this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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ELI5 why is anarchy not "the guy with the bigger stick" making the rules? (lemmy.giftedmc.com)
submitted 10 months ago by haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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I'm politically agnostic and have moved from a slightly conservative stance to a vastly more progressive stance (european). i still dont get the more niche things like tankies and anarchists at this point but I would like to, without spending 10 hours reading endless manifests (which do have merit, no doubt, but still).

Can someone explain to me why anarchy isnt the guy (or gal, or gang, or entity) with the bigger stick making the rules?

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[โ€“] h14h@midwest.social 27 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Anarchists develop structures and agreements that discourage concentration of power

MLMs believe that they must use the state, capitalism, and by extension coercive control

Are these not different words for the same fundamental concepts?

I fail to see how "the state" and "capitalism" aren't just a more developed form of "structures" and "agreements". And if the community decides punishment is an appropriate response to breaking an "agreement", how is that any different from "coercive control"?

And if you're community gets large enough (say even like a couple hundred people), how are any decisions gonna get made even remotely efficiently?

Feel like you're a hop skip and a jump from a representative democracy. And as soon as bartering becomes too inconvenient, I'm sure a new "agreement" still be made to use some proxy as a form of current and boom now you've got capitalism too.

[โ€“] pearable@lemmy.ml 5 points 10 months ago

I think "more developed" is not great here. It's assuming because it's the most common currently and supplanted more anarchist methods that it is better. States and capitalism have benefits that anarchy does not. You can not engage in an anarchist invasion. You can not extract value from a country using colonialism in an anarchist society. This enables capitalist and state control to expand and eventually control the land that anarchist, chieftain led, and other pre state communities once controlled [1]. Capitalism and the state conquered and coerced until it held an almost universal control [2] but that doesn't mean it's better to live under.

One of the agreements I have in mind is trading what a farm's workers need: insurance in case of bad harvest, tools, infrastructure, education, labor, etc for what a city or town needs: food [3]. The "punishment" for breaking such an agreement is not violence. The result is the end of the agreement. That is not coercive control because the other can go to someone else for the same need.

It probably wouldn't be efficient at large scales [4]. That's why you make small decisions among those the decision effects. A group might elect a recallable representative for their watershed council and the meeting notes would be distributed to everyone who wanted to read them. However, most decisions about a workplace or neighborhood could probably work by assembly [5]. It is a kind representative democracy but the purpose of anarchy is not ideological purity. The point is creating a society that eliminates as much oppression as possible and enables the most freedom possible.

Bartering, as large scale economic system, is a myth. Gift economies, slavery, stateless communism, and more were far more common. Barter between communities existed but it was the minority of economic activity. The economy I suggest has more in common with Anarcho Communism. To borrow a phrase, "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need."

  1. The exceptions are legion but they don't exactly control a lot of land. The San are an example.
  2. Worshipping Power does a good job examining the transition if you're interested in reading more.
  3. Each of those line items could be spread across a miriad of organizations and communities.
  4. The current system is only efficient at funneling money to the top so I'm not that worried.
  5. These are just possibilities but I think it's a workable structure that I would describe as non-heirarchical.