Submitted 6 hours ago by ageedizzle@piefed.ca to [deleted]
Anarchy is a political structure where there’s basically no one in charge, right? But wouldn’t that just create a power vacuum that would filled by organized crime, corporations, etc.? Then, after that power vacuum is filled, we’re right back at square one, and someone is in charge.
Are there any political theorists that have come up with a solution to this problem?
Take this for what it is, the thoughts of an internet stranger who’s not terribly well read on the topic. I think it wouldn’t work. I think hierarchy is so utterly baked into our primate brains that if we destroyed it, it would just come back and be even worse, because now it’s not official and nobody’s accountable.
It wouldn’t.
Anarchism (and communism) live and die by the idea that ALL people would have a completely unrealistic level of cooperation and selflessness. As fucked up as capitalism is, it can bend when people don’t play nice and there’s at least a theoretical possibility of anyone gaining power (money) to impact change in the system. Money itself doesn’t inherently have preferences or moral opinions on what should be. Anarchism however breaks the moment someone behaves selfishly. It can work fine in small, like-minded communities where people can always leave (or be excluded) to find other systems that better fit their ideals. However, Anarchism on a societal level would demand that there is basically no other type of society available - which would lead to Sen’s paradox. The reason we don’t have true anarchist (or communist) countries is that they get wiped out by powers that function in sync with people’s natural inclinations for self-interest (like capitalism). People like to argue that these attitudes are DUE to capitalism, not inherent in human nature. Even if I were to entertain the idea that that’s true, we currently live in this world of self-interest. Unless you can press a reset button on humanity, this is what we are working with. Solutions that rely on the idea that we can just fundamentally change how ALL people in the world currently are, are not solutions. They’re idle fantasies. The “argument” that “if not for how the world wasn’t shitty, we could have an amazing utopia”, is not an argument at all, it’s just a tautology with no power of utility.
The way db0 handled their defederation from feddit.org is a great example of how Anarchism fails even on small scale. They espouse ideals about democratic voting and rational discourse, but the moment the organizing body of the instance had opinions on how they think things “should” be, they used propaganda and political theater to get the result they wanted. Anarchist ideals couldn’t function in a low stakes online space, it has little hope of functioning where people are driven by actual, survival needs (and desire for power). Whatever ideological purity drove the db0 admins to present the “democratic vote” the way they did, will be the exact same drive people tend to fall to on larger scales as well.
Same thing can be seen in the Communist instances: they rely heavily on propaganda and people sticking to the “correct” narrative. Which also brings up the conflict: there has to be an organizing body that has opinions on what is “right” and what is “wrong”. This organizing body will be the authority, no matter how people try to use rhetorical slalom to get around it and trick people into thinking the spade isn’t a spade.
People can start to build small grassroots communities with these ideals. Please do, and once they gain enough power (money) in the system we are currently living in, perhaps they can impact policy changes etc. that are more humanitarian. That would be wonderful. But always be aware that the ideals are fragile and break under any corruption. Capitalism works with corruption, which is why it’s extremely effective at being the might that makes right.
When we say “in charge”, it can mean two very different things : either in charge for anything (like a leader), either in charge of a specific thing (like a worker). Most anarchist theories aim at getting rid of the former, arguing that only the latter produces anything directly. So there would/could be people in charge, but for specific tasks : that could be handling a single repair, managing a field of crops, or organizing the shipment of food across a region (depending on the anarchist system, some may or may not make sense). Those people would be chosen by various systems, mostly direct “democracy”, where assemblies of most people mandates them. The main difference between mandating and voting is that mandating is limited to a predefined task to accomplish. Also, in most anarchist systems, it has to be short and/or revocable, though that could be applied to voting too. A common point is also federation : most system advocate for little communities where you can establish rules as close as possible to what people desire. And then those communities can federate together for purposes that require or work best at large scale. This principle of little communities getting together for bigger problems is what has been established in anarchist Ukraine and autonomous Chiapas, though in two different ways.
So, there is no necessary power vacuum, as in the lack of power does not imply chaos which would imply need for power.
Now, of course there is the risk of power-hungry people aiming at recreating power : but I’d say if you managed to get rid of a state, you have the militant basis and strength required to get rid of mafias or other states, right? And if need be, anarchist armies existed with anarchist principles : elected officers, self-discipline, etc.
saving this. It’s a good question. I’ve heard plenty of thoughts on how it should work on a small scale, but nothing about the larger scale.
And that’s why I work on the small scale.
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.”
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.
There are many types of theories, but they rarely are literally “no organized public sector”. Generally you can more think of it as your municipality being more or less completely sovereign and independent.
That’s archy.
Whats the difference between archy and anarchy?
Anarchy means “without rule”, so it describes a society where you were banned from 169
My prediction is that it works for 5 minutes… then a neighboring state is gonna invade and annex it
You’d need some organizing to defend yourself… like a military… counter-espionage…
Oopsie… you’ve accidentally invented the state…
2 minutes in, the biggest gang in the area would already have declared themselves the ruler, ending anarchy. But yes.
You’ve also invented immune-systems, which fight pathogens & parasites, within our bodies…
_ /\ _
Anarchy is a political structure where there’s basically no one in charge, right?
That’s a very literal interpretation of the word. As I understand it, anarchy is more like a class of ideas, rather than any concrete idea. Two people who both call themselves anarchists can have very, very different ideas about how society should run.
So the answer is: it depends what kind of anarchy you’re talking about. Your question is asking how a broad category would work but it’s so broad that I don’t think you can give a concrete answer. You’ll need to be more specific.
My feeling is they don’t?
Even with the best forms of representative government and transparency and so on things are still shit.
There will always be people who crave power and influence and money and are willing to do anything they can to acquire more. Only laws and regulations can mitigate that.
Open source, direct internet democracy.
Let anyone vote on anything basically.
My hope is voters tend to vote on matters relevant to them providing initative to get/beeing informed on the matter they vote on.
I see representative systems as root of corruption so my solution calls for a system with direct decisions without political representatives.
So, passengers in an airliner decide on managing the airliner, because they outvote the pilots!
Democracy!!
Democracy’s still a kind of “boss”, a kind of “archy”.
I hold that, exactly as vertebrates all show, you have to have a brain, & you have to have COMPETENCE & RESPONSIBILITY & ACCOUNTABILITY based brain.
Pilots, not majority-on-the-aircraft, fly the aircraft.
Those who reject how immune-systems work, including immunization/vaccination ( done right ), ought be prevented from voting on immunization programmes.
Those who aren’t living with the ability to get naturally pregnant, don’t have any business voting on women-specific health issues, including abortion.
Etc.
Not accountable in that domain? no vote.
Not responsible in that domain? no vote.
Not competent in that specific domain? no vote.
Period.
This makes me intolerable among many ideologues/ideologies.
Which is good.
_ /\ _
No. It means the airline is a cooperative business.
Anarchy means the laws are made by everyone nor by a small group of people. And nobody can have more power than the rest. It’s, to simplify it, the end of “because I say so”.
internet democracy
Ew no, Kill it with fire
Paper is harder to hack
Nah.
People (yes including me) are pretty much lazy idiots who tend to believe whatever plausible thing was told them most recently, without really investigating supporting arguments and comparing them to counter arguments.
Imagine if you had any vote that might effect an industry or a large corporation. That industry would influence the narrative and hence the outcome.
You may as well just form government by having your largest 500 companies nominate a representative from their board.
There are 2 fundamental systems-understandings required, & you’ve hit on 1 of them: when you remove the good brain, an evil-brain fills the vacuum ( “nature abhors a vacuum” is a true sociopolitical-principle! )
Within your body, your brain is boss.
Period.
Go look at the biology of ALL VERTEBRATES and you will see that there is a “boss”, a brain, in ALL of them.
Now go look at coral, or bacterial-colonies, or jellyfish, & see what “no boss” means:
it caps the allowed-intentionality, the allowed-complexity, the allowed-effectiveness, the allowed-depth-of-meaning, that the organism CAN be.
Same with civilizations!
That’s the other principle.
So, so long as you’re willing to have a civilization which doesn’t include any parent-child relationships ( because “parent” & “boss” mean the same thing, in that relationship, especially with toddlers ), or ANY hierarchy-relationship ( teacher-student being another ), THEN true-anarchy is possible.
But then you’re limited, in pure-anarchy-form, to a few adults collaborating or not-collaborating, & you’ve removed medical-services ( which are hierarchical ), aviation ( ditto ), regulation ( disallowing pollution by “persons”, corporate OR individual ), education ( teacher/student ), etc.
You’ve removed team-research.
You’ve removed emergency-response-forces, which are hierarchical ( with good reason: consensus works when one has infinite-time to resolve anything, as Ikea does: better quality decisions … which take forever to resolve! … but in life-on-the-line-time-crunch, hierarchy wins, & that is objective fact.
The next time you see a ship sinking, while committees are forming aboard, to discuss possible-solutions, but nobody is either stopping the sinking or getting people into the lifeboats, then you’re looking at non-hierarchy’s consensus-perfection. )
IOW, the stunning amount of ignoring required to maintain that no-archy is valid, puts it far outside of Objectivity, putting it ONLY in the Ideology category.
The more-complex the civilization, the more-required it is to have teacher/student, to have regulation/doer ( to protect the commons ), to have parent/child relationship, to have science leading technology, to have child-protection-services, etc.
Vertebrates vs jellyfish showed this principle all along!
& if you’ve got a complex-civilization, & you remove the good-brain, … then there are ONLY 2 things that’d happen, left:
EITHER you’ve replaced the good-brain with automatic-systems, automating-away government with machine-learning, best-of-breed issue-solving mechanisms, automatic management of the economic dimensions ( measurement shows that these roads need repairing to keep future-costs down, that was automatically solved, contracts are automatically offered, automatically bid-on, etc, … AND things like … too-much-investment is going into these careers, & those careers are being understaffed, pay is now automatically altered ( supply-demand principle ) to make the understaffed careers more-attractive ), automatic management of pay-ladders, etc…
AND the economy is not-for-profit.
That’s actually required, too, btw…
DarkTriad { narcissism, machiavellianism, sociopathy-psychopathy } ISN’T COMPATIBLE with civilized flourishing, either incorporated-“person” or individual-authority DarkTriad!
Which political-system our world’s “wearing” is actually secondary to that!
Put DarkTriad in charge of ANY political-paradigm, & hell will be sooner or later enforced, obviously.
OR … organized-crime wins, & becomes the all-pervading boss. ( in East Germany, that was the gov’t itself, same as with Putin’s Russia )
It isn’t a political-will problem, it is a fundamental-human-nature problem, that can only be mitigated through rigging systems to make entire-categories-of-decisions for us, to remove our DarkTriad manipulation-of-world ( unconscious-bias OR conscious! ) from the equation.
The statistics that if you want someone convicted, just make them nonwhite, male, & low-education, or if you want them not convicted, then you make them white, female, & well-educated, is bias not objectivity-in-judging.
How can civilrights win against political-motivation when EVERYTHING we do is deformed by our unconscious biases??
& that deforming-of-process/deforming-of-results … isn’t mitigated by ideology ( which is bias ) or by political-regime ( which is just biased-framework ).
It can only be mitigated, by automating-out the decisions which ought not be political.
& that also means that we have to prevent DarkTriad people from even being eligible for authority-roles:
we have to filter them out, XOR we get Putin/Netanyahu/Millei/Trump, & the CCP ( whose snuffing of Tibet was as imperialist as anything the right has ever done, in spite of the ideological-ignoring of the communist-ideologues ).
Jellyfish ARE anarchy: but brainless.
Vertebrates AREN’T anarchy, having brains.
Civilizations embody the same archy pattern.
& this isn’t mere ideology: it is systems fact, all of history showing this.
Even true-ashrams are archy: LivingSpirit’s the “boss”/brain, not individual-politics, so it’s every bit as archy as any system can be, but it’s got a non-individual ( yin-G-D isn’t “individualistic” ) “brain”, is all.
Which brings-in another principle: self-centrism vs overall-centrism ( narcissism vs altruism ).
Without sorting THAT out, then the whole “anarchy vs archy” question’s false-framed.
How could narcissism produce healthy-world, either in no-archy OR in archy??
Humankind needs to outgrow that, XOR humankind’s being extinguished, in The Great Filter, this-century ( world-species equivalent to puberty: when will-multiplying-technology gets potent enough, AND population-saturation-frustration combine with consequences-of-trashing-our-ecological-basis, including ClimatePunctuation, THEN … Great Filter: grow-up XOR force-extinguish one’s own species ).
DarkTriad’s the fundamental problem, not degree-of-archy.
Individual DarkTriads contending for their “victory” in “anarchy” will quickly enforce “archy”, as some win, due to circumstance, or whatever, over the others.
Vertebrateness/archy only multiplies the power of the civilization: archy is a technology not a political-nature.
Evil’s the root-problem, not the technology-we-structure-civil-process-through, archy or otherwise.
_ /\ _
Tiresia@slrpnk.net 13 minutes ago
The issue is that it’s not one problem, it’s thousands. Anarchism has countless solutions for countless power vacuums, from regulating the flow of meetings to federating different Zapatista towns.
You yourself are probably engaging in anarchic power vacuum mitigation when your friend group decides when to hang out and what to do; if anyone got too much power or responsibility you would take action to make things fair again.
Generally speaking, power vacuums are dismantled by dissolving the hierarchies that can be dissolved, changing the material conditions so power is decentralized, and building a social structure to hold the remaining power conditional on not being authoritarian. You can probably remember doing these things with your friends (or former friends).
Anarchist theory is either descriptive, like critically analysing the Zapatistas, or it’s putative, like sociocracy. So far we have no proven overarching theory of what works for everyone everywhere in every situation, but we do have lots of small anarchist collectives that are benefiting their members and their society in limited scopes.