Yeah, down with the violence of the state! Although, to prevent bad actors and armed gangs we do need to have some sort of militia to protect the vulnerable from the greedy and cruel, human nature being what it is. And to prevent said militia from turning into the very thing it was supposed to protect us from, we need some sort of oversight, preferably from a democratically elected body, that tells the militia how to act and prevent them from violating the rights of the people. Oh wait I just reinvented violence of the state hehe.
People in Somalia hearing that America has a 1.8% homelessness rate: “wow. Things are really just as bad over there.”
A common anarchist definition of the state is: The institutionized power structure which alienates people from the businesses of their daily lives.
So not the government at all, right? Because they aren’t responsible for hardly any alienating in my experience. I would attribute any alienating I feel to corporations.
I don’t feel alienated by the justice system. Maybe it’s because I don’t live in America. Corporations infringe on my enjoyment of my life a lot more than the government ever does. The only interactions I ever have with the justice system is when the police come to my neighborhood to shut up a domestic disturbance which is usually much appreciated on my part.
Also, the government provides all kinds of valuable services and benefits that I interact with every day. They build the roads that the corner shop across the street uses to get deliveries, they send out trash and recycling collectors every week, they run the clean water and power to my home, they maintain firefighting services and national free healthcare infrastructure. Sure they could be doing a bit better at some of these things, but I wouldn’t say I feel alienated by them.
Meanwhile corporations are constantly worsening my interactions with them, bombarding me with new and innovative forms of psychological warfare designed to trick me into giving them my money in exchange for something I don’t really need.
You’re describing alienation. You give power to an entity alien to you/the community. You could have mitigated the disturbances in your neighborhood together with your community. Sending the cops wont fix the issue systemically, though. The best they can do is take someone away.
All these services don’t need a hierarchical state.
The state is the entity protecting these corporations by enforcing their property rights.
All these services don’t need a hierarchical state.
You think people will just build roads out of the goodness of their hearts? Or pick up trash? Obviously not. Those services have to be performed by somebody who is getting paid, and in order to pay them, you need to levy taxes. Boom, hierarchical state. The rest is just details.
Like it or not, the world is too big and complicated for everyone to live in self-governing communities anymore. Like imagine applying what you’re suggesting to a densely packed population centre like New York. It makes no sense.
You think people will just build roads out of the goodness of their hearts?
No, I think people build roads because they themselves decided in a council that roads needed to be built.
Or pick up trash?
You act as if there aren’t whole histories of volunteer work in the world. If you get lost in the alps and mountain rescue saves you, pretty much none of them are getting paid, for example.
Those services have to be performed by somebody who is getting paid, and in order to pay them, you need to levy taxes.
I find you lack in societal creativety sad.
Like imagine applying what you’re suggesting to a densely packed population centre like New York. It makes no sense.
Imagine trying to manage such a big society by giving decision power to fewer people who can’t possibly fathom the complexity of the system they’re trying to control.
What would happen to those corporations without the government enforcing their property? Have you ever tried to seize a McDonalds to distribute food to the homeless?
People have property rights too. I wouldn’t want someone seizing the food in my fridge to feed the homeless. Property rights are a good thing actually. The problem isn’t the government “protecting” corporations. It’s that wealth grants a greater degree of control over government due to corruption.
Ultimately though it’s a pointless discussion since anarchists are never going to see what they envision implemented beyond weirdo hippie commune towns because their ideas don’t scale up.
I wouldn’t want anyone to seize the food in your fridge. Unless with “seize” you mean “fill up unprompted” because people know you need to eat and that’s enough reason to give you food, and maybe you’re busy all the time with constructing bridges or whatnot so they also cook for you.
And while corruption is an issue, it’s not the only issue: The very act of having lots of capital to throw around allows companies to direct policy, you e.g. don’t need to grease hands to get different municipalities to overbid each other with tax breaks for your new fidget spinner factory. The BS is inherent in the system.
As to scaling: Possibly. Possibly not. I’d argue that it can’t yet be envisioned, not even by anarchists themselves (and we’re aware of that, hence all the gradualism)… but as you acknowledged that it can work in the small, what happens if all the municipalities we have turn into hippie communes? Would they elect, among themselves, an Emperor Commune to rule over them? I don’t think so. They’d find ways to cooperate at eye level. How that will look in detail, as said, I have no idea, it’s probably going to involve federation and plenty of subsidiarity.
Practically, right now, it makes no difference as most of us are not living in hippie commune towns. First step would be to get there, then we can think about luxury gay space anarchism.
Those small communes only work because everyone is opting in for the anarchist model. Most people have no interest in that model, and so it will never scale beyond such small communities where everyone opts in.
It especially isn’t going to work as soon as you reach the scale where tribalism sets in. That’s a natural human behaviour and cannot be eliminated. The human brain craves an “us versus them” narrative. You know this to be true, because your brain does it too, even if you suppress that part of your brain, it’s still there and you’re aware of it. Some of us can rise above it, but we all know that especially in large groups, humans revert to their more base instincts. The only way to prevent that tendency from dominating society is with the structure imposed by a government.
Like, how exactly would you envision anarchism working in NYC, with the current population of NYC? Not some hypothetical group of people who’ve all drunk the anarchism Kool aid. Literally just how does it work in a city that big with regular people who haven’t read your anarchist newsletter? Because you will never get everyone to agree that anarchism is the way to go. So you’re going to have to come up with a model that works for people even if they don’t want to be part of it.
No it’s still definitely violence. Like, day to day, you try to use violence as little as possible but it is necessary for the laws of society to be backed by violence or people would ignore them. “Violence” doesn’t have to refer to killing people, it means the use of force against somebody without their consent (killing them, arresting them, or evicting/exiling them).
The state we have right now in America and most of Europe is a community that decides how it wants to be policed (i.e. a democracy). Different jurisdictions make different policing decisions and have different outcomes, but they all follow that structure.
The point I was making was that any attempt by anarchists to “overthrow the state” is silly because the “state” will return in a new form as power reconsolidates. If you consider a recognized federal or state government to be a “state” but an armed “anarchist” militia that runs a city to not be a state, that’s just a silly semantic argument.
Yeah, down with the violence of the state! Although, to prevent bad actors and armed gangs we do need to have some sort of militia to protect the vulnerable from the greedy and cruel, human nature being what it is. And to prevent said militia from turning into the very thing it was supposed to protect us from, we need some sort of oversight, preferably from a democratically elected body, that tells the militia how to act and prevent them from violating the rights of the people. Oh wait I just reinvented violence of the state hehe.
People in Somalia hearing that America has a 1.8% homelessness rate: “wow. Things are really just as bad over there.”
That’s not what anarchists refer to as a state.
A common anarchist definition of the state is: The institutionized power structure which alienates people from the businesses of their daily lives.
If the whole constituency of the community that the militia protects is involved in controlling that militia, that’s not state violence anymore.
Like having the militia answer to a democratically-elected government?
No, to councils, not representatives with a free mandate.
Representatives don’t have a free mandate in a democracy, they’re bound by laws and by their constituency.
How are your councils formed and what restricts their power?
So not the government at all, right? Because they aren’t responsible for hardly any alienating in my experience. I would attribute any alienating I feel to corporations.
I beg your pardon? what is the whole justice system if not the alienation of the community to settle their disputes?
I don’t feel alienated by the justice system. Maybe it’s because I don’t live in America. Corporations infringe on my enjoyment of my life a lot more than the government ever does. The only interactions I ever have with the justice system is when the police come to my neighborhood to shut up a domestic disturbance which is usually much appreciated on my part.
Also, the government provides all kinds of valuable services and benefits that I interact with every day. They build the roads that the corner shop across the street uses to get deliveries, they send out trash and recycling collectors every week, they run the clean water and power to my home, they maintain firefighting services and national free healthcare infrastructure. Sure they could be doing a bit better at some of these things, but I wouldn’t say I feel alienated by them.
Meanwhile corporations are constantly worsening my interactions with them, bombarding me with new and innovative forms of psychological warfare designed to trick me into giving them my money in exchange for something I don’t really need.
You’re describing alienation. You give power to an entity alien to you/the community. You could have mitigated the disturbances in your neighborhood together with your community. Sending the cops wont fix the issue systemically, though. The best they can do is take someone away.
All these services don’t need a hierarchical state.
The state is the entity protecting these corporations by enforcing their property rights.
You think people will just build roads out of the goodness of their hearts? Or pick up trash? Obviously not. Those services have to be performed by somebody who is getting paid, and in order to pay them, you need to levy taxes. Boom, hierarchical state. The rest is just details.
Like it or not, the world is too big and complicated for everyone to live in self-governing communities anymore. Like imagine applying what you’re suggesting to a densely packed population centre like New York. It makes no sense.
No, I think people build roads because they themselves decided in a council that roads needed to be built.
You act as if there aren’t whole histories of volunteer work in the world. If you get lost in the alps and mountain rescue saves you, pretty much none of them are getting paid, for example.
I find you lack in societal creativety sad.
Imagine trying to manage such a big society by giving decision power to fewer people who can’t possibly fathom the complexity of the system they’re trying to control.
What would happen to those corporations without the government enforcing their property? Have you ever tried to seize a McDonalds to distribute food to the homeless?
People have property rights too. I wouldn’t want someone seizing the food in my fridge to feed the homeless. Property rights are a good thing actually. The problem isn’t the government “protecting” corporations. It’s that wealth grants a greater degree of control over government due to corruption.
Ultimately though it’s a pointless discussion since anarchists are never going to see what they envision implemented beyond weirdo hippie commune towns because their ideas don’t scale up.
I wouldn’t want anyone to seize the food in your fridge. Unless with “seize” you mean “fill up unprompted” because people know you need to eat and that’s enough reason to give you food, and maybe you’re busy all the time with constructing bridges or whatnot so they also cook for you.
And while corruption is an issue, it’s not the only issue: The very act of having lots of capital to throw around allows companies to direct policy, you e.g. don’t need to grease hands to get different municipalities to overbid each other with tax breaks for your new fidget spinner factory. The BS is inherent in the system.
As to scaling: Possibly. Possibly not. I’d argue that it can’t yet be envisioned, not even by anarchists themselves (and we’re aware of that, hence all the gradualism)… but as you acknowledged that it can work in the small, what happens if all the municipalities we have turn into hippie communes? Would they elect, among themselves, an Emperor Commune to rule over them? I don’t think so. They’d find ways to cooperate at eye level. How that will look in detail, as said, I have no idea, it’s probably going to involve federation and plenty of subsidiarity.
Practically, right now, it makes no difference as most of us are not living in hippie commune towns. First step would be to get there, then we can think about luxury gay space anarchism.
Those small communes only work because everyone is opting in for the anarchist model. Most people have no interest in that model, and so it will never scale beyond such small communities where everyone opts in.
It especially isn’t going to work as soon as you reach the scale where tribalism sets in. That’s a natural human behaviour and cannot be eliminated. The human brain craves an “us versus them” narrative. You know this to be true, because your brain does it too, even if you suppress that part of your brain, it’s still there and you’re aware of it. Some of us can rise above it, but we all know that especially in large groups, humans revert to their more base instincts. The only way to prevent that tendency from dominating society is with the structure imposed by a government.
Like, how exactly would you envision anarchism working in NYC, with the current population of NYC? Not some hypothetical group of people who’ve all drunk the anarchism Kool aid. Literally just how does it work in a city that big with regular people who haven’t read your anarchist newsletter? Because you will never get everyone to agree that anarchism is the way to go. So you’re going to have to come up with a model that works for people even if they don’t want to be part of it.
Except if the state is a community voting on how they should be policed, it isn’t really violence, is it?
No it’s still definitely violence. Like, day to day, you try to use violence as little as possible but it is necessary for the laws of society to be backed by violence or people would ignore them. “Violence” doesn’t have to refer to killing people, it means the use of force against somebody without their consent (killing them, arresting them, or evicting/exiling them).
The state we have right now in America and most of Europe is a community that decides how it wants to be policed (i.e. a democracy). Different jurisdictions make different policing decisions and have different outcomes, but they all follow that structure.
The point I was making was that any attempt by anarchists to “overthrow the state” is silly because the “state” will return in a new form as power reconsolidates. If you consider a recognized federal or state government to be a “state” but an armed “anarchist” militia that runs a city to not be a state, that’s just a silly semantic argument.