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An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)

theanarchistlibrary.org

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Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)

#31

Post by mr_spothawk »

danharaj wrote: 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…

> At the scale of society I see Marxism as just as important.

what'd I just read? I think it was something like "100 million people died in the 20th century" because Marxism [1]

> How to make a political program out of anarchism?

nah bruh... the article is explicit:

> We are anti-political because we are interested in the self-organization of the power of individuals. This tension towards self-organization is completely orthogonal to democracy in any of its various forms.

[1] http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/11/20/nicolae-one-hun...

Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)

#32

Post by fiatjaf »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #3

“Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time“ https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill

Again?

People paste that quote everywhere, as if Churchill or whoever said that was some sage with infinite wisdom.

Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)

#33

Post by wybiral »

sigil wrote: post #27
wavefunction wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

> Do we even have a right not to be harmed? If we do, how is justice served -- can we serve it ourselves, or delegate it to others if we wish?

...And then the young anarchists assemble a small group for mutual protection and justice. And then these small groups begin to share resources and find the need for policies and infrastructure...

...And then they rebel against their new society because it imposes policies on their "freedom"...

Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)

#34

Post by badosu »

wav-part wrote: post #23
kijin wrote: 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…

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?

Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)

#35

Post by maxerickson »

danharaj wrote: 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…

The way to reconcile differing views is to discard them as principles and look at them as ideals and preferences.

Doesn't make for sweeping rhetoric though.

Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)

#36

Post by aaron-lebo »

evanlivingston wrote: post #28
mattmaroon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's not crazy to think. Why do extremely wealthy people continue to strive for 100 billion instead of settling with 10? They had plenty at 1 million.

That's probably socialized, but maybe theres some animal hunger underneath it.

Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)

#37

Post by confounded »

wav-part wrote: post #23
kijin wrote: 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…

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?

Re: An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005)

#38

Post by confounded »

mattmaroon wrote: post #26
cs702 wrote: post #11

"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.

Anarchism is much more than the absence of a national government.

When and where was it tried plenty?

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