Educate me about Anarchism.

[danny la rouge]

The best book I've read on the subject was 'Demanding The Impossible' by Peter Marshall, although I didn't finish it as 2/3rds of the way through I'd decided anarchism wasn't viable. That's not a criticism of the book, though.

Leave aside viable for now - is it desirable?

And if so, how close do you want to try to get?

 

[Voley]

What people want is entirely down to the culture they formed their wants in.

Massive sweeping statement alert!

 

[nino_savatte]

which then gets reported in lazy media as "ANARCHY BREAKS OUT IN BAGHDAD!!!!!!!!"

The mass media likes its shorthand expressions. For instance, it is easier to label all Afghan rebels as "The Taliban" than to acknowledge the fact that there are many groups, based on tribal allegiances, who are fighting to rid their country of occupying troops.

 

[kabbes]

Massive sweeping statement alert!

Doesn't mean that it is wrong though, does it?

How can people have a "natural" desire for capitalism? How can millions of years of evolution produce a creature that has an inbuilt genetic desire for a complex organisation of scarce goods that has only existed for a few hundred years?

It's pretty fundamental to all psychological studies that our wants are formed by our environment.

 

[danny la rouge]

Massive sweeping statement alert!

Given that modern capitalism is largely designed around artificially creating "wants", I'd say if you replace "entirely", it's a fair enough statement.

 

[bluestreak]

The point is that you don't just suddenly impose an anarchist world and then hope that people don't opt out of it. You persuade them that the current system doesn't suit their needs, anarchism is their best choice and show them the steps that will achieve it. Then by the time you reach the anarchist state, the question of opting out doesn't arise in the first place, because it has been chosen organically by the people.

This is what I mean by education and opposition. If you lead by example, people believe anarchism is a force for good, and that anarchists are the ones going out there and improving their communities. If you try and impose anarchism on them, they will treat it as any other imposition.

 

[Voley]

Leave aside viable for now - is it desirable?

And if so, how close do you want to try to get?

For me personally?

I think anarchism is the ideal that you should judge all political theories against. It's certainly desirable, hugely so. But the practicalities baffle me. How would anarchists resolve conflict? Isn't this reliance on mutual aid incredibly naive?

And I don't buy the idea that people's natures would change from the essentially selfish ones we currently see due to the culture changing.

Interesting thread, btw. I usually avoid ones like this as I expect butchers or someone to bite my head off but this one seems to be civil enough. I've got to go and feed the capitalist beast that is Lidl just now but I'll be back later.

 

[bluestreak]

Leave aside viable for now - is it desirable?

And if so, how close do you want to try to get?

Quite. Tyrannical dictatorships work. This human instinct to be on the winning side is good from a survival POV, but rubbish from an "improving society" POV.

 

[kabbes]

I also see anarchism/libertarianism as a guiding principle for society and something to judge policy against but not something right now that we could wholesale change to, more's the pity. I'd like us to be able to work towards it though, even if the fruits of this are not felt until many generations after my death.

Anyway, it's a useful philosophy regardless of its practicality as a complete philosophy. I can reject the idea of ID cards outright, for example, as being fundamentally opposed to my concept of an ideal society.

 

[danny la rouge]

And I don't buy the idea that people's natures would change from the essentially selfish ones we currently see due to the culture changing.

I think that's the crux. I don't think we're essentially selfish; I think the evidence suggests we're capable of good and evil. That's all of us.

In fact, the research suggests that we are probably hard-wired for a "deep morality", that is - as social animals - we have a basic disposition towards co-operation and fairness (this can be shown in all primates, and even in other social animals, like dogs), that there is a 'deep grammar' there, upon which each society builds its social mores; its ethics. (I'd recommend Moral Minds, by Marc Hauser, if you're interested in running through where the most up-to-date research leaves us with this).

 

[kabbes]

It's true in my experience that dogs definitely have a deep-rooted need for "fairness". It's almost uncanny, actually.

 

[Citizen66]

basically. "anarcho-capitalists"

quite. they're not anarchists by any stretch of the imagination because being able to acrue wealth would create division and power and that would inevitably lead back to... oh!

 

[danny la rouge]

It's true in my experience that dogs definitely have a deep-rooted need for "fairness". It's almost uncanny, actually.

Well, I have a dog, too, and would agree. But if you want to go beyond anecdotal, there's actually good, reproducible, empirical evidence for this.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Not a wind up or a troll but a serious question because I have to admit that I dont really understand what people talk about when they refer to themselves as Anarchists as my own understanding is all tied up with thinking of old Punk rockers and so on.

Lets say that Anarchists got their way tomorrow and had the chance to shape society. What would they do with say the NHS or education ? Would they have a Police force ? Would an Anarchist society offer elections to people and would they tolerate opposition to themselves ?

The first rule of Anarchism Club is that there is no Anarchism Club.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I'd say that they're capitalists who call themselves anarchists in much the same way as Stalin called himself a communist.

Or to put it another way, spotty first year students who've read too much Ayn Rand.

Not quite accurate, Bernie. That should have read " spotty first year students who've wanked offwhile reading Ayn Rand".

 

[ViolentPanda]

Urgh. I know the sort of thing you're talking about.

Urgh...what a sick and morally bankrupt philiosophy ... it sounds like the sort of thing that gets believed my smug upper class first year politics students who haven't even thought about what they're saying ...

Yep, the sort of stuff that a dose of critical thinking usually consigns to the "interesting but not germane to real life" bin.

 

[DotCommunist]

Not quite accurate, Bernie. That should have read " spotty first year students who've wanked offwhile reading Ayn Rand".

I never tire of recounting the usually verbose China Meiville's three word review of Atlas Shrugged: Know your enemy

 

[Barking_Mad]

All you need to do is look at Ayn Rand and the Objectivists to understand what a diabolical idea 'anarcho-capitalism' is. Their idea of 'freedom' is to shackle society to the whims of capitalism. There would be no regulation of the business sector, who would be allowed to do whatever they pleased. In other words they would be required to 'regulate' themselves. Business doesn't like regulation and it is hard to see how they could ever act ethically under an anarcho-capitalist system. I wonder what the Randists think of pollution and how businesses would 'regulate' themselves with regard to this?

hehe I knew Nino's 'Randar' would go off

 

[ViolentPanda]

I never tire of recounting the usually verbose China Meiville's three word review of Atlas Shrugged: Know your enemy

I gave the exact same reply back in the mid-80s to a bookseller when she asked me why the hell I wanted to order a copy, same with Mein Kampf and Imperium.

 

[Frampton]

On libertarian principles. Mostly US. Better seen on a broad spectrum. At one end you have the Ayn Rands who are no more than apologists for big business - at the other end take a look at magazines like "The Voluntarist" with ideas not far removed from Anarchism.

I suppose questions that begin with stuff like "what would Anarchists do about the NHS and the police" rests upon a mind-set that looks at society from a state perspective. Colin Ward has written extensively around these subjects. Understanding Anarchism requires thinking outside of a state vanage point.

The journal "The Cunningham Amendment" has long advocated the basic unit of society to be seen within the acyromn M.A.D - Multitudes of Activists of Dozens. Multitudes because they are multi-voiced and multi-varied, Activists because they alone seem to recognise the damaging human values of boredom and greed, and Dozens because it's a powerful social number.

Herein lies the attraction of Anarchism. It has no neat, comforting blueprint to offer. Ultimately it's about responsibility and maybe even a new set of values. And only one battle: that between freedom and servitude.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Not quite accurate, Bernie. That should have read " spotty first year students who've wanked offwhile reading Ayn Rand".

Oh yeah, forgot about the salacious bits ....

For example the bit where she first meets John Galt, page 2019-2292

'Dagny moaned passionately as he pushed her face further into the dirt and cried: "cornhole me now you mysterious free-market capitalist superman, I want to feel the superiority of your objective truth all the way to my tonsils"

The mysterious figure penetrated her brutally and began to declaim on the subject of freedom ... '

 

[ViolentPanda]

hehe I knew Nino's 'Randar' would go off

"Randar"! I like that!!

 

[Barking_Mad]

The gangsters have already taken over. The last thirty years have seen the rule of corrupt, greedy, power-crazed bastards undermining accountability and passing public money to private organisations and lining their own pockets.

The gangsters have always been in charge, haven't they? The only difference is they have more power than the run of the mill kind.

"Ask him how he thinks one should treat those who do not keep to the laws," said the Englishman.

Nekhludoff translated the question. The old man laughed in a strange manner, showing his teeth.

"The laws?" he repeated with contempt. "He first robbed everybody, took all the earth, all the rights away from men, killed all those who were against him, and then wrote laws, forbidding robbery and murder. He should have written these laws before."

 

[Barking_Mad]

"Randar"! I like that!!

Only took me 12,908 posts to come up with something useful. Come back at 24,000 for the next installment

 

[ViolentPanda]

Oh yeah, forgot about the salacious bits ....

For example the bit where she first meets John Galt, page 2019-2292

'Dagny moaned passionately as he pushed her face further into the dirt and cried: "cornhole me now you mysterious free-market capitalist superman, I want to feel the superiority of your objective truth all the way to my tonsils"

The mysterious figure penetrated her brutally and began to declaim on the subject of freedom ... '

The worst thing is that I know some Yank libertarians who it wouldn't take much of a stretch to imagine eek: retch!!! ) being exactly like that!

 

[Bernie Gunther]

The worst thing is that I know some Yank libertarians who it wouldn't take much of a stretch to imagine eek: retch!!! ) being exactly like that!

Well, I must admit I didn't check the exact quote, but from what I recall that's a fairly accurate pastiche of some of the (frequent) salacious bits in Rand's novels.

Lots of violent abusive sex, free market gobbledegook and confused Aristotle quotes. A heady mixture for repressed teenage nerds

 

[kabbes]

I've never read Atlas Shrugged. Does it really have sex scenes in it!?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I've never read Atlas Shrugged. Does it really have sex scenes in it!?

Sure, and her breakthrough novel the Fountainhead too. Generally it's pretty rough sex, with the heroine's consent to such not really being made clear and one of her assortment of hypercapitalist ubermensch figures supplying the pork.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I've never read Atlas Shrugged. Does it really have sex scenes in it!?

Yes, unfortunately.

 

[kabbes]

Good grief. Nothing like mixing up yer erotic life with yer socioeconomic theories, eh?