I feel like you have set the bar remarkably low for what constitutes “a government.” If any organization whatsoever for any purpose constitutes “a government” then anarchy will be trivially impossible.
Am I the only one that read the title and imagined an SCA-esque government recreationist society? You know, after a hard day of work at the collective (entirely non-coercive work, of course), you and a bunch of your friends head down the the park with some home-made three-piece suits and form yourselves one of those quaint old-timey government things like they had back before the End of History. Have a debate, make some laws, use the force of the state to oppress some workers, drink some beers, that sort of thing.
I woulds say that what the OP described is a little more specific than that: An organization developed for the purpose of compelling a member or members of the society to abide by certain mutually agreed upon rules of conduct.
I think that goes farther than the OP’s implication, or at least his example. But, sure, there are any number of ways to say that de facto governments are created and if you already accept such situations are inevitable then anarchy is, again, trivially impossible. Case closed.
As I mentioned, I am using the word “class” to refer to a group of people who share a common relationship to the ownership of the means of production and distribution of wealth. Under this definition, men and women in hunter-gatherer societies do not form separate classes, notwithstanding any gender-based division of labour, because the means of production (hunting weapons, containers, grindstones, etc.) are owned in common.
For detailed explanations of how (from the point of view of Marx and his various interpreters) government is predicated on the existence of mutually antagonistic classes, I can refer you to an article on libcom.org and to the definition of “state” in the Marxists Internet Archive glossary.
From your (psychonaut’s) cited glossary, “The state is the institution of organised violence which is used by the ruling class of a country to maintain the conditions of its rule.” If “organized violence” is inherent to your definition of government, you’re not really playing with the same deck of cards that I am.
I would certainly agree that Hunter-Gatherer societies are stateless, but for different reasons than in your links—mostly that they do not traditionally have formal relations with other states. I can’t see, however, that they lack government, since they have tribal customs and means of ensuring compliance with those customs, both formal (laws) and informal (beliefs). Frankly, the idea that hunter-gatherers are happy, primitive people living without the needless modern complications of government is kind of offensive, and says more about the writers than the subjects.
It’s still a ridiculously low bar.
By that standard, let’s reduce the group’s size to the extreme:
Say I live in some god-forsaken bit of earth and the “community” consists of three people: my buddy Tom, my neighbor Dick, and me (Harry). If Tom and I colluded to force Dick to stop letting his dog pee in my yard, does that constitutes a local government?
Where’s the limit?
I agree with erislover that if we’re 1) calling any form of organization “government” and 2) defining anarchy as government-less, then anarchy is basically impossible for humans.
However 1) is absurd, and 2) is at least disputed by some. e.g. from the wiki:
Could be. As I said, different political theorists use different definitions.
But no one has claimed that they are happy noble savages; the claims being made about them are merely observations about their economic interrelationships. No one in this thread or in the material I’ve referenced paints primitive communism as an idyllic society to which we should all aspire to return. Indeed, for all its economic and political equality, its members are highly susceptible to periodic outbreaks of disease, famine, and other disasters for which they have no effective social or technological solutions. It’s been only relatively recently, thanks largely to capitalism’s rapid development of technology and social infrastructure, that we’ve been able to effectively insulate ourselves against such problems.
I think the issue with the question posed by the OP is that it’s basically a True Scotsman argument on either side. Personally, even though I consider my ideal to be borderline anarchic, I think true anarchy is sort of a singularity that, if it can be achieved at all, can only be achieved instantaneously and eventually resorts back to some form of extremely limited government.
I think a more realistic view of anarchy wouldn’t be a complete lack of cooperation but rather as a continuum between heavy coercion and complete consent. I would argue that a group can perform government-like functions without really so much being a government provided that any sort of coercion is absent. For isntance, if we have a small society and it is suggested that a road be built, rather than having a tax, which is typically a coercive form of raising public funds (how many people would pay taxes if there were no punishment for failing to do so?), everyone voluntarily donated money and/or land, then its less of a government than a cooperation. So in the case of the OP, while having guards is a government-like function, I think whether it’s just a community cooperating or a government depends upon how the decision was reached and implented.
Ultimately, this would really only work in relatively small and like-minded communities because once it gets large enough, there will tend to be enough variation that some amount of coercion will likely come in when agreements can’t necessarily be made with everyone willing.
Oh, I should also mention that defining the state in terms of organized violence is by no means confined to Marxian schools of thought. Max Weber, for example, famously defined the state as an organization which “upholds the claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order.” Oppenheimer’s conquest theory of the state is also expressed in terms of violence and consolidation of power:
The OP starts from the flawed premise that an anarchist society would necessarily be one that has no government. Since that’s bullshit, and confuses “State” for “Government”, the entire debate is moot.
Anarchist society, as I envision it, has more government (via direct democracy and the syndicalist framework)than the current Western norm. It just doesn’t have the hierarchical State.
Then you’re using the word “anarchy” to mean something completely different from what most people mean by that word.
Only because most people’s understanding of anarchism amounts to strawmen and hills of beans.
As a physicist, that should be something you are familiar with.
Mr. Dibble is sort of our resident expert on anarchism, which comes in many flavors.
erislover: No, their understanding is limited to one flavor. That is neither of those things.
That’s what the colloquialism “hill of beans” represents: an insignificant level.
I don’t know what the “syndicalist framework” refers to, but I agree that anarchism would devolve into “direct democracy”, meaning mob rule without the protections of a constitution to curtail its power.
What is the mob going to rule with if there is no permanent power base? Or do you suppose that without the Bill of Rights, we’d be living under a state of continuous rioting and lynching, while decent hardworking folks wrung their hands in worry?
Continuous? Probably not. But without an effective government you would see outbreaks of mob violence and lynching on a fairly regular basis. What would stop it? If everyone is armed, all it would take is more guns than the group you want to terrorize and you are in business.
:mad: Big Boss Thog not like anarchist sedition-talk! You pay mammoth-steak and knapped-flint tax like everybody or you get thrown to the hungry cave bears!