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Anti-anarchist pretty much think
- Anarchy = chaos
This is heavily promoted by mainstream media and language
- Anarchists are pacifist
Many people seem unable to comprehend how a community might defend itself without a standing military and so assume we must be unwilling to defend ourselves.
- Nothing can be accomplished without coercion
Because most of us have grown up within strict hierarchies coerced to do things we don’t want, we have trouble imagining any other way.
- Everyone is inherently a selfish asshole
This is probably projection in most cases
Heck the state
The state (could and idealistically) be the will of the people via proper democratic systems. It’s just that right now most aren’t that democratic, and unelected corporations have too much influence. (So under capitalism, I do think actual democracy isn’t super meaningful)
I think if you want to have a functional civilisation (rather than just small communes, which with today’s population is a pipe-dream) you need some kind of taxes, and now we’ve already arrived back at needing a state.
Collective spending is required for a civilisation, end of story. Anarchy is never going to build continent spanning infrastructure, ever.
Someone trying to accumulate wealth or power is going to ruin it for you. Sold you food with lead in it? Okay, what are ya gonna do about it? At a small, community scale this is easy, at civilisation scale, forget about it. You need some court system.
If you want to go live in a commune, be my guest, that’s the only place anarchy can work.
As much as I abhor the state and wish we live like the state of Cheran (ironic of me to say state in this case, I know), anarchy will only work in a very small group, where everyone knows each other, are like-minded enough to not abuse each other’s goodwill, and respect each other’s personal boundaries.
So have a lot of small groups
Free trade and mutual cooperation between collectives, I thought this was considered the standard anarchic model?
And then what stops one small group from slowly becoming a giant group again?
People and ideology.
In other words, literally nothing.
the same ‘literally nothing’ that currently stops us from ending starvation, poverty, homelessness, war…
people and ideology create the institutions which (re)produce and enforce a status quo. this is not inherently bad, and it would not be significantly different under any other ‘system’. we are all the state so long as we do nothing different.
If Putin’s and Bezos didn’t arise in every society, you wouldn’t need a government.
But they always do.
They arise because they capture that state
Anarchism wouldn’t get that far in the first place lmao
