But even ignoring the violence issue–somehow–I have to say this society strikes me as a grim dystopia. I don’t want my well being determined by an arbitrary and intangible thing like reputation. Who decides what my reputation is? You’re simply setting up a different hierarchy, one without a formal codification, but one where the charismatic, the forceful, and the charming will determine the distribution of wealth. I don’t want to work to get a good reputation among people I can’t stand. I want to work as much as I have to work, doing, as much as possible, the work I want to.
Also, what about shit work? Who’s going to be the janitor, the garbageman, the Bus driver? No one does shit work for reputation. So who’s going to do it? in a commune shit work can be done by rotation. In a vast industrialized urban society chores will have to be assigned by a large beauracracy. Fun! And not an anarchy.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not thrilled about the status quo in the U.S. We need some reforms for health insurance, and we need to improve the lives of those at the bottom of society. But you do this by reform, not by plunging the nation into chaos.
OK, I know I’m going to have to elaborate on that.
You probably do consider there to be something “in it” for the gang members, perhaps to the point that you’re astonished to be asked to spell it out (?)
But could one not levy the same general type of question for virtually any form of “government” that moves beyond the absolute immediacy of physical coercion?
OK, so in this <ahem> “electoral democracy” you’re positing, what’s to keep the elected officials from immediately using their power to prevent anyone else from running for office? And right there and then, you’re back to dictatorship for life. It wouldn’t work!
OK, so in this <ahem> “chartered monarchy” you’re describing, if the monarch lets the nobility exercise as much freedom as you’ve set forth, they’d obviously use it to upend the monarch and one of them would end up taking over, and you’re back to absolute rule.
OK, so in this <ahem> “absolute dictatorship” you’re describing, if the totalitarian takes his hand off the people in his control and lets them out of clubbing reach as you’re describing long enough to give them the opportunity, they will obviously immediatley strike out at him, and you’re back to “kill or be killed”. There’s no way a “society” could exist!
In each case, the reason it works anyway is that the system appeals to the self-interest of enough of the people enough of the time to acquire their uncoerced cooperation most of the time. And part of the appeal consists of predictability, dependability. We actually kind of like structure. We only expend energy finding workarounds and taking the risks of rulebreaking when the system pinches too much, doesn’t meet our needs.
For an anarchy to work, it need not be sufficient to lure every would-be gang member into hippie-dippie peaceful cooperation. It only needs to be sufficient to lure nearly everyone to continue to play within its structures despite the violence and pain dished out by would-be gang members trying to impose “you do as we say” coercion-based structures instead.
Just as the occasional uncaught violent criminal does not turn most of us into vigilantes and gang members. Not even in the Hub of the South Bronx Nope, folks cuss out the police and decry the horrid state of affairs but most people continue to play by the rules, and the gangs don’t greatly expand their sphere of influence, do not drive out the existing systems, etc etc.
Oh gee, that would be unprecedented! The charismatic, charming, and forceful setting the pace? What a fucking nightmare!
So, umm, Don’t Be a Jerk™ and keep on doing the work you do and enjoy doing. Now and then, as need be, maybe pitch in and do some work you don’t enjoy doing, 'cuz it needs doing.
You ever been in a relationship? Ever done the dishes, emptied the garbage? Ever not done so and found out just how much your failure to carry your share of the shitwork-load can wreak havoc with your reputation? Trust me on this: the shine can sure come off your glow in a hurry if you go around expecting other folks to do stuff you think you’re too good to do!
It took me 10 minutes from first consideration to come up with a prototype structure for making decisions without putting anyone over anyone else. Whatever structure would be in use, it would not subject you to decisions you didn’t participate in making. And not even “majority rules” gets to dictate to you as an individual. Anarchy means “no one rules”. Not even a voting majority.
Agreed. Let’s play with anarchy in parallel with existing systems. No reason to rise up and destroy the existing system. Just slowly and peacefully make it obsolete by providing more efficient, less inegalitarian, more humanly pleasant structures for decision-making.
It may come as a surprise to you that anarchists can come in conservative as well as radical flavors. I’m a conservative anarchist. I dont’ throw no sabots. You can’t improve on a modern electoral democracy through violent revolution. And there’s no reason to kill all the horses just because you have an idea about an “internal-combustion engine” that might work, you know?
Adn what happens when a non-altruistic, self-serving greedy bastard finds himself on the outs with the society due to bad reputation, and decided he has nothing to lose by gaining a reputation as a non-altruistic, self-serving greedy murderous bastard in order to get what he didn’t feel like contributing to.
Big shots get to be big shots by gaining the respect of others. You gain anothers repsect by being generous to them, or you can gain their respect by showing you are a threat to them. People who get to be big shots by the latter route are often unmoved by disdain.
So your trying to sell us on this idea by showing that it will be no better than the status quo, and will not have any of the security that a mutually-agreed-upon authority at the head of society offers. What’s the plus side?
Again, WHO is going to steward this development? I keep seeing these hypothetical situations where the attitude you seek is nurtured amongst the populace, but how can this happen in a society where the main rule is “do not feel compelled to listen to anyone just because they say you should”?
Well now, this is exactly the situation that Larry Borgia described. Gangs. Who gets to decide that one gang is on the side of some objective idea of proper justice? What if one gang decides that “good manners” on the part of another group is to hand over everything they’ve produced, or they’ll be killed? Who is to say the first gang is wrong?
Well, that’s what I’ve read over the years. Supposedly such groups can’t grow past a few hundred people without massacring themselves, and the few left tend to hide from everyone, so they are hard to study. Plus, they can’t compete with anybody, so they tend to be in very out of the way places.
Well, I’d really like to see some evidence for the assertion that they existed, never mind being practiced “for tens of thousands of years”. Even the pre-literate societies I’m most familiar with, while being more egalitarian than most (Khoi-khoi and Bushman tribes, for example), by no means could be called “anarchist” societies, as there’s always a “Kaptein” and a system of rank within the group. Although the pre-contact Khoi did approach a semblance of anarchy in their attitudes to property rights (utilitarian model of land stewardship) and leadership (“Captaincy” being pretty much reputation- rather than inheritance-based, IIRC), there were still substantial elements of patriarchy and classism in their society, both of which are anathema to anarchism.
The only anarchist societies I’m aware of are relatively modern small-scale communes. Although some earlier religious communities approached it, I believe. I’m not too clued up on those, so I can’t really say.
I really can’t remember where I read this, but it was fairly recently.
Those were given as more modern versions, with the same limitation in numbers of a few hundred people, but with less violence.
As I remember the theory it was mentioned in context with, it’s that our societies have a natural limit of size of about 200 people; any society larger than that is artificial, and requires an artificial, formal structure. The group size of primates tends to be predictable by brain size, and by our brain size it’s about 200 IIRC.
Such anarchies fall apart if the size limit is exceeded; the communes just fell apart, while the tribes follow ( ed ) a boom-bust cycle, where they’d reach the limit and slaughter themselves down well below it. As I understand the theory, a true anarchy is organized informally from the bottom up, and when the population grows too large people lose track and everything falls apart.
I have never read a reputable history or cultural anthropology work that did NOT suggest that true long-term hierarchical systems only began with the rise of agriculture.
Certainly, when some member of a nomadic groupd went hunting, etc. there might be a “captain” in charge of the group while it was active, but such an informal, impermanent hierarchy seems to me to fit in with the description of anarchy provided by AHunter3.
Now it’s “true, long-term” hierarchical structures (whatever those are), which is not what I said.
I’d like a cite, please. A quote from one of those reputable works will do. As far as I know, HG and herder bands around these parts were just as liable to classism and patriarchy as any other society. That’s not anarchy, that’s just small government. Certainly, with the Khoi, the Big Man position wasn’t a temporary thing.
I don’t think you’re grasping what anarchism, as a political construct, really tries to be. Let me ask you (and Der Trihs, since he brought up primate band sizes) a question: would you say chimpanzees tribes live in an anarchy?
Some (many? most?) H/G bands were semi-anarchic but seldom if ever pure-anarchic. No evidence of classism or patriarchy as an organizational mode. The species did survive in that mode for (depending on where you draw the line and say “on this side, human”) hundreds of thousands or several millions of years.
But that, too, is largely beside the point. Semi-anarchic isn’t an anarchy, and without some kind of formal structure a pure anarchy isn’t practical for more than a dozen people, let alone hundreds or thousands. Obviously if we are to have trains (that run on time, no less) and planes and symphony orchestras and ampicillin and MP3 players, rather than just tiny bands of folks running naked and gleaning edible items while dodging dangerous critters of other species, we need a structured anarchy, and whatever the hunter-gatherers of prehistory might have been, I seriously doubt that they functioned as one of those.
Structure, for the benefit of those following along only semi-attentively, does not imply differential authority, and the term structured anarchy needs to be understood as utilizing a structure that very specifically does not do so.
Here’s the thing, though. We know such societies can work, because we really do have liberal democracy and constitutional monarchy and absolute dictatorships and patriarchial tribalism and on and on.
I’d call Hunter-Gatherer societies anarchic, because while there are status differences between people, they aren’t class differences, and aren’t formal heirarchical differences. Bob gets lots of respect because he’s a good hunter, and people like him, he’s friendly, and he’s generous. Steve gets no respect because he’s lazy and grouchy and couldn’t catch a rabbit to save his life.
So we know anarchy, or semi-anarchy, can exist in a hunter-gatherer economy. But we’ve never seen anything similar in a pastoral or agricultural or industrial economy. We’ve seen all kinds of other governments, so we know they can work, but not anarchy.
Bottom line, I’m a pragmatist. I want to live my life, play with my kids, have a nice place to live, good food to eat, and not get chopped with a sword if I offend the wrong gangster. And all this in a world of 6 billion other people who also want those same things. How can I accomplish those things? We know that societies with governments can accomplish certain things, like keeping crime down to a manageable level, promoting the useful arts and sciences, and allowing continent spanning trade networks. What’s anarchy’s record? If you want to convince us to throw out government and establish anarchy it’s not enough to show that anarchy might possibly work, you have to convince us that it would be better than what we’ve got today.
And starting from first principles, such as “any formal heirarchy is wrong” isn’t the way to do that. Even if I agreed (which I don’t) what does that get us? The fact that I have a boss at work doesn’t particularly chafe me. And I positively LIKE the fact that certain people are trained and equiped to handle those that break the pre-arranged rules that we’ve all worked together to set out.
So why is formal heirarchy so intolerable? What do we gain by throwing it out? And even if you and I and all our friends decide to dispense with formal heirarchy, what do we do about those people who disagree, and who keep formally organizing themselves into violent gangs?
Then what makes you think that prehistoric human groups did?
Note - absence of formal government structures does not equate to an anarchist state. As AHunter3 points out, ironically, anarchy is a lot more organised than that.
I know everyone taking part in this discussion isn’t confusing “anarchy” with “disorganised” or “chaotic”, so I don’t see where all these comparisons with simple societies is coming from. Anarchy is anything but a simple system of government.
I’d go so far as to say it’s the system (along with the socialism it’s often confused with) that requires the most un-primitive citizenry in order to work. Libertarianism is where you want to go if you follow the “worst of man” model for human behaviour. Anarchism is hopelessly Romantic. That’s its appeal, and its downfall.
Maybe when we’re all post-human, what was it, 2030 (we need a tongue-in-cheek emoticon)
Actually I wish to hell it was a fuckload less goddam romantic.
It could prove useful in a variety of ways even if it doesn’t supplant all existing/hierarchical authoritatian systems. And no one has any business declaring any of it “impractical” until they’ve taken some time to consider the possible ways of implementing it (and looked at those of others who have been doing so for a long time).
Eh, I’m not exactly worked up about proving anarchism impractical. Nearly everyone on earth thinks it’s impractical, so there’s no percentage in piling on. If there really was a successful and growing anarchist movement I’d be more concerned.
Since I personally advocate liberal democracy and capitalism, and our current socio-political-economic system is within spitting distance of that, I’m fairly satisfied. If someone wants me to change my mind, I figure they’ll think of ways to try to do so.
If it’s within spitting distance, I get to spit first
Our western liberal democracies may well be the high point for individual freedom within complex organized societies to date. Which IMHO is really pathetic.
Either you satisfy awfully easily or you have no particular distaste for being affected by decisions you didn’t get consulted about.
I must say, I don’t understand your “concern”. Exactly what is it that you envision us doing, in our attempts to implement an anarchy, that you are so afraid of? Heck, the brand of anarchy I’ve been discussing is about as threatening as a babysitting cooperative!
Yet everyone somehow thinks of torches and broken windows
“implement anarchy” - sounds like a contradiction in terms.
The thing one could be concerned about re. anarchy, if it wasn’t such a completely unrealistic prospect, is that it - like any other respectable utopia - requires barbed wire and concentration camps more than anything else.
Yes, but it really is impossible for all 6 billion people in the world to get my buy-in every time they decide to eat at Taco Hole instead of Wendy’s. Every day and in every way people are going to make decisions I disagree with, and it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference if the consulted me about it, because they aren’t going to listen to me anyway.
Yeah, it’s the barbed wire and re-education and remaking humanity stuff I’m objecting to. Of course you anarchists are toothless debaters right now. But if you actually felt you were within spitting distance of abolishing all heirarchical power relations, well, we’re implementing a utopia here, so anyone who gets in the way of our glorious worker’s paradise must be a seriously evil, twisted person. And even if violence isn’t in the cards, achieving “consensus” can be pretty ugly as anyone who was ever struggled in the Cultural Revolution can attest.
Utopian schemes are always suspect. If you want to implement anarchy through evolutionary means, feel free. But when you go around smashing the state, I’ll be on the other side of the barricades. If the existance of ANY heirarchical power relations is an abomination to your anarchist society, then violence is the inevitable result. If the existance of voluntary heirarchical power relations is hunky-dory, well then you’ve got your anarchist utopia right here right now. You and the other 5 guys in your anarchist collective. The fact that the other 6 billion people on earth don’t buy in is irrelevant. If you require buy-in from the rest of us, then how much do you require? How much do the rest of us have to give up before you’re satisfied?
Now, I can hear you objecting. Why do I bring up all these horror stories from failed Communist utopias, when actually existing Communism was about as far from anarchism as you could possibly get? The similarity is the utopian dream, to remake society into something completely new and create a new type of man. And if man does not conform to the theory, then man must be changed to conform to the theory.
Nope, folks cuss out the police and decry the horrid state of affairs but most people continue to play by the rules, and the gangs don’t greatly expand their sphere of influence, do not drive out the existing systems, etc etc.
