8 ms·

Law and order among the anarchists (2020)

57 points by wahnfrieden 4y ago

nynx 4y ago
What a beautiful piece of writing. Definitely read if you're reading the comments before the article.
082349872349872 4y ago
Thank you! (if you'd care to expand a bit on the compatibility of legal codes and court power with anarchism, I'm all eyeballs.) For example: in my country, police can act on their own in criminal matters, but must have a court order to act on civil matters. This, to my uninformed mind, is already a proto-hierarchy. How would this sort of distinction be handled in a non-hierarchical manner?
- Proven 4y ago
  David Friedman's work on this topic is interesting, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PnkC7CNvyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PnkC7CNvyI for example. I think courts would be private as well, and you'd live in a jurisdiction of your choice. I also think that jurisdictions that didn't enforce court orders from other jurisdictions would be black-listed by those jurisdictions. Furthermore, individuals from a black-listed jurisdiction would be stigmatized in, or barred from entering the jurisdiction that couldn't obtain their cooperation. There has to be a cost attached to unreasonably uncooperative behavior.
  - freedomben 4y ago
    It might be worth mentioning that parent post is the anarcho-capitalist flavor of anarchy, which solution would sound like a dystopia to an ansoc or anarcho-communist person such as OP. I'm pretty skeptical about whether these private courts would/could work in the long term, but it is fascinating to read the theories.
    - missedthecue 4y ago
      In some sense they already exist in modern society. Most insurance companies arbitrate in private courts for instance. Public courts are too slow and inefficient.
      - 082349872349872 4y ago
        Public courts are slow and inefficient by design. The principle (and practice imx) is that most cases should settle before ever taking up much of a public court's time. Making public courts faster would reduce the incentive of the parties to avoid externalising their failure to agree onto the public.
  - mathieuh 4y ago
    David Friedman appears to be a so-called “anarcho-capitalist”, which is not what this article is talking about. Anarchy is inherently incompatible with capitalism. Anarchy is the dismantling of hierarchies, the removal of rulers. Capitalism depends on hierarchies and lauds rulers.
    - missedthecue 4y ago
      Anarchism describes a way of organizing society in a cooperative way without government compulsion. The idea that it is incompatible with capitalism, which is inherently based on mutual cooperation, is something pushed retroactively by socialist anarchists. Also, the idea that hierarchies of any type cannot exist within anarchies is more socialist revisionism. Most anarchist societies over history have had hierarchies in some form or another. Somalia and Iceland's periods of anarchy are two such examples.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
        Anarchism describes a way of organizing society in a cooperative way without government compulsion. The idea that it is compatible with capitalism, which is inherently based on exploitation of labor and asymmetric distribution of returns favoring capital, is something being pushed retroactively by capitalist anarchists.
        missedthecue 4y ago
        I disagree out of hand that capitalism is "based" on exploitation of labor, but even if it were, exploitation and differing levels of capital return are completely compatible with anarchism. Anarchism is not a synonym for utopia. People can do bad things or simply amoral things that you happen to not like within a stateless societal framework such as anarchism.
        maxbond 4y ago
        An anarchist society would necessarily dismantle hierarchies as they arose in an ongoing manner. If you tried to create capitalism in an anarchist society - that is to say, create a system of private property ownership whereby you could own the means of production and extract the surplus labor of a working class, without participating in the labor - that society should quickly recognize this is an unjust hierarchy that must be abolished to maintain anarchism. I think we have all experienced, living in a capitalist society, that such a system creates a very steep hierarchy where the wealthy have much more power than those without wealth. Anti-statism is not axiomatic to anarchism, it results from it's opposition to domination and the principle of means-ends unity, and opposing the state is not a sufficient condition for being an anarchist. It's worth noting anarchism was an offshoot of socialism - to say that this is a narrative projected backwards from anarchosocialists is incorrect.
  - rsecora 4y ago
    s/jurisdiction/country/g That's similar to the definition of countries, international treaties and frontiers.
    - 082349872349872 4y ago
      Although while there are no involuntary de jure hierarchies among countries, de facto there are.
  - kodyo 4y ago
    Sort of like jurisdictions in America that have legalized marijuana or declare themselves sanctuary cities in direct opposition to federal law.
  - 082349872349872 4y ago
    > jurisdictions that didn't enforce court orders from other jurisdictions would be black-listed by those jurisdictions. *Cough* ICC *cough*?
- maxbond 4y ago
  I agree that what you're describing is a hierarchy. What I would say is that, as much as possible, policing should be dismantled. My understanding is that in Rojava policing is a shared responsibility, sort of like jury duty. They educate as many people as possible in how to fulfill this roll, and then people rotate through it for short periods of time. This helps prevent a professional class of police from arising and starting to use the powers of the police to pursue their own interests and protect themselves from accountability. Similar logic could be applied to judges.
  - wahnfrieden 4y ago
    Sounds similar to other anarchist structures such as rotating out workers councils leadership roles to minimize hierarchy ossification
    - 082349872349872 4y ago
      I can't remember what their term for it was, but someone once told me the various different "first responder" trades in the US now have a shared vocabulary for building and modifying a temporary (limited to the duration of the incident) on-site hierarchy.
      - DicIfTEx 4y ago
        I don't know about the US, but in the UK there is JESIP: https://www.jesip.org.uk/ https://www.jesip.org.uk/
    - cuteboy19 4y ago
      But then no one would be able to develop any governmental expertise right?
      - maxbond 4y ago
        Everyone would be participating in governance, sometimes because they were on a council, other times because they were part of democratic processes. People wouldn't master opaque bureaucracies, but we should be eliminating those as much as possible. It's also my experience that there's never a shortage of opportunities to practice leadership and decision making when you're working with other people in a real world environment, where unforseen circumstances are constantly forcing your team to react and adapt. It's also my observation that when there is a problem, most people's instinct is to get everyone who's expertise are relevant into a room, discuss the relevant facts, and make a decision by consensus - if you leave people to their own devices, they reflectively form a direct democracy.
- atoav 4y ago
  Rotation would be one way to do it. The problem with hierarchies is not that they exist, but that the people who are within them get used to their positions and start to abuse them. If you limit those priviledges in time and make them part of civil duties you not only get a more ephatic, educated public (as they learn what a police force has to deal with first hand) you avoid them developing into a paramilitary structure within your society. Or so goes the theory. Would be interesting to try this one out in practise.
  - 082349872349872 4y ago
    As with rotation between military units, it would also solve the problem of cops and criminals (due to being pretty much in the same milieu) finding their interests more aligned with each other than with society at large. The immediate drawback I notice is that in my country, local police have substantial training: 2 years full time (IIRC) so they must sign contracts beforehand such that if they were to quit before X years they would owe their jurisdiction the prorated amount of their training costs. (OTOH, IIUC US County Deputies have almost no requirements, so YMMV)
    - maxbond 4y ago
      Perhaps your first several rotation could be a provisional/training rotation where you receive on the job training. Another thing to consider is that, at least in my country, police have a huge mandate. If we narrow the scope of the mission, we can reduce the amount of training necessary.
      - 082349872349872 4y ago
        Spitballing... maybe rotations are by subject area, but you'd have to have passed qualifying exams for certain posts within that subject. People who didn't find the more responsible posts to their temperament would still be exposed to the problems of the field as they cycle through, and those who do would be doing on-the-job training until they felt confident in (or the other people currently in that subject strongly recommended to) challenge the exams. (come to think of it, that's not too far off from the apprenticeship model of many trades and professions in my country, except it would tend to develop T or even W shaped people instead of just I shaped...)
fidesomnes 4y ago
georgeoliver 4y ago
Wow, I had not been keeping up with the situation in northern Syria, but this article has changed that. Here's an article from a few days ago: https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/syria-turkey-kurds-rojava-slow-death-face https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/syria-turkey-kurds-roj... It's disheartening but I guess predictable that a society which seems to be committed to democratic reforms in the Middle East is the one getting thrown under the bus.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  This article talks about the US as monolithic, but my limited understanding is that although SDF's key ally was the US Army, CIA had clandestinely been backing a different Syrian faction, so "the US" has never wholeheartedly been onside throughout. (and, presumably, now it's State's turn to be backing Erdogan? Pawns will be sacrificed.) 'America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests' — HAK
  - microsoftdoes 4y ago
    The West just wants to hurt Assad and by extension Russia and Iran. It is truly an evil war. Syria would have been better off under Assad than with what has happened due to Western intervention. The bar for toppling a sovereign order should be very high, and should almost always include a high chance of quick success and a viable alternative regime.
msmenardi 4y ago
Robert Evans (the author) has done a lot of important reporting in the middle east. I first heard about him through a friend who recommended his podcast "It Could Happen Here", and I loved his reporting on the BLM protests in Portland. Very interesting stuff.

57 points by wahnfrieden 4y ago

nynx 4y ago

What a beautiful piece of writing. Definitely read if you're reading the comments before the article.

Thank you! (if you'd care to expand a bit on the compatibility of legal codes and court power with anarchism, I'm all eyeballs.) For example: in my country, police can act on their own in criminal matters, but must have a court order to act on civil matters. This, to my uninformed mind, is already a proto-hierarchy. How would this sort of distinction be handled in a non-hierarchical manner?

Proven 4y ago
David Friedman's work on this topic is interesting, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PnkC7CNvyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PnkC7CNvyI for example. I think courts would be private as well, and you'd live in a jurisdiction of your choice. I also think that jurisdictions that didn't enforce court orders from other jurisdictions would be black-listed by those jurisdictions. Furthermore, individuals from a black-listed jurisdiction would be stigmatized in, or barred from entering the jurisdiction that couldn't obtain their cooperation. There has to be a cost attached to unreasonably uncooperative behavior.
- freedomben 4y ago
  It might be worth mentioning that parent post is the anarcho-capitalist flavor of anarchy, which solution would sound like a dystopia to an ansoc or anarcho-communist person such as OP. I'm pretty skeptical about whether these private courts would/could work in the long term, but it is fascinating to read the theories.
  - missedthecue 4y ago
    In some sense they already exist in modern society. Most insurance companies arbitrate in private courts for instance. Public courts are too slow and inefficient.
    - 082349872349872 4y ago
      Public courts are slow and inefficient by design. The principle (and practice imx) is that most cases should settle before ever taking up much of a public court's time. Making public courts faster would reduce the incentive of the parties to avoid externalising their failure to agree onto the public.
- mathieuh 4y ago
  David Friedman appears to be a so-called “anarcho-capitalist”, which is not what this article is talking about. Anarchy is inherently incompatible with capitalism. Anarchy is the dismantling of hierarchies, the removal of rulers. Capitalism depends on hierarchies and lauds rulers.
  - missedthecue 4y ago
    Anarchism describes a way of organizing society in a cooperative way without government compulsion. The idea that it is incompatible with capitalism, which is inherently based on mutual cooperation, is something pushed retroactively by socialist anarchists. Also, the idea that hierarchies of any type cannot exist within anarchies is more socialist revisionism. Most anarchist societies over history have had hierarchies in some form or another. Somalia and Iceland's periods of anarchy are two such examples.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
      Anarchism describes a way of organizing society in a cooperative way without government compulsion. The idea that it is compatible with capitalism, which is inherently based on exploitation of labor and asymmetric distribution of returns favoring capital, is something being pushed retroactively by capitalist anarchists.
      - missedthecue 4y ago
        I disagree out of hand that capitalism is "based" on exploitation of labor, but even if it were, exploitation and differing levels of capital return are completely compatible with anarchism. Anarchism is not a synonym for utopia. People can do bad things or simply amoral things that you happen to not like within a stateless societal framework such as anarchism.
        maxbond 4y ago
        An anarchist society would necessarily dismantle hierarchies as they arose in an ongoing manner. If you tried to create capitalism in an anarchist society - that is to say, create a system of private property ownership whereby you could own the means of production and extract the surplus labor of a working class, without participating in the labor - that society should quickly recognize this is an unjust hierarchy that must be abolished to maintain anarchism. I think we have all experienced, living in a capitalist society, that such a system creates a very steep hierarchy where the wealthy have much more power than those without wealth. Anti-statism is not axiomatic to anarchism, it results from it's opposition to domination and the principle of means-ends unity, and opposing the state is not a sufficient condition for being an anarchist. It's worth noting anarchism was an offshoot of socialism - to say that this is a narrative projected backwards from anarchosocialists is incorrect.
- rsecora 4y ago
  s/jurisdiction/country/g That's similar to the definition of countries, international treaties and frontiers.
  - 082349872349872 4y ago
    Although while there are no involuntary de jure hierarchies among countries, de facto there are.
- kodyo 4y ago
  Sort of like jurisdictions in America that have legalized marijuana or declare themselves sanctuary cities in direct opposition to federal law.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  > jurisdictions that didn't enforce court orders from other jurisdictions would be black-listed by those jurisdictions. *Cough* ICC *cough*?
maxbond 4y ago
I agree that what you're describing is a hierarchy. What I would say is that, as much as possible, policing should be dismantled. My understanding is that in Rojava policing is a shared responsibility, sort of like jury duty. They educate as many people as possible in how to fulfill this roll, and then people rotate through it for short periods of time. This helps prevent a professional class of police from arising and starting to use the powers of the police to pursue their own interests and protect themselves from accountability. Similar logic could be applied to judges.
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  Sounds similar to other anarchist structures such as rotating out workers councils leadership roles to minimize hierarchy ossification
  - 082349872349872 4y ago
    I can't remember what their term for it was, but someone once told me the various different "first responder" trades in the US now have a shared vocabulary for building and modifying a temporary (limited to the duration of the incident) on-site hierarchy.
    - DicIfTEx 4y ago
      I don't know about the US, but in the UK there is JESIP: https://www.jesip.org.uk/ https://www.jesip.org.uk/
  - cuteboy19 4y ago
    But then no one would be able to develop any governmental expertise right?
    - maxbond 4y ago
      Everyone would be participating in governance, sometimes because they were on a council, other times because they were part of democratic processes. People wouldn't master opaque bureaucracies, but we should be eliminating those as much as possible. It's also my experience that there's never a shortage of opportunities to practice leadership and decision making when you're working with other people in a real world environment, where unforseen circumstances are constantly forcing your team to react and adapt. It's also my observation that when there is a problem, most people's instinct is to get everyone who's expertise are relevant into a room, discuss the relevant facts, and make a decision by consensus - if you leave people to their own devices, they reflectively form a direct democracy.
atoav 4y ago
Rotation would be one way to do it. The problem with hierarchies is not that they exist, but that the people who are within them get used to their positions and start to abuse them. If you limit those priviledges in time and make them part of civil duties you not only get a more ephatic, educated public (as they learn what a police force has to deal with first hand) you avoid them developing into a paramilitary structure within your society. Or so goes the theory. Would be interesting to try this one out in practise.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  As with rotation between military units, it would also solve the problem of cops and criminals (due to being pretty much in the same milieu) finding their interests more aligned with each other than with society at large. The immediate drawback I notice is that in my country, local police have substantial training: 2 years full time (IIRC) so they must sign contracts beforehand such that if they were to quit before X years they would owe their jurisdiction the prorated amount of their training costs. (OTOH, IIUC US County Deputies have almost no requirements, so YMMV)
  - maxbond 4y ago
    Perhaps your first several rotation could be a provisional/training rotation where you receive on the job training. Another thing to consider is that, at least in my country, police have a huge mandate. If we narrow the scope of the mission, we can reduce the amount of training necessary.
    - 082349872349872 4y ago
      Spitballing... maybe rotations are by subject area, but you'd have to have passed qualifying exams for certain posts within that subject. People who didn't find the more responsible posts to their temperament would still be exposed to the problems of the field as they cycle through, and those who do would be doing on-the-job training until they felt confident in (or the other people currently in that subject strongly recommended to) challenge the exams. (come to think of it, that's not too far off from the apprenticeship model of many trades and professions in my country, except it would tend to develop T or even W shaped people instead of just I shaped...)

fidesomnes 4y ago

georgeoliver 4y ago

Wow, I had not been keeping up with the situation in northern Syria, but this article has changed that. Here's an article from a few days ago: https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/syria-turkey-kurds-rojava-slow-death-face https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/syria-turkey-kurds-roj... It's disheartening but I guess predictable that a society which seems to be committed to democratic reforms in the Middle East is the one getting thrown under the bus.

082349872349872 4y ago
This article talks about the US as monolithic, but my limited understanding is that although SDF's key ally was the US Army, CIA had clandestinely been backing a different Syrian faction, so "the US" has never wholeheartedly been onside throughout. (and, presumably, now it's State's turn to be backing Erdogan? Pawns will be sacrificed.) 'America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests' — HAK
- microsoftdoes 4y ago
  The West just wants to hurt Assad and by extension Russia and Iran. It is truly an evil war. Syria would have been better off under Assad than with what has happened due to Western intervention. The bar for toppling a sovereign order should be very high, and should almost always include a high chance of quick success and a viable alternative regime.

msmenardi 4y ago

Robert Evans (the author) has done a lot of important reporting in the middle east. I first heard about him through a friend who recommended his podcast "It Could Happen Here", and I loved his reporting on the BLM protests in Portland. Very interesting stuff.