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"Anarchism’s failure to resolve this tension, to articulate the relationship of the individual to the collective, and to enunciate the historical circumstances

"Anarchism’s failure to resolve this tension, to articulate the relationship of the individual to the collective, and to enunciate the historical circumstances that would make possible a stateless anarchic society produced problems in anarchist thought that remain unresolved to this day." Its resolved for me. And no doubt for you - think of a family gathering - you didn't need the police (or the state) there to manage things for you. All you need to do is apply the golden rule (from wiki): * Treat others as you would like others to treat you (positive or directive form) * Do not treat others in ways that you would not like to be treated (negative or prohibitive form) The negative form is better. So, no one has a right to cause harm to another. (Of course they can cause harm, but its not right.) A group of people that think the same thing, also do not have the right to cause harm to others (where 'cause' = 'initiate'.) This isn't to say that if harm is caused to you, you don't have the right to respond - you have the right to defend yourself. Now consider - despite the general impression - how many times has another individual harmed you? Now, contrast that with how many times has the government initiated violence against you (forcible payment of tax, jay walking, drinking beer in public, or whatever, parking fines, licenses, etc). When force is there as a threat, even if it is not being overtly used, it is still the use of force. If I don't do something I want to do, that doesn't harm another, because of the threat of force (fines, imprisonment, etc) that is violence being inflicted on me. So, the governance structure will have you believe that without policemen etc the world would descend into chaos. But government itself is the worst abuser! It initiates harm and violence everywhere, all day, every day. And it has convinced individuals to do this for it (policemen, soldiers, doctors, teachers) by calling it 'right' in its courts (regardless of the golden rule). The governance structure says it IS ok to initiate harm (if it says so) for money (that it prints). Its a trick - and it has resulted in misguided order-followers who do wrong all day (but call it right), for the benefit of an elite group. Such is life. If people followed their conscience and heart, we wouldn't be in this mess.

PaulHoule 4y ago
You don't need Leviathan (the state) to control the actions of ordinary people so much as you need it to prevent the ambitious few from taking control. That's the instability of anarchism.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  You need Leviathan to prevent the ambitious few from taking control, without itself becoming the means for them to take control.
  - PaulHoule 4y ago
    That's what makes it so hard. If I had to describe what "the real problem" is today it's that the capture of the state by powerful interests undermines the legitimacy of the state and limits the state's ability to face hard problems like climate change.
  - sky-kedge0749 4y ago
    You don't need Leviathan to do that. You could have a cultural custom so that anyone reaching a certain level of power or wealth or social status must give enough of it up to come back to the normal level.
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      1. Say you have a society with such a custom. Say someone violates it, passing that level of power and wealth and still trying to get more. Now what? In particular, they have significant power. How are you going to enforce the custom on them? Or can they freely violate it if they're willing to break societal norms? 2. Say your society doesn't have such a custom (which is most existing societies). Now what? How do you mold society into such a consensus that nobody will think of violating it? Do you think that creating such a consensus is easier than creating a government to limit the power of the powerful?
      - sky-kedge0749 4y ago
        1. Power in human society is social and contextual. If there's a custom to limit your status and you violate that, you can be ejected from the group and then your status goes down to nothing. This sort of thing happens all the time. If you play casual sports with friends and then one person trains up to pro level, they'll need to take a handicap or no one will play with them, because having one player dominate the game is no fun, and allowing the pro would twist the whole social vibe into a metagame of currying favor. 2. I don't agree with you about most societies. Most people prefer their own social circles to have similar ability, intelligence, income, even physical attractiveness. That's the revealed preference for a society. We're not ants or bees that choose hierarchies when we don't have to. So by existing societies I assume you mean, the one global society that manifests differently everywhere but is really all the same and can't be escaped. Since people hate hierarchy it will not surprise you when I point out that this particular society only exists due to extreme violence and disinformation. So instead of thinking about molding a consensus, let's think instead about removing the violence and disinformation and then we can see what people really want. As for the easiest way of doing that, I don't know, but at least we don't need to go around saying that the current system is necessary.
miguel_cordeiro 4y ago
> * Treat others as you would like others to treat you (positive or directive form) >* Do not treat others in ways that you would not like to be treated (negative or prohibitive form) Funny, that's a "highest law" similar to the Wiccan Rede(1) and a sensible life goal as well. (1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiccan_Rede https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiccan_Rede
- verisimi 4y ago
  Right, thank you. It is a simple principle that works in pretty much every situation I have encountered. To live a moral life (ie do the right thing) you can do whatever you want, but don't initiate harm.
pphysch 4y ago
> think of a family gathering Great, you've considered the case of N ~= 100. Don't need a state to manage that. How about N ~= 1,000,000,000? Anarchism (and any fully decentralized protocol) "works" for small N because the average node can keep all the other nodes of the society in memory. If you need something, you know exactly whom to ask. And if you do something wrong, everyone will remember and hold you accountable. This plainly doesn't work with millions of nodes. Same principle why Bitcoin will never take off without hacking on traditional centralized finance mechanisms like Lightning; at some N, the resources required for individual nodes to maintain an accurate representation of the entire network becomes impractical (either impossible or just way too slow).
- pdonis 4y ago
  > How about N ~= 1,000,000,000? How many gatherings of a billion people have you attended? Nobody actually has direct relationships with a billion people. That's why there is no need to "solve" the "problem" of how to centrally coordinate a network with a billion nodes. The coordination happens spontaneously as people voluntarily interact with the people they directly know. In economics, this mechanism is called a "free market".
  - pphysch 4y ago
    In our globalized world, it is absolutely possible to interact with a set of a billion different individuals via social media, commerce, et cetera. Of course there are no physical gatherings of a billion people; that is a strawman. But for sake of argument, let's move N down to 10,000 (a small city or large crowd). How do you manage that without hierarchical organization and government?
    - pdonis 4y ago
      > In our globalized world, it is absolutely possible to interact with a set of a billion different individuals via social media So you have a billion Facebook friends? > commerce, et cetera. So you go to a billion different grocery stores? A billion different drugstores? A billion different restaurants? The fact that, ultimately, there might be a billion or more people involved in the processes that bring you your food, household items, etc., or visiting the same social media sites that you do, does not mean you interact with all of those people directly. Nobody does. All of that activity is coordinated spontaneously, driven by individual voluntary interactions involving much smaller numbers of people. In fact, talking about the social media case, centralization of power, as in the case of Facebook, has arguably done more harm than good. > let's move N down to 10,000 (a small city or large crowd). How do you manage that without hierarchical organization and government? You will most likely have hierarchical organization in these cases. But hierarchical organization is not the same thing as government. Hierarchical organizations evolve all the time through the voluntary interactions of people. Governments impose their rules on people by force. Those are very different things.
nradov 4y ago
How do you define "harm"? If you shoot me in the head that's pretty clearly harmful. But what if you cut ahead of me in a queue, or let your dog poop on my lawn, or drive an unmuffled car when I'm trying to sleep, or dump just a tiny amount of lead into my drinking water?
- pastacacioepepe 4y ago
  > But what if you cut ahead of me in a queue, or let your dog poop on my lawn You don't need laws or hierarchy for this, just social conventions and in fact we already have them and they work. Queues hold all the time and you can mostly walk around without stomping on dog shit. > drive an unmuffled car when I'm trying to sleep, or dump just a tiny amount of lead into my drinking water? The first is a minor annoyance that exists also under our current hierarchy, the second can be safely consired harm, as it's scientifically proven.
  - nradov 4y ago
    That's a nice little utopian fantasy which can sort of work for privileged people who live in nice safe neighborhoods. Try living in a ghetto and relying on social conventions there. Ask a local gang member politely to control his pit bull and you're likely to catch a beating, or worse.
    - pastacacioepepe 4y ago
      Ghettos wouldn't exist under anarchy. They are a byproduct of capitalism. It's not like abolishing capitalism would abolish ghettos right away, but if you remove the capitalist hierarchy there are not many reasons left for minorities to marginalized.
CrackerNews 4y ago
Personally, I think a more Marxist approach is correct in realizing that people follow their economic class.

PaulHoule 4y ago

You don't need Leviathan (the state) to control the actions of ordinary people so much as you need it to prevent the ambitious few from taking control. That's the instability of anarchism.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago
You need Leviathan to prevent the ambitious few from taking control, without itself becoming the means for them to take control.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  That's what makes it so hard. If I had to describe what "the real problem" is today it's that the capture of the state by powerful interests undermines the legitimacy of the state and limits the state's ability to face hard problems like climate change.
- sky-kedge0749 4y ago
  You don't need Leviathan to do that. You could have a cultural custom so that anyone reaching a certain level of power or wealth or social status must give enough of it up to come back to the normal level.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    1. Say you have a society with such a custom. Say someone violates it, passing that level of power and wealth and still trying to get more. Now what? In particular, they have significant power. How are you going to enforce the custom on them? Or can they freely violate it if they're willing to break societal norms? 2. Say your society doesn't have such a custom (which is most existing societies). Now what? How do you mold society into such a consensus that nobody will think of violating it? Do you think that creating such a consensus is easier than creating a government to limit the power of the powerful?
    - sky-kedge0749 4y ago
      1. Power in human society is social and contextual. If there's a custom to limit your status and you violate that, you can be ejected from the group and then your status goes down to nothing. This sort of thing happens all the time. If you play casual sports with friends and then one person trains up to pro level, they'll need to take a handicap or no one will play with them, because having one player dominate the game is no fun, and allowing the pro would twist the whole social vibe into a metagame of currying favor. 2. I don't agree with you about most societies. Most people prefer their own social circles to have similar ability, intelligence, income, even physical attractiveness. That's the revealed preference for a society. We're not ants or bees that choose hierarchies when we don't have to. So by existing societies I assume you mean, the one global society that manifests differently everywhere but is really all the same and can't be escaped. Since people hate hierarchy it will not surprise you when I point out that this particular society only exists due to extreme violence and disinformation. So instead of thinking about molding a consensus, let's think instead about removing the violence and disinformation and then we can see what people really want. As for the easiest way of doing that, I don't know, but at least we don't need to go around saying that the current system is necessary.

miguel_cordeiro 4y ago

> * Treat others as you would like others to treat you (positive or directive form) >* Do not treat others in ways that you would not like to be treated (negative or prohibitive form) Funny, that's a "highest law" similar to the Wiccan Rede(1) and a sensible life goal as well. (1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiccan_Rede https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiccan_Rede

verisimi 4y ago
Right, thank you. It is a simple principle that works in pretty much every situation I have encountered. To live a moral life (ie do the right thing) you can do whatever you want, but don't initiate harm.

pphysch 4y ago

> think of a family gathering Great, you've considered the case of N ~= 100. Don't need a state to manage that. How about N ~= 1,000,000,000? Anarchism (and any fully decentralized protocol) "works" for small N because the average node can keep all the other nodes of the society in memory. If you need something, you know exactly whom to ask. And if you do something wrong, everyone will remember and hold you accountable. This plainly doesn't work with millions of nodes. Same principle why Bitcoin will never take off without hacking on traditional centralized finance mechanisms like Lightning; at some N, the resources required for individual nodes to maintain an accurate representation of the entire network becomes impractical (either impossible or just way too slow).

pdonis 4y ago
> How about N ~= 1,000,000,000? How many gatherings of a billion people have you attended? Nobody actually has direct relationships with a billion people. That's why there is no need to "solve" the "problem" of how to centrally coordinate a network with a billion nodes. The coordination happens spontaneously as people voluntarily interact with the people they directly know. In economics, this mechanism is called a "free market".
- pphysch 4y ago
  In our globalized world, it is absolutely possible to interact with a set of a billion different individuals via social media, commerce, et cetera. Of course there are no physical gatherings of a billion people; that is a strawman. But for sake of argument, let's move N down to 10,000 (a small city or large crowd). How do you manage that without hierarchical organization and government?
  - pdonis 4y ago
    > In our globalized world, it is absolutely possible to interact with a set of a billion different individuals via social media So you have a billion Facebook friends? > commerce, et cetera. So you go to a billion different grocery stores? A billion different drugstores? A billion different restaurants? The fact that, ultimately, there might be a billion or more people involved in the processes that bring you your food, household items, etc., or visiting the same social media sites that you do, does not mean you interact with all of those people directly. Nobody does. All of that activity is coordinated spontaneously, driven by individual voluntary interactions involving much smaller numbers of people. In fact, talking about the social media case, centralization of power, as in the case of Facebook, has arguably done more harm than good. > let's move N down to 10,000 (a small city or large crowd). How do you manage that without hierarchical organization and government? You will most likely have hierarchical organization in these cases. But hierarchical organization is not the same thing as government. Hierarchical organizations evolve all the time through the voluntary interactions of people. Governments impose their rules on people by force. Those are very different things.

nradov 4y ago

How do you define "harm"? If you shoot me in the head that's pretty clearly harmful. But what if you cut ahead of me in a queue, or let your dog poop on my lawn, or drive an unmuffled car when I'm trying to sleep, or dump just a tiny amount of lead into my drinking water?

pastacacioepepe 4y ago
> But what if you cut ahead of me in a queue, or let your dog poop on my lawn You don't need laws or hierarchy for this, just social conventions and in fact we already have them and they work. Queues hold all the time and you can mostly walk around without stomping on dog shit. > drive an unmuffled car when I'm trying to sleep, or dump just a tiny amount of lead into my drinking water? The first is a minor annoyance that exists also under our current hierarchy, the second can be safely consired harm, as it's scientifically proven.
- nradov 4y ago
  That's a nice little utopian fantasy which can sort of work for privileged people who live in nice safe neighborhoods. Try living in a ghetto and relying on social conventions there. Ask a local gang member politely to control his pit bull and you're likely to catch a beating, or worse.
  - pastacacioepepe 4y ago
    Ghettos wouldn't exist under anarchy. They are a byproduct of capitalism. It's not like abolishing capitalism would abolish ghettos right away, but if you remove the capitalist hierarchy there are not many reasons left for minorities to marginalized.

CrackerNews 4y ago

Personally, I think a more Marxist approach is correct in realizing that people follow their economic class.