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this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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Anarchy sounds cool until you realize billionaires would just own the militias and now we're right back to an oligarchy.
Sorry but from your comment I get the idea that you have the popular misconception that anarchy just means “no government”.
Anarchy is the destruction of all heirarchy including the state, this includes class heirarchy. Anarchy is very similar to utopian marxism, just skipping the “dictatorship of the proletariat” part.
Anarchy is the rejection of unjust hierarchies, not all hierarchies. Certainly a parent would have authority over a small child insofar as that’s reasonably justified. Similarly, some expert may be elected to a position where they’re democratically authorized to make specific decisions so we don’t have to vote a thousand times a day about specialized matters.
On the whole, anarchism just means a lot more democracy.
I think we should not confuse the authority based on oppression, and those based on expertise. However the last one could be justified in front of the community (like the Union), so I would use the word "hierarchical"; the trust we gave in those people is freely agreed between equals.
Agree with you, depending on the anarchist theory hierarchy disappears more or less but never entirely. It depends on the system chosen and modified by peoples though, so these example may not apply to some anarchist societies, especially the part about the children if you consider what anarchist thinkers wrote and experimented about education
If it’s real anarchy, there can’t be billionaires. One of the central tenets that almost all anarchists agree upon is that capitalism and the state support one another, and so both need to be demolished simultaneously. Destroying one while preserving the other will, as you point out, lead right back to the old system. We see the similar but inverse situation in Russia and China, where attempts to destroy capitalism with a strong state also lead back to oligarchy.
You might be thinking of ancapism, which is widely rejected by most anarchists and not considered to be a real part of the movement.
Their point is that you'll find it difficult to "demolish both" the state and concentrations of wealth and power "simultaneously" when you're fighting through billionaire-owned militias. Good luck.
And?
Radical social change is always difficult. But if you’re implying that authoritarianism is more effective at defeating capitalism, I disagree, and I think there’s strong evidence from history that undermines such a hypothesis.
That said, I think for anarchism to succeed there does need to be a sort of balance and destructive competition between the existing powers of the state and private ownership (or foreign states as we see in Rojava). Anarchists should observe and act with this dynamic in mind to prevent the total domination of any one structure over society, as this will be much more difficult to overcome. But eventually the goal is to build social power that is greater than either of them put together.
So in an anarchist society, how do people settle disputes? There can't be a law without some form of governing body to enforce the law. Seems like a might makes right would bubble right back up to the top.
Well, the answer to this question depends somewhat on the specific strain of anarchism, but for social anarchism, which is the branch I’m most familiar with, the idea is that councils of local people at the scale of the conflict would settle it according to their own internal processes. One successful example of a process from our current society that would be compatible with anarchism is community mediation. But the exact process would in most cases be up to the local community based upon their needs and what works for them.
I think you are right that there is a bit of a tension in terms of governance vs. individual freedom, but this is inherent to all systems of human organization and life. There is a need for governance, but the idea is to make that governance as free from hierarchy and coercion as practically possible. How far one can take this idea is an open question, but I think it’s highly likely that a more liberated society than our current one is very achievable.
The true answer is "it depends". Each community may be slightly different.
The main thing is that there is no state that holds a monopoly on power. This reenforces the idea that anarchism probably won't come about from a quick revolution. It needs to be built over time and with trust and the understanding that we must work together.
An answer would be that the community uses some combination of restorative justice, therapy, arbitration, or in the worst cases exile or violence towards the offender.
It would be worth reading more about criminal justice on theanarchistlibrary.org.
The way some Australian anarchists solved disputes over a crime for 60,000 years was a concept called payback. The community would get together and decide on a punishment the wronged party can reasonably inflict upon the perpetrator of the crime. Payback serves to satisfy the victim's need for justice and prevent cycles of revenge. After the punishment is given, both sides of the conflict forgive each other and the community can continue to function in unity.
This is just one way a stateless, moneyless, classless society would settle disputes. There are many different ways to run an anarchist government.
Just leave that to your friendly local warlord to settle.
And the very far left anarchists, the soulists, reject reality itself, and don't believe in a real anything. But soulists also hate ancaps and recommend giving them all a radical headectomy.
Anarchism can work (it is working everyday currently). It just does not look the same everywhere. The idea would be for many communities to build strong mutual aid such that they don't need to rely on an oligarch. We need to move away from capitalism and form communities that can associate with each other and help one another. It isn't so much of a one time revolution, but a process that needs to be worked towards over time.
But then a warlord shows up, kills a bunch of you and enslaves everyone else. You can't mutual aid yourself out of that.
Of course you can. Anarchism is not (but can be) a pacifist ideology. However, the idea is to build up strong communities and relationships with those around you. I certainly would not sit by idly if someone came to hurt me, my loved ones, etc. An anarchist society would look to extend those bonds to those you live with/ near and associate with.
Uh huh. And who operates the hospitals? And I mean a modern hospital, with fMRI capability, a full surgical ward, a biochem lab, a research department, a pediatric ward, and a 24/7 emergency room.
Complex institutions require reliable infrastructure and task specialization, both of which require stability, order, and the resources of a larger, well-organized civilization to support them.
The same people would operate a hospital. There are already anarchists from every walk of life, so in a hypothetical post capitalist society they could continue to work together in a hospital.
As I have put forward in other comments, anarchism does not spring up overnight. It would take years of work to get to (if it ever does). They main thing is that we take responsibility for ourselves and work together in a system of mutual aid.
This all will look different in each community. In communities that are able to grow larger with many people, there will be larger hospitals with more specialized departments. In smaller communities, there may not be a hospital or it may have limited services. But that is already the case in our current system. The major difference is that people will not have to second guess going in for care for fear that they cannot afford it.
There are many obstacles to a truely anarchist society. But that doesn't mean that we can't work towards one. People do not lose the desire to care for others, to research, or to organize because they don't have a government.
If you are interested in learning more, I suggest looking at the Zapatista movement in Mexico. They have built multiple hospitals and clinics since they took the region. Again, this will look different in each area as anarchism is not a one size fits all approach.
The problem you are highlighting is that a system like many here want requires wall to wall adoption.
There aren't very many fmri engineers, heart surgeons, etc.
What if one of them decides to start offering their services at a "market rate" rather than benevolently assisting their neighboring communities freely?
Then what happens if one community happens to have access to resources that person wants, and the others don't?
Is the fmri engineer compelled by force to assist everyone and share their knowledge? Obviously impossible.
Mutual aid includes distributing weapons and training people to defend their homes. Revolutionary Catalonia had an army and went to war, and it was anarchist.
Yeah, and then Franco came in with more guns and Catalonia lived under fascism for the next 50 years. You can (and should) resist with violence if needed, but there's a limit to what a small group can do in the face of an organised military that doesn't care about who they kill.
And where is that fascist government now?
Replaced by a central, non-anarchist government, with a royalty, which is still opposing Catalan independence. And even though the party in charge is called socialist, they're not challenging capitalism because they know how that ends.
So Anarchism and fascism both lost. I'm sure liberalism will lose too sooner or later..
Today's empires.... tomorrow's ashes.....
One can only hope it gets replaced by something better.
What billionaires? In anarchy if someone tries to hoard wealth, we all show up at their house with baseball bats.
Or they will hire dudes with bats to protect them by promising them a lot of wealth.
Building a monarchy 101.
Baseball bats lol
Who is we? The anarcho capitalist libertarians will have their wealth hoarded and defended like it's 10.000 BCE
"We all", so it's not an anarchy? I mean the second you get everyone agreeing on something and acting it out, it's no longer anarchy. It's a commune of VERY like minded people that value keeping to them selves, but militarize the second someone threatens their way of life. And unless it's a hive mind, such a force will naturally find some sort of organizing body or fizzle out. Switzerland is a lot closer to what you're describing than anarchy.
anarchy doesn't forbid collaboration between large groups of people. It just forbids forcing them to collaborate if they don't want to.
Anarchy doesn't work if nobody upholds it (by bashing those trying to establish hierarchy/authority). Just like democracy doesn't work if people don't participate.
By "we all" I mean the local billionaire bashers club.
Sounds like a medieval guild bullying the rich shitty noble trying to have his way with the town. What I'm trying to get at is, that's it's a nice idea, but who's keeping the Billionaire Bashers Club (BBC, lol) in check? Also we essentially just created two factions that would be fighting over power. Unless the BBC starts policing people to prevent them from conspiring in the first place. Doesn't really matter what angle we approach this by, we're creating a governing body here.
Billionaires already own the police, which number over 700,000 in the US alone and the national police budget would be equivalent to the third most expensive army in the world. If this is already the state of things, how could we blame that on the anarchists? This argument effectively boils down to "we shouldn't have a revolution because the rich would have a monopoly on violence", which we already know to be the case in our current society. So in this way, nothing at all is holding us back. The worst case scenario would be a preservation of the status quo. Even if the Proud Boys, III%ers, Patriot Front, Oath Keepers, etc. all combined into a giant mercenary group, it wouldn't be even close to how the cops already are. They're one of the most militarized police forces in the world with access to heavy equipment such as assault rifles, chemical weapons, acoustic weaponry, MRAPs, and much more.
If the revolution ever comes, we'll just have to take all the billionaires to the Ipatiev House. A revolution would already have no recourse but to defeat any police opposition anyway, so there really is no difference whether the billionaires are around or not. Those billionaires, if they have any sense of self-preservation, would be smarter to take their money and simply flee abroad.