this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
573 points (100.0% liked)
NonCredibleDefense
4046 readers
637 users here now
Rules:
- Posts must abide by lemmy.world terms and conditions
- No spam or soliciting for money.
- No racism or other bigotry allowed.
- Obviously nothing illegal.
If you see these please report them.
Related communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Let's be realistic now!
Anarchy just shifts the problem from “people with the most money bully the people with less” to “people with the most guns bully the people with less”.
Did we read the same praxis?
What problems are there in: “Everyone should be armed! Money is theft!”?
Guns are not the only deterrent to intolerance, btw. We use bolt cutters too.
So, I have a question: how did kings and governments get the monopoly on violence?
Anarchism doesn't really have a great answer to that question, and frankly I really dont think it needs one. It's reckons that people who understand the freedoms they have will fight to maintain them, and it understands those ideas within the context of now, rather than trying to thread a shakey narrative through all of history. If you want men from 100 years ago to answer all your questions today then Marxism is probably closer to what you want
Doubtless you can find Anarchist arguing about that question, its a good question. But at its core Anarchism is a more of a philosophy rather than an ideology. Its a collection of tools that one can employ to solve problems and win concessions from authority.
That said if you want to see some of said argument, The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow gives some nice answers. And does so whilst trying to build on the up to date evidence about what life was like that long ago.
Ah makes sense, thank you for that great answer (:
So in the root it relies on a belief that “good” people are in the majority and that our current structure gives an outsized amount of power to “bad” people?
Yes, but it's not like we spent the last 200 years hoping for that to happen on its own. In the very beginning the idea was "let's assassinate the king the rest will sort itself", nope, it doesn't, the king is in people's heads.
A word you'll hear used quite often nowadays in theoretical Anarchist circles is "prefiguration", building the new in the shell of the old, in particular building horizontal modes of organisation. When you see something being organised hierarchically, say, a workplace, and you have an idea on how to organise it horizontally (e.g. a cooperative), then do so. And be good at it.
The idea is that thus, hierarchical realism can be fought: That idea that people have in their head that to organise something, someone has to be in charge, call the shots, order people around, be able to exert authority over others, force others. The more people are part of those kinds of structures, the more obvious it will become that horizontal modes of organisation are also possible on larger levels, and people will work towards creating those. The avalanche needs to be built from the bottom up, as weird as that sounds.
In short: I can't tell you what's over the horizon, but I can give you a compass and say "Here, that direction, doesn't that look promising? Let's take a first step!".
...and meta side-note we're on lemmy. As everyone can just spin up their own instance (or happily join an instance with admins who admin instead of try to rule over their users) and the instances interact horizontally it's quite anarchic in principle. Evidently, it also works. That it was written by tankies is just extra irony on top, showing how little they understand their pet enemy.
Yea it basically requires that you are either a bad actor pretending this is true, or a basement dweller who choses to believe this is true. They have no idea the kind of assholes you meet traversing society, or they are the assholes. The 5 million people in Manhattan are just not going to live peacefully without law and order. Be fun to watch tho.
From inaction and popular belief that they can give people safety. People gave the "defense" job to kings and goverments with belief that they could focus on other stuff, not realizing they are giving up their freedom. Soon, kings and gov start to violate people all around.
To be fair, the ancient world was wildly unsafe and governments did provide a modicum of safety. Not just against aggressions, but also in terms of reliable access to food.
Oppression.
Why does US & Europe need oppressors?
And what’s stopping another group from using oppression to get the monopoly on power again once anarchy is introduced?
Innumerable.
Then get to solving them!
European neoliberalism continues to create more problems, for profits!
Generally one doesn't look to those in the ideological opposition for solutions.
Like European Neoliberalism…. How many more slaves from Africa & Guatemala do you need, @[email protected] ?
Lord.
I don't remember one anarchist revolution where the lord of wars emerged. Not in Ukraine, not in Spain, not in Korea, not in Chiappas. However, hierarchical organization do create lord of wars; from bolcheviks to fascists, including liberal regimes. And European Union is not the last to create dictatorship elsewhere through its imperialism.
For info, mass media in Europe don't give a shit about authoritarianism in the US. They just talk about trade issue and taxes. This is not the freedom you're looking for
The hierarchical organizations didn’t always exist did they? They formed from anarchy.
Again, you need to source. To one of those example evolve in hierarchical organization. If you claim is "no organization could exist with total equality", we do agree. But we could say the same with communism, or even democracy. We need to be materialist, and tend to equality and freedom. And privileges tend te reproduce through time
Bro you already have anarchy, trump has turned the USA into a lawless place. This is it chief. Enjoy.
anarchism is the dissolution of the state and its monopoly on violence, not the dissolution of law. an anarchic society can have a law but no state, but a state and no law is a dictatorship
In a society with equally distributed power of violence you wouldn't have laws, but mere loose agreements. It is the monopoly on violence that gives one the authority to impose laws.
given the way real world "monopolies" on violence work, i would contend that true law has never existed
Sir, I'm not a fascist. I don't support death camps.
Maybe you're looking for another emperor in another castle?