The philosophy of anarchism

Torakx

Hi,
I was just wondering which philosophers have covered anarchy in depth.
I am guessing Nietzsche has, but I haven't quiet gotten as far as his thoughts on government etc.
I'm on his Schopenhaeur stage at the moment.

I have heard a lecture by Chomsky on what really anarchism means, but i have alsoheard negaive thigns about him and want some other perspective, both for and against.

Also I am curious what models for governing or models for anarchy are out there.

And finally what everyone else here thinks about anarchism,,if we all happen to have a similar definition that is ^^.
The whole thread may end up a discussion on exactly what anarchy is, if not how many types it is or if it is anything other than freedom of choice.

Black Swan

Has a state of anarchy ever existed except for a short time (e.g., hours, days) in a riot, government collapse, or some such collective event with little or no social structure? Gustave Le Bon in The Crowd cautioned about the dysfunctions of mob rule, as opposed to legitimate political authority and structure. What constitutes legitimate was a matter for debate.

Robert Paul Wolff suggested that moral autonomy and political authority were incompatible in his philosophy of anarchism. Wolff questions the legitimacy of authorities in issuing commands, when it is the moral responsibility of each individual to first decide for themselves whether such actions were appropriate. Such individual autonomy may place the individual and the commanding authority in a conflict situation.

MRnotlob606

There did exist some Anarchistic communities in Spain during the Spanish civil war. Noam Chomsky sees himself as a sort of anarchistic syndicalist or an advocate libertarian socialism. I think the Paris commune of 1871 can be seen as a sort of anarchistic structure.

Mikhail Bakunin is seen as the father of the collectivist school of anarchism. Collective anarchism basically advocates the abolition of both the private means of production and the state means of production. The means of production are held in common amongst the members of a community. Money would be abolished and substituted by a labor notes . The salaries of workers would be dictated by different working syndicates that woul

Labarbapostiza

Black Swan wrote: »

Has a state of anarchy ever existed except for a short time (e.g., hours, days) in a riot, government collapse, or some such collective event with little or no social structure? .

Yes, anarchies have existed throughout human history, and much longer than our current system of liberal democracy.

The native North Americans had no prisons. Liberal democracy is in fact loosely based on their system of government. The Grecian veneer was completely superficial, in an effort to avoid crediting the Native Americans. They didn't have a system of writing, gun powder, steel or capitalism. But their system of agriculture was nearly as advanced as European, except they lacked draught animals like horses. They were incredibly big on personal freedoms. Which is why many European settlers ran away from their pales to live like the natives.

How did this paradise get lost. There are some huge weaknesses in not running a society along the lines Plato's proto-fascist Republic. One, you can assemble fighters, but you can't really marshal resources into creating capital intensive tools of war, such as cannons and gunpowder, and even steel.

The second reason, and probably the main reason Native American society was destroyed, was that the Native Americans had a much higher standard of living than Europeans. They were more hygienic and didn't live with animals in their houses, like Europeans kept pigs in the parlour. The diseases as a result of poor living standards had plagues the Europeans but they hadn't wiped them out. When they arrived in America, their diseases killed 80 to 90% of the Natives. The diseases even moved faster than the Europeans. They never had to clear farm land, even the houses would already have been built. Natives are nearly always depicted as living in tents - landless gypsies - how can you dispossess gypsies. They mostly lived in houses of wood and stone. In the 20th century Westerns, Native Americans were completely misrepresented. They were depicted as savages attacking and scalping civilised pilgrims, when in fact it was the other way around.

A problem we have visualising anarchies is we're locked into ideas (usually that serve the self interest of the originators of these ideas), that the system we have is the best it could be.

MRnotlob606

I think Rousseau was a sort of progenitor of anarchism. He criticized Civilization as corrupting, and inequitable. He much preferred the almost anarchistic society of primitive man. It was natural, they're was less of a hierarchy, communities would look out for the constituent members of their tribe/community.The only inequality's were natural ones like physical strength. As society transformed throughout time , Social conventions made society more unequal and it created different classes of people.

However I must argue that Rousseau also supported government, supported the social contract that typically addresses the questions of the origin of society and the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual.

Black Swan

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

Yes, anarchies have existed throughout human history, and much longer than our current system of liberal democracy.

The native North Americans...

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.

Labarbapostiza

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.

Torakx

An intersting read here.
https://books.google.ie/books?id=vSmDAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT58&lpg=PT58&dq=philosophers+who+were+sociopaths&source=bl&ots=rWNQHFS-aA&sig=n62VghkZGECqMcvYktNCU3pcplA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=WFQUVdDiEs207Qbp8IDoDQ&ved=0CDQQ6AEwBDgK#v=onepage&q=philosophers%20who%20were%20sociopaths&f=false

Relating to violence and what is considered in the situation posed as a "state of anarchy".
The state of anarchy mentioned is a motorbike club called the Sons of Anarchy.

I haven't read all of it, but the angle i'm getting at is the point made a bit into that text, stating that it was not that violence was in the people waiting to be loosed. It was that the environment they were in, away from the protection of general society, forced them to become violent. This "state of anarchy" was their way of life and as a matter of security, violence was inevitable.

I checked the online dictionary to see the meaning of anarchy. It was not really what I had in mind when considering a philosophy of anarchism.
Having no authority over you for example.
Because of the current paradigm, it would not be so simple to just go straight to no authority.
Society and culture has been so strongly affected by forced authority structures, that it has become a slave to stockholm syndrome in a collective unconscious sense. Some who are oppressed the most in life, adjust to survive. creating violent behaviour when a chance to cooperate could exist.
This "training" of society to work against each other, instead of for each other, appears to be a result of an authoritive governing system. Aided greatly with the invention of debt as a symbol(currency), the polar opposite of credit or excess.
In this way the commun-ist ideaologies have some merit I think(communities sharing burdens). As a transition to anarchy. Anarchy to me, is a state of reaching for perfection.

A personal anecdote.
When I was in college recently, there was a great example story used to give credit to the idea of using faster iterations of prototypes when building games.

There was a test done on groups of adults and separately on groups of children as a team exercise.
They had to build the tallest structure possible out of these small sticks on a table, I think with a time limit.
The adults failed miserably.
The results apparently were due to the children breaking the structure every time it went wrong. Quickly finding a building pattern that was most suited they stacked the sticks up in the most efficient way.
From my memory the children were probably around 10-12, no older.

While listening to this story I was also reflecting on philosophy and my previous thoughts on anarchism.
Children are naturally anarchistic. It is only when we grow into a system of authority do we learn inflexibility and lack of growth. To stand in line for the greater good.
My response might be to say that standing in line and holding up an imperfect system, is to nurture destruction.
This is why I think a philosophy of anarchy could have a lot of potential for society and planning for the future.
For me, the anarchy part is the breaking down and rebuilding of things. The reaching for perfection.
I am probably influenced a lot here by Nietzsches words "What does not kill me, makes me stronger". That says to me, we need friction to grow.
And as a game designer thinking of building systems that hold structures, virtual worlds even, I notice that code is rarely used from one game to another. The reason being, we have learned somuch from the making of the first iteration, we know how to make a better script for the next game. we take whatworked and redo the parts that were inefficient.

I don't think anarchy as a system of living socially is devoid of accounting for history. I would say historical ontology would be one of the most important topics for a system thatis constantly improving.

If our society and governing system today, was like a Windows pc, the registry would be f*&ked

Roquentin

interesting posts folks

KomradeBishop

I think one of the fatal flaws of anarchism and Libertarian Socialism, is that it is hard to create systems (economic/political/societal), which are capable of protecting themselves from exploitation, without having some kind of hierarchy - and individual people, on a mass/collective scale, are one of the weakest and most exploitable parts of such systems (as the effects of mainstream media over public perception and politics shows).

Anarchist systems have pretty much no way of protecting against exploitation - and tend to rely upon wishful/optimistic thinking, that everyone will just get along; when in reality, the small few who relentlessly begin exploiting various political/economic/social systems for their own gain, in this anarchic society, will rapidly begin to form a whole new hierarchy with themselves in power.

It just doesn't work on the scale of society as a whole, and nobody has a workable theory of how it could ever work on that scale. However, it definitely can work on smaller scales, and has been proven to (e.g. things such as worker-run businesses) - so it has its place, and has truly enormous potential for benefiting society/economies/politics worldwide - but only in piecemeal, being used only where it explicitly works, and avoided where it doesn't.

That's the problem with most ideologies (Anarchism, Communism, Capitalism - not to mention all the economic schools): People tend to have their pet ideology, and apply it in absolute fashion, without being pragmatic about it instead and mixing/matching where appropriate (i.e. where different concepts work best).

Often the best way, is to just start with what you've currently got politically/economically/societally, and slowly evolve it in the direction you want to go, testing things here and there to see what actually works, and what doesn't. There are so so many well-merited political/economic/societal ideas that just haven't been tried out, so we have no idea what would/wouldn't work in many cases; usually testing them out is opposed for ideological reasons (typically as it would undermine the current political/economic orthodoxy).

I'd imagine that Libertarian Socialism could come a very very very long way, if this experimental approach to testing it could be supported and engaged in on a meaningful scale; the possible benefits of this kind of political experimentation, protected from impingement by ideologues who would oppose ever testing these things out - the potential is huge.


On the topic of games and anarchism within business: Yanis Varoufakis (now Greek Finance Minister) used to work at the game company Valve, who have a fascinating non-hierarchial company structure - great read:
http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/why-valve-or-what-do-we-need-corporations-for-and-how-does-valves-management-structure-fit-into-todays-corporate-world/

Black Swan

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

Representative Democracy is an authentic form of anarchy.

According to whom? It would be interesting to introduce philosophers and their philosophical positions regarding this position in order to discuss this statement in more depth. Quotes and citations would facilitate this process.

Labarbapostiza

Black Swan wrote: »

According to whom? It would be interesting to introduce philosophers and their philosophical positions regarding this position in order to discuss this statement in more depth. Quotes and citations would facilitate this process.

The particular formulation of defining anarchy as the absence of hierarchy, I got from Jacques Ranciere. I've taken it further by using the word hierarchist as a defining, or redefining antonym, which then makes the nebulous anarchism distinct, damaging the hierarchist definition in the process.

Plato's Republic and Orwell's 1984, are descriptions of the same society seen from two different perspectives. Philosophers can tend to be as much a part of the problem as part of the solution; but that again is a matter of perspective. Plato's Republic from the perspective of a member of the elite/inner party class might be taken to be the best of all possible worlds. Which is why the text has been so popular among the academies of the elites - as literally a training manual. From the perspective of member of the outer party, or proletariat, it's 1984.

An aspect of the social and political control in Orwell's 1984 is lexical impoverishment. The removal of words from language that would be essential to resistance. Without a word for a thing, it can neither be attacked or resisted. In Merriam-Webster, there is no entry for hierarchist.

How does a word become a word. Is it because it appears in an authorative dictionary. If it's removed from the dictionary, like words are removed 1984, does it cease to be a word. And again, if the word is in the dictionary, is that definition absolute.


In Merriam-Webster the synonyms for anarchy are: chaos, confusion, disorder, hostility, nihilism, rebellion, riot, turmoil, unrest, disorganization,
disregard, misrule, revolution, mob rule, nongovernment, reign of terror

Where its' antonyms are given as: calm, harmony, method, order, organization, peace, system, lawfulness, rule.

Do you see how the hierarcists who control Merriam-Websters achieve their desired political result. It's either us, and our wonderful Platonic republic, which is peaceful, in harmony, and calm.......or it is a reign of terror.

Read the words and see what they're trying to make you think. And what they are trying to deprive you of. The etymological root of the word; an-archy, tells the truth, it is the absence of hierarchy.

The antidemocratic elites, of which we have an abundance of in Ireland see democracy as "mob rule".

folamh

Schopenhauer's primary works are in metaphysics, not political philosophy. I don't really know why Nietzsche is associated with anarchism.

Political philosophers who cover anarchism in its various factions include William Godwin, Max Stirner, Peter Kropotkin, Mikhail Bakunin, Pierre Proudhon, Lysander Spooner, Voltarine de Cleyre, Benjamin Tucker, Emma Goldman, Henry David Thoreau, Frederic Bastiat, Lucy Parsons, Robert Nozick, Murray Rothbard, L. Susan Brown, Michael Huemer and George H. Smith.

Eugene Norman

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

Yes, anarchies have existed throughout human history, and much longer than our current system of liberal democracy.

The native North Americans had no prisons. Liberal democracy is in fact loosely based on their system of government. The Grecian veneer was completely superficial, in an effort to avoid crediting the Native Americans. They didn't have a system of writing, gun powder, steel or capitalism. But their system of agriculture was nearly as advanced as European, except they lacked draught animals like horses. They were incredibly big on personal freedoms. Which is why many European settlers ran away from their pales to live like the natives.

How did this paradise get lost. There are some huge weaknesses in not running a society along the lines Plato's proto-fascist Republic. One, you can assemble fighters, but you can't really marshal resources into creating capital intensive tools of war, such as cannons and gunpowder, and even steel.

The second reason, and probably the main reason Native American society was destroyed, was that the Native Americans had a much higher standard of living than Europeans. They were more hygienic and didn't live with animals in their houses, like Europeans kept pigs in the parlour. The diseases as a result of poor living standards had plagues the Europeans but they hadn't wiped them out. When they arrived in America, their diseases killed 80 to 90% of the Natives. The diseases even moved faster than the Europeans. They never had to clear farm land, even the houses would already have been built. Natives are nearly always depicted as living in tents - landless gypsies - how can you dispossess gypsies. They mostly lived in houses of wood and stone. In the 20th century Westerns, Native Americans were completely misrepresented. They were depicted as savages attacking and scalping civilised pilgrims, when in fact it was the other way around.

A problem we have visualising anarchies is we're locked into ideas (usually that serve the self interest of the originators of these ideas), that the system we have is the best it could be.

Very little of this is true. US democracy is based on european and english models in particular, Europeans and Americans were wealthier than native Americans which is why they could invade, and by and large most North American native Americans were nomadic. Housing in meso America was brick but mostly Americans who invaded west built their own housing.

Labarbapostiza

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.

countrynosebag

Have learnt much, thank you.
Found the points about children and the change as they progress (?) into adulthood most interesting.
Yes, here in Ireland an ongoing case to illustrate the Irish point is the water disputes. It has been the case that any dissent is not seen as democratic protest but instead a type of behaviour akin to thuggery and interferes with any validity of protest. Whilst it has been correct that a few have been disorderly and/or violent it is not true for most. The protesters continue to be labelled as some sort of public disorder.

Torakx

I was going to say that now is a particularly interesting time, to observe anarchists coming out of their caves, "waving clubs" haha
But I think this has always been the case. Maybe it is the result of organised war. Or farming at a more primal level. The disruption of the hive and it's most dominants plans and goals is seen as dissent. Colonialism and other forms of dilution of cultures, facing off against those who are trying to maintain individuality and their culture, is what I see through history.
A constant struggle to consoloditate power, where anarchists want the opposite, I think...

Black Swan

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

Representative Democracy is an authentic form of anarchy.

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

The particular formulation of defining anarchy as the absence of hierarchy, I got from Jacques Ranciere.

Can you specifically name a "Representative Democracy" with an "absence of hierarchy" that exists in reality today, at this very moment in time? Not one from the past, which may or may not be subject to the problems associated with problematic record keeping, cross-cultural interpretation errors, historical revisionism, lost in translation, or publication author, editor, funding source, or government biases, etc.

Labarbapostiza

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.

KomradeBishop

Yes, Europe is not a representative democracy anymore - not even close - you can't really have a true democracy without having a sovereign currency, because as we can see now, Greece and countries like Ireland do not have full control over public financing anymore, due to the Euro, as they would have with a national currency (and thus, don't have sovereign control over policymaking, which is hugely affected by Euro-imposed financial limits), and regaining this democratic control would involve imploding our economies in an exit from the EU (so no sign of a return to true democracy, possibly ever).

We can regain some control, but essentially, while we're in the Euro and a dysfunctional EU, we are not in a real democracy. True democracy in Europe is effectively over - and will remain this way in the short/medium term, and maybe even long-term/permanently, unless the Euro implodes (which it might in the coming years).


Interestingly, one of the few ways to return limited democratic control and boost the economy, may be through community-managed currencies, rather than the current hierarchical currency system with the ECB at the top (nationally managed currencies, like linked above, are even better too - but still hierarchical).

This is why some forms of Libertarian Socialism (which ties into anarchism) may have such huge potential, if it can be experimented with on a limited scale (growing in scale if it proves credible), as it could allow there to be many regional currency authorities, and many different kinds of overlapping currencies, allowing proper full employment in communities and greater regional democratic control over work/local-policymaking.

Bernard Lietar has done some excellent writing on this, although I don't agree with all of his economic views:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Future_of_Money

This kind of experimentation is something I'd like to see a lot more of, but it's not really something enough people are even aware of to discuss/talk-about, nevermind gather the expertise required to actually put it into practice.


Something that is very notable about EU proponents: They deny its lack of democratic credentials, while also simultaneously playing down the idea of democracy by attributing it to 'mob rule' - I've seen this, and other kinds of odd defensive arguments backing the EU (such as 'we voted for it, so we must want it this way' - even when people did not know what the consequences were of what they voted for), even when debating with admins/mods in charge of another section of Boards (which indicates a potential bias). It was often a difficult topic to openly discuss, for this reason.

Black Swan

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

Superficially, any western democracy could be referred to as a "representative democracy"...

Can we assume that all western democracies today are hierarchical, many (if not all) substantially so, and therefore not examples of anarchy as you have defined it?

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

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.

Then a "Representative Democracy" with an "absence of hierarchy" does not currently exist at this moment in time? If you believe one does exist in reality today, can you name it so that we can examine and discuss it specifically?

Torakx

I found some time to do a quick search for that tonight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebel_Zapatista_Autonomous_Municipalities

Functioning

According to the sympathizers with the movement, the laws or regulations in the Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities are not against the authorities, but for "Together for Good Government," intending to form a participatory government by the coordination of the community representatives. In various communities, the general assemblies meet for a week to decide on various aspects concerning the community. The assemblies are open to everyone, without a formal bureaucracy. The decisions made by the communities are then passed to elected delegates whose job is to pass the information to a board of delegates. The delegates can be revoked and also serve on a rotation basis. In this way, it is expected that the largest number of people may express their points of view.

I was lead to this one as well, but I don't know if it's a good example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rojava

A wiki link from my original search.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anarchist_communities


Another interesting read.
http://www.ic.org/wiki/communitarian-anarchism/

KomradeBishop

Ya the Zapatista's do fantastic coffee They produce the coffee from worker-run co-ops (the type of business that anarchist-inspired Libertarian Socialism would try to make dominant in society):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapatista_coffee_cooperatives

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Labarbapostiza

[QUOTE=Black Swan;94913772

Then a "Representative Democracy" with an "absence of hierarchy" does not currently exist at this moment in time? If you believe one does exist in reality today, can you name it so that we can examine and discuss it specifically?[/QUOTE]

Is that a question or a statement?

If you're trying to make a statement, make it in good faith and we can examine it.

Torakx

I think even taking the examples I gave above, you can't rely on those as a test. I would say we can get hints and clues as to how things might work. But at any time an anarchist movement starts up, there will be dictators, bankers, political puppets, police and army, interfering and trying to shut it down, or give it a bad name.
If it is allowed to flourish as a good example, it will do too much damage to the current systems, running on an oligarchical style of governing that uses capitalism as the vehicle for "progress".

It is difficult to move a large area or population over to this way of thinking, when they will be suffering trade embargos for being free from colonialism and corporate infiltration. The rest of the world, run by the rich, will block off trade and spread lies through their media to damage that society. They would train terrorists from that region and fill their ears with lies. We see it in the middle east every few years, when the Americans under Israeli guidance, take a new country for themselves.
When they need to take a new country, they create a terrorist group and arm them, then plow in to save the day.
That is not even considering yet the psychological lash back, from a slave society suffering from stockholm syndrome.

For this reason among others, I think an anarchistic society is not something you can go to straight away.
It would probably need to spread roots through society instead of stepping off as beng separate.
I saw the beginnings of this in Ireland a few years ago and it is still going on, with a small few.
But as expected and why I walked away from such groups, they got infiltrated, the leaders were diverted on from their course and it turned into a recruitment agency for Mormans. Not surprised it was an american made religion either...
Which brings me to one slightly off topic thought.
Why is UFC coming to Ireland all of a sudden? It seems a nice coincedence that all the Irish are getting these awesome distractions right now. Big orgs coming from across the ocean, apparently coincedental.
The media frenzy over McGregor and Aldo is the biggest one I have seen in UFC for a long time.
Maybe I am giving the corporate media too much credit there....maybe.