I dont think that there can ever really be true total anarchism because a powerful body will rise up to control. The only possible way for total anarchy to occur would be if the was only 1 person in a void without fellings or thought. because even 1 man in nature is governed by hunger, sleep, nature, animals, and the urge to reproduce. So could there ever truely be total anarchy on earth? Oh yea if your with anarchy arent you in a government group?
I don’t know, but the anarchists say that once you’re free, why would you let people boss you around?
If true total anarchism could exist, would it last?
“anarchy sounds good to me then someone asks ‘who’d fix the sewers?’ or ‘would the rednecks play dictator of the neighborhood?’”- Biafra
-Imp
Jobs that everyone could take turns doing and although people wont be forced to do them, if a person is consistantly lazy then others dont have to share their resources or efforts with them!
I think anarchy can be well described as a sort of formless (i.e. stateless) communism. Rather than state ownership, there is no ownership. Property is theft and the only commodities are sex and love.
People will naturally do what needs to be done.
It’s easy to say that something will never work, rather than trying to make it work. At one time people considered space travel to never work. And before that people didn’t even know space existed, above earth (not outside of, above-remember back then the earth was flat) was heaven.
However, I think it is definatly accurate to say that an anarchist non-state would not work in this time of Realpolitik.
Another important point about the Anarchist Revolution is that it will not work untill the next stage of human evolution, which we are on the very brink of. (Did I just end a sentance with a preposition? Well as an anarchist I am allowed to do that.)
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I just found this article on the net -
http://www.gwiep.net/periodicals/ic092708.htm
It has a pessimistic view on the possibility of becoming anarchist.
But I believe it will spread slowly.
Some people will think about what they believe in and do research to find more information. These people might then make contact with others with similar views. Once they are more sure that anarchy is the way to go, they will try to persuade others about why they believe it.
This leads on to the next group, those who come across an anarchist and are persuded to convert to anarchy, then they too will sing the praises of anarchy.
The majority of opposition to anarchy the anarchist encounters will be because the person is ignorant on what anarchy really is. The ignorant are easier to convert than those who have arrived at their beliefs through research.
Even so, some will be immune to conversion and as people become more informed and still decide to stick with their beliefs (due to them reading stuff that supports their current beliefs), there will be less conversions, but it will still spread.
I read that article you posted, Crusader, and enjoyed it. But the author left out a step, at some point the child comes to aquant the state with its parents.
Parents=safety and love
Parents=State<— Missing link
State=safety and love
This equation is made at some point. I speculate that it is not a genetic trait, but impressed by the society surrounding the child. So in an anarchist society this link is made in a different way, i.e.:
Parents=Community/Self/Freedom I don’t really know what it would be in an anarchist society, but I think you know what I’m getting at.
Depends on what you mean by “anarchism”. If its the lack of any power structure, well then thats just silly. If its some relative term, then its very realizable. Also, if you had beings that were smarter than humans, and all for some reason came to a similar conclusion that they had no need to control each other, then I imagine anarchy would be very possible.
Does it really matter if anarchism could exist? I mean, would we, as rational people really want it? Where nobody is governed, and everything is everybody elses. There are crazy people out there–people with chemical imbalances, sociopaths–what would happen to those people?
Would we really want it so that there was no security in our lives?
Would we really want no game to play–such as economics and politics and philosophy, itself?
I wouldn’t.
How is the lack of a power structure silly? Power structures are what’s silly. What makes the person at the top of the structure more qualified to make decisions for the people at the bottom than the people themselves? Is it because they rose to the top, therefore they must be qualified? No. That’s flat out wrong, because look Gearge Bush Jr. clearly not qualified to run a country. And look at the monarchs, they didn’t rise anywhere they were born there.
Humans are a being smarter than humans. Take for example you and me, you’re a human (maby not, maby you’re actually a cabbage in disguise) and I’m a human (maby not, maby I’m actually a cabbage in disguise) yet somehow I’m much smarter than you. Therefore humans are smarter than humans.
(I’m just joking about being smarter than you, Poiesis, how can one cabbage be smarter than another?)
But anyway… we humans are much smarter than the humans who thought the earth was flat and all that jazz, i think you get what I mean.
Unlikely.
See the thing is that if there was true, pure anarchy, there wouldnt be a family. Parents could not legaly control their children in an anarchist society, snd then again it would be a society of anarchist so that society because of itsself will disband and or kill itsself for a revolution of anarchy… right?
Going by this logic anarchy a just a slang word for death, destruction, and chaos as there can never even be a family to care for the children the societes youth would have to be geneticly engineered so that the anarchists would not have to abid by natures laws of reproduction. and the people would have to be put in a stasis of some sorts because the true full blow anarchist would not abid by hunger or the needs of life. technically it would have to be like the matrix.
[contented edited by ILP]
There already IS an anarchist society…look out the window.
The nature of the universe is an anarchaic one, and we are no different. If your looking for a society free from co-ersion, your only option is to live in a society of one. Everyone in the entire world is always free to make their own choices. There is no rule over the will of men, that create s pyramid of power which anarchists must fight against. I used to think that was the case, but i soon realized that i was just the exact same as everyone else. I was wanting to espouse my views, and for everyone else to follow them, even if my view was to dissolve the government and live free. Anarchists seem to forget that democracy has the concent of the people one way or anouther. Society always has the choice to revolt, and if they do not, its not our place to tell them they should. There is no “better” or “best” societal form. Its all opinion.
And in MY opinion, if there was never government, we would all still be living in the stone age (which may not be so bad, but i enjoy my computer thank you very much).
If they didn’t, they’d die. Most people try to prevent their own death.
DietCoke is right, there is no state, because nothing, not even a state can exist… and so forth.
The reason we have to tell people it’s time to revolt is because they’re too stupid and weak to figger it out by themselves.
I believe that Communism is infact just as you stated anarchy to be. Communism is infact the end stage of Marxism where all chains of government are released and power is returned to the people.
The main difference between Marxism and Anarchism is that Marx believe that humans weren’t ready for Communism (aka Social Anarchism) and that all aspects of Capitalism had to be stomped out before the people could live in true utopia (Communism). To stomp out all aspects of capitalism, Marx invented a transformation stage that would be run by the state to stomp out all aspects of capitalism using numerous economic tactics (Central Planning) and even to “re-educate” the masses so that they would embrace Communism, or as I would say, try to fast-forward human progress and evolution. This transformational stage even called for a dictator or “proprietor” to gain full control of the state, so that when the time came for Communism, the chains of Government would be released easily.
It’s this transformation stage that all so-called “Communist countries” are currently in. So really, it would be more proper to call these countries “State Socialist” countries.
In my opinion, it’s this transformation stage that really makes Marxism horrid. Instead of slowing pushing human evolution in the anarachist direction, Marxism calls for a “fast-forwarding” of human evolution through the means of this transformation stage, which infact does nothing more than create a state that is against everything that Communism stands for. Instead of no government, there is nothing BUT government. Instead of liberation, there is oppression.
As for me, I guess I would be called a “Social Anarchist evolutionist”. Or someone who believes that Social Anarchy should be slowly introduced and Capitalism slowly replaced, not completely abolished as most Marxists/Anarchists believe. I believe that Anarchism is not something that we can (Or should) implace at this moment. Human evolution has not come far enough for that to happen, we are still too destructive to survive without implaced order. But I believe that if the world continues to liberalize and more voluntary (non-government) socialist programs are created, and capitalism is slowly replaced by economic plans such as ParEcon http://www.zmag.org/parecon/indexnew.htm and other simlar systems, then one day the human race might be able free themselves from government and all simlar types of oppression.
Then again, I’m an idealist.
Well for those of you who don’t know much about anarchism or want to know more about anarchism there is a really great FAQ on the net
It’s quite long and I haven’t even come close to reading through all of it yet, but it’s broken into sections so you can read what about what you want. It has quite a few persuasive arguments.
Sorry for the rambling nature of this post, I will endeavor to make it more comprehensible.
A state of political affairs cannot be maintained, it is a futile exercise. There can only be motivation sourced from within the individual, as every experience we have is not of the thing in and of itself, but the individual’s perspective of that thing (in both direct terms, and the terms of contextual understanding).
To want to create a political system that lasts beyond one’s death may be an entertaining creative exercise, much like painting a picture, but it’s motivation can only ever be purely aesthetic and personal.
Anarchism is a state of mind, which results in a series of behaviours in the individual, which then results in a particular nature of power relationship between the individual and those experiential and conceptual objects we call humans.
Anarchism is the process whereby externally imposed power relationships are removed from the individual, whether they have been established by force, coercion or prior consent. Can a person ever be truly free of externally imposed power relationships? Almost certainly not. Our psychology is such that the contextual meanings lent to us by our childhood experiences will colour every event that follows them. The situation now is such that very few people are ever free of experiences in their childhood which establish power relationships.
However, this does not detract from the desirability of removing those that we can remove.
When I say that Anarchism is a state of mind, I say it is a set of concepts held and acted upon. An embracing of a sceptical enquiry, and rejection of the individually non-confirmable, as it relates to the way we should act (where the holding of or expressing of a belief are acts as much as defending oneself from physical violence).
To be an Anarchist therefore obviously requires a certain amount of personal power, or a lack of care for the consequences resultant from engaging in a defence of the self from externally imposed power relationships (so long as the self is maintained as a psyschologically self-sufficient being).
The process is therefore naturally painful. At least temporarily one loses comfort and capability, both of which are commonly sourced from other people who demand a certain kind of reciprocation, and who punish ‘disobedience’.
Without this process, however, one cannot achieve a transcendence of the external limits imposed on us by those who benefit from our detriment, and though there is temporary loss this gives rise to an enourmas potential gain.
Such people can easily be in positions of power over other people. It is not for other people’s sakes that I care for their emancipation, and if they want to lower and degrade themself before me or others, it is simply unfortunate for them that they are not capable of self-sufficiency.
However, emancipation of other’s is naturally beneficial to the individual in so far as anarchist society and anarchist economy are more fruitful modes of production (for both the mental and material) than others so far experienced.
Anarchist ‘society’ is the natural result of several such people engaging on any level, where the nature of their self-sufficiency is understood and maintained by the other’s in the ‘group’.
Anarchist ‘economy’ is the natural result of a large enough group of such people (or those who emulate them in action but not in belief) congregating and coming to the realisation that within their group they can maximize their productive output and material wellbeing through certain modes of production reliant on a basis of shared (as opposed to imposed)understandings.
What beliefs, then, are consequential?
A scepticism - if a phenomenon can be plausibly explained in more than one term, then it is known that it cannot be certainly one or the other.
That the causation of experience is such a phenomenon.
That regardless of this, and the lack of proof for the nature of an external universe, experience exists. There can be no possibility that experience does not exist, as this proposition does not explain the phenomenon of experience.
That the individual’s known experience constitutes known reality, and therefore explanations given by objects within this reality for certain phenomenon which make recourse to external unconfirmable phenomenon are of no value.
That the foundation for rational belief about the phenomenon which compose reality is only that which the individual can personally confirm, and so external information holds value insofar as it includes a means for testing, and makes no claims beyond the confirmable or about causation or phenomenon that can be explained by more than one means.
A distinct endeavor to find alternative explanations for all phenomenon.
That we partake in (and in fact cannot avoid) the construction of a complex of concepts and experiences composed of divisions, connections and boundaries.
That we must ‘cut away the chaff’, those concepts that we hold that are purely conceptual, and have no basis in the experiential.
All known reality is synthetic, a simulation created for some unknown purpose, and that as such we must live in the basis of the consequentiality of the place the self holds within this simulation.
If one were to accept the entire body of science, then the prior statement must be accepted, insofar as the human brain/mind is a highly complex biological device, developed for the apparent purpose of creating a simulated reality which corresponds sufficiently to the underlying scientific reality for the further procreation and spread of the human self-replicating pattern.
Those who seek to benefit from our detriment do not generally care for the motivating beliefs that lead us to a belief about the right course of action, so long as we come to the belief that obedience, acceptance of delivered knowledge and authority are accepted. Within any person their psychology is such that no matter what their founding beliefs, it is more than tempting to be lead to a belief in a particular action, where punishments and rewards come into the equation. This is especially the case when we do not have sufficient perspective to inform us of the pitfalls of such an acceptance. Most notably, in children.
It is the case that over a few generations we can engender a natural inclination to obedience and acceptance of information commands within animals (of which humans are a type).
For generations and millenia humans have been intentionally rewarding obedience and destroying those who are disobedient. It is not all too much of a leap then to make the claim that we have created an evolutionary imperative upon our own species for a tendency towards this kind of behaviour.
However, this does not damn us to such a fate. Especially since most evolutionary imperatives upon humans have been weakened in the past few centuries. I would argue the imperative for obedience is one of these. Over time we will notice a greater disinclination to obedience within the population, and should this prove more succesful in reproducing itself, it will eventually outcompete the obedient pattern. There may be confict between the two strains over time, but we can expect that either one will destroy the other, or some compromise situation will be realised which will eventually lead to a total departure between the two subsets of traits. Maybe eventually two distinct subspecies, who may not even be capable of shared reproduction.