Hey there ! Thanks for your reply. Thanks also for making the discussion centered around a specific question, i indeed tried to reply quote by quote and found myself pointing out the same flaws over and over.
I’ll first talk about these flaws, which i think can be summed up to one : you do not argue (at least not here). I think i’m right to say it’s not an argument
because you use circular reasoning to say “There are only states, therefore they are necessary” and then “they are necessary, therefore there are only states”. If you don’t see the problem here, it will be hard to discuss, as it already has been.
you make an continuous use of the “general statement” argument that i talked about in my previous comment. You say something universal if taken as is, then claim it’s hyperbole, and then say that examples i give are “anecdotal”. This makes your argument pointless since no one can either prove it (it has no universal value), either disprove it (every counter example is discarded as anecdotal). I’m sorry if i sounded pedantic to you, but this is the way i debate, and i think the basis for every proper logical debate : we cannot just state vague facts about humanity as proof of our arguments, since their value comes from how common they are, and there is no way to prove this. We either have to take universal takes that enables proper counter-argument, either accept that the fact does not apply to a possibly large number of people.
because you jump from theory to practice and vice-versa. When talking about political theory, its “Then why don’t we see anarchists societies”. When it’s about examples of anarchist societies, its “They failed because anarchy is flawed as an ideology”. More generally, you do not answer directly to the passages you quote. You choose on which axis to operate the distinction. : you did not explained why the legitimity of violence is not an abritrary choice, you explained why state is legitimate. You strawman my points : on pride, i didn’t push that “humanity as a collective lack pride as an emotion” (= most people lack pride), i said some people lack it, most anarchists lack it, i lack it.
You ignore historical facts. you never get stability ororderatany point in an anarchist society is plain wrong, look at the examples i gave (we needed more than a century to get back some of the social advances of the Commune, factories were more productive in Spanish War anarchist territories, ukrainian anarchist communes were functional). The reason you give for their short duration is not the one given by history : it’s not an expression when i say that each of them resulted in a massacre by a state, it is the actual case. You also contradicted yourself on this point : “[anarchy] always collapses on itself” cannot be true at the same time than “The rest of the world is not going to coddle some anarchists ideologues” : either it collapses on itself, either it is some external intervention (spoiler alert : it was the second option).
About your question, i’ll answer it in a more general fashion than just about the US, because 1) i don’t know the US that well and 2) the case of a state and its branches suddenly disappearing is quite a fantasy.
How a society can function without a government?
Most anarchists and (left) libertarians base their theories on federalism. This idea, existing already in a weak shape in a lot of state-linked organization (including the states of US), is that entities can band and disband together. The idea is to create different groups on an individual basis (you can be part of multiple groups, such as the group of your neighbourhood, of your workingplace, of your political expression, etc.), and those groups can form greater groups (like the council of multiple neighbourhoods for a city, the association of multiple factories of the same sector, etc.). This network of groups is meant to replace the main advantage of state-like organization, which really is organization itself : communication and exchanges on great distances, optimization of knowledge, ressources, etc.
This can seem very complicated, but it’s akin to what already exist : there are councils for my building, my neighbourhood, my city. My boss works in a cooperative, which regroups around 15 winemakers, and this cooperative is part of a broader network which includes around 15 cooperatives. This stratification already exists in a rich way, the only question is to make it go from bottom rather than from the top.
You can have people dedicated to help those organizations work. They can be viewed as administrative/representative, but there are some differences anarchists promotes : people are delegated tasks, they do not represent you. The difference is that they cannot take any decision, they have one or more task to complete but can’t act outside. Yeah, but what if they do, you ask ? The other important part of anarchist delegation of tasks is immediate recall : mandate for people can be ended by a simple vote. What if people abuse this to prevent someone to be effectively mandated ? It’s probably the sign that either this person is not the right one, either there is a profound fracture in the group, which should encourage the creation of a new group (which is a good thing under anarchist ideas, each groups having their rules means that more groups means more chances for you to find or create the right one).
Really, you should be quite familiar with federalism since we’re having this discussion on the Fediverse, from different servers with different softwares.
How would the economy function ?
One of the question you can have is : how to make sure everyone gets a house, food, clothes, etc? Well, there are workers and workplaces for those, and each group can produce and give according to people’s needs. If you really need people to have an interest to believe this will work, it is mutual aid viewed in a negative way : if you don’t give food to the carpenter, they won’t build your house (the positive way is, you give food to whoever needs it, and the carpenter builds houses for whoever needs it). Note this is close to what we have in capitalist states : you got to work if you want food or house. The only thing is, in our current societies, money and state enables people to do nothing or stuff we don’t need/want (banks, administration, mines, etc.).
How would justice be enforced?
There are two things here : the justice part, and the enforced part. The justice definition from a state perspective is easy, it’s what says the law. Anarchist societies propose to see it from the individuals perspectives : the goal is not to find a victim and a culprit to punish, nor to get to the “state of balance” where the society was before the unjustice, it is to bring the society to a point which everyones agrees to, ideally to prevent the unjustice from happening again. Now comes the enforce part : once an agreement is reached, it is far easier to enforce since everyone agrees to it. For the situations where this does not apply (before the argument is concluded, if it is not respected), it either comes from the good faith of everyone included, either falls back to forms of violence/authority, ideally limited (such as imprisonment until argument is reached for dangerous persons, etc.).
How would you deal with people who reject this idea and want to reestablish a central authority?
This is quite a hard question. Since everyone is asked to participate in multiple groups, one part of the answer is people could recreate groups that federate in a more central way. The difference with what we have currently, is they could be able to leave them at any time to build something else.
The other part of the answer is for people that want to impose central authority to everyone (which is a common will through most states, and is to my eyes the cause of states hegemony : they need people to provide the services they promise, so they cannot accept people outside of them. In the worst form, you get imperialism, when state not only feed on their people, but try to feed on other states’ peoples). I don’t have a good answer for that, the movment is quite divided between accepting agreements with states and fighting against the imposition of central authority (this is the weapon/bombs part of anarchy)). Neither is satisfying to my eyes, probably both will have to be used anyway.
Thanks again for this final question which, i’m happy to admit, resets the debate and will, i hope, show that every flaw i listed were only relative to our previous discussion.
Reading what you wrote as an answer to this question, it sounds like you’re just an advocate for true direct democracy. I mean that’s fine, but the point is that what you’re advocating for isn’t true anarchy. You’re still in favor of a central authority, just one that’s structured differently. Now direct democracy does have it’s strengths and drawbacks, and we can discuss the merits of that later, but for now I want to focus on a particular concept, and that’s the idea of entirely voluntary governance.
The idea of an entirely voluntary government sounds very appealing, however, I think it’s one of those ideas that sounds better than it actually is. Let’s think about it from a fundamental level, in order for something to be voluntary, there needs to be a person with free will making consensual decisions. However, consent is an inherently subjective concept and thus the standard for who can consent will always be arbitrary… and if that’s the case who gets to decide the standard? This is something that has to be established at the very start.
Well who can consent? Can children consent? Where is the cutoff, and who decides it? If a community is split on whether or not 16 year olds can consent, do the 16 year olds get a vote in this discussion or are they sidelined? What if they don’t like the decision, can children disassociate and join other groups that say they can consent or not? How about disabled people, can they consent or do they not get a vote? Do they perhaps have someone else be their representative and make decisions on their behalf? But if that’s the case, and decision making can be outsourced for kids and the disabled, can consenting adults also outsource this power? Let’s suppose people want to have a representative, is that allowed or is individual participation mandatory? If it’s mandatory then who is enforcing this rule?
I hope you catch what I’m trying to demonstrate here. This is a concept that’s vague, and its implementation is rather complicated.
How would the economy function?
Economics is definitely not your forte lol
You’re trying to combine standard market capitalism with the Marixst resource distribution… but these two ideas contradict each other. Marxist socialism requires a strong, central, and authoritarian government in order to seize and collectivize all the means of production, property, wealth, and resources and then to centrally plan every single aspect of the economy to properly distribute the resources from ability to need. However, market capitalism is literally the opposite. It requires government to allow the markets to have some autonomy so they can function independently. Capitalist economies are decentralized and unplanned, and resource distribution is done through the markets on the basis of supply and demand. You can’t combine the two.
It seem your idea of economics is not based in reality. This isn’t the 1500s, our modern economies aren’t based on a bunch of framers and craftsmen who open up little shops to sell their labor and crafts. A carpenter building a house? Lol. Do you understand just how much labor goes into building a modern house? Not to mention that there are things that require way more labor, way more resources, and insane global supply chains to produce like cars, planes, and smartphones. These are not things that you can build without strong multinational corporate structures, and you can’t get them trade them through bartering.
Also, you think things like administration, banks, and mines aren’t necessary? Lmao, you can’t be serious. I’ll just say this, capitalism is a system that favors efficiency above all else for better or for worse, and it’s really good at it. Everything that industry that exists and every product you see on sale exists because there are people out there who buy them. The demand exists, and so the companies provide. Things like banks provide value to the economy as they fill a niche, and that’s the reason why they exist.
How would justice be enforced?
Bring society to a point where everybody ideally agrees to prevent injustice? What does that even mean? The point you’re talking about is an ideal, it’s literally a fantasy by definition. How can you possibly govern a society when your concept of justice hinges on the realization of something imaginary? Is an anarchist society just going to remain lawless until this ideal point?
The enforcement part is equally ridiculous. You can only enforce laws once everybody has agreed to the punishments? Why would any criminal or wannabe criminal ever agree to implementing any punishments against themselves? Good faith? Lmao, if criminals were operating in good faith then they wouldn’t be criminals. I think you understand the absurdity of this notion, which is why you acknowledged that prisons and authority might make a come back in an anarchist society… but if that’s the case then doesn’t that defeat the whole point of the anarchy experiment?
How would you deal with people who reject this idea and want to reestablish a central authority?
Ah ha! Finally stumbled you good, didn’t I? I think this is the core issue with anarchy and I think it’s an inherently flawed ideology. Everything you said here relies on good faith whether it’s governance, economics, law, justice, or self defense. However, we don’t live in an ideal world, we live in a flawed world, and in our flawed world good faith is a rather scarce resource. There are a lot of people in our society who are greedy, egotistical, selfish, jealous, hateful, evil, violent, and contrarian. We’ll always have murders, pedos, rapists, bigots, thieves, morons, frauds, and zealots. These are people who exploit the good faith of others for their personal benefit at the expense of others.
In a normal society, these bad faith actors are either deterred by the entity that has monopoly on violence or they’re squashed by it. However, in an anarchist society, there is no monopoly on violence and so bad faith actors have no filters and are set loose. These people have no issue with violence or forcing others to do what they want, and so they will use violence to enforce their standards on to normal people and onto each other. Because each group or individual will have their own values, morals, and ideals there will be a competition of violence on who gets to enforce their standard. This type of chaos, disorder, instability, and violence is the reason why anarchy mostly exists as a fun thought exercise rather than a practical, viable ideology.
Thanks again for this final question which, i’m happy to admit, resets the debate and will, i hope, show that every flaw i listed were only relative to our previous discussion.
I’m going to split my response into two separate comments as I feel like we’re having two conversations at the same time, and I don’t want to mix them up. I’ll reply to your criticisms in this reply, and then reply to your answers in another. I originally didn’t want to respond to your criticisms at all as our previous conversation is no longer relevant, however, there’s a lot that you said that doesn’t sit right with me and I just want to set the record straight before I move on. You don’t have to reply to this comment if you don’t want to, it’s just here to voice my disagreements with your criticisms. You can just read and move on to my other comment.
Anyway, my response:
You’re conflating two separate statements. I said that if you look at the evolution of human history, you’ll quickly find out that states have won out over their alternatives. I think we can both agree (hopefully) that this is an objective statement. My point here is that there have to be reasons why things turned out the way they did, perhaps it’s best to understand those reasons instead of dismissing them. My second statement is that states are necessary because they are the most efficient answer we have to govern on a large scale. States provide an institutional framework that allow for stability, order, justice, and large scale organization. Our disagreement on the second statement is the root of our debate. However, as you can see, these two statements aren’t used to justify each other, and thus combining the two and calling it circular reasoning is just a misunderstanding on your part.
I take big issue with this criticism specifically because you’re being dishonest. My original statement was that “pride is a universal human emotion”. That’s an objectively true statement. People express pride differently, people are proud of different things, and different cultures have different ideas about it. However, all humans have it. You have it, I have it, we all do. It’s like happiness, sadness, or anger. The entire reason why I said this in the first place is to make the point that patriotism is a reflection of a universal human emotion. Keep in mind, I am not saying that patriotism is a universal trait, just that it’s a form in which an actual universal trait, pride, manifests itself.
If you disagreed with the notion that patriotism is a reflection of pride, then that’s fine, we could have had a discussion about it. However, you chose to sideline my point in favor of taking up the position that pride is not a universal emotion, and specifically focusing on the literal meaning “universal”. However, this focus was just the red herring fallacy. You were focusing on a minor detail to distract from the point being made. If you actually want to double down on the notion that pride is not a universal human emotion then we’re moving past political opinions and entering the realm of science, and that means that you have to actually show me an academic study that counters the established science (example). It’s why I pointed out that your anecdotes don’t mean much in this case.
Now, I don’t think it’s that deep and I don’t think you’re going to double down on this position, but I do think our exchange about this specific point up until now has been particularly frustrating because it’s unnecessary. I’m sure you understood what I meant from the beginning because it was a very simple point.
Theory and practice are intertwined. Anarchy is a failure in practice because it’s a flawed ideology in theory. It’s like talking to a islamists. They’ll tell you that islamic rule produces utopias… so you point out examples of it being a complete failure… then they start talking about that’s not “real” islam and how the quran is perfect… so you start pointing out the flaws in the quran to explain the connection. I’m not saying you’re doing this, but I’m just pointing out that trying to pretend that theory and practice and are two entirely separate categories is silly.
Also, I find it weird how you’re accusing me of engaging in bad faith by saying I’m turning your arguments into strawmans, when the first example you gave is just you not following the chain of responses. You said that I didn’t answer why the legitimacy of violence isn’t an arbitrary choice. Well, let’s find out why:
Original topic: whether or not someone supporting their country is radical.
Your response: someone supporting their country means supporting the monopoly of violence and that’s radical
Me: monopoly of violence isn’t inherently radical as it exists to regulate force which prevents chaos
You: all types of violence is radical and adding the distinction between regulated and unregulated force is arbitrary
Me: the distinction is the point, and the difference between regulated and unregulated violence is the difference between chaos and stability
You: distinctions in general are arbitrary in nature
Me: the distinction is critical as not all violence is equal, regulated violence by a society helps establish order which prevents unnecessary violence while unregulated violence by individuals does the opposite
And that was the last direct reply. Notice how the my responses directly respond to your responses? Notice how the conversation got specific but didn’t go off topic? Notice how you never asked me why the legitimacy of violence is not an arbitrary choice nor was that ever brought up? That means I didn’t misinterpret what you said, therefore I didn’t strawman you. If you felt like you need to add clarification or nuance or ask that either of me then just do that, but don’t call my direct responses to your points as strawman arguments when they’re not.
There’s three parts to this. First, you’re trying to pass off your opinions as facts. What you define as stable and orderly and what I define as stable and orderly are clearly different, and that’s fine, but we still have to acknowledge that they’re opinions. Take the Spanish anarchists as an example, the whole experiment lasted a granted total of 3 years. During this time, there was A LOT of internal fighting between the different types of anarchists as well as communists and republicans. A lot of people tried to enforce their own justice and take governance into their own hands and thousands of people died because of this. A lot of anarchist leaders ended up joining the republican government which undermined the very movement they led. The lack of centralization led to piss poor coordination which led to the anarchists to get absolutely crushed by Franco’s fascist troops. If this is what you define as stable and orderly then I don’t want to know what you consider to be unstable and disorderly.
Second, Makhnovshchina was not truly anarchist. They had an actual government that was backed by a military. So they had a full monopolization of violence and everything. The Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine stayed as the de facto government for 5 years until the bolsheviks took over. That’s the reason why they were more functional than their anarchist counterparts elsewhere, like in Spain for example.
Third, similar to the point I made earlier, the failures of anarchy are intertwined. Anarchy collapses on itself because it lacks the means to do what a functional government can, and that is to maintain order, organize the people to do large scale projects, and defend itself and it’s people. Because of this, anarchy will always result in another, more centralized form of government from crushing it and taking its place. The only way anarchy can work in the real world is if everybody in the world magically agreed to leave the anarchists alone, if some major power decided to protect them for some reason, or if there’s extreme levels of chaos and dysfunction in a society. Since none of these options are realistic or sustainable, anarchy is simply not capable of being a viable alternative to a state. I don’t think that’s a contradictory position.
Hey there ! Thanks for your reply. Thanks also for making the discussion centered around a specific question, i indeed tried to reply quote by quote and found myself pointing out the same flaws over and over.
I’ll first talk about these flaws, which i think can be summed up to one : you do not argue (at least not here). I think i’m right to say it’s not an argument
because you use circular reasoning to say “There are only states, therefore they are necessary” and then “they are necessary, therefore there are only states”. If you don’t see the problem here, it will be hard to discuss, as it already has been.
you make an continuous use of the “general statement” argument that i talked about in my previous comment. You say something universal if taken as is, then claim it’s hyperbole, and then say that examples i give are “anecdotal”. This makes your argument pointless since no one can either prove it (it has no universal value), either disprove it (every counter example is discarded as anecdotal). I’m sorry if i sounded pedantic to you, but this is the way i debate, and i think the basis for every proper logical debate : we cannot just state vague facts about humanity as proof of our arguments, since their value comes from how common they are, and there is no way to prove this. We either have to take universal takes that enables proper counter-argument, either accept that the fact does not apply to a possibly large number of people.
because you jump from theory to practice and vice-versa. When talking about political theory, its “Then why don’t we see anarchists societies”. When it’s about examples of anarchist societies, its “They failed because anarchy is flawed as an ideology”. More generally, you do not answer directly to the passages you quote.
You choose on which axis to operate the distinction.: you did not explained why the legitimity of violence is not an abritrary choice, you explained why state is legitimate. You strawman my points : on pride, i didn’t push that “humanity as a collective lack pride as an emotion” (= most people lack pride), i said some people lack it, most anarchists lack it, i lack it.You ignore historical facts.
you never get stability or order at any point in an anarchist societyis plain wrong, look at the examples i gave (we needed more than a century to get back some of the social advances of the Commune, factories were more productive in Spanish War anarchist territories, ukrainian anarchist communes were functional). The reason you give for their short duration is not the one given by history : it’s not an expression when i say that each of them resulted in a massacre by a state, it is the actual case. You also contradicted yourself on this point : “[anarchy] always collapses on itself” cannot be true at the same time than “The rest of the world is not going to coddle some anarchists ideologues” : either it collapses on itself, either it is some external intervention (spoiler alert : it was the second option).About your question, i’ll answer it in a more general fashion than just about the US, because 1) i don’t know the US that well and 2) the case of a state and its branches suddenly disappearing is quite a fantasy.
Most anarchists and (left) libertarians base their theories on federalism. This idea, existing already in a weak shape in a lot of state-linked organization (including the states of US), is that entities can band and disband together. The idea is to create different groups on an individual basis (you can be part of multiple groups, such as the group of your neighbourhood, of your workingplace, of your political expression, etc.), and those groups can form greater groups (like the council of multiple neighbourhoods for a city, the association of multiple factories of the same sector, etc.). This network of groups is meant to replace the main advantage of state-like organization, which really is organization itself : communication and exchanges on great distances, optimization of knowledge, ressources, etc.
This can seem very complicated, but it’s akin to what already exist : there are councils for my building, my neighbourhood, my city. My boss works in a cooperative, which regroups around 15 winemakers, and this cooperative is part of a broader network which includes around 15 cooperatives. This stratification already exists in a rich way, the only question is to make it go from bottom rather than from the top.
You can have people dedicated to help those organizations work. They can be viewed as administrative/representative, but there are some differences anarchists promotes : people are delegated tasks, they do not represent you. The difference is that they cannot take any decision, they have one or more task to complete but can’t act outside. Yeah, but what if they do, you ask ? The other important part of anarchist delegation of tasks is immediate recall : mandate for people can be ended by a simple vote. What if people abuse this to prevent someone to be effectively mandated ? It’s probably the sign that either this person is not the right one, either there is a profound fracture in the group, which should encourage the creation of a new group (which is a good thing under anarchist ideas, each groups having their rules means that more groups means more chances for you to find or create the right one).
Really, you should be quite familiar with federalism since we’re having this discussion on the Fediverse, from different servers with different softwares.
One of the question you can have is : how to make sure everyone gets a house, food, clothes, etc? Well, there are workers and workplaces for those, and each group can produce and give according to people’s needs. If you really need people to have an interest to believe this will work, it is mutual aid viewed in a negative way : if you don’t give food to the carpenter, they won’t build your house (the positive way is, you give food to whoever needs it, and the carpenter builds houses for whoever needs it). Note this is close to what we have in capitalist states : you got to work if you want food or house. The only thing is, in our current societies, money and state enables people to do nothing or stuff we don’t need/want (banks, administration, mines, etc.).
There are two things here : the justice part, and the enforced part. The justice definition from a state perspective is easy, it’s what says the law. Anarchist societies propose to see it from the individuals perspectives : the goal is not to find a victim and a culprit to punish, nor to get to the “state of balance” where the society was before the unjustice, it is to bring the society to a point which everyones agrees to, ideally to prevent the unjustice from happening again. Now comes the enforce part : once an agreement is reached, it is far easier to enforce since everyone agrees to it. For the situations where this does not apply (before the argument is concluded, if it is not respected), it either comes from the good faith of everyone included, either falls back to forms of violence/authority, ideally limited (such as imprisonment until argument is reached for dangerous persons, etc.).
This is quite a hard question. Since everyone is asked to participate in multiple groups, one part of the answer is people could recreate groups that federate in a more central way. The difference with what we have currently, is they could be able to leave them at any time to build something else.
The other part of the answer is for people that want to impose central authority to everyone (which is a common will through most states, and is to my eyes the cause of states hegemony : they need people to provide the services they promise, so they cannot accept people outside of them. In the worst form, you get imperialism, when state not only feed on their people, but try to feed on other states’ peoples). I don’t have a good answer for that, the movment is quite divided between accepting agreements with states and fighting against the imposition of central authority (this is the weapon/bombs part of anarchy)). Neither is satisfying to my eyes, probably both will have to be used anyway.
Thanks again for this final question which, i’m happy to admit, resets the debate and will, i hope, show that every flaw i listed were only relative to our previous discussion.
Reading what you wrote as an answer to this question, it sounds like you’re just an advocate for true direct democracy. I mean that’s fine, but the point is that what you’re advocating for isn’t true anarchy. You’re still in favor of a central authority, just one that’s structured differently. Now direct democracy does have it’s strengths and drawbacks, and we can discuss the merits of that later, but for now I want to focus on a particular concept, and that’s the idea of entirely voluntary governance.
The idea of an entirely voluntary government sounds very appealing, however, I think it’s one of those ideas that sounds better than it actually is. Let’s think about it from a fundamental level, in order for something to be voluntary, there needs to be a person with free will making consensual decisions. However, consent is an inherently subjective concept and thus the standard for who can consent will always be arbitrary… and if that’s the case who gets to decide the standard? This is something that has to be established at the very start.
Well who can consent? Can children consent? Where is the cutoff, and who decides it? If a community is split on whether or not 16 year olds can consent, do the 16 year olds get a vote in this discussion or are they sidelined? What if they don’t like the decision, can children disassociate and join other groups that say they can consent or not? How about disabled people, can they consent or do they not get a vote? Do they perhaps have someone else be their representative and make decisions on their behalf? But if that’s the case, and decision making can be outsourced for kids and the disabled, can consenting adults also outsource this power? Let’s suppose people want to have a representative, is that allowed or is individual participation mandatory? If it’s mandatory then who is enforcing this rule?
I hope you catch what I’m trying to demonstrate here. This is a concept that’s vague, and its implementation is rather complicated.
Economics is definitely not your forte lol
You’re trying to combine standard market capitalism with the Marixst resource distribution… but these two ideas contradict each other. Marxist socialism requires a strong, central, and authoritarian government in order to seize and collectivize all the means of production, property, wealth, and resources and then to centrally plan every single aspect of the economy to properly distribute the resources from ability to need. However, market capitalism is literally the opposite. It requires government to allow the markets to have some autonomy so they can function independently. Capitalist economies are decentralized and unplanned, and resource distribution is done through the markets on the basis of supply and demand. You can’t combine the two.
It seem your idea of economics is not based in reality. This isn’t the 1500s, our modern economies aren’t based on a bunch of framers and craftsmen who open up little shops to sell their labor and crafts. A carpenter building a house? Lol. Do you understand just how much labor goes into building a modern house? Not to mention that there are things that require way more labor, way more resources, and insane global supply chains to produce like cars, planes, and smartphones. These are not things that you can build without strong multinational corporate structures, and you can’t get them trade them through bartering.
Also, you think things like administration, banks, and mines aren’t necessary? Lmao, you can’t be serious. I’ll just say this, capitalism is a system that favors efficiency above all else for better or for worse, and it’s really good at it. Everything that industry that exists and every product you see on sale exists because there are people out there who buy them. The demand exists, and so the companies provide. Things like banks provide value to the economy as they fill a niche, and that’s the reason why they exist.
Bring society to a point where everybody ideally agrees to prevent injustice? What does that even mean? The point you’re talking about is an ideal, it’s literally a fantasy by definition. How can you possibly govern a society when your concept of justice hinges on the realization of something imaginary? Is an anarchist society just going to remain lawless until this ideal point?
The enforcement part is equally ridiculous. You can only enforce laws once everybody has agreed to the punishments? Why would any criminal or wannabe criminal ever agree to implementing any punishments against themselves? Good faith? Lmao, if criminals were operating in good faith then they wouldn’t be criminals. I think you understand the absurdity of this notion, which is why you acknowledged that prisons and authority might make a come back in an anarchist society… but if that’s the case then doesn’t that defeat the whole point of the anarchy experiment?
Ah ha! Finally stumbled you good, didn’t I? I think this is the core issue with anarchy and I think it’s an inherently flawed ideology. Everything you said here relies on good faith whether it’s governance, economics, law, justice, or self defense. However, we don’t live in an ideal world, we live in a flawed world, and in our flawed world good faith is a rather scarce resource. There are a lot of people in our society who are greedy, egotistical, selfish, jealous, hateful, evil, violent, and contrarian. We’ll always have murders, pedos, rapists, bigots, thieves, morons, frauds, and zealots. These are people who exploit the good faith of others for their personal benefit at the expense of others.
In a normal society, these bad faith actors are either deterred by the entity that has monopoly on violence or they’re squashed by it. However, in an anarchist society, there is no monopoly on violence and so bad faith actors have no filters and are set loose. These people have no issue with violence or forcing others to do what they want, and so they will use violence to enforce their standards on to normal people and onto each other. Because each group or individual will have their own values, morals, and ideals there will be a competition of violence on who gets to enforce their standard. This type of chaos, disorder, instability, and violence is the reason why anarchy mostly exists as a fun thought exercise rather than a practical, viable ideology.
It’s all good.
I’m going to split my response into two separate comments as I feel like we’re having two conversations at the same time, and I don’t want to mix them up. I’ll reply to your criticisms in this reply, and then reply to your answers in another. I originally didn’t want to respond to your criticisms at all as our previous conversation is no longer relevant, however, there’s a lot that you said that doesn’t sit right with me and I just want to set the record straight before I move on. You don’t have to reply to this comment if you don’t want to, it’s just here to voice my disagreements with your criticisms. You can just read and move on to my other comment.
Anyway, my response:
You’re conflating two separate statements. I said that if you look at the evolution of human history, you’ll quickly find out that states have won out over their alternatives. I think we can both agree (hopefully) that this is an objective statement. My point here is that there have to be reasons why things turned out the way they did, perhaps it’s best to understand those reasons instead of dismissing them. My second statement is that states are necessary because they are the most efficient answer we have to govern on a large scale. States provide an institutional framework that allow for stability, order, justice, and large scale organization. Our disagreement on the second statement is the root of our debate. However, as you can see, these two statements aren’t used to justify each other, and thus combining the two and calling it circular reasoning is just a misunderstanding on your part.
I take big issue with this criticism specifically because you’re being dishonest. My original statement was that “pride is a universal human emotion”. That’s an objectively true statement. People express pride differently, people are proud of different things, and different cultures have different ideas about it. However, all humans have it. You have it, I have it, we all do. It’s like happiness, sadness, or anger. The entire reason why I said this in the first place is to make the point that patriotism is a reflection of a universal human emotion. Keep in mind, I am not saying that patriotism is a universal trait, just that it’s a form in which an actual universal trait, pride, manifests itself.
If you disagreed with the notion that patriotism is a reflection of pride, then that’s fine, we could have had a discussion about it. However, you chose to sideline my point in favor of taking up the position that pride is not a universal emotion, and specifically focusing on the literal meaning “universal”. However, this focus was just the red herring fallacy. You were focusing on a minor detail to distract from the point being made. If you actually want to double down on the notion that pride is not a universal human emotion then we’re moving past political opinions and entering the realm of science, and that means that you have to actually show me an academic study that counters the established science (example). It’s why I pointed out that your anecdotes don’t mean much in this case.
Now, I don’t think it’s that deep and I don’t think you’re going to double down on this position, but I do think our exchange about this specific point up until now has been particularly frustrating because it’s unnecessary. I’m sure you understood what I meant from the beginning because it was a very simple point.
Also, I find it weird how you’re accusing me of engaging in bad faith by saying I’m turning your arguments into strawmans, when the first example you gave is just you not following the chain of responses. You said that I didn’t answer why the legitimacy of violence isn’t an arbitrary choice. Well, let’s find out why:
Original topic: whether or not someone supporting their country is radical.
Your response: someone supporting their country means supporting the monopoly of violence and that’s radical
Me: monopoly of violence isn’t inherently radical as it exists to regulate force which prevents chaos
You: all types of violence is radical and adding the distinction between regulated and unregulated force is arbitrary
Me: the distinction is the point, and the difference between regulated and unregulated violence is the difference between chaos and stability
You: distinctions in general are arbitrary in nature
Me: the distinction is critical as not all violence is equal, regulated violence by a society helps establish order which prevents unnecessary violence while unregulated violence by individuals does the opposite
And that was the last direct reply. Notice how the my responses directly respond to your responses? Notice how the conversation got specific but didn’t go off topic? Notice how you never asked me why the legitimacy of violence is not an arbitrary choice nor was that ever brought up? That means I didn’t misinterpret what you said, therefore I didn’t strawman you. If you felt like you need to add clarification or nuance or ask that either of me then just do that, but don’t call my direct responses to your points as strawman arguments when they’re not.
Second, Makhnovshchina was not truly anarchist. They had an actual government that was backed by a military. So they had a full monopolization of violence and everything. The Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine stayed as the de facto government for 5 years until the bolsheviks took over. That’s the reason why they were more functional than their anarchist counterparts elsewhere, like in Spain for example.
Third, similar to the point I made earlier, the failures of anarchy are intertwined. Anarchy collapses on itself because it lacks the means to do what a functional government can, and that is to maintain order, organize the people to do large scale projects, and defend itself and it’s people. Because of this, anarchy will always result in another, more centralized form of government from crushing it and taking its place. The only way anarchy can work in the real world is if everybody in the world magically agreed to leave the anarchists alone, if some major power decided to protect them for some reason, or if there’s extreme levels of chaos and dysfunction in a society. Since none of these options are realistic or sustainable, anarchy is simply not capable of being a viable alternative to a state. I don’t think that’s a contradictory position.