I think I've become some sort of anarcho egalitarian socialist.
I think, anyway. My view here isn't as well thought out as some, hence why it's in my listening collection.
But, in short:
- a world with rules, not rulers
- where political equality is ensured: everyone participates in governance.
- everyone has enough to eat and drink and health care and education, access to broadband and all the other tools necessary for modern life.
I've got more ideas on details that I'm happy to discuss, but I'm primarily looking for thoughts regarding those three pillars.
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How do you envision a system that can fairly and effectively enforce rules but which does not by the nature of that enforcement lead to having essentially created rulers?
ReplyDeleteSimilarly for the creation and repeal process for such rules.
Ideal positions, but...
ReplyDelete- How are the rules enforced?
- How is attitude and knowledge gap addresses? E.g. Have a librarian and an engeneer voices the same weight when creating laws to decide where is allowed to build houses?
Have you read some of the Anarchists classics? Kropotkin, Bakunin, Malatesta, the likes?
"How are the rules enforced"
ReplyDeleteRobots.
Giant Robots.
And I, for one, welcome our new giant robot overlords.
(Less flippantly, I really don't think that "anarcho" anything can actually work.)
First anarchist rule: when you state your belief in an anarchist system, everyone will bombard you with questions asking you to justify, evaluate and rule against detailed and intricate issues (the same that no social philosophy really tangled) and will hold your on the spot answers as a proof against the whole philosophy.
ReplyDeleteNo exception.
Second anarchist rule: anarchy is order.
That's only because anarchist systems have a zero percent success rate so far. Other systems which use more boring methods of enforcing the rule of law? At least they have a mixed record.
ReplyDeleteIsaac Kuo historically false.
ReplyDeleteFrom the Icelandic Commonwealth to small communities in XX century Italy there are plenty of example of stable non-statal organizations.
By contrast democratic government tend to become an oligarchy in about fifty years.
I wonder where the true rate of success lies.
Ezio Melega I've been wondering if there's a link between community size, sustenance level economy, and stable non-statism. Iceland notwithstanding.
ReplyDeleteRabbit Stoddard me too.
ReplyDeleteI think that you pointed out one of the most interesting point of discussion in contemporary anarchism.
One thing that I often find in casual critics is a willingness to forfeit anarchic experiences because they are not at Nation or Nation equivalent level.
Admitting the point for the sake of discussion (but not really sold on the absolute, historical, truth of those statements), I wonder: do we need National-sized forms of government? Isn't just the Nation-State a modern sovrastructure to be analyzed and, maybe, surpassed instead of accepted as the baseline of every discussion?
That's a very interesting and ongoing debate.
William Nichols fell free to kick me out at anytime if I begin to hijack the thread. I will not take offense at all XD
ReplyDeleteEzio Melega You're fine! But, could you clean up your previous post? There's a few big typos, and I don't want misunderstanding.
ReplyDeleteSorry. Actually writing from mobile, while working XD
ReplyDeleteMy bad.
I have this note in my Fair Housing class master, "7 is the magic number of team members for decision-making effectiveness. Once you reach that number, each additional member reduces effectiveness by 10%." I don't know that it's universally true, but it makes me laugh every time I look at government.
ReplyDeleteMeera Barry It's (basically) true in software development.
ReplyDeleteHuh? The Icelandic Commonwealth a.k.a. Icelandic Free State was a state. It had leaders, courts, administrative regions, etc... Makes no sense.
ReplyDeleteYes, span of control is totally a thing. In the US National Incident Management System (NIMS), span of control dictates that each team leader should supervise 5-7 individuals. Any more, and restructuring should happen where the one team should be granularized into more than one team. And if a team leader is supervising fewer than 5, they may be able to supervise two teams.
ReplyDeleteNote: most attempts at anarchic restructuring of society have been brutally and violently put down or if they still exist are (and have constantly been) fighting for their survival. That should in no way be a comment on the viability of such societies. If anything it shows how far powerful forces will go to prevent examples from bearing fruit.
ReplyDeleteA few imperfect examples:
* the Paris Commune
* Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)
* Zapatistas in Chiapas
* Rojava
* many pirate ships during the great age of sail
I don't know enough about human nature to weigh in compellingly upon the question of "How possible are non-state solutions, vis-a-vis statist solutions?"
ReplyDeleteThe only thing I can, maybe, contribute is just that: The question or non-state organization is going to turn, more than that of statist organization, upon nuances of how human nature plays out at scale.
Maybe statists answer that question by saying "As long as I can force compliance (where needed by my system) through the threat (veiled or otherwise) of state force, for at least long enough that it becomes the next generation's problem, I'm good." It's not a good answer, but it is an answer.
Isaac Kuo the Icelandic Commonwealth was not a State in the modern sense.
ReplyDeleteIt had a democratic legislative organ, a judiciary system based on successive, semi-elective courts and no executive branch.
The ruling of the goði, the quarter courts and even the Althing were not enforced by any Statal edict or police force, but were accepted on a voluntary base. The Courts defined, in a certain sense, what was needed to be part of the community. If one wanted something different was not punished (fines were in the form of material compensation to the wronged part, a wergild, not a modern administrative punishment) but just put out of the community.
When the Althing decided to switch to Christianity, through the assistance of a mediator, they just did. No religion war, no police force going house to house to check, no ruler imposing the choice, just the community's discussing and finding a shareable position, then accepting it because... It was what everyone agreed to.
It degenerated into a feudal system during the Sturlung Age because the judicial system begun to impose first taxation then ruling without the chance of opting out of the community, i.e. by creating an aristocrstic class that imposed rules and taxation without the possibility for the community to overrule their will.
Ezio Melega Props for mentioning Malatesta.
ReplyDelete"the Icelandic Commonwealth was not a State in the modern sense."
ReplyDeleteI only care if it was a state in a practical sense. I'm extremely bored and uninterested in arguments which split hairs or No True Scottsman like arguments.
If there's an organization with the de facto authority and power to enforce compliance with the law, that's a government in every practical sense.
And the lack of a "police force"? Uhh...so what? Modern police didn't exist anywhere back then. Societies generally lacked resources to have dedicated full time police officers anyway. Would you argue that therefore there weren't really governments back then? If so, then... whatever.
The bottom line for anyone living in those societies was the same - you better stay on the good side of the law or you're going to get screwed. The precise punishment mechanism would have been a distinction without a difference.
Yes. The law.
ReplyDeleteAnarchy believes in law. Anarchy is all about the law. Community can't exist without laws, without order, and Anarchy is order.
Anarchy isn't chaos, isn't riots, isn't individualism. Anarchy is the rule of the shared law, the ordnung.
Anarchy doesn't mean free for all. Anarchy literally, ethimologically, means no princes, no rulers. Because the only ruler we allow for is the law we agreed to share, but the one imposed on us to protect others and their privileges.
Because, deep down, we believe people able to be decent to each other without anyone telling them to do that.
Utopic, I know.
Rule by mos maiorum is... complicated, historically. Not impossible. But complicated.
ReplyDeleteAlso: Please ensure comments are kind and in responding to others that you use the principle of charity.
ReplyDeleteSome of the tone has gotten close to not being that; let's keep it kind and charitable, folks.
[ This is your local dictator speaking, apparently. Gosh. ]
"Because the only ruler we allow for is the law we agreed to share"
ReplyDeleteUnanimous consent is never going to happen. So, let's consider the Icelandic Commonwealth. Did everyone who lived there agree to share the same laws? What about a criminal who said he didn't want to share the same laws? Did he just get away with it so he avoided all punishments? Of course not.
Laws only have meaning if they can be forcibly imposed on people who would rather not agree to them.
Whether it's giant robots enforcing that imposition or a posse mustered with the blessings of an authoritative court, or a police force of full time employees, someone's going to get forcibly punished in order to deter further transgressions.
And until we master giant robot overlord AI, there's going to be some humans deciding who's in the right and who's in the wrong. They are de facto rulers, de jure ruling in favor or against the ruled.
Personally, I actually would prefer a system where it's humans who do the ruling than robot overlord AIs.
theanarchistlibrary.org - Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!
ReplyDeleteI think we should call ourselves Banksian Culturtarians, William Nichols. :)
ReplyDeleteThing I have noticed: Americans, especially those Americans who have not travelled outside the country or participated in democracy outside of the US political system, see democracy as an arena where conflicts of interest clash and always result in one winning party and all others as the discarded losers. The idea that democratic processes can create consensus rather than declare a winner is often an incomprehensibly foreign concept.
ReplyDeleteSo you get this “yeah, but if there’s a disagreement, the system must determine who WINS” sentiment that often misses the point of democratic systems as designed/cultivated/practiced.
I dunno, quite a number of us are not huge fans of the party system from first principles. Coalition govts between parties don’t seem a whole lot better, for reasons other than establishing a winner- which, frankly, seems unimportant to me.
ReplyDelete.
ReplyDelete