Anarchy is not by nature disorganized. Lack of hierarchy doesn’t mean lack of organization. Probably a well-functioning anarchist organization is better organized than most hierarchical ones.
If friends are not there to defend the group of three, mutual aid is missing. That’s why it failed.
Just one gifted sociopath dooms it from the inside…
I long for mutual aid society, but every time I have participated in any form of it, I’ve had to back away as it invariably becomes toxic. I just don’t have the energy to keep fighting, honestly.
We don’t need to incentivse not selling people out. Heirarchy creates a set of incentives TO sell people out. Remove those incentives and people will for the most part not sell people out. You’ve got it exactly backwards.
Ask your buddy mao about anarchist fighting forces. He literally took anarchist tactics around decentralized militias and used them to great success. The Vietnamese as well. Or have a look at the Spanish revolution, rojava, the Ukrainian black army, or the zapatistas if you need more proof that decentralized militant forces are effective and capable. It doesn’t warrant an in detail explanation because “but how fight if democracy???” is weak as fuck.
What’s your plan to “remove those incentives” because think we’ve got more than enough sample data on what happens when a government falls and the disappearance of all crime and hostility is not part of it.
Are you the one that said not to say “go read theory”? Because the urge to tell you to go read theory is pretty fuckin strong. I’m not going to summarize 200 years of political philosophy and history for you. Especially because I know you’re just gonna go “no you’re wrong and my heirarchical realism is right” no matter how compelling my points are. I’ll give you a couple of places to start, I guess.
Also, the Spanish revolution is a lot more complicated than “the fascists won btw”. Your tone again suggests it’s not worth the effort of breaking it down for.you. I don’t have any specific recommendations on that other than to open a book. Have a good day and go fuck yourself
But sure. Look through this thread for my comment on elite panic. It’s more or less the answer to your questions about crime, failing government, etc. With some more handy links that you might find useful if you’re ever determined to not be as ignorant as you currently are
YPG, the militia formed during the seperation of Rojava from the Syrian government, have been accused by Human Rights groups of using Child Soldiers.
Correct… and notably, unlike the other forces around them (Syrian dictatorship, Turkish-sponsored islamists, ISIS, etc) they responded to the accusation within a month:
In June 2020, United Nations reported the YPG/YPJ as the largest faction in the Syrian civil war by the number of recruited child soldiers with 283 child soldiers followed by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham with 245 child soldiers.[141]
On 15 July 2020, SDF issued a new military order prohibiting child recruitment. The NGO Fight For Humanity conducted multiple training sessions with hundreds of SDF commanders about the UN-SDF Action Plan To Prevent Child Recruitment, and distributed informational posters and flyers about it written in both Arabic and Kurdish, as part of an ongoing educational process. Syria-based researcher Thomas McClure observed that “SDF are less likely to engage in such practices than any of the other forces in Syria, but seek to hold themselves to a higher standard of accountability and human rights.”[142]
On 29 August 2020, SDF announced the creation of a new system that anyone can use to confidentially report to specialized Child Protection offices any suspected case of child recruitment, in accordance with the action plan that the SDF signed with the United Nations in the summer of 2019.[143][144]
Anarchism is really against coercion, that’s what is meant by hierarchy. Hierarchy only makes sense if it’s used for coercion of other’s behavior.
There is no reason a group of people can’t organize in a voluntary hierarchy to complete a task without the use of coercion.
Imagine a group of 10 anarchist making pizza for the homeless. Two of them make pizza for a living and 8 are there for the week to help out. There is nothing preventing those 8 people from taking instruction from the two that know how to make pizza. Nobody is coerced to be there or to do anything.
What does a well-functioning anarchist organization look like, though? How does one of any size prevent from fracturing into competing factions over time? If such organizations are limited to tight-knit community scales, I can’t see how it’s not eventual feudalism with extra steps.
It’s just a type of rule. As in “an-archy”, without ruler.
There’s also “synarchy”, meaning “joint rule or government by two or more individuals or parties”, which I feel is far more what people here are advocating in the name of anarchism.
Who said anarchists and their friends will not defend from outside threats? The Spanish anarchists organized and fought for 3 years against overwhelming odds when they had to.
It’s nice to think they were: I’d rather live in a world without slavery and with democracy but there was no guarantee of success except the fact that in hindsight it was successful.
Not all forms of government have won out. Nor will all possible forms of government succeed.
Yes, but looking forward from their end, with your perspective, none of them were possible. My point is that it’s fallacious to claim that just because it hasn’t succeed yet, it can’t succeed.
Remains to be seen if anarchism can ever win though.
Statist forces have always triumphed.
Nowhere does this preclude future victory: this is an accurate representation of the current state of affairs. Anarchy has 0 victories and it remains to be seen if there will be any.
Until 1783 Democracy had no modern victories either, and it very much remained to be seen if it would.
My point is and always has been the same: we don’t and can’t know if Anarchism will win out against statist forces or not. All we know is that it never has.
If you’re expecting a more polemic argument about Anarchism Bad or something you won’t find it. I wasn’t here to debate anarchism: just to add a caveat.
Past performance is no indicator of future performance. It’s entirely possible that the Zapatistas cause the collapse of the Mexican government just as it’s possible that they fade away into oblivion.
The luddites were annihilated and their philosophy has never been as prevalent or popular as it was in their uprising. While there’s still a chance of a popular resurgence they still missed their best opportunity and were crushed by the state.
History has hundreds of suppressed revolts to every success.
That’s not to say it’s hopeless: just that it isn’t inevitable. We’d like to believe that with enough tries you can succeed but that is a fallacy.
In Paris we fought and were massacred.
In Korea/Manchuria we fought and were massacred.
In Ukraine we fought and were massacred.
And as you say in Spain we fought, but then we were massacred.
There’s more of course, but you get the idea.
Something probably should be done differently in the future.
So? How many slave revolutions did we have before it was “technically” abolished (it’s still ongoing, but at least illegal in principle)? We had legal slavery for like ~6K years until it was abolished. Capitalism only exists for ~400 years and there were hundreds of failed democratic revolutions. Anarchism as a movement is barely over 150yo and no anarchist revolution happened before 100 years. Just because things don’t happen overnight, or even in our lifetime, doesn’t mean they’re impossible.
So, yeah, looking at those examples I’d say we should try to prevent our opponets from going fascist.
If there’s anything fascists are good at it’s murdering lots and lots of people, so Id say we should stop them from gaining a following or try to remove their following if they already got one.
Easier said then done, but, to steal your words, doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
Also notably, the Kronstadt anarchists held a general assembly to dicsuss the question of “shall we accept Lenin’s ultimatum, or fight a battle against the Red Army?” and decided democratically to fight.
(The battle was extremely bloody, anarchists lost and the Red Army won, at the cost of losing at least 5 times more people. Considerable numbers of anarchists escaped to Finland.)
In short: anarchists can use heavy artillery when needed, even if they know that war is not healthy - neither for them or the society they want.
Do you wait your turn in line at the store under the threat of violence? Do you only drive the speed limit because if you didn’t you would get pulled over and have your license suspended? Do you give money/food to the homeless despite it being againstl local bylaws that could land you with a fine?
Enforcement in day to day life is an illusion. People don’t need to be forced to “behave”. By and large, most of us just do because we want to get on with our day. If there is no social incentive to harm others, for the most part people.wont harm others because we simply have no desire to harm others. There are ways to account for fringe cases that don’t require a hierarchical, domineering system
This is a great time to bring up elite panic. TL;DR in emergency situations (fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, bombing, etc.), it’s been proven time and again that individuals are not only capable of organizing impromptu mutual aid and direct action networks, but that they’re better at disaster relief than state bodies. When heirarchical enforcement rears it’s head in the form of state and military bodies, things get awful for everyone quickly. A podcast on the topic. A book on the topic.
This is a time and place where all social paradigms are shattered. You can “steal” all you want and fuck over everyone else if you so please without any threat of punishment from above. People don’t do that. They help each other, they directly distribute what they have to those who need it most and work together to ensure everyone’s wellbeing.
It’s not surprising either. Mutual aid is baked into existence. Humans are capable of both cooperation and competition. Our society is built around competition. And even still you see people doing what they can for one another when they’re able to. I feel a lot of social ills are caused by alienation from community and not being able to exercise our cooperative impulses enough.
If there were no authority, people would wait in line. By and large, people want to help and labor. Most of us want to work, especially if we feel it is meaningful. If there were no authority, I think the majority of us would be better off for it
The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fires. People spontaneously formed networks of mutual aid and direct action. They autonomously conducted firefighting, medical, food distribution, and rescue efforts to those afflicted. When the military showed up to provide disaster relief they were met by people managing their own affairs and clamped down on it. Killing several victims of the earthquake, jailing many more, and inadvertently starving people by not providing enough food and water to the victims. This was all made worse by the military severely punishing people who “looted” abandoned stores for food and other resources in reaction to the states failure to help effectively. The military even went as far as to level and burn entire blocks to prevent people from “stealing”.
In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, people again formed mutual aid networks to help those in need. The state cracked down on looting (people taking what they needed from abandoned and flooded stores), killing a few. Rescue efforts by the national guard were delayed because they weren’t able to have an armed person on every rescue boat. So instead of just sending them out unarmed or only sending the armed ones, they just didn’t send any. This killed people. Rich racists went on killing sprees in their neighborhoods any time they saw black people nearby. This was ignored and in some cases encouraged by local police as “protecting their property”. The anarchist black cross was the only organized body to effectively deliver aid and defense for the people affected.
In 1964 an earthquake struck Anchorage, Alaska, levelling large portions of the city. People spontaneously organized into mutual aid and direct action networks. They were so effective, only 9 people died from injures related to the earthquake. The death toll would have been significantly higher if it weren’t for the actions of residents. It was a subject of study for years due to the swift and effective response of the locals. The police in the area scrambled in a state of panic. They attempted to enforce the rule of law. Even granting civillians with the temporary position of deputy. They gave them a gun and marked them as deputies using lipstick. These “deputies” were a gaggle of drunks in a local bar. The residents of Anchorage kindly told them to fuck off. When the military arrived to aid in rescue efforts a few days after the earthquake, there was no one left to rescue. The residents saved everyone themselves.
There’s 3 examples of what happens when people are not subject to the rule of law. When there are no power structures to enforce it’s will on the people. When they do get reintroduced, its often violent and cruel.
These are great examples. One other non-disaster one I love is the Irish Bank Strike. The banks didn’t like some regulation so they decided to go on strike thinking it would bring the economy to its knees.
It didn’t. People used cash to buy things, and if they needed bigger purchases they just used their existing checkbooks. If there was a question about someone’s credit they’d go down to the pub and the pub owner would vouch for the person writing the check.
Loving the dialogue because you specifically are willing to bring up examples of spontaneous human cooperation during times of geological hazard. It seems like regular folks do rise to the occasion.
I guess my worry is what happens during times of sociological hazard i.e. war or conflict. It’s one thing for humans to join together and help each other after disasters have happened to them specifically, but if those hazards are being speculated and predicted about so as to happen in the future, I wonder how much regular folks care about it. Look at climate change maybe and the inaction a lot of people take (a lot of action is being taken too, don’t get me wrong, but whether that action is fast enough depends).
I would say that humans have a great ability to react to geological or sociological effects, but as for preparing for or preventing geological or sociological causes, I would say it’s hit or miss.
I think timescale is the important factor for spontaneous organization. As you noted with climate change, despite us feeling the effects of it every day, it’s still “abstract” to many of us. That’s a problem for later, we don’t need to deal with it now. And even then, if you asked the average Joe if we should act immediately around climate change I think you’d find there’s enough of us out there who are willing to do something. We just aren’t sure what or how. We’ve been prevented from acting with self determination for most of our lives and the practice isn’t familiar to us.
A quick aside, because I don’t want to forget about your mention of cooperation in conflict. That impulse is still present and practiced in times of political strife and war. You see it all the time without realizing. People react in much the same way after a series of bombings that they do in natural disasters. I don’t have any examples off the top of my head but it should be easy enough to dig up a few stories on the subject.
I was writing earlier about the importance of prefigurarion organization to build a successful stateless society. These practices not only put egalitarian power structures in place (neighborhood councils, unions/syndicates, co-ops) and forms the basis for direct distribution in a moneyless economy, it also allows individuals an opportunity to practice self determination, direct action, and exercising real political power. And that’s part of my reasoning as to why I think time is a more important factor.
All of these things will be important as climate change progresses. As Peter Gelderloos highlights in his book “The Solutions are Already Here” (couldn’t find a free copy, otherwise I’d link it) the state is incapable solving climate change. Many of their grand projects have been either unnecessary, inappropriate, or abject failures. Grassroots efforts have been far more successful and long lasting. The best thing the state can do for climate change is to get out of the way and allow people who know what they’re doing to work.
People are able to act and react, but we’re not permitted to meaningfully act in our day to day lives as a consequence of various forms of heirarchy. Have you ever had to stand by and watch something awful/dumb/misguided happen because the reaction from those with power over you may have been more severe than just letting the thing happen? Stuff like that is happening on a mass scale every day because those above us hold a monopoly on the legitimate use of force and are happy to use it if the “threat” you present is great enough.
I’d keep rambling but I have to get ready for work haha. Feel free to reply or DM me, I’m happy to talk!
Can you really expect the kind of behavior that emerges from a disaster to be the behavior that people would maintain forever even in the absence of some unifying horror? The disaster creates temporary community unity which allows such incredible social cohesion at scale.
Obviously not. That’s why most anarchists advocate for pre configuration and organization. If you’ve already got mutual aid networks, horizontal systems of distribution and production in place before shit goes down, your odds of a successful transition to a stateless society are much higher. The examples of elite panic were there to highlight the cooperative impulses of individuals and the malignancy of the state on those impulses
If it does enforce it, then we’re no longer talking about an anarchy.
Anarchism is not anti self-defense, and that applies at the community level as well. A group of anarchist isn’t obliged to let a selfish person harm them. Self-defense is neither authority nor coercion.
You have a very skewed idea of anarchism. I won’t deny the existence of anti-organizational and pacifist anarchist groups but they’re not a majority. Social anarchism, anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, communalism, Marxist autonomism, council communism, neozapatismo, and especifism are all libertarian socialist ideologies that espouse the necessity of organization and self defense. I’m sure I’m missing a few too. You’re taking a silly comic as serious commentary on the ideological substance of a deep and diverse body of political theory.
Perhaps like… organised cooperation, even perhaps putting things on paper to make sure what has been agreed upon gets followed through. Maybe even assign some people to do that for the larger society, so everyone doest have to worry about it. I mean, everyone should help each other, so if someone just doesn’t anyone on purpose and even takes other’s things, they should face some sort of negative consequence, but then we’d need to assign people who verify that someone has broken the rules and some to enforce that the negative consequences actually happen.
And wow, the anarcho-syndicalist commune now has government, taxes, justice and law enforcement.
People are by nature cooperative unless fucked over, but I find it weird that the prescriptive meaning of “anarchy” is completely glossed over.
The type of society I want to live in definitely won’t happen without any sort of rules or regulations about at least some things. Otherwise we won’t have industry, and I like my toys. We can’t manage a good (and advanced) society without good regulation which requires good government.
Otherwise we won’t have industry, and I like my toys.
Your toys are being manufactured by some underpaid slave worker in china or india. Have fun playing with these in the few hours of life you got left from the industry.
So you’re saying you think it’s preferable and even possible to go back to a society without any of the amenities which require industry on the scale that regulation is necessary?
Because that’s the actual argument, not whether a person in a capitalistic system participates in said system out of necessity.
I say “toys”, but I’m talking about electronics I actually need. I prefer buying the most ethical ones, but sometimes those option’s don’t exist. And the electronics I’ve now set my eyes on are not manufactured by underpaid slave workers in India or China, but The United States of America.
Just fyi though, clothing is the number one slave industry, and me purchasing a product or two of fancy electronics a year is nothing compared to youngsters constantly buying disposable clothing made in sweatshops. My backpack is older than the average age on Lemmy (from the early 90’s), my jacket is from the 70’s, and aside from a dozen domestic made underwear and t-shirts or so, all my other clothing I’ve either gotten as a gift or bought second-hand. Wool, leather, hemp, cotton and other natural fabrics > polyester.
The main point still remains that the se idyllic cooperatives won’t happen without big time organised… organisations. Like one specifically for matters regarding governing of, say, industries and labour protection.
I wonder what one could call such “governing organisations”?
You defeat your own position, no one said perfection was necessary to achieve any kind of society, no need to let perfection be the enemy of good enough and functional.
My brother in christ, focus on the whole discussion instead of taking it one argument at a time. An imperfect society will, by necessity, fail to the issues raised previously.
I’m not a Christian, but I don’t think it’s at all possible for a society to be perfect, ever. By that metric nothing will address the issues. But issues can be addressed even partially and can be the difference between death and survival.
I don’t agree with that either. If we never knew capitalism we would say the same thing, as a matter of fact we would say it’s inherently imperfect and needs regulations at every turn. On paper I’d say anarchy beats capitalism any day and I’m not even a huge fan of anarchy.
You speak as if we’re in a functional system where people are safe, getting here was smooth sailing, and I’m proposing a preposterous idea. Our system currently does not work and billions have died to get to this fucked up place. Why would you think a different system will fail because it is not like just the current failing system?
If I see a guy shoplifting and just shoot him, who is in a position to tell me that I was wrong
The community, a functional anarchist community wouldn’t tolerate this, it would become a crime in itself. A functional anarchist community would defend itself and have members ready to do so. If somebody shot another person for something like shoplifting (which wouldn’t be a thing in anarchism duh) that would be murder and that person would now be at risk of termination as a mortal threat to the community. People don’t usually desire to escalate things though, so contrived examples like this are silly.
You can’t have some lackadaisical ad hoc minute men arrangement, there are too many humans and too many competing interests for that to work in the modern world.
I’m not one of those that thinks anarchism is a drop-in replacement for capitalism or that anarchism can come from violent revolution. If anything close to anarchism could ever happen it would take at least a couple generations (of cultural change) and co-occur with degrowth. We know that our current system is unsustainable, so we’re either going to end up with something like anarcho-communism + degrowth or we won’t exist anymore. There is no way a hierarchical system that exploits that planet to support billions will be able to exist beyond the next decades, can’t happen. Even socialism just makes things more equal while we destroy the planet.
I’ve never once met an anarchist who can coherently explain how, in a practical sense, you ensure justice and order at a large scale without a state, legal framework
The scale and ways of life now are the result of an exploitative economic system. Without that it’s not our nature to form into efficiently exploitable structures. We’d form into manageable communities as humans have done for hundreds of thousands of years prior to the appearance of the state.
Who makes sure my lights stay on and that my landlord didn’t use asbestos and lead pipes when…
You and your community work to keep the lights on and other needs met. For asbestos and lead pipes, the motivations to do these things come from an exploitative economic system. In anarchism, if someone sells you poison, you can defend yourself. There won’t be many people selling lead pipes when their life is on the line rather than a fine or job loss.
You can’t just have mob justice or random individuals deciding based on their own arbitrary, subjective opinion how to carry out justice at any given
So instead we should have the opinion of the rich powerful racist people enforced by people with a license to kill and who use in inordinately more often on vulnerable populations who cannot legally protect themselves?
Does that person’s wife or brother now get to shoot me?
Yes, and the community might say, “well, he deserved it, have a taco”. Our current system basically allows most men to rape women and the woman has no recourse because the state protects the rapist. This is not a working system.
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Anarchy is not by nature disorganized. Lack of hierarchy doesn’t mean lack of organization. Probably a well-functioning anarchist organization is better organized than most hierarchical ones.
If friends are not there to defend the group of three, mutual aid is missing. That’s why it failed.
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Actually, there seems to be a bit of a mix-up. Let me clarify.
In an anarchist group, enforcing anything goes against its fundamental principles.
If personal gain is the motive, one isn’t truly aligned with the group’s social contract and isn’t considered part of it.
Decisions are made collectively, without hierarchy. Voting or delegating organisational tasks to sub-groups is the norm.
I won’t go into words like “attacking,” “defense,” or “threats” as they are military terms, far from the anarchist ethos.
And I won’t call you “bro” or make you read theory. I feel you won’t.
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Why defenseless? The entire organization can defense itself from outsiders. No need of hierarchy for that.
Just one gifted sociopath dooms it from the inside…
I long for mutual aid society, but every time I have participated in any form of it, I’ve had to back away as it invariably becomes toxic. I just don’t have the energy to keep fighting, honestly.
We don’t need to incentivse not selling people out. Heirarchy creates a set of incentives TO sell people out. Remove those incentives and people will for the most part not sell people out. You’ve got it exactly backwards.
Ask your buddy mao about anarchist fighting forces. He literally took anarchist tactics around decentralized militias and used them to great success. The Vietnamese as well. Or have a look at the Spanish revolution, rojava, the Ukrainian black army, or the zapatistas if you need more proof that decentralized militant forces are effective and capable. It doesn’t warrant an in detail explanation because “but how fight if democracy???” is weak as fuck.
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Are you the one that said not to say “go read theory”? Because the urge to tell you to go read theory is pretty fuckin strong. I’m not going to summarize 200 years of political philosophy and history for you. Especially because I know you’re just gonna go “no you’re wrong and my heirarchical realism is right” no matter how compelling my points are. I’ll give you a couple of places to start, I guess.
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. E-book/PDF version. Audiobook version.
Anarchy Works, Peter Gelderloos. PDF/E-book version Audiobook version
Seeing Like a State, James C. Scott, pdf version
An Anarchist FAQ
On YouTube: Anark (Theory essays), Andrewism (Theory and Praxis), Zoe Baker (PhD in anarchist history).
Also, the Spanish revolution is a lot more complicated than “the fascists won btw”. Your tone again suggests it’s not worth the effort of breaking it down for.you. I don’t have any specific recommendations on that other than to open a book. Have a good day and go fuck yourself
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Cringe.
But sure. Look through this thread for my comment on elite panic. It’s more or less the answer to your questions about crime, failing government, etc. With some more handy links that you might find useful if you’re ever determined to not be as ignorant as you currently are
Zapitista, Makhnovshchina, Rojava, Zomia, etc. didn’t all descend into mass crime and slaughter.
What we’ve seen is these movements benefit the people living there.
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Correct… and notably, unlike the other forces around them (Syrian dictatorship, Turkish-sponsored islamists, ISIS, etc) they responded to the accusation within a month:
Spain was not part of WW2. Facists won before that, though.
Anarchism is really against coercion, that’s what is meant by hierarchy. Hierarchy only makes sense if it’s used for coercion of other’s behavior.
There is no reason a group of people can’t organize in a voluntary hierarchy to complete a task without the use of coercion.
Imagine a group of 10 anarchist making pizza for the homeless. Two of them make pizza for a living and 8 are there for the week to help out. There is nothing preventing those 8 people from taking instruction from the two that know how to make pizza. Nobody is coerced to be there or to do anything.
They said x and you’re somehow reading y.
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What does a well-functioning anarchist organization look like, though? How does one of any size prevent from fracturing into competing factions over time? If such organizations are limited to tight-knit community scales, I can’t see how it’s not eventual feudalism with extra steps.
Hierarchy isn’t the opposite of anarchy.
It’s just a type of rule. As in “an-archy”, without ruler.
There’s also “synarchy”, meaning “joint rule or government by two or more individuals or parties”, which I feel is far more what people here are advocating in the name of anarchism.
Who said anarchists and their friends will not defend from outside threats? The Spanish anarchists organized and fought for 3 years against overwhelming odds when they had to.
Remains to be seen if anarchism can ever win though.
Statist forces have always triumphed.
Monarchy always triumphed over democracy until it didn’t. Slavery always triumphed over abolition until it didn’t.
But none of those triumphs were inevitable.
It’s nice to think they were: I’d rather live in a world without slavery and with democracy but there was no guarantee of success except the fact that in hindsight it was successful.
Not all forms of government have won out. Nor will all possible forms of government succeed.
Yes, but looking forward from their end, with your perspective, none of them were possible. My point is that it’s fallacious to claim that just because it hasn’t succeed yet, it can’t succeed.
Nowhere does this preclude future victory: this is an accurate representation of the current state of affairs. Anarchy has 0 victories and it remains to be seen if there will be any.
Until 1783 Democracy had no modern victories either, and it very much remained to be seen if it would.
Make a point. Don’t make me assume what your point is and then just restate random facts still without making a point.
My point is and always has been the same: we don’t and can’t know if Anarchism will win out against statist forces or not. All we know is that it never has.
If you’re expecting a more polemic argument about Anarchism Bad or something you won’t find it. I wasn’t here to debate anarchism: just to add a caveat.
Now we’re just waiting to see if anarchism will have that moment where they’ll triumph.
Does anyone else feel like we are in a prisoner’s dilemma with this?
Every empire’s days are numbered, it’s not like anything is destined to be forever. I wonder how many days are left for the Zapatistas?
Past performance is no indicator of future performance. It’s entirely possible that the Zapatistas cause the collapse of the Mexican government just as it’s possible that they fade away into oblivion.
The luddites were annihilated and their philosophy has never been as prevalent or popular as it was in their uprising. While there’s still a chance of a popular resurgence they still missed their best opportunity and were crushed by the state.
History has hundreds of suppressed revolts to every success.
That’s not to say it’s hopeless: just that it isn’t inevitable. We’d like to believe that with enough tries you can succeed but that is a fallacy.
Yeah , but …
In Paris we fought and were massacred.
In Korea/Manchuria we fought and were massacred.
In Ukraine we fought and were massacred.
And as you say in Spain we fought, but then we were massacred.
There’s more of course, but you get the idea.
Something probably should be done differently in the future.
So? How many slave revolutions did we have before it was “technically” abolished (it’s still ongoing, but at least illegal in principle)? We had legal slavery for like ~6K years until it was abolished. Capitalism only exists for ~400 years and there were hundreds of failed democratic revolutions. Anarchism as a movement is barely over 150yo and no anarchist revolution happened before 100 years. Just because things don’t happen overnight, or even in our lifetime, doesn’t mean they’re impossible.
So, yeah, looking at those examples I’d say we should try to prevent our opponets from going fascist.
If there’s anything fascists are good at it’s murdering lots and lots of people, so Id say we should stop them from gaining a following or try to remove their following if they already got one.
Easier said then done, but, to steal your words, doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
Also notably, the Kronstadt anarchists held a general assembly to dicsuss the question of “shall we accept Lenin’s ultimatum, or fight a battle against the Red Army?” and decided democratically to fight.
(The battle was extremely bloody, anarchists lost and the Red Army won, at the cost of losing at least 5 times more people. Considerable numbers of anarchists escaped to Finland.)
In short: anarchists can use heavy artillery when needed, even if they know that war is not healthy - neither for them or the society they want.
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Do you wait your turn in line at the store under the threat of violence? Do you only drive the speed limit because if you didn’t you would get pulled over and have your license suspended? Do you give money/food to the homeless despite it being againstl local bylaws that could land you with a fine?
Enforcement in day to day life is an illusion. People don’t need to be forced to “behave”. By and large, most of us just do because we want to get on with our day. If there is no social incentive to harm others, for the most part people.wont harm others because we simply have no desire to harm others. There are ways to account for fringe cases that don’t require a hierarchical, domineering system
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This is a great time to bring up elite panic. TL;DR in emergency situations (fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, bombing, etc.), it’s been proven time and again that individuals are not only capable of organizing impromptu mutual aid and direct action networks, but that they’re better at disaster relief than state bodies. When heirarchical enforcement rears it’s head in the form of state and military bodies, things get awful for everyone quickly. A podcast on the topic. A book on the topic.
This is a time and place where all social paradigms are shattered. You can “steal” all you want and fuck over everyone else if you so please without any threat of punishment from above. People don’t do that. They help each other, they directly distribute what they have to those who need it most and work together to ensure everyone’s wellbeing.
It’s not surprising either. Mutual aid is baked into existence. Humans are capable of both cooperation and competition. Our society is built around competition. And even still you see people doing what they can for one another when they’re able to. I feel a lot of social ills are caused by alienation from community and not being able to exercise our cooperative impulses enough.
If there were no authority, people would wait in line. By and large, people want to help and labor. Most of us want to work, especially if we feel it is meaningful. If there were no authority, I think the majority of us would be better off for it
Rather than link a whole ass book why didn’t you just give at least one practical example? I feel like that actually would have been easier to do.
The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fires. People spontaneously formed networks of mutual aid and direct action. They autonomously conducted firefighting, medical, food distribution, and rescue efforts to those afflicted. When the military showed up to provide disaster relief they were met by people managing their own affairs and clamped down on it. Killing several victims of the earthquake, jailing many more, and inadvertently starving people by not providing enough food and water to the victims. This was all made worse by the military severely punishing people who “looted” abandoned stores for food and other resources in reaction to the states failure to help effectively. The military even went as far as to level and burn entire blocks to prevent people from “stealing”.
In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, people again formed mutual aid networks to help those in need. The state cracked down on looting (people taking what they needed from abandoned and flooded stores), killing a few. Rescue efforts by the national guard were delayed because they weren’t able to have an armed person on every rescue boat. So instead of just sending them out unarmed or only sending the armed ones, they just didn’t send any. This killed people. Rich racists went on killing sprees in their neighborhoods any time they saw black people nearby. This was ignored and in some cases encouraged by local police as “protecting their property”. The anarchist black cross was the only organized body to effectively deliver aid and defense for the people affected.
In 1964 an earthquake struck Anchorage, Alaska, levelling large portions of the city. People spontaneously organized into mutual aid and direct action networks. They were so effective, only 9 people died from injures related to the earthquake. The death toll would have been significantly higher if it weren’t for the actions of residents. It was a subject of study for years due to the swift and effective response of the locals. The police in the area scrambled in a state of panic. They attempted to enforce the rule of law. Even granting civillians with the temporary position of deputy. They gave them a gun and marked them as deputies using lipstick. These “deputies” were a gaggle of drunks in a local bar. The residents of Anchorage kindly told them to fuck off. When the military arrived to aid in rescue efforts a few days after the earthquake, there was no one left to rescue. The residents saved everyone themselves.
There’s 3 examples of what happens when people are not subject to the rule of law. When there are no power structures to enforce it’s will on the people. When they do get reintroduced, its often violent and cruel.
These are great examples. One other non-disaster one I love is the Irish Bank Strike. The banks didn’t like some regulation so they decided to go on strike thinking it would bring the economy to its knees.
It didn’t. People used cash to buy things, and if they needed bigger purchases they just used their existing checkbooks. If there was a question about someone’s credit they’d go down to the pub and the pub owner would vouch for the person writing the check.
Eventually the banks gave up and reopened.
Loving the dialogue because you specifically are willing to bring up examples of spontaneous human cooperation during times of geological hazard. It seems like regular folks do rise to the occasion.
I guess my worry is what happens during times of sociological hazard i.e. war or conflict. It’s one thing for humans to join together and help each other after disasters have happened to them specifically, but if those hazards are being speculated and predicted about so as to happen in the future, I wonder how much regular folks care about it. Look at climate change maybe and the inaction a lot of people take (a lot of action is being taken too, don’t get me wrong, but whether that action is fast enough depends).
I would say that humans have a great ability to react to geological or sociological effects, but as for preparing for or preventing geological or sociological causes, I would say it’s hit or miss.
I think timescale is the important factor for spontaneous organization. As you noted with climate change, despite us feeling the effects of it every day, it’s still “abstract” to many of us. That’s a problem for later, we don’t need to deal with it now. And even then, if you asked the average Joe if we should act immediately around climate change I think you’d find there’s enough of us out there who are willing to do something. We just aren’t sure what or how. We’ve been prevented from acting with self determination for most of our lives and the practice isn’t familiar to us.
A quick aside, because I don’t want to forget about your mention of cooperation in conflict. That impulse is still present and practiced in times of political strife and war. You see it all the time without realizing. People react in much the same way after a series of bombings that they do in natural disasters. I don’t have any examples off the top of my head but it should be easy enough to dig up a few stories on the subject.
I was writing earlier about the importance of prefigurarion organization to build a successful stateless society. These practices not only put egalitarian power structures in place (neighborhood councils, unions/syndicates, co-ops) and forms the basis for direct distribution in a moneyless economy, it also allows individuals an opportunity to practice self determination, direct action, and exercising real political power. And that’s part of my reasoning as to why I think time is a more important factor.
All of these things will be important as climate change progresses. As Peter Gelderloos highlights in his book “The Solutions are Already Here” (couldn’t find a free copy, otherwise I’d link it) the state is incapable solving climate change. Many of their grand projects have been either unnecessary, inappropriate, or abject failures. Grassroots efforts have been far more successful and long lasting. The best thing the state can do for climate change is to get out of the way and allow people who know what they’re doing to work.
People are able to act and react, but we’re not permitted to meaningfully act in our day to day lives as a consequence of various forms of heirarchy. Have you ever had to stand by and watch something awful/dumb/misguided happen because the reaction from those with power over you may have been more severe than just letting the thing happen? Stuff like that is happening on a mass scale every day because those above us hold a monopoly on the legitimate use of force and are happy to use it if the “threat” you present is great enough.
I’d keep rambling but I have to get ready for work haha. Feel free to reply or DM me, I’m happy to talk!
Can you really expect the kind of behavior that emerges from a disaster to be the behavior that people would maintain forever even in the absence of some unifying horror? The disaster creates temporary community unity which allows such incredible social cohesion at scale.
Obviously not. That’s why most anarchists advocate for pre configuration and organization. If you’ve already got mutual aid networks, horizontal systems of distribution and production in place before shit goes down, your odds of a successful transition to a stateless society are much higher. The examples of elite panic were there to highlight the cooperative impulses of individuals and the malignancy of the state on those impulses
Where the fuck do you live where there is a line waiting authority?
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Hahahahahaha, sure mate.
“Officer he cut in line, arrest this man!”
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Yes, the practical speed limit varies wildly by location on smaller roads and they just choose the lowest one for the whole section.
Anarchism is not anti self-defense, and that applies at the community level as well. A group of anarchist isn’t obliged to let a selfish person harm them. Self-defense is neither authority nor coercion.
You have a very skewed idea of anarchism. I won’t deny the existence of anti-organizational and pacifist anarchist groups but they’re not a majority. Social anarchism, anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, communalism, Marxist autonomism, council communism, neozapatismo, and especifism are all libertarian socialist ideologies that espouse the necessity of organization and self defense. I’m sure I’m missing a few too. You’re taking a silly comic as serious commentary on the ideological substance of a deep and diverse body of political theory.
mutual aid, equality or freedom are not doomed to fail: as long as human beings live in societies they will seek cooperation and justice.
Perhaps like… organised cooperation, even perhaps putting things on paper to make sure what has been agreed upon gets followed through. Maybe even assign some people to do that for the larger society, so everyone doest have to worry about it. I mean, everyone should help each other, so if someone just doesn’t anyone on purpose and even takes other’s things, they should face some sort of negative consequence, but then we’d need to assign people who verify that someone has broken the rules and some to enforce that the negative consequences actually happen.
And wow, the anarcho-syndicalist commune now has government, taxes, justice and law enforcement.
People are by nature cooperative unless fucked over, but I find it weird that the prescriptive meaning of “anarchy” is completely glossed over.
The type of society I want to live in definitely won’t happen without any sort of rules or regulations about at least some things. Otherwise we won’t have industry, and I like my toys. We can’t manage a good (and advanced) society without good regulation which requires good government.
Your toys are being manufactured by some underpaid slave worker in china or india. Have fun playing with these in the few hours of life you got left from the industry.
So you’re saying you think it’s preferable and even possible to go back to a society without any of the amenities which require industry on the scale that regulation is necessary?
Because that’s the actual argument, not whether a person in a capitalistic system participates in said system out of necessity.
I say “toys”, but I’m talking about electronics I actually need. I prefer buying the most ethical ones, but sometimes those option’s don’t exist. And the electronics I’ve now set my eyes on are not manufactured by underpaid slave workers in India or China, but The United States of America.
Just fyi though, clothing is the number one slave industry, and me purchasing a product or two of fancy electronics a year is nothing compared to youngsters constantly buying disposable clothing made in sweatshops. My backpack is older than the average age on Lemmy (from the early 90’s), my jacket is from the 70’s, and aside from a dozen domestic made underwear and t-shirts or so, all my other clothing I’ve either gotten as a gift or bought second-hand. Wool, leather, hemp, cotton and other natural fabrics > polyester.
The main point still remains that the se idyllic cooperatives won’t happen without big time organised… organisations. Like one specifically for matters regarding governing of, say, industries and labour protection.
I wonder what one could call such “governing organisations”?
You defeated your own position. Humans aren’t, nor can be perfecly just nor perfectly cooperative.
You defeat your own position, no one said perfection was necessary to achieve any kind of society, no need to let perfection be the enemy of good enough and functional.
My brother in christ, focus on the whole discussion instead of taking it one argument at a time. An imperfect society will, by necessity, fail to the issues raised previously.
If there’s some other part of the argument that supports that, I don’t see it.
I’m not a Christian, but I don’t think it’s at all possible for a society to be perfect, ever. By that metric nothing will address the issues. But issues can be addressed even partially and can be the difference between death and survival.
Neither am I. It’s a figure of speech.
Then you shouldn’t campaign for the one form of government which does pretty much require a perfect society.
I don’t agree with that either. If we never knew capitalism we would say the same thing, as a matter of fact we would say it’s inherently imperfect and needs regulations at every turn. On paper I’d say anarchy beats capitalism any day and I’m not even a huge fan of anarchy.
???
We do say the same thing. It’s why we want to crush this shitty system. Because we know it is shit and doesn’t work.
A privilege which Anarchy doesn’t get.
Anarchism is neither inherently pacifist nor disorganized, that’s your lack of understanding showing.
The circle A anarchism logo means “order without hierarchy”.
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You speak as if we’re in a functional system where people are safe, getting here was smooth sailing, and I’m proposing a preposterous idea. Our system currently does not work and billions have died to get to this fucked up place. Why would you think a different system will fail because it is not like just the current failing system?
The community, a functional anarchist community wouldn’t tolerate this, it would become a crime in itself. A functional anarchist community would defend itself and have members ready to do so. If somebody shot another person for something like shoplifting (which wouldn’t be a thing in anarchism duh) that would be murder and that person would now be at risk of termination as a mortal threat to the community. People don’t usually desire to escalate things though, so contrived examples like this are silly.
I’m not one of those that thinks anarchism is a drop-in replacement for capitalism or that anarchism can come from violent revolution. If anything close to anarchism could ever happen it would take at least a couple generations (of cultural change) and co-occur with degrowth. We know that our current system is unsustainable, so we’re either going to end up with something like anarcho-communism + degrowth or we won’t exist anymore. There is no way a hierarchical system that exploits that planet to support billions will be able to exist beyond the next decades, can’t happen. Even socialism just makes things more equal while we destroy the planet.
The scale and ways of life now are the result of an exploitative economic system. Without that it’s not our nature to form into efficiently exploitable structures. We’d form into manageable communities as humans have done for hundreds of thousands of years prior to the appearance of the state.
You and your community work to keep the lights on and other needs met. For asbestos and lead pipes, the motivations to do these things come from an exploitative economic system. In anarchism, if someone sells you poison, you can defend yourself. There won’t be many people selling lead pipes when their life is on the line rather than a fine or job loss.
So instead we should have the opinion of the rich powerful racist people enforced by people with a license to kill and who use in inordinately more often on vulnerable populations who cannot legally protect themselves?
Yes, and the community might say, “well, he deserved it, have a taco”. Our current system basically allows most men to rape women and the woman has no recourse because the state protects the rapist. This is not a working system.
I don’t think those ideas are doomed to fail. I think the idea of not having a state is doomed to fail.