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this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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Real question: what do anarchists expect society to do/become and why is it better?
Nuanced answers only
So if you ask a group of 5 leftists of any sort how they imagine society might be structured you'll get 6 answers. Anarchists are no different, it's difficult because it's off the map yeah?
The common thread is a society with no involuntary impositions of power and authority. That isn't no rules, many societies in the past and present have varying degrees of hierarchy and even within the same society the degree of hierarchy can change depending on what groups of people are doing.
you know how when you organise a family gathering nobody is "in charge" exactly? people select tasks they are suited to or feel it's their turn to do and go about doing them. People might choose to defer decisions to another person but always retain the ability to withdraw that consent and so on?
Anarchists imagine a society more like that, where when a person wants something done they assemble a group of people, communicate their ideas, reach a consensus on whether it should or shouldn't be done, if people agree then they organise themselves into a group to accomplish the task.
It's really not so different from how you probably conduct yourself most of the time. It's actually kinda rare for people to use coercive violence to get people to cooperate. Anarchists think we can all just take a few more steps towards being anarchists all the time.
As to why would it be better? well what feels better: cooking at a community gathering or working at a restaurant with your boss breathing down your neck?
This sounds a whole lot like the indigenous peoples of various lands until the imperial machines of war rolled them over. These days, I don't think you need a military budget rivaling America's, but I think some form of military defensive structures would need to remain in place to protect your massive hippie nation-state from opportunistic neighbors.
Ultimately this is the core problem as I see it - a hierarchical society will always be militarily stronger, practically by definition - and if history has taught us anything, it's that weak neighbors get eaten by their stronger neighbors.
Additionally I think most of these idealized community structures are overly optimistic about the likelihood of a charismatic leader coming along and getting people to follow them, and then not letting them withdraw that power. Anarchists talk about hierarchies without formal power structures, but what is actually stopping someone whose already effectively in charge from turning that power into something more permanent, especially if they've convinced the populace that they want that?
Its happened an endless amount of times all throughout history, and I really don't see why it wouldn't here. Ultimately it just seems like a fragile system that relies mostly on every single individual being perfectly rational and immune to the draw of populist leaders. Aka - completely unlike actual humans
Anarchists aren't unaware of these problems, if you're interested then there is a lot of ink spilled on the subject. Either from the perspective of actually existing anarchists or theoretical books.
Anarchists don't imagine some perfect static society but rather a set of evolving practices to guard against precisely what you're talking about. The less centralised things are the less vulnerable they are, and even if someone manages to start concentrating power that doesn't mean they're guaranteed to hold on to it for very long.
The history of the Spanish civil war might be quite interesting to you, as the anarchists had to fight the strongly backed fascists, obviously eventually they lost but they did pretty damn well! lots to learn there.
No involuntary impositions of power and authority is the centrist position. The anarchist position should be no impositions of power and authority even if they are voluntary. A perfect example of voluntary power and authority is wage labor. By any usable standard, wage labor is voluntary. Anarchists should object to wage labor because it involves a hierarchy of alienation. This violates workers' inalienable rights, which are rights that can't be given up even with consent
When somebody asks for an intro to anarchism I generally don't feel it's super useful to get deep into the weeds of definitions.
The salient point is no "I'm your boss do what I say or you starve" maybe "You asked me to teach you, practice these tasks or find another teacher"
What if I'm really into impositions of power and authority though? Like REALLY into it??
It's fine, we don't kink shame here
Most people have a very flaws understanding of anarchism. It absolutely is NOT a society without rules, that's chaos and where the most physically powerful will rule, which is objectively a terrible thing and a big step backwards.
Anarchism is not really a system of government, but the philosophical belief that there should not be a heiarchy in societal laws. It can be applied in many different forms of goverment, most commonly with democracy but there are plenty of anarcho-communist out there. The gist is that systems that promote one group being shown favor, especially at the expense of another, should be dismantled. And what replaces it should be set up to serve and protect all people evenly.
This usually means police abolition and refocusing that energy on the underlining reasons people break "the law". Like providing a minimum level of housing, income and food to all.
I can't summerize the books succiently, but if you are interested The Dispossed and The Conquest of Bread deals with more examples.
Just echoing Ursula K Le Guin's The Dispossessed is an fantastic read. It does a great job of contrasting anarchism with hierarchical societies without really playing favorites.
Her entire body of work is just fantastic, honestly my favorite author. I just finished The Lathe of Heaven the other day and really appreciate her sociological approach to sci-fi.
Do these people really believe only homeless and poor people are hurting other people?
Of course no one believes that, don't make hyperbolic strawmen. But you can't deny that poverty definitely drives a nontrivial percentage of crimes, and we have plenty enough resources to end poverty. Let's do that, and the remaining actual sociopaths can stay in prison for life. (But also let's make prison no longer a place where we torture and enslave people.)
Restructuring society around principles of Mutual Aid and other forms of Cooperative systems. Participatory Economics, for example, is a promising idea.
The chief philosophy is a rejection of all hierarchy, but not a rejection of order or society.
Looking at the replies it seems anarchism is about having strong yet diverging opinions on the definition of anarchism
Ooh, just like libertarianism!
(Don’t tell the anarchists I made that comparison)
Libertarianism original referd to anarchism actually. The modern usage of ultra-capitalist nonsense comes from people intentionally redefining the word cause they were mad that Liberalism no longer referd to what they were doing
They're doing the same thing now with Anarchism, hence Anarcho-Capitalism.
Libertarian still means anarchist pretty much everywhere, the US is the only place I know where it doesn't. Ancaps don't really exist outside of the US too at least not in any numbers to be relevant.
To be fair, AnCaps are irrelevant in the US as well, the GOP and DNC swallow the vast majority of mainstream politics. Everything else meaningful is grassroots.
As a libertarian socialist whos about three steps away from anarchism. They probably are giggling at you.
That's just the general leftist experience. From Marxist-Leninists to Orthodox Marxists to Anarcho-Communists to Anarcho-Syndicalists to Democratic Socialists to Left Communists (ICP flavor) to Left Communists (Dutch/German flavor) to Libertarian Socialists to Market Socialists to Marxist-Leninist-Maoists to Dengists to Council Communists to everything in between, each seemingly hates the guts of the others.
Ask any one from each of these and they will all have a general "worker ownership of the Means of Production is good" base, with about a million different takes on what that actually means and what that actually looks like.
In general, I think it's safe to say that democracy is a good thing, decentralization helps protect against Authoritarianism, and moving towards a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society is a good thing. Until then, people should learn and improve their understanding as much as possible, teach others, organize local communities and unions, and work on self-improvement.
I don't actually know all that much about it, but the anarchists that I know are all about communities and mutual support and stuff. So I guess they think government is bad and communities supporting each other is good.
Personally I wonder what they'd call it when a community gets really good at providing a particular type of support and they agree to pool their resources to efficiently provide said support to all members of the community.
Yes yes and then they discover that managing that shared pool of resources is quite the job so they all decide on a few key people to take on the task with specific roles. I think we're going somewhere with this!
So? Rotating certain roles in society is part of anarchist theory and common practice in anarchist organizations. Besides anarchists aren't opposed to assigning certain roles or managing resources. The point is how you do it i.e by actual democratic means.
But nobody is appointed any role for life or until a higher boss says so, this is the key difference. Also the decisions on that role are not done in a vacuum, they can't give orders and expect anyone to blindly follow it and never question. They have to be aligned with what the community wants, and if the person doesn't act accordingly anyone can step in.
You're basically describing a coop.
The thing is that these resources could get withdrawn in case that community can't won't supply that support anymore.
Different
Some people are so negatively affected by society and its structures, literally anything would be better.
See: Brodie in Dogma.
Some people are very shortsighted and don't comprehend how bad it can get. No one living in a G20 country can accurately make this claim
Most people talking about anarchy just want to f*** some s*** up because they feel powerless or threatened or boxed in. But that's not what anarchy is or how it functions as a community structure.
A good way to think about anarchism as an actual community structure, as a commune, is to think about the native Americans pre colonization.
Anarchism is not the absence of societal or authority structures, it's freedom to create your own rules within your community and exist separately from other communities.
So each native American tribe had their own rules and their own territory and within that territory their rules were absolute, but 20 mi over other tribe had their own rules and territory and their rules were absolute.
It's actually pretty similar to the idea of having separate states that get to make their own laws in the United States(guns and prostitutes are fine in one state but get you years of prison in another), except that anarchy has only worked in small groups because unless you have strict rules within each community, one bad actor can spoil an entire community of 200 people.
So after your tribe grows too large(a state) it's unsustainable without smaller communities(towns) within your tribe using bureaucracy/authority to keep people in line.
A dismantling of hierarchies of all kinds. No rulers, no masters. The people would manage themselves.
It's better because it's a society based on mutual aid instead of exploitation. There are different theories about how exactly it will look like or how you get there. But overall most agree that it's a non-hierarchical society, based on self-management and federalism. Decisions are made through direct democracy. If you want to read more there is a good chapter about it here Final Objectives: Social Revolution and Libertarian Socialism.
I think some anarchists are just angry. But "anarchy" as a type of government, means a society without leaders. (Anarchos means "without kings") just people living peacefully, helping each other, without anyone really needing to be in charge.
For more info read V for Vendetta. The movie didn't really cover this well, but the book makes it feel like the next stage of human evolution.
They don't really expect society. Society relies on rules and common understanding, actual anarchy would lack society.
Anarchy is order. Rules and comon understandings are kinda central to anarchist theory. Anarchy is a common understanding.
I can tell you Anarchism is misunderstood. Sure, there are some utopians, but every political ideology has them. Personally, I believe syndicalism is the way to go, that's why I'm in the IWW. A federation of industrial unions with a focus on creating a culture of care and personal autonomy in the small scale could work. Sure, right now there's a lot of work needing to be done, but what can you expect after decades of repression?