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Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

• feralimal 6y ago
  Yes, apparently he died last week. The person said to be behind the phrase we are the 99% at the Occupy Wall Street movement. He was an interesting character. My question would be: do anarchists really work as professors at the London School of Economics? And Yale? Aren't you a 'system man' at that point?
  • approxim8ion 6y ago
    That's kind of like saying you can't criticize capitalism while still using an iPhone. I don't feel it holds.
  • cblconfederate 6y ago
    Anarchists are not an alien species, nor is there an anarchistan yet. They live among us
    • jacquesm 6y ago
      I suspect that if an anarchistan would be created within a lifetime it would 'revert' to some other well known political framework, either a democracy or a dictatorship. If there was an anarchistan in recent history it was a probably Somalia and even there you now find a regular government.
      • ozborn 6y ago
        A more appropriate example of "anarchistan" would probably be Catalonia during the civil war in the 1930s. It has been written and discussed by Orwell, Bookchin and many others. Your point is well taken though, at the end it did function as part of a "regular" democratic government before being crushed in the civil war both by Soviet backed communists and Franco.
    • feralimal 6y ago
      Well, I suspect that David Graeber, who quietly self-proclaimed himself as one of the leaders of Occupy Wall Street, was one of those people designed to make 'anarchistan' a distant reality. He would take the energy invested in him and then faceplant before the finish line. By say, proposing that the left wing should be voted for. He was in support of Corbyn etc - this is to say he was happy to work within the system. You might say that this is a pragmatic view - but really he represented a hard left view. Anarchism is, by definition, no-leaders. Self-determination. Neither communism nor a libertarian position. So I think in practise he was in contradiction of the beliefs he purported to hold. BS jobs was good though!
      • vidarh 6y ago
        Libertarianism was conceived by the anarcho-communist Joseph Dejacque, who first used the term to call Proudhon, the father of anarchism a mere 'moderate anarchist, liberal but not libertarian'. For about a century libertarianism was exclusive a far left ideology including mostly anarchists and libertarian Marxists.
        • feralimal 6y ago
          I suspect hard left and hard right meet up eventually... :)
  • jhrmnn 6y ago
    You can be a capitalist and still say true statements about anarchism, both supportive and unsupportive. Or vice versa.
    • koheripbal 6y ago
      Once you support anarchism, your other positions become oxymorons because you're working to eliminate the systems that make organization possible.
  • mathieuh 6y ago
    We all have to live in this system, it's unrealistic to think all anarchists should be ideologically pure and live in the woods off the land like Kaczynski. I believe thinking and writing and getting these ideas into the mainstream can be a form of praxis. As Zizek says, sometimes the most revolutionary thing to do is nothing at all.
    • evgen 6y ago
      Ah, the wonderful 'do as I say, not as I do' flavour of anarchism. Apparently, it is the only type of anarchism one actually finds in the wild.
    • feralimal 6y ago
      Absolutely. The system is pervasive and we have to live within it. But should you embrace it? While Yale and LSE are no doubt great institutions, to my mind they are also up there as educators of those who go on to become the system's top managers.
      • vidarh 6y ago
        LSE has a history as a hotbed of activism ever since it was the focal point of UK student rebellions in the late 60s. It's not nearly as Conservative as you might think.
        • feralimal 6y ago
          Hotbed is right. The institution literally force grows radicalism. And yet, it is considered a top university. The reason is that it helps to present what is in fact a false dichotomy. The radical thought they support is that within the Overton window. Nothing that would really shake up the ruling elite is expressed there. Like CNN and Fox news.
  • rmrfrmrf 6y ago
    Doesn't surprise me considering neoliberalism and anarchism have a lot of the same goals in terms of dismantling the state.
  • pessimizer 6y ago
    It's a good question. Not specifically about the London School of Economics, because that was started by Marxist Fabian Society members 125 years ago, but about a lot of academia. Of course anarchism is a resistance to rule by domination, not to systems and procedures. Some universities are no doubt power centers, though. edit: anarchism means "no ruler." It's usually painted by people who think rulers are necessary as something like amorphism i.e. "no shape."
  • Retr0 6y ago
    Well he was fired by Yale for his political actions (Although of course they didn't say that). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/25/usa.internationaleducationnews https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/25/usa.internatio...
  • woko 6y ago
    > do anarchists really work as professors at the London School of Economics? And Yale? I know a banker who is communist. It does not mean that he behaves like a communist in his actions, but he does in his words. From my perspective, he takes the best (or the worst) of both worlds: the quality of life of a very rich man who can afford living in the most expensive places and whatever leisure he wants, and the ability to punch down on the "lesser" people around him from his morally higher stand-point. Never under-estimate people's hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance, especially when what is at stake is exerting power over other people's lives. One can always find a way to rationalize one's crappy behaviour to try to lower the cognitive dissonance after the fact.
    • feralimal 6y ago
      > I know a banker who is communist. That's an incontinent position to hold and he must have high cognitive dissonance of schizophrenia. Except if he is duplicitously self-serving, ie happy to receive the payments but not the opprobrium that comes with a high paying system position.
      • vidarh 6y ago
        You'd be very surprised how many socialists and communists there are in banking. On one hand one of the things Proudhon and Marx agreed on was that driving down the cost of credit is an inherently radical act - the cheaper credit becomes the weaker the hold of employers over employees becomes, as it becomes easier to start for yourself. On the other hand in finance you see the mechanisms at work laid bare. Nowhere else than in finance and in far left groups have I seen the same extent of shared fear (AND optimism - people tend to be unaware the Communist Manifesto starts with fanboy-level praise for the advances brought by capitalism) about the long term societal effects of automation for example.
        • feralimal 6y ago
          I'm not surprised. They see themselves as doing the best for themselves - that's anarchy, right? But they are prepared to harm others to do it. But even so, they want to be thought well of. I guess bankers and communists share the idea of looking at 'the people' as a group to be governed and managed. Both are wedded to the system. I think communistic thinking is the idea that seems to have won, and (technocratic) governance is going to proceed with that as its basis.
• hprotagonist 6y ago
  He said, "If you and I can agree that we will both do our share of the work of the world" -- that's the work 'round the Joe Hill House -- "If you and I agree that we will only take what we need and put back what we can; if you and I can agree that we'll care for the afflicted: and mostly, if you and I can agree that we won't hurt anybody" -- all the things you can't get from the boss and from the state -- "then we can begin to build between us that voluntary combination and get the work of the world done without the boss and without the state." Well, I've said that t'so many young people, especially lately, who get this idea that anarchy is some kind of nihilism: "Oh you can't tell me what to do". No! Anarchy, you've got to tell _yourself_ what to do because you've got to learn to become your own best government. And believe me, you can do it better and cheaper than they can. Utah Phillips, "I will not obey" https://www.youtube.Com/watch?v=h5Ro4rTvDcw https://www.youtube.Com/watch?v=h5Ro4rTvDcw
• LoSboccacc 6y ago
  what a bunch of bad examples. I (used to, pre-covid) see daily plenty people cutting bus lanes, so these exist, and what you going to do to protect society from them? even a stern look is not the anarchist way. most sport teams have a captain and a trainer and most volunteer forces are under supervision of more experienced staff around here. sure they don't strictly command the squad, but they're the one responsible for organizing participant to minimize internal and external friction that capitalism is unfair is so generic it's extremely disingenuous to make that critique as a sign of anarchism there's quite a logical jump from "two wrongs don’t make a right" to "abolish the criminal justice system", which isn't about punishment to begin with in most societies. "Pretty much every achievement has been based on cooperation and mutual aid" - pretty much most of the contemporary technological jump came from wwii, and the modern technological jump came from private holdings competing and one upping one another. "Do you believe that human beings are fundamentally corrupt and evil" uh, there's psychopathology that need to be cured; how many people submitted to rehab vs how many people were forced into? "certain sorts of people are inferior specimens, destined to be ruled by their betters? " of curse I wouldn't call them "inferior" and "ruling", but some people require continuous assistance or guidance. this question has been loaded with negative term to cause a certain predefined answer to seem the only right answer. ask yourself is someone with dementia would need a tutor to manage their finances instead and help them trough surviving in decent condition, and suddenly the answer is not as much black and white. hope this is because it's a very short essay to a large introductory text, because otherwise is severely lacking both in arguments and the logic by which what's there has been built.
  • ctrlp 6y ago
    The standard reply is that social pathologies are caused by a pathological system. In that way it's not much different than Marxist apologetics. Unfalsifiable utopianism, and frankly, naive about human nature. There's just so much hand waving when it comes to concrete proposals. Blueprints? like what? Stalin himself would have been a fan a Parecon. I'll miss David. Debt was a really interesting book. But, if this is anarchism, our most visible anarchist activists today didn't get the message. We all practice Communism at the level of a family. And we all practice anarchism in a somewhat free society. But not all social systems scale. I do wonder why my favorite anarchists like Graeber and Chomsky and Zinn found their homes in academic institutions where most of their peers are fully capable of governing themselves. Call me cynical, but scratch a cynic and you'll find a disillusioned idealist, they say. It seems to me that if you scratch a social anarchist and you'll find a crypto totalitarian.
• scandox 6y ago
  Most people do behave "decently" in this sense. However some do not. Under an open system, these outliers will eventually eat the decent. It strikes me this is likely the exact journey we have come on to arrive where we are. We have created a structure in which the monsters can eat a certain proportion of us in order that we may not be eaten.
  • JackFr 6y ago
    > Most people do behave "decently" in this sense. It’s even worse than that. Most people believe that they act decently. But to paraphrase Feynman, the easiest person to deceive is ourselves. No one (or at least vanishingly few) believe that they are the villain in their own narrative. And yet evil persists in the world.
    • luckylion 6y ago
      I'm not sure that is true. While I don't know (or rather, I don't know that I know) anyone who's actually a villain of some sort, I know quite a few people in SEO affiliate marketing. Their businesses generally don't add any value, they buy links, use cheap copy writers that produce mediocre content often full of factual errors, Google eats it up like it was the best thing ever (because of the links they bought), people get directed to their sites from search queries and buy at the shops the recommend. They essentially inject themselves between Google and the shop, but they're not adding any value - if anything, they're reducing value (by influencing buying decision with lies - not just marketing "women will find you more attractive if you have this car", actual lies as in "this product can do X" when it can't). And they know it, and when you ask them about it, they'll happily say so. They don't believe that they are providing a service, and they're not telling that to themselves either. Why do they do it, then? Because they get money for it. They are well aware that they aren't adding value, but they're doing it because it pays. I don't believe that e.g. a thief, thugs or fraudster go around thinking they do nothing wrong or that they act decently. They know, they are fully aware that they are a net-negative to society. What I find more interesting in that regard is this: do they realize they are abnormal in that regard, or do they believe that everybody acts like them?
• koheripbal 6y ago
  It's great to have people with diverse opinions - we are richer for that. ... but some people like Graeber, make the transition from spreading a mesage form of activism to violent and destructive activism. Not only does that alienate people, it's also findamentally wrong in a democracy. If you cannot convince people to vote differently with your words, then using violence and intimidation makes you a cancerous part of the system.
  • scandox 6y ago
    > Graeber > violent and destructive activism When? Where? What? This is something I never heard of.
  • fallingfrog 6y ago
    David has never done anything violent or destructive, and it’s disrespectful to make those kinds of false claims.
  • QuesnayJr 6y ago
    I don't think that's fair to Graeber, and I think he's a useless hack. I haven't seen any place where he advocates violence.
• fallingfrog 6y ago
  The fundamental nature of politics is that it’s about relationships of power- how power is exercised, who has power, who doesn’t, and what the relationship is between people or groups of people. Whenever one person or group of people is above another in some kind of power hierarchy, the same kind of dynamic develops, no matter whether it’s in a corporate office or medieval Europe or anywhere else- its always the same. The people on the bottom will always display resentment and resistance towards those who have power over them, because nobody likes having explicit or implicit violence threatened on them and being exploited or told what to do. The person or people on top will always display contempt and fear towards those underneath, contempt because in order to justify being on top one has to believe that they are superior or more deserving in some way, and fear because on some level they know that they are outnumbered by a lot of very angry people. They know that the sword of Damocles hangs over their heads. The discourse of the political right wing is therefore always going to be dominated by both contempt and fear, for exactly those reasons. The contempt manifests in talking about a “culture of victimhood” and “welfare queens” and “black on black violence” and “snowflakes” and the fear manifests in calls for law and order, more aggressive policing, border walls and increased military funding. But the source of the discord is the power hierarchy itself, whether it be racial or class or gender or whatever, and until that is abolished the same poisonous political dynamic will persist. It cannot be papered over by advocating for everybody to “just get along” or “give peace a chance”; that’s just one more way to tell the people at the bottom that they need to stop complaining and accept their situation. Even if the discord calms down for a while, it will inevitably bubble back to the surface again as resentment and anger build up, and fear and contempt to meet it. Only equality can resolve the conflict.
• oxymoran 6y ago
  “Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to.” My anarchist sympathies want this to be true but this is a demonstrably false fairy tale. Just look at how we treat the planet and other living things in the presence of lawful order. Why would you assume that we would act righteously in the absence of law? It is painfully obvious that we would act much worse under anarchy.
  • emteycz 6y ago
    Many people believe they put their part in through paying taxes to the state, and thus don't have to worry any more. Also tragedy of commons, etc.
  • taken_username 6y ago
    Having law is different than enforcing law.
  • Nursie 6y ago
    Exactly this. It's a lovely dream, but humans are lazy, aquisitive, and many would sell their own grandmother to gain a perceived advantage.
    • fallingfrog 6y ago
      Nobody aside from hardened sociopaths would do that.
      • shadowgovt 6y ago
        How many hardened sociopaths can an anarchy sustain before it either collapses or becomes a mockery of its own self-direction and mutualism principles?
        • lawwantsin17 6y ago
          You should read about how Anarchy treats it's mentally ill before you decide they don't have a solution to that simple problem. The way we treat mentally ill in Capitalism is a crime.
• Ensorceled 6y ago
  The major problem with anarchist and libertarian philosophies is being demonstrated in the US right now ... at least 30% of the population is willingly supporting a man with despotic intentions, seemingly to it's bitter conclusion. The secondary problem is there are always sociopaths willing to use that 30% for their own ends.
• chewbacha 6y ago
  The early descriptions reminded me of libertarianism. did anyone else feel that? “Libertarians seek to maximize political freedom and autonomy, emphasizing individualism, freedom of choice and voluntary association.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism
  • Giorgi 6y ago
    Yes, libertarianism is quite close to anarchy or minarchy. It looks like such sentiments are very strong in places where goverment has failed their people for dozens of years, in comparison of Europe for example.
    • torb-xyz 6y ago
      With the exception of anarchism being anti-capitalist. Any ‘anarchist’ that is pro-capitalism is generally not regarded as anarchist by the wider anarchist movement. Fun fact: befor the modern US meaning, libertarian used to mean anarchist-communist as a way around french authorities banning the word anarchist in the late 1800 if I remember correctly.
      • vidarh 6y ago
        The first use was Joseph Dejaque criticising Proudhon for not going far enough. Specifically he criticised Proudhons views on women. This first use was in the 1850's I believe. Left wing libertarianism predates the right wing use of the term by about a century. During that time it was very much a term that encompassed anarchists and some other socialists such as libertarian Marxists.
  • licebmi__at__ 6y ago
    Yes, they are both kinds of libertarianism[1], the main difference is that left wing reject private property (not personal property), which is argued that its existence will create power structures thus defeating the purpose of said libertarianism. 1: “One gratifying aspect of our rise to some prominence is that, for the first time in my memory, we, ‘our side,’ had captured a crucial word from the enemy . . . ‘Libertarians’ . . . had long been simply a polite word for left-wing anarchists, that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of the communist or syndicalist variety. But now we had taken it over..." - Murray Rothbard
• INTPenis 6y ago
  A swedish rapper said in 1998; "Den enda sanna demokraten är anarkist", translates to "the only true democrat is anarchist". Not meaning the Democratic party in the US but rather a literal interpretation of the two words. Democrat meaning rule of the people and anarchist meaning no leaders. I was raised to believe in anarchism, and I still do at heart. But if it were ever to work we'd need strict and global regulations on centralized power that would need to be upheld by a coalition which would itself become a centralized power. Because evolution itself is randomness unchecked. So a political ideology alone can't control when someone will come along wanting to exploit systems to break free and gain more power for themselves or their own people.
  • mijamo 6y ago
    Anarchism does not mean no leader. It means no authority. Hence why it is fundamentally different than democracy because democracy implies an authority somehow attributed to the people (directly or indirectly).
  • feralimal 6y ago
    I break the word 'democrat' into demo and crat. 'Demo' meaning the people, the demos, the citizenry. 'Crat' as in hold in Greek. So, citizen-hold. Or alternatively, 'mob rule'! Really, IMO, you want individual rule for each individual. No system, no groups - just individuals. Anyone free to do what they want as long as they don't harm another individual. Do unto others, and all that. That would be a closer definition of anarchy for me.
  • uncletammy 6y ago
    > Because evolution itself is randomness unchecked. Eloquently put
  • seneca 6y ago
    > Because evolution itself is randomness unchecked. Randomness unchecked is chaos. Evolution actually specifically requires a check, in the form of the organism's environment, which is what prunes the ineffective branches. This is also so for human organizations. Without agreed upon rules to check undesirable traits we end up with Chaos.
• amadeuspagel 6y ago
  I wonder how a similar essay for other ideologies would look like. Do you buy things? You're a capitalist. Do you keep some things the way they are? You're a conservative. Do you clean your room? You're a fascist. But I doubt someone would bother writing such essays, and if someone did, I doubt it would get upvoted to the HN frontpage. What is it about this that appeals to people? An ideology that feels edgy, but doesn't actually offend anyone?
  • andybak 6y ago
    I think it's an particularly interesting thing posted here at the moment because of the protests and the frequent demonisation of anarchism in the media. But it's also interesting on hacker news because of the popularity of libertarianism amongst some here. It must be obvious how close anarchism and libertarianism are. In fact when I was first made aware of libertarianism many years ago it was regarded as a branch of anarchist thought.
    • vidarh 6y ago
      Libertarianism started on the far left - Dejaque criticised Proudhon for being a 'moderate anarchist, liberal, but not libertarian' and went on to publish the first libertarian paper. Parts of the Socialist League who counted William Morris, Friedrich Engels and Eleanor Marx as members were libertarian. Right wing libertarianism first became a thing ca 1950s and was explicitly a project by Rothbard to bring together anti-authoritarian groups on both the left and the right. The primary distinction tends to be that right libertarians see property rights as one of the things the state must protect, while left libertarians tends to see property rights as fundamentally oppressive.
  • QuesnayJr 6y ago
    I have definitely seen those kinds of essays, for all kinds of positions. It's a natural strategy of persuasion -- "See, you already agree with me 90%, so why not take the final step and join me?" The most obnoxious one I remember reading was one that argued "Do you believe in a world that can be understood? Then by this tortured logic, you are already a Christian." Aside: "Do you clean your room? You're a fascist" is very funny.
• yosito 6y ago
  People mean different things when they say they're anarchist. This article describes a mix of libertarianism, humanism and egalitarianism that is quite admirable. But many anarchists are willing to use violence against anything or anyone they perceive as powerful or oppressive, and it's pretty easy to frame pretty much anyone you disagree with in those terms. There's a reason that anarchism is associated with violent stereotypes. I personally prefer to identify with values like egalitarianism and humanitarianism without a label like anarchism that is often associated with violence that I disagree with and don't want to be even remotely associated with.
• bjt2n3904 6y ago
  I don't often read anything from anarchists. Whenever I do, it always comes off as sophomoric. Pretentious sophistry. When you boil down his questions, they're not serious questions about anarchy, they're lame excuses for him to keep talking. - Do you wait for your turn on a crowded bus? - Are you a member of a sports team or small group without a leader? - Do you think politicians suck, and people are selfish? - Do you really believe the things you were told as a child? Good grief. These talking points are so generic, any political ideology could use these. "Are you a communist? The answer may surprise you! Do you like eating toast for breakfast? Many communists also like to eat toast!"
  • it_was_cool 6y ago
    The thesis of the article is that anarchism is not particularly violent or exotic, but a natural extension of very common moral beliefs and practices. One could argue this is interesting in its own right, given popular depictions of anarchism, but the article goes even further, articulating an anarchistic view of human nature. You can reasonably disagree with this view, as others here have, but to criticize these "talking points" as "generic" seems precisely to miss the point.
  • nebulous1 6y ago
    I have issues with this article and with anarchism, and I agree that some of this is sophomoric (not sure about sophistry though). However, this article isn't really for you (or me). There are surprisingly many people who think that "anarchists" simply want to see the world burn and are promoting a society where their children are as likely to be murdered while out playing as not. This article is just saying that that's not the case. It's obviously too hand-wavy to take us beyond that.
    • pbourke 6y ago
      > There are surprisingly many people who think that "anarchists" simply want to see the world burn and are promoting a society where their children are as likely to be murdered while out playing as not. Indeed. Anarchists clearly do not want to see the world burn, they just redefine "world" to be the few blocks that surround their home. And children are clearly safe when one subscribes to the correct private security service. If children are murdered, that’s obviously a violation of the contract with the security service that must be settled through arbitration.
• GreeniFi 6y ago
  His obituary. An excellent read, even if you don’t agree with his world view. https://novaramedia.com/2020/09/04/the-opposite-of-a-cynic-david-graeber-1961-2020/ https://novaramedia.com/2020/09/04/the-opposite-of-a-cynic-d... Here is his series on debt on the BBC. Fascinating stuff if you are or have an interest in economics. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b054zdp6 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b054zdp6
• DeusExMachina 6y ago
  Funny how any ideology can take our common beliefs and say: "See? You are one of us". I didn't know who this guy was until he died last week and was celebrated as a great thinker. I am not familiar with his body of work. But if it's along the lines of "all good is on my side and all bad is on the enemy's side" he was not a thinker. He was just an ideologue.
  • niek_pas 6y ago
    Perhaps, rather than speculating on his work, you could read some of it, and refrain from commenting on it until you have done so.
  • lemmonii 6y ago
    Would you kick a baby on the sidewalk? If you answered no you are totally one of us!
• fallingfrog 6y ago
  It’s important to point out here that anarchists are not advocating for lack of organization; people are social animals and must work together to live. They are advocating for lack of power structures of domination and subordination. Imagine there are two kingdoms on some continent. One is managed by some kind of democratic council, and resources are shared equitably; the other is ruled by a tyrant. Which one is more likely to make war on its neighbors? The tyrant, obviously- because the tyrant has something to gain by conquest (more subjects, wealth, and power) and the democratic society does not (assuming that the society stays democratic after the conquest, they now have to contend with the voices of a lot of angry new citizens). The same applies to any organization: an organization is aggressive and violent in direct proportion to how hierarchical it is. There is a tragic principle of natural selection that plays out, however, if you imagine that continent and imagine a random arrangement of democracies and kingdoms, over time the kingdoms will make war and expand and the democracies will not. After a few hundred years, most of the citizens of the continent will be living under tyrants. And tyranny has to justify itself to its subjects, through religion or ideology; the subjects will be made to feel that obedience is virtue and that the king is a father figure and so forth. But popular freedom movements will constantly be popping up and have to be suppressed. I give you: the modern world.
• browserface 6y ago
  Anyone who has ever lived in a share house (or next to one) knows that without laws civilization will descend into absolute chaos and endless tit for tat revenge warfare. Try parenting with anarchist principles. At some point you run into limits. The point is, what imposes those limits? Physics, gravity, society or yourself? Ideally the limits you put on yourself should mean you never encounter (negatively or destructively) any of the other systems of limits. But, not all people are capable of always limiting or controlling themselves, and no...that's not the fault of their being "arbitrary restrictions" or "ludicrous laws" and it's not a "reaction against meaningless oppressive authority", it's just people are not perfect and not always good at acting in a way that doesn't put them up against the other sources of limits. Even if someone has perfect self-control. Who says they have perfect knowledge of the limits, which if they were to cross them would bring about their destruction or detriment, in any given situation? You should be the source of truth and guide for your life, but I don't think you can expect to know everything and avoid all risks if you only pay attention to what you think is OK and ignore signals from elsewhere. I think you need to balance it with acknowledging that other people and society has some fucking clue about that stuff as well. It's not perfect either, but you shouldn't not factor it into your decisions. If anarchists were so clever at charting their own courses, how come they end up getting arrested for stupid shit? I suppose they're "not true anarchists".
  • vidarh 6y ago
    Anarchism does not suggest no rules, but voluntary association. A flat share is a perfect example in that if ypu don't like the rules you find other people to share with - the rules are not imposed from above, but the result of negotiation and entered into voluntarily. I'm not an anarchist though I share some of the views, but so much of the criticism of anarchism comes from misrepresenting anarchism as rejecting all organisation and rules. Different forms of anarchism favor different levels of organisation, but part of the reason why there are so many variations is exactly that they all believe in the existence of systems of organization and enforcement of rules.
    • browserface 6y ago
      I get that you see it that way. I think that might be shifting the goalposts of anarchism in the face of criticism, and I suspect the appeal to "zero rules" can be brought back later in less critical contexts. But I appreciate the expanded perspective you've given me. So...voluntary association, but still having rules and organizing. OK, sounds alright. How is that different to the current global system? I mean it like, I was born in country A, then traveled to country B and C, and discovered actually I didn't like the culture and rules in country A, so I came to live in countries B and C. I can go where I like to choose the system of governance that suits me. None of these countries are anarchist....If anarchism speaks more to the relationship between an individual and a system, and less to the system itself, is it really a system of organization that could replace a social/political system, isn't it more just like a "guiding philosophy" for some individuals? Or a way of describing a set of things that some people might do, even if they are not "anarchists". It might be me, but anarchy seems to be having an identity crisis.
• golergka 6y ago
  Is it just me, or does this text seems to pretend as if anarcho-communists are the only kind of anarchists and anarcho-capitalist don't exist? It doesn't seem to talk a lot about property rights, but some phrases about "the way society is organized right now" and "useless professions" are not what all anarchists believe.
  • torb-xyz 6y ago
    That’s because all the other kinds of anarchism: anarcho-communism, left wing market anarchism, primitivism, syndicalism, individualist anarchism (unrelated to right-wing libertarianism), communalism, etc… they all agree that anarchism is fundamentally anti-capitalist. Furthermore anarcho-capitalism has no connection to the wider anarchist movement (and is quite recent) and did not grew out of the anarchist tradition.
  • DavidVoid 6y ago
    Many people, for good reason, believe that anarcho-capitalism is an oxymoron. Wikipedia has a short section of some anarchist criticism of anarcho-capitalism [1]. Anarchists such as Brian Morris argue that anarcho-capitalism does not in fact get rid of the state. He says that anarcho-capitalists "simply replaced the state with private security firms, and can hardly be described as anarchists as the term is normally understood". Similarly, Bob Black argues that an anarcho-capitalist wants to "abolish the state to his own satisfaction by calling it something else". He states that they do not denounce what the state does, they just "object to who's doing it". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism#Criticism
• bem94 6y ago
  Anyone who want's an good read which features anarchism, I'd recommend "The Dispossessed" by Ursula Le Guin. It's an incredible story in it's own right, and has a very complete description of how a completely anarchist society might function.
• seventytwo 6y ago
  If what this article says is true, then anarchism will fail for the same reason libertarianism fails. They’re both exercises in ideal realities. They’re experiments with frictionless ramps, and ideal pulleys, and objects falling in a vacuum. Both in physics and in society, the world is more complicated than “government is unnecessary” or “don’t tread on me”.
• wrnr 6y ago
  What a mealy-mouth, I'm an anarchist because I oppose the state's monopoly on violence with violence.
• INGELRII 6y ago
  I'M NOT AN ANARCHIST. Consider the difference between a faceless government and something with a face. Faceless means impartial, once removed, not having skin in the game. Faceless means not having to take aside. Faceless allows more formality. Face means somebody who knows you personally. Anarchism means a governing body with a face. People close to you. Society 'freely organizing itself' means politics and people gaining power with social influence. Instead of visible hierarchies, it means invisible hierarchies build from personal relationships. I want more participatory democracy, more deliberative democracy, not anarchism. Modern liberal democracy with laws and principles and visible hierarchies allows individuals to separate themselves from the village, the mob and the social games involved. --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deliberative_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deliberative_democracy
  • feralimal 6y ago
    Well, how does a technocratic government suit you? Entirely faceless, run by a bunch of 'scientists' that you can't even vote out, but who know what's best for you. That's where we are heading. And many on this site are building that future.
    • INGELRII 6y ago
      I'm against "entirely" anything. There are no fixed solutions for organizing society. We don't know what it is to be a human (only strict ideologies are certain what humanity wants and what the goal is). Allowing changes and feedback is the key.
      • feralimal 6y ago
        > There are no fixed solutions for organizing society. Quite. But who says it is for anyone to organise 'society'? You're missing the point of anarchism, I think. The only person you need to 'organise' and take responsibility for, is yourself. Most people look to government (not themselves) to take responsibility. And that is the problem.
• x87678r 6y ago
  I still have no idea what Anarchists want. In an ideal anarchist society are there laws? Who enforces? Do you pay taxes? Can you own property or you just build a house wherever you want and defend it? Is there money and who organizes it? Something like a big hydro dam, factories, ships - who owns/builds these and why? Even googling now gives no straight answer.
  • boomboomsubban 6y ago
    There is no "straight answer" as there are a variety of viewpoints that could he considered "anarchism" and their responses to these questions differ. This is true of whatever viewpoint you follow too, your personal beliefs differ from the accepted dogma at certain points. In as small of a description as possible, anarchism generally favors a democratic city state.
• curation 6y ago
  What is really being discussed when the word anarchy is produced in contexts like this, is power. Those who see themselves as connected to power will of course vote no. Those who do not see themselves connected to power know enough to shut up about it.
• icedchocolate 6y ago
  “ Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. “ Lol you lost me immediately. This is essentially pretending anti-vaccers and other groups of people just don’t exist. Just because you’re in a bubble of educated, reasonable people, doesn’t mean everyone is like that, sadly.
• elgfare 6y ago
  This was interesting, I learned something. The problem with anarchy is that everyone must be a good anarchist for it to work. Our current society is also dependent on most people being good anarchists, but it's also more resilient against non-anarchists. Also, removing state power structures will not remove all power structures. There will still be people with lots of material or social capital providing them with power. My hunch is that in absence of laws and power structures most people will miss a social contract and will miss people telling them what to do. Basically it's less taxing on our minds.
  • sudosysgen 6y ago
    Anarchism would also remove private property, and for it to work people would have to organize in ways to minimize social capital.
    • elgfare 6y ago
      How do you do that though? There would of course be no enforcable private property, but ownership would not disappear as a (albeit nebulous) concept.
      • sudosysgen 6y ago
        Anarchism would mandate worker ownership of production, in the principle that ownership only ever derives from use. So factories and the like would be cooperatively owned, which makes it very very difficult for one individual to amass seriously outsized amounts of material resources. Combined with monetary policy that increases the velocity of money, the issue is fixed. As for personal property, under the principle that you've worked for and use your personal property and that it doesn't result in a master/slave relation, it would be intact.
        • elgfare 6y ago
          > Anarchism would mandate worker ownership of production Legitimately curious: How do you mandate anything in an anarchy?
• yodsanklai 6y ago
  To me, anarchism is simply an ideal view which is the opposite of authoritarianism. We all sit somewhere in between these two extreme points of view. In that sense, one can lean toward anarchism, e.g. they value personal freedom and question unnecessary authority, but don't necessarily believe in a more extreme form of anarchy without government and so on.
  • peschu 6y ago
    anarchy is the opposite of hierarchy I always wonder why nobody knows that. There are so much and long comments discussing this shit, but the simplest thing and explanation nobody seems to know or nobody wants to know.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• domnomnom 6y ago
  "If there’s a line to get on a crowded bus, do you wait your turn and refrain from elbowing your way past others even in the absence of police? If you answered “yes”, then you are used to acting like an anarchist!" No. This fails at scale. People are prosocial in small groups and in person but when this scales it goes away. This is a slight of hand the author is making to silently embed a false premise into the argument.
  • mistermann 6y ago
    You've done the same (or it has been done to you). Can you spot it?
    • domnomnom 6y ago
      You’ve done the same as well!!! Can YOU spot it?
      • mistermann 6y ago
        No, I can't, but I would absolutely love for you to point it out for me so I might improve my thinking. Are you actually able to point out where I've gone wrong?
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
• Sebb767 6y ago
  > Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. [...] But it’s one that the rich and powerful have always found extremely dangerous. So you're telling me they don't behave well on their own? Also: > Do you believe [...] that certain sorts of people (women, people of color, ordinary folk who are not rich or highly educated) are inferior specimens, destined to be ruled by their betters? Doesn't really go well with: > Do you believe that most politicians are selfish, egotistical swine who don’t really care about the public interest? So, all are equally good, unless you're rich or a politician, in which case you're a pig. What could possibly go wrong?
  • learnstats2 6y ago
    "Power attracts the corruptible. Suspect any who seek it" (and similar) is a very common aphorism. It's not an unreasonable position to take that we should dismantle these power structures (having extreme wealth or extreme political power), and it's not unreasonable to be cautious of those who seek to maintain those.
  • sudosysgen 6y ago
    Do you not see the fundamental difference between disliking people for what they are and disliking people for what they chose to do and become?
    • Sebb767 6y ago
      No. This is not black and white. Case in point: Religion. Is it okay to prosecute someone for that? They choose it after all. You might say he was born into that, but same goes for rich children. I hope I don't need to argue on why prosecuting for a religion is a bad thing. To be fair here, I don't think it's wrong in all cases to judge someone for his groups. If you say everyone in the KKK is bad, that's fine by me (and, FTR: I agree). But the hypocrisy irks me alot.
• robofanatic 6y ago
  Humans having been living without so called governments or police for millions of years. The perfect anarchist world would have happened by now if it actually worked.
  • sudosysgen 6y ago
    It did work. The main issue was agriculture, which made private property a source a power, which allowed some people to accumulate more power than others. As soon as we developped agriculture, it stopped being the natural outcome.
• scythe 6y ago
  I wonder why anarchists rarely critique the dynamics of FOSS, particularly those projects with no commercial backing. You have a bunch of people in a naturally leaderless setting who, at least apparently, want to cooperate and build something in an environment where violence is largely irrelevant, and yet: >Are you a member of a club or sports team or any other voluntary organization where decisions are not imposed by one leader but made on the basis of general consent? Well, yes, but what a pain! Everyone goes off in all different directions and boring stuff often doesn't get done. Sometimes I find myself wishing we had a dictator.
• lucasnortj 6y ago
  Reading this article it’s almost as if Graeber never looked at the world around him and saw how people behave when they see that law and order has broken down e.g. the London riots of 2010 where everyone ran to loot the nearest Foot Locker as soon as they realised no one would stop them.
  • sudosysgen 6y ago
    Actually, a very tiny minority on the order of a fraction of a percent of people did so. The anarchist reply would be that in an anarchic society where it is the common interest that production goes smoothly, the 99.9% would have a vested interest in stopping the 0.02% that's looting and such riots would not happen, whereas in our current system private ownership means that there isn't much of a reason to go out of your way to protect some rich corporations property.
  • Hoenoe 6y ago
    Please read: https://thecorrespondent.com/443/brace-yourself-for-the-most-dangerous-idea-yet-most-people-are-pretty-decent/58612083398-55f77a22 https://thecorrespondent.com/443/brace-yourself-for-the-most...
• jkhdigital 6y ago
  > Everyone believes they are capable of behaving reasonably themselves. If they think laws and police are necessary, it is only because they don’t believe that other people are. I believe this is missing an important distinction between two kinds of law: common and statutory. If anarchists had laws, they would be common law, which simply represents accreted experience and wisdom about dealing with human conflicts that inevitably arise in any society. I absolutely think common law is necessary, because it provides a long-term consistency and stability to human relations. Instead of individuals coming to ad hoc decisions about how to redress wrongs and grievances, they can rely on precedent which ensures some measure of fairness.
  • vidarh 6y ago
    I completely disagree with this. Common law is still enforced. The issue is not the source of the law, but how the organ that enforces it gets the power to do so - whether it is imposed from above, or entered into by consent. We already enter into agreements about which rules apply in situations not covered by law all the time. The more you relegate to consensual agreements, the closer to anarchy you get,whether those agreements include 'refer to common law principles' or 'refer to this book of statutes'.
• kstenerud 6y ago
  In my younger years, I'd respond to anarchists espousing their theories by taking their wallet out of their back pocket or purse, and seeing how long it takes for them to threaten to call the police (it can take a surprisingly long time in a bar setting). Nowadays I just ignore them.
• csours 6y ago
  I don't understand anarchy. Take littering for an example. Would an anarchist system (oxymoron alert) have fines for littering? How about signs and a slogan? TV advertisements? Another example: I regularly volunteer at conventions. Somewhere between 90 and 95% of people follow the rules without much prompting. 5-10% of people don't... but I sincerely believe that without volunteers watching, that number would go up sharply. Another reason people behave is the threat of their badge being revoked. > "For thousands of years people lived without governments. In many parts of the world people live outside of the control of governments today. They do not all kill each other." Hahaha no. Just no. People may not have lived under the control of formal governments, but there is always some sort of power structure. They may not have killed each other with systematic warfare, but small raids and personal violence killed a lot of people per capita. --- Having said all that, I do think that internalizing the rules of society does far more than overt displays of power, like police or military parades; but I also think that the police play an important role in decreasing public crime. However, I also do not think that simply adding more police or increasing the harshness of enforcement will decrease public crime further. It's all Pareto Principle.
  • vidarh 6y ago
    Consider that your conventions do not require the power of law enforcement to be able to deal with most problems. You can self-organise to set rules, and show away people who refuse to comply. Anarchists want more of that, and less of power imposed from above. Proudhon, the father anarchism, was a mutualist - he wanted most functions of society to be contracted between people,the way a convention goer agrees to terms when entering a convention. It's not no rules and no enforcement, but voluntary association and consent and stripping away coercion wherever possible.
    • luckylion 6y ago
      > You can self-organise to set rules, and show away people who refuse to comply. Aka "we don't need law enforcement, we can become law enforcement ourselves". And then you have law enforcement. Sounds like a reset more than an alternative.
• throwaway39293 6y ago
  People are asking a lot of basic questions in the comments. I recommend exploring https://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/index.html/ https://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/index.html/ It's very quick to browse and find answers.
• nmeofthestate 6y ago
  "Do you have this one-dimensional and pessimistic view of morality, or this other equally naive view of morality? Well then guess what!" etc
• wcerfgba 6y ago
  Anarchism is not a single political or economic philosophy, it is a very broad school of thought. I would not agree that the most basic principle of anarchism is self-organization. For me the nucleus of anarchism is that all authority should be questioned and that power structures of all kinds (not just governmental/state) should be analysed and dismantled. If this has piqued your interest, you may wish to look in to libertarian socialism, which is a narrower strain of thought within the anarchist tradition, which advocates citizens assemblies, worker co-ops, and fractal councils, among other specific solutions to some of the issues raised in this thread. Also, a short introductory video on anarchism from Philosophy Tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCAUmh99hMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCAUmh99hMI
• sudosysgen 6y ago
  I think an important thing that is lost here is that anarchists in practice do not advocate for removing all hierarchies. Just the most possible practically, which is a heck of a lot less hierarchy than we have now, and to crucially keep these hierarchies in check via rotations, direct democracy, and so on, to prevent any one person to accumulate much of any power at all; in essence making authority a painful chore.
• schwax 6y ago
  A question I'm asking myself is: "What would it take for anarchism to work?" (See also: "What would it take for capitalism to work for everyone?") Some ideas to consider: 1. @visakanv on assholes: > Assholes make up about 1% of most groups, cause about 75% of the damage, and ruin everybody’s experience. [1] 2. Dale Pendell on a long-term formulation of anarchism he calls "Horizon Anarchism": > I want to see the president, when it comes time to sign a bill, even if the bill may be necessary, to recognize—instead of being proud of every piece of legislation that’s passed—to recognize that it represents a failure of our collective social nature. And, instead of giving away all these pens with fanfare, he should light a stick of incense and say, “My fellow Americans, it is with deep regret that I must announce to you that, because we could not solve this problem on our own, we have had to enact another piece of legislation. Let us pray we can recover our senses and repeal it as soon as possible.” [2] 3. Another question to ask is "Why are some people willing to cooperate, but not others?" Theories of developmental stages give us useful models to understand the prerequisites. What cultural, psychological, and physical needs must be meet? I've found a good starting point in this area in Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux [3], which draws heavily on Ken Wilber's integral theory and other research on developmental stages that came before it [4]. [1] http://www.visakanv.com/blog/assholes/ http://www.visakanv.com/blog/assholes/ [2] https://psychedelicsalon.com/podcast-055-horizon-anarchism/ https://psychedelicsalon.com/podcast-055-horizon-anarchism/ [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcS04BI2sbk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcS04BI2sbk [4] https://reinventingorganizationswiki.com/Developmental_Perspective_on_Organizations https://reinventingorganizationswiki.com/Developmental_Persp...
  • Hoenoe 6y ago
    Thanks for all the nice resources and good question. I think a good place to look is also at Elinor Ostrom 8 design principles to deal with the tragedy of the common and David Sloan Wilson's multilevel selection theory [1]. They call is polycentric governance but it has a lot of related ideas. [1]: https://evonomics.com/tragedy-of-the-commons-elinor-ostrom https://evonomics.com/tragedy-of-the-commons-elinor-ostrom [1]: https://evonomics.com/tragedy-of-the-commons-elinor-ostrom/?utm_source=newsletter_campaign=organic https://evonomics.com/tragedy-of-the-commons-elinor-ostrom/?...
• georgewsinger 6y ago
  The strongest, most "steelmanned" defense of Anarchy (and it's not even close) is Michael Huemer's The Problem of Political Authority: https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Political-Authority-Examination-Coerce/dp/1137281650/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=problem+of+political+authority&qid=1599317402&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Political-Authority-Examinati...
• ctrlp 6y ago
  The simplest expression of anarchist principles I've seen is that it is opposed to coercion. All else follows. This is very appealing but at any scale we find that people must be forced to be persuaded. If that sounds Orwellian, you're not wrong. Orwell was anarchist adjacent and a keen critic of the left. (Check out Homage to Catalonia.) Anarchy is a fig leaf for totalitarianism. It is a short step from the University diversity council to the reeducation camps. We need to be very careful that the political options we are advocating in the spirit of freedom and equity are not poisoned bait preying on our best instincts for fairness and care.
• blhack 6y ago
  Is there a name for this type of thing where you label yourself as something that everybody already understands, but then try to bait and switch the definition on them? Anarchists: we don’t believe in anarchy! We believe in the human spirit and peace and harmony! Satanist: we don’t believe in evil, we believe in love and treating each other with respect and kindness! I see this pop up all the time in politics and it’s always kindof funny to me. (I won’t go into specifics of places this is happening in politics right now for obvious reasons)
  • TeaB 6y ago
    Anarchy = non-hierachy. Anarchists definitely do believe this
  • wavefunction 6y ago
    >everybody already understands Seems like a problematic assumption to make.
    • blhack 6y ago
      Do you mean for non-native speakers? It seems like this bizarre “anarchy doesn’t really mean anarchy it actually means the opposite!” Sort of stuff would just further confuse somebody. Funnily enough: this is why I think AI is so hard. How could you train an AI to be able to decode everything necessary to know if somebody means “anarchy lack of order” or “anarch: lots of order”. It take SO much context to get that right. Like you have to make lots of assumptions about what the other person is thinking, what their background and political affiliation is. Very complex problem.
  • thomastjeffery 6y ago
    Well, satanism has always been about the irony, so I wouldn't call it a bait and switch. It's meant to be an obvious satire, showing off the obvious flaws present in judeo-christianity. People often take satanism literally so they don't have to confront their own problematic belief system. I imagine many anarchist movements follow a similar pattern.
• cryptofistMonk 6y ago
  "How many hours would we really need to work in order to maintain a functional society — that is, if we got rid of all the useless or destructive occupations like telemarketers, lawyers, prison guards, financial analysts, public relations experts, bureaucrats and politicians, and turn our best scientific minds away from working on space weaponry or stock market systems to mechanizing away dangerous or annoying tasks like coal mining or cleaning the bathroom, and distribute the remaining work among everyone equally?" Somewhat interesting thought, but it does not sound anarchist at all. Who's going to do the turning of our scientific minds, decide which minds are the scientific ones, or distribute the rest of the shitty jobs? When jobs are being distributed, who is going to be paying or otherwise providing for the workers? This sounds a lot more like some kind of totalitarian communist state.
  • ctrlp 6y ago
    Read Michael Albert's Parecon for an anarchist answer to these questions. One of many of which Lenin would be proud.
• dragonwriter 6y ago
  “Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to.” No, pretty much everyone, even the staunchest opponents of anarchism, thinks human beings are capable of that. Anarchists are people who believe that people are not merely capable of that, but alo have a universal enough tendency to act in an irrationally altruistic manner without external constraint that external constraint is not necessary to prevent widespread harm inflicted by even a small minority of transgressors seizing opportunity for unjustified gain at the expense of others. I get that this piece is intended to be a less subtle form for anarchism of what the “world's smallest political quiz” is for libertarianism; propaganda to convince people that despite disagreeing with most substantive political positions taken by most anarchists they've ever encounter they are nonetheless closet anarchists, but come on.
• TeaB 6y ago
  Zapatistas, Apoists, Chris Boehm's work which suggests many if not all (current) pre-industrial societies (implying all societies from 250 000 - 15 000 years ago) maintain anarchist-like societies. As such, civilisation (and farming) and therefore hierachical societies account for 0.06% of human societal structures, measured by time. Edit: just for kicks: “The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.” ― Murray Bookchin
  • nabla9 6y ago
    Pre-insustrial cultures were homogenic societies. You can have functioning anarchist societies with traditional values or with same minded -istas and -ists. Not with people with different goals and values. I don't think anarchism works in a modern heterogenic society. Only with a organized government you can have Mormonistas, and Trumpistas living in the same neighbourhood with a Lesbian couple. Anarchism can't protect minorities against the will of the people. Government can.
• dingdingdang 6y ago
  This is such demagogue reasoning that it is hard to know where to begin. A good indication of something being off is when it is trivial to rewrite the points to support the exact opposite point. I.e. "Are You A Conservative? The Answer May Surprise You!" "If there’s a line to get on a crowded bus, do you wait your turn and refrain from elbowing your way past others even in the absence of police?" "If you answered “yes”, then you are used to acting like a conservative! A most basic conservative principle is that there exists an enduring moral order. Thus voluntary community is an important aspect of human life leading to reasonable understandings with each other and to treat each other with dignity and respect." Etc. etc.
  • qntty 6y ago
    You assumption that being (the traditional kind of) conservative is the opposite of being an anarchist would be strange to many anarchists. Noam Chomsky has said that he considers himself a conservative in the traditional sense. Also see the essay by the '60s anarchist Paul Goodman called "Notes of a Neolithic Conservative".
    • luckylion 6y ago
      I believe the parent comment's point wasn't about conservatives specifically, but rather that you can just change a word or two and insert any ideology you'd like by saying that since $ideology has [insert some words here] and therefore would also form a queue at the bus station.
      • komali2 6y ago
        Hmm, I'm not sure I agree. I think this is more an indictment of artificially striated political beliefs than this article. I also believe that most of where conservatives and liberals disagree are in how to deal with exactly the sort of mechanisms that anarchy seems to say are the problems in the first place, i e. Bureaucrats, the military, police, law etc.
      • qntty 6y ago
        You could say the same about ethical theories too. They all have a way of explaining what they would do when confronted with a runaway trolley or some silly thing like that. The fact that all political ideologies have a way of explaining why they would get in a bus queue just shows that asking someone about why they line up for a bus is a good way to find out about how they think about the world politically. It's just using a simple example to illustrate how anarchists make sense of the world. There are many people who (understandably) think that they don't live their life in an "anarchist" way, and this article is just showing people that there is probably a lot about their life which is consistent with anarchism. There is probably also much which is consistent with the principles of other ideologies, but anarchism is one of the least understood, so a simple exercise like this can be informative. [That being said, as something of an anarchist, I don't share the Graeber's conception of anarchism but that's another issue.]
• Al-Khwarizmi 6y ago
  I have never believed in anarchism, as I don't believe that "human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to". But with COVID-19, I am seeing more proof than ever. In my country (but I guess it's the same in most, except perhaps some Nordic countries) bars, pubs and discos only reduce seating or close indoor spaces when forced to by law, in spite of the evidence that they cause lots of outbreaks. A large chunk of people only started wearing masks when forced to by law, and take any chance the law allows to remove them. The government recommended remote work whenever possible but many companies just ignored it in spite of having many workers that could perfectly work remotely, and just implement it when forced by law. And so on. Tell me again that "human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to"... it's not that "most politicians are selfish, egotistical swine", it's that many people are. I'd rather have a politician mandate masks or restrict bar/pub capacity (not because politicians are any better than the average person, but because they tend to have at least a bare minimum of education, access to advisors, some positive incentives -the next election- and no high stakes on the decision like, say, a bar owner) than have mask deniers and careless people spread the virus around by gathering in closed spaces without masks.
  • seibelj 6y ago
    In Boston the majority of everyone I saw wore a mask before it was mandatory. The shame was (and still is) very strong for those who don’t wear one. I see junkies (drug addicts) who don’t give a fuck but I assume that’s because they have given up on life. All normal people are wearing masks that I can see.
    • kotojo 6y ago
      And for a counter observation I saw lines out of nail/hair salons and bars in Atlanta the day Kemp dropped shelter in place at the beginning of May. I'd say I see 1 in 8 people wearing a mask anywhere that doesn't explicitly require it, and then people mostly wearing them improperly otherwise.
      • Nbox9 6y ago
• TehShrike 6y ago
  I don't think these presuppositions make for a consistent anarchist. I think Rothbard's presuppositions in Ethics of Liberty hold up better: every person has full rights to their own body, the right to property, and the right to whatever they make with their body and their property.
• andi999 6y ago
  It depends on the social surroundings. "If there’s a line to get on a crowded bus, do you wait your turn and refrain from elbowing your way past others even in the absence of police?" Yes, of course, but mainly because it also works. When I went to a certain east asian country 10 years ago, I had to stop queuing like this otherwise everybody cut in in front of me. I know a person who couldnt stop the normal queing and failed at getting a meal at mcD (never made it to the counter). So there are cultural tipping points.
• thomastjeffery 6y ago
  "Are you an X?" is a fallacious concept made popular by religion. We are all capable of understanding a variety of viewpoints, and partially agreeing with them. The more abstract the viewpoint, the more parts are available to where with. Anarchy is one of the most abstract ideas I'm aware of.
• spicyramen 6y ago
  In reality Anarchism fails to address the fact that people behave different, there are people that is good, respect each other, work hard, look for themselves and their families...while there are others which just don't (pedophiles, rappist, burglars, scammer, etc.). Like there are people that prefer a 9-5 job vs serial entrepreneurs. In a world with such diversity of thoughts is naive to think that humans can behave in reasonable fashion. In a world where we all behave different a set of rules and structure is needed
• noxer 6y ago
  >Do you believe that human beings are fundamentally corrupt and evil Certainly not all but it only needs a few so I guess I'm not an anarchist I accept reality even if I don't like it.
• chmod600 6y ago
  "For thousands of years people lived without governments. In many parts of the world people live outside of the control of governments today. They do not all kill each other." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage
  • username90 6y ago
    Tribal societies have hierarchies and laws, they are not anarchies.
    • galaxyLogic 6y ago
      And they attack kill and steal from other tribes
• username90 6y ago
  No, when you remove repercussions lots of people go out and loot stores. And then thanks to the broken windows effect a majority of people will follow suit. People are well behaved today not because we are born decent but because we have grown up in a well functioning society with strict laws.
• galaxyLogic 6y ago
  Anarchism is not the answer. Democracy and extreme transparency of governance is. Anarchism doesn't start with the right question which is: "How can we maximize the total average good for all people". Anarchism starts with "How can people live without rules imposed on them by others?" The idea that eliminating all rules imposed by others would produce maximal average good for people is suspect, and has no real justifications proposed for it. It assumes that every person could have the consciousness of what is in the best interests of everyone, and then would always choose to follow the guidance of such information.
• elindbe2 6y ago
  "The first is that human beings are, under ordinary circumstances, about as reasonable and decent as they are allowed to be" I'd like to try and understand Graeber's argument but I get stuck here. If you take one glance at history with all of its various wars, raids, riots, revolutions, etc I can't see how one could sustain this claim. For example, did Ghengis Khan act about as reasonable and decent as he was allowed to be? This points to a larger problem I see with much if today's social commentary: taking the existence of an advanced civilization for granted. If you believe that today's society is inevitable and indestructible then you don't need to put any effort into sustaining it and can simply change anything you wish without worrying about the consequences to civilization.
• chmod600 6y ago
  Simple question: Two families both like that big house in the prime location. Who gets it? The one that slept there last night? The one that built it? The most obnoxious family so that they can drive the others away? Without laws, the result will probably be the latter, no?
• PaulAJ 6y ago
  In "The Hacker Crackdown" there is a quote from Gail Thackeray: Fifteen percent of the populace will never steal. Fifteen percent will steal most anything not nailed down. The battle is for the hearts and minds of the remaining seventy percent. Never mind whether its 15%, there is a minority of people who will steal, or perform other antisocial acts, if they think they can get away with it. If the majority of people see this happen without consequences then they will behave in the same way, partly because under those circumstances theft is a reasonable choice, and partly because of herd instinct. So yes, I believe that human society does need a system of laws backed by enforcement. I don't need to believe that its everyone else who needs to be controlled and I alone am moral, I just need to believe that there are some people who need to be controlled.
• squibbles 6y ago
  Benevolent anarchism does not scale. The more pluralistic a population, the more differences of opinion and disagreement on principles. The rule of law is one way to cast multiple subjective experiences into a single objective framework.
• SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  > For thousands of years people lived without governments. In many parts of the world people live outside of the control of governments today. They do not all kill each other. Mostly they just get on about their lives the same as anyone else would. I hate to focus in on just one point, but protection from violence is really a core part of most people's demands from governance, and this description isn't true. Warfare is extremely common in societies without governments; the exact rate varies widely, but there are many known societies where 20-25% of adult men can expect to die fighting a war.
• blauditore 6y ago
  > If there’s a line to get on a crowded bus, do you wait your turn and refrain from elbowing your way past others even in the absence of police? > If you answered “yes”, then you are used to acting like an anarchist! First, many people actually try to force their way into crowded trains to get a good spot earlier in my experience. It's not exactly forceful, but also not friendly or waiting-in-line. Just because I behave that way doesn't make me an anarchist, or "acting like one". There's a long way from following some practices to believing everyone would follow those if not forced to.
• kgran 6y ago
  I don't know much about this kind of stuff, but if the natural kind of division of labour still exists in an anarchist society, some group would eventually be elected to act as those who catch thieves, rapists, murderers, con artists and the kind. Not every person nor group is suited for this dangerous job as a specially elected, trained and paid group of people, so the emergence of 'anarchist' police would be inevitable.
• TulliusCicero 6y ago
  > Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. It is really a very simple notion. This can sound reasonable when you think of it in terms of, "most people behaving in a reasonable fashion, most of the time". But anarchists don't want to eliminate hierarchical use of force for most cases, but for all of them. Any time I've heard anarchists try to explain how they would deal with the subset of people who are just real shitty in various ways, the responses have been either, a) in our utopia, you wouldn't have those problems, because hierarchy causes all of them, or b) increasingly convoluted and implausible-sounding ways to deal with crazy assholes without using force.
  • mc32 6y ago
    I tend to agree. Psychopaths are an unsolvable problem. People like them is “why we can’t have nice things”. If it weren’t for psychopaths we would not need passwords or encrypted passwords or security protocols, etc, etc., because everyone would behave in good fashion. But we don’t so we can’t.
    • jchook 6y ago
      That said, locking people in cages, treating them with inhumanity and violence, then releasing them into a world where they now have a harder time functioning in society and finding legitimate work doesn’t sound like a genius plan to solve psychopaths.
      • jlawson 6y ago
        It's easy to criticize without suggesting any alternative.
        • mhuffman 6y ago
          The typical suggested alternative is "treatment", ie. hospital -jail!
        • wildrhythms 6y ago
• PaulAJ 6y ago
  One piece of counter-evidence is the repeated story of online communities. In the early days of the Internet there was Usenet (OK, so it started separate, never mind), a global community, or collection of communities, using text-based message broadcast. It was a nice, self-policing community where obnoxious behaviour was frowned upon, and frowning was generally enough. Every September a new cohort of university students discovered this wonderful resource, and sometimes took a while to learn the social norms, but peer pressure generally worked. Then in the 90s the Internet started to become popular. AOL started distributing free CDs that let you access Usenet. Lots more people arrived on Usenet, resulting in the "Eternal September" when the social norms broke down and everything became chaos. Spam and flame wars drowned out serious conversation. Some of the communities within Usenet were able to continue because they were small enough to maintain their own internal cohesion, but increasingly these became exceptions. I stopped using Usenet for discussion some time around 2000. There simply wasn't any point. Even the cohesive communities were abandoning it for private email lists and web sites.
• stagehn 6y ago
  Compare the murder rate per capita in tribal societies today versus modern society. It's orders of magnitude higher. Case closed.
• ddingus 6y ago
  I have observed anarchists generally don't like being told what to do. That is not a judgement. Just observed behavior leading to an obvious conclusion. To be fair here, I don't like being told what to do. When the machinery of society is running well, lives are reasonable, etc... these people continue to advocate and agitate, but the masses will generally go with what is easy, reasonable. It's all pretty harmless. Now consider the case when said machinery is not running well, is unjust, and generally not reasonable. Suddenly, that advocacy and agitation takes greater root. Screw being told what to do, essentially. Society sees greater unrest and in general the basic social contracts come into question. From whatever establishment happens to be in majority control point of view, anarchists and others willing to subvert are bad, harmful elements that should be avoided and or dealt with more formally. Seems to me that is not harmful at all, may even be beneficial, a self correcting mechanism of sorts. Anarchists are simply a necessary artifact of human nature. The T-cells of society. The remedy is not to condemn anarchists, or consider their ideas irrelevant. It is to run society better. Make the basic deal sexy, compelling enough that people will accept being told what to do in return for a modest, reasonable, dignified life. Edit: From discussions with an anarchist friend: When the common man, labor, the basic, necessary classes are abused, overexploited, they are offended. It may be they are members of said class too. So there is clear self interest. Agency really matters. Potential does too. Overly totalitarian society tends to labor to excess and snuff out being human. Social democracy is largely comparable with anarchism. Rule by democracy, not by purse, or bloodline, army, or god. This exchange seems to support my observations above. Nice weekend lark! This discussion here, along with a couple I will have with others will prove interesting and informative. If nothing else, I suspect many of us, if we are truly seeking info like this, will understand one another better. Never a bad thing.
• aimor 6y ago
  This is the second article by David Graeber (died recently) I've read today. About 15 years separate the two, but the style is similar. Can someone explain it to me: What is the joke? Or, what context am I missing? Wikipedia isn't filling in the gaps here.
• cortesoft 6y ago
  Here is my argument against anarchism as some alternative to what we have. We ARE living in the end state of anarchism. We know how people will organize when there is no existing coercive power structure; they will form themselves into groups with rules and laws and enforcement. How do we know this? Because it is what people have done, over and over and over, when in that situation. If all of the government were to suddenly disappear, groups would start to form, power would collect and disperse and reorganize, and certain people who are very good at that game (or have the right allies) will rise to leadership. The end result will be some sort of stable-ish arrangement of groups who control different areas and... here we are.
  • the42thdoctor 6y ago
    As long a group does not try to conquer another and everyone is free to change groups, there's no problems with it.
    • cortesoft 6y ago
      You are ‘free’ to change groups, but most groups have a process for joining, and not everyone who wants to join is able. And you will have to move to that group’s territory. Also, I am not sure what you mean by ‘no problems with it’.... this is an anarchy, there is no one to bring those problems to. Some people trying to conquer others is just a part of being in an anarchy. Some people want to conquer.
  • leftyted 6y ago
    I think you're right. But I also think that "anarchists" are actually after the stage where people "form themselves into groups with rules and laws and enforcement". They don't really want anarchy, they want a "reconstitution". And I can understand why. There seem to be limits on how much a society can change after its constitution. It can change, but over time it carries more and more baggage. In order for significant change, a society has to be reconstituted. There has to be a rupture, a new chapter, etc. I think anarchists are instinctively seeking the potentiality, the excitement that comes with that rupture.
• ggggtez 6y ago
  > Even if you decentralize society and put as much power as possible in the hands of small communities, there will still be plenty of things that need to be coordinated, from running railroads to deciding on directions for medical research. But just because something is complicated does not mean there is no way to do it democratically. Aha! So, in order to organize in an anarchic society, maybe we should form some kind of democracy where people get to vote on things. Of course, even if most people are good natured, managing and optimizing trillions of dollars of budget is difficult, so it would be good if we could elect representatives that could work in a small community of anarchists who can devote their attention to understanding these issues, and voting on them. We could perhaps call them "Congress". WAIT A SECOND. I GET IT NOW. Anarachy IS big government!
• runjake 6y ago
  They lost me in the first paragraph with: “Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. It is really a very simple notion.” Having dealt with the dark side of humanity, there are lots of people who will not behave reasonably if left unchecked, due to one reason or another. And there are a lot of these people. Some of them lifelong criminals, some of them even your friendly neighbor that keeps his yard looking really nice. So you need a system of checks. You need some sort of enforcement arm that apprehend and deals violence to these people. You need some place, away from society, to secure these people. And now, you’ve more or less reinvented the current structure. Whether we like it or not, violence is the foundation upon which society ultimately sits. The threat of violence keeps everyone inline. If you resist each step of the law, ultimately, you will be dealt violence. You may choose to be a pacifist, and that is somewhat admirable, but you’ve really chosen to outsource the violence required to survive to other parties. Society provides us a useful curtain that covers the horror of nature’s rules.
  • sneak 6y ago
    I think the main criticism is that centralizing the “legitimate” use of force to, as you say, “keep everyone in line”, is that you get all of the downsides of a violence-based society, and none of the upsides of freedom: such societies still enslave, torture, steal, violate privacy, and mass murder. Indeed, we’re witnessing an unprecedented wealth transfer right now in the US as a result of such centralization of authority. I’ve never met an anarchist that believes that by abolishing the state that society will become entirely nonviolent. It’s just a sort of standard “who will build the roads?” straw man: Policing doesn’t need police, and social contracts don’t need a statehouse.
    • JacksonGariety 6y ago
      > we’re witnessing an unprecedented wealth transfer right now in the US Indeed. And it must be regarded as infinitely baffling that everyone is shouting "abolish the police" instead of "redistribute the wealth" ...
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• miki123211 6y ago
  While I believe a vast majority of people will behave reasonably without law enforcement, there's that small minority who wouldn't, and that's what the government is protecting us against. That small minority can do a lot of harm, think of an internet forum with 100 reasonable users and one troll, posting at a rate of 1 post per minute, just for the fun of it. That troll can easily ruin discussions for anyone else. With that said, I agree with the anarchic notion of pushing power down, though. Push most decisionmaking power as low as possible. The higher you are in the hierarchy, the less power you should have. Make lots of small communities that self-organize and are very easy to leave, that last part is important. Accept the notion that some people are evil, no matter what you do. Instead of fighting against the incentives, embrace them. Those thinking about power grabs should know that, even if they succeed, it's trivial for nonconsenting people to leave, so it's not worth the trouble. Any given level of hierarchy should only deal with two things, conflict resolution between lower level units that can't come to a voluntary agreement; and possibly removing units that disproportionately affect others from the hierarchy (not sure about that one). Internal decisions should be made internally. A higher level should only coordinate when absolutely needed. In other words, members of communities should be able to do whatever they want, as long as they don't hurt other people. All voluntary agreements are fine. Only when something can't be voluntarily resolved, or when a member starts behaving violently, the community leadership step in to fix the situation. When someone grabs too much power and does bad things with it, either members leave, or other communities decide to stop associating with the bad one, which might cause members to leave. Same for all other levels.
• garyrob 6y ago
  At first I react the headline as asking whether I was an antichrist. Hopefully not.
• yongjik 6y ago
  > If there’s a line to get on a crowded bus, do you wait your turn and refrain from elbowing your way past others even in the absence of police? > If you answered “yes”, then you are used to acting like an anarchist! No, if you answered "yes", then that means you live in a society that maintains bus stops, and buses, and these buses are expected to come at regular intervals and stop right in front of the first person waiting in the line, and (for example) not stop fifty meters from the stop sign (and in the middle of the road), forcing everybody to run toward the bus before it takes off again, because there are five other buses and eight illegally parked cars between the bus and the stop sign. In other words, being able to wait in line in an orderly fashion is not (only) the result of human decency. It's a result of decades of social trial-and-error, forcing people to (for example) not park at bus stops, and eventually convincing enough people that there is a working social system. I guess one can build a convincing case for anarchism (I particularly liked Le Guin's take in The Dispossessed) but this example is a straight-up first world problem.
• cryptica 6y ago
  I believe that a small subset of humans are fundamentally evil and that these people are hungry for power and are therefore the most likely to get into positions of power. If you keep any system running long enough, the scum will eventually float to the top. When that happens, you have to stir the pot. We need a reset. Any political system which will shake things up is welcome. Communism? anarchism, capital redistribution, wealth tax, universal basic income...
• sktrdie 6y ago
  RIP David Graeber. He died just a few days ago
• aksss 6y ago
  Click-bait headlines now?
• yunderfall 6y ago
  This is a common rhetorical tactic used by people with unpopular ideas. They imply that most people just "don't understand" and would be on their side if they would simply become more informed. The reality, in my experience, is that most people simply aren't interested in thinking deeply about social organization on a regular basis; and, of the people who are, most of them already understand your ideas and will disagree with them if everyone involved has the maturity to actually debate the issue in depth and say what they mean. No, I am not whatever label you want to apply to me. I may agree with aspects of your philosophy, but I probably disagree with others. But the vast majority of these groups don't want to hear it, because like Orwell said, there is nothing more maddening than someone who listens calmly, shows they clearly understand your point of view, and disagrees.
• netman21 6y ago
  Ho did Prof. De Lapaz define Rational Anarchist? "I believe I do not need a government, but I acknowledge that you may feel the need to be governed."
• ajarmst 6y ago
  I'm pretty used to this sort of inverted 'No True Scotsman' (you know, if you believe <innocuous thing> then you're really a <follower of a definitely non-innocuous set of complex and frequently inconsistent and contradictory intersecting beliefs, norms and practices>) assertion about Christianity, Agnosticism, Atheism, Capitalism, Socialism, Fascism, Feminism, Objectivism, Belief in the Paranormal or UFOs, and whatever John McAffee is currently raving about. I will, however, confess to some amusement at seeing any careful parsing of the rules defining anarchism.
• drblast 6y ago
  I think in many ways it's impossible to have this discussion with a U.S. audience. The idea of force and violence being the solution to everything is deeply, deeply ingrained in U,S, culture. Simply suggesting that reason and cooperation can solve some of the problems we in the U.S. attempt to solve with more violence is usually met with the "starship troopers" ideology that violence is the actual source of legitimacy of all government. And we do treat everything this way. We have a problem and declare war on it. War on drugs, war on poverty, war on obesity. That might sound like a tongue-in-cheek way to state a problem is serious, but consider that mindset an entire culture must have to make "war" be the perpetually used shorthand for the ultimate solution to every social problem. And a large portion of the U.S. apparently has no concept of a social contract and a sense of cooperative action or "doing my part." It's like violence and force is the only tool we have in the U.S. so every social ill is met with the further application of it, way beyond what is reasonable. And it seems to be a one way trip. You can never suggest that we have gone too far. Apparently there can never be too many police, too much military spending, or too many people in prison. They only right answer is more of that, please. We are teetering on the precipice of complete authoritarianism because of our culture and it's scary.
  • bostonpete 6y ago
    This comment would've made more sense a decade or so ago. You say you can "never suggest we've gone too far" or "it's impossible to have this discussion with a U.S. audience" but the topics you raise have increasingly been a part of the public discourse in recent years. I agree that it's distressing to see how some people view the world w.r.t. these issues but I don't agree that applies to the whole country, or even the majority at this point.
  • warning26 6y ago
    > And it seems to be a one way trip. You can never suggest that we have gone too far. Apparently there can never be too many police, too much military spending, or too many people in prison. They only right answer is more of that, please. Personally, I think it's not taken far enough. Leveraging force to eliminate ignorance would, I believe, benefit society. If we allow those who would push untruths for either personal gain or simply out of ignorance, what does society have to lose by ridding itself of them?
• mr_woozy 6y ago
  >Do you believe that human beings are fundamentally corrupt and evil, or that certain sorts of people (women, people of color, ordinary folk who are not rich or highly educated) are inferior specimens, destined to be ruled by their betters? Can´t I believe in the first one without adhering to the second?
• drummer 6y ago
  Highly recommend the book 'What anarchy isn't' by Larken Rose. Free download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yd18waixbva1jae/WhatAnarchyIsnt-FREEBIE.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/yd18waixbva1jae/WhatAnarchyIsnt-FR...
• Hoenoe 6y ago
  A nice addition to this article would be https://thecorrespondent.com/443/brace-yourself-for-the-most-dangerous-idea-yet-most-people-are-pretty-decent/58612083398-55f77a22 https://thecorrespondent.com/443/brace-yourself-for-the-most...
• jmnicolas 6y ago
  Look at any real life anarchist experience (CHAZ being the latest example): after a few days / weeks of chaos, the first thing they do is recreate the services that a state provide.
• sassycassie 6y ago
  So people who have common sense and a nice human beings are anarchists? wtf guys
• stuartd 6y ago
  For me, Proudhon [0] said it best, 180 years ago (did a bit of tidying, e.g. de-capitalization, paragraphing): > To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. > To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. > It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. > That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality. Edit: and I must include his canonical line, adapted for modern times: > Whoever lays their hand on me to govern me is a usurper and tyrant, and I declare them my enemy. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon#Anarchism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Joseph_Proudhon#Anarchi...
• scoot_718 6y ago
  I don't trust other people sufficiently to fall for this load of crap.
• anm89 6y ago
  I consider myself an anarchist but strongly dislike this version or definition of anarchism. Anarchism is by definition a nonsensical political philosophy. How do you anarchistically implement and maintain anarchy. This obviously doesn't work. For me anarchism is a personal philosophy. I choose to consider myself the only meaningful sovereign for myself. I acknowledge that states exist and that I might have very real consequences if I piss them off, I just don't believe they have any special moral authority and try to be the one at the end of the day that sets the rules for my life too the extent that I can.
• averros 6y ago
  Anarchists (as opposed to thugs and hooligans who riot in the streets) are simply people who think that violence (or threats of violence) towards people who did nothing wrong to anyone is not morally permissible. This immediately makes State impossible because it fundamentally relies on taxation. Taxes are, of course, are collected under the threat of violence. Now, how to exactly organize society which doesn't rely on violence towards innocent people to operate is a matter of much debate. The most logically sound (in fact much sounder than any existing current State laws) legal theory for such society was advanced by Murray Newton Rothbard. His "The Ethics of Liberty" is absolute must read to anyone who wants to claim any familiarity with modern political thought.
• ozim 6y ago
  "The number of left-wing and anarchist terrorist attacks in 2019 (26) reached the level of 2016 and 2017 after a decrease in 2018. All attacks took place in Greece, Italy or Spain." - https://www.europol.europa.eu/activities-services/main-reports/european-union-terrorism-situation-and-trend-report-te-sat-2020 https://www.europol.europa.eu/activities-services/main-repor... What is behaving in a reasonable fashion most of the time when there are anarchist terrorist attacks?