6 ms·

A bit off topic, but I am confused how anarchism and socialism can work together. Can you explain?

by jeffdavis 8y ago

whatshisface 8y ago
Well, first you figure out which genes code for self-interested behavior...
- fallingfrog 8y ago
  Huh?
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    State communism is diametrically opposed to anarchist personal freedom, because what are you going to do about the defectors that use their personal freedom to start trading? You have to be able to turn off the "personal freedom" switch once someone starts doing something that, if left unchecked, would switch society to a different form of government. The joke is that if you're not going to do it with police (which would be authoritarian), then you'd have to make it so that the idea "why don't we exchange goods and services," and the idea "why don't we band together to get one up on every other race," and the idea "why don't we start bashing unpopular people's heads in to steal their corn," never even enters into the minds of people who want to climb up higher than everyone else.
    - fallingfrog 8y ago
      Exchanging things for things is fine under anarchism. Exchanging your freedom for money would be bad. The question: how do you keep it from happening without a big nasty authoritarian state? Is a valid one. In my view there would be 3 safeguards: 1) it would be seen as morally repugnant, like banging your cousin. 2) the other, democratic businesses in the area would just refuse to do business with you 3) in the absence of material want, nobody would feel compelled to sell their labor the way they do now, where they have no real choice. The first thing that happened when England went capitalist in (I think) the 1700’s is that the land that used to be held in common was privatized and people were displaced to the cities, where they had to find jobs. In other words the state deliberately created a situation where people had no choice but to sell their time for money. In the case of someone accumulating actual weapons and attempting an armed power grab, there would be local citizens militias which would converge on the outbreak of violence and contain it. Maybe it won’t work, maybe it will, but we won’t know until we try.
      - whatshisface 8y ago
        >there would be local citizens militias which would converge on the outbreak of violence and contain it. What if the first step in my evil plan was to gain the loyalty of the local militias by lauding their virtue and advocating that they should receive a bigger cut than everyone else because they're so brave and put themselves in the line of danger? Groups fall to ambitious leaders all the time, because people really eat up a charismatic leader with big promises. (See: how the Legions were talked installing a dictator in Rome.)
        fallingfrog 8y ago
        I think there are 2 points I would use to respond to that. 1) it’s really, really hard to accumulate a large stockpile of money without exploiting the labor of other people and 2) no political system is immune to a 50% + 1 attack. By “citizens militia” I meant just ordinary people who own weapons so yeah if somebody comes along who is so charismatic that they can convince 50% + 1 people to follow them, it’s game over.
fallingfrog 8y ago
Socialism is a broad term that includes two main branches; state communism, which emphasizes a planned economy, and anarchism, which emphasizes fighting any kind of heirarchy including state power. In an anarchist world all decisions would be made on the local level wherever possible and businesses would be run democratically by their workers. Anarchists see anarchism as the skill of organizing and working without having people simply follow orders, which if you think about your private life you probably do it all the time. But at work you do what you’re told, which is in our view a gross assault on your personal integrity. In the anarchist view if there is a large power differential between two people there is simply no way for them to deal fairly with one another. A legal system is just a band-aid. Hoping for nicer rulers is delusional. The solution is that nobody should have that kind of power in the first place. This extends to male power over women and white supremacy as well. But it’s still considered a branch of socialism, associated with the writings of Bakunin and Kropotkin.
- jeffdavis 8y ago
  Interesting. It still sounds like you'd need some kind of big state around to constantly hammer down these power dofferentials. And it's not clear how something like that would work in a globalist world. But thank you for a sincere answer. I do have some overlapping views. Basically I think most cities/communities should be run with center-left-democratic policies, the federal government should be run as libertarian, and states would vary between what we now call Democrats and Republicans. In other words, the nature of government should change depending on the scale. What would I call that viewpoint?
  - fallingfrog 8y ago
    Libertarian, I suppose. I was libertarian until I got my first corporate job, when I realized that every large corporation internally functions just like a Stalinist state. I mean Brezhnev had nothing on corporate America when it comes to bureaucracy..
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]

A bit off topic, but I am confused how anarchism and socialism can work together. Can you explain?

whatshisface 8y ago

Well, first you figure out which genes code for self-interested behavior...

fallingfrog 8y ago
Huh?
- whatshisface 8y ago
  State communism is diametrically opposed to anarchist personal freedom, because what are you going to do about the defectors that use their personal freedom to start trading? You have to be able to turn off the "personal freedom" switch once someone starts doing something that, if left unchecked, would switch society to a different form of government. The joke is that if you're not going to do it with police (which would be authoritarian), then you'd have to make it so that the idea "why don't we exchange goods and services," and the idea "why don't we band together to get one up on every other race," and the idea "why don't we start bashing unpopular people's heads in to steal their corn," never even enters into the minds of people who want to climb up higher than everyone else.
  - fallingfrog 8y ago
    Exchanging things for things is fine under anarchism. Exchanging your freedom for money would be bad. The question: how do you keep it from happening without a big nasty authoritarian state? Is a valid one. In my view there would be 3 safeguards: 1) it would be seen as morally repugnant, like banging your cousin. 2) the other, democratic businesses in the area would just refuse to do business with you 3) in the absence of material want, nobody would feel compelled to sell their labor the way they do now, where they have no real choice. The first thing that happened when England went capitalist in (I think) the 1700’s is that the land that used to be held in common was privatized and people were displaced to the cities, where they had to find jobs. In other words the state deliberately created a situation where people had no choice but to sell their time for money. In the case of someone accumulating actual weapons and attempting an armed power grab, there would be local citizens militias which would converge on the outbreak of violence and contain it. Maybe it won’t work, maybe it will, but we won’t know until we try.
    - whatshisface 8y ago
      >there would be local citizens militias which would converge on the outbreak of violence and contain it. What if the first step in my evil plan was to gain the loyalty of the local militias by lauding their virtue and advocating that they should receive a bigger cut than everyone else because they're so brave and put themselves in the line of danger? Groups fall to ambitious leaders all the time, because people really eat up a charismatic leader with big promises. (See: how the Legions were talked installing a dictator in Rome.)
      - fallingfrog 8y ago
        I think there are 2 points I would use to respond to that. 1) it’s really, really hard to accumulate a large stockpile of money without exploiting the labor of other people and 2) no political system is immune to a 50% + 1 attack. By “citizens militia” I meant just ordinary people who own weapons so yeah if somebody comes along who is so charismatic that they can convince 50% + 1 people to follow them, it’s game over.

fallingfrog 8y ago

Socialism is a broad term that includes two main branches; state communism, which emphasizes a planned economy, and anarchism, which emphasizes fighting any kind of heirarchy including state power. In an anarchist world all decisions would be made on the local level wherever possible and businesses would be run democratically by their workers. Anarchists see anarchism as the skill of organizing and working without having people simply follow orders, which if you think about your private life you probably do it all the time. But at work you do what you’re told, which is in our view a gross assault on your personal integrity. In the anarchist view if there is a large power differential between two people there is simply no way for them to deal fairly with one another. A legal system is just a band-aid. Hoping for nicer rulers is delusional. The solution is that nobody should have that kind of power in the first place. This extends to male power over women and white supremacy as well. But it’s still considered a branch of socialism, associated with the writings of Bakunin and Kropotkin.

jeffdavis 8y ago
Interesting. It still sounds like you'd need some kind of big state around to constantly hammer down these power dofferentials. And it's not clear how something like that would work in a globalist world. But thank you for a sincere answer. I do have some overlapping views. Basically I think most cities/communities should be run with center-left-democratic policies, the federal government should be run as libertarian, and states would vary between what we now call Democrats and Republicans. In other words, the nature of government should change depending on the scale. What would I call that viewpoint?
- fallingfrog 8y ago
  Libertarian, I suppose. I was libertarian until I got my first corporate job, when I realized that every large corporation internally functions just like a Stalinist state. I mean Brezhnev had nothing on corporate America when it comes to bureaucracy..
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]