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Anarchism
1773 words, ~10 minute read.
Anarchism is a political philosophy centered around the idea that authoritative hierarchies are unjust, and aim for a society completely devoid of a state. Marx described how socialism, as it approaches its end goal of communism, would see the state naturally wither away, reaching anarcho-communism, just one of the flavors of anarchism.
Broadly speaking, flavors of anarchism can fall into 3 categories: collectivist anarchism, which includes the aforementioned anarcho-communism; individualist anarchism, which are right-wing versions of anarchism based on Individualism; and modern anarchism, which are adaptations of collectivist communism to include additional hierarchies, such as anarcha-feminism which seeks to abolish the patriarchy in addition to class hierarchy. I'm personally biased against individualist anarchism but align with the values present in many collectivist and modern flavors of anarchism. I believe an ideal society is one with strong Local Communities that operate as a collective; spreading power as thinly as possible to avoid the possibility of any individuals becoming corrupt and abusing their power.
Decision Making in Anarchy
Flavors of anarchy will differ on whether decision making should exist at all. Egoism, an individualist flavor of anarchism, argues against not only any kind of collective decision making, but against society itself. Collectivist flavors of anarchism typically allow for group decision making in some form.
Group decision making under anarchism is typically modeled after a flavor of democracy. Majoritarian democracy, or Direct Democracy , is the idea that everyone gets a single vote and a measure passes if most people are in favor of it. A Consensus Democracy is the idea that measures should only pass if nobody is opposed to it. This typically means in lieu of voting, individuals can "block" a measure by saying they disagree with it in part of in whole, and the polity must then decide to drop the measure or tweak it until it can pass without any blocks. Some forms of consensus democracy will also allow for measures to pass despite a small number of blocks, for the sake of making it feasible without constant gridlock when scaling up.
There are criticism of group decision making as anti-anarchistic in any form. In both of these versions of democracy, the polity is collectively agreeing to have some form of rule or agreement in place, and once agreed to, an individual typically cannot rescind their consent to that rule or agreement. In majoritarian democracy, up to half the polity may have never even given consent for that rule in the first place. Even in consensus democracy, discussions will often break down into compromise and eventual resignation in order to get measures passed, which is not a "true" version of consent. Typically supporters of these decision making processes will justify them as necessary of a society to function.
I'm personally a fan of consensus democracy. I agree with the justification that a society will naturally and necessarily contain social relationships that lead to things like compromises, and that "persuasiveness" is a permissible hierarchy out of necessity for society to exist.
Democracy in Statist Society
As a quick aside, some anarchists are critical of the term "democracy" here, as it may carry baggage of how democracy is implemented in a statist society, or disingenuously try to copy over the positive associations democracy has within western society. An anarchist would typically flat out reject any form of Representative Democracy due to representatives inherently imperfectly abstracting the will of their constituency. They would argue representative democracy strictly gets better the closer you get to everyone having a representative that perfectly matches their positions on all issues, which is of course then equivalent to a direct democracy.
Assigning Roles in Anarchy
A flavor of anarchism that allows for group decision making typically also allows for roles to be assigned. If the group agreed that a specific person is in charge of making sure livestock don't escape, or another person is in charge of drafting a design for a new building being proposed, then that's completely fine. However, no person fulfilling a role should be considered un-replacable, as that imbues that person with unjust coercive power. That means roles should have redundancies and an answer for "what if this person threatens to stop performing their role unless we capitulate to their demands?"
Motivation Under Anarchy
Anarchism relies on the idea that there are enough individuals motivated to systemically fix problems that they will do so without direct personal gain (beyond the problem being solved), and that others will not block those efforts, even if the policy won't help them in particular. I believe this would and does hold true. I believe our society being filled with greedy individuals is primarily caused by our society rewarding greed (see Social Constructs and Materialism). Without the profit motive and returning to a culture of collaboration and mutual aid, greed would for the most part become a non-factor in policy making. Those who are already at the top of the hierarchy don't want to lose their position, and have thus been propagandizing that hierarchies are necessary/inevitable, and even just. This concept gets discussed in The Alt-Right Playbook: Always a Bigger Fish.
Accountability under Anarchy
Anarchy requires Police Abolition, as a carceral state is, obviously, a state. There is no state sanctioned violence in a state-less society. With that in mind, if someone breaks a rule or otherwise acts anti-socially, the anarchist society will have to rely on other methods of accountability.
Like prison abolitionists, anarchists would prefer systemic solutions to problems. If someone had to steal food from another at risk of starving, the solution is to ensure food (and other needs like shelter and healthcare) are accessible to all. Technology has made it trivial to provide for everyone; In America, there is more food waste than it would take to feed all the hungry, and enough vacant houses to shelter all the homeless. The scarcity is artificial, created by and maintained by those at the top of the hierarchy.
After meeting everyone's needs, crimes should essentially go away. When accidents happen, there's no need for consequences but the community may make changes to help prevent accidents from re-occurring. If the incident was caused by someone's needs not being met (e.g. food or healthcare), then they should be supported rather than punished. For the remaining edge cases, there is typically reliance on social consequences. People are less likely to associate with someone with anti-social tendencies, and that person may eventually just have to leave the community if no one remains who is willing to associate with them. This should be exceedingly rare, however.
Scaling up Anarchy
A core principle of anarchism is "free association", referring to how individuals should be able to freely enter and leave agreements between anarchist organizations. This is freedom to collaborate with whoever and however you like. These organizations are then typically considered rather ephemeral; temporary arrangements that can dissolve at any time as the needs and desires of those within the arrangement change. Scaling this up, it applies to communities/polities as well. A community can freely enter or leave agreements with other communities, and individuals can freely enter and leave those communities.
One thing to be wary of with free association, is that it can incidentally support segregation. It's therefore important for communities to encourage diversity as much as they can, and refuse to associate with bigoted communities, theoretically discouraging those bigoted views through social and material isolation.
Anarchy and Capitalism
The definition of individualist anarchism, one of the three categories defined in the introduction, is quite contested amongst anarchists. Some deny that its distinct from collectivist socialism, others claim it includes anarcho-capitalism, and yet others deny the capitalism is even compatible with anarchism at all. As the broad categories are just a Social Construct trying to make it easier to analyze different flavors of anarchism, I think its sufficient to say individualist anarchism is not really a useful term, as it typically needs clarification upon use of what individualist anarchism means to that author specifically.
I will take a strong position in favor of the argument that capitalism is inherently incompatible with anarchism, though. Capitalism inherently forms hierarchies by introducing currency as a coercive force that is then required for continued survival. Anarcho-capitalism, the theoretical blending of capitalism and anarchism, argues for a stateless society with a market economy, effectively instituting laissez-faire economics. Anarcho-capitalism argues this market would regulate itself naturally due to the exchange of goods being purely voluntary, however this ignores capitalist incentives that would trend the economy towards wealth accumulating in the hands of the few. This creates a coercive hierarchy, which is not voluntary due to people's need for food, water, and shelter. The only way to avoid this unjust hierarchy would be with a form of regulatory body that would be nothing short of a state. Therefore, anarcho-capitalism is not compatible with anarchism, because despite their shared antipathy towards states, they do not share the underlying antipathy towards hierarchy.
Anarcho-capitalists argue that their vision of anarchism is the only form that could possibly exist in reality, as any other form necessitates a state in order to handle things like the redistribution of private property. However, this argument itself implies the necessity of private property as a concept. Collectivist forms of anarchy such as anarcho-communism or mutualism demonstrate how economies can work without private property.
Anarchy in the Workplace
Typical American corporations are very hierarchical, with a few hands at the top having ultimate say over the company - what it does, how much it pays its employees, who it fires, etc. Worker's co-operatives are alternatives to corporations that are entirely worker owned and operated, with a flat hierarchy.
This dynamic means technological progress works in employees' favor, rather than owners' (since the employees are the owners). For example, lets say some technological innovation made employees twice as productive. Under a capitalist structure, the owners would have no reason to increase compensation based on the increased production, and in fact would be discouraged from doing so. They'd likely either use the increased productivity to sell more products, or half the workforce to cut down on significant expenditures. Under a socialist or anarchist structure, the needs and desires of the people are most important, so workers are likely to either see increased compensation due to their increased productivity, or reduced hours without a reduction in compensation. The co-operative could still decide to also just utilize the increased productivity without reducing hours nor increasing compensation, but the decision to do so would have been consensually made by the workers themselves, not their boss.
China enacted a policy in 2024 to make all of its corporations operate democratically, with a "Employee Assembly" made up of up to 100 workers, that can decide on things like firing supervisors or, in big companies, appointing 1/3 of the board of directors. That goes a long way in democratizing the remaining private businesses in China.