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Oh you mean a democracy that isn't flawed like the USA.
Scandinavian countries have direct democracy, as in voting on their representatives directly, and they are in no way anarchist.
Maybe you mean general elections on every detail of law, but again, that's impossible, it's stupid, it's a waste of time and resources to have people decide how farmers interact with suppliers and dairy, something 99.9% of all people have no knowledge of.
It's stupid because it's impossible. You could also say it's decidedly insane.
this is not a problem in any real world anarchist society that has ever existed, can you give one example of this being a problem? What actually happens is building law through consensus, look at the way the zapatistas organize for example.
showing up to the meetings isn't mandatory, but they have one day off where everyone is allowed to participate, in the event of a tie, they vote, but most decisions are made through consensus.
also I think you vastly overestimate how much laws need to be changed, lawmakers will not endlessly go back and forth about unimportant things. did you know most members of congress in the US don't even read the bills they sign? How much work is it really to help with making law once a week or so?
representative democracy is not direct democracy to be clear
As in none.
There are tons, they just are usually destroyed by outside forces
https://anarwiki.org/List_of_Anarchist_Societies
Oh boy I love how the Freetown Christiania is first on that list. Since that's a place I actually know very well.
You list is bullshit, that's like saying 5 friends are an anarchist society. Those are NOT self governing societies. They are under the rules of countries.
If any are not, they are probably just very small cult like communities.
They do not run factories power-plants, electricity grids, infrastructure or anything of any serious scale, and are in no way models for how to run a country.
Freetown Christiania had lots of problems with crime, and they also had huge problem of elitism as in very few people actually decided everything, the power structure is/was very much based on who had lived there from the beginning.
All this anarchy idealism/ideology is bullshit that doesn't work in real self governing societies. Of course it can work for small groups, like what the fuck, just because I live in a street where we help each other, we don't form a government and police for that!
Christiana may have called themselves autonomous, but they never where in any meaningful sense of the word. And the truth is they needed help from criminal rocker gangs to get rid of widespread sales of hard drugs. And later they chose to legalize according to Danish law, and called on help from the real police to get rid of the remaining drug sales. Christiana today a mostly normal part of Copenhagen today, but maybe still influenced more than average by the 70's flower power roots, although there was never any flower power in the way that society was run.
Christiania was always 100% depending on the normal society they existed within, the dependence wasn't superficial either but for EVERYTHING, Jobs, hospitals, doctors, sewage, electricity. Christiania was never much more than a football club deciding to play by their own rules. They can do that, but they still live in a society where everything is governed by the rules of the country and the city.
I'm sorry, but your dream is an impossible lie. And you just proved your complete inability to demonstrate any self governing society of any significant size that function by a system of anarchy. By significant size, I'd say it needs to be at least 50000 people, to have any significance to show it as a working model at a scale above a tiny tribal community where everybody mostly know each other.
I don't know anything about or care about christiana, so, i'll just assume you're right about all that, but it really doesn't matter. Problems with one society do not mean the ideology is fundamentally flawed, it just means that society was flawed, you'll have to demonstrate issues with the fundamental ideology that apply to all anarchist societies, not some of them.
"They are usually destroyed by outside forces"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Catalonia
again you haven't even begun to research the topic, but are very confident.
before you say, revolutionary catalonia doesn't exist anymore, yeah, that's what happens when fascists destroy you with a military, you'll note none of the issue was internal politics...
Every single capitalist country immediately dogpiles and tries to destroy any anarchist movement, that doesn't mean anarchism is fundamentally flawed.
No you have to show it actually works, the idea of anarchy goes back to ancient Greece, and there has never been a functioning society based on it. Because it doesn't function.
So it wasn't anarchist, it was merely one among many groups, it had a traditional government, and it lasted for only 2 years.
I've accumulated experience about the topic over time since the 70's. I've read philosophical books about forms of government, I've examined MANY types of governance, and examined why Communism works so poorly, while Social democracies seem to be just about the best form of government we have achieved yet. This is in combination with my interest in national economy, and psychology from an evolutionary perspective.
Don't you try to claim I haven't examined the subject, when national governance is a high interest of mine through about 50 years now.
And yes based on my experiences it's extremely clear that anarchy is not a realistically functional form of governance. Anarchy for bigger societies is ONLY something countries devolve to, for instance after a war, and things ONLY get better when a proper government is restored. And by better I mean not killing each other, and not die of starvation, and the economy working and access to hospitals and education. All the things we normally take for granted in developed societies.
I've presented to you the LACK of anarchist societies of scale as an indication it does not work. This means there is no proof it works, and since the idea and principles are clearly not working even in theory in my opinion, the lack of evidence to the contrary mean I see Absolutely no reason to believe it can work.
You have shown NOTHING to make a plausible argument for anarchy, on the contrary everything I've been shown by you and others turn out to be clearly flawed and not support anything that is claimed.
Again Anarchy as an idea dates back to ancient Greece for fucks sake, and there is NO society of scale in history to my knowledge that has proven it works even partially. It's very easy to prove me wrong, because if there is, all you have to do is provide a link to said society.
Many things have been tried for the past 2000 years around the globe, if Anarchy which has been a known theoretical model for all that time actually worked, it should be very widespread by now.
This is so much bullshit. the modern form of capitalism is only 5-600 years old. EVERY society before that cannot have been oppressed by capitalism.
Capitalism also isn't a form of governance, it's a method to facilitate economic activity. Which is why ALL democracies are capitalist. Capitalism may suck hard, but we have nothing to replace it with yet.
Anarchy is not an alternative to capitalism, on the contrary. Anarchy as an idea was always about pursuing individual interests. The exact opposite of socialism. To facilitate the pursuance of individual interests, capitalism in a democracy is the best model we know of.
categorically false, i have shown that it works, it's just that people with power destroy it, and people with power are good at destroying things.
You've already proven you don't know what anarchism is or how its defined by saying that because it had a government it wasn't anarchist.
there's a reason we use primary sources to analyze things, which books of proudhon, kropotkin, or bakunin have you read?
Have you ever considered that maybe people with a lot of resources want these things not to happen, and that's the primary reason they don't happen, rather than them being fundamentally flawed?
This has nothing in common with any definition of anarchism or any implementation of anarchism by any of the founding philosophers of anarchism, you don't even know how to define anarchism, those things "devolving into anarchy" has literally nothing to do with anarchist philosophy, and is just a co-opting of the term.
How do you know that the reason it doesn't work isn't because there's very powerful people who want it to not work? All evidence seems to point to that, considering the ones that work well are always destroyed by outside forces.
I have, you just are arguing against a strawman, you believe that if there's a government, it isn't anarchy, because you don't know what anarchists actually believe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Catalonia
Categorically false, you could've made this argument about capitalism during feudalist times, capitalist countries absolutely do dogpile anarchists and communists.
No, but they were then oppressed by feudal lords... before that, there were plenty of anarchists
No, all democracies are capitalist because capitalists destroy democracies that aren't. Consider what a disaster for the super-wealthy it would be if socialism succeeded... The reason all communist countries are authoritarian is because only authoritarians can hold onto power when the CIA, the worlds largest military tries to destroy them.
You again don't even know what that means. Which anarchist philosophers did you get these ideas from? Name them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism literally read the first paragraph on wikipedia... this is how unresearched you are. It was literally founded as a socialist ideology...
Create a list of anarchist societies that failed on their own merit, and not because they were destroyed by a capitalist or feudalist overthrow, the zapatistas, for example, would be COMPLETELY FINE if mexico wasn't trying to destroy them. Nothing about their system of government is the problem they have, it's external forces, and there are a lot of very powerful external forces that want anarchism and socialism to fail.
You get a point for effort, but we will probably never agree on this.
I stated only facts. You can't even name an anarchist philosopher you've read but have strong feelings about the ideology.
if you want to have a valid, useful opinion on something, do the bare minimum of research.
Have you ever read a philosopher on democracy? If not, how can you have such strong opinions without doing your research?
It's not like Anarchy is some very complex concept, Fundamental political ideologies are not that hard to understand, like theocracy, dictatorship, communism, democracy. It's all pretty simple, and so is anarchy.
And of all of the above, democracy is the best we have, but in that context, it's important to notice that USA is NOT an actual democracy!!! It's a flawed democracy, and the flaws are very fundamental.
PS: Descartes was strongly in favor of anarchy, but even he ended up admitting that it cannot work. That was about 400 years ago, when philosophers were very busy trying to rethink models for how society can work. But the fundamental idea of Anarchy hasn't really changed since then. If it had, it would be called something other than anarchy.
Yes, I have, I wouldn't if I didn't, and I certainly wouldn't have strong opinions if I was unread on the topic. It is hilarious to me that you thought this was a gotcha, this is just embarrassing on your part tbh.
The notion that you think they're simple is my proof that you are completely unread on them. Explain mutualism to me, I doubt you can. Political philosophy is one of the most complex fields on the planet, the idea that these things are simple and easy to understand is actually hilarious, and could only come from someone who knows very little about the topic.
I agree, democracy is by far the greatest system ever created, that's why I maximize it, I want democracy in the workplace, democracy for every single law, I want democracy everywhere. The flaw is that we don't actually have a democracy, our democracy lets us elect representatives, but not choose laws that actually benefit us. Democracy is entirely core to anarchism, such that they cannot be separated, in fact, anarchism may be the very most democratic system... but you seem to believe democracy is a separate idea from anarchism, communism, capitalism, etc, it's not, you can have a democratic anarchist society (in fact, i don't think there's such a thing as a non-democratic one), communist, capitalist, these are economic systems that have no bearing on whether or not they're a democracy. You don't even seem to know what democracy means, this is why i'm saying you shouldn't have strong opinions if you're unread.
The notion that descartes couldn't figure it out and therefore it must be fundamentally flawed is actually legitimately hilarious. that was before even PROUDHON. 90% of anarchist thought hadn't even happened at that point, descartes was not some god that could figure out every detail of everything. Furthermore he was highly influenced by the church and there's a ton of evidence that he was forced to give up on research that hurt the church orthodoxy. They did y'know, burn people alive for heresy back then.
I reestablish that none of these are good critiques, they all reek of being uneducated on the topic. Learn to be humble and learn humility, you don't know what you're talking about, you shouldn't have strong opinions. You certainly shouldn't be insulting things you haven't even done preliminary research on.
There are tons of actually valid ways to criticize anarchism, but you don't know enough to do any of them. Research comes before strong opinions.
I never claimed that, just that I didn't read any philosophers, there's a huge difference between philosophers and real scientists. We were taught about political systems in 7th grade, so it's quite stretch for you to claim people need to read philosophers to understand them.
But i actually have read philosophers, but it wasn't very big reads and it was long ago, doesn't take much to recognize when you are confronted with bullshit.
OK that's not anarchy. maybe someone calls it so, but that has NOTHING to do with what anarchy actually means.
If you don't read primary sources then you don't know what they actually say, this is how you end up being propagandized into believing the absolute nonsense you believe about what anarchists believe.
Here's an example:
Buffalox firmly believed that all races other than whites are inferior and hates democracy because he hates democratic systems except fascism.
See how I can just say you said anything? That's what a secondary source does for you. That's why they aren't used in any serious academic analysis.
which ones?
Bakunin, proudhon, literally every single founder of anarchist thought would COMPLETELY disagree with you, can you point to a single one that agrees with you? You can't, because you have no idea what anarchism is, just some nonsense your teacher told you in 7th grade. Orwell would also completely disagree with you, I literally can't even name one anarchist thinker who would agree with your definition.
I'm sorry but are you really claiming that the FOUNDERS of anarchism don't know what anarchism is and what they're doing has nothing to do with anarchism? Is that really what you're going to go with here?
Maybe your definition is just not what any anarchist thinkers actually believe, again, simply name one and you will prove me wrong. Don't you think it's more possible that you've simply been lied to about what anarchists believe?
just as an example, why do you think bakunin did this:
"By organizing and heading Czech and German secret societies to instigate a revolttionary movement in Bohemia, he made extraordinary efforts to help German democracy which, at that time, was preparing for the struggles of 1849."
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/maximoff-the-political-philosophy-of-bakunin
I'm sorry but you don't know anything about anarchism and are confidently asserting you do. Read ANY anarchist philosophers and then get back to me.
You cant be serious?! Those people are hundreds of years to late to be founders of anarchism, from when the idea was reexamined 400 years ago. And the actual founder of the Idea was 2000 years ago.
It would be easier to believe you, if you didn't spew such bullshit. Also those were not new ideas when I was in 7th grade, I may be old, but i'm not THAT old.
And also Mikhail Bakunin was a Russian Anarchist, so how exactly were his ideas suppressed by capitalism as you claim?
This is a nice quote though.
Because he was anti Marxism/communism, as per the quote above.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statism_and_Anarchy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anarchism
please just read the first paragraph aloud and try again
I said by the people in power, not necessarily by capitalism... capitalists are just currently the people with power, anarchist is a very anti-people in power ideology... duh.
again, which anarchist philosophers agree with you, name them. Name just one and you will prove me wrong.
also, you linked statism and anarchy and fundamentally don't understand that the state is separate from the government in anarchy, because you again, have no formal education on the topic but a lot of opinions.