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Comment by TotalCrackpot | Hacker News Reader

> 3. Anarchism leads to a lawless society in which the strongest will rule. It leads to Dark Ages, as it has done before. It may be moneyless, but it will have very clear class and ownership concepts.

Why? Because of one sentence quote from a book published in 1651? Or maybe you have no idea what you are talking about?

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You'll have an easier time if you explain what anarchism is instead. Eg, "anarchism doesn't seek to abolish all power structures, it seeks to replace hierarchical power structures with horizontal ones; to narrow their scope of responsibility; and to form systems of accountability to ensure the power structures serve the purpose intended, rather than their own interests. The problem of power structures expanding to consume all of society is a result of the tendency of power structures to serve their own ends and expand their scope of responsibility (analogous to the classic quip about how every application will eventually send email)."

Discussions of political theory in a general audience, where you can't assume everyone is on the same page about what terminology means (and the term anarchism most especially), usually go better if you explain what you mean in long form rather than using the jargon term.

If you tell someone you're an anarchist and don't elaborate on what you mean, they're gunnuh think of Gavrilo Princip.

If nobody feels like organizing social power structures I’d probably just go ahead and do it myself. What are you gonna do when there’s ten of us and one of you?

Generally anarchists accept power structures are inevitable and want different power structures, organized on the basis of mutual cooperation and collective decision making rather than a hierarchical system where a small number of people (usually the people furthest from the "facts on the ground") deliberate and decide. More like direct democracy than a power vacuum.

Individual anarchist would disagree with quite a lot of of this, which is why I don't define Anarchism, for me it's about fighting against relations of domination and subordination. This school is very broad.

Certainly. If you have ideas about how to oppose systems of domination and subordination without creating systems to replace them, I'm always interested to hear about it.

I'm confused why you don't want to define it. You seem passionate about advocating for it. If you won't define it, how can you respond to a challenge like in the GGP comment? Why should anyone be convinced by your argumentation if you won't tell them what you're arguing for?

Keep in mind, you don't have to provide a complete definition, only a definition for what you mean by it and what you are advocating for. You can make it clear that others might disagree.

I would say my approach is fairly economical, if GGP doesn't want to justify their opinion on anarchism being the rule of the strongest with private property then I just wasted my time. I wouldn't be surprised if he considered anarchism as only anti-statist ideology, if he wrote that then indeed I would probably write something more about ideas that usually correspond to this ideology. On one hand I try to engage him, on the other indeed I do that confrontationally. I think this has advantages to writing a monologue abut what Anarchism means, or at least what it means to me.

I guess I just don't understand what your goal are and what you're trying to economize. If you don't want people to think it's merely antistatism, snapping at them will seem, in their minds, to confirm their preconceptions.

I certainly am not suggesting you write a monologue, but snapping at them isn't a dialogue either.

So what’s the answer then when I show up at your door with ten guys with guns? What’s the social structure that prevents it in your ideal view?

I cared for my community so you have 100 people against you. Even if you were in a SWAT police uniform because of internet trolls, while in current system I would be probably get legally murdered by such entity.

> I cared for my community so you have 100 people against you.

Sounds pointlessly idealist to me. If you’re allowed to just assume large scale cooperative society then any system of governance is fine.

> while in current system I would be probably get legally murdered by such entity.

“X has problems therefore not X is better”

Ok. I'm current society you call police, in next 10 minutes you get to murdered. In an hour or 2 police comes and of your murderers were bad then they left evidence that makes them go to prison financed from other people taxes. You are dead.

And… what happens in your fantasy society?

It sucks that someone got murderer by police arresting the culprit and putting them into a publicly funded prison seems largely ideal plus or minus your view of the death penalty?

It tries to destroy incentives for these behaviors before they happen. You have to address that on case-by-case basis. A lot of acts we consider harmful stem from bad material situation, which is an inherent part of this system. System needs people in very bad situation to be willing to do the worst jobs. And anarchists overall think that you should put more action towards HELPING a person that got harmed than only punishing a persecutor of harmful act.

This is more or less the goal of every system of governance aside from strongman rule. You’ve proposed the common desireable end state with no explanation of how to get there, and then acted as if your solution is credible as a path to get there.

Governance is hard. And has problems. That doesn’t mean the opposite of governance is the answer.

As the slogan goes, "no government doesn't mean no governance." Anarchism is about a different way of doing governance where decisions are, as much as possible, made by the people directly effected by them, as close to the problem as possible. Anarchists are generally not opposed to governance, they're opposed to the particular form of governance represented by the state.

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