Discussions about scarcity and anarchism that I’ve seen online seem to always talk about “scarcity in the large”, i.e. how does an anarchist society allocate production, food, labour, materials etc.
I’ve a question about anarchism and scarcity in the small. Say, a really nice location, eg. a breezy location in a very hot climate, or the room with the nice windows in the community centre, or Bag End at the top of the hill. Say, an anarchist community has decided to use the location for purpose X, but a minority wants to use it for purpose Y. Maybe an even smaller minority wants to do Z, and a bunch of other people have their own little ideas about how to use it. Some are transient and could be accommodated (you get it on Tuesdays 5-7) but others might not be (“our sculpture project needs to dry out in that specific spot for the next 4 months, we know it blocks the view but it’s the only place the breeze hits just right!”) or could be contradictory (the siesta people vs the loud backgammon players can’t both use the spot at high noon) or antagonistic (the teenagers who want to party late vs the new parents who need quiet for the babies). And dis-association doesn’t really help here because that’s the nice spot for many kilometers around or there is literally no way to create another beach for our small island community because that’s literally the only place on the island where sand exists, so we can’t just off and leave. (* Many of these examples are imagining a hot summer in an anarchist Greece, sorry it’s almost August.)
It looks to me like a simple non-life-and-death scenario like this could potentially completely poison and destroy a community and in the face of that it would be the little death of anti-authoritarian organizing. Like yea, when life and death matters are at hand, anarchists will band together and conquer the bread. But petty small-scale little shit where it’s managing annoyances and small grievances, I don’t think non-authoritarian decision making can solve. And I suspect it’s crap like this that has killed off many intentional communities and experiments or made them veer away from non-hierarchical, anti-authoritarian organizing.
Have anarchist thinkers seriously thought of this?
Of course plenty of anarchist thinkers have thought about this. Of course non-authoritarian decision-making can solve small issues, if it’s done right. If people give up on organizing because they can’t figure out these sorts of problems, they’re simply not very committed to the process, and it is that non-committal attitude rather than the small problems themselves that can poison and destroy a community.
Any pointers to essays would be welcome.
That said, I think you’re sidestepping the problem with a no true Scotsman fallacy. Anarchist groups disintegrate due to petty shit all the time. Why would anarchist communes be immune to the same things?
Essays could be nice, but I don’t know any off-hand. That said, I myself am an anarchist thinker. I don’t have to be published or be considered “great” in order to know anything.
It’s not a fallacy. I’m not side-stepping; I’m confronting your concerns directly. I’m not saying that anarchist groups never disintegrate because of petty issues, nor am I saying that anarchist groups are always immune to these problems. What I am saying is that it is possible for such groups to do well, depending.
It’s just simple logic. If you’ve ever experienced a successful negotiation and compromise situation with another human being, with whom you had some conflicting interests, you’re aware that it can be done. Extrapolate it to more people, who happen to be anarchists, and there you have it. It just depends on how able and willing everyone involved is, in connection with the particular problems that they’re having.
You’ll have problems in literally any and every group of people, but how good people are at dealing with them varies a great deal.
I understand your cynicism, given the state of the world, but it’s inaccurate and also discouraging to others if you go about stating things like “But petty small-scale little shit where it’s managing annoyances and small grievances, I don’t think non-authoritarian decision making can solve.” It’s not always, but it can, sometimes. You know what I mean?
But you don’t have a long beard and a black and white photo portrait! How could I have known! /S
Thank you for your time to put together a thoughtful answer. I of course understand that conflict arises and needs to be addressed in all human interactions.
I guess the next step is to ask whether authority or compulsion would be any better at helping a community navigate such differences, and the answer is meh probably not.
Thanks!
While there should be highly coordinated groups like organizations, I think there should be something in between an organization and completely uncoordinated atomized autonomous action. These in-between groups should subsidize cooperation across social distance and difference to make people cooperate and keep the group from disintegrating.
With respect to managing collective property, I have made a post linking an article that I think would be of interest
Isn’t this just the opposite of “who does the dishes”? The answer to “Who gets the room with the nice windows in the community center?” is the same: Everyone.
And yeah, doing that in way that’s fair to everyone is tough but also super rewarding. Since it’s really different for every resource and community there won’t be any generalized solution.
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Have anarchist thinkers seriously thought of this?
The answer to that question is almost always that yes, they have. In this case I’d say start with reading The Dispossessed to get your imagination going before looking further into the topic at the anarchist library.
This seems to be more of a case of:
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Feel free to ask questions here.
Literally on the sidebar.
I don’t think my behaviour in this thread has been smarmy or antagonistic, as your cartoon implies, but if it has, I apologize.
I got my answer from Flora, so I’m thanking good faith responses and I’m outta here, glossing my eyes and back with the other nonanarchists. Checkmate, I guess.
This seems kind of unnecessary. They’ve been pretty reasonable and polite, and after a quick look at their post history I didn’t see any sign that this was asked in bad faith.
I get that anarchists probably get tired of answering questions, but it also seems like an important part of getting people who aren’t already 100% onboard to better understand anarchy?
It may be a lack of imagination on my part, but I had trouble understanding most of the answers they got too, so I guess I sympathize.
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They backtracked a bit in their later replies, but the original question is exactly the type of contrived theoretical scenario that when you try to also answer it theoretically there is an endless amounts of “gotchas”.
Discussing anarchy theoretically online is IMHO a bit pointless anyways, as there is no agreed canon and every scenario will be always highly context specific.
People will either come to agree with anarchism because they agree with the basic principles (which do not need convincing in arguments) or because they see it working in praxis…
Hmmm le guin
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But that just creates the authority of the status quo. The people who want “nothing new happening” are the ones who win by default. It’s basically entrenched anarchist nimbyism.
Ok, here’s me not being an anarchist, but I think that assuming that all people are not going to be petty and antagonistic is even more utopian that post-scarcity.
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As an answer this comes close to what I’m asking. But I’m not sure. For example, always getting outvoted can mean eventually getting being pushed out of a place can be tyrannical. I don’t think direct democracy has some magical ability to fix things on its own. In any case what I’m asking is if people have thought through these dynamics over time.
eventually getting being pushed out of a place can be tyrannical
The opposite is true. A single person staking out some resource is it’s own tyranny. If the single person’s wants are so far removed from the collective, why are they there?
It’s not magical, it’s the strategy that you use to solve the problems.
Because the were born there? Because they have lived there for 40 years?
But also we might not be talking about an individual, but one or more groups. In keeping with my setting, in any given Greek village there are multiple groups with super volatile competing agendas.
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Good point, you’re right, the social network should help mediate this beyond formalistic notions. Thanks.
Practical answer here: Overall, the aim is to not prevent someone from doing something, so you’re actually checking with everyone if it’s OK to use a space for Purpose X. If a subset want to use it for Purpose Y, they have a meeting with a facilitator. The facilitator does the hard work (there are guides) but overall people just talk about their interests and what they want to achieve. Basically everyone talks until there’s an agreement in place, and this must be unanimous (otherwise people keep talking).
Here’s an example video of a meeting in action, though the aim is there not to make decisions.
Thank you.
Your description doesn’t give me any elements of a community that is trying to organize itself with horizontal principles. It sounds more like random people put together for some reason, trying to solve individual problems, without any sense of good will.
So this doesn’t seem to me like a scarcity problem.
The vast majority of communities are exactly random collections of people. Even a carefully put together intentional community will become random 1-2 generations down the line.
It is true that children don’t necessarily take on the convictions of their parents, but communities are build around structures of common purpose (and not primarily family bonds). What you seem to have in mind is a typical modern suburb with no shared purpose, which is pretty much the opposite of what anarchists think of as communities.
I’m literally thinking of Greek island villages.
And? Look at the economic structures on these islands. They are in no way sustainable and largely depend on outside inputs like tourism or agri-industrial projects that only survive because of EU regulatory protection and outside investors that prey on that. There is very little shared purpose left there.
I don’t know where you’re going with this. People grow up and live in the places that they do, in a network of friends, relatives and extended family. Before becoming “human capital”, the only people that traditionally uproot themselves to leave and intentionally join a community would be monastics.
I haven’t lived in a suburb, but even in cities there are neighborhoods with their community and extended social networks. That’s the common complaint against gentrification for example, that it uproots urban communities.
Living somewhere just because you grew up there is not some byproduct of capitalism, it’s what humans do.
the only people that traditionally uproot themselves to leave and intentionally join a community would be monastics.
This is not supported by the historical record, people in the past have been much more mobile than you think.
Living somewhere just because you grew up there is not some byproduct of capitalism, it’s what humans do.
And it is secondary to the economic conditions. If you live all your life under alienating economic conditions then you have little shared purpose left and there is no such thing as communities where you live.
And it is secondary to the economic conditions. If you live all your life under alienating economic conditions then you have little shared purpose left and there is no such thing as communities where you live.
I don’t think this is accurate. It can be, at specific places, but given that alienating economic conditions is the literally the norm everywhere, I don’t buy the argument that the world is a place without communities without shared purpose. On the contrary, some of the most vibrant communities are those created by exploited working people. Anyway, I’m not sure what the argument here is any more, thanks for your answer regardless.
Just to clarify that I talk about randon people in contrast to people who consciously want to be part of a community with horizontal organization principles.
I think the fediverse already experienced what happens when those problems arise during the canvas event and yet it was still eventually resolved peacefully.
There was limited space on the board and certain structures couldn’t be created somewhere else because it was in relation to something that was in that specific part of the board (the pony blast was a big attraction and the rainbow traveled through a lot of things.) So if you want to see what happens look at one of those time lapses very closely.
Edit: And what was even more interesting about that event is a lot of the negotiation happened without any direct communication where as in this hypothetical community you would be able to talk to those people.
Could you please fix the link? It goes to the creative commons license text.
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Cool, thanks!
