this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2024
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Having "less government" eventually crosses a threshold into having "no functional macro government at all".
What you do after that threshold is entirely open ended.
Anarchism is not owned by one political group, the ideation of what comes next is. (In leftist groups, collectivism via willful participation, focused on meeting the needs of all members of the group. In right groups, what amounts to libertarian bartering and more insular communing.)
Anarchism is about opposition to all oppression and unjust hierarchies. If you are pro-capitalism, pro-patriarchy, pro-white supremacy, or pro-nationalism, you aren’t an anarchist. Sorry.
And if you aren’t any of those things, what affinity do you have with the political right?
Are you asking me? Or being hypothetical?I'm none of those things, nor an anarchist, I'm just capable of reading the definition .
If that was directed at me, Kinda shitty you assumed that about me as i made a complete abstract statement, without showing my favor.
the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government; anarchism.
My previous comment aligns, especially with the second definition.
Many, many on the right want far less government and less of anyone telling them how to organize their communities. they absolutely want a new version of the world with small and increasingly absent governance. The fact that they are shitty doesn't discount their desire for anarchist changes in macro governance.
Frankly, your descriptions of what you believe "true" anarchism proves my point. A right aligned person could come in and confidently describe their key points as they believe just as well.
MY core point was that it's the transition to micro governance, free of external systemic pressure is not isolated to leftist ideals, edit though, it could be! In your post collapse world.
Chill, it’s just a rhetorical you, directed at any who identify with it. If you don’t, then that’s fine. I know nothing about your ideology.
Anarchism is unique to the left though. I’ve never met someone in the right who doesn’t subscribe to some kind of hierarchical domination of other people, usually one of multiple of the examples I gave. If they don’t, then in my view they are confused about their own ideological position.
If you destroy some hierarchies and not others, the systems newly freed from competition for dominance in society will rapidly expand and replace them. Anarchism has always been about opposition to capitalism as much as to the state. You can’t just abandon one of the core tenets and still claim to belong—although the first ancaps were never anarchists. They were capitalists who discovered a clever and dishonest way to advocate for their own dominance over society.
Just saying it was pretty leading, when I worked hard to keep my comment neutral. Clarifying if I'm being put in a box is not being triggered or whatever.
The point is after the dissolving of macro scale government, all bets are off on what's next. Neither the left or right has ownership of the idea of "absence"
Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.
But I think you are confused about what is meant by anarchism. We’re talking about a specific political movement, not a mere absence of government.
It's no worries we cleared that up,, we are just chatting about an interesting but potentially loaded topic.
I understand anarchism as it is known in leftist groups has a well defined ethos and criteria.
My point is that that the core motivation isn't unique, others have their own interpretation. The desire to reduce macro scale government is certainly not unique to leftist groups. And those.other groups have their own well defined ideation around the ideal post transition society.
That’s all true, I just think it’s very annoying that they chose to graft themselves onto an existing political movement by taking their name when they share very little of the core ethics. It makes communication more difficult and implies an affinity that I don’t believe exists.
I mean , libertarian sourced small to zero government is NOT new
It is relatively new actually. I mean the ideas, maybe not since Jefferson had similar ideas hundreds of years ago but the cooption of the words anarchism and libertarianism, both of which were historically leftist movements, was popularized by Murray Rothbard in the 1970s. He was also pro-segregation, just to demonstrate what kind of people we’re discussing here.
Rothbard agreed privately that his movement was fundamentally not anarchism but for whatever reason in his public writings, he claimed otherwise. I suspect it was just to troll leftists but who knows.
Dude that's 50 years ago.
Edit also the ideation is not tied in a person or specific movement, just saying the notions of situation and isolation, especially idealized with the collapse of the federal government go back before the 70s
Anarchism significantly predates even Marxism. Depending on who you ask it is at least 150 years old as an explicit political movement. And even before that the majority of the socialists were ideologically closer to what is today described as anarchism, heck even the young Marx largely just plagiarised ideas from earlier anarchist thinkers.
I think that is where you leave what anarchists define as anarchism. It doesn't end there, it's not open ended. If you end up with some town or camp that is ruled by a leader and/or a priesthood and police force to keep law and order, it's not anarchism. If you can own land and impose your vast property rights so others don't have anything, you're not anarchist.
Exactly how a voluntary collaboration of anarchists is supposed to work to avoid quickly growing small systems of power again (chiefs or warlords) I never figured out so don't ask me. Best answer is that "because the people already overthrew the existing power structures they will have an easier time preventing future power structures". So I think they assume the belief system is powerful enough so that once people are indoctrinated, they would reject any systems of control again. How such an indoctrination is achieved and maintained would be my next question.
Of course there are theories like anarcho-syndicalism. And I think in generally anarchism is understood as merely being of a mindset that any authority has to justify itself or be abolished, but necessary authority is not. So you'd still pay taxes for roads and schools.
more ramblings
Personally I believe that without AGI and a powerful and benevolent and incorruptable mind a la "The Culture" any ideology is just window dressing and temporary. If humanity wants someone to watch the watchers, we need to build the perfect watcher that can do that.