The philosophy of anarchy
I am interested in seeing peoples' thoughts here related to the arguments that anarchists make against the concept of government and politics in general.
Briefly speaking, anarchy means "without rulers". Anarchists argue that the institution we refer to as "government" is illegitimate, because no one has the right to rule over another. Ruling over others is akin to owning them, which is essentially the model of having masters and slaves.
This might sound odd at first, and as if I'm going off on a tangent, but I will explain how these concepts are related to politics and the institution of government. Governments are ruling classes which force society to obey their laws through force. If you disobey their laws, you will be forcibly fined or jailed. Essentially, the institution of government is a mechanism used by politicians to impose their will on society. However, if you try to explain or answer why society should have to follow their laws, there will be no satisfactory answer.
A law is comprised of words on paper. If I wrote down some random rules such as "You can't eat ice cream on Sundays" or "You must wear a red hat on public buses" and called them laws and claimed that you have to obey them because I have declared them as laws, would you take me seriously? If not, then why should the politicians who write their own dictates and call them "laws" be taken seriously?
One can argue that there is a difference between some random person making up "laws" and the politicians in the government making up laws, since the politicians were elected by society. Yet if the politicians passed some law or laws you don't agree with, does anything make those laws so special that they have to be obeyed even if they are dumb or harmful?
I am looking forward to your thoughts and feedback!
Briefly speaking, anarchy means "without rulers". Anarchists argue that the institution we refer to as "government" is illegitimate, because no one has the right to rule over another. Ruling over others is akin to owning them, which is essentially the model of having masters and slaves.
This might sound odd at first, and as if I'm going off on a tangent, but I will explain how these concepts are related to politics and the institution of government. Governments are ruling classes which force society to obey their laws through force. If you disobey their laws, you will be forcibly fined or jailed. Essentially, the institution of government is a mechanism used by politicians to impose their will on society. However, if you try to explain or answer why society should have to follow their laws, there will be no satisfactory answer.
A law is comprised of words on paper. If I wrote down some random rules such as "You can't eat ice cream on Sundays" or "You must wear a red hat on public buses" and called them laws and claimed that you have to obey them because I have declared them as laws, would you take me seriously? If not, then why should the politicians who write their own dictates and call them "laws" be taken seriously?
One can argue that there is a difference between some random person making up "laws" and the politicians in the government making up laws, since the politicians were elected by society. Yet if the politicians passed some law or laws you don't agree with, does anything make those laws so special that they have to be obeyed even if they are dumb or harmful?
I am looking forward to your thoughts and feedback!
Comments (105)
I don't think this is an accurate description of a democratically elected government. People in government come from every class but apart from 'economic' separation, I don't think the term class has any value we should accept or wish to sustain.
Quoting AntonioP
But what about criminal laws for example, do you think those are needed in a human community?
It was attempted in relatively small groups in France during their revolution and Spain during their civil war, I think, but I don't think there are many, if any, surviving communities that live under an anarchist doctrine. Do you know of any?
If one did get fully established and recognised. I wonder if this would be their national anthem:
Why did you name the thread "The philosophy of anarchy", when the op is only talking about the philosophy of governance. Are you ready to get on topic, and talk about an absence of government, rather than talking about governance?
Suppose we remove all forms of governance. Could we proceed to live in this way? Would there be problems? If there is foreseeable problems, how would we deal with them without any form of governance?
You cant find a satisfactory answer because you've used a circular definition:
"Society" is created/the product of mutually agreed laws/order. Society is about being social : Social etiquette, manners of interaction, customs, norms, commonly held practises or what we could say as "the official and unofficial laws of conduct" of how to cooperate/be civil.
Are the laws of a society enforced on them (tyrannies/dictatorships) or mutually agreed upon, amended, revised to reflect the collective conscience (democracy).
Plus, I think it's fair to say laws and ordered systems work on all levels. Your own body has laws and orders to maintain a non cancerous state, to stay healthy and not let your body systems fall into "disorder" - derangement, decay.
Would you promote anarchy against a government if you had to allow your cells to do the same to your own bodies government? Become anarchists that rebel against the immune system (law enforcers) and spread out beyond their domain to take down the system?
Also we self police regularly. We have quite a large range of freedoms in society - of what career to pursue, of what hobbies to take an interest in, of what places one may live, how many kids you'd like, what things you wish to purchase.
I think in general law is to prevent people from being harmed. Whether they do it knowingly or accidentally.
I could concede maybe that there could be some place in the world where one can go and live away from society if they so choose. But if everyone that is dissatisfied with society moves to that place they just institutionalise it into another society - because they have to live with eachother.
The only way to not be governed is to go it alone. To be a solitary hermit living out your life in absence of anyone else who have their own set of rules and behaviours that they may expect you to adhere to out of common courtesy/respect /politeness.
Luckily for them the world is big enough to do such a thing. And I'm sure hundreds of people are currently living alone or as a couple unknown and ungoverned on vast plains or in vast forests. Truly free of expectations and policing. But I'd say that is a hard life. Uncomfortable and potentially deadly. No access to modern medicine.
Because politicians are under intense scrutiny, public opinion/outcry, get lambasted by the media, by the courts etc if they write down or suggest any laws that seem absolutely arbitrary or absurd.
Not only that but they have a whole team of policy reviewers, ethicists, political scientists, and a series of checks and balances to tick before any such law gets passed.
What you describe is more "law by decree" which is what the Kings of Old did. Kings nowadays don't even have such an easy time passing any laws without the remaining government reviewing it, or public opinion.
The only people who do what you describe are fascist dictatorships. Which exist. And I think anarchy is most likely only appropriate in such a harmful/toxic governance. I believe its called revolution when the public become sick of their sh*t and turn to anarchy.
As happened in France with King Louis
An authority must be legitimate. For instance it can be justly reasoned that a father is the legitimate authority of his child. A politician is the legitimate authority over swaths of people because those people voted him in. They believe a feudal remnant such as a voting contest is the legitimate means to select authority, and that authorities need to be selected in perpetuity. So be it; but these little games and the fact that they play them legitimizes the contestants and especially the winners as authorities. What isnt legitimate, but criminal, is that these politicians claim authority even over those who do not vote, who do not want to participate in their charades, and who have not voluntarily agreed to participate in their hierarchy.
Laws are legitimate and criminal for the same reason. People have bestowed politicians with the legitimate authority to make them. The man scribbling rules has no such legitimate authority.
Why should A get to threaten B with violence to do X?
Go on then.
Quoting AntonioP
Do people, individual and collective, NOT have the right to employ government?
No, ruling over others is not in itself akin to owning them. In a feudal society the peasants may have had very few rights, but they weren't slaves. (We ought to know what real master/slave relationships look like.) Modern despotic governments maximize their control through pervasive surveillance and the threat of violence, and some countries are like that; most are not.
Our best bet is a democratic society with a sufficiently limited government that it is possible to conduct one's life as one likes more or less, while at the same time living within rules that make community possible. This will involve a fair amount of social friction. Some people will make too much noise; some will use alcohol and drugs which impair their behavior (however subjectively pleasant they may be); some people won't mow their lawn; some people will have sex in public places; some people will engage in.petty crime and get away with it.
Some people will behave in a way that is unacceptable for any society to accept: shooting people at random; stabbing somebody on the bus; reckless driving; selling spoiled food, stealing large amounts of money; burning buildings down, etc. A livable community requires ways to effectively suppress these kinds of criminal behavior.
Its the authority that has to justify it. All I know is that if I see a father stop his child from running into a busy street Im not going to question that authority. I will question the authority of an official, though.
When a power is overthrown is it not replaced with yet another? Some people like to leave decision making to others and will tow the line so to speak. They want to be sheep. If people want to be sheep who ought to shepard them and how can they do so without admitting they are a ruler?
You said...
Quoting NOS4A2
How would you know it can be justly reasoned if you can't supply me with what those just reasons would be?
What would you call a household where everybody does what the head figure wants out of fear of getting beaten?
And what would your reaction be if the head figure excused themselves by saying the beatings are only a last resort for when the fear of being beaten isn't sufficient to force obedience?
Well, saying it can also implies that it cannot. The point is, again, that the authority has to justify it.
How about if we rephrase it as what would you call a household where everybody does what the head figure wants or face being exiled, told to leave and make their own way without any support?
The head excuses themselves by saying that exile is only a last resort if one's desire to cooperate isn't sufficient enough to maintain a cohesive collective.
I can't make any sense of that. Say I'm the government/parent and I offer you a series of justifications as to why I have authority over you. Is that it now, do I have legitimate authority now I've justified it?
Of course you cant.
I would call it preservation of one's/a groups welfare when faced with someone insidiously caustic. If a member of my familys only source of pleasure and validation is to harm others then they are not welcome any longer.
Of course I would try to persuade them to consider others feelings and be more open to difference of opinion. But if they are incapable and have demonstrated purely individualistic intent then they ought to truly be individual right? Fend for themselves as that is all they care about in the end.
They may always rejoin the family unit if they offer an agenda that isnt wholly self serving.
If I am the father of such a family. I must protect everyones interests to the best of my ability. And if one person is being wholly ruinous to everyone else's esteem perhaps they need time alone to reflect on what their siblings/family.mean to them, and if they really think its right to inflict suffering on others just so they can have some form of self esteem.
I wouldn't hesitate to rid of pure malevolent nastiness. Whoever may propagate it.
Say what you will, large scale institutions, including societies and nations, can not operate without governance. It's not a matter of what's right and what's wrong, it's a question of what will work and what won't. If your solution is to somehow prevent development beyond the scale of a village, good luck with that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missionary_Church_of_Kopimism
I'd also call that abusive parenting; societies are not families, though.
Despotic regimes employ violence on similar terms: IF you do not obey the Maximum Leader, the result will be imprisonment, beatings, torture, and possibly death. Such despotic regimes exist, but they stand out against the majority of societies whose response to unlawful behavior goes no further than imprisonment. Imprisonment is coercive, certainly, but coercion is not the same as violence (beatings, torture, execution etc.).
Violence or nothing is a false binary. Societies use coercion (fines, for instance) to enforce rules. Leave your car on the street after a snow storm, and it might get towed away--a coercive measure people find quite aversive. Coercion yes, but the streets cannot be cleared of snow if people don't move their cars out of the way.
Force and coercive measures are not inherently violent. There are also passive measures which society uses -- literal and figurative 'speed bumps'. Regulatory review of land use proposals are a speed bump; ruling against the developer ("No, you can't build a slaughterhouse in the middle of a residential area!"). The refusal of a permit is likely to feel coercive. If the developer persists, force (in the form of intrusive court proceedings) may be used. We're not talking about beatings or killing anybody here. Force and coercion are none-the-less employed.
Coercion carries with it the threat of violence. It is such that if you refuse to conform to a demand you are then subject to force in a way that results in physical assault, theft, abuse, battery, kidnapping, confinement, and so on. its true that many governments put less violent impositions between the threat of violence and the violence itself in order to convince one that he should comply, but the threat of violence is always there as a last resort should he not.
Quoting Bitter Crank
The two are linked. How do you get someone into prison that does not wish to go there? With violence, or with threats of violence. Those two are in my eyes of the same moral quality.
Nothing in our justice system makes sense without violence to back it up - the threat of violence is always there. If it wasn't, it wouldn't work. That's why the moment the justice system's capability to intervene is in question things like rioting, looting and anarchy start taking over in a heartbeat.
That's why I consider the entire system to be predicated on violence.
Prison I find to be comparable to torture, even if it would be a "mild" form of torture, if such a thing exists at all.
Quoting Bitter Crank
We go back to the head figure of the family, who now states "my household cannot function properly without violence and threats of violence" - would you consider this acceptable? I wouldn't.
I don't see why it would be acceptable in one instance, but not in the other. It seems like a double standard to me.
Because a society is not the same as a family. I grew up in a family where confrontations were rare. We seven children behaved ourselves without violence. Threats of violence? As my father would say, "If you don't stop complaining [crying, whining, etc], I'll give you something to complain about." Or, "If you don't stop squabbling [in the back seat], you can get out and walk home."
When were these threats turned into violence? They were not. Our parents' anger was novel enough for us to take it seriously all by itself. Were we ever spanked? Yes. Was that violence? No; it didn't rise to the level of violence. There are families where parents exercise violence freely; fists, kicks, hard slaps, belts, etc. I have seen this in action in families (and worse, actually) and I definitely do not approve of it.
There is no parent in society. There are citizens, and there is a government. there are written and unwritten rules governing interaction between citizens, and between the government and citizens. A lot of these rules have the force of law. There are penalties laid out for violating the law. Unwritten rules have penalties which result, too. Like, leave angry drunks alone. Threaten an angry drunk and you will likely get socked.
Societies have an implied social contracts which bind citizens to treating each other more or less civilly (and most of the time, the contract is honored). There are mutual obligations which are understood. The law, however, is not an IMPLIED social contract -- it is explicit. We understand that if we violate the law, there may well be quite unpleasant consequences. Prison is one of the possible consequences.
If you think being in prison is the same as being tortured, then that is what you think. I don't agree; I would vastly prefer not to be in prison, but it isn't ipso facto the same as torture. (That said, a prison certainly can be operated in such a way that it is torture).
I will agree that the threat of violence (of some material sort) lies behind governmental authority and power. Law and the social contract assigns to the state the privilege of exercising violence to compel compliance in designated situations. I'm OK with that. If we don't want to be the recipient of privileged violence, then we don't flagrantly violate the law. We are careful about when, where, how, and why we tempt the state into pouncing on us.
The smart rat doesn't tempt the cat to pounce, unless he's very near his bolt hole.
None satisfactory for you, it seems. The rest of us see a benefit in all ceding the right to do violence to a third party; something we learned in kindergarten.
The problem with social contracts is that I was never asked to sign one. The dependency is first created without ever offering an opt-out, and then the demands are stacked high.
Again, I invite you to envision a family, this time one in which a depedency is created and then ruthlessly exploited. The excuse the parents give is "If my child doesn't like it here, they can just leave." - completely foregoing the fact that they worked to create that dependency in the first place, and then justifying their use of violence against their child on that basis!
I have great problems accepting that line of reasoning, and it still strikes me as obviously abusive. I have yet to be told why societies function differently in such a way that this would be justified.
Besides, what if the social contract is obviously defunct? Do I still have to abide by its rules?
Is a religious fundamentalist country justified in stoning to death women for adultery because, after all, that was the social contract she supposedly signed and if they didn't like it they were free to flee the country?
The main reason we seem to justify the "social contract" in western countries is because we like its terms, but this is the same as the religious fundamentalist defending their social contract because they like religious fundamentalism being the basis of their society.
No. Without a functioning social contract, you have chaos, and all you can do is try to stay alive.
Quoting Tzeentch
No. Your approach resembles the antinatalist approach. A person is created without being consulted and therefore has to endure the consequent suffering against their will. Your vision of family (at least as you have projected it here) expects violence and ruthless exploitation. It isn't that ruthlessly exploitative families never have existed. They have--but they are not the model 99.9% of people strive for. Families are generally nurturing and loving. Do people fail in this project? Sure. We are fallible.
The social contract (which is, granted, not a signed document. and nobody thinks it is) yields mutual support and benefit. That's how a functioning society works.
The social contract of mutually beneficial behavior would exist in an anarchist society as much as, maybe more than, it does in a hierarchical society. Our human ability to mirror other people's needs, desires, pains, etc. long preceded civil society.
Well said.
As a kind of apropos, if one cares to think of it this way, social lesser animals also each have their own unsigned social contracts: a grouping of meerkats (which are relatively, but by no means perfectly, non-hierarchical, if I remember right) will abide by a social contract different from that of a grouping of wolves (which are relatively speaking very hierarchical, starting with two alpha mates and going down to the omega) - yet both these examples can perform feats of reciprocal altruism that some humans can only presume to be unnatural.
Well, my take on the philosophy of anarchy: it's the unrealistically optimistic belief that all individuals in a large grouping of humans can remain ethical toward each others needs without hierarchical governance and policing - and that it's this very governance which makes many humans less than ethical. I find its unrealistic optimism right up there with the ideal of communism (in contrast to the concrete practice of what can be termed Stalinism): can work for some very small groupings, like a kibbutz, but it requires that all participants are on the same page in terms of ethical conduct without there being any rotten apple to spoil the bunch.
The language of contracts has befuddled a swath of Libertarians regarding what was meant when the notion was first articulated.
What is often forgotten is the negativity associated with having to accept them. Hobbes argued for authority as the only remedy to the war its absence would permit. Rousseau presented it as a loss of a natural form of life where nobody owns anything so nothing can be stolen. Locke saw it as a need to confirm deals beyond those who make them.
In each of these cases, the challenge is never simply to cancel the original arrangements. It is, rather, to find a better arrangement.
I invited you to envision a family. It should be obvious that I do not believe all families are exploitative. However, if a family were to operate in the way a state operates, we would unmistakenly recognize them as exploitative, and that's the double standard I am trying to lay bare.
What I am asking you is, what makes the actions of a state acceptable, when they're so obviously not in other situations?
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes they are, and states are not.
This further begs the question.
Quoting Bitter Crank
This did not answer my question - what if the individual is not benefited but instead exploited or abused by the "social contract"?
Should they still abide by it? If they wish not to, is the state correct to say "If you don't like it here, you can just flee the country"?
Quoting Bitter Crank
How do we determine whether a social contract functions?
How many people may feel like they are being exploited / abused before the contract is considered defunct?
Statism also requires that everyone is on the same page in terms of ethical conduct. If anyone violates certain rules, for instance, he can be kidnapped and imprisoned. Anarchism refutes the idea that one tiny subset of the population gets to decide what that ethics is for everyone else and who gets to enforce it over any given territory.
Im not so sure its utopian, though. A consequence of ending a monopoly on violence is its dispersion, and Im sure most anarchists are aware of that. Violence will occur; people will try to seize control; and hopefully they will be met with the force of free people.
Perhaps a better analogy than social contract is in order. The arrangement is nothing like a contract or pact or agreement because no one has voluntarily agreed with it, no one can refuse the terms and conditions, and there is no way out of it. Also, no state has originated in such a way. Its a false analogy, which is a fatal flaw. Its more analogous to something like a protection racket. It would be interesting if a government really did pull out a social contract one day just to see if everyone was still on board. Im sure most would sign over their freedoms and livelihoods for a little bit of safety.
It is neither the function of the state to be loving and nurturing, nor can the state BE loving and naturing. Why not? Because states are not families, not composed of a handful of people, and their function is to maintain civil order as they mediate mediate the competing interests of millions of citizens, That said, they are not required to violently oppress and abuse the citizens in the process.
There are states which fail to meet my expectations: quite a few states, really. Burma, Afghanistan, Russia, China, North Korea, Mexico, El Salvador, Ethiopia, and Somalia, for example. Not a complete list at all. At any given time in history, most states have managed to meet your expectations of violence and exploitation including the United States and the various nations in the European community.
IF the citizenry are able, they change the state (by reform or revolution) so that it ceases to oppress.
The root of the problem is not in the existence of states per se. It is in the perverse behavior of those who wield power.
To be more specific about what I wanted to say: Unlike any Stalinistic governance that ever was, I find that a sustained anarchy will require that no one individual in the community violates the implicitly agreed upon ethical conduct of the community, and this of their own accord. And this because ...
Quoting NOS4A2
I take it that violence toward others and attempts to seize control will both be violations of the ethical conduct which anarchy assumes. Given this:
When starting off with a baseline of anarchy (no governance) in a given community, violators of ethical conduct will gain power over non-violators of said conduct, thereby resulting in a governance of the community (one that will quite arguably be corrupt to boot) and thereby an end of the anarchy which previously was. To prevent this, a sustained checks and balances of power is required; in an anarchistic community this will translate into all individuals of the community needing to wield equal power - be it physical, social, economic, etc., or any combination of these - so as to prevent one individual assuming more power than the rest.
While this can be done with good enough approximations of the just stated ideal in very small communities, in large societies it to my thinking does become utopian thinking - by which I here mean unrealistic thinking.
Will it be by organized thugs or a democratic majority?
[sup]Of course, democracy is always in danger. Say, if a majority picks a thug that removes democracy. I'd think, though, in that case, that society might already be on a trajectory for ruin. Otherwise, democracies tend to illegalize (organized) thugs.[/sup]
@NOS4A2, you might be interested in Christiania, which can variously be seen as a social experiment, a sort of anarchist community, or whatever.
I wonder if the idea of a large society would have came into consciousness if at any time anarchism had prevailed, because it assumes a community where there really isnt one. But after centuries of living under state rule, weve all come to conflate the idea of a nation or territory with society on the virtue that we are all obliged to obey the institutions that govern it, and by no other measure. In Common Sense, Paine warns of this tendency to conflate government and society in such a way, but here we are. Now we cannot imagine society without government.
Like you said, there needs to be some ethical agreement between members of anarchist communities, and to add to that, some organized defense for it to work. That simply isnt possible on such a grand scale. I agree on that point but in a more cynical way. Centuries of state rule have by now rendered man unable to work with each other to achieve such ends. This is because we have been pacified for far to long to conceive of and work towards these arrangements.
Agreed.
For what it's worth:
In an idealistic sense, I find the notion of pure anarchy to be almost, if not fully, indistinguishable from the notions of pure communism (or, community-ism) and of pure democracy (akin to what they were close to having in ancient Athens). Not wanting to write a thesis on this, in short, they to me all seem to require the same codes of conduct. Things don't ever remain static, so, from my pov, it's a question of whether societies move toward this just expressed ideal of universal "fraternity, equality, and liberty" or else toward its converse: that of an ever-more powerful authoritarian regime (which some do hold as their ideal governance, given that they happen to be on the side which is in control).
Obviously, the former ideal is unrealizable in the world as we presently know it, but incremental progression toward this for now utopian state of affairs is not: Hence the ideals of the functional democratic-republic wherein, for one example, all powers are to be in checks and balances and, as yet another example, all citizens are to be deemed endowed with equal right regardless of the power they might wield.
Yes, the aforementioned is somewhat overly simplified, and will likely be rather controversial for many, but I find that the issue is always a matter of where we're headed to politically. And without a clearer sense of the ideals we strive for, it's likely that we'll move about like a headless chicken ... which is to say randomly, in contrast to having an idea of where we should be going as our long term goal which guides our actions in the present.
This is exactly the problem I have with the idea of the social contract.
A contract suggests that when either side breaches the terms, some form of termination can take place.
In practice, the citizen has no such option. If the state breaches the contract, they can flee, or through some large, arduous political or bureaucratic process try to change things, if that is even possible at all.
In pratice, there is no social contract by which the state is bound.
Furthermore, states can move into extreme directions at the drop of a hat. During the Vietnam War the United States government forced its citizens to participate in conducting a de facto genocide against the inhabitants of a third-world country. (And it has repeated similar things since then)
Was this a breach of the social contract? If so, where could US citizens have gone with their grievances?
Short answer: nowhere. They could comply or be met with the state's violence. Even if they weren't shipped off to Vietnam, they were forcibly made complicit in the ordeal through methods like taxation.
The social contract is nothing but a fancy term to describe the same ties that bound serfs to their feudal landowners in the Middle Ages (you give me grain, I give you safety, or else), and it is every bit as one-sided.
It's a pacifier, but that only becomes apparent once one finds themselves on the receiving end of the state's injustice.
Quoting Bitter Crank
States function through laws. Laws function through the threat and application of violence.
The state itself is a perverse instrument, so is it any wonder that perverse individuals are drawn to wielding its power?
The fact that you call the people in power and their behavior perverse suggests you see the same problem I do, but if you wish to change a system you cannot do so while abiding by the very same paradigm of violence.
The threat and application of violence is an inherent component of all human social interaction, simply because any action I choose will do unintended violence to someone else , and anything I believe to be right will be perceived as a violation of someone elses standard of ethics. We have no choice but to shun those who behave in ways that violate our modes of thinking and acting. Whether we incarcerate them or physically separate
them from us, the principle is the same, even though there are vast differences in the degree of humaneness with which we split ourselves or our group off from
others whose behavior we cannot abide.
Self declaredradical anarchists like David Graeber perpetuate a certain violence in demanding a wholesale denunciation and distancing from what they deem as structures of violence. The problem isnt the existence of statist structures , but the rigidity of their formation and interpretation.
There are always ways of adding multiple forms
of discursive mediation , negotiation and collective
reinterpretation into legal and governmental structures , and this will happen as a consequence of evolving social
understanding.
You express antipathy to states and the violence they might, may, will, or already have deployed, and you are quite right that states employ force. (Wasn't it PM Margaret Thatcher who said h didn't suffer from "a sickly inability to use force"?). Therefore, I assume you will fly the anarchist banner. Now, you also express antipathy to this idea of the "social contract". A lot of people dislike the term. Fine -- one can get alone without using that term.
What happens, though, is that we find ourselves wondering what we are obligated to do. We have attended a really nice party. We will wonder what our obligations are to the host: should we return a similar invitation? Should we send a thank you note? Bottle of wine? Or, just forget about it.
The idea of etiquette (something I am not good at) is an example of a social contract. Someone buys you a beer at the bar; you should buy them the next round. It's not that complicated.
I think we have a number of obligations to others. We are supposed to rake up our leaves and shovel the snow off our walks. (Some people) believe that we are expected to maintain an attractive lawn. Is a yard covered by ground ivy attractive? It's green and flat. IMHO, it takes too much labor, weed killer, fertilizer, and obsessive-compulsive disorder to maintain the perfect lawn. But... some people think that's part of the social contract.
In an anarchist society, I would think mutual obligations would be much, much more important than they are in our hierarchical atomized society. Without a state, peace among the people will have to be self-sustaining, wouldn't it? That implies a common agreement on what goes and what doesn't. A social contract.
If you don't like the term, fine: Don't use it. But some of us find it a convenient way to reference complicated systems of mutual obligation.
To be clear, I don't fly any banners nor am I campaigning for the abolition of states.
I'm just discussing an idea.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Obviously I have no problem with people consensually interacting and voluntarily committing to mutual obligations, preferably also without violence playing a role.
And that's exactly the problem I have with states and how it relates to anarchy: the role of violence and the lack of consensuality.
I think the problem is that you're discussing only part of an idea. It's like if I offered you tea or coffee and you replied "I don't much like coffee". Apart from the contextual implication I would draw, it doesn't help much because if you dislike tea even more, the coffee would be your best choice still.
The problem is what to do about those whose 'free choice' is to harm others, or restrict their freedom. If we allow them, then we're sacrificing our own freedom for the sake of theirs. If we deny them, then we're imposing our will against their's and we're likely to need some threat to support such an imposition.
It's not ideal that such violence-supported impositions are needed, but its being non-ideal is irrelevant unless there's a better alternative.
So do we just let those who want to harm others, or restrict their freedom, do so? Or do we act, with force if necessary, against their will to prevent them?
The goal of violence is to control people against their will. What you're asking me is whether I can give you a better tool than violence to control people against their will.
My response would be, don't try to control people against their will.
It is a great shame if humans believe altruism and reciprocity are unnatural. For that to be the case, self service and selfishness would be the natural state of things.
Quoting javra
Exactly. We may be the most optimistic and hopeful people, very sure that our own innate wisdom or ethical principles would serve as just in an anarchist society and thus stabilise it. But this disregards the "rotten apples" of which you speak which are just as likely to occur on society as well doing/well meaning, good folk.
So it seems that a hierarchy is required only as long as it reflects the social conscience (democracy). Because such a hierarchy factors in all peoples needs from all walks of life through voting.
Anarchy is only appropriate when faced with a caustic, hyper Conservative totalitarian government with "law by decree" (of one person).
So the person who does do that gets to do so with impunity? We're powerless to stop him?
I don't see how that helps. People have their freedom restricted either way.
And if their will is to harm others, what then? What if their will is to control others? Or maybe they just want to burn down the nearby forest because they like burning things. Do you just let people do whatever they want? That's not how any society functions.
And what if I want to do things that are harmful to others, because I'm a selfish cunt and don't agree with rules against exploiting others? How does the anarchist deal with that sort of fellow?
The justification for authority starts with all human groups developing rules to follow so they can meaningfully coexist. That means some restriction on freedom. We learn this as small children when older people don't just let us bite, kick, steal and throw tantrums for any reason. Someone has to decide on and enforce those rules. Governments are a way to do this along with administering societal functions like collecting taxes for roads, defense, etc as humans congregated in larger groups.
And if people violate those mutual obligations, or wish to be violent? What do you do with Viking marauders or pirates? Warlords, criminal gangs, serial killers, rapists? What about would-be conquerers who are raising an army? It happened in the past. Plenty of rulers conquered their way into power.
Even if we all agree anarchy was morally superior, how do we suppose the world remains in anarchy? It certainly didn't in the past. How would we even ditch thousands of years of government across the planet at this point? 8 billion people are going to live happily in anarchist communities?
Governments are all guilty of the exact same, Im afraid. There is no human right they have not violated; they engage in marauding and piracy; they have and will murder people on a mass scale, more so than any warlord, gang, or serial killer, all of whom can be dealt with by any sufficiently armed group of people.
Governments are also guilty of not protecting their citizens, whether through inadequacy or incompetence. People still murder, rob, rape, burn down forests, and many are sure to be rewarded with a cuishy punishment. Since the government claims and enforces the monopoly on violence, though, their failure adds another burden to the citizen, for hes already been denied for so long the right and means to protect himself that hes been left a sheep to the wolves, so to speak.
Im not positive a group of anarchists are any better at doling out violence and justice than a government, but its difficult to see how they can be any worse.
True, but a sufficiently armed group of people are not likely to be anarchists.
Quoting NOS4A2
Sure, but the alternative has been mob justice, which is judged historically to be even worse than the judicial system we've developed over time.
Quoting NOS4A2
While true, a lot of that is a matter of scale. Governments can marshal armies because they have a lot of people. They can protect multinational corporations because we have global trade networks. The anarchist faces the problem of what to do when there's lots of people concentrated in areas. It's all good and fine for small groups of hunter/gatherers to be community-based, it's another thing when you have millions of people nearby. There is a tendency for self-organization to occur, and a tendency for some individuals to take advantage of that. Also a need for large-scale organization as services needed to be provided for those millions, and it's a lot more efficient to have highways than a bunch of privately owned roads.
Also, we have a lot of historical evidence for all the wrong-doings of governments, we have less evidence of what our ancestors were up to before recorded civilization. We do know all the other hominids went extinct along with lots of megafauna. Our hunter/gatherer ancestors may have played a role in both. There is evidence of human migrations coinciding with existing populations being replaced.
The reality is there is no ideal solution. Governments are bad because they are run by people, but what alternative is there? Communities are run by people too. It might be a case of what is the least-bad, realistic approach to governance. Same with economics.
The difference is that you and I wouldn't be complicit in it.
Quoting Marchesk
That's not my problem. If people want to continue to construct and contribute to rapacious institutions then so be it. The extent of my action will be to avoid them, and protest if forcibly made complicit.
So?
Quoting Tzeentch
I wasn't asking what you would do. I was asking why?
Why would you seek to avoid being part of it?
So Joe Bloggs uses his big stick to beat his neighbours into becoming his slaves. You could either stop him, by force, or stand by. Why would you stand by?
We're not talking about 'rapacious' institutions. You're claiming an opposition to government tout cort. Even a great one.
Protecting people against direct physical violence is a noble goal. If government was to limit itself to that task and that task alone I could consider it a grey area.
Anything else does not warrant violence.
Why not?
Just exploring your idea further.
Say person A's actions will directly result in person B getting hurt (punched in the face by person A). You're saying it's a noble goal to prevent that, even if violence is used to do so - "If government was to limit itself to that task and that task alone I could consider it a grey area."
No say person A's actions will directly lead to the starvation of a million children. You would oppose stopping them by violence. Why?
It seems such an odd ethic. You'd prevent me from punching a person in the nose, but you wouldn't prevent me from polluting the main drinking source of an entire village, killing thousands.
All right. 50.
And in a place where drinking-source-polluting ruffians roam about, no less?
Are you seriously trying to claim that no children have ever died from contaminated drinking sources?
You won't have a choice. The children will be located wherever the most powerful bully forces them, and they'll have access to whatever drinking source the most powerful bully allows them access to.
You're denying the right for anyone to try and stop that arrangement.
So in ruffian controlled territory, families ought to just up sticks and move?
Odd then that you use the exact opposite argument again the position that one could up sticks and move if one disagrees with the laws of one's government.
Sounds like an awful circumstance to have children in. Anyone so foolish shouldn't be surprised when things go to hell in a handbasket, nor should they be under the impression that questionable decisions on their part would justify their use of violence.
Quoting Isaac
They certainly could. Or they could stay and protest - they are being wronged after all. They shouldn't resort to violence.
Why not?
It doesn't seem to. I've been to a number of protests, some have turned violent. Often (though not always) the police's threat of violence is enough to reduce the violence.
At an interpersonal level, violence may breed violence, but with government, military, and policing, you'd find very little argument that their collective threat of violence has actually bred more violence than would be the case without.
You don't see that states going to war are simply an extension from the poor family and the ruffians from your hypothetical? It's outsourced violence. And ironically, no one ever seems to agree over who are the poor families and who are the ruffians.
And what about the many violent rebellions against authority that history has known, with death tolls going in the millions?
The numbers are irrelevant because you've no contrasting numbers for a modern society without government. That may number in the billions.
Having no contrasting example you must rely on argument, not evidence. So by what mechanism do you see violence reducing absent policing or militaries? What mechanism do you imagine restrain every would be violent criminal from simply carrying out their violent will?
What a joke had Stalin or Mao said: "If I hadn't killed them, many more would have died!"
We're not talking about a mere change in policy here. We can easily argue that Stalin or Mao need not have killed all those people by pointing to human societies where that didn't happen.
You can't point to a modern community with no government and say "look, less violence"
There are no modern communities without governments so this line of argument is fruitless.
Here, however, is the Global Peace Index https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Peace_Index.
You'll note absolutely no link whatsoever between more laissez faire governments and lower violence.
No governments at all may reduce violence, they may not. We've no way to tell.
What we can tell is that less interventionist government does not lead to less violence.
Yep.
Agreed.
None of which removes the fact that there's no evidence of a link between more interventionist government and increased violence.
Decreased governance does not appear to decrease violence, so it's hard to see an argument that no governance would.
Here's a list of countries by public sector size https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_sector_size, so you can compare. I see no link at all with measures of violence, do you?
Ironically, it seems that these governments have now reached the threshold for outward violence, since they can hardly threaten with more than destroying the planet.
They are now starting to turn their violence inward, into some sort of "new wave authoritarianism" the rotten fruits of which only time will reveal. (But 20th century totalitarianism gives us an idea)
I've literally just cited the evidence to the contrary. Bigger governments do not lead to more violence. The Global Peace Index takes several measures of outsourcing into account including UN funding and weapons sales. There's still no link between size of government and violence.
The US has a tiny government per capita, a very low tax regime and a very small public sector. It's by far the most violent government of recent decades.
Norway has a moderate sized government, a huge public sector and very high taxes. Its barely been involved in any wars and has a very low level of internal conflict.
Also, Norway is not a state, it's a vassal.
Try this one then https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Global_Militarization_Index
And here's a different measure of government size. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_government_spending_as_percentage_of_GDP
Still no link.
It shows that decreasing the size of government, by any measure at all, does not decrease violence.
Your argument that "violence begets violence", if you include the sort of coercive violence governments use, is false. Countries with larger governments (more coercive threat of violence) are not more violent places by any measure, including outsourcing, war, crime, whatever.
Your position is contradicted by the evidence.
I'd say that's supports my position, rather than undermines it.
I don't know. I think that depends on the will of said people. If the will is wholly self serving and caustic to the respect, tolerance or social cohesion of others, I think they need to be reigned in as parents reign in their children's maladaptive and deviant behaviour for their own benefit.
In an ideal world there would be no power play, manipulation and control because everyone would be "on the same page" : ie have the best intentions for one another and the best reasoning capability to implement those intentions.
But society has both a). People with purely bad intentions and B). People who may not have bad intentions but a poor ability to empathise, consider and discern facts, to reason well in general to minimise unwanted harm.
If everyone was an equally proficient philosopher that are well meaning, then society would not need a stringent hierarchy and control of others. This is about education and brethrenhood.
But for whatever reasons people do not think as much as one another. Some think more and are more wise.
So it seems not all efforts to control and manipulate others is inherently bad, they are only bad if the person doing so does not hold everyone else with the same high esteem as they do themselves. Elitism leads to problems, subservience of a greater good (if that greater good is measured, well balanced, and open to review and constructive criticism, if the greater good is accurately so) is not bad.
If I was asked if I would like to be controlled/manipulated by someone who really truly knew what was best for me and everyone else and could demonstrate it (lead by example) I would be happy to relinquish control to them. One less concern on my plate.
But their mastery of ethics and reason must stand to that. It is near impossible to prove. Which is why it is not the case.
It doesn't. It supports the tautology that the most violent governments are the most violent governments.
It does not support your view that violence (including coercion) begets violence. That view is directly contradicted by the evidence in that the more coercive governments are not the most violent by any measure.
The most violent governments include highly coercive ones, like Russia, and ones with very low measures of government coercion, like the US.
Smaller government does not less to less violence by any measure.
Where do you think it gets all those trillions of dollars from? They don't grow on trees you know.
Gods! Did you even look at any of the links?
Low taxes, low public expenditure, low public sector, low government per capita rates, laissez faire economics...
Governments with higher levels of coercion than the US are less violent.
Do you understand correlation?
And the violence it imports and outsources. Much of what is consumed in the United States is made in, for example, China. The gap in your logic should be obvious.
When push comes to shove, the United States also has no problem forcibly making its citizens complicit in overseas genocides in third-world countries.
Is this your idea of a "low coercion" government?
Yes. In the terms of your argument. You are arguing that violence breeds violence. You are including in "violence" the sorts of government coercion involved in taxation, regulation and public sector work.
The evidence shows that those forms of coercion do not lead to more violence by any measure.
Your claim is therefore wrong.
[I]Some[/i] forms of violence might beget more violence, but clearly not all forms of violence do.
Government coercion in the form of regulations, taxation, public sector works, etc generally has either no effect at all or, if anything, produces slightly less violence than lower levels of such coercion as typified by somewhere like Norway when compared to the US.
I never stated it like that.
My point is that powerful governments (which to exist must apply large amounts of violence) wreak the most destruction on mankind. That some governments apply that violence to their own people, and others apply it to people in other countries, does not change their violent nature.
Yes. And you've failed to prove, of even demonstrate that argument.
Governments currently have an almost total monopoly on violence. They use this monopoly to commit vast atrocities.
Nothing in that proves that non-governed communities would commit fewer atrocities.
The evidence is they would commit the same or more.
You also argued that, in my well-poisoning example, the people ought not coerce the well-poisoner with threat of violence because "violence begets violence". This is also false. The sort of coercive violence a government commits in imposing laws does not beget more violence. If it did you'd see a correlation between the size of government and the levels of violence. There is no such link. In fact it's moderately the opposite.
It does. It simply outsources, exports or imports it. That's why, as governments have grown larger and more powerful over the course of history, their propensity for violence has likewise grown. Now we're at the point that every person on Earth is threatened every day of their lives by violence.
The link is clearly there, but you don't like to see it.
Quoting Isaac
You cannot reduce my argument to "violence begets violence".
I've literary cited the evidence to the contrary. If you're going to just keep repeating your position without addressing the opposing evidence then it's pointless discussing the matter.
There is no link between size of government and violence. Larger governments are not more violent. Smaller governments are not less violent. There is no link.
Clearly there is, but you need to get the idea out of your head that the United States is somehow an example of a small government!
It's tendrils span the globe. There's not a larger government in the world.
There are many larger governments in terms of spending, taxation, laws, public sectors, and government bodies per capita.
If you want to limit your argument to saying that bigger governments in terms of military and economic influence, are more violent, then I'd agree with you, but you do not.
A country can have free citizens at the expense of the rest of the world (the United States), and that doesn't make its violence in any way benign.
In the case of some unassuming country like Norway, it's citizens are free, it's government is "large", yet where is the violence?
It outsources its violence to the United States, and thus is complicit, and is not a "non-violent" nation. Complicit not just in the violence the United States has to carry out to guarantee its safety, but complicit also in the violence the United States has to carry out to put itself in a position where it can do that.
The indices I cited include measures of outsourcing.
Is your claim then, that Norway is more violent than the US?
States have been operating in relative anarchy since their beginning, and are the only political organizations allowed to do so. At least on paper, though, states have come to adopt international law through voluntary consent and agreement rather than through an authority. The monopoly on violence between states is not centralized in one supreme institution.
By extension, does statism suggest that states, like all political organizations of people, ought to be governed by some authority?