What is anarchism?

[innonimatu]

I concur with the rest of your post - but why does that seem so?

True, we don't have proof of that. The only case of semi-direct democracy that comes to mind is Switzerland. And you can argue that it just hasn't been tried, which doe not mean it would fail if it were. So:
We can't yet even seem to make make direct democracy work on a large scale!

Might as well focus on trying that to start with!

 

[Tahuti]

It seems to me that pragmatic objections, objections concerning the long term stability of an anarchist society sort of fall into the same realm as arguing that democracy must devolve into voter apathy and therefore democracy is not a viable system. I suppose the argument should be how much do we value democracy that we are willing to uphold and work toward its ideals regardless of falling short at times?

This can also prove democracy isn't viable either, alongside anarchism.

Sorry, I'm not buying old examples with primitive societies about how that is possible. They're bullcrap, remnants of the old savage fairy tales. And it certainly isn't on a global scale unless you can argue that increasing the number of people involved actually has a stabilizing effect. Hell, we can't even seem to make make direct democracy work on a large scale! Perhaps, just perhaps, in a society of abundance where conflicts motivated by material needs became too much trouble for people to engage in, perhaps it might be done. But as technology stands now I don't see how that can be put to the test.

Another way I can imagine anarcho-commie societies fail, besides charismatic authority, is by the very idea that the workers delegate power to a representative council that acts like a parliament of a communist state and then starts privatizing...

Property rights are a legal-political claim, they are not a social relationship in and of themselves. A property claim in a propertyless society is incoherent babble, as much as wandering around a modern republic claiming divine kingship. Social relations of property have to exist before they can obtain legal articulation.

I hope for your case this comparison isn't valid, as relatively democratic republics have turned into highly autocratic monarchies quite often in history. The Netherlands went from its beginnings as a relatively modern republic in 1582, to an Assad-style hereditary "republican" dictatorship under the Oranje-Nassau family during most of the 18th century, to a modern unitary republic during the 1790s, to a Bonapartist puppet state in the early 19th century to be then annexed by the French Empire and regain independence as Absolute Monarchy (again under the Oranje-Nassau family) in 1815, until it finally became a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament 1848 with the Oranje-Nassau's as figureheads.

Similiarly, Oliver Cromwell may have temporarily managed to abolish the monarchy in favor for more power to the House of Commons, only to disband this rump parliament and claim absolute power for himself. Early Post-Soviet Azerbaijan seemed to have promiss to become one of the premier Post-Soviet democracies alongside the Baltics under the leadership of Elchibey, only to have these hopes dashed by a military coup in 1993 that led to the foundation of the Aliev dictatorship that exists to this day. And of course, most European Absolute Monarchies were the result of a centralization of power from the feudal estates.

Loose monarchies, feudal entities and even modern republics have all turned into (de-facto) absolute monarchies. Even those without any monarchical tradition or whatsoever. And it will continue to happen again in the future.

Noting that charismatic can produce authority in authoritarian and hierarchical societies doesn't tell you if it will do the same in non-authoritarian and non-heirarchical societies (let alone anti-authoritarian and anti-hierarchical societies, as in practice they tend to be).

The point is not that charisma can establish authority in non-hierarchical societies; the point is that charisma can create hierarchical societies out of non-hierarchical ones.

 

[innonimatu]

Another way I can imagine anarcho-commie societies fail, besides charismatic authority, is by the very idea that the workers delegate power to a representative council that acts like a parliament of a communist state and then starts privatizing...

Well, communists have always had a great faith in the benefits of education. Whether it is justified or now...
The hope would be that workers would know better. And, just as important, that with communism in place there wouldn't be anyone waiting to buy and lobbying for the privatizations. That was the complaint about the final years of the USSR: that Gorbachev (and some before him) allowed the rise of small scale businessman who went on to become the oligarchs behind Yeltsin.

 

[Gary Childress]

well... you would have people like me in the society that don't belive in the abolition of government and the organization of society is best done in a co-operative way by governments...

before asking is their any reasonable argument to be made against the Ideals
1. belief in the abolition of all government
it should be established that this is an ideal to start with

This is an excellent point. I agree, we shouldn't take it as an unexamined assumption that the abolition of government itself is unjust. It should be demonstrated that government is something undesirable before we go off half cocked and start making revolutions.

You say you don't believe in the abolition of government. Is government then not ultimately an unnecessary institution of coercion? And is all unnecessary coercion not ultimately unjust? What about all the corruption and scandal that seem to come with government? The buying of political clout, etc. I'm curious to explore this difference in views. As this may be an important objection, I'd like to learn more about it.

NOTE: If I am not accurately framing the issue of government in the latter paragraph then feel free that any anarchist should correct me.

 

[Save_Ferris]

Regardless of whether it is good or not, history has shown that anarchist states are always beaten, sometimes from within.

 

[Gary Childress]

Regardless of whether it is good or not, history has shown that anarchist states are always beaten, sometimes from within.

In fairness to anarchists, when you say always beaten, what set of samples are you taking this from in order to form this conclusion? I take it the Spanish Civil War would be one, what would be some other instances of anarchist "states" being beaten, sometimes from within?

 

[innonimatu]

Regardless of whether it is good or not, history has shown that anarchist states are always beaten, sometimes from within.

History has shown that history hasn't ended?

 

[Tahuti]

Well, communists have always had a great faith in the benefits of education. Whether it is justified or now...
The hope would be that workers would know better. And, just as important, that with communism in place there wouldn't be anyone waiting to buy and lobbying for the privatizations. That was the complaint about the final years of the USSR: that Gorbachev (and some before him) allowed the rise of small scale businessman who went on to become the oligarchs behind Yeltsin.

Weren't most of the oligarch's who benefited from the Yeltsin privatisations former Soviet bureaucrats and CPSU members?

The problem of the Post-Soviet free market reforms was primarily that Russia practically maintained the Soviet system, with the difference being companies formerly owned by the Soviet State falling in the hands of former bureaucrats. There was hardly any liberalisation in the sense that regulatory burdens on forming new businesses were reduced, which are arguably much more important for a functioning market economy than privatisation is, something which China proved, by liberalising their economy but keeping large amounts of state enterprises.

 

[Save_Ferris]

In fairness to anarchists, when you say always beaten, what set of samples are you taking this from in order to form this conclusion? I take it the Spanish Civil War would be one, what would be some other instances of anarchist "states" being beaten, sometimes from within?

What I meant to say is that they are relatively unstable.

 

[Ajidica]

What I meant to say is that they are relatively unstable.

Not really. The largest anarchist 'state' Anarchist Catalonia, was done in by Franco's military force. The same happened to the Republicans but you would hardly argue that a Republican government is relatively unstable based off of that. The only other examples of decently large anarchist 'states' was the Paris Commune and the Blacks during the Russians Civil War.
In short, what you are saying is that 'states' formed under intense external pressure with numerous internal issues tend to be rather unstable. Hardly a novel statement!

 

[Global Skeptic]

http://www.tristandc.com/economy.php

 

[Traitorfish]

Another way I can imagine anarcho-commie societies fail, besides charismatic authority, is by the very idea that the workers delegate power to a representative council that acts like a parliament of a communist state and then starts privatizing...

How do you privatise when there's no money and no property?

I hope for your case this comparison isn't valid, as relatively democratic republics have turned into highly autocratic monarchies quite often in history. The Netherlands went from its beginnings as a relatively modern republic in 1582, to an Assad-style hereditary "republican" dictatorship under the Oranje-Nassau family during most of the 18th century, to a modern unitary republic during the 1790s, to a Bonapartist puppet state in the early 19th century to be then annexed by the French Empire and regain independence as Absolute Monarchy (again under the Oranje-Nassau family) in 1815, until it finally became a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament 1848 with the Oranje-Nassau's as figureheads.

Similiarly, Oliver Cromwell may have temporarily managed to abolish the monarchy in favor for more power to the House of Commons, only to disband this rump parliament and claim absolute power for himself. Early Post-Soviet Azerbaijan seemed to have promiss to become one of the premier Post-Soviet democracies alongside the Baltics under the leadership of Elchibey, only to have these hopes dashed by a military coup in 1993 that led to the foundation of the Aliev dictatorship that exists to this day. And of course, most European Absolute Monarchies were the result of a centralization of power from the feudal estates.

Loose monarchies, feudal entities and even modern republics have all turned into (de-facto) absolute monarchies. Even those without any monarchical tradition or whatsoever. And it will continue to happen again in the future.

As I said, I don't subscribe to Great Man theories. None of these transformations occurred because some Carlylean hero wandered in from outside of history, they were the product of a great big mash-up of myriad structural and contingent factors. Individual charisma may have been one of those, but we can't just abstract it from context and declare it to be some terrifying transhistorical phenomenon.

The point is not that charisma can establish authority in non-hierarchical societies; the point is that charisma can create hierarchical societies out of non-hierarchical ones.

That's really the same claim, it's just phrase differently.

 

[Tahuti]

How do you privatise when there's no money and no property?

By granting exclusive usage rights to land to certain individuals or groups. While such may maintain the fiction of common ownership of land if done by non-coercive means, it does mean that property rights are effectively reinstated. And this can in turn can also pave the way for reinstating such institutions as money, etc.

As I said, I don't subscribe to Great Man theories. None of these transformations occurred because some Carlylean hero wandered in from outside of history, they were the product of a great big mash-up of myriad structural and contingent factors. Individual charisma may have been one of those, but we can't just abstract it from context and declare it to be some terrifying transhistorical phenomenon.

Again, I neither implied one great man would be sufficient to overthrow such a system. After all, we don't know of one great man who ended hunter-gatherer societies either.

 

[Traitorfish]

By granting exclusive usage rights to land to certain individuals or groups. While such may maintain the fiction of common ownership of land if done by non-coercive means, it does mean that property rights are effectively reinstated. And this can in turn can also pave the way for reinstating such institutions as money, etc.

Why would that happen? How would that happen? Again, you can't just say "imagine if X" when there's no particular reason to believe that X would occur. What if the entire population of Belgium ran into the sea like lemmings? There has to be some coherent narrative.

Again, I neither implied one great man would be sufficient to overthrow such a system. After all, we don't know of one great man who ended hunter-gatherer societies either.

You listed a bunch of Great Man narratives. What else was I to infer from it?

 

[Tahuti]

Why would that happen? How would that happen? Again, you can't just say "imagine if X" when there's no particular reason to believe that X would occur. What if the entire population of Belgium ran into the sea like lemmings? There has to be some coherent narrative.

You listed a bunch of Great Man narratives. What else was I to infer from it?

It's of course primarily a thought experiment. But I did gave you some narratives myself. If you like, you can share your thoughts on what you think is likely to corrupt a property-free society yourself.

 

[Traitorfish]

It's of course primarily a thought experiment. But I did gave you some narratives myself. If you like, you can share your thoughts on what you think is likely to corrupt a property-free society yourself.

As I said, I think that class is primarily a matter of mediation. Dominant classes emerge because they occupy a mediatory role in the process of social reproduction. Where social reproduction is organised communally, without mediation, class does not exist. The necessary precondition of class relations, then, is the existence of some form of socially necessary mediation. In the earliest class societies, this appears to have taken the form of priest-lords, uniquely able to mediate between communities, between sub-communities, and between communities and divinities. (That last part is I think more important than traditional materialist/Marxist accounts have recognised.) Today, it takes the form of capitalists, who are uniquely able to "embody" capital, on which the entire logic of social reproduction is premised.

Now, I wouldn't categorically rule out the possibility of any sort of mediatory structures reappearing in a post-capitalist society. However, I think what would characterise them in contrast to historical mediatory structures is that they would rely to a great extent on contingent and specific necessities rather than structural and general ones, their power hinging on their ability to resolve a specific problem, rather than representing the entire organisational logic of society. This would suggest that their power would be both unstable, because it is premised solely on the lack of a better solution to a problem, and there would be absolutely no guarantee that such a solution would not emerge, and also that their power would not be totalitising, because it would represent only one aspect of the process social reproduction, albeit a crucial one, rather than being the hub on which the entire process turns. (One could even argue that such partial examples class dominations are found historically, as in the persistence of certain communal practices among peasant agriculturalists. (Ironically, if this were true, it would mean that it took capitalist to fulfil the dominance of the manorial aristocracy. )) If we accept that any state of post-capitalist implies to begin with a heightened and efficient counterpower, then it would require the further development of this counterpower being critically weakened for one of these proto-classes to actually remove itself in this fashion from the communality of social reproduction and establish class relations.


With all this blether about mediation, it may also be worth saying that this is why I think an authentic anarchism is necessarily communist: because only a communist society represents the dissolution of mediatory structures and thus the containment of power which represents anarchism. Now, one could make a case for an individualist structure within these terms- there have actually been a few interesting attempts to sketch out something to this effect- but any such individualist, even one utilising market-like structures of distribution, would not appear anything like market society as we understand, and so could not be properly described as "capitalist".

 

[Gary Childress]

This is an excellent point. I agree, we shouldn't take it as an unexamined assumption that the abolition of government itself is unjust. It should be demonstrated that government is something undesirable before we go off half cocked and start making revolutions.

You say you don't believe in the abolition of government. Is government then not ultimately an unnecessary institution of coercion? And is all unnecessary coercion not ultimately unjust? What about all the corruption and scandal that seem to come with government? The buying of political clout, etc. I'm curious to explore this difference in views. As this may be an important objection, I'd like to learn more about it.

NOTE: If I am not accurately framing the issue of government in the latter paragraph then feel free that any anarchist should correct me.

This was my reply to Graffito's post before it, saying we should first determine if anarchists ideals (such as the abolition of government) are indeed worthy ideals. I haven't seen anyone answer my querry yet as to whether government is NOT an unnecessary institution of coercion. Does anyone out there think government is a good thing, something which should NOT be abolished? I think this point made by Graffito is an important one to consider so I'm asking it again.