Questions on Anarchism
This is a response to aditya's comment on my most recent article.
First of all, I'd like to say that it's great to be able to talk with intelligent reasonable people about anarchism, because it's pretty much impossible to develop an understanding of something without debate. I'm also starting to realize that, although anarchism has been around as a coherent philosophy for over a century, there are still lots of holes that need to be filled in. So in some ways I feel like I'm actually treading new ground in some of my discussions, and in that context, dissenting opinions are almost essential.
With regard to your questions, I've tried to address them as thoroughly as possible. However, like I said, some of these ideas are actually not very developed within the school of anarchist thought (at least as far as I know), so I'll mostly be drawing from my own interpretations. Not to be said that there are no ideas, just that the majority of anarchists (including myself) aren't actually that familiar with the ideas of 19th century anarchists, and even if they were, they would probably be relatively outdated. Secondly, anarchists differ drastically in their beliefs about the nature of humans and the particular applications in human society. So I really can't represent the actually opinions of all or even most anarchists.
There are quite a few schools of thought that deal with the economics of potential anarchist societies. In fact, the anarcho-capitalists have no problem with capitalism (as long as it's completely unregulated), as the name implies. However, I won't be discussing their beliefs, since the right wing anarchists are pretty much just insane (I mean, nobody in their right mind actually thinks privatizing the police is a good idea). In terms of productivity, it's kind of subjective. For example, a certain economy can produce quite a bit, but if the products aren't supplied to the people who need them, the productivity is really useless. I know that's a simplistic interpretation of economics, but a more complex analysis would require a much longer essay, and I would probably need to know quite a bit more about economics. In fact, although I've only taken one class on econ, I imagine that there probably aren't that many classes that deal with "productivity" in ways that actually take into account helping out people. I could be wrong.
However, like you said, if society was structured in the way that you suggested was the natural result of anarchy, then it would be completely impossible to be as productive as our current economic system. The problem is that in order to create the right kinds and amounts of products, you need massive coordination. Small, isolated groups can't create in bulk, and even if they were able to, they couldn't very well figure out what would be best for everything without constant and aggressive communication with the rest of the world. In fact, the highly coordinated Soviet Union was much better off economically before it underwent massive liberalization in the 80s. As much as I disagree with the centralized character of that particular atrocity, the fact is, some of the economics were sound, for precisely the reasons I've been discussing. But I've gotten ahead of myself; I'll get more into the proposed material structures of anarchy later on. Either way, I'd be interested in reading the book you suggested to get a better view of the whole matter (wikipedia didn't really give me much information).
If you want to know more about specific economic policies that different types of anarchists propose, wikipedia has a pretty good introduction here. There are georgist anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists, anarcho-communists, individualist anarchists, and more. Although I can't reasonably talk about the efficiency of each of these economic models, the links might explain a little about their aims (also, this link about participatory economics might be of interest; although it is not explicitly anarchism, it's definitely very compatible with it).
I tend to attribute the function of any given society to the economic, political and social structure more than to the motivations of the individuals within it. However, technically motivations are a subset of the social structure of a society, and I'll leave it to you to assume how large of a subset it is. Anyways, if the main motivations of capitalists is "a moralistic obsession with hard work and 'deserving what you get'" then the corresponding motivation for anarchists would be "a strong sense of self-determination coupled with a desire for solidarity and cooperation". That's a little vague and probably sounds a little too lofty for the average human being to follow, but I don't really see how the same argument can't be made for the capitalist motivations (at least if you asked a disinterested third-party observer).
There are almost as many different ideas about the political and social organization of anarchism societies as there are about economics. The two most notable that come to mind are primitivism, federalism, and regionalism. There's a pretty good description of the latter two here (and if you really want to get an in-depth knowledge, a lot of the books cited, especially Proudhon's, should be illuminating). Now, these approaches for the most part confirm your suspicion in some ways. Primitivism, which I actually have spent a good deal of time researching before I thoroughly rejected it (for reasons which I don't really need to go over), is pretty much exactly what you're describing, and regionalism is not too different. My interpretation is that the breaking down of society into affinity groups does not literally mean the destruction of urban areas and the establishment of hundreds of millions of tiny 12-person communes around the world. I see it as more of an administrative and economic partitioning. The biggest structural changes I foresee are the workers taking control of the workplaces, and more specifically the factories (although I know the US is post-industrial and more of a service economy, but we're talking globally here), which hopefully will avoid the capitalist oppression of most of the west and the government-controlled mess of the USSR and other "communist" countries. It will also hopefully avoid the need for the tiny sectarian communes you're so worried about (again, sorry for the simplistic analysis). As for the politic changes I can't even attempt to do a basic explanation. However, this guy can:
"Solicit men's view in the mass, and they will return stupid, fickle and violent answers; solicit their views as members of definite groups with real solidarity and a distinctive character, and their answers will be responsible and wise. Expose them to the political 'language' of mass democracy, which represents 'the people' as unitary and undivided and minorities as traitors, and they will give birth to tyranny; expose them to the political language of federalism, in which the people figures as a diversified aggregate of real associations, and they will resist tyranny to the end."
It's a nice little quote. Now I can't really go into more detail because I literally haven't managed to find anything more detailed than the sweeping generalizations our the anarchist "founding fathers". Now I personal think the reason for this absence is not do to internal inconsistencies within anarchism, but rather due to a complete rejection for what you call "ideological authoritarianism". Although this a very sound policy in my eyes, it ironically causes one of the two most serious problems facing modern anarchist movements, both of which will be discussed in the following paragraphs.
The irony of this ideological libertarianism is that in this case it leads to striking similarities with what might be the most egregious form of absolutism that exists: Christianity. By rejecting the idea that we can accurately describe what a state of anarchy would be like, we are inadvertently attributing a certain magical quality to it. The language of anarchists is one that appeals to pretty much all human beings (in fact, some of the language we use was cleverly exploited by the founding fathers of the USA, and is still used today as gross caricatures of freedom and justice), but due to our natural hesitancy to arrogantly dictate the conditions for anarchy, we are left simply with the rhetoric. In this form, anarchy is indistinguishable from the Christian idea of heaven (although perhaps slightly more concrete).
The second problem with anarchism as it currently exists, happens to bring the similarity with Christianity even closer. This lies in the complete reject of the current society, and one-minded focus on the One Big Revolution. This idea draws from the very worse streams of Marxist vanguardism that should make any self-respecting anarchist sick. The idea of one momentous shift in world politics leading to the "heaven" that is anarchy seems like was plucked straight out of the book of revelations. The analogy is so obvious, that I almost don't need to spell it out. In some ways, the anarchists are waiting for the rapture. Of course, I would argue that we are not nearly as far gone as the Christians, but it is still a problem that needs to be addressed.
I've very worried about the similarities between some aspects of anarchism and Christianity not simply because I hate Christianity and everything that has to do with it, but because of serious implications on the present and future of the movement. The vagueness of the predictions for a future society and the idle preparation for its coming can cause serious atrophy in the theoretical and practical foundations of the movement, respectively. However, I am confident that, although these problems are very serious, they are not so fundamentally ingrained in the movement that it is impossible to overcome. Anyways, this stuff is really only interesting to anarchists probably, so I'll get back to the issue at hand.
And the issue at hand is...
Human Nature.
Anarchists have had an interesting relationship with human nature, as is expected for any radical philosophy, or really any philosophy (but I believe that any real philosophy should be radical). I'm not exactly sure if there's a consensus among anarchists about human nature (there rarely is) but I personally agree with your conception of it. It is impossible to say exactly what it is, because in order to do so, you would need to examine man in a completely natural state; a state that does not in fact exist. The only way you can reasonably talk "human nature" is be describing/predicting the way human beings respond to a certain situation. I think most people would agree that the same person will react drastically differently depending on the situation they finds themself in. I think one of the aims of political philosophy is to determine what organization of society is such that it creates the best situation for the most amount of people to act right. If I were to phrase it more broadly (which I won't) the resulting generalization would probably be the only aim of political philosophy.
I'm not confident to definitively say what situation is most conducive to causing good behavior, but I don't think it's a capitalistic one and I don't think it's an authoritarian one. That's more or less why I'm an anarchist. I believe that direct action, not appeal to a higher power, is the most effective way to accomplish your goals. Of course, just because you're not submitting to authority, that doesn't mean that you're not cooperating. On the contrary, horizontal associations induce cooperation, rather than inhibit them. If you are on the same level as someone else, and you have similar interests (as people in similar situations are wont to do) then you're likely to work with your equals to accomplish similar goals. Anyways, it appears that I'm saying this with certainty simply because the text flows more easily: I do not mean to imply that I am 100 percent sure about any of this. Furthermore, I apologize for the trillionth time for being overly simplistic. For a more detailed account of the practice of modern anarchist societies, find about any book on the Spanish Revolution that has an overtly anarchist viewpoint.
Finally, on the current turmoil in Africa, I don't think I know enough to address that issue directly. I also would like to note that the mainstream accepted meaning for anarchy doesn't not have anything to do with the tenets of anarchism or the society that anarchists predict. The phrase you're probably looking for is "violent anomie" which is really actually a pretty good descriptor of places other than those in Africa, such as the U.S.A (each of the letters in USA has a link to a different symptom of our particular case of anomie).
On the subject of transition to anarchic societies, I would also like to direct you to the Spanish Revolution. It was by no means a complete transition, but there are reasons to believe had the fascists not been around, and the communists didn't meddle, it would have gone through and it would have been a relatively peaceful revolution. But that's just speculation. The current goal of anarchists with regards to an ultimate revolution is creating the foundations of the "new society" in isolated pockets with the current one. If enough people in this country internalized anarchist ideas (or at the very least semi-anarchist practices such as direct action, voter abstention, cooperation, self-determination, worker-controlled companies etc...) then a violent revolution would not be necessary. The history of the world has had a few non-violent revolutions, so there's some sort of precedent for this type of thing. Ultimately, if enough people support an overthrow of the government, the powers-that-be have no choice but to concede. In that situation, the only thing that could lead to violence is the government having too strong of a desire, and the only country that could possible succeed in squashing a popular uprising is the USA (what with the billions of dollars being spent in the military yearly). Either way, I think truly anarchist society can not possibly come out of violence. If you would like a more detailed analysis of why, I can give it to you, but right now I'm really tired of typing.
First of all, I'd like to say that it's great to be able to talk with intelligent reasonable people about anarchism, because it's pretty much impossible to develop an understanding of something without debate. I'm also starting to realize that, although anarchism has been around as a coherent philosophy for over a century, there are still lots of holes that need to be filled in. So in some ways I feel like I'm actually treading new ground in some of my discussions, and in that context, dissenting opinions are almost essential.
With regard to your questions, I've tried to address them as thoroughly as possible. However, like I said, some of these ideas are actually not very developed within the school of anarchist thought (at least as far as I know), so I'll mostly be drawing from my own interpretations. Not to be said that there are no ideas, just that the majority of anarchists (including myself) aren't actually that familiar with the ideas of 19th century anarchists, and even if they were, they would probably be relatively outdated. Secondly, anarchists differ drastically in their beliefs about the nature of humans and the particular applications in human society. So I really can't represent the actually opinions of all or even most anarchists.
There are quite a few schools of thought that deal with the economics of potential anarchist societies. In fact, the anarcho-capitalists have no problem with capitalism (as long as it's completely unregulated), as the name implies. However, I won't be discussing their beliefs, since the right wing anarchists are pretty much just insane (I mean, nobody in their right mind actually thinks privatizing the police is a good idea). In terms of productivity, it's kind of subjective. For example, a certain economy can produce quite a bit, but if the products aren't supplied to the people who need them, the productivity is really useless. I know that's a simplistic interpretation of economics, but a more complex analysis would require a much longer essay, and I would probably need to know quite a bit more about economics. In fact, although I've only taken one class on econ, I imagine that there probably aren't that many classes that deal with "productivity" in ways that actually take into account helping out people. I could be wrong.
However, like you said, if society was structured in the way that you suggested was the natural result of anarchy, then it would be completely impossible to be as productive as our current economic system. The problem is that in order to create the right kinds and amounts of products, you need massive coordination. Small, isolated groups can't create in bulk, and even if they were able to, they couldn't very well figure out what would be best for everything without constant and aggressive communication with the rest of the world. In fact, the highly coordinated Soviet Union was much better off economically before it underwent massive liberalization in the 80s. As much as I disagree with the centralized character of that particular atrocity, the fact is, some of the economics were sound, for precisely the reasons I've been discussing. But I've gotten ahead of myself; I'll get more into the proposed material structures of anarchy later on. Either way, I'd be interested in reading the book you suggested to get a better view of the whole matter (wikipedia didn't really give me much information).
If you want to know more about specific economic policies that different types of anarchists propose, wikipedia has a pretty good introduction here. There are georgist anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists, anarcho-communists, individualist anarchists, and more. Although I can't reasonably talk about the efficiency of each of these economic models, the links might explain a little about their aims (also, this link about participatory economics might be of interest; although it is not explicitly anarchism, it's definitely very compatible with it).
I tend to attribute the function of any given society to the economic, political and social structure more than to the motivations of the individuals within it. However, technically motivations are a subset of the social structure of a society, and I'll leave it to you to assume how large of a subset it is. Anyways, if the main motivations of capitalists is "a moralistic obsession with hard work and 'deserving what you get'" then the corresponding motivation for anarchists would be "a strong sense of self-determination coupled with a desire for solidarity and cooperation". That's a little vague and probably sounds a little too lofty for the average human being to follow, but I don't really see how the same argument can't be made for the capitalist motivations (at least if you asked a disinterested third-party observer).
There are almost as many different ideas about the political and social organization of anarchism societies as there are about economics. The two most notable that come to mind are primitivism, federalism, and regionalism. There's a pretty good description of the latter two here (and if you really want to get an in-depth knowledge, a lot of the books cited, especially Proudhon's, should be illuminating). Now, these approaches for the most part confirm your suspicion in some ways. Primitivism, which I actually have spent a good deal of time researching before I thoroughly rejected it (for reasons which I don't really need to go over), is pretty much exactly what you're describing, and regionalism is not too different. My interpretation is that the breaking down of society into affinity groups does not literally mean the destruction of urban areas and the establishment of hundreds of millions of tiny 12-person communes around the world. I see it as more of an administrative and economic partitioning. The biggest structural changes I foresee are the workers taking control of the workplaces, and more specifically the factories (although I know the US is post-industrial and more of a service economy, but we're talking globally here), which hopefully will avoid the capitalist oppression of most of the west and the government-controlled mess of the USSR and other "communist" countries. It will also hopefully avoid the need for the tiny sectarian communes you're so worried about (again, sorry for the simplistic analysis). As for the politic changes I can't even attempt to do a basic explanation. However, this guy can:
"Solicit men's view in the mass, and they will return stupid, fickle and violent answers; solicit their views as members of definite groups with real solidarity and a distinctive character, and their answers will be responsible and wise. Expose them to the political 'language' of mass democracy, which represents 'the people' as unitary and undivided and minorities as traitors, and they will give birth to tyranny; expose them to the political language of federalism, in which the people figures as a diversified aggregate of real associations, and they will resist tyranny to the end."
It's a nice little quote. Now I can't really go into more detail because I literally haven't managed to find anything more detailed than the sweeping generalizations our the anarchist "founding fathers". Now I personal think the reason for this absence is not do to internal inconsistencies within anarchism, but rather due to a complete rejection for what you call "ideological authoritarianism". Although this a very sound policy in my eyes, it ironically causes one of the two most serious problems facing modern anarchist movements, both of which will be discussed in the following paragraphs.
The irony of this ideological libertarianism is that in this case it leads to striking similarities with what might be the most egregious form of absolutism that exists: Christianity. By rejecting the idea that we can accurately describe what a state of anarchy would be like, we are inadvertently attributing a certain magical quality to it. The language of anarchists is one that appeals to pretty much all human beings (in fact, some of the language we use was cleverly exploited by the founding fathers of the USA, and is still used today as gross caricatures of freedom and justice), but due to our natural hesitancy to arrogantly dictate the conditions for anarchy, we are left simply with the rhetoric. In this form, anarchy is indistinguishable from the Christian idea of heaven (although perhaps slightly more concrete).
The second problem with anarchism as it currently exists, happens to bring the similarity with Christianity even closer. This lies in the complete reject of the current society, and one-minded focus on the One Big Revolution. This idea draws from the very worse streams of Marxist vanguardism that should make any self-respecting anarchist sick. The idea of one momentous shift in world politics leading to the "heaven" that is anarchy seems like was plucked straight out of the book of revelations. The analogy is so obvious, that I almost don't need to spell it out. In some ways, the anarchists are waiting for the rapture. Of course, I would argue that we are not nearly as far gone as the Christians, but it is still a problem that needs to be addressed.
I've very worried about the similarities between some aspects of anarchism and Christianity not simply because I hate Christianity and everything that has to do with it, but because of serious implications on the present and future of the movement. The vagueness of the predictions for a future society and the idle preparation for its coming can cause serious atrophy in the theoretical and practical foundations of the movement, respectively. However, I am confident that, although these problems are very serious, they are not so fundamentally ingrained in the movement that it is impossible to overcome. Anyways, this stuff is really only interesting to anarchists probably, so I'll get back to the issue at hand.
And the issue at hand is...
Human Nature.
Anarchists have had an interesting relationship with human nature, as is expected for any radical philosophy, or really any philosophy (but I believe that any real philosophy should be radical). I'm not exactly sure if there's a consensus among anarchists about human nature (there rarely is) but I personally agree with your conception of it. It is impossible to say exactly what it is, because in order to do so, you would need to examine man in a completely natural state; a state that does not in fact exist. The only way you can reasonably talk "human nature" is be describing/predicting the way human beings respond to a certain situation. I think most people would agree that the same person will react drastically differently depending on the situation they finds themself in. I think one of the aims of political philosophy is to determine what organization of society is such that it creates the best situation for the most amount of people to act right. If I were to phrase it more broadly (which I won't) the resulting generalization would probably be the only aim of political philosophy.
I'm not confident to definitively say what situation is most conducive to causing good behavior, but I don't think it's a capitalistic one and I don't think it's an authoritarian one. That's more or less why I'm an anarchist. I believe that direct action, not appeal to a higher power, is the most effective way to accomplish your goals. Of course, just because you're not submitting to authority, that doesn't mean that you're not cooperating. On the contrary, horizontal associations induce cooperation, rather than inhibit them. If you are on the same level as someone else, and you have similar interests (as people in similar situations are wont to do) then you're likely to work with your equals to accomplish similar goals. Anyways, it appears that I'm saying this with certainty simply because the text flows more easily: I do not mean to imply that I am 100 percent sure about any of this. Furthermore, I apologize for the trillionth time for being overly simplistic. For a more detailed account of the practice of modern anarchist societies, find about any book on the Spanish Revolution that has an overtly anarchist viewpoint.
Finally, on the current turmoil in Africa, I don't think I know enough to address that issue directly. I also would like to note that the mainstream accepted meaning for anarchy doesn't not have anything to do with the tenets of anarchism or the society that anarchists predict. The phrase you're probably looking for is "violent anomie" which is really actually a pretty good descriptor of places other than those in Africa, such as the U.S.A (each of the letters in USA has a link to a different symptom of our particular case of anomie).
On the subject of transition to anarchic societies, I would also like to direct you to the Spanish Revolution. It was by no means a complete transition, but there are reasons to believe had the fascists not been around, and the communists didn't meddle, it would have gone through and it would have been a relatively peaceful revolution. But that's just speculation. The current goal of anarchists with regards to an ultimate revolution is creating the foundations of the "new society" in isolated pockets with the current one. If enough people in this country internalized anarchist ideas (or at the very least semi-anarchist practices such as direct action, voter abstention, cooperation, self-determination, worker-controlled companies etc...) then a violent revolution would not be necessary. The history of the world has had a few non-violent revolutions, so there's some sort of precedent for this type of thing. Ultimately, if enough people support an overthrow of the government, the powers-that-be have no choice but to concede. In that situation, the only thing that could lead to violence is the government having too strong of a desire, and the only country that could possible succeed in squashing a popular uprising is the USA (what with the billions of dollars being spent in the military yearly). Either way, I think truly anarchist society can not possibly come out of violence. If you would like a more detailed analysis of why, I can give it to you, but right now I'm really tired of typing.
posted by Denial so Fragile it Fractures at 5:11 PM
4 Comments:
OK, well here is a sort of summary of my criticism of assuming that anarchy can achieve "self-determination coupled with a desire for solidarity and cooperation":
Anthropologically speaking, if you take a look at all the small, non-centralized societies that have existed for the past century, you will find that almost all of them are strongly hierarchical and socially restrictive--allocating individuals to roles based on gender, age, lineage, race or other arbitrary classifiers.
This is enforced not by a government, but replaced simply by extremely rigid "social laws" such religion, tradition, taboo, violence and the threat of osrtacism.
Although these societies provides certainly a sort of economic "self-determination" in the sense that almost all members of these societies can achieve similar levels of eocnomic prosperity (sort of by the law of natural equality, because it is difficult to accumulate capital or monopolize sections of the eocnomy in small communal, economic systems), there is a very high level of intellectual/social authoritarianism.
Societies don't need mere physical violence of governments to be coercive. Imagine how even small group situations, say a classroom, a group of people arguing, can become highly socially violent and coercive and intellectually restrictive.
It is easy to dismiss this argument by saying, "oh well these tribal groups are primitive people, and educated, enlightened anrachic groups would respect individual intellectual freedom". I think this is a very dangerous assumption. Take a look at the "Asch line studies" and "Milgram Obedience studies" to see how prone, even in small, educated groups, individuals are to hierarchy, intellectual opression and obedience. I think this is a major concern for anarchy, and one that too many anarchists approach overly idealistically. I'm not trying to put forward the opposite, the typical assumption of "chaos in the absence of govt"; on the contrary, these anarchic societies are highly ordered. But you can definitely not assume self-determination in small, non-centralized groups. On the contrary, I think these modes of social organization *require* intellectual/social restriction to function coherently, because no large-scale, fluid market forces exists to allocate people to neccessary socioeconmic roles.
This is mitigated though, by the fact that much of the social funtioning in these societies can be attribtued not to social coercion but indiviudal, voluntary cooperation. I do agree that some sort of spirit of solidarity seems likely in non-centralized, small group societies.
Anarchists, however, should not ignore the other element, of social coercion, involved in anarchy.
Capitalism, in the extreme-libertarian sense, however offers complete intellectual freedom but severe economic restriction and inequality. This is ironic, because libertarian capitalism is based on hyper-meritocracy; unfortunately inter-generational accumulation of capital and social advantage--sacred elements of the cult of private property--cause a fundamental inequity between individuals. Intellectual life is unrestricted. There is, in this society, only one law--that of private property.
I think, however, the problem of economic inequity can be significantly alleviated--largely through improved social services and education. btw, the US is not a purely capitalist sytem, but somewhere between mechanical and organic, between libertarian and statist, between anarchic and centralized, organization. So I'm not trying to defend American capitalism here. I think there should be instituted major inheritance taxation laws.
So it seems a tradeoff. With extreme libertarian capitalism you get intellectual/social freedom but economic inequity. With anarchy you get economic equality and freedom but intellectual/social restriction (there are a number of reasons which i am happy to elaborate if you dont think so). This is sort my derivation from Durkheim's theory of the mechanical/primitive/small-group society and the organic/modern/capitalist society.
However, I'm inclined to prefer capitalism because the absolute levels of affluence it offers to even the poorest members of society is potentially higher than that offered to the richest in anarchic, equitable society. I also think that economic equity/freedom is not as important as intellectual freedom/equity provided that all members of society are provided with some bearable minimum level of socioeconomic conditions.
Indeed, it is often those governemnts and ideologies obsessed with assuring constant eqaliity that tend to become fascist. Even when they offer economic equality, the absolute standard of living has been quite poor. I realize that communism is not anarchism, but they contain many similar elements--particularly the emphasis on communalized economies and constantly equal economic conditions.
I could elaborate a lot of these points further, but yea, thats that in my opinion.
aditya
Very informative and interesting article. I had not really considered the parallels between the Christian heaven and the anarchist notion of the ideal society. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.
hey sorry my response has taken a while, i've been kind of busy. anyways, i'll put up a response sometime in the next couple days.
The long-awaited response to Aditya's pitiful defense of capitalism is now available on the main page. It's not nearly as good as I wanted (and there are a number of interesting issues that I would like to address at a later were date were revealed to me during my final drafting phase) but I decided to finish it before I abandoned the project. Anyways, enjoy.
Post a Comment
<< Home