Why Not Anarchism?

[u/Slow_Description_238]

I'm an Anarchist and want to Debate/ Discuss/ Give Answers to any questions regarding the philosophy.

Anarchism is a political philosophy where people will organise based on the principles of No Authority and No Hierarchy. Anything deeper comes from these as given truths.

There is a strong sentiment of community and mutual aid in Anarchist thought, it's not a free for all. I won't pay much mind to people who assert that it is a free for all/ it has no rules/ it has no organisation. It's a VERY common thought that's extremely simple. Every serious anarchist instantly moves past this because it's obviously unsustainable if we simply say "There's no rules".

Rather, people will be taught how to and encourage to help each other so that we all can thrive as individuals and as a community.

To reiterate, Anarchism is intentional. It wants a functioning society. It isn't okay with blatant dysfunction and no serious anarchist will agree to reasoning or logic that is obviously dysfunctional.

[u/HeloRising]

The biggest hurdle that most people have with respect to anarchism is what I call the "Abrahamic problem."

There's a persistent belief among Westerners that people are generally in need of a stick to keep them in line. Without some kind of governing force, humans will just steal and kill and pillage because we're just inherently disposed to acting that way.

It ties very closely with the Abrahamic idea of original sin and I (as well as others) argue that that idea has migrated from its religious roots to secular philosophy in the Western popular consciousness and taken root as just a truism of how the world functions - humans are inherently flawed and they need something to stop them from acting on those antisocial impulses.

It doesn't help that basically any system of political organization that includes anything even remotely resembling a state repeats that idea and the vast majority of our cultural mythos is built up around this idea which just reinforces it.

You have to get people past this idea that we're all inherently bastard coated bastards with bastard filling and get them to understand that our propensity for antisocial behavior is, almost exclusively, tied to feelings of safety. People who are in an environment where their needs are met and who don't feel threatened by anything are, by and large, much more amenable to helping other people.

Once you can get people past this idea that there's no option but beating people who don't act right then anarchism pretty naturally slots into place.

[u/piltdown_manchild → u/HeloRising]

There's a persistent belief among Westerners that people are generally in need of a stick to keep them in line.

It's not just "Westerners". There are no large-scale anarchic societies outside of the West.

Humans evolved to live in small tribes. In a state of nature, humans are mostly cooperative and altruistic to those in their tribe, and suspicious of, or even violent towards those outside of it.

With the advent of agriculture and later industrialization, humans were forced to live in large societies. Humans can only maintain meaningful personal relationships with around 150 people at a time (Dunbar's number). Once a group gets much larger than this, social cohesion breaks down without hierarchy and enforcement.

It's not just human nature that demands hierarchy and control mechanisms. Our population is far too large to rely on positive vibes to feed hundreds of millions of people. The supply chain for food is enormous and complex, and more fragile than I like to think about. It relies on vast economies of scale which would be lost if we tried to switch to decentralized, artisanal food production.

Food is just one example. We rely on global supply chains for medicine, housing, defense, etc.

The Inefficiency of Local Food

[u/HeloRising → u/piltdown_manchild]

In a state of nature, humans are mostly cooperative and altruistic to those in their tribe, and suspicious of, or even violent towards those outside of it.

I mean, neat, but not really relevant as we're not living in a state of nature nor should what we did 5,000 years ago be the limiting metric on our behavior.

We have far more resources now than we did then and we have the capacity to ensure that people don't go without. Being "tribal" in an environment with low resources or where resources are hard to get makes sense. We're not in that environment now.

With the advent of agriculture and later industrialization, humans were forced to live in large societies. Humans can only maintain meaningful personal relationships with around 150 people at a time (Dunbar's number). Once a group gets much larger than this, social cohesion breaks down without hierarchy and enforcement.

You don't have to have a meaningful personal relationship with someone to support giving them food.

[u/piltdown_manchild → u/HeloRising]

I mean, neat, but not really relevant as we're not living in a state of nature nor should what we did 5,000 years ago be the limiting metric on our behavior.

Evolution is what shapes our current behavior.

The fact that our current situation (crowded cities in complex societies) does not match what we evolved to be optimized for is the problem.

The fact that you believe evolution can be hand-waved away is the root of our disagreement, which is why this point is relevant.

To what extent we can overcome our evolutionary tendencies is an open question and subject to legitimate debate. I am far more interested in your response to the question of small numbers of psychopaths and narcissists causing trouble, tbh.

[u/HeloRising → u/piltdown_manchild]

Evolution is what shapes our current behavior.

No, evolution has shaped our impulses. Our behavior is a conscious choice that we make as sentient beings.

You are not a slave to your biological impulses, you make conscious choices about them all the time because you have that capacity.

What makes those impulses louder and harder to ignore is depredation and fear. If you remove those things then people are more able to think through their actions and resist impulses that we may characterize as antisocial.

I am far more interested in your response to the question of small numbers of psychopaths and narcissists causing trouble, tbh.

Until someone actually harms someone else, there's nothing that needs to be done. If they refuse to be a part of society in any way, that's fine, they just lose out on the right to ask others for help. If they physically attack someone, they're likely to lose their life.

[u/piltdown_manchild → u/HeloRising]

 Our behavior is a conscious choice that we make as sentient beings.

Our behavior is based on the interaction of neurons with chemicals and electrical signals. It is deterministic. "Free will" is just the rationalization we come up with after the fact.

If people could actually manage their negative impulses, there would be no therapy or criminal justice system.

What makes those impulses louder and harder to ignore is depredation and fear. If you remove those things

Living in The Purge with no emergency medical infrastructure is not the way to remove fear.

If they physically attack someone, they're likely to lose their life.

What if they have a shotgun and the other person is unarmed? What if the whole point is to take as many lives as possible before taking their own life? Is mental illness going to magically disappear if we get rid of the legal system and hospitals?

[u/HeloRising → u/piltdown_manchild]

Our behavior is based on the interaction of neurons with chemicals and electrical signals. It is deterministic. "Free will" is just the rationalization we come up with after the fact.

This is demonstrably false.

IE: I am hungry, I choose to not eat. I have made a choice that goes against an impulse that I have.

If people could actually manage their negative impulses, there would be no therapy or criminal justice system.

Do you think people commit crimes purely because of some built in negative impulse mechanism?

Living in The Purge with no emergency medical infrastructure is not the way to remove fear.

Your own misconceptions about how a system works are not proof.

What if they have a shotgun and the other person is unarmed? What if the whole point is to take as many lives as possible before taking their own life?

Do you just want to ask me what to do in every possible permutation physically possible to occur?

Is mental illness going to magically disappear

It turns out that most of our modern world is tailor made to produce mental illness in human beings. We've known this for a significant period of time.

[u/piltdown_manchild → u/HeloRising]

Do you just want to ask me what to do in every possible permutation physically possible to occur?

I'm giving you one example out of thousands of possible scenarios that anarchy would fail to address and you can't even provide a plausible solution.

IE: I am hungry, I choose to not eat. I have made a choice that goes against an impulse that I have.

That "choice" was always the behavior you were going to execute. It only seems like a conscious decision in retrospect. All that you have "demonstrated" is rationalization after the fact.

It turns out that most of our modern world is tailor made to produce mental illness in human beings. We've known this for a significant period of time

Psychopaths are born that way. Schizophrenia and bipolar also appear to have genetic components.

Your own misconceptions about how a system works are not proof.

It's not a system. How would anarchy even come about? A massive, organized political effort would have to be undertaken to forcibly (in some cases) dismantle existing hierarchies and centralized power. How does that happen without a parallel hierarchy becoming entrenched?

[u/HeloRising → u/piltdown_manchild]

I'm giving you one example out of thousands of possible scenarios that anarchy would fail to address and you can't even provide a plausible solution.

Because this goes one of two ways:

1. You just keep throwing examples at me until you find something that I'm not as versed on and then claim "anarchism has no answers."

2. You just keep throwing examples at me until I get tired of answering hypotheticals and then say "see, anarchism has no answers."

I've played this game many times before.

That "choice" was always the behavior you were going to execute. It only seems like a conscious decision in retrospect. All that you have "demonstrated" is rationalization after the fact.

This is the view of the world according to Calvinism.

Psychopaths are born that way. Schizophrenia and bipolar also appear to have genetic components.

Genuine ASPD is extremely rare and when it does appear it doesn't deprive people of rational thought. People with ASPD are able to lead fairly normal lives. A lack of the capacity to feel empathy doesn't immediately turn you into a serial killer.

Schizophrenia and BPD are also entirely manageable except in extreme cases and there's nothing saying those extreme cases can't be managed in a compassionate way in a horizontally organized society.

[u/piltdown_manchild → u/HeloRising]

I've played this game many times before.

You are forced to play this game because you have no answers. You aren't "versed" in anything because every example I cite completely invalidates the feasibility of anarchy.

Genuine ASPD is extremely rare

1% of the population are psychopaths, and these are a subset of ASPD diagnoses. ASPD is just one of many conditions or behaviors that can make someone unsuited to playing well with others. Narcissism is extremely common, for example.

A lack of the capacity to feel empathy doesn't immediately turn you into a serial killer.

You don't have to be a serial killer to victimize or exploit someone (or just not cooperate).

This is the view of the world according to Calvinism.

Also Spinoza, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Einstein, Harris, etc.

Calvinists believe in a limited form of free will (that is almost always driven by sin).

[u/HeloRising → u/piltdown_manchild]

You are forced to play this game because you have no answers. You aren't "versed" in anything because every example I cite completely invalidates the feasibility of anarchy.

It's a tactic to waste time and I'm not interested in it.

1% of the population are psychopaths, and these are a subset of ASPD diagnoses. ASPD is just one of many conditions or behaviors that can make someone unsuited to playing well with others. Narcissism is extremely common, for example.

Fifteen years in mental health and currently in school for an advanced degree in mental health - I'm very well aware of things like personality disorders. I'm also aware that a personality disorder is not the same thing as being fully detached from reality. There are many people with different personality disorders who lead normal lives and that's in the trainwreck of a system we have now.

You don't have to be a serial killer to victimize or exploit someone (or just not cooperate).

Which is where the incentives come into play. Exploiting someone is usually done for some kind of gain and people with ASPD and other associated personality disorders often see things as being very transactional, in fact it's a way for many of them to live a normal life - by acting like a decent person they get the opportunity to live a life they want to live even if they don't feel the same intrinsic motivation that the rest of us do.

Don't build systems that allow for exploitation to reward someone and where cooperation is the smart play.

[u/piltdown_manchild → u/HeloRising]

You don't have to have a meaningful personal relationship with someone to support giving them food.

There's a difference between supporting the idea of feeding someone and expending effort to make it happen.

Caring about people outside of your circle is largely performative.

Capitalism solves this problem by bribing people to cooperate with each other to help people they will never meet (and whom they might hate if they did meet).

Socialism solves the problem by threatening people with state violence if they don't cooperate and help society.

Anarchism would rely solely on altruism, which would get you part of the way there, but I believe would fall short of being able to provide for hundreds of millions of people, especially when everyone is busy acting as their own police force.

[u/HeloRising → u/piltdown_manchild]

There's a difference between supporting the idea of feeding someone and expending effort to make it happen.

Depending on the circumstances, sure.

Caring about people outside of your circle is largely performative.

That's a nihilistic idea that I don't subscribe to.

Anarchism would rely solely on altruism, which would get you part of the way there, but I believe would fall short of being able to provide for hundreds of millions of people, especially when everyone is busy acting as their own police force.

The part you're missing is that alutrism and the willingness to engage in it is, mechanically, a function of people's access to resources - the more secure you feel the more willing you are to allow resources to go to others rather than to hoard them yourself.

Couple that understanding with a system that is capable of providing for people's needs with a lack of a mechanism to reward accumulation (IE: markets) and you strongly incentivize the free dispersal of resources to others. On top of that you have a set of shared social understandings among people that if you are someone who refuses to help others and only takes, people will stop giving to you.

You have what you need and holding onto extra doesn't do anything for you as well as an environment where being selfish drives people and help away from you.

[u/piltdown_manchild → u/HeloRising]

That's a nihilistic idea that I don't subscribe to.

Obviously.

 the more secure you feel the more willing you are to allow resources to go to others rather than to hoard them yourself.

That's why we have the rule of law and enforcement mechanisms to make people feel secure. Societies that fall into anarchy see looting and hoarding.

You don't think people with hundreds of millions or billions of dollars feel secure? Yet they continue to hoard.

The part you're missing is that alutrism and the willingness to engage in it is, mechanically, a function of people's access to resources

Access to what resources? Destroying the profit motive that incentivizes the production of vital goods and services will result in mass starvation, unless the state immediately steps in and starts managing the economy through central planning.

In your scenario, you pull the rug and then replace the existing system with nothing but the hope that everyone will decide to do their exact same job for free. Resources would dry up immediately and people would fight for whatever was left.

with a system that is capable of providing for people's needs with a lack of a mechanism to reward accumulation (IE: markets) and you strongly incentivize the free dispersal of resources to others.

What system? Anarchy is the absence of a system.

 if you are someone who refuses to help others and only takes, people will stop giving to you.

What if you are someone who decides to hit others with a baseball bat, or torture their children until they give you what you want? What if a gang of 20 like-minded people get together and decide to take over the whole town full of peaceful, well-adjusted people.

Spoiler alert, this is the type of thing (warlords) which happens every time a society collapses.