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Are You an Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You by David Graeber (2000)

47 points by TotalCrackpot 2y ago

danialjunejo 2y ago
[flagged]
vouaobrasil 2y ago
Another question: do you consider yourself neither left nor right on the political spectrum, because you believe that society is fundamentally broken and both sides just further consumerism in different ways (the right supports big business directly, and the left tries to create equal opportunities for everyone to further consumerism)? If so, then you may be an anarchist.
- joyboyluffy 2y ago
  yup yup
- eesmith 2y ago
  Graber was an anarchist and a leftist. For example, quoting from https://davidgraeber.org/articles/is-your-job-bullshit-on-capitalisms-endless-busywork/ https://davidgraeber.org/articles/is-your-job-bullshit-on-ca... > I’ve been working with people who’ve become big advocates for a universal basic income. It’s not the only solution, but it conforms with my political instincts. People think that is odd because I’m an anarchist. Why would I want a policy where the government would just give people money? Isn’t that giving power to the government? I say, no. > A basic income would be the perfect leftist antibureaucratic policy. It would not only reduce the number of bureaucrats, but it would get rid of the worst of them, the annoying ones who decide whether you’re really poor enough to deserve this, or whether you’re really married to that person or whether you really live in that room. He thought there were multiple ways people considered themselves on the left. For example, from https://davidgraeber.org/articles/from-managerial-feudalism-to-the-revolt-of-the-caring-classes/ https://davidgraeber.org/articles/from-managerial-feudalism-... : > The conclusion that I came to is that essentially, the left is applying an outdated paradigm: they’re still thinking in terms of bosses and workers in a kind of old-fashioned industrial sense, when what’s really going on is that for most people the key class opposition is caregivers versus managers. Leftist parties are trying to represent both sides at the same time, but they’re really dominated by the latter. and that "mainstream left" wasn't barely on the left. From https://davidgraeber.org/interviews/i-found-myself-turning-into-an-idiot-david-graeber-explains-the-life-sapping-reality-of-bureaucratic-life/ https://davidgraeber.org/interviews/i-found-myself-turning-i... : > Because, in a way, the left began against bureaucratization of life. It’s about freedom. The mainstream left, which is barely left at all at this point in traditional terms … has really embraced a combination of market and bureaucracy, an equal synthesis of the worst aspects of capitalism and the worst aspects of bureaucracy.
- posterman 2y ago
  i think you are getting liberalism and "the left" confused
  - notarobot123 2y ago
    as do many left-wing political parties
    - posterman 2y ago
      well, they wouldn't be left wing if they presented centrist liberal ideals would they? you, too, may be confusing liberalism with leftism. almost as if it was the intended function of the liberal project...
      - jampekka 2y ago
        "Left" is a relative concept. The original French revolution left was liberalist. Liberalism is the core ideology of the current western world. Both Democrats and Republicans are liberalists. Even Putin is predominantly a liberalist.
        posterman 2y ago
        yes, this is what i am saying. modern liberalism is indeed a "core ideology", or put another way, a hegemonic centrist ideal. it is definitionally not leftist. i think it is well understood that most leftist political ideologies recognize the importance of a liberal movement as a precursor. to the original comment this stems from, leftism is in no way an endorsement of consumerism.
        jampekka 2y ago
        I find it more useful to use more "absolute" terms. If by left you mean some fashion of socialism, then indeed left is not liberalist. But in contemporary politics such left is almost non-existant. E.g. most European "socialist" or even "communist" parties are staunchly liberal, and mostly celebrate consumerism. I don't think "leftism" is really an ideology, or at least it can mean very different things in different contexts. Edit: I find it also better to use "liberalist" instead of "liberal" when referring to the political movement and ideology. "Liberal" is easy to misinterpret and misuse, and it tends to hide the fact that liberalism a quite specific ideology, that e.g. has no monopoly on liberty.
- krapp 2y ago
  >do you consider yourself neither left nor right on the political spectrum, because you believe that society is fundamentally broken and both sides just further consumerism in different ways (the right supports big business directly, and the left tries to create equal opportunities for everyone to further consumerism) No, because I find that extremely reductionist, simplistic and naive. In my experience points of view that abandon nuance in favor of equivocation and cynicism tend themselves to be attempts at propaganda and control. It is true, if you adopt the left/right political model (which you don't even need to, it is itself a propaganda tool meant to normalize the two party paradigm in American politics) that both the Democratic and Republican parties in the US serve the needs of capitalism and the military industrial complex. It is not, however, true that all leftist ideology and all right-wing ideology are essentially the same as a result, and that neither have any purpose or value beyond simply being vehicles for capitalism.
- TotalCrackpot 2y ago
  Most anarchists consider themselves far-left. Most of them are a libertarian wing of far-left.
  - denton-scratch 2y ago
    > Most anarchists consider themselves far-left. "Far-left" is a derogatory term, a synonym for "left-wing extremist". Nobody considers themselves an extremist. I've noticed that my own views seem to be to the left of any mainstream political party here. For me, that just means that all the mainstream parties are right-wing. I reserve the term "far-left" for hyper-dogmatic communist revolutionaries who don't object to using violence for political ends.
    - TotalCrackpot 2y ago
      Anarchists are far-left. Some far-lest is authoritarian like Marxist-Leninists, some far left is anti-authoritarian like Anarchists.
      - denton-scratch 2y ago
        It appears that you want to use the term "far left" to mean something like "socialist". I agree that anarchists are socialists. I don't agree that all Marxist-Leninists are authoritarian; and for what it's worth, I'm not aware of any Marxist-Leninist grassroots group operating here (UK). I repeat: "far-left" is a term of abuse. It's routinely deployed by US persons of the Trumpian and Tea-Party persuasions against anyone they disagree with, including the leadership of the Democratic Party, a party that has never espoused any kind of socialism.
_heimdall 2y ago
The terms anarchist and libertarian are both really misunderstood (or misused?) today. At least in the US, most people seem to think libertarians are anarchists and anarchists are terrorists that want to lice in The Purge. I guess that does kind of make sense though. We also don't use the left/right spectrum the way most other cultures do and we've totally redefined what it means to be liberal or conservative. Well looky there, I must be an anarchist too?
- jampekka 2y ago
  Originally libertarians were anarchists, and they were roughly synonyms. And in many parts of Europe still are. In USA these terms were co-opted by right wing to come up with anarchocapitalism and right-libertarianism.
- netsharc 2y ago
  To me, all these "isms" have millions of different versions, almost one in each brain. If you ask a fan of AOC (not all of them obviously), "socialism" might conjure an image of clean and tidy Stockholm, ask a fan of Trump (not all of them obviously) and they'll tell you about Stalin's gulags or how Sweden is overrun by "Muslim terrorist".
- Synaesthesia 2y ago
  Anarchism has been unfairly maligned, it’s basically associated with bomb thrower. But it’s really not about that.
  - deleted 2y ago
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krasotkin 2y ago
Why do anarchists write programs using functional languages? Because they're stateless.
- WJW 2y ago
  Fellow programmers of the world, unite and overthrow the oppression of the StateT monad!
joyboyluffy 2y ago
the best example for a anarchist state is Japan
- jampekka 2y ago
  What? There was anarchist movement in Japan, but it was heavily supressed by the Japanese state and later also by the allied states. An anarchist state is also kind of an oxymoron.
  - bell-cot 2y ago
    Reaction I: Cross off "kind of" Reaction II: Well...Japan often is an extremely poor fit for Western conceptual pigeonholes...
joyboyluffy 2y ago
well what are the real pros and cons of anarchist? is it good for the society?
hnthrow289570 2y ago
>The first is that human beings are, under ordinary circumstances, about as reasonable and decent as they are allowed to be, and can organize themselves and their communities without needing to be told how. That's a crock of shit, look at how brutal early civilizations were compared to today. You have an argument over long terms (100+ year spans), but not in the near term. If you want the assumption to apply to the near term, you have to accept that people behave in part based on the laws and society which they grew up with, which then makes you look weird for being against that system. That's what gives rise to the common decency.
- posterman 2y ago
  [flagged]
- ossobuco 2y ago
  > That's a crock of shit, look at how brutal early civilizations were compared to today. You have an argument over long terms (100+ year spans), but not in the near term. That's why I suppose anarchism as an ideology was born in the 19th century. You don't have to make it work through all of humankind history, just in the modern times. I say this and I'm not even an anarchist myself.
- angelsbrood 2y ago
  Try Graeber and Wengrow's Dawn of Everything :)
- ancap 2y ago
  Compared to today? In the past century hundreds of millions of people have been slaughtered by states. Compare that with any "private sector" killing, now or in "early civilization" and the mounds of bodies are non-existent by comparison.
  - deleted 2y ago
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  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    OK, but compared to today, the mounds of population are also missing. So be careful that you make a fair comparison. Counterexample: Pirates had a fairly anarchic organization - certainly more anarchic than most ships. They were still pretty good at killing people.
_benj 2y ago
> Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. I find this definition interesting because it seems to me there’s a very prevalent portrayal in media pointing towards the opposite, that is that humans left alone (read, without some powerful/wealthy authority) will unravel into the most depraved state imaginable. Reading the book factuality was fascinating because it showed me a view of humans that you don’t see in mass media since ordinary is boring and thus we only get either extremes of good or bad (read, saving the Amazon rainforest to a mother killing her child) Anarchy by this definition is hard to believe (although I aim to) because we are bombarder with the exceptions to the rule
- mc32 2y ago
  Anarchy probably works okay in low density areas rich in natural resources resulting in low competition. The pastoral idyll, the hunter gatherers, etc. Once you get high density, anonymity, etc. that comes with towns and cities it probably breaks down quite a bit and you need a force to keep it from imploding.
  - GaryNumanVevo 2y ago
    Ancient Native Americans used to have an interesting system. Most of the year they would roam around in "anarchic" groups of 100-200. During the buffalo hunting season, hundreds of nomadic tribes would come together and build a tent city with thousands of individuals. They'd elect a tribe to "police" the hunt, effectively insuring that everyone got a fair split of meat, and other animal products. There was a rule where the same tribe couldn't be elected twice, so if someone took an issue with the way order was kept, they could wait until hunting season was over and volunteer their own tribe to police next year.
  - pif 2y ago
    Indeed, anarchy was the default state of human nature until communities reached Dunbar's number, i.e. around 150 people. Then, they did invent civilization for a reason!
RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago
That is not the real test: The real test is: Your friend’s daughter had her drink spiked and then was raped while passed out by a bunch of frat guys. If you believe that you and your buddies should get together with guns and baseball bats and go to the Frat house and exact justice/revenge on them, then you might really be an anarchist. All the situations outlined are nice and good. Self-organization should be the default mode. However, there are situations where you need someone that can use violence to enforce justice. For most people, that would be the state.
- beaeglebeachh 2y ago
  The state doesn't enforce anything resembling justice for rape. Rape is rarely prosecuted and difficult to prove in a court of law.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago
    The effectiveness of the state’s enforcement is orthogonal to whether you believe it is their responsibility. Do you believe that the state should be trying to enforce justice for rape, or do you think it should be the responsibility of a “self-organizing” posse? If we agree that it is the state’s responsibility, then we can talk about ways to improve it. But then, you are already not an anarchist.
    - beaeglebeachh 2y ago
      I don't view justice as a responsibility but rather as a right for the victim. Whether the victim stops the rape with a 9mm hole in the aggressors head, sends posse, or sends a judge to do it are private matter for the victim to choose not for me to dictate. The problematic parts come up with how you pay the judge (stealing from 3rd parties), jailers etc and much the other stuff the state does. It would probably be more pragmatic to basically privatize the judge/court.
      - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
        > I don't view justice as a responsibility but rather as a right for the victim. Whether the victim stops the rape with a 9mm hole in the aggressors head, sends posse, or sends a judge to do it are private matter for the victim to choose not for me to dictate. So again, think of murder instead of rape. The victim isn't going to enforce a right to justice - they already failed to do so. Now what? Do you just shrug and say "you should have defended yourself better"? In that environment, can you not see how much it would absolutely suck to be a loner who is both physically and financially weak? Worse: Can you not see that you are in fact physically, financially, and socially weak? You're going to be the prey. So think very carefully before you advocate this "utopia".
realusername 2y ago
> The first is that human beings are, under ordinary circumstances, about as reasonable and decent as they are allowed to be, and can organize themselves and their communities without needing to be told how Well, I guess I'm not an anarchist then because I think it's already difficult when there's pressure to tell people what to do. I do wish I'd agree with that though.
bell-cot 2y ago
Looking at the closing para... > Now, you might object that all this is well and good as a way for small groups of people to get on with each other, but managing a city, or a country, is an entirely different matter. And of course there is something to this. Even if you decentralize society and put as much power as possible in the hands of small communities, there will still be plenty of things that need to be coordinated, from running railroads to deciding on directions for medical research. But just because something is complicated does not mean there is no way to do it democratically. It would just be complicated. In fact, anarchists have all sorts of different ideas and visions about how a complex society might manage itself. To explain them though would go far beyond the scope of a little introductory text like this. Suffice it to say, first of all, that a lot of people have spent a lot of time coming up with models for how a really democratic, healthy society might work; but second, and just as importantly, no anarchist claims to have a perfect blueprint. The last thing we want is to impose prefab models on society anyway. The truth is we probably can’t even imagine half the problems that will come up when we try to create a democratic society; still, we’re confident that, human ingenuity being what it is, such problems can always be solved, so long as it is in the spirit of our basic principles — which are, in the final analysis, simply the principles of fundamental human decency. ...and comparing it to Wikipedia's take... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy ...I'm thinking that the article is actually advocating for an idyllic version of small-government democracy. Not anarchy.
- Synaesthesia 2y ago
  Anarchy does not mean absence of organisation. It means absence of unfair dominance and control of one over another. An anarchist society could be highly organised, in all kinds of ways people decide to.
  - bell-cot 2y ago
    At least on-line, the definitions I'm seeing are very heavy on the "there are no rulers / authorities / states / government" points. There ain't no "as long as it's fair" escape clauses. Small-scale, if well-behaved people are the vast majority, and there are easy ways to cut out the occasional bad actor - that can work very well. Just look at the Internet of the 1970's and 1980's. Larger scale, with a real-world mix of human behaviors, and cutting off the "wrong sort" far more difficult - OOPS. Look at the modern internet, and the many toxic actors and organizations that have explosively grown in the large-scale anarchy. EDIT: Add "no big rewards for becoming dominant" to my preconditions for anarchy working well. You for-sure could not have gotten Zuckerbucks-grade rich by dominating the early internet.
wahnfrieden 2y ago
Coppola’s new movie Megalopolis is according to him primarily inspired by the works of Graeber and Wengrow including Dawn of Everything When it’s reported to be a political film, it may be specifically anarchist, very interesting
pookha 2y ago
No such thing as Anarchy. I've evolved my view on politics, gangs, tribes and governments into a simple understanding that we're dealing with systems at-large and those systems will always be expanding to fill the known universe and they'll constantly be bumping into each other and competing. An "Anarchist" is someone that does not consent to an authority (system) or its self identified "social contract". Ironically these kinds of people are the ones that dream-up systems (Rousseau's ideas built the US constitution) which then attract and absorb the systems-people (conformists). I accept that these systems-people are violent (nature of systems) and predatory but inevitable and sometimes useful and will be part of humanity for as long as humanity exists. Anarchy is impossible.
- peteradio 2y ago
  Ok but hands off my chickens hoa clucker
incomingpain 2y ago
Anarcho-X people are heavily misrepresented by the government. If north america went anarcho-capitalist, it'd work as well as or better the current system. But the problem is that there's still an entity which must enforce property rights, etc. This 'police/military force' then becomes the new government. It will ever increase in size. Eventually you arrive back to where we are. Where government got so large that it's unsustainable, suddenly anarchist sentiments return.
johnaspden 2y ago
Apparently not. And I am slightly surprised by that.
deleted 2y ago
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INTPenis 2y ago
This is exactly how I view anarchism. The word itself only says one thing, no leaders. So it's up to us to define a world without leaders. My definition has always been that we can have laws, we can have rules, we definitely need rules, but everyone must have a chance to understand how they're made, and everyone must have a chance to be part of the process. The only true democracy is anarchy. If we can put a man on the moon and hold elections then surely we can construct a functional anarchist system. If you're a true anarchist you believe more in rules than anyone else. Rules about littering, about right of way, rules that enforce order. Because without centralized leadership everyone must help enforce the rules. Which is also why it'll never work in practice of course. It will always remain a dream, it goes against evolution, really. If evolution is throwing dice then it dictates that sooner or later someone will go against the grain. No system is perfect and sooner or later someone will exploit it. The true nature of human politics is just pure chaos. Dog eat dog, survival of the fittest, or like Pac said; "gimme gimme gimme, everybody back off". It's like a biological survival instinct to hoard wealth and protect ones own against the world.
enoch_r 2y ago
> Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. This is an empirical question. It seems to me that even if a good-sized majority of the population is capable of living in this fashion, a small minority is absolutely not. (And this obviously is not due to "deprivation" or "inequality", unless you believe that white collar criminals are "deprived.") A small percentage of people can quite easily ruin things for everyone else, e.g. in NYC where a third of all shoplifting arrests were for 327 people (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/15/nyregion/shoplifting-arrests-nyc.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/15/nyregion/shoplifting-arre...).

47 points by TotalCrackpot 2y ago

[flagged]

Another question: do you consider yourself neither left nor right on the political spectrum, because you believe that society is fundamentally broken and both sides just further consumerism in different ways (the right supports big business directly, and the left tries to create equal opportunities for everyone to further consumerism)? If so, then you may be an anarchist.

joyboyluffy 2y ago
yup yup
eesmith 2y ago
Graber was an anarchist and a leftist. For example, quoting from https://davidgraeber.org/articles/is-your-job-bullshit-on-capitalisms-endless-busywork/ https://davidgraeber.org/articles/is-your-job-bullshit-on-ca... > I’ve been working with people who’ve become big advocates for a universal basic income. It’s not the only solution, but it conforms with my political instincts. People think that is odd because I’m an anarchist. Why would I want a policy where the government would just give people money? Isn’t that giving power to the government? I say, no. > A basic income would be the perfect leftist antibureaucratic policy. It would not only reduce the number of bureaucrats, but it would get rid of the worst of them, the annoying ones who decide whether you’re really poor enough to deserve this, or whether you’re really married to that person or whether you really live in that room. He thought there were multiple ways people considered themselves on the left. For example, from https://davidgraeber.org/articles/from-managerial-feudalism-to-the-revolt-of-the-caring-classes/ https://davidgraeber.org/articles/from-managerial-feudalism-... : > The conclusion that I came to is that essentially, the left is applying an outdated paradigm: they’re still thinking in terms of bosses and workers in a kind of old-fashioned industrial sense, when what’s really going on is that for most people the key class opposition is caregivers versus managers. Leftist parties are trying to represent both sides at the same time, but they’re really dominated by the latter. and that "mainstream left" wasn't barely on the left. From https://davidgraeber.org/interviews/i-found-myself-turning-into-an-idiot-david-graeber-explains-the-life-sapping-reality-of-bureaucratic-life/ https://davidgraeber.org/interviews/i-found-myself-turning-i... : > Because, in a way, the left began against bureaucratization of life. It’s about freedom. The mainstream left, which is barely left at all at this point in traditional terms … has really embraced a combination of market and bureaucracy, an equal synthesis of the worst aspects of capitalism and the worst aspects of bureaucracy.
posterman 2y ago
i think you are getting liberalism and "the left" confused
- notarobot123 2y ago
  as do many left-wing political parties
  - posterman 2y ago
    well, they wouldn't be left wing if they presented centrist liberal ideals would they? you, too, may be confusing liberalism with leftism. almost as if it was the intended function of the liberal project...
    - jampekka 2y ago
      "Left" is a relative concept. The original French revolution left was liberalist. Liberalism is the core ideology of the current western world. Both Democrats and Republicans are liberalists. Even Putin is predominantly a liberalist.
      - posterman 2y ago
        yes, this is what i am saying. modern liberalism is indeed a "core ideology", or put another way, a hegemonic centrist ideal. it is definitionally not leftist. i think it is well understood that most leftist political ideologies recognize the importance of a liberal movement as a precursor. to the original comment this stems from, leftism is in no way an endorsement of consumerism.
        jampekka 2y ago
        I find it more useful to use more "absolute" terms. If by left you mean some fashion of socialism, then indeed left is not liberalist. But in contemporary politics such left is almost non-existant. E.g. most European "socialist" or even "communist" parties are staunchly liberal, and mostly celebrate consumerism. I don't think "leftism" is really an ideology, or at least it can mean very different things in different contexts. Edit: I find it also better to use "liberalist" instead of "liberal" when referring to the political movement and ideology. "Liberal" is easy to misinterpret and misuse, and it tends to hide the fact that liberalism a quite specific ideology, that e.g. has no monopoly on liberty.
krapp 2y ago
>do you consider yourself neither left nor right on the political spectrum, because you believe that society is fundamentally broken and both sides just further consumerism in different ways (the right supports big business directly, and the left tries to create equal opportunities for everyone to further consumerism) No, because I find that extremely reductionist, simplistic and naive. In my experience points of view that abandon nuance in favor of equivocation and cynicism tend themselves to be attempts at propaganda and control. It is true, if you adopt the left/right political model (which you don't even need to, it is itself a propaganda tool meant to normalize the two party paradigm in American politics) that both the Democratic and Republican parties in the US serve the needs of capitalism and the military industrial complex. It is not, however, true that all leftist ideology and all right-wing ideology are essentially the same as a result, and that neither have any purpose or value beyond simply being vehicles for capitalism.
TotalCrackpot 2y ago
Most anarchists consider themselves far-left. Most of them are a libertarian wing of far-left.
- denton-scratch 2y ago
  > Most anarchists consider themselves far-left. "Far-left" is a derogatory term, a synonym for "left-wing extremist". Nobody considers themselves an extremist. I've noticed that my own views seem to be to the left of any mainstream political party here. For me, that just means that all the mainstream parties are right-wing. I reserve the term "far-left" for hyper-dogmatic communist revolutionaries who don't object to using violence for political ends.
  - TotalCrackpot 2y ago
    Anarchists are far-left. Some far-lest is authoritarian like Marxist-Leninists, some far left is anti-authoritarian like Anarchists.
    - denton-scratch 2y ago
      It appears that you want to use the term "far left" to mean something like "socialist". I agree that anarchists are socialists. I don't agree that all Marxist-Leninists are authoritarian; and for what it's worth, I'm not aware of any Marxist-Leninist grassroots group operating here (UK). I repeat: "far-left" is a term of abuse. It's routinely deployed by US persons of the Trumpian and Tea-Party persuasions against anyone they disagree with, including the leadership of the Democratic Party, a party that has never espoused any kind of socialism.

_heimdall 2y ago

The terms anarchist and libertarian are both really misunderstood (or misused?) today. At least in the US, most people seem to think libertarians are anarchists and anarchists are terrorists that want to lice in The Purge. I guess that does kind of make sense though. We also don't use the left/right spectrum the way most other cultures do and we've totally redefined what it means to be liberal or conservative. Well looky there, I must be an anarchist too?

jampekka 2y ago
Originally libertarians were anarchists, and they were roughly synonyms. And in many parts of Europe still are. In USA these terms were co-opted by right wing to come up with anarchocapitalism and right-libertarianism.
netsharc 2y ago
To me, all these "isms" have millions of different versions, almost one in each brain. If you ask a fan of AOC (not all of them obviously), "socialism" might conjure an image of clean and tidy Stockholm, ask a fan of Trump (not all of them obviously) and they'll tell you about Stalin's gulags or how Sweden is overrun by "Muslim terrorist".
Synaesthesia 2y ago
Anarchism has been unfairly maligned, it’s basically associated with bomb thrower. But it’s really not about that.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

krasotkin 2y ago

Why do anarchists write programs using functional languages? Because they're stateless.

WJW 2y ago
Fellow programmers of the world, unite and overthrow the oppression of the StateT monad!

joyboyluffy 2y ago

the best example for a anarchist state is Japan

jampekka 2y ago
What? There was anarchist movement in Japan, but it was heavily supressed by the Japanese state and later also by the allied states. An anarchist state is also kind of an oxymoron.
- bell-cot 2y ago
  Reaction I: Cross off "kind of" Reaction II: Well...Japan often is an extremely poor fit for Western conceptual pigeonholes...

joyboyluffy 2y ago

well what are the real pros and cons of anarchist? is it good for the society?

hnthrow289570 2y ago

>The first is that human beings are, under ordinary circumstances, about as reasonable and decent as they are allowed to be, and can organize themselves and their communities without needing to be told how. That's a crock of shit, look at how brutal early civilizations were compared to today. You have an argument over long terms (100+ year spans), but not in the near term. If you want the assumption to apply to the near term, you have to accept that people behave in part based on the laws and society which they grew up with, which then makes you look weird for being against that system. That's what gives rise to the common decency.

posterman 2y ago
[flagged]
ossobuco 2y ago
> That's a crock of shit, look at how brutal early civilizations were compared to today. You have an argument over long terms (100+ year spans), but not in the near term. That's why I suppose anarchism as an ideology was born in the 19th century. You don't have to make it work through all of humankind history, just in the modern times. I say this and I'm not even an anarchist myself.
angelsbrood 2y ago
Try Graeber and Wengrow's Dawn of Everything :)
ancap 2y ago
Compared to today? In the past century hundreds of millions of people have been slaughtered by states. Compare that with any "private sector" killing, now or in "early civilization" and the mounds of bodies are non-existent by comparison.
- deleted 2y ago
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- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  OK, but compared to today, the mounds of population are also missing. So be careful that you make a fair comparison. Counterexample: Pirates had a fairly anarchic organization - certainly more anarchic than most ships. They were still pretty good at killing people.

_benj 2y ago

> Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. I find this definition interesting because it seems to me there’s a very prevalent portrayal in media pointing towards the opposite, that is that humans left alone (read, without some powerful/wealthy authority) will unravel into the most depraved state imaginable. Reading the book factuality was fascinating because it showed me a view of humans that you don’t see in mass media since ordinary is boring and thus we only get either extremes of good or bad (read, saving the Amazon rainforest to a mother killing her child) Anarchy by this definition is hard to believe (although I aim to) because we are bombarder with the exceptions to the rule

mc32 2y ago
Anarchy probably works okay in low density areas rich in natural resources resulting in low competition. The pastoral idyll, the hunter gatherers, etc. Once you get high density, anonymity, etc. that comes with towns and cities it probably breaks down quite a bit and you need a force to keep it from imploding.
- GaryNumanVevo 2y ago
  Ancient Native Americans used to have an interesting system. Most of the year they would roam around in "anarchic" groups of 100-200. During the buffalo hunting season, hundreds of nomadic tribes would come together and build a tent city with thousands of individuals. They'd elect a tribe to "police" the hunt, effectively insuring that everyone got a fair split of meat, and other animal products. There was a rule where the same tribe couldn't be elected twice, so if someone took an issue with the way order was kept, they could wait until hunting season was over and volunteer their own tribe to police next year.
- pif 2y ago
  Indeed, anarchy was the default state of human nature until communities reached Dunbar's number, i.e. around 150 people. Then, they did invent civilization for a reason!

RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago

That is not the real test: The real test is: Your friend’s daughter had her drink spiked and then was raped while passed out by a bunch of frat guys. If you believe that you and your buddies should get together with guns and baseball bats and go to the Frat house and exact justice/revenge on them, then you might really be an anarchist. All the situations outlined are nice and good. Self-organization should be the default mode. However, there are situations where you need someone that can use violence to enforce justice. For most people, that would be the state.

beaeglebeachh 2y ago
The state doesn't enforce anything resembling justice for rape. Rape is rarely prosecuted and difficult to prove in a court of law.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago
  The effectiveness of the state’s enforcement is orthogonal to whether you believe it is their responsibility. Do you believe that the state should be trying to enforce justice for rape, or do you think it should be the responsibility of a “self-organizing” posse? If we agree that it is the state’s responsibility, then we can talk about ways to improve it. But then, you are already not an anarchist.
  - beaeglebeachh 2y ago
    I don't view justice as a responsibility but rather as a right for the victim. Whether the victim stops the rape with a 9mm hole in the aggressors head, sends posse, or sends a judge to do it are private matter for the victim to choose not for me to dictate. The problematic parts come up with how you pay the judge (stealing from 3rd parties), jailers etc and much the other stuff the state does. It would probably be more pragmatic to basically privatize the judge/court.
    - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
      > I don't view justice as a responsibility but rather as a right for the victim. Whether the victim stops the rape with a 9mm hole in the aggressors head, sends posse, or sends a judge to do it are private matter for the victim to choose not for me to dictate. So again, think of murder instead of rape. The victim isn't going to enforce a right to justice - they already failed to do so. Now what? Do you just shrug and say "you should have defended yourself better"? In that environment, can you not see how much it would absolutely suck to be a loner who is both physically and financially weak? Worse: Can you not see that you are in fact physically, financially, and socially weak? You're going to be the prey. So think very carefully before you advocate this "utopia".

realusername 2y ago

> The first is that human beings are, under ordinary circumstances, about as reasonable and decent as they are allowed to be, and can organize themselves and their communities without needing to be told how Well, I guess I'm not an anarchist then because I think it's already difficult when there's pressure to tell people what to do. I do wish I'd agree with that though.

bell-cot 2y ago

Looking at the closing para... > Now, you might object that all this is well and good as a way for small groups of people to get on with each other, but managing a city, or a country, is an entirely different matter. And of course there is something to this. Even if you decentralize society and put as much power as possible in the hands of small communities, there will still be plenty of things that need to be coordinated, from running railroads to deciding on directions for medical research. But just because something is complicated does not mean there is no way to do it democratically. It would just be complicated. In fact, anarchists have all sorts of different ideas and visions about how a complex society might manage itself. To explain them though would go far beyond the scope of a little introductory text like this. Suffice it to say, first of all, that a lot of people have spent a lot of time coming up with models for how a really democratic, healthy society might work; but second, and just as importantly, no anarchist claims to have a perfect blueprint. The last thing we want is to impose prefab models on society anyway. The truth is we probably can’t even imagine half the problems that will come up when we try to create a democratic society; still, we’re confident that, human ingenuity being what it is, such problems can always be solved, so long as it is in the spirit of our basic principles — which are, in the final analysis, simply the principles of fundamental human decency. ...and comparing it to Wikipedia's take... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy ...I'm thinking that the article is actually advocating for an idyllic version of small-government democracy. Not anarchy.

Synaesthesia 2y ago
Anarchy does not mean absence of organisation. It means absence of unfair dominance and control of one over another. An anarchist society could be highly organised, in all kinds of ways people decide to.
- bell-cot 2y ago
  At least on-line, the definitions I'm seeing are very heavy on the "there are no rulers / authorities / states / government" points. There ain't no "as long as it's fair" escape clauses. Small-scale, if well-behaved people are the vast majority, and there are easy ways to cut out the occasional bad actor - that can work very well. Just look at the Internet of the 1970's and 1980's. Larger scale, with a real-world mix of human behaviors, and cutting off the "wrong sort" far more difficult - OOPS. Look at the modern internet, and the many toxic actors and organizations that have explosively grown in the large-scale anarchy. EDIT: Add "no big rewards for becoming dominant" to my preconditions for anarchy working well. You for-sure could not have gotten Zuckerbucks-grade rich by dominating the early internet.

wahnfrieden 2y ago

Coppola’s new movie Megalopolis is according to him primarily inspired by the works of Graeber and Wengrow including Dawn of Everything When it’s reported to be a political film, it may be specifically anarchist, very interesting

pookha 2y ago

No such thing as Anarchy. I've evolved my view on politics, gangs, tribes and governments into a simple understanding that we're dealing with systems at-large and those systems will always be expanding to fill the known universe and they'll constantly be bumping into each other and competing. An "Anarchist" is someone that does not consent to an authority (system) or its self identified "social contract". Ironically these kinds of people are the ones that dream-up systems (Rousseau's ideas built the US constitution) which then attract and absorb the systems-people (conformists). I accept that these systems-people are violent (nature of systems) and predatory but inevitable and sometimes useful and will be part of humanity for as long as humanity exists. Anarchy is impossible.

peteradio 2y ago
Ok but hands off my chickens hoa clucker

incomingpain 2y ago

Anarcho-X people are heavily misrepresented by the government. If north america went anarcho-capitalist, it'd work as well as or better the current system. But the problem is that there's still an entity which must enforce property rights, etc. This 'police/military force' then becomes the new government. It will ever increase in size. Eventually you arrive back to where we are. Where government got so large that it's unsustainable, suddenly anarchist sentiments return.

johnaspden 2y ago

Apparently not. And I am slightly surprised by that.

deleted 2y ago

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INTPenis 2y ago

This is exactly how I view anarchism. The word itself only says one thing, no leaders. So it's up to us to define a world without leaders. My definition has always been that we can have laws, we can have rules, we definitely need rules, but everyone must have a chance to understand how they're made, and everyone must have a chance to be part of the process. The only true democracy is anarchy. If we can put a man on the moon and hold elections then surely we can construct a functional anarchist system. If you're a true anarchist you believe more in rules than anyone else. Rules about littering, about right of way, rules that enforce order. Because without centralized leadership everyone must help enforce the rules. Which is also why it'll never work in practice of course. It will always remain a dream, it goes against evolution, really. If evolution is throwing dice then it dictates that sooner or later someone will go against the grain. No system is perfect and sooner or later someone will exploit it. The true nature of human politics is just pure chaos. Dog eat dog, survival of the fittest, or like Pac said; "gimme gimme gimme, everybody back off". It's like a biological survival instinct to hoard wealth and protect ones own against the world.

enoch_r 2y ago

> Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. This is an empirical question. It seems to me that even if a good-sized majority of the population is capable of living in this fashion, a small minority is absolutely not. (And this obviously is not due to "deprivation" or "inequality", unless you believe that white collar criminals are "deprived.") A small percentage of people can quite easily ruin things for everyone else, e.g. in NYC where a third of all shoplifting arrests were for 327 people (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/15/nyregion/shoplifting-arrests-nyc.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/15/nyregion/shoplifting-arre...).