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I find it hard to believe you've talked to any real anarchists, or at least listened to them. People like Noam Chomsky deal with that question extremely head on

• graeme 6y ago
  > is that when there isn't those built hierarchies bad/selfish people don't amass power so everyone else can actually handle them on equal terms But how do you stop a bad person from amassing power in an anarchist system? As a simple example, how would you deal with highway robbers? Those were omnipresent in societies before states gained strength.
  • marricks 6y ago
    I mean, did they rob peasants or the lords of the land with their amassed stolen wealth...? A community can decide to cast someone out, reprimand them, imprison them, etc. The whole idea of restorative justice can actually exist when a community is able to address it.
    • crowbahr 6y ago
      They robbed anyone and everyone. Some people just give 0 fucks about anyone besides themselves. Most people give 0 fucks about anyone outside of a moderate group of acquaintances and friends.
    • graeme 6y ago
      ....any travellers. And the point is they were outside communities. Right now we take for granted that we can travel from point a to point b without worrying about such threats.
    • bbarnett 6y ago
      What the? A "community" which makes "communal decisions" is a form of government, not anarchism! How can you cast someone out, without gates? Guards? Walls? How can you throw them out? Prevent them from returning? Do you think the robbers will just stop, because you said "Stop!". I feel like you're trolling here. I could of course be wrong, but it feels that way.
      • rhn_mk1 6y ago
        Anarchism is a form of self-governance.
        • bbarnett 6y ago
          Which has nothing to do with a government.
          • rhn_mk1 6y ago
            But it has everything to do with "A "community" which makes "communal decisions"", whatever you call it. I hope Merriam-Webster clears that up: "Definition of government 1 : the body of persons that constitutes the governing authority of a political unit or organization"
            • bbarnett 6y ago
              I specifically said that "community" which makes "communal decisions" is not anarchy. You've simply claimed it does, then mentioned "governing authority", which is not entirely in line, now is it?
              • rhn_mk1 6y ago
                You're right on the strength of my argument, but you're wrong on anarchy not being able to create governments (in the M-W definition above). But I'm not going to argue this any more.
      • throwaway49872 6y ago
    • seventhtiger 6y ago
      I honestly don't understand how that is unique at all. It sounds like every government that has ever existed. Once you define the community, its mechanism of decision, and the reprimands and punishments, I'm not sure what's less government about this than current government.
  • fault_lines 6y ago
    How do you amass power in an anarchist system? In capitalism you generally amass power by amassing capital. What's the equivalent under anarchism?
    • jokethrowaway 6y ago
      Anarchism and capitalism are compatible, see anarcho-capitalism. You may be interested in checking out this explanation: https://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2 https://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2 That said, I agree with your criticism of communism / anarcho-syndacalism: if you remove capitalism, you are moving power into party politics, which creates even greater inequality to what we have today and explains the horror of communism we've seen in the past century.
      • fault_lines 6y ago
        They most certainly are not. Some right-libertarians have convinced themselves that they are anarchists so that they can pretend to be radicals but that does not make it so. Anarchism and capitalism are incompatible, anarchism is a left-wing ideology that among other things, seeks the end of capitalism. I don't know why you interpreted my comment as being a criticism of communism or anarcho-syndicalism (it was just a probing question to understand what somebody thought anarchism would look like), and neither does your criticism of those ideologies make much sense. I don't think you actually know what anarcho-syndicalism is if you think it involves party politics.
    • nickalaso 6y ago
      You still would amass capital. Guns, food, persons, other resources. The destruction of fiat currency wouldn't prevent the accumulation of valuable goods/commodities.
  • natmaka 6y ago
    Governments replaced those robbers, you just cannot escape nor defend yourself :-)
    • akiselev 6y ago
      Most people couldn't escape or defend themselve from robbers if they wanted to, let alone vote against them. That's why governments replaced them.
      • natmaka 6y ago
        AFAIK (at least in most European countries) such robbers didn't attack villages, and people willing to travel tried hard to do it in groups (pilgrims, merchants). You now have nearly no way to escape your (Occidental) government. Wherever you go, whatever you do, whoever you associate with. If you really believe you can change the power-that-be by voting let's say we disagree.
        • Meekro 6y ago
          Escaping your government is easy. There are plenty of places on Earth you could go that have essentially no (functional) government. People tend to run from these places, not to them.
          • natmaka 6y ago
            > Escaping your government is easy. It isn't, and technical progress (transport and communication means) made it more and more difficult. > People tend to run from these places, not to them. It depends. Historically see for example the Zomia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeast_Asian_Massif#Zomia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeast_Asian_Massif#Zomia ) , and some Spanish cities during the civil war ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_Spain#Anarchist_presence_in_the_Spanish_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_Spain#Anarchist_p... ). For an ongoing case take a look at Rojava ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_Administration_of_North_and_East_Syria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_Administration_of_N... )
• bufferoverflow 6y ago
  Hmmm, no, it's a false equivocation. What do you do with really bad / evil people who got caught doing evil things (there's enough evidence to put them in prison). I never heard a good answer from an anarchist. You have to realize there are truly evil people out there. People who will assault innocent people, who will torture, who will rape, who will murder, who will do all of the above to a toddler. And will force the parents to watch. I don't want to live in a society where such people are simply let go, or get some bullshit therapy and let go.
  • marricks 6y ago
    I mean, do you like that those people get off now if they’re powerful? Or if a cop decides to do that either nothing happens or they get let go with a million dollar pension? At least in a flat society you’d have an equal say to advocate for w/e you thought is just. Personally for me, and many others who lean left, prison or death doesn’t sit right because it doesn’t address the root of the problem and it’s often used to quash dissent. This is perhaps what you find unsatisfying but if you were magically placed into an anarchist community you’d have more ability to advocate for what you thought was fair.
    • bbarnett 6y ago
      Holy whataboutism! With no laws, no police, no jails, no courts, and no justice system, everyone on of those incredibly evil people mention in the prior comment goes 100% free to continue their reign of terror. Yet, of course, that's exactly the same as some people who slip through the cracks of a justice system that catches many such people a year. Prosecutes them with attempts to be fair. Puts them in jail so they can't hurt others. Yup. Because someone might slip through the cracks, well.. that's precisely the same as what the prior poster said! What a false equivalency.
      • marricks 6y ago
        I mean sure in a society where no one holds anyone accountable that would happen. That’s not what anyone is actually advocating for.
• noodle 6y ago
  > when there isn't those built hierarchies bad/selfish people don't amass power so everyone else can actually handle them on equal terms. This doesn't really ring true to me. In a society where hierarchy is removed, the bad people will form a hierarchy to create power. It being "not allowed" in that society doesn't mean it won't still happen, due again to the people being "bad" in the first place. Two bad people will form a group and use that to derive power over any non-grouped individuals. Or 10 bad people over smaller groups, etc..
  • acephal 6y ago
    This is the problem with much of the spectrum of political rhetoric in America, they're almost all somehow unrealistic in their basic, shared presumption of a world without some over-determining Other (a black box concept that is somehow causal of all social woes) is the goal: feminists, a world without patriarchy, anarchists, a world without hierarchy, Nazis and White Supremacists, a world without racial degeneration, so on and so forth). Socio-political issues tend to be more complex in causal factors than political rhetoric can possibly bare. Look at how conservatives re-evaluate the value of "BLM" at every opportunity since it represents all Black politics to them even though Official BLM is a distinct political group in the Black community of whom not every Black person agrees with the stated manifesto on their website, there being more than enough easily searchable YouTube videos to learn the opinion of various Black commentators.
    • jessaustin 6y ago
      Actual feminists and anarchists have more nuanced views than you present here. (I confess I don't know enough "Nazis and White Supremacists" to say; perhaps they are just that simplistic. Nice implicit comparison, though!) It seems that upon hearing "let's have less X", you can't get past your instinct that X is the basis of all imaginable human life. It is to your credit that you haven't had a similar reaction to those who oppose racism.
    • lefrenchy 6y ago
      Your argument can be applied in the same way to the current economic system in the US (capitalism). The free market capitalist system has the shared presumption that free markets are efficient and will allocate resources effectively. This shared presumption is unrealistic in that same fashion, since entirely free markets are not possible (market manipulation, monopoly, etc...). No reasonable anarchist will say their solution solves all problems, but they would argue their ideal society would be better and would solve problems we are faced with today.
• acituan 6y ago
  > I find it hard to believe you've talked to any real anarchists, or at least listened to them True scotsman fallacy aside, what the top minds on anarchy think is not as relevant as what most people/anarchists understand of it, if we are talking about a non-hierarchical self-administering system, because performance of the system will approximate to the median (mis)understanding of them.
• pandaman 6y ago
  I figure that you imply, that you are the real anarchist or at least familiar with their way of thinking? I have a question for you then and please disregard if you are not a real anarchist. How is the current system of any consequence for you to live the anarchy dream? Why can't you just ignore it and do what you wanted to do in the hypothetical anarchy? If I had these beliefs (i.e. the lack of social hierarchy and organized violence to uphold it) I would be very happy as I could immediately live in my ideal society by just ignoring the existing hierarchy and organized violence since all I could do about it in the true anarchy I can do already (i.e. submit to the organized violence or die challenging it).
  • mindslight 6y ago
    Any ideal model can be used to describe the current state of affairs as its pathological case. In the ancap paradigm, the existing government can be viewed as a really powerful corporation. In a left-flavored anarchist paradigm, the existing government is a large scale social contract. Or as you've said, an othered government is just a hostile group to be avoided. What matters is the overall heuristic of trying to shrink the structures to be more local and manageable. Anarchism in all its various flavors isn't a prescription, but rather a rebuke of prescriptivism. Concretely, most anarchists still have a sense of justice, possibly even a stronger one. Murdering someone and then succumbing to (possibly organized) violence makes sense. Smoking a plant and then being attacked does not.
    • pandaman 6y ago
      Well, everyone has a sense of justice. Some people think that murder for "dissing" them or being too rich/white/gay/smart/stupid/etc is just and some think that smoking evil plants like tobacco is abomination and kills everyone who gets a whiff of smoke. We already have a solution for reconciling individual views on justice that works much better than what anarchists managed to show in their CHAZ/CHOP, for example. This does not answer my question though. Why anarchists are not happy? Why can't they live in their desired society right now?
      • 6y ago
• TulliusCicero 6y ago
  I've heard the reasoning, it just sounds like utter nonsense. > when there isn't those built hierarchies bad/selfish people don't amass power This is where the reasoning falls apart. What stops them from amassing power? The responses to this question always sound really convoluted and 'reach-y', ala, "people just won't, like, do that, maaaan!" or "others will stop them, in a completely non-hierarchal way without any explicit use of force". There are TONS of situations in real life where people are nominally equal, but in practice hideously unequal. The way anarchists talk just reminds me of what some feminist movements discovered in the twentieth century: removing explicit power structures and hierarchies didn't put everyone on equal terms, it just made the power differences less transparent and regulatable. Of course, anarchists are free to say whatever they want: the very fact that there basically haven't been any state-equivalent anarchist communities existing for a long time in recent memory means they're free to theorycraft to their heart's content. You don't have to grapple with any flaws if your system doesn't actually exist.