Why do you believe in it, do you approve it in theory or also in practice? I think a lot of people approve of anarchism in theory but rejects the possibility of it to be put in practice unless we live in an utopia… which I don’t think we do, unfortunately. Maybe techno-anarchism would be more practical? Technology is such badly regulated and ordinary people are punished harsher than corporate so I really think techno-anarchism deserves a lot more attention (not saying anarchism itself doesn’t) I see a lot of people here are more knowledgeable than me so don’t take my word so seriously, maybe I shouldn’t be expressing my idiot thoughts on it, or maybe just embrace it and ask regardless of any shame I might get.
I’m not trying to be mean to anyone, just genuinely wanted to discuss with whoever is willing to chip in on the topic.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchism/comments/jp3q4p/comment/gbesw1p/
About preventing crime, the short version is that it starts in the home.
Much violent crime can be traced back to cultural factors. Violent crime, such as murder, would probably decrease dramatically in an anarchist society because most of its causes — poverty, televised glorification of violence, prisons and police, warfare, sexism, and the normalization of individualistic and anti-social behaviors — would disappear or decrease.
The differences between two Zapotec communities illustrates that peace is a choice. The Zapotec are a sedentary agrarian indigenous nation living on land that is now claimed by the state of Mexico. One Zapotec community, La Paz, has a yearly homicide rate of 3.4/100,000. A neighboring Zapotec community has the much higher homicide rate of 18.1/100,000. What social attributes go along with the more peaceful way of life? Unlike their more violent neighbors, the La Paz Zapotec do not beat children; accordingly, children see less violence and use less violence in their play. Similarly, wife-beating is rare and not considered acceptable; women are considered equal to men, and enjoy an autonomous economic activity that is important to the life of the community so they are not dependent on men. Regarding child-rearing, the implications of this particular comparison are corroborated by at least one cross-cultural study on socialization, which found that warm, affectionate socialization techniques correlate with low levels of conflict in society.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-anarchy-works#toc42
As for the re-emergence of hierarchies, I think that the notion of anarchism is essentially ‘checks and balances’ turned up to 11. You get to a society that’s an ecosystem of fluid social relationships, and an anti-authoritarian culture which makes it impossible in a million ways for anyone to accumulate power. If we could get there, I think it would be more robust than current liberal democracy, where the branches of government can cooperate and you need buy-in from less people to enable power to be accumulated.
IMO, good anarchist praxis is to 1) encourage and popularize anti-authoritarian parenting methods and 2) build strong community groups and mutual aid networks.
In the now, I believe in Mutualism and Solidarity Economies as a means for preserving liberty and keeping one another safe.
Hey, you guys showed up on “the front page” again. Real sorry about that.
But, hey. IMO, lemmy is anarchism. So there you have it.
There are plenty of anarchist communities working in real life, so, yeah, it’s viable. You can join an anarchist collective, or even start your own. These collectives are the reason life under capitalism is viable in a lot of countries. These collectives exists right now in your city, helping each other and the poor. You don’t need permission from the oppressor to be an anarchist, just do it, stop subjugating yourself to the oppression, stop accepting it, normalizing it, and build the life you want with others. As others pointed out, anarchy is inside you first, it’s not an external system, you decide to stop participating in violence. Anarchists then, tend to find each other and form communities. Be part of one, experience human life as it should, and become ungovernable.
My heart says anarchy and my brain says communism. I can’t live without either, so you can’t make me choose. I’ll maintain a materialist outlook and continue to act accordingly.
The empirical evidence that we have available seems to indicate that anarchy is viable if people are either accustomed to it, or otherwise actively want it. This prevents a power vacuum, because people aren’t seeking a ruler to guide them. In situations involving governmental collapse or some other rupturing of the social order, people are expecting that guidance and not receiving it. This allows a new, usually more violent authority to step in and take control. Obviously we want to avoid that.
Note that the examples we have of semi-anarchistic societies aren’t perfect examples of what we want. Some only lasted a short time, or were small scale, or had some other flaws. They do serve to illustrate parts of anarchist theory, though. There are also various projects that do the same. The internet is one major example; a global information network used by 2/3rds of the world’s population, but without a world government to create and manage it.
We have yet to see a large-scale, long-lived attempt to fully apply modern anarchism. At least part of the reason for this is that the left got intellectually derailed by Marxism and its derivatives for about a century. Prior to that, anarchism had been rising in popularity. We’ve been growing again for the last few decades, so we’ll see what the future holds.
My thoughts about power balance, power vacuum and so on are simple.
Those who’d want to take power are usually cowards. It’s no good to dead. It’s no good if there’s nothing remaining to have power over. The one who can destroy a thing owns it.
There’s the Cold War MAD doctrine which was employed by all sides and simultaneously vilified by green, pacifist etc parties. But maybe now we can see how the world without MAD looks and see that it’s better when everyone is armed to their teeth.
You can come to the truth from anywhere if you seek it honestly. It’s the same with weapons - everyone arming themselves and being ready to defend themselves create a group immunity, where sociopathic behaviors get rewarded less, and sociopaths are more challenged in accumulating power. Again, the only real kind of ownership is where you can destroy your property. You own your life when you are capable of sacrificing it as you wish. When a society is armed to its teeth, then its power imposed upon any kind of power-accumulating authorities is more than theirs, and when it’s disarmed, it’s nothing compared to theirs.
People being accustomed to anarchy and actively wanting it are not enough. People want to try all kinds of things. People fear. People are malicious. People want worse societies when they believe they will be the ones imposing injustice upon others. People are also just stupid.
The Internet is not an example of anarchy, of course. It’s nothing without its backbone cables built with participation of governments and enormous corporations and treated as strategic assets. It’s no more anarchist than sea ports. There was a sprinkle of anarchy there in its transient years from an elitarian scientific thing to a common medium. That was not stable. Nothing anarchist can be stable in a system of dominating hierarchy.
I admit it was easy to buy into this fairy tale when I was a kid. In 2006 it seemed that the humanity is one step from becoming free and, well, humane.
All that said, I think eventually we win.
But we can never know, because our perception is always poisoned. It’s much easier to do that than to thoroughly weed us out (it has a better characteristic considering their superior power, while the latter is not plausible to do). That’s what the adversary is always doing. Any “smart and considered” action is likely wrong, because it’s based on compromised perception. This is just like scammers calling you to “help catch criminals” or something.
The only way anarchism ever succeeds is by acting on rigid principle, as if fighting blindfolded.
The Internet is not an example of anarchy, of course. It’s nothing without its backbone cables built with participation of governments and enormous corporations and treated as strategic assets. It’s no more anarchist than sea ports. There was a sprinkle of anarchy there in its transient years from an elitarian scientific thing to a common medium. That was not stable. Nothing anarchist can be stable in a system of dominating hierarchy.
I admit it was easy to buy into this fairy tale when I was a kid. In 2006 it seemed that the humanity is one step from becoming free and, well, humane.
You’re missing the point of the example. I’m not pushing techno-libertarian utopianism here. I’m not even talking about what the internet does, I’m talking about what it is: A globe-spanning megaproject that connects (nearly?) every country, and is used by a full 2/3rds of existing humans. And it was made without a supreme central authority forcing everyone to cooperate in its creation and maintenance. ARPANET was created by the US, but no one forced the Russians or the Chinese to adopt the IP protocol on their computers and connect to their neighbors.
This is important because a super common anti-anarchist talking point is that people won’t cooperate (at least not at scale) unless an overarching authority forces them to. The existence of the internet demolishes that argument. It would be fundamentally impossible if that talking point were true.
It’s funny because China (and a number of countries including the US, but particularly China) doesn’t really like how open and decentralized the Internet is. If the Chinese government had their way it would not look like this, but somehow they were pushed to join in.
ARPANET was created by the US, but no one forced the Russians or the Chinese to adopt the IP protocol on their computers and connect to their neighbors.
Also no one forced people to adapt railway gauge or PSTN standards.
This is important because a super common anti-anarchist talking point is that people won’t cooperate (at least not at scale) unless an overarching authority forces them to. The existence of the internet demolishes that argument. It would be fundamentally impossible if that talking point were true.
I can’t agree. It’s the lower authorities submitting to the higher authority. That happens. A small group of authorities is close to one. In fact none are monolithic.
