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Comment by hnaccount141 | Hacker News Reader

> We need to form a collective around the idea that all organized social structures are evil! Unite in disunity!

Anarchism, as the term is used in this context, is absolutely not about opposing all organized social structures. It's specifically about opposing coercive structures. The goal is typically organization through bottom-up, cooperative means rather than via an authority enforcing structure from the top down.

If you're interested, here's a piece from Bookchin responding to this exact point: https://libcom.org/library/anarchy-organization-murray-bookc...

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I hear this a lot, but it's incredibly tautological. "We only oppose coercive structures" yeah like is there anybody on earth that endorses coercive structures?

Or the closely related variant, "we only oppose unjust hierarchies". yeah right.

> is there anybody on earth that endorses coercive structures?

Yes? Prisons are openly coercive, as are taxes, not to mention the use of military force to enforce economic benefit. Lots of people openly back these concepts and institutions (including the qualities that make them coercive) with justifications like, "if we didn't coerce some people, our society wouldn't be able to function".

Which just furthers my point, that "coercive" is in the eye of the beholder, making your statement tautological: "we only oppose structures that we oppose". No, fyi, most people would not consider prisons, taxes or the military to be "coercive", and neither would I.

I'm curious what you would consider coersive if prison doesn't fit your definition.

If your definition of coercive is anything that doesn't entirely align with anybody's utility function, I'm curious as to what you wouldn't consider coercive.

Mutual aid.

Consensus decision making.

Love.

Hacky sack

Music.

Good sex.

Really?

Yes, excellent. Anything that scales?

Prisons are coercive in the same sense health and safety regulations are coercive.

GPL'ed software.

Requires coercion to enforce, like all contracts.

Coercion to enforce, but no coercion required to succeed!

> is there anybody on earth that endorses coercive structures

Ever heard of dictatorships?

Political systems don't define the nature of a system, the political leadership does. Because in the end any system of rules doesn't really mean much when it's up to the political establishment of a country to enforce those rules. Democracies can bring great oppression, dictatorships can bring great freedom. The history of Ancient Greece/Rome are more than sufficient evidence of this, to avoid the hornet's nest that is contemporary society.

The main strength of a democracy is in stability. It ideally creates the perception of the ability to change one's political future with a vote, which means people are less likely to resort to the methods they must to change their political future under an e.g. dictatorship. Of course when that perception collapses, we're back to square one.

It sounds like you haven't contended much with the context behind the distinctions, maybe because you've been socialized into believing you willfully and freely consented to the coercive structures you inhabit.

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