7 ms·

An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)

57 points by pointfree 9y ago

pmichaud 9y ago
A list of things that are wrong is pretty boring without plausible alternatives. Like, even if you're right, it doesn't matter because we're not comparing The Bad Thing to The Absence Of All Those Bad Things. That's trivial, of course bad things are bad. We're comparing The Bad Thing to A Different Set of Tradeoffs. That's the part I want to see.
- fiatjaf 9y ago
  It's not boring if the majority of people think these bad things are good.
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
“Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time“ https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill
- fiatjaf 9y ago
  Again? People paste that quote everywhere, as if Churchill or whoever said that was some sage with infinite wisdom.
  - kiliantics 9y ago
    He was also definitely not a good poster child for democracy, given his passion for colonialism.
danharaj 9y ago
> Anarchists believe in unmediated relations between free individuals, the absence of any coercive or alienating forces in societies, and an unquestionable, universal right to self-determination. If that sounds difficult to implement, I agree! I'm an anarchist because I think the principles so succinctly put are a good pole star for my personal life. At the scale of society I see Marxism as just as important. How to square the two? I don't know How to make a political program out of anarchism? I don't know, but I think it'll be possible with the right philosophical and scientific mindset. I think it would be a mindset quite radically different from how we currently approach the world. There are some immediate problems to ponder. For example, my fist is an unmediated relation between individuals. Does the idea of free individual preclude it? You can't base your politics only on what you think ought to be, but also how it ought to change when there is a violation of that preferred condition. Clearly there are times when a good anarchist (whatever that is) will throw a punch, and how ought an anarchist society deal with that? I like The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin as a thoughtful examination of society that tries to grapple with such small and dirty questions. As well as bigger questions of course. In that quote, I don't see a solution, or a goal, but an orientation. It frames the world in a way that asks you to focus on certain possibilities that might seem remote, but have existed and will exist so long as humanity exists. That's why I'm an anarchist and why I like and agree with this piece.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > Anarchists believe in unmediated relations between free individuals, the absence of any coercive or alienating forces in societies, and an unquestionable, universal right to self-determination If you and I can interface “unmediated” and freely, and I decide to use that freedom to take your shit, you need a “coercive or alienating force” to correct the wrong. Controlling this force is the history of civilisation.
  - wavefunction 9y ago
    That's true of Libertarianism as well.
    - krapp 9y ago
      Libertarians tend to accept that coercive force is sometimes necessary, particularly when it comes to property ownership and enforcing contracts, although they also sometimes disagree that a state and monopoly on force are necessary for the coercion. To this end, Libertarianism sometimes seems to me like a weak or pragmatic form of anarchy.
      - gbacon 9y ago
        Libertarians reject the initiation of coercion or violence but accept forceful response — at the gentlest intensity necessary — to repel such invasions. For example, a libertarian would be fine with a homeowner shooting dead an armed robber who had broken in. Ludwig von Mises was a minarchist, i.e., he advocated for the smallest state necessary. His student Murray Rothbard referred to himself as an anarchist or an anarchocapitalist. Of course, Rothbardians and Marxists mean entirely different concepts when they use the term anarchist.
    - sigil 9y ago
      On the contrary, libertarianism regards the law as force organized for the common defense and nothing more. [1] The protection of our negative rights is the one essential function of government in the libertarian view. I've always been curious: how does anarchism reconcile your right not to be harmed with the supposed right of other individuals to do anything they please, including harm you? Do we even have a right not to be harmed? If we do, how is justice served -- can we serve it ourselves, or should it be delegated somehow? Or are these questions "out of scope" and justice is handled on a case-by-case basis that's not prescribed by anarchism? [1] http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html
aaron-lebo 9y ago
With all due respect, if this is the best the anarchists have (and this article is from a respected individual and is decently written), you're fucked. These critiques are not new or without response. The problem is, this is 1000+ words of arguments about human nature, special pleading, etc, with NO sources. They describe known phenomena like control of the agenda and never call it that, I'm not sure if that's because they aren't aware of that term or they just fon't feel like attributing hundreds if not thousands of years of research before them. It'd be like if someone cloned Signal and acted like Moxie didn't exist. Cite something, anything that scholars who study politics and democracies have written, don't put forward these vague critiques with nothing backing it up. Many arguments that seem intuitive are wrong when faced with evidence, and this article and anarchists in general seem to forget that democracies have certain features (and misfeatures) that are responses to real world situations. Anarchism is a political ideology that's never met the real world, like a lot of ideologies on HN and elsewhere. This might convince the random Internet reader, but it's not going to convince anyone who has studied the topic. Here's a few politics 101 cites that are decent: https://www.amazon.com/Models-Democracy-3rd-David-Held/dp/0804754721 https://www.amazon.com/Models-Democracy-3rd-David-Held/dp/08... https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Its-Critics-Robert-Dahl/dp/0300049382/ref=pd_sim_14_5?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0300049382&pd_rd_r=P9Q9DD56X4WQMGMMHWWB&pd_rd_w=2SjSW&pd_rd_wg=7b7k2&psc=1&refRID=P9Q9DD56X4WQMGMMHWWB https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Its-Critics-Robert-Dahl/dp/... https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Second-Robert-Dahl/dp/0300194463/ref=pd_sim_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0300194463&pd_rd_r=P9Q9DD56X4WQMGMMHWWB&pd_rd_w=2SjSW&pd_rd_wg=7b7k2&psc=1&refRID=P9Q9DD56X4WQMGMMHWWB https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Second-Robert-Dahl/dp/03001... https://www.amazon.com/Future-Freedom-Illiberal-Democracy-Revised/dp/0393331520 https://www.amazon.com/Future-Freedom-Illiberal-Democracy-Re... Could tech people stick to what they are good at, or at least acknowledge the wider world of experience when they are making arguments?
- Top19 9y ago
  I very much enjoyed (and even laughed) reading your response. It’s very concerning to see people talk so positively about anarchy. Another word for anarchy is “nihilism”, which is its philosophical twin. Neither of these words are used a lot today, but “nihilism” you’ll see mentioned a lot in the build-up to WWII. Am currently reading the below book, which argues in its final chapter that a German invasion of Poland is imminent and is the next course of action Hitler will take. It was published in May 1939 in German, and translated in August 1939 to English. Germany invaded Poland on September 1st, 1939. The author is very clear that for all their flaws, capitalism and democracy are very reformable. And that a dictatorship of Fascism or Communism will dazzle with early successes before descending into violence both internally and externally. The Revolution Of Nihilism: Warning To The West https://www.amazon.com/dp/1258001071/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_RZCnAbKJPHR0V https://www.amazon.com/dp/1258001071/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_RZCn...
baldfat 9y ago
I thought all Anarchist now just called themselves Libertarians? As a Punk Rock Kid I had Anarchist showing up at shows trying to get people to join the movement. Then all the way through the 90s it go crazier. I can;t tell how obnoxious and violent things got. Now 20 years later they are all Libertarians now. It is safe to say I am not a anarchist nor libertarian but I am amazed how many people fail to see the history of anarchy and libertarian thought. Anarchy falls into self-serving narcissism.
- rootw0rm 9y ago
  First of all, violence is not Anarchism. The essence of Anarchy is non-violence. Google voluntaryism. So yes, of course real anarchists identify as libertarians, anarchism is the embodiment of libertarian philosophy, especially the non-aggression principal. (NAP)
cs702 9y ago
"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." - Winston S Churchill, November 11, 1947 Source: https://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form-of-government/ https://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-...
- mattmaroon 9y ago
  And we tried anarchy plenty. Power, unfortunately, abhors a vacuum.
  - confounded 9y ago
    Anarchism is much more than the absence of a national government. When and where was it tried plenty?
    - mattmaroon 9y ago
      From the dawn of humanity until a few thousand years ago. So roughly the first 99% of our existence, not to mention the hominids from which we evolved.
      - jessaustin 9y ago
        Could we say, then, that anarchism is better for the environment than most systems of government?
- ivm 9y ago
  "I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes." "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion." - Winston S Churchill
pointfree 9y ago
With all due respect I would have liked if the hackernews moderators had kept my original headline "An Anarchist Critique of Democracy by Moxie Marlinspike (Signal SMS), Windy Hart" I thought this article/transcript was of interest to hackernews in a large part due to one of the two authors being the author of the Open Whisper Systems Signal SMS app.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 9y ago
  I understand the feeling, but we've learned from experience that HN works better when the focus is on content rather than personalities. We've also learned that HN can't really have a substantive discussion about ideology. Something about open internet forums causes such discussions to revert to the mean, and from there to the bottom of the barrel, pretty quickly. But at least your submission was off the beaten track!
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
rootw0rm 9y ago
Voluntaryism is the only moral way. We deserve to live a peaceful existence free from threat of force.
mac01021 9y ago
They list lots of problems inherent in democracy. Then, in the conclusion, they hint that the next show/article is going to describe a reasonable system that doesn't have those problems. But I can't find the next episode anywhere.
jmull 9y ago
This is awfully childish. Anywhere you have two or more people "asserting a direct and unobstructed link between thought and action, between desires and their free fulfillment" you are going to have conflict... which means not everyone is going to be able to get and do everything and anything they want. Notice that this has nothing to do with democracy. It's an inevitable consequence of the existence of people who want things.
- kiliantics 9y ago
  Anarchists don't think that they will all just be able to do anything they want. They believe that the way people can reach a compromise with each other, given the constraints you mention, could be very different. They want it to happen on a horizontal and decentralised level, without the institutional hierarchies of the power structures we are forced to obey now.
0xBA5ED 9y ago
If the relations between free individuals is unmediated, they can interact in any way they choose. So if a group agrees to pool their resources and impose their collective will on others, then you just lost your anarchy. To eliminate "coercive forces", you'd need to ensure that no group or individual can acquire leverage over another.
- kiliantics 9y ago
  A big part of anarchist ideology is the notion of "solidarity". So if a group were to attempt to assert authority by coercive means like this, then people would ideally come together in solidarity to stop them. This is why anarchists and antifa show up to stop neo-nazis that are threatening minorities and other vulnerable groups.
  - 0xBA5ED 9y ago
    What you're describing is mob justice, which is essentially pure democracy.
kiliantics 9y ago
Amazing to see this discussion on HN! Here's another article that I'm pretty fond that explores how modern democracy has failed us and what we might be better off with in its place: https://crimethinc.com/2016/04/29/feature-from-democracy-to-freedom https://crimethinc.com/2016/04/29/feature-from-democracy-to-...
lumberjack 9y ago
That is not the "anarchism" that I have read about in the past?! Did the author just appropriate the name for a different kind of political ideology? Seems like it.
- uiri 9y ago
  In what ways does it differ from the commonly held notions of what "anarchism" is as a political (or anti-political) ideology?
jancsika 9y ago
> Direct Democracy Isn’t Anarchy, You Fucks Here's a quick thought experiment: Imagine for the moment that anarchy-- the type with roots in 19th century Europe and fits and starts in Catalonia and Andalusia-- is the key to universal enlightenment and human cooperation. (Not saying it is, just a thought experiment-- humor me.) Now imagine that there is a small but dedicated cabal of evil demons intent on keeping the world from coming to realize this truth. If you were an advisor to the cabal, how would you suggest they use their meager resources? If it were me, here's what I would do: 1. Split the demons up and send each to a burgeoning center for anarchy. 2. Tell each demon to play up what is idiosyncratic and novel in that particular region's understanding of anarchy. Eschew both clear, standardized terminology and laymen's terms for something that sounds passionate, yet somehow also particular. 3. Discourage genre literacy, and don't cite sources. 4. Favor novelty over intellectual rigour. 5. Develop clever inside jokes. 6. When faced with a powerful intellectual adversary, fall back on tribalism. And once the demons are comfortable in their new surroundings, the kicker: 7. Convince the demons that it is now safe for them to earnestly believe in their new form of fun-house-mirror anarchism. They are safe to defend and most importantly love the little tribe they have created. Using such a technique, I'm fairly certain I could guide my demons to an easy victory. In the event that any of the disparate anarchist groups tries to band together in a spirit of cooperation or defense against a common adversary, passive-aggressive tribalistic infighting will eat up a critical mass of their resources! * Now, let's get back to reality and realize there is no such conspiracy to derail anarchism. Still: mission accomplished, no? Edit: wording. Also-- I'm only critiquing the concept of anarchism implicitly espoused by the authors. The anarchists of the early 20th century seemed to have suffered from a much different problem, which was the inability to manufacture enough arms-- to ward off both the fascists and the communists when they retook Barcelona, for example.

57 points by pointfree 9y ago

A list of things that are wrong is pretty boring without plausible alternatives. Like, even if you're right, it doesn't matter because we're not comparing The Bad Thing to The Absence Of All Those Bad Things. That's trivial, of course bad things are bad. We're comparing The Bad Thing to A Different Set of Tradeoffs. That's the part I want to see.

fiatjaf 9y ago
It's not boring if the majority of people think these bad things are good.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

“Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time“ https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill

fiatjaf 9y ago
Again? People paste that quote everywhere, as if Churchill or whoever said that was some sage with infinite wisdom.
- kiliantics 9y ago
  He was also definitely not a good poster child for democracy, given his passion for colonialism.

danharaj 9y ago

> Anarchists believe in unmediated relations between free individuals, the absence of any coercive or alienating forces in societies, and an unquestionable, universal right to self-determination. If that sounds difficult to implement, I agree! I'm an anarchist because I think the principles so succinctly put are a good pole star for my personal life. At the scale of society I see Marxism as just as important. How to square the two? I don't know How to make a political program out of anarchism? I don't know, but I think it'll be possible with the right philosophical and scientific mindset. I think it would be a mindset quite radically different from how we currently approach the world. There are some immediate problems to ponder. For example, my fist is an unmediated relation between individuals. Does the idea of free individual preclude it? You can't base your politics only on what you think ought to be, but also how it ought to change when there is a violation of that preferred condition. Clearly there are times when a good anarchist (whatever that is) will throw a punch, and how ought an anarchist society deal with that? I like The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin as a thoughtful examination of society that tries to grapple with such small and dirty questions. As well as bigger questions of course. In that quote, I don't see a solution, or a goal, but an orientation. It frames the world in a way that asks you to focus on certain possibilities that might seem remote, but have existed and will exist so long as humanity exists. That's why I'm an anarchist and why I like and agree with this piece.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> Anarchists believe in unmediated relations between free individuals, the absence of any coercive or alienating forces in societies, and an unquestionable, universal right to self-determination If you and I can interface “unmediated” and freely, and I decide to use that freedom to take your shit, you need a “coercive or alienating force” to correct the wrong. Controlling this force is the history of civilisation.
- wavefunction 9y ago
  That's true of Libertarianism as well.
  - krapp 9y ago
    Libertarians tend to accept that coercive force is sometimes necessary, particularly when it comes to property ownership and enforcing contracts, although they also sometimes disagree that a state and monopoly on force are necessary for the coercion. To this end, Libertarianism sometimes seems to me like a weak or pragmatic form of anarchy.
    - gbacon 9y ago
      Libertarians reject the initiation of coercion or violence but accept forceful response — at the gentlest intensity necessary — to repel such invasions. For example, a libertarian would be fine with a homeowner shooting dead an armed robber who had broken in. Ludwig von Mises was a minarchist, i.e., he advocated for the smallest state necessary. His student Murray Rothbard referred to himself as an anarchist or an anarchocapitalist. Of course, Rothbardians and Marxists mean entirely different concepts when they use the term anarchist.
  - sigil 9y ago
    On the contrary, libertarianism regards the law as force organized for the common defense and nothing more. [1] The protection of our negative rights is the one essential function of government in the libertarian view. I've always been curious: how does anarchism reconcile your right not to be harmed with the supposed right of other individuals to do anything they please, including harm you? Do we even have a right not to be harmed? If we do, how is justice served -- can we serve it ourselves, or should it be delegated somehow? Or are these questions "out of scope" and justice is handled on a case-by-case basis that's not prescribed by anarchism? [1] http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html

aaron-lebo 9y ago

With all due respect, if this is the best the anarchists have (and this article is from a respected individual and is decently written), you're fucked. These critiques are not new or without response. The problem is, this is 1000+ words of arguments about human nature, special pleading, etc, with NO sources. They describe known phenomena like control of the agenda and never call it that, I'm not sure if that's because they aren't aware of that term or they just fon't feel like attributing hundreds if not thousands of years of research before them. It'd be like if someone cloned Signal and acted like Moxie didn't exist. Cite something, anything that scholars who study politics and democracies have written, don't put forward these vague critiques with nothing backing it up. Many arguments that seem intuitive are wrong when faced with evidence, and this article and anarchists in general seem to forget that democracies have certain features (and misfeatures) that are responses to real world situations. Anarchism is a political ideology that's never met the real world, like a lot of ideologies on HN and elsewhere. This might convince the random Internet reader, but it's not going to convince anyone who has studied the topic. Here's a few politics 101 cites that are decent: https://www.amazon.com/Models-Democracy-3rd-David-Held/dp/0804754721 https://www.amazon.com/Models-Democracy-3rd-David-Held/dp/08... https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Its-Critics-Robert-Dahl/dp/0300049382/ref=pd_sim_14_5?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0300049382&pd_rd_r=P9Q9DD56X4WQMGMMHWWB&pd_rd_w=2SjSW&pd_rd_wg=7b7k2&psc=1&refRID=P9Q9DD56X4WQMGMMHWWB https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Its-Critics-Robert-Dahl/dp/... https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Second-Robert-Dahl/dp/0300194463/ref=pd_sim_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0300194463&pd_rd_r=P9Q9DD56X4WQMGMMHWWB&pd_rd_w=2SjSW&pd_rd_wg=7b7k2&psc=1&refRID=P9Q9DD56X4WQMGMMHWWB https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Second-Robert-Dahl/dp/03001... https://www.amazon.com/Future-Freedom-Illiberal-Democracy-Revised/dp/0393331520 https://www.amazon.com/Future-Freedom-Illiberal-Democracy-Re... Could tech people stick to what they are good at, or at least acknowledge the wider world of experience when they are making arguments?

Top19 9y ago
I very much enjoyed (and even laughed) reading your response. It’s very concerning to see people talk so positively about anarchy. Another word for anarchy is “nihilism”, which is its philosophical twin. Neither of these words are used a lot today, but “nihilism” you’ll see mentioned a lot in the build-up to WWII. Am currently reading the below book, which argues in its final chapter that a German invasion of Poland is imminent and is the next course of action Hitler will take. It was published in May 1939 in German, and translated in August 1939 to English. Germany invaded Poland on September 1st, 1939. The author is very clear that for all their flaws, capitalism and democracy are very reformable. And that a dictatorship of Fascism or Communism will dazzle with early successes before descending into violence both internally and externally. The Revolution Of Nihilism: Warning To The West https://www.amazon.com/dp/1258001071/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_RZCnAbKJPHR0V https://www.amazon.com/dp/1258001071/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_RZCn...

baldfat 9y ago

I thought all Anarchist now just called themselves Libertarians? As a Punk Rock Kid I had Anarchist showing up at shows trying to get people to join the movement. Then all the way through the 90s it go crazier. I can;t tell how obnoxious and violent things got. Now 20 years later they are all Libertarians now. It is safe to say I am not a anarchist nor libertarian but I am amazed how many people fail to see the history of anarchy and libertarian thought. Anarchy falls into self-serving narcissism.

rootw0rm 9y ago
First of all, violence is not Anarchism. The essence of Anarchy is non-violence. Google voluntaryism. So yes, of course real anarchists identify as libertarians, anarchism is the embodiment of libertarian philosophy, especially the non-aggression principal. (NAP)

cs702 9y ago

"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." - Winston S Churchill, November 11, 1947 Source: https://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form-of-government/ https://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-...

mattmaroon 9y ago
And we tried anarchy plenty. Power, unfortunately, abhors a vacuum.
- confounded 9y ago
  Anarchism is much more than the absence of a national government. When and where was it tried plenty?
  - mattmaroon 9y ago
    From the dawn of humanity until a few thousand years ago. So roughly the first 99% of our existence, not to mention the hominids from which we evolved.
    - jessaustin 9y ago
      Could we say, then, that anarchism is better for the environment than most systems of government?
ivm 9y ago
"I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes." "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion." - Winston S Churchill

pointfree 9y ago

With all due respect I would have liked if the hackernews moderators had kept my original headline "An Anarchist Critique of Democracy by Moxie Marlinspike (Signal SMS), Windy Hart" I thought this article/transcript was of interest to hackernews in a large part due to one of the two authors being the author of the Open Whisper Systems Signal SMS app.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dang 9y ago
I understand the feeling, but we've learned from experience that HN works better when the focus is on content rather than personalities. We've also learned that HN can't really have a substantive discussion about ideology. Something about open internet forums causes such discussions to revert to the mean, and from there to the bottom of the barrel, pretty quickly. But at least your submission was off the beaten track!

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

rootw0rm 9y ago

Voluntaryism is the only moral way. We deserve to live a peaceful existence free from threat of force.

mac01021 9y ago

They list lots of problems inherent in democracy. Then, in the conclusion, they hint that the next show/article is going to describe a reasonable system that doesn't have those problems. But I can't find the next episode anywhere.

jmull 9y ago

This is awfully childish. Anywhere you have two or more people "asserting a direct and unobstructed link between thought and action, between desires and their free fulfillment" you are going to have conflict... which means not everyone is going to be able to get and do everything and anything they want. Notice that this has nothing to do with democracy. It's an inevitable consequence of the existence of people who want things.

kiliantics 9y ago
Anarchists don't think that they will all just be able to do anything they want. They believe that the way people can reach a compromise with each other, given the constraints you mention, could be very different. They want it to happen on a horizontal and decentralised level, without the institutional hierarchies of the power structures we are forced to obey now.

0xBA5ED 9y ago

If the relations between free individuals is unmediated, they can interact in any way they choose. So if a group agrees to pool their resources and impose their collective will on others, then you just lost your anarchy. To eliminate "coercive forces", you'd need to ensure that no group or individual can acquire leverage over another.

kiliantics 9y ago
A big part of anarchist ideology is the notion of "solidarity". So if a group were to attempt to assert authority by coercive means like this, then people would ideally come together in solidarity to stop them. This is why anarchists and antifa show up to stop neo-nazis that are threatening minorities and other vulnerable groups.
- 0xBA5ED 9y ago
  What you're describing is mob justice, which is essentially pure democracy.

kiliantics 9y ago

Amazing to see this discussion on HN! Here's another article that I'm pretty fond that explores how modern democracy has failed us and what we might be better off with in its place: https://crimethinc.com/2016/04/29/feature-from-democracy-to-freedom https://crimethinc.com/2016/04/29/feature-from-democracy-to-...

lumberjack 9y ago

That is not the "anarchism" that I have read about in the past?! Did the author just appropriate the name for a different kind of political ideology? Seems like it.

uiri 9y ago
In what ways does it differ from the commonly held notions of what "anarchism" is as a political (or anti-political) ideology?

jancsika 9y ago

> Direct Democracy Isn’t Anarchy, You Fucks Here's a quick thought experiment: Imagine for the moment that anarchy-- the type with roots in 19th century Europe and fits and starts in Catalonia and Andalusia-- is the key to universal enlightenment and human cooperation. (Not saying it is, just a thought experiment-- humor me.) Now imagine that there is a small but dedicated cabal of evil demons intent on keeping the world from coming to realize this truth. If you were an advisor to the cabal, how would you suggest they use their meager resources? If it were me, here's what I would do: 1. Split the demons up and send each to a burgeoning center for anarchy. 2. Tell each demon to play up what is idiosyncratic and novel in that particular region's understanding of anarchy. Eschew both clear, standardized terminology and laymen's terms for something that sounds passionate, yet somehow also particular. 3. Discourage genre literacy, and don't cite sources. 4. Favor novelty over intellectual rigour. 5. Develop clever inside jokes. 6. When faced with a powerful intellectual adversary, fall back on tribalism. And once the demons are comfortable in their new surroundings, the kicker: 7. Convince the demons that it is now safe for them to earnestly believe in their new form of fun-house-mirror anarchism. They are safe to defend and most importantly love the little tribe they have created. Using such a technique, I'm fairly certain I could guide my demons to an easy victory. In the event that any of the disparate anarchist groups tries to band together in a spirit of cooperation or defense against a common adversary, passive-aggressive tribalistic infighting will eat up a critical mass of their resources! * Now, let's get back to reality and realize there is no such conspiracy to derail anarchism. Still: mission accomplished, no? Edit: wording. Also-- I'm only critiquing the concept of anarchism implicitly espoused by the authors. The anarchists of the early 20th century seemed to have suffered from a much different problem, which was the inability to manufacture enough arms-- to ward off both the fascists and the communists when they retook Barcelona, for example.