damn, that would be a good band name. Anarchy Cops. In fact, I'm writing that down.

> Wealth and power were far more concentrated when the world was ruled by absolute monarchs, emperors, and warlords.

They would look on today's billionaires with an envy the rest of us couldn't imagine. Today's wealthy and powerful are like gods compared to history's tyrants.

> You can't "eliminate unjustified forms of dominance" and also have no hierarchical system to enforce it.

Ultimately, the argument is about what is and is not a justified hierarchy. In this way, anarchism isn't unique from other forms of critique of power. What anarchism is, instead, is a focus on dominance in its political form. Environmentalism, feminism, race theory, Marxism, and other forms of critiques on the justification of hierarchy exist. It's a simplistic interpretation to take these as arguments for absolutely no power dynamics. That's impossible. What they are, instead, are the shadows cast by those power dynamics. They raise questions worth answering, and in answering them, we can create a more ethical world.

Anarchy in its most extreme theoretical form isn't possible. Neither is good, truth, objectivity, etc. Ultimately, ideals are directions we move toward more than they are destinations. To abandon projects just because their most Platonic form isn't achievable in material reality is really just to abandon any meaning or purpose and fall into nihilism and despair.

Yes, in my experience arguments for anarchy as a workable system rely heavily on like...everyone just being cool, man. Which might work in a small community but is just not going to work on any scale much beyond Dunbar's number.

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And according to the author’s definition of anarchy as the absence of domination. But nature is nothing BUT domination—strength having its way with weakness. This article is a synthesis of delusion and word salad.

This is why I like the idea of some voluntary system of actual social contracts - some basic minimal law plus a legal framework you sign

Right now something similar would be moving to states with laws that reconcile with your values but that is not practical for most

But technology could make this viable

Imagine economic and governmental systems competing for members in the same geographic area but a baseline legal minimum and systems of tariff to prevent one system from bypassing the regulation of another

Liberalism is very specifically the combination of democracy with capitalism. What we are living through is the natural consequence of trying to merge democracy with its opposite. Either you end up with a society that abolishes capitalism for some form of socialism (democracy in the economy), or you end up with a society that abolishes democracy in favor of some form of capitalism (some kind of corporate feudalism or fascism). We are living through the latter today.

I agree that over time there is an expansion of the moral sphere, but the path to moral expansion is treacherous, and we are currently in a period of backsliding. Victories won in the past are being rolled back. Some are new victories, like abortion rights in the US. Some are ancient victories, like acceptance of gay or trans people. I do agree that in general there is an expansion of this sphere, but only over very long periods of time, and in the short term it expands and contracts, sometimes violently.

We have this narrative of progress, which is an Enlightenment thought, which paints history as backwards and primitive while painting the present as progressive and advanced. Sadly, the real world is much more complicated than that. Some progress is made and some progress is lost as time marches on. It's convenient for those in power to paint the past as being worse because this is a much easier (and more profitable) strategy than actually making the present better. Be wary of progress narratives because, more often than not, they're misleading.

The world today has many wonders, but it also has more inequality than any historical period, the rising threat of nuclear war, and global ecological collapse. These are all the result of not only failure to progress, but serious regress. The point of critiquing liberal democracy is to ask how we got to such a dire situation and work towards something better than this. Anarchism is one, of several, such responses.

Profound

>And yet wealth and power remain extremely concentrated - more so than in any point in history.

Wealth and power were far more concentrated when the world was ruled by absolute monarchs, emperors, and warlords. It's actually far more dispersed now than for most of human history. It's still very concentrated, but it's much better now than it used to be.

>An anarchist society is not one without structures of governance, but one which radically distributes wealth and power to the individual by critiquing and eliminating unjustified forms of dominance.

Until someone who wanted power seizes it and imposes their will. Power loves a vacuum, and an anarchist society would invite far greater concentrations of wealth and power because any regulatory institutions or guardrails would be gone. Power would just go to whoever was most willing to seize it by whatever means. You can't have both a government and a lack of hierarchy; who enforces the rules, if there are any?

You can't "eliminate unjustified forms of dominance" and also have no hierarchical system to enforce it. What's stopping me from gathering a handful of droogs and coming over to your house and taking your stuff? If I didn't have the stuff you have, why wouldn't I do this if it meant that my own family/community would love more comfortably and securely?

Unfortunately everyone knows anarchism is unachievable but sees some nobility in fighting for it regardless. This is very sad to me because it stops people from fighting for an actually achievable socialism, by obfuscating class dynamics, and creating pure ideals of liberty vs. authority that do not materially exist. This is unfortunately a victory of the capitalist class. Make the tool of Marxism sound scary and bad through decades of propaganda, and instead divert people's revolutionary energy into spinning their ideological wheels. The FBI even dispersed anarchist media in the 60s. Look at countries in the global south and notice that Anarchism isn't a thing there, and that people are fighting and have successfully fought for socialism. Anarchism ultimately is a white western trend in imperial core countries that have suffered the most from McCarthyism and red scare.

highly recommend this short and easy book: Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti

This is the best thing I have seen posted on this sub

I would put some things with different words or argue for some compromise that keeps the good of civilization - medicine or technology or scientific method - but his general point is useful

This is the best thing I have seen posted on this sub

I would put some things with different words or argue for some compromise that keeps the good of civilization - medicine or technology or scientific method - but his general point is useful

The part that makes me devious AF and wanna vandalize your shit

You gonna call the anarchy cops?

It's always okay to stop a murder or a theft. These are abhorrent actions against humanity.

What parts of the "social-psychological nature of the human mind" prevent which aspects of anarchist organizing?

You attack the thought by your objection with his wording but that is pretty much compatible with his point

Words are built in systems and making original points requires either new words or a temporary best fit redefinition

It does not matter whether authority can be classified within one word but two different ideas by the linguistic taste you have personally developed

The difference was stated without confusion either way

And yet wealth and power remain extremely concentrated - more so than in any point in history. The institutions that rule also concentrate power at the very top - whether it's the totalitarian power of the business owners, the plutocratic power of a board of directors, the dictatorial power of some "elected" leaders like the US president, or the kleptocratic power of our democratic "representatives" who overwhelmingly belong to the owning class.

Systems of governance create the conditions which consolidate wealth and power in some hands, and strip wealth and power from others. An anarchist society is not one without structures of governance, but one which radically distributes wealth and power to the individual by critiquing and eliminating unjustified forms of dominance.

Anarchism as a political philosophy strives for non-hierarchical cooperation. It's hard to say what an "end-stage" anarchist society would look like - anarchism focuses more on how people should go about organizing than the results of the organization.

I tend to imagine society organized across geographies by trade and industrial unions and in localities by consensus-driven democracy with local councils handling the day to day administrative tasks. The economy would primarily function almost as a gift economy, possibly with some markets for luxury goods.

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Anarchism is an approach and critique of domination, in its many guises and forms. It’s not a telos, meaning it’s not an end point or fulfillment. Sure we can look to the Spanish Revolution as a way it’s been expressed, but it’s not a program. I always considered anarchism to be an approach or relationship to authority, rather than a step-by-step approach in which to organize human society. I’m not sure that’s even a possibility or something we should strive for to be quite honest. Many moving parts would need to be put into place before that kind of thinking could even emerge.

I was not 100% sure where you were going with that but I appreciate you laying this out.

It seems to me, though that there are a couple of ways of looking at this development. , see the development of liberal democracy, increasing recognition within certain spheres of an individual. That is individual has a certain dignity and worth and independence that cannot be abrogated. I don’t think it’s wrong to see political development as the increasing expansion of that zone. So you see things like the Magna Carta before locke as beginning to impose limits on arbitrary rule, and that trend continuing.

For my own self, I think the notion of private property can be overstated and can warp itself through disproportionate political influence and act to a bridge the autonomy of others.

But I’m not sure that problem isn’t found, and just the institution itself. That is to say the remedy for all the ills you identify are thoighbthe exercise of political power

If you tell me that because of economics, there is disproportionate, political power, I would agree. But I would also say that that is not liberal democracy. That is the warping of liberal democracy to a different end

That's why we've moved away from systems of government where a person rules, and into systems of government where institutions and laws rule, and the people running those institutions cycle through.

This is precisely and deliberately because people paradoxically need to be governed to some degree but also cannot reliably self-govern without mucking it all up.

It’s funny you should mention education as it’s one of Noam Chomsky’s go to examples of a fairly anarchic power structure. Departmental leadership is regularly cycled while curricula are developed through consensus. Anarchism does not have to mean the complete absence of hierarchical power structures.

> 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.

Odd to think that because people are incapable of self-governing that they must be capable of governing others. It seems like one should have the opposite reaction.

>Also, the opening line of "Anarchism is the only way of life that has ever worked or ever can" is beyond a stretch, and is likely a great way to lose 90% of your readers before the first paragraph is over.

I dunno, I might have lost interest if it weren't for that insufferably contrarian take. I'm tempted to think it's bait and I fell for it.

The only way I can redeem that claim is by arguing that anarchism has never truly been instituted, and therefore has a lower failure rate than other systems. Sort of like communism as Marx envisioned it.