If you at least tried to explain why I’m wrong instead of “you’re wrong, read a book”, maybe I could use your definition of anarchy instead of mine.
The definition I got from this post is “anarchy is when people do the work that they love and they don’t have to worry about being paid enough for that work”. And I don’t think that would result in a stable society, since the demand for some kinds of labor is very different to the amount of people that “love” to do that work.
The reason I say read a book is because you will not learn anything structured and thoughtful in an internet comment section. Too many voices, different levels of academic education, ages, experience, or seriousness.
The foundation for learning about anything is to go to authoratitative sources, to look up terminology etc. It seems very silly, to the degree that it seems bad faith, to form opinions on an ideology without experiencing it in action or reading anything.
It would be like me criticising the standard model of physics, or the power grid, or whatever. I don’t have an opinion on whether we could do better with the power grid because I have never studied it.
Talking about human nature or historical societies, having never engaged with anthology is like talking about the function of the spleen having never opened an anatomy textbook.
I mean straight up underneath that silly wikipedia page fragment you linked is a high level discussion of the flaws of the “tribe” or “tribal stage” as a lens for analysing societies and history and how it’s not taken super seriously anymore because it doesn’t translate well. You’re apparently confident that you know what a chief is - universally - but you can’t give concrete examples or explain why you think a chief is a small king in the style of absolutist or legalist monarchs with evidence their concrete social roles and privileges.
I mean even in recent history, let alone 10s of thousands of years ago, multiple distinct societies were well documented in the Americas with vastly different structures and degrees of privilege among “chiefs” with some acting more like centralised resource distributors and advisors and some as the small kings you imagine.
Anarchy is the absense of hierarchy, there are many schools of anarchy but generally they all agree that involuntary relations wherein one person is elevated above another in terms or access to goods, participation in society, and often fundamentally (as in how these privileges are preserved) the ability to use coercive violence on others.
A well functioning family is anarchic, a friend group is often anarchic, community organisation are frequently anarchic. It is not stupid, it often works. In times of disaster it is almost always people’s fucking rad ability to self organise voluntarily that steps in and saves the day.
All of the examples you mention where anarchy works are small groups of <50 people. This post is talking about anarchy in the scope of an entire labor market. That is thousands of millions of people. The context is way different. Furthermore, all of those examples are small anarchic groups in the context of a non-anarchic society.
A family can be anarchic, but they still can call the police if a family member murders another one.
I won’t read a book just to argue with someone. Each word has thousands of definitions depending on who uses it. Each different person I’ve talked to in this thread has a different definition of what anarchy is. If I read a book about anarchy, I can only argue with the author. I won’t read 1 book per random person on the internet.
I ask a simple question: how is an anarchic system going to defend against foreign and inside enemies? In any other system this is a simple answer, yet for anarchy I’m encountering walls of text that either sidetrack the conversation or give an utopian answer of “everyone would come together and defend eachother” which has no basis in reality.
If you at least tried to explain why I’m wrong instead of “you’re wrong, read a book”, maybe I could use your definition of anarchy instead of mine.
The definition I got from this post is “anarchy is when people do the work that they love and they don’t have to worry about being paid enough for that work”. And I don’t think that would result in a stable society, since the demand for some kinds of labor is very different to the amount of people that “love” to do that work.
The reason I say read a book is because you will not learn anything structured and thoughtful in an internet comment section. Too many voices, different levels of academic education, ages, experience, or seriousness.
The foundation for learning about anything is to go to authoratitative sources, to look up terminology etc. It seems very silly, to the degree that it seems bad faith, to form opinions on an ideology without experiencing it in action or reading anything.
It would be like me criticising the standard model of physics, or the power grid, or whatever. I don’t have an opinion on whether we could do better with the power grid because I have never studied it.
Talking about human nature or historical societies, having never engaged with anthology is like talking about the function of the spleen having never opened an anatomy textbook.
I mean straight up underneath that silly wikipedia page fragment you linked is a high level discussion of the flaws of the “tribe” or “tribal stage” as a lens for analysing societies and history and how it’s not taken super seriously anymore because it doesn’t translate well. You’re apparently confident that you know what a chief is - universally - but you can’t give concrete examples or explain why you think a chief is a small king in the style of absolutist or legalist monarchs with evidence their concrete social roles and privileges.
I mean even in recent history, let alone 10s of thousands of years ago, multiple distinct societies were well documented in the Americas with vastly different structures and degrees of privilege among “chiefs” with some acting more like centralised resource distributors and advisors and some as the small kings you imagine.
Anarchy is the absense of hierarchy, there are many schools of anarchy but generally they all agree that involuntary relations wherein one person is elevated above another in terms or access to goods, participation in society, and often fundamentally (as in how these privileges are preserved) the ability to use coercive violence on others.
A well functioning family is anarchic, a friend group is often anarchic, community organisation are frequently anarchic. It is not stupid, it often works. In times of disaster it is almost always people’s fucking rad ability to self organise voluntarily that steps in and saves the day.
All of the examples you mention where anarchy works are small groups of <50 people. This post is talking about anarchy in the scope of an entire labor market. That is thousands of millions of people. The context is way different. Furthermore, all of those examples are small anarchic groups in the context of a non-anarchic society.
A family can be anarchic, but they still can call the police if a family member murders another one.
I won’t read a book just to argue with someone. Each word has thousands of definitions depending on who uses it. Each different person I’ve talked to in this thread has a different definition of what anarchy is. If I read a book about anarchy, I can only argue with the author. I won’t read 1 book per random person on the internet.
I ask a simple question: how is an anarchic system going to defend against foreign and inside enemies? In any other system this is a simple answer, yet for anarchy I’m encountering walls of text that either sidetrack the conversation or give an utopian answer of “everyone would come together and defend eachother” which has no basis in reality.