@nil@functional.cafe @passenger @HeavenlyPossum
And anarchism means if my gun is bigger, you're my bitch and I get all your stuff.
@ScottSoCal @nil @HeavenlyPossum
There's an old joke about "ask capitalists to describe socialism and they'll just describe capitalism."
Is this a real world example? Because you've just described how a state works, and ascribed it to people who don't believe in states.
@passenger @nil@functional.cafe @HeavenlyPossum
No, I described how people work, today, in the real world.
Anarchy is all very nice when it's theory, or in The Dispossessed (I enjoyed that book), which is fiction. In the real world, there are people like the people who raised me. Think Ammon Bundy, with less beard. Think Ammon wouldn't take all your stuff? If you fought back, think he wouldn't round up a bunch of people like him and come back again?
@ScottSoCal @nil @HeavenlyPossum
Firstly, please consider that what you're doing is stating assertions that you consider to be axiomatic, and asking me to accept them as axioms. This isn't a good way to convince anyone.
I think what you're describing is what Turkey did to Kurdistan, and what Sudan did to Darfur, and what the USA did to the indigenous nations, and what Putin tried to do to Ukraine: a group of men with guns tells others what to do, and shoots them if they don't agree.
This is called a monopoly on violence, and according to most theorists, it's a necessary precondition to the creation of a state. Indeed, a number of theorists have theorised that when a state loses its monopoly on violence, it ceases to be a state. An example of this might be rural Austria-Hungary during the last year of WW1, or parts of the Confederates States of America during the final days of the civil war. In both cases, when the state lost its monopoly on violence, a few other things collapsed, such as the currency and the courts of law.
A situation of genuine anarchy is one in which no person or group has a monopoly on violence, and therefore people have to deal with disagreements in a way other than using threats of violence.
The two are not the same, as I hope you'd agree.
You're describing a highly contrived theoretical situation - one which can't exist in the real world. Someone will have a bigger gun, or a bigger club, or a bigger rock, or more people, or better nutrition, or better tactical ability.
Theory can be fun, but it doesn't always apply to the real world. Ammon Bundy exists - that's beyond dispute. So do lots of other people like Ammon Bundy - my parents as example 1.
@nil@functional.cafe @HeavenlyPossum
I return to what I said earlier - small groups can manage it. It doesn't scale to large groups, it breaks down. We've had anarchist groups in the US, too. Small groups of like-minded people, for relatively short periods of time. They always break down. That doesn't mean they always will, but it ain't happening soon. It would require a complete change of social psychology, over generations.
@nil@functional.cafe @HeavenlyPossum
@ScottSoCal @nil @HeavenlyPossum
Like I said, read Goldman. She talks about a population of millions in modern towns and cities, with trains and electricity and mass transit. She's fairly scathing about what does and doesn't work, but on the whole reports that it was pretty stable and prosperous considering the wartime conditions.
What turned out to destroy it was that the Nationalist columns overran capitalist parts of Spain, communist parts of Spain and anarchist parts of Spain alike. Obviously, that doesn't mean that communism and capitalism are unworkable either.
The entire population of Spain during the civil wars was only about 25M, so saying there were millions in these collectives is stretching credulity.
@nil@functional.cafe @HeavenlyPossum
@ScottSoCal @nil @HeavenlyPossum
The CNT and UGT, the two major armed anarchist groups, each had about 1.5 million members, which doesn't include non-member residents of areas they had liberated. These areas included most of Catalonia (which includes the major city of Barcelona) and large parts of other areas of Spain.
The historian Sam Dolgoff estimates that the total number of people who participated, including those who found themselves resident in liberated areas, was about eight million.
I find it fascinating that you identify Ammon Bundy—a person who exists now, who committed crimes in the context of a state that coddled him for years—as a problem of *anarchism.*
This is the anarchist equivalent of those memes that show dire poverty under American capitalism but caption them “wow look how terrible socialism is.”
@ScottSoCal @nil @HeavenlyPossum
I'm sorry to hear that you had shitty parents. I didn't have a particularly comfortable childhood either, so my sincere solidarity goes out to you on that.
Why not read Emma Goldman's dispatches from Spain, describing the successful anarchist communities there during the civil war? Her comments on how hairdressers organised themselves without managers or investors are particularly interesting to me.
After all, actual documentation of a time when it happened is far more persuasive than simply a statement of ideology, saying "no it will definitely never happen / yes it will definitely happen."