Down with Every government earth!

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That sounds like the blind leading the blind to me.

what type of anarchist would you call yourself? syndicalist? anarchist communist? primitivist?

i'm from the second variety, and believe that the possibility of revolution is a little higher given the state's decision to help out the bankers, thus increasing public distrust of both the state and the capitalists, the two things we want to overthrow

hairmonster85
one of at least three anarchists on the spectrum in yorkshire

I'm probably going to regret asking this: but how exactly is anarchist communism better than the regular kind? And why (in your opinion) would it be more successful than the (unsuccessful) versions that already abound?

Literacy rates tend to suck in areas without functional governments that support an educational system. It might be better in areas that are already more developed, but I think I can safely say that education would suffer if not supported as it currently is. Our current system is not set up optimally and could be improved, but it's better than nothing.


Many of those things could have been accomplished under a different system, but I would say that many of them require a level of centralized control. Yes, I want reform of the current system. You want annihilation of the current system. Those are two rather different things.


The elementary school I went to was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Concert halls, museums and a variety of other cultural institutions are supported by public money.


The issue in Africa is largely the hangover from colonialism, along with warlords trying to take over. They've yet to get a decent government firmly established in Africa, and there are a lot of obstacles to setting one up in that environment.

Yes, most people don't like that, but it isn't as if anarchists are arguing for the sake of increasing rates of theft or anything like that, so the argument really has to be made that crime rates cannot be low without some government, and that is a harder argument to make, particularly given that the major determinant of crime rates really is not likely to be just crime disincentives but social attitudes at any given time anyway.

Smaller democracies would *still* be better than the current system from an anarchist perspective, but there seems no reason that this would necessarily happen, and it also seems questionable that fights would break out, as few people who speak live in a country that has seen a war on it's soil within their own lifetimes, and it doesn't seem as if there is much reason why this war is "barely constrained" by the limited numbers of cops and military forces that we see. We can say that they provide some security, but you could have said that about gold backing the dollar, the dollar survived after being separated from gold though, how would this necessarily be so different?


"True anarchy"?? I don't know what you mean by that. In any case, it doesn't seem necessarily so, for example there are relations that fit neither category well, such as economic relations, these may be somewhat cultural, and these may have some governmental influence, but their essence is neither. In any case, there are no universal rules, and enforcing the rules needs to be understood more as a matter of culture, it is really the academics who have closer ties to political office, who care less about the rule of law than the people do, the people only go along with these arguments to get their favored results, but without the academic apologists, they'd have no power. I wouldn't say that human "nature" is trustworthy though, but I think human reason has some greater strength than given credit for.


What is wrong with being greedy, selfish or narcissistic? The problem is somebody causing harm to somebody else. Governments promote greed, selfishness, and narcissism by implanting a power to aid some at the cost of others and aggrandize some at the harm of their fellows. What is needed is free individuality, that way the sins of the individual end up being the individual's sins, not some collective sin we must all pay for.

Ok, and population densities have been getting larger for years, but resources have been getting less limited for years, but we've had less wars despite the former. Thus it seems that there is nothing to worry about, as for the "threshold reached", I think that is nonsense and nothing more, and I think that if you believe in the truth of that, there is nothing that can be done *ANYWAY* so it wouldn't matter what system was upheld.

I would tend to disagree, as I stated, resources have actually been becoming *more* plentiful, the only resource we've been having problems with in recent times is oil, and still there have been measures to adapt taken by private interests despite the long-term nature of the problem. As for the issue of authoritarian style governments, I do not want them to arise, thus I would oppose such measures, and I don't see why you would support them in any case. As for the stability of the world, actually I don't think it has very much to do with that at all, as we have had many situations where governments and culture groups have similarities but have fiercely fought, not only that, but the ideological differences between ourselves and the Soviets were massive, and still the war was only cold. I mean, WWI had more similar ideologies than the Cold War, but one was hot, the other was cold.


Everyone does, and because there are disputes amongst anarchists, I wouldn't actually give too much detail. In any case, there are also too many variables to meaningfully talk about large-scale change as well, no matter what that change happened to be, but the ability to meaningfully get to a change does not impact the importance of an idea, as (accepting conventional definition)communism lacked some aspects of reachability, but still came into fruition at some point due to some focus. It could also be stated that communism failed, but a major part of that failure was the theory of how the society should work.

Actually, I would argue that centralized government is not an evolutionary prospect, as I think centralized governments have tended to fail on many metrics compared to other styles of managing society, it is just that centralization favors the powerful as it allows them to use power for their own glory. After all, human nature and history do not say what *should* be, they can just say talk about what has happened and what tends to happen, and centralized government is a trend that I think is hard to claim to be good.

As for Somalia, in actuality, there is little ability for anyone to impose their will upon the populace, and even in Somaliland, there is little reach power of these nominal governments. In any case, Africa as a whole has tended towards a number of wars, not just Somalia, and to take Somalia without the context of the failures that tend to be found across Africa seems to be a questionable move. In any case, part of the military actions in Somalia are likely pushed for by a feeling that Somalia *ought* to be a unified country, as I know that is a message that people have tried giving to Somalian leaders, and this notion of *ought* seems to best describe the reason why Somalian leaders aren't pursuing some more rational course of action, as if it were resources, the warlords would engage in piracy, and if it were some irrational quest for land, then it seems as if there would be more military action between Somalia and a non-Somalian area.

Literacy rates tend to suck in areas without economic development in general, and I don't know of you doing very much statistical analysis to separate the 2 factors in your analysis. In any case, I don't see why education would suffer to any major extent in a nation that knows the high returns of education, and that has an education system that would be much better off if movements were taken the same direction. It seems to me that you have to claim that there is some perfectly optimal middle situation.


I tend to doubt that. I don't know what you are talking about that requires centralized control though, as education mostly requires a school building, some teaching staff, and some equipment and little else, and this can be seen by the private education that already exists.


And all of them are a means of subsidizing one group at the cost of some others. Culture is independent of government action, I am listening to a Tribute to Marilyn Manson version of "Mechanical Animals", this did not come from a museum or some governmental act.

I don't debate the first point, just that if someone's so much on the periphery they lose much of your sense of allegiance to law easily enough. Good capitalism is a sublimation of greed, self-interest, and narcissism (using such motivations and turning them around for good), when you lose ways to channel it positively or more likely in this case have less capability to force people to channel it constructively *or else*, the human animal can chisel away at a person's self control.

I'm not at all saying that society would self destruct, but we'd have no way of going back if we found out that it was a big mistake and its far easier to philosophize about better forms of government and debating the pros and cons, the winner eventually being a further and more positive evolution, rather than stripping it down to anarchy and seeing what happens.

Well, I really think that force isn't that effective anyway. It isn't as if people improve a lot by going to jail, sometimes conservative groups will trot out some person who "saw the light" but most of the time the people who don't do well seem to be the ones who don't have much incentive to do that well, as legal work usually is better than questionable work.

Actually, interestingly political philosopher Robert Nozick starts off with anarchist notions and progresses from there, and I think Murray Bookchin's views have been questioned for being too non-anarchist, as well, I think that the anarcho-capitalists(who have questionable anarchist legitimacy) have actually thought about the idea of government spontaneously emerging from an anarchist system.

We wouldn't know, force or the threat thereof have never been fully repealed here in the west. Its like MacBeth was saying in another thread - jail's more storage than rehab. I say storage as well as having your life and liberties on freeze for that many years with no control of your environment. That thought bothers a lot of people, even if they'd get a kick out of prison life.



Well... it'd be adventurous...

Part of the issue involved here is that there is also no single anarchism, as hairmonster85 asks: "what type of anarchist would you call yourself? syndicalist? anarchist communist? primitivist? " and those 3 are not the only 3 groups that call themselves anarchist. Wikipedia has 27(if I remember what I counted) different groups under it's section for schools of anarchism, and these groups of anarchism all have variations and deviations, and there are a number of subcategories(in all fairness, some of the 27 groups are subcategories of other listed groups). In any case, these groups will all differ on these matters. I do think that most anarchists have systems other than vigilante justice.

Oh, right, no I know that there is a disincentive, however, it isn't as if any society would tend to allow people to go without any form of punishment, and anarchism usually includes something like this, just not all anarchists agree on these matters. Some anarchists really just want order to emerge more so than want a specific form of order to exist.

people can't even think enough to reduce the size of government on their own rather less full blown anarchy. and from the looks of the way governments are going, people are willing to think less and less and give more of that responsibility and power to the government over holding it themselves.

and with that i say:


sure you can overthrow the governments...but what about their militaries? what about their loyal citizens?


people can't even get rid of the god security blanket rather less the government security blanket.

...

Last edited by claire-333 on 24 Dec 2008, 4:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Resources have not been getting less limited. Food, land, water and various commodities all have their supply constrained by increasing demand. The current slump does not change that as a longterm prospect. More importantly, if you strip away the infrastructure provided by our current system, then a whole bunch of other factors start to impact to the point where certain things just won't be available. The problem I have with your argument is that you seem to be defending anarchism with reference to selective situations in our current paradigm that appear analogous to how they'd be in your anarchist system. For example you earlier referred to billion-dollar weapon systems, suggesting their existence would influence the likelyhood of war. Clearly, within the system you propose, their existence has to be in doubt. The same applies to your resources argument. Only economies of scale, technological advances and investment in infrastructure make you believe that resources are not being tested. Again, those factors are a result of our current system of centralised government.

With reference to your comment on wars, again, as I mentioned in a previous post, the lack therof is probably related to various nations in the western world having similar ideologies, economies and government, and those nations acting collectively on various issues, including forming alliances such as NATO. You could say the same about the old USSR, I suppose. The "threshold" thing I mentioned is, from what I recall from what I've read, fairly distinct in the archaeological record in that once the population grows so that the surrounding land cannot supply adequately for a hunter gatherer existence, then societies do, generally, become more war like. I was simply demonstrating that war is in our nature when we are put into a specific environmental context, and your removal of central government, I'd suggest, is more likely to create that environment.

You commented that you believe I actually want more centralised government. That is not the case. I am pointing out what I believe is likely, not what I specifically want. Personally, I'd be happy living in some remote part of Scotland free from both people and government, truth be told.

Food and water have not seen appreciable increases in their prices, and land is hardly one of those resources that people have to have a set amount of anyway, as we've been doing more with less land for years. Well, that is a valid argument, however, I do think that costs of war would still be high even with less expensive variants of the same equipment, as I somehow doubt we would go back to the iron age or anywhere close. I also don't think that most of the economies of scale necessitate a lot of centralized government action to accomplish, important roads could likely be controlled by smaller bodies, technological advances could still be made using some system, and I see no reason why necessary infrastructure would be quickly abandoned. In any case, there is no relevant model of anarchism to refer back to, thus I would tend to argue *somewhat* parasitically because there is no blueprint.


I tend to doubt that, we are well past a hunter gatherer existence, and we have not had a war over basic resources in a developed nation for centuries. I am not even denying that war is a natural thing for humans, only claiming that war responds to incentives, and I do not think that the incentives would exist in an anarchist society, and in any case, there is no specific model to refer back to, partially because there is no single view of anarchism, and there is no central hierarchy dictating the nature of an anarchist society.

Well... I don't see how likelihood and want are separated. You argue what you want, as facts don't matter, they only are building blocks for the arguments.