How would an anarchist society avoid recreating government?

Great Debates
141

To address a sem-side point, Blake earlier said that if people were genetically engineered to follow the rules, that’d be the least-anarchic system imaginable (correct me if this is a poor paraphrase). I disagree.

There’s an interesting SF novel I just finished, Schild’s Ladder, that proposes just such a thing. A post-scarcity economy, combined with thorough understanding of genetics, prompts people to engineer bloodthirstiness out of the human genome, such that the idea of killing a sentient being is absolutely abhorrent to everybody. Some 20,000 years therefore pass without murder, and ours is known as the Age of Barbarism.

Anarchism results.

Stipulate that, alongside the abhorrence for murder is an abhorrence for unfair trades and deceit-for-gain. What other laws would you need? Surely a great deal of behavior would still be allowed, virtually all other behavior. And nobody would miss deceit, murder, or unfair trades, any more than you and I miss the ability to eat fresh feces: we’re genetically programmed not to like doing so, just like their genetic programming.

I say it’s sort of a side point because, absent such genetic programming, I don’t think anarchism is possible. Blake is drawing poor conclusions when he states that a single sociopath ruins anarchism: if 1,000 people want to live in peace, and 1 dude wants to rape and murder, one of the thousands is going to shoot the one dude.

The problem isn’t the one dude. It’s the combination of the one dude, human desire for leadership and coherent philosophy, human tribalism and belief in the exceptionalism of one’s own tribe, and human greed. The anarchist society faces what I believe is a fatal threat from this combination: when the sociopath develops a Santorum-like philosophy, he spreads it through sincerity and charisma among those whose lives kind of suck and who are looking for answers. He covinces them that they, the true believers, are superior to those wanton heathens living in anarchy; he convinces them that the heathens are less than human. They raid, they pillage; they gain material goods through doing so, a concentration of wealth unavailable to the anarchists. More people, jealous of that material wealth, join the movement, and effects snowball.

Anarachists, meanwhile, might interrupt their weeklong consensus-building exercise over whether to make more green cloth or blue cloth to start developing a response to the sociopathic movement that threatens them. If they’re anything like the anarchists I’ve worked with in the past, six months later when Santorum’s minions descend, they’ll still be debating an appropriate response.

142

I don’t think this is true. These forces are also realized in the very quests that would theoretically lead to a post-scarcity society in the first place. (Something I do think is impossible, but that’s tangential.) I do not think we could eliminate these aspects of living beings without losing a massive amount of useful behaviors.

In some sense, I think we currently live in anarchy. Government is an illusion in the mind of the governors. In some cases, government is also an illusion in the mind of the governed. This sense is not especially enlightening or foundational, but I find it useful to reflect upon sometimes. Statists focus a lot on the exercise of power. I think Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson said it best: the only real power anyone has is the ability to say “no” and accept the consequences. Some consequences to some actions follow directly from the existence of the state, but even without a state actions have consequences. Even without a permanent police force, as you say, the one guy will get shot.

I have not yet said so, but now I think the time is right: the real reason we can’t have anarchy isn’t the warlords, it’s the statists themselves. I say this because:

This is only possible when a formal power structure exists. Without a military, this action cannot happen. Unorganized force does not lead to government; at best, it is a tool for bad examples of revolution. A permanent power structure is required to accomplish the purported “evils” of anarchy, and it is primarily—though not totally—this kind of organized force which is the tool of all governments, good and bad. When states succeed, it is in spite of this horrible tool, not because of it. Free and pleasant societies happen when people respect the law, not when we have the right amount of cops.

There are an enormous numbers of venues in our relatively free society where people are free to organize as they see fit and this has been partially responsible for the existence of modern living. I don’t think this caricature of abstract living in anarchy is fair.

143

Can you say more about this? I’m not following your meaning here. An example might be helpful.

Not following you here either: it seems to me like there’s also the power to shoot people who say “no.” Is there some context to this quote that makes it make more sense?

This is also ambiguous to me (I’m sorry to keep repeating such statements–I’m finding your writing to be pretty opaque in general, with a lot of what look to me like unsubstantiated claims). If you mean that one can’t move from unorganized force to a formal power structure, that’s demonstrably wrong, since humanity used to have unorganized force and now has formal power structures.

If you mean that formal power structures must be formed in order to get to the kinds of evils I’m talking about, I absolutely agree; that’s actually kind of my point. Formal power structures have got a lot of ethical problems in many, if not all, cases. Their saving grace is that they can be really amazingly effective at accomplishing goals. The Santorums of the world, those who don’t especially groove on anarchism, are almost certain to recreate formal power structures, and the Tea Partiers of the world, those who look to charismatic leaders who offer strong tribal ideologies, are almost certain to join up with these formal power structures.

And I don’t think anarchist societies have adequate defense against these structures.

As for caricaturing anarchist groups, I helped organize an anarchist conference that attracted hundreds of attendees in the mid-nineties, and I worked with Earth First! in the early nineties, and I volunteered for a long time at a collectivist bookstore. It’s not so much a caricature as a memory.

144

The aspects which we’re discussing eliminating are part of the aspects we wish to keep. Greed is a word to describe behavior we don’t like, but the same forces which drive greed drive, say, innovation, experimentation, and such. You might say that the impulse, properly channeled, results in social and individual gains, while unfettered can cause harm. But to remove the impulse in order to remove the bad necessarily will remove the benefits, too. To my mind, it is like destroying all your immune system to prevent getting AIDS. It would work, of course, but we’d give up a lot of the things we didn’t want to.

Not a context, a perspective. Again, I’m not trying to be super deep or make some foundational point. Shooting someone is a way of expressing rejection. If it is too weird, forget I said it.

I meant exactly what I said: unorganized force does not have the effects claimed. Moving from unorganized force to organized force is not a property of the force. The evils ascribed to anarchy are the result of one of the principle things anarchists reject.

Yes.

I believe you are mistaken, which is also part of my disagreement with Alessan earlier. The force was not what accomplished anything. I believe this is the same kind of mistake people make when they say things like “war is good for the economy”, it’s kind of a broken window fallacy on a much larger scale. Even if the exercise of force were required to reach a particular result, that is not in itself a justification for the permanent power structure we call a state. We do not shell major cities in order to increase employment, though it would definitely increase employment. A permament power structure happened to use force as a means to an end. Even if the force was necessary, this does not in itself justify the existence of the state.

Yes—statists are the enemies of anarchism, not warlords.

Again the matter of perspective rears its head. This is not a problem with anarchy, it’s a problem with the statists. They will not be satisfied without wielding a police force and military. If anarchy is impossible, this is why—but that’s not a problem with anarchy. It’s statists grabbing your arm and making you punch yourself and then saying, “Quit hitting yourself!”

My boss has no power over me in the sense we are discussing (state versus non-state) and we don’t have these problems at the office. As far as I can tell, our entire economy is organized that way. So again—I think your example is unfair.

145

Analogies seem to be flowing around a lot lately, so here is an analogy. Maybe it will help clarify my position. At the very least, it may help clarify what I am hearing—maybe a misinterpretation.

me: “Chess is not impossible.”
not-me: “Chess is impossible, because there’s no one to enforce the rules.”
me: “But enforcing the rules is not a matter of force, it is a matter of agreement, and we can agree without force.”
not-me: “Impossible. There will always be some guy who wants to jump pieces with a rook, and what then? Then it isn’t chess. QED.”
me: “If that person doesn’t agree to the rules, then he isn’t playing chess. That’s trivial.”
not-me: “So chess is impossible.”
me: “It doesn’t take universal agreement to play chess.”
not-me: “But someone will just come to your game and jump pawns with their rook. You can’t stop them.”
me: “Of course I can stop them.”
not-me: “Aha! See! You used force!”
me: “So?”

146

Move back to the “Of course I can stop them” phase.

LHOD: Seriously? Because the way I see it, the folks who want to jump pawns with their rook are going to be better-organized than you, and if you try to stop them, they’re going to punch you in the face and take your chess set."

You: …

147

It’s a little like that, sure. Life’s unfair. I agree that there are plenty of people who could function fine without a state. Believe me, I’d much prefer to live around such people all my days (that being the second-best alternative to my getting to be absolute dictator: I’d genuinely be awesome at it, and y’all really ought to let me).

I have very little interest, however, in determining who’s at fault for anarchism’s impossibility. That doesn’t strike me as a particularly important question. The important question is, is widespread anarchism not under the umbrella of a government (in the way that, say, Internationalist Books functions under the umbrella of a government who will do at least a cursory investigation if someone murders the owner and steals his money) even feasible? If it is, then by all means I think we ought to be moving in that direction. If it isn’t, rather than trying to maintain ideological purity by blaming the statists for its failures, I think we ought to be looking at what ideas are feasible.

148

OK, wherefrom this silly argument over and over again ? What prevents anarchist states from having a military ? Makhno’s piece of Ukraine had one, a pretty good one at that. Organized and everything. Even though they had no officers.
OK, so it got stomped by Russia’s bolsheviks in the end - but then, the Whites’ state army didn’t fare any better :stuck_out_tongue:

No but seriously, what exactly prevents anarchist communities from having enforcers, designated troubleshooters and so forth ; or damn well arming themselves and using force when necessary ? In a Dark Age, roving marauders scenario, what would prevent them from forming a militia ? In short, what kind of super violence-negating powers does an authoritarian state magically grant its police and/or military that simply could not imaginably be replicated in an anarchist country, if such a need presented itself ?

149

Maybe not, but it’s the subject of this thread—whether it is impossible.

I think we are moving in that direction. I don’t generally think appeals to hand-wavey historical “trends” are particularly good arguments, but just to say so, it indeed seems to me we are moving in that direction. Not on the order of individual lifetimes, however.

150

Sorry I somehow missed this reply.

Yes. But the question is: how does and anarchistic society avoid recreating government? If the answer is, someone else from outside the society will somehow provide enough pressure to do it, then that’s not really answering the question, is it? Because that’s not the anarchistic society creating government. Then the response that statists are the problem, not anarchy, is a highly relevant response to the misdirection.

The assertion so far has been this general trend: anarchistic societies cannot be maintained because of forces outside the society which will organize states. Significantly, states will have more physical force, due to their nature (it is characteristic of the state). Such states will be brutal, horrific regimes. So we need a good state (effective was the word choice so far) to protect us from the bad (ineffective) states.

As things go, this is not a totally unreasonable discussion. It has a few problems.
[ol][li]It has not actually said what was wrong with the anarchy. It said what was wrong with dictators. But we can agree on that prior to any other discussion.[/li][*]It has not actually said what makes effective states effective. It has been suggested that force is the issue, but the ineffective states also bring force to bear, so it cannot be what distinguishes them. I suggested effective governments are the way they are because of the very qualities which would make anarchy possible: broad social agreement.[/ol]

151

But doesn’t have a government? Register extreme dubiety.

152

Can everyone agree that the “roving bands of warlords” scenario is, in fact, exactly how governments were actually established in history?

And that in order to defend yourself against these very real bands of warriors, your family, or tribe, or village, or collection of villages, was obligated to gather together, either as part time volunteers or full-time specialists, their bands of warriors?

And the trouble is, once you’ve created a band of warriors for defense, then to the guys over in the next village, you’re exactly the same as any other band of warriors? And that, in fact, there wasn’t any such distinction between bands of warriors organized for defense against bandits, and bands of warriors organized to wander over to the neighboring area and engage in banditry?

And so, the people who the warriors agreed to obey were the government of that place. It doesn’t matter why the warriors agreed to listen to which people. Only that, if you have a system where a person or group of people make a decision, and the warriors agree, then you have a government. It could be that warriors agree to follow the toughest warriors, or the cleverest, or the ones who are skilled in understanding the supernatural, or the ones from the right family, or the ones voted for by the community. These are all governments.

Now, why in the world would a particular warrior agree to do what some other person asked? Simply because a lone warrior can be defeated a tougher warrior, but two weaker warriors can defeat one warrior. And ten can defeat five. And five well trained motivated guys can defeat ten confused amatuers. And this is why gangs exist. Gangs are nothing more than simple governments arising spontaneously in places and times where other governments are weak. They exist for the exact same reasons that the earliest tribes from prehistory existed, a group of fighters is stronger than a single fighter. The toughest tough guy by himself is a nobody who won’t survive long. Unless he’s got buddies of one kind or another to back him up, he’s literally dead.

So take for example, Kowloon Walled City. Here was a place supposedly outside any government jurisdiction. Hong Kong didn’t claim it, the People’s Republic of China didn’t claim it. You could do anything you wanted there. No cops, no judges, no building inspectors. An anarchist paradise. Except of course, that Kowloon Walled City was controlled by the triads, and you could not work there or live there or enter there without their permission. If they didn’t want you there, they could just kill you, and no outside government would do anything about it. So does that mean Kowloon Walled City had no government? Or that it was government by the gang, in exactly the same way, by the same methods, and for the same purposes that Sumerian villages would be governed?

As for the contention that government is an illusion, well, sure. All there really is are people who believe certain things and act in certain ways. There is not literally such a thing as “The United States of America”, it really does exist only in our own heads. If you want to argue that means that we really do live in anarchy, and government is an illusion, well, OK. But how exactly is this useful?

If you think that lots of things that we currently label as “governmental functions” don’t have to be labeled that way, and that most people don’t refrain from killing and eating their neighbors only because they’re afraid of the cops, then sure. If you want to argue that order can arise spontaneously out of simple mutually agreed-upon mutually beneficial rules and we don’t constantly need a third party to enforce agreements, then sure.

99.9% of the time people go about their lives engaging in voluntary non-zero-sum behavior and have no need of a “government”. The trouble comes when we have disagreements. You farmed on “my” land, and I’m angry. I tell you to stop. You say it’s “your” land, not “mine”, and tell me to make you stop. Now what? In a system of efficient government, it is not neccesary for me to go get my sword, or collect my buddies, or find the cops, or for you to get your sword, or collect your buddies, or find the cops. Because even though we disagree, we already know how the dispute will end. Either I’m tougher and will win the sword-fight, or you’ve got more buddies and so my gang will lose, or the cops will side with me because I’m in their tribe, or the cops will side with you because the exact boundaries were written down on a piece of paper at the courthouse.

Even in situations where no swords or gangs or cops were actually employed, and thus the dispute was resolved without actual violence, the presence of violence was still there, lurking in the background. It might be so far in the background that neither of us is consciously aware of it. But without the cops believing that what is written on a particular piece of paper is important, then we’d be back to gangs, and without gangs we’d be back to swords, and without swords we’d be back to fists.

The cops don’t need to be full-time professional cops, hey, we could have neighborhood watches and citizen’s tribunals, and then we wouldn’t have to label all this “government”. Except neighborhood watches and citizen’s tribunals leads to shitty governance, even if we don’t want to label it governance. That sort of governence is a lot closer to the gang of warriors model.

I happen to think that the model we employ in modern liberal democracies leads to the sort of society that I personally find the most appealing. Maybe other people prefer life under a totalitarian dictatorship, or a feudal monarchy, or a chaotic system of gang warlords. Probably the only other system of political organization that I would have found more congenial, if only I had been born into it, would be living as a hunter-gatherer in a period of low population density. But of course, that is impossible nowadays.

And so, to change our political system, I find absolutely no appeal to the idea of tossing out our existing socio-politico-economic system in favor of something else. If you want to argue for the gradual supplantation of existing sorts of organizations with what you call “anarchist” methods of governence, well, we can compare how well they work vs how well existing methods work. And your aesthetic judgement of “how well” doesn’t count any more than mine, or Rick Santorum’s.

If I have to be extensively retrained to appreciate sitting at endless comittee meetings until we reach consensus, then I’m afraid that’s never going to happen. I’d rather have some asshole statist make a decision, and then we can either yell at them or support them, but at least I don’t have to waste years of my life listening to fuckheads blathering about nothing. The anarchist methods for achieving consensus, as they actually exist when employed in real life, seem to me to be literally hellish.

153

Or if absolutely everyone agrees, which has been Blake’s major point all along.

How do you play chess with someone who thinks that the King can also move like a Knight? How do you mediate the disagreement if neither person will give up his opinion? You can’t. Chess is impossible without unanimity of consent.

154

You’ll have to forgive me, Lemur, it’s been a while since I read “Anarchy, State, Utopia.” The argument that the state is the solution to the war of all against all, and how it really must be some kind of minimal state and not just tribes—that argument, and why I found it unconvincing, has been lost with time. However, to answer some particular questions.

I have no idea. It sounds like it had no government, from your description. But I could be persuaded either way.

The point is that the good governments people like don’t devolve into horrible dictatorships necessarily. And the reason they don’t do this is because of the very characteristics of the citizens which would enable an anarchistic society to function. The police enforce the will of the state, but that amounts to Kowloon and not Boston if the people themselves aren’t already in broad agreement to not fuck each other over. The argument that the [good] state is necessary to protect us from the [bad] state very conveniently fails to describe how the good state can be maintained in the first place. Why don’t the thugs just become cops? Why doesn’t the military take over the government? Because there are states with thug cops and military coups! The answers to these questions are exactly why I think anarchy isn’t impossible. The answers to these questions reveal that in some ways—but not all ways of course—we’re already there, or working our way there. Not everyone, and not everywhere, but I have never claimed completeness.

I say “very conveniently” above, and emphasize it so, because it is the double standard. Statists have no obligation to account for good states, but anarchists have the burden here to demonstrate how such complete agreement is possible. (Of course that is impossible.)

This is not a picture of more than a few nations and if you are going to use this as an example then you have the same burden I do: explain how it is avoided. Because there are states where this doesn’t hold. Therefore, ipso facto, it is not states which are preventing the behavior in question. So this example cannot constitute a refutation of anarchy without simultaneously refuting the existence of peaceful, relatively free states. But we know such states exist.

Now what?

155

This is either trivial or false. Since we’ve been over the trivial case a thousand times in this thread, and which I have never once denied, I’m going to go with false.

You and I agree on the rules of chess. Lemur doesn’t. Can you and I play chess?

156

This only works if you engage in what I see as some fancy semantic footwork: the moment someone advocates a state, they’re by definition no longer part of the society. Is that how you’re solving this problem?

If so, I don’t think it’s helpful. Because people born into an anarchist society are totally capable of deciding to leave it and become statists. The question, “how can an anarchist society avoid recreating government?” needs to account for these people; if it’s spawning new states from ex-members of the society, that’s a real problem.

[quote]
As things go, this is not a totally unreasonable discussion. It has a few problems.
[ol][li]It has not actually said what was wrong with the anarchy. It said what was wrong with dictators. But we can agree on that prior to any other discussion.[/li][/quote]

If I tell you that shark’s fins are the wrong treatment for cancer, you can’t come back and say, “You’re pointing to the damage caused by cancer cells, not to the damage caused by shark’s fins. You’re not telling me what’s wrong with shark’s fins, you’re telling me what’s wrong with cancer.” The illness is the human drive to violence. Our system of social organization is the cure for this illness. Anarchism is the wrong cure.

[quote]
[li]It has not actually said what makes effective states effective. It has been suggested that force is the issue, but the ineffective states also bring force to bear, so it cannot be what distinguishes them. I suggested effective governments are the way they are because of the very qualities which would make anarchy possible: broad social agreement.[/ol][/li][/QUOTE]

Broad social agreement is great. However, are you with Kobal in his (absurd, to me, from what I know about anarchist military groups) suggestion that nonhierarchical armed forces have proven the equal to hierarchical military forces?

I really really want to get rid of the military entirely. But I don’t see a way to get that to happen. The closest I can see to that happening, absent genetic engineering on a species-wide level, is to put the military under civilian control.

157

Fancy footwork? Obviously someone actually attacking society or its citizens has gone a bit outside “advocating for a state.” Don’t move the goalposts now. Reasonable people can disagree. If we’re talking about people disagreeing, obviously they can disagree. But we weren’t discussing that, were we? No. We were discussing people using violence to achieve their ends.

This is a very, very strange criticism. I’m not sure how to answer it. Can you maybe rephrase it? Because if you’re asking how people can disagree without instituting a permanent power structure, I don’t even know where to begin.

Please see my response to Lemur.

Without recalling the specific details of the conversation here, I would broadly agree to the following: organized military forces have not always shown their dominance over guerilla tactics, but I don’t know that this demonstrates either proposition you’ve asked me to comment on. Specialization has shown itself to be an improvement over generalism so organized military forces would be expected (though this is not a necessity) to outperform ad hoc militia (plausibly the defensive capabilities of an anarchistic society). If that were so, the question would be whether anarchy could avoid becoming a state while still having specialized defensive capabilities, if we assume from the outset that it will have to defend itself from outside threats (states).

Of course, we do know that even the existence of a state is not sufficient to secure its population. So again statists let themselves off the hook while requiring a larger burden of anarchists. But I guess I should be used to that now.

158

No, you can’t. Lemur866 stole your chessboard. So you have to form a vigilante committee to go out and get it back from him. And by the time you found it, he already went back to where he and his friends are using it for firewood, and there are more of his friends than there are of you.

Regards,
Shodan

159

Poor word choice on my part, apparently. I didn’t mean empty advocacy of a state; I meant real, productive advocacy of a state, that is, actively working toward the creation of a state. Would you like me to rephrase my last post with that clarification, or do you mind going back and rereading it with that in mind?

That’s not what I’m asking at all, and I’m not sure at all how you’re getting that from me, who would prefer to live in an anarchist state and who well knows how that could work.

I’m asking how anarchists can disagree effectively with the people who are establishing a permanent, formal power structure next door to them, with the intent of using that power structure to tell the anarchists what to do.

I don’t at all think that the state is a great thing, and that’s not what I’m arguing. I’m arguing that the state is an effective thing at organizing and holding onto power, and that as nature abhors a vacuum, human nature seems to abhor a power structure vacuum. Shitty as it is, I think that the folks who want a state will always win in a serious (not theoretical) argument about whether there should be a state.

160

What, exactly, about anarchy suggests negotiations like this are impossible? What, exactly, about anarchy suggests defensive force is impossible? Because if you accept anarchists can negotiate and defend, then I don’t understand the question.

Because they invariably stack the deck. Statists do not require of themselves that all states be successful in organization, defense, personal freedom, or any other topic. But if the anarchist cannot demonstrate complete freedom, perfect defense, absolute agreement… well, then, anarchy is impossible, isn’t it? Written history is littered with failed states, but none of that counts. States just should exist, even if they don’t actually solve the problems apparently faced by anarchy. States just are natural, even if some of them are dictatorships. States just can defend effectively, even if hundreds of them have been wiped out, conquered, or otherwise evaporated. This is an impossible burden to meet when every criticism can only ever go one way.