The key for any successful politically and economically equalized system… Is circular oversight. Committees arranged to observe and contribute to each others decision making. Shared and necessarily equal responsibilities.
Maybe this could work, but only if you divide the military across the committees. If it’s just an advisory role, it’s meaningless. That’s the problem we’re seeing with the Supreme Court and Congress in America.
Even with those safeguards in place, what’s to stop the committees from working together to turn on the people? Maybe this doesn’t happen immediately, but what about in 300 years across many changes of power?
It goes beyond oversight, it needs to be a flat structure, where no one person has authority over any other person. It’s not enough to create three groups, give them all power, and have them all watch over each-other, for example, because that would also inevitably lead to corruption. The only thing that can guarantee freedom, peace, justice, and equality for all requires the abolition of all power structures. We need anarchism.
But I can assert power over you by threatening you with a baseball bat. If I get a group of buddies with bats, we become the power structure.
You can’t eliminate power structures forever, they arise spontaneously in a population. You can’t abolish power structures because abolition requires a power structure to enforce.
The best you can do is devise power structures with multiple layers of accountability. So long as some people are bigger, stronger, meaner than others, power imbalances will exist. If you don’t have a structure to regulate those imbalances, warlords and mafiosos will make their own.
You’re missing a few major pieces of the puzzle here - why would you threaten me with a bat in the first place? Most crime is a result of inequal power structures to begin with. If all of our needs are met, why would we choose to be violent? Some crimes of passion may occur, but that’s not likely to create any hierarchies.
If we have an anarchist society, then we have already been successful at dismantling power structures. Any attempts to establish new power structures can be dealt with in the same way - in fact, in a much easier way, since they won’t have anywhere near as much pre-established power.
Revolution is not a single, one-off event. Anarchism requires permenent revolution, a commitment by the society to collectively prevent the formation of new power structures. It requires serious social changes that are likely to take at least a single generation, but probably longer.
why would you threaten me with a bat in the first place?
Some people are greedy, or jealous, or just want to be in power.
If we have an anarchist society, then we have already been successful at dismantling power structures. Any attempts to establish new power structures can be dealt with in the same way
That seems like circular logic that hand-waves the intrinsic difficulty of the task as a trifling detail. You’re assuming a solution exists, and then assuming that solution can deal with any new threats.
Anarchism requires permenent revolution, a commitment by the society to collectively prevent the formation of new power structures. It requires serious social changes that are likely to take at least a single generation, but probably longer.
That just leaves the tricky transition period. What do we do in the meantime? I think a single generation is massively underselling the timescale, what you’re describing is likely to take a century or more. You can’t build a system off of humans suddenly having heretofore unobserved commitment to the collective good.
We’re berry-picking primates advancing too fast for our nervous systems to keep up. Anarchism is a nice utopia to think of, but it isn’t much comfort for people living today.
Seems like your mind is made up! I think this is just going to be one of those “agree to disagree” situations. The answers to your objections can be found in the Anarchist FAQ, I’d recommend learning more about it before dismissing it!
On the contrary, my mind is constantly open and I’ve read quite a bit. But what I’ve read generally falls into three categories:
Totally hand-wavey, concerned more with guiding principles than actionable models. No attempt is made to describe how to devise a non-hierarchical system that fulfills the needs of the people.
Delusional, based entirely on people suddenly being way more cooperative and efficient in group decisions than they’ve ever actually been observed to be en masse.
Inconsequential, “non-hierarchical” is abstracted so far that most modern democracies could be described as such after relatively minor reform. These seem the most practical to me, like the proponents actually considered the mechanics of how the system would work in the material world.
I’m not trying to dismiss it, but everything I’ve read either makes it sound like a fantasy, or a minor change.
Again, humans are incredibly co-operative, but we’ve all been subject to brainwashing from childhood against our better natures. We can act against that brainwashing. It absolutely requires a social revolution - we need to be honest about our society and culture. If you think co-operation is delusional, I’d recommend learning a bit about paleolithic and neolithic human societies.
Anyways, I’m sure you won’t change your mind, the brainwashing is real, I get it, it’s tough. As long as you’re anti-capitalist, that’s fine with me, you’ll get there.
Paleolithic and neolithic societies didn’t have millions of people. The small percentage of greedy people becomes a much greater problem at that scale.
I find it pretty offensive that you can’t conceive of any disagreement that isn’t the result of brainwashing. It’s extremely counterproductive
The key for any successful politically and economically equalized system… Is circular oversight. Committees arranged to observe and contribute to each others decision making. Shared and necessarily equal responsibilities.
Maybe this could work, but only if you divide the military across the committees. If it’s just an advisory role, it’s meaningless. That’s the problem we’re seeing with the Supreme Court and Congress in America.
Even with those safeguards in place, what’s to stop the committees from working together to turn on the people? Maybe this doesn’t happen immediately, but what about in 300 years across many changes of power?
It goes beyond oversight, it needs to be a flat structure, where no one person has authority over any other person. It’s not enough to create three groups, give them all power, and have them all watch over each-other, for example, because that would also inevitably lead to corruption. The only thing that can guarantee freedom, peace, justice, and equality for all requires the abolition of all power structures. We need anarchism.
But I can assert power over you by threatening you with a baseball bat. If I get a group of buddies with bats, we become the power structure.
You can’t eliminate power structures forever, they arise spontaneously in a population. You can’t abolish power structures because abolition requires a power structure to enforce.
The best you can do is devise power structures with multiple layers of accountability. So long as some people are bigger, stronger, meaner than others, power imbalances will exist. If you don’t have a structure to regulate those imbalances, warlords and mafiosos will make their own.
You’re missing a few major pieces of the puzzle here - why would you threaten me with a bat in the first place? Most crime is a result of inequal power structures to begin with. If all of our needs are met, why would we choose to be violent? Some crimes of passion may occur, but that’s not likely to create any hierarchies.
If we have an anarchist society, then we have already been successful at dismantling power structures. Any attempts to establish new power structures can be dealt with in the same way - in fact, in a much easier way, since they won’t have anywhere near as much pre-established power.
Revolution is not a single, one-off event. Anarchism requires permenent revolution, a commitment by the society to collectively prevent the formation of new power structures. It requires serious social changes that are likely to take at least a single generation, but probably longer.
Some people are greedy, or jealous, or just want to be in power.
That seems like circular logic that hand-waves the intrinsic difficulty of the task as a trifling detail. You’re assuming a solution exists, and then assuming that solution can deal with any new threats.
That just leaves the tricky transition period. What do we do in the meantime? I think a single generation is massively underselling the timescale, what you’re describing is likely to take a century or more. You can’t build a system off of humans suddenly having heretofore unobserved commitment to the collective good.
We’re berry-picking primates advancing too fast for our nervous systems to keep up. Anarchism is a nice utopia to think of, but it isn’t much comfort for people living today.
Seems like your mind is made up! I think this is just going to be one of those “agree to disagree” situations. The answers to your objections can be found in the Anarchist FAQ, I’d recommend learning more about it before dismissing it!
On the contrary, my mind is constantly open and I’ve read quite a bit. But what I’ve read generally falls into three categories:
Totally hand-wavey, concerned more with guiding principles than actionable models. No attempt is made to describe how to devise a non-hierarchical system that fulfills the needs of the people.
Delusional, based entirely on people suddenly being way more cooperative and efficient in group decisions than they’ve ever actually been observed to be en masse.
Inconsequential, “non-hierarchical” is abstracted so far that most modern democracies could be described as such after relatively minor reform. These seem the most practical to me, like the proponents actually considered the mechanics of how the system would work in the material world.
I’m not trying to dismiss it, but everything I’ve read either makes it sound like a fantasy, or a minor change.
Again, humans are incredibly co-operative, but we’ve all been subject to brainwashing from childhood against our better natures. We can act against that brainwashing. It absolutely requires a social revolution - we need to be honest about our society and culture. If you think co-operation is delusional, I’d recommend learning a bit about paleolithic and neolithic human societies.
Anyways, I’m sure you won’t change your mind, the brainwashing is real, I get it, it’s tough. As long as you’re anti-capitalist, that’s fine with me, you’ll get there.
Paleolithic and neolithic societies didn’t have millions of people. The small percentage of greedy people becomes a much greater problem at that scale.
I find it pretty offensive that you can’t conceive of any disagreement that isn’t the result of brainwashing. It’s extremely counterproductive