Someone recently asked a question in a forum: Question: How do you prevent people from taking control in an anarchist society? Seems you need coercion, which means you need people in positions of power, which means anarchy is impossible so long as they are those who want to control others. And there are always those types. This is the major point of confusion for most non-anarchists. Understanding anarchism requires turning things on their head and looking at politico-economics from a completely different perspective. Anarchism is not exactly what people think it is. Bear with me. First of all, you have to look at the political spectrum in terms of degrees. Take a look at this graph: Every society in history has fallen somewhere in the middle of this graph. The extremes are all impossible to achieve. For example, suppose in an ultimate communist society, the state controls the production of everything, and everyone gets the same package of goods which includes two loaves of bread and one bag of rice. If you don't like bread and your neighbor doesn't like rice, you will trade. But that's market trading of private property! So the society isn't ultimately communist after all - it's close, but not quite. The same applies to each of the four corners, including anarchism. The question is not "which extreme corner can we make work in theory?" because we can't make any of them work in theory. Instead, the question is, "Which direction is the best way to move?" Anarchists say we need to move in the direction of the bottom left corner. (Our society is presently rapidly moving in the direction of the top right corner.) So, your question, "How do you prevent people from taking control in an anarchist society?" is akin to asking a communist, "How do you prevent people from trading the bread they are given for the rice someone else is given?" The first answer would be, you're taking the theory to extremes and ignoring the substance. The main thing anarchists are saying is that any improvements to any society are made by moving down and to the left on that graph. The other issue is whether coercion can be good. There are two ways of interpreting that question, and so two different answers. In any instance of coercion we have two parties, the coercer and the coerced. The first way of interpreting the question is to assume we already know whether the behaviour of the coerced is being made better or worse through the act of coercion. If the power to coerce is used to stop a person from stealing, then perhaps it has done good. If the power to coerce is used to extort money from a marginalized person, then perhaps it has done bad. So sure, individual instances of coercion can have positive consequences. But that's really beside the point. The more important questions are, "How do we know, in each case, whether the coerced behavior is better than what the behavior would have been otherwise?" and "Who should be given the power to coerce who?" These two related questions are the ones we need to answer if we want to figure out how to set up an ideal society. Even if we do, as you suggest, need coercion, you must also agree that we want to avoid coercion. Your entire example demonstrates this. The very reason you are saying we need coercion is so that we can avoid "people from taking control" (a.k.a. coercion). So we need to figure out which coercion we should allow, and which coercion we should avoid. In almost every case in which we might be tempted to use coercion, the two parties (coercer and coerced) disagree on whether the coercion is good or not. There's no quick and easy way to determine, in each and every case, whether coercion would have a positive outcome. That's because we need to consider the relevant context, and what constitutes relevant context varies from case to case. Should we coerce people not to steal? It depends on the case. Consider the context of robin hood for example. There are a million examples in which theft is good and a million in which theft is bad, but the entire context needs to be taken into consideration when judging. Should we stop these revolutionaries from overthrowing the dominant regime? It depends on the case. What is the character and beliefs of the revolutionaries and the dominant regime? A group of liberal democrats overthrowing a fascist dictator is probably good (depending on the rest of the context). A group of fascists overthrowing a liberal democracy is probably bad (depending on the rest of the context). But if the coercer and coerced almost always disagree, then who should make the final call about whether the coercion in this case is good? The majority? Surely it's at least possible for the majority to be mislead or misinformed. Sometimes someone is fighting to do something wonderful for everyone, and that person is blocked by an uninformed public. What we need is for the coercer and coerced to come to an agreement about what is best. One person having the power to coerce the other eliminates agreement as a possibility, and so it thereby eliminates us ever knowing if perhaps the coerced was actually the justified party. But here's the big leap to understanding anarchism. You are concerned about people taking control, but people already have control (although it may be difficult to see because we are looking at it from inside the system). There are degrees of people having control and exploiting society. At one end of the spectrum are authoritarian dictators. Mid way along are corporate elites controlling a supposedly democratically elected liberal government. And then there are systems even less authoritarian and exploitative that have yet to be achieved - ones with consensus based decision making and worker controlled enterprise. There are some countries in which the regular police do not carry weapons and where criminals are rehabilitated rather than punished. The systems that are less authoritarian and exploitative are (by definition) more anarchist. Surely you agree that the society we presently live in is not perfect. There are two directions we can go from where we are. If our society becomes worse, and more like, say, North Korea, then we are moving in the opposite direction of anarchy. If our society becomes better, and more like Scandinavia, then we are moving in the direction of anarchy. How do you stop people from taking control in an anarchist society? Well, how do you do it even in this society? Surely there is a risk of revolution or insurgency here too. Surely some bad guy could take over somehow. What are the weak spots that we need to patch up even now? The only answer is to increase surveillance and increase the power and authority of the ruling elite. Scrap warrants, let the authorities enter everyone's home at will to search for evidence of dissent. Force everyone to wear a GPS tracker so the authorities can monitor who socializes with who. Reward the public for turning over people who criticize the current regime, then torture the critics to find out everything they know that might threaten the state. In fact, democracy itself (even as restricted as it presently is) might open the door to some popular but ultimately evil dictator - that's what happened with Hitler in Germany. So we should perhaps scrap that too. Notice something about all of these suggestions to make us safe from evil? They themselves are evil. So, how do you stop people from taking control in an anarchist society? The only answer seems to be, by simply handing over control to someone. Your solution (coercion) is the very problem you want a solution for (coercion). The power to coerce is ultimately illegitimate, and it is the very evil that democracy strives to avoid. Anarchy is just democracy taken seriously. ___ If you agree that moving down and to the left is good, then you agree that we shouldn't presently do any of those nasty security measure things I described in my last post to help prop up the current regime and prevent a regime change. Right? But if you believe we shouldn't toss away democracy and civil liberties to preserve the status quo, then WHY shouldn't we? The answer to that question is the same as the answer to the question you're asking me now: because in order to secure a system, you have to make it a shitty system that isn't worth securing. If I have to let you chain me up to prevent someone else from chaining me up, I don't really see the point. I might as well fight to simply not be chained up. Perhaps we should turn this around so you can better understand what I'm saying. How about you describe the perfect system?: one that is both secure against subversion and worthy of protection from being subverted. Then I will explain how that is problematic and then you will see that the only solution is the endless striving for greater freedom (anarchy). ___ Let me put it this way. You suggest that coercion may be necessary to prevent someone from taking control, but someone having the power to coerce simply IS someone having control. So you want to prevent someone from taking control by giving someone control. Can you see how that is self-defeating at best and perhaps even completely incoherent? If someone having control is not desirable (which you must believe it isn't if you're concerned about it being a consequence of anarchy), then surely the only state-of-affairs we should strive for is one in which nobody has control: anarchy. How do we rid the world of coercive organizations? Ha! If I knew the answer to that, I would have done it already. But seriously, I think the most important thing is having an educated public. People need critical thinking skills. People also need to realize the importance of their own engagement with social affairs. They need to see that being passive and handing over the decision making power to others is the first step in becoming a slave. As far as practical policy changes that could move us in the right direction (an anarchist direction), there are a million possible things we could do. I'll list some to give you a general sense of the kinds of changes that remove coercion from society: - Disarm police (like they have done in England) - Disarm ourselves - Replace police with specialists in the particular fields (case by case) such as deescalation of conflict, mental health, etc. - Take punishment out of the legal system, and instead use a science-based approach that helps treat and heal offenders' inclination to hurt others (like they have done in Norway) - Adopt decision making systems that are more consensus-based, direct, proportional, and preference sensitive (!!!) - Eliminate financed political campaigning and contributions to politicians - Replace all privately-owned businesses with cooperatives (!!!) - Eliminate "ownership" of land and natural resources (!!!) But, as I mentioned earlier, the further we go with these anarchist reforms, the greater and greater a degree of public education and engagement is required. So other suggestions might be: - Provide higher-quality education that focuses on (from an early age) critical thinking, logic, philosophy, radical political theory, behavioural economics, positive psychology, etc. - Make university education free of charge - Replace all privately-owned media with cooperatives - Eliminate advertising All of this together would transform the world into something much much more like an anarchist utopia. Getting there will be a long hard journey. ___ Anarchy isn't a power vacuum. A power vacuum is a bunch of people who are willing to be subjugated, but with nobody having yet stepped up to the job of subjugating them. Anarchy is a bunch of people who are not willing to be subjugated. _______ "But why would you try to stop people from being coercive by accepting people being coercive? " Because certain forms of coercion are more ethical than others. I'd rather give someone permission to force a serial killer to be held in a cell than to permit the killer to continue killing. These are very different types of coercion. One is justifiable, I think. But if you give someone power to force people to do stuff, then how do you know that the person you give power to is going to lock the serial killer in a cell rather than be a serial killer? Power corrupts. A serial killer that you haven't given power and authority to is easier to deal with than a serial killer to whom you have given power and authority. So let's not quibble over terms. If you believe that: 1) We should implement direct, consensus-based decision making systems instead of representative, "majority of votes wins" systems 2) The legal system should not include punishment but instead should care about offenders and effectively treat them for their pathology of being willing to harm others 3) Police shouldn't carry weapons, and should instead be volunteering to take the risks involved with defending society from the confused and deluded offenders in a respectful way, and, 4) The private ownership of land, natural resources, the media, and industry, is illegitimate and that these resources should be shared and managed by the people who work and live with them. Then you are, for all intents and purposes, an anarchist (or, if you prefer, a libertarian socialist). There is no substance to our debate, because we believe the exact same thing. Most people who call themselves "social democrats" would not agree to all four (or perhaps ANY) of these suggestions. However, most people who call themselves anarchists would agree to all four. It turns out that the best answer to your question is what I first gave at the beginning of this thread. Please re-read the response immediately below the graph. There are no absolutes in the real world of political economics because the realization of any ideology depends of the actions of every person in society, and it is unimaginable that every person will act in exactly the same way all the time. The world isn't crisp and neat, it's blurry and unpredictable. In any political system, purity and perfection is impossible to achieve. It is no mark against anarchism that it has this in common with every other conceivable ideology. Furthermore, when you are choosing between a set of options, each of which is marginally imperfect in a meaningless way, pointing out and harping on the imperfection of a particular option (while ignoring the faults of the other options) is not helpful. What we need to do is compare the overall quality of the options and determine which is best. In this case, anarchy wins. And it sure seems like you agree.
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