate. Anarchists think we can all just take a few more steps towards being anarchists all the time.
As to why would it be better? well what feels better: cooking at a community gathering or working at a restaurant with your boss breathing down your neck?
This sounds a whole lot like the indigenous peoples of various lands until the imperial machines of war rolled them over. These days, I don't think you need a military budget rivaling America's, but I think some form of military defensive structures would need to remain in place to protect your massive hippie nation-state from opportunistic neighbors.
Ultimately this is the core problem as I see it - a hierarchical society will always be militarily stronger, practically by definition - and if history has taught us anything, it's that weak neighbors get eaten by their stronger neighbors.
Additionally I think most of these idealized community structures are overly optimistic about the likelihood of a charismatic leader coming along and getting people to follow them, and then not letting them withdraw that power. Anarchists talk about hierarchies without formal power structures, but what is actually stopping someone whose already effectively in charge from turning that power into something more permanent, especially if they've convinced the populace that they want that?
Its happened an endless amount of times all throughout history, and I really don't see why it wouldn't here. Ultimately it just seems like a fragile system that relies mostly on every single individual being perfectly rational and immune to the draw of populist leaders. Aka - completely unlike actual humans
Anarchists aren't unaware of these problems, if you're interested then there is a lot of ink spilled on the subject. Either from the perspective of actually existing anarchists or theoretical books.
Anarchists don't imagine some perfect static society but rather a set of evolving practices to guard against precisely what you're talking about. The less centralised things are the less vulnerable they are, and even if someone manages to start concentrating power that doesn't mean they're guaranteed to hold on to it for very long.
The history of the Spanish civil war might be quite interesting to you, as the anarchists had to fight the strongly backed fascists, obviously eventually they lost but they did pretty damn well! lots to learn there.
I'm sorry, but how do you arrive at that conclusion? If I roll in with a giant, powerful military from my centralized state, how does being less centralized make your position easier to defend? The less centralized you are, the less capable of a coordinated defense you are, and the more likely it is that your territory will be conquered without being able to present a meaningful resistance.
And if you were referring to an internal threat from a populist leader, then that's assuming that the individuals involved don't let said populist leader make them more centralized for easier control - if you're just relying on the individuals always making the right decisions, then frankly you're doomed.
Absolutely, and judging by history the typically dont. But a wannabe tyrant can do a lot of damage through their rise and fall, and tyrants have descendants.
And I'm sorry but "just devoted weeks/months of your life to read anarchist literature" isn't a replacement for an actual rebuttal to my points, I have done some reading on anarchism, hence why I understand the concepts well enough to talk about them, but of course I'm not going to spend huge amounts of time reading up on a political system that I think is fundamentally flawed, and I've yet to come across any argument in your comments or others that actually negates any of what I've already said, most of it boils down to "we'll just figure it out bro, trust us"
Completely irrelavent scenario (and if it was relavent, the fact that they lost would support my point), the Republicans of the Spanish Civil War weren't from an anarchist society (nor were they all anarchists). They were residents of a non anarchist society who rebelled, using existing infrastructure created by the existing non-anarchist society.
The closest real analogue is what happened to the native Americans during the colonization (though even that is a very loose analogue, as many tribes were very very far from anarchic, though some were very very close to it), and we all know how that ended from our history books.
It's going to be basically impossible impossible to address this. You've asked incredibly broad questions and I'm typing on my phone with arthritic thumbs. Anything I miss or can't exhaustively lay out convincingly you'll just say "well what about that thing". Which is fair enough, hence why political theories can't be adequately explained in a few internet comments and why if you want detailed answers you can really only find them in books. I'm sorry, I'd have the same answer if you asked me to explain electromagnetism. Some things are just complicated.
I would say I'm not sure why you seem to think centralisation leads to superior manufacturing capabilities or agility in decision making. That isn't obvious to me, often in disaster situations we find the opposite with citizens mustering before states. Many models of anarchism are highly industrialised. It's not as simple as big military beats small military, look how badly the usa failed in its various wars since ww2. Even if that was true why then is the world not neatly rolled into one super state? factors other than military might superiority affect the desire for and feasibility of military invasions.
As to not having an exact answer for every conceivable problem: it's not like our society has one either. It's not designed, we're making this shit up and it is failing catastrophically to address challenges like power and wealth concentration due to technology, ecosystem collapse (we are in a mass extinction ffs), and climate change. Further it almost ended the world several times over during the cold war!
my dude right here is like "i'm typing with thumbs on a tiny device" while banging out "exhaustively," "convincingly," "electromagnetism," "centralisation," "industrialized," "catastrophically,"
god tier shit
<- ADHD
Well, yeah - when you're advocating for a very radical change in societal structure, with potential downsides ranging as far as actual genocide, I feel like it'd be irresponsible to not point out flaws perceived in the proposed structure (or - lack of structure - as the case may be). You'll forgive me for not just taking your word when you say "we've got it figure out bro".
The trouble with reading an argument in a book is that it's a one way conversation. It's easy to present an idea in a way that seems totally sensible, when you're the only voice speaking. I don't doubt that you've ready many anarchic books that make sense when you read them, but the fact that you and others are having trouble distilling those arguments in a comprehensive fashion here shows that the arguments made in those books were probably not as compelling as you perceived them to be when you read them, but were just presented well (likely with a bit of confirmation bias sprinkled in).
History and modern economics? Can you point to a modern nation that is heavily decentralized with a greater industrial base than it's centralized peers such as China and the US? As for decision making, I'll grant you that on small scales a lack of centralization works in your favor. Trying to get 100 people to decide on something is a lot easier than 100 million, but when dealing with a military or economic threat from a centralized power, 1 million separate decisions made by groups of 100 don't actually help.
True, though guerilla warfare certainly wouldn't be unique to anarchism. And while I agree the USA has failed in pretty much all of it's military goals since WW2, I'd point out that the targets of those military campaigns were completely decimated by the time they withdrew. Small comfort to your anarchic society that they weren't completely conquered when every village has been drone striked into rubble.
I'd also point out that the failings of the US military since WW2 has infinitely more to do with the fact that none of our wars have actually had meaningful objectives. During the cold war, each one had the dubious unofficial objective of "embarrass the SU", the wars in the middle east were fought for purely economic reasons (whatever might have been stated publicly), which is a goal they did actually succeed in.
I don't disagree with this at all - but the fact that the current systems aren't working well doesn't mean we should just ignore problems in proposed alternatives.And ultimately i don't see how implementing anarchism actually fixes any of the problems you describe, given that all the problems you describe are fundamentally rooted in the flaws of human nature.
Hell, Climate Change in particular is one that would be basically impossible to actually solve in an Anarchic society. Say I wanted to build a super-polluting factory in our anarchic society, I go out where there aren't any people currently living, use my own resources to build said factory, and start polluting. Whose to say I can't? Who would even know what I'm polluting? I don't disagree that our current society is fucked - but just because the current system is broken, doesn't mean we should toss it out for a half-baked one just because it's different.
I'm sceptical that you have read as much as you claim based on some of what you've said espesh re super polluting factory.
I can no longer continue hurting myself to reply. Read some academic crap, read rebuttals. You will find what you're looking for.
oh yes, defensive militias are necessary. Communities need to be able to protect themselves.
Fortunately if we've learned one thing recently it's that modern nation states are extremely bad at fighting decentralised resistance. So you don't necessary need a giant mechanised army in order to be enough of a pain to make invading you infeasible.
The problem with this isn't military, it's that it doesn't work at scale. Even within a family unit it's hard enough getting six people to agree on anything, and that's when two of them hold power over the other four.
Of those tribes you mentioned that work how you describe, how many had more than, oh, 50 members?
No involuntary impositions of power and authority is the centrist position. The anarchist position should be no impositions of power and authority even if they are voluntary. A perfect example of voluntary power and authority is wage labor. By any usable standard, wage labor is voluntary. Anarchists should object to wage labor because it involves a hierarchy of alienation. This violates workers' inalienable rights, which are rights that can't be given up even with consent
When somebody asks for an intro to anarchism I generally don't feel it's super useful to get deep into the weeds of definitions.
The salient point is no "I'm your boss do what I say or you starve" maybe "You asked me to teach you, practice these tasks or find another teacher"
I am using the conventional definition of voluntariness. It is the people that are suggesting that wage labor is involuntary that are using unconventional definitions of the notion of voluntariness.
Even if this more expansive notion of voluntariness was coherent, it would not be an argument against capitalism per se because capitalism can have a UBI.
Hopefully, a teacher does not steal the positive and negative fruits of the student's labor
What if I'm really into impositions of power and authority though? Like REALLY into it??
It's fine, we don't kink shame here
Abolishing slavery did not prevent people from acting in a manner they wished. It prevented them from having the lack of rights of a slave. Similarly, preventing people from being wage laborers just means that that working in a firm would automatically confer voting rights over the firm and make management democratically accountable to the people that work in the firm
I think you replied to the wrong comment? I was making a sex joke lol
Lol! No.
So, honest question, genuinely not here to argue but to learn: how is this approach scalable to a society of millions, or even billions? What are some thoughts on this?
It seems to me that any society in history that operates this way successfully consists of small groups of people living very differently than we generally do today, often sharing a common ethnic or familial bond or some common purpose. Although I'm sympathetic to anarchism in principle and in smaller groups, human society seems to have gone beyond any hope of a successful anarchic turnover long ago. Any breakdown of societal order seems to result in bad actors taking advantage, even when such developments seem positive at first. And any positive ahierarchical community that becomes too big eventually becomes corrupted it seems.
This is sort of way too big for a lemmy comment haha.
I think if you're interested then it's the sort of thing maybe best learned from books directly. Anything I try and write will be an extremely crude summary pre mangled through my own imperfect understanding.
You could read about what the CNT/FAI did to manage a war economy, they learned on the fly pretty quick. Conquest of bread is good to lay out the sort of fundamentals. Murry Bookchin's works are pretty influential. Other's probs have other suggestions.
I agree, thanks for the recommendations! Exactly what I was looking for.
Onya! Even if you end up thinking it's all a load of horse shit it's worth learning about. It's a very different lens to the hierarchical society (and long history of such) most English speaking people are used to.
Oh if you like reading just random essays and rebuttals and so on browsing anarchists library can be interesting too.
There are examples of libeterian socialist societies today (chiapas, rojava) and historically (spain, ukraine etc.). What's common with both is that they have to put up with relentless attacks from capitalists and fascists. Yet despite that they, in the case of rojava and chiapas, have prevailed.
If you think anarchism can only work in small communities then there are anarchist theories focusing on smaller communities, like Bookchin.
Revolution also isn't something that happens in a day and suddenly you have to re-strucure all of society. During and before the revolution you are already creating these anarchist structures so when you get to that point you are prepared. Working with mutual aid for example doesn't just help people now but train ourselves to live a different life based on solidarity. I believe that even if anarchism will never happen it still worth pursuing these different forms of organisation. This is partly because I am fairly confident capitalism, at least globally, will collapse. Climate change among other things will see to that. What will come after might truly be horrific but I believe anarchism is going to be the only real alternative to it if we want to live truly free.
You read Ian M Banks Culture series? The organization of the culture there seems pretty similar. (Though far future)
kinda? the society essentially has benevolent gods handling everything so idk what can be translated to our world
This seems very naive and superficial, which is, as far as I know, what other philosophers criticise about anarchism.
That's exactly how the state as a concept came into existence. How are we not currently living in the consequence of what people reached out of anarchy? It seems like we are already living what anarchists suppose will happen in an anarchist society.
looks at human history What?
What does that have to do with anarchism?
I'm super exhausted but you're wrong about the state. The modern nation state comes out of the directorate post French revolution, and the proto state going back to like Ur and other early cities in Mesopotamia was based off slave taking by warriors primarily, enabled by appropriation of grain. Anthropologist James C Scott writes about this a fair bit, he's notably not an anarchist btw if that affects assessment of bias.
re coercive violence: I mean it in the sense that it is something individuals don't spend much time doing. Obviously when you look at millions of people over decades it happens but it is much much less common than consensus seeking. Think of the ?millions? of interactions people have and how few involve violence or the threat thereof.
What you misunderstand is that the same thinking you want to apply now lead to these first cities. They thought that was consensus then as well. We only in hindsight decided that, for example, it is unjust if people are enslaved or not allowed to vote. It still started with communities making up their rules and these grew. It's the same thing as what anarchists are proposing is the way to do it.
You just have to look at any society without police and a legislative to see that they all oppress those who are perceived as weaker. Usually it is kids and women who don't have rights in these communities.
no they didn't. They built walls to stop the population fleeing into the surrounding hills.
Re police I think you should look into the history of them. Peelan policing as an ideal has some neat ideas but it was still essentially a compromise with aristocracy. It's very interesting.
No police doesn't mean no safety shit. I have arthritic thumbs and my dog is freaking out in storm, Angela Davis writes interesting things about modern cops if curious. a bit usa centric but interesting nonetheless.
You need to revisit your anthropology. Complex societies like chiefdoms and states arise with the ability to own and accumulate private property which in turn leads to the ability to control resources.
I'm not an anarchist and don't know a lot about it, I just think it is important to discuss the matter on a sound factual basis.