Anarchists (lib left) aren’t typically waiting for society to collapse. We typically focus on building the world we want to see now in order to make the collapsing society unnecessary to provide out material needs. You know, the whole mutual aide and community organizing bit.
“Mutual aid is an organizational model where voluntary, collaborative exchanges of resources and services for common benefit take place amongst community members to overcome social, economic, and political barriers to meeting common needs.”
Legal systems are far more effective at guiding human behavior than hoping for the voluntary good will of people’s hearts.
History seems to support that coercion is necessary to stop the most egregious abuses by bad actors. Tell us how we would prevent someone like Trump who lacks any concern for anyone else from cheating and robbing everyone without some sort of deterrent using force.
I like the idea of anarchism, but I see it as more of an ideal world view than an actual stable reality.
To support this, every group member of every group must almost unanimously support the concept. When resources or safety in an area become scarce, it’s easy for some groups to evolve back into another power structure to take care of their own people.
It’s really difficult for me to imagine everybody on this planet getting along with this. But I’m certainly interested in other viewpoints.
Honestly ALL systems are more of an ideal world than a stable reality. So singling out anarchism because it too is idealistic isn’t really much of an argument against it.
Well, in many other systems you have an overarching ruling layer that sets laws and is able to enforce them from a top level.
That is precisely the reason why those systems can be relatively stable. As you just have a very large group of people following the same set of rules.
I’d rather live under a state with a secure monopoly on violence than in a stateless chaos of violence. Anarchy isn’t a form of government. It’s simply the period before a group uses violence to establish itself as the government.
Let me ask you, would you rather deal with a cop or a warlord?
There’s the term “anarchy” describing a state of chaos, and there’s the philosophical political term anarchism, which is completely separate.
You’re assuming the chaos is what anarchist philosophers want, which is incorrect.
Authority would be handled democratically or rotationally in an anarchist society. As an example, the police could be voted into place at a meeting that occurs every saturday where anyone who wants can attend to decide what the people in a given region do.
Your response indicates you’ve never actually engaged with any anarchist philosophers or thought before, let me ask you this, do you really think no anarchist philosopher EVER thought of any of those points? Research the beliefs of bakunin, kropotkin, and the likes before giving strong opinions on anarchism, else you look unbelievably ignorant to anyone who actually is familiar with the material.
Central authority and law is meant to kept that chaos in check.
Law, sure, central authority? It does the opposite, it causes a great deal of misery and chaos. It is unchecked power held by few who won’t give it up under any circumstances, it maximizes the chaos of humanity. Freedom and democracy are the only counter-balance, and anarchists just want to maximize democracy.
Given your example, what would happen if two groups in the same town both elected their own police force with wildly different directives?
Both groups would show up to the meeting and either reach consensus or leave it to a democratic vote. I want to point out that this has NEVER happened in any anarchist society, why do you think this is a likely scenario? If they were absolutely deadset, I suppose there could be a schism, but there’s no historical reference for this, because why would this ever happen?
Please, if you’re going to try a gotcha argument like this, engage with the material and look for a historic reference. This WHAT IF THIS HAPPENS? can be done with any ideology, if there’s no historic reference for it, then sure, it could cause a disaster, but it hasn’t ever so why should I care? I can come up with countless theoretical disasters, and real ones for capitalism.
What happens when you give those cops the means to enforce their directives and they decide to enact their own rules?
They’ll do poorly at the next town meeting and probably be demoted/swapped out…
How would you even get them to do their job without a centrally backed currency?
They can choose not to do it, of course. There’s an idea of mutual aid, I scratch your back, you scratch mine, the people would be grateful for them doing a good job and would help them elsewise, as just one example. Mutualism actually has various currency-related anarchist strategies, a central authority is not needed for making a currency valid, I don’t know why you believe that premise to be the case.
You do not understand anarchism in the slightest. You are imagining some Hobbsian hellscape out of a disaster movie, which is completely counter to human nature.
Anarchists (lib left) aren’t typically waiting for society to collapse. We typically focus on building the world we want to see now in order to make the collapsing society unnecessary to provide out material needs. You know, the whole mutual aide and community organizing bit.
On that note, Authoitarian right are not waiting either. They are actively taking power over and from others.
There are accelerationists in every political sphere
Anprim would like a word
Good luck creating a social contract based on vibes only.
I don’t know what that means, but I don’t think you do either.
“Mutual aid is an organizational model where voluntary, collaborative exchanges of resources and services for common benefit take place amongst community members to overcome social, economic, and political barriers to meeting common needs.”
Legal systems are far more effective at guiding human behavior than hoping for the voluntary good will of people’s hearts.
So your argument is that the only way to get people to live together is under the constant threat of violence from the state?
History seems to support that coercion is necessary to stop the most egregious abuses by bad actors. Tell us how we would prevent someone like Trump who lacks any concern for anyone else from cheating and robbing everyone without some sort of deterrent using force.
Not the guy you were talking to, but in my opinion, yes
I like the idea of anarchism, but I see it as more of an ideal world view than an actual stable reality.
To support this, every group member of every group must almost unanimously support the concept. When resources or safety in an area become scarce, it’s easy for some groups to evolve back into another power structure to take care of their own people.
It’s really difficult for me to imagine everybody on this planet getting along with this. But I’m certainly interested in other viewpoints.
Honestly ALL systems are more of an ideal world than a stable reality. So singling out anarchism because it too is idealistic isn’t really much of an argument against it.
Well, in many other systems you have an overarching ruling layer that sets laws and is able to enforce them from a top level.
That is precisely the reason why those systems can be relatively stable. As you just have a very large group of people following the same set of rules.
I’d rather live under a state with a secure monopoly on violence than in a stateless chaos of violence. Anarchy isn’t a form of government. It’s simply the period before a group uses violence to establish itself as the government.
Let me ask you, would you rather deal with a cop or a warlord?
There’s the term “anarchy” describing a state of chaos, and there’s the philosophical political term anarchism, which is completely separate.
You’re assuming the chaos is what anarchist philosophers want, which is incorrect.
Authority would be handled democratically or rotationally in an anarchist society. As an example, the police could be voted into place at a meeting that occurs every saturday where anyone who wants can attend to decide what the people in a given region do.
Chaos is a byproduct of human nature. Central authority and law is meant to kept that chaos in check.
Given your example, what would happen if two groups in the same town both elected their own police force with wildly different directives?
What happens when you give those cops the means to enforce their directives and they decide to enact their own rules?
How would you even get them to do their job without a centrally backed currency?
Your response indicates you’ve never actually engaged with any anarchist philosophers or thought before, let me ask you this, do you really think no anarchist philosopher EVER thought of any of those points? Research the beliefs of bakunin, kropotkin, and the likes before giving strong opinions on anarchism, else you look unbelievably ignorant to anyone who actually is familiar with the material.
Law, sure, central authority? It does the opposite, it causes a great deal of misery and chaos. It is unchecked power held by few who won’t give it up under any circumstances, it maximizes the chaos of humanity. Freedom and democracy are the only counter-balance, and anarchists just want to maximize democracy.
Both groups would show up to the meeting and either reach consensus or leave it to a democratic vote. I want to point out that this has NEVER happened in any anarchist society, why do you think this is a likely scenario? If they were absolutely deadset, I suppose there could be a schism, but there’s no historical reference for this, because why would this ever happen?
Please, if you’re going to try a gotcha argument like this, engage with the material and look for a historic reference. This WHAT IF THIS HAPPENS? can be done with any ideology, if there’s no historic reference for it, then sure, it could cause a disaster, but it hasn’t ever so why should I care? I can come up with countless theoretical disasters, and real ones for capitalism.
They’ll do poorly at the next town meeting and probably be demoted/swapped out…
They can choose not to do it, of course. There’s an idea of mutual aid, I scratch your back, you scratch mine, the people would be grateful for them doing a good job and would help them elsewise, as just one example. Mutualism actually has various currency-related anarchist strategies, a central authority is not needed for making a currency valid, I don’t know why you believe that premise to be the case.
You do not understand anarchism in the slightest. You are imagining some Hobbsian hellscape out of a disaster movie, which is completely counter to human nature.
This is the definition I am basing my perspective on.
“the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government; anarchism.”
Also human nature has created plenty of hellscapes in the past. Don’t think it can’t happen again.
Can you give some examples of those hellscapes?
Is that what you think mutual aid is?
Feel free to give your own take.