Hacker News Reader

Comment by sudosysgen | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure this is true. Not only were humans very loosely hierarchical essentially until the invention of agriculture, but anarchism doesn't advocate for arbitrary and informal authority, but for limited in any authority at all unless absolutely necessary, in which case it must be directly kept in check.

View on HN

> Not only were humans very loosely hierarchical essentially until the invention of agricultur

Even if they were both this and peaceful then, this would only imply that we merely need to dismantle agriculture and the civilization dependent on it to return to that state, which I submit is an unacceptable trade-off to most people.

And even if it was acceptable to most people, it would take only a small minority opting out to retain the power to subjugate everyone opting-in and ruin the whole effort.

That doesn't follow from the principle. We don't need to dismantle agriculture or anything else, you can also have technological anarchic societies and indeed they exist.

What it means is that hierarchies are not necessary for human organization.

> you can also have technological anarchic societies and indeed they exist.

Where?

The Zapatistas are an example.

The Zapatista-governed area is at best parasitically technological (it uses imported technology, but neither creates nor maintains much of a technical base).

It certainly might be legitimately viewed as a step up for the most systemically disenfranchised, exploited, impoverished communities, but it's not a demonstration of a way that a technological society can be maintained.

That hierarchical structures became dominant after the invention of agriculture does not imply that agriculture necessitates hierarchical structures.

> And even if it was acceptable to most people, it would take only a small minority opting out to retain the power to subjugate everyone opting-in and ruin the whole effort.

Could you expand on this?

Regarding humans being organized very loosely until agriculture personally I wouldn't consider that as a plus.

We're on HN, just think about the pace of human development before agriculture and after. We were pretty much doing the same thing for half a million years and then in 10000 years: rockets in space! ;-)

Sure, but that still directly goes against the argument that humans are naturally hierarchical, because they aren't.

And there are ways to have agriculture and industry and compounding scientific advancements without having rigid hierarchies, are there not?

They are hierarchical. All primates are. Agriculture just revealed the need for a level of social structure no other species on Earth could achieve before.

Regarding your follow-up question, maybe there are ways to achieve the same thing with a radically different social structure. The problem with social changes on this scale is that they are extremely disruptive. I'd rather reform and improve iteratively than rewrite the whole code base ;-)

You should consider the issues of iteratively improving the same code base, pushing to prod for hundreds of years!

Primate dominance hierarchies are weak, accountable, and constantly challenged, and not even necessary in humans which exhibit other behaviors depending on nature. As a consequences, hierarchy is not necessary in humans and not inherent.

That being said, there are ways to move into anarchism that aren't that disruptive as long as the dominant power structure doesn't decide to violently repress it. Syndicalism into market socialism into anarchism is a common one.

I'd be curious where anarchism was applied on a large scale for more than a generation and the result was good.

Regarding the code analogy, I'd rather have a million pushes to prod than one huge force push that rewrites history;-)

But as I said, it's possible to transition to anarchy. You don't need to do it in one bit push. The issue is when the underlying code base is so bad that there is nothing else, but we can certainly try incrementalism.

In theory, there's no reason you couldn't go towards and anarchic society via a million small reforms, but in practice you get executed for using your already existing rights if you state that your goal is to do such reforms.

Is it possible to transition to anarchy in a geopolitical environment of competing nation-states? How would an anarchizing state in the process of gradual self-dismantlement outcompete more centralized states in economic and military terms?

The same ways any small country survives more than a few years.

The way most small countries have survived in the past century is to rely on the protection of a larger state with a powerful military and/or on international treaty organizations (UN, NATO, OAS, etc.) which derive their influence from those state militaries.

> And there are ways to have agriculture and industry and compounding scientific advancements without having rigid hierarchies, are there not?

Sure, the absence of rigid heirarchies with strictly top-down authority in favor of fairly fluid ones with something like circular authority where the top of heirarchy is selected and changeable by the people subject to it is a hallmark of liberal society, realized to varying degrees throughout much of the world.

But that's not what anarchism is about.

There are still ways to run agricultural and otherwise technological societies with minimal authority if any at all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com