8 ms·

Reading this essay gives the impression that this person was singular, and her time singular as well. I was always told anarchism implied violence and generall

Reading this essay gives the impression that this person was singular, and her time singular as well. I was always told anarchism implied violence and generally other bad things, but after reading Graeber's "Debt: the first 5000 years", I chanced upon "Anarchy works" http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-anarchy-works http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-anar... which is interesting to read, for at least the depictions of how anarchism has played out in several previous situations, socially and economically.

thenerdfiles 13y ago
Robert Tucker, Kropotkin, Chomsky, etc. all give us a clear idea as to how and why anarchism MUST work. Governments (where before religions, but at a moral level, religions still do) exist as a function of hegemonic markets (corporations) such that governments limit the powers of liberty of individuals through the frameworks of blind justice (corporations are just like us). This is not new. Corporations are not just like us. What do economic categories have to do with the rightness or wrongness of action? What does economic stratification have to do with the limits of human freedom? If our autonomy is limited, we do not need an Indexed Dollar to inform us of this; the market will tell us all by itself. Just like as J.S. Mill argued in terms of Women's Suffrage — Why do we need a government to legislate what Women can or cannot do when Nature will determine this all on her own? Why do we need a Government to legislate what we are economically capable of or not? (We don't.)
- mynameishere 13y ago
  Why do we need a government to legislate what Women can or cannot do when Nature will determine this all on her own? What an odd think to say. It's the nature of humans to form government, and the most natural one is despotism. Shut down the macro-governments we have now and you'll have millions of micro-tyrannies overnight. And the role of woman there would be about that of a slave. Similar stuff about god giving "inalienable rights" is rhetorical hocus-pocus.
  - snitko 13y ago
    That is not the nature of humans. That's the nature of some humans to rule and enslave others. Some people just want to be left alone - I would argue that most people want that. Then a group of thugs comes over, sets us fighting against each other, calls it a democracy and feeds off our labour. I wasn't asked to sign any kind of contract with any government, I was never asked if I want to pay taxes to finance things I actually despise. If you believe our society ought to be humane - help the poor, provide for elderly etc. - then convince me to give you money voluntarily and convince me you can do a good job of helping the poor (and keep convincing me all the while I'm paying you). Governments pretend you have a vote that makes a difference, then they just rob you indefinitely.
    - saraid216 13y ago
      > Governments pretend you have a vote that makes a difference, then they just rob you indefinitely. You know, I'm willing to bet a lot of Republican congressmen feel this way.
  - thenerdfiles 13y ago
    Really? Just straight to "micro-tyrannies"? I'm just going to throw this out that this is an unscientific claim, and it's a matter of opinion. I think it's sensationalist gun-jumping, and does not take into consideration the actual economics at play (at least in the U.S.). Nor does it take us hackers as a serious economic force into consideration. 1. The Urban Archipelago: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=19813 http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=19813 Nor does it take into consideration that the political compass is vastly more complicated than is popularized in the mainstream political theatre. 2. http://www.la-articles.org.uk/pc.htm http://www.la-articles.org.uk/pc.htm I don't have anything constructive to respond with in terms of "where women would fit in" given than your claim amounts to a biased post-apocalyptic scenario to begin with. (Also unscientific.) Your abstractions I do not think are doing the work you want them to. The U.S. isn't some "macro-government" that can be thrown into the pot of all other "macro-governments." It's the U.S., and it's considerably unprecedented.
    - 13y ago
rubidium 13y ago
That was a nice read. Thanks for the link. I also read Graeber's Debt, and then his Democracy Project. The one thing I can't shake in all of the anarchist literature is what seems to be a fundamental assumption that an individualist altruism can be the foundation of all societies worldwide. It may work sometimes and in certain societies (with certain natural economies), but the abuse and indifference so often found in human society makes a strong case against such human governance possible on any large scale. "If men were angels, no government would be necessary."
- thenerdfiles 13y ago
  How can we know if we are not angels with a handful of milleniums of governments and religious institutions actively engaged in telling us we are not? Structural Oppression is a real thing.
  - rubidium 13y ago
    Because it didn't start that way. Because _nearly_ every society shows signs of warfare, banding together, governance and structuring society in some sort of hierarchical way. Because even when there is absolutely no reason for someone to _not_ help someone they see in need, they sometimes don't. Now, this doesn't say we can't make it better, and that anarchists experiments aren't worth trying. But to assert that all hierarchical structuring of society is necessarily bad seems completely unfounded, and misses what good things hierarchical structure brings to human society.
    - thenerdfiles 13y ago
      Example: Einstein. This is an example of someone escaping hierarchical society to give us an unquestionable good. Giordano Bruno, Baruch Spinoza, Galileo, the nominalist Peter Abelard; goods that had to circumnavigate hierarchical society. If I say "a handful of millenniums" I am pointing to the evidence of history. Splinter groups and revolutionaries both of thought and action resisting governments have given us the goods we receive. To say that hierarchical society is the backdrop behindwhich they do good works is begging the question. Moreover, simply because hierarchical society has done good for us, on the average, does not meant it MUST continue to do so. As I stated earlier, Chomksy, etc. have argued for why anarchism MUST work, not that it works more often than non-anarchisms.
defen 13y ago
> I was always told anarchism implied violence and generally other bad things Well, she was involved in a plot to assassinate Henry Clay Frick, the stated purpose being to "strike terror into the soul of his class" and "bring the teachings of Anarchism before the world"
mb0 13y ago
If you want to dig a little deeper into anarchism & like gelderloos' writing, he also wrote a popular book called "How nonviolence protects the state", which raises some points in support of violence as a revolutionary tactic: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-how-nonviolence-protects-the-state http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-how-... Main argument is, violence is necessary because the state always uses violence. He also raises some points about nonviolence empowering the state's violence, as well as nonviolent radicals' criticism of violent radicals being a form of oppression. If you want to get real deep into anarchist literature, Derek Jenson's Endgame will tell you about how necessary it is for us to destroy civilization in order to promote the survivability of the planet.
- aaronem 13y ago
  That's the trouble with anarchism and its fellows: you can start from whatever set of premises you like, but sooner or later, you always find yourself either mired in irrelevance or earnestly explaining how, in order to bring about a better world for everyone, it is absolutely necessary and morally imperative to murder millions of people and build mountains out of their skulls, which is okay, because it's not everyone but just the bad people, and if they weren't bad people then you wouldn't have to murder them, so it's all their fault really, and it's easy to tell how bad they are by the way you're murdering them.

thenerdfiles 13y ago

Robert Tucker, Kropotkin, Chomsky, etc. all give us a clear idea as to how and why anarchism MUST work. Governments (where before religions, but at a moral level, religions still do) exist as a function of hegemonic markets (corporations) such that governments limit the powers of liberty of individuals through the frameworks of blind justice (corporations are just like us). This is not new. Corporations are not just like us. What do economic categories have to do with the rightness or wrongness of action? What does economic stratification have to do with the limits of human freedom? If our autonomy is limited, we do not need an Indexed Dollar to inform us of this; the market will tell us all by itself. Just like as J.S. Mill argued in terms of Women's Suffrage — Why do we need a government to legislate what Women can or cannot do when Nature will determine this all on her own? Why do we need a Government to legislate what we are economically capable of or not? (We don't.)

mynameishere 13y ago
Why do we need a government to legislate what Women can or cannot do when Nature will determine this all on her own? What an odd think to say. It's the nature of humans to form government, and the most natural one is despotism. Shut down the macro-governments we have now and you'll have millions of micro-tyrannies overnight. And the role of woman there would be about that of a slave. Similar stuff about god giving "inalienable rights" is rhetorical hocus-pocus.
- snitko 13y ago
  That is not the nature of humans. That's the nature of some humans to rule and enslave others. Some people just want to be left alone - I would argue that most people want that. Then a group of thugs comes over, sets us fighting against each other, calls it a democracy and feeds off our labour. I wasn't asked to sign any kind of contract with any government, I was never asked if I want to pay taxes to finance things I actually despise. If you believe our society ought to be humane - help the poor, provide for elderly etc. - then convince me to give you money voluntarily and convince me you can do a good job of helping the poor (and keep convincing me all the while I'm paying you). Governments pretend you have a vote that makes a difference, then they just rob you indefinitely.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    > Governments pretend you have a vote that makes a difference, then they just rob you indefinitely. You know, I'm willing to bet a lot of Republican congressmen feel this way.
- thenerdfiles 13y ago
  Really? Just straight to "micro-tyrannies"? I'm just going to throw this out that this is an unscientific claim, and it's a matter of opinion. I think it's sensationalist gun-jumping, and does not take into consideration the actual economics at play (at least in the U.S.). Nor does it take us hackers as a serious economic force into consideration. 1. The Urban Archipelago: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=19813 http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=19813 Nor does it take into consideration that the political compass is vastly more complicated than is popularized in the mainstream political theatre. 2. http://www.la-articles.org.uk/pc.htm http://www.la-articles.org.uk/pc.htm I don't have anything constructive to respond with in terms of "where women would fit in" given than your claim amounts to a biased post-apocalyptic scenario to begin with. (Also unscientific.) Your abstractions I do not think are doing the work you want them to. The U.S. isn't some "macro-government" that can be thrown into the pot of all other "macro-governments." It's the U.S., and it's considerably unprecedented.
  - 13y ago

rubidium 13y ago

That was a nice read. Thanks for the link. I also read Graeber's Debt, and then his Democracy Project. The one thing I can't shake in all of the anarchist literature is what seems to be a fundamental assumption that an individualist altruism can be the foundation of all societies worldwide. It may work sometimes and in certain societies (with certain natural economies), but the abuse and indifference so often found in human society makes a strong case against such human governance possible on any large scale. "If men were angels, no government would be necessary."

thenerdfiles 13y ago
How can we know if we are not angels with a handful of milleniums of governments and religious institutions actively engaged in telling us we are not? Structural Oppression is a real thing.
- rubidium 13y ago
  Because it didn't start that way. Because _nearly_ every society shows signs of warfare, banding together, governance and structuring society in some sort of hierarchical way. Because even when there is absolutely no reason for someone to _not_ help someone they see in need, they sometimes don't. Now, this doesn't say we can't make it better, and that anarchists experiments aren't worth trying. But to assert that all hierarchical structuring of society is necessarily bad seems completely unfounded, and misses what good things hierarchical structure brings to human society.
  - thenerdfiles 13y ago
    Example: Einstein. This is an example of someone escaping hierarchical society to give us an unquestionable good. Giordano Bruno, Baruch Spinoza, Galileo, the nominalist Peter Abelard; goods that had to circumnavigate hierarchical society. If I say "a handful of millenniums" I am pointing to the evidence of history. Splinter groups and revolutionaries both of thought and action resisting governments have given us the goods we receive. To say that hierarchical society is the backdrop behindwhich they do good works is begging the question. Moreover, simply because hierarchical society has done good for us, on the average, does not meant it MUST continue to do so. As I stated earlier, Chomksy, etc. have argued for why anarchism MUST work, not that it works more often than non-anarchisms.

defen 13y ago

> I was always told anarchism implied violence and generally other bad things Well, she was involved in a plot to assassinate Henry Clay Frick, the stated purpose being to "strike terror into the soul of his class" and "bring the teachings of Anarchism before the world"

mb0 13y ago

If you want to dig a little deeper into anarchism & like gelderloos' writing, he also wrote a popular book called "How nonviolence protects the state", which raises some points in support of violence as a revolutionary tactic: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-how-nonviolence-protects-the-state http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-how-... Main argument is, violence is necessary because the state always uses violence. He also raises some points about nonviolence empowering the state's violence, as well as nonviolent radicals' criticism of violent radicals being a form of oppression. If you want to get real deep into anarchist literature, Derek Jenson's Endgame will tell you about how necessary it is for us to destroy civilization in order to promote the survivability of the planet.

aaronem 13y ago
That's the trouble with anarchism and its fellows: you can start from whatever set of premises you like, but sooner or later, you always find yourself either mired in irrelevance or earnestly explaining how, in order to bring about a better world for everyone, it is absolutely necessary and morally imperative to murder millions of people and build mountains out of their skulls, which is okay, because it's not everyone but just the bad people, and if they weren't bad people then you wouldn't have to murder them, so it's all their fault really, and it's easy to tell how bad they are by the way you're murdering them.