So everybody for themselves, ok. But what if two form a group and start oppressing the one who thought he is free.
Group formation seems to be natural way humans organize up to a state level.
Anarchy doesn't mean "everybody for themselves" in a chaotic sense. It advocates for the absence of a formal, hierarchical government, aiming for self-managed societies based on voluntary, cooperative institutions.
Here are key points:
1. Mutual Aid: Anarchists believe in mutual aid and voluntary cooperation rather than competition and individualism.
2. Horizontal Structures: They support horizontal organization without hierarchies, promoting collective decision-making.
3. Community Defense: Anarchist communities often organize collective defense mechanisms to protect individuals from oppression.
The concern about groups oppressing individuals is valid, but anarchists argue that decentralized, community-based approaches can mitigate this better than centralized power structures, which often lead to greater systemic oppression.
In general, it's important to generalize this. Most political philosophies are better understood and judged by the directions they demand existing societies move in rather than the final destination, which might never be achieved.
[1] EDIT: of the society he was living in, or see better comment below.
Chomsky has always been focused on pragmatic actions within the situation you are in. If that's Spain in the 1920s, he would be a Revolutionary Anarchist.
But most of the time he's speaking, it's not about Spain in the 1920s, so the specifics of actions that are pragmatic are different.
Similar to what you are saying, and I agree with some of what you're saying, but it would be incorrect to define Chomsky based on the tactics he feels are valid in a given situation.
Forgetting the language about everyone being for themselves, parent’s question boils down to “what happens when people don’t cooperate?”. The answer to that can’t be “people will cooperate”.
I think when you’re thinking about social structures of all kinds a useful perspective is to ask whether you’re creating a prisoner’s dilemma, and what the consequences of that could be.
Anarchism requires identifying justifiable authority, and dismantling it.
Certainly unjustifiable authority won't cooperate.
It sounds a lot like "cooperation is voluntary but you will be dismantled if you don't"
Ending Slavery didn't leave room for the decision to non-cooperate with it, by continuing to own Slaves, or to be a Slave. Certainly depends on the specifics.
Just like Slavery was dismantled with no choice for those who wished it to continue.
Certainly it could tolerate it within a transition. You could imagine Worker controlled corporations entirely, however with private property still existing.
I also think it depends heavily on the definition of private property, which is a specific set of rules in every locality. Certainly some of those rules would be different.
But I think what you're getting at is, "What's the ideal?", and the answer I think would not tolerate private property.
But honestly, I'm not sure I believe that. Again, I can think of definitions I think work.
Or alternatively, stops some communities from being raiders and pirates, and the eventual desire to have a stronger response that a hierarchy can bring to bear. At any rate, the current global order is very far from anarchy, and it's extremely difficult to see how it could be come about in part of the world without being taken over by countries with imperialistic ambitions. Imagine what Russia and China would do if somehow Europe and the US became anarchistic.
Are there any well working anarchic societies today?
Recently people working there however have said it's moving further away from the core principals though.
The most successful Anarchist society was Spain, which is what the article is discussing.
Anarchists suffer the same problems as (actual) communists, fascist power seeking dickheads ruin reality for everyone. Power seeking behaviors have to be actively countered lest they pass an infection point they become self sustaining which requires a massive amount of coordination between parties.
Large scale horizontal structures simply don't work once the population exceeds the human capacity to remember everyone and their relationships to each other (approx 100-110 people). That's why ancient human foraging clans were always splitting at around 80-100 people until agrarian societies provided enough concentrated food and energy for specialization and hierarchy.
It's why horizontally organized companies start to fray after they grow beyond 100 people.
The problem is when representatives that you send can't be recalled easily. You can think of this as a technical problem, since elections have been expensive historically to run.
There are ideas in the vein of "liquid democracy" that consider how we could arrange things with instant recall: e.g. if democracy were an app on my phone, and I could remove my support from my representative between the time they cast a vote and the time the vote is finalized, and replace them with somebody who will vote properly. This could be done completely without anger; I could restore the my support to the previous person after the vote. What it does is make my representative someone who I trust with my will for the moment not someone who owns my will.
It's a different perspective.
Really at the end of this day all your voting system turns into is a popularity contest of stars and rabid attention seekers that can hold the average public attention for longer than everyone else. I'm not saying our current system is good, I'm saying yours is hilariously bad.
What? This is of course what we already have in many western democracies. Adding the hypothetical ability to "recall representatives easily" as the parent describes doesn't cause this problem.
The root of the issue here is just representative vs direct democracy, and GP is obviously correct that technology could be allowing us to create/withdraw support closer to real-time than whatever the election cycle is. Not to mention just having more of a voice on more issues, like why do we need the representatives anyway?
Since in the limit direct democracy basically is anarchic, these types of discussions are IMO one of the best ways to ground otherwise theoretical discussions about anarchism and avoids the trigger word.
The truth is that most people on all sides of the political spectrum only want elections until their preferred king is in charge, then they become staunch royalists, supporters of dynasties/dictators/fascists, whatever you want to call it.
My paradoxical observation is that people who really believe in democracy are almost always anarchists, deep down. To test yourself, just ask whether you want the government to do things "in the interest of the public", regardless of whether the public agrees that it is desirable. If you "want to protect the public" from actually having their own preferences because "they don't know better", this paternalism is right next door to fascism. It doesn't matter much whether you're forcing them to pay for good things like education programs, or for bad things like an unjust war. When you go down the road that "representatives are necessary because the people can't make decisions" or that "term limits are necessary because the public is fickle", you're really saying you just want democracy until your preferred king is installed.
Because it is a full time job that most of us want to do for free.
I don't even have the time or resources to properly evaluate ballot propositions that come around every couple years let alone all the decisions made by people I elect and those they delegate to.
It was brutally crushed by all major nations in the world. You can't say how it wouldn't work otherwise, because it did work, and was crushed with violence.
Now where have I heard that one before? Oh right, it was Putin, explaining why communism turned into a monster, and communism was in fact inflicted upon poor Russia by the west to destroy their socialist paradise...
This is how zealots speak. Their philosophy and their people are pure and innocent. Therefore any time it fails, it can only be THE ENEMY's influence.
That doesn't mean it wouldn't have failed for specific reasons if allowed to continue, however we don't know what that failure would be, and stating it as was done, is a ridiculous idea.
Which may be the answer to this entire thread, anarchism isn't going to work unless the world decides to let it work (hint, people in power aren't going to let this happen).
How to reasonably change from a method of complete control, to one which opens the door for other paths.
I don't disagree with that. It has been, and always will be the central question on how to remove dictatorships.
That's what keeps the idealist dream alive (for the struggle!), and why I'm not worried that you'll make any progress.
You can make much more substantive arguments against Anarchism that are reasoned, and reasonable. Making things up instead of understanding the historical record is a choice.
Pierre Prudhon, who was basically the first anarchist wrote about all of our social obligations in all of his works - read chapter 4 of “what is property” to see what this looks like applied to interrelaional labor exchange
Further, Adam Smith, who you could also argue was also an early anarchist wrote in the theory of moral sentiments about the same thing
similarly for Emma Goldman similarly for Kropotkin etc..
So there is a fundamental lack of understanding about what anarchist philosophy actually is, it would seem, that prevents an actual discussion about it
this problem is ever-present among ideologues, and may be one of the ways you can identify a from-first-principles totalizing ideology and differentiate it from legitimate schools of philosophy
Many political -isms suffer from this problem, and the "true believers" all inevitably hold in their head what they believe to be the correct definition, about which they will always correct non-believers and bicker about with comrades.
Regardless, it's all a waste of time, because if you can't even define your ideology you will never see it manifested.
There's also a good discussion from Moxie Marlinspike (creator of Signal)[0]. He discusses some of the things you're asking and I think this can answer better than a comment.
But modern US-style libertarianism has one very central difference: Support for private property, which was anathema to Dejacque, who firmly supported Proudhon's infamous "property is robbery".
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/joseph-dejacque-on-t...
I do find it quite interesting how this particular implementation of an agrarian non-state society has very different outcomes than typically envisioned by anarchist theorists, particularly in regards to power/wealth/influence concentration, the emergence of social hierarchy, warlords, and the poor living conditions experienced by those at the bottom.
https://acoup.blog/2024/06/07/collections-how-to-raise-a-tri...
It's possibly true, but there's no evidence it is.
I guess the question also depends on what is "better". Certainly it's better for those with authority, but it's very difficult to compare that with another structure.
I mean, which leftist revolutions lead to a radically egalitarian society instead of an authoritarian? If there is one, I'd love to read about it.
"Better" as in, more likely to prevail in real terms. You can obviously go too far with that and paralyze yourself within a hierarchy, but some is better than none.
The one referenced in the article. Although it was brief before it was crushed.
Would have been interesting to see how it developed. Since it didn't, we have no evidence it wouldn't have.
While it was active, it was a marvel of human effort.
Thus my point...
Self-regulation is only possible in small communities via social norms, but then you have conflicts if your neighbors instead.
The obvious solution in big societies is enough socialism for everyone to incentivize generally polite society.
If people worked out how to be a bad person at a beach thats learned behavior. They might study the law. realize there are loopholes to exploit. Maybe realize they could argue the beach is private property and not public and kick everyone out. People do this, yes, but part of me imagines that they only attempt to do this because they know others have done similar things and are supported by lawyers and advisors who are finding ways to do this thing. Its not a natural response. Natural is probably a child working with other children they don't even know on a sand castle.
> But still I think what I am trying to get at is for the vast majority of people and things, we tend to operate pretty evenly.
When is the last time you saw a rich person take the bus? How many of them lobby for higher taxes on themselves to increase the availability and accessibility for regular people? It wasn't working class families hiring disabled "guides" to help them skip lines at Disneyland. There are plenty of ways that things are not operated evenly, even for things that are technically available to everyone.
Not quite. There have been many alternatives to state societies in history, so states are far from the only way to organize even largish society.
That said, state societies have spontaneously arisen at least 6 times and perhaps a dozen times. And the rise of states tends to either motivate neighboring polities to form states in response or pretty inevitably get extinguished by the states. Given the frequency of spontaneous reinvention of states, and the seeming inevitability of their expansion, even if states are not the only way to organize large polities, they do seem to a local if not global maximum.
This has nothing to do with anarchism.
Anarchism is simply organizing society to have as little hierarchy as possible.
I consider myself an anarchist and I think federalism can be an important part of it.
You'll also find that many people involved with building the Fediverse seem to have anarchist beliefs, for example.
Not really. Anarchism is a historically leftist movement. It's about rejecting hierarchy and coercion, not necessarily rejecting all notions of social duty, shared fate, cooperation, human care and support, etc.
Everybody for themselves would be a demand that a king would make. Normal people cooperate.
It's impossible to philosophically engage with anarchism, because every anarchist rewrites its definition on-the-fly to win whatever argument they happen to be in at that moment.
The common thread is the idea of decentralized, ideally evenly distributed, power.
That's not another idea, that's really the same idea. Voluntary interactions are not unearned. The only problem with that is that it accepts kings (i.e. the legitimacy of primitive accumulation and the fencing off of the commons.) If you just say that King Charles owns England, and everything within it, he can even force you into a contract in order to use his roads to leave.
But of course anarcho-capitalism is a legitimate Anarchist strain. As it is now, it exists with a fake pedigree from Objectivists and Libertarians, who are simply Republican anti-communists minus the Christianity, but you can see the same beliefs within what was at the time accepted as fairly orthodox anarchism in Benjamin Tucker.* There are still interesting libertarians that don't accept primitive accumulation, and simply think that the creation of interlocking markets is a better way to organize a free society than the glorification of wage-laborers.
I'm largely a Rudolf Rocker anarchist myself, and Homage to Catalonia changed my life as well. Speaking of groups, I was a card-carrying anarchist who volunteered at the 223 infoshop in Portland during the 90s. I had always suspected that Chomsky was an anarchist, and the confirmation was when he spoke in town and made his first political donation to that same infoshop. It was his first occasion making a political donation of that type, and everybody in left politics noticed.
edit: A quote from John Zerzan, an primitivist (or the primitivist) anarchist who hated Chomsky, illustrating how impactful that donation was:
> In the fall of 1995, Chomsky donated much of the proceeds from a well-attended speech on U.S. foreign policy to Portland’s 223 Freedom and Mutual Aid Center, better known as the local anarchist infoshop. As if to honor its generous benefactor appropriately, the infoshop spent the money first of all on a computer system, and several months later financed a booklet promoting the infoshop and the ideas behind it. Among the most prominent quotes adorning the pamphlet is one that begins, “The task for a modern industrial society is to achieve what is now technically realizable...” The attentive reader may not need me to name the author of these words, nor to point out this less than qualitatively radical influence.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/john-zerzan-who-is-c...
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* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Tucker
edit: I would also mention that Benjamin Tucker was almost entirely in line with current Libertarian thought, still thought of himself as an anarchist and a socialist, and was one of the biggest misogynists possible. When people seriously engage with ideas instead of stereotypes, they come out in weird places. When you seriously engage with ideas instead of conventions, you start to realize that we're already in a weird place.
Anarchism is dependent on group organization.