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Yes and we've been taught from a young age that capitalism and democracy are joined at the hip. But when we look back we can see how capitalism accommodated its

Yes and we've been taught from a young age that capitalism and democracy are joined at the hip. But when we look back we can see how capitalism accommodated itself quite nicely to domination starting from the early modern period.

einpoklum 4y ago
It depends on what you mean by democracy. For people who mean a government by a parliament of elected representatives making laws and a centralized state government running the state by those laws - then that tends to go with capitalist relations of production; and it is an accessible and useful structure for commercial corporations, which will have their property ownership enforced by the state, and will not have to have continuing agreement of local populations to their activities. The dictionary says Democracy means: "Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives." - so there's already the question of decision by representative yes-or-no. Plus, there's the question of what the 'government' part means. Some Anarchists would say they oppose democracy because of it. Does it mean that decisions get enforced by a special social structure? Are decisions majoritarian? etc.
- incompatible 4y ago
  I think anarchists typically support direct democracy, but oppose representative democracy, which gives the representatives excessive power. Any society will have to make decisions at some point which can't be left to individual preferences. E.g., we have a large natural forest, should it be preserved for nature, or cut down for timber and farmland? If left to individuals, the people who want to cut it down will win by default.
  - public_defender 4y ago
    It's sort of a different thought pattern than most of us are used to using. Imagine the anarchists vote: 49 for logging, 51 against. The question is then whether 51 anarchists foresters will mobilize to stop 49 anarchist deforesters. Will there be a civil war? Will the 49 weigh the benefits of whole community over wood and yield? Will someone burn the chainsaws in the night? It's less about whether we vote directly or through an intermediary, and more about how we hold the community together (or don't) through tough decisions.
  - kqr 4y ago
    It's not just that representatives in a typical representative democracy wield disproportionate amounts of power, it's also that the people who are able to become popular enough to get a significant share of votes are people who have time and resources and connections for campaigning, PR, and so on. This is a very specific stratum of the population. It's an elective kind of aristocracy, basically.
  - einpoklum 4y ago
    > should it be preserved for nature, or cut down for timber and farmland? Perhaps the main question would be what happens when people disagree with the decision, regardless of how it was taken. Many Anarchists would be concerned more with that than with the question of how such a decision is taken.

einpoklum 4y ago

It depends on what you mean by democracy. For people who mean a government by a parliament of elected representatives making laws and a centralized state government running the state by those laws - then that tends to go with capitalist relations of production; and it is an accessible and useful structure for commercial corporations, which will have their property ownership enforced by the state, and will not have to have continuing agreement of local populations to their activities. The dictionary says Democracy means: "Government by the people, exercised either directly or through elected representatives." - so there's already the question of decision by representative yes-or-no. Plus, there's the question of what the 'government' part means. Some Anarchists would say they oppose democracy because of it. Does it mean that decisions get enforced by a special social structure? Are decisions majoritarian? etc.

incompatible 4y ago
I think anarchists typically support direct democracy, but oppose representative democracy, which gives the representatives excessive power. Any society will have to make decisions at some point which can't be left to individual preferences. E.g., we have a large natural forest, should it be preserved for nature, or cut down for timber and farmland? If left to individuals, the people who want to cut it down will win by default.
- public_defender 4y ago
  It's sort of a different thought pattern than most of us are used to using. Imagine the anarchists vote: 49 for logging, 51 against. The question is then whether 51 anarchists foresters will mobilize to stop 49 anarchist deforesters. Will there be a civil war? Will the 49 weigh the benefits of whole community over wood and yield? Will someone burn the chainsaws in the night? It's less about whether we vote directly or through an intermediary, and more about how we hold the community together (or don't) through tough decisions.
- kqr 4y ago
  It's not just that representatives in a typical representative democracy wield disproportionate amounts of power, it's also that the people who are able to become popular enough to get a significant share of votes are people who have time and resources and connections for campaigning, PR, and so on. This is a very specific stratum of the population. It's an elective kind of aristocracy, basically.
- einpoklum 4y ago
  > should it be preserved for nature, or cut down for timber and farmland? Perhaps the main question would be what happens when people disagree with the decision, regardless of how it was taken. Many Anarchists would be concerned more with that than with the question of how such a decision is taken.