It declares itself to be classless, moneyless, and stateless. Just like terrorists call themselves rebels, and dictatorships call themselves democracies.
Ultimately, I’m looking for a lot more than a declaration or wish, a napkin blueprint that reads “This machine grants wishes!”. I’m looking for a proven track record of success.
That’s not the question. The question is “How does one BUILD something that hasn’t been built before?”
No matter how detailed the designs, any project manager can tell you that a plan ends up changing as it hits certain realities, and a system of governance, even for a small country, is going to be many times more complicated than anything most people have ever worked on. We’ve already seen several examples of the results, and they failed spectacularly. You don’t get to look at them and say “They don’t count” or “They’re not TRUE scotsmen.”
I’m not doing a no true Scotsman, or saying things don’t count. I’m saying that you cannot claim something to be a failure wholesale without analyzing what broke.
If you have a plane, and it fails because the screws became loose on the wing, you know what went wrong and have an idea of how to fix it, even if the results were catastrophic. You cannot then say that planes cannot exist.
I’m not claiming planes cannot exist. I’m saying that (assuming this is pre-wright-brothers) there’s no proof yet (metaphorical) planes can exist, so it’s foolish to criticize our current methods of travel via cars and horses. By deepening the critiques of capitalism (a system I know to have flaws), you’re making the claim “It’s SO stupid to drive from Ohio to New York, when you could FLY” in a world that hasn’t yet established flying is even possible.
It could be that the solution is “Tighten the wing screws a bit more”, or it could be that the screws will always come apart from the tension, and it’s simply a doomed invention. Ultimately, we’d still need a better proof of concept to devote ANY mental energy to it.
Not quite analogous. We know many problems with Capitalism, and we know many aspects of leftist organization absolutely work. We know what parts historically did not, and we also know that these issues are far from necessary for building a leftist structure.
You’re arguing that there’s no point in improving the plane and fixing what is broken when we still have cars and horses.
For your point that it could be that the screws can never be tightened, or a solution without screws cannot be found, is not an argument against tightening the screws or coming up with an alternative method, despite pretending that’s a valid reason alone. In fact, in Engineering, it can be known what forces will be applied to screws in flight and as such it can be predicted what is required.
Essentially, you can use previous knowns to solve for unknowns, rather than assuming everything is simply a blind guess.
we know many aspects of leftist organization absolutely work. We know what parts historically did not, and we also know that these issues are far from necessary for building a leftist structure.
Facts not in evidence. Don’t invent assertions as truth.
You’re arguing that there’s no point in improving the plane and fixing what is broken when we still have cars and horses.
I’m going to expect an apology for deliberately putting words in my mouth. You know very well I didn’t say this.
The Wright brothers did not pull commuters into their untested inventions. If you can test and refine without harming or harassing people, do so; otherwise, keep it to yourself.
Under anarchism, whoever holds the most guns and food, and is the most ruthless, holds the power. Try to create a vacuum by destroying government, and someone else will claim it.
That is what anarcho capitalism is. But in this case some people, who hold the most gun and food, have more power than the others. So there is hierachy again. True Anarchism wants to prevent that.
A lot of good explanations here :) https://www.anarchistfaq.org/afaq/
I’m no Anarchist, but that’s not what Anarchism is. Anarchism is a fully developed horizontal system, rather than vertical. The idea that Anarchism is simply “no rules” is an unfounded stereotype, there’s lots of Anarchist theory.
While I personally think it’s very difficult to achieve, it wouldn’t be for the reasons you’ve listed. Simply destroying government isn’t an Anarchist ideal, building up parallel structures like networks of Mutual Aid to replace the state and make it redundant is Anarchist praxis.
Anarchists believe that if horizontal power structures are in place, it becomes difficult to go against that current. Ie, if everyone has power, in order to gain more power than another, one must require people willing to give up their power to submit to them in order to push against others. This theoretical group would also have to be strong enough to go against the rest of the public.
It’s similar to why Communists believe once Communism is globally achieved, there wouldn’t be mechanisms for Capitalism to come back, just like Monarchism is almost nonexistant today.
Yet, that’s not how real world actually works is it. Humanity grew out of small scale societies that operate the way you described, and then inevitably every large society ends up creating hierarchies. And societies that have hierarchies appear to consistently outcompete those that do not. It’s not like this is a hypothetical discussion, we have thousands of years of human history to look at and see what forms of organization work in practice. Communists believe that there need to be explicit mechanisms that allow the working class to hold power and prevent regressions into capitalism.
I’m not an Anarchist, I’m just explaining misconceptions about Anarchism. You ironically lack Materialism in your analysis, with several instances of you claiming hierarchy simply appears, without analyzing the mechanisms of why.
Additionally, society has never been organized historically the way modern Anarchists desire it to be, primitive Communism is not what Anarchists, except for the fringe Anarcho-Primitivists, argue for. Again, they want strong horizontal organization, filled with decentralization. It isn’t an arbitrary rejection of organization period.
All in all, I do think you can do better. Rather than simply saying things “appear to organize in certain manners,” question the material conditions that changed organizational structures, and analyze why you think specific examples of horizontal organization posited by Anarchists would regress into hierarchy.
I’m well familiar with the argument Anarchists make, I’m just pointing out that it appears to be divorced from reality. I’m also not claiming that hierarchy simply appears. I even provided a link in a different comment explaining why hierarchies become necessary for any complex organization https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
My argument is basically that hierarchies appear because they are effective, and if the current system was somehow overthrown, and this flat society was created, then we’d see hierarchies start forming because like minded people would recognize their value. Once that process starts people who choose to organize in this fashion would have competitive advantage over those who do not. This is just a process of natural selection at work.
You just described neofeudalism and “anarcho”-capitalism. Those don’t have anything to do with anarchism, just americans muddying the waters by trying to confuse semantics.
Nothing would prevent people with anarcho-capitalist mindset from doing these things under anarchism. That’s the whole problem with the idea. Anarchists make this fundamental assumption that vast majority of people think just like them, and if the state was somehow destroyed then it’s all magically just ponies and rainbows.
People peddling anarchism need to explain why hierarchies keep arising in human societies over and over again. Anarchism is where humanity started and how small tribal societies live. However, we have yet to see any large society function that way for obvious reasons https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
Problems of hierarchy that we don’t have a solution for, unfortunately; and I say that honestly.
No system of society I have ever seen proposed truly eliminates the issues of power hierarchy. Sometimes, they even make them worse.
Wouldnt a communist society not have a hierarchy because its classless, moneyless and stateless
It declares itself to be classless, moneyless, and stateless. Just like terrorists call themselves rebels, and dictatorships call themselves democracies.
Ultimately, I’m looking for a lot more than a declaration or wish, a napkin blueprint that reads “This machine grants wishes!”. I’m looking for a proven track record of success.
How does one design something that hasn’t been built before?
That’s not the question. The question is “How does one BUILD something that hasn’t been built before?”
No matter how detailed the designs, any project manager can tell you that a plan ends up changing as it hits certain realities, and a system of governance, even for a small country, is going to be many times more complicated than anything most people have ever worked on. We’ve already seen several examples of the results, and they failed spectacularly. You don’t get to look at them and say “They don’t count” or “They’re not TRUE scotsmen.”
I’m not doing a no true Scotsman, or saying things don’t count. I’m saying that you cannot claim something to be a failure wholesale without analyzing what broke.
If you have a plane, and it fails because the screws became loose on the wing, you know what went wrong and have an idea of how to fix it, even if the results were catastrophic. You cannot then say that planes cannot exist.
I’m not claiming planes cannot exist. I’m saying that (assuming this is pre-wright-brothers) there’s no proof yet (metaphorical) planes can exist, so it’s foolish to criticize our current methods of travel via cars and horses. By deepening the critiques of capitalism (a system I know to have flaws), you’re making the claim “It’s SO stupid to drive from Ohio to New York, when you could FLY” in a world that hasn’t yet established flying is even possible.
It could be that the solution is “Tighten the wing screws a bit more”, or it could be that the screws will always come apart from the tension, and it’s simply a doomed invention. Ultimately, we’d still need a better proof of concept to devote ANY mental energy to it.
Not quite analogous. We know many problems with Capitalism, and we know many aspects of leftist organization absolutely work. We know what parts historically did not, and we also know that these issues are far from necessary for building a leftist structure.
You’re arguing that there’s no point in improving the plane and fixing what is broken when we still have cars and horses.
For your point that it could be that the screws can never be tightened, or a solution without screws cannot be found, is not an argument against tightening the screws or coming up with an alternative method, despite pretending that’s a valid reason alone. In fact, in Engineering, it can be known what forces will be applied to screws in flight and as such it can be predicted what is required.
Essentially, you can use previous knowns to solve for unknowns, rather than assuming everything is simply a blind guess.
Facts not in evidence. Don’t invent assertions as truth.
I’m going to expect an apology for deliberately putting words in my mouth. You know very well I didn’t say this.
The Wright brothers did not pull commuters into their untested inventions. If you can test and refine without harming or harassing people, do so; otherwise, keep it to yourself.
Yes, we do. It’s called anarchism. It’s literally what it is for.
Under anarchism, whoever holds the most guns and food, and is the most ruthless, holds the power. Try to create a vacuum by destroying government, and someone else will claim it.
That is what anarcho capitalism is. But in this case some people, who hold the most gun and food, have more power than the others. So there is hierachy again. True Anarchism wants to prevent that. A lot of good explanations here :) https://www.anarchistfaq.org/afaq/
I’m no Anarchist, but that’s not what Anarchism is. Anarchism is a fully developed horizontal system, rather than vertical. The idea that Anarchism is simply “no rules” is an unfounded stereotype, there’s lots of Anarchist theory.
While I personally think it’s very difficult to achieve, it wouldn’t be for the reasons you’ve listed. Simply destroying government isn’t an Anarchist ideal, building up parallel structures like networks of Mutual Aid to replace the state and make it redundant is Anarchist praxis.
And what precisely prevents people from organizing into hierarchies again?
Anarchists believe that if horizontal power structures are in place, it becomes difficult to go against that current. Ie, if everyone has power, in order to gain more power than another, one must require people willing to give up their power to submit to them in order to push against others. This theoretical group would also have to be strong enough to go against the rest of the public.
It’s similar to why Communists believe once Communism is globally achieved, there wouldn’t be mechanisms for Capitalism to come back, just like Monarchism is almost nonexistant today.
Yet, that’s not how real world actually works is it. Humanity grew out of small scale societies that operate the way you described, and then inevitably every large society ends up creating hierarchies. And societies that have hierarchies appear to consistently outcompete those that do not. It’s not like this is a hypothetical discussion, we have thousands of years of human history to look at and see what forms of organization work in practice. Communists believe that there need to be explicit mechanisms that allow the working class to hold power and prevent regressions into capitalism.
I’m not an Anarchist, I’m just explaining misconceptions about Anarchism. You ironically lack Materialism in your analysis, with several instances of you claiming hierarchy simply appears, without analyzing the mechanisms of why.
Additionally, society has never been organized historically the way modern Anarchists desire it to be, primitive Communism is not what Anarchists, except for the fringe Anarcho-Primitivists, argue for. Again, they want strong horizontal organization, filled with decentralization. It isn’t an arbitrary rejection of organization period.
All in all, I do think you can do better. Rather than simply saying things “appear to organize in certain manners,” question the material conditions that changed organizational structures, and analyze why you think specific examples of horizontal organization posited by Anarchists would regress into hierarchy.
I’m well familiar with the argument Anarchists make, I’m just pointing out that it appears to be divorced from reality. I’m also not claiming that hierarchy simply appears. I even provided a link in a different comment explaining why hierarchies become necessary for any complex organization https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
My argument is basically that hierarchies appear because they are effective, and if the current system was somehow overthrown, and this flat society was created, then we’d see hierarchies start forming because like minded people would recognize their value. Once that process starts people who choose to organize in this fashion would have competitive advantage over those who do not. This is just a process of natural selection at work.
Mate, that’s how it works under every system, especially capitalism. The whole point of anarchism is to defuse that authority.
You just described neofeudalism and “anarcho”-capitalism. Those don’t have anything to do with anarchism, just americans muddying the waters by trying to confuse semantics.
Nothing would prevent people with anarcho-capitalist mindset from doing these things under anarchism. That’s the whole problem with the idea. Anarchists make this fundamental assumption that vast majority of people think just like them, and if the state was somehow destroyed then it’s all magically just ponies and rainbows.
People peddling anarchism need to explain why hierarchies keep arising in human societies over and over again. Anarchism is where humanity started and how small tribal societies live. However, we have yet to see any large society function that way for obvious reasons https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm