Anarchism Discussion Thread

[Werreales]

Just... How does education work in Anarchism? Private schools?
And generaly, anarchist societies are pretty primitivists...

[Werreales]

how? power inequalities still exist, their just not legally constrained. so if anything you are empowering narcissists and bigots.

No, you as a defender of the state wish to maintain a power structure and social system that allows tyrants to rise to power.

Anarchism is the first door for tyrants.

[Conscentia]

Then it would not be anarchy. If people do not want anarchy, then there will not be anarchy. Through education and the experience of freedom, I would not expect this to be an issue. If an anarchist society were to exist it would have come into being through people rebelling and annihilating the old order upon anarchist principles, so logically they would not be in favour of re-establishing hierarchy (though it is a extremely important point that we would have to be vigilant in guarding against centralising, hierarchical, and authoritarian tendencies). Likely, after an anarchist revolution there will be some peoples who choose not to be part of the anarchist society, and might establish authoritarian societies among themselves - that is fine: it is not free communism if people cannot choose to live a different way. The only issue would be if such non-anarchist societies, or power-hungry elements within anarchist societies, attempt to establish authority over those who do not want it. In that case we will defend ourselves.

Defend yourselves how? Would you not being violating their "freedom"? The defence is surely coercive.

What do you mean "refuse to cooperate"? Do you mean what of people who do not wish to be part of society? Then they can choose not to be, though I feel sorry for them. Do you mean disruptive elements? Dissent will always be the breeding ground of freedom. If they want to violate our freedom? We will defend ourselves, just as we fight against the powers that violate our freedom today.

I guess "disruptive elements".
How does your application of coercive force in 'defence' not constitute a majoritarian hierarchy where the majority command and dissenters obey? I mean, how is that any different from a majoritarian democracy?

I disagree that it is a case of simply "hoping for the best". I have pointed at the concept of "building the new world in the shell of the old", in that revolution does not so much create a blank slate as remove the roadblock of tyranny and allow the ideas, relations, and practices which have brought us thus far to expand into every aspect of life as we desire and as necessary to face the challenges of life and society (what I am talking of is the social revolution, which is a process that would continue for many years after the insurrection that had cleared the way). Revolution is necessarily a rupture with the existent, it is a risk - not a gamble but the unknown of freedom.

You admit it's a risk and an unknown. I don't see how that isn't just hoping for the best.

Is freedom the only justification you use?
Additionally, what about laws? Do you see them as having a place in an anarchist society? If so, how are they decided and altered?

[Camelza]

Can an anarchist please give a straight answer as to how a large population would be feasibly governed without hierarchy or authority of any kind?

Some anarchists while rejecting hierarchy (a required tenet for anyone who claims to have anarchist beliefs) accept authority in the forms of laws, comittess, organisations, government and laws.
I think the answer would be, in my opinion; A population of any size that has been properly educated on social matters and has adopted a social, egalitarian stance on everyday life. A society with advanced technology would be also quite more easy to implement an anarchist pattern to in contrast to a luddite one.

[Arcturus Novus]

Lately I've been reading ancom literature. It seems interesting, and I'd like to see it implemented, but I can't think of a peaceful way to do so.

[Threlizdun]

Just... How does education work in Anarchism? Private schools?

Considering private property is incompatible with anarchism, private schools definitely would not be the source of education.

Modern education is largely grounded in the age of imperialism, where uniform programs were established to socialize people into behavioral patterns that were beneficial to maintaining the state bureaucracy and the civil society necessary to support it. It was designed to ensure you could take anyone from any area under your control and have them able to perform the same task. As uniformity and efficiency are the priority of the system, critical thinking cannot possibly hope to thrive. Education is less about teaching people about the world and what they may do in it as much as it is about construction narratives for how they are to view the world and dictating what they are permitted to do with their lives. The current model of education is integral to the maintaining of state control, and it must be abolished if there is any hope the state likewise being abolished.

A proposal for how anarchist education would differ has been suggested by Paul Goodman. He recognized that most of the beneficial education we actually received came outside of schools. He felt it was best to learn through experience, and recommended education be transferred to factories, parks, museums, and similar environments where students would actively participate in their education. He recommended replacing formal schools with discussion groups of no more than twenty people.

There is further evidence people have been finding to support such an informal and unorganized standard of learning. Our greatest period of learning occurs through our infancy. It remains strong throughout our early childhood. Young children are seldom sat down and lectured for hours about the way of the world; they get interested in something, so they try to figure it out. If they can't figure it out, they ask. Teachers have tried applying this to older students and it works well. Students become more interested in the subject and try much harder to be able to learn about it, and only tend to demand help once they truly feel like they need it. Even then, they rarely actually give up. This attitude of giving up and asking for help immediately is a byproduct of our formal education system. Children are instructed on what they must learn and how they must learn it. You aren't even provided with the opportunity to try to educate yourself about the subject or look for education among your peers.

Education in an anarchist society is largely built upon what could easily be a prerequisite for an anarchist society, a system of decentralized, informal education through small discussion groups of individuals who actively participate in the area of their study and how attempt to perform their tasks as well as possible before having to ask for help from professionals. It's the only rational system that we can hope to see innovation expected from those who undergo it, rather than innovation confined to a few outliers that manage to escape the limitations the existing system places upon them.

And generaly, anarchist societies are pretty primitivists...

If you're discussing anarchism as it existed throughout most of human history, then yes, hunter-gatherer tribes were the most common form of organization for anarchists. Of course, at the time that would neither be considered primitivist or anarchist, but simply how people lived until the adoption of agriculture. If you are discussing the the societies actually founded on modern anarchist philosophy, primitivists would make up a minority of such settlements.

[Prussia-Steinbach]

Lately I've been reading ancom literature. It seems interesting, and I'd like to see it implemented, but I can't think of a peaceful way to do so.

And?

[Prussia-Steinbach]

No, you as a defender of the state wish to maintain a power structure and social system that allows tyrants to rise to power.

Anarchism is the first door for tyrants.

Yes, an organized, armed, freedom-loving society is just an open door for power-hungry dictators-to-be.

[Sociobiology]

Anarchism is the first door for tyrants.

Yes, an organized, armed, freedom-loving society is just an open door for power-hungry dictators-to-be.

basically yeah, the really bad dictators have been problems because they were charismatic and got a lot of people on their side.

[Sociobiology]

Just... How does education work in Anarchism? Private schools?

Considering private property is incompatible with anarchism, private schools definitely would not be the source of education.

Modern education is largely grounded in the age of imperialism, where uniform programs were established to socialize people into behavioral patterns that were beneficial to maintaining the state bureaucracy and the civil society necessary to support it. It was designed to ensure you could take anyone from any area under your control and have them able to perform the same task. As uniformity and efficiency are the priority of the system, critical thinking cannot possibly hope to thrive. Education is less about teaching people about the world and what they may do in it as much as it is about construction narratives for how they are to view the world and dictating what they are permitted to do with their lives. The current model of education is integral to the maintaining of state control, and it must be abolished if there is any hope the state likewise being abolished.

A proposal for how anarchist education would differ has been suggested by Paul Goodman. He recognized that most of the beneficial education we actually received came outside of schools. He felt it was best to learn through experience, and recommended education be transferred to factories, parks, museums, and similar environments where students would actively participate in their education. He recommended replacing formal schools with discussion groups of no more than twenty people.

There is further evidence people have been finding to support such an informal and unorganized standard of learning. Our greatest period of learning occurs through our infancy. It remains strong throughout our early childhood. Young children are seldom sat down and lectured for hours about the way of the world; they get interested in something, so they try to figure it out. If they can't figure it out, they ask. Teachers have tried applying this to older students and it works well. Students become more interested in the subject and try much harder to be able to learn about it, and only tend to demand help once they truly feel like they need it. Even then, they rarely actually give up. This attitude of giving up and asking for help immediately is a byproduct of our formal education system. Children are instructed on what they must learn and how they must learn it. You aren't even provided with the opportunity to try to educate yourself about the subject or look for education among your peers.

Education in an anarchist society is largely built upon what could easily be a prerequisite for an anarchist society, a system of decentralized, informal education through small discussion groups of individuals who actively participate in the area of their study and how attempt to perform their tasks as well as possible before having to ask for help from professionals. It's the only rational system that we can hope to see innovation expected from those who undergo it, rather than innovation confined to a few outliers that manage to escape the limitations the existing system places upon them.

And generaly, anarchist societies are pretty primitivists...

If you're discussing anarchism as it existed throughout most of human history, then yes, hunter-gatherer tribes were the most common form of organization for anarchists. Of course, at the time that would neither be considered primitivist or anarchist, but simply how people lived until the adoption of agriculture. If you are discussing the the societies actually founded on modern anarchist philosophy, primitivists would make up a minority of such settlements.

you just described all primitive forms of education, and the universal problem with those is uninformed people educating uninformed people just leads to ignorance and superstition.

[Sociobiology]

Can an anarchist please give a straight answer as to how a large population would be feasibly governed without hierarchy or authority of any kind?

Some anarchists while rejecting hierarchy (a required tenet for anyone who claims to have anarchist beliefs) accept authority in the forms of laws, comittess, organisations, government and laws.
I think the answer would be, in my opinion; A population of any size that has been properly educated on social matters and has adopted a social, egalitarian stance on everyday life. A society with advanced technology would be also quite more easy to implement an anarchist pattern to in contrast to a luddite one.

not really small societies can't support modern technology, not enough specialists.

[The Liberated Territories]

Anarchists should move to Somalia, if they don't like the state.

I'll help you pack!

So an anarchist area contains a strong centralized presidency like Somalia who has a large military, and stronger de-facto autonomous entities within them (like Somaliland), and is also slowly rooting out pirates by reclaiming the lost ports, and interior?

Yes, actually. That is the natural outgrowth of the anarchist order...in fact, we are currently living in anarchy right now, as all civilization had arisen from a barbaric anarchy to enlightenment, law, and order.

No, you as a defender of the state wish to maintain a power structure and social system that allows tyrants to rise to power.

Anarchism is the first door for tyrants.

This quote better reflects my feelings. A reduced state is the only possible compromiser between freedom and slavery, anarchy and order.

[Sociobiology]

It is rarely the most intelligent or just that assume positions of power. Meritocracy is fundamentally impossible.
Humanity seemed to do fine for the thousand of years that we didn't live under authoritarian institutions of minority rule.

Humanity wasn't living in large populations with the division of labour for those years. Humanity also didn't have an infrastructure to maintain.
And actually, I'm not convinced they did do "fine" at all. I hear the murder rate was very high, the carrying-capacity was low, and the hunter-gatherer lifestyle doesn't really appeal to me.

for one thing it has a LOT of violent deaths, like hundreds of times what even shitty modern societies manage.

[Sociobiology]

how? power inequalities still exist, their just not legally constrained. so if anything you are empowering narcissists and bigots.

I don't know if I follow.

variation still exists, everything from who is more charismatic to who owns the better land. all your doing is enabling exploitation of those differences, unless you are going back to band society population levels, in which case you can kiss modern technology goodbye.

in small societies cheaters and hoarders are punished because everyone knows everyone else, as soon Bob cheats on deal or tries to hoard foot, everyone in the society knows so Bob gets shunned or killed. but in large societies Bob can find a steady supply of complete strangers for his whole life, there are just too many degrees of separation for enough people to know and care about Bob to do anything. Hence laws which are enforced and investigated independently, its a one stop social network so to speak. large societies make up for burden created by this by being able to support lots of specialists and thus highly advanced technology and intensive infrastructure. but by its very nature you can't have the huge numbers of people needed to have so many specialists and still rely on direct interpersonal knowledge like small societies.

[Sociobiology]

how? power inequalities still exist, their just not legally constrained. so if anything you are empowering narcissists and bigots.

No, you as a defender of the state wish to maintain a power structure and social system that allows tyrants to rise to power.

except modern states, unlike what you are advocating, actually have systems to limit the power of such individuals, we have laws, even laws for lawmakers.

[Novsvacro]

I don't know if I follow.

variation still exists, everything from who is more charismatic to who owns the better land. all your doing is enabling exploitation of those differences, unless you are going back to band society population levels, in which case you can kiss modern technology goodbye.

in small societies cheaters and hoarders are punished because everyone knows everyone else, as soon Bob cheats on deal or tries to hoard foot, everyone in the society knows so Bob gets shunned or killed. but in large societies Bob can find a steady supply of complete strangers for his whole life, there are just too many degrees of separation for enough people to know and care about Bob to do anything. Hence laws which are enforced and investigated independently, its a one stop social network so to speak. large societies make up for burden created by this by being able to support lots of specialists and thus highly advanced technology and intensive infrastructure. but by its very nature you can't have the huge numbers of people needed to have so many specialists and still rely on direct interpersonal knowledge like small societies.

You know the whole basis of anarchism is the questioning of unequal power structures, right? If someone who was especially eloquent started demanding submission, people what most likely write him off as an idiot, which is exactly what they would be.

[Novsvacro]

No, you as a defender of the state wish to maintain a power structure and social system that allows tyrants to rise to power.

except modern states, unlike what you are advocating, actually have systems to limit the power of such individuals, we have laws, even laws for lawmakers.

And have you seen the effectiveness of such laws? Yeah.

[Camelza]

Some anarchists while rejecting hierarchy (a required tenet for anyone who claims to have anarchist beliefs) accept authority in the forms of laws, comittess, organisations, government and laws.
I think the answer would be, in my opinion; A population of any size that has been properly educated on social matters and has adopted a social, egalitarian stance on everyday life. A society with advanced technology would be also quite more easy to implement an anarchist pattern to in contrast to a luddite one.

not really small societies can't support modern technology, not enough specialists.

Pardon me, when I said of any size I actually meant "even the most large and populous society", having pherhaps in my subconciousness the frequent false claims made by anti-anarchists that anarchism cannot exist in a large scale. Criticism has its effects I guess.
Yes, smaller societies would face far more difficulties in adopting an social anarchist pattern as societies, due to the lack of technological advantages, but also due to foreign reaction - this is one of the reasons that I consider internationalism and scientific advance extremely important to the development of anarchist societies (or a single anarchist society encompassing all of the world, for that matter).

[Prussia-Steinbach]

No, you as a defender of the state wish to maintain a power structure and social system that allows tyrants to rise to power.

except modern states, unlike what you are advocating, actually have systems to limit the power of such individuals, we have laws, even laws for lawmakers.

Laws for lawmakers usually aren't what you call "stringent" or "strict" or "enforced."

[Prussia-Steinbach]

This quote better reflects my feelings. A reduced state is the only possible compromiser between freedom and slavery, anarchy and order.

Anarchy and order are far from opposites; the former, in fact, requires the latter.

Making sure I note, though it should be obvious, that this is anarchy according to anarchism; not the alternate, chaos definition.

[Prussia-Steinbach]

Yes, an organized, armed, freedom-loving society is just an open door for power-hungry dictators-to-be.

basically yeah, the really bad dictators have been problems because they were charismatic and got a lot of people on their side.

And, in an anarchist society, people wouldn't be on their side.

That's, like, the point, man.

[Kubra]

Pherhaps I misinterpreted the following part:

Alexander wad a macedonian, proper greeks thought thwm little better than other barbarians.

----

What I said that the Spartans and Athenians looked down on Macedonians before Alexander. The point is that these two greek city states, revered for their greatness, were actually pretty horrible places full of horrible people. There is a greater history to Greece than these two city states, and that's precisely the point: their history is put to the margins in favour if the two city states considered "great", and these two city states were active participants in the creation of this narrative.

To be fair, the opinion that southern Greeks considered Macedonians barbarians comes mostly from some Athenian detractors of Philip who used mudslinging to turn the public opinion against the ambitious King of Macedon. Macedonians during that time were considered a tribe of Doric Greeks by most Greeks(Of course I don't disagree that this wasn't the case 700 years ago from that). As for the two city-states, yes they were horrible and full of awful people, especially Sparta, but Athenians actually gave birth to many nice things despite cutting the hands of their enemies.
To be honest, I am far more fond of Rome than any of the Ancient Greek/Hellenistic states, I just love to talk history.

What kind of anarchist are you, by the way?

a bit o' bantz masquerading as dialogue. Proper ought to be italicized and the narrator ought to imagined wearing a monocle.
Aw all the cool people in Athens got exiled, straight up killed, or were just generally looked down upon. The Romans might not have been great philosophers or natural scientists in comparison to the output of Athens, but I don't recall them to be altogether terrible in their conduct towards the two.
I'm a communist to anarchists and an anarchist to communists.

[Prussia-Steinbach]

I'm a communist to anarchists and an anarchist to communists.

[Kubra]

I'm a communist to anarchists and an anarchist to communists.

cuz then you'll make the two half-happy, and I want the lot equally unhappy with me
every time the local hoxhaists look at me in disgust I feel validated
not so much with the anarchos cuz they're hard-drinking cool guys, even if a little boring in their politics

[Prussia-Steinbach]

cuz then you'll make the two half-happy, and I want the lot equally unhappy with me
every time the local hoxhaists look at me in disgust I feel validated
not so much with the anarchos cuz they're hard-drinking cool guys, even if a little boring in their politics

*raises literal current beer in hand*