Camus, Albert and the Anarchists (2007) | Hacker News Reader

Camus, Albert and the Anarchists (2007)

theanarchistlibrary.org

118 pointsTotalCrackpot56 comments

The Rebel is a very interesting piece of work - you can randomly flip it open to any page and find tidbits like this:

> "When we are assured that tomorrow, in the natural order of events, will be better than today, we can enjoy ourselves in peace. Progress, paradoxically, can be used to justify conservatism. A draft drawn on confidence in the future, it allows the master to have a clear conscience. The slave and those whose present life is miserable and who can find no consolation in the heavens are assured that at least the future belongs to them. The future is the only kind of property that the masters willingly concede to the slaves."

However, even after reading the book the notion of anarchism remains unclear. I couldn't tell you how an anarchist would go about setting up a steel factory (or any other activity requiring highly coordinated human effort) in line with anarchist principles, for example.

Check out the CNT in Spain.

In principle, the steelworkers would be like any group of people working together without hierarchy. How would a group of friends decide where to go in the afternoon? If there is more than one option, but only one can be taken, then either they'd split off into multiple groups, or they'd vote on which option has the greater support, perhaps with dissenters leaving.

Some positions in a complicated workflow do require far more experience and skill than others, so it would seem a hierarchy of some kind would naturally arise? You really wouldn't want someone with just a few months of experience making potentially catastrophic decisions, for example.

I suppose any kind of hierarchy would need to be informal, based on workers following the examples set by other workers who they trust to have the right expertise. But unlike in a typical formal hierarchy, this wouldn't need to be those who have simply worked there the longest, or have the greatest drive for power over others, or those who have the best connections with the owners. There wouldn't be any fringe benefits (payment) for having greater influence through expertise.

As someone who has written a work anarchist political theory 15 years ago, my understanding is that many anarchist theories argue among the lines of: The political question is not about whether there are hierarchies, but how to organize them in a way that:

1. hierarchies are not set in stone and won't get people stuck in one space

2. power accumulation and corruption through power is successfully prevented both in the short and the long term (ideally while still keeping the whole thing very mobile on small matters and more stable and careful on grand matters)

3. hierarchies are not steeper than absolutely necessary and there should be a high mobility between hierarchical layers

4. anarchy is about an absence of centralized ruling structure, not about an absence of rules. This might seem a weird distinction, but having a ruler and no rules is not the same as having no ruler and coming up with a set of clear rules

Most anarchist theorists would therefore have argued the notion that anarchy requires a higher sense of order and does not represent "chaos" as it is often described. One of the most important prerequisites for that was good education, at least in the CNT educating yourself was seen as one of the prime duties of an anarchist, because if everybody comes into the role of the decider, it is good if you know what you are doing.

Democracy is also a system that tries to deal with the way power is given, transitioned by giving the people a vote. In most anarchist or anarchosyndicalist systems voting is also pretty important, it is just much more self-organized, more bottom up than top down and came with ideas like strict term limits and rotations for all positions of power. Often councils where proposed to gain some continuity, with members of these councils often leaving and new ones coming in.

Please note that I describe that CNT flavoured anarchism from the top of my head, there are different notions elsewhere (e.g. less collectivist and much more libertarian ones in the US).

Thank you for this edifying comment. As someone who has, at best, an extremely surface level understanding of anarchism, I found some aspects of what I understood quite appealing but I thought that it may be impractical or too idealistic. This has sparked my interest to actually go deep.

I very much suggest you watching some Anark video essays on YouTube, I think he is a very good resource to better learn the theory.

if me and a group of friends are on a sunny weekend building a house together, we’re going to show much more deference to the person who has 20 years of electrician experience when it comes electrical work. and the same would go with plumbing and a plumber. etc… etc…

this doesn’t really have anything to do with how an anarchist would view hierarchy. i think most people would show deference to domain knowledge, but this wouldn’t suddenly make the electrician “the boss”.

It would make the architect the boss because he would tell you what needs to happen next. That scenario with a client deadline means the “architect” is going to push you to finish before the deadline, prod you to get back to work if you’re lazing around and generally fulfill the role of a foreman. Anarchism is a theoretical mental exercise with no basis in anything in the real world. True anarchism is just current day Haiti where there strong rule over the weak because anarchism doesn’t provide any solutions as to how to build and maintain a society without hierarchies.

"It would make the architect the boss because he would tell you what needs to happen next."

But he would have no formal power and there would be no underlings. The other people would voluntaritly accept his leadership based on his skills. (Or they would not and leave). So he cannot treat them bad just because he feels like it.

That is a different approach to power and I have seen it working in the real world (think of the friends example).

But yes, I also have not seen it working stable and consistent enough to base all of society on it.

So the explicit anarchistic projects I have seen, definitely had (informal) power structures.

So I really love the consensus approach of anarchism when it is working. It is really awesome working together with people who all do it because they want to, not because they have to. But the hypocrosy regarding power is turning me off. Because in reality there are no true equals and also in anarchistic projects there are people having way more power than others. Which I don't think is bad, but it is bad pretending this isn't the case.

Your reasoning seems a bit tangled. In one sense, "anarchism" is just the absence of government, so is often used to describe the state where a government has collapsed and various groups are vying violently for power. But they aren't trying to create an anarchist society with an absence of hierarchy, but to simply reinstate the power pyramid with themselves on top.

As for an architect somehow becoming a boss because they are the only one who knows what to do, I can't even imagine this happening. Anarchists would walk out instead of being bossed around. Lazing around can be acceptable in anarchism, since maximising production (with most of it taken by the rich anyway) isn't the goal.

again, in this scenario that wouldn't magically make the architect "the boss", at least according to the US idea of "boss", it simply means he's leading the project.

ive been fortunate enough to know quite a few adult anarchists, professionals who are very very respected in their fields. engineers who you have probably heard of. im not referring to college age kids still on wobbly legs, young bambis who are still trying to find their footings. actual mature professionals. and i hesitate to put words in their mouth but ill give it a shot. apologies in advance if im off, anarchists please absolutely correct me:

i suspect they would say something like you have to distinguish between a leader and a boss. you also have to distinguish between someone who is an "authority in their field" vs "authority figure." one is an expert who is well respected, they're an authority in their field, they have wisdom and expertise in some subject. their words have more weight in that subject. that isn't the same as an authority figure, someone who has power to cause negative outcomes for you personally. we see a lot of noise about "anarchists are anti-authority", but they absolutely are not anti-wisdom or anti-expertise. they're anti-authority_figure.

from what i've seen anarchist projects have no problem with team leaders and they certainly have no problem at all with someone being an expert authority in their field. for example they have no problem at all with the concept of a team leader because if the project 'leader' is an obnoxious dickbag, they can just all pick up and move the meeting next door and leave the obnoxious person behind. we do this kind of team organizing everyday outside of work without bosses, whether its a camping trip amongst friends, a family reunion, hackathon, lan party, etc... etc...

to an anarchist, someone being good at something doesn't mean that im not good at something else. and both of us being good at different things doesn't magically give either of us the right to be a dickbag to each other. for groups of people organizing to complete some random large project, leaders need someone to do x, y, and z just as much as the team needs organization. and if the leader is awful the team is always free to metaphorically move the meeting next door and leave the awful person behind. there is no shortage of organizing that happens outside of a boss/employee relationship where the person organizing knows they can't be a dickbag because no one would help them. if no one wants to help them, they can't realize their project.

anyway, anarchists, again, sorry if anything ive said is entirely wrong. please please correct me.

>Anarchism is a theoretical mental exercise with no basis in anything in the real world

You can expand your universe if you search this: Anthropology Egalitarianism

The main idea behind anarchism is free association, meaning a group of people can freely decide who leads them. It isnt too far fetched an idea. There are several working implementation of worker owned democratic workplaces, of which the Isreali kibbutz communities are one the largest.

Imagine replacing corporate entities with structures where the employees all have share of the company and have direct access to vote in leadership, or decide some other kind of structure (as Valve supposedly does). Theres some challenges to work though but I dont see why any new startup cant take this approach.

If I ever get a successful product going Im going to give it a try.

You can check Igalia and their videos on YouTube to see their structure for remote IT worker coop that is flat and has over 100 employees.

There is a difference between a hierarchy of control, and a hierarchy of capabilities. Think of a student driver and instructor scenario. The student driver is in direct control of the car, while the instructor has more experience and is a better driver than the student. The instructor can mentor the student and provide safeguards so that the student does not kill themselves while obtaining knowledge. It's accepting these sorts of hierarchies in humanity that allow us to make better decisions, and listen to experts, while not giving up control over our own actions.

One of the dissenters is the chemistry experts, setting the charges in the steel factory, his specialization is something he can hold hostage and he takes it with him. Now you have a crew with no idea, producing low value steel, maybe even destroying the steelworks in the process. Once the factory is worn out, they all decides its to much hassle to run it and go fishing. Societal complexity does not hold up without external pressures.

You can choose delegates with some sphere of autonomy in a horizontal way, but in anarchist association you can instantly recall them in a horizontal way too. This helps mitigate creating hierarchy while giving someone autonomy and making it possible to divide labor.

Who can instantly recall them? A group vote or an individual? Because one of them is just democracy and the other is utterly unworkable. The first time someone doesn’t want to work, they’re going to “recall” the boss.

Direct democracy, ranging from majority vote to some kind of consensus or consent. Considering someone not working - in anarchy you can always pick with whom you associate with so you can just not associate with a persons who you feel is too lazy.

> However, even after reading the book the notion of anarchism remains unclear. I couldn't tell you how an anarchist would go about setting up a steel factory (or any other activity requiring highly coordinated human effort) in line with anarchist principles, for example.

You’ve lost the ability to imagine freedom.

Freedom is one of those words subject to endless manipulation. Freedom of action, for example - does that mean people should be free to enslave others? Freedom to expropriate (steal) the product of another's labor? Freedom from the physical laws of conservation of energy and momentum?

Take the bicycle - an optimal transport solution for the anarchist. Everyone has a bicycle, everyone is free to ride the bicycle - but how does the bicycle factory work? How do all the factories needed to supply the bicycle factory with rubber, steel, aluminum, precise machine tooling, etc. fulfill those tasks? In turn, how do they get raw materials - ores, etc. - that they need to produce these materials? Do they sign contracts with each other? If one party fails to deliver on a contract, is there a penalty and who enforces that penalty?

Certainly the situation can be improved - I'd argue for fixing the highest salary to be no more than 10X the lowest salary, and that gradations should be entirely merit-based (not inheritance-based) - but is that against anarchist principles or not? Flattening hierarchies is possible, but eliminating them?

I think if you try to eliminate hierarchies, you just replace them with sneaky covert hierarchies that are gamed by the usual manipulative personality types to their own benefit.

See for example Chomsky’s[1] anarchism.[2]

> authority, unless justified, is inherently illegitimate and that the burden of proof is on those in authority. If this burden can't be met, the authority in question should be dismantled.

Authority/hierarchy are interchangeable in this context.

[1] The guy most known in computer science for his “Chomsky hierarchy”.

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchy101/comments/ss7eze/where_do...

That doesn't answer the covert hierarchy problem, which is what plagued all those 1970s anarchist communes. Some group would arise within the commune, it would work to control resources or exclude 'undesirables' and so on, leading to a lot of cult-like situations with a charismatic manipulative individual gaining control and authority.

Consider also the enforcement of contracts between parties issue. Now, I understand that the anarchist position would be that if someone fails to deliver on a promise, then you can simply stop associating or doing business with that person - fine. Then they come into your workplace at night and steal everything you've made. You can say, I'll take my goods back by force, but then it's just a question of who has the greatest capability for violence, right?

Para 1: If this refers to “Tyranny of Structurelessness” (maybe that was just feminism) then modern anarchism has plenty of structure. If not: I guess it doesn’t work.

Para 2: It would be great if we would get to a point where we have to live up to these high-minded ideals. Like if pacifism is possible.[1] Meanwhile these “what if an unstoppable anarchist met an immovable anarchist” thought experiments aren’t interesting.

[1] Not that pacifism is an anarchist position. So relevance?

There will always be issues with human nature that any system will struggle with. Isn't practically every country today capitalist? Is everybody now living in a kind of paradise, if we are assuming that capitalism is the ideal system?

Isn't it a bit strange that we are always trying to force everybody into the same system, regardless of personal preferences? But the "system" of course is domination by some people over others, and what else would they want? Would they ever accept that some people may want to be left alone, free from their domination? The usual mainstream political discussion is only over what form of domination is preferable.

Anarchism does not exclude division of labour.

That tidbit is very interesting

Well, he met Gaston Leval, who wrote about CNT's economic successes within the Spanish civil war/revolution (primarily in the books called "Collectives in the Spanish Revolution" and "Collectives in Aragon"). Anyone who has read those accounts in good faith can not help but seriously consider those ideas as their own.

I had no idea Albert Camus was an anarchist, I've read some of his work (The Myth of Sisyphus and The rebel) and it shouldn't really surprise me to find out he is a socialist of some form.

Edit: If it isn't clear Camus is a fantastic writer and you should definitely check out some of his work, and more articles from https://libcom.org/ if you have the time!

At the very least, even if you haven’t read Camus, I expect that any programmer of any experience should already have some intuitive sympathy with “The Myth of Sisyphus.”

One must imagine Sisyphus happy working within an extremely obscure and undocumented micro services architecture

Fixing one bug only to find the fix reveals another bug. Repeat til the end of time.

If staging is sometimes debugged in sorrow, it can also take place in joy, for the struggle itself to release to prod is enough to fill a dev's heart.

Lagniappe: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/29

Really? I think he was very open in his admiration for some of the anarchists mentioned in The Rebel, calling Kaliayev & co, 'men of the highest principles' and refers to other anarchists' "profound considerations for the lives of others".

I either forgot about them or didn't make the association, its been a while since I've read it.

Tangential, but one of the things I am most excited about as AI gets "human level" good at audio book narration is the ability to turn things like the Anarchist Library into audio books. There are so many things that I want to read that I just don't have time for (there and other places) but are far too obscure to ever get a professional narration. And yes Librivox has quite a few of them, but the quality is ... a little distracting (or at least was in the late 10s when I last checked).

Me too. I’ve been impressed with some essays I’ve listened to via Open AI TTS. Much better than the librivox ones I’ve occasionally suffered through, and it’s only going to get better.

Did you try other providers such as 11labs or open source like voice craft or openvoice

I too can't wait for my first ASMR napalm recipe! Finally I'll be able to get a good night's sleep.

Anarchist Library not The Anarchist Cookbook, silly.

Drats! Foiled by reading comprehension, once again!

I was just thinking about this recently. There’s an obscure book I can get on ebook but not audiobook. Does anyone know the state of the art for producing an audiobook with a text to speech network?

It fun that this question comes today, last night I was saying to myself that all audiobooks from audible sounded the same. But AWS TTS quality is bad so the closest would be play.ht, 11labs and lately open source voice craft and open voice

https://huggingface.co/pyp1/VoiceCraft_830M_TTSEnhanced

https://research.myshell.ai/open-voice

The main issue is the time and sentiment.

It shouldn't take long before someone takes openvoice and start taking books and tts them on a platform.

The main issue will be legal to negotiate right with copyright owners this is where the game is... purely lawyers

That is an incredibly good LLM app idea. Book-to-cinematic. Thousands of years of content ready to go

Camus famously broke with the french left over (certain aspects) of Algerian Liberation, for the simple reason that his mother continued to live there. He famously quipped:

"At this moment bombs are being planted in the trams in Algiers. My mother could be on one of those trams. If that is justice, I prefer my mother."

...which won him no small amount of censure. I always think of this moment when I am asked to co-sign, wholeheartedly, the measures endorsed by certain movements.

Yes, generally people side with their family and loved ones over principles. My fathers family had their house aerial bombed by the french, so a few tram bombs just sounds par for the course of an independence uprising. But your main point is correct - violence is always ugly, and we have to be careful when rationalizing it to achieve pragmatic goals.

We can also generalize beyond our families, and make it one of our principles not to harm innocent people. This puts random bombings of trams or housing off-limits. How likely is it that these acts will achieve pragmatic goals anyway?

Well the Algerians successfully overthrew the French colonizers after violent uprisings.

I'm not familiar with how it worked out with the Algerians, and whether attacks on civilians were a deciding factor. Of course, similar situations still occur today, when you have a colonising power with overwhelming military superiority, and the dispossessed resort to attacks on civilians.

Well, when one group disenfranchises you via military conquest without such a Noble Distinction, and you cannot defeat them in a Noble Battle, you expand the available choices. And it seems to have worked out for most independence movements.

He also was Algerian so meant that quote literally rather than figuratively, and consequently he had a lot more skin in the game when compared to Parisians like Sartre.

Aujourd’hui, maman est morte.

Camus and his views remind me of a certain political spectrum in Western society that is very popular.

> a certain political spectrum

Which one would that be?

LⒶgniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7qT-C-0ajI

Please be direct and name what you’re referring to?

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