Most of the time people are pretty cool, but when people aren’t cool all the cool people need to be like “hey, that’s not cool, so be cool or you need to leave” and thus the coolness is enforced.
Additionally because of game theory, a “rat” will always exploit everybody’s chillness. It’d be great to not spend a cent on the military but Russia is a rat that uses this opportunity to invade its neighbors. Inevitably you will have to invest in some kind of law enforcement.
Anarchist movements have military as well, in need they can pick a commander to lead them whose power can be dissolved at any time even without finding an alternative commander. Commanders power is not enforced and anyone can not listen to them. These armies where most efficient in the past, but they were most of the time defeated because both right-wing and so call “left-wing” communist fight them. This is what happened during anarchist movement in Spain, which no one seems to talk about.
I’d be more concerned how to disarm the military. Giving someone power, and them willingly giving it back never works. There have been times when a country had no effective military and mere civilians banded together but these were very rarely effective combat forces.
Exactly, that is why no anarchist believes in giving someone power that they can’t take back at any moment. That is exactly the anarchist point of view, you don’t give other people power, no matter what they say they will use it for. Power of a commander can be purely on a voluntary basis, many native american tribes lived exactly this way. Most of the prehistoric humans lived this way. You can choose to follow someone more experienced, but that is purely your choice and at any moment you can just simply step-away if you disagree. No one is saying you can’t look for inspiration for making decisions in others, but you should never agree to follow someone whatever choice they make. All armies are made of mere civilians, we are all just people. It is just that some are more experienced then others, for example, by having formal military training or being a veteran. In those situations, people naturally listen to those with more experience, as long as they seem reasonable. Furthermore, you can have formal combat training in societies without rulers as well. So having mere civilians banded together is not a trait of anarchist society.
In the modern era weapons and technology require the coordination and organization of millions of men for a single weapon or consumer product. From the armor, steel, engine, fuel, cannon and shells of a tank it seems too complicated to organize without a rigid government (in fact multiple governments as many parts are imported).
I think anarchism could have only existed prior to the industrial era, where much of your technology, development and manufacture was local to you. From your local baker, blacksmith and watchmaker expecting good faith is a reasonable assumption, however today everything involves such great planning and organization, a powerful centralized entity inevitably becomes necessary. An entity to also protect every step of an increasingly complex and fragile supply chain.
A “primitive” vs “modern” economy is often metaphorically represented by a donkey and jet engine by economists. A jet engine is much faster and more powerful than a donkey, but a single malfunction in its myriad of components leads to explosive decomposition. I’m also concerned that the public would renain unconvinced to regress technologically, most people are willing to sacrifice personal freedom for greater quality of life. I suppose you could join the Amish as an opportunity for a self-sustainable anarchic government.
Spain was run without government during anarchist revolution in 20th century and their production and technological advancement increased, since there was no one on the top taking all the profits that otherwise would be used for investing in the community and industry. Quality of life is always better in free societies, then when you have to listen to your boss, work long hours and struggle to pay the bills. As far as I know, once Europen children were raised in native amercian egalitarian societies, they would never want to go back to cities and work long hours under someone else’s rule.
I don’t know much about Amish, but I got the feeling that they are patriarchal society, which is exactly the opposite of a free anarchist society where no one rules over anyone else.
This guy cools
Republicans: Exist
Direct democracy isn’t supposed to be passive, but in every anarchist community, it is collectively enforced. Republicans (and anyone else) should be actively fought not to be in power, but that doesn’t mean by simply giving someone else power to rule over you. We can simply agree to collectively fight anyone who tries to be in power, we can follow who we want in this fight, but no one should force us to follow them and anyone who tries should be collectively fought against as well.
While I broadly agree with you, we don’t have that third option yet, and electing the less bad option while we build the third option is a necessity.
You don’t get to say “Well I don’t want any of this - I want better” while checking out of the systems we live within, ceding power to the fascists - you need to be doing everything you can to fight fascism first and foremost while fighting for better.
It isn’t easy, but who really thought a fundamental change in the structure and nature of our society would be?
I have nothing against doing temporary solutions, but I am generally don’t really see anyone giving proportional fight for that third real solution, but I see many people spending a decent part of their day reading, talking and getting angry over these incomplete solutions and getting often confused on what is right and what is wrong.
My understanding is that every option where you vote for any party is pretty fascistic choice, and only some parties are better at hiding it then others. All parties generally disguise their ideas as fight for the working class, both racist and “progressive” parties, while both do exactly the same thing in terms of worker rights and interests. I think that pretending to fight for “progressive” ideas while doing exactly the opposite for the conditions that cause that hatred and domination of one group over another, is just as harmful, if not more so.
There is a good video I just watched today about it, I highly recommend it. And I highly recommend spending more time building actual co-operatives, (direct democratic) unions and other horizontal structures opposed to getting caught up in these games rich people play with us. Educating people and yourself of current and past anarchistic movement should be a priority over criticizing and legitimizing these forms of hierarchical systems.
Absolutely works for me that’s a very anarchistic take.
You ever been in a room where one psychotic person seems to set the whole tone? That’s the world without governments. Anarchy inevitably leads to misery, so let’s come up with the best government we can.
I thought about this for some time. An anarchy would always collapse into governed state.
First, imagine the perfect scenario where there no authority and world is just a lot of tiny city-sized communities. It would take just a single bad actor to form a state, start invading neighboring communities and growing in power. In response - other communities would be forced to group into increasingly bigger states to have a chance to oppose influence from bigger/richer states.
This thought experiment also works if violent takeover is replaced by economic one. Think of cartels and monopolies.
Until they hit another group that is either bigger or stronger and opposed to their way of doing shit. Really no different than how shit works now. Because you certainly wouldn’t be free to murder and steal and rape and enslave or whatnot even in an anarchistic society; people who don’t want you doing that shit would stop you or punish you.
And some of those groups would form some ways to manage shit and conduct wars, leading us probably back to governments.
If you looked up on this subject first, you would know that humans where anarchist for 95% of our existence. There is a good youtube channel “What is politics?” that talks about this. Even today, there are anarchist communities and there where in the past in the modern world, some of them are still going on, some of them where destroyed by outside force, some of them dissolved into state power.
Citation needed. I think we’d be fine.
No where on earth has anarchy, the places that have it for a few days spontaneously develop order through gangs, warlords, or the intervention of more stable societies
This person doesn’t know how to search for things on the Internet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anarchist_communities You should know that for 95% of huiman existence almost all tribes where anarchist. There is a good youtube channel “What is politics?” that talks about this.
He’s wrong about “a few days”, but that article does not support your case that anarchism works
It supports the case that it can work. I never made an argument that it always works forever. There are failed attempts, but the cause of their failure is also very important. It is often claimed that somehow, internally, anarchism can not work within a country, while usually the reason anarchisam is destroyed is due to outside invasion or interference. It is simply the case, that anarchist are currently outnumbered, mostly due to opinions like this, that it can not work, so we should try it. If we get a critical mass of enough people, it would be the opposite, states would not be able to survive in a majority anarchistic World, as no one would need to surrender themselves to domination by rulers if they can easily find a better alternative.
You ever been to Somalia?
Why Somalia? Did you read somewhere they were anarchists or did you just assume that both anarchists and Somalians are savages so that they have to be related somehow.
Nah i mentioned them because they don’t have a functioning national government, i.e. anarchy.
No one has a functional state goverment if it’s function is to actually help the people. If states function is to keep people in power, and it is, then they are all functional, including Somalian.
That’s the thing, no one holds any power on a national level in Somalia.
? A simple wikipedia search shows there is clearly a president of somalia and there is a goverment that is “federal palamentary constitunoal republic”. Am I missing something? This is the president of somalia.
This in not true at all. In all anarchist communities, equality is strictly enforced and anyone who tries to get a hold on power is either kicked out or murdered.
Being president should be like jury duty. Everyone has to do it eventually. And it sucks just as much so everyone tries to weasel out of it.
I’ve done jury duty once, my group didn’t even get called into the court room so the worst part was just listening to the conversations of 50 other people bitching about how they had better things to do, such children.
“I can’t make it to D&D tonight.”
“Why not? Are you afraid of the beholder fight?”
“No man, I gotta be the President.”
“Aww man that sucks… Well, try not to nuke anybody, I guess.”
It’s legitimately a fucked up job for most people. You’re on call 24/7, the stress is so bad you can literally watch presidents prematurely age, you have to smile at people who make you want to puke, and you are legitimately trapped in the security circle.
Yeah there’s a lot of perks but I’ll keep my application to myself.
I wish people would just agree to be nicer to each other ;-;
(I got yelled at by my boss the other day, can you tell?)
Your boss sounds like a turd! I don’t understand people who do that. I understand being frustrated, but yelling is a grade school response.
Bill and Ted. Joni Mitchell. They knew.
Where there is dominance over others, abuse is inevitable. In cooperatives, where works chose and can at any time dissolve positions of mangers, these things can do not happen. I work in a coop for more than 5 years, I never got someone not being nice to me, since we all have voting power and it wouldn’t be smart to anger your co-workers.
-Peter Kropotkin
In this thread: people that don’t know how to be cool.
…WHAT?! … SAY AGAIN…?!
I CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER THIS POWER VACUUM!
It is the people that take power. There where many anarchist communities all around the world, some of them still are. Even back before in stone age, before agriculture, most communities where without a leader and yet they strictly enforced rules. This is just propaganda, so people in power, can stay in power.
There is a good youtube channel called “What is politics?” that talks about these things.
Then the power vacuum has been filled, no?
Yes anarchy as a the school of thought doesn’t suggest a power vacuum but rather filling that vacuum with everyone
What power vacuum? What does that even mean? That somebody is always in power over someone else? If no one is making you do something, you simply choose for yourself. Existence of some kind of a power vacuum would mean that no one can make a decision for themselves about anything, but that some one has to tell them what to do. Which obviously makes no sense, since someone ultimately has to decide. Politics is all about decision making power. If you have no rulers, then people have the decision making power to choose to live as they wish.
A power vacuum happens when a government gets overthrown with no tangible system to replace it. That means that if you successfully replace a hierarchy based system with a flat system, there will be no power vacuum, because the power has been defined and delegated.
If you just kill the leaders, rip down the system and go around believing that by the honour system you’ve effectively changed society and everyone will be happy forever, someone else will step in and define a new central authority, most likely through violence and persecution, due to the:
power vacuum.
I was relying on allusion and subtext, but that was a mistake. Some people can’t read between the lines and draw inference according to their own bias.
You could have asked me to clarify, but instead you assumed - and what is assumption?
Well you are assuming that someone would step in with central authority. I will not get into a pointless fight of who was right, we agree that another system should be put in place. We might disagree that it quite natural to put a system of direct democracy in place when there is no central goverment, as it is often the case inside a friend group when people are making a decision about where they are going to eat or whatever. It is not my fault that I assumed what you are trying to say, it is quite reasonable and necessary in any conversation to assume what someone is trying to say if they haven’t been perfectly clear, which is ok since no one can be perfectly clear all the time. But you do have a bit of an attitude, in your orginal comment and here. You are being a bit arrogant and degrading other peoples opinions.
A power vacuum is about systems and not leaders, but kill a leader, and the power vacuum happens.
Find someone else to argue with if you don’t want to accept objective reality.
I never disagreed with you on this. You just want to argue and feel smarter then everybody.
Yeah well that sounds great, but people tend to be pretty horrible and selfish assholes rather than “just being cool.” I’m not sure the President is much more than just a figurehead most of the time, but I’ve seen people try to start “be cool” communities that always ended up failing.
For one thing, some people wanted to do things that disrupted the sleep of others, for another thing, some people wanted to go around naked while others didn’t want to see them running around naked, and some people wanted to have pot parties, whiles others found it disgusting. Eventually it all ends up withg people at each other’s throats.
I think it’d be a lot easier to just be cool if people could really just be cool and not hyper-upset and offended by everything all the time.
That is what happens when a bunch of rich kids try to play equality, while actually growing up as spoiled brats. In true egalitarian societies, which were the norm for 95% of humanities history, people live extremely equal lives where they HAVE to be nice to each other. When you have no choice but to get along with others, you have to take care of other peoples feelings or you can get kicked out of your group and left to fend for yourselves, which in nature is a death sentence. Or since there is no police, just straight up murdered by someone else.
No one is naturally nice, but when you live together with other people, you are forced to be. Unless you have rich mom and dad where you can go back to, if others aren’t letting you do what they did.
Yeah, those communes ended up being an untenable disaster or an abusive (usually sexually) cult.
They never really worked out, everyone wants to do their own thing and that inevitably means someone gets upset or offended. If we were all given our own planet, we could probably get away with doing whatever we want to do, but in a world full of other people there’s just no such thing as absolute freedom to do anything you want.
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Ok. I’ll even share my snacks with you guys.
You bring chips, I bring soda
I’ll bring queso!
At some point Belgium didnt even had a government so its completely possible
Some still don’t. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anarchist_communities Even in past for 95% of human existence almost all tribes where anarchist, there is a good youtube channel “What is politics?” that talks about this.
I’m conflicted. I’m worried about sociopath taking advantage of the lack of government, but on the other hand I’m not sure it’s worse than the current solution where said sociopaths are the government.
In most systems where you can end up with no Prime Minister / President for a temporary period* the civil servants keep going. So it’s not like there’s no government.
* Usually it’s because political parties are having trouble forming coalitions or a run off condition in countries with a history of electoral uhh … Shenanigans.
Don’t worry, it is a lot harder for sociopath to have control over people in an already free society then in a society where you can use already existing structures of control to gain more control. Never forget, that in a system with no police, anyone can kill you if you try to hurt them. Where there is no state goverment, the people are government. And people make far more effective police to actually protect themselves then these selfish fucks.
Poland managed without an elected government for about a year. Heard it was nice.
Many societies did. In fact, for 200 000 years, that is all we were, no rulers no chiefs, all equal, direct democracy sharing societies. This system is imposed on us ever since agriculture where we can’t easily escape our lands. However, when we organize together, in large enough numbers and introduce direct democracy and clear and concrete brave actions, we can take back control from people in power.
Let me get this straight: you think that tribal humans had no rulers and no chiefs? Not only is that not true, it’s like the opposite of true. There were a ton of leaders. If anything, we have fewer leaders now.
Also, your idea of direct democracy is unworkable without leaders. Who is going to make boring daily decisions like running the Post Office or the US’s official position on someone’s fart in Brussels? Are you trusting the average citizen to vote on that?
That is simply not true. There is a good video about it, but you can also look it up yourself. The term is egalitarian societies and antrhopologists in last 50 years discovered a bunch of currently living tribes with such structures as well as found much of evidence that before agriculture that was the norm.
The workers in those post offices are the one that run the post office, bottom up structure. In Spain during anarchist revolution, people were running every part of society in this manner without appointed leaders: factories, banks, military. And they were doing great. Turns out when you don’t have someone at the top leaching all the profits, it ends up pretty profitable for the workers and job becomes a lot easier to do. You can look up anrho-sindicalist war in Spain in 20th century if you don’t believe me.
