Comment on How would an anarchist society work?
EffortlessGrace@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Taking the definition at its etymological root, all anarchy means is “without heirarchy”.
In my head-canon, that doesn’t necessarily mean the lack of laws, state, institutions or governance; the implication is that there are no citizens or individuals with permanently elevated authority in the polity of government.
Many, of course, disagree with this mostly on the basis of practicality, but I’d like to think it’s another way to describe the concept of “No gods, no kings, no masters, no slaves.”
The “archy” is definitely related to the idea of a top-level leadership/executive group that is set apart from the rest. Anarchy removes that executive privilege and parasitism.
For any society to function, there must be rules. Anarchy, in most forms, the community is the legislature and judiciary.
I guess you mean “without rule” as in “without people ruling” and not as “without norms”, and it is indeed correct. There is a word for “without norms”, which is anomie (at least in french).
Also, i’d argue that states and governance inherently require permanently elevated authority, but if you meant more general meaning for those, like state as organization of masses of people and governance as common decisions for those masses, then i see your point.
The “political class” of an anarchical state as I’ve described would be rotationary.
We in the United States have “Jury Duty”, where the average citizen is required by law to be selected to be part of a “jury of peers” on legal cases if the defendant exercises their right to a trial by jury.
Jurors can be struck down (relieved of their duty) for many reasons in the jury selection phase by attorneys, the judge, or submitting documentation on why they can’t perform their duty.
A corollary compulsory service or duty could be applied to the positions in the three branches of government we have in our current constitutional structure.
We would effectively shift from being a democratic federal republic (on paper; in practice, the current form of government is a plutocracy) to an anarchic aleatory republic. We would have representatives, but they’d be subject to review, competency approval, and votes of confidence.
But then there’s the issue of who enforces the rules
all of us, that’s what culture is. There are so so many things we only do because we’re brought up to consider it normal, a popular example being how you put back the shopping cart.
No one is going to punish you for just leaving it wherever, hell you could bring it home and it’s almost certain no one would really even care much about it, but yet most people put the cart back simply because it’s the right thing to do and we’d get a very strange and uncomfortable feeling in our stomachs if we didn’t.
Do you know how common it is in the US for people to just like… leave it? In germany theres the advantage that people have gotten accustomed to putting it back through the coin lock mechanism even if oftentimes the cart they use is now not locked. The problem is if strong factions arise where it will be hard for the rest of the public to sanction someone breaking rules. If it becomes more convenient to ignore then to enforce such a decentralized enforcement won’t be effective
SPRUNT@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Democracy is supposed to be that, but the citizenry doesn’t participate like they should so it devolves to where things are now.
Deceptichum@quokk.au 2 weeks ago
Because the citizenry are disempowered, they have delegated their social obligations to institutions to handle it for them and thus hold no stake in what happens.
They view the result of politics as something that happens to them rather than something they influence, and frankly they’re right. We elect representatives who maybe hold one or two values we want, yet constantly act out of our own interests.
The only true democracy that can last is a direct democracy where everyone votes on the issues they want too.
EffortlessGrace@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
I commented about participation in another comment, coincidentally.