[yes, we got a new Andrewism video for Labour Day!]
“Anarchism - a political philosophy and practice that opposes ALL hierarchies along with their ‘justifying’ dogmas and proposes the unending pursuit of anarchy, where free association, self determination, and mutual aid form the basis of our society.”
@cerement came across this video on youtube and had the fediverse discussion leaded into the YT interface through https://github.com/Xyl-AU/Reddit-Comments-for-YouTube (which seems to be removed?! even though I still have it installed)
happy to see an active discussion on this side about this video!
This concept of free association is interesting to me as I’m not very familiar with it. How does it not devolve into warring gangs of people seeking to undo each other’s work?
For example, a group of builders perceives a need for more housing, so they want to build an apartment building at the edge of town. Another group who gardens there is opposed. Clearly there is a need for some process that mediates between these groups. But if not through consensus or democracy, how is this done? Free association seems great for things that are not controversial, but almost any large project is going to be controversial, and there will be a nearly constant need to resolve such disputes. How to do so efficiently and without hierarchical relations is one of the biggest challenges to anarchy, and I don’t see how free association solves this issue.
Anthropology has a lot to teach us on how people dealt with such large-scale endeavors without the state. If there’s conflict, they find a mediator or perhaps hold a meeting between the two groups to hash these things out. Sometimes, two groups would go to war. But anarchy is not merely statelessness, it means a society of consent and collaboration without hierarchy. Previous forms of statelessness may see peoples going to war or exert hierarchy with one another over any sort of disagreement or conflict, but anarchy means means a commitment to figuring out how to settle conflict and disagreements without hierarchy. So yes, anthropology has a lot to teach us on how people dealt with conflict in healthy ways. Sometimes they’d settle conflict in violent ways, but our purpose is to learn from these and do better.
tl;d: how is this done? talk to each other and learn from how people mediated conflict without states.
Would love to see resources on conflict resolution from anarchic societies if anyone has them.
My MIL is a community mediator using nonviolent communication which I highly recommend people read up on if they are interested. It’s interesting and useful stuff.
Well I think part of the answer comes from having a society that is more interconnected than we currently have.
If there were people that were both part of the gardening group and part of the builder’s group then those people would have the necessary common knowledge to be able to satisfy the needs of both groups.
That is part of why I think a society of anarchists necessarily needs people to be educated in ways that make them a lot more generalist than we are now (hence the emphasis most anarchists have with the idea of self-sufficiency).
Edit: Also in the cases where there isn’t significant overlap between the two groups having a third group that does have knowledge of both of them participate in the decision making would also serve the same function.
Yeah I mean there are lots of possible mediation strategies but my experience is that having a formal process of who should be consulted and how disputes get settled does avoid a lot of conflicts and bad feelings. Of course, this does add complexity, places where hierarchies can creep in, and inefficiencies in solving community problems. So there is probably no one perfect system but we may need to experiment with lots of structures to see which has the best balance of features for each specific circumstance.
Maybe I misunderstood but Andrew seems to be indicating that there isn’t a need for formal groups to manage shared resources, and that such groups will naturally arise and disappear based on common interests. But I think there will naturally be factions with different priorities in terms of how common resources should be utilized, just as there are today. Perhaps as you say with a more developed sense of solidarity these problems will lessen but I have a hard time thinking they will disappear.
I am not sure I can envision how this free association concept would work in practice for these controversial issues, but I certainly am interested to see this principle in action on a small scale to find out.
Now I’m not 100% sure of this because I’m working from memory, but I think Kropotkin gave examples for this in “Mutual aid”.
For Eskimos he mentions that anything an individual catches or gathers belongs to the clan as a whole, and then it is redistributed. People living in tribes (with no concept of a separate family) generally live ‘each for all’.
Village communities, on the other hand, recognized only movable property as privately owned, while land belonged to the community, and everything had to be done with the consent of the community.
When disputes did arise, they were treated as communal affairs and mediators were found to pass a resolution. If the resolution was not agreeable to one party, the case would go before the folkmoot and the decision reached was final. The party that had to provide some reparation could either accept, or leave the village and go somewhere else, but there were no law enforcers.
A little less rosy than Kropotkin, and not really anarchist, but Icelanders lived without a state until the late 13th century. They had a (bi)yearly gathering (the “Thing”) where all grievences could be brought forth before the judges and people. When a sentance was passed, it was up to the family of the ‘winner’ to see that the other side accepted it, there was no state figure to force them.
Challenge the assumption: By other means but to a great extent, violence IS being done by our current housing system. Unless you are born into wealth: We’re fucked 6 ways from sunday. There is no middle class, never was.
We have working class, and then we have elites. If you’re not a C-level executive, you are no more secure…in tech I see many of my peers learning this the hard way with wave after wave of layoffs.
So don’t ignore the deaths of, evictions of, destabilization of lives and mental well-being, for all of those working 2 jobs and still not able to make rent. Living in their cars, while exectutives call them lazy and entitled. Dehumanization: check.
In fact, We dont devolve into Anarchism – we advance towards it. It is checks and balances turned up to 11, gardening the weeds against any heirarchy of oppresion that might attempt to emerge.
If any devolving is happening: “Fasicism is capitalism in decay” about describes it.
May we yet preempt it’s barbarism.
Hierarchies are opposed, not mediating third parties nor organization. Ask ten different anarchists and you’ll get twenty methods to approach your thought experiments.
Sure, I’m just wondering what people think about this. The video seems to imply that consensus and particularly majoritarian democracy won’t be necessary but I’m not sold on this.