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Anarchism means no unearned hierarchy, it doesn't mean no cooperation. It means no kings, it doesn't mean no leaders. Everybody for themselves would be a deman

Anarchism means no unearned hierarchy, it doesn't mean no cooperation. It means no kings, it doesn't mean no leaders. Everybody for themselves would be a demand that a king would make. Normal people cooperate.

Analemma_ 2y ago
In decades of being on the internet, I have yet to meet two anarchists who use the same definition of "anarchism". Certainly I know plenty of people who would excoriate you for saying it "means no unearned hierarchy". It's impossible to philosophically engage with anarchism, because every anarchist rewrites its definition on-the-fly to win whatever argument they happen to be in at that moment.
- teddyh 2y ago
  In decades of also being on the internet, I have also yet to meet two people who use the same definition of "democracy".
  - ein0p 2y ago
    Especially now when there’s often talk of criminalizing political speech and protest to, ostensibly, “protect _our_ democracy”. Who’s democracy it is is never explicitly stated, but I think it’s not mine.
    - teddyh 2y ago
      There was always talk like that, but from only one side, so you probably did not hear it or take it seriously then. Now, however, it has shifted to come from the other side as well. I mused at length about this here some months ago: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38119795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38119795>
      - rightbyte 2y ago
        Great write up. However, I believe there has been a shift in what kind of people are filtered into the top. Like, there seems to be this trend selecting for "meta players" to some greater extent internally in the parties as well as quarrelsome over cooperative. I dunno what the mechanism for this is.
        ein0p 2y ago
        My pet theory is that the only major change is that there’s now much less of a filter over the information that reaches the populace. The regime can’t quite figure out yet how to deal with this without undermining its own legitimacy, flimsy as it may be. It used to be you had to go through the newspapers or tv to get anything out, and both are controlled by a very small group of people. To the extent that there was diversity of opinion it was because the two wings of the uniparty disagreed with one another. Nowadays trust in the press is at historic lows and actually reading it makes one _less_ informed than not reading anything at all. So people turn to social media and personalities they trust there. End result: an actual democracy could break out for the first time since Ancient Greece. The Uniparty can’t tolerate risking tens of trillions in money flows on some highfalutin’ bullshit like that.
- coliveira 2y ago
  I agree with this. For anarchism to be successful, the first step would be to relabel itself to something else other than anarchism, because this word is currently almost meaningless. An almost similar thing also happened to communism, every group has a different definition to the point that they cannot agree anymore on what communism is.
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    Maybe some authoritative figure could write a manifesto or something...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
beaeglebeachedd 2y ago
That's one interpretation. Another us the idea that only voluntary interactions and transactions are legitimate -- i.e. taxation or forceful socialist takeover of capital is archist. The common thread is the idea of decentralized, ideally evenly distributed, power.
- pessimizer 2y ago
  > Another is the idea that only voluntary interactions and transactions are legitimate -- i.e. taxation or forceful socialist takeover of capital is archist. That's not another idea, that's really the same idea. Voluntary interactions are not unearned. The only problem with that is that it accepts kings (i.e. the legitimacy of primitive accumulation and the fencing off of the commons.) If you just say that King Charles owns England, and everything within it, he can even force you into a contract in order to use his roads to leave. But of course anarcho-capitalism is a legitimate Anarchist strain. As it is now, it exists with a fake pedigree from Objectivists and Libertarians, who are simply Republican anti-communists minus the Christianity, but you can see the same beliefs within what was at the time accepted as fairly orthodox anarchism in Benjamin Tucker.* There are still interesting libertarians that don't accept primitive accumulation, and simply think that the creation of interlocking markets is a better way to organize a free society than the glorification of wage-laborers. I'm largely a Rudolf Rocker anarchist myself, and Homage to Catalonia changed my life as well. Speaking of groups, I was a card-carrying anarchist who volunteered at the 223 infoshop in Portland during the 90s. I had always suspected that Chomsky was an anarchist, and the confirmation was when he spoke in town and made his first political donation to that same infoshop. It was his first occasion making a political donation of that type, and everybody in left politics noticed. edit: A quote from John Zerzan, an primitivist (or the primitivist) anarchist who hated Chomsky, illustrating how impactful that donation was: > In the fall of 1995, Chomsky donated much of the proceeds from a well-attended speech on U.S. foreign policy to Portland’s 223 Freedom and Mutual Aid Center, better known as the local anarchist infoshop. As if to honor its generous benefactor appropriately, the infoshop spent the money first of all on a computer system, and several months later financed a booklet promoting the infoshop and the ideas behind it. Among the most prominent quotes adorning the pamphlet is one that begins, “The task for a modern industrial society is to achieve what is now technically realizable...” The attentive reader may not need me to name the author of these words, nor to point out this less than qualitatively radical influence. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/john-zerzan-who-is-chomsky https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/john-zerzan-who-is-c... ----- * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Tucker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Tucker edit: I would also mention that Benjamin Tucker was almost entirely in line with current Libertarian thought, still thought of himself as an anarchist and a socialist, and was one of the biggest misogynists possible. When people seriously engage with ideas instead of stereotypes, they come out in weird places. When you seriously engage with ideas instead of conventions, you start to realize that we're already in a weird place.
hyperliner 2y ago
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Analemma_ 2y ago

In decades of being on the internet, I have yet to meet two anarchists who use the same definition of "anarchism". Certainly I know plenty of people who would excoriate you for saying it "means no unearned hierarchy". It's impossible to philosophically engage with anarchism, because every anarchist rewrites its definition on-the-fly to win whatever argument they happen to be in at that moment.

teddyh 2y ago
In decades of also being on the internet, I have also yet to meet two people who use the same definition of "democracy".
- ein0p 2y ago
  Especially now when there’s often talk of criminalizing political speech and protest to, ostensibly, “protect _our_ democracy”. Who’s democracy it is is never explicitly stated, but I think it’s not mine.
  - teddyh 2y ago
    There was always talk like that, but from only one side, so you probably did not hear it or take it seriously then. Now, however, it has shifted to come from the other side as well. I mused at length about this here some months ago: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38119795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38119795>
    - rightbyte 2y ago
      Great write up. However, I believe there has been a shift in what kind of people are filtered into the top. Like, there seems to be this trend selecting for "meta players" to some greater extent internally in the parties as well as quarrelsome over cooperative. I dunno what the mechanism for this is.
      - ein0p 2y ago
        My pet theory is that the only major change is that there’s now much less of a filter over the information that reaches the populace. The regime can’t quite figure out yet how to deal with this without undermining its own legitimacy, flimsy as it may be. It used to be you had to go through the newspapers or tv to get anything out, and both are controlled by a very small group of people. To the extent that there was diversity of opinion it was because the two wings of the uniparty disagreed with one another. Nowadays trust in the press is at historic lows and actually reading it makes one _less_ informed than not reading anything at all. So people turn to social media and personalities they trust there. End result: an actual democracy could break out for the first time since Ancient Greece. The Uniparty can’t tolerate risking tens of trillions in money flows on some highfalutin’ bullshit like that.
coliveira 2y ago
I agree with this. For anarchism to be successful, the first step would be to relabel itself to something else other than anarchism, because this word is currently almost meaningless. An almost similar thing also happened to communism, every group has a different definition to the point that they cannot agree anymore on what communism is.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  Maybe some authoritative figure could write a manifesto or something...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

beaeglebeachedd 2y ago

That's one interpretation. Another us the idea that only voluntary interactions and transactions are legitimate -- i.e. taxation or forceful socialist takeover of capital is archist. The common thread is the idea of decentralized, ideally evenly distributed, power.

pessimizer 2y ago
> Another is the idea that only voluntary interactions and transactions are legitimate -- i.e. taxation or forceful socialist takeover of capital is archist. That's not another idea, that's really the same idea. Voluntary interactions are not unearned. The only problem with that is that it accepts kings (i.e. the legitimacy of primitive accumulation and the fencing off of the commons.) If you just say that King Charles owns England, and everything within it, he can even force you into a contract in order to use his roads to leave. But of course anarcho-capitalism is a legitimate Anarchist strain. As it is now, it exists with a fake pedigree from Objectivists and Libertarians, who are simply Republican anti-communists minus the Christianity, but you can see the same beliefs within what was at the time accepted as fairly orthodox anarchism in Benjamin Tucker.* There are still interesting libertarians that don't accept primitive accumulation, and simply think that the creation of interlocking markets is a better way to organize a free society than the glorification of wage-laborers. I'm largely a Rudolf Rocker anarchist myself, and Homage to Catalonia changed my life as well. Speaking of groups, I was a card-carrying anarchist who volunteered at the 223 infoshop in Portland during the 90s. I had always suspected that Chomsky was an anarchist, and the confirmation was when he spoke in town and made his first political donation to that same infoshop. It was his first occasion making a political donation of that type, and everybody in left politics noticed. edit: A quote from John Zerzan, an primitivist (or the primitivist) anarchist who hated Chomsky, illustrating how impactful that donation was: > In the fall of 1995, Chomsky donated much of the proceeds from a well-attended speech on U.S. foreign policy to Portland’s 223 Freedom and Mutual Aid Center, better known as the local anarchist infoshop. As if to honor its generous benefactor appropriately, the infoshop spent the money first of all on a computer system, and several months later financed a booklet promoting the infoshop and the ideas behind it. Among the most prominent quotes adorning the pamphlet is one that begins, “The task for a modern industrial society is to achieve what is now technically realizable...” The attentive reader may not need me to name the author of these words, nor to point out this less than qualitatively radical influence. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/john-zerzan-who-is-chomsky https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/john-zerzan-who-is-c... ----- * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Tucker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Tucker edit: I would also mention that Benjamin Tucker was almost entirely in line with current Libertarian thought, still thought of himself as an anarchist and a socialist, and was one of the biggest misogynists possible. When people seriously engage with ideas instead of stereotypes, they come out in weird places. When you seriously engage with ideas instead of conventions, you start to realize that we're already in a weird place.

hyperliner 2y ago

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