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Chaos is nice too, though.
I still don’t understand what mechanism in anarchism prevents a strongman coming along, charming a bunch of guys with guns and taking whatever they want? How does this not turn into a bunch of warlords taking each other’s resources? And if your answer is “that’s what’s happening now”, ok fine but how does anarchism fix that?
Community defense. It’s everyone’s responsibility to defend each other, not some centralized police force or military. Plus as others stated, societal change so people are less susceptible to that sort of “charm.” Most of the time people fall for warlords, crime bosses, etc cause they prey on those without. When you live in poverty, becoming a rank and file goon for a warlord doesn’t sound so bad. But if we built the economy to meet needs rather than profit, and society to give people freedom rather than hierarchy, people would be a lot harder to sway. What really could a warlord give people that they wouldn’t have already in an anarchist society? Money? What good would that do in a society that doesn’t use it. Power? Well the warlord has all the power, and an anarchist society already gives you full autonomy over yourself. The only thing they could offer is power over others, but in return you give up all your power over yourself to the warlord. Might be able to sway some people with that, but I don’t think it would be enough to become a serious threat. And like someone else said, our existing society can’t even defend against it. I’d say if this is really what is your make or break for anarchism, then I think you should reevaluate your priorities. You likely can’t make a perfect society, so we should be picking the one that meets our needs most. My needs are food, healthcare, housing, and freedom. Anarchism meets those needs better than our current society, and better than any other type of society currently or in the past.
When different municipal groups need to coordinate together with another group for something, let’s say foreign trade, how is this accomplished under anarchism?
I am an anarchist in an ideal world but we don’t have anything resembling that. Just trying to learn.
This questions gets asked a lot in many variations, which is why a more detailed answer based on the works of many anarchists can be found in An Anarchist FAQ:
How will an anarchist society defend itself against the power hungry?
My personal take:
A society that was able to establish anarchy or something similar already proofed that they are able to kill/destroy/abolish the state, capitalism, patriarchy etc. I don’t see how a single charming person with some guns is able to somehow just defeat all of that. What I want to say is, the tools, skills, relationships necessary to defend an anarchist society have to exist before anarchy is actually achieved (or they get created in the process of achieving anarchy).
And personally I see the (not anarchist but ideologically similar) projects in Rojava and Chiapas as great examples of revolutionary projects that are able to defend themselves against powerful opposition using everything they can.
Warlords are able to do that because they already start from a position of power, exploiting others and making them act against their own interests. This is one of the core problems “fixed” by anarchism.
Does this mean this will never ever ever happen in an anarchist society? No, there will always be threats. But disregarding anarchism entirely just because it can’t fix something that is fundamentally unfixable hardly seems reasonable or fair.
My personal belief is that anarchy would require both organizations that monitor and combat these types of movements early in their development and very strong social norms to prevent people from falling for strongman arguments.
Remember that basically all social organizations in our current society are organized hierarchically, and this means people are more or less indoctrinated to think this is good and natural. It will take time and effort, but this must be deconstructed and mental and social defenses to domination must be built. Most humans naturally hate being dominated but this instinct is harshly repressed in childhood, usually through schooling. If we stop doing this, the world may look very different.
In certain highly egalitarian foraging societies, there are customs that harshly enforce humility and punish braggarts. It starts with public criticism but those who continue to behave arrogantly may eventually be exiled from the group or even killed.
This may seem harsh but unfortunately, there may always be a minority of people too credulous to see through BS. So this kind of behavior needs to be nipped in the bud before it becomes a problem.
Would those organizations be, by definition, a government?
Not in my opinion, no. They would be subordinated to the collective as a whole rather than above it, and would be organized in a horizontal way. This would also be their sole task, so they would have no other powers.
There is a risk they could become an authoritarian force over time, so society should remain vigilant against this and remove any individuals who start to gather undue power immediately.
Ultimately if a society can learn to have every individual engaged in this anti-authoritarianism to an extent that such an organization is no longer needed, that might be ideal. We can ideate all we want but ultimately we won’t know what is most effective until we start trying these ideas out.
Johnny Rotten lied to us
Johnny Rotten is a piece of Tory shit from a fake band.
