Anarchy vs. an Ordered Government

[Panzeh]

I suppose unlike the other anarchists here I don't see it as the perfect end-result, but it's certainly better than anything else. There will be chaos, but that's the price of freedom. That's what people won't be able to handle.

Anarchy is the absence of government, and the part that deals with heirarchies comes from that. I oppose modern capitalism but not capitalism in general.

 

[Narz]

The fact is anarchy worked well for hundreds of thousands of years whilest governments have had some successes and many failures over the last 8-10,000 years. I think it's possible for small groups to go back to anarchy without losing the gains of civilization.

 

[mdwh]

It would just take some green/eco-anarchy people to start convincing people and begin the movement. It could even start with a Green Party government or something. I am willing to compromise. Ecovillages would be a great accomplishment, even if we didn't get to anarchy.

You don't even need ecovillages. The point is, you can try to convince people to reduce pollution now. And many people are doing that.

This is an entirely separate issue to whether we have a Government or not (and personally, I believe that some kind of state makes it easier to reduce pollution, as individuals - whether in capitalism or anarchy - are less likely to pay the extra cost).

 

[Narz]

This is an entirely separate issue to whether we have a Government or not (and personally, I believe that some kind of state makes it easier to reduce pollution, as individuals - whether in capitalism or anarchy - are less likely to pay the extra cost).

Hmm, I disagree but do elaborate.

 

[Fugitive Sisyphus]

The fact is anarchy worked well for hundreds of thousands of years whilest governments have had some successes and many failures over the last 8-10,000 years. I think it's possible for small groups to go back to anarchy without losing the gains of civilization.

How do you define "working well." Anyway, in the entire history of our species, humans have never lived in a culture of anarchy. Humans, like all primates, are social creatures and form hierarchies in the wild.

I shall rephrase my rhetorical question of "what has modern civilization done for us?" to "what has civilization ever done for us?"

 

[tomsnowman123]

How do you define "working well." Anyway, in the entire history of our species, humans have never lived in a culture of anarchy. Humans, like all primates, are social creatures and form hierarchies in the wild.

Before agriculture, humans usually lived as autonomous bands of hunter-gatherers without leadership, authority, division of labor, organized violence, environmental destruction, etc.

 

[Dann]

The fact is anarchy worked well for hundreds of thousands of years whilest governments have had some successes and many failures over the last 8-10,000 years. I think it's possible for small groups to go back to anarchy without losing the gains of civilization.

Before agriculture, humans usually lived as autonomous bands of hunter-gatherers without leadership, authority, division of labor, organized violence, environmental destruction, etc.

And you're proposing we go back to THAT?! To a world where everyone has to produce his own food and the clothes on his back? From where will come the excess labor to say, build houses and generate electricity? From where will come the idle minds necessary for philosophy and scientific progress?

Yes, organized violence and environmental destruction are indeed bad side effects of our species' complete domination of this planet but you can't discard the whole package just because you're disillusioned with the bad parts. (As an aside, even our genus Homo and Australopithecine (sp?) relatives engage in band wars too, using rocks and branches as weapons).

Even I agree that seen from Gaia's perspective, humanity is like a cancer gnawing away at the surface of the planet. But remember the worst that we can do is make the planet ultimately uninhabitable to us, ourselves! The planet itself will recover, albeit in a different form and will probably spawn some new species, perhaps completely different from what we are familiar with. Even if we do succeed in wiping ourselves out via mass suicide for the planet's sake you think the cockroaches will be grateful to us at all?

 

[Fugitive Sisyphus]

Before agriculture, humans usually lived as autonomous bands of hunter-gatherers without leadership, authority,

This is false. As I said before, humans are social animals and there has always been leaders and a social hierarchy. So unless you can back your statement up with facts that go against the entire history of the human race and all our observations of nature, you cannot use this argument.

division of labor

There has always been division of labor. Men go out hunting, women prepare food, take care of babies. One man's responsibility is to drive the prey into the trap, another's responsibility is to do the killing, another organizes this, etc.

organized violence

I am not quite sure what you mean by organized violence (is there disorganized violence?) and I will admit that there was less violence 10000 years ago. But the main reason for this is that the human population was much smaller and spread out so there was less capacity and need to fight over resources, territory, etc. There has always been violence.

environmental destruction

This is also easily proven false. We now know that the reason why most of the large animals that used to inhabit the North American continent such as elephants and horses (the ones that existed before the Spanish reintroduced them) are extinct because of the actions of the Native American hunter-gathers. There was of course less environmental destruction but the reason for this was because of the extremely low population compared to modern day and the lack of an industrial society. To return to that level of environmental harmony you have to do one of two things. One: dramatically reduce human population or two: return to pre-industrial revolution technolodgy. And how you will ensure a small population and limited technolodgy without a government?

 

[Uiler]

In my opinion those who want anarchy tend to be young people who grew up in a pampered middle-class or upper-class environment who have never experienced being in a true anarchy before aka. "the strong survive and the weak die". And before they get on their high horse and say "that's not what *real* anarchy is" the simple fact of the matter is that is what anarchy always ends up in real life. What *you* think "real" anarchy is is a idealistic construct that would never exist in real-life. Look at real-life anarchies and see how many times the people end up welcome the return of authority, any authority, just for an end to the chaos. The Taliban was originally welcomed. The political theory of "Anarchy" is akin to "Communism" - sounds nice in theory, doesn't work in reality due to the realities of human nature. Humans are social animals. They desire order, structure , a hierarchy. If there is none they'll fight each other until one exists. Even excluding civil war robbers and bandits will proliferate. If there is no-one to keep peace and order, small groups of related people will take it upon themselves to keep peace and order and create a hierarchy. They will be forced to just to defend themselves against robbers and bandits. Any resentments previously kept in check by government control will spread like wildfire.

EDIT: BTW is anyone else getting echoes of the "Noble Savage" in some the pro-anarchy posters? 20th century anarchy theory seems to be the modern rehash of 19th century Primitivism aka "The Noble Savage".

 

[Huang]

@tomsnowman123

Would you say that you support anarchy because it's more beneficial to you and/or to the human race in general?

Would you agree that what is moral is rational?

 

[Golf3r]

anarchy might work. however, we would end up arranging ourselves back into small towns/villages and revert back to midieval technology. We would never get any major advances in technology or any such thing that would benefit the human race as a whole. We need to unify our efforts, and small governments that protect our rights would be perfect for this.

 

[Panzeh]

I suppose i'm not much of a primitivist like tomsnowman, but making sweeping generalizations about anybody's beliefs isn't cool. You can make the point that anarchism and communism haven't really been tried without that "you're just pampered" stuff. Would you prefer it if I said you lived in a trailer in West Virginia banging your cousin?(no disrespect to West Virginians, I live there).

I do think that primitive society sucked, and that the industrial revolution was progressive compared to the earlier period. There will be chaos and banditry in modern anarchy, but such is the price of freedom.

 

[tomsnowman123]

This is false. As I said before, humans are social animals and there has always been leaders and a social hierarchy. So unless you can back your statement up with facts that go against the entire history of the human race and all our observations of nature, you cannot use this argument.

There has always been division of labor. Men go out hunting, women prepare food, take care of babies. One man's responsibility is to drive the prey into the trap, another's responsibility is to do the killing, another organizes this, etc.

I am not quite sure what you mean by organized violence (is there disorganized violence?) and I will admit that there was less violence 10000 years ago. But the main reason for this is that the human population was much smaller and spread out so there was less capacity and need to fight over resources, territory, etc. There has always been violence.

This is also easily proven false. We now know that the reason why most of the large animals that used to inhabit the North American continent such as elephants and horses (the ones that existed before the Spanish reintroduced them) are extinct because of the actions of the Native American hunter-gathers. There was of course less environmental destruction but the reason for this was because of the extremely low population compared to modern day and the lack of an industrial society. To return to that level of environmental harmony you have to do one of two things. One: dramatically reduce human population or two: return to pre-industrial revolution technolodgy. And how you will ensure a small population and limited technolodgy without a government?

Interesting Wikipedia Link

Some text from the article:

Hunter-gatherer societies also tend to have non-hierarchical social structures, but this is not always the case.

A common perception is that men hunt and women gather, but this is an over-generalization

Organized violence, like wars, were pretty much non-existant back then, and, without industrialization, the enviroment was in much better shape.

@ Dann: No, I don't believe that we neccesarily have to return to this, it would cause too many deaths for my liking. Plus, we don't have to return to the stoneage, there is some good technology.

@ Cleric: I believe that anarchy means freedom, and so, yes, I do believe it is a wise path to follow. People are perfectly entitled to disagree with me however.

 

[El_Machinae]

Well, I choose to band with like-minded individuals, for mutual benefits from specialisation. Of course, I encourage laws that benefit me, and thus encourage laws that benefit me and the group (those are the most popular ones).

We, of course, will use force to defend ourselves. As through specialisation, we have spare capital to invest in progress.

 

[Uiler]

I was born in an idealic pre-industrial farming village (no joke, seriously. No electricity, no running water). My family were farmers. It's back-breaking work. I laugh at any one who has this utopian vision of what life was like in the past in this sort of life-style. I guess having high infant mortality rates and often having no recourse but to pray to the gods that your child will be saved is superior to modern life. Oh and no electricity, and no running water. No-one I know who comes from that background (and I know a lot) wants the same for their children or grandchildren. Their dream is for their children/grandchildren to study hard, become a professional and leave behind that "idealic pastoral life" forever (and take them out of it too!)

I would like to say that yes, in these small farming villages situation (as typical in S. China you have regions of "neighbouring" villages who regularly trade with each other and send kids to the same schools, they're not that far away, and often each village is dominated by one or two founding families so most people have the same surname), inbreeding is a big problem. There are ways to get around it - namely very well kept detailed family registers, strict rules about who you can and cannot marry and a strict lookout for a history of mental and physical disabilities. The traditional family background investigation is not just to work out if the family is in good standing. The vast majority of the time, men take wives from outside their village, but the area still ends up being inbred. These measures can only delay it.

And for those who think long highly destructive wars are impossible without a central government you must be joking. Look at Afghanistan, look at Somalia. Another example is the Punti-Hakka clan wars in the far South of China. A breakdown in government authority allowed old grudges to spill over. Village attacked village. Town attacked town. There was no organisation except for the "this village is Hakka and so will attack a Punti village" and "this town is Punti and so will attack the Hakka village". The "soldiers" were nothing more than armed farmers and townsmen and the "financing" came from relatives overseas and they weren't fighting with modern weapons but home-made swords and spears. It was a strictly town by town, village by village affair. A decade of fighting later, 1 million people were killed, had fled or were sold into slavery and fighting only stopped when a resurgence in government control allowed the government to step in. They solved the problem by using the army to forcibly evict the Hakka en masse from the region (well, I guess the Punti were there first). The Punti were winning but that's only because they were more numerous. All you need for a long extended war is organisational structures on the level of a village. Hakka villages in China are often marvelled at for the fact they look like massive defensive fortresses. Well let's just say, they didn't choose that architecture because they liked the look.

Finally, the image of a utopian hunter-gatherer society without much violence is completely false and is due more to romanticised imaginings than actual reality (like that of the farming life in pre-industrialised times). As Jared Diamond says in "Guns Germs and Steel":

Anthropologists formerly idealized band and tribal societies as gentle and non"iolent, because visiting anthropologists observed no murder in a band of
25 people in the course of a three-year study. Of course they didn't: it's easy to calculate that a band of a dozen adults and a dozen children, subject to the inevitable deaths occurring anyway for the usual reasons other than murder, could not perpetuate itself if in addition one of its dozen adults murdered another adult every three years. Much more extensive longterm
information about band and tribal societies reveals that murder is a leading cause of death. For example, I happened to be visiting New Guinea's lyau people at a time when a woman anthropologist was interviewing lyau women about their life histories. Woman after woman, when asked to name her husband, named several sequential husbands who had died violent deaths. A typical answer went like this: "My first
husband was killed by Elopi raiders. My second husband was killed by a man who wanted me, and who became my third husband. That husband was killed by the brother of my second husband, seeking to avenge his
murder." Such biographies prove common for so-called gentle tribespeople and contributed to the acceptance of centralized authority as tribal societies grew larger.

It turned out that the Fayu normally lived as single families, scattered through the swamp and coming together once or twice each year to negotiate exchanges of brides. Doug's visit coincided with such a gathering, of a few dozen Fayu. To us, a few dozen people constitute a small, ordinary gathering, but to the Fayu it was a rare, frightening event. Murderers suddenly found themselves face-to-face with their victim's relatives. For example, one Fayu man spotted the man who had killed his father. The son raised his ax and rushed at the murderer but was wrestled to the ground by friends; then the murderer came at the prostrate son with an ax
and was also wrestled down. Both men were held, screaming in rage, until they seemed sufficiently exhausted to be released. Other men periodically shouted insults at each other, shook with anger and
frustration, and pounded the ground with their axes. That tension continued for the several days of the gathering, while Doug prayed that the visit would
not end in violence.

This is coming from a guy who actually has *lived* with hunter-gatherers and strongly praises their intelligence and ingenuity.

Anarchy is a utopian vision of the world, just like communism and neoconservatism. Communism and neoconservatism have both failed because they failed to take into account reality. Why would anarchy be any different? No utopian philosophy has ever worked in real-life, but those who've tried them have always managed to cause a lot of damage before they give up.

 

[tomsnowman123]

I was born in a village with no running water, no electricity, dirt roads, no modern medicine. My family were farmers. It's back-breaking work. I laugh at any one who has this utopian vision of what life was like in the past in this sort of life-style. I guess having high infant mortality rates and often having no recourse but to pray to the gods that your child will be saved is superior to modern life. Oh and no electricity, and no running water. No-one I know who comes from that background (and I know a lot) wants the same for their children or grandchildren.

Firstly, I have said that some technology is good. I am not saying get rid of all of it, nor am I saying tht we should return to a hunter-gatherer society, as it would result in too many deaths. I am saying that that lifestyle is without many of the flaws of modern civilization. I, for one, like my computer. Also, Afghanistan and Somalia aren't really under anarchy, different militant groups can be said to have control of different regions.

I am sorry that you had to live through those conditions, I don't think that they have to exist in this day in age. Also, my view of anarchy is not neccesarily a utopia. I understand that there will be flaws, and that people disagree. I do believe however, that this is a viable alternative to our current society which I believe is flawed.

 

[no human choice]

anarchy. ha! i laugh at you. like it will ever work.

 

[Azash]

A government that has extremely little control. Near-anarchy.

 

[Azash]

justone, please post an argument.

 

[Uiler]

Firstly, I have said that some technology is good. I am not saying get rid of all of it, nor am I saying tht we should return to a hunter-gatherer society, as it would result in too many deaths. I am saying that that lifestyle is without many of the flaws of modern civilization. I, for one, like my computer. Also, Afghanistan and Somalia aren't really under anarchy, different militant groups can be said to have control of different regions.

I am sorry that you had to live through those conditions, I don't think that they have to exist in this day in age. Also, my view of anarchy is not neccesarily a utopia. I understand that there will be flaws, and that people disagree. I do believe however, that this is a viable alternative to our current society which I believe is flawed.

Look, I think the sentiments are nice and fine. However, if you look at reality, even with modern technology, people are leaving farming in droves. Everywhere in the industrialised world from Japan to America, young people leave the farms and flock to the city. The exception are those who genuinely love farming because of the ideal or whatever, but those aren't that many. And this is *with* all the advances of modern technology. Life on a farm is tough and hard.

Afghanistan and Somalia are/were anarchies. Anarchy is just no central government. There was no central government in Afghanistan and Somalia - ergo they are anarchies. Sure, not according to the idealistic utopian vision of anarchy, but this is how anarchies pan out in real-life. If you don't accept this, name one time that anarchies have not turned out like this.

You may say you are not utopian, but the philosophical theory of anarchy only works by assuming utopian conditions. Your "vision" of anarchy has a chance to flourish every single time in history a central government has collapsed. And yet it has never has. Not in any culture, not in any country, not in any circumstances, not in any time. Not once. People have "tried" anarchy all the time and it has never worked. Not willingly, they were pushed but they did "try" it. And you know what, in the end they always ended up looking for structure, hierarchy, a leader, even if he is a dictator to get them out of anarchy. That may tell you something.

Finally, in an anarchy, how are you going to stop someone with a bigger gun from simply taking power from you? Organised trained groups are inherently superior in fighting than disorganised small groups. Allocation of resources, indoctrination, specialisation, training. All it would take is one "community" to come to this realisation, arm themselves, and voila. The communities who are disorganised and "rule by committee" have no chance even if they do attempt to stop them. And other people - it is well known that people are attracted to power. If they think the community that is attacking the others and winning is going to win, then they will tend to join it. People love being part of something bigger than themselves, they love to be part of power. Sure you'll initially need to stick a gun to their heads to get them to obey you but the next generation can always be indoctrinated. Or you could put the conquered people to slave in the fields growing food for you while you devote your own loyal populace to warfare thus greatly increasing the military power and ability of your community over neighbouring ones. Power tends to rise exponentially. Power attracts power. Oh wait, this basically describes how people have always gained power in the absence of a central government. Through the barrel of a gun/edge of a sword/blunt end of a club. How is an anarchist utopia going to stop this - unless each group is armed, trained to fight and ready to shoot on sight. Not much for a utopia there. But still, even then, some groups, by virture of being in a better geographical position, better leaders, will naturally become larger and more powerful than the others. There will always be some easy targets - groups that neglect their training, weakened by disease, just generally soft. In the end, all you need is one spoiler and that's the end of any anarchist utopia.