A bit like that. A bit like really friendly neighborhoods where everyone knows each other. And also a bit like what Betty Friedan (of all people —c’mon, you did NOT think of her as a hippie, now did you?) described well in The Second Stage. It’s not so much that you can’t own anything, but that you don’t HAVE to own every single freaking thing you ever expect to need or want access to.
Interesting. Well, thank you for answering my questions.
You might be interested in reading about Freetown Christiana, an anarchist community that has existed since 1971 within Copenhagen, Denmark.
There is also the Whiteway Colony near Stroud, Gloucestershire (UK) which has existed since 1898.
Also, Wikipedia has this list of communities which functioned under anarchist principals, including the Iclandic Commonwealth, Rhode Island, Albermarle, and Libertatia.
Wow, I never knew I was an anarchist…
Seriously though, much of what you describe are ideals of the Burningman community - and much of that does exist for a week each year.
- Land is assigned based on a combination of need and what a group will offer to the community when they use that land. No group pays for the land, and no one makes any money on that land, it is a “de commodified” event.
- There are some specially marked bikes that are just left around for people to use and leave at another spot.
- Most people come with something to give - I usually bring shade and help my friends put something under it like a free bacon give away place (we call it a “gift kitchen”). Last year we did bacon and waffles. Did you know that hippies will stand in the sun for an hour for 2 slices of bacon and 1/4 of a waffle?!?
- Other common gifts are art of many different kinds, free rides on “art cars”, public performances, one of a kind experiences, and the list goes on and on.
- We do all of this so we can relate to each other in non-economic ways. It is not about what I can get out of you, but what you and I can share as we experience something together. There is far more value in a life changing experience and a deeper connection to a friend, than can ever be recorded on a balance sheet.
That model is unsustainable, but parts of it do exist in my local community. For example, I have a mechanic I can trust - how’s that for a community giving back!
My experience has been that nearly every body I have ever met who was wearing an “anarchy” t-shirt either did not mean it or thought it meant “no rules, every one does what they want”, and it brings to my mind those bar-fight scenes in old westerns where every one would just start punching the guy nearest him.
Anarchy as a reasonable goal is new to me, thanks for the summary of your ideals.
Anarcho-Dag
I suppose anyone who brings beer to a party could be called an anarchist, but cleaning up the morning after the party, no one is an anarchist.
Thanks for all the replies! I guess the reason it didn’t make a whole lotta sense to me was because it doesn’t make a whole lotta sense to me. 
You’re right - there IS a lot of STUPD in the world.:rolleyes:
Your goals remind me of a great quote by E. O. Wilson when asked to comment on Marxism - “Wonderful theory, wrong species.”
Your goals don’t seem even remotely realistic when trying to achieve them with human beings - people simply are not that selfless, and there has never been a society of more than a handful of people anytime in history which approached this “nirvana.”
Do Anarchists actually think this could WORK or is it just a way to pass the time while waiting for the next conference to disrupt?
I can’t speak for all Anarchists 
but my own take on it is that yes, it could work at some point in the future. It’s a goal to strive towards, and an idea of how to build our society so that at some point (maybe not for hundreds or even thousands of years mind you) we arrive at a society whereby things get done by mutual agreement and cooperation, not by coercion.
So, how do you deal with Human nature? Say I want to sit on my can all day, and just take the food you grow? What happens if I value my my beets more highly than you do? It sure seems that once you start to deal with all of the real issues in running a society, that you will end up with some system similar to what we have now.
So, anarchists, if property is a foreign concept do I own myself? What if someone else really needs me for important biomedical research that I may not survive? Is it contrary to the no-ownership ethos if I refuse outright?
So the two scraps of convincing anarchist thought that I’ve read include are these (probably poorly expressed on my part). While I’m about the biggest supporter around of government action to improve people’s lives, I agree with these ideas.
First, that as a political movement, anarchism doesn’t have to be about the final endpoint, but can be about which way to go right now. In other words, when giant centralized governments can’t secretly spy on, kidnap and torture random citizens, when most people have to put up with whatever their employer demands or take the chance of losing their healthcare, and when oil company profits aren’t more important than preventing global climate change, then we can debate about exactly how much government we should leave and how much power corporations should have. But until then, the way ahead is clear, and as a single way to describe all of these goals, anarchism is as good a term as any.
But even stronger, I see anarchism ideally more as a personal philosophy than a political platform. ** Beowulff** doesn’t say that Ahunter’s society is bad or worse than we have now; in fact, I think beowulff, along with most people would rather live in that society than this one, assuming it works. The objection is that it won’t work, is that it’s impractical due to human nature.
And maybe so, but if we think that imaginary society is a better society than what we have now, then – assuming we care about the world– we should be doing what we can to move as close as we can to it. Of course that means starting with ourselves, trying to make ourselves into the people that can live in that society. That means trying to be self-reliant, but cooperative and willing to aid others (isn’t ‘radical self-reliance’ a burningman phrase?); being able to take the responsibility of participating in decisions affecting our neighborhoods and countries; learning how to work together without assigning permanent power to particular individuals, and figuring out how to come together with different cultures and attitudes in ways that don’t create conflict or require extensive rules.
And from ourselves the next step is immediately around us, in our families, with our friends, in our neighborhoods and in our jobs, trying to always work towards a vision where we don’t need people with guns telling other people what they must do.
Will we get a whole world or country there, all anarchists who can work together without any coercion? Maybe not, but does that mean we shouldn’t try and move closer?
In that sense, sure I’m an a tepid anarchist, and I’m glad there are more committed and stronger ones out there.
The thing is, anarchism is explictly not about the results as it is about the process. No “hierarchy”. No one person can tell anyone else what to do. Every decision has to be by consensus.
Which to me sounds like Hell on Earth.
And of course, plenty of Anarchists aren’t pacifists. They believe that it’s OK to use violence to settle disputes with non-Anarchists. But isn’t that the definition of heirarchy? “Do what I say or I’ll smash you in face”? That’s how kings and aristocrats maintain their power. So anyone who engages in violence or the threat of violence or the implicit threat of violence is engaging in a hierarchical power structure.
And of course, improvements on the running of the government surely are not anarchist. Anarchists don’t want a liberal state that doesn’t spy on or torture it’s citizens. They don’t want any sort of state. Anarchism is NOT about improving the state, it’s about, well, smashing the state.
As a political discussion, this is better suited for GD than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Well that certainly explains the violent direct action that is so commonly present when world leaders try to come to a consensus.
. . . errr, wait a minute.
The transition from absolute monarchy to representative democracy, and the inclusion of citizen’s rights that curtail what even the duly elected representatives are supposed to be able to impose on those citizens, are steps in the direction of anarchy.
They occurred despite “human nature”. And oddly enough, despite the continued existence of despotic centralized states, those more anarchic states have survived and not been immediately overrun by the less anarchic ones. Even though, yes, it does appear that the more totalitarian regimes have tended to be more belligerent and warlike.
Every step in that direction is a good one. And you really can’t overshoot. If you try to get by with less authoritarian structure than the people are ready for, it comes back.
Selfishness, by the way, wouldn’t necessarily work against anarchy the way folks think it would: selfish people want the outcomes they want; preferably with the least effort on their own part to get it. They WILL however generally expend some effort getting what they want. In a non-anarchic system that tendency results in rule-breaking, short-cutting, doing unto others BEFORE they do unto you and then running like hell, and in taking advantage of whatever pockets of generous or openly available resources without consideration for whoever else might want or need them. With me so far? In a hypothetical anarchy (one that is already ‘HERE’ not one that magically springs into existence around the people who a moment ago were living in this system by this system’s rules), it results perhaps in doing for other people in perhaps ostentatious ways, so as to make one look cooperative and so as to make sure the recipients of your efforts remember that you were there for them – all this because that is HOW you maximize the likelihood of them paying you back and of other people in general thinking well of you; it may result in you being about as self-centered as you can get away with as far as taking advantage of generous or openly available resources (which would be ALL OF THEM) without consideration for whoever else might want or need them, but now that is weighed against your need for their voluntary cooperation and for your need for your own good name. People won’t bust you for theft but they may come to think of you as a deadbeat and be no more than grudgingly cooperative when you need a hand. Since THAT does not serve your greedy self-centered best interests, you find the equilibrium, and the equilibrium pans out adequately well for everyone. In other words, there isn’t a huge disparity in outcomes between those whose motivation is self-serving greed and those whose motivation is idealistic desire to live in a cooperative sharing society.
Untrue. Or untrue of me at any rate. I advocate (for example) gradually modifying the US Congress (and similar legislative bodies) so that our elected representatives continue (for the time being) to propose the laws and to speak out on the floor, in front of the TV cameras, in favor of good laws and against bad laws (as they see them) but come time for the roll call vote, we all tune in to Channel 99 or whatever and we each cast a vote. We did not have the technology for anything of the sort until recently. We now do.
That is not anarchy. It is a recommended improvement to the existing state. It moves us in the direction of anarchy.
And attempts to “smash the state” would lead, invariably, to a police state (if the attempted insurrection were more than marginally successful) or to a more right-wing pro-“law-and-order” state at least (if the attempted resurrection mostly just disrupted things a bit and made citizens feel insecure). “Anarchists” who think smashing anything is going to yield anarchy are among the most deluded damn fools on the face of the earth.
I’m not quite certain how to put this, but you’re taking whatever you feel like and labelling it “anarchy.”
In the BM community the people who do not give back are shunned from individual groups. I am looking at ways to stretch the value of that to at least the larger local community.
For instance, let’s say a new mechanic shows up talking just like the one I use and trust now, but his performance sucks. In my community, that would get around real quick and that person would not get anymore business from us. The alternative to a coercive legal system is a community that keeps track of people’s actions, and allows individuals to decide how to react to that information. Like, if I only need an oil change and my regular mechanic is busy, I may go to the other guy, or not, based on how badly he did on my friend’s car.
One way that we do this is with the “Burner Business Bureau”, an online list. I want to make it include reviews of those businesses for every one to read.
We have not thrown out the idea of ownership, so this may not be a good model of the “anarchy” way.
?!?? 
My very next sentence, after the part you quoted, reads:
sb, I’m not quite certain how to put this, but you’re taking whatever you read and labeling it “wrong”.
I think you are using the word anarchy to describe your ideal, but it is not the most common interpretation…
Form Dictionary.com:
an⋅ar⋅chy /ˈænərki/ –noun
- a state of society without government or law.
- political and social disorder due to the absence of governmental control: The death of the king was followed by a year of anarchy.
- a theory that regards the absence of all direct or coercive government as a political ideal and that proposes the cooperative and voluntary association of individuals and groups as the principal mode of organized society.
- confusion; chaos; disorder: Intellectual and moral anarchy followed his loss of faith.
OK, your view is definition #3, but I still think that you are talking about a much more gentle and truly democratic form of governance, not a lack of governance. This is a semantic issue, so not that important.
BM has the advantage of temporary structure – i.e. a camp (group of people with something to share) that gets good placement but does not perform very well will not get good placement next year. It is easy to not own land when you only occupy it for a week, and you have 51 other weeks to make the money it costs to go to BM. I am not sure how this would work in a traditional permanent structure like a regular city.
Also the organizing structure is temporary. In my local group doing a mini-burn (about 500-800 peeps) I am in charge of placement, but next year I may choose to do “earth guardian” (trash and recycling, leave no trace point guy), and the person who is now my assistant could take over. The person who is the overall lead may take next year off and just do a 4-hour shift at the gate.
Hierarchies are voluntary, organizational, but not personal. For instance, my “assistant” does not do my bidding, he is just in charge of a subset of the overall job, and we work together on decisions. He is the “assistant” because that is how he wants to use his energy, and because I don’t have a better word, not because I have some power over him. Next year we may switch roles, just for the hell of it.
I got the job last year by showing up and saying “I’ll do this”, and I am doing it again this year because I did a reasonably good job last year. We call that “do-ocracy” – the one who does is the one who decides. If someone wants to help make decisions, they need to show up and contribute something.
Yes, “radical self reliance” is one of the 10 guiding principles of BM.
I am talking about this because I think it is an example that is close to some parts of AHunters ideal of anarchy… if I am hijacking, I’m sorry.
Dag