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An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)

theanarchistlibrary.org

41–50 of 88 posts

Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)

#41
post #4

> 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…

> How to make a political program out of anarchism?

Just give up radicalizing it. Accept the society AS IS as a starting point and start stripping the state of its powers and ambitions one by one. Read through the laws, legalize everything that can be legalized fairly safely (e.g. legalize drugs but don't hurry to legalize private atomic weapons :-)) at particular stage, remove requirements that are not really necessary (e.g. repeal copyrights enforcement but keep net neutrality). It is crucial to implement this process in a mindful and responsible way, i.e. avoiding dissolution of government institutions that do an important job and have no decent private alternatives established to the moment or repealing regulations that are there to limit the powers of corporations (which will certainly seek to establish tyranny over the nation as soon as the forces binding them weaken).

> We reject all societal processes that break that link — such as private property, exchange relations, division of labor, and democracy.

This is a way too radical idea that can hardly be considered constructive or viable. There can be no hope for a society anything close to real to survive and prosper with no body of power over them unless all its members respect property and interests, safety and privacy, freedom and dignity of other members the way they would like others to respect those of their own. Also division of labor is an absolutely natural thing, goods and services are to be subjects of free market, it is perfectly correct for a doctor to concentrate on healing people and expect the people to care about his needs in exchange so he won't waste time e.g. cultivating foods to feed his family.

The ultimate goal is not to destroy the system. It is to make every individual as free (keeping in mind that security is a precondition to freedom) as possible without infringing freedom of their neighbour, to decentralize and distribute power as uniformly as possible (while still letting and encouraging experts to make important decisions) and to establish Nash equilibrium so only minor fluctuations will occur and nobody will be able to gain enough power to become the new tyrant.

Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)

#42
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 resul…

Some of us already have :). What do you mean by that?

Its a jab. AnCap is next evolutionary stage of a society (atleast for some socities). Autocracy --> Democracy --> AnCap.

Not quite there ofcourse but they are getting there:

https://www.seasteading.org/floating-city-project/

https://www.freesociety.com/

Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)

#43
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true of Libertarianism as well.

Libertarians tend to accept that coercive force is sometimes necessary, particularly when it comes to property ownership and enforcing contracts, although they also sometimes disagree that a state and monopoly on force are necessary for the coercion. To this end, Libertarianism sometimes seems to me like a weak or pragmatic form of anarchy.

Libertarians reject the initiation of coercion or violence but accept forceful response — at the gentlest intensity necessary — to repel such invasions. For example, a libertarian would be fine with a homeowner shooting dead an armed robber who had broken in.

Ludwig von Mises was a minarchist, i.e., he advocated for the smallest state necessary. His student Murray Rothbard referred to himself as an anarchist or an anarchocapitalist.

Of course, Rothbardians and Marxists mean entirely different concepts when they use the term anarchist.

Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)

#44

Earlier 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.

"We are adaptation-executors, not fitness-optimisers."

Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 resul…

By cooperation, do you not mean subordination?

In autocracy, cooperation can be called subordination. But not otherwise.

Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)

#46
post #16

Earlier 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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Commonwealth

Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)

#47
post #4

> 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…

In this video[0], economist Richard Wolff talks about all the things he didn't learn studying economics at the US's most prestigious universities, because they were never mentioned. Fascinating talk. Towards the end he talks of a Spanish company run by its workers, which sounds like it has successfully transformed work for those people to something democratic, and, well, something free from what anarchists (and we all..uh 99% of us anyway) want to be free from. It sounds doable to extend that to other areas of life. Watch it! Highly enlightening ...and 'hope you can believe in' isn't that common nowadays.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynbgMKclWWc

Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)

#48
This is awfully childish.

Anywhere you have two or more people "asserting a direct and unobstructed link between thought and action, between desires and their free fulfillment" you are going to have conflict... which means not everyone is going to be able to get and do everything and anything they want.

Notice that this has nothing to do with democracy. It's an inevitable consequence of the existence of people who want things.

Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)

#49

With all due respect, if this is the best the anarchists have (and this article is from a respected individual and is decently written), you're fucked. These critiques are not new or without response. The problem is, this is 1000+ words of arguments about human nature, special pleading, etc, with NO sources. They describe known phenomena like control of the agenda and never call it that, I'm not sure if that's becaus…

> Anarchism is a political ideology that's never met the real world, like a lot of ideologies on HN and elsewhere. This might convince the random Internet reader, but it's not going to convince anyone who has studied the topic.

Although there have been some widespread and fairly comprehensive implementations of anarchism, namely the Makhnovists in the Ukraine and the Spanish Revolution in Catalonia, Aragon, Andalusia, and some parts of the Valencian Community, anarchism is more of a political tension "from where you are standing right now" than an attempt to conquer a territory to establish anarchism. That should follow from the name itself.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alfredo-m-bonanno-th...

The Situationist movement had some enduring effect on French culture from the first-person perspective. (Situationism is not anarchist, but it is libertarian and communist). The Spanish revolution less so, because it was followed by General Franco's rule.

Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)

#50

With all due respect, if this is the best the anarchists have (and this article is from a respected individual and is decently written), you're fucked. These critiques are not new or without response. The problem is, this is 1000+ words of arguments about human nature, special pleading, etc, with NO sources. They describe known phenomena like control of the agenda and never call it that, I'm not sure if that's becaus…

> Anarchism is a political ideology that's never met the real world, like a lot of ideologies on HN and elsewhere. This might convince the random Internet reader, but it's not going to convince anyone who has studied the topic. Although there have been some widespread and fairly comprehensive implementations of anarchism, namely the Makhnovists in the Ukraine and the Spanish Revolution in Catalonia, Aragon, Andalusia…

I'm aware of anarchism's role in the Spanish Revolution, but I'm not sure what we can really say about that experience. It lasted a very short time, mostly due to factors outside of its control, but also because it was part of an unstable political front with the communists and other liberals. How much of that instability was due to anarchism itself? It's difficult to say.

Don't mean to sound anti-anarchism, because I understand the sentiment. Thanks for more examples. Also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anarchism

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