Forum Post: What do anarchists belive?
Posted 12 years ago on Dec. 18, 2011, 8:14 p.m. EST by hymie
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I don't know a lot about what anarchists believe, but I have been somewhat surprised by the few I have met here. In the past, I had gathered the impression that anarchists are violent and frequently manipulated by the secret establishment.
None of the anarchists that I have met so far have given the impression of being violent. They do seem to be thoughtful people, and willing to consider alternatives. They recognize that something is wrong with the status quo and try to keep an open mind to alternatives.
So, if you are an anarchist or anarchistically inclined, tell us what you think anarchy is, what you think about Wall Street. Also, tell us what you think is the solution to today's economic crisis.
Thank you for your curiosity. I am going to share a few things that make sense to me. If they are useful for you, great! If not, I apologize. First, I think free market anarchy, which makes sense to me, is a conclusion, and conclusions are not the place to start. I did not start out a believer in free market anarchy, and only after challenging my consistency of logic and evidence did I abandon my previous beliefs (painfully).
I think premises are the starting place. My premise is the non-aggression principle, which is the idea that not INITIATING violence or coercion is a consistent principle that everyone could ethically live by. Applying that non-aggression principle consistently led me to the conclusion of free market anarchy.
Now, what you asked about: Anarchy is by definition against the initiation of aggression. Anarchy is not about chaos, but about organization based on voluntary agreement.
Thankfully, there are not previous examples of society-wide anarchy. If anarchy was an easy solution, then obviously there would have to be something wrong with humans to not have achieved a society free of the initiation of aggression, ie violence or coercion yet, and we would have to conclude that it is not possible. Analogously, humans have not managed to move to Mars, yet just because it is difficult does not make it impossible.
The reason anarchy is not easy is because developing the personal integrity to not initiate violence or coercion when having grown up the victim of violence and coercion is challenging. The perpetuation of violence and coercion is similar to PTSD. While we easily recognize how war or rape, for instance, can cause PTSD, we are less aware of how traumatic childhood is almost universally.
In a 1999 study, 94% percent of parents of three or four year olds reported having spanked their child in the past year. (Straus M.A., and Stewart, .JH. (1999). “Corporal punishment by American parents: national data on prevalence, chronicity, severity, and duration, in relation to child and family characteristics.” Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 2 :55 –70.)
The same lesson that we teach young children - to not use violence to get what they want - we hypocritically break, despite being many times more resourceful, larger, and powerful. "Might makes right" is something every child experiences as a victim in some form, despite being taught that violence and coercion are wrong. The hypocrisy we almost all go through is hard to notice by being so ubiquitous, just as we hardly notice the air we breathe.
Humans only recently figured out that slavery is immoral and that adult minorities of gender, race, sexual orientation, abilism, and so on deserve full personhood. Humans are only slowly figuring out that children deserve personhood. Until violence and coercion is removed from our personal relationships, society cannot be free.
The family is the state. In which families does democracy or anarchy exist? In most families, don't parents make the rules while children are treated like they cannot act reasonably or ethically? Isn't that the argument for government in a nutshell, that government needs to act like parents because individuals cannot act reasonably or ethically?
eBay and the fashion industry are pretty good examples of anarchy. eBay self polices mainly on reputation of buyers and sellers. The fashion industry is almost free of coercive copyright and patents that create favoritism and protectionism. Competition and cooperation flow, and the industry thrives free of monopoly.
These are some of my thoughts, and they are mainly conclusions except in the intro where I raised the issue of premises being where to start.
One resource I recommend is freedomainradio.com which helped me consider my premises and conclusions, and is allegedly the largest philosophical conversation in the world. Though this website is pretty hopping ;).
What is free market anarchy?
What do you as an anarchist recommend that our society should do to remedy our economic crisis?
I distinguish anarchy with the prefix free market, because there are other types of anarchy in name. I don't think other types of anarchy, such as anarcho-syndicalism, are actually true to the non-aggression principle, so I don't consider them real anarchy. I actually prefer the term voluntaryism, now that I think of it, because anarchy has a lot of baggage attached.
Anarchy literally means "without ruler", which means no initiating violence or coercion like rulers do. The free market means the same thing. The free market is completely voluntary trade, and is free of any violence or coercion. So the free market and anarchy are the same thing to me, but I use the term free market anarchy to distinguish from those who believe that anarchy supports violence and coercion.
Free market anarchists know what NOT to do. They don't know what to do, because they cannot assume what other individuals will want. Voluntaryists do not know what society should do, because they understand that society is a concept, and that individuals are the agents. The only thing that free market anarchists agree on is the non-aggression principle that every individual can voluntarily choose to live by.
Having a central bank in the Federal Reserve that monopolizes the money supply is against the non-aggression principle. Voluntaryists believe that a central bank is an act of aggression preventing competition or cooperation. The state is using force and coercion to funnel resources from the unfavored to the favored. The banking cartel is benefitting, but it is important to understand that the state is the heart of the problem, not corporations. Corporations just do not have the power that the state does. Ultimately, corporations and the state are only concepts, and the real truth is that there are individuals who use violence against other individuals. The question to ask oneself is who in the room has control over the gun.
A solution in my mind is to allow freedom in currency. Individuals should be free to start up competing currencies to Federal Reserve notes.
The real problem is violence and coercion. Since money does represent power, violent and coercive individuals focus on controlling it. The solution is do not allow money to be controlled. Allow no law that gives control over money into the hands of certain individuals, because no individual can resist the way that power corrupts. No one is meant to have power over another individual against his or her will. Already in life, a parent has so much control over his or her child, and to help orient a child in life without abusing power is difficult. To me, personal relationships are the real arenas of change. If voluntaryism cannot work in personal relationships, then how can it work at the level of society? Thankfully, voluntaryism does work in personal relationships, and we all appreciate the freedom to associate with our romantic partners and friends. Family is still an institution frought with violence and coercion, particularly the parent and child relationship.
The society wide economic problems took a long time to develop the way they are today, and there is no easy solution. This forum proves that getting along is not easy. I feel that the effort is worthwhile and possible, because conversations like this one happen. Thanks for your questions.
Ok, take note. The new tactic is hymie's post. The rich want all power, nothing for the people. The rich can make their own gated cities if they wanted, with the slave laborers outside the city gates. They want power to pollute, to trample workers' rights. The elite powers want you to vote to get rid of all rules and regulations. Compaints of "big govt" received poor response from OWS, so now the new buzzword is "anarchist". They do, however, need to package the idea in a cuddly manner. Hence this post and the gloriously detailed responses supporting it.
Well, I am not an anarchist myself, but I have met some here and simply wanted to understand them better. Whether some ideology represents an enemy or a friend, it is better to have some intelligence about them.
WHO are the real ANARCHISTS in today's America, the Patriots of OWS or the Suit-and-Tie Mafia that has quietly taken over the country?
Isn't it "kinda ironic" that all over this troll-infested forum, OWS haters are accusing the Movement of being "just a bunch of ANARCHISTS"?
Actually, America and a great many other pseudo-democracies are NOT the law-and-order countries that they claim to be, but are basically GLORIFIED ANARCHIES where "MIGHT TRUMPS RIGHT" and the ESTABLISHED DISORDER reigns.
Isn't that why Wall Street got away with clearly immoral AND illegal practices that plunged the country - and the world - into a catastrophic crisis?
And isn't that why Congress has just decided to basically scrap our "Bill of Rights" and "Magna Carta" protections dating back to 1215?
WHO is currently governing this country, if not a mafia of SUIT-AND-TIE ANARCHISTS? "OBAMA IS SURROUNDED BY MAFIA!" recently exclaimed spiritual teacher and physician Deepak Chopra.
As Chris Hedges pointed out months ago, the Great Patriots of OWS are actually fighting to uphold the Constitution and "restore the rule of Law". They are, in a word, the POLAR OPPOSITE of the suit-and-tie anarchists who have staged a covert and gradual COUP D'ETAT against our democracy.
Good points.
Are you aware of the threat of a war against Iran triggering a world war? The highest ranking military officers in the US, Russia and China have been talking about it. Some have tried to warn Obama that he should tell Netanyahu not to attack Iran under any circumstances. But Obama says it is not our, US, business. What should we do about this?
Anarchy has one purpose. That is to induce so much chaos into a society that the people will most likely accept the first entity that promises a return to structure.
The answer,,, WHO CARE what they believe.
Some anarchists are committed to nonviolence and some believe in the use of violence for political ends, In either case the question of violence or nonviolence is a tactic and as such essentially irrelevant to anarchism as a political theory or body of thought.
Anarchism is opposition to the state, which it clearly views as a human invention and therefore subject to human evaluation and perhaps might even be superceded by some other method of social organization,
Anarchists do not see the state as co=terminous with government, While the state is part of government, it is not the whole thing, Many institutions that have nothing to do with the state have governments after all, Labor unions and voluntary institutions have governments but they are not the state or a state, What makes a state different, What states are are all the coersive apparatus of government, That would include obviously the police and military and all those institutions that have a sanctioned monopoly on violence, It would also include those institutions which in the words of Noam Chomsky are used to "manufacture consent." That would include teaching, social work and institutions like advertising,
The anarchists agree with Marx that these institutions of violence are essentially used to enforce the class rule of the minority and keep the majority in its place as the ruled, The basic difference between Marx and the anarchists is that the anarchists want to go after the state directly whereas Marxists tend to see a transitional period during which time, after a majority successfully seizes power it will use that power to expropriate the former ruling class to make it incapable of reasserting itself and ultimately making the state superfluous,
To some degree these differences may be semantic. For example both anarchists and Marxists look to the Paris Commune of 1871 as a model. But anarchists tend to view the Commune as a condition of statelessness while Marxists tend to characterize it as a workers state,
I do not consider myself an anarchist, though I have read somewhat in anarchist thought and find some of their ideas compelling,
I have been a part time occupier at OWS since day one, but I was not active in the movement before then in its formative stages. I have read considerably about its origins and talked to people who were at the very first meetings to consider the idea of OWS. Most of them freely acknowledge being very influenced by the anarchist intellectual tradition,
Far from being off putting to people it was these folks who energized a nation or at least a whole new social movement. In addition it is they who developed a relationship with organized labor from the earliest days of the movement, the first such relationship between sections of organized labor and the left intellegenticia since the 1940s. They have built an alliance with sections of the religious community, with the debtor class, with those whose homes have been foreclosed, with the stop stop and frisk movement, with the homeless and with many other sectors of society,
Much of what they believe can be found on this website. Look at the home page, for example, not the postings but all the permanent copy on the home page and that will give you a good idea of the OWS vision, which again is strongly influenced by the anarchist intellectual tradition,
Also, definitely read the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City.
Anarchists definitely have no confidence in the existing state and certainly not in the major political parties. This is one reason why OWS raises no demands. It does not look to the existing state to solve its problems. They argue that it is up to us, all of us, to reorganize society from below democratically and not to make demands on a state that can never meet our needs,
Liberals argue that most Americans now simply will not buy such a revolutionary vision, Most anarchist I know agree and their response is that this project will take a long long time, certainly years, probably decades and possibly several life times, Patience is a revolutionary virtue that the liberals in the movement clearly do not share, Nevertheless it has been these radicals that have so far done the most effective outreach for the movement,
Many economists do not see the present crisis as cyclical but rather as systemic, I would agree and if that is the case, so long and the crisis remains, barring police repression, so will OWS. Our project is very long term and involves the engagement of everyone to reconstruct society from below. Right now we are a movement of a few thousand activists in a nation of 300 million, We have a lot of organizing to do before we can even envision what a truly democratic, peaceful and loving society will actually look like and be organized because it will take all of us to do it, or at least the vast majority and we are nowhere near that yet,
People think that is impossible but they are the same people who thought OWS was impossible in the first place, America has seen mass movements in the past, It is just that it has been so long since such a movement has existed in the US that it is outside of human memory and therefore viewed by many as an impossibility,
I can understand the displeasure with which anarchists would view our contemporary society, but what would they think about US society in the times of JFK? Or what about Europe during the Renaissance?
These periods surely had their imperfections, but still they represent good times in history, with a more or less positive state running the show. Is it possible to have a state apparatus in a beneficent society?
Well, anarchists are anarchists. They oppose the state. Any state. In terms of JFK that was essentially exactly the same state as we have today, though it is somewhat more evolved at this point, In terms of Renaissance Europe the modern state was just beginning to evolve there at the time, though the Italian city states were very highly evolved states, The modern city was just then evolving out of the feudal state and in some regions was viewed historically by anarchists as stateless formations. I say this historically because anarchism really didn't begin to emerge as a coherent political doctrine until the 19th century, There are anarchist essays, however, that look to the north German Hansiatic League of cities and a stateless formation and a possible model for a stateless society,
The anarchist (and for that matter the Marxist) view is that the state is a coersive mechanism and is only necessary to preserve the class rule of the minority in a class based society, In a classless society which is the ultimate aim of both anarchism and classical Marxism, in theory the state (that is any coersive mechanisms--police, army etc) would be unnecessary since the exclusive role of the state is the preservation of the class rule of the minority,
The is the question of how would a society with no coersive apparatus deal with genuinely antisocial elements and the violently mentally ill, Well , the fact is that humanity lived without a state for tens of thousands of years before the state evolved (a direct result of the rise of social classes) and there were always antisocial elements in every society, We can learn something about how a stateless society deals with such elements by looking at the few remaining stateless societies of which there were many more a century or more ago, The historical practice of Native Americans is perhaps most familiar in that regard where antisocial types were essentially exiled from the community,
This might be developed further, For example during the occupation of Zuccotti there was a de-escalation team rather than security, I saw this group effectively stop fights and engage in other interventions without ever resorting to violence, Obviously we have a lot to learn in that regard, but the examples I have seen are a great start,
I would think that if anarchy is an effective way of organizing people, there would be more examples of anarchist organizations. Why do you think there are not more anarchist organizations in the world?
Well the reason why there is not a greater anarchist movement is essentially the same reason that there is not really a mass Marxist movement or for that matter any radical mass democratic movement, and it is not because they don't work, Most of the people who say Marxism doesn't work, for example point to Stalinist Russia which was hardly a socialist community but as a totalitarian society the very antithesis of socialism,
The fact is, there are dozens of examples of anarchist and anarchistical efforts to counter the power of the state and all of these have worked quite well internally (right down to the internal government of Zuccotti Park before the eviction for that matter). What stumped these movements was police and/or military repression, not that they weren't working internally, The American Socialist Party for example was quite successful and on the rise until 1917 when it came out against US participation in World War I and was systematically smashed by the US govenment, never to recover, If you want to see more on this go to Clint Eastwood's current movie on J Edgar Hoover, According to the movie Hoover started his career by depriving the anarchist Emma Goldman of her US citizenship and he saw her as public enemy number one,
However, it could be argued sociologically that this is a natural way for people to organize themselves the most recent example of which is the rise of General Assemblies as the primary decision making bodies of an emerging social movement,
Yes, I would think if there were to be more examples, they would be within existing states, like the kibbutzes in Israel. If anarchy were an effective model, couldn't anarchists start more business/communities in the style of kibbutzes?
Well, some people, including some anarchists, would consider movements like the kibbutzim as examples of anarchism. Others would not as such movements exist under the sponsorship or at least are legally allowed under the protection of an existing state and as such should not be considered anarchistic properly understood, The communities that developed in the occupations on the other hand, might be considered anarchistic because, even while they existed under and existing state, they also stood in opposition to that state,
I see, couldn't anarchy, rather than resisting the state, peacefully compete against it? If anarchistic organizations could be developed to be large and successful, their leaders could be recognized as potential political leaders, who, if elected, could then alter the national system into a more anarchistic form.
Well it seems as though you are asking anarchism to be something other than what anarchism has been historically, In any event it is a social movement that exists across time and space and as such no individual can redirect the movement as a whole, Not everyone, after all, follows even the strongest leader and by its nature anarchism is not especially succeptable to such influences,
Anarchists are not in the least interested in any power for themselves in any state as they are opposed to the state as such, That being the case the whole notion of anarchists seeking personal power in an existing state is an oxymoron and to do so they would essentially stop being anarchists properly understood no matter what they continued to call themselves,
I'm not really suggesting anything, I'm just conducting thought experiments to try to understand your movement a little better.
I suppose one could pursue political office, not out of an interest in power, but out of a desire to serve one's fellow man.
Combining things that seem to be opposites is frequently a strategy for creative thinking.
For an anarchist to pursue public office in order to serve one's fellow man is an oxymoron because as a public official you would necessarily be an agent of the state and anarchists see the state as nothing but the repressive apparatus that the tiny ruling class holds over the vast majority. To run for public office from the point of view of anarchism would essentially be to sell out to the ruling class and become one of its agents, no matter how progressive the program you proposed was,
On the other hand anarchists do often run for office in institutions which are not agencies of the state such as labor unions,
Can you tell us a little about yourself? You sound educated. Did you attend a university or educate yourself?
I'm a teacher, living in LA. I've been teaching in foreign countries recently, and may be going back to China soon.
I'm retired and have a graduate level education in history, though most of what I know about social movements I have learned from a lifetime of activity in then, There is simply no substitute for that kind of education whether you end up agreeing with the movement or not, Things are really popping in China right now, I don't have it at the tip of my fingers but some town in China has actually managed to kick the CP out, Everybody is in the town square in what looks like a GA, Apparently the People;s Army has the town surrounded but the people are holding out, China has one of the most dynamic labor movements in the world even though it is completely illegal, which goes to show just how far obedience to the law will get you, If you want to go to China great, but you can't really be active politically there without putting yourself in great personal danger, If you'd like to go abroad but would also like to be politically active I would suggest some place like Egypt or perhaps one of the PIIGS nations (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece or Spain) any one of which is very likely to go under at any minute which will undoubtedly spawn a great movement of social opposition as long as it is not put down by the rise of a fascist state,
When I was there, a few years ago, I was in Guangzhou, one of the major industrial cities in the south, I hadn't seen any such movements. I had heard about something like what you are mentioning, in the poor farming areas.
I actually just read a positing about this elsewhere which I believe mentioned strikes involving 180,000 workers last year in China which ultimately isn't a lot in a nation as large as China. I always caution OWS activists not to get too enthusiastic about the size of our movement which is actually quite tiny and only appears massive in terms of what preceeded it, which was virtually nothing,
Actually, I've lived in China before, for over a year. I didn't really try to do any political activity, though in my classes for advanced students, I did often talk with them about my own economic and political beliefs. I never had any problems with this, even with CCP members in my classes. They were mostly sympathetic to my beliefs.
Perhaps you were not in an area where this is significant and I am not especially familiar with the geography of China but I do know that there have been regular strike waves involving tens of thousands of workers in industrial cities all over China often involving pitched battles with the People Army, These have been reported in the western labor press by very reliable and objective reporters,
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