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.
Thanks for the splitted answer, it is a very nice choice. So here we go on the meta-discussion, cuz i think we still have disagreements on the nature of what we both said.
A - The circular reasoning
We indeed agree on the fact that human history shows that states have won out over their alternatives during the last 5 000 years, approximatively.
You seem to pretend that i dismiss the causes of this. As i said two comments ago in the summary, i simply hold a different explanation : you think states dominate because they’re efficcient for stability, i think states dominate because they prey on other forms of organization. If you really think i dismiss this, i just give another explanation.
I maintain the circular reasoning part : to sum up how you turned it in your last answer, you say 1) states are the norm because states are necessary, and 2) states are necessary because they have advantages. But why do they have advantages that the other forms of governement do not have ? Your proof before that was “there is only states that succeed, the other forms disappear”. So you just add one step, but in the end it’s the same thing : on one hand, you explain the dominance of state by their necessity, on the other you explain their necessity by their advantages, which are prooved by their dominance. Either i misunderstand some part of your position, either it is circular.
B - The pride & the pride of being part of something greater
I owe you an apology here, as my last comment taken as is was indeed focusing on pure pride. I should have added that not only did i claim only some people lack it and not humanity as a collective, but more than that, i did not talk about pure pride, but “pride of being part of something greater”, which we both agree is less common than pride itself. I don’t know why i didnt, probably just skipped to another part. This makes my strawmaning complaint stronger though.
C - Practice and theory
I dont say that practice and theory are entirely separate categories. They are different level of debate though, and you cannot answer one with the other. You can support one with the other, but not answer one with the other. To explain better, in your example of anarchy being a failure, there should be an actual problem (misorganization, miscommunication, etc) that leads to anarchy failure, and this problem could be linked to theory. Exactly as you said in your islamists example, the actual problems of islamists systems can be linked to qoran theory.
Funnily enough, the point i criticize you for is exactly what you criticize islamists for : when you give an answer on the practical side, they jump to the theoric side, and vice-versa. It’s strange that you can see that for them, but not for you.
D - Strawmaning
There is a misunderstanding here. My accusation of strawmaning is on the pride part, not on the arbitrary distinction of how to classify violence.
E - On historical matters
Thanks for acknowledging the historical examples. We indeed have a very different definition of stability and order (especially on political unstability, and internal fighting), but it’s not the only explanation to our difference of explanation here.
One of them is the way you attribute the causes of events. When you say “Anarchists were crushed by Franco’s fascist troops”, it seems that you take it as a proof that anarchy leads to unstability. But to my eyes, the people responsible for unstability here are the state troops. I guess the first one is true on a broader sense, and the second one on this specific situation.
Another one is on the knowledge we have of it : i’m not sure what you mean by A lot of people tried to enforce their own justice andtake governance into their own hands and thousands of people died because of this.. If it’s about war, yes, anarchist armies are as other armies, they cause a lot of useless death. If it’s about something else, i’d be glad to learn about it !
Last one is a bit of nuance, especially on the Ukrainian part : there was indeed a system of governement backed by an active military, and this leads to a form of monopolization of violence. But i would not call it a full monopolization of violence, as the military government did not take every decision, and let the regional committees take a lot of decisions, and the local soviets organize freely. Also, all of those systems (both military and governement) were organized along anarchist principles : direct election of delegates, immediate recall, autodiscipline (this one specific to army). To be clear, what i challenge precisely is : the extent of centralization of power (it existed, but it was quite diminished compared to actual state), the extent of monopolization of violence (it existed, but as there were fewer decision to enforce, the monopolization was less important), the non-anarchist aspect of the movement (it is clearly an anarchist movement using partially non-anarchist methods (but not only non-anarchist methods)).
Lastly, and i’m sorry to bring the language part again, but here you’re giving good examples that the examples i gave were far from perfect. But the point you made before was that you never get stability ororderatany point. I claim that you did, during a few months in the Commune, a few years in some regions of Spain, and by short intermittences during the Ukrainian revolution. Sure, it’s not much. And the reason why it’s such little is another topic we discussed. But not much is not the same as nothing. This is, i think, the main explanation of our disagreement here, beyond slight adjustments (causes, knowledge, nuances). In the end, we are saying the same thing : i say “there is a little bit of stability and order”, you say “there is not much stability and order”.
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.
Thanks for the splitted answer, it is a very nice choice. So here we go on the meta-discussion, cuz i think we still have disagreements on the nature of what we both said.
A - The circular reasoning
We indeed agree on the fact that human history shows that states have won out over their alternatives during the last 5 000 years, approximatively.
You seem to pretend that i dismiss the causes of this. As i said two comments ago in the summary, i simply hold a different explanation : you think states dominate because they’re efficcient for stability, i think states dominate because they prey on other forms of organization. If you really think i dismiss this, i just give another explanation.
I maintain the circular reasoning part : to sum up how you turned it in your last answer, you say 1) states are the norm because states are necessary, and 2) states are necessary because they have advantages. But why do they have advantages that the other forms of governement do not have ? Your proof before that was “there is only states that succeed, the other forms disappear”. So you just add one step, but in the end it’s the same thing : on one hand, you explain the dominance of state by their necessity, on the other you explain their necessity by their advantages, which are prooved by their dominance. Either i misunderstand some part of your position, either it is circular.
B - The pride & the pride of being part of something greater
I owe you an apology here, as my last comment taken as is was indeed focusing on pure pride. I should have added that not only did i claim only some people lack it and not humanity as a collective, but more than that, i did not talk about pure pride, but “pride of being part of something greater”, which we both agree is less common than pride itself. I don’t know why i didnt, probably just skipped to another part. This makes my strawmaning complaint stronger though.
C - Practice and theory
I dont say that practice and theory are entirely separate categories. They are different level of debate though, and you cannot answer one with the other. You can support one with the other, but not answer one with the other. To explain better, in your example of anarchy being a failure, there should be an actual problem (misorganization, miscommunication, etc) that leads to anarchy failure, and this problem could be linked to theory. Exactly as you said in your islamists example, the actual problems of islamists systems can be linked to qoran theory.
Funnily enough, the point i criticize you for is exactly what you criticize islamists for : when you give an answer on the practical side, they jump to the theoric side, and vice-versa. It’s strange that you can see that for them, but not for you.
D - Strawmaning
There is a misunderstanding here. My accusation of strawmaning is on the pride part, not on the arbitrary distinction of how to classify violence.
E - On historical matters
Thanks for acknowledging the historical examples. We indeed have a very different definition of stability and order (especially on political unstability, and internal fighting), but it’s not the only explanation to our difference of explanation here.
One of them is the way you attribute the causes of events. When you say “Anarchists were crushed by Franco’s fascist troops”, it seems that you take it as a proof that anarchy leads to unstability. But to my eyes, the people responsible for unstability here are the state troops. I guess the first one is true on a broader sense, and the second one on this specific situation.
Another one is on the knowledge we have of it : i’m not sure what you mean by
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.. If it’s about war, yes, anarchist armies are as other armies, they cause a lot of useless death. If it’s about something else, i’d be glad to learn about it !Last one is a bit of nuance, especially on the Ukrainian part : there was indeed a system of governement backed by an active military, and this leads to a form of monopolization of violence. But i would not call it a full monopolization of violence, as the military government did not take every decision, and let the regional committees take a lot of decisions, and the local soviets organize freely. Also, all of those systems (both military and governement) were organized along anarchist principles : direct election of delegates, immediate recall, autodiscipline (this one specific to army). To be clear, what i challenge precisely is : the extent of centralization of power (it existed, but it was quite diminished compared to actual state), the extent of monopolization of violence (it existed, but as there were fewer decision to enforce, the monopolization was less important), the non-anarchist aspect of the movement (it is clearly an anarchist movement using partially non-anarchist methods (but not only non-anarchist methods)).
Lastly, and i’m sorry to bring the language part again, but here you’re giving good examples that the examples i gave were far from perfect. But the point you made before was that
you never get stability or order at any point. I claim that you did, during a few months in the Commune, a few years in some regions of Spain, and by short intermittences during the Ukrainian revolution. Sure, it’s not much. And the reason why it’s such little is another topic we discussed. But not much is not the same as nothing. This is, i think, the main explanation of our disagreement here, beyond slight adjustments (causes, knowledge, nuances). In the end, we are saying the same thing : i say “there is a little bit of stability and order”, you say “there is not much stability and order”.