Anarchism

[Degenerate Heart of HetRio]

That is until a Chinese Indonesian comes to live with them. Then it's rapey pillage murder time.

In Brazil milicianos need no different ethnic origin to start oppressing you and fucking your life.

They're just alike drug dealers in Rio de Janeiro, only older, more trained (often they're former state security agents) and more socially conservative.

[Zottistan]

It doesn't matter if they accept it or not, as I've said, several times...

A successful military organization is a state, or a part of a state.

It's not a state. The monopoly on violence is still on the hands of the state/community, they're just the enforcers.
Cars have engine, but we can't call the engine as a car, even though it's a part of the car.

Hence, "or part of a state". If it's a rogue army that doesn't answer to anybody but still rules an area, it'd be a state by itself.

If every individual in a group has shared control over a body with a monopoly on violence, the group as a whole is a state, yes. That's pretty much what a modern democracy is, after all...

It's the widely accepted anarchist definition, according to Max Weber.

Well yes, since the community enforced monopoly on violence as a whole, you may call them a 'state'. But, it doesn't negate the whole point of anarchism, which is a society without governing bodies. In an anarchist society, nobody governs no one.

Well, the point of anarchism is actually statelessness, or freedom from hierarchal control.

But think about it: if there are rules and they are being enforced with violence, there is government going on. People are being governed. If a state exist and that state enforces rules (for instance, by preventing the rise of state-like entities), it is governing within it's jurisdiction.

What are you defining "government" as?

If they're not the only people allowed to use violence, what's stopping raiders and state-like entities from forming?

The community as a whole of course. Like I said before, every members of the community has the same duty and rights to contribute to the defense of the community, whether they have the skill or not.

So, there is a monopoly on violence, the community as a whole is a state, and the community as a whole uses violence to enforce its rules.

This isn't anarchy.

It's a monopoly held by the community... All you're doing is shifting the monopoly to a larger group of people, or to the group making the laws/rules. Democratic policing is still policing, and a police force in any form can't function without a monopoly on legitimate violence. It doesn't matter if everybody in the community contributes, in the least.

Yes, the whole community monopolizes on violence. The security organizations on such a society act based upon the laws agreed by the whole member of the community. But still, it's pretty much a society without any governing institutions.

The society as a whole is a governing institution.

[Sociobiology]

they also existed in a time without trained soldiers, firearms, or bombs, whats your point?

Although we have advanced weaponries, we also have the advantages of advanced medical treatments, ethical codes in warfare, and so on. I think that reduces unnecessary casualties in war.

actually the biggest difference is we don't exterminate our enemies including women and children anymore.
And that is only because there is very little threat of retaliation thanks to the state, band societies do tend to exterminate each other because the risk of retaliation is very high if they leave people alive.
States still had orders of magnitude lower rates of violence even when they just had bronze tools.

and while they might inherit those achievements without large populations they will not be able to maintain them.

Why not? Sure they can if they can manage to find the people specialized in those achievements.

they don't have the population to support that many specialists, it takes literally hundreds of thousands of people to support one heart surgeon or one MRI repair man, it takes even more to build an MRI machine. The sheer number of specialized laborers you need to maintain modern technology is staggering, thats why states advanced so much faster than any other society they could manage huge populations and huge populations gives you many many specialists. informal policy and law enforcement only works with less than ~300 people where you can rely on instinctual social pressure and the ability to keep track of everyone else in the community. States are so large they have to have people who specialize in policy making and/or law enforcement because there are just too many people to do it any other way, but that also gives them the population to have many specialists in the first place.

you don't find people who are specialized, you create them through labor surplus, food surplus, education, and training.

Oh and two 2/3 of the stateless societies listed are modern ones

without the modern ways and lifestyle of today's society of course.

yes because they literally can't support them.

[Norstal]

That is until a Chinese Indonesian comes to live with them. Then it's rapey pillage murder time.

In case you haven't noticed, I'm talking about the concept of such security system. Which is appliable in an anarchist society.
Exclusive problems won't always appear in all sorts of scenarios

Please, don't bullshit your way out of this. Crime rates are low because they're not reported. I've lived there and if this is an example of anarchy that you can come up with, then I hope that it will never come to fruition because of how xenophobic and racist a society like this can be.

Well, guess what? any society can be racist and xenophobic, be it statist or anarchist. It's not a problem exclusive to the latter.

Of course it can. Except that with states, it can be stopped. The U.S was able to stop segregation and much of racism in the 1960s because it had a strong central government to enforce it. If anarchist communes were able to solve ethnic issues just like that, there wouldn't be states in the first place. These "exclusive problems" were all able to be solved by states.

Seriously, why is it that anarchists want anarchy without studying how states even came to be.

[Sociobiology]

well there is, as long as you keep your society very small (~<300 people)

I doubt that. Besides, are we talking about a country or a small tribe?

A society, and bands and tribes manage social order entirely through individual interaction, because literally every person can keep track of what ever other person is doing, If Bob is behaving in an unsavory way every single person in the community learns about it very quickly and each can exert individual pressure against Bob. As the society grows and exceeds this number they quickly fall to in fighting and split into two separate tribes or bands and go their separate ways. It is quite literally the democracy at its most fundamental, however it is limited by the number of people a single brain can keep track of. For it to work I have to be able to keep track of the behavior (through direct observation or gossip) of every other person, so I know who to trust and who to shun, which your brain can only do for so many people.

[Genivaria]

And to add on to that, one of the biggest examples of people dissenting from the vote led to a fucking CIVIL WAR in my country.
So yes people will dissent if they disagree.

They dissent because they feel that their interest are being trumped over by the larger group's interest. That is a problem within a representative democracy, not every interest is being represented by the people in the government.

But in an anarchist society, which will have a smaller number of community members, sense of solidarity, brotherhood, etc. will be stronger. If there's dissent, there's only a small chance it would turn out to be a bloody civil war.

And you think the same won't happen in a small direct democracy?
I never got a sufficient answer to my question from earlier.
Without coercion how do you make dissenters fall in line with the group's decision?

[Maqo]

And you think the same won't happen in a small direct democracy?
I never got a sufficient answer to my question from earlier.
Without coercion how do you make dissenters fall in line with the group's decision?

No, by staying in the place where the decision is made by the opposing majority, they are giving their implicit voluntary consent for those rules to be enforced by the private security firm employed by the decision-making-body. The key is it is totally voluntary - and if they don't like the decision they can just go find some other commune to live in which exactly agrees with their ideals all the time.
This is different from the social contract and states because reasons.

[Pola]

We are against Anarchism, because without a law, people will act crazy.

[Dejanic]

We are against Anarchism, because without a law, people will act crazy.

That's a silly thing to say if you're a Communist, since Communism is stateless.

[NFA]

You know... I find it interesting that people have all sorts of opinions about anarchism, yet have never actually lived under it. I think that we should give Anarchism a try, as a social experiment, and then judge based on the results. MAYBE it would work, or most likely it would prove to be a flop. But either way at least we could put the debate to rest once and for all....

[Casita]

You know... I find it interesting that people have all sorts of opinions about anarchism, yet have never actually lived under it. I think that we should give Anarchism a try, as a social experiment, and then judge based on the results. MAYBE it would work, or most likely it would prove to be a flop. But either way at least we could put the debate to rest once and for all....

Didn't your founding fathers discuss things before they actually happened, or did their revolution happen accidently, then some how they won and decided to discuss it?

Not sure people that want liberation want to live under anything, but maybe a roof of some kind.

I've experienced anarchism on a small (temporary) scale during my time as an anarcho-primitivist, that is until the state came in on horse back. I'm not going to pretend that primitivism is the way to go for most people, in fact it would mean death for those that need medical attention, nor is my experience applicable to a sprawling urban environment. However, in my experience, domestic issues were handled without state intervention. Yes, the state intervened, but not for our well-being.

On a larger scale armed defense, expropriation of resources, building infrastructure, among other things would be necessary. That's why practical sciences are extremely important.

The reason why the debate goes on is because there are hundreds of thousands of people fighting for liberation around the world, at this very moment.

[Sociobiology]

And you think the same won't happen in a small direct democracy?
I never got a sufficient answer to my question from earlier.
Without coercion how do you make dissenters fall in line with the group's decision?

No, by staying in the place where the decision is made by the opposing majority, they are giving their implicit voluntary consent for those rules to be enforced by the private security firm employed by the decision-making-body. The key is it is totally voluntary - and if they don't like the decision they can just go find some other commune to live in which exactly agrees with their ideals all the time.
This is different from the social contract and states because reasons.

any particular reasons, because you just described the modern state exactly.

[Sociobiology]

You know... I find it interesting that people have all sorts of opinions about anarchism, yet have never actually lived under it. I think that we should give Anarchism a try, as a social experiment, and then judge based on the results. MAYBE it would work, or most likely it would prove to be a flop. But either way at least we could put the debate to rest once and for all....

I've never lived as a hunter gatherer, but I can honestly say I do not want to. Why would anecdotal evidence make that a better decision?

[Pola]

We are against Anarchism, because without a law, people will act crazy.

That's a silly thing to say if you're a Communist, since Communism is stateless.

I'm not communist anymore after the coup of 2 days ago.

[MERIZoC]

That's a silly thing to say if you're a Communist, since Communism is stateless.

I'm not communist anymore after the coup of 2 days ago.

…what coup?

[Pola]

Coup d'état. The communists are defeated. Democracy is restored.
Free and open elections are going to be held in August, for a new governement.
We'll restore are monarchy.

[Zottistan]

Coup d'état. The communists are defeated. Democracy is restored.
Free and open elections are going to be held in August, for a new governement.
We'll restore are monarchy.

General is out-of-character.

[Maqo]

No, by staying in the place where the decision is made by the opposing majority, they are giving their implicit voluntary consent for those rules to be enforced by the private security firm employed by the decision-making-body. The key is it is totally voluntary - and if they don't like the decision they can just go find some other commune to live in which exactly agrees with their ideals all the time.
This is different from the social contract and states because reasons.

any particular reasons, because you just described the modern state exactly.

Sorry, I thought the "because reasons" was sufficiently sarcasm-laden to point out that yes, I know that. Poe's Law, I guess.
But I have seen some 'anarchists' on this forum believe in exactly what I described above...

[Kuzestan]

Hence, "or part of a state". If it's a rogue army that doesn't answer to anybody but still rules an area, it'd be a state by itself.

Yeah I can agree with that.

Well, the point of anarchism is actually statelessness, or freedom from hierarchal control.

But think about it: if there are rules and they are being enforced with violence, there is government going on. People are being governed. If a state exist and that state enforces rules (for instance, by preventing the rise of state-like entities), it is governing within it's jurisdiction.

What are you defining "government" as?

I define it as a governing body of a state/community. Of course, we could all just consider that an anarchist society still has government. We can think that everyone in the community is the government, but that's where the line is drawn. In such a society, since everyone becomes the rulers of their own, no people are in the position to enforce their rules to another. Everyone in the community plays with the set of rules agreed by every of its members, with no governing bodies to enforce them except for themselves. This is the main difference between an anarchist society and a statist society, whereas the latter have a society being governed by a smaller number of people.

So, there is a monopoly on violence, the community as a whole is a state, and the community as a whole uses violence to enforce its rules.

This isn't anarchy.

Yes, you may call such a society a 'state'. But, like what I have described above, it is still an achievable society.

The society as a whole is a governing institution.

And since everyone's the governing institution, no small amount of people are going to enforce the rules onto a larger group of people.

[Kuzestan]

actually the biggest difference is we don't exterminate our enemies including women and children anymore.
And that is only because there is very little threat of retaliation thanks to the state, band societies do tend to exterminate each other because the risk of retaliation is very high if they leave people alive.
States still had orders of magnitude lower rates of violence even when they just had bronze tools.

Yes, the result of a war between stateless communities might turn out to be that way. But it's also possible that the communities might have an agreement if a conflict did break out among them, and the agreement might include sparing unarmed innocent civillians, not killing a wounded prisoner, and so on.)

they don't have the population to support that many specialists, it takes literally hundreds of thousands of people to support one heart surgeon or one MRI repair man, it takes even more to build an MRI machine. The sheer number of specialized laborers you need to maintain modern technology is staggering, thats why states advanced so much faster than any other society they could manage huge populations and huge populations gives you many many specialists. informal policy and law enforcement only works with less than ~300 people where you can rely on instinctual social pressure and the ability to keep track of everyone else in the community. States are so large they have to have people who specialize in policy making and/or law enforcement because there are just too many people to do it any other way, but that also gives them the population to have many specialists in the first place.

you don't find people who are specialized, you create them through labor surplus, food surplus, education, and training.

It could be solved by forming an alliance/cooperation pact between such communities, so they can complement each other's disadvantage with their own specialties (i.e. a community which has control of an electric power plant can supply the electricity to other communities in exchange for supplies and raw materials, a community with more members specialized in advanced medical treatments might trade their skills with another community for a year's harvest, and so on.0

yes because they literally can't support them.

Because they didn't form such cooperation pact that I have mentioned above.

[Zottistan]

Well, the point of anarchism is actually statelessness, or freedom from hierarchal control.

But think about it: if there are rules and they are being enforced with violence, there is government going on. People are being governed. If a state exist and that state enforces rules (for instance, by preventing the rise of state-like entities), it is governing within it's jurisdiction.

What are you defining "government" as?

I define it as a governing body of a state/community. Of course, we could all just consider that an anarchist society still has government. We can think that everyone in the community is the government, but that's where the line is drawn. In such a society, since everyone becomes the rulers of their own, no people are in the position to enforce their rules to another. Everyone in the community plays with the set of rules agreed by every of its members, with no governing bodies to enforce them except for themselves. This is the main difference between an anarchist society and a statist society, whereas the latter have a society being governed by a smaller number of people.

Going by the actual definitions that anarchists themselves use, anarchy has government.

And everybody is in a position to enforce their rules on others. Anybody who disagrees with the collective opinion on law will have views forced on him. What you're talking about is direct democracy, and it's a form of government.

So, there is a monopoly on violence, the community as a whole is a state, and the community as a whole uses violence to enforce its rules.

This isn't anarchy.

Yes, you may call such a society a 'state'. But, like what I have described above, it is still an achievable society.

Has a state =/= anarchist.

The society as a whole is a governing institution.

And since everyone's the governing institution, no small amount of people are going to enforce the rules onto a larger group of people.

Nope. Instead a large group of people enforce the rules onto a smaller group of people.

[Kuzestan]

And you think the same won't happen in a small direct democracy?

Yes, but with a much more smaller chance, since the bonds between people in a small but solid society tends to be much more stronger.

I never got a sufficient answer to my question from earlier.
Without coercion how do you make dissenters fall in line with the group's decision?

They could talk some sense to the dissenters, and it it's still doesn't working, the dissenters could just stay and carry out the decision unwillingly, or move to another commune. It's pretty much like your average dissenters in organizations and political parties.

[Kuzestan]

I define it as a governing body of a state/community. Of course, we could all just consider that an anarchist society still has government. We can think that everyone in the community is the government, but that's where the line is drawn. In such a society, since everyone becomes the rulers of their own, no people are in the position to enforce their rules to another. Everyone in the community plays with the set of rules agreed by every of its members, with no governing bodies to enforce them except for themselves. This is the main difference between an anarchist society and a statist society, whereas the latter have a society being governed by a smaller number of people.

Going by the actual definitions that anarchists themselves use, anarchy has government.

And everybody is in a position to enforce their rules on others. Anybody who disagrees with the collective opinion on law will have views forced on him. What you're talking about is direct democracy, and it's a form of government.

Yes, you may call such a society a 'state'. But, like what I have described above, it is still an achievable society.

Has a state =/= anarchist.

And since everyone's the governing institution, no small amount of people are going to enforce the rules onto a larger group of people.

Nope. Instead a large group of people enforce the rules onto a smaller group of people.

Well I give up , an anarchist might explain it better than me though.

Edit: I still think it's an achievable society for some reasons.

[Genivaria]

And you think the same won't happen in a small direct democracy?

Yes, but with a much more smaller chance, since the bonds between people in a small but solid society tends to be much more stronger.

I never got a sufficient answer to my question from earlier.
Without coercion how do you make dissenters fall in line with the group's decision?

They could talk some sense to the dissenters, and it it's still doesn't working, the dissenters could just stay and carry out the decision unwillingly, or move to another commune. It's pretty much like your average dissenters in organizations and political parties.

So love it or leave it basically? How is this different from a state?

[Kuzestan]

Of course it can. Except that with states, it can be stopped. The U.S was able to stop segregation and much of racism in the 1960s because it had a strong central government to enforce it. If anarchist communes were able to solve ethnic issues just like that, there wouldn't be states in the first place. These "exclusive problems" were all able to be solved by states.

What states can do, stateless communities can do to. Segregation might be the best answer if racism and xenophobia still exists in some anarchist communities, like these folks. Forced segregation by the state doesn't always bring the result that we wanted though. It may look like that everyone's accepting their neighbors, but the hostile environment could still be felt.

Seriously, why is it that anarchists want anarchy without studying how states even came to be.

I doubt that's the case.