reasons why people say anarchism could never work

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http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=QM_p ... &q&f=false

Would you expect similar agreements between each community-operated police force? You need to police the trains.

i see. does this mean that every person with an interest in marx and engels is also autistic, and for that matter every person who has theorised on anarchist philosophy or organised in anarchist movements has also been autistic?



i don't see how anarchism to what we have now would be a logical progression. marx believed what we have now would evolve into essentially an anarchist system.

people who run for elected positions in local or national politics don't tend to come from the bottom, though. this may be beside the point however, as once they are in office they become part of the power structure. they are prey to vested interests, lobbyists and corruption. government progressively serves the powerful and wealthy, rather than the masses. the trajectory of government policy over the course of the 20th century, and particularly since the thatcher/reagan era until now demonstrates this.


multinational corporations are not at ground level. this is an example of top down structure. corporations have the power of wealth and protection from the state.



this is all true, but not valid in the context of this discussion. mass influence over product development decisions by means of purchasing power can not be argued to empower the populace in any real sense. especially given the majority of people on earth live a subsistence existence. what purchasing power do they wield?

also, purchasing power has no direct influence on policy decisions etc. it doesn't facilitate workers receiving the true value of their labour.



legal decisions being based upon precedent doesn't imply a bottom up legal system either.

Ah, so they're the oppressor not the oppressee already.


My analogy wasn't federal government though. To clarify I meant city, county, etc.. Probably not major city either where you have political machines, just small local stuff or, in big city counties its the suburbs.


I'm a bit confused. I think you meant to post this to the next blurb? Anyway I think innovations for fixing problems and appropriately sharing liability - in a capitalistic system can come slowly, can take a disaster or two, but they get through quicker via the private sector than they would congress. Another thing to note - I'd like to know how M1 and M2 would be handled under an anarchist system. Say I want to start a company and need funds, would there still be fractional reserve? Would the banks be able to loan me money? Would I need to go see a venture capitalist for everything from starting a business to buying a house?


I have to detail what you're saying to try and sort it out. You're claiming that the business to business sector trumps human demand or trumps what the media can do to a company who is in violation of the laws or even public interest - as I take it. Also, I'd love to know what 'empowering the populace' means. Aside from something that would be good for Rage Against The Machine lyrics I'm trying to understand what kind of empowerment you're talking about, what they're trying to achieve with that empowerment, and what the hoped for end result is. Clearly self or group empowerment in the traditional sense through NGOs, political and non-political organizations or urban revitilization plans at a local level don't work given that those are tools of the current system, what plan of empowerment are we talking about?


The question back to you - how would you facilitate them receiving the true value of their labor, what would define and who would define the true value of their labor?


No, it absolutely does. Local law comes from local law, state law draws from experience it was able to draw from both state and local law, federal law draws from experience of its own as well as state and local. I think the thing you're forgetting at least with America is that the state and federal governments aren't significantly older and have significantly less legal practice than the sum of the localities. States and federal governments, in a common law system, draw from everything relevant that they can find. Obviously a trade dispute between two states may not be something they'd be able to go back to a local level on as easily but in other senses they can. The appelate system starts the majority of cases and law suites at the local level, they only start elevating past the local level when they're that difficult to solve that they keep getting appealed upward.

I'd bet that most political philosophers are autistic. Most people in a society aren't.

Well it is kinda hard to be perfectly specific about something that does not even exist and has not been tried yet. But I think people have been conditioned to have this inherently evil 'human nature' people use as a reason why anarchy could not work. People believe they are inherently evil and bad and must therefore have a government to enforce rules using fear of punishment. Same with religion, you're evil because you're human so you have to repent and follow these rules or burn in hell like you deserve. So the idea would be to educate people there are other ways besides 'compete to get to the top regardless of who you hurt on the way.' and keep the government around to prevent things from getting too out of hand because if it was not for them instead of just bullying people and stuff like that we'd be flat out killing each other for that top job position. Rather then being told from an early age that competition is the most important thing maybe the idea that building a positive society for everyone in it is the best idea.

I don't know its hard not to be vague because even I was not really exposed to another way......I went through the regular education system and observed the conditioning I just was not as easy to convince that it was the correct way. But I don't exactly have a perfect alternative at this point and I cannot claim I could come up with one, but that should not stop me from being open to other ideas.

Anarchy is supposed to work in the short run, not in the long run.

I disagree I do not think non-autistic human=psychopath, but maybe that's just me.......I think its pretty ignorant to generalize anyone who's not autistic as selfish, shortsighted, petty and spiteful. And it's just that sort of group division between different groups of people those running the show like to see.......because it keeps us divided.

Oh I like what I've read here so far:
anarcho-communism

Just a thought for reflection:

Look up 'ABN Jihad Exposed: Can Islam Be Reformed?' on Youtube. There was a four-way debate somewhere in this series between one libertarian/reform muslim (Zuhdi Jasser), one former terrorist now Christian, and two debaters who are defenders of fundamentalist Islam. BOTH of the the defenders of fundamentalist Islam say the exact same thing about sharia, caliphate, and the barbarism that we see in countries that supposedly practice it - real sharia hasn't been done yet.

The impression I'm getting is that the 'it hasn't been done yet' is something utopians of all stripes will never stop saying, likely in that it has the same genius to it as a theist saying 'prove that a God doesn't exist'. In one side you have an infalsifiable claim, on the other and in this context we have a claim that could only be falsified after we try a utopian system perhaps another hundred times and failed until everyone is sufficiently satisfied that everything they tried to blame previous failure on (capitalism, Christianity, biggotry, etc.) wasn't present and that every excuse subsequent to that had been exhausted as well.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to paint a bunch of radical ism's on you, I'm just trying to say that I might be seeing the beginning of a pattern between utopians and certain brands of rationalization.

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 03 Feb 2012, 4:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Get whatever impression you want, but all I was saying is true communism has not existed yet........so one cannot argue that it would not work because it hasn't existed so it has yet to be seen.

'True Communism' hasn't existed because it's imaginary.

No it has not existed yet because a communist society has not been created on a large scale.....it has been proven to work on a small scale, but the goal would be to create a large communist society I guess as in trying to make it work on a larger scale. that does not mean calling the proposed system communism to gain the support of the people but instead turn it into another system with a ruling class and call it communism.

I think what can be said about your analogy between NT thought an autistic thought; an autistic will believe that an asymptotal line can be reached and even crossed, an NT still understands that its an asymptote.

I don't know what that means.