The philosophy of anarchism

Sorry for the delay in a reply...these kind of discussions can be energy intensive, something I've had in short supply recently.

Originally Posted by Black Swan
The North American tribes did not exhibit a state of disorder due to absence or nonrecognition of authority. They had hunting party and tribal organisation, not anarchy. For example, the Lakota Sioux had 7 tribes, each with chiefs, elder counsels, rules (with penalties), etc., and were further organised into a confederacy with the Dakota and Nakota Sioux to wage war on outsiders. Chief Sitting Bull was known for his organisation skills, bringing the tribes together to defeat the US Army led by George Armstrong Custer at the 1876 battle of the Little Bighorn, with Crazy Horse as their famous war chief.

First point. Never fall into the trap of concertina-ing history. Native American society is radically altered from the moment of first contact. It's the beginning of the great plague, which spreads faster than the European explorers - there's territory that's inhabited in the 15th century, that by the time Europeans arrive as late as the 19th century, if they do encounter anyone, it's often the remnants of a long dead civilisation. The first time the natives ever see a horse is when the Spanish arrive. Horsemanship, that by the time of the Civil War is a major feature of native life, is something from European contact.

The second point, and the more important point.

I'm going to define anarchy. Anarchy is not a chaos where everyone does as they please. Anarchy is the opposite of hierarchy. Anarchy is the absence of something. It's the absence of the essential features that define a hierarchical society.

In hierarchical society there are leaders (or dictators), in an anarchical society there can be representatives; but it is important that those representatives conceive themselves as representatives, and also those they representatives and not leaders.

Anarchy has a very dirty name, the roots of the dirt being the proponents of hierarchy. There is a contemporary antagonism in society, between the two ideologies, and this antagonism is present in mainstream politics, but you will never hear a mainstream anarchist declare themselves openly to be an anarchist, due to the public misconception of anarchy, and you will never hear a mainstream hierarchist openly declare themselves to be so, as it might wake up sections of the public to a reality they would fiercely resist.

If you hear a politician consistently refer to themselves as a political representative, it's a fair bet they are anarchists. If they consistently refer to themselves as "leaders" they are hierarchists.

Representative Democracy is an authentic form of anarchy. Perverted representative democracy, which is the form we clearly have, is hierarchist.

The society in Orwell's 1984 is a hierarchal society. A very comfortable inner party, a less comfortable outer party, and a very uncomfortable proletariat. You won't find the word hierarchist in one of our dictionaries, for the same reason you will not find it in dictionary from the world of Airstrip 1.

interesting posts folks

Eugene Norman wrote: »

Very little of this is true.

Oh really...let's do a little examination of your claims.

US democracy is based on european and english models in particular,

And what democracies in Europe would they have been. By the time American had established its' liberal democracy, the heads of Louis XVI and his lovely wife were still attached to their bodies. And the English system was very far from anything as recognisable as democracy; with very limited suffrage, rotten boroughs to give disproportionate representation, ministers selected by the regent, the Church and the lords still having great powers. If you want to call that democracy, you may as well call pre-revolutionary France a democracy.

Europeans and Americans were wealthier than native Americans which is why they could invade,

The wealth comparison is not that straightforward. The native Americans had been cut off from the rest of the world for thousands of years. They hadn't developed steel or gun powder for weapons, as they didn't have the need. If you compare living standards of 15th century native Americans with the living standards of 15th century Europeans there's a stark contrast. The natives had independently developed their agriculture; they knew how to fertilize their land, and the effectiveness of soil perturbation. With a mixture of farming, things like corn and squash, and other native vegetables, and hunting and fishing, as well as raising turkeys, the natives had a much better diet than the Europeans. European agriculture was more labour intensive for a lower calorie yield.

And something very important, Europeans lived with their animals in their homes, pigs in the parlour, and cows craping in the same room the family ate and sleep in. The native Americans did not live like this. European cities were open sewers.

Because of European's and Chinese living conditions, plagues of diseases were very common. The Americans were isolated from these plagues. The Europeans had developed resistance to many of the diseases, but they were pestilent and infectious. Even with steel and gunpowder, the Europeans would not have been able to conquer the native Americans. Because there were simply too many of them, and shipping vast numbers of Europeans to the Americas was just not possible. From first contact with the Europeans the natives were given a full whammy of viruses and bacteria they had no resistance to. 90% were wiped out. The survivors were in complete disarray and unable to resist conquest and colonisation.

and by and large most North American native Americans were nomadic.

Oh yes, nomads. It's kind of funny that. Narratives of colonisation often have a component of an unspoilt land, belonging to no one, being discovered, finders keepers......and since nomads move around they don't really have ownership...the land can't possibly be theirs, and they're not using it properly.

You know if you look up the word Arab on Wikipedia, or in some dictionaries and encyclopaedias. It gives the root of the word as being from an old Hebrew word for desert wanderers. Do you see what that infers. That the Arabs are desert gypsies, and the Jews are fine settled folk.

Of course that is a complete nonsense. Hebrew emerges from Arabic. And pretty much everyone in the old and new testament were Arabs. Arab cities have existed for thousands of years. Some clever clogs thought up the false etymology.

If you watch an of those old cowboy films, you'll see the honest hard working pilgrims being beset by angry murderous tinkers. Of course, what can you do with tinkers only hunt them off. (from a different perspective you could see the pilgrims in their gypsy wagons, as traveller gangs coming to rob the farmers.....but it's never presented in that fashion.)

The nomad myths in any colonisation are essentially "ah sure they were only tinkers".

Housing in meso America was brick but mostly Americans who invaded west built
their own housing.

Building materials tend to be of whatever materials were locally available.

When Europeans encountered natives on the eastern coast of north America, they found them living in either stone cottages, or the iconic American log cabin. And the clothing of these natives was not a flimsy piece of loin cloth, they wore leather jackets, trousers and moccasins on their feet, and coon skin hats on their heads. Like the iconic style of dress of Davy Crocket.

They had towns. Many that exist today still bearing the native names.

After the great plague, many European settlers would find full towns with buildings abandoned, as well as farms, which they would then occupy.

Even in the 19th century, native Americans who had become Europeanised, were being dispossessed of their farms and homes......And of course they ended up living in tents......that's what happens to you if someone steals your home.

There are generally two justificationary myths in colonisation. One is the tinker myth. It's less credible these days, but of course still used. The second is a child like people in need of salvation from themselves. The Iraqis needed saving.

European domination of the Chinese was very temporary and not that deep, and the primary reason being they were as disease ridden as us.

Black Swan wrote: »

Can you specifically name a "Representative Democracy" with an "absence of hierarchy" that exists in reality today, at this very moment in time?.

Superficially, any western democracy could be referred to as a "representative democracy". And they all purport to have their structures organised from bottom up selection.....and not top down, as in a typical hierarchy, like the Catholic Church.

In reality the selection process is top down. With considerable input from people completely outside the democratic process. The news outlets owned by Denis O'Brien would claim to support democracies, but they are fiercely antidemocratic.


From an outsiders perspective, Denis O'Brien's "success" would appear to be based on corruption. But from that of an insider, it's the perfect functioning of the system. And you can say the same for the Irish Times and RTE, who appoint people largely on the basis of their social class, and connections to the unnamed nomenklatura.

Our supposedly democratic representatives are in favour of water privatisation, against the overall will of the people, because it will result in the insiders who are normally granted senior positions in the civil service, well paid though modest by comparison to what they can reward themselves when the utility is taken completely out of any democratic constraints.

If you read Francis Fukuyama's end of History. His claim is that none of these western democracies are actually democracies. That they are in fact benign dictatorships run by limited pool drawn from a managerial class. Fukuyama believed (he's had a big change of heart in recent years), that this form of government was preferable to actual democracy, because the self interest of managerial class was aligned with social stability. You can read articles from the 80s, written by Irish conservative intellectuals (I know conservative and intellectual don't go well together but bear with me), that specifically refer to the Irish system of the Tweedle dum and Tweedle dee parties of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, as giving the same "stability" Fukuyama refers to, because they're essentially identical. They serve the same interests. Regardless of who a dissatisfied electorate chose, they'll get the same thing.

But now, even that sham is breaking down. Goldman Sachs, through their subsidiaries; the IMF and the ECB, Have been able to completely bypass the sham democracies, and directly appoint prime ministers and finance ministers. Even though they conducted activities, in the instance of Greece for example, assisting and directing fraud that allowed Greece to borrow more and greatly contributed to the current crisis.

No form of governance will be perfect. The obstacles to real representative democracies, that do not seek to collect and redistribute resources on the basis of class and position within that social hierarchy, are not insurmountable. The possibility is there within the existing frame work. The greatest obstacle is the cynicism in believing democracy is possible at all.