That is not the "anarchism" that I have read about in the past?! Did the author just appropriate the name for a different kind of political ideology?
Seems like it.
An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)
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Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)
#72> 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…
> 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.
You are not wrong. Traditional anarchism, does not even attempt to talk about "coercion". In general, "anarchism" is about the dismantling of social hierarchies. It is a central tenant in anarchist ideology that hierarchies are bad. That is why there are various "flavours" of anarchism. Each emphasises some kind of hierarchy.
The piece in the OP has nothing to do with the century long tradition of anarchist thought.
Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes." "I hate Indians. They a…
Churchill was a straight up racist. He was also indirectly responsible for the Bengal famine of 1942. On being told about the famine, his only response was "Isn't Gandhi dead yet". Of course, it helps that he ended up on the winning side of the war. What confuses me is that his contemporary, Stalin also ended up on the winning side though later on, his deeds[mis-deeds] came to the fore and he is now known as one of t…
Churchill, however, was voted the Greatest Briton of 20th century for some reason.
Well, Britain didn't get taken over by the Nazis. That's kind of a good accomplishment
Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)
#74That is not the "anarchism" that I have read about in the past?! Did the author just appropriate the name for a different kind of political ideology? Seems like it.
In what ways does it differ from the commonly held notions of what "anarchism" is as a political (or anti-political) ideology?
Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)
#75With all due respect I would have liked if the hackernews moderators had kept my original headline "An Anarchist Critique of Democracy by Moxie Marlinspike (Signal SMS), Windy Hart" I thought this article/transcript was of interest to hackernews in a large part due to one of the two authors being the author of the Open Whisper Systems Signal SMS app.
I understand the feeling, but we've learned from experience that HN works better when the focus is on content rather than personalities, especially in titles.
We've also learned that HN can't really have a substantive discussion about ideology. Something about open internet forums causes such discussions to revert to the mean, and from there to the bottom of the barrel, pretty quickly. But at least your submission was off the beaten track!
Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
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's absurb. Anarchism is a system completely without land ownership (i.e. "property is theft"). Feudalism is a system based almost entirely around land ownership (named after the word feodum meaning a grant of land in exchange for service).
> Anarchism is a system completely without land ownership (i.e. "property is theft")
Not all forms of anarchism subscribe to this.
Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Churchill was a straight up racist. He was also indirectly responsible for the Bengal famine of 1942. On being told about the famine, his only response was "Isn't Gandhi dead yet". Of course, it helps that he ended up on the winning side of the war. What confuses me is that his contemporary, Stalin also ended up on the winning side though later on, his deeds[mis-deeds] came to the fore and he is now known as one of t…
Churchill, however, was voted the Greatest Briton of 20th century for some reason. Well, Britain didn't get taken over by the Nazis. That's kind of a good accomplishment
...of a huge number of people.
But war victories usually come with cultural domination and glorifying winners' favorite mass murderers as a bonus.
Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)
#78"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-...
Plato compares different forms of government in the Politician dialogue (oligarchy/aristocracy, tyranny/monarchy, democracy; 302-303), where the democracy is described as the least effective form of government among all when good and honest instances of each are compared, and the least harmful one when bad and corrupt instances are compared. That's because it's static given how much effort and involvement it takes to even decide on minutia; and big, important decisions are very hard to make. Today this definition seems relevant and partly true to me, and I believe it is mostly an acceptable trade-off given the tendency to corruption of those who are in power (I have this vague thought that this tendency is probably a part of the stereotype of the politically-successful person).
Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Evo-psych arguments are always weak, but this one would work slightly better if it were focused on violence rather than property. It isn't as if Homo sapiens evolved in an environment of flatscreen televisions and automobiles. A Neolithic tribe "owned" a couple of arrowheads and a big flat rock for cracking nuts. If they lost those they'd presumably just get some more. More to the point, we didn't evolve in an enviro…
Just to comment on this. A common google search would have pointed out that your ideas about local police forces are largely incorrect. Police have been a thing for much longer. The big thing that happened in more recent history (Meaning 1700s) is separating them from the private market, the military or unregulated local mobs. You can trace the enforcers of civil law through force all the way back to ancient Babylon…
The Romans had slaves. What are the chances that "Cohortes Urbanae" prioritized their interests? Do you argue here that police now are not different in significant ways from whatever those forces were? BLM might agree with you (me too!), but that isn't an argument against anarchism...
This is how fearful people fool themselves. They paint over the authoritarian excess of the past with anachronistic illusions of the present. Instead, they should realize that the unmistakable evils of authoritarians past indict those of the present, even if we tell ourselves that it's different this time.
Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)
#80> Direct Democracy Isn’t Anarchy, You Fucks
Here's a quick thought experiment:
Imagine for the moment that anarchy-- the type with roots in 19th century Europe and fits and starts in Catalonia and Andalusia-- is the key to universal enlightenment and human cooperation. (Not saying it is, just a thought experiment-- humor me.)
Now imagine that there is a small but dedicated cabal of evil demons intent on keeping the world from coming to realize this truth. If you were an advisor to the cabal, how would you suggest they use their meager resources?
If it were me, here's what I would do:
1. Split the demons up and send each to a burgeoning center for anarchy.
2. Tell each demon to play up what is idiosyncratic and novel in that particular region's understanding of anarchy. Eschew both clear, standardized terminology and laymen's terms for something that sounds passionate, yet somehow also particular.
3. Discourage genre literacy, and don't cite sources.
4. Favor novelty over intellectual rigour.
5. Develop clever inside jokes.
6. When faced with a powerful intellectual adversary, fall back on tribalism.
And once the demons are comfortable in their new surroundings, the kicker:
7. Convince the demons that it is now safe for them to earnestly believe in their new form of fun-house-mirror anarchism. They are safe to defend and most importantly love the little tribe they have created.
Using such a technique, I'm fairly certain I could guide my demons to an easy victory. In the event that any of the disparate anarchist groups tries to band together in a spirit of cooperation or defense against a common adversary, passive-aggressive tribalistic infighting will eat up a critical mass of their resources!
*
Now, let's get back to reality and realize there is no such conspiracy to derail anarchism.
Still: mission accomplished, no?
Edit: wording. Also-- I'm only critiquing the concept of anarchism implicitly espoused by the authors. The anarchists of the early 20th century seemed to have suffered from a much different problem, which was the inability to manufacture enough arms-- to ward off both the fascists and the communists when they retook Barcelona, for example.