So what you're saying is that it's okay for me to just walk into someone's home, murder the entire family and just live there now because I'm the most violent of all?
What they're saying is that all rights are derived from force. The state that enforces your rights uses force to do so. This comic is mostly dunking on anarcho capitalists, in that they seemingly believe that property rights are magic.
I don't think anyone who has done any thinking on this topic would deny this, but our hypocrisy does not mean that change isn't desired or is somehow impossible.
Naomi Klein has written well on this topic in her book Doppelganger, which is the first place I ever heard this concept mapped out in all its dark detail.
I'll just paste the Q & A here, because I think it's important that people read it. You can look up more on this yourselves:
Q: You also write about another kind of shadow self, borrowing a formulation from the writer Daisy Hildyard—the idea being that, while we’re typing on iPhones, we also exist in rare-earth mines alongside poisoned teen-age laborers. The awareness of the plunder and damage inherent in the idealized American life has increased, but so, perhaps, has the lived acceptance of it, and the result is a simmering sense of unease.
NK: I quote James Baldwin a lot in the book, because I think he’s probably the most powerful theorist of the fear of what Hildyard is talking about. She calls it the second body—the shadow self that’s implicated in all of these systems that are unveiled. It isn’t just that they’re hard to look at, it’s also that we are implicated; we are not apart from them. There is my body sitting in this chair, and there’s my other body, hovering over the tax dollars funding drone warfare, implicated in oil wars, implicated in the plastic in the ocean. That’s not other people—that’s me, that’s us.
Emphasis mine. I just chose this link because it's free. Not the original source.
Yeah, down with the violence of the state! Although, to prevent bad actors and armed gangs we do need to have some sort of militia to protect the vulnerable from the greedy and cruel, human nature being what it is. And to prevent said militia from turning into the very thing it was supposed to protect us from, we need some sort of oversight, preferably from a democratically elected body, that tells the militia how to act and prevent them from violating the rights of the people. Oh wait I just reinvented violence of the state hehe.
People in Somalia hearing that America has a 1.8% homelessness rate: "wow. Things are really just as bad over there."
A common anarchist definition of the state is: The institutionized power structure which alienates people from the businesses of their daily lives.
So not the government at all, right? Because they aren't responsible for hardly any alienating in my experience. I would attribute any alienating I feel to corporations.
I don't feel alienated by the justice system. Maybe it's because I don't live in America. Corporations infringe on my enjoyment of my life a lot more than the government ever does. The only interactions I ever have with the justice system is when the police come to my neighborhood to shut up a domestic disturbance which is usually much appreciated on my part.
Also, the government provides all kinds of valuable services and benefits that I interact with every day. They build the roads that the corner shop across the street uses to get deliveries, they send out trash and recycling collectors every week, they run the clean water and power to my home, they maintain firefighting services and national free healthcare infrastructure. Sure they could be doing a bit better at some of these things, but I wouldn't say I feel alienated by them.
Meanwhile corporations are constantly worsening my interactions with them, bombarding me with new and innovative forms of psychological warfare designed to trick me into giving them my money in exchange for something I don't really need.
You're describing alienation. You give power to an entity alien to you/the community. You could have mitigated the disturbances in your neighborhood together with your community. Sending the cops wont fix the issue systemically, though. The best they can do is take someone away.
All these services don't need a hierarchical state.
The state is the entity protecting these corporations by enforcing their property rights.
So... If the police force is made of local people who are from your community and the sheriff is an elected official from the community...? It's not like the feds are coming for these purposes.
The cops are always around, and seems like a pretty systemic fix to me.
Then the cops/sherrif cease to be members of the community, since you've introduced a hierarchy. You always know that the cop has power over you or they wouldn't be a cop.
The "fix" is about as systemic as constantly taking pain meds for when you alway bonk your head on something. It adresses the symptom, not the underlying issue.
I guess I don't understand how hierarchy and community are mutually exclusive especially if hierarchy is granted by and from the community itself.
If this isn't the case, why respect family hierarchy either? At 16 if I'm bigger than my dad, fuck him it's my house now. Basically the only point of removing all hierarchy I can see is that we pass the "violence" part down to everyone instead of deciding to isolate it in the enforcement group.
I think we have different definitions of hierarchy here. To me, if I have a higher hierarchical position than you, then you ought to do what I tell you, due to my status. If a community delegates violence to a militia, it doesn't necessarily mean that the militia gets to issue commands on their own.
Are you highlighting the "ought" because it isn't mandatory to comply?
Maybe the difference is that you think a policing force makes their own rules or decisions because of the nature of the hierarchy? It sounds like a variant of "who polices the police" and that the answer is the police can never outnumber or overpower the full community from which they are derived. Which I mean yeah I guess that's fine.
I personally don't see the enforcement hierarchy (police or militia) as having power over anyone outside the granted scope of enforcement. That's bordering on the discussion of police misconduct and government that is too large, which are valid concerns but not really the core issues.
No, they were extrajudicial killings, which by definition means not using the justice system. They were condoned by the communities who performed them. And yeah the state enabled them by not punishing them, but it was the community who made them happen. If the communities hadn't wanted to lynch people, people wouldn't have been getting lynched. You think things would have been different in those cases if those southern towns were self-governing collectives?
Hell, do you think that desegregation ever would have happened in southern towns if there hasn't been a hierarchical government? The US literally had to send the military to protect black schoolkids in southern towns when they desegregated schools. What do you think would have happened if those communities didn't have a hierarchical state governing them?
No, I think that those killings wouldn't have happened if there weren't people in power whose private interests where best served by reinforcing racism. Anger against minorities is usually fostered in order to distract people from class conflict.
I don't know. Maybe the Black Panthers would have entered these communities if the state didn't sabotage their right for self-defence?
All these services don't need a hierarchical state.
You think people will just build roads out of the goodness of their hearts? Or pick up trash? Obviously not. Those services have to be performed by somebody who is getting paid, and in order to pay them, you need to levy taxes. Boom, hierarchical state. The rest is just details.
Like it or not, the world is too big and complicated for everyone to live in self-governing communities anymore. Like imagine applying what you're suggesting to a densely packed population centre like New York. It makes no sense.
You think people will just build roads out of the goodness of their hearts?
No, I think people build roads because they themselves decided in a council that roads needed to be built.
Or pick up trash?
You act as if there aren't whole histories of volunteer work in the world. If you get lost in the alps and mountain rescue saves you, pretty much none of them are getting paid, for example.
Those services have to be performed by somebody who is getting paid, and in order to pay them, you need to levy taxes.
I find you lack in societal creativety sad.
Like imagine applying what you're suggesting to a densely packed population centre like New York. It makes no sense.
Imagine trying to manage such a big society by giving decision power to fewer people who can't possibly fathom the complexity of the system they're trying to control.
Can you explain wtf a council is in your understanding? Because the way I see it there are two possibilities: either it would be literally every member of a community, in which case you're basically advocating for billions of people to have Jury duty every day for the rest of time, which most people are not going to want. Or else it's not literally everyone, in which case, congratulations you just reinvented representative democracy.
Like, most people, myself included, don't want to be involved in every little decision. So we vote for people to represent our interests in government. Obviously the voting system itself could stand to be improved, but that's a case for electoral reform and proportional representation, not anarchism.
Councils are made up of interest groups of the population. There are communal councils, work councils of coops, housing councils, garden councils, consumer councils, etc.
Attendance is not mandatory, put highly encouragen through the social structure surrounding these councils. My worker's council cohorts are my friends, my goworkers, etc.
Big decisions are decided on via federation. E.g. every communal council sends of delegates to regional council, which sends delegates to a national council, and so on.
The difference to parliamentary representation is the type of delegation: Representatives have what you call a "free mandate": they only are subject to their own conscience (and the law, of course). If I vote for a representative for their strong stance against puppy butchering, they're free to butcher as many puppies as they like, once they are elected.
Compare that with an imperative mandate (which social anarchists propose): Your position as a delegate depends on you carrying out the will of the body that elected you. If you defy that imperative, you lose your position as a delegate.
The difference to parliamentary representation is the type of delegation: Representatives have what you call a "free mandate": they only are subject to their own conscience (and the law, of course). If I vote for a representative for their strong stance against puppy butchering, they're free to butcher as many puppies as they like, once they are elected.
IMO that free mandate is a good thing. Sometimes people need to adapt to changing circumstances. Like for example, if a government was reducing healthcare funding and then a pandemic broke out, I'd want them to make a snap decision. And most people don't want to have to participate in all aspects of governing. We elect people to represent us.
Again, everything you're describing is workable within representative democracy and that's significantly less of a hassle for the average person. You claim the state is alienating but then advocate for everyone to feel social pressure to participate in these councils? That sounds miserable.
You're just reinventing government but in a form where it's less efficient, more annoying, and can't get things done. The current system is so much better than what you're describing I can't fathom how someone could see it any other way. Especially as things scale up. Again, imagine if New York was operated in the way you're describing. You think millions of people are going to just harmoniously self-govern? No. That's why we elect municipal and higher levels of government to make decisions for us. And yeah they have a free mandate but they also have another election coming up, so if people don't like what they do they can elect someone else next time.
Why do you think that those changing circumstances can't be handled in a federated manner?
I'm using the proper definition of alienation.
Free mandates make the system succeptible to lobbyism/corruption. The current system is so great that we're currently in the process of eliminating our foundation of life on the planet.
I don't think that people will be annoyed by a council system. If they are, they can abstain. But IMHO, the reason people are so fed up with politics is their lack of agency. People are in general very interested inspolitics as long as it concerns them and they have agency. Councils should alleviate both of those issues.
You think millions of people are going to just harmoniously self-govern? No.
Why not? Remember that the sa?e thing was basically said of the peasantry in feudal times: that people are incapable of being in control of politics. There's no reason to suggest that the current system is the best it can get.
4 years or longer is one hell of a lot of time to screw things up. If you're only participating in democracy once every four years, that's not much of a democracy. And don't gst me started on the lack of democracy in economics.
Why not? Remember that the sa?e thing was basically said of the peasantry in feudal times: that people are incapable of being in control of politics. There's no reason to suggest that the current system is the best it can get.
I really hope you understand why that isn't at all the same thing. In one case it was people advocating for authority derived from the people rather than from birthright. Here you are just advocating for power derived from more people and with less structure. But both systems still derive their power from the people. I'm not talking about flawed democracies like The US. But the idealized concept of a representative democracy. It works just fine.
People won't harmoniously self govern because human nature creeps in. Tribalism happens. Nazis happen. COVID deniers happen. Lynch mobs happen. Mob rule is rule by the basest human instincts, and that isn't pretty. Humans are not fundamentally righteous, especially not when operating in groups. Not everyone agrees on what the social contract should be, and that's exactly why it's helpful to have rules that govern how people need to conduct themselves in a society. Obviously not everyone agrees with those rules all the time, but the fundamental idea of having rules at all is still valuable.
Most people don't want to have to take such an active role in public policy, and are perfectly happy to delegate to someone else. We all have issues with how our representatives actually do their jobs, but those problems are fixable within the current systems. And since the system you're describing only works if everyone is onboard, it's never going to happen. Most people don't want anarchy, they want structure.
Again, what you're describing sounds basically like jury duty; having to uproot my actual daily life in order to go be part of a meeting with literally a million people (the population of my city) over basic public services. People get bogged down in details all the time. I don't want to listen to a million people bikeshedding.
So much of what you're describing is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And for a system which, to be frank, sounds monumentally inefficient, impractical, unpleasant, and alienating, especially at larger scales.
I really hope you understand why that isn’t at all the same thing. In one case it was people advocating for authority derived from the people rather than from birthright. Here you are just advocating for power derived from more people and with less structure. But both systems still derive their power from the people. I’m not talking about flawed democracies like The US. But the idealized concept of a representative democracy. It works just fine.
The current system of liberal democracy is still mainly driven by economic interests, i.e. the interests of capitalists. This is not an issue that can be elected away, no matter how great your electoral system is, since the influence of the industry on the politicians is way too high and they are way too protected from repercussions for corrupt behavior. This isn't only the case in the US, but also in all of Europe and basically in every other liberal so-called democracy.
I'm not advocating for a system with less structure, far from it. The system I'm proposing is more decentralized, yes. But hierarchical power structures always need to filter information from complex systems, reducing complexity to be legible to the people in power. This creates inefficiencies and leads to people being treated unfairly. A decentralized approach to governance is way more able to manage the complexities of complex social structures.
In what way is the power derived from the people? Did the people give active consent to the system? When did that happen? Or are the people rather coerced in participating in a system they have nothing but the most shallow say in? Hell, you probably spend a huge chunk of your wake hours working at a company where you have exactly nil democratic say in. How is a society, where the economy isn't managed democratically even considered a democracy?
People won’t harmoniously self govern because human nature creeps in. Tribalism happens. Nazis happen. COVID deniers happen. Lynch mobs happen. Mob rule is rule by the basest human instincts, and that isn’t pretty. Humans are not fundamentally righteous, especially not when operating in groups. Not everyone agrees on what the social contract should be, and that’s exactly why it’s helpful to have rules that govern how people need to conduct themselves in a society. Obviously not everyone agrees with those rules all the time, but the fundamental idea of having rules at all is still valuable.
I am so tired of that old platitude about "human nature". Notice how Nazis have almost always used liberal democracy to seize power? You can still see it today with fascist leaders in the US, Italy, Russia, Hungary, and probably soon enough: at least two other European countries (my bet is on Austria and France). There has been no Nazi seizure of power in a council-based democracy.
You should either supply some scientific evidence about "human instincts", or you should update your outdated view of humanity. Thomas Hobbes was wrong. The leviathan isn't real. Humanity has the potential to be caring and nurturing or to be greedy and violent. The environment and circumstances that surround a human has more impact on their behavior than some fairy tale of "human nature". Social contract theory is bogus. It's not a contract if I never consented and I don't have the realistic option to not consent. It's nothing but a philosophical parlor trick to justify the violent status quo.
I (and no other anarchist) ever claimed that anarchism means "no rules". It means no institutionalized social hierarchies. You can still have rules that are agreed upon by a group where no one is above the other. This is how the majority of human interactions work. It's not illegal to adhere to the rules of a board game on board game night. I don't give you a present on your birthday because my boss told me to do so. There are myriads of examples where humans spontaneously cooperate and follow mutually agreed upon rules without the need of an authority enforcing those rules.
And even if humanity is greedy "by nature": Shouldn't we avoid building societal institutions where a minority of people have power to reduce the rights of the majority? Or where a minority of people has the power to keep me from having the things I need to survive? Anarchism is a strategy to mitigate people's greed for money and power, by giving their peers the power of keeping them in check. Our current system took a few people and functionally turned them into gods: Compare the power a McDonald's toilet scrubber has and compare it to the power Elon Musk has. The power differential is greater than that of pharaos and slaves in ancient egyptian times.
Most people don’t want to have to take such an active role in public policy, and are perfectly happy to delegate to someone else.
I disagree. People in general are very interested in politics if two conditions are present: It affects them and they experience agency. If it doesn't affect them, they won't care and a lack of agency is frustrating. I promise you: pick the most politically apathetic person you know and ask them about a policy that affects them and they'll show you how much they care about it and probably also their frustration about their lack of agency.
We all have issues with how our representatives actually do their jobs, but those problems are fixable within the current systems.
Again, what you’re describing sounds basically like jury duty; having to uproot my actual daily life in order to go be part of a meeting with literally a million people (the population of my city) over basic public services.
Not what I'm advocating for. First: I said federation several times. So there will be councils for maintenance, school councils, work councils, parks and recreational councils, etc. If you don't feel like attending one of the councils: then don't. Also, delegation is still a thing with councils. If the trash is picked up on time, because the people delegated for maintenance do a good job, you won't need to be bothered by it (unless you have a system in your community where you're supposed to do your part for trash pickup).
People get bogged down in details all the time. I don’t want to listen to a million people bikeshedding.
I consider the "million people" argument as a strawman from now on, ok?
So much of what you’re describing is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And for a system which, to be frank, sounds monumentally inefficient, impractical, unpleasant, and alienating, especially at larger scales.
Defending the status quo is both the easiest and boringest task in the world.
What would happen to those corporations without the government enforcing their property? Have you ever tried to seize a McDonalds to distribute food to the homeless?
People have property rights too. I wouldn't want someone seizing the food in my fridge to feed the homeless. Property rights are a good thing actually. The problem isn't the government "protecting" corporations. It's that wealth grants a greater degree of control over government due to corruption.
Ultimately though it's a pointless discussion since anarchists are never going to see what they envision implemented beyond weirdo hippie commune towns because their ideas don't scale up.
I wouldn't want anyone to seize the food in your fridge. Unless with "seize" you mean "fill up unprompted" because people know you need to eat and that's enough reason to give you food, and maybe you're busy all the time with constructing bridges or whatnot so they also cook for you.
And while corruption is an issue, it's not the only issue: The very act of having lots of capital to throw around allows companies to direct policy, you e.g. don't need to grease hands to get different municipalities to overbid each other with tax breaks for your new fidget spinner factory. The BS is inherent in the system.
As to scaling: Possibly. Possibly not. I'd argue that it can't yet be envisioned, not even by anarchists themselves (and we're aware of that, hence all the gradualism)... but as you acknowledged that it can work in the small, what happens if all the municipalities we have turn into hippie communes? Would they elect, among themselves, an Emperor Commune to rule over them? I don't think so. They'd find ways to cooperate at eye level. How that will look in detail, as said, I have no idea, it's probably going to involve federation and plenty of subsidiarity.
Practically, right now, it makes no difference as most of us are not living in hippie commune towns. First step would be to get there, then we can think about luxury gay space anarchism.
Those small communes only work because everyone is opting in for the anarchist model. Most people have no interest in that model, and so it will never scale beyond such small communities where everyone opts in.
It especially isn't going to work as soon as you reach the scale where tribalism sets in. That's a natural human behaviour and cannot be eliminated. The human brain craves an "us versus them" narrative. You know this to be true, because your brain does it too, even if you suppress that part of your brain, it's still there and you're aware of it. Some of us can rise above it, but we all know that especially in large groups, humans revert to their more base instincts. The only way to prevent that tendency from dominating society is with the structure imposed by a government.
Like, how exactly would you envision anarchism working in NYC, with the current population of NYC? Not some hypothetical group of people who've all drunk the anarchism Kool aid. Literally just how does it work in a city that big with regular people who haven't read your anarchist newsletter? Because you will never get everyone to agree that anarchism is the way to go. So you're going to have to come up with a model that works for people even if they don't want to be part of it.
Why? Would it not be in their self-interest? Enlightened self-interest, that is. If it is, and they still have no interest, what makes them choose otherwise? How do we free them from that kind of conditioning?
It especially isn’t going to work as soon as you reach the scale where tribalism sets in. That’s a natural human behaviour and cannot be eliminated.
That is true but also overstated. Over here in Europe we're tribalist AF going down to the village level, doesn't mean that we're at each other's throats. At least off the football pitch, that is.
The only way to prevent that tendency from dominating society is with the structure imposed by a government.
You're overstating the power that governments have -- they all, by necessity, even the likes of North Korea, govern by assent or acquiescence from the governed it's a simple numbers game. It is a question of culture, not of having police at every corner. Who, btw, in many places do the exact opposite of reducing tribal tensions.
Like, how exactly would you envision anarchism working in NYC, with the current population of NYC?
NYC isn't a good place to start moving towards an anarchist municipality. Plenty of anarchists in NYC, doing their neigbourhood thing, but capturing Manhattan is pretty much impossible without full smaller cities haven gotten the bug first. It's like starting a D&D campaign as low-level character and saying "but this is pointless, I can't even slay ancient dragons".
Attempting the impossible is a sure-fire way to be disappointed. To feel disheartened, powerless, fatalist. To then fail to achieve the possible. Consider Anarchism not as a vision that is to be realised, or even provable in your lifetime, but as a compass to guide your direction: Can you take a step? Then what's stopping you? Let things yet beyond the horizon be things beyond the horizon, they might not even exist any more once you get there. What's the worst that can happen, that you made the world a bit of a better place? I'd take that risk.
Over here in Europe we're tribalist AF going down to the village level, doesn't mean that we're at each other's throats. At least off the football pitch, that is.
Europe was in a state of constant war until they began to form larger, more federal power structures like the EU. This example supports my point.
Why? Would it not be in their self-interest? Enlightened self-interest, that is. If it is, and they still have no interest, what makes them choose otherwise? How do we free them from that kind of conditioning?
It's not in people's interest to participate in the anarchist model because it sounds like a huge hassle, an incredibly inefficient way of running a society. Like I would much rather elect someone to make laws on my behalf. I realize that system doesn't always work in practice, but what the hell, if you're allowed to speak in hyper-idealized terms, then I am too.
It's not conditioning. It's completely rational to not want such large numbers of people to be involved in every little decision. We've learned over human history that mob rule is not good. Representative democracy is a natural consequence of that.
As someone who works in an office environment, I can tell you the decision making process has seriously diminishing returns as you add more people. A meeting with 4 people will usually make the same decision as one with 30, and will do it in a quarter the time. And yeah sometimes the 4 person meeting will make a mistake that the 30 person meeting would have caught, but it's still worth having decisions be a bit more error prone to not have quite so much time wasted on the natural bickering and bikeshedding that humans tend toward when trying to make decisions as a group. Go watch the TV show Parks and Rec, pay attention to the scenes where they consult the public about their decisions. That's what anarchism is going to look like (in fact, it's a pretty accurate depiction of real world public consultations). Most people are not going to be capable of participating in public administration in good faith.
You ask how we can "break the conditioning" but the thing you're responding to is human nature. So what you're actually asking is how to brainwash people into all adhering to one system.
Europe was in a state of constant war until they began to form larger, more federal power structures like the EU. This example supports my point.
The EU has exactly zero capacity to put boots on the ground to stop countries from fighting each other. The only boots it has is FRONTEX, that is, border guards. They wouldn't stand a chance against the police force of a single larger city.
It’s not in people’s interest to participate in the anarchist model because it sounds like a huge hassle, an incredibly inefficient way of running a society. Like I would much rather elect someone to make laws on my behalf.
Noone's stopping you from doing that. There's generally plenty of delegation going on. Noone's putting considerations about the cement mixture used in lamp post foundations to the general council, everyone knows that it's best left to the engineers.
While they're probably not good examples for how things would look in the west because the conditions they operate in are quite different, I recommend looking at how Chiapas and Rojava do things. They don't get bogged down in meetings. Here's a couple of videos (also about other places).
That’s what anarchism is going to look like (in fact, it’s a pretty accurate depiction of real world public consultations).
That's what consultations look like if people use the little chance they have to ever get heard in person to air general grievances. Even just emotionally. Can't expect people to act sensibly in your "conservation of the red-footed sparkle toad" consultation while their community is getting demolished for a highway expansion -- without consultation. Replace whatever with whatever in that equation.
Meanwhile, there's plenty of studies surrounding sortition (which would be a great intermediate step in many areas) showing that if you take a random sample of people (actually randomised) and sit them together with a couple of experts for at least a couple of days to hash things out, they do come up with very very sensible stuff. More like juries.
You ask how we can “break the conditioning” but the thing you’re responding to is human nature. So what you’re actually asking is how to brainwash people into all adhering to one system.
Nah what I'm asking of you is to stop saying "this thing I'm thinking of won't work because human nature" and instead say "hmm maybe another thing could work" and "probably not perfect but it's better than we have now and we might learn from it". You're not in school, any more, incomplete and approximate answers earn full credit when it comes to catalysing societal change.
Sigh, it always ends up being a semantic issue because people hear "anarchist" and think "no government". When really, the political philosophy of anarchism is a little different.
And then, the confusion about everyday political terms like "state", "government", etc. arises, were most people havenothing, but vibes-based definitions at hand. 🙄
It is, that community will still have its marginalized groups that don't get representation, and if anything, on a smaller scale it's harder to form a group that would argue for necessary support for these people
on a smaller scale it’s harder to form a group that would argue for necessary support for these people
Idk, I kinda gotta disagree with that. Sure, mob violence against "undesirables" is always gonna be a problem, but communities know each other and are less likely to see different constituent groups as "outsiders"
But in this specific example, where we are talking about "how do we decide who gets to use violence to keep the peace," I think community-based democratic approaches are the best option.
I also gotta disagree with
that community will still have its marginalized groups that don’t get representation
because by definition, if there is a marginalized group, they are not part of that community, and instead would form their own peacekeepers, like Guardian Angels.
Obviously there is a benefit to federalization, I'm not arguing for nor do I support statelessness, but I think if democracy is emphasized from the ground up, those issues naturally tend to erode. Like I think the core problem which necessitates the federal government stepping in to ensure rights comes from a lack of democracy.
but communities know each other and are less likely to see different constituent groups as "outsiders"
Tell that to every gay kid who grew up in a small rural Christian town...
form their own peacekeepers
So you expect every marginalized group to have their own personal cops? What about cross-sectional minorities. I don't know how this works in your head but whatever you're trying to say here is not translating well.
So not the person you're replying to but maybe instead of disengaging you reevaluate and rephrase because following along that's sure as shit how I read it too and if that's not your idea, what is?
No it's still definitely violence. Like, day to day, you try to use violence as little as possible but it is necessary for the laws of society to be backed by violence or people would ignore them. "Violence" doesn't have to refer to killing people, it means the use of force against somebody without their consent (killing them, arresting them, or evicting/exiling them).
The state we have right now in America and most of Europe is a community that decides how it wants to be policed (i.e. a democracy). Different jurisdictions make different policing decisions and have different outcomes, but they all follow that structure.
The point I was making was that any attempt by anarchists to "overthrow the state" is silly because the "state" will return in a new form as power reconsolidates. If you consider a recognized federal or state government to be a "state" but an armed "anarchist" militia that runs a city to not be a state, that's just a silly semantic argument.
If the little piggies had grown up in the wild, they would be Razorbacks and would rip the wolf to shreds and then eat him. Or perhaps the little piggies could have spent some of their wealth contracting wolfhounds to keep their houses safe. Instead, they trusted to their ivory-tower theories and got eaten.
If you're waiting for a powerful military force to end capitalism and allocate resources as their leader wishes, that's not anarchy. That's just new management.
"I can take things from those people that are different from me because I'm physically stronger than them and might makes right. You should do the same."
I mean its totally accurate, Pretty much all countries today can trace their current borders back to violence, most land ownership traces back to violence, laws are one way or another enforced by the threat of violence....
Contracts are not something you are born into, raised to fit it’s clauses, and unable to opt out of.
Society is one thing, nation states another. They’re relatively new and not a great system IMO. I believe we can do better.
Decentralized autonomus scalable communities would be better.
To quote my own comment;
“I like to think of economies (and nation-states) as loosely coupled monolithic legacy systems.
Due to poor developer practices and lack of architecture, parts of these systems have poorly written functions that hog 99% of the resources. You would not try to patch or update such a poorly designed system because there is no way to correct all the myriad built-up legacy back-doors, bugs, privilege escalation vulnerabilities, etc. The systems have been completely corrupted and cannot be recovered. We would like to avoid shutting off the hardware on which these systems run (the human race).
So we slowly drain away processing power to power up a new properly designed scalable system.
This new system is intentionally designed to avoid all pitfalls of the old system. It purposefully avoids attempts at privilege escalation, resource hogging, and doesn’t allow bad coding practices. Through scalable architecture, we implement a modular and resilient system that is decentralized and federated. Better yet, this new system is written in a language that is incompatible with the old system; they can only interface via APIs specifically designed to minimally interface with the old and unsafe system.
Of course, you’re right, it’s not independent or tamper-proof, but we can sure as shit try to make it that way!”
I don’t like how the comic seems to encourage a violent takeover of property like this.
May have something to do with the fact that the capitalists have armies of state-funded paramilitaries called "police" that makes any kind of peaceful takeover utterly impossible.
A peaceful takeover would in my mind involve a democratic decision to do the takeover - I don't see how the police would stand in the way of that. The bigger issue would seem to me to be convincing people to vote for such a democratic decision. But at least that is a peaceful path.
That's why you are not allowed anything that remotely resembles democracy - instead, you get an interactive horse and pony show every few years where you are allowed to choose which gang of racketeers gets to represent the rich's interests.
u don’t see how the police would stand in the way of that.
They are standing in the way of that right now. It's their only function - it's the only function they have ever had and ever will have.
But at least that is a peaceful path.
There is no peaceful way to dismantle capitalism. The capitalists and their cronies has seen to that.
Codetermination: German law specifically mandates democratic worker participation in the oversight of workplaces with 2000 or more employees. Similar laws exist in Denmark for businesses with more than 20 workers and France for businesses with more than 5000 workers.
The monarchy is slightly controversial but the majority of danes like it. There are certain benefits - if we didn't have a king, we'd need a president instead who would be a much more politically divisive figure than the king is. As it is, the king is a much more uniting figure. We also don't need to have elections for the president or any of that stuff.
And no, of course he has no real power. Which is honestly good, cause a president would have more power than that. I personally prefer the situation as it is right now. The king stays because the people say so - that is also democracy.
So it's fine if I murder your family and take everything your children have so that my children can live in luxury?
In the US, mobsters kill with impunity while their family gets reality TV (Mob wives) showing off their life of luxury. The "children are innocent of their parents crimes" is unjust because the victims' children suffer.
The King is the child of a mobster. His luxury life came from violence. Your children will have to work their entire lives in part because of what the King's ancestors stole from them.
The danish monarchy is so old that this is so far in the past that it literally does not matter any more. A couple of generations, sure. 1000 years of generations? Nobody cares and I don't think it's reasonable to blame anyone for crimes made by ancestors that far in the past. It's not like we blame me for my ancestors (vikings) pillaging of Englang and other horrible things they did.
Lots of people where profiting from slave trade 200 years ago and we don't prosecute any ancestors of those people today. I really don't know what your point is.
Where I live, The police are generally worse armed than the population. They're also haven't been any unwarranted police shootings in my memory. The only police shooting that I can remember happening in the came with a whole firefight. Unfortunately, this is generally uncommon in the more authoritarian states.
If the little piggy were a capitalist instead of a libertarian, he would have a pack of wolfhounds who would fuck that wolf up if he came near the piggy's house.
Without a government to keep them in check, the wolfhounds would be the ones in charge, and everybody would have to pay them or their shit would get wrecked.
Yep. That's why the piggies set up a system of government. If the wolfhounds start going back on their word, society collapses and the wolves move in. With an orderly system, enforced by the wolfhounds who themselves are subject to the democracy set up by the piggies, everyone's house stays up and wolves are kept back.
Out-competing and out-organising them. Decommodifying things, e.g. things like housing cooperatives and similar are an antidote to the real-estate market. Also, capturing even state structures, replacing hierarchical power into horizontal relations where you can, no topic is too small there. If the stars align just right simply changing the way the city's road planning authorities communicates, how it comes to decisions, can cause a cultural shift making the electorate want to have more of that stuff. With a thousand little things organised that way it becomes harder and harder for the people at large to not ask "hey why aren't we doing this big thing like that".
Ultimately, the enemy is not one particular thing but the idea that organisation necessarily involves hierarchy and domination.
A Care Bears episode.
Any attempt at solidarity with the police ends with them turning on the rest of us. It's how they got unions and everyone else still had to fight to get them
When interpreting the comic, I find it interesting to keep in mind that a wolf pack is a family unit, consisting of parents of children. So the wolf is taking the property for his family. The comic is advocating banditry, basically.
I think that's a bit extreme - there are many different varieties of anarchism (some even say that every anarchist has their own definition, which makes the term itself very non-descript). Some might need to devolve to violence but I'm not convinced all of them do.
We were robbed of a truly incredibly human being when Graeber passed away. I'm a huge fan of "Debt: The First 5000 Years". And I'm heartbroken that "Bullshit Jobs" was the last publication he produced.
You may be happy to know he and David Wengrow wrote The Dawn of Everything. It was published posthumously but his fingerprints are all over it. Great book to boot! Pirate Enlightenment was also published posthumously. Haven't had a chance to read it but I think it's safe to assume it's great too.
I really loved it (Pirate Enlightenment) as well. It's not as life changing a read as Debt or Dawn, but its a nice story and gives a little hope in the emergent nature of democracy. Who doesn't love a pirate story?
I skimmed it. It's bullshit. Reminds me of the "not technically a lie but essentially a lie" bullshit that the door-to-door "have you heard the Good News" religious bastards would try to sucker you in with when I was a kid in the South. A lot of "like us" type bullshit.
If you're stupid enough, you might think it makes sense. But it's a fairytale.
I'm not saying the author is stupid. I'm saying he's maliciously pandering to stupid people.
Let's take a super quick example.
If there’s a line to get on a crowded bus, do you wait your turn and refrain from elbowing your way past others even in the absence of police? If you answered “yes”
I'll try to get past my gag reflex at how condescending this is. But sure. Start with an eminently, universally reasonable position.
The most basic anarchist principle is self-organization
Still sounds fairly reasonable, but the intelligent among you might be thinking "hmm, sounds pretty reductive"
Everyone believes they are capable of behaving reasonably themselves. If they think laws and police are necessary, it is only because they don’t believe that other people are. But if you think about it, don’t those people all feel exactly the same way about you?
Now we've gone fully into "only really dumb people aren't skeptical at this point" territory. I mean, first of all, in the interest of saving your mental health, it's a decent idea to ignore any statement that starts with "but if you think about it". However even going past that, you get to the premise: "I'm a good person, therefore everyone is a good person!" Which is...like...seven-year-old logic.
Anarchists argue that almost all the anti-social behavior which makes us think it’s necessary to have armies, police, prisons, and governments to control our lives, is actually caused by the systematic inequalities and injustice
This is the part where we go off the deep end. The author hopes you're either not paying attention or are really stupid at this point.
If you're that easily swayed into believing something is bullshit, I can see how you got into anarchism.
Well, fuck you and your bad faith style of arguing, too.
I'm not saying the essay is thorough or even a complete rundown of anarchist ideology. It's more a easy-going rebuttal of societal contract theory, based on the presumed everyday life experience of the reader. Suggesting that this essay is a conclusive summary of anarchism and the reason why people "get into anarchism" is about as strawman as it gets.
The essay simply explains one core tenant of anarchism: that humans rely on cooperation and trust on a core fundamental level in everyday situations, even in capitalism. Societal structures collapse once that base-level of cooperation doesn't exist.
The essay simply explains one core tenant of anarchism: that humans rely on cooperation and trust on a core fundamental level in everyday situations, even in capitalism. Societal structures collapse once that base-level of cooperation doesn’t exist.
Because people who will not cooperate may be rare, but they are not vanishingly rare. They are common enough that we need explicit rules backed by the violence of the State to enforce them. Everyone knows this at a base level too. That loud neighbor. That guy flipping you off in traffic. The woman at the store eyeing the jewelry case a little too hard. If we didn't have laws, and cops to enforce them, these people would do what they wanted regardless of what anyone else wanted.
Which leads to the follow-up bullshit of "if you just destroy the protective power of the State, all the bad people will actually be good people!" Yeah and rainbows shoot out my ass when I fart, too.
Lol, and you complain about Graeber writing bullshit. xD
In what way is your "bad person" example any better that the waiting for the bus example Graeber gave?
If humanity was that sellfish, it would have died out about 100000 years ago. You're spouting unscientific bullshit and act as if you're the only reasonable person in the room. Classic lib moment.
I dunno about 100,000 years ago, but around 50,000 years ago is when we finished exterminating the Neanderthals.
Humans are not inherently good.
But regardless of how good or bad we are, surely you realize how insane it is to suggest that there could ever exist a society that is 100% free from bad actors, both internal and external? Because in a society without cops the one willing and able to resort to the most violence is king.
So the problem with cops is not that they might be local folks handling domestic disputes, it's that they keep you from squatting inside a building that is "for lease" owned by the company two towns over? Is that the capital interests part?
While that part is much televised, I can't say that I've ever seen an officer do any of that. I HAVE seen police perform a core function of keeping the peace between individuals on more then one occasion.
Sure, any instance of that is a problem, but besides stopping strikes these all seem like things your neighborhood "us vs them" group might do. Or, in the case of eviction, just the regular members of the community. Admittedly, in the eviction case though that's only for delinquency in "rent to own" probably.
Point being, by and large community policing is a standard function of society and I think it's the standard function of police EXCEPT perhaps in large metros where police are enforcers outside their own neighborhoods.
While that part is much televised, I can't say that I've ever seen an officer do any of that. I HAVE seen police perform a core function of keeping the peace between individuals on more then one occasion.
You understand that this is pretty much nothing but anecdotal evidence, right? Maybe ask a minority or precarious workers how they see the cops. The peace police keep is mostly a fiction.
but besides stopping strikes these all seem like things your neighborhood "us vs them" group might do.
Not if the militia is delegated by the community. The community wont order its' militia by consensus to beat up part of the community.
Point being, by and large community policing is a standard function of society and I think it's the standard function of police EXCEPT perhaps in large metros where police are enforcers outside their own neighborhoods.
That's not the role modern police took in a historical context. It has been created to maintain private property relations and that still is its' core function.
I suppose we will have to use our sets of anecdotal evidence and agree to disagree.
I can't argue that police reform is unnecessary because it is. Despite that face I don't think you can say that police aren't also making DUI arrests, responding to neighborhood disturbances, providing safety and first response for incidents on the road, and other non-state enforcing sorts of issues. Public perspective is important, but I think the ACAB crowd would also be inclined to tell you that anarchists are fundamentally dangerous, animal rights protesters are disruptive and misguided, and a bunch of other stuff that is "valid opinion" but is hardly accurate or well considered.
I would contend that ANY policing or militia unit will eventually come to be an enforcer of private "property relations" to a greater or lesser extent for any society that permits the accumulation of wealth or value, but that's not the fault of the rule enforcing groups. Someone has to keep the peace. (Maybe here's your whole political point idk).
The last thing I'll say is
Not if the militia is delegated by the community. The community wont order its' militia by consensus to beat up part of the community.
This is bogus. Little towns in middle America do exactly this. Progressivism vs conservativism here near the birthplace of the KKK is not a quiet and harmonious affair as signs, graffiti, and even open displays of aggression show. People are nasty and people are good, but there are both types for sure.
I don't think any of your principles in this thread are wrong per se, but I'm not seeing how they scale beyond a small town.
I suppose we will have to use our sets of anecdotal evidence and agree to disagree.
I'm pretty sure the data on police violence is on my side of the argument.
Despite that face I don’t think you can say that police aren’t also making DUI arrests, responding to neighborhood disturbances, providing safety and first response for incidents on the road, and other non-state enforcing sorts of issues.
Maybe. However, I have a high priority on how the capitalist system is not only imprisoning the many to the benefit of the few, but also currently in the process of destroying the habitat of our species. As such, the systemic role of the police in our current liberal capitalistic system is the most vital issue, IMHO. You yourself said that police reform is necessary. Most of the positive examples you listed can be done by public servants without a gun and the state issued monopoly on violence.
Public perspective is important, but I think the ACAB crowd would also be inclined to tell you that anarchists are fundamentally dangerous, animal rights protesters are disruptive and misguided, and a bunch of other stuff that is “valid opinion” but is hardly accurate or well considered.
I don't really get that point. Firstly, because "the ACAB crowd" probably knows that anarchists are harmless to the vast majority of the population (and considering their political power, also harmless to the rest of the population). Also: what does public opinion have to do with the validity of a political philosophy? Was slavery less wrong in the past due to the racist beliefs of the populance?
I would contend that ANY policing or militia unit will eventually come to be an enforcer of private “property relations” to a greater or lesser extent for any society that permits the accumulation of wealth or value, but that’s not the fault of the rule enforcing groups. Someone has to keep the peace. (Maybe here’s your whole political point idk).
Yeah, you kinda got it right there. The whole concept of private property is toxic. Once you believe that, it's a logical conclusion to not be the biggest fan of the people protecting that concept. (It's also about the job both attracting bully-like personalities and fostering those tendencies in the people with those jobs, but that's more of an individualistic critique)
Little towns in middle America do exactly this. Progressivism vs conservativism here near the birthplace of the KKK is not a quiet and harmonious affair as signs, graffiti, and even open displays of aggression show. People are nasty and people are good, but there are both types for sure.
I just find it a very bad-faith argument against council rule by concensus, to argue with a scenario where both society and the state condoned progroms and actively taught racist beliefs.
I don’t think any of your principles in this thread are wrong per se, but I’m not seeing how they scale beyond a small town.
There are several examples of at least libertarian socialism. While those are not explicitly anarchistic, they sure have elements of what I'm describing. Historical examples are the Paris commune, anarchist Ukraine and 1930's Catalonia with the CNT/FAI. Contemporary libertarian socialist societies exist for example in Rojava and with the Neo-Zapatistas.
So what I'll leave with here is to clarify about public opinion:
You said I should ask high risk workers and minorities what they think about cops. I'm saying you can ask a lot of people what they think about anything and you're inclined to get a broad range of answers that are more or less extreme.
And also about people:
2016 and onward have made it pretty clear there is a plurality of perspectives that may all be toxic to a greater or lesser extent. This isn't just an artifact of the state: people disagree and sometimes in severe ways regardless of community size. It's not bad faith to say that if families can ostracize individuals and neighbor can turn against neighbor that adding a council and consensus doesn't make that go away. 60% vs 40% can still have nasty outcomes in conflict.
No, the article is explaining something similar to what Graeber called "everyday communism". That cooperation is a fundamental piece of life in human society.
That's not the same as saying that everybody is a little goody too shoes inside their heart.
To cut a long story short: anarchists believe that for the most part it is power itself, and the effects of power, that make people stupid and irresponsible.
it is power itself, and the effects of power, that make people stupid and irresponsible.
I read it as; most people are negatively affected on both sides of power imbalances. The natural answer to this is to attempt to remove power imbalances.
In the context of decision making, no matter if you think humans are inherently goody two shoes or not; most people respond well to increased responsibility. More democratised decision making and ownership in a community creates a positive feedback loop. An easy to understand example is in a company a flat bonus for meeting your target gives no motivation to a worker after they meet that target compared to worker coops splitting profits evenly between all workers because they share ownership of the company.
People can be extremely evil and still respond positively to being given ownership of something. You're reading what you want to read, not whats actually there.
You're splitting hairs. Evil people given ownership of something don't automatically stop being evil. They tend to be MORE evil. It's a ridiculous premise.
Yeah I was like "maybe I was wrong" but then I came to that part and just had to laugh.
I would love to assume that everyone is benevolent - but they simply are not. It's not like there aren't sufficient examples of states without police or military power. They surely don't correspond to this fantastical view.
Authoritarians shouldn't hold a monopoly on the communist label. Anarchism is much more in line with communism imo. Seeing as both anarchic and communist societies would both be stateless, moneyless, and classles
people on Reddit avoid the Fediverse b/c of its “extremist political views"
If you're a Reddit regular, you might want to throw stones. The Fediverse exists in large part because of the extremist political views of Reddit administrators.
Existential Comics aren't advocating any of these philosophical/ideological arguments. Its usually about it being funny to inject these things where we wouldn't normally expect them, or to have well-known philosophers behave out of character, etc.
The last bullet point rule of this community says:
Adult content is not allowed. This community aims to be fun for people of all ages.
However, the cute little piggy is literally being eaten alive - look at his cute whittle frowny face! Why, he is shocked, shocked I say, shocked! ... but perhaps capitalist piggy should not be quite so shocked, hrm?:-P In any case, it is "gore":
Murder, bloodshed, violence.
What makes it "funny" is the dehumanization - the play between how piggy wanted to devour the wolf('s work product), but instead got devoured himself, the implication being that the turnabout is fair play. I get it, I do think it's funny, it is an inspiring message, and if I had seen a gore warning I would have clicked past it and enjoyed it. Although, I will say that the gore portion does seem unnecessary - if capitalist piggy had been like on a treadmill hooked up to make electricity for the wolf, that would have worked almost as well to convey a message, without escalation. Anyway, I'm not here to criticize the author in any way, and the latter suggestion in particular does seem to spoil the purity of the vision, where what is best for the wolf is decided by himself (the carnivorous, apparently hungry wolf), not by either piggy or the external viewer. It's the ultimate anarchist freedom - maybe wolf will get shot in the evening, but this afternoon he dines on piggy!!
My points though are: (1) intellectual honesty - we can do whatever we want but why can't we follow our own rules that we claim to follow, in the rules tab? Is this truly "fun for people of all ages", REALLY? and (2) If we want to grow the Fediverse, e.g. to get more content, then like it or not we must either restrict ourselves to post solely more mainstream stuff (booo - yes that's right I'm booing this suggestion, bc I very much like an eclectic variety of message content and format), or else label the things that most "average" people are going to find objectionable. Like porn, I'm not suggesting to ban it, only label it so that it doesn't catch people unawares. Otherwise, back to intellectual honesty, we should just give up trying to claim that we want to grow the Fediverse, and accept that we don't really mean it - this is what it is, apparently, and we are never going to invest efforts to change it.
Right now, I am too ashamed to continue recommending the Fediverse to anyone else, as I have done several times in the past, if it is going to remain something that only the MOST extreme among leftists are going to be able to enjoy, and even among that crowd, the subset that ignores our own rules set up for our very selves.
