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Interesting that Anarchism is largely ignored despite it playing a crucial role in the 20th century as well as being to diametrically opposed to all of Fascism,
by otalp 8y ago
Interesting that Anarchism is largely ignored despite it playing a crucial role in the 20th century as well as being to diametrically opposed to all of Fascism, Capitalism and Soviet Lennism/Stalinism. For those unaware, Gandhi's philosophy was largely based on Leo Tolstoy's Pacifist-Anarchism, and Gandhi subsequently served as a major influence to both MLK and Nelson Mandela. That 3 of the most positively viewed figures of the 20th century, as well as people like Bertrand Russell and George Orwell were all influenced by an idea that most people have never heard of is fascinating.
Anarchism itself is so broad and varied that it resists characterisation. You have the entire spectrum, from primitivists to pacifists to futurists. People who claim that voting in elections is pointless(like many on the Occupy movement) to people who advocate for the lesser evil(Noam Chomsky 'endorsing' Hillary Clinton) to people who advocate for the worse evil(accelerationists)
The one thing that can be said about it with certainty, is that it is seen as "a tendency in human affairs, to question existing power structures". Whether that be the state, religion or interpersonal power relations between race or gender. Much of what we define as "progress" is in reality questioning deep-seated assumptions that seem so obvious that only a fool would question them. In the past, some of these assumptions were things like "It is obvious there are significant difference between races", "It is obvious that men and women are not intellectually equal", "It is obvious that we need a monarch or ruling class to maintain peace and order". Today it is things like "It is obvious that corporations are here to stay and beneficial" or "It is obvious that we need a centralised government to keep order".
One of major problems with society today is that people are essentially told there are 2 positions:
1)You think on balance Government is worse and bloated, and therefore steps should be taken to reduce government influence and increasing private control of resources.
2)You think on balance corporations are worse, and therefore steps should be taken to reduce corporate influence by increasing government control of resources.
Most Anarchists contend that Government and Corporations are undesirable, and that we must work towards some kind of decentralized, federated, non-hierarchical system with free association.
I think in general people need to think more about Libertarian Socialism(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism) as a viable alternative to the US/Soviet model, which are more alike than different, as they are both in essence state-capitalist systems. They aren't identical, but fall in a pretty narrow spectrum and incentivise power-seeking. An approach that questions everything on the other hand is the essence of anarchism: a first-principles based method of determining the structure of society.
- jancsika 8y agoSeems like a recurring drawback to anarchism is the inability to "provide for the common defense." Also, a nameclash of "decentralized, federated, non-hierarchical" political systems with decentralized/federated digital systems. I don't see any good reasons why an anarchist ought to choose a decentralized/federated design for an arbitrary piece of software. But I get the sense that anarchists think choosing such a design is an ethical imperative, very often to the chagrin of their potential userbase.
- garmaine 8y agoAnarchists don’t trust (or don’t want to trust) the centralized party running the alternative. If you think that’s laughable, consider your relationship with Facebook or Google.
- jancsika 8y agoYeah, but what would an anarchist think of the design of Signal? What would an anarchist think of Len Sassaman's idea for doing a scalable remailer that had a centralized component (if I remember correctly)? What would an anarchist say about the design of the directory servers in Tor? What would an anarchist say about using DNS to host a git repo on a website? If the answer is that an anarchist would reflexively focus mindshare on the centralization because it is a priori unethical, then anarchism as an institution is a hindrance to software development.
- Avshalom 8y agoPretty sure archists have argued about all your examples too. A lot of things hinder software development: laws and regulations; skepticism of the community; lack of resources; technical constraints of existing hardware; trade secrets and patents to maintain an edge against competitors; ethics and morals incidental to the organization of society... hell we're already in a place where people reflexively look at centralized services (and even decentralized services) and see future hierarchy. not all hindrances are equal but a) do you imagine anarchism to be a uniquely strong hindrance b) do you consider that hindering of software development to be a sufficient issue to object to anarchy.