How would an anarchist society help the poor?

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TallyMan
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07 Jun 2014, 4:21 am

Cyanide wrote:
TallyMan wrote:
drh1138 wrote:
In other words, Planet Somalia.


Yes! :lol:

One thing is for sure; without any laws to protect the common man, gangs and overlords will make up their own "laws" and enforce them and collect punitive "taxes" like the old days. So the poor would be even worse off than under almost any form of organised government with the possible exception of dictatorships like North Korea today or Cambodia under Pol Pot.


Yes... because it's absolutely impossible for people to band together and defend themselves against invaders, right?


It isn't easy for villagers to defend themselves, especially if they are poorly trained and ill-equipped with munitions. They also have more to fear from intimidation and reprisals against their families if they don't comply with the demands of the gangs. When the German military machine invaded France in WW2 they were well trained and equipped fighting what were largely just farmers. Plus the border between Germany and France is so long as to be impossible to defend. Once in place the Germans reinforced their dominance through brutality: If someone killed a German soldier, ten villagers were taken out and shot. I live near a memorial in France dedicated to such a group of people. Resist the demands of the Germans and you could find your wife or daughter raped and killed.

If an anarchic society doesn't have a military to defend itself, there is nothing to stop a well armed neighbouring country from seizing power. I'm not saying France was anarchic, it just didn't have a large military machine at the outbreak of WW2. My argument is that without a police force enforcing a legal system or a military to protect from external aggression, an anarchist society is wide open to gangs taking control internally or foreign powers taking control.


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FeralRobot
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07 Jun 2014, 7:11 am

A left-anarchist society would establish worker ownership of the means of production, and maybe abolish private property (if we're dealing with anarcho-communism or -collectivism). This would ensure fair pay, as the workers would dictate their own pay. A co-operative, non-hierarchical system would allow people to take what they need. A practical example would be the collectives of civil war era Catalonia.
The first anarchists who called themselves such - Proudhon, Bakunin etc. - were socialists.
As for resistance to other nations:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Territory
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Insurrectionary_Army_of_Ukraine
They resisted the German and Austrian armies, Ukrainian nationalists and the White Army, and held out against the Red Army for two years. They were anarchists.


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