Hacker News Reader

Comment by TEP_Kim_Il_Sung | Hacker News Reader

> But the thing with anarchism is, that there is not really a authorative definition accepted and in use ..

Sure there is:

anarchism (n.) "political doctrine advocating leaderlessness," 1640s; see anarchy + -ism.

anarchy (n.) 1530s, "absence of government," from French anarchie or directly from Medieval Latin anarchia, from Greek anarkhia "lack of a leader, the state of people without a government" (in Athens, used of the Year of Thirty Tyrants, 404 B.C., when there was no archon), abstract noun from anarkhos "rulerless," from an- "without" (see an- (1)) + arkhos "leader" (see archon).

View on HN

The joke was, that anarchists in general are not a big fan of authorative things, so you can cite all the definitions you want - there will be still lots of anarchists who will oppose that and have their own definition. And yes, they are contradictive, as for example some anarchists negate all authorithy all the time (at least in theory), while some are fine with voluntarily authority, with a grey area into unvoluntarily authority.

(In my opinion, there is allmost no anarchist opposed to all authority - they might say so, but only because they negate the existence of informal hierachies and do not consider collectivism (theft) as a shape of authority for instance. Lots of hypocrisy going on there, but there are self aware and righteous folks among them)

Some people oppose all 'hierarchies', and say that is anarchism, but it is clear those are different words, and good luck getting rid of hierarchies without mass genocide, unless that is the real purpose.

"good luck getting rid of hierarchies without mass genocide, unless that is the real purpose"

The idea of the peaceful anarchism like gandhi represented is, to convince people to just stop following unjust orders. No need for genocide this way and he showed, that this can work sometimes.

The problem I see rather with the natural developing of informal hierachies in group dynamics. In other words, there will be leaders, even if they say everyone is equal.

I disagree with anarchists as much as the next guy, but a quick google gets a bunch of results that contradict your definitions. It seems that anarchism is, at best, very rarely defined in the way you provided.

Which is why I quoted the original meaning and root words. etymonline.com

Well no fair! I’m sure the original meaning of “earth” is “the thing at the center of the universe”, but we’ve moved on from that definition!

Earth means soil, dirt, that sort of stuff. It's meaning has stayed consistent. What is unfair about using a word how it was meant to be used?

Language evolves, otherwise we’d all be talking like Shakespeare. Am I getting trolled?

Language evolves, but whenever people misunderstand each other by using the same word differently, it is perfectly fine to defer to the original meaning to avoid confusion. Especially, when no agreement is reached otherwise; Same applies to literally every other dispute, like marriage, property, labour, music, etc. Whomsoever originally wrote/performed the music, gets to name the song and tag their name to it. Whomever gets married first, gets dibs on wedding night. Whomever does the work, gets the spoils. etc.

I’m getting trolled, that was well done haha

"it is perfectly fine to defer to the original meaning to avoid confusion"

Well, I kind of tried that method for some time, but for some reasons I was not able to avoid confusion. Maybe because people care more about what a word means to them today and not what it meant 2000 years ago?

This is not, by any stretch, what modern anarchists would use as a definition.

Try instead, "a society free from unjust hierarchies". Most anarchists are comfortable with the idea of democracy, elections, and delegation of decision making. As long as it's consensual and democratic. Think of like, "hey, we need a treasurer to manage the finances".

Anarchism is not a unified idea. Anarcho syndicalism is different from Anarcho communism is different from Anarcho socialism.

"a society free from unjust hierarchies"

What would be a just hierarchie?

"Most anarchists are comfortable with the idea of democracy, elections, and delegation of decision making. As long as it's consensual and democratic"

Most anarchists I met, not so much. Till the extreme point of "anarchists don't vote". Not even in a small group. There is a consensus or there is no decision.

I like the idea of doing things in a consensus. But only one person in a bad mood can then block everything. But when you remove that person, it is not really a democratic consensus anymore, but majority rule .. which is fine by me, but is probably not "pure anarchism" anymore.

I've met those types of anarchists. They get nothing done in the name of ideological purity. They'll still be getting nothing done two centuries from now.

I think incrementalism is a dead end too - at some point we need to make some hard cuts away from current systems, but it's self defeating to not acknowledge the material reality in front of us.

A just hierarchy might be:

"we are working with a federation composed of 40 other anarchist groups. We elect a delegate and delegate small decisions to them, and they can be removed easily by the group."

"We have a safety officer on the factory floor who has the power to stop the work of others if there's a concern. They can be replaced easily"

"A teacher removing students who are disruptive to learning, but finding them alternative learning models."

An unjust hierarchy is when one person has power over another for no reason and whose power is self reinforcing or permanent. (A wealthy capitalist has more power, and gains power faster than a factory worker.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com