ELI5 why is anarchy not "the guy with the bigger stick" making the rules?

I’m politically agnostic and have moved from a slightly conservative stance to a vastly more progressive stance (european). i still dont get the more niche things like tankies and anarchists at this point but I would like to, without spending 10 hours reading endless manifests (which do have merit, no doubt, but still).

Can someone explain to me why anarchy isnt the guy (or gal, or gang, or entity) with the bigger stick making the rules?

vexikron, (edited )

Because no one knows anything whatsoever about actual anarchist political theory.

Largely due to it being heavily suppressed and propagandized against by States, capitalist or ‘Communist’, and their adherents.

Anarchy as thought of by the wide and vast majority of people is simply a state of chaos and violence with no clear rulers.

What Anarchy actually is is fairly simple.

Root words derive from Greek.

An- Prefix: Without

Archon: Tyrant/Cruel and Ruthless Ruler/Undefiable Authority

Non insane Anarchists are always critics of the state, corporate structures of organizing the work place, most forms of organized religion, oppressive social norms and anything that creates and maintains any kind of hierarchy in society that results in oppression, impoverishment or cruelty to any particular group of people for illegitimate reasons.

Anarchy is essentially very similar in many ways to communism as Marx envisioned it, in that it is an idealized, as yet not perfectly defined goal of a just, egalitarian and democratic society that heavily emphasizes people being adequately represented economically in their daily lives as workers, as opposed to the standard liberal capitalist model where your boss essentially has authoritarian power over you in the workplace.

Both Marxism and Anarchism are highly critical of the profit motive and the ability of a very small number of people to own all or much of the capital (means of production such as factories) of a society, for very lengthy and detailed reasons.

A very common misunderstanding is what is truly meant by ‘private property’: most people unfamiliar with Marxism or Anarchism believe that Marxists and Anarchists believe that no one should be allowed to singly, individually own /anything/.

This is false. While many different adherents have different precise definitions, generally speaking private possessions are just fine until they get to the point of owning something directly and singly that has a massive impact on the lives of others should you choose to unilateraly use your ‘property rights’ in a way that is beneficial to you personally, but harmful to a large number of other people.

Further, Marxists and Anarchists both generally agree that ‘property rights’ as we currently conceive of them really only functionally exist for the rich and powerful, and are enforced via the power of the state.

Anarchism significantly differs from many later Marxist derived theories such as Leninism, Stalinism and Maoism that generally emphasize that in order to actually achieve an ideal, non capitalist society, one must create a massive state structure (or subvert an existing one) and place all power to reorganize a capitalist economy into a class of totalitarian economic organizers and planners, and that during this process the state is entirely justified in basically any means of crushing dissent it deems necessary.

This is of course heinous to Anarchists, who view a totalitarian state as essentially criminal.

What modern Anarchists, who are, again, not insane, usually support are working both within and outside of existing norms and government structures to meaningfully improve peoples lives amd expand their rights:

Mutual Aid: Direct Involvement in you local community to feed the hungry, house the unhoused, provide aid to the sick and displaced.

Advocacy: Doing what you can to promote ideas and views that will be beneficial to the masses, or to protect at risk minorities, both within existing formal societal structures like governments and businesses, and also within society generally.

Many modern Anarchists are also very concerned about the power if states and corporations to abuse the environment and curtail freedom of expression.

Anarchy also has another useful definition in the context of a world of nation-states:

Anarchy is that same common understanding of a world without rules and chaos, but the realization that this simply describes our current world given the history of actions of and between nation states, who often engage in many harmful acts against other nation-states and their populations, and rarely actually follow any rules or norms which are supposed, but i actuality rarely do, govern affairs between states. States will often do whatever they believe they can get away with that will benefit themselves, even if it means massively harming another state or group of people.

Finally, if you want to also be a modern technologically savvy anarchist, aka a cyberpunk, you can realize that the advent of computer and digital technology means there no longer exist any actually valid reasons, in very many cases, to actually pay for software, and that you should be an advocate of open source software.

So, in summary, Anarchy is not a state of chaos, without rules.

It is a very complex and nuanced political theory of advocacy for a more equitable and more just society.

No serious Anarchist believes that the world would be better if everyone was free to rum around and do literally whatever they want on an individual scale.

What exact kind of society do they propose?

Well unfortunately that differs wildly from Anarchist to Anarchist, but again, as with how Marxist socialism is but a /process/ of transforming from a capitalist society into an as of yet not perfectly defined communism, Anarchism is a /process/ and /method of analysis/ of how to transform into a better society for everyone.

Chuymatt,

Well, crud. I guess I am much more on the side of anarchists than I thought…

Zoop,

Haha I’ve had the same exact realization while learning about what it actually is!

vexikron,

See, unlike the communist tankies who would at this moment chant ‘one of us, one of us’…

I will encourage you to aim to to good in an imperfect world where circumstances are often either morally gray, or involve complex factors that are non obvious, but very relevant and important, to learn moral and ethical theories and challenge yourself to actually answer ‘What is good?’.

I will encourage you to /never/ believe you have all the answers to everything, that there is always more than can be learned, and that there are very rarely one size fits all answers to unique and specific situations, and to know that admitting a mistake or error, and reflecting on why or how you came to be in error, is not the sign of a fool, but is the sign of a genuine person striving to be consistent froma starting point of incomplete knowledge and experience.

I will encourage you to challenge your own assumptions, but to be confident when confronted with rhetoric and theories that you yourself can prove are misleading, logically invalid, or outright justify atrocities.

As can probably be reasonably expected, there is an extremely wide range of Anarchist stances on basically the minutia of theory, as well as on what are and are not defensible or moral stances on specific current events or situations, and there are many Anarchist theoreticians who come from many different cultures and backgrounds, and many who focus much more on how Anarchist theory can or should apply to more specific features of our largely capitalist world.

I have tried here to outline the most broadly agreed upon ideas that… well again probably only really Communist Tankies would find fault with, they kind of have a whole history of incorporating anarchists into initial Social Revolutions, and then murdering them all after they have control of their newly acquired state.

They really do not like that Anarchists existed and still exist, they are very convinced, ironically, that they own the ideology that evolved out of Marx, when in truth prominent Anarchists such as Kropotkin and others actually both agreed and disagreed with each other on various issues, and helped form some of both of their views both by antagonism and agreement.

Anyway, entirely unironically:

Live Long and Prosper, and, the Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few.

captainlezbian,

A lot of people are. We have bad press, partly our fault and partly because we’re dangerous to systems of power and those who benefit from them. The cultural idea of power doesn’t mind if everyone swaps places or if things get turned upside down. The framework of thinking persists, everyone in the system understands it. It’s easy. Destroying it though, that means basically everyone has to unlearn a lot. It demands we see the beggar and the ceo as equals influenced by their situation and circumstances.

But also I think one thing to understand that a lot of people don’t is that there’s folks I’d call optimist anarchists, and folks I’d call pessimist anarchists. Optimist anarchists believe that we as people can build a better world together because people tend to want to help people and abolishing hierarchy is the best way to enable that. Pessimist anarchists believe that power tends to fuck with your head and make you a worse person. To them abolishing hierarchy may not result in a good situation, but rather that allowing hierarchy is too high risk. The optimist may say that a benevolent dictator isn’t as good for society as a benevolent society of equals. The pessimist would say that a benevolent dictator is rare at best and highly unlikely to keep happening.

haui_lemmy,

Nice explanation! Thank you. I’m kind of getting the hang of it now. Very glad I asked.

vexikron,

No problem.

Papanca,

Wow, that was a very interesting and informative read, thank you!

vexikron,

Thanks for the compliment! =)

0xtero,

In a “pure”, transformed anarchistic society the large majority of people would subscribe to the idea of classless, stateless society where people act on their own responsibility or through voluntary associations and seek to reduce or even end violence and oppression. In such society only the minority would be willing to wield the big sticks of oppression.

Also in such society, the majority would obviously rise up against such attempts at pure fascism. Even though the basic ideology of anarchism is rooted in pacifism and non-violence, it doesn’t mean anarchistic societies would simply give up the their ideology, roll on their back and surrender when faced with violence.

Also, I personally believe, that the way to the transformation from our current society to anarchism is only possible through means of revolution - and revolutions are very seldomly non-violent.

I know you didn’t want to read long manifestos, but this is probably worth a read: theanarchistlibrary.org/…/peter-gelderloos-how-no…

The real answer is of course far more nuanced than this post, but I tried to keep it short and readable

haui_lemmy,

Thank you very much! I will give it a read! Brilliantly put btw.

prayer,

The world itself is anarchistic. Each counties has its rules but international politics have no governing body (the UN doesn’t really rule over every state, just serve to mediate discussion). The country with the biggest stick would probably be the US, but they haven’t conquered Canada or Mexico, let alone everyone else. Other players like Russia or China have influence too.

While the US does have a lot of soft power in influencing nations, they certainly aren’t making the rules for other countries and puppeting them.

moormaan,

While the US does have a lot of soft power in influencing nations, they certainly aren’t making the rules for other countries and puppeting them.

This is a very rosy eyed statement. The “soft” power is the visible part, just the tip of the iceberg.

gapbetweenus,

While the US does have a lot of soft power in influencing nations, they certainly aren’t making the rules for other countries and puppeting them.

South America would probably disagree.

hangukdise,

That was true in the 60s, but now most south American governments are ostensibly anti-american but need to be in okay terms with america so that they can trade internationally

Raiderkev,

youtu.be/fibDNwF8bjs?si=bIMz9kq2831lWgbD

Relevant wkuk

haui_lemmy,

Oh wow. Its not a bad question how to run a giant plant though in an anarchist system.

ghosthand,
@ghosthand@lemmy.ml avatar

Philosophize This has just started a podcast series on Anarchy that I’m finding informative. The podcasts are short and all have transcripts. The first episode is here: www.philosophizethis.org/…/anarchism-part-one.

The second part just came out this past week.

NotJustForMe,

The short of it is “power to the people”.

pearable,

People tend to think of anarchism as a power vacuum. As soon as a charismatic person comes in they’ll start gaining more and more following. But that’s not really how it works. Anarchy is about filling that vacuum with everyone. If a decision needs to be made you bring in everyone the situation effects to make it. You start at the level of a household to neighborhood to watershed to biosphere. A charismatic wanabe tyrant will be frustrated every step they take towards getting more power.

Anarchists develop structures and agreements that discourage concentration of power. They enable people to guide their own lives and improve their communities. When violence occurs, when agreements are broken the community decided what is too be done.

All that assumes you’re already there. One of the primary differences between anarchists and MLMs (Marxist Leninist Maoists) isn’t necessarily their longest term goals, it’s the means by which they reach them. MLMs believe that they must use the state, capitalism, and by extension coercive control in order to reach those goals. That brings the risk of capture and co-option of those structures. They’ve also accomplished incredible feats of human uplift so I wouldn’t say their position is without merit.

Anarchists see the revolution coming about through a unity of means and ends. They create a better society by building it while the old one still stands. Their groups are horizontally organized. They create organizations to replace food production and distribution; and devlop strategies for housing distribution (squatting).

haui_lemmy,

Thank you very much for elaborating. I learned a lot. :)

Subverb,

Like true Libertarianism, this assumes that people will be perfect, altruistic and cooperative.

They won’t be. Eventually (quickly) someone will become a cult of personality or a bully and seize power.

See: America 2016/2024.

sebsch, (edited )

Libertarians just want the person with more money above the ones with less. It’s a very hierarchical system in favour for assholes (people stealing or inherit a lot of money).

pearable,

It is true libertarianism in the older socialist sense. It assumes most people will act in their own self interest. It assumes that most people are at their core social. It asserts that the structures of capitalist control: isolation, bigotry, corporate media and more have convinced people to act in destructive ways that neverless enable their survival. Capitalism also enables unempathetic narcissistic people to gain unjustified control over all of our lives.

Power vacuums demand to be filled. Anarchism leaves no openings. When early states began encroaching into stateless societies they had an easy time with patriarchal and other heirarchical societies. Bureaucracies and tyrants were easily subsumed by dethroning a leader and implanting a friendly local. Anarchist societies were another story. They were not habituated to authority, they fought tooth and nail to maintain their anarchy. I don’t have access to my books right now but in a couple days I’ll drop an excerpt from Worshiping Power that goes into detail on a couple of examples.

Subverb,

But humans have short memories. As soon as the pressure is off and the complacency sets in, someone will abuse it.

pearable,

Humans have long memories when they want to. Some of the longest surviving cultures are very egalitarian. The San peoples of Africa for instance. Oral traditions have long told stories that impart moral lessons about how to treat the environment, animals, and other people. Anti-authotitarian traditions and education are quite effective. The idea that a person can own a hundred acres was, and could be again, as absurd as claiming a pig can fly not all that long ago.

Subverb,

You site a tribe of 65,000 primitives in Africa in a conversation about the modern, internet level, instant communication, spacefaring society of eight billion people. Their culture doesn’t scale.

You may have the right idea but you’re on the wrong path to proselytize for it. Eight billion people can’t return to a hunter/gatherer society and squat down in the dust to grind grain on a rock for dinner.

pearable,

I’m definitely not advocating for a return to hunter gathering. Billions would die. But I do think they have things to teach us.

mrcleanup,

Anarchism leaves no openings.

The way I see it, anarchism leaves nothing but openings. Your egalitarian paradise only needs one family to want to seize power gather weapons and find like minded people to form a feudal military organization and they can start picking off and dominating families one by one. Individuals would not be able to stand against this centralized power and the time it would take to meet, agree, and mobilize a militia wouldn’t help.

It isn’t that anarchism evolves into feudalism, it’s that it takes centralized power to resist centralized power. And as soon as you start concentrating power, having a standing army with wages, or other centralized systems to pool community resources, that’s government. Even, yes, a descentralized non-capitalist deregulated egalitarian democracy.

It doesn’t bother me that people want this kind of system, it bothers me that people want to call this simplified form of community governance “anarchy” which is by definition “the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government” because as soon as you start imposing rules like “we can expell a murderer if everyone else votes to” it becomes a simple form of communal government and the definition no longer applies.

pearable,

Long lived anarchist societies [1] have traditions and structures that resist this sort of thing. Morality tales, traditions that shame those who aim to put themselves above others, and a tradition of armed self defense serve to prevent subversion from within. These things tend to be frustrated early. If your neighbor gets “picked off” or joins a cult of personality are you going to sit around and wait for it to happen to you or are you going to get your neighbors together and put a stop to it. You’re right that individuals cannot stand up to such a threat, that’s precisely why they’ll form a militia to stop it. Ideally such things can be resolved with words but violence is a perfectly rational response to such a threat.

Centralized power is actually pretty bad at holding ground and subjugating populations. They have to build whole expensive structures of social control to ensure soldiers will fight. As soon as that structure is less convincing than a losing fight they run. The people being subjugated need no such structure. They have every reason to fight to protect themselves, their family, their community, and way of life.

Nothing I’ve described goes against your definition. A group of people deciding not to feed, house, or allow someone to stay in their midst is not a heirarchy. It’s also not government. Just as a group is free to associate it is also free to disassociate.

  1. They have long existed and some still persist. The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow talk about several.
mrcleanup,

So let’s say we do it. We transform our country and it becomes everything you hoped and then the neighboring country invades. How does the anarchist society stand against that? How do they have a militia that can operate beyond the immediate resources of each member (beyond begging door to door)? How do you maintain supply lines without people doing that full time? How do you buy supplies without taxes to pay for them? How do you administer supplies without someone doing that full time? How do we respond to rockets fired into our territory? Does Bob have an anti missile system in the barn?

It just seems like a nice idea but too fragile to succeed.

mrcleanup,

Isn’t that just a liberal social Democratic system for people afraid of the words social and liberal?

Anarchists creating structures and agreements isn’t anarchy anymore, its… well… government.

pearable,

Anarchy is liberal in the sense that it pursues individual’s freedom not only from oppression but also to act in ways that enrich themselves. It does not require total chaos as it’s detractors have tried to characterize it since the term was coined.

Anarchy is social in the sense it accepts human beings are almost always better off in groups and that society’s goals should be for the betterment of all.

It is democratic in the sense that people come together to make decisions; although, consensus is perhaps a better descriptor. Democracy has an association with first past the post voting and decisions that bind those represented.

It is not a liberal social democracy as that tends to be used to describe a capitalist society with strong social programs, a beauracracy, and police state. They also tend to be supported by colonialism abroad or petrochemical extraction but I suppose that’s not necessarily a requirement. I would agree that such a society is not anarchist.

Structure is not heirarchy. A collective farm is a structure just as much as a factory farm. An agreement where a farm exchanges food for labor, infrastructure, medicine, education, and tools from a city does not preclude anarchy. Either side breaking that agreement when the other begins acting in bad faith is not oppression or a police state.

NotJustForMe,

I’m not very political or versed in the science about them, but does anarchy exclude guidelines and collaboration? I’d have thought it would enhance those things.

If there isn’t anything enforcing rules and laws, a government would be informational, making guidelines based on what people found to work best. Like a giant kickstarter paired with Wikipedia.

Many guidelines will be followed. Like, boil your chicken before eating it. Good to know, and most will do it. Some won’t, for whatever reason.

Think village assembly, fund-raisers, donations.

I might be completely off here. In my mind, people work great together, until there are rules to exploit. The best of us always comes out despite enforcing structures.

gapbetweenus,

A charismatic wanabe tyrant will be frustrated every step they take towards getting more power.

To be fair, this goes for everyone, not just a tyrant.

h14h,

Anarchists develop structures and agreements that discourage concentration of power

MLMs believe that they must use the state, capitalism, and by extension coercive control

Are these not different words for the same fundamental concepts?

I fail to see how “the state” and “capitalism” aren’t just a more developed form of “structures” and “agreements”. And if the community decides punishment is an appropriate response to breaking an “agreement”, how is that any different from “coercive control”?

And if you’re community gets large enough (say even like a couple hundred people), how are any decisions gonna get made even remotely efficiently?

Feel like you’re a hop skip and a jump from a representative democracy. And as soon as bartering becomes too inconvenient, I’m sure a new “agreement” still be made to use some proxy as a form of current and boom now you’ve got capitalism too.

CurlyWurlies4All,
@CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net avatar

See Democratic Confederalism. youtu.be/BKRHyF78j2I?si=5tHIXPtGNI0jW5Jq

pearable,

I think “more developed” is not great here. It’s assuming because it’s the most common currently and supplanted more anarchist methods that it is better. States and capitalism have benefits that anarchy does not. You can not engage in an anarchist invasion. You can not extract value from a country using colonialism in an anarchist society. This enables capitalist and state control to expand and eventually control the land that anarchist, chieftain led, and other pre state communities once controlled [1]. Capitalism and the state conquered and coerced until it held an almost universal control [2] but that doesn’t mean it’s better to live under.

One of the agreements I have in mind is trading what a farm’s workers need: insurance in case of bad harvest, tools, infrastructure, education, labor, etc for what a city or town needs: food [3]. The “punishment” for breaking such an agreement is not violence. The result is the end of the agreement. That is not coercive control because the other can go to someone else for the same need.

It probably wouldn’t be efficient at large scales [4]. That’s why you make small decisions among those the decision effects. A group might elect a recallable representative for their watershed council and the meeting notes would be distributed to everyone who wanted to read them. However, most decisions about a workplace or neighborhood could probably work by assembly [5]. It is a kind representative democracy but the purpose of anarchy is not ideological purity. The point is creating a society that eliminates as much oppression as possible and enables the most freedom possible.

Bartering, as large scale economic system, is a myth. Gift economies, slavery, stateless communism, and more were far more common. Barter between communities existed but it was the minority of economic activity. The economy I suggest has more in common with Anarcho Communism. To borrow a phrase, "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need."

  1. The exceptions are legion but they don’t exactly control a lot of land. The San are an example.
  2. Worshipping Power does a good job examining the transition if you’re interested in reading more.
  3. Each of those line items could be spread across a miriad of organizations and communities.
  4. The current system is only efficient at funneling money to the top so I’m not that worried.
  5. These are just possibilities but I think it’s a workable structure that I would describe as non-heirarchical.
hangukdise,

I see the concept but unfortunately it runs against human nature: humans have an inherent need to follow someone and the emergence of cliques among people result in power struggles for the benefit of their own group.

pearable,

This is proven incorrect. While many societies throughout history have been heirarchical, many were egalitarian and rejected heirarchy. Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution, Worshipping Power, and The Dawn of Everything all talk about various early societies many of which reject authoritarian structures. One still existing group of egalitarian societies in Africa is called the San, by all accounts they’ve been around for millenia. I’m not aware of a long lasting egalitarian industrial society but the idea that human beings are incapable of living free from some authority is simply untrue.

Pratai,

Because the moment anarchy starts making rules, it’s no longer anarchy.

Zink,

That sounds like anarchy is the societal equivalent of a radioactive element. It is what it is, until some random amount of time when some shit kicks off and it becomes something else.

intensely_human,

Which is a property of all things

madelena,

Yes, and those who has grown a community or company will understand this. The emergence of power structures isn’t a matter of if, but when.

nicocool84,

Anarchy is not the absence of rules but the absence of authority.

Rhoeri,
@Rhoeri@lemmy.world avatar

And without authority to back up the rules- the rules are easily dismissed without consequence. And easily dismissed rules with no consequence is anarchy.

Therefore- rules negate anarchy.

nicocool84,

Anarchists tend to think that fear of the state is not the main reason why we don’t murder each other. In other words, following rules that are understood does not require the stick. Anarchists also tend to think that authority mostly enforce rules to maintain itself, and that the common good actually relies on something else.

beSyl,

How does an anarchy society enforce the rules? Say, murders.

nicocool84,

Let’s say you risk nothing if you murder. Would you start right away going on a killing spree ? Chances you think “I won’t but others will” and others actually think the same. An anarchist would probably analyse this by saying that destroying trust between indivuals living together is a basic tool power use to justify its domination. A pedantic anarchist would get his Latin out at this point. Divide et impera.

droans,

By that logic, there either never has been a murder in human history or governments cause people to murder.

Anarchy isn’t some deep philosophy, it’s just a lack of any sort of life experience.

nicocool84,

By your logic, murders don’t happen anymore in liberal democracies?

It isn’t some deep philosophy indeed. It’s very practical and not a church in any way. Anarchists usually don’t care about people calling themselves anarchists, but consider that some stuff like counter measures to absolute power that our institutions have, gender equality and some other stuff are things they’ve been pushing for a while.

At its very core, anarchism is the refusal of any fundamental dogma, and in some ways very related to the scientific method and rationalism. This is probably a more personal take than what I’ve written so far ;-)

Chill out man, we aren’t coming to behead you or anything. <3

Val,

All murders happen because of emotional (killing someone in anger), economical (Theft gone wrong) or psychological (Doesn’t realize it’s wrong) reasons. none of these is prevented by sticking the murderer in a box after the murder.

All of these are prevented by building strong social network to manage any harmful impulses before something happens, which is something any reasonable anarchist would agree with.

Also If you think the list is incomplete then feel free to give another example.

Oh yeah also political assassinations and wars. But your comment already addresses those.

I think a better wording is that anarchy is naive. And I’d rather be naive than accept that this is the best we can come up with, because that’s depressing.

beSyl,

You misunderstood my question. I did not mean to ask why there would be no murderers. My question is this:

  • If anarchism is not against rules but rather authority, how would you deal with murderers? If there is no authority to sentence them, would they remain free individuals?
nicocool84,

Anarchists usually think that a lot of murderers actually get away with it in our actual world, be it through war crimes, neglecting sanitary or safety rules to maximise profit; you can extend this list with a lot of legal murders.

Anarchism definitely does not define a specific rule for what to do with murderers. Different communities might want to handle that differently. They usually think that prison does not solve anything though, and that only the poor get sent there anyway.

I think a mistake is to think that anarchism is a “feature-complete” view of the world, when it really is the realisation that power corrupts, and that we should keep this in mind when organising ourselves. Arguably, over the long run, anarchist views are winning: institutions that prevent - in theory - crazy psychopath from taking absolute power, churches losing power over our lives, women considered as human beings; these are things anarchists have pushed for, for 2 centuries. This short essay might give you more insight: theanarchistlibrary.org/…/david-graeber-are-you-a…

NotJustForMe,

Rules don’t negate anarchy. I don’t follow rules for fear of punishment, but because they make sense. If they don’t make sense, I seek explanation. If there isn’t a good one, I ignore it.

Is this the Rules version for No Morality without God?

doom_and_gloom, (edited )
@doom_and_gloom@lemmy.ml avatar

deleted_by_author

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    TopRamenBinLaden,

    Person with big stick < A bunch of people with pockets full of rocks

    Gabu,

    Not when the big stick is made of enriched Uranium

    haui_lemmy,

    Thats an interesting point. I‘ve read a lot of answers by now and I really enjoy how many different viewpoints and interpretations come together along with patterns of probably the core of the topic.

    MC_Lovecraft,

    There’s a whole lot of different takes here already, so I’m just going to plug this very excellent book: Practical Anarchism: A Guide for Daily Life and bounce.

    haui_lemmy,

    Thank you very much for contributing! :) I‘ve read to almost all of the answers so far and they’re more than I could have hoped for. Very happy that this discussion works so well.

    chicken,

    My impression from talking to and reading stuff by anarchists is that the idea is for culture to serve in the place of sticks and rules. As for the mechanics of how this works, what such a culture would need to achieve to succeed and how it could do so, frankly most of them seem to take it on faith that this will be the easy part and naturally fall into place as soon as their oppressors are no longer mucking things up.

    Which is a shame because I think it could be totally plausible and worth seeking, if you worked through the game theory and sustainability-over-time issues, despite being a monumental challenge and being about something as crudely understood as collective psychology. Human society is a system, and systems can be designed lots of different ways. It could be possible to have a culture that is powerful or clever enough to allow for a large population to function without a controlling state beating people into line.

    Not directly related to this comment but I also want to mention and recommend the book The Disposessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, really thoughtful novel about anarchism.

    haui_lemmy,

    Thank you for contributing! I will check out the book.

    DaCrazyJamez,

    Anarchy, in it’s purest sense, is to a system what darkness is to light. Darkness is the absence of light, not a thing in-and-of itself. Anarchy is the lack of an establishment or system, rather than a system in itself.

    What this means, in practical application, is that most anarchists are simply opposed to whatever system exists currently. Human nature dictates that SOME system will exist as long as we do, so true anarchy can only exist when there are no longer humans around to perceive it.

    In historical context, this almost always means that when anarchy “takes over,” what it creates is a “systemic void” which - like any vacuum - quickly gets filled. Usually by the guy with the biggest stick.

    trolololol,

    Nah that’s the stereotypical view, where anarchy = chaos. For some reason it also needs to find a dumpster and put fire on it, and ffs I never understood that reference.

    Anarchists don’t agree with any of those analogies

    zik, (edited )

    I think this is a common misconception about anarchies - that there’s no social control of any kind. If you look at actual real world anarchies like Freetown Christiania in Copenhagen they don’t believe in a complete absence of organisation. Far from it - they develop community-based committees which have no actual power in themselves but are used to develop concensus on issues that affect the whole community. So rather than abolishing all rules they’re all about human collaboration and concensus.

    For instance when hard drugs became a problem in Christiana the residents got together and banned hard drugs. It’s not a law as such but everyone’s in agreement that if you try to sell hard drugs you’ll be ejected.

    It’s not a perfect place and it’s hard to say that their brand of anarchy works well as a system of government. It seems to have been a mixed experience for many people who’ve lived there. But it’s definitely been an interesting social experiment.

    There are plenty of documentaries on youtube if you’re interested.

    Rodeo,

    they develop community-based committees which have no actual power in themselves but are used to develop concensus on issues that affect the whole community. So rather than abolishing all rules they’re all about human collaboration and concensus.

    So it’s a democracy.

    BiteSizedZeitGeist,

    It doesn’t sound like there are any elections, or representatives, or bills or candidates to vote on. Just conducting an ad-hoc “all in favor say aye” type of vote doesn’t mean it’s a democracy. Just because many people come to a consensus doesn’t mean it’s a democracy.

    cozycosmic,

    Elections and representatives are “representative democracy”, not a true democracy. Voting on issues is democracy. Democracy literally means “the people have the power”

    OwenEverbinde,

    Hmm… so an approach that would have gotten Rodeo’s point across better might have been to say,

    “so anarchy is just another name for the purest form of democracy.”

    Because democracy is such a broad word that it is occasionally applied to the United States, despite the CIA’s history of coups and the FBI’s history of extrajudicial assassinations of citizens.

    BiteSizedZeitGeist,

    I’m talking about the level of organization. There’s a difference between saying “the best way to resolve this conversation is to ask everyone present for a vote” and “there’s going to be another cyclical election soon, these will be the matters we’re going to vote on.” Counting ayes and nays doesn’t make things a capital-D Democracy, it’s the institutionalization of these practices.

    zik,

    Democracies usually have laws and some kind of government. There are no laws in Freetown Christiania and there’s no individual who has direct power over another.

    rgarciag,

    I hope we get more discussions like this on Lemmy. Awesome!

    haui_lemmy,

    Same here! :)

    theywilleatthestars,

    Because that’s called despotism, which anarchists historically oppose.

    haui_lemmy,

    Thanks. I have been reading and listening to a lot of stuff from other comments by now. Really cool discussion imo.

    OurToothbrush,

    I mean are you looking for theory or actual anarchist practice?

    Because in practice the best anarchism has done is war communism but less organized, less democratic, and less efficient than the communists, and the worst they’ve done is basically a military dictatorship that accidentally empowered kulaks to do pogroms, and if you ask modern anarchists the takeaways from these programs and what to do better in the future, 9/10 times(being generous) they’ll just repeat a “stabbed in the back by tankies” narrative which shows they really haven’t learned from their history.

    haui_lemmy,

    Oh wow. Now we’re getting into interesting waters. I probably need to read a lot.

    OurToothbrush, (edited )

    To add a disclaimer, I am specifically talking about the largest and more stable projects, anarchosyndicalism during the Spanish civil war and the free ukrainian state during the Russian Revolution

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