Probably another reason is that some sectors of the anarchist movement downright, seriously, positively, extremely scary. Just google “John Zerzan” and then hope the government’s keeping an eye on him and his ilk.
Rereading your posts, I think I may have misinterpreted some of your thoughts. In my defense, you did seem a little indirect in your descriptions. I thought you had implied that your system expected people to go along with the consensus of the majority even if they did not happen to agree with it. And if that were true, all you had done was re-invent government by town meeting. But rereading your posts, I suspect I was wrong and in the system you described, decisions were only valid when every person involved agreed with the decision. And if that’s true, I see other problems with your system than the ones I originally thought it contained.
If I understand what you’re writing correctly, you’ve described a means for running a small group of like-minded individuals participating in a voluntary undertaking with all particpants having equal status and who all know each other on a personal basis. If so, you’ve described as close to an ideal society as could exist in the real world. So it’s really ingenious to suggest this example proves anarchy can work when you’re applying it to a situation where no government is needed. The main role of government is to resolve conflicts between individuals and factions and you’re describing a situation where there are no significant conflicts.
Do you feel that your system would work in running a town - much less a city or state or nation? If not, then it’s not really a political system.
Correct
Correct again. If my model were to prove successful, that would not in any way prove that the entire planet could go anarchistic, or even that a quantity of people equal to the population of Cleveland OH could do so.
But if a valid, functional model that works for, let’s say, 500-1000 volunteers who are actively interested in seeing anarchy work cannot be found that will enable those volunteers to reach decisions, attain organization, deploy resources, etc etc, then anarchy sure as hell isn’t going to work for 10 billion people, right?
This is Wright Brothers stuff. I’ve got a silly little balsa-wood looking thing that might, in its rickety way, get anarchy off the ground. Doing that — getting a test model working, way more than the 8-guys-on-a-fishing-trip, enough folks that you definitely need more than good vibes in order to plan things collectively — doing that may not be sufficient but it’s definitely necessary.
I’ve worked in small orgs that tried to function as absolute anarchies without structures, as mentioned up-thread. “No significant conflicts” is not a description that tends to continue to apply once you’ve got plural numbers of human beings trying to reach an accord. Even the fishing-trip scenario can involve long loud arguments about whether to stay right here or putter the boat into the shallows for the best fishing of the afternoon!
I feel that it could, yes, with refinements and elaborations that will emerge from the process of trying it as a smaller level, and so on. And if not from my starting point, then from someone else’s that will probably bear some resemblance.
That feeling, that belief, is not as of yet borned out by the evidence, but then it hardly could be, now could it? Evidence, experience, and experimentation in different ways to set it up, that’s what I want to see in my lifetime.
I wanna see the little balsa-wood model fly across the field. The Wright Brothers didn’t have a scheme for handling air traffic control or an answer for how to accomodate transatlantic shipping, or even an easy answer to “whaddaya do when your passenger airplane is up in the air and your engine conks out, huh?”, but those weren’t the right questions at that stage of the game, were they?
First things first. I have a strong hunch that anarchy could actually fly. Let’s find out.
That there’s a typo, not an yokelism, ya understand.
I can’t see any system that gives every person involved the power of veto over every decision (which yours does) working at any real world government level. To use your airplane metaphor, you’ve built an aircraft that will crash if any single part fails to work. You might - with good luck, ideal conditions, and a huge amount of effort - get a successful test flight or two of a model prototype. But to suggest these test flights indicate you can now scale up to a full size airplane with millions of seperate parts and fly across country indicates you don’t understand the vulnerability of your design.