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An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)
21–30 of 88 posts
Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Anarchists believe in unmediated relations between free individuals, the absence of any coercive or alienating forces in societies, and an unquestionable, universal right to self-determination If you and I can interface “unmediated” and freely, and I decide to use that freedom to take your shit, you need a “coercive or alienating force” to correct the wrong. Controlling this force is the history of civilisation.
Does this model suggest that anarchy might be more tenable in situations of relative plenty? After all if everyone had enough shit there wouldn't be as much cause to take the shits of others? Of course we'd still have to come up with activities to occupy all the "guard dog" will-to-power types when they no longer had good excuse to brutalize unfortunates. My suggestion would be a new violent sport! Since physical fit…
People don't take things because they need them. They take things because it's a biological imperative. Lack of scarcity won't change the nature of an animal whose psyche is the product of millions of years of scarcity.
Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)
#23> Anarchists believe in unmediated relations between free individuals, the absence of any coercive or alienating forces in societies, and an unquestionable, universal right to self-determination. If that sounds difficult to implement, I agree! I'm an anarchist because I think the principles so succinctly put are a good pole star for my personal life. At the scale of society I see Marxism as just as important. How to…
I respect anarchists for offering thorough criticisms of the democratic status quo that too many people take for granted. I would even like to see a few thousand anarchists start their own society and try to put their theories into practice on an artificial island or something. Even if they all need to be rescued by UN forces at the end of the day, the experiment will provide the rest of humanity with valuable insigh…
For my taste, though, both anarchism and libertarianism seem to be based on an overly optimistic view of human nature.
Democracy is too optimistic for some parts in the world as well. No system such as (Autocracy/Democracy/AnCap) can work without certain level of cooperation from everyone involved. True AnCap requires most and never-seen-before amount of cooperation but if possible, it does give/predict awesome results.
Maybe they'll become more realistic once we've either evolved or augmented ourselves to a much higher level of intelligence and conscience.
Some of us already have :).
Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)
#24> Anarchists believe in unmediated relations between free individuals, the absence of any coercive or alienating forces in societies, and an unquestionable, universal right to self-determination. If that sounds difficult to implement, I agree! I'm an anarchist because I think the principles so succinctly put are a good pole star for my personal life. At the scale of society I see Marxism as just as important. How to…
I respect anarchists for offering thorough criticisms of the democratic status quo that too many people take for granted. I would even like to see a few thousand anarchists start their own society and try to put their theories into practice on an artificial island or something. Even if they all need to be rescued by UN forces at the end of the day, the experiment will provide the rest of humanity with valuable insigh…
I would argue anarchism has been tried in the past, it was simply called feudalism. Since it lead to the Dark Ages, there's not much support for it nowadays.
Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)
#25> Anarchists believe in unmediated relations between free individuals, the absence of any coercive or alienating forces in societies, and an unquestionable, universal right to self-determination. If that sounds difficult to implement, I agree! I'm an anarchist because I think the principles so succinctly put are a good pole star for my personal life. At the scale of society I see Marxism as just as important. How to…
Not to get too philosophical, but the problem with anarchism is rooted in our evolution and in natural selection itself.
Our strength and security comes from our ability to assemble and organize.
Then there's also some game theory involved with the state of the world right now. If we all agree to dismantle our organizational apparatus and military infrastructure then the last group to do so would be at quite an advantage to take over. Not too unlike the nuclear situation.
Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)
#26"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." - Winston S Churchill, November 11, 1947 Source: https://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-...
And we tried anarchy plenty. Power, unfortunately, abhors a vacuum.
Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Anarchists believe in unmediated relations between free individuals, the absence of any coercive or alienating forces in societies, and an unquestionable, universal right to self-determination If you and I can interface “unmediated” and freely, and I decide to use that freedom to take your shit, you need a “coercive or alienating force” to correct the wrong. Controlling this force is the history of civilisation.
That's true of Libertarianism as well.
On the contrary, libertarianism regards the law as force organized for the common defense and nothing more. [1] The protection of our negative rights is the one essential function of government in the libertarian view.
I've always been curious: how does anarchism reconcile your right not to be harmed with the supposed right of other individuals to do anything they please, including harm you? Do we even have a right not to be harmed? If we do, how is justice served -- can we serve it ourselves, or should it be delegated somehow? Or are these questions "out of scope" and justice is handled on a case-by-case basis that's not prescribed by anarchism?
Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does this model suggest that anarchy might be more tenable in situations of relative plenty? After all if everyone had enough shit there wouldn't be as much cause to take the shits of others? Of course we'd still have to come up with activities to occupy all the "guard dog" will-to-power types when they no longer had good excuse to brutalize unfortunates. My suggestion would be a new violent sport! Since physical fit…
People don't take things because they need them. They take things because it's a biological imperative. Lack of scarcity won't change the nature of an animal whose psyche is the product of millions of years of scarcity.
where did yo get that idea?
Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I respect anarchists for offering thorough criticisms of the democratic status quo that too many people take for granted. I would even like to see a few thousand anarchists start their own society and try to put their theories into practice on an artificial island or something. Even if they all need to be rescued by UN forces at the end of the day, the experiment will provide the rest of humanity with valuable insigh…
I would argue anarchism has been tried in the past, it was simply called feudalism. Since it lead to the Dark Ages, there's not much support for it nowadays.
That is a really hot take. Anarchism developed as a response to industrialization and the transformation of society caused by the adoption of capitalist modes of production.
Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)
#30A list of things that are wrong is pretty boring without plausible alternatives. Like, even if you're right, it doesn't matter because we're not comparing The Bad Thing to The Absence Of All Those Bad Things. That's trivial, of course bad things are bad. We're comparing The Bad Thing to A Different Set of Tradeoffs. That's the part I want to see.
It's not boring if the majority of people think these bad things are good.