this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2024
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Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-are-you-an-anarchist-the-answer-may-surprise-you
We were robbed of a truly incredibly human being when Graeber passed away. I'm a huge fan of "Debt: The First 5000 Years". And I'm heartbroken that "Bullshit Jobs" was the last publication he produced.
You may be happy to know he and David Wengrow wrote The Dawn of Everything. It was published posthumously but his fingerprints are all over it. Great book to boot! Pirate Enlightenment was also published posthumously. Haven't had a chance to read it but I think it's safe to assume it's great too.
I really loved it (Pirate Enlightenment) as well. It's not as life changing a read as Debt or Dawn, but its a nice story and gives a little hope in the emergent nature of democracy. Who doesn't love a pirate story?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines
That only applies to news articles, not political essays. Those have titles not headlines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedantry
Betteridge talks about something fundamentally different. Read the essay, it's really short.
I skimmed it. It's bullshit. Reminds me of the "not technically a lie but essentially a lie" bullshit that the door-to-door "have you heard the Good News" religious bastards would try to sucker you in with when I was a kid in the South. A lot of "like us" type bullshit.
If you're stupid enough, you might think it makes sense. But it's a fairytale.
I'm not saying the author is stupid. I'm saying he's maliciously pandering to stupid people.
Let's take a super quick example.
I'll try to get past my gag reflex at how condescending this is. But sure. Start with an eminently, universally reasonable position.
Still sounds fairly reasonable, but the intelligent among you might be thinking "hmm, sounds pretty reductive"
Now we've gone fully into "only really dumb people aren't skeptical at this point" territory. I mean, first of all, in the interest of saving your mental health, it's a decent idea to ignore any statement that starts with "but if you think about it". However even going past that, you get to the premise: "I'm a good person, therefore everyone is a good person!" Which is...like...seven-year-old logic.
This is the part where we go off the deep end. The author hopes you're either not paying attention or are really stupid at this point.
Yeah I was like "maybe I was wrong" but then I came to that part and just had to laugh.
I would love to assume that everyone is benevolent - but they simply are not. It's not like there aren't sufficient examples of states without police or military power. They surely don't correspond to this fantastical view.
Look at how people responded to the COVID pandemic and you will see that human beings are terrible at looking out for their community.
I read your comment, then I read
again and I thought to myself: "Hell, if that's not the pot calling the kettle black!"
With that much antagonistic priming, any political essay will be interpreted as gondescending bullshit.
If you're that easily swayed into believing something is bullshit, I can see how you got into anarchism.
You shouldn't see it as bullshit because of "priming". You should see it as bullshit because it's bullshit.
Well, fuck you and your bad faith style of arguing, too.
I'm not saying the essay is thorough or even a complete rundown of anarchist ideology. It's more a easy-going rebuttal of societal contract theory, based on the presumed everyday life experience of the reader. Suggesting that this essay is a conclusive summary of anarchism and the reason why people "get into anarchism" is about as strawman as it gets.
The essay simply explains one core tenant of anarchism: that humans rely on cooperation and trust on a core fundamental level in everyday situations, even in capitalism. Societal structures collapse once that base-level of cooperation doesn't exist.
How is that "bullshit"?
Because people who will not cooperate may be rare, but they are not vanishingly rare. They are common enough that we need explicit rules backed by the violence of the State to enforce them. Everyone knows this at a base level too. That loud neighbor. That guy flipping you off in traffic. The woman at the store eyeing the jewelry case a little too hard. If we didn't have laws, and cops to enforce them, these people would do what they wanted regardless of what anyone else wanted.
Which leads to the follow-up bullshit of "if you just destroy the protective power of the State, all the bad people will actually be good people!" Yeah and rainbows shoot out my ass when I fart, too.
Lol, and you complain about Graeber writing bullshit. xD
In what way is your "bad person" example any better that the waiting for the bus example Graeber gave?
If humanity was that sellfish, it would have died out about 100000 years ago. You're spouting unscientific bullshit and act as if you're the only reasonable person in the room. Classic lib moment.
I dunno about 100,000 years ago, but around 50,000 years ago is when we finished exterminating the Neanderthals.
Humans are not inherently good.
But regardless of how good or bad we are, surely you realize how insane it is to suggest that there could ever exist a society that is 100% free from bad actors, both internal and external? Because in a society without cops the one willing and able to resort to the most violence is king.
That's not what anarchists are advocating, tough.
Anarchists aren't against communities defending themselves. Cops are defendants of capital interests, though.
Edit: it's also not about people being "good" or "bad". It's about limiting the potential of accumulation and monopolization of structural power.
So the problem with cops is not that they might be local folks handling domestic disputes, it's that they keep you from squatting inside a building that is "for lease" owned by the company two towns over? Is that the capital interests part?
No, it's the part where they'll evict you and beat up/down protests, minorities and strikes part.
While that part is much televised, I can't say that I've ever seen an officer do any of that. I HAVE seen police perform a core function of keeping the peace between individuals on more then one occasion.
Sure, any instance of that is a problem, but besides stopping strikes these all seem like things your neighborhood "us vs them" group might do. Or, in the case of eviction, just the regular members of the community. Admittedly, in the eviction case though that's only for delinquency in "rent to own" probably.
Point being, by and large community policing is a standard function of society and I think it's the standard function of police EXCEPT perhaps in large metros where police are enforcers outside their own neighborhoods.
You understand that this is pretty much nothing but anecdotal evidence, right? Maybe ask a minority or precarious workers how they see the cops. The peace police keep is mostly a fiction.
Not if the militia is delegated by the community. The community wont order its' militia by consensus to beat up part of the community.
That's not the role modern police took in a historical context. It has been created to maintain private property relations and that still is its' core function.
I suppose we will have to use our sets of anecdotal evidence and agree to disagree.
I can't argue that police reform is unnecessary because it is. Despite that face I don't think you can say that police aren't also making DUI arrests, responding to neighborhood disturbances, providing safety and first response for incidents on the road, and other non-state enforcing sorts of issues. Public perspective is important, but I think the ACAB crowd would also be inclined to tell you that anarchists are fundamentally dangerous, animal rights protesters are disruptive and misguided, and a bunch of other stuff that is "valid opinion" but is hardly accurate or well considered.
I would contend that ANY policing or militia unit will eventually come to be an enforcer of private "property relations" to a greater or lesser extent for any society that permits the accumulation of wealth or value, but that's not the fault of the rule enforcing groups. Someone has to keep the peace. (Maybe here's your whole political point idk).
The last thing I'll say is
This is bogus. Little towns in middle America do exactly this. Progressivism vs conservativism here near the birthplace of the KKK is not a quiet and harmonious affair as signs, graffiti, and even open displays of aggression show. People are nasty and people are good, but there are both types for sure.
I don't think any of your principles in this thread are wrong per se, but I'm not seeing how they scale beyond a small town.
I'm pretty sure the data on police violence is on my side of the argument.
Maybe. However, I have a high priority on how the capitalist system is not only imprisoning the many to the benefit of the few, but also currently in the process of destroying the habitat of our species. As such, the systemic role of the police in our current liberal capitalistic system is the most vital issue, IMHO. You yourself said that police reform is necessary. Most of the positive examples you listed can be done by public servants without a gun and the state issued monopoly on violence.
I don't really get that point. Firstly, because "the ACAB crowd" probably knows that anarchists are harmless to the vast majority of the population (and considering their political power, also harmless to the rest of the population). Also: what does public opinion have to do with the validity of a political philosophy? Was slavery less wrong in the past due to the racist beliefs of the populance?
Yeah, you kinda got it right there. The whole concept of private property is toxic. Once you believe that, it's a logical conclusion to not be the biggest fan of the people protecting that concept. (It's also about the job both attracting bully-like personalities and fostering those tendencies in the people with those jobs, but that's more of an individualistic critique)
I just find it a very bad-faith argument against council rule by concensus, to argue with a scenario where both society and the state condoned progroms and actively taught racist beliefs.
There are several examples of at least libertarian socialism. While those are not explicitly anarchistic, they sure have elements of what I'm describing. Historical examples are the Paris commune, anarchist Ukraine and 1930's Catalonia with the CNT/FAI. Contemporary libertarian socialist societies exist for example in Rojava and with the Neo-Zapatistas.
So what I'll leave with here is to clarify about public opinion:
You said I should ask high risk workers and minorities what they think about cops. I'm saying you can ask a lot of people what they think about anything and you're inclined to get a broad range of answers that are more or less extreme.
And also about people:
2016 and onward have made it pretty clear there is a plurality of perspectives that may all be toxic to a greater or lesser extent. This isn't just an artifact of the state: people disagree and sometimes in severe ways regardless of community size. It's not bad faith to say that if families can ostracize individuals and neighbor can turn against neighbor that adding a council and consensus doesn't make that go away. 60% vs 40% can still have nasty outcomes in conflict.
Maybe, maybe not, but it is what the article was advocating.
No, the article is explaining something similar to what Graeber called "everyday communism". That cooperation is a fundamental piece of life in human society.
That's not the same as saying that everybody is a little goody too shoes inside their heart.
Not sure how else to interpet this
Seems pretty clear cut.
And that quote proves your point in what way, exactly?
That quote is saying that everybody is a little goody too shoes inside their heart.
No, it doesn't. Tha's your priming talking.
Ok, explain what it means, please.
Not OP but:
I read it as; most people are negatively affected on both sides of power imbalances. The natural answer to this is to attempt to remove power imbalances.
In the context of decision making, no matter if you think humans are inherently goody two shoes or not; most people respond well to increased responsibility. More democratised decision making and ownership in a community creates a positive feedback loop. An easy to understand example is in a company a flat bonus for meeting your target gives no motivation to a worker after they meet that target compared to worker coops splitting profits evenly between all workers because they share ownership of the company.
That's just a less condescending way of saying that everyone is a little goody two shoes.
People can be extremely evil and still respond positively to being given ownership of something. You're reading what you want to read, not whats actually there.
You're splitting hairs. Evil people given ownership of something don't automatically stop being evil. They tend to be MORE evil. It's a ridiculous premise.