Submitted 2 days ago by The_the@lemmy.dbzer0.com to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
ITT: Nobody has any idea what any anarchist philosopher ever said or believed and simply thinks it means no rules
They then strut victoriously, thinking they are smarter than every anarchist philosopher who has ever existed because they know that rules matter in a society, not realizing that no anarchist thinker has ever said “let’s just have no rules or organization and just see how it goes based on the vibes”
How’s about this: name me one functioning country of significant size (i.e. not just a commune) that functions on an anarchistic model. Demonstrate via examples that this system actually works in practice.
I think that if humanity can manage to survive long enough, anarchism is inevitable.
It’s essentially the adult stage of human society - the point at which humans collectively and consistently, rather than just individually and situationally, can be trusted to generally do the right thing simply because it’s the right thing and therefore the most reasonable thing to do.
Forvtgectime being snd the foreseeable future though, humanity is nowhere even close to that. Through the course of history, human society has managed to advance to about the equivalent of adolescence. There’s still a long way to go.
In spite of that, I do identify as an anarchist, but my advocacy is focused on the ideal and the steps humanity as a whole has to take to achieve it. I think it’s plainly obvious that it cannot be implemented, since any mechanism by which it might be inplemented would necessarily violate the very principles that define it. It can only be willingly adopted by each and all (or close enough as makes no meaningful difference), and that point will come whenever (if) it comes.
Even when people will do the right thing in 99.99% of situations, there will still need to be rules.
Just take a look at how game theory works. Anyone exploiting those mechanism in a group even if only one in a thousand, could devastate a society in no time , if it’s naive enough to not have the rules, even when they are not usually needed.
I do like your thinking though, and I also have dreams of a future society where criminals are not punished but nurtured. Because it must have been awful to have been in a state of mind, to want to do something to hurt others.
I’m not sure it’s possible though. But it is the ideal we should hopefully at some point strive for. But there still needs to be standards or “rules” for when people need help to be readjusted to functioning normally in society.
Anarchy doesn’t mean no rules, it means no rulers.
Anarchy sounds good to me then someone asks “Who’d fix the sewers?”
Anarchist response would be “people who want functioning sewers, which should be everybody.”
Yeah it’s a dirty job. So is wiping your ass. Does someone need to threaten you to wipe your ass? Take a shower? When your toilet breaks at home do you shrug and just shit on the bathroom floor?
No, you fix the toilet. Same with the sewers.
Ok and who does that end up being?
Someone doesn’t understand what anarchism is. Opinion discarded. Please read a book and return.
This is the opportunity to share resources and give them a direction to head, and you missed it.
Probably the people who own the sewers.
Let me rephrase the question, who will fix the potholes?
who will fix the potholes?
Make the libertarians do it! /s
Idk, ive fixed a pothole or two that bothered me near home, but yeah, I’m not doing a whole city lol
I think though that once people realize the onus is on them to fix things, people will start to fix things. Provided of course, that they have the means and ability to do so.
And then, there are still companies which can be hired to do these things, provided someone is willing to pay them
It’s a Dead Kennedy’s song and do people own the sewers in anarchism.
It seems foolish and young to me. Same as libertarian rules or rule by religious doctrine. None of that shit works. Just shiny little playthings to keep people distracted from real and genuine problems that cause an existential threat to all species living on earth.
Strange claim, given that it’s arguably how humans have organized their society for 296,000 years until that religion you dislike fucked it all up.
Uhm, no? For most of humanity, we were in patriarcal tribes. That’s not the same as anarchy. And the moment settlements grew, there was typically some kind of hierarchy in place, some chief.
Which anarchist philosophers beliefs did you find foolish and young? I’d love a critique!
It depends on the definition
The definition is whatever you want the definition to be. Don’t let others force a definition on you.
A lot of people think it means total chaos, but it really just means an opposition to hierarchy.
People living comfortable lives will rationalize any critique of the system away, even if that comfort is built upon emiseration and exploitation.
Quite literally impossible to implement. Same as true “Libertarianism”. Can’t actually exist.
Look at it this way. You and your neighbours want no government. No taxes. No laws. No “authority” telling you what to do and how to do it. Great!
What happens when the road needs to be fixed? Do you fix just the road in front of your house? Or do you negotiate with your neighbours for you all to pay a fair share to get the entire road done? Congratulations…you just invented government.
So now the road is getting done, but the people doing the work really don’t want to deal with every individual for every particular decision. It’s a much better idea to elect one person to do the communicating. Congratulations…you just invented civics and beaurocracy
This person that you all agreed to handle all of this stuff doesn’t have time anymore to support himself or his family because he’s dealing with your shit, so he demands that each of you pay an amount to keep in able to feed himself while he administrates your “anarchic society.” Congratulations…you just invented taxes
Replace “roads” with literally anything else in a community and the end result is the same. Both Libertarians and Anarchists are fucking morons.
You don’t know what anarchism is or what it means and are arguing with a strawman.
You say they’re arguing against strawmen, but do nothing to refute the arguments or show why they’re strawmen. Let’s say you have what you want: Rules but no rulers, direct democracy, and government but no state (please explain the latter in more detail).
The local hospital needs to decide how much money (read: resources) to spend on constructing a new wing, and who should do the job. A power line has to be built to replace the one that just fell down, and your direct democracy decided last week that you want to do something to incentivise the farmers to produce healthier and more sustainable food, rather than easy to produce and unhealthy food, but you haven’t ironed out the details yet. The next option you have to affect these decisions is later today, when you’ll have some kind of meeting or vote to decide on the matters. How you will find a time and place that allows everyone to have their say is an obvious issue, but I’ll leave it to you to explain how to overcome it.
These decisions need to be made, and when everyone doesn’t agree, there needs to be a mechanism to get stuff done regardless. I haven’t even gotten started on how to deal with internal groups or outside forces that want to exploit the system or the society as a whole.
Please explain how this is solved without some kind of hierarchical system where some people make decisions and enforce those decisions on behalf of the group as a whole. These are the roles we typically assign to “rulers” or “the state” (i.e. the bureaucracy).
Anarchism isn’t “no government”. I don’t think your larger assessment is incorrect in that anarchism is utopian in nature and unrealistic on a larger scale but your understanding of the ideology is flawed.
Genuinely thought that said “anachronism” and was ready to go on a tirade about how cool cloaks are and how they should make a comeback
Fuck yeah, I’d wear a cloak.
People calling themselves anarchists seem to reliably be less of a red flag than when they call themselves communists.
I think there’s a lot of sentiment to sympathize with and a lot of ideas to learn about.
Implementation of anarchism seems hard and maybe sometimes a bit naïve, but on the other hand I don’t actually understand the specifics nor is there any one opinion.
Anarvhism refers to a vlass of ideologies moreso than any one in specific.
coupled with communism it’s the real shit
The end goal of civilization.
Stateless, Egalitarian societies.
I think it’s one gun away from a dictatorship.
For power to be safely devolved to the people there need to be resilient structures in place to prevent a bad actor from simply wresting control by force.
Also, I think that while it solves societal issues well for the most personal of personal liberties it fails to properly add in protections from the liberties of others that may be imposed on you… i.e. a spouse trying to escape an abusive relationship will find sparse services to support them.
Lastly, I like trains. Trains don’t happen in a reasonable time-frame without a strong centralized government. In the UK a coop recently opened a new train line… I think it took them 30+ years.
For power to be safely devolved to the people there need to be resilient structures in place to prevent a bad actor from simply wresting control by force.
Why do you think this is incompatible with anarchism?
Also, I think that while it solves societal issues well for the most personal of personal liberties it fails to properly add in protections from the liberties of others that may be imposed on you… i.e. a spouse trying to escape an abusive relationship will find sparse services to support them.
Why can’t they simply vote on such laws being absolute, and hard to change, like we currently do in non-anarchist democracies?
Trains don’t happen in a reasonable time-frame without a strong centralized government. In the UK a coop recently opened a new train line… I think it took them 30+ years.
Why did it take them 30+ years? Why couldn’t an anarchist society simply vote to build a new train line?
For power to be safely devolved to the people there need to be resilient structures in place to prevent a bad actor from simply wresting control by force.
Why do you think this is incompatible with anarchism?
There still must be a state with the capacity for violence to prevent strongman takeovers. Most descriptions of anarchism generally exclude the existence of a unified state and often exclude any form of non-individual violence.
Also, I think that while it solves societal issues well for the most personal of personal liberties it fails to properly add in protections from the liberties of others that may be imposed on you… i.e. a spouse trying to escape an abusive relationship will find sparse services to support them.
Why can’t they simply vote on such laws being absolute, and hard to change, like we currently do in non-anarchist democracies?
What state apparatus would be preserved into anarchism that would provide these supports and how would it be funded? Additionally, how would we reconcile the lack of a state with the need for apparatuses to oppose individual suppression that are necessarily authoritarian and imbued with violence. Think first about a village of good people with one abusive relationship - that village can perhaps support the spouse in escaping that relationship. Think now about an evangelical or Mormon community with widespread and socially accepted spousal abuse - a solution to that abuse will almost never emerge internally. An outside authority imbued with the power of violence by a large populace is required to make that situation just - and that justice will come against the majority opinion of that locale.
Shit like this had happened in the past - most cult raids you’ve heard of were breaking up situations where everyone made a voluntary choice with the assistance of coercion and other disabling factors.
Trains don’t happen in a reasonable time-frame without a strong centralized government. In the UK a coop recently opened a new train line… I think it took them 30+ years.
Why did it take them 30+ years? Why couldn’t an anarchist society simply vote to build a new train line?
It took them 30+ years because they needed to privately fund it. I think you may be confusing anarchy with council republics or other devolved and federated forms of governments (like Lenin’s idealized Soviets - not to be confused with the USSR).
It’s important also to look at the costs of devolution of power. After the first Trump term human rights around reproductive care were devolved to be the decision of the states - that devolution of power resulted in less freedoms for individuals.
People like to focus on the “I can do…” freedoms in US political thought but I think some of our most important freedoms are “I can refuse to have … done to me” freedoms - and those two freedoms are always in opposition. Someone wants to not be murdered and someone else wants to murder them - no matter the outcome someone is having their freedom restrained.
Technically the whole world runs on pure anarchism. No rules, only those created by local groups. With agreements between some of the groups. Most of it enforced by violence.
Laws only exist because most people believe in them. For the rest they are enforced with violence. I believe that anarchy would result in a similar system. Most people would behave but some would not. To protect everyone eventually some kind of police and laws would form again.
Anarchism has nothing to do with “no rules”
I think liberals don’t even know what it means, but insist their opinions on it need to be heard anyways, because all opinions are valid, right?
I think it’s great. We should fucking try it.
I see it as a guideline for how society could be structured after the elimination of class.
Pls no anarcho capitalism. A good breakdown of the topic: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTN64g9lA2g&t=1
I don’t think practically you could end up with a state of anarchism because it implies that humans can exist in a power vacuum. Something will always fill that vacuum. Now, the question is what is that thing? It can take a lot of forms. The goal should be to make it serve the qualitative needs of most people - food, shelter, well being, safety.
Anarchists are not against government, they’re against the state, and these are two different things.
They are also not against rules, there’s no power vacuum because power is held by consensus. I don’t think you’ve ever read an anarchist philosopher, based on this take.
Absence of government; the state of society where there is no law or supreme power; a state of lawlessness; political confusion
gcide.gnu.org.ua/?q=Anarchy&define=Define&strateg….
Whatever you’re arguing for, I’d suggest using another word
When I was younger, I believed that it was an ideal worth striving for. Now I don’t have that much faith in people anymore and I think that the best you can ask for is to try to live life your way and stay true to your beliefs and morals as best you can, according to whatever circumstances that you’ve been given.
It rules!
Responsible anarchism is a good ideal to aim for, but in pure form it’s utopian. Realistic way to get closer to this ideal is shifting to stateless/borderless societies that center around some alternative entities other than geopolitical nation-states.
I think there’s a reason anarchists aren’t migrating in droves to anarchies like Haiti or Somalia.
being ruled by warlords is not anarchist.
The point stands though. Pure Anarchism is a power vacuum. There is no way to achieve a power vacuum, it will be quickly filled — the most basic way it is filled is by dictators and warlords. You want to live in a power vacuum? Ask yourself how you will enforce it and suddenly you’re no longer talking about anarchy.
You can’t prove that
Its interesting idea but i wonder if humans are capable of running it beyond so small groups that it wouldnt matter. It would require huge amount of planning and creative thinking to get anarchy working in such way it would benefit everyone and to mitigate its problems.
Then there is also the problem of our current system influencing the new system. Lets say we manage somehow overthrow the current opression and start implementing somekind of anarchy that has been planned in such way it functions beneficially for everyone. By its nature, there couldnt be any authority that defines what anarchy is by its core since it would be up to the people themselves.
I can imagine anarchy easily fragmenting into pieces and then some pieces gaining more support than others and then we would have several competing ideas. Ultimately one would win and others might or might not survive too. And then we would have new ruling system that is probably not anarchy. I dont mean this would happen immediately but eventually. So there would need to be somekind of defensive system against that that would prevent harmful ideas from gaining power, but how to make something like that without it becoming oppressive? And how do you restrict anarchy in the first place since the whole point is there is no central authority? And if you try to have authority that isnt central, you end up with multiple ones that become central authority within their area of influence.
Maybe i’m not as well versed on anarchy as i should to be throwing these thoughts around, but these are some thoughts i have on the subject. As far as i know, anarchism is that people make the rules themselves instead of there being central authority that tells them what to do.
So ultimately anarchism is idea that would require a lot of planning and researching to be even considered worth trying if you want to implement it in controlled way. And i dont see any government allowing such planning to happen since it would be direct threat to them if you manage to create something that is worth trying. And very likely if they still were to allow it, they would just want to influence your work in such way they gain more power from it at the expense of others. And if we had some government that would want it because they want what is good for everyone, then wouldnt that government type be what you wanted to have with anarchy in the first place? Anarchy for sake of itself doesnt seem very useful.
And if you want to implement it “naturally” by just removing all authorities and allowing people to settle things by themselves, i think we can all imagine how that would go.
When I think about it that way, anarchism seems more like “initialization” or starting point where you start building something more complex. Everything we currently have is founded on anarchism afterall, at least i dont think first humans could have had any other system. You cant really hold on to it because it will change either by the people or by the power that wants to preserve it.
Now this turned into kind of an essay
I thought it was quite cool when I was a teenager. Then I grew up.
Aka you heard about it, did no reading on theory and slowly the capitalist culture you lived in burned your brain down. That’s what happens when you don’t have any actual education about something.
No, I’m quite aware of what it is … and concluded it to be a terrible idea.
Honestly, I don’t really understand what it is. I don’t understand socialism, communism, hell I hardly understand capitalism and I’m living in it.
I know the “it’s chaos” interpretation isn’t really correct though
Nestor Makhno and his Makhnovists weren’t perfect but I think its probably the closest we’re going to get to seeing a working anarchist society. It seemed like it worked for a short time.
Also note the mutial aid systems that spring up in the wake of some disasters could probably be considered temporary anarchist societies. Rebecca Solenit wrote a book about this but I haven’t gotten a chance to read it yet. A Paradise Built in Hell. I hear its good but I can’t say that with firsthand knowledge
Anarchism is the worst a society can devolve into.
And people who believe that certain anarchy “models” can work, know nothing about the psychology of larger groups.
When large groups of people need to live together there needs to be structure and rules, and the rules need to be upheld by a governing body.
The best way we have to form that governing body is democracy.
When large groups of people need to live together there needs to be structure and rules that must be respected, and the rules need to be upheld by a governing body.
you can’t prove this.
As I stated, people defending anarchy doesn’t understand the psychology of larger groups.
I can only say that EVERY successful society has a central government. If Anarchy could work as well, how come there are no successful anarchy societies.
Not as in so few, but NONE! If it should work so well, why has no country ever even tried?
When a country is thrown into anarchy because the government is removed, and nothing replaces it. It always turns out the same. Extreme violence, theft and hunger.
That’s what is shown to happen when Anarchy reigns.
Anarchists believe in a government with direct democracy, you are arguing against a strawman
Oh you mean a democracy that isn’t flawed like the USA.
Scandinavian countries have direct democracy, and they are in no way anarchist.
I consider myself an anarcho-pragmatist. It would be nice not to have any rulers or an hierarchy. But I also know people well enough to know that unless we defer any decision making to a supercomputer everyone trusts, we’re going to need some form of societal structure.
No one will unanimously trust a computer model. People will try to undermine and destroy it.
NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 2 days ago
In the absence of other power structures (political, legal, religious, economic, etc) whoever has the means and willingness to do violence will exert their will over others. Unstructured societies always devolve into might makes right.
naeap@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
There is a difference between Anomie and anarchy
Just because there are no leaders/rulers, doesn’t mean there are no social rules or morale values.
A law doesn’t keep one from doing bad stuff.
Else we wouldn’t have murderers.
But society must grow and develop. At the current state anarchy probably wouldn’t work…
breadcat@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
that’s true, they need to be enforced somehow…
nsrxn@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
you can’t prove this
hisao@ani.social 2 days ago
Theoretically maybe, but empirically, humanity was completely unstructured at the beginning and currently not a single anarchist society exists. Why do you think everyone transformed into various kinds of nation-states eventually? Because nation-states were exceptionally good at filling that “power vacuum”. To overpower nation-states, something at least comparable is needed. Transnational corporations/syndicates/unions, something like that.