Just a topic to chat about.
“the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/j-r-r-tolkien-from-a-letter-to-christopher-tolkien Found the whole letter. Tolkien was clearly against industrialisation and the modernity. He prefered the shire which is anarchist, the have no government. Seeing the ring as a metaphor of absolute power is a fair reading and the only way to save middle earth is to destroy the symbol of ultimate power. There are anti authoritarian themes throughout the legendarium. Sauron is the ultimate dictator who wants to order the world as he wishes. Using power to overthrow him will lead to a new dictator rising up. The power needs to be destroyed for peace to be possible. His view on kings seemed to be: you can sit on a throne but leave us alone. Analysing tolkiens work through an anarchist lens makes more sense than one might think
I love this quote
Makes me wonder why he was allegedly a monarchist. Don’t mean that as a gotcha, it’s just funny I’ve seen anarchomonarchism attributed to him
I would love to live in an anarchist society! I just don’t know how to get there, it seems like to many people prefer the current situation. And I also want everyone to be able to live as they please. Maybe if things get bad enough under capitalism, but it feels like most people will jump on the other side and the far right will benefit from it.
I would take significant cultural change, the kind of change capitalists will do their damnedest to prevent. People have to first believe a world not based on mutual exploitation is even possible.
There is. I’d say it actually goes right in most cases. Like, assuming you had a decent childhood, your parents had power over you and it went right. And went way better than it would have if no one had power over you. Of course one can also have shitty parents, but saying it always goes wrong is over the top. Imo instead we should discuss in what contexts who should have what amount of power over whom, keeping everything as liberal as possible, but also have systems of power in place where necessary.
Everyone that argues against anarchist positions immediately goes to the parent/child relationship. For sake of argument, let’s ignore this one (out of millions) specific situation biologically imposed on us. Now does the statement seem to be more true?
Of course I don’t expect you to agree if your not anarchist, I didn’t post this (or event this rebuttal really) to change your mind, I posted it to plant seeds and make people wonder.
To add, many anarchists specifically criticize the parent / child hierarchy as one that is also deserving of deconstruction. See for example all the posts on https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/topic/youth-liberation.
Children should not be subordinate to adults.
That’s why we have the decentralisation principle… I could’ve swore I put it here somewhere.
Fully agree. My ability to have access to healthcare, housing, food, water, and transportation is all at the mercy of my employer providing me paychecks for my time and service. This is a problem, they can just fire me when im not profitable or effective for them anymore, and all of these needs I have, now are in question of how i can get them.
And I would consider myself in a privileged position already.
This concept for me highly relates to veganism. I dont feel right paying sombody to kill an animal for me to eat it, I have the ability and am in the position to NOT eat bodies of innocent animals, So i do so because I can at least control that.
but i cant control money, i need my job for my family to be able to get resources they need. I hate capitalism, but i have mouths to feed and I dont have other options.
I’m personally on the fence regarding anarchism, but I don’t think it matters right now. People should unionize, protest (not wishy-washy boycotts, actual protests). If the balance of power stirs to the people, then we worry what is the next course of action.
I agree, while I’m full anarcho-communist I don’t think we can get there directly from here. I support unions and vote for Biden while I hold my nose.
There’s no way for no one to have power over anyone without someone violently seizing power. That’s why people have power over other people in the first place, and I’m not aware of any satisfactory solution.
This is the question I have never heard an answer to and I can’t understand how one can support the concept of anarchy while it is unresolved. How does anarchy not inherently devolve into feudalism?
Violent siezure of power isn’t even the only mode of breakdown. People’s needs and circumstances vary. People in need will turn to those with incidental power and, poof, you have lords again.
The whole thing smells of meritocracy or world peace. The idea of a perfectly level playing field is utopian.
Anarchism is not simply the lack of rules / rulers. Anarchists believe in tearing down vertical power structures (hierarchies) and replacing them with horizontal egalitarian structures. We believe that society should structure along the lines of small unions of workers and neighbors and artists and whatever who gather freely to advocate for their own needs and desires and to coordinate efforts. These unions or communes if you’d prefer, would federate alongside other unions/communes to create a federation that works together to meet the needs of all. Should that federation stop meeting the needs of all or should new needs arise then the unions can defederate and federate with others.
This serves two purposes. 1.) It prevents these federations from becoming new governments (you can leave at any time) and 2.) It provides a system of organization that allows smaller groups to stand up to threats.
For a real life example that we are all familiar with. There exists this Anarchist “nation” called The Fediverse and recently a war lord by the name of Meta who attempted to infiltrate the federation of the Fediverse and the people recognized that this would upset the balance of our new egalitarian way of life. So all of the largest unions (servers) of the Fediverse organized and formed a new coalition to unite against Meta and prevent them from gaining control and shut them out of the process entirely. Thus they were able to protect the Fediverse and keep it going.
That’s how Anarchism will protect itself from outside influence.
That’s not the question, though. There will always be imbalances of power. Transitioning to a “nonhierarchical” society just ends up with a bunch of power dynamics festering while no one talks about them because they’re not supposed to exist. Obviously there’s such a thing as too much concentrated power, but having spent fairly significant time in contexts where people believe there’s no hierarchy, I like my hierarchies out where I can see them, rather than waiting to stab me from the shadows.
Plus, there’s the warlord problem: Other people don’t stop using hierarchy just because you do.
If the state were to suddenly disappear, yes, I’d agree with you. Humans have existed for hundreds of thousands of years, most of that without a state, and with many groups living in what were likely arguably something like anarcho-communist societies (check out The Dawn Of Everything from David Graeber). Warlords are a symptom of a power vacuum.
Cultural slaves need support, time, and healing before anything close to freedom can happen. They will immediately go insane and reforge their chains.
Oh, days old post that died. oops
Agree to disagree, and I won’t live in or interfere with your anarchist utopia, k?
what you are describing is the tyranny of structurelessness
and you are correct. structure is impossible to escape. but general hierarchy is not. I’m defining that as a structure in which one party has general powers to control another party, like police.
the opposite would be specific hierarchy - a structure in which a party has power over other parties only in prescribed circumstances, like a bouncer deciding when a person must leave a bar. within the structure of our society, that bouncer can’t leave the bar and start forcing people into or out of other locations. a cop more or less can do that.
therefore, it’s not a given that a “nonhierarchical” society is one of implicit structure. the most successful “nonhierarchical” society would be explicitly structured and would have robust checks and balances through specific hierarchies.
for example, a subject matter expert should probably have preferential influence on decisions within their subject over non-experts. certain amounts of violence may always be necessary, so perhaps certain resources need guards. those guards would not be deciding policy, but they would be administering a pre-designed system of resource access, with the power to enforce that system if someone is trying to hoard that resource. (I’m not certain force will always be necessary, but it’s perfectly believable.)
the best structures would discourage power accumulation with distributed responsibilities and self-improving systems (“laws” that prescribe their own revisions, theoretically with certain provisions that prevent regression toward allowing power accumulating behavior). these structures are not impossible, they’re just difficult to design and they are typically hated by power-seeking parties.
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Anarchist philosopher and writer Pyotr Kropotkin wrote this amazing article called “Are we good enough” and I’m going to copy paste part of it here because it’s really relevant to your point about preventing bad people from taking over
Men are not good enough for Communism, but are they good enough for Capitalism? If all men were good-hearted, kind, and just, they would never exploit one another, although possessing the means of doing so. With such men the private ownership of capital would be no danger. The capitalist would hasten to share his profits with the workers, and the best-remunerated workers with those suffering from occasional causes. If men were provident they would not produce velvet and articles of luxury while food is wanted in cottages: they would not build palaces as long as there are slums.
If men had a deeply developed feeling of equity they would not oppress other men. Politicians would not cheat their electors; Parliament would not be a chattering and cheating box, and Charles Warren’s policemen would refuse to bludgeon the Trafalgar Square talkers and listeners. And if men were gallant, self-respecting, and less egotistic, even a bad capitalist would not be a danger; the workers would have soon reduced him to the role of a simple comrade-manager. Even a King would not be dangerous, because the people would merely consider him as a fellow unable to do better work, and therefore entrusted with signing some stupid papers sent out to other cranks calling themselves Kings.
But men are not those free-minded, independent, provident, loving, and compassionate fellows which we should like to see them. And precisely, therefore, they must not continue living under the present system which permits them to oppress and exploit one another
To answer the question you presented at the end of your comment, Kropotkin says no. There is no way to prevent this and thus we must destroy the positions of power to stop men from using it to oppress others.
Full link to Are We Good Enough
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-are-we-good-enough
And in video format for those who prefer to listen instead of read
But how do we convince others of this?
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It’s been awhile since I read this so I’m going to mess up the details so I apologize. But I believe it was in the book Debt the first 5000 years that David Graeber shares a story from an African tribe that he had an account of.
In this tribe it was custom that if someone remarked on something or asked for something that the people of the village were obligated to give it to the asker. And there was a man in this tribe who every day would go to the fisher and comment on the best fish they had caught so if course the fisherman were obligated to give it to him. And then he’d visit the weavers and comment on the best basket they had. And so on and so forth up and down the coast he would do this and everyone knew who he was and that he would do this and the merchants got upset and got together to decide what to do. Custom says they cannot refuse him when he asks so they concluded that there was only one logical and egalitarian thing left to do. And so they formed a mob and killed the guy.
So what do you do if someone is shitting up stream and won’t stop? First you try talking to them. If that doesn’t work then you get your union to talk to their federation to pressure them into cooperating. And if all else fails then we fight to protect our health and our way of life. Anarchism isn’t pacifism. We can protect ourselves from those who will destroy our way of life and oppress others.
We don’t. We just relocate slightly upstream and now they have to drink our shit!
It should be noted that the Stanford Prison Experiment has been pretty thoroughly debunked over the years and its results are of very questionable utility. The Britannica article does mention the criticism, but sadly it still presents the study in a more “trustworthy” light than it really should be.
See eg. https://www.letexier.org/IMG/pdf/LeTexier_Debunking-the-SPE_American-Psychologist_2019.pdf
