Hint: it's not about rules, it's about hierarchy.
That's not necessarily true, is it? All participants of an instance or group could practice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy to form and enforce a set of rules without hierarchies. Not saying that's what happened here though...
The only nation state currently that somewhat has a form of direct democracy (Major emphasis on somewhat)- Switzerland- still has absurd hierarchies, some even more so than other countries, where entire cantons can decide who can or cannot move somewhere.
anarchy |'anəki| noun [mass noun]
1. a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems: the country has been plunged into a state of anarchy.
2. the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government;
anarchism.
What's happening in this comment thread is that people are "confusing" a mastodon instance dedicated to the political philosophy with a group dedicated to being in a state of disorder. It's neither productive to the discussion nor witty.
As for the modern pejorative connotation, it’s grounded in a critique: how do anarchist societies cope with motivated and determined rule-breakers without devolving into chaos?
What anarchists propose is not in principle impossible, but it’s never been demonstrated to be practical. A near-universal critique of utopias is that they are not robust in the face of sustained opposition: that is, they assume everyone is ideologically aligned.
Fwiw, Anarchists use the analogy of nations having anarchist relationships with other nations.
If that's the sort of society anarchists envision for individuals, I have to say they're not being very ambitious!
> If that's the sort of society anarchists envision for individuals, I have to say they're not being very ambitious!
That's a reductionist take but ok...I'm not an anarchist & take a more pragmatic view to my own circumstances but I do appreciate the contributions that the various anarchist Philosophies to contribute.
For me, it's less about envisioning a new society but more about realizing the reality of what actually is...beneath the veneer that we call society is a regime enforced with violence & the imposition of a pyramid scheme on people whether or not they want to take part in it. The government does not make anything but only transfers resources at a loss. If some people gain resources at the expense of many others, then the people gaining the resources are happy while the others who are supporting the system are downtrodden. If the downtrodden stop participating in their own exploitation, violence is committed against them to accept their servitude. Effectively, you cannot have a pyramid scheme without some sort of colonialism or slavery. When the colonized realize they can remove the imposed yoke & organize in other ways, they do. What happens then?
This is a reason why totalitarian governments do not want people thinking for themselves or doing things that bring independence outside of that system
I think you're mistaking authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Authoritarian regimes (such as Russia or China) seek to create an environment of depoliticization and disengagement, allowing them to go about their domestic business without any opposition. Totalitarian regimes do the opposite: extreme political mobilization of the population toward a particular aim. The difference is readily apparent when these two regime types institute a draft: disengaged people flee, mobilized people sign up to fight.
For me, it's less about envisioning a new society but more about realizing the reality of what actually is...beneath the veneer that we call society is a regime enforced with violence & the imposition of a pyramid scheme on people whether or not they want to take part in it.
Who has the monopoly on organized violence is the primary question answered by any political philosophy. My main criticism of anarchism is that it doesn't offer a solution to this problem, it merely punts. Power naturally accrues to those most willing to use it, so a diffusion of power is a vacuum, and nature abhors a vacuum.
An explicit organizational structure with a chain of command, often involving taxes & a locus of governing power with titles.
> I think you're mistaking authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Authoritarian regimes (such as Russia or China) seek to create an environment of depoliticization and disengagement, allowing them to go about their domestic business without any opposition. Totalitarian regimes do the opposite: extreme political mobilization of the population toward a particular aim. The difference is readily apparent when these two regime types institute a draft: disengaged people flee, mobilized people sign up to fight.
I tend to delineate a given prescriptive title from the descriptive attributes of action. With that in mind, the West & Democratic processes can be Totalitarian. A 51% of the vote to institute totaltiarianism is a Totalitarian government in my opinion. A bureaucratic rule by experts, prevalent in the west, often avoids Democratic processes anyways, leading to a fascist structure of public/private partnerships where corporations, franchised by the state, wield enormous political control over the lives of the people. The scientific process itself becomes corrupted to work within the framework of funding potential instead of inquiry for knowledge. With that said, personal autonomy, freedom, & liberty are key principles to uphold to avoid Totalitarianism. This includes the freedom not to be imposed on by others. The application of these principles change over time as there are no absolutes.
Pyramid structures are inherently unstable as the importance of necessary work is deincentivized in favor of power grabbing. An example of the consequences is how planned obselecence & profit seeking has diminished the combat capacity of the West. Russia is very successful in the Ukraine war against NATO despite having a fraction of the military budget of NATO. Another example is the dissonance between elites & the working class.
> Who has the monopoly on organized violence is the primary question answered by any political philosophy. My main criticism of anarchism is that it doesn't offer a solution to this problem, it merely punts. Power naturally accrues to those most willing to use it, so a diffusion of power is a vacuum, and nature abhors a vacuum.
My take is that Anarchism is a reaction to the political & social climate. The attractor is distribution of power & force rather than a monopoly. The problem with monopolies is that the locus of power attracts the Psychopaths & Sociopaths who will eventually take over the seats of power & leverage the concentrations of power. If the structures of power were more distributed, then Psychopaths & Sociopaths have less leverage & are more incentivized to do work that benefits their communities. Human nature does not change & people work within a framework of incentives. Centralized power incentivizes grabbing power due to the benefits of being at the top of the Pyramid scheme without having to do work that benefits the community...If the pyramid schemes were less powerful & overarching, there would be less incentive & impact to climb to the top of the pyramid & more incentive to provide value to the community.
Nature abhors a vacuum, but with distributed power, there would be no vacuum. Violence is used to consolidate power & is a net loss, so measures to disincentivize violence can be created within the community...including non-cooperation, ostricization, & even ganging up on an actor harming others. Ganging up on people happens today in the political realm, where some people are deemed "enemies of the State" & "domestic terrorists" despite not being violent. In that case, the principles have been corrupted to suit political ambition, rallying the apparatus of the state to commit violence against people with a different worldview & opinion.
Psychopaths and sociopaths will always exist (barring some totalitarian mass genetic engineering project). They will always be looking to pry open the cracks in society and find an advantage. The benefit of formal power structures is not that they prevent tyranny (they don’t) but that they make it legible. A legible tyranny at least stands a chance of being held to account.
I don't see how one can even begin to arrive at such an assessment, considering the basic chain of events since Feb 24, 2022.
You mean the war where Russia is getting so desperate that they are using tanks as VBIEDs, which is the same war that NATO has yet to participate in?.
Fascinating. I thought anarchy was supposed to be all about unfettered freedom of association and trade with no governmental oversight. They seem to be defining it as opposition to the existing societal structure rather than a description of the desired structure.
In fairness, I assume their rules are for residents of that server, not accounts which are federated in.
Is the intention of your reply to promote the stereotype that anarchy equals lawlessness and chaos?
From Wikipedia:
Anarchist organizations come in a variety of forms, largely based upon common anarchist principles of voluntary cooperation, mutual aid, and direct action. They are also largely informed by anarchist social theory and philosophy, tending towards participation and decentralization.
How do you make efficient decisions and coordinate actions against an enemy who has decided that hierarchy allows them to wage war more efficiently and effectively.
Anarchy hand waives away so many critical problems. It seems like a different flavor of libertarianism.
I have a casual belief that anarchy is an ideology pushed by foreign interests (Russia in particular) namely to cause chaos and prevent institutional investment from otherwise liberal people. Institutions build power and power can be used for good or bad. Societies operations depends on good people getting into positions of power out of a sense of responsibility, rather than bad people getting into power out of a sense of ambition.
Politics is largely an idea of how the game prisoners dilemma should be played. Libertarians and anarchists alike believe in an "always cooperate" strategy because "defection" is not a wildly different concept than domination. To defect against someone who cooperates is to dominate them. These ideologies take the stance that no one should be able to dominate, but fail to properly account for those who will choose to try to dominate anyway. These ideologies fail because no matter how much anyone wishes otherwise, might is the ultimate arbiter of disputes and participating in a hierarchy makes you, in the aggregate sense, stronger.
This means it is a somewhat a fools errand to fight oppression because it assumes a position of less power. One must be able to oppress and then choose not to. Then you run into the greater problem of if there are no consequences for you because you are able to oppress, why should you be bound by an ideology that inhibits you?
The biggest problem any anarchist faces is that they think they need to fight the police rather than become the police. An ideologically consistent anarchist should be on the police force exercising their individual power against those who try to dominate others and changing the culture of societies enforcers from within rather than thinking they can fight it from outside.
I find it interesting that people think rules can only be enforced by a position of power above the offender, rather than a consensus of their peers and equals.
What happens? Tell me a detailed compelling story of a consensus of peers and equals investigating and resolving the murder.
Which is inherently fine, states are a tool of class warfare. The capitalist ruling class uses state power for its own ends, a successful worker ruling class needs to do the same.
I just wish the anarchists were honest about it.
Fuck You Everything is Mine
They use a lot of words and games to deflect from it but in the end that's it in a single short sentence.
No anarchism (not anarchy) is not ideology pushed by foreign interests. Lack of institutional investment in US isn't caused by few people believing in anarchism.
I am curious too. I can see a few problems.
1. Deciding what the rules should be. How rules are generated to start with. (Meta rules).
2. Decide when the rules are broken. Human affairs are messy. So there should be an arbitration process to say “yes rule 1, 4 and 5” were broken by members x, and y.
3. How rules are enforced. To punish someone you may need some real power over them. Throw them out of a meeting. Impose a fine. Jail them in the basement?
Speaking as a computer nerd would a distributed consensus like Multipaxos or Raft but for anarchists work?
They can send messages between each other with increasing epoch numbers and everything.
The problem are the Byzantine failures. Members colluding with each others to take over and replying truthfully. Also how to accept new members who are not FBI informants.
What do you do if everyone decides Joana has to go sit in the basement as punishment and reflect on her behavior, but she doesn’t want to. Need an new ballot to decide who the group of enforcers will be. Start a new Raft proposal round…
(This is all sarcasm in case it wasn’t clear).
This is it in a nutshell.
The main primitive a government deals with is disputes. The main unit of corruption is loyalty.
Conservative spectrum ideologies are about systems of loyalty and therefore concern a dominance hierarchy.
Liberal spectrum ideologies are about choosing a set of values that are more important than loyalty including loyalty to oneself. Liberal spectrum ideologies require dominance of values, which requires making responsible (another word for self-sacrificial) choices and "cancelling" those who violate core values.
Most people who believe in human rights don't know they are dirty globalists. To believe in human rights is to believe human rights should be protected, which implies an entity capable of protecting those rights or solving disputes about those rights. Most people who are anti-"being the world police", haven't fully contemplated what it means if we leave a vacuum and China decides they are the world police.
War, more than anything else, is about choosing which legal framework governs a given territory. The Ukraine war is about whether Russian law or Ukrainian law binds the territory of Ukraine. War determines who's police have authority. War determines who's system of justice provides it.
People that want freedom need to stop thinking about fighting power, and think about becoming power. Power is amoral, it is neither good nor bad, it is a tool to be used for good or for bad. Anarchists should focus on tools of power, which are institutions. Unions are this institution, becoming a police officer and providing a counter balance to "those who burn crosses who join forces" does more to further anarchy's goals than anything else.
One has a very simple choice. Wield power or be subject to it.
This is why I'm more of a pragmatic minarchist.
People will continue to keep forming groups and multiplying their efforts and that creates power imbalances, and people will continue to keep seeking to try to wield that power.
So what needs to happen is that the government, corporations, unions, and organized religion need to be set against each other and kept in balance. That only happens through the people being educated though and being involved and able to restrict what they can do. Although corporations themselves are formed like dictatorships and that needs to fundamentally change so that they're at least more like representative democracy.
There's still going to be power hierarchies, though, but the point is to minimize them.
Of all the different philosophies, though, anarchism is at least solidly in the right direction, even if the end goals are impossible. But I think its a lot like the "paradox" of intolerance, where the naively perfect world isn't a stable optimum, but that doesn't invalidate getting closer to that being better.
Have you met humanity?
Oh, I scrolled down and they do specifically mention nazi germany and covid19.
It was not always like this, and I hope one day these narcissistic weirdos leave, and people can once again discuss freely.
Which may be a front for the FBI. There is probably a really good chance that any social site that is catering to the groups outside of the mainstream has the FBI behind it.
The "left" is similar, but it's not usually the the FBI these days AFAICT.
But maybe that's just something I see and is just a perception issue.
In case anyone else was wondering.
Accoridng to <https://breadtube.fandom.com/wiki/Kolektiva>, kolektiva.social was launched by "the anarchist video colletives subMedia and Antimidia".