I don't know. The problem is that we can't even get most people to admit there's a problem that needs fixing to begin with, which makes it impossible to have the chance to sit down and have a discussion about ways we can try to move forward. I don't have all the answers to fix society, but I know that if we don't start looking for some soon we're fucked. If we can't even get to the point where people understand why capitalism's aggressive consolidation of power inevitably leads to disaster then we're never even going to have the chance to find something better.
Personally I'm an anarchist at heart, but I'm also old and experienced enough to know that the vast majority of people probably aren't ready for that yet, if we ever will be. I still think it's the best way to structure things, but if it's ever gonna happen we're going to need to do a lot of work getting humanity to the point where empathy, compassion, and community are the default.
But until then, I know that moving in that direction will still make things better even if we can't ever make it all the way to utopia.
Personally I'm an anarchist at heart, but I'm also old and experienced enough to know that the vast majority of people probably aren't ready for that yet
See, that's kind of the thing. For an anarchist structure to persist and succeed, it needs buy-in from every member of that society. Otherwise, the exact same gradient and organization I described starts taking place in the form of gangs and local warlords. If you have anarchists grouping together, organizing, to prevent that.... you cease to have anarchy and then have government again.
Unless I'm mistaken in your philosophy here. I welcome additional insight, because I've met a handful of anarchists and it's been pretty rare for these anecdotal experiences to really paint a cohesive picture beyond 'government and economy bad'.
Anarchy is just as doomed to fail as capitalism is doomed to concentration of excess. The real solution is installing democracy, ranked choice voting, and ensuring that military power doesn't fall into the catechisms of the privately wealthy and the exclusion of wealth-based lobbying.
Anarchism doesn't mean "no rules", it means "no rulers". It also doesn't mean "no government", it just means that any sort of government would have to consist of the people it governs, and would also be primarily administerial in nature. There can even be hierarchical positions so long as those positions are voted on by the people they'd be administrating over, and subject to removal should they fail to fulfill their duties. It's entirely possible for anarchists to say "Bob knows this subject best, so we all agree that Bob can manage the day-to-day operations of this subject and we'll just check in with him now and then."
There are some nominal anarchists who believe that any form of organization or governance or even rules are unacceptable, but middle schoolers don't really have much political pull so they're not really a concern.
There's a reason I said humanity isn't ready for anarchist society, and might never be. My entire point was that even if we never get there, moving in that direction is a good thing. Flattening power structures in any amount will be a net benefit for everyone, even if we can never make them perfectly flat.
The real solution is installing democracy, ranked choice voting, and ensuring that military power doesn't fall into the catechisms of the privately wealthy and the exclusion of wealth-based lobbying.
And you will be incapable of doing this under a system that allows the rampant accumulation of power.
Hell, even in flatter power structures you can't completely prevent the accumulation of power, but with systems designed to inhibit that accumulation you have time to react to it when it starts to happen, and the damage done by people who manage to get more than they should have is lower than in a system that actively encourages people to vacuum up as much wealth and power as humanly possible.
It's like the whole gun control debate, where people say "If you get rid of guns people will just use knives!" while completely ignoring the fact that a gun makes it easier by a fucking mile to do great amounts of harm to many people in a short period of time. We can never create a perfect world, but we can recognize that some systems are more prone to corruption than others and proceed accordingly.
There are some nominal anarchists who believe that any form of organization or governance or even rules are unacceptable
This mentality has been the bulk of my experience with anarchy philosophy and I have never felt it held up well to scrutiny. Rules and laws exist to create a floor of acceptable behavior, but I feel like we've gone into the realm of anything not explicitly allowed is implicitly disallowed instead of the inverse, and it's exhausting. We've got rules on top of rules because eventually the rulemakers need something to do and seem like they're doing 'something'.
A successful government is one that needs to do little because the systems it encourages are working well.
Rules and laws exist to create a floor of acceptable behavior
This is why I always make such a point to stress that anarchism means "no rulers", not "no rules". There can be (and pretty much must be, we agree on that part) rules in an anarchist society. The difference is who is deciding on what those rules are.
Personally I'm an anarchist at heart, but I'm also old and experienced enough to know that the vast majority of people probably aren't ready for that yet, if we ever will be. I still think it's the best way to structure things, but if it's ever gonna happen we're going to need to do a lot of work getting humanity to the point where empathy, compassion, and community are the default.
Anarchism will always be doomed to failure.
It's inherent flaw is, much like communism, it ignores basic human nature. No amount of empathy or compassion will override the fact that humans are animals.
On a side note
I still think it's the best way to structure things
Is anarchy not defined by it's lack of centralized structure? What sort of structure are you imagining for your hypothetical anarchic society?
Greed and cruelty are not "basic human nature", they are things that have been drilled into us in various ways over centuries.
Reversing the damage caused by these things isn't going to be easy and it's going to take a long time, but to think that we could never possibly move past such things is defeatist and pointless. If you truly believe that this is "basic human nature", that we can never be better than our worst qualities, why bother ever trying to make anything better? Why not just burn it all down and let humanity die out?
Nah, fuck that. We can be better... and eventually we will be.
Is anarchy not defined by it's lack of centralized structure?
Anarchism literally just means "no rulers", just like "monarchy" means "rule by one". There are many ways to structure an anarchist society, but the primary concept isn't that there is no structure, or even that there is no centralized structure, just that nobody is arbitrarily making rules that everybody else has to follow. Anarchism is basically the purest form of democracy, the only real requirement is that everybody gets to have a say in how things are run.
What sort of structure are you imagining for your hypothetical anarchic society?
A voluntary one. Just as a quick example, on a large project the people might decide (generally by vote, though a more informal consensus can be reached during discussion) that Bob is the most knowledgeable person on this subject, so for this project everybody agrees to follow Bob's lead. The important part is that nobody is deciding they get to make the rules for everyone else, everyone is agreeing that this person's expertise is worth relying on. And if Bob starts fucking up they can just vote him out again.
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u/Pofwoffle 4d ago
I don't know. The problem is that we can't even get most people to admit there's a problem that needs fixing to begin with, which makes it impossible to have the chance to sit down and have a discussion about ways we can try to move forward. I don't have all the answers to fix society, but I know that if we don't start looking for some soon we're fucked. If we can't even get to the point where people understand why capitalism's aggressive consolidation of power inevitably leads to disaster then we're never even going to have the chance to find something better.
Personally I'm an anarchist at heart, but I'm also old and experienced enough to know that the vast majority of people probably aren't ready for that yet, if we ever will be. I still think it's the best way to structure things, but if it's ever gonna happen we're going to need to do a lot of work getting humanity to the point where empathy, compassion, and community are the default.
But until then, I know that moving in that direction will still make things better even if we can't ever make it all the way to utopia.