They arise because there will always be a small percentage of humans who are sociopaths. Simplified, this means they are willing to harm others, not just because they are starving and NEED to harm someone to get their basic needs met (which I’d argue most people are capable of), but even to take things they don’t actually need. Since most people are not willing to hurt others to take things they don’t actually need (usually even willing to bend rather than fight), sociopaths have a leg up on the rest of us. They were able to rise to power way back when the first cities were being built, and have maintained a sociopathic society ever since. Sociopathic tendencies are lauded amongst the corporate elites, and without them it is unlikely one will make it in the corporate world.
Sociopaths are people who take what they want and are willing to harm others to do so. These people do and will exist in literally every system anywhere literally ever.
These people become kings. They become tyrants. They do what they want and everyone else suffers.
Maybe eventually you’ll have a peasant revolt. And what can the peasants do to establish a system that mitigates this possibility in the future?
They arise because the capture that economy. A state is not required to capture an economy. However, a state is required to have any hope of even remotely controlling the people controlling the economy.
What is the best example of something built by anarchists?
For the sake of curiosity I’d leave this quite broad. Buildings, institutions, inventions, art. What’s the showcase example of what anarchy has created for us?
much of the basic technique in photography and film? not being a chattel slave? OSHA? there not being a cop city in atlanta just yet? several major art movements; really most of them at least since radio became a thing? the personal computer? FOSS(what about Lemmy, originally? was that anarchists?)? a major chunk of the muscle behind the positive parts of the early internet and trying to keep it free? modern shadow archives? most (by a very small very arguable margin) of the Russian revolution, before the Bolsheviks killed all the communists? organized labor? curry burritos? LOTR? the entire genre of science fiction?
I thought credit for both of those usually goes to unions. Which anarchists or groups of anarchists made the most significant contributions to the 40 hour work week or 8 hour days?
How did a philosophy of minimized government involvement contribute to the regulations and enforcement mechanisms around our labor laws?
syndicalism is a tendency of libertarian socialism. it was anarchists engaging in — typically violent — direct action that bred the popular labour movement, women’s suffrage, the abolition of racial segregation, and others.
How did a philosophy of minimized government involvement contribute to the regulations and enforcement mechanisms around our labor laws?
… because we live in a society? the State needs labour, but if all the labourers refuse to sell themselves until labour-buyers stop X, then the State may decide very graciously to abolish the practise of X. so the theory of syndicalism goes: rinse and repeat till you have eroded all the power of labour-buyers, and you can seize the workplace and cut out the State.
So… as soon as the society based on mutual aid starts?
Speaking entirely seriously, the reduction of societal relations in a capitalist economy to purely or even primarily material concerns conceals and denies the very real and very prominent place personal and cultural biases have. Oftentimes materially damaging movements are ignored until they begin to threaten cultural norms.
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