What is Anarchism

FionnMatthew wrote:

Linux, for instance.

While it may run efficiently, producing linux is probably one of the most inefficient systems on the planet. There's thousands of coders and debuggers and little or no unification. The elements that remain constant are those that have been around since the beginning i.e. the kernel itself

FionnMatthew wrote:

Linux, for instance.

You see this is the nonsense that I'm talking about. Linux development is not an anarchist based development system. It is a hierarchical system. It would not work if it was anarchist based.

You guys start talking off about anarchist systems (oh won't it be great) but to actually solve all the problems that this throws up you slowly, problem by problem, move to a hierarchical system. Which is what we already have.

FionnMatthew wrote:

Push forward??? We're theorizing here. It's an imaginative exercise.

And I'm "imagining" that anarchism is a very flawed and unrealistic system.

For all your huff and puff about how we are just discussing this any time it is mentioned that anarchism is flawed or won't work you fly completely off the handle (I love the bold fonts btw, always impressive :rolleyes:)

Part of a discussion of an idea is being open to the idea that the idea simply won't work.

Not only do you appear not open to that idea, but the very idea seems to deeply offend you.

Why, I'm not sure.

If anyone wants to see why anarchism won't work they simply have to look at this discussion. To many zealots spoil the revolution, as it were :rolleyes:

Akrasia wrote:

The 'results' of the meeting are basically the minutes of the meeting that are taken back to the community and the community decides what to do next.

Groan. Ok lets try this again. Who makes the decisions? The community. Leaving aside how this actually happens, the question still remains, can the community be corrupt? Yes

Any element that makes a decision can make a decision that goes against the best interest. that is corruption.

As you say yourself

"Priority should be given to local activity as much as possible"

Can one community priorities its own interests over those of another community, as the expense of that community. Yes they can, and not only that, but they seem to be required to.

You will end up with powerful communities and weak communities. Weak communities, with nothing to a offer to protect them from being taken advantage of will fall.

What you are basically describing is a modern Corporation, which puts its own interests ahead of others outside of itself, and is required to by its own self interests.

How does the community itself make decisions?

Akrasia wrote:

Ah right. I get it now. you're insane. Communities will make corrupt decisions that will screw themselves.... right.

No, communities will make decisions that screw other communities

As I seem to remember saying at the very start :rolleyes:

Akrasia wrote:

Where did i say that?

Here

Akrasia wrote:

You're arguing against your own imagination now.

No, I'm arguing with you.

Akrasia wrote:

No, I am describing democracy.

Self interest and prioritising the interests of your own community is not the purpose of democracy. That is precisely why you have a central government.

The concept was invented in the first place to stop prioritisation of local communities, when city states realized that it was better to work together than to work as independent autonomous communities.

As with so many of the idea on display here, this used to be the way it was but the systems evolved into modern day systems precisely because of the problems you guys ignore or pretend won't happen.

Akrasia wrote:

It appears alien to you because you have probably never experienced it before.

Yes yes, black helicopters, corrupt business, secret organizations, mindless consummers etc etc. Please, can we save the melodrama.

Akrasia wrote:

By debating, Compromising voting and reaching consensus wherever possible.

What do they vote on? Everything?

Every single decision that the community takes has to be voted on by the community at a large?

What to fix a road. Debate, vote. What to designate a playing field? Debate, vote. What to increase bread production? Debate, vote. What to repair a sewer system? Debate, vote. and so on

Do you have any concept of how long that would take, or the logistics involved in actually carrying out a mass vote ever time something has to be decided?

Again that is precisely why representation was invented in the first place, because people do not have time or the ability to actually do this.

FionnMatthew wrote:

If you don't humor, in a positive, constructive, charitable way, the idea of ironing out the problems in anarchism, you don't know that the problems outweigh the benefits.

I have "humoured" the problems of anarchism, years ago.

What I'm not humouring is you guys rehashing the same old tired and flawed arguments. One assumes you discovered anarchism a year or so ago in college.

FionnMatthew wrote:

You don't have the right to an opinion.

Thank you, I look forward to your Utopia of cooperation and understanding :rolleyes:

FionnMatthew wrote:

The last word is yours to squander, as insipidly as you see fit.

Certainly,

There once was a man from Nantucket
Who kept all his cash in a bucket.

But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a man

And as for the bucket, Nantucket.

DadaKopf wrote:

So, simply a point of information, Wikinight - a matter of definition with regard to the development of political systems. You say about democracy:

You're confusing democracy with forms of state, therefore confusing levels of analysis, ultimately confusing your own argument.

I wasn't talking about democracy, I was talking about centralized representational government.

The anarchists here are basically saying it is better if there is no central hierarchical government, that instead you have lots and lots of small assemblies representing local people, in which local people have greater access to (they can just join if there is something on their mind) and these assemblies communicate with each other when they need something from each other, in the form of delegates.

I was attempting to explain that it originally was like that, but the problems presented by such a system are quite vast when attempting any wide spread co-ordination over matters of say trade, security or law. As such centralized government formed as a natural and practical way of managing larger democracies.

Unfortunately the anarchists see centralized hierarchical government, as well as capitalism, simply in the narrow terms of power, greed and corruption. They believe in that in the local assembly version these elements will be greatly reduced because the power placed in any one person will be greatly reduced. If no one has power no one can abuse power.

I again tried to point out that this is (in my humble opinion of course) a rather naive idea, because such a system is unworkable in a large population groups that actually have to achieve wide spread organization, such as sewer systems or the Internet.

DadaKopf wrote:

But then, curiously, you use the example of city states to prove your point about democracy, when in fact you're not actually talking about democracy but forms of state.

That is because I was talking about forms of state, rather than democracy

DadaKopf wrote:

Looking to history, city states, like those in Italy and the Netherlands for example, were not democracies, they were (by the 1400s) dominated by rich merchants in alliance with an immensely powerful Catholic church (and some Protestant).

I was referring more to city states such as Athens and Sparta which contained assemblies of local people sometimes run on direct democracy, similar to how the anarchists believe modern society should be run. Apologies, that could have been clearer.

DadaKopf wrote:

Democracy is a theory, and ethical commitment, to a method to distribute power equitably; forms of state are institutionalist instruments designed to delimit those process.

And rightly so, because direct democracy is unworkable in large populations. The phrase "herding cats" springs to mind.

DadaKopf wrote:

Spare a thought for Switzerland: a federal government with highly localised, democratic regional autonomy. In 500 years, have they really only managed democracy and the cuckoo clock?

Make no mistake, I'm all on for local government. But that isn't what is on the table here. Even in local government there is a hierarchy.

I object to the idea that people will just do what is best when given the opportunity, so therefore there is no need for hierarchical structure.

The anarchists see hierarchical structure as a way to place all the power in a small group of "elite" people. They, rightly, say this leads to corruption of that person, because power corrupts. So what is the obvious solution? Remove the hierarchical collection of power.

The point that doesn't seem to get across is that the flip side of that is that all the responsibility and blame is place in that person too.

In a system where everyone makes the decisions you end up where no one is actually responsible for what has happened, and this leads to a kind of "law of crowds"for democracy

When was the last time you heard of anyone who voted for Fianna Fail getting in given out to? Bertie is certain given out about, so is his government. Most TDs are at some point given out about, held accountable for what they are doing.

The problem is if you remove the hierarchy, who are you left with? Just the voters.

Time and time again has demonstrated that in situations like this people vote less morally than if they were directly asked to do something. So they will vote for a war that they themselves wouldn't fight in. We can blame Bush for going to war, but is there much point in blaming on of the millions of Bush voters?

We need the hierarchical structure because we need to know where responsibility lies, and at some point we need people to act as individuals.

Jim_Are_Great wrote:

I don't know if we can claim direct democracy to be unworkable in large populations when the best example of a functional direct democracy we have is Switzerland.

Switzerland isn't a direct democracy, it is a half-direct democracy, in that anyone in the population can over turn a law made by Parliament if they gather 30,000 supporters in I think 4 months (something like that). But there is still a parliament that does the day to day running. Imagine if that wasn't there, and anytime you wanted to do anything you had to poll thousands of people.

Jim_Are_Great wrote:

But should there be?

Yes

Jim_Are_Great wrote:

I can't think of any possible reason why people would willingly go against what is best for them.

Really? I can think of hundreds.

I suffer from a stomach condition called Crohn's disease. I really shouldn't drink that much alcohol. Last Saturday I went out and got very drunk, felt like sh*t on Sunday and then had bad stomach pains and a temperature on Monday. And I'm kicking myself for being so silly, but at the time I though what is the harm. I was an idiot, and I like to think of myself as a reasonable sensible guy.

People, in general, can be idiots and can act in idiotic fashion from time to time.

Jim_Are_Great wrote:

Even with ordinary human perversity taken into account, I can't think of why a body of people would choose anything other than the optimum.

You need to study history. Did the German people choose the "optimum" when they voted Hitler into power? Did the American people choose the "optimum" when they voted Bush into a second term?

People, as I said, can be idiots, they can make decisions not on rationality but on emotion and can be manipulated or manipulate based on this.

A hierarchical system puts safe guards against this in place

Jim_Are_Great wrote:

Is it not better for a community or group to accept responsibility for its own actions, decisions and shortcomings than to place them on one person?

No, because no one will accept responsibility. In a group dynamic people are almost anonymous.

Have you ever seen those studies when they put a random guy in a room with 10 other "actors" and set the room next door on fire. The actors don't do anything, and more often than not because the actors aren't doing anything the guy himself does nothing. And if he is asked (or given out to) for not doing anything the excuse is always "No one else did anything either"

You only have to look at democracy, who takes responsibility for voting in a bad government? No one. Have you ever heard anyone say "its my fault FF are in power"?

Jim_Are_Great wrote:

Of course people give out about what TDs and councillors do, but if they had the power to undertake whatever enterprise it was that the representative failed to execute, would it not be preferable?

No, it would be absolute chaos. 10,000 people with a different idea of how and where to build the Port Tunnel.

Even if it was possible to vote as a group on the issue, if the people vote in a bad idea and some how this bad Port Tunnel is build, who takes responsibility for that? No one, because no one takes responsibility for what they vote for. You just end up with a bad Port Tunnel, that would probably never be build in the first place (can you imagine direct democracy on a building site, everyone would want to be the foreman)

Jim_Are_Great wrote:

If a community as a whole takes a decision collectively with the same disastrous consequences, the 'blame' is on the people themselves.

And...? What does that do except dilute the blame to a meaningless level?

You seem to be missing the point of blame, which is to evaluate does the person know what they are doing for the future

If the society blames itself do they then decide that they are idiots and should not be trusted to make future decisions? Do they get a new society?

Jim_Are_Great wrote:

On an anarchist level, I would have had a direct input into the implementation of that measure, rather than having it formed and consolidated at a political echelon which is entirely inaccessible to me.

You and the other 4 million people in the country. You think your "direct" input would make any more of a difference?

In a hierarchical system you can go to one person, your local TD, and you can tell him your views. If you have a good argument you might even persuade him of your point of view. He then has actual power to influence that.

In an anarchist system who do you go to? Are you going to try and directly influence hundreds of people that your point of view is correct so in the group vote they vote with you?

Do you have the time to do this for every single issue you are concerned about?

Keep the word and enjoy it because it is dead and buried.

I actually prefer the word Voluntaryism because it has no negative connotations.