Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000) • Hacker News Board

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

#761

Post by b112 » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 2:30 PM UTC

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #718

b112 wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which has nothing to do with a government.

But it has everything to do with "A "community" which makes "communal decisions"", whatever you call it. I hope Merriam-Webster clears that up: "Definition of government 1 : the body of persons that constitutes the governing authority of a political unit or organization"

I specifically said that "community" which makes "communal decisions" is not anarchy. You've simply claimed it does, then mentioned "governing authority", which is not entirely in line, now is it?

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

#762

Post by brbrodude » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 2:31 PM UTC

acituan wrote: post #619

brbrodude wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where I see one of the most striking arguments for anarchist philosophy. That is: It takes, and it took, an immensurable ammount of violence to make the status quo, 'lawful order' is a very shaky concept there. From this perspective it's way clearer that the unbalances and the unlawlessness of a big chunk of the "order" are themselves the sources of so much messed up stuff we have to deal with and try hopeles…

> Maybe if there's one, for me, then it'd be that humans already come from nature with capacity for self-determination, conflict resolution, sociability, organization. All those other structures mostly hijacks that and messes it up with imbalances, most obviously by abuse of power, hierarchy being the main instrument for making that What humans come from nature with doesn’t scale to the world and numbers we have buil…

The main thing is, anarchism is the only philosophy that it's dead-on clear that the structures can and should be questioned and that it can and should be reconfigurable, refactored and etc if we're going with programming terms. It's just democracy but pushed deeper. Anarchism embodies the liberal democracy & socialist ideals, it is coherent with classical thought & philosophy, as well as enlightenment rationality(in case you haven't noticed the current status quo is absolutely losing coherence and moving further from all that), it has also been paired w/ religious ideals.

The idealized citizen in liberal & classical democracy is an anarchist, a free person participating in the matters of the "polis"(city), the "free" distinctions has plenty of consequences if you really get into it, we're talking about people from antiquity here, what they were saying is that only free people could be trusted to participate, this immediately creates a problem of class distinction i.e.: people who owned land, that were free enough to be able to learn philosophy, etc. So, although implementation was imperfect from the start, the kernel is good.(btw I'm an antiquity geek in case you haven't noticed).

What I'm getting at is: there's no rewrite at all, actually, it would be maintenance, paying the tech debt and sticking to the vision. This hollowed out democracy we're with now is a joke.

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

#763

Post by brbrodude » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 2:32 PM UTC

djur wrote: post #550

brbrodude wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where I see one of the most striking arguments for anarchist philosophy. That is: It takes, and it took, an immensurable ammount of violence to make the status quo, 'lawful order' is a very shaky concept there. From this perspective it's way clearer that the unbalances and the unlawlessness of a big chunk of the "order" are themselves the sources of so much messed up stuff we have to deal with and try hopeles…

The problem with Chomsky as a resource for anarchism is that 1) his anarchism is sui generis, and he doesn't tend to cite or be in conversation with other anarchist thinkers and 2) his anarchism is utopian, and he doesn't begin to outline a program to accomplish it. In practice he's really more of a social democrat whose vision of anarchism basically resembles a self-organizing social democracy with minimized state c…

Again this is taking the position that anarchism would need it's "government program" to justify itself and then maybe society could see about moving over to that program, I don't think that's the point, as I've argued in my previous comment.

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

#764

Post by vidarh » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

vorpalhex wrote: post #260

vidarh wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone is allowed to amass power to to abuse others, it is not anarchy. You seem to assume anarchy implies no rules, but fundamentally to ensure minimal rules the bare minimum is to shut down any attempt at aggression against others. An anarchist would argue, however, that protecting society against aggression does not require a top down state.

There was a recent attempt in Capital Hill at creating an area where everyone was equal, and as I recall a bunch of people seized power and went on to cause havoc and violence... How do you prevent someone from building too much power? Well, you need to cap their reserves of soldiers/hardware/supplies. In order to do that you inherently need a stronger entity to enforce those caps...

An early premise of anarchist movements was that there are already someone trying to grab too much power, namely nation states. As such a large proportion of anarchist thought is down to how to organise and build bottom up structures with the intent of matching and being able to counter and destroy the power structures of nation states.

Now ask yourself why you assume they'd be unwilling to build structures capable of resisting attempts to take power, when that is basically the raison d'etre for these groups.

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

#765

Post by vidarh » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #238

vidarh wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it not a good thing if there are no structures in place for those people to abuse to oppress others? We've seen states captured by murderous lunatics time and time again. It seems having structures in place for those kinds of people to abuse has worked very poorly.

They will build structures. These structures are called gangs, and their leaders warlords.

Or states.

As long as the concentration of power in the hands of nation states have been the foundation for most of the worst mass murders in human history, it seems quaint to worry that people arguing for making power shared and collective rather than allowing it to be concentrated will do worse.

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

#766

Post by mindslight » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 2:53 PM UTC

pandaman wrote: post #721

kilburn wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the same poster, but I think his point is: Consider a world where society lived by the anarchist principles. In that hypothetical world, most people self-organized in a large group where: - They decided to democratically appoint representatives that flesh out large-scale agreements and called it law - They decided it is necessary to have people dedicated to securing the lands where they live from both internal an…

This is one explanation. The question I have is more of the "what are you going to do when some people will get together and apply concerted violence to you (not dissimilar to the way the government works right now)?". I have not seen a single attempt to answer this in the few hundred comments. It appears most anarchists do not even realize this possibility even exists.

Right-flavored anarchism (eg anarcho-capitalism, cryptoanarchism) addresses this question directly - a plurality of competing defense companies that would be incentivized away from actually fighting as it would be unprofitable.

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

#767

Post by vidarh » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

elgfare wrote: post #227

vidarh wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mandate in this case is used in the abstract: in the absence of any system to recognise and enforce private property rights, and in the face of a society that sees coercion and aggression as pretty much the only things that are wholly and totally unacceptable, they cease to exist because they only exist in the first case through the state or other means of threatening force to enforce it. It would be more precise to…

Thanks. That feels like weird chain of causality. All the bad stuff only disappears when the systems protecting us from them are removed.

Nobody is suggesting removing the systems that are actually protecting us. The argument is that a lot of the structures are not protecting us, but perpetuating oppression, and that if we invert the power pyramid, and power is only delegated by consent to the extent it is exercised in a manner that minimises oppression, then we're left with what people actually consent to be subjected to.

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

#768

Post by vidarh » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 2:59 PM UTC

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.

With the crucial difference of not having the power to set rules for people who instead opt not to engage with you.

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

#769

Post by vidarh » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 2:59 PM UTC

feralimal wrote: post #189

vidarh wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be very surprised how many socialists and communists there are in banking. On one hand one of the things Proudhon and Marx agreed on was that driving down the cost of credit is an inherently radical act - the cheaper credit becomes the weaker the hold of employers over employees becomes, as it becomes easier to start for yourself. On the other hand in finance you see the mechanisms at work laid bare. Nowhere el…

I'm not surprised. They see themselves as doing the best for themselves - that's anarchy, right? But they are prepared to harm others to do it. But even so, they want to be thought well of. I guess bankers and communists share the idea of looking at 'the people' as a group to be governed and managed. Both are wedded to the system. I think communistic thinking is the idea that seems to have won, and (technocratic) gov…

You've totally missed the point of what I wrote.

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

#770

Post by playing_colours » Sun, Sep 06, 2020, 3:17 PM UTC

jokethrowaway wrote: post #746

bufferoverflow wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm, no, it's a false equivocation. What do you do with really bad / evil people who got caught doing evil things (there's enough evidence to put them in prison). I never heard a good answer from an anarchist. You have to realize there are truly evil people out there. People who will assault innocent people, who will torture, who will rape, who will murder, who will do all of the above to a toddler. And will force t…

In an anarchic society with no government to protect people, the people would pay whoever likes this line of work to protect them. A system of private law enforcememt could emerge out of anarchy. The interactions between different law enforcement agencies (whether with simple agreements or third party private arbitration courts) and the different internal rules would create a market in which consumers are free to cho…

So we end up in Feudalism, because what prevents those agencies from establishing their power over territories and demanding payment for protection?