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Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

theanarchistlibrary.org

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Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#361

Post by ericmay »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #209

I have never believed in anarchism, as I don't believe that "human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to". But with COVID-19, I am seeing more proof than ever. In my country (but I guess it's the same in most, except perhaps some Nordic countries) bars, pubs and discos only reduce seating or close indoor spaces when forced to by law, in spite of the evidence that they c…

Eh I’m not sure politicians am have proved in recent times to be much better.

And to that point, if you don’t trust your fellow person, why would you trust them to vote, or hold office? Why would you want them to wield real power?

We need to fix this country. It starts with us. Vote. Run for office. Stop accepting mediocre government.

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#362

Post by RandoHolmes »

elgfare wrote: post #135
sudosysgen wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anarchism would also remove private property, and for it to work people would have to organize in ways to minimize social capital.

How do you do that though? There would of course be no enforcable private property, but ownership would not disappear as a (albeit nebulous) concept.

Native Americans had no concept of land ownership. It's one of the reasons why they famously would sell land for a few beads, they had no concept of what they were actually doing.

The point is that it's possible to do. It doesn't mean we should, but it is possible.

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#363

Post by PaulAJ »

One piece of counter-evidence is the repeated story of online communities.

In the early days of the Internet there was Usenet (OK, so it started separate, never mind), a global community, or collection of communities, using text-based message broadcast. It was a nice, self-policing community where obnoxious behaviour was frowned upon, and frowning was generally enough. Every September a new cohort of university students discovered this wonderful resource, and sometimes took a while to learn the social norms, but peer pressure generally worked.

Then in the 90s the Internet started to become popular. AOL started distributing free CDs that let you access Usenet. Lots more people arrived on Usenet, resulting in the "Eternal September" when the social norms broke down and everything became chaos. Spam and flame wars drowned out serious conversation. Some of the communities within Usenet were able to continue because they were small enough to maintain their own internal cohesion, but increasingly these became exceptions.

I stopped using Usenet for discussion some time around 2000. There simply wasn't any point. Even the cohesive communities were abandoning it for private email lists and web sites.

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#364

Post by username90 »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #343
username90 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an organized society a psychopath can kill a few in a murder spree. In an unorganized society the psychopath can gather and organize a lot of thugs to loot and burn millions of homes. Has happened many times in history. I know which one I prefer. The gun argument actually works here, if you ban good guys from organizing then all organizations will be bad ones. And an organized group of people always wins against u…

Calling the societies being discussed "unorganized" isn't a fair view of the topic, and the rest of your post rather depends on that point of view.

So how would your anarchist utopia deal with an army of thousands raiding your village?

> the rest of your post rather depends on that point of view.

The need to feel safe from raiders is fairly universal.

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#365

Post by komali2 »

luckylion wrote: post #334
vidarh wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that your conventions do not require the power of law enforcement to be able to deal with most problems. You can self-organise to set rules, and show away people who refuse to comply. Anarchists want more of that, and less of power imposed from above. Proudhon, the father anarchism, was a mutualist - he wanted most functions of society to be contracted between people,the way a convention goer agrees to terms…

> You can self-organise to set rules, and show away people who refuse to comply. Aka "we don't need law enforcement, we can become law enforcement ourselves". And then you have law enforcement. Sounds like a reset more than an alternative.

Not quite so simple: this is what "community policing" is all about. Many portland protesters were there because they wanted the national guard out. National guard soldiers who didn't live there, weren't members of the community... Who could act shitty to community members with no consequence.

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#366

Post by simoom22 »

auggierose wrote: post #350
aarpmcgee wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it seems that you seem to be imagining anarchy only within the context of the current state of reality with the sole difference of anarchy being set to ‘true’. I think a world in which anarchy were dominant would be structured quite differently and involve humans with fundamentally nonviolent dispositions. My belief is that this is possible.

Anarchy means that the law of the strongest rules. Not sure why you think that this is somehow aligned with non-violence.

That's the opposite of anarchy. An-arch-y means a situation without fixed power structures.

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#367

Post by mc32 »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #354

> Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. It is really a very simple notion. This can sound reasonable when you think of it in terms of, " most people behaving in a reasonable fashion, most of the time". But anarchists don't want to eliminate hierarchical use of force for most cases, but for all of them. Any time I've heard…

I tend to agree. Psychopaths are an unsolvable problem. People like them is “why we can’t have nice things”.

If it weren’t for psychopaths we would not need passwords or encrypted passwords or security protocols, etc, etc., because everyone would behave in good fashion. But we don’t so we can’t.

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#369

Post by mynameishere »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #209

I have never believed in anarchism, as I don't believe that "human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to". But with COVID-19, I am seeing more proof than ever. In my country (but I guess it's the same in most, except perhaps some Nordic countries) bars, pubs and discos only reduce seating or close indoor spaces when forced to by law, in spite of the evidence that they c…

So tell us, how many months of mask wearing would be "reasonable"? We're up to about six in my locale. Would twelve be reasonable? Eighteen? Until the virus is gone? That would require, most likely, eternal mask wearing, even with a vaccine. Why don't you lecture us about "reasonable" behavior some more.

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#370

Post by jchook »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #354

> Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to. It is really a very simple notion. This can sound reasonable when you think of it in terms of, " most people behaving in a reasonable fashion, most of the time". But anarchists don't want to eliminate hierarchical use of force for most cases, but for all of them. Any time I've heard…

AFAIK anarchy is not the abolition of the use of force, but rather the lack of a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.

The federalist papers spend a bit of time debating inevitable rise of factions and pluralism without a dominant faction ordained by the people.

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