The only way anarchy can work.

agreed. a leader rises up, people follow them, and boom! we're back into some form of government!
the strongest best wolf takes over and takes everyone's money and kills whoever questions them or doesn't agree.

 

take, steal what you want, or get shot in trying to do so.
maybe a barter system, but I doubt everyone plays that fair.

 

That's all well and good, boycott and bring down authority and government, but then there's no authority to keep the criminals in check, and then you have chaos and violence.

 

anarchists voting for a leader of a coersive institution, now thats an oxymoron.

 

i reckon anarchy would work if entheogens were a part of the cultural norm

 

Anarchy works if anarchists work at it.

 

Anarchy in my opinion will work, but work can be described many ways in this case. With anarchy there will be violence. However anarchy is to free us from our slave chains, it is not to make the world a safer place. If humans have a destructive nature and resort to primal instinct, well that's just the way it is suppose to be. There will be massive amounts of death and that's just the way it is suppose to be. People are suppose to die, humans were never meant to live in such great numbers. Technology and medicine was never suppose to be here. Governments and society shouldn't exist, it is killing our planet. But i don't care the planet.

 

I like the Native American approach.

 

I love this Quote from Alan Moore

"I believe that all other political states are in fact variations or outgrowths of a basic state of anarchy; after all, when you mention the idea of anarchy to most people they will tell you what a bad idea it is because the biggest gang would just take over. Which is pretty much how I see contemporary society. We live in a badly developed anarchist situation in which the biggest gang has taken over and have declared that it is not an anarchist situation- that it is a capitalist or a communist situation. But I tend to think that anarchy is the most natural form of politics for a human being to actually practice."

I'm sure you guys have heard of Peter Kropotkin ? That should speak volumes of how anarchistic communism should be run. Noam Chomsky has other ideas that are amazing. If you watch "Manufacturing consent" I'm sure the you'd get rather pissed off. Edward Abbey too.

I personally feel that every bit of our survival depends on nature. Technology used for war is senseless. Take the whole military budget of the world and funnel it into technology, clean energy, and efficient local manufacturing. We are highly based on a sense of social order based around specialization, expandability and skills as well as the more cultural clout, power, influence ect. The black death sure seems to fix those problems temporarily before the Renaissance. Hope it doesn't take that or another holocaust for the human race to make things work.
The closest system that would work would still have have to be a hierarchy of sorts, if Only for the point of direction labor and safety.

 

Anarchism = Real Democracy. Look at it that way. What we have now in the western world is not real democracy. It is a plutocracy. It is a system where only a few people have all the power. This maybe less bad in places like Northwestern Europe but it still exists.

 

So (and I ask this without being combative) what examples of real democracy do we have going by your logic? And I'm not talking about a commune or a group of squatters. What society, in the last 100 years or so, offered the the best example of democracy?

I think anarchism is a fine idea. But, I'm sorry to say, anarchy will remain just that: An idea. I don't understand how a citizen of a Western Civilization can say, "Break down everything we have, start over." True, our governments aren't perfect. The American system of corrupt capitalism/corrupt government is often sickeningly brutal. But the Western democracies -- and yes, our capitalistic roots -- are a fine bedrock to build upon as long as we work toward responsible democracy.

I'll concede that what we have in America today isn't a responsible democracy (and certainly not responsible capitalism). In fact, aside from a maybe few years under FDR, I don't think we've ever had responsible capitalism (which to me would be free markets mixed with ideas from the social democrat school of thought).

But all this talk -- and this isn't all directed at the last poster -- about how the Western nations aren't "real" democracies or how humans would be better off in either hunter-gatherer communities or small communities of workers deciding such and such isn't just unrealistic, but would likely lead to a more brutal system than we have now.

Radical ideas like anarchy are great fodder for Political Science essays. But the tenants (and caveats) of Western Civilization aren't going anywhere no matter how awesome Zinn and Chomsky are (and I'm a fan of both). I'd contend that the die-hard anarchists work toward more attainable goals in and outside our current system, rather than harping about an ideology that's rather impractical in our current geopolitical climate.

Also: Tits

 

It's by no means impractical if you just give it a try. Anarchist Spain worked quite well, that is a really good example of how anarchism can spring up in a modern age.

Please define "democracy". Doesn't democracy mean the people have the power? How do people have the power today's system, whether it be the parliamentary model of the UK or the congressional model of the US. Honestly how much power do the people really have? And same goes for countries who have adopted the same style of government, which so many developed countries have tried to do. The working class certainly has no power in the US, every 4 years or so a ruler is elected in the executive and a bunch of rulers are elected in the legislator. They have no legal obligation to listen to the people, they are supposed to be representatives but the fact is that they don't have to pay attention to popular opinion. Well they do to a certain extent, since they have to become re-elected. But it's certainly not imperative that they listen to the people on all issues....as long as they handle a couple popular issues and get those known to the public, they can fool them while acting against the will of people on other issues, without getting them as much publicized. Honestly, how is this real democracy? I mean maybe if there was a law that a representative had to take an objective poll before passing a bill, and had to listen to the popular vote, then it can be kind of called a democracy. But that ain't what we have today do we?

Furthermore, I think you are mistaking anarchy as a system of no system. Or something akin to chaos. The fact is, an anarchist society would be highly organized, because if it wasn't then hierarchy and massive inequality would develop (eg feudalism).

That's another important point too. At its core, anarchy seeks to abolish all forms of coercive hierarchies. I think it is a basic human drive not to be apart of coercive hierarchies if they can manage to do so, whether that be social, racial, gender, sexual, or economic. I don't see why such an idea is impossible to achieve, or at the very least something that we can work towards.

We don't have to destroy existing structures, we can work with what we have and move towards the goal of freedom, equality, and justice for all. It might look very different in the end, but on the way it will seem as if not much has changed over time so to speak. How would such an anarchist society look? Well we might as well look at some of the real world examples, Anarchist Spain is a good place to start.

But if you want me to explain further. Most human affairs will be dealt with at the local level. The people would control the means of production within the local community. Yes it would resemble a commune, however it won't be so strongly collectivized to the point where people have to give up their personal liberties. There would still be a free market, where people are free to do as they please, just individuals would not be allowed to gain massive amounts of wealth while the rest of the population is spiraling in the opposite direction, towards poverty (and thus cycling back to feudalism and crony capitalism). There would be democratic control over how we use natural resources, the environment, and all land owned in common. Possession of "property" would be based off of occupancy or use, not whoever claims it first. There is of course room for other type of concepts of possession, but that is fine as long as the civil liberties of all are preserved.

So essentially an organization would still exist, and this organization may do many of the tasks governments today do. However unlike governments, the organizations will be completely voluntary and be at the mercy of the people, not the other way around. The way the government is set up now, the government has the power to override what the people want. This would not be allowed in an anarchist societie....all organizations must be free, horizontally managed systems that can be dissolved by the people.

Such organizations does not have to be limited to the local sphere. We certainly can have federations of organizations where each community helps each other out, and the more prosperous communities help the more needy ones. Such a system can be global in scope, and instead of having a world government, we would have a free democratically controlled organization that works from the bottom up.

Look at it like this. Right now things are often handled from the top down. Decision making for instance is a top down affair. Honestly the main difference between anarchy and today, is that instead of top down, it would be bottom up. Those individuals who have been empowered with special decision making, will be at the "rule" of the ones who empowered them with such privileges.

Another way to look at it is today everything is done vertically. An anarchy would be different in that things will be done horizontally instead.

 

@ Dragon

I feel ya on a lot of your points, especially the democracy question. But again, I just don't see how you can view anarchy as a stable system or a realistic alternative to what we have today.

I'm not going to get into crazy specifics here (you just typed a lot of shit in your last post, dude lol), but for brevity's sake, I'm gonna say that the main difference between anarchists (you) and people who don't think the ideology is feasible in the long run (me) is this: People like me, who don't think anarchy is a plausible alternative, have a pretty low opinion of people.

I just don't see how a bunch of small, run-from-the-bottom-up communities won't end up getting their asses kicked by a larger, more militaristic community. Eventually the assholes and douchebags of the world will find a way to fuck up everybody's shit. And I see no precedent in human history to back up the anarchist's train of thought. Sure, perhaps there were a few anarchist (or similar) societies in the past, but where are they now?

And I don't think it's a question of "Oh, well the assholes of the world are capitalists/communists/non-democratic and that's why they fucked up *whatever*". Ideologies and political systems of different nations are just the whims of powerful people/institutions using their power. Eventually, now matter how awesome an anarchist world might be, some asshole is gonna do some asshole-ish shit.

Sorry, I wrote more than I wanted to. And it's all very disjointed. Long day, too many beers...but I'm enjoying this little back-and-forth. Cool discussion.

 

the only way anarchy can work is if people want it to. thats the beauty of anarchy, its also its major drawback. if everyone wants it to work, then awesome. everyone works together, there is no war, no figthing, everyone lives peacefully. but if enough people dont want it to work... then we're fucked. right? right. now, if we tried to overthrow the american government, we would be crushed. utterly defeated. why? they have an organized government army. but in anarchy, you cant have that. because there would be no one to COMMAND that army, because there's no government, no organization. so if enough people wanted to, they wouldn't follow the "common laws" and what would we do to stop them? nothing. we can't. because there is no REAL law so we cant persecute them. unless it was only one person out of 20 people. then we could get together and try to stop the democrat. but if it were 10 out of 50 working together to bring us down.... then we couldn't function. because they would be working together, governing each other. which we wouldn't be... idk its a big mind fuck really. the onyl weay it can work is if everyone WANTS it to work. catch my drift?

 

i didnt read the posts before me but these are my thoughts on anarchy.

Does anarchy entail people having jobs? working under wages? are there politicians? is there free-trade enterprise? is there monopolization?

Anarchy by definition is without authority, or at least no enforcement of authority. That's a continuous conundrum, because it's impossible for there not to be some kind of authority, especially if you do have politicians, free enterprise, capitalism, the job system, etc. And of course by having the opposite of capitalism, some kind of socialism, it's a contradiction to anarchy.

If an anarchist believes in absolute no authority, while supporting free-trade, they are very misled and not right in their thinking.
Anarchists need to adopt the idea of science reigning over political decisions.

The first thing people must do is realize that capitalism that is especially without control is disastrous to pretty much any moral. capitalism alone is based on imbalance. everyone created equal is a joke as long as capitalism is around.
And secondly, people need to realize they need to ditch, maybe not abruptly ditch but maybe slowly get rid of the monetary system and adopt the acknowledgement of technology. with a monetary system, it ensures a system anywhere in between absolute free reign capitalism and absolute communism. any monetary system has it's pros and cons, but never all pros or at least never equal in it's inhibitions. Also, science is an authority we don't normally question, but it is the most equal, and powerful force we have as humans. Science already reigns over our decisions of what kind of medicine you need, or what statistics make a better decision, or how to operate on this human to heal him. If you take a self sustainable factory that is made through ideals of freedom, without jobs, working with technology, and replace it with any and every politician we have, we then have a just system.

 

Oh, I feel ya. But this is exactly my point. 'Everyone' isn't going to want it to work. We're never, ever, ever, going to see the day when everyone agrees on this stuff. So, without trying to sound harsh, harping on why anarchy would be the best possible system (non-system?) is pointless.

That's why I say anarchists, while advocating an admirable ideology, would be better off supporting more plausible goals.

 

This seems to be a common argument of statists. I am not being facetious here, but I have to ask you: why do you need any social ideology to be fully established before you accept it? Do you do this to your own ideas- do you require that they be fully established before you accept them as valid? Or do you hold this as a special standard (Special Pleading) specifically for Anarchism?

Secondly, and this is a side issue because I don't think your epistemic standard has any validity anyway, how do you define society? Do the societies of the French revolution of 1968 or the Spanish Revolution count as "societies" for you? If not, why not?

 

First of all, and I mean no offense, why would you call me a "statist"? I'm not a statist. I'm just a motherfucker who lives in a state, in a world that's always had states (at least for the greater part of human history), especially very powerful states who've crushed less powerful states*, which is, basically, why I think anarchism isn't plausible. Instead of "statist" I'd prefer you call me a "dude who's realistic". But anyway...

What do you mean by 'fully established'? I'll agree that there have been short-lived examples of anarchy-in-action. What I'm saying is that it isn't a viable system (or non-system) because some powerful motherfucker -- financially or militarily -- will come along and crush it.

And yes, those example you provided perfectly qualify as societies. (Dunno why you'd ask that, really. Although I haven't ventured into this thread in a while and I haven't read over the previous posts so forgive me if I missed something. I dig beers after work, dog lol)

But my point, which I already stated several times, is this: Okay, anarchy can work on a small scale for a short time. But how can you say that it's a plausible alternative when there's no anarchist society that's been able to hold it's ground -- military, for example -- against another nation?

I'm not saying anarchism isn't a wonderful idea. It is. And if there was a way to make it work, I'd support it. But it isn't realistic. All the theorizing in the world isn't going to make it so. Because some asshole is going to have a bunch of ICBMs and the power to use them. Really, and again, I mean no disrespect, how is an anarchist society going to combat that? Unless, of course, the anarchists have ICBMs too. In which case they'd be having community meetings about how to use the ICBMs while the dictator (or, more likely, not even a dictator) nextdoor is launching those motherfuckers.

Excuse my long-winded habits.

 

Sid Vicious, patron saint of anarchists.

 

I'm calling you a statist because you use statist arguments. People who already understand Anarchism and why it works don't ask for examples of "societies." They already know the principles work in their own lives and in other people's lives. It's ridiculous for an Anarchist to ponder whether freedom and equality is workable. Of course it's workable. It is man's nature to want to be free and equal.