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“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

“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.
    - ModernMech 6y ago
      How many hardened sociopaths can any system take before the same? Look at America right now, with a narcissistic psychopath installed at the highest level of a supposed democracy.
      - shadowgovt 6y ago
        Systems built on mistrust of human nature (i.e. checks and balances) can take more. The amount he hasn't been able to do in that position is testament to that. Imagine if the US had been an anarchy instead and he'd amassed enough same-thinking folk to take it over?
    - vidarh 6y ago
      Is it not a good thing if there are no structures in place for those people to abuse to oppress others? We've seen states captured by murderous lunatics time and time again. It seems having structures in place for those kinds of people to abuse has worked very poorly.
      - Nursie 6y ago
        They will build structures. These structures are called gangs, and their leaders warlords.
        vidarh 6y ago
        Or states. As long as the concentration of power in the hands of nation states have been the foundation for most of the worst mass murders in human history, it seems quaint to worry that people arguing for making power shared and collective rather than allowing it to be concentrated will do worse.
        Nursie 6y ago
        In democratic states power is shared and collective. That's the point. They will do worse, look around you at wherever there is a power vacuum. What follows? Violence.
        vidarh 6y ago
        Power is concentrated and delegated top down. That's the point. If I want to withhold consent to be policed a certain way, I can't, even if I only e.g. live and interact with people who similarly want to withhold consent (nobody would suggest that I would have the right to unilaterally dictate the rules if I interact with others who don't share my views). So the problem is that the power is not collective other than the power to vote for who the power will be concentrated with. There's a massive disconnect there where, e.g. if we go by US elections, about half the population at any point are ruled by a system they have not consented to. That is not collective power, at least not collective and shared power of the people, but of a majority at most (even assuming representatives do what their voters want them to, which is also a dicey proposition). Nearly every government in the world tries to limit this tyranny of the majority by legally protected rights to secure the minority against government overreach too, but the fact that they need to demonstrates how flawed this model is. You assume a power vacuum, but nobody is suggesting a power vacuum, but power mediated by consent, negotiation and bottom up delegation rather than top down coercion. As long as you're assuming a power vacuum, you're arguing against a strawman.
  - Nursie 6y ago
    It was an exaggeration. But there are enough humans who are not interested in fair behaviour, but only getting ahead at almost any cost, that the idea of an unregulated world is laughable.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  I don't even think many would, the problem is that it only takes a few. The damage that a dedicated antisocial hyperminority can do to a society that lacks rules and enforcement of said is significant... Even more so in an age where technology acts as a force multiplier.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    The idea of how an anarchic society would be run is that you would need strong social norms, and people willing to use violence in order to prevent authority from rising, which effectively deals with small antisocial minorities.
    - Nursie 6y ago
      And where in the world has it played out like this? Instead of examples of peaceful anarchism, the history of the world is full of examples showing that those with the will to use violence use it for their own ends, form gangs, and militias, become warlords...
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        Sure, the Zapatistas, the Apoists, and a few indigenous anarchist groups. Forming gangs and militias is difficult when the status quo is good for most people resulting the majority being willing to use violence to avoid being ruled by gangs and warlords.
        Nursie 6y ago
        The zapatistas amd apoists appear to be effectively democratic militia, existing in opposition to outside oppressors. The body of your post there seems effectively to be historically illiterate.
        sudosysgen 6y ago
        They are indeed directly democratically run militias, but that is exactly how anarchists would run a militia. And they aren't just militias, they also run civil society.
- FranzFerdiNaN 6y ago
  This behaviour is most definitely promoted by capitalism, so I wouldn't be so fast to make it a general principle. In fact, all proof shows that humans are extremely cooperative and social when the going gets tough or disaster strikes.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    I think it's really telling that this disaster-anarchism argument comes up so regularly. The question isn't how society functions during a state of exception, it's how it functions on day 2 after the excitement is over when things go back to normal. It's like all other revolutions having failed the revolution has now been outsourced to hurricanes and floods. if you want to argue that capitalism or the status quo or whatever is bad, make the case how anarchism functions on an ordinary, boring day, that is to say how it organises regular life, that is the relevant question.
  - Nursie 6y ago
    Humans in general are, but a significant enough minority are interested only in power and aquisition. I'm sorry but this is a pipedream.
  - tomp 6y ago
    > humans are extremely cooperative and social when the going gets tough or disaster strikes. 2020 being a great example. Jesus, this whole discussion is such a shitshow. Every time I hear about anarchism I keep wishing someone would explain to me how it all works, I expected a lot from HN users, but all I keep reading is fairy tails with obvious holes the size of Mount Everest. Like, did anyone even consider to think how you'd resolve the obvious market fallacies (which, despite the name, have nothing to do with capitalist markets, but simply with humans / rational self-interested agents).
spuz 6y ago
> It is painfully obvious that we would act much worse under anarchy. The article makes many points against this. It would be better to take those and refute them rather than simply saying "it's painfully obvious".
torb-xyz 6y ago
Anarchists obviously don’t think this will come about by itself, they simply believe that it is possible to organize society in such a way that the statement above holds true. Anarchists will generally argue that todays society prevents that from being the case (at least to a large enough degree). The details of all this (strategies, how to make it work, etc) is at the core of a lot of anarchist theory.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  That's what I find so weird about most criticisms of Anarchism. Anarchists like nothing more than building systems and methods, then seeing how they work or could be improved. The only way to differentiate different forms of anarchism is through the systems they think would be most effective, and the methods they think would be most effective to bring them about. It's just a lot harder to build peer-to-peer systems than centralized ones, although peer-to-peer systems are ultimately the most resilient.
  - torb-xyz 6y ago
    Yeah, it's really funny how anarchism has this reputation for disorganisation. The anarchists I've met are super nerds about what is good democratic process going down to intricate details of how it all should be organised. I guess there is probably also a big difference here between actual anarchists and people who merely sympathise with anarchism (like myself), possibly mainly because they have an anti-authoritarian inclination (which alone, an anarchist does not make).
  - Hoenoe 6y ago
    > It's just a lot harder to build peer-to-peer systems than centralized ones, although peer-to-peer systems are ultimately the most resilient. I don't think that's true, top-down/centralized systems will become exponentially more complex with every new layer.
jacquesm 6y ago
I think it is written that way just to provoke you, and it seems to have worked.
- ReactiveJelly 6y ago
  I wish anarchist thinkers could explain their thoughts as well as they could provoke me.
lucideer 6y ago
> this is a demonstrably false fairy tale Demonstrably how? > Why would you assume that we would act righteously in the absence of law? What is a demonstrably false fairy tale is that we don't act righteously when law enforcement is present. So asking what would happen in its absence seems irrelevant. > It is painfully obvious that we would act much worse under anarchy. Above you said it was "demonstrable" but now seem to be settling for saying it's somehow self-evident. ... Fwiw I don't personally agree with the quoted statement, or rather I agree with only a narrow interpretation of it. I don't think individuals are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion in all situations without having to be forced to. I do think groups are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without external force, given certain conditions: anarchism in my mind is about local* law enforcement rather than external. Self-regulating organisations are possible, the only real condition is the removal of external incentives for those organisations to misbehave. *By "local" I just mean internal/within proximity to the individual
- murgindrag 6y ago
  > Demonstrably how? Tens of thousands of years of human history. Feuding warlords, and slaves, rather than everyone acting together in unity. > What is a demonstrably false fairy tale is that we don't act righteously when law enforcement is present. So asking what would happen in its absence seems irrelevant. Well, we don't have mass rape, looting, or murder. One really needs to compare scale. Democracy seems to be a horrible system, and indeed the worst system, except for all the others (paraphrasing Churchill). > Self-regulating organisations are possible, the only real condition is the removal of external incentives for those organisations to misbehave. You're missing scale. SMALL self-regulating organizations do very well. The key condition isn't just about removing external incentives, but also about scale. Once you're at some scale, you're guaranteed to have a few psychopaths who work to game the system to personal benefit. A key thing about small-scale is everyone can say "Adolf is a jerk. Let's swing clear of him." Large scale, he takes over Germany, and onto the world! Likewise, large-scale, you're missing social incentives. Small scale, I can say "I won't steal from you, because you'll think I'm a jerk." Large-scale, try leaving your wallet in the train in almost any major city for 10 minutes. Tribal culture was pretty good on isolated islands. It didn't go Lord of the Flies. That only happened at scale. I've seen largish organizations sustain this for maybe a half-decade or decade, but never longer. At some point, game-theoretical organizational models take over, and things never go back.
geofft 6y ago
That assumes that the presence of lawful order makes things better, which is sort of the whole question this article is about. You can construct a pretty good argument that, say, absent the structures of "lawful order" around which large corporations grow, fewer people would be driving hours to work each day, drinking water out of plastic bottles, flying across the country on business trips, producing pesticides in Bhopal, piling up ammonium nitrate in Beirut, etc. I think most of us as individuals could lead happy and fulfilling lives and contributing to the advancement of humanity without any of that.
- eyko 6y ago
  "I think most of us as individuals could lead happy and fulfilling lives and contributing to the advancement of humanity without any of that." Your assumption is that we led happy and fulfilling lives before what we now call society, which is false. Bad harvest years would routinely decimate communities. Hunger also drove people to steal from others, many times violently (kill, rape, and ransack), and in the best case where they only stole your food, you were now left to starve because a famine affects everyone, and the victims were already on rations as it were. Local spots of violence in the struggle for the very few resources that we had were very common place. As societies evolved, such conflicts for resources became more necessarily more complex (think bands, think small militias, think city-state armies, think all out war). The main misconception I tend to see people have is that they somehow believe that our current condition is somehow different from the condition we were in. As if society was imposed on us and we became bad. We are society. Be it a community of ten or a community of a thousand. Good an evil are both sides of the same coin, it's just our nature.
  - geofft 6y ago
    > Your assumption is that we led happy and fulfilling lives before what we now call society, which is false. No, that's not my assumption, and I'm confused why you think it is. I'm simply saying that I, right now, in our current state of society, am not driving a car to work or buying water bottles in my current happy and fulfilling life, and the only reason I did that previously (and might do so in the future) is because a corporation backed by our current form of government made it so that I needed to do that to have a happy and fulfilling life. I didn't say anything about the state of humanity before modern society. You make some good points, but I don't think they have much to do with this particular discussion. You may well be raising a different good objection to anarchism, but it's not the objection I'm responding to.
bem94 6y ago
> Just look at how we treat the planet and other living things in the presence of lawful order. Law isn't a basis for morality, and there's a lot to be said for how present (capitalist, consumerist) systems promote un-sustainability, despite many on an individual level rejecting those systems.
onion2k 6y ago
The line you quoted doesn't say that people will act reasonably, but rather that they are capable of acting reasonably. The interesting (and massive) problem is figuring out why some people act unreasonably in the same situation as someone else who doesn't. If it's something that can be addressed through mechanisms like the provision of healthcare, UBI, equality, or addressing inequality then perhaps society can be structured to have a very minimal government without the need for so many laws simply by making sure everyone is treated fairly and not left in a position where unreasonable actions are a solution to their immediate problems.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  > addressed through mechanisms like the provision of healthcare, UBI, equality, or addressing inequality then perhaps society can be structured to have a very minimal government The (most likely/obvious implementation of the) first half of that seems diametrically opposite of “very minimal government”.
  - onion2k 6y ago
    Having a government that's there to do no more than take in tax receipts and spend the money on essentials would be minimal compared to what we have at the moment. Right now the government involves itself in practically every aspect of people's lives. It doesn't have to be that way.
    - elindbe2 6y ago
      But your minimal government wouldn't work. If you have taxes then you need a justice system to enforce collection of taxes. You'll also need a military to prevent outsiders from taking your treasury.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  The provision of healthcare, UBI and the like is itself incompatible with "very minimal" government - each of those would involve government control over a non-trivial fraction of GDP. I'm not saying that these things aren't worth doing; some of them may well be. We should be mindful of the costs, however. For that matter, anarchist thought hasn't historically shown much awareness wrt. the importance of, e.g. social capital provision, as enabled by voluntary "grassroots" institutions like churches and community clubs, as something that's incredibly effective at promoting reasonable, pro-social values and behaviors. (Some of these institutions necessarily involve various sorts of hierarchy and ranking, such that, e.g. a Scout Guide would rank higher than a newcomer Scout. Many anarchists would intuitively dismiss any such hierarchy as inherently coercive - despite the entirely voluntary character of these organizations.)
prrls 6y ago
Anarchy doesn't mean "absence of law". Absence of law is anomie. One is often confused for the other, but there is a slight difference. Anarchy is more about you and your community having the autonomy to decide your own rules, not a central authority. I believe "autonomy" is the key word here, not "law".
- dwighttk 6y ago
  The “nomy” in autonomy is law.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Then community autonomy means community law.
    - dwighttk 6y ago
      Community self law/rule
- andi999 6y ago
  So I am playing a bit of devils advocate here, but then isnt the KKK a good example of Anarchy? The community agreed that part of the residents should not live there anymore, they made there own laws and tried to enforce them.
  - vidarh 6y ago
    No, because the KKK itself represents a coercive power structure acting without the consent of those it attempt to enforce power over, which is inherently not anarchist. If the KKK only tried to harass or harm people who had consented to be subject to them, then you'd have an argument.
    - andi999 6y ago
      This doesnt tally with the previous comment. Then you are saying anarchy has laws, but they cannot be enforced. So your interpretation is no laws (which can be enforced): then how would you prevent the KKK in forming (violating your rule) without a government to enforce "no minority killings, please"
lawwantsin17 6y ago
This troll just took over the conversation with troll nonsense. Don't argue with oxymorons.
brbrodude 6y ago
This is where I see one of the most striking arguments for anarchist philosophy. That is: It takes, and it took, an immensurable ammount of violence to make the status quo, 'lawful order' is a very shaky concept there. From this perspective it's way clearer that the unbalances and the unlawlessness of a big chunk of the "order" are themselves the sources of so much messed up stuff we have to deal with and try hopelessly to justify(ending up just evading cowardly). So to me anarchism is much more about recognizing dystopia already here and demistifying and dismantling that than some gaseous utopian end state. The way I see it, platonics are kind of irrelevant in this context. Maybe if there's one, for me, then it'd be that humans already come from nature with capacity for self-determination, conflict resolution, sociability, organization. All those other structures mostly hijacks that and messes it up with imbalances, most obviously by abuse of power, hierarchy being the main instrument for making that. That power itself depended on (some): trust, sociability, harmony & etc to establish itself. I.e.: there are things which should not be decoupled, decouple it, you'll get dystopia. The more I research and get older(32 now) the clearer it is, IMO. Hardest part is getting past all the noise. A very good introduction to this kind of radical(literally) perspective to me would be Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. P.s.: by the way don't miss that anarchism in this sense is not the same as 'anarchy' as commonly understood. As Chomsky says in a video(youtube "chomsky anarchism"): anarchism would actually ammount to a highly organized society.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  > humans already come from nature with capacity for ... conflict resolution ... Um, I don't think so. Conflict resolution is the main obstacle to the viability of entirely voluntary ("anarchist") organization. That's why it's the self-defining function of any government, even the most minimal.
  - _jal 6y ago
    How often do you find yourself needing third-parties to arbitrate your interactions? Because for me, outside some formal processes I do for my job, it has been well over a decade since I needed someone to mediate my interactions with someone else. People are very good at conflict resolution. They only see the cases where it doesn't work out.
eyko 6y ago
As Thomas Hobbes beautifully described what in his understanding would be the natural condition of mankind: "In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and, which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."[1] Societies exist as a natural evolution of human connectedness and dependence on each other. Laws as a natural evolution of complex societies attempting to find fair ways to settle disputes. Law enforcement as a natural evolution of societes that come up with laws that not everyone agrees to abide by. The idea that, were we to be left to our own devices would be model citizens is, as you very well put, "demonstrably false fairy tale". The fact that we have laws and law enforcement in the first place is evidence of that. That being said, ever since I came across the works of Bakunin, Berkman, Goldman, Tolstoy, Camus, etc. as a teenager, I've considered myself very much an anarchist in the traditional and philosophical sense, but definitely not in the cultural sense. That is to say I don't believe that law and law enforcement are incompatible with anarchy: I do share the fundamental believe that all humans are created equal, and that there should be no hierarchies besides those that are natural and organic (e.g. my parents have certain authority over me in the family context, but my parents could equally become my students and I would have some academic authority over them in terms of mentorship, in my field of expertise). Organic hierarchies are the fabric of society and being human. We're not solitary animals, and hierarchies will always form in groups. We can agree that nobody should have any more rights and privileges than others based on claims of nobility, birth, ethnicity, gender, or any sort of social or cultural position, whilst at the same time accepting that in all human gatherings, certain group dynamics will emerge and that's okay as long as we respect each other as individuals and agree to abide by a common set of rules. But I definitely don't believe that humans are good by nature and that society corrupts us -- we are selfish by nature, self preservation has got us here. We're perfect at survival, even if that may mean taking another life, human or otherwise. I read somewhere that mankind's success is as a result of our capacity for violence. Unfortunately it feels very accurate. 1. Leviathan, Part 1: "Of Man". c. 13 https://www.bartleby.com/34/5/13.html https://www.bartleby.com/34/5/13.html
anarch1c 6y ago
I’m curious what makes you so sure the laws on the books are what’s keeping the majority of billions from randomly shooting each other. Just because laws exist doesn’t mean they’re what’s keeping your neighbors from randomly gunning you down given they could snap biologically despite the law. Anarchism doesn’t mean no laws or rules. Anarchism as a lawless violent mess is the movie version. One could even keep the Constitution system we have, again anarchism is rules, no rulers. Still need to figure out rules. An anarchism “hack” at scale IMO starts with a functioning legislative and judicial process beholden to public life not corporatism, and local management of concern rather than having Mr President to eventually function overload, wiggling his pen changing the outputs without legislative action. It means not believing in grandpas notion of a functional nation state. Paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson, the dead should not rule the living. (Indeed they cannot given many facts of science, it’s really lots of vain people emotionally play acting their nostalgia, the world has literally moved on). Step 1 in the US, restrain the Presidency. It was only ever intended to be a task master for Congress. Step 2 Senate term limits to avoid capture by people who think America achieved the ultimate form of human society in 1980. Step 3 expand representation in Congress, a process which was halted decades ago by special interests. Step 4 expand judiciary to improve access to timely court processes. Yet another process neutered in the last century. Above all take control of your political future rather than be distracted by what are ultimately disposable technology fads. I know it’s fashionable to ignore it but you pointed out yourself how much worse it could be without anything, might be a good idea to make sure it’s screwed down.
- oblio 6y ago
  What you're saying looks a lot like reform, not anarchy.
  - anarch1c 6y ago
    You seem functionally fixed cognitively. Sorry, anarchy is fire and brimstone! Mad Max living! Let’s go there! Does that feel better? Anarchism isn’t a thing. It can’t have one shape, and color. Like most things there’s nuance and philosophy to it that the popular memes, and a whole lot of popular writing, do not impart. Vague emotional colorings without functional concept. Anarchism is fine with collective social norms so long as it’s not at gun point, serving 1% bottom lines. There’s little to be said about logistical life, we know how to supply people. It’s emotional categorizing of who is lord and who is a serf that we’ve yet to shed.
learnstats2 6y ago
Your assumption that people must behave better in the presence of authority - and therefore worse in the absence of it - is exactly the assumption that is under question.
- oblio 6y ago
  They don't have to behave better in the presence of authority, they are forced to, that's kind of the point of authority :-)
  - __s 6y ago
    Unfortunately authority doesn't behave better in the presence of itself
    - oblio 6y ago
      True, but the real world is about compromises and lesser evils. Formal authority is quite often better than arbitrary, informal authority. And make no mistake, humans are social, their natural congregations are hierarchical.
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        I'm not sure this is true. Not only were humans very loosely hierarchical essentially until the invention of agriculture, but anarchism doesn't advocate for arbitrary and informal authority, but for limited in any authority at all unless absolutely necessary, in which case it must be directly kept in check.
        oblio 6y ago
        Regarding humans being organized very loosely until agriculture personally I wouldn't consider that as a plus. We're on HN, just think about the pace of human development before agriculture and after. We were pretty much doing the same thing for half a million years and then in 10000 years: rockets in space! ;-)
ClumsyPilot 6y ago
> "> Just look at how we treat the planet and other living things in the presence of lawful order" On the contrary, it' and indictment of the current law system, it has utterally failed to protect the environment and other living things, where-as anacistic organisations, charities and protest movement have done a lot for the environment. In fact they are the only ones that have done anything at all. If a given CEO damages profits for the sake of environment, he can be removed as he is not fullfilling his legal duty, maximising profits. So even if a hypothetical environmentalist became the chielf of ExxonMobil, he wouldn't be able to do much.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  > anacistic organisations, charities and protest movement have done a lot for the environment. In fact they are the only ones that have done anything at all. This is not true at all. Protecting the environment isn’t just about actions like planting trees and buying up the occasional extra property parcel to dedicate as a land reserve. It requires government scale regulation to impose negative consequences on people and companies producing negative externalities. You can argue that the government hasn’t done enough in this regard, but it’s demonstrably not true to claim that 3rd parties have done more than the government to regulate industry and build national park level land reserves. This is the problem with most pro-anarchistic stances: They take too much of the current system’s benefits for granted while also assuming that less regulation would somehow produce a more regulated outcome. I don’t understand the desire to put impossible theories of anarchy on a pedestal instead of simply making incremental improvements to the current systems.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    The anarchist argument is distribution of power. Take the example of pollution. Say you're an employee of a fossil fuel cooperative. Is it in your interest to continue polluting? Yes, because you after all own some of the ressources of that company and control it. So what is the anarchist solution? Well, it's in the interests of everyone to stop pollution, right? So you'd need people to come together, decide that population is a concern, at least a good percentage of people, and offer you to be compensated for your investment in fossil fuels in exchange to stop polluting and find another job or not work in industry at all anymore. You might say that this is unrealistic, but for the government to do anything about pollution we needed hundreds of millions of people to protest and a majority of the people agreeing that pollution is a problem worth fixing. And if that doesn't work either, you elect and randomly chose people to supervise the elected with short term limits in order to have authority against pollution. This is the anarchist solution to the tragedy of the commons in this case. As for making incremental change, there are hard limits. There are existing power structures that will hamper you very strongly - the state, private interests, the corporate media, and so on. If you do incremental change that they don't like, they absolutely will use violence to prevent you.
almost_usual 6y ago
I see this when dispersed camping, simple things like cleaning up at the campsite before leaving. Most people don’t have a problem with it but there are small groups who don’t care about anything. Those small groups tend to ruin it for everyone. You don’t see that at managed campgrounds because you will be fined.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  > At a managed campground you don’t see this because you’ll be fined. Thus proving the superiority of private property over the complete anarchy of the commons.
  - brianberns 6y ago
    Those aren't the only two options. You can have public property that isn't anarchy. That's how national parks work in the US.
    - almost_usual 6y ago
      State Parks and National Parks usually have zero tolerance for unwieldy behavior. National Forests are where you’ll see gunshot holes in signs and occasionally trash. I’ve seen entire burnt out vehicles in CA National Forests, it’s a little more wild west.
- Lowgain 6y ago
  >I see this when dispersed camping, simple things like cleaning up at the campsite before leaving. Most people don’t have a problem with it but there are small groups who don’t care about anything. Those small groups tend to ruin it for everyone. As I understand it, an anarchist camping group (for lack of a better name) could still collectively agree on and enforce rules - in many ways still a "managed" campground, just with more shared ownership
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
jkhdigital 6y ago
I think the whole point of the article is not insist that anarchy is a suitable organizing principle for society as a whole, but that pockets of anarchy already exist and perhaps we should consider allowing a bit more anarchy before we smother everything in heavy-handed power structures and legislation.
jancsika 6y ago
> It is painfully obvious that we would act much worse under anarchy. You're rankly speculating, and that puts me in control of the board. I choose Barcelona, 1936. Now is the part where you read the relevant Wikipedia entry and attempt to find the intersection between the facts there and what I quoted from you above. And just to keep the conversation focused: the inability to defend a city against an impending attack from fascists and communists is a completely different problem than the people in the city "acting much worse under anarchy."
photonemitter 6y ago
Tragedy of the commons, and the laziness of a false sense of security railings. Basically; I agree with you, and I think it is because of the way people act in a society that seems structured. People seem to think that if there is a crowd of people, then they are part of the crowd. If a crowd sees someone in trouble, then the people are generally found to be more reluctant to step up and offer help, compared to when they are alone (plenty of research seems to show this.) I suspect this is a sort of commons tragedy, where we assume that a crowd must hold structure with “people who take care of that sort of thing”, or that someone who feels qualified will somehow step up. From my own experience it also seems like people tend to relegate any issues to whosoever looks like they have any kind of uniform. (Even employees at shops, etc.) Were it not the case, we can speculate that people who are forced to bear their own actions would be more inclined to act out their own moral and ethical leanings... rather than the implied relation that illegal = bad, and legal/not-illegal= good (or acceptable). In a sense then, anarchy is when all that is legal encompasses everything that falls under a sort of Kantian categorical principle. While everything illegal is the universally opposite. (Basically where the extrinsic laws of society match the intrinsic moral values of all citizens.)
vidarh 6y ago
Consider that people are in charge no matter what. In the current system, you simply decide to trust others using coercion over the ability of negotiating voluntary agreements for acceptable behaviour. If people can't be trusted, the current system is also flawed, and has far more severe failure points: get a bad leader, and bad behaviours gets enforced with the power of a nation state. Anarchy is not absence of law, but presence of consent and negotiation at every level.
spurgu 6y ago
I believe that the core issue is the size of the group. That small groups up to 100-150 people (where everybody knows each other personally) would be able to self-organize in an anarchist fashion. Going above that the us/them issues will increase, leading to a need for some type of government.
- vorpalhex 6y ago
  Thomas Paine touches on this in his works. Every group past about 10 has a government even if it's just a patriarch figure. As the group grows, the government gets more complex and usually it's harder to represent everyone.
- BobbyJo 6y ago
  I think it's inability to work on large numbers of people is due to an even simpler explanation: the law of large numbers. One giant asshole can do a lot of damage, and with 1000 or more people, you can guarantee there are going to be at least a few.
bobthechef 6y ago
> 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. Indeed, we know that (pace Rousseauian claims) man misbehaves not because some "system" has made him do so, but because he chooses to behave in such a manner, often knowing fully well he is choosing misbehavior. I think most of us, if we're honest, even if our moral understanding is variable, admit that we have acted in ways we knew were unjust before we acted. To take this discussion further, government is a natural institution, i.e., one which follows from human nature and is natural to human societies for the sake of the common good (whether at the level of the family, the community, nation, the world, etc.). Part of what the common good entails is the administration of justice which requires an authority to administer that justice. In your example, if the problem is, say, industrial destruction of the common good that is our environment which we need to live (provided there exist better ways to secure the good produced by legitimate industry or legitimately permissible industry without that destruction), then the problem is a deficient law that fails to guard the common good. Healthy criticism of authority is important because we know that those in authority are capable of choosing badly either through malice or incompetence. However, just at there is an excessive deferral and submissiveness some show toward authority that subordinates evidence and reason to authority, there is also a hostility to the very idea of authority. The latter is what rests at the bottom of anarchism. Anarchism in practice devolves into the rule of the powerful because no authority acts as a bulwark against power for the sake of the common good. So on the one hand we have unbridled capitalism wherein the powerful dominate and exploit the weak, and on the other we have socialism which is the tyranny of government. Both converge at essentially the same point. In both cases, the powerful impose their "laws" on the populace for their own benefit. The empirical evidence corroborates as much and there is no sense in placing one's hope in either. The meat grinder of human existence on this earth is not to be abolished and the solution is not revolution. All revolutionaries are opportunists that prey on resentment, whether it is the product of envy or righteous anger, and parlay it into their own power. It also results in orgies of violence, dead bodies, and rivers of blood. We are much better off engaging in good actions in our daily lives, many which may require pain, suffering, and sacrifice. All social action is the action of individuals for individuals. A society is only as good as its members. To many, that message isn't sexy. It lack the ecstatic grandeur or the messianic and eschatological satisfaction of what revolution seems to promise. They are like the woman at the well. There is a lesson to be learned here.
mempko 6y ago
Or, maybe we act the way we do because of law. Law may restrict our moral choices.
cortic 6y ago
Consider there is how you want people to act and how you don't want people to act, to say that you are also reasonable implies that society collectively agrees with you, which would mean you are making a rule that everyone follows anyway. IF this isn't the case and you want people to act differently than they currently act then this is a social problem that can only be solved by engineering society to adopt your values. It just can't be done by dictating legally what people should do, some examples.. Prohibition; it works fine in countries that largely adopt religious values forbidding drinking.. but is impossible to be successful in countries who's society has not been engineered to accept it. Woman's suffrage; laws banning women voting work fine in countries where the society already feel this way, in most western countries there would be outright revolt. Even slavery can be legally enforced only to the degree society accepts it, from indentured servitude in societies that embraced laissez faire, to chain-gangs in societies that embraced philosophies of penance and damnation. Rules and laws are only afterthoughts, put in place after society decides collectively how people should function. Because of this laws are largely superfluous to how individuals act.
lapinot 6y ago
> 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. You seem to be conflating anarchy with chaos (to be fair most people do, the word "anarchy" itself was probably used as an insult before it was even picked up by anti-authoritarian communists). The weight of laws in our societies is so big that and it's meaning so large that it's probably more understandable if we say that anarchism doesn't want to supress laws [#]. One particularly good example of law system that couldn't be more anarchist is international law, the main point being that it's normative and not coercive. That's not saying it's not respected, indeed you may suffer consequent actions from some countries if you don't: from diplomatic troubles (moral judgments) to degraded economic relationship (exclusions) and ultimately war (use of force). The basic assumption is that every subject of international law recognizes that the other subject are sovereign entities. International law is for me the proof that such organizational principles do work in practice, and it's a source of inspiration for thinking about anarchistic organization. Quoting wikipedia, all the right keywords are in there: > [international law] is the set of rules, norms, and standards generally accepted in relations between [subjects]. [..] It establishes normative guidelines [..]. > The sources [..] include [..] custom [..], treaties, and general principles of law recognized by most [..] legal systems. > [It] operates largely through consent, since there is no universally accepted authority [..]. The conclusion i'm hitting is that at the planetary level, we do live in some kind of anarchist system. For me it's the biggest lesson of anarchism: the main goal is to conquer the level of states, extending down from the international level and up from the inter-individual cooperative level. I could continue with the fact that this level of states is also the realm of private corporations, which then bridges with usual marxist cooperative production systems rethoric. [#] The more precise statement would be that anarchistic principles refuse "the singleton" judiciary institution (one that assumes monopoly of justice, has jurisdiction over everything). Judges and courts may still exist, for example contracts could specify under which jurisdiction they may be disputed/upheld. ps: don't criticize saying that international law is dominated by usa/western countries, that's another debate.
- lapinot 6y ago
  pps: I thought about this international-law example while i was reading Bolo'Bolo (by PM, free access). It's a really funny and thought inspiring short book. Its development on productive and economic relationships is really nice. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/p-m-bolo-bolo https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/p-m-bolo-bolo

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.
  - ModernMech 6y ago
    How many hardened sociopaths can any system take before the same? Look at America right now, with a narcissistic psychopath installed at the highest level of a supposed democracy.
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      Systems built on mistrust of human nature (i.e. checks and balances) can take more. The amount he hasn't been able to do in that position is testament to that. Imagine if the US had been an anarchy instead and he'd amassed enough same-thinking folk to take it over?
  - vidarh 6y ago
    Is it not a good thing if there are no structures in place for those people to abuse to oppress others? We've seen states captured by murderous lunatics time and time again. It seems having structures in place for those kinds of people to abuse has worked very poorly.
    - Nursie 6y ago
      They will build structures. These structures are called gangs, and their leaders warlords.
      - vidarh 6y ago
        Or states. As long as the concentration of power in the hands of nation states have been the foundation for most of the worst mass murders in human history, it seems quaint to worry that people arguing for making power shared and collective rather than allowing it to be concentrated will do worse.
        Nursie 6y ago
        In democratic states power is shared and collective. That's the point. They will do worse, look around you at wherever there is a power vacuum. What follows? Violence.
        vidarh 6y ago
        Power is concentrated and delegated top down. That's the point. If I want to withhold consent to be policed a certain way, I can't, even if I only e.g. live and interact with people who similarly want to withhold consent (nobody would suggest that I would have the right to unilaterally dictate the rules if I interact with others who don't share my views). So the problem is that the power is not collective other than the power to vote for who the power will be concentrated with. There's a massive disconnect there where, e.g. if we go by US elections, about half the population at any point are ruled by a system they have not consented to. That is not collective power, at least not collective and shared power of the people, but of a majority at most (even assuming representatives do what their voters want them to, which is also a dicey proposition). Nearly every government in the world tries to limit this tyranny of the majority by legally protected rights to secure the minority against government overreach too, but the fact that they need to demonstrates how flawed this model is. You assume a power vacuum, but nobody is suggesting a power vacuum, but power mediated by consent, negotiation and bottom up delegation rather than top down coercion. As long as you're assuming a power vacuum, you're arguing against a strawman.
- Nursie 6y ago
  It was an exaggeration. But there are enough humans who are not interested in fair behaviour, but only getting ahead at almost any cost, that the idea of an unregulated world is laughable.
shadowgovt 6y ago
I don't even think many would, the problem is that it only takes a few. The damage that a dedicated antisocial hyperminority can do to a society that lacks rules and enforcement of said is significant... Even more so in an age where technology acts as a force multiplier.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  The idea of how an anarchic society would be run is that you would need strong social norms, and people willing to use violence in order to prevent authority from rising, which effectively deals with small antisocial minorities.
  - Nursie 6y ago
    And where in the world has it played out like this? Instead of examples of peaceful anarchism, the history of the world is full of examples showing that those with the will to use violence use it for their own ends, form gangs, and militias, become warlords...
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      Sure, the Zapatistas, the Apoists, and a few indigenous anarchist groups. Forming gangs and militias is difficult when the status quo is good for most people resulting the majority being willing to use violence to avoid being ruled by gangs and warlords.
      - Nursie 6y ago
        The zapatistas amd apoists appear to be effectively democratic militia, existing in opposition to outside oppressors. The body of your post there seems effectively to be historically illiterate.
        sudosysgen 6y ago
        They are indeed directly democratically run militias, but that is exactly how anarchists would run a militia. And they aren't just militias, they also run civil society.
FranzFerdiNaN 6y ago
This behaviour is most definitely promoted by capitalism, so I wouldn't be so fast to make it a general principle. In fact, all proof shows that humans are extremely cooperative and social when the going gets tough or disaster strikes.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  I think it's really telling that this disaster-anarchism argument comes up so regularly. The question isn't how society functions during a state of exception, it's how it functions on day 2 after the excitement is over when things go back to normal. It's like all other revolutions having failed the revolution has now been outsourced to hurricanes and floods. if you want to argue that capitalism or the status quo or whatever is bad, make the case how anarchism functions on an ordinary, boring day, that is to say how it organises regular life, that is the relevant question.
- Nursie 6y ago
  Humans in general are, but a significant enough minority are interested only in power and aquisition. I'm sorry but this is a pipedream.
- tomp 6y ago
  > humans are extremely cooperative and social when the going gets tough or disaster strikes. 2020 being a great example. Jesus, this whole discussion is such a shitshow. Every time I hear about anarchism I keep wishing someone would explain to me how it all works, I expected a lot from HN users, but all I keep reading is fairy tails with obvious holes the size of Mount Everest. Like, did anyone even consider to think how you'd resolve the obvious market fallacies (which, despite the name, have nothing to do with capitalist markets, but simply with humans / rational self-interested agents).

spuz 6y ago

> It is painfully obvious that we would act much worse under anarchy. The article makes many points against this. It would be better to take those and refute them rather than simply saying "it's painfully obvious".

torb-xyz 6y ago

Anarchists obviously don’t think this will come about by itself, they simply believe that it is possible to organize society in such a way that the statement above holds true. Anarchists will generally argue that todays society prevents that from being the case (at least to a large enough degree). The details of all this (strategies, how to make it work, etc) is at the core of a lot of anarchist theory.

pessimizer 6y ago
That's what I find so weird about most criticisms of Anarchism. Anarchists like nothing more than building systems and methods, then seeing how they work or could be improved. The only way to differentiate different forms of anarchism is through the systems they think would be most effective, and the methods they think would be most effective to bring them about. It's just a lot harder to build peer-to-peer systems than centralized ones, although peer-to-peer systems are ultimately the most resilient.
- torb-xyz 6y ago
  Yeah, it's really funny how anarchism has this reputation for disorganisation. The anarchists I've met are super nerds about what is good democratic process going down to intricate details of how it all should be organised. I guess there is probably also a big difference here between actual anarchists and people who merely sympathise with anarchism (like myself), possibly mainly because they have an anti-authoritarian inclination (which alone, an anarchist does not make).
- Hoenoe 6y ago
  > It's just a lot harder to build peer-to-peer systems than centralized ones, although peer-to-peer systems are ultimately the most resilient. I don't think that's true, top-down/centralized systems will become exponentially more complex with every new layer.

jacquesm 6y ago

I think it is written that way just to provoke you, and it seems to have worked.

ReactiveJelly 6y ago
I wish anarchist thinkers could explain their thoughts as well as they could provoke me.

lucideer 6y ago

> this is a demonstrably false fairy tale Demonstrably how? > Why would you assume that we would act righteously in the absence of law? What is a demonstrably false fairy tale is that we don't act righteously when law enforcement is present. So asking what would happen in its absence seems irrelevant. > It is painfully obvious that we would act much worse under anarchy. Above you said it was "demonstrable" but now seem to be settling for saying it's somehow self-evident. ... Fwiw I don't personally agree with the quoted statement, or rather I agree with only a narrow interpretation of it. I don't think individuals are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion in all situations without having to be forced to. I do think groups are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without external force, given certain conditions: anarchism in my mind is about local* law enforcement rather than external. Self-regulating organisations are possible, the only real condition is the removal of external incentives for those organisations to misbehave. *By "local" I just mean internal/within proximity to the individual

murgindrag 6y ago
> Demonstrably how? Tens of thousands of years of human history. Feuding warlords, and slaves, rather than everyone acting together in unity. > What is a demonstrably false fairy tale is that we don't act righteously when law enforcement is present. So asking what would happen in its absence seems irrelevant. Well, we don't have mass rape, looting, or murder. One really needs to compare scale. Democracy seems to be a horrible system, and indeed the worst system, except for all the others (paraphrasing Churchill). > Self-regulating organisations are possible, the only real condition is the removal of external incentives for those organisations to misbehave. You're missing scale. SMALL self-regulating organizations do very well. The key condition isn't just about removing external incentives, but also about scale. Once you're at some scale, you're guaranteed to have a few psychopaths who work to game the system to personal benefit. A key thing about small-scale is everyone can say "Adolf is a jerk. Let's swing clear of him." Large scale, he takes over Germany, and onto the world! Likewise, large-scale, you're missing social incentives. Small scale, I can say "I won't steal from you, because you'll think I'm a jerk." Large-scale, try leaving your wallet in the train in almost any major city for 10 minutes. Tribal culture was pretty good on isolated islands. It didn't go Lord of the Flies. That only happened at scale. I've seen largish organizations sustain this for maybe a half-decade or decade, but never longer. At some point, game-theoretical organizational models take over, and things never go back.

geofft 6y ago

That assumes that the presence of lawful order makes things better, which is sort of the whole question this article is about. You can construct a pretty good argument that, say, absent the structures of "lawful order" around which large corporations grow, fewer people would be driving hours to work each day, drinking water out of plastic bottles, flying across the country on business trips, producing pesticides in Bhopal, piling up ammonium nitrate in Beirut, etc. I think most of us as individuals could lead happy and fulfilling lives and contributing to the advancement of humanity without any of that.

eyko 6y ago
"I think most of us as individuals could lead happy and fulfilling lives and contributing to the advancement of humanity without any of that." Your assumption is that we led happy and fulfilling lives before what we now call society, which is false. Bad harvest years would routinely decimate communities. Hunger also drove people to steal from others, many times violently (kill, rape, and ransack), and in the best case where they only stole your food, you were now left to starve because a famine affects everyone, and the victims were already on rations as it were. Local spots of violence in the struggle for the very few resources that we had were very common place. As societies evolved, such conflicts for resources became more necessarily more complex (think bands, think small militias, think city-state armies, think all out war). The main misconception I tend to see people have is that they somehow believe that our current condition is somehow different from the condition we were in. As if society was imposed on us and we became bad. We are society. Be it a community of ten or a community of a thousand. Good an evil are both sides of the same coin, it's just our nature.
- geofft 6y ago
  > Your assumption is that we led happy and fulfilling lives before what we now call society, which is false. No, that's not my assumption, and I'm confused why you think it is. I'm simply saying that I, right now, in our current state of society, am not driving a car to work or buying water bottles in my current happy and fulfilling life, and the only reason I did that previously (and might do so in the future) is because a corporation backed by our current form of government made it so that I needed to do that to have a happy and fulfilling life. I didn't say anything about the state of humanity before modern society. You make some good points, but I don't think they have much to do with this particular discussion. You may well be raising a different good objection to anarchism, but it's not the objection I'm responding to.

bem94 6y ago

> Just look at how we treat the planet and other living things in the presence of lawful order. Law isn't a basis for morality, and there's a lot to be said for how present (capitalist, consumerist) systems promote un-sustainability, despite many on an individual level rejecting those systems.

onion2k 6y ago

The line you quoted doesn't say that people will act reasonably, but rather that they are capable of acting reasonably. The interesting (and massive) problem is figuring out why some people act unreasonably in the same situation as someone else who doesn't. If it's something that can be addressed through mechanisms like the provision of healthcare, UBI, equality, or addressing inequality then perhaps society can be structured to have a very minimal government without the need for so many laws simply by making sure everyone is treated fairly and not left in a position where unreasonable actions are a solution to their immediate problems.

sokoloff 6y ago
> addressed through mechanisms like the provision of healthcare, UBI, equality, or addressing inequality then perhaps society can be structured to have a very minimal government The (most likely/obvious implementation of the) first half of that seems diametrically opposite of “very minimal government”.
- onion2k 6y ago
  Having a government that's there to do no more than take in tax receipts and spend the money on essentials would be minimal compared to what we have at the moment. Right now the government involves itself in practically every aspect of people's lives. It doesn't have to be that way.
  - elindbe2 6y ago
    But your minimal government wouldn't work. If you have taxes then you need a justice system to enforce collection of taxes. You'll also need a military to prevent outsiders from taking your treasury.
zozbot234 6y ago
The provision of healthcare, UBI and the like is itself incompatible with "very minimal" government - each of those would involve government control over a non-trivial fraction of GDP. I'm not saying that these things aren't worth doing; some of them may well be. We should be mindful of the costs, however. For that matter, anarchist thought hasn't historically shown much awareness wrt. the importance of, e.g. social capital provision, as enabled by voluntary "grassroots" institutions like churches and community clubs, as something that's incredibly effective at promoting reasonable, pro-social values and behaviors. (Some of these institutions necessarily involve various sorts of hierarchy and ranking, such that, e.g. a Scout Guide would rank higher than a newcomer Scout. Many anarchists would intuitively dismiss any such hierarchy as inherently coercive - despite the entirely voluntary character of these organizations.)

prrls 6y ago

Anarchy doesn't mean "absence of law". Absence of law is anomie. One is often confused for the other, but there is a slight difference. Anarchy is more about you and your community having the autonomy to decide your own rules, not a central authority. I believe "autonomy" is the key word here, not "law".

dwighttk 6y ago
The “nomy” in autonomy is law.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Then community autonomy means community law.
  - dwighttk 6y ago
    Community self law/rule
andi999 6y ago
So I am playing a bit of devils advocate here, but then isnt the KKK a good example of Anarchy? The community agreed that part of the residents should not live there anymore, they made there own laws and tried to enforce them.
- vidarh 6y ago
  No, because the KKK itself represents a coercive power structure acting without the consent of those it attempt to enforce power over, which is inherently not anarchist. If the KKK only tried to harass or harm people who had consented to be subject to them, then you'd have an argument.
  - andi999 6y ago
    This doesnt tally with the previous comment. Then you are saying anarchy has laws, but they cannot be enforced. So your interpretation is no laws (which can be enforced): then how would you prevent the KKK in forming (violating your rule) without a government to enforce "no minority killings, please"

lawwantsin17 6y ago

This troll just took over the conversation with troll nonsense. Don't argue with oxymorons.

brbrodude 6y ago

This is where I see one of the most striking arguments for anarchist philosophy. That is: It takes, and it took, an immensurable ammount of violence to make the status quo, 'lawful order' is a very shaky concept there. From this perspective it's way clearer that the unbalances and the unlawlessness of a big chunk of the "order" are themselves the sources of so much messed up stuff we have to deal with and try hopelessly to justify(ending up just evading cowardly). So to me anarchism is much more about recognizing dystopia already here and demistifying and dismantling that than some gaseous utopian end state. The way I see it, platonics are kind of irrelevant in this context. Maybe if there's one, for me, then it'd be that humans already come from nature with capacity for self-determination, conflict resolution, sociability, organization. All those other structures mostly hijacks that and messes it up with imbalances, most obviously by abuse of power, hierarchy being the main instrument for making that. That power itself depended on (some): trust, sociability, harmony & etc to establish itself. I.e.: there are things which should not be decoupled, decouple it, you'll get dystopia. The more I research and get older(32 now) the clearer it is, IMO. Hardest part is getting past all the noise. A very good introduction to this kind of radical(literally) perspective to me would be Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. P.s.: by the way don't miss that anarchism in this sense is not the same as 'anarchy' as commonly understood. As Chomsky says in a video(youtube "chomsky anarchism"): anarchism would actually ammount to a highly organized society.

zozbot234 6y ago
> humans already come from nature with capacity for ... conflict resolution ... Um, I don't think so. Conflict resolution is the main obstacle to the viability of entirely voluntary ("anarchist") organization. That's why it's the self-defining function of any government, even the most minimal.
- _jal 6y ago
  How often do you find yourself needing third-parties to arbitrate your interactions? Because for me, outside some formal processes I do for my job, it has been well over a decade since I needed someone to mediate my interactions with someone else. People are very good at conflict resolution. They only see the cases where it doesn't work out.

eyko 6y ago

As Thomas Hobbes beautifully described what in his understanding would be the natural condition of mankind: "In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and, which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."[1] Societies exist as a natural evolution of human connectedness and dependence on each other. Laws as a natural evolution of complex societies attempting to find fair ways to settle disputes. Law enforcement as a natural evolution of societes that come up with laws that not everyone agrees to abide by. The idea that, were we to be left to our own devices would be model citizens is, as you very well put, "demonstrably false fairy tale". The fact that we have laws and law enforcement in the first place is evidence of that. That being said, ever since I came across the works of Bakunin, Berkman, Goldman, Tolstoy, Camus, etc. as a teenager, I've considered myself very much an anarchist in the traditional and philosophical sense, but definitely not in the cultural sense. That is to say I don't believe that law and law enforcement are incompatible with anarchy: I do share the fundamental believe that all humans are created equal, and that there should be no hierarchies besides those that are natural and organic (e.g. my parents have certain authority over me in the family context, but my parents could equally become my students and I would have some academic authority over them in terms of mentorship, in my field of expertise). Organic hierarchies are the fabric of society and being human. We're not solitary animals, and hierarchies will always form in groups. We can agree that nobody should have any more rights and privileges than others based on claims of nobility, birth, ethnicity, gender, or any sort of social or cultural position, whilst at the same time accepting that in all human gatherings, certain group dynamics will emerge and that's okay as long as we respect each other as individuals and agree to abide by a common set of rules. But I definitely don't believe that humans are good by nature and that society corrupts us -- we are selfish by nature, self preservation has got us here. We're perfect at survival, even if that may mean taking another life, human or otherwise. I read somewhere that mankind's success is as a result of our capacity for violence. Unfortunately it feels very accurate. 1. Leviathan, Part 1: "Of Man". c. 13 https://www.bartleby.com/34/5/13.html https://www.bartleby.com/34/5/13.html

anarch1c 6y ago

I’m curious what makes you so sure the laws on the books are what’s keeping the majority of billions from randomly shooting each other. Just because laws exist doesn’t mean they’re what’s keeping your neighbors from randomly gunning you down given they could snap biologically despite the law. Anarchism doesn’t mean no laws or rules. Anarchism as a lawless violent mess is the movie version. One could even keep the Constitution system we have, again anarchism is rules, no rulers. Still need to figure out rules. An anarchism “hack” at scale IMO starts with a functioning legislative and judicial process beholden to public life not corporatism, and local management of concern rather than having Mr President to eventually function overload, wiggling his pen changing the outputs without legislative action. It means not believing in grandpas notion of a functional nation state. Paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson, the dead should not rule the living. (Indeed they cannot given many facts of science, it’s really lots of vain people emotionally play acting their nostalgia, the world has literally moved on). Step 1 in the US, restrain the Presidency. It was only ever intended to be a task master for Congress. Step 2 Senate term limits to avoid capture by people who think America achieved the ultimate form of human society in 1980. Step 3 expand representation in Congress, a process which was halted decades ago by special interests. Step 4 expand judiciary to improve access to timely court processes. Yet another process neutered in the last century. Above all take control of your political future rather than be distracted by what are ultimately disposable technology fads. I know it’s fashionable to ignore it but you pointed out yourself how much worse it could be without anything, might be a good idea to make sure it’s screwed down.

oblio 6y ago
What you're saying looks a lot like reform, not anarchy.
- anarch1c 6y ago
  You seem functionally fixed cognitively. Sorry, anarchy is fire and brimstone! Mad Max living! Let’s go there! Does that feel better? Anarchism isn’t a thing. It can’t have one shape, and color. Like most things there’s nuance and philosophy to it that the popular memes, and a whole lot of popular writing, do not impart. Vague emotional colorings without functional concept. Anarchism is fine with collective social norms so long as it’s not at gun point, serving 1% bottom lines. There’s little to be said about logistical life, we know how to supply people. It’s emotional categorizing of who is lord and who is a serf that we’ve yet to shed.

learnstats2 6y ago

Your assumption that people must behave better in the presence of authority - and therefore worse in the absence of it - is exactly the assumption that is under question.

oblio 6y ago
They don't have to behave better in the presence of authority, they are forced to, that's kind of the point of authority :-)
- __s 6y ago
  Unfortunately authority doesn't behave better in the presence of itself
  - oblio 6y ago
    True, but the real world is about compromises and lesser evils. Formal authority is quite often better than arbitrary, informal authority. And make no mistake, humans are social, their natural congregations are hierarchical.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      I'm not sure this is true. Not only were humans very loosely hierarchical essentially until the invention of agriculture, but anarchism doesn't advocate for arbitrary and informal authority, but for limited in any authority at all unless absolutely necessary, in which case it must be directly kept in check.
      - oblio 6y ago
        Regarding humans being organized very loosely until agriculture personally I wouldn't consider that as a plus. We're on HN, just think about the pace of human development before agriculture and after. We were pretty much doing the same thing for half a million years and then in 10000 years: rockets in space! ;-)

ClumsyPilot 6y ago

> "> Just look at how we treat the planet and other living things in the presence of lawful order" On the contrary, it' and indictment of the current law system, it has utterally failed to protect the environment and other living things, where-as anacistic organisations, charities and protest movement have done a lot for the environment. In fact they are the only ones that have done anything at all. If a given CEO damages profits for the sake of environment, he can be removed as he is not fullfilling his legal duty, maximising profits. So even if a hypothetical environmentalist became the chielf of ExxonMobil, he wouldn't be able to do much.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> anacistic organisations, charities and protest movement have done a lot for the environment. In fact they are the only ones that have done anything at all. This is not true at all. Protecting the environment isn’t just about actions like planting trees and buying up the occasional extra property parcel to dedicate as a land reserve. It requires government scale regulation to impose negative consequences on people and companies producing negative externalities. You can argue that the government hasn’t done enough in this regard, but it’s demonstrably not true to claim that 3rd parties have done more than the government to regulate industry and build national park level land reserves. This is the problem with most pro-anarchistic stances: They take too much of the current system’s benefits for granted while also assuming that less regulation would somehow produce a more regulated outcome. I don’t understand the desire to put impossible theories of anarchy on a pedestal instead of simply making incremental improvements to the current systems.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  The anarchist argument is distribution of power. Take the example of pollution. Say you're an employee of a fossil fuel cooperative. Is it in your interest to continue polluting? Yes, because you after all own some of the ressources of that company and control it. So what is the anarchist solution? Well, it's in the interests of everyone to stop pollution, right? So you'd need people to come together, decide that population is a concern, at least a good percentage of people, and offer you to be compensated for your investment in fossil fuels in exchange to stop polluting and find another job or not work in industry at all anymore. You might say that this is unrealistic, but for the government to do anything about pollution we needed hundreds of millions of people to protest and a majority of the people agreeing that pollution is a problem worth fixing. And if that doesn't work either, you elect and randomly chose people to supervise the elected with short term limits in order to have authority against pollution. This is the anarchist solution to the tragedy of the commons in this case. As for making incremental change, there are hard limits. There are existing power structures that will hamper you very strongly - the state, private interests, the corporate media, and so on. If you do incremental change that they don't like, they absolutely will use violence to prevent you.

almost_usual 6y ago

I see this when dispersed camping, simple things like cleaning up at the campsite before leaving. Most people don’t have a problem with it but there are small groups who don’t care about anything. Those small groups tend to ruin it for everyone. You don’t see that at managed campgrounds because you will be fined.

zozbot234 6y ago
> At a managed campground you don’t see this because you’ll be fined. Thus proving the superiority of private property over the complete anarchy of the commons.
- brianberns 6y ago
  Those aren't the only two options. You can have public property that isn't anarchy. That's how national parks work in the US.
  - almost_usual 6y ago
    State Parks and National Parks usually have zero tolerance for unwieldy behavior. National Forests are where you’ll see gunshot holes in signs and occasionally trash. I’ve seen entire burnt out vehicles in CA National Forests, it’s a little more wild west.
Lowgain 6y ago
>I see this when dispersed camping, simple things like cleaning up at the campsite before leaving. Most people don’t have a problem with it but there are small groups who don’t care about anything. Those small groups tend to ruin it for everyone. As I understand it, an anarchist camping group (for lack of a better name) could still collectively agree on and enforce rules - in many ways still a "managed" campground, just with more shared ownership
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

jkhdigital 6y ago

I think the whole point of the article is not insist that anarchy is a suitable organizing principle for society as a whole, but that pockets of anarchy already exist and perhaps we should consider allowing a bit more anarchy before we smother everything in heavy-handed power structures and legislation.

jancsika 6y ago

> It is painfully obvious that we would act much worse under anarchy. You're rankly speculating, and that puts me in control of the board. I choose Barcelona, 1936. Now is the part where you read the relevant Wikipedia entry and attempt to find the intersection between the facts there and what I quoted from you above. And just to keep the conversation focused: the inability to defend a city against an impending attack from fascists and communists is a completely different problem than the people in the city "acting much worse under anarchy."

photonemitter 6y ago

Tragedy of the commons, and the laziness of a false sense of security railings. Basically; I agree with you, and I think it is because of the way people act in a society that seems structured. People seem to think that if there is a crowd of people, then they are part of the crowd. If a crowd sees someone in trouble, then the people are generally found to be more reluctant to step up and offer help, compared to when they are alone (plenty of research seems to show this.) I suspect this is a sort of commons tragedy, where we assume that a crowd must hold structure with “people who take care of that sort of thing”, or that someone who feels qualified will somehow step up. From my own experience it also seems like people tend to relegate any issues to whosoever looks like they have any kind of uniform. (Even employees at shops, etc.) Were it not the case, we can speculate that people who are forced to bear their own actions would be more inclined to act out their own moral and ethical leanings... rather than the implied relation that illegal = bad, and legal/not-illegal= good (or acceptable). In a sense then, anarchy is when all that is legal encompasses everything that falls under a sort of Kantian categorical principle. While everything illegal is the universally opposite. (Basically where the extrinsic laws of society match the intrinsic moral values of all citizens.)

vidarh 6y ago

Consider that people are in charge no matter what. In the current system, you simply decide to trust others using coercion over the ability of negotiating voluntary agreements for acceptable behaviour. If people can't be trusted, the current system is also flawed, and has far more severe failure points: get a bad leader, and bad behaviours gets enforced with the power of a nation state. Anarchy is not absence of law, but presence of consent and negotiation at every level.

spurgu 6y ago

I believe that the core issue is the size of the group. That small groups up to 100-150 people (where everybody knows each other personally) would be able to self-organize in an anarchist fashion. Going above that the us/them issues will increase, leading to a need for some type of government.

vorpalhex 6y ago
Thomas Paine touches on this in his works. Every group past about 10 has a government even if it's just a patriarch figure. As the group grows, the government gets more complex and usually it's harder to represent everyone.
BobbyJo 6y ago
I think it's inability to work on large numbers of people is due to an even simpler explanation: the law of large numbers. One giant asshole can do a lot of damage, and with 1000 or more people, you can guarantee there are going to be at least a few.

bobthechef 6y ago

> 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. Indeed, we know that (pace Rousseauian claims) man misbehaves not because some "system" has made him do so, but because he chooses to behave in such a manner, often knowing fully well he is choosing misbehavior. I think most of us, if we're honest, even if our moral understanding is variable, admit that we have acted in ways we knew were unjust before we acted. To take this discussion further, government is a natural institution, i.e., one which follows from human nature and is natural to human societies for the sake of the common good (whether at the level of the family, the community, nation, the world, etc.). Part of what the common good entails is the administration of justice which requires an authority to administer that justice. In your example, if the problem is, say, industrial destruction of the common good that is our environment which we need to live (provided there exist better ways to secure the good produced by legitimate industry or legitimately permissible industry without that destruction), then the problem is a deficient law that fails to guard the common good. Healthy criticism of authority is important because we know that those in authority are capable of choosing badly either through malice or incompetence. However, just at there is an excessive deferral and submissiveness some show toward authority that subordinates evidence and reason to authority, there is also a hostility to the very idea of authority. The latter is what rests at the bottom of anarchism. Anarchism in practice devolves into the rule of the powerful because no authority acts as a bulwark against power for the sake of the common good. So on the one hand we have unbridled capitalism wherein the powerful dominate and exploit the weak, and on the other we have socialism which is the tyranny of government. Both converge at essentially the same point. In both cases, the powerful impose their "laws" on the populace for their own benefit. The empirical evidence corroborates as much and there is no sense in placing one's hope in either. The meat grinder of human existence on this earth is not to be abolished and the solution is not revolution. All revolutionaries are opportunists that prey on resentment, whether it is the product of envy or righteous anger, and parlay it into their own power. It also results in orgies of violence, dead bodies, and rivers of blood. We are much better off engaging in good actions in our daily lives, many which may require pain, suffering, and sacrifice. All social action is the action of individuals for individuals. A society is only as good as its members. To many, that message isn't sexy. It lack the ecstatic grandeur or the messianic and eschatological satisfaction of what revolution seems to promise. They are like the woman at the well. There is a lesson to be learned here.

mempko 6y ago

Or, maybe we act the way we do because of law. Law may restrict our moral choices.

cortic 6y ago

Consider there is how you want people to act and how you don't want people to act, to say that you are also reasonable implies that society collectively agrees with you, which would mean you are making a rule that everyone follows anyway. IF this isn't the case and you want people to act differently than they currently act then this is a social problem that can only be solved by engineering society to adopt your values. It just can't be done by dictating legally what people should do, some examples.. Prohibition; it works fine in countries that largely adopt religious values forbidding drinking.. but is impossible to be successful in countries who's society has not been engineered to accept it. Woman's suffrage; laws banning women voting work fine in countries where the society already feel this way, in most western countries there would be outright revolt. Even slavery can be legally enforced only to the degree society accepts it, from indentured servitude in societies that embraced laissez faire, to chain-gangs in societies that embraced philosophies of penance and damnation. Rules and laws are only afterthoughts, put in place after society decides collectively how people should function. Because of this laws are largely superfluous to how individuals act.

lapinot 6y ago

> 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. You seem to be conflating anarchy with chaos (to be fair most people do, the word "anarchy" itself was probably used as an insult before it was even picked up by anti-authoritarian communists). The weight of laws in our societies is so big that and it's meaning so large that it's probably more understandable if we say that anarchism doesn't want to supress laws [#]. One particularly good example of law system that couldn't be more anarchist is international law, the main point being that it's normative and not coercive. That's not saying it's not respected, indeed you may suffer consequent actions from some countries if you don't: from diplomatic troubles (moral judgments) to degraded economic relationship (exclusions) and ultimately war (use of force). The basic assumption is that every subject of international law recognizes that the other subject are sovereign entities. International law is for me the proof that such organizational principles do work in practice, and it's a source of inspiration for thinking about anarchistic organization. Quoting wikipedia, all the right keywords are in there: > [international law] is the set of rules, norms, and standards generally accepted in relations between [subjects]. [..] It establishes normative guidelines [..]. > The sources [..] include [..] custom [..], treaties, and general principles of law recognized by most [..] legal systems. > [It] operates largely through consent, since there is no universally accepted authority [..]. The conclusion i'm hitting is that at the planetary level, we do live in some kind of anarchist system. For me it's the biggest lesson of anarchism: the main goal is to conquer the level of states, extending down from the international level and up from the inter-individual cooperative level. I could continue with the fact that this level of states is also the realm of private corporations, which then bridges with usual marxist cooperative production systems rethoric. [#] The more precise statement would be that anarchistic principles refuse "the singleton" judiciary institution (one that assumes monopoly of justice, has jurisdiction over everything). Judges and courts may still exist, for example contracts could specify under which jurisdiction they may be disputed/upheld. ps: don't criticize saying that international law is dominated by usa/western countries, that's another debate.

lapinot 6y ago
pps: I thought about this international-law example while i was reading Bolo'Bolo (by PM, free access). It's a really funny and thought inspiring short book. Its development on productive and economic relationships is really nice. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/p-m-bolo-bolo https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/p-m-bolo-bolo