I thought the ideas on anarchy were kind of sloppy and poorly developed. However, I did like the idea of listing the things that tend to “dominate” us (and certainly anarchy is about trying to minimize these things). I wish that it had not just listed a potpourri of modern contenders to being in charge, but focused on more fundamental components that things are composed of.

For instance, socialist-democratic seems like it actually appeals to the mass/majority (as shown through votes and public discussion), the institution (an appeal to a long-functioning institutions that has shown stability) and the technocratic system (tax codes, legal codes, the educational system standing in for the arbitrary judgements of individuals).

I think it’s extremely odd the author doesn’t even mention the threat of physical coercion, kind of the big daddy of all coercion with tons of thinking around the state holding a monopoly on violence and all that.

I think you failed to address this:

"The word "obligation" was never a part of my comment. That's your distortion."

Are you willing to address it, or do you refuse?

No need to feel silly - who can really say if this interpretation of it is correct beside the writer themself?

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I think your interpretation is valid - just because mine might make more sense, it isn't really the common one if you look through this thread, and so it may be that the writer really did have that baffling take. *shrugs*

It feels true to my logic. We don't need validation from others when we've done the work ourselves and are more fulfilled.

Thoughtlessly conforming to social norms is of course not ideal, and sloughing off outdated and ossified traditions is healthy and key to adaptation.

But knee-jerk rebellion just for its own sake is execrable and should be treated with hostility. Our ancestors were not all a bunch of deluded, doctrinaire fools, and a great deal of wisdom has been laid down by people that learned what does and doesn't work.

When lacking a depth of insight on a matter, it is probably better to go with the house rules rather than upending the table.

I see what the problem is, you're interpreting obligation as work and I'm interpreting it as a moral kindness that comes without effort.

Liberalism as a political ideology grew from thinkers like John Locke (the supposed "Father of Liberalism") and Adam Smith during the Enlightenment.

This is the very early days of capitalism, before socialists would coin the term, and theorists were just attempting to objectively describe economics. They didn't yet fully understand that they were describing a particular mode of economics. You can see this confusion to this day, where many just assume that "capitalism" means "markets" and that "free market" means "freedom". This is a leftover from those early thinkers.

Liberalism, as a political ideology, takes these economic assumptions and integrates them into a political and moral theory. For instance, Locke's idea of personal rights and property rights being essentially the same can be found in liberal democracies (and was a justification for voting rights being connected with land ownership). This is where we also see the argument for laissez-faire economics, or the idea that a government should let the market regulate the economy of a nation (every prior system restrained markets with a heavier hand since markets regularly commit atrocities for profit). It's also where you see the idea of the "tyranny of the majority", which references the fear of the "agrarian" population (the working class at the time), and how if they had democratic power, they'd vote away the private property of the ruling class (the founding fathers of the US specifically write about this).

The result is a preservation of the autocratic caste system of capitalism which divides everyone into employer (owner) and employee (worker) where the former has all the wealth and makes all the decisions, and the latter does all the work and makes none of the decisions. Liberalism specifically preserves this arrangement through democratic suppression of workers (look up the history of worker's rights; they weren't won democratically), often through state violence. The police are one such institution, which exist primarily to protect private property rights, because it is impossible for private property owners to protect their own property, and it is unprofitable to pay for that expense yourself, so it becomes subsidized by tax payers under liberal democracy to maintain the caste system of capitalism.

That's a very brief overview of the subject, but you can find a little more information on the Wikipedia page. It's not going to be as direct a response, but you should be able to verify what I've said here.

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Hunter gatherer societies are in many ways anarchic and were the basis of human civilization for most of our existence. For a modern example the kibbutzim of Israel are a kind of anarchic society. There are tons of others as well. As a general matter, though, the fact that an ideology invites harsh repression doesn’t mean that ideology can’t work. Democracy didn’t exist for thousands of years and attempted democratic communities were brutally destroyed, but once democracy was able to overcome that history of oppression better societies were created.

fair enough, i can respect that any anarchist society would need to overcome the existing power structures.

i do slightly disagree with the idea that abolition or civil rights "began with anarchist thought", but perhaps my definition of anarchism is different than this context. If questioning authority makes you an anarchist then sure, but then how can a stateless society enforce civil rights without state institutions?

It would look like everyone singing kumbaya and sharing everything. There will be no prisons or strong state enforcement of law because, in anarchy-world, everyone will just be good and serial killers just need to have free food. All crime is due to poverty!

> If it is a universal truth, then there shouldn’t be any exceptions to the rule.

Have you give that much thought?

> But if everyone understands the word ‘horse’ to mean a certain animal, why waste so much of an argument asserting that ‘true’ horses are actually deer?

A horse is a concrete object; hardly a contentious matter. A better analogy would be the word ‘love’. Nothing wrong with pointing out that few people use the word in anything but a disastrously superficial sense — many of our admired thinkers have said as much.

And every single one exists only with the blessing of non-anarchist societies.

Nature is the blue-footed booby, watching impassively as the larger of her two chicks slowly fights with the smaller for solitude in her shadow.

And she remains so, as the smaller--now just outside her shadow--slowly dies of exposure baking under the hot sun. struggling, and calling for help.

Do we consider “the fundamental social-psychological nature of the human mind” to be one of these “power structures?”

Because I agree, it will take a long time to overcome that. Like, we’d need to evolve into a different species before an anarchist social regime could ever hope to be stable and healthy

>A person is smart, rational. People are dumb panicky animals.

Yeah, as I was rereading the article, I kept thinking "But how exactly could anyone organize an educational system without a hierarchical (i.e. dominant) structure of some kind? I trust a doctor to give me medical care or to cut me open on the basis of the existing power structures within our educational system (which help ensure certain standards are met).

Like I said, I don't think a purely anarchistic society is feasible (and certainly not at the scale of an entire nation); but there are idealistic elements to it that I think we absolutely should focus on (including to the point of restructuring our existing societies to be more equitable and less dominating).

I’m a big fan of Chomsky’s definition. My poor attempt to paraphrase: authority is not self justifying, and authoritarian structures that can not justify their existence should be dismantled. Could probably add what authority deserves to exist should be controlled through democratic processes.

>I see anarchism as being an ideal standard of living. I don't think we'll ever get to that standard

Seeing how people reacted to a completely manageable crisis like COVID selfishly and counterproductively proved to me without a reasonable doubt that people as a group cannot be trusted to act rationally without guardrails or hierarchical structure.

A person is smart, rational. People are dumb panicky animals. You or I might be able to live capably in an anarchical society, but the vast majority could not, and there would always be some minority of people who would impose their own hierarchy upon their immediate area, with coercion or charisma, and then BOOM, you have warlords and cults. And now you and your neighbors need to organize a way to protect yourselves from those warlords and cults. BOOM, now you have an organized society that demands specialization and organization, and now you aren't anarchical so what was the point of all that in the first place.

Anarchism, even in its most optimistic and ideal form is inferior to organized society in every way save for an individual's desire to be unconstrained. Life is better with infrastructure and logistics. Paved roads, grocery stores, supply chains, libraries, electricity, bridges, transportation, etc are awesome and none of those would exist without large scale organization and regulation.

No. Because to achieve an anarchistic society would require overcoming the power structures that have been in place for a really really long time. Doesn’t mean it’s impossible, just not probable in our lifetime, and maybe not in our children’s lifetime either. But what matters isn’t immediate effect, what matters is contributing to that future when it is possible.

Abolition, workers rights, women’s rights are all examples of movements that began with anarchist thought. They all involved questioning of a structural problem in society and the subsequent attempt to dismantle it. It takes time.

When your terminology is so unwavering in its definition, when your ideology is supposedly so absolute, just a single caveat or exception shows it’s fallacy and conceptual failure. If it is a universal truth, then there shouldn’t be any exceptions to the rule. If there are, then your stance isn’t unassailable, and you need to re-examine why that is. If certain people needed to be dominated EVEN in an anarchist society, then how can domination be cast off? Don’t they prove that domination and control is NECESSARY for society to function in their very first paragraph?

And I am not a stickler on language. It’s a living organism, it evolves and grows. But if everyone understands the word ‘horse’ to mean a certain animal, why waste so much of an argument asserting that ‘true’ horses are actually deer? It just further obfuscates the topic and point you’re trying to make. Language should be clear and concise. It’s purpose is to convey meaning. Even after reading their points, I still vehemently disagree that ‘anarchy’ is the term they’re looking for, regardless of the strength of their essay or if their ideology is even attainable.

One easy thing to do is to stop focusing on superfluous things, especially status symbols. Status signalling keeps the social hierarchy intact.

> and half of the arguments seem to be based on redefining words

I would add to this a slavish dedication to purity of concept, both broadly philosophically, but more specifically, linguistically.

> And yet life is anarchic, and all good things within it; including you.

> Nature is anarchic

This is, indeed, an idea that won’t go away— an appeal to nature divorced from knowledge of it.

It’s an argument that’s been used probably as long as we’ve been making arguments. It’s been used to prop up authority, anarchism, domination, freedom, creationism… you name it, we’ve cited “Nature” as our example and our proof.

“Nature”, which so often seems to exclude us or the things we make.(the word therein defined as just being “anything non-human”).

Nature is not your rhetorical monkey(mine neither, for that matter). It is rigid systems to your randomness, randomness to your rigid systems.

It is symptomatic of the author’s overall method here— craning back from their conclusion, anarchy is THE right state of being— to justify it through cherry-picked examples and fatuous pontification.

To be fair, this isn’t the first time I’ve felt this way running into anarchistic argumentation. I don’t know if that speaks to bias on my part, a commonality of those arguments, or both.

Could you lay that out in a little more detail ? Seems to me like you are asserting some ideas and drawing connections which are not beyond dispute. You may be corect but I cant really follow - this is not so much an explanation asnan assertion

Which I gotta say is really ironic given the subject if this thread and the article

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> thinking that the meanings you give to words are more important to what someone is saying than the context and intent.

You are taking your interpretation as being necessarily correct, ignoring your very own advice: considering "the context and intent".