Anarchy Works (2010)
theanarchistlibrary.org
theanarchistlibrary.org
It distinguishes itself on the principle of 'non-coerciveness'. But coercion is written into the fact of physical scarcity: if someone wants that food, then someone else cannot have it. Any organisational notion that does not represent that scarcity as constraint on behaviour is useless. It simply fails to address the problem.
What anarchism then does is to confuse and obscure this, or just wish it away. The motif of 'decentralised organisation' is a contradiction in terms: there cannot be structure without some constraint. If every local grouping is always free to decide the rules, then there are no rules. If everyone is free at every transaction to invent their own money, then there is no money. Plus, everyone making up new rules will not scale. (And no, people will not just naturally, magically, happen to agree.) Organisation is essentially hierarchical in its basic one-to-many informational form: there must be some single pattern followed by multiple elements.
What anarchism could sensibly propose instead is more sophisticated democracy: ie, better forms of feedback from participants to rule generation. We cannot avoid rules/structure, but we could more responsively, iteratively, steer the the construction of them.
You could also easy make the opposite criticism of capitalism: it doesn't recognise abundance and builds almost everything on (often artificial) scarcity.
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Free banking ("everyone making up their own money") was never the disaster currency monopolist would like you to think it was.
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You say locally made up rules that apply only locally don't scale. Does it really scale to have locally made up rules (because they always are) that are enforced globally?
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But yes, many anarchists do exactly what you propose: they experiment way different ways to collectively make decisions. They don't shun all rules.
I'm not a polisci guy, but isn't anarchism with some rules... not anarchism? Isn't that libertarianism?
[0] Why is anarchism also called libertarian socialism? https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-anarchist-faq-ed...
It's a bit ironic to say anarchism works because people have been interested in it for centuries if not more and yet it has clearly never worked. And then people always bring up something or other "oh, these people were anarchists for 2 and a half months in Spain in 1926, see it works!"
Another glaring inconsistency with anarchism is that if you are unwilling to use coercion or organized force, then how do you defend yourself against another group who will and wants to take you over? You'll just get obliterated and then be forced into their version of non anarchism. And then the nit picking starts "you can defend yourself" yeah but if you haven't been actively cultivating an organized defense force you're going to lose and maintaining an organized defense force involves all sorts of coercion and hierarchies.
No point even writing this stuff, it's not the kind of thing you'll ever convince anyone of who doesn't want to here it but organized anarchism is just such a preposterous idea that it's hard not to.
Home, WA was more explicitly "anarchist." It lasted for about 18 years, and I think from the beginning they had a rough time from neighboring towns as it was founded right about the same time McKinley was assassinated. McKinley's assassin was a self-proclaimed anarchist, so overnight the word "anarchist" became notorious and dangerous in mainstream opinion. There was, again, much outside gossip about the town being a weird "free love" town (which was not such a baseless claim in this case). Internally, it seems people never really agreed on social norms about being nude in public spaces, either.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home,_Washington
As to your point of defense, I once heard someone describe that as the major difference between anarchism and Marxism. Marxists generally believe that the State needs to be seized from capitalists, and then we must use the power of the State to oppress the oppressors. That is supposed to be a transitory period, and eventually the State will have squashed all capitalist opposition, at which point the State "withers away." The anarchists see all that and say we should try to jump straight to the good part :) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withering_away_of_the_state
I think your system needs to prove it can survive at least a generation if not multiple human lifetimes to be historically proven.
Lol, try explaining to people in the balkans that everyone's an anarchist now and they all just should get along.
You could take an over under on the amount of hours before the genocide starts
Funny, I'd rather have you in solitary confinement for the rest of your life then running around robbing people with weapons but hey, psychopath is in the eyes of the beholder.
Just be aware, you can come seize my capital but you better have more guns then I have.
except, of course, for anyone that disagrees that anarchy can work?
> If we ever win the freedom to run our own lives, we’ll probably come up with entirely new approaches to organization
Didn’t take long to come out and admit that!
The truth AFAICT is that humans are animals and animals love a pecking order. You remove the “rules” and all you’ve done is remove the formalization of rule–providing ample opportunity for arbitrary informal rule systems to become established in an unwritten fashion. I’ve found that the people I know that advocate anarchy actually view it as a means, not an end. The real end is the system they think would work best (usually to their benefit, imagine that), and anarchy is simply the step that removes the old system.
Second, you're repeating a common argument that "if there will be informal cliques of power arising anyway, we may as well formalise and legitimise their power." That's not a universally accepted line of reasoning. It might be the case that flexible orders of informal power results in better outcomes than strictly defined hierarchies of formal power.
I’m not saying we should legitimize any unjust system, I’m saying we should fly the plane while we fix it instead of crashing it into the ground, melting it down and recasting it into new parts.
I think it’s more likely we get to better forms of organization by moving forwards, not backwards.
> That's not a universally accepted line of reasoning.
Sounds like argumentum ad populum mixed in with a little “many people are saying…”
> It might be the case that flexible orders of informal power results in better outcomes than strictly defined hierarchies of formal power.
Sure maybe, but it’s on you to elaborate how that could happen, or provide examples.
> strictly defined hierarchies of formal power
My experience dealing with many different government agencies, from border patrol and customs to the IRS and DMV have shown me that government is anything but rigid and well defined; the insidiousness of bureaucracy lies in its fluidity, due to the fact that you’re at the whim of whatever agent stands before you, with all their human imperfections. They had a bad day? They’re off their game? You just might get the shaft.
Still, I think that’s a better place to start building from than square one.
Now you're implying that anarchism, based on more egalitarian principles than what we have now, is "moving backwards"? Or did I misunderstand this?
> Sure maybe, but it’s on you to elaborate how that could happen, or provide examples.
I feel like research into system safety and performance -- some of it has disseminated into modern management training -- emphasises a low power gradient and a Westrum generative culture. In other words, what we know indicates we should move at least a little bit away from feudalism and toward anarchism.
Even the traditionally strictly hierarchical armed forces are moving toward decentralised control, "commander's intent", initiative on the ground, etc.
> My experience dealing with many different government agencies...
This is very observant! I think it would be better to recognise this explicitly and start from the assumption that power is flexible and informal, rather than keep trying to pretend it's something else.
I think it is not a given that anarchism is more egalitarian, especially if you think, like I do, that it provides easy cover for opportunists to exploit it. Pure egalitarianism means reverting to the lowest possible common denominator. Many people will not accept that.
When I say forwards and backwards, I mean getting closer to understanding and defining the power dynamics intrinsic to populations of humans. I think code of law is an output of that pursuit, much like software code is there output of the process of defining whatever system it is modeling.
I have to admit that you’ve brought me to the limit of my knowledge with Westrum, haven’t heard of that before. I’ll have to read some things and chew on that a bit.
Low power gradient sounds nice, but I’ll say two things about it OTTOMH: 1) that is not anarchy, and 2) even a very shallow gradient in a world of 7 billion still results in a very wide base of people at the lowest rungs and a very high rung for the upper crust. Ie it can still lead to large inequalities given a sufficiently large society.
I’m not saying that is fair or right, I’m just saying I’m not seeing convincing alternatives.
I’ve always thought the opposite is true. A set of rules is bound to be gamed. More rules create more opportunities to exploit (regulation only benefits leechers). When rules are global, profit of exploitation is greater. Therefore, there are more exploiters and exploits. In anarchy, the extent to which a set of rules apply is limited. Therefore, there is less profit from exploitation, and in turn, there are less exploiters.
What does this mean?
You also notice it other ways: information (especially bad news) gets distorted as it tries to travel up a steep power gradient. In a steep power gradient, blame gets assigned downward and credit is claimed upward. Under a low power gradient, people share talk time in meetings more equally.
There is no "we" here.
If someone has the power to remove the power structures, people will start organising themselves in power structures pretty damn quickly. And those who are organised enough that can accumulate more physical power will immediately start enforcing those structures on others.
It always comes down to physical power, and although I would love to se a society where every single member follows the principles of non-violence, I can't even imagine a world without it.
And the slaves love to get food and shelter for their work.
> I’ve found that the people I know that advocate anarchy actually view it as a means, not an end. The real end is the system they think would work best (usually to their benefit, imagine that), and anarchy is simply the step that removes the old system.
There has to be a name for a "No no true scotsman" fallacy. No true strawman? No system is an end to itself, it serves something or someone. Can we find systems that serve more people or better? Or do you just want to throw tour hands in the air and say "well, people are corrupt haha"?
We’re skirting awfully close to Godwin’s law here aren’t we?
One of the deepest insights I found in Caste by Isabel Wilkerson was that most people, when put in the position, would capitalize on the opportunity to subjugate their fellow humans. I’m not saying I want to do that, I’m just saying that is reality as I have seen it play out.
> Or do you just want to throw tour hands in the air
Quite the opposite, see my reply to your sibling, I think we can do get farther by working in the systems we’ve evolved vs throwing them all away. I’m not sure anarchism is a good approach to avoiding path dependency in the search for an optimal government, which may not even be possible –as you said, no system is an end itself. We’re going to keep discovering new problems to solve, and I think we’d be better equipped with advanced forms of government. That doesn’t mean they can’t be made simpler or be organized better than they are today.
Isn't this basically because they feel forced to, since they're subjugated to someone else?
"May as well get mine"
And even then, the buck stops somewhere. To whom is the king of the hill beholden?
that’s the crux of it though isn’t it? democrats (lowercase d) don’t trust any individual to wield direct power over another so they limit their own power and transfer it to the state and then distribute control over the state. anarchists don’t trust others to wield power over them so they seek to remove themselves from obligatory power relations altogether.
i’m not convinced there isn’t a non-destructive path from democracy to anarchy. start where we are today, and increasingly make more systems “opt in”. “you want the power to buy/sell things without FDA approval? fine, but you’ll have to settle disputes outside of our court system.” and keep doing that until you’ve granted the diehard anarchist the legal freedom to legitimately opt out of all prior power relations, and start his village in the woods, no police, no taxes, no restrictions on exchange. actually i’m a little fuzzy on what proportion of anarchists would be satisfied by this, or if it would more likely be rejected as being ancap or libertarian.
This is about as convincing as Peterson and his lobsters argument lol
It's interesting that those types of comments usually come from the same people who would call animals "non-human animals" to show that humans are "just" another animal. Yet when you remind them Nature doesn't keep things that haven't found an equilibrium, they freak out...
Yes, any human group will naturally or forcefully get hierarchically ordered. "Anarchy" is just a fancy idea that doesn't pass reality's test. Or that won't be real "anarchy".
I also had good groups with hierarchies, but never because of the hierarchy, but despite it. These projects were never as fulfilling as the freeform ones, where we collectively decided who needed to do what and what needed to be done. Hierarchies can be very bad when taken too seriously, because your superior is usually not the best at understanding the problem domain at any given point in time and it is very easy to loose the motivation of your subordinates if they don't feel in control of their domain.
That being said the interesting test for any system of power distribution is always scale. Small groups, communes, villages or cities are something else than countries.
ie 99 percent of human beings
Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protes...
If you had anarchism and called it by some other name, it would turn out differently.
Anarchism is notoriously bad at systematic violence because it's basically the one thing it's designed to prevent, so it's very hard to defend against easy access to physical force.
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* In everyday practical capitalism, it rarely goes this far. It's enough to indirectly imply a threat of violence. ("If you don't obey my orders I could give you a bad performance review which might lead to you being fired and you will risk being out of a job long enough to have trouble paying your dues to society for the necessities and then you will either die or be taken by force to jail. So you better do as you're told!")
An anarchy is more likely to be like a faraway rural area - neighborhood patrols, more self-subsistence, neighbors cutting your grass, some baking banana bread for everyone, people burning garbage, adulterers getting beat up.
CHAZ leaned into the TV stereotypes, and not the more natural historical ones.
Also this sounds like the “no true Scotsman” thing. Some of the people in the zone were self described anarchists, they were setting up co ops and volunteer medical services, and if it had succeeded (meaning, not been overrun by violent crime) I’m sure people would have pointed to it as a model of anarchist principles in action.
It also doesn't sound very anarchist to prevent others from using your accumulated property with hired guns. That's the basis of capitalism!
Ancaps and anarchists have very little to do with each other, actually.
edit: to make it clear, I don’t want to “safeguard” the word anarchism, I don’t really care, I’m not part of that movement. But the anarchists that wrote the original article are part of a movement that take anarchism to mean something, while ancaps make it mean something entirely different.
I'm sorry if I'm falling victim to the media stereotypes about your country, but this doesn't sound all that different from the regular news that the rest of the world gets about it.
Well, that thing about the community garden was kind of novel, but unlikely to make headlines outside of a neighborhood watch newsletter.
You just focus on the gun problem here, not on the overall picture...
No. What gave you that impression?
> You just focus on the gun problem here, not on the overall picture...
I know. I have visited a few times. It's a nice place if you can ignore all the murder that is going on...
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protest#...
(He also turned out to be engaging in sexual abuse and trafficking, but that's another story.)
When people discuss hypothetical anarchistic tribal societies, the first thing I think of is the parallel societies that sometimes exist in immigrant populations in the first world. They often feature hawala systems, cash-only societies, occasionally even alternate currencies. I have firsthand experience with this from my own family.
speaking to the road part: people were perfectly capable of getting around town before we had the automobile or paved roads. in the suburbs i grew up in we had a fairly sprawling trail system kept packed/clear just by regular organic use. as a kid with a bike, that was the preferred way to get anywhere since it kept me away from cars.
to be frank, as a city-dweller who rarely travels beyond a 5mi radius and prefers to get around by bike, an asphalt-free city sounds kinda awesome. i don’t want to understate the significance of modern infrastructure (electricity, plumbing, literally saves lives). i also think it’s worth noting that anarchy doesn’t mean these things have to be created via volunteer efforts or not at all — you’re at least as likely to see a proliferation of home generators and septic tanks instead. which can fairly be claimed to be a step backward along multiple axes: i don’t disagree the amenities would be worse, but “by how much” is i think often overstated.
On healthcare:
> but has among the lowest life expectancies because the political culture would sooner let poor people die than give them healthcare and welfare.
We die younger because of lifestyle and other factors (basically we are relatively fat and lazy).
On anarchist policing:
> They focus on protecting people rather than property
Property is essentially to human flourishing (not to mention survival). If someone burns down your business, steals your car, or burglarizes your home that harm is felt directly. Only people swimming in luxury can take lightly the theft and destruction of property.
What many anarchists disagree with is the idea of property. Of owning more than you can use. Of accumulating things through inheritance until you have no chance to use it all on your own, so you rent it out to others.
It's basically the difference between using a seat on the train and defending your right to sit there (possession), and picking up your gun to prevent other people from using the 12 seats neighbouring yours (property).
What an anarchist would think is that the rights of the propertied to choose at some point in the future to use something is less important than the right of someone in need to make use of that very same thing right now when they need it.
This is such a ridiculous caricature and an example of why argument from analogy is so fraught with problems.
I might argue that the more likely scenario in a socialist society (i.e. anti-private property) is that a man who paid for three seat tickets would be forced at gunpoint to hand those seats over to people who didn't buy any tickets.
> I might argue that the more likely scenario in a socialist society (i.e. anti-private property) is that a man who paid for three seat tickets would be forced at gunpoint to hand those seats over to people who didn't buy any tickets.
Why would a society that has allowed freedom to purchase three tickets would allow others to violate that freedom? Anarchism is not disorder.
I don't actively make use of the fire extinguisher in my kitchen, does that mean I do not possess it and can be taken from me at will? On the other hand, most of a billionaire's money is not lying around in some vault, it is actively being put to work in the form of investments into businesses that allow other people to make their livelihoods and add to the material prosperity of our society. Does he not "possess" that money (in the sense that he is using it?)
I am probably coming off as pedantic, but I am skeptical of the distinction you make.
> What many anarchists disagree with is the idea of property. Of owning more than you can use.
Many socalist/anarchists seemed quite content with the destruction of "possessions", peoples homes and livelihoods, during the 2020 riots. Maybe you were not OK with such destruction (and if so, good!)
> It's basically the difference between using a seat on the train and defending your right to sit there (possession), and picking up your gun to prevent other people from using the 12 seats neighbouring yours (property).
That's not what property is.
And yet there’s a bibliography below.
Moreover, decentralized political economies cannot either deliver the goods when it comes to economies of scale that modern capital makes possible. Democracies strain to deliver large capital intensive projects like the Hoover Dam or the construction of aircraft carriers but these are simply currently beyond the pale of even more decentralized political economies.
Of course, technology can change how warfare is conducted and reduce the relative advantages of economies of scale. If one prefers anarchist political economy, one should be interested in anything that levels the playing field between decentralized and centralized coordination strategies. When push comes to shove though, will you be so enthralled by anarchist ideals that you would scorn or deny technology that tends to centralization if it makes humanity wealthier or wiser than alternatives?
Most of the examples cited in this book no longer exist, and some only lasted a few years. The stateless societies and social experiments were mostly conquered by imperialist powers or repressed by states.
So even if it worked, it will work only for a limited time.
What? Libertarianism is explicitly against exploitation. Its core principles are non-aggression and voluntary association.
No one who has ever owned a home or had a family— no one, that is, with much to lose— supports anarchy.
The moment you come into life, you immediately begin to die, unless someone saves your life… And that continues for the rest of your life. This simple fact is why anarchy cannot work.
the question remains whether an anarchist society could be safe from an authoritarian neighbor.
Actually, the answer is no.
Every paragraph I read makes me think that this is the type of philosophy for dreamers who don't understand the difference `∀x` and `∃x`. (something that is true for all cases vs something that is true for at least one case)
It wasn't just a pithy satirical quote from Starship Troopers:
Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history
than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful
thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have
always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms.
When you vote, you are exercising political authority,
you’re using force. And force, my friends, is violence.
The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.
Immediately you run into the idea that to seriously contend with an adversary who would wish to dominate you or take your resources, you must have the means to develop technology and you must have a hierarchy to coordinate military actions. This new hierarchy is now a form of power and a threat to the very idea of not having an entity that can dominate someone else. It invokes the idea of a tax and funding and use of force to take that funding from others who theoretically share the same values, for to not fund your military is to become dominated. We are quickly reaching a point where nation states ability to target and execute violence exceed the possibility of guerilla resistance.
This article trying to convince me that anarchy can work needs to start with violence at its foundation, not as a barrier or an after thought, but an axiom.
Additionally As a programmer I am somewhat off put by the central idea.
> each person should be the center of society, and all should be free to build the networks and associations they need to meet their needs in common with others.
I feel like this statement says humanity should be an N^2 structure rather than a log(N) structure, which immediately makes me wonder how all the fish don't get fished out of the ocean and how you prevent your neighbor from polluting the world to death.
When I attempted to satisfy myself with skimming, I feel like most arguments can be summed up as "environmental destruction is not a problem under anarchy, because under anarchy environmental destruction is not a problem" followed by an `∃x` explanation rather than an `∀x` justification.
Which reminds me of when I fell pray to the Ron Paul hype because I believed humanity was good and accepted the "free market will solve the problem" and "people will act in their self interest" arguments, when the reality is that these ideologies purpose is primarily to tear down existing institutions and power structures so that currently powerful entities can concentrate their power less impeded. While there may be a temporary period of libertarian-ness or anarchy, it is quickly supplanted with authortarianism. The ideologies cannot sustain themselves, much like communism requires concentration of power as a step before ownership is distributed, which then perpetuates the concentration rather than enacting the distribution resulting in authoritarianism.
If you want to escape/confront domination and exploitation the single most important description is how you distribute the mechanisms of violence/power and how bad faith actors are dealt with even if they are of equal power or have a level that ensures mutual destruction.
Americans are (in general) just super individualistic and assume worst about "others" and usually "don't tread on me" instead of actually considering fairness of any given set of rules.
Sorry folks.
Also, the "capitalist rationalists" make my blood boil. Their inability to decompose complex social mechanisms to their explicit and implicit functions and imagine other configurations due to above sentiments (others can't be trusted, don't tread on me) make all discussions feel like arguing with a 5 year old.
I think there is a natural selection that these terms go through. For example, Capitalism is favored heavily because under such a system, anyone can technically amass great riches, which feeds the desire for more of it by both the people who have amassed riches and those who have “yet” to do so, thus the constant buzz and support for it. Anarchy as a concept is never going to be in a place where anyone of power or means, will publicly support such a thing because Anarchy threatens the very structure that has allowed them their amassed wealth and power.
In many ways anarchy is closer to capitalism than it is to socialism. Only slightly relevant, but I wonder what kind of shifts we would see if we were able to separate the concept of a free market from capitalism. I personally think a free market is one of the best incentive structures we have for a network of independent actors, but we should, as a society, support those who wish to invent mand take risks without the potential outcome being literal starvation and homelessness.
I actually think anarchists bring something valuable to politics, but a lot of them are LARPing as revolutionaries - in the sense of seeing opportunity for a different sort of polity in the failure of the current paradigm, but without any capability to realize that or any functional model to draw upon. Like Marxists, they're mostly stuck in the 19th century.
Indeed "The Dispossessed" has taught me more about syndicalism in reality than reading syndicalists in my philosophy studies at university.
I've tried to found a cooperative twice with some friends, but should not have bothered, should just have taken "The Dispossessed" more seriously.
Communists, and statist socialists in general, are actually represented in the book as the state of Thu. And it's implied to be just as nasty and authoritarian as the real deal.
And there was no shortage of those little things. Well, I can't speak for Poland, but even in the late USSR (which was comparatively less unequal than Stalin's one, ironically), there was still blat and Beryozkas.
The Dispossessed is a work of fiction; it tells you what was in the mind of its author. But, like Das Kapital, it has built up a certain following, and you can probably learn a lot about that following from reading the book, just as you can learn about cosplayers by reading (or watching) Batman. However, this doesn't tell you much of anything about the possible ways human society can be organized.
You've got to be decadent, spoiled, detached from reality westerner to write such nonsense.
It's basically socialism when things go bad and capitalism when things are good.
It favours the rich.
It favours the well-connected, who then become rich thanks to big government largesse rather than actual productive work.
That's nonsense repeated by fiaters to justify their money spigot. Federal Reserve was created in 1913, and low and behold took it less than two decades to fail catastrophically by causing credit and asset bubble that collapsed in 1929.
Capitalism works perfectly fine if you let it be. It has some boom and bust cycles caused by human psychology, but non-prudent actors get periodically removed from the system and that's about it.
If you do any research on the subject and read anything that isn't coming from government sponsored sources, it is clear as day.
> Yet governments ...
Yes. Because the governments are the problem, not the capitalism. In capitalism rich greedy financiers would go bankrupt over and over and over, and there would be no government to bail them out.
Your problem is not capitalism. It's the government.
Capitalism works perfectly fine if you’re rich. Right up until climate change destroys your ivory towers.
any state with power can decide how to regulate the commons/natural resources/etc. capitalism exacerbates latent issues through its mandate to continually grow consumption, but a government could feasibly enforce that its citizens’ activities be environmentally neutral regardless of economic system, if it so desired.
Not when they're embedded within Capitalism, and relentlessly lobbied by the rich with vested interests in the other direction. See the other half of my previous comment.
Shame that nobody ever in history let it be. I mean, after all, why would they? Have you thought about what the point of getting power is? It's certainly not to then let go of it...
There was a large depression 10 years prior, but it ended fairly abruptly and lead to an economic boom not long after precisely because the market was allowed to operate freely.
The depression of 1929 held on and was worsened precisely because of state intervention.
At least anarchocapitalism is consistent within itself.