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Genuine question for this audience. Given a general recognition of the philosophical grounding of Chomsky and the broader social anarchist philosophers (Henry

• pixl97 2y ago
  >leadership that present anarchist You might see the conflict here in the wording... A successful meme is one that causes itself to be propagated. For example most religions have a tenant of "have kids, teach those kids your religion" and "convert others to your religion". Leadership in a group that says get rid of leadership is never going to be as successful as a group that attempts to acquire more power. Or to say different, it's success measure would be in destroying itself.
  • anamexis 2y ago
    I think you're responding exactly in a way GP is talking about, namely "that they can’t actually evaluate it the way that political philosophers define it." Anarchism does not mean that there are no leaders or leadership.
    • AndyNemmity 2y ago
      Anarchism means there is no unjustified authority.
      • pixl97 2y ago
        >unjustified authority That is a tautology. Who provides the justification and who gave them that authority. The king? The nobles? The learned? The majority? The masses? The individual? The problem with power is it is self justifying. If you have power you can justify anything, and if you do not, you exist at the mercy of those that do. One would think the most rational behavior would be to give those power that want it least (such as anarchists), but human psychology shows that significant portions of humanity want hierarchies and will gladly give their power to put a dictator/king into power.
        • AndyNemmity 2y ago
          Noam Chomsky - "Anarchism is a tendency that is suspicious and skeptical of domination, authority, and hierarchy. It seeks structures of hierarchy and domination in human life over the whole range, extending from, say, patriarchal families to, say, imperial systems, and it asks whether those systems are justified. It assumes that the burden of proof for anyone in a position of power and authority lies on them. Their authority is not self-justifying. They have to give a reason for it, a justification. And if they can’t justify that authority and power and control, which is the usual case, then the authority ought to be dismantled and replaced by something more free and just. And, as I understand it, anarchy is just that tendency. It takes different forms at different times."
          • pixl97 2y ago
            This is just a continuation of the tautology... In this statement Noam manages to stick his head so far up his own ass that you can see his face inside his mouth... > And if they can’t justify that authority and power and control, which is the usual case, then the authority ought to be dismantled and replaced by By fucking what. Oh yes, by someone/something/some group with power. If you have the power to do this, you have the same power as a brutal dictator. If you have power to tear down these non-self justifying systems, you can use any fucking justification you want to tear it down. At the end of the day power is power. You just hope this power is wielded towards more freedom, but you're just a single orator away from tyranny.
  • laurex 2y ago
    I don't think anarchism is necessarily "get rid of leadership" - it can be more like "share leadership." In other words, to do this well, you must recognise and dismantle coercive structures and dominance. This of course takes work, but skipping over this work in favour of "output" type work has led to a great deal of output without consideration of consequences. If we learn to be leaders in a context of power-sharing, there's not necessarily a conflict in that power's expansion, though it's hard to make that legible in a world where power is regarded as a resource subject to scarcity.
    • dingnuts 2y ago
      it's not possible to dismantle dominance structures. They're evolutionarily defined in our biology and are primordial. If you ban explicitly stated dominance hierarchies, they merely become implicit. Think about "flat" organizations. On paper, there is no power hierarchy. In reality, you have to join the group and observe to discover who is actually in power, because it's implicit, but there is always someone in power. This is then lamented as "politics." There is no evidence that implicit power structures, especially ones where everyone maintains the lie that there is no power structure at all, are better than explicitly defined power structures. In fact, history presents lots of evidence to the contrary, especially if you read Russian!
      • laurex 2y ago
        Dominance is a strategy among the ones we have evolved to employ, but it's not accurate to say it is "wired in" as the primary and inescapable strategy. At least as I understand it, anarchism does not deny our impulses to dominance exist, rather it seeks to put that tendency in check through processes of collaboration and checks to individual power. As soon as you begin introducing an argument that is about states or organziations, it becomes a little muddy, since at least in theory, anarchism is playing a different game, but there are examples even in our current era of rampantly dominant structures of this working at scale. For example, the 12-step programs are designed in such a way that their governance works by essentially anarchist, collectivist principles, and there are millions of people participating in them.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • AndyNemmity 2y ago
    Anarchism isn't about getting rid of leadership. It's about asking the question if authority is justified, and if it isn't dismantling it. Certainly there are cases where authority is justified. Just not in the case of unaccountable private dictatorships, or as they are known, corporations.
    • goatlover 2y ago
      Wouldn't anarchists also be opposed to the state, and any governments above the local level, which are to be determined democratically?
      • AndyNemmity 2y ago
        No. It would be justifiable to have a government at a national level democratically controlled to handle foreign policy for example. But it would be a real democracy, and would require consistent ratification from the population. Details on individual tactics like this depend on the technology and situation in existence. It's getting far easier to imagine a world where this is possible.
        • orwin 2y ago
          See: Switzerland
  • lumb63 2y ago
    As someone who formerly identified as a libertarian, this is the logic that made me question the position. A philosophy which when empowered aims to minimize its sphere of influence is self-defeating, unfortunately.
• corimaith 2y ago
  Takes more than philosophical grounding to accrue political power. Liberalism has fundamental contradictions that Communism or Fascism dosen't, yet it is the former that is the dominant ideology today. Same with thing with "capitalism" or the greater financial system, most would have negative reaction to such words, yet they are one of the few systems where their ideas are fully realized in praxis onto reality.
• noamundrstander 2y ago
  Syndicalist
  • ricktdotorg 2y ago
    great comment, and i think, the correct answer to the Q of a non-triggering term to use for action-oriented radicalism. also love that your account was seemingly created to add this comment.
  • AndyNemmity 2y ago
    Syndicalist is a particular style, based around Syndicalism. There's nothing inherent that is required, it's just a type.
    • noamundrstander 2y ago
      It’s a non triggering term that Chomsky himself uses to characterize his anarchism.
      • AndyNemmity 2y ago
        I've never heard him call himself an Anarcho Syndicalist. He is certainly a supporter of Anarcho Syndicalism, but has never been a member. The most common term I've heard him describe himself as is Libertarian Socialist, or Anarchist. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I am fairly confident. Do you have a quote to reference?
• djokkataja 2y ago
  There are lots of different flavors of anarchy, and anarchists can't agree on them. Or--and I think this might be quoting or paraphrasing someone: there are as many different kinds of anarchy as there are anarchists. And sometimes their reactions to each other are very strongly negative, like "That's not really anarchy, that's just preserving capitalism via a last-ditch attempt!" Also I think in the US at least, religion plays into it. God over humanity is conceptually the ultimate hierarchy model that Christians buy into. So it seems like Christians often don't have as much issue with embracing the idea of one person being over another person as a reflection of that model. This seems a little bit funny given how anarchic Jesus was, but he never said, "Yo, check it out, I am literally an anarchist and you should be too," and so they seem to have missed that.
  • sparrish 2y ago
    Matthew 28:18-20 'Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”' Doesn't sound anarchist to me. Why do you say Jesus was anarchic?
    • jcranmer 2y ago
      > Why do you say Jesus was anarchic? At a guess, I'd say it's because Jesus spends a lot of time casting the religious authorities as villains, so this viewpoint is extended to a general belief in antiauthority and consequently pro-anarchy. Except this also misses all the times where he turns around saying "follow the law" and other events where he criticizes antiauthoritism (e.g., his rebuke of Simon Peter during his arrest).
      • goatlover 2y ago
        You have to understand Jesus historically as an apocalyptic Jew, concerned with the coming Kingdom of God replacing the corrupt world order. But it was also a restoration of the Kingdom of Israel with a descendant of David as king. That was the meaning of the Jewish messiah. Which is why Pilate had him crucified, and there was a sign saying "King of the Jews".
• AndyNemmity 2y ago
  The name is basically irrelevant. There are other names used for it, like Libertarian Socialism. The fact it's a different name, hasn't increased the relevancy. Libertarian Socialism and/or Anarchism, is a structure of ideas that gets destroyed by every government if it ever gains relevance, as occurred with Spain, as the article and Homage to Catalonia are about. We don't need names to communicate the issue. It's really simple. If authority is unjustified, it should be dismantled. And what does that mean in practice? That corporations are unaccountable privately owned Dictatorships, and workers should be in control of them. That renting yourself to a dictatorship is not freedom, and control of operations and decision making should be in the hands of those who do the work.
  • AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    Thank you for a very clear, concise statement. With a clear conscience, I can now say "I am against that". Why? 1. Those dictatorships aren't going to dissolve themselves. You're going to have to use force to do so (I hold out very little hope of legislation against corporations passing, or being declared constitutional if it did pass). You can create an armed revolution that can overthrow corporate interests, but what you get after that doesn't usually look like greater freedom. What it looks like is someone who was after power found a vehicle to get it, and after the dust settles, all the rules and structures that limit how they can exercise power are gone. 2. It's inconsistently in favor of freedom. "Renting yourself to a dictatorship is not freedom"? What if I want to? Should I not have the freedom to do so? (Why would I want that? In terms of my overall well-being, that may look like a net win to me. I may decide that not having to worry about controlling the direction of the business, while limiting my freedom at work, means more mental space to control things I'm more interested in.) 3. It's not very practical. There are people who, bluntly, are not fit to have much of a say in how a business is run. What are you going to do with them? If you want people to voluntarily organize into employee-owned businesses or co-ops or whatever, I'm fine with that. If you want to advocate that employees should come to such enterprises, I'm fine with that. Argue that they'll get a better (and more fulfilling) deal there? Sure. But telling the rest of us that we can't (or shouldn't) do otherwise? That sounds rather dictatorial of you, frankly. (With you not necessarily meaning AndyNemmity, but whoever advocates the idea.)
• asdff 2y ago
  The issue is in the discourse that's leveled against the average person. Its not scientific or data centric, its tribalistic and designed to appeal to emotion over rational logic. As you note, there are smart people who can take all the existing information about the world, read up on political theories and make their own conclusions from available evidence and data. These rationalists are not most people, unfortunately. Others don't learn such critical thinking and research skills. These people act very much like humans have acted for a millennia, appealing to their trusted shaman or chief as the source of truth rather than a careful, individual assessment of the available evidence. They think in terms of emotion. Then there is a third group of people who are aware of both groups of people. They use the rational people to research actionable data, and use the science of propaganda to convince the emotional masses to support whatever is useful for this third group in terms of amassing more resources, or more power to later amass more resources. I'm not sure how we get out of this rut as a species to be honest. As the famous quote goes, you can't rationalize someone out of a perspective they didn't rationalize themselves into.
  • AndrewKemendo 2y ago
    What a thoughtful response and I think that you’ve done a fantastic job at summarizing the crux of the issue Namely, that idealized human organizational structures require every citizen to have a level of dedication and persistent scrutiny, education, etc... that would allow for sustainment of a society. This is every Greek philosopher ever saying that education is the key to democracy Further, because this is the case, societies have tendencies (as we know from history) to lurch around following leaders who exploit this epistemological gap I fear that you’re correct in the sense that this is not a tractable problem Thank you!
    • AndyNemmity 2y ago
      History shows it's been overcome. It just requires dedicated work, just as it has in labor movements in the United States, and in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, and the precursors to it. But you're absolutely right, it takes work to create the environment these ideas can take hold.
    • 2y ago
• mindslight 2y ago
  IMO the fundamental difficulty is that anarchism is framed in terms of a negative - the absence of hierarchy. This makes it a fantastic foundation for critiquing existing (power) structures on their own merits in isolation. But that foundation makes proposing new structures a secondary concern. So then you get the various schools, each trying to describe how they themselves think society should be positively structured, while awkwardly trying to avoid the fact they're proposing new structure, and all the ways that can (and likely will) go wrong. The problem gets especially poignant when trying to push existing society in one of these specific directions, where undermining some power structures can cause others to fill the vacuum. You'll also find yourself in opposition to other groups pushing for their own freedom, but focused on a different part of the existing power structure that makes the most sense for them to start with. My own synthesis is something along the lines of anarchism without adjectives where we need to be against immediate oppression of individuals by power structures, but also realizing that scaling any such movements will inevitably spawn their own oppressive hierarchies, likely aimed at people different than us. Ultimately I think the larger societal changes in individual freedom are created by new technologies, each of which can either support or oppress individual freedom.