You're viewing a single thread.
Anti-anarchist pretty much think
- Anarchy = chaos
This is heavily promoted by mainstream media and language
- Anarchists are pacifist
Many people seem unable to comprehend how a community might defend itself without a standing military and so assume we must be unwilling to defend ourselves.
- Nothing can be accomplished without coercion
Because most of us have grown up within strict hierarchies coerced to do things we don't want, we have trouble imagining any other way.
- Everyone is inherently a selfish asshole
This is probably projection in most cases
How do you keep an Anarchic Utopia then? What stops Dickie McDickerson and his thugs from establishing a state on top of you?
Zero tolerance for sophistry, and dedication to non-non-violence when dealing with sealions.
Good luck with that. You may need to substitute all humans with robots.
It's a dream. Capitalism would be great and completely valid without some greedy fuckers trying to get everything for themselves. Communism would work without some greedy fuckers trying to get everything for themselves. Anarchism would work without... You get the jist.
Our problem is not politics, it's the human nature. No matter how many loving hippies there are, there are always going to be some people who try to exploit everything for their own good
I'm cynical (or old) enough to agree with this sentiment to a point, but capitalism has greed built in, it's a feature not a flaw.
It inherently incentivizes greed, it's not built in per se. As are all traits of the dark triad. This is what makes capitalism the worst choice and really sad. It brings out the worst in us. And those who are better have no chance.
You are 100% correct.
Capitalism is greed. Acquire and accumulate at all costs. Hoarding is not just acceptable, but praiseworthy.
Greed came long before capitalism. Capitalism is the current way to organize greed.
Wealth disparity has always existed as a result of greed, not capitalism. There have always been extra wealthy and poor. There has always been nobles and serfs. Patricians and plebians. Bourgeoisie and proletariat.
Any system of economic equality cannot exist unless there is a very tight framework around it and people designated to enforce that framework, which, ipso facto, eliminates equality, as that then puts a monopoly on a legal use of force. With a legal use of force, corruption is only a matter of time.
That's true, in capitalism that we see anyways. But we would be able to get capitalism working just fine if the ultra rich would put their momey for a good use. If they have enough to support themselves, they could use that extra momey to help struggling businnesses and aim the extra monry where its needed more at that point. But that's never ever going to happem
They'd be out-competed by those who used their wealth to screw over the competition and drive small businesses under.
Greedy fuckers are going to be making anything worse, but that only means that a complete utopia is impossible, not that all systems are going to be equally bad. Would you argue that the average absolute monarchy would have just as much abuse as your average liberal democracy?
Did I say anything about monarchy or claim that all of the politics are equal? No I just said noke of them work because humans are not going to cooperate on large scale enough with thinking whats good for everyone. Monarchy pretty much just assumes there is a greedy fucker there. And even if he would make a good leader one person is not enough to make all the decisions
The problem is the human condition of greedy tuckers, so let's keep political systems which give a few people who want all the power all the power, rather than work towards anarchism where no one gets the power?
you're wrong my comrade
Interestingly enough, that's literally the solution for The Culture.
Worrying about sealions on Lemmy in particular is just vanity since one really has the option to move on and ignore, or even block, at will. There is no way to force an answer, but it is perfectly okay to ask politely for one on a forum-like platform.
I'm not asking for sources, it's a simple logic experiment with a look at history. A decentralized pacifist state is a power vacuum to certain people. We need at least the basic sketch of a larger state and acceptance of organized violence as a method to defend it.
The same that stops them from taking over a democracy. Sometimes.
If a society became anarchist enough to abolish state structures, there obviously had to exist a reason - there had to exist popular support.
Thus, someone attempting to recreate a state would face questions and opposition. People would try to persuade them of their error. If they declared a state, anarchists would not recognize it. If it claimed sovereignity above a territory, anarchists might not recognize that either.
The new state might encounter problems - unwilling residents would leave and be accepted in anarchy, annoyed anarchists would organize trade boycotts and sanctions, ultimately it could go badly and armed confrontation could follow. In some scenarios, the state might remain and attract people who want to live there. In some scenarios, war would follow - and if the majority really was anarchist, the state would lose and disappear.
If they declared a state, anarchists would not recognize it. If it claimed sovereignity above a territory, anarchists might not recognize that either.
Oh no, you misunderstand. They're not giving you a choice. They aren't proponents of democracy or any kind of representative government. You have to go from an Anarchic state to resisting an organized group while they are grabbing community leaders in the middle of the night and taking young men and women to work camps.
To resist an organized group, you communicate the problem (in an anarchist society, communicating the problem of a nascent state seems like the easy part), present evidence of the nature and severity of the problem, and ask people and existing organizations to mobilize.
Whether the next step is obstructing the state peacefully or mass production of munitions, would already depend on how bad the state has got.
Well you're already adding violence back in, but honestly that's fine. I didn't buy that pacifism would work anyways. It's good to practice in regards to starting stuff, but you'd have to be ready to end stuff.
And honestly I hope what you're saying would work but now you've got 3 more problems to solve. You're starting from standing and they're already going. So they're going to have a head start in every way. You're asking for volunteers and you have to deal with the bystander effect. They're coercing people to fight for them. And third, you've now created an army and at least some infrastructure to support it. There's more than a few times through history that the defending army just decided it was in charge now.
And just so you know where I'm coming from I've always thought you need at least some of the state institutions we have for a leftist state to work. Like education, enough military to make invading too costly, enough police to tackle organized crime, a tax system to provide help in disasters and keep infrastructure working, and a civil government to manage that infrastructure. Having it all in place negates the Dicky McDickerson problem from the outset. What we really need is to scale back a lot of what we have and to classify much of what people do to get rich as organized crime.
For the US specifically we'll also need a plan to deal with Christian Conservatives who will attempt to institute a theocracy pretty much right away.
Anarchists are pacifist
Will there be downsides?