What is your opinion of anarchy?

Anarchy is a goal fort some, who feel that there is profit (not necessarily monetary) from disorganization.

But anarchy is a lot like socialism – in the long run it fails. And it fails, once again, because of the basics of human nature. Humans, over time, tend to self-divide (i.e. not have it imposed on them) into distinct groups, based on needs, personality, and goals. Humans tend to flock together – this is historical and anthropological – it was (and is) a way of promoting the strength of the ‘tribe’ or social group.

And in any group, there ultimately emerges a leader – again, nothing nefarious about this. Groups tend to need leadership and leaders evolve. Some want to be leaders, others are ‘drafted’, but leaders evolve.

Government is a larger (macro) view of tribal leadership. So anarchy might have a few moments of glory, but in the long term humans revert to form and create their own social structures and governance – it is the nature of social groups to do that.

Having said all that, there is some appeal to changing how we are governed today. But to me, the answer is not anarchy, but better government. Anarchy scares me – it is nothing more than mob rule where as structure, even bad structure, is less threatening and more predictable.

Anarchy is a direct path to a dictatorship.

Anarchy:
1. a state of society without government or law.
2. political and social disorder due to the absence of governmental control.
3. a theory that regards the absence of all direct or coercive government as a political ideal and that proposes the cooperative and voluntary association of individuals and groups as the principal mode of organized society.
4. confusion; chaos; disorder.

Anarchy, like Socialism, gets a bad rap because it goes against the existing system. The educational system expresses and promotes the policies and beliefs of those who write the rules so we get very one sided opinion. When you were taught, if it was even mentioned, you were given a definition something along the lines of #4 above. And #2 is worded in such a manner that assumes that, and leads you to do likewise, any system that lacks government control will lead to disorder therefore government is a necessity.

A system set up along the lines of definition #3 above would, in my opinion, be preferable to the present one. It also sounds a lot like socialism which is another of those scary scenarios that we are given nothing but negative information on.

@ARE_you_kidding_me Why do you think their is a correlation between a dictatorship and anarchy?

@rojo – the problems with #3:

1) how do you impose ‘voluntary’ associations? Would that theory not coerce people into being ‘voluntary’ members of a social structure?

2) how do you force people to cooperate?

I think your definition #3 is idealistic and unrealistic. It’s a dictionary definition, but will/cannot ever happen.

@elbanditoroso Anarchy, in the political sense, has nothing to do with disorganisation, and does not preclude leadership.

If we’re going to invoke human nature, and what is incompatible with it—then that would seemingly be modern civilisation.

For the entirety of our evolutionary past, humans were roaming hunter-gatherers, yet today we live sedentary lives and buy food packaged delivered for us.

For the 200,000+ years before the Agrarian Revolution—humans lived in relatively small, egalitarian bands, with mass violence being unknown to them. Nothing like what most people experience today—and wars and conflicts are common.

And for all this time in our evolutionary past, there was gift exchange instead of money and market exchange—basically economic communism.

@elbanditoroso “1) how do you impose ‘voluntary’ associations? Would that theory not coerce people into being ‘voluntary’ members of a social structure?”

This objection makes no sense at all. If an association is voluntary, then there is no coercion. It is the absence of coercion.

It makes as much sense as being told that freedom has to be forced on people. It’s as if emancipation, in your mind, is a coercive act.

Same with “forcing to co-operate”. There’s nothing about forcing. Co-operation is also voluntary, and since humans are a social species that have evolved to co-operate—it is not a stretch of the imagination that most people do so quite naturally without any imposition.

we can’t get the few people on this thread to agree on anything, how does anyone expect anarchy to address real problems?

Since we cannot voluntarily come to a consensus @zenvelo perhaps if we only had a controlling body that could tell us what our options were and provide us with the answers?

@rojo That’s why an anarchic system akin to your #3 still doesn’t work.

@NerdyKeith because the power hungry psychopaths will take over, fight until only one has all the power and then basically be a dick to the rest of us. Anarchy is a power vacuum.

Idealistic and juvenile, imo. It’s fine to be discontent with the current system but there is no way in hell that anarchy would work out better.

@ARE_you_kidding_me The power mad tend to look for established institutions in which to dominate others. It’s anarchists who specifically address the question of social domination, and have spent the best part of two centuries thinking of ways and means of preventing it, and advocating alternative forms of social organisation that do not allow for power hungry psychopaths to take control.

@Mariah It not only can work out better, it’s historically proven to work out better. What I do find actually idealistic and juvenile is the idea that not thinking about better systems, and falling back on the status quo is going to work out just fine. I don’t know if you’ve realised, but we’re amidst the greatest extinction even in millennia, depleting finite resources at an exponential rate, producing catastrophic ecological damage in the form of anthropogenic climate change, and allowing monumental banditry of a tiny fraction of the world’s population to monopolise huge swathes of the world’s resources and assets.

It isn’t mere “discontent”. Current civilisation is on a trajectory of self-destruction. It’s those “juvenile” anarchists who address this more than most.

Not sure where you got the idea that I don’t think about better systems and am great with the status quo. I want change, just not anarchy. I am very concerned about climate change and resource depletion but I highly doubt that eliminating all regulation will make it better.

@Mariah Then we have a misunderstanding, since eliminating all regulation isn’t what anarchy means in its political context.

My understanding was that anarchy means no government which means no regulation. If I have misunderstood then I apologize.

@Mariah It’s more complicated than that. We have regulations because capitalism is systemically blind to externalities, and there is an incentive to pass on the cost of negative externalities even when there are regulations in place.

A business owner could cut costs by dumping waste and causing pollution, or by fraudulently claiming a product is more energy efficient than it really is, or that it produces less pollution (Volskwagen is a recent notable case).

If they believe that they can get away with it, that the short-term rewards are worth it, or that the benefits out-weigh the risks—then there’s a good chance that they will take the chance.

And we know what happens where there are no regulations. Capitalists behave as if the environment is a free-for-all, free to exploit resources, to dump pollution, to defraud consumers, and to treat workers in humiliating ways (and employ children). And the idea that “bad practices” are somehow eliminated through market discipline and consumer choice just does not stand up to any scrutiny and doesn’t happen anywhere frequently enough—if at all.

So—I’m not an idealistic fool. For as long as there is capitalism, I want government regulations—in fact, I think they should be far stronger, and I think Pigovian taxes should be put on a greater number socially and environmentally harmful products, and at far higher rates.

The thing is is that an anarchist society is necessarily a non-capitalist one (and “anarcho”-capitalists are not anarchists)—and the dynamics of economic production are very different when those who control economic production are also the ones affected by what they output—as an anarchist society is also a socialist one, with economic production being democratised and controlled directly by workers and their communities.

I would say that I am an anarchist at heart, but I do not think I could speak for it nearly as well as @Kropotkin does.

Hmm, we are in a lot more agreement than I realized. I apologize for being flippant earlier. I should have done more research before commenting. Understand that my only contact with “anarchy” before now was teenage boys spraypainting that “A” symbol on city walls and declaring “fuck the police.”

@Mariah “Understand that my only contact with “anarchy” before now was teenage boys spraypainting that “A” symbol on city walls and declaring “fuck the police.”

Unfortunately there’s a lot of dipshits out there without real knowledge or understanding of political and economic systems (and no interest ether), who’s thought process is just “anarchy = rebellion, rebellion = cool” and just glomp on to the shock value of vandalizing property by spray-painting shit with circle-A symbols.

@Kropotkin glad you explained that cause I was about ask if you were referring anarcho-capitalism

@Mariah It’s a common problem. Also “anarchy” and “anarchism” are increasingly associated with a sort of idealised hyper-capitalism where human behaviour is viewed as voluntary contractual agreements comprising entirely of mutually beneficial exchanges, and everything that can conceivably be owned or commodified is turned into ‘private property’—and this is called “anarcho-capitalism”. It’s a view that is anathema to about 99.9% of anarchists who have ever lived.

@ARE_you_kidding_me It’s funny that you were going to ask. I’m only carrying the name and image of probably the most famous anarchist-communist ever. I guess not famous enough.

Ok, peter kropotkin, have not read about this particular fellow yet. This was a question you have been waiting for your entire fluther life no?

@ARE_you_kidding_me Not really. The topic has come up before, and I’ve written about it on here in the past.

Anarchism is an ideal where people form themselves into a society willingly and happily. Despotism, where people are treated as slaves is its opposite. It works best in small groups such as those that existed in prehistoric times before societies became large and regimented as @Kropotkin mentioned. It is an ideal that has eluded us since the invention of agriculture when we first became slaves of the land and had to work in order to be fed.