Imagine the mainstream to be whatever a reasonably informed person that don’t think anarchism could work thinks.
I ask this casually, I don’t expect you to back all claims with citations or anything. I’m interested in learning what you think. I don’t have the knowledge for it to turn into a debate.
I guess you hear a lot of the same arguments/questions, do you have a FAQ or something? (sometimes I think there should exist some wiki with FAQs about all political views, these discussions tend to cycle into the same)
A common thing that comes up a lot when I see people saying there is no way anarchism could work, is that it’s human nature to be selfish and to attempt to gain power over others etc. I think people are just as likely to be benevolent or at least neutral to each other when the conditions are right.
People saying it can’t work might be thinking of present social and economic conditions and suddenly removing our political system with one based on anarchism, or simply removing all the hierarchies in society instantly. A real ‘anarchist revolution’ would likely require education and cultural shift over time, with the building of alternative structures to meet needs locally, separate from political and economic forces in place right now.
The anarchism subreddit has a pretty good introduction on anarchism in my view https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchism/wiki/primer. The Anarchist Library has a large body of text from many authors regarding related topics as well.
A common thing that comes up a lot when I see people saying there is no way anarchism could work, is that it’s human nature to be selfish and to attempt to gain power over others etc. I think people are just as likely to be benevolent or at least neutral to each other when the conditions are right.
I think there are two kinds of people. One kind is selfish and attempts to gain power over others, even to their own detriment. The other kind is benevolent and caring and empathetic, and would not willingly exploit others. With this duality present, anarchy becomes the only thing that will reliably work in the long-haul.
When we allow some people to have coercive power over others (as is the case in hierarchies), the self-interested people gravitate toward those positions of power. Because they do not care about how their actions affect others, they tend to make decisions that are destructive to society in the pursuit of short-term personal gain. I would actually go so far as to claim that all of our societal ills fundamentally arise from the fact that pathologically self-interested individuals without any empathy are calling the shots - including the industrial practices that are leading to total environmental destruction.
Only in a society where this coercive control does not exist can we keep those destructive forces in check. When a self-interested person has coercive power over groups of people, they can retaliate against people or groups who try to call them out on their bad behavior. By pitting other groups against each other, they can maintain that power in an extremely large society even when their own group is ultimately a minority and most groups would agree that their actions deserve negative social consequences. As long as an individual can never wield the power of a group, community policing/moderation will always be possible, and these bad actors can be penalized or even removed as appropriate. We want to empower the people with empathy (who will generally work together for a common good, or at least against a common bad - at least, so long as they haven’t been tricked into fighting each other over petty nonsense instead), rather than the people without it (who won’t generally work together unless they can somehow strike up a mutually beneficial deal - opportunities are limited when they all ultimately covet each other’s power and wealth).
OP: The idea that not all people are fundamentally the same (“created equal”, if you will) or have positive value is very uncomfortable to the masses, and I think that this is the point where I diverge from the mainstream.
In other words, sociopaths want power the most.
I usually point out that the world we’ve built isn’t necessary and that things like “GDP” going up are actually indications of greater degrees of human exploitation rather than ‘progress’
If private actors pollute public water to the point where it’s no longer safe to drink, and people need to buy filters or import it, GDP goes up as a market has been created. Has society been improved by that?
A far as diverging from the mainstream, personally I offer critical support to AES states in their struggle to navigate these contradictions as this isn’t a simple knot to untangle, and keeping alive bickering from almost a hundred years ago is silly.
People should be forgiven.
Second chances should exist.
Treat others how you want to be treated.I’m an individualist, and that pushes me to anarchism because I support individual rights over societal goals. I have zero desire to convert other people to anarchism, and don’t see anarchism as the solution or anything.
I think for any mainstream political party to achieve their goals would require a level of social conformity that doesn’t exist, so the only solution is force, which I don’t believe is moral or even practical.
I was voting liberal prepandemic, but as a proponent of body rights, and free speech I can’t in good faith support them anymore. The change in political climate has been staggering to say the least. I got a bit more to say, but work calls!
I appreciate the prompt ✌️😋
We are anarchists with our friends, our families. We are anarchists when disaster strikes and we need to solve a problem, we are anarchists when we work on things a lot of the time, when we learn a task with peers we are anarchists while we study or practice.
When we interact with strangers and resolve disputes we are usually anarchists, the law basically only becomes involved in peoples’ lives when things are seriously fucked up and it’s usually a horrible experience.
Why can’t we just be anarchists a bit more? and then after that and so on? where does it suddenly not work and why is that so?
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-anarchist-faq-editorial-collective-an-anarchist-faq-full
At least for anarchism there does exist a comprehensive faq.
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