this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2024
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Anarchy does not mean "no laws or regulations". Anarchy means "no vertical power structures".
BTW, Marx's idea of a classless, stateless society is essentially anarchist.
Laws and Regulations with no Enforcement is the same as No Laws and No Regulations. Enforcement comes from a vertical power structure.
Social and societal norms and contracts already exist, and in every applicable example people will immediately betray each other for benefits to themselves. Imagine that on a much larger scale when addictive drugs and fully automatic weapons suddenly become legal but strongly disapproved of.
This reflects a deep misunderstanding of anarcho-communism which I once shared. As someone who uses a broader definition of 'state' which comes into conflict with most anarchists' narrower definition of 'state', I find it more helpful to think of anarcho-communism as an extremely decentralized, directly democratic state without bureaucratic specialists or private property. When someone fucks around, the community gets together to vote on what kind of 'find out' follows, and then, as a community, agrees to enforce it.
There are complete and functioning examples of anarcho-communism in the 20th century, but every individual piece of the puzzle also has historical precedent. Collective enforcement is very common in secure-but-isolated and rural areas before the modern-era; collective decision-making has precedent essentially wherever and whenever a community lacks long-standing decision-making institutions or a 'strong-man', etc etc.
What if a secure-but-isolated rural area has a group who enforces christo-fascist ideological beliefs such as banning maternal medication and care, but the small (comparative to share of total population) vocal group has better guns due to their larger organizational structure spanning churches in several psuedo-states? You think the community is going to line up to be slaughtered by the new might-makes-right societal structure?
I'm not misunderstanding shit, mate. You're misunderstanding how powerless a supposed anarcho-anything is against human hostility.
BTW thanks for engaging with me on this subject, it feels nice to have a decent conversation where I'm not constantly suspicious the other person is some kind of bot, as with most shillery I argue against these days.
Then you have the Spanish Civil War.
btw I do unironically think you're a cool person.
Hah, well, thank you!
Yeah, I know that feeling. As aggressive as I can get, I generally respect people who hold honest conversations.
I suppose if violently offing 1% of the lower class population and (with some outside help) plunging the western world into a decade of war is the cost of true freedom, it's worth trying at least a few more times. /s
Didn't realize the three years of the Spanish Civil War were responsible for ten years of war for the rest of the West.
And unironically, yes. Every revolution is preceded by a hundred failed revolutions against unjust power structures. I'm not an ancom, but I'm also not under the impression that the immensely fucked current state of society is as good as it can get. I'll break out an old Twain quote that I do so adore:
It's a little disingenuous to believe every failed revolution contributes to the one successful good outcome. More often than not, overthrowing the previous powers just leads into militaristic groups taking control and becoming a dictatorship.
The Spanish Civil War oversimplified basically boils down to this: one side, the nationalists, that supported the military regime and the Nazis and provided supplies and mainly logistics for them, and one side who decided it was better to throw their bodies into the machine until it stopped turning. The side with the Nazis won the war. Since the Nazis were at war on multiple fronts, there few allies were key in prolonging the conflict and defending Germany.
Contributes? No. But you don't know which attempt will succeed until the whole conflict is over. That's not an excuse to say "Well, this will be bloody, so maybe instead we just stay under feudal authority." You can't do that; you have to press forward.
... I don't know that I follow this? Nazi Germany wasn't at war, for all intents and purposes, until '39, by which point the Spanish Civil War was wrapping up. The Republican side didn't try to 'throw bodies into the machine until it stopped turning', the war was highly contested and anyone's game for the first two years.
The Nationalists were still allied with Nazi Germany before the Nazis were at war as well as after the Spanish Civil War ended, because, once again, the bad guys who previously overthrew a democracy had won the war.
Right, anarchy is anti-authoritarian idealism. Like all utopian ideals, it's intended to be more of an abstract imperative, in this case to reduce vertical hierarchy, more than a positive expression that the most just society is one where there exists exactly zero vertical hierarchy.
The goal is not zero hierarchy necessarily but that all hierarchies should be justified as necessary, limited in scope, and voluntary.
Like if we're sailing on a boat in the ocean someone has to be the captain and call the shots so that quick effective action can be taken especially in emergencies. However once we get to port we should be able to elect a new captain if the current one is a being a dick.
There are two levels of discussion here.
One is about finding a common understanding of what anarchism means, the other about how to achieve it.
To understand what no vertical power structure could look like, you could imagine a friend group going to the park together. Who suggests what will differ and change over time, but no one inherently has any power over another.
If we employ a little fantasy, in a post scarcity society (think Star Trek or The Culture), where any conceivable need and whim can be catered for, there is no reason for misbehaviour or crime, and thus no need for enforcement - this is also anarchist.
As to how we get to such a state of being, I can't say. Traditions, history, and cultural trauma seem unbridgeable in less than several generations, and even then we would need more resources and knowledge than I think humanity could have on this level on the Kardashev scale.