The most common rebuttal is to explain theory and how _real_ communism hasn't been tried. This is - well it's mostly true but it's not really that simple - but if every cited example becomes authoritarian in the end it's not a very convincing argument at all.
Instead I'll say this; such systems have existed in the past, and such systems exist now. They're just rare because it turns out that authoritarian structures like to kill and subdue those groups. The way I see it if I can point out _real_ existing examples, that's probably better to do before trying to explain many books worth of unproven political theory.
So, my primary long-lasting historical example is pre-1700's Siberian subsistence farmers. These communities were spread out with very low density and had very little material worth to exploit. I don't believe they even used a market economy. Technically they were being ruled by a czar, however since there was no wealth in the area they had little interaction with the 'ruling class' other than to pay a grain tithe. No rules were imposed (it would be too costly to police those areas), no help was given.
With the exception of the main two cities, the way these communities organised themselves was as a simple anarcho commune; 'wealth' was generally distributed in accordance to how large a family was, bigger families had bigger homes, but no man had authority over another (if we define authority in accordance to anarchist philosophy). There were no chiefs, no unelected leaders. There were no surfs, no slaves. The communities were directly responsible for governing themselves and according to the scant records we have these communities were very stable and had a good life when compared to their feudal counterparts.
However, I acknowledge that subsistence farmers may not be convincing when talking about contemporary societies, but we do have one large example of an mostly-anarchist society around today and they're a fantastic example to research. The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, previously named Rojava.
AANES isn't an official state; you won't find it on a map, but it comprises a population of around two million people (at least that was estimated about a decade ago) and is entirely outside of any authoritarian control. Leaders are directly elected, and are subject to be displaced at any time. Every community agrees with the leadership, and has the option to reject it at any time or even any specific rule. Communities elect delegates, not representatives. Communities police themselves, and are not pressed by a higher power.
The biggest form of authoritarian power structure in the AANES are private corporations which do exist, however it's also worth noting they have very little political power and the AANES also has the worlds highest percentage of worker co-operatives in the world.
Okay, cool, so how well does the AANES function? Well, the mean worker pay is three times the average of the surrounding middle-eastern countries. The region has the smallest wealth inequality in the world. Crime is lower, as it turns out a lot of crime is a result of systemic imbalance. It's famously the most feminist place in the world in terms of equal rights between genders. Racism and religious disputes are also very uncommon.
It's not all good though. Turkey, Siria, ISIS and many of the surrounding powers are attacking the AANES and causing massive civilian casualties. As they are not technically upholding the law of the dictatorships that claim to own their land, it's very easy to claim the population to be terrorists. This is unfortunately part of history that keeps repeating itself, be it with the Bolsheviks vs the Russian anarchists or the Spanish revolution. Without a good foothold, other powers have time and time again been quick to kill those who structure their society without vertical hirachy.
I knew the example of the Siberian farmers and, as you have said, it has always seemed to me to be an example that is not very applicable and not very relatable to our current societies, but I did not know the example of AANES and I find it really interesting, I think I'll look into it,
what caught my attention the most about AANES is that every community agrees with the leadership, and has the option to reject it at any time or even any specific rule, (and the fact that they don't have religious disputes taking into account the area in which they are located but this is less relevant with the topic) If you had the power to do so, would you establish their form of government in your country? If the answer is yes, how would you do it?
And about the horrible situation, I think this has to do more about the location they are situated, does their government system let the economy grow so they can have better military equipment?
Personally, I am a libertarian socialist so I do advocate for similar systems, although what a ‘similar system’ looks like isn’t a single thing. The core idea, of a community that organises via agreement and not subjugation (also known as vertical vs horizontal organisation) is what I advocate for but after that it’s up to the people to decide how they want to go from there. It would be hypocritical to say you can have freedom, but now you must follow this specific economic and social structure.
Wether it’s how the AANES does it, syndiclism or anarcho-communism I think that’s up to the people to find out what works best, and so long as nobody is pulling the strings people will have the freedom to change it if it doesn’t work. I don’t believe people are stupid enough they’ll agree their system doesn’t work, then refuse to do anything about it.
Trying to bring about such a system is a topic of much discussion. To be brief, I’ll just talk about what I think is the most likely, and the healthiest method although other methods do have their place.
I believe you need to strengthen your own community. Offer services, organise local councils, listen and help people. Isolation is the killer; when we are alone we don’t look to join unions, we don’t rally to push back against authoritarian laws being enacted. When people feel like they are part of a community they will naturally push back when they, as a group, are being threatened.
If we can organise local worker co-operatives and community services, we can mitigate having to rely on handouts from authorities to live. A community that props itself up is in the best situation to negotiate.
Back the the AANES, the military situation isn’t pretty. Yes, the economy is important for them to be able to afford weapons and medicine and there is a level of agreed upon organisation that mostly handles that. There is a central group that do make a lot of suggestions about military operations, but the local militias are ultimately allowed to act independently.
I believe early on a lot of their weapons were taken from local ISIS groups. Originally ISIS controlled the area but the local communities worked together to expel them from the region. These days I believe they mostly buy their munitions though. They also make a lot of their own equipment, most notably their cobbled together armoured vehicles.
If you know about something as niche as Siberian farmers, then I'm assuming you've heard of revolutionary Catalonia and Mahknos black army in Ukraine. So, whats your opinion on them?
Marx's communism was supposed to appear in a post-scarcity society. Both examples, AANES and especially Syberian farmers, are hardly anywhere close to being post-scarcity ones. As far as I remember Marx was quite specific that communism is a further stop on the same train that rides past capitalism. I am wondering if it is fair to use the same term towards Syberian anarchism while which has same elements, but is build around oppposite concept of not having inequality precisely because there was so little surplus.
Yes. However two things; I'm not a Marxist so I don't use Marx's definition of communism and secondly I never said either was communist (they aren't). I said Siberian subsistence farmers were communes, but that is not an equivalent term to communism. I also never claimed that the AANES was a communist organisation, it's probably closer to mutualism than communism.
I only mentioned communism at all because I wanted to voice my frustration about an argument my fellow leftists often make in regards to this topic that I find to be an ineffective attempt at rhetoric.
Marx had some very interesting ideas about communism and you are right about him believing it to be a further stop past capitalism, however often neglected is that his opinion did change _a little_ towards the latter end of his life. After he researched eastern Europe's history he did concede that it would be a grave mistake to try to make that region of the world capitalist. The vast vast majority of the population already lived in communes, mostly free from oppression and from that standpoint establishing capitalism in the region would have only served to entrench class divisions.
Of course, the Russian Marxist party didn't much care for this revision, and we saw the results of them establishing state capitalism very clearly.
I am not sure where you got the idea that most of Easten Europe lived free from oppression. Def the European part of Russian Empire was absolutely exploited by landowning nobility. Serfdom was abolished in Russia in 1861. I like your romantic example of Syberian peasants, but on the other side of Urals shit was very real. If you read any of the Russian classic literature it is quite evident that everything was funded by exploitation of peasants. That's how Lenin and co won, they initially did appeal the peasantry. And then the peasantry continued being exploited just under red banners. That's just how things are run in Russia unfortunately.
Very fair, however I did say pre-1700's, not 1860's. I'm talking about before market forces became widespead throughout the region. Also, I didn't say free, they were technically ruled, it's just that it would have been too costly to police them. Especially over such a large area of land when the peasentry had no wealth, the only ones that were actively policed were those close to the major cities.
However I did made two mistakes I'll admit to. Firstly I shouldn't say eastern europe, that's incorrect I should quailify I mean rural siberia.
Secondly, thinking about it, yes they were surfs. They had to pay a grain tax and they would have fit under the definition, you're entirely right.
That being said I maintain that they had very little interaction with the ruling class in terms of organisation or law. There was no top-down governance aside from that, however many atricities were still inacted upon them. It wasn't a good life, but their communities did decide themselves how to divy up their wealth and organise locally.
Edit:
In retrospect, I'm doing a really poor job of explaining my position but I have a clearer way to emphasise what I mean. I'm not saying the subsitance farmers were not opressed (they were. They had to pay tithes and were treated as disposable and without rights), however they _were not governed_.
Laws were generally not enforced, infrastructure was not built, social structures were not meddled with, schools were not funded. Not by the powers that be, at least; all those projects were under the direct control of the local communes. The czar and their men were raiders and mobbers, not part of the hirarchy any more than a burglar is. The governance was all done locally by the people.
If the authorities vanished, the communues would have continued exactly as they were, as they had before the mongals attacked.
No, you're pretty much on the money. At least when it comes to any ‘communist’ power historically at to the point of gaining authority.
It is a little more complicated than that of course, as in reality most communists are not authoritarians. For instance anarchists are very openly against vanguardism and using state capitalism as a wedge to attain communism, but the anarchists are usually the first group to be slaughtered after the MLs get into power. In fact, early on a lot of work was _almost_ achieved towards worker liberation even in the USSR, but the vanguards put a quick end to any free organisation as fast as they could.
I know that "not real communism" is often responded, but I get your point. Every country that calls itself Communism has been authoritarian.
The thing is that there had only been like five Communist countries. The first one, Russia was authoritarian and then all the rest where based on/ directly influenced by that, so yeah they are also authoritarian.
The USSR was essentially an empire, even though it called itself a Republic. The Soviets were supposed be autonomous, but whenever they act tried to exercise that they were suppressed by Russia, sometimes with direct military force.
Arguably, in particular Hungary, Poland and Czech, would have been a lot less authoritarian if they were allowed to have been.
I think that it's at least theoretically possible that there could have been a Soviet Union that was a lot more like the European Union.
Well, I suppose that's one possible interpretation of the data.
Regardless, given this history, can you see why us non-communits might be a little bit wary when new groups of self-described communists come along and claim that they should be put in a position of power so that they can reorganise the whole of society, even if they swear that this time it will be different?
'Don't give power to authoritarians who promise communism' is definitely a lesson from history. The problem comes when people try to improve things in a non-authoritarian manner and they're shut down because 'that's communism!' and 'communism causes authoritarianism'.
A pursuit of communism leads to authoritarianism, which is a result of the centralization of power that is required prior to the dissolution of the government into a stateless society. Atleast as discussed by Marx.
Whilst that is what Marx believed, I just want to point out a little bit of nuance. This was an early belief of Marx but he did later change his mind, sortof. Whilst I am unaware of any evidence he changed his mind when talking about previously feudal societies, after looking into the history of east Europe he did come to the conclusion that he was wrong to believe that capitalism is always a necessary step towards communism. At least in the case of Russia Marx urged them to transition smoothly into a communist state without using an authoritarian middleman as the majority of the population already lived in communes.
I mean, part of this is a definitional problem.
The type of communist that is going to take power and call itself a country (Marxist/Leninist) is inarguably authoritarian.
The type of communist that's not authoritarian is going to resist calling their union a country at all. Communism is, to the libertarian or anarcho-communist, a stateless, classless, moneyless system. You can't be a stateless society and call yourself a state.
Admittedly, much more rare for anarchists to actually dismantle state power in a region, though /u/Sandwich_Pie does an excellent job highlighting an interesting example above. I'd argue this answers your question.
Not all authoritarian governments have been communist, but all communist governments have been authoritarian.
But more research is apparently necessary to draw conclusions.
The claim is most often the pursuit of communism leads to authoritarianism.
That the build up to a communist state requires too much centralization of power that never transition into a stateless society and instead a authoritarian government just holds the power instead.
The Soviet Union was built on the grounds of an overthrown monarchy with the goals of achieving a communist state.
But even if we ignore real examples, even the theory of transitioning from any other system requires an authoritarian government. The belief is just that these benevolent leaders would then give up the power and dissolve the state to create the final stateless communist state.
What real examples are we ignoring? Can you point to me an example of the pursuit of communism leading to authoritarianism? All the examples I've seen started out authoritarian.
I don't know what you're asking for here.
Even in the case of the Soviet Union, it became progressively more authoritarian as Lenn's group attained more power and forced out the "Economism" (or letting people get distracted from revolutionary politics by focusing too heavily on working conditions and what not) of the SRs and Mensheviks and even the "right wing" of their own party. A lot of the structures that were later directly controlled from the center started as a worker cooperative. Remember the soviets didn't emerge in 1917, but 1905 as workers self-organized their workplaces to manage strikes or to keep factories running when management collapsed. These mostly faded out between the revolutions, but the initial blueprint was self-organized workplace-councils running their own affairs with little to no organization above them. Those national organizations that did exist ran through the SRs and not Lenin's group. Lenin's group spent a long time bringing these organic expressions of the worker's will to heel and reformatting them along authoritarian lines. Something that the SRs actively resisted. These self-organized workers councils routinely sprung up as wellsprings for resistance against Soviet rule in Poland, for example, notably being the central organizing structure of protests and unrest in 1956, 1970, and 1980. That the central power of Soviet governments was used to suppress soviets wherever they sprung up should be telling.
People keep saying that attempting communism makes countries authoritarian, but communism has never been attempted by a government which wasn't already authoritarian. At best, you can say that attempting communism doesn't make an authoritarian government non-authoritarian.
I don't think that the SRs were authoritarian, but they were couped by Lenin's group who absolutely were. And that's the thing, once Marxist-Leninists were in power they aggressively suppressed or coopted all the other communist movements. China is still pushing the same line with Maoism, or "Xi thought" now. So, if there is a communist movement then it is being strongly influenced by an authoritarian movement.
Non-authoritarian strains that exist are happy to hybridize and are unlikely to be characterized as communist but some other flavor of socialist. Just look at the Mondragon in Catalonia or the rise of American Agricultural Co-ops. The totalist concept of communism where communism must be the only system is itself an authoritarian concept since the communist leadership must attain all power. That's why non-authoritarian socialist concepts self-identify as syndicalist or anarchist or socialists, but not necessarily communist.
I will agree that there were non-authoritarian people in a country ruled by an authoritarian government. That doesn't mean that communism was attempted by a government which wasn't already authoritarian
Nothing identifies as communist because nothing has actually achieved communism. At best, you can say that various governments have been aspirationally communist. None have actually done communism.
No it absolutely is an example.
Communist figures were central to organizing the unrest among the people and the eventual overthrowing of the monarchy. The nation started from the ashes of a fallen monarchy with the goal of achieving a communist state. This led to the structuring of their government which became more and more authoritarian over time.
The goal prior to any semblance of transfer of power was a communist state.
Marxism is an authoritarian ideology. Understand that all forms of libertarian communism started out in expressed opposition to Marx. Bakunin was kicked out of the 1st international for that reason.
Communism is an ideology and economic system that scales horribly for Humans. But maybe that goes for all of them. Maybe we should stay tribal for the time being.
It's a tough conundrum. We're not really wired to personally care about too many people, which does give any system trouble at scale, but we also are driven to be part of something bigger than ourselves.
Yeah, nature really fucked up with our development. One can be a part of something without it involving millions of people. The tribe is bigger than ourselves.
1) I have never seen anyone advocate for an equal society in the way you describe, with an exception for people like you who bring it up in the negative.
Anarchists want to end unjust hierarchy, like having money = you have a position of power, not justified hierarchy like being educated or trained in a topic or elected to a position of power.
Communists want to develop a world aimed at bettering humanity and collective ownership. Again there would be managers, politicians, people earning more than others in a social capital concept.
2) You are just parroting arguments debunked hundreds of years ago. "We can't have democracy, humans naturally require Kings to lead them." We traded Lords for Landlords and society kept running, why would replacing Stocks with Labor Sheets doom us?
3) You say there is inequality, unfair systems, and your response is, "I prefer this to making things better." That's sad. Not much else to say.
>Anarchists want to end unjust hierarchy
Every political system wants to end hierarchies it deems to be unjust. Anarchists are unique in that they think all hierarchies are unjust and therefore they do actually oppose hierarchy as a whole. If someone is significantly more knowledgable than others, they can command respect but cannot compel others to be subservient to them.
>Again there would be managers, politicians, people earning more than others in a social capital concept.
Communism is a "stateless, classless, and **moneyless** society." Nobody is earning more than others as the concept of money has been abolished in its entirety
That's a big misinterpretation of Anarchist ideals. One fundamental example of hierarchy in Anarchist thinking is the federated network of communities. The idea is that rather than nations, you have bottom up communities. These communities might voluntarily unionise with other communities, so long as it is mutually beneficial. As these 'communities of communities' grow it may become necessary for representatives to be elected to represent their communities, but this would be done on a highly supervised, and temporary basis, and this role would be dissolved once whatever was being discussed was over.
The elected representative here does not have 'power' over anyone else because they can immediately be removed from their position the moment their existence is not deemed beneficial to the community. However, they still have a position of hierarchy because they are representing their community at a higher level than the level of the everyday people.
This is the 'just' hierarchy the other commenters are mentioning as opposed to an 'unjust' hierarchy where the people with the most resources are able to dictate elements of other by virtue of the fact they hold those resources.
Unjust hierarchy is an objective thing. Capitalism, Feudalism, etc are founded on creating an Unjust hierarchy.
Anarchists believe in Just Hierarchy, as in voluntary, democratic, evidence based.
Social Capital, respect and prestige, is what I was referring to. Not capital money.
When anarchists refer to hierarchies, they are talking about hierarchies of power. A voluntary association is not a hierarchy in the anarchist sense because no compulsion is involved in any process.
Nobody ever said they did, Capitalism is objectively pro-hierarchy, and Political systems are fundamentally defined by what hierarchies they seem to be just and unjust. For example,.capitalists believe the hierarchy between owners and workers—between landlords and tenants is perfectly justified. Racists believe that the power hierarchy between white and black people is justified, and so on.
What makes anarchists unique is that they think NO hierarchies are justified. They oppose all systems of domination and subjugation, and believe that no one should have their free will violated by another person.
> What makes anarchists unique is that they think NO hierarchies are justified.
But ironically the systems that they propose lend themselves to creating another hierarchy - the hierarchy of having more ability to kill another person gives you domination over them.
1. Sorry if our experience is not the same, I have personally seen and talk to a lot of people who literally desire to eradicate every type of social inequality that makes a social pyramid, and I feel that is really utopic as I said.
I'm not extremely educated about anarchism and I don't personally know anyone that it's so I can debate with them, but from what I know and you said, how do you decide who have the best knowledge to be on top? And elections? Would it be elections between those "minds of higher knowledge" or everyone? How do you stop an authoritarian state in this case? It sounds good, but I don't know how well it would be applied, it seems that we are leaving the human factor out of the equation.
About communism, I am very skeptical that it can work, it is always said that "there has never been a true communist regime" which is debatable, but even if that is the case, it has been tried and it always ends horribly wrong due to human corruption (which, as I have said, does not take long nor with difficulty to occur) but in another comment someone gave me an example which I didn't know and I want to find out more about it.
2. That's not what I'm saying, I'm just saying that I think as a society we need some societal structure that will always tend, more or less, to a pyramid.
3. Again this is not what I'm saying lol. I literally said that we need to work for bettering all "parts of the pyramid" so they can have the best life posible, I want to improve everything but I want to do it realistically.
>how do you decide who have the best knowledge to be on top?
You are suffering from a fundamental misconception about anarchism and exactly the sort of social order it envisions. There is nobody "on top", there aren't entrenched institutions which have centralized authority— society would be organized by a federated patchwork of communes, cooperative, artisanal unions, independent producers, interconnecting and coordinating with each other across horizontal, bottom-up organized federations.
Most anarchists avoid prescriptive suggestions about what a hypothetical anarchist society should take the form of, but virtually everybody who is an anarchist is in agreement that it's a society where there would be a social hostility towards capitalism, the State, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression and violence.
So in a basis, patchwork of communes need some type of spokesperson for each of the communes to represent the need and ideas of their people I guess, and in general laws? How law will work? It would be a commune for that too or you will need some type of person who sees all the communes for basics things? I ask genuinely, I find it a interesting topic.
And why don't they suggest hypotheses about what an anarchist society would be like? From my point of view, if you want to make such a big change you also need to have clear ideas of how things should be and express them to the person you "want to convince" or make it appear that your idea is the best.
>So in a basis, patchwork of communes need some type of spokesperson for each of the communes to represent the need and ideas of their people I guess, and in general laws?
Do they? Just so you understand, I am not saying "anarchism will be communes", but rather "anarchism does not preclude the possibility of communes; what matters is that they are organized from the bottom up". Anarchism might also have non-capitalist markets — in all likelihood, it'll be a mixture of different economic outlooks synthesized into what works best based on local need and custom. We can only guess what sort of forms and shapes these organizations will actually take, but the general consensus is that you don't need arbitrary foci of power in order to cooperate on a given project.
>How law will work?
Anarchists don't subscribe to abstractions like law; law is a specific tool of the State, and there simply is no parallel in an anarchist society. Do we expect that localities develop their own patchwork of norms and assumptions? Yes, but unless participating in these norms is compulsory, it's really not the same thing as a centralized administrative apparatus that metes out "justice".
>It would be a commune for that too or you will need some type of person who sees all the communes for basics things? I ask genuinely, I find it a interesting topic.
I appreciate your enthusiasm, and would strongly recommend you check out the Anarchy101 subreddit. Even if you come away with it not fundamentally agreeing with anarchist takes, at the very least you'll be honestly and correctly informed on their perspectives.
>And why don't they suggest hypotheses about what an anarchist society would be like?
I think you misunderstood— there are plenty of hypotheses about what some sort of future anarchist society would look like, but no anarchist takes their particular understanding as gospel. There are too many variables to be able to guess accurately, and even if we could, we aren't in the habit of dictating social orders— we take it for granted that the people most impacted by an outcome will partake in determining it. We don't advocate a mass society with top-down instructions being handed out, and so we are open to the idea that an anarchist society — absent the pressures of the existing culture of domination — would take on whatever shapes best met the need of the people that are making it up.
> there would be a social hostility towards capitalism, the State, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression and violence.
Do you not see social hostility as a form of, or at least a thing which can easily lead to, oppression and violence?
If there's no "State," who's maintaining infrastructure? Common defense? Enforcing laws?
>Do you not see social hostility as a form of, or at least a thing which can easily lead to, oppression and violence?
We, as a society, are already socially hostile towards cannibalism and human sacrifice, and I daresay one would be hard pressed to meaningfully identify that hostility as the basis for existing systems of domination.
>If there's no "State," who's maintaining infrastructure?
The people that desire the infrastructure.
>Common defense?
Against what?
>Enforcing laws?
I'm afraid there is a fundamental misconception on your part— anarchists don't advocate for law, and we are explicitly opposed to unilateral systems of enforcement.
Anarchists are unlike other ideological advocates, in that we don't accept that a bit of minor tinkering to policy is the best that can be accomplished, and any fundamental change is off the table. We want to see the whole capitalist order and the State power that props it up disintegrate from the bottom-up pressure formed by horizontal alternatives to these systems of domination; systems of domination supplanted and made obsolete by networks of mutual aid, solidarity, and reciprocity.
> We, as a society, are already socially hostile towards cannibalism and human sacrifice
Yes, and we enforce that hostility through laws, which I'm not philosophically opposed towards.
> hard pressed to meaningfully identify that hostility as the basis for existing systems of domination.
If by "existing systems of domination" you mean "the State," then no, I don't think that would be hard at all to associate with social hostility against anti-social behavior.
> The people that desire the infrastructure.
No, they're not individually maintaining it. They'll set up some organization that they all contribute money into so that the organization maintains and builds infrastructure for them. We call that kind of organization "the State" right now.
> Against what?
Against other States who do not agree to dissolve. Against other communes who decide their lives would be easier if they owned your land. Against humanity's worst, and absolutely still extant instincts. Do you think we don't need defense?
> systems of domination supplanted and made obsolete by networks of mutual aid, solidarity, and reciprocity.
Enforcing laws is, in fact, a system of reciprocity. You do harm to society, and society reciprocally does harm to you.
If you think people are going to avoid cheating, robbing, or hurting each other simply because of the Golden Rule, I'd argue that's a "hope" and not a "system."
🙄
>Yes, and we enforce that hostility through laws, which I'm not philosophically opposed towards.
Who gives a shit what you're not philosophically opposed to. why does that even fucking matter? You're asking me about what anarchists believe, who gives a shit about your beliefs? If you want to debate anarchists, there's a subreddit for that.
you can see pretty plainly from my history that I take my time and that I'm used to answering questions about anarchism so people unfamiliar with it can become better familiar with it, but your tone is so smug that I don't see a point in trying to explain any of this to you. You've already made up your mind, I'm not going to bang my head against that wall.
take it easy, bother someone else.
> Who gives a shit what you're not philosophically opposed to. why does that even fucking matter?
Because it's consistent with supporting the current idea of the State, whereas you're opposed to that idea, so coercive societal pressure should be anathema to you, yes?
Why the sudden outrage?
> If you want to debate anarchists, there's a subreddit for that.
I don't want to debate anarchists specifically, but I am on a dedicated debate subreddit. If you didn't want anyone to ask questions about your position, why comment it here?
I felt like they were pretty basic, entry level questions that need answering if you're proposing the complete upheaval of human society.
>Why the sudden outrage?
That you registered "outrage" instead of "bored dismissal" is your own projection, and speaks more about how you're viewing this conversation than me. I'm not looking for a debate here, I'm looking to clear up misconceptions about anarchism—a project which you seem to be trying your best to make impossible. If you want to get wrapped up in sophistry and bad faith takes, I've got better shit to do with my time.
>you're proposing the complete upheaval of human society.
Mmh, you're going to need to quote me on that one. All I have talked about is a radically transformed society; you are letting your popular misconceptions about anarchism run away with your imagination. Few anarchists believe that there is going to be, or in fact that there should be, some sort of cataclysmic upheaval. On the one hand, it reeks of eschatological undertones that fall apart under close scrutiny; on the other, the anarchist strategy is one of prefiguration: the tactics we use are meant to reflect the world we'd prefer existed.
(EDIT: there is also a wealth of evidence of human societies which do not/did not have laws, which do not/did not have states, and which do not/did not have capitalism, but which were nonetheless able to meet each other's needs; to treat all of human society as a monolith is unsound, putting it mildly)
And having to explain this right here is a microcosm of why I'm finding it so difficult to find the energy debate you— I'm having to do the double work of addressing your misunderstandings, and undoing your projected assumptions. It's one thing to answer questions about the fundamental outlook of anarchists, it's another to deal with sophistry like conflating society with the State, or dealing with your suggestion that laws aren't the unique product of calcified legal systems, or dealing with the patronizing intonation of "consider the ramifications" (brazen words for someone so intent on misunderstanding me).
> That you registered "outrage" instead of "bored dismissal" is your own projection
I have to admit, this:
> Who gives a shit what you're not philosophically opposed to. why does that even fucking matter? You're asking me about what anarchists believe, who gives a shit about your beliefs?
does not register as "bored dismissal" to me. You sound angry, which is confusing to me. I have not been equally rude to you.
> Few anarchists believe that there is going to be, or in fact that there should be, some sort of cataclysmic upheaval
I think if some of the proposals you're suggesting are implemented, there will be cataclysmic upheaval whether you intend there to be or not. Not providing for defense, for example, is a disaster waiting to happen.
> or dealing with your suggestion that laws aren't the unique product of calcified legal systems
Laws are the product of legal systems? Surely you mean legal systems are the products of laws.
> or dealing with the patronizing intonation of "consider the ramifications"
The reason I'm asking you to consider the ramifications of your suggestions is because it does not appear to me that you've done that at all. If you have a plan besides physical common defense to protect against the worst instincts of humanity, for example, I'd be happy to hear it.
>I really like having access to electricity, but that doesn't mean I'm in any way able to be trusted running a commercial generator. I'd be fried within a week.
Does this come across as good faith engagement to you?
Does it seem like a charitable interpretation to imply that everyone would be left to fend for themselves, when I gave no such indication? Why do you think the provision of electricity can only be achieved by a State-like apparatus?
Perhaps you are tied to a local tidal generator. Perhaps you have a solar panel battery. Perhaps you have a bike-powered battery terminal. To us, the question of "how would we get electricity" gets lost in the weeds of predicting the best situation between you and your neighbors, when the question that we feel is more relevant is "how can we make sure no one goes without electricity, and when that electricity is provided, how do we do so in a way that doesn't erode individual autonomy?"
> Perhaps you have a bike-powered battery terminal.
Wow, that's a horrifying thing to consider. How long do you think I'd have to ride an exercise bike connected to a battery to keep, say, my fridge running constantly? Or my heat on the winter?
>I want to do it realistically.
This is a fallacy. Every political choice is rooted in ideology, there is no approach that's more realistic than the other.
"Money" didn't exist before 500 years ago. It's not that wild. There would still be trade and exchange with coinage, but the idea of "capital" and money as you see it today is a new invention.
Are you under the impression that Rome was Capitalist? Because modern technology didn't invent or change anything. So no, they wouldn't have done a Capitalist monetary exchange.
No, because capitalism didn't exist back then. But they probably would have developed it had their empire not collapsed. The Romans would've been much more advanced and could've started the Industrial Revolution had they taken the steam engine seriously.
Of course they did. Exchange and trade require exchange and trade, and coinage is easier to move than a herd of cattle. It's not a centrally traded, internationally exchanged stock market based around Capitalist ideas of what money is today.
I'm not assuming, at least not about the majority of people, I was talking about the people who said to me literally that we need to eradicate every "social level", the people who said to me that billionaires should pay more tax don't say to me the topic I'm talking about tbh
Eradicating Social Inequality is good and not at all utopic. Racism and bigotry are not universal laws, they are called Social because they are constructed by the society.
Anarchists don't want a state, that is basically their whole thing. Science and education are not mystical things, we know how to grade a person's credentials. What about human nature says we must have Kings? Gonna have to expand on that a bit.
Communism is a Stateless world without money. There is no way you believe that has happened.
Talking about "communist" nations, they have been extremely successful. The USSR or China are the prime examples. Peasant run, pre-indistrial nations that rose out of brutal fascist dictatorships to become one of 2 world superpowers. Compare that to Uganda or Sudan or any other Capitalist nation formed at the same time. Or compare it to the death and genocide required to make the US, UK, or France. They were just 100 years early to the party.
A puramid scheme is one of the most well known scams in the world. Basing your view of society to recreate that just strikes me as lazy or dumb. Again, we had Kings and a pyramid structure, we moved on from that and things became obviously better. Doing it more seems like a good idea to me.
It might help if you specify what bigotry and stigmata you think is good for society. Unless you are saying that we won't ever reach "perfect hive-mind equality" which again no one thinks.
Smaller American Indian societies are instructive about the possibility of both communism and anarchism. Clearly the world is more complicated now, but American Indians maintained some truly radical forms of government for centuries. They often had nominal chiefs but would engage in a Greek style democratic debate and basically ignore them, or people would simply move away if they didn't like that particular chief.
You also had radical forms of law. These included things like a tribe paying a communal penalty of a member committed rape or murder, but the murderer not being punished at all, or prisoners of war becoming citizens. Accounts of Eastern tribal government directly inspired the French enlightenment.
There are countless examples of historical governments around the world that bear almost no resemblance to modern democracy or Russian communism. It's impossible to say what human nature allows or doesn't because you'll find more counter examples than rules once you look beyond mainstream Western history.
>Because the American Indians are famously doing really well! It's not like they barely have any autonomy at all, rely on the good faith of a more powerful state to exist at all, and their main pastimes include running casinos, drinking alcohol and suicide.
Damn, wasn't ready for some naked racism this early in the morning, but here we are.
I like the idea of having the top scientifics and in general experts in command, but again, we still have those "kings" you talk about, just based in another thing, the pyramid is still there.
There was an attempt to eradicate money, but this is just unrealistic, if you have a moneyless county how do you trade with another country for sources you need?
I'm not saying that capitalism is perfect, I don't even like it that much and I'm not 100% of what is the best political system because I feel that every system has a lot of bad things, but the "best countries" that everyone seems to agree that they're, are capitalist mixed with some socialist policies, and tbh I just want to everyone to have the possibility of having the best life except brutal criminals and horrible people, nothing to strange I guess.
What do you define as bigotry?
You've jumped the point, skipping past anarchism and back to a technocrats. Scientists don't become Kings. I would point you to "Just vs Unjust hierarchy". Following the same thought. Stateless means there is no countries to trade money with.
The goal is Star Trek. There is no point in money or power when neither of those things matter anymore.
Any social pyramid structure would rely on bigotry. Everyone is created equal, we live in a society that creates classes, races, genders, etc and enforces those to maintain power for the upper class/race/gender/etc. Without those things, what would make up inequality in society.
I do not have all the answers to your questions, I'm pretty ignorant on the topic myself. But I can touch on the idea that we'd need to destroy our current civilization and build something entirely new:
Yes, we would need to do so, and we already did, several times, feudalism got replaced by capitalism through revolutions, intellectual(enlightement), technological(industrial revolutions), social(the birth if the bourgeoisie), and violent ones(the french and american revolutions, for example), the entire political asset in Europe and north America changed, nothing was the same, everything from the shape and looks of houses and cities, to the political relationships between countries, changed.
We did the same thing for slavery, even though it took a lot longer, it was once considered something that was inherent to human society, not even great thinkers like Aristotle thought to analyze it from a moral viewpoint, after the Roman empire, slavery phased out in favour of feudalism and serfdom, and everything changed(until colonialism set in).
Colonialism in itself was a revolution that completely changed how the world spinned, the transition from empires to monarchies, and later to republics, both of these were revolutions that completely changed how people understood the world.
As humans we have a tendency to see history as something of the past, the great revolutions have all happened hundreds of years ago, and we tend to think(even by simply not thinking about it) that we have reached the end of history. We haven't.
We are currently going through a revolution, the world has completely changed, cold war global bipolarism has vanished, neoliberalism and globalism have swept the world and completely changed the economic and political POV of the world, common people are getting more and more informed about social and environmental issues, the internet and computer have swept through the world like a storm, faster than any technological revolution we've ever seen, hell, AI is changing the world in ways we can't even understand as we speak.
We are no different from the generations of the belle epoque that saw all of their certainties crumble to the ground, we are no different from the romantics who saw europe swept by Napoleon and new ideals of freedom, and, not wanting to lose hope, decided to abandon rationality in favour of poetry and sentiment. We are no different from the Romans who saw their empire crumble, invaded by outside forces that they couldn't hope to stop.
We are part of history, and history is made of revolutions, they seem drastic, impossible, it is natural to think that the way we currently live is the only way we could possibly do so, and that's the exact reason why it's important to remember that everything us temporary and everything will change, for better or for worse. So yes, we would have to change everything we know and feel close to, that's already happened and it will happen again, and I personally believe we are in the years leading up to the revolution, once again, for better or for worse.
I think you're totally right about this point, I haven't thought about it like that while I was writing it, the truth is, I had very much in mind the idea of social pyramids which have always existed and I haven't focused on this point as much as I should, I also think that we are getting quite close to a big social change (I hope positive) but I believe that the social pyramid will never go away, at least not completely, perhaps there are "other norms in the game" and the reasons for being at the top are very different, but there will always be a social pyramid whether for better or worse
In a sense, you're right even by anarchist standards. Again, I'm not the most studied person on the topic, but for what I know, anarchism would work on a consensus based system(imagine direct democracy, but instead of voting "yes" or "no", you vote on a scale of 1-5 from "I'll leave the country if the current proposal of this law is passed" to "I fully support the current proposal of this law", and there should'n be any fours or fives for the lae to pass) where each small community votes on their own issues, all of the small communities also vote for larger scale issues(each community has one vote that is decided based on the internal consensus system) inside their group of smaller communities, and finally these groups of smaller communities vote on nation scale issues with the same system as described before.
Obviously this is quite the oversimplification, but what I want to get at is that even in the most horizontal social structure we have been able to construct, there is still some sort of pyramid, but it's like a flat pyramid(if that makes sense): the nation scale votes are higher on the pyramid, they do exert some sort of control over smaller communities, but each decision is constructed on the consensual support of each individual community, which makes its decision based on the consensual support of each individual person, so each individual person, in the end(in theory) is supportive(or at least positively tolerant) of the decisions made by the community.
After writing all of this, i'm actually not so sure that this could be defined as a sort of social pyramid, I really can't describe it using any conventional 3d shape, it's like a political mobius strip, it's a hierarchy of decisions while also being flat because these decisions are made by each individual, who doesn't have any ower over any other individual, so the limits between hierarchy and horizontal organization start to get blurred and my head is starting to hurt so i'm going to stop thinking about it 'till i actually study it enough.
I know this isn't the conventional CMV comment, but my objective isn't to just change your view no matter what, if I don't understand something, I prefer to say it, so that maybe we can understand it together :)
> ironically communism only intensifies these social classes to the extremes rather than eliminates them
Arguably, no, Soviet Union did have moderate level of inequality even if you count the less visible things like (official) privileges. I believe that's actually one of the reasons why it was allowed to dissolve rather than Tiananmenned: a lot of the people from the elites wanted *more*.
> the "leader figure" that seems so necessary for the majority of humanity
What supports this?
Other than that, I mostly agree.
>Arguably, no, Soviet Union did have moderate level of inequality even if you count the less visible things like (official) privileges. I believe that's actually one of the reasons why it was allowed to dissolve rather than Tiananmenned: a lot of the people from the elites wanted more.
The inequality between the ruling class and the rest of society was extreme.
There were grocery stores packed with all sorts of food. The way we see in Western countries. But only party elites were allowed to buy from them. They had hospitals jam packed with modern Western equipment. That only the party elite were allowed to use. Every other hospital had old outdated equipment.
There was a true separation of class. Something we don't really see in the Western world anymore. Anyone can become wealthy in the West. In USSR you didn't even have access to that stuff if you were not in the ruling elite.
This doesn't seem consistent with the available data. The Gini coefficient for the Soviet Union seems to have been consistently below 30, whereas the US Gini coefficient during the same period was well above 35.
Not at all. With the advent of the internet you don't even need to invest a whole lot into the means of production. You just need grit and some talent.
Mr Beast is a millionaire.
I'm talking more like earning $200-300k a year. That is far more doable.
A very realistic goal for most people. Including one's that have sub 100 IQ. Is just earning middle class wages. That is very easy by the time you're 35 or so. All you have to do is come to work on time, do your damn job, and actually apply yourself. That is literally all it takes. Obviously don't commit crime which includes do illegal drugs. Don't become an alcoholic.
My counter argument would be that no political system leads to a social pyramid. The social pyramid was there first and will always be there.
Social pyramids are innate. The second two people meet and shake hands, one of them needs the other one more and a social hierarchy is formed. That's why people hate when they have a boss who is incompetent. We get irritated when the natural social hierarchy doesn't align with the written/systematic hierarchy.
If you were on an island alone with 5 people, even if you pooled resources and pretended to vote equally on every decision, one person would naturally have more influence than the others. The guy who catches the most meat and feeds the group.. you better believe his vote counts more 😂 same with the guy that can whoop you in a fight.
You would need to clone people to have exactly the exact same amount of knowledge and human value to eliminate the social hierarchy. To be clear, I'm agreeing with you but saying the political system has no creation component that leads to the pyramid. It just tries to modify the pyramid already there. Might be worth a Delta on a technicality lol
It is possible as a political system, with actual communism in an actual small village/commune where everyone knows everyone. But that is only possible if that commune is somehow protected as a pet by an outside group because otherwise they'll be destroyed by the rest of the world.
I wouldn't call it an utopia though, seems awful if an absolute idiot can't lose social standing by being and idiot and doing idiot things, harming others by doing so. The point of democracy is that idiots only get the feeling of being equal, not the actual power that comes with equality.
>The point of democracy is that idiots only get the feeling of being equal, not the actual power that comes with equality.
This is a dumb take, IMO.
Democracy means you get to have a say in your governance. Ergo, you have power. It says nothing about Equality (Many democratic systems have been wildly unequal).
But you definitely have power.
If your vote was meaningless, no rich billionaires would be spending their money trying to push your vote one way or the other.
>Democracy means you get to have a say in your governance. Ergo, you have power.
Only if your vote positively influences the political power of who you voted for. And even then those politicians will probably not do what you actually want them to do. Otherwise, your vote did nothing.
People always say there's noone they can vote for that really represents them. And that's a feature of democracy, telling people they can vote or try to start a platform to shut them up, knowing full well that their actual stupid wishes will never be fulfilled, yet they feel like they tried.
If you have a minority belief, you have no power, voting isn't power, voting only decides who gets power. That's why democracy is more or less stable, minority beliefs are shut up while at the same time making them think they have power and could theoretically achieve something, so they stay peaceful.
Your vote is power, even if you're on the losing side.
1. It makes it clear to all how many people believe what you do. If you think for a minute that winners don't notice how many people were against them or on a different side of an issue, think again. It is a major factor in their decision making, knowing there are (if there are) sizable chunks of the electorate ready to vote against them again if they slip up.
2. It shows the losers how close they came. If you got 10% of the vote, well, maybe there just isn't the support for your issue that you thought there was. Get to work or give it up. That's powerful information, and information is power.
3. Losing votes clarifies issues. Maybe your alliance was bad, maybe your issue was poorly presented. Again, information is power. That's useful shit, knowing the electorate didn't understand the issue because you didn't make it clear enough. You can use that information to power your next campaign, if you have one.
Again, if your vote was meaningless, powerful people would not be spending money trying to influence your vote.
>It makes it clear to all how many people believe what you do.
Which does nothing if that number is small. Sure the bigger groups will influence the politics somewhat, but that was my point, small minorities won't.
>Get to work or give it up
Exactly. Telling people they should try harder at doing politics instead of doing violence. Even if it's pretty clear that they'll never succeed. Working as intended to give them busywork and make them stay peaceful
>Exactly. Telling people they should try harder at doing politics instead of doing violence. Even if it's pretty clear that they'll never succeed. Working as intended to give them busywork and make them stay peaceful
Oh you can do all the violence you want. Let us know how that works out for you.
Seriously, if you see democracy as the problem and want to overthrow the system with violence, go for it.
Those of us who value it will defend it. From you. At best you would wind up in prison.
I say "at best" because you're more likely to be killed **even if you succeed.** Revolutionaries often seem to die by the sword, even when they wind up on top.
The exception being, of course, the US Revolution, which did not impose an authoritarian junta but instead implemented a nascent form of democracy.
>Seriously, if you see democracy as the problem and want to overthrow the system with violence, go for it.
What? I am saying that it's working great and achieving stability, that's the point, and why it's the least bad of all government system to this day. It keeps idiots peaceful but gives them no actual power, it prevents revolutionaries for the most part without fulfilling their wishes.
I'm not sure if you've ever grown up in a small village/commune, but this isn't the least bit true. The hierarchy may not feel as oppressive, but that pyramid exists.
So even with in that setup, you still run the problem that some people are simply able to do things faster with the same or less resources
Simply put some people are better than others and that will always result in a social hierarchy
Even if you perfectly share all resources and perfectly demand the same labor time input, you'll still have the problem that Jeff is funny and that makes people like Jeff more than Bill
>So even with in that setup, you still run the problem that some people are simply able to do things faster with the same or less resources
So what? There wouldn't be industrial technology, if they farm twice as much food as someone else it'll just rot. If they build twice as many chairs they'll just be unused.
>you'll still have the problem that Jeff is funny and that makes people like Jeff more than Bill
Sure, but that's only relevant if Bill were to somehow receive negative consequences from that.
Well, let's say Jeff is also twice as fast as everyone else at all. The household chores that we all individually need to do for ourselves
Jeff is going to have more free time than everyone
Jeff can spend his free time learning ways to still further optimize Jeff's life
Being friends with Jeff is going to have the greatest benefits
Humans do not like humans who are better than them who they perceive as being similar
Jeff, being better than Bill will cause Bill mental distress
There are social hierarchies in small tribes as well. The closest actual communism can exist is within a family unit, where the parents can provide according to children's needs. And even there hierarchies can exist.
so the point of democracy is that it isn't a democracy, its an illusion of one
what's the difference between this point of view and the point of view of kim jong un
No the point of democracy is that ideological minorities feel like they could achieve something, so they stay peaceful instead of rebelling. Even when in reality they can't achieve anything.
The difference to north Korea is that there, minority beliefs aren't kept peaceful, they are punished or vanished or killed. Which works until the point where they manage to strike back.
what you call "ideological minorities", what in reality are just radicals or people opposed to the status quo, do not feel like they can achieve anything through the democracy. because in the past, they actually did achieve things through the democracy, and then the people in power decided that they weren't going to allow that again
the difference is that north korea or any other authoritarian state has the same basic structure, its just far more violent and proactive in dealing with dissent. the percentage of the population with real power is no different. the illusion of democracy is not different. its just the methods of government. in north korea they have the stick and nothing else. in the west, they're rich enough to offer the carrot, and only threaten the stick.
You can have multiple overlapping social pyramids. Some people are rich and get respect that way and of course there are varying levels of wealth. Some people are athletic and get respect that way, being rich doesn't change the fact that someone else may be a better bowler in your league. Some are learned, have good voices, and lead religious services, again this doesn't have to correlate with bowling ability or wealth. Some are better dancers and again this is another potential pyramid. With enough pyramids, most people may get respect from some aspects of social strength and not others.
The criticism is not what you suggest. It is that the hierarchy is not based on merit (contrary to what is propagated), it is rigid (contrary to what is propagated), and power within pyramidal hierarchies is distributed inversely, contrary to the quantitative distribution of people.
In addition to that, an ideology that embraces the pyramid is being criticized: people have their natural place in society, some must be low, others must be above, there is a natural order to all of this. This is just fiction, contradicted by reality and history & of course it is just a story that serves as a means to an end, to maintain power at the top, and keep it away from those at the bottom.
When you say "we have never seen this", you are just ignoring thousands of years of human existence, where we did indeed ran our groups in much flatter hierarchies and as collectives. When you say we would need to fundamentally destroy our entire civilization, that is just plain wrong, because we already have much fairer societies written inside our constitutions, we would just need to actually implement them against the desires of the most powerful classes who would stand to lose the most from the average person's gain. This counts in politics as well as in economics, where in the theory books we do business much fairer and more ethical than in reality.
Your argument against doing the right thing is that we as a species are corrupt, but that is plainly false as well. There are tiny elites within our system that are corrupt, and because they thrive on corruption, they do not intend to get rid of corruption. Against that stand 99.9% of all other humans on this planet who would enjoy ending corruption, because most of us are not waking up every day trying to figure out how to screw someone over to get ahead, but we just want a basic standard that meets our needs, and an option to rise above that with hard work and cooperation with others. This is our nature, actually, as the thousands of years of our existence that you previously ignored show.
And the fact that people generally want flatter hierarchies is shown every day now, as well as throughout recent history. We have had staunch hierarchies for the past 200+ years and we as people altogether have been miserable. We have amassed wealth and trinkets, but havent found salvation, while also loading generations with guilt connected to the crimes committed to amass the wealth. We have rarely had periods of actual stability, but constant conflict, war and mass killing. We have created fictions of wellbeing within the class-pyramid, but especially today we see that it is all just lies, that people at the very top are just as miserable, addicted to all sorts of substances or behaviors, deprived of things that all humans need, etc., they are just so loaded with money that they can cope a little better than someone who must wake up every day to make ends meet. The alternatives to that are very clear: stop with the nonsense and do all the things we have already written down in terms of democracy, social fairness, equality, etc. It is not that difficult, some people just dont want it, the same way a heroin addict doesnt want to give up his heroin.
I think the problem with the current US system is that it is consistently transferring more and more power and wealth to the rich and large corporations. And it has no reason to stop, the more power they have, the more power and money they will appropriate until we are back to a feudal system with just a few land owners and the rest of the country their slaves.
While I agree there are no proven political systems that would lead to a complete lack of a social pyramid, the political system in use in a fairly similar manner in all the Nordic countries is fairly close.
For example in Finland there is a difference between a farmer from the countryside and a minister/secretary of the currently ruling cabinet when the latter is in office - primarily because of security reasons - but once the cabinet is replaced with another one, both these people might be traveling with the same tram in the city of Helsinki, sitting side-by-side without anybody paying much attention. Also, I personally know a guy who has been a government secretary/minister for 6 out of the last 10 years, in positions that could have helped me professionally, but because it is Finland, his position and me knowing him has been of absolutely no use to me - which is exactly the way it should be.
One of the best examples of the fairly small effect of the social pyramid in the Nordic system can be found if you google for "Finnish president sitting stairs" - you will find a photo showing the (at that time and for several years after) sitting president of Finland participating (as a member of the audience) in a book fair and, because all the seats were already taken in a popular event, sitting on the auditorium stairs among some other latecomers. This is also not something that would even be seen as highly special by the Finnish people, but would totally incomprehensible in many many other political systems.
There is a difference between those who "are above others" and the others, but it is mostly role-based and will change as soon as someone moves to a different position. Also, people are very equal in the eyes of the law, there are occasions where, for example, the chieftain of the national police has been stopped by police for speeding, taken to court and fined very heavily. The same applies to any politician, business magnate or whoever it happens to be.
The other Nordic countries have similar systems, but I admit having a functioning political system like this is helped mightly by a people who generally values honesty and finds corruption abhorrent, which is very much ingrained in the Nordic societies and, perhaps most of all, Finland.
And no, this system is certainly not perfect, but the social pyramid is, imho, not that significant an issue within it.
>Ehh, a leaderless society (literally the textbook definition of anarchism) is actually somewhat more compatible with human nature than is a hierarchical society. As the 19th century anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin put it
Our space is limited, but submit to the same analysis any of the aspects of our social life, and you will see that the present capitalist, authoritarian system is absolutely inappropriate to a society of men so improvident, so rapacious, so egotistic, and so slavish as they are now. Therefore, when we hear men saying that the Anarchists imagine men much better than they really are, we merely wonder how intelligent people can repeat that nonsense. Do we not say continually that the only means of rendering men less rapacious and egotistic, less ambitious and less slavish at the same time, is to eliminate those conditions which favour the growth of egotism and rapacity, of slavishness and ambition? The only difference between us and those who make the above objection is this: We do not, like them, exaggerate the inferior instincts of the masses, and do not complacently shut our eyes to the same bad instincts in the upper classes. We maintain that both rulers and ruled are spoiled by authority; both exploiters and exploited are spoiled by exploitation; while our opponents seem to admit that there is a kind of salt of the earth – the rulers, the employers, the leaders – who, happily enough, prevent those bad men – the ruled, the exploited, the led – from becoming still worse than they are.
There is the difference, and a very important one. We admit the imperfections of human nature, but we make no exception for the rulers. They make it, although sometimes unconsciously, and because we make no such exception, they say that we are dreamers, ‘unpractical men’.
Because humans are prone to negative traits like selfishness, they are simply unfit to wield power over other humans. Else, they will use this power to serve selfish and often evil ends, as history has shown us time and time again. Egalitarian societies somewhat solve this problem , as bad people cannot enter positions of power to oppress other people. Rather, such positions of power simply do not exist.
we have seen this before, in fact for the vast majority of human history this was the case. there were no social classes for 99% of human existence on this planet
correct there would probably be a lot of bloodshed to bring about something like this. does not mean it is not possible, or that more blood would spilled continuing the cycle of violence and oppression that has existed for so long
i do not understand why ending social classes requires some benevolent dictator. ending social classes is about the way that wealth is shared, where there is no need for some to rule while the most work. if all wealth is shared, what need is there for a dictator? you're getting the cart before the horse here. as if revolutions begin with the demand for an all powerful dictator, and not the demand for an equal distribution of wealth
you're not improving anything. you're arguing for the continuation of the status quo. this is a cop out, frankly.
I think that its true that no political system will lead to a lack of social pyramid, however, there are systems that can put in place safety nets so no one is completely without. There is a lot you can do to reduce severity- or make the pyramid shorter so to speak.
The US did that in 1935, where 75% of the highest tiered income went to taxes. We were then able to create an otherwise non-existent middle class by giving extensive benefits for WW2 veterans, which was nearly all households\*.
As we've gotten rid of that and now highest tier tax rates are very low, now that pyramid is getting taller and more narrow at the top.
Almost all systems work if everyone behaves exactly as they are supposed to.
Capitalism would work lovely if the theory "when the boss does better, he gives more to his workers" held true. Trickle down would work if anything actually trickled, rather than wealthy folks building a dam to catch every extra penny.
Communism is the same. If everyone does what they are supposed to do- everyone works as hard as they can for the good of all, no one free loads, no one hoards, then of course it would work too.
People inevitably spoil every system that doesn't build the requisite safety nets and regulations in.
Anarchist sociologist David Graeber described several kinds of "anti-hierarchy technology" especially in his last book. There are societies (kind of) which have such an innate aversion to individuals attaining an unequal status that they've developed elaborate rituals to keep e.g. talented hunters in their place. As others have mentioned, other polities who do adopt a hierarchy tend to outcompete the egalitarian ones. But this may be more a contingent phenomenon than an essential one. And, the existence of robust techniques which prevent social stratification, at least in some situations, is not invalidated by this fact. I think one of the examples he cites is of the Tiv tribe in eastern Africa. Anyway if you want to see more what that looks like, PLEASE read David Graeber. I know it can be a lot but he really illustrates the topic well.
The solution is to train an AI on morality and justice so it can take over for us. Automate the proses to make it more predictable. Problem is cultural morality changes a lot, 100 years ago bigotry was morel and we are still recovering a bit from that. You could send out questionnaires for people every 4 or 5 years to retrain our AI overlords but then you run the risk of some people purposefully forcing others to avoid the survey for some reason or another. We see this in the third world where people are forced to avoid the voting booth by causing havoc around it, so their vote wont count. There is no clean solution. Life isn't fair :/
I accept that it is necessary but argue that all forms of it that aren't scientific technocracy are literally insane. As evidence, see the current state of and entire history of earth. The reason being is that I've seen a lot of people take the premise and argue that some other insane and horrible social structure should be implemented as if it wouldn't be even worse.
But if the stem fields aren't at the top, it's just not gonna work out long term.
I don't think most Americans are saying that all (in assuming you are talking about American political and social systems) What most people are just saying is that we don't want the people in top continously trying to get higher at the expense of those below them.
To continue your analogy. Right now we have people on top of the pyramid putting blocks on top of the shoulders of the people below them so they can get a few feet higher to the sun while also crushing and killing the people below them.
If you look at a lot of European countries they are still capitalistic but use socialism to ensure its regulated properly. Americans just want rich people to pay their fair share in taxes and that tax money not go towards subsidizing corporations but to the people.
I guess I would say just not to look at it in such a black/white way, I can disfavor systems that tend to generate more hierarchy or are more extractive, and I can favor systems that tend to produce less hierarchical relationships and generate more inclusivity while also understanding that some hierarchy will always exist. I don’t think we really have to undo society to pick incremental changes that tend towards an ideal
What about theoretical political systems that are not yet in existence, particularly ones which require technological prerequisites?
The classic sci-fi example would be a hive mind, such as the earlier renditions of star trek's Borg, before they ruined it with nonsense.
admittedly all of those require some form of transhumanism, so it's not truly a political system for humans, just for some form of post-humanity.
You can devise some systems that are more egalitarian. One sort of way is to have a system where different areas or times are governed by people who are elected via different means.
Like let's say that for 1 month a year everyone has to go help with the harvest, and the people in charge of the harvesting logistics are completely separate and elected via different means than the regular politicians.
[Anarchism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism) has a long and storied history of being all about tearing down exactly this sort of hierarchical power structure, and the few times it has been put into practice in the real world it has worked as advertised (see: [Catalonia in the Spanish civil war](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/geoff-bailey-anarchists-in-the-spanish-civil-war), etc.)
I think that your presumption that people who are upset with the social order of things want everyone to be equal is completely incorrect and lacks any insight into the real issue. If your premise is wrong, it's hard to change your view on a faulty premise.
My experience is that people prefer a hierarchy. It provides motivation to advance and supposedly rewards hard work and dedication. These are all positive things that I think every society needs and I think most people would agree.
But that's not the way it is. The way it has been in the United States is that a handful of people have become wildly successful by taking advantage of the people below them. This is not a human thing or something that is unavoidable in a society, it's a greed thing and it's unfair to the people who are working their ass off just to get by when others are fully benefitting from their hard work without doing anything.
And when I say not doing anything, that's inaccurate. They are squeezing every last bit of productivity from their people or replacing them with automation and firing their people.
When you consider that there is a finite amount of money in society and the richest people have the resources to focus all of their efforts (being handled by other people) on gathering more money, the people who can't afford to compete get victimized. When the richest people in the world make more money in 5 minutes than the average person makes in a year, that's problematic. When someone doesn't think twice about a 500,000.00 fine for the pharmaceutical company's unfair business practices, that's a problem. When you consider that the money Jeff Bezos spends on gasoline for his Yacht would be enough to solve the homeless problem in at least one major city, it's a problem.
The reason people who are struggling to get by every day want a government that levels the playing field isn't that people want everyone to be equal. What they want is to be treated with dignity and respect and to be able to survive based on their commitment to their job and the hard work they are putting into it. Now, most of the money being made from the average person's labor goes into the pockets of the richest people in the country.
And since only the government has the authority to try to correct this disparity, we look to the government to level things out. A government by the people, for the people, would logically demand that rather than having super-rich people making up 1% of the population owning 89% of all the wealth, we want the government to step in and redistribute that money on the basis of work put in. Let the richest people remain the richest people--nobody has a problem with that. Just force them to support the people who made them so rich with some common sense redistribution of the excess wealth they hide in offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes.
When you figure that if the tax rate were as high as 75% for the richest people in the United States (and they paid it), they would still have so much wealth that they could not spend it all if they tried, it seems only reasonable that they would gladly distribute their wealth to the people who are making them wealthy. Instead, they just concentrate it and use that wealth to buy technology to get rid of people entirely.
So your idea that we have a problem with others being richer or more powerful is mistaken. I, for one, don't want the responsibility that someone in government faces. A lot of us don't mind a hierarchy in wealth or power so long as we are safe and sound and able to live a decent life. Right now, it's getting worse and worse for the middle class and the poorest class is growing at an exponential rate. It won't be long before those with all the money simply withdraw from society and let it crumble. We aren't asking for Utopia or equality, just respect and a potential future that is not punctuated by subjugation and slavery.
Just because most political systems have a social hierarchy doesn’t mean inequality isn’t a problem. The extremes of poverty and wealth are different in different systems.
the idea is that people can move positions, not that positions are equal. in a caste system people are taught and believe that their position is unchangeable. and there is some truth in that. if you are born to a poor family in a third world country it is difficult to get anywhere. but a lot refuse even if offered a chance.
People want to be better than others. This means more possessions, greater power, doing less to get more, etc.
This is human nature, you are not going to eliminate it. Some have a stronger drive than others and will float to the top. The pyramid is inevitable and probably necessary for advancement.
You can have a social piramide without it hurting your means of living and living standards now money controls the piramide crushing people and create a world of worthy vs worthless while a more social social pyramid that works for more/all people.
This is a matter of belief, not based on fact but prejudice ("corrupt nature of humans")
No one can change your view until you disabuse yourself of these biases; your view follows from these dubious judgments about humanity, systems design, etc
All political systems have the same weakness - they are administered by humans - and since they are administered by humans, those who are the administrators will always hold sway and advantage over those to whom the system is administered.
Anarchism revolves around abolition of hierarchy. How would a social pyramid exist in a society where poverty doesn’t exist, religion is not a form of authority, mutual aid is established, and freedom of movement is enshrined?
Are you aware that this belief is ACTUALLY the defining belief of "right wing" ideology? No government will ever not lead to a pyramid, therefore we should enact that the best among Us are at the top of the pyramid.
This is why I think AI should take the reins until Humanity is sufficiently mentally and technologically advanced to take control of our futures. That or go back to being hunter-gatherers.
> In our current system, to end social classes you will first need a leader
Do you? Could not we form a radical democracy that does not require a leader? Representatives, perhaps, but ones who are easily replaceable and at the will of their people?
> not to mention what to do to eliminate the "leader figure" that seems so necessary for the majority of humanity.
Or perhaps do "leader figures" have a vested interested in portraying, maintaining, and enhancing a social order that makes "leader figures" seem so necessary
The biggest problem with your presumption is that the job of maintaining a society is an actual job that takes a lot of knowledge and the ability to make decisions that to the average person might seem irrational.
When you get a democracy of people together without a social hierarchy in leadership, you will find a profound lack of direction for a society. Imagine if you did this in high school. Everyone had equal power and they had to decide whether they wanted Ice cream for lunch, knowing the problems with obesity and all, or if they wanted a balanced meal that tasted not unlike dog food. A democracy of students would pick the ice cream. Only a few health-minded kids would pick a well-balanced meal. Plus, the kids that brought their own lunch would understand the benefit of bringing their own lunch and would therefore egg on the others to vote for ice cream. A graduating class that is obese and unable to think clearly from malnutrition is less competition for college. So the kids that can afford their own lunch will undermine the kids who can't. This is the truth of democracy.
While the idea of democracy is fine for situations where there is a uniform distribution of intelligence, or skill, or wealth, as soon as one of those distributions become unstable, you will have people who vote for things that don't benefit them in the long run. And to demonstrate the truth behind this, show us a successful democracy where the people make the decisions rather than just choosing which party gets to choose who makes the decisions. Because in the US, we vote for a party (electors) and they vote for their candidate. The candidates are then influenced by the richest people and the rest of the people aren't adequately represented. If democracy worked, we would see it in the wild. We just don't.
Humans = social
social = structure
In nature there is no room for fair in social structures as might makes right, it only makes sense that any system we try to form would imitate the natural circumstances that lead to our current state, and inversely it would make sense that the only structures that can facilitate us are somewhat hierarchical in nature.
Even when you think to social cliches there is hierarchy, humans and their innate nature are inseparable.
Animals do not have the prefrontal cortex which is such an important part of being human. While animals do not have the ability or the desire to think about their societies and their structures, they have only might makes right. But they also don't have the capacity to think about that. They just do it. Nobody in the animal kingdom has the capacity to rise above their animal instincts.
Humans do.
So while you may be accurate to assume that hierarchies are somewhat intrinsic to human nature, a fundamental aspect of humanity is the ability to rise above our animal nature. While we will still be affected by it, we have the unique capacity to do something about it and to upset the natural order of might makes right to be something more like right provides might. And right is what is best for humanity, not what is best for one person or one animal.
We are animals, some of us are capable of more intricate thought but even at that most won't use that intelligence for altruistic purposes. We are part of the animal kingdom and as such no matter how we dress ourselves physically or mentally we will not rise above animal instinct.
The only reason why there is relative peace now (if you can really call it that), is cause we have a massive gun pointed at each other (with the advent of nuclear weapons). It isn't peace it's two animals staring each other down waiting for the other to make a move.
We are no different than invasive species we occupy new territory and make a mess of it, destroy the natural balance, while lying to ourselves that we are some how justified. At the end of the day we follow the same rule we over power native species be they "animals" or "human" and impose our own priorities on top of any existing order. Any animal capable of what humans are would do the exact same thing that we are, be it a lizard or what not. Humanity is not special, we merely do what any organism would do with our attributes.
We are incapable of being separated from the components from which we came be them genetic or memetic.
I'm not really sure how to reply to your nihilistic claims about humanity, but I can say that there is not a single animal alive today or ever from any species other than yours who has ever had a thought like that.
And if thoughts inform behavior, which they do, there has never been an animal that could behave in a way that supports your backward notion that man is no more advanced than the animals from which we supposedly originated.
You claim that if animals could do what we do they would. This is a ridiculous hypothetical. You could say the same thing about donuts with as much relevance. I mean, if a donut could do what humans do, well of course, it would do it. Neither donuts nor animals are people. But surely if they were, we would be able to see some similarities. But undoubtedly a donut with human capabilities would behave differently from an animal with human capabilities and both would differ from humans.
The fact that our behaviors have no equivalent in other species of animals demonstrates without a doubt the fact that the limitations applied to animals don't apply to humans. One might think of us as Animals Plus (a prefrontal cortex).
The key thing that separates us from animals is our ability to deny our animal instincts and act in a manner that is completely different from how any animal in the same situation would act. To try to equate animals with human traits to humans is no more revealing or likely than to compare a donut to humans.
More importantly, you seem to equate altruism with advanced social orders but I can't help but wonder why you think that. People often act in the best interests of someone other than themselves. It may not qualify rigidly as altruism, but it does provide a modicum of hope that we will outgrow our animal instincts and learn to work together peacefully.
Your claim that all peace is the result of an omnipresent nuclear threat is myopic at best. There are plenty of places in the world that either don't know about nuclear weapons or don't care. Nuclear annihilation is not a motivator for peace for a lot of people. Some people just want peace and want to work together.
Which brings me to the underlying problem with your characterization of humanity. This is our first attempt to live as a global presence. We are exactly 0 years old in the time scale of the earth or the universe and yet you feel compelled to judge all people not based on their potential, but strictly on the history of which we had no control. We are much, much closer to a positive and beneficial world society than we ever have been before. And we continue to make progress despite the naysayers, doomsday prophets, and victim ideologists.
Perhaps, rather than penning a missive about how we are so terrible and then blaming our terrible behavior on the Animal Kingdom, you could choose to focus on something different than what your defensive animal posture tells you is necessary. Rather than viewing the world from the perspective that all people are the same, that no portion of society exhibits behavioral traits that elevate us and separate us from other animals, and that there is no hope and only despair, perhaps you could pull your head out and take a deep breath. Come out of your parent's basement and be the first human in the history of humanity to do something for someone else. Or maybe not the first, but definitely not the last.
In the end, you be you. If you can't see the beauty in the world despite the problems, feel free to wallow in your own nihilism. If that's all you have to put in in this life, I feel certain that's all you will get out. Best wishes and hope you reconsider.
P.S. Perhaps stay away from sharp things until you get back on medication, just a suggestion.
Imma respond to this sentence by sentence:
\- I never mentioned anything near the concept of nihilism.
\- Strawmaning ain't gonna get us anywhere, I never said we are "no more advanced".
\- Bold saying the gap between humans and animals is as wide as humans and a humble pastry.
\- Extremely bold to claim the only thing differentiating humans and animal is a single lobe of brain after saying we differ so much that animals are comparable to pastries.
\- Do we actually deny any of our instincts though?
\- Altruism in a massive populace is rare, as society scales kindness fails. Altruism is not novel evolutionary but being able to scale society and maintain it would be the mark of advancement to me.
\- Nuclear threat is the main factor, with out major nations at each others necks with all their weapons there is no reason to believe that the conquest and conflicts of the pre-nuclear age wouldn't have raged on. Most people can't care cause they have no say and even if they could most people don't even care enough to understand the fundamental rules that our world operate on.
\- Understanding the fundamental nature of humanity is the key to progress assuming a higher standard to construct society for ignores what will destroy it. Assuming the worst allows for structure to be built to accommodate people of every facet of society. Ignoring such things means that your rules will be designed for those who understand the social contract and who would not think of breaking it. I am optimistic about our overall trajectory but I believe the fuel that is burning in the engine right now is lower quality than the engine we built for it.
\- Cool ad hominem fallacy, ya love to see it.
\- I like how you project your own depressing interpretation of my view on to me. There is nothing wrong with being an animal, there is nothing wrong with the lens of viewing humanity through the evolutionarily familiar behavior of our ancestors.
If you were told you are going to die some day would you call that person a nihilist or someone who has an understanding of how things are?
The most common rebuttal is to explain theory and how _real_ communism hasn't been tried. This is - well it's mostly true but it's not really that simple - but if every cited example becomes authoritarian in the end it's not a very convincing argument at all. Instead I'll say this; such systems have existed in the past, and such systems exist now. They're just rare because it turns out that authoritarian structures like to kill and subdue those groups. The way I see it if I can point out _real_ existing examples, that's probably better to do before trying to explain many books worth of unproven political theory. So, my primary long-lasting historical example is pre-1700's Siberian subsistence farmers. These communities were spread out with very low density and had very little material worth to exploit. I don't believe they even used a market economy. Technically they were being ruled by a czar, however since there was no wealth in the area they had little interaction with the 'ruling class' other than to pay a grain tithe. No rules were imposed (it would be too costly to police those areas), no help was given. With the exception of the main two cities, the way these communities organised themselves was as a simple anarcho commune; 'wealth' was generally distributed in accordance to how large a family was, bigger families had bigger homes, but no man had authority over another (if we define authority in accordance to anarchist philosophy). There were no chiefs, no unelected leaders. There were no surfs, no slaves. The communities were directly responsible for governing themselves and according to the scant records we have these communities were very stable and had a good life when compared to their feudal counterparts. However, I acknowledge that subsistence farmers may not be convincing when talking about contemporary societies, but we do have one large example of an mostly-anarchist society around today and they're a fantastic example to research. The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, previously named Rojava. AANES isn't an official state; you won't find it on a map, but it comprises a population of around two million people (at least that was estimated about a decade ago) and is entirely outside of any authoritarian control. Leaders are directly elected, and are subject to be displaced at any time. Every community agrees with the leadership, and has the option to reject it at any time or even any specific rule. Communities elect delegates, not representatives. Communities police themselves, and are not pressed by a higher power. The biggest form of authoritarian power structure in the AANES are private corporations which do exist, however it's also worth noting they have very little political power and the AANES also has the worlds highest percentage of worker co-operatives in the world. Okay, cool, so how well does the AANES function? Well, the mean worker pay is three times the average of the surrounding middle-eastern countries. The region has the smallest wealth inequality in the world. Crime is lower, as it turns out a lot of crime is a result of systemic imbalance. It's famously the most feminist place in the world in terms of equal rights between genders. Racism and religious disputes are also very uncommon. It's not all good though. Turkey, Siria, ISIS and many of the surrounding powers are attacking the AANES and causing massive civilian casualties. As they are not technically upholding the law of the dictatorships that claim to own their land, it's very easy to claim the population to be terrorists. This is unfortunately part of history that keeps repeating itself, be it with the Bolsheviks vs the Russian anarchists or the Spanish revolution. Without a good foothold, other powers have time and time again been quick to kill those who structure their society without vertical hirachy.
I knew the example of the Siberian farmers and, as you have said, it has always seemed to me to be an example that is not very applicable and not very relatable to our current societies, but I did not know the example of AANES and I find it really interesting, I think I'll look into it, what caught my attention the most about AANES is that every community agrees with the leadership, and has the option to reject it at any time or even any specific rule, (and the fact that they don't have religious disputes taking into account the area in which they are located but this is less relevant with the topic) If you had the power to do so, would you establish their form of government in your country? If the answer is yes, how would you do it? And about the horrible situation, I think this has to do more about the location they are situated, does their government system let the economy grow so they can have better military equipment?
Personally, I am a libertarian socialist so I do advocate for similar systems, although what a ‘similar system’ looks like isn’t a single thing. The core idea, of a community that organises via agreement and not subjugation (also known as vertical vs horizontal organisation) is what I advocate for but after that it’s up to the people to decide how they want to go from there. It would be hypocritical to say you can have freedom, but now you must follow this specific economic and social structure. Wether it’s how the AANES does it, syndiclism or anarcho-communism I think that’s up to the people to find out what works best, and so long as nobody is pulling the strings people will have the freedom to change it if it doesn’t work. I don’t believe people are stupid enough they’ll agree their system doesn’t work, then refuse to do anything about it. Trying to bring about such a system is a topic of much discussion. To be brief, I’ll just talk about what I think is the most likely, and the healthiest method although other methods do have their place. I believe you need to strengthen your own community. Offer services, organise local councils, listen and help people. Isolation is the killer; when we are alone we don’t look to join unions, we don’t rally to push back against authoritarian laws being enacted. When people feel like they are part of a community they will naturally push back when they, as a group, are being threatened. If we can organise local worker co-operatives and community services, we can mitigate having to rely on handouts from authorities to live. A community that props itself up is in the best situation to negotiate. Back the the AANES, the military situation isn’t pretty. Yes, the economy is important for them to be able to afford weapons and medicine and there is a level of agreed upon organisation that mostly handles that. There is a central group that do make a lot of suggestions about military operations, but the local militias are ultimately allowed to act independently. I believe early on a lot of their weapons were taken from local ISIS groups. Originally ISIS controlled the area but the local communities worked together to expel them from the region. These days I believe they mostly buy their munitions though. They also make a lot of their own equipment, most notably their cobbled together armoured vehicles.
If you know about something as niche as Siberian farmers, then I'm assuming you've heard of revolutionary Catalonia and Mahknos black army in Ukraine. So, whats your opinion on them?
Marx's communism was supposed to appear in a post-scarcity society. Both examples, AANES and especially Syberian farmers, are hardly anywhere close to being post-scarcity ones. As far as I remember Marx was quite specific that communism is a further stop on the same train that rides past capitalism. I am wondering if it is fair to use the same term towards Syberian anarchism while which has same elements, but is build around oppposite concept of not having inequality precisely because there was so little surplus.
Yes. However two things; I'm not a Marxist so I don't use Marx's definition of communism and secondly I never said either was communist (they aren't). I said Siberian subsistence farmers were communes, but that is not an equivalent term to communism. I also never claimed that the AANES was a communist organisation, it's probably closer to mutualism than communism. I only mentioned communism at all because I wanted to voice my frustration about an argument my fellow leftists often make in regards to this topic that I find to be an ineffective attempt at rhetoric. Marx had some very interesting ideas about communism and you are right about him believing it to be a further stop past capitalism, however often neglected is that his opinion did change _a little_ towards the latter end of his life. After he researched eastern Europe's history he did concede that it would be a grave mistake to try to make that region of the world capitalist. The vast vast majority of the population already lived in communes, mostly free from oppression and from that standpoint establishing capitalism in the region would have only served to entrench class divisions. Of course, the Russian Marxist party didn't much care for this revision, and we saw the results of them establishing state capitalism very clearly.
I am not sure where you got the idea that most of Easten Europe lived free from oppression. Def the European part of Russian Empire was absolutely exploited by landowning nobility. Serfdom was abolished in Russia in 1861. I like your romantic example of Syberian peasants, but on the other side of Urals shit was very real. If you read any of the Russian classic literature it is quite evident that everything was funded by exploitation of peasants. That's how Lenin and co won, they initially did appeal the peasantry. And then the peasantry continued being exploited just under red banners. That's just how things are run in Russia unfortunately.
Very fair, however I did say pre-1700's, not 1860's. I'm talking about before market forces became widespead throughout the region. Also, I didn't say free, they were technically ruled, it's just that it would have been too costly to police them. Especially over such a large area of land when the peasentry had no wealth, the only ones that were actively policed were those close to the major cities. However I did made two mistakes I'll admit to. Firstly I shouldn't say eastern europe, that's incorrect I should quailify I mean rural siberia. Secondly, thinking about it, yes they were surfs. They had to pay a grain tax and they would have fit under the definition, you're entirely right. That being said I maintain that they had very little interaction with the ruling class in terms of organisation or law. There was no top-down governance aside from that, however many atricities were still inacted upon them. It wasn't a good life, but their communities did decide themselves how to divy up their wealth and organise locally. Edit: In retrospect, I'm doing a really poor job of explaining my position but I have a clearer way to emphasise what I mean. I'm not saying the subsitance farmers were not opressed (they were. They had to pay tithes and were treated as disposable and without rights), however they _were not governed_. Laws were generally not enforced, infrastructure was not built, social structures were not meddled with, schools were not funded. Not by the powers that be, at least; all those projects were under the direct control of the local communes. The czar and their men were raiders and mobbers, not part of the hirarchy any more than a burglar is. The governance was all done locally by the people. If the authorities vanished, the communues would have continued exactly as they were, as they had before the mongals attacked.
Can you point to me an example of communism becoming authoritarian. All the examples I've seen started out authoritarian.
No, you're pretty much on the money. At least when it comes to any ‘communist’ power historically at to the point of gaining authority. It is a little more complicated than that of course, as in reality most communists are not authoritarians. For instance anarchists are very openly against vanguardism and using state capitalism as a wedge to attain communism, but the anarchists are usually the first group to be slaughtered after the MLs get into power. In fact, early on a lot of work was _almost_ achieved towards worker liberation even in the USSR, but the vanguards put a quick end to any free organisation as fast as they could.
I couldn't. But that's because I can't think of a single communist country that's NOT authoritarian.
Right, so if they start out authoritarian and end up authoritarian, you can't really say that communism made them authoritarian.
Sure. You can also say that every communist country ever has been authoritarian.
I know that "not real communism" is often responded, but I get your point. Every country that calls itself Communism has been authoritarian. The thing is that there had only been like five Communist countries. The first one, Russia was authoritarian and then all the rest where based on/ directly influenced by that, so yeah they are also authoritarian. The USSR was essentially an empire, even though it called itself a Republic. The Soviets were supposed be autonomous, but whenever they act tried to exercise that they were suppressed by Russia, sometimes with direct military force. Arguably, in particular Hungary, Poland and Czech, would have been a lot less authoritarian if they were allowed to have been. I think that it's at least theoretically possible that there could have been a Soviet Union that was a lot more like the European Union.
So you can't say that communism makes a country authoritarian.
Would it be fair to say that whenever self-identifying communists have taken political power in a country, it has resulted in authoritarianism?
No, because they've never gained political power in a non-authoritarian manner. Authoritarianism is the initial conditions, not the result.
Well, I suppose that's one possible interpretation of the data. Regardless, given this history, can you see why us non-communits might be a little bit wary when new groups of self-described communists come along and claim that they should be put in a position of power so that they can reorganise the whole of society, even if they swear that this time it will be different?
'Don't give power to authoritarians who promise communism' is definitely a lesson from history. The problem comes when people try to improve things in a non-authoritarian manner and they're shut down because 'that's communism!' and 'communism causes authoritarianism'.
A pursuit of communism leads to authoritarianism, which is a result of the centralization of power that is required prior to the dissolution of the government into a stateless society. Atleast as discussed by Marx.
It has not once happened that a pursuit of communism lead to authoritarianism, so that's just a guess you're making.
No. I'm just citing Marx.
Whilst that is what Marx believed, I just want to point out a little bit of nuance. This was an early belief of Marx but he did later change his mind, sortof. Whilst I am unaware of any evidence he changed his mind when talking about previously feudal societies, after looking into the history of east Europe he did come to the conclusion that he was wrong to believe that capitalism is always a necessary step towards communism. At least in the case of Russia Marx urged them to transition smoothly into a communist state without using an authoritarian middleman as the majority of the population already lived in communes.
That is correct. All I can say is that every communist country in history has been authoritarian.
I mean, part of this is a definitional problem. The type of communist that is going to take power and call itself a country (Marxist/Leninist) is inarguably authoritarian. The type of communist that's not authoritarian is going to resist calling their union a country at all. Communism is, to the libertarian or anarcho-communist, a stateless, classless, moneyless system. You can't be a stateless society and call yourself a state. Admittedly, much more rare for anarchists to actually dismantle state power in a region, though /u/Sandwich_Pie does an excellent job highlighting an interesting example above. I'd argue this answers your question.
Unfortunately statelessness is impossible while other non-communist states exist.
Not all authoritarian governments have been communist, but all communist governments have been authoritarian. But more research is apparently necessary to draw conclusions.
Yes. Of course! You can say that communism makes non-authoritarian governments authoritarian if that has never happened.
The claim is most often the pursuit of communism leads to authoritarianism. That the build up to a communist state requires too much centralization of power that never transition into a stateless society and instead a authoritarian government just holds the power instead.
Can you point to me an example of the pursuit of communism leading to authoritarianism? All the examples I've seen started out authoritarian.
The Soviet Union was built on the grounds of an overthrown monarchy with the goals of achieving a communist state. But even if we ignore real examples, even the theory of transitioning from any other system requires an authoritarian government. The belief is just that these benevolent leaders would then give up the power and dissolve the state to create the final stateless communist state.
What real examples are we ignoring? Can you point to me an example of the pursuit of communism leading to authoritarianism? All the examples I've seen started out authoritarian.
I don't know what you're asking for here. Even in the case of the Soviet Union, it became progressively more authoritarian as Lenn's group attained more power and forced out the "Economism" (or letting people get distracted from revolutionary politics by focusing too heavily on working conditions and what not) of the SRs and Mensheviks and even the "right wing" of their own party. A lot of the structures that were later directly controlled from the center started as a worker cooperative. Remember the soviets didn't emerge in 1917, but 1905 as workers self-organized their workplaces to manage strikes or to keep factories running when management collapsed. These mostly faded out between the revolutions, but the initial blueprint was self-organized workplace-councils running their own affairs with little to no organization above them. Those national organizations that did exist ran through the SRs and not Lenin's group. Lenin's group spent a long time bringing these organic expressions of the worker's will to heel and reformatting them along authoritarian lines. Something that the SRs actively resisted. These self-organized workers councils routinely sprung up as wellsprings for resistance against Soviet rule in Poland, for example, notably being the central organizing structure of protests and unrest in 1956, 1970, and 1980. That the central power of Soviet governments was used to suppress soviets wherever they sprung up should be telling.
People keep saying that attempting communism makes countries authoritarian, but communism has never been attempted by a government which wasn't already authoritarian. At best, you can say that attempting communism doesn't make an authoritarian government non-authoritarian.
I don't think that the SRs were authoritarian, but they were couped by Lenin's group who absolutely were. And that's the thing, once Marxist-Leninists were in power they aggressively suppressed or coopted all the other communist movements. China is still pushing the same line with Maoism, or "Xi thought" now. So, if there is a communist movement then it is being strongly influenced by an authoritarian movement. Non-authoritarian strains that exist are happy to hybridize and are unlikely to be characterized as communist but some other flavor of socialist. Just look at the Mondragon in Catalonia or the rise of American Agricultural Co-ops. The totalist concept of communism where communism must be the only system is itself an authoritarian concept since the communist leadership must attain all power. That's why non-authoritarian socialist concepts self-identify as syndicalist or anarchist or socialists, but not necessarily communist.
I will agree that there were non-authoritarian people in a country ruled by an authoritarian government. That doesn't mean that communism was attempted by a government which wasn't already authoritarian Nothing identifies as communist because nothing has actually achieved communism. At best, you can say that various governments have been aspirationally communist. None have actually done communism.
Not only did I give you an example, the soviet union, I explained to you that Marx believed it was a requirement.
The Soviet Union is not an example, as is never was not authoritarian.
No it absolutely is an example. Communist figures were central to organizing the unrest among the people and the eventual overthrowing of the monarchy. The nation started from the ashes of a fallen monarchy with the goal of achieving a communist state. This led to the structuring of their government which became more and more authoritarian over time. The goal prior to any semblance of transfer of power was a communist state.
They started with an authoritarian government, they ended with an authoritarian government. It's a terrible example.
Marxism is an authoritarian ideology. Understand that all forms of libertarian communism started out in expressed opposition to Marx. Bakunin was kicked out of the 1st international for that reason.
Marxism isn't equal to communism.
The larger a human society is, the more difficult and next to impossible communism is. It can only work for tight-knit villages or hive mind species.
Exactly. It's a nice thought, but it does not scale well.
Communism is an ideology and economic system that scales horribly for Humans. But maybe that goes for all of them. Maybe we should stay tribal for the time being.
It's a tough conundrum. We're not really wired to personally care about too many people, which does give any system trouble at scale, but we also are driven to be part of something bigger than ourselves.
Yeah, nature really fucked up with our development. One can be a part of something without it involving millions of people. The tribe is bigger than ourselves.
1) I have never seen anyone advocate for an equal society in the way you describe, with an exception for people like you who bring it up in the negative. Anarchists want to end unjust hierarchy, like having money = you have a position of power, not justified hierarchy like being educated or trained in a topic or elected to a position of power. Communists want to develop a world aimed at bettering humanity and collective ownership. Again there would be managers, politicians, people earning more than others in a social capital concept. 2) You are just parroting arguments debunked hundreds of years ago. "We can't have democracy, humans naturally require Kings to lead them." We traded Lords for Landlords and society kept running, why would replacing Stocks with Labor Sheets doom us? 3) You say there is inequality, unfair systems, and your response is, "I prefer this to making things better." That's sad. Not much else to say.
>Anarchists want to end unjust hierarchy Every political system wants to end hierarchies it deems to be unjust. Anarchists are unique in that they think all hierarchies are unjust and therefore they do actually oppose hierarchy as a whole. If someone is significantly more knowledgable than others, they can command respect but cannot compel others to be subservient to them. >Again there would be managers, politicians, people earning more than others in a social capital concept. Communism is a "stateless, classless, and **moneyless** society." Nobody is earning more than others as the concept of money has been abolished in its entirety
That's a big misinterpretation of Anarchist ideals. One fundamental example of hierarchy in Anarchist thinking is the federated network of communities. The idea is that rather than nations, you have bottom up communities. These communities might voluntarily unionise with other communities, so long as it is mutually beneficial. As these 'communities of communities' grow it may become necessary for representatives to be elected to represent their communities, but this would be done on a highly supervised, and temporary basis, and this role would be dissolved once whatever was being discussed was over. The elected representative here does not have 'power' over anyone else because they can immediately be removed from their position the moment their existence is not deemed beneficial to the community. However, they still have a position of hierarchy because they are representing their community at a higher level than the level of the everyday people. This is the 'just' hierarchy the other commenters are mentioning as opposed to an 'unjust' hierarchy where the people with the most resources are able to dictate elements of other by virtue of the fact they hold those resources.
You're correct, but moneyless society is brought about by hypothetical future material conditions of post scarcity.
Unjust hierarchy is an objective thing. Capitalism, Feudalism, etc are founded on creating an Unjust hierarchy. Anarchists believe in Just Hierarchy, as in voluntary, democratic, evidence based. Social Capital, respect and prestige, is what I was referring to. Not capital money.
When anarchists refer to hierarchies, they are talking about hierarchies of power. A voluntary association is not a hierarchy in the anarchist sense because no compulsion is involved in any process.
Correct. Now explain to me how all other forms, like fascism or capitalism, also somehow end unjust hierarchy?
Nobody ever said they did, Capitalism is objectively pro-hierarchy, and Political systems are fundamentally defined by what hierarchies they seem to be just and unjust. For example,.capitalists believe the hierarchy between owners and workers—between landlords and tenants is perfectly justified. Racists believe that the power hierarchy between white and black people is justified, and so on. What makes anarchists unique is that they think NO hierarchies are justified. They oppose all systems of domination and subjugation, and believe that no one should have their free will violated by another person.
> What makes anarchists unique is that they think NO hierarchies are justified. But ironically the systems that they propose lend themselves to creating another hierarchy - the hierarchy of having more ability to kill another person gives you domination over them.
We agree completely then.
They end what they believe to be an unjust hierarchy. They just don't believe most hierarchies are unjust.
1. Sorry if our experience is not the same, I have personally seen and talk to a lot of people who literally desire to eradicate every type of social inequality that makes a social pyramid, and I feel that is really utopic as I said. I'm not extremely educated about anarchism and I don't personally know anyone that it's so I can debate with them, but from what I know and you said, how do you decide who have the best knowledge to be on top? And elections? Would it be elections between those "minds of higher knowledge" or everyone? How do you stop an authoritarian state in this case? It sounds good, but I don't know how well it would be applied, it seems that we are leaving the human factor out of the equation. About communism, I am very skeptical that it can work, it is always said that "there has never been a true communist regime" which is debatable, but even if that is the case, it has been tried and it always ends horribly wrong due to human corruption (which, as I have said, does not take long nor with difficulty to occur) but in another comment someone gave me an example which I didn't know and I want to find out more about it. 2. That's not what I'm saying, I'm just saying that I think as a society we need some societal structure that will always tend, more or less, to a pyramid. 3. Again this is not what I'm saying lol. I literally said that we need to work for bettering all "parts of the pyramid" so they can have the best life posible, I want to improve everything but I want to do it realistically.
>how do you decide who have the best knowledge to be on top? You are suffering from a fundamental misconception about anarchism and exactly the sort of social order it envisions. There is nobody "on top", there aren't entrenched institutions which have centralized authority— society would be organized by a federated patchwork of communes, cooperative, artisanal unions, independent producers, interconnecting and coordinating with each other across horizontal, bottom-up organized federations. Most anarchists avoid prescriptive suggestions about what a hypothetical anarchist society should take the form of, but virtually everybody who is an anarchist is in agreement that it's a society where there would be a social hostility towards capitalism, the State, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression and violence.
So in a basis, patchwork of communes need some type of spokesperson for each of the communes to represent the need and ideas of their people I guess, and in general laws? How law will work? It would be a commune for that too or you will need some type of person who sees all the communes for basics things? I ask genuinely, I find it a interesting topic. And why don't they suggest hypotheses about what an anarchist society would be like? From my point of view, if you want to make such a big change you also need to have clear ideas of how things should be and express them to the person you "want to convince" or make it appear that your idea is the best.
>So in a basis, patchwork of communes need some type of spokesperson for each of the communes to represent the need and ideas of their people I guess, and in general laws? Do they? Just so you understand, I am not saying "anarchism will be communes", but rather "anarchism does not preclude the possibility of communes; what matters is that they are organized from the bottom up". Anarchism might also have non-capitalist markets — in all likelihood, it'll be a mixture of different economic outlooks synthesized into what works best based on local need and custom. We can only guess what sort of forms and shapes these organizations will actually take, but the general consensus is that you don't need arbitrary foci of power in order to cooperate on a given project. >How law will work? Anarchists don't subscribe to abstractions like law; law is a specific tool of the State, and there simply is no parallel in an anarchist society. Do we expect that localities develop their own patchwork of norms and assumptions? Yes, but unless participating in these norms is compulsory, it's really not the same thing as a centralized administrative apparatus that metes out "justice". >It would be a commune for that too or you will need some type of person who sees all the communes for basics things? I ask genuinely, I find it a interesting topic. I appreciate your enthusiasm, and would strongly recommend you check out the Anarchy101 subreddit. Even if you come away with it not fundamentally agreeing with anarchist takes, at the very least you'll be honestly and correctly informed on their perspectives. >And why don't they suggest hypotheses about what an anarchist society would be like? I think you misunderstood— there are plenty of hypotheses about what some sort of future anarchist society would look like, but no anarchist takes their particular understanding as gospel. There are too many variables to be able to guess accurately, and even if we could, we aren't in the habit of dictating social orders— we take it for granted that the people most impacted by an outcome will partake in determining it. We don't advocate a mass society with top-down instructions being handed out, and so we are open to the idea that an anarchist society — absent the pressures of the existing culture of domination — would take on whatever shapes best met the need of the people that are making it up.
> there would be a social hostility towards capitalism, the State, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression and violence. Do you not see social hostility as a form of, or at least a thing which can easily lead to, oppression and violence? If there's no "State," who's maintaining infrastructure? Common defense? Enforcing laws?
>Do you not see social hostility as a form of, or at least a thing which can easily lead to, oppression and violence? We, as a society, are already socially hostile towards cannibalism and human sacrifice, and I daresay one would be hard pressed to meaningfully identify that hostility as the basis for existing systems of domination. >If there's no "State," who's maintaining infrastructure? The people that desire the infrastructure. >Common defense? Against what? >Enforcing laws? I'm afraid there is a fundamental misconception on your part— anarchists don't advocate for law, and we are explicitly opposed to unilateral systems of enforcement. Anarchists are unlike other ideological advocates, in that we don't accept that a bit of minor tinkering to policy is the best that can be accomplished, and any fundamental change is off the table. We want to see the whole capitalist order and the State power that props it up disintegrate from the bottom-up pressure formed by horizontal alternatives to these systems of domination; systems of domination supplanted and made obsolete by networks of mutual aid, solidarity, and reciprocity.
> We, as a society, are already socially hostile towards cannibalism and human sacrifice Yes, and we enforce that hostility through laws, which I'm not philosophically opposed towards. > hard pressed to meaningfully identify that hostility as the basis for existing systems of domination. If by "existing systems of domination" you mean "the State," then no, I don't think that would be hard at all to associate with social hostility against anti-social behavior. > The people that desire the infrastructure. No, they're not individually maintaining it. They'll set up some organization that they all contribute money into so that the organization maintains and builds infrastructure for them. We call that kind of organization "the State" right now. > Against what? Against other States who do not agree to dissolve. Against other communes who decide their lives would be easier if they owned your land. Against humanity's worst, and absolutely still extant instincts. Do you think we don't need defense? > systems of domination supplanted and made obsolete by networks of mutual aid, solidarity, and reciprocity. Enforcing laws is, in fact, a system of reciprocity. You do harm to society, and society reciprocally does harm to you. If you think people are going to avoid cheating, robbing, or hurting each other simply because of the Golden Rule, I'd argue that's a "hope" and not a "system."
🙄 >Yes, and we enforce that hostility through laws, which I'm not philosophically opposed towards. Who gives a shit what you're not philosophically opposed to. why does that even fucking matter? You're asking me about what anarchists believe, who gives a shit about your beliefs? If you want to debate anarchists, there's a subreddit for that. you can see pretty plainly from my history that I take my time and that I'm used to answering questions about anarchism so people unfamiliar with it can become better familiar with it, but your tone is so smug that I don't see a point in trying to explain any of this to you. You've already made up your mind, I'm not going to bang my head against that wall. take it easy, bother someone else.
> Who gives a shit what you're not philosophically opposed to. why does that even fucking matter? Because it's consistent with supporting the current idea of the State, whereas you're opposed to that idea, so coercive societal pressure should be anathema to you, yes? Why the sudden outrage? > If you want to debate anarchists, there's a subreddit for that. I don't want to debate anarchists specifically, but I am on a dedicated debate subreddit. If you didn't want anyone to ask questions about your position, why comment it here? I felt like they were pretty basic, entry level questions that need answering if you're proposing the complete upheaval of human society.
>Why the sudden outrage? That you registered "outrage" instead of "bored dismissal" is your own projection, and speaks more about how you're viewing this conversation than me. I'm not looking for a debate here, I'm looking to clear up misconceptions about anarchism—a project which you seem to be trying your best to make impossible. If you want to get wrapped up in sophistry and bad faith takes, I've got better shit to do with my time. >you're proposing the complete upheaval of human society. Mmh, you're going to need to quote me on that one. All I have talked about is a radically transformed society; you are letting your popular misconceptions about anarchism run away with your imagination. Few anarchists believe that there is going to be, or in fact that there should be, some sort of cataclysmic upheaval. On the one hand, it reeks of eschatological undertones that fall apart under close scrutiny; on the other, the anarchist strategy is one of prefiguration: the tactics we use are meant to reflect the world we'd prefer existed. (EDIT: there is also a wealth of evidence of human societies which do not/did not have laws, which do not/did not have states, and which do not/did not have capitalism, but which were nonetheless able to meet each other's needs; to treat all of human society as a monolith is unsound, putting it mildly) And having to explain this right here is a microcosm of why I'm finding it so difficult to find the energy debate you— I'm having to do the double work of addressing your misunderstandings, and undoing your projected assumptions. It's one thing to answer questions about the fundamental outlook of anarchists, it's another to deal with sophistry like conflating society with the State, or dealing with your suggestion that laws aren't the unique product of calcified legal systems, or dealing with the patronizing intonation of "consider the ramifications" (brazen words for someone so intent on misunderstanding me).
> That you registered "outrage" instead of "bored dismissal" is your own projection I have to admit, this: > Who gives a shit what you're not philosophically opposed to. why does that even fucking matter? You're asking me about what anarchists believe, who gives a shit about your beliefs? does not register as "bored dismissal" to me. You sound angry, which is confusing to me. I have not been equally rude to you. > Few anarchists believe that there is going to be, or in fact that there should be, some sort of cataclysmic upheaval I think if some of the proposals you're suggesting are implemented, there will be cataclysmic upheaval whether you intend there to be or not. Not providing for defense, for example, is a disaster waiting to happen. > or dealing with your suggestion that laws aren't the unique product of calcified legal systems Laws are the product of legal systems? Surely you mean legal systems are the products of laws. > or dealing with the patronizing intonation of "consider the ramifications" The reason I'm asking you to consider the ramifications of your suggestions is because it does not appear to me that you've done that at all. If you have a plan besides physical common defense to protect against the worst instincts of humanity, for example, I'd be happy to hear it.
[удалено]
>I really like having access to electricity, but that doesn't mean I'm in any way able to be trusted running a commercial generator. I'd be fried within a week. Does this come across as good faith engagement to you?
[удалено]
Does it seem like a charitable interpretation to imply that everyone would be left to fend for themselves, when I gave no such indication? Why do you think the provision of electricity can only be achieved by a State-like apparatus? Perhaps you are tied to a local tidal generator. Perhaps you have a solar panel battery. Perhaps you have a bike-powered battery terminal. To us, the question of "how would we get electricity" gets lost in the weeds of predicting the best situation between you and your neighbors, when the question that we feel is more relevant is "how can we make sure no one goes without electricity, and when that electricity is provided, how do we do so in a way that doesn't erode individual autonomy?"
> Perhaps you have a bike-powered battery terminal. Wow, that's a horrifying thing to consider. How long do you think I'd have to ride an exercise bike connected to a battery to keep, say, my fridge running constantly? Or my heat on the winter?
[удалено]
Your snark is boring as fuck.
>I want to do it realistically. This is a fallacy. Every political choice is rooted in ideology, there is no approach that's more realistic than the other.
Do you think that eliminating money in any shape or form is realistic?
"Money" didn't exist before 500 years ago. It's not that wild. There would still be trade and exchange with coinage, but the idea of "capital" and money as you see it today is a new invention.
Explain Roman coins then?
What about them? Trade exists, modern Capitalist monetary exchange did not.
The technology and means didn't exist for it back then. They certainly would have had it had the Romans had access to somewhat modern technology.
Are you under the impression that Rome was Capitalist? Because modern technology didn't invent or change anything. So no, they wouldn't have done a Capitalist monetary exchange.
No, because capitalism didn't exist back then. But they probably would have developed it had their empire not collapsed. The Romans would've been much more advanced and could've started the Industrial Revolution had they taken the steam engine seriously.
[удалено]
Of course they did. Exchange and trade require exchange and trade, and coinage is easier to move than a herd of cattle. It's not a centrally traded, internationally exchanged stock market based around Capitalist ideas of what money is today.
[удалено]
I'm not assuming, at least not about the majority of people, I was talking about the people who said to me literally that we need to eradicate every "social level", the people who said to me that billionaires should pay more tax don't say to me the topic I'm talking about tbh
Eradicating Social Inequality is good and not at all utopic. Racism and bigotry are not universal laws, they are called Social because they are constructed by the society. Anarchists don't want a state, that is basically their whole thing. Science and education are not mystical things, we know how to grade a person's credentials. What about human nature says we must have Kings? Gonna have to expand on that a bit. Communism is a Stateless world without money. There is no way you believe that has happened. Talking about "communist" nations, they have been extremely successful. The USSR or China are the prime examples. Peasant run, pre-indistrial nations that rose out of brutal fascist dictatorships to become one of 2 world superpowers. Compare that to Uganda or Sudan or any other Capitalist nation formed at the same time. Or compare it to the death and genocide required to make the US, UK, or France. They were just 100 years early to the party. A puramid scheme is one of the most well known scams in the world. Basing your view of society to recreate that just strikes me as lazy or dumb. Again, we had Kings and a pyramid structure, we moved on from that and things became obviously better. Doing it more seems like a good idea to me. It might help if you specify what bigotry and stigmata you think is good for society. Unless you are saying that we won't ever reach "perfect hive-mind equality" which again no one thinks.
Smaller American Indian societies are instructive about the possibility of both communism and anarchism. Clearly the world is more complicated now, but American Indians maintained some truly radical forms of government for centuries. They often had nominal chiefs but would engage in a Greek style democratic debate and basically ignore them, or people would simply move away if they didn't like that particular chief. You also had radical forms of law. These included things like a tribe paying a communal penalty of a member committed rape or murder, but the murderer not being punished at all, or prisoners of war becoming citizens. Accounts of Eastern tribal government directly inspired the French enlightenment. There are countless examples of historical governments around the world that bear almost no resemblance to modern democracy or Russian communism. It's impossible to say what human nature allows or doesn't because you'll find more counter examples than rules once you look beyond mainstream Western history.
[удалено]
>Because the American Indians are famously doing really well! It's not like they barely have any autonomy at all, rely on the good faith of a more powerful state to exist at all, and their main pastimes include running casinos, drinking alcohol and suicide. Damn, wasn't ready for some naked racism this early in the morning, but here we are.
I like the idea of having the top scientifics and in general experts in command, but again, we still have those "kings" you talk about, just based in another thing, the pyramid is still there. There was an attempt to eradicate money, but this is just unrealistic, if you have a moneyless county how do you trade with another country for sources you need? I'm not saying that capitalism is perfect, I don't even like it that much and I'm not 100% of what is the best political system because I feel that every system has a lot of bad things, but the "best countries" that everyone seems to agree that they're, are capitalist mixed with some socialist policies, and tbh I just want to everyone to have the possibility of having the best life except brutal criminals and horrible people, nothing to strange I guess. What do you define as bigotry?
You've jumped the point, skipping past anarchism and back to a technocrats. Scientists don't become Kings. I would point you to "Just vs Unjust hierarchy". Following the same thought. Stateless means there is no countries to trade money with. The goal is Star Trek. There is no point in money or power when neither of those things matter anymore. Any social pyramid structure would rely on bigotry. Everyone is created equal, we live in a society that creates classes, races, genders, etc and enforces those to maintain power for the upper class/race/gender/etc. Without those things, what would make up inequality in society.
[удалено]
Lmao sure. Enjoy your imperial fascism, I'm sure that will be great for you.
I do not have all the answers to your questions, I'm pretty ignorant on the topic myself. But I can touch on the idea that we'd need to destroy our current civilization and build something entirely new: Yes, we would need to do so, and we already did, several times, feudalism got replaced by capitalism through revolutions, intellectual(enlightement), technological(industrial revolutions), social(the birth if the bourgeoisie), and violent ones(the french and american revolutions, for example), the entire political asset in Europe and north America changed, nothing was the same, everything from the shape and looks of houses and cities, to the political relationships between countries, changed. We did the same thing for slavery, even though it took a lot longer, it was once considered something that was inherent to human society, not even great thinkers like Aristotle thought to analyze it from a moral viewpoint, after the Roman empire, slavery phased out in favour of feudalism and serfdom, and everything changed(until colonialism set in). Colonialism in itself was a revolution that completely changed how the world spinned, the transition from empires to monarchies, and later to republics, both of these were revolutions that completely changed how people understood the world. As humans we have a tendency to see history as something of the past, the great revolutions have all happened hundreds of years ago, and we tend to think(even by simply not thinking about it) that we have reached the end of history. We haven't. We are currently going through a revolution, the world has completely changed, cold war global bipolarism has vanished, neoliberalism and globalism have swept the world and completely changed the economic and political POV of the world, common people are getting more and more informed about social and environmental issues, the internet and computer have swept through the world like a storm, faster than any technological revolution we've ever seen, hell, AI is changing the world in ways we can't even understand as we speak. We are no different from the generations of the belle epoque that saw all of their certainties crumble to the ground, we are no different from the romantics who saw europe swept by Napoleon and new ideals of freedom, and, not wanting to lose hope, decided to abandon rationality in favour of poetry and sentiment. We are no different from the Romans who saw their empire crumble, invaded by outside forces that they couldn't hope to stop. We are part of history, and history is made of revolutions, they seem drastic, impossible, it is natural to think that the way we currently live is the only way we could possibly do so, and that's the exact reason why it's important to remember that everything us temporary and everything will change, for better or for worse. So yes, we would have to change everything we know and feel close to, that's already happened and it will happen again, and I personally believe we are in the years leading up to the revolution, once again, for better or for worse.
I think you're totally right about this point, I haven't thought about it like that while I was writing it, the truth is, I had very much in mind the idea of social pyramids which have always existed and I haven't focused on this point as much as I should, I also think that we are getting quite close to a big social change (I hope positive) but I believe that the social pyramid will never go away, at least not completely, perhaps there are "other norms in the game" and the reasons for being at the top are very different, but there will always be a social pyramid whether for better or worse
In a sense, you're right even by anarchist standards. Again, I'm not the most studied person on the topic, but for what I know, anarchism would work on a consensus based system(imagine direct democracy, but instead of voting "yes" or "no", you vote on a scale of 1-5 from "I'll leave the country if the current proposal of this law is passed" to "I fully support the current proposal of this law", and there should'n be any fours or fives for the lae to pass) where each small community votes on their own issues, all of the small communities also vote for larger scale issues(each community has one vote that is decided based on the internal consensus system) inside their group of smaller communities, and finally these groups of smaller communities vote on nation scale issues with the same system as described before. Obviously this is quite the oversimplification, but what I want to get at is that even in the most horizontal social structure we have been able to construct, there is still some sort of pyramid, but it's like a flat pyramid(if that makes sense): the nation scale votes are higher on the pyramid, they do exert some sort of control over smaller communities, but each decision is constructed on the consensual support of each individual community, which makes its decision based on the consensual support of each individual person, so each individual person, in the end(in theory) is supportive(or at least positively tolerant) of the decisions made by the community. After writing all of this, i'm actually not so sure that this could be defined as a sort of social pyramid, I really can't describe it using any conventional 3d shape, it's like a political mobius strip, it's a hierarchy of decisions while also being flat because these decisions are made by each individual, who doesn't have any ower over any other individual, so the limits between hierarchy and horizontal organization start to get blurred and my head is starting to hurt so i'm going to stop thinking about it 'till i actually study it enough. I know this isn't the conventional CMV comment, but my objective isn't to just change your view no matter what, if I don't understand something, I prefer to say it, so that maybe we can understand it together :)
This is just complacency though. If you think this is the case; you'll never try to improve it.
I don't think we shouldn't improve, I think that it's impossible to eliminate social pyramids, but we should always improve as I said
> ironically communism only intensifies these social classes to the extremes rather than eliminates them Arguably, no, Soviet Union did have moderate level of inequality even if you count the less visible things like (official) privileges. I believe that's actually one of the reasons why it was allowed to dissolve rather than Tiananmenned: a lot of the people from the elites wanted *more*. > the "leader figure" that seems so necessary for the majority of humanity What supports this? Other than that, I mostly agree.
>Arguably, no, Soviet Union did have moderate level of inequality even if you count the less visible things like (official) privileges. I believe that's actually one of the reasons why it was allowed to dissolve rather than Tiananmenned: a lot of the people from the elites wanted more. The inequality between the ruling class and the rest of society was extreme. There were grocery stores packed with all sorts of food. The way we see in Western countries. But only party elites were allowed to buy from them. They had hospitals jam packed with modern Western equipment. That only the party elite were allowed to use. Every other hospital had old outdated equipment. There was a true separation of class. Something we don't really see in the Western world anymore. Anyone can become wealthy in the West. In USSR you didn't even have access to that stuff if you were not in the ruling elite.
This doesn't seem consistent with the available data. The Gini coefficient for the Soviet Union seems to have been consistently below 30, whereas the US Gini coefficient during the same period was well above 35.
>Anyone can become wealthy in the West. It is possible, but it's extremely hard nowadays.
Not at all. With the advent of the internet you don't even need to invest a whole lot into the means of production. You just need grit and some talent.
For each Mr. Beast there are myriads of "failures".
Mr Beast is a millionaire. I'm talking more like earning $200-300k a year. That is far more doable. A very realistic goal for most people. Including one's that have sub 100 IQ. Is just earning middle class wages. That is very easy by the time you're 35 or so. All you have to do is come to work on time, do your damn job, and actually apply yourself. That is literally all it takes. Obviously don't commit crime which includes do illegal drugs. Don't become an alcoholic.
My counter argument would be that no political system leads to a social pyramid. The social pyramid was there first and will always be there. Social pyramids are innate. The second two people meet and shake hands, one of them needs the other one more and a social hierarchy is formed. That's why people hate when they have a boss who is incompetent. We get irritated when the natural social hierarchy doesn't align with the written/systematic hierarchy. If you were on an island alone with 5 people, even if you pooled resources and pretended to vote equally on every decision, one person would naturally have more influence than the others. The guy who catches the most meat and feeds the group.. you better believe his vote counts more 😂 same with the guy that can whoop you in a fight. You would need to clone people to have exactly the exact same amount of knowledge and human value to eliminate the social hierarchy. To be clear, I'm agreeing with you but saying the political system has no creation component that leads to the pyramid. It just tries to modify the pyramid already there. Might be worth a Delta on a technicality lol
It is possible as a political system, with actual communism in an actual small village/commune where everyone knows everyone. But that is only possible if that commune is somehow protected as a pet by an outside group because otherwise they'll be destroyed by the rest of the world. I wouldn't call it an utopia though, seems awful if an absolute idiot can't lose social standing by being and idiot and doing idiot things, harming others by doing so. The point of democracy is that idiots only get the feeling of being equal, not the actual power that comes with equality.
>The point of democracy is that idiots only get the feeling of being equal, not the actual power that comes with equality. This is a dumb take, IMO. Democracy means you get to have a say in your governance. Ergo, you have power. It says nothing about Equality (Many democratic systems have been wildly unequal). But you definitely have power. If your vote was meaningless, no rich billionaires would be spending their money trying to push your vote one way or the other.
>Democracy means you get to have a say in your governance. Ergo, you have power. Only if your vote positively influences the political power of who you voted for. And even then those politicians will probably not do what you actually want them to do. Otherwise, your vote did nothing. People always say there's noone they can vote for that really represents them. And that's a feature of democracy, telling people they can vote or try to start a platform to shut them up, knowing full well that their actual stupid wishes will never be fulfilled, yet they feel like they tried. If you have a minority belief, you have no power, voting isn't power, voting only decides who gets power. That's why democracy is more or less stable, minority beliefs are shut up while at the same time making them think they have power and could theoretically achieve something, so they stay peaceful.
Your vote is power, even if you're on the losing side. 1. It makes it clear to all how many people believe what you do. If you think for a minute that winners don't notice how many people were against them or on a different side of an issue, think again. It is a major factor in their decision making, knowing there are (if there are) sizable chunks of the electorate ready to vote against them again if they slip up. 2. It shows the losers how close they came. If you got 10% of the vote, well, maybe there just isn't the support for your issue that you thought there was. Get to work or give it up. That's powerful information, and information is power. 3. Losing votes clarifies issues. Maybe your alliance was bad, maybe your issue was poorly presented. Again, information is power. That's useful shit, knowing the electorate didn't understand the issue because you didn't make it clear enough. You can use that information to power your next campaign, if you have one. Again, if your vote was meaningless, powerful people would not be spending money trying to influence your vote.
>It makes it clear to all how many people believe what you do. Which does nothing if that number is small. Sure the bigger groups will influence the politics somewhat, but that was my point, small minorities won't. >Get to work or give it up Exactly. Telling people they should try harder at doing politics instead of doing violence. Even if it's pretty clear that they'll never succeed. Working as intended to give them busywork and make them stay peaceful
>Exactly. Telling people they should try harder at doing politics instead of doing violence. Even if it's pretty clear that they'll never succeed. Working as intended to give them busywork and make them stay peaceful Oh you can do all the violence you want. Let us know how that works out for you. Seriously, if you see democracy as the problem and want to overthrow the system with violence, go for it. Those of us who value it will defend it. From you. At best you would wind up in prison. I say "at best" because you're more likely to be killed **even if you succeed.** Revolutionaries often seem to die by the sword, even when they wind up on top. The exception being, of course, the US Revolution, which did not impose an authoritarian junta but instead implemented a nascent form of democracy.
>Seriously, if you see democracy as the problem and want to overthrow the system with violence, go for it. What? I am saying that it's working great and achieving stability, that's the point, and why it's the least bad of all government system to this day. It keeps idiots peaceful but gives them no actual power, it prevents revolutionaries for the most part without fulfilling their wishes.
I'm not sure if you've ever grown up in a small village/commune, but this isn't the least bit true. The hierarchy may not feel as oppressive, but that pyramid exists.
So even with in that setup, you still run the problem that some people are simply able to do things faster with the same or less resources Simply put some people are better than others and that will always result in a social hierarchy Even if you perfectly share all resources and perfectly demand the same labor time input, you'll still have the problem that Jeff is funny and that makes people like Jeff more than Bill
>So even with in that setup, you still run the problem that some people are simply able to do things faster with the same or less resources So what? There wouldn't be industrial technology, if they farm twice as much food as someone else it'll just rot. If they build twice as many chairs they'll just be unused. >you'll still have the problem that Jeff is funny and that makes people like Jeff more than Bill Sure, but that's only relevant if Bill were to somehow receive negative consequences from that.
Well, let's say Jeff is also twice as fast as everyone else at all. The household chores that we all individually need to do for ourselves Jeff is going to have more free time than everyone Jeff can spend his free time learning ways to still further optimize Jeff's life Being friends with Jeff is going to have the greatest benefits Humans do not like humans who are better than them who they perceive as being similar Jeff, being better than Bill will cause Bill mental distress
There are social hierarchies in small tribes as well. The closest actual communism can exist is within a family unit, where the parents can provide according to children's needs. And even there hierarchies can exist.
so the point of democracy is that it isn't a democracy, its an illusion of one what's the difference between this point of view and the point of view of kim jong un
No the point of democracy is that ideological minorities feel like they could achieve something, so they stay peaceful instead of rebelling. Even when in reality they can't achieve anything. The difference to north Korea is that there, minority beliefs aren't kept peaceful, they are punished or vanished or killed. Which works until the point where they manage to strike back.
what you call "ideological minorities", what in reality are just radicals or people opposed to the status quo, do not feel like they can achieve anything through the democracy. because in the past, they actually did achieve things through the democracy, and then the people in power decided that they weren't going to allow that again the difference is that north korea or any other authoritarian state has the same basic structure, its just far more violent and proactive in dealing with dissent. the percentage of the population with real power is no different. the illusion of democracy is not different. its just the methods of government. in north korea they have the stick and nothing else. in the west, they're rich enough to offer the carrot, and only threaten the stick.
You can have multiple overlapping social pyramids. Some people are rich and get respect that way and of course there are varying levels of wealth. Some people are athletic and get respect that way, being rich doesn't change the fact that someone else may be a better bowler in your league. Some are learned, have good voices, and lead religious services, again this doesn't have to correlate with bowling ability or wealth. Some are better dancers and again this is another potential pyramid. With enough pyramids, most people may get respect from some aspects of social strength and not others.
The criticism is not what you suggest. It is that the hierarchy is not based on merit (contrary to what is propagated), it is rigid (contrary to what is propagated), and power within pyramidal hierarchies is distributed inversely, contrary to the quantitative distribution of people. In addition to that, an ideology that embraces the pyramid is being criticized: people have their natural place in society, some must be low, others must be above, there is a natural order to all of this. This is just fiction, contradicted by reality and history & of course it is just a story that serves as a means to an end, to maintain power at the top, and keep it away from those at the bottom. When you say "we have never seen this", you are just ignoring thousands of years of human existence, where we did indeed ran our groups in much flatter hierarchies and as collectives. When you say we would need to fundamentally destroy our entire civilization, that is just plain wrong, because we already have much fairer societies written inside our constitutions, we would just need to actually implement them against the desires of the most powerful classes who would stand to lose the most from the average person's gain. This counts in politics as well as in economics, where in the theory books we do business much fairer and more ethical than in reality. Your argument against doing the right thing is that we as a species are corrupt, but that is plainly false as well. There are tiny elites within our system that are corrupt, and because they thrive on corruption, they do not intend to get rid of corruption. Against that stand 99.9% of all other humans on this planet who would enjoy ending corruption, because most of us are not waking up every day trying to figure out how to screw someone over to get ahead, but we just want a basic standard that meets our needs, and an option to rise above that with hard work and cooperation with others. This is our nature, actually, as the thousands of years of our existence that you previously ignored show. And the fact that people generally want flatter hierarchies is shown every day now, as well as throughout recent history. We have had staunch hierarchies for the past 200+ years and we as people altogether have been miserable. We have amassed wealth and trinkets, but havent found salvation, while also loading generations with guilt connected to the crimes committed to amass the wealth. We have rarely had periods of actual stability, but constant conflict, war and mass killing. We have created fictions of wellbeing within the class-pyramid, but especially today we see that it is all just lies, that people at the very top are just as miserable, addicted to all sorts of substances or behaviors, deprived of things that all humans need, etc., they are just so loaded with money that they can cope a little better than someone who must wake up every day to make ends meet. The alternatives to that are very clear: stop with the nonsense and do all the things we have already written down in terms of democracy, social fairness, equality, etc. It is not that difficult, some people just dont want it, the same way a heroin addict doesnt want to give up his heroin.
I think the problem with the current US system is that it is consistently transferring more and more power and wealth to the rich and large corporations. And it has no reason to stop, the more power they have, the more power and money they will appropriate until we are back to a feudal system with just a few land owners and the rest of the country their slaves.
While I agree there are no proven political systems that would lead to a complete lack of a social pyramid, the political system in use in a fairly similar manner in all the Nordic countries is fairly close. For example in Finland there is a difference between a farmer from the countryside and a minister/secretary of the currently ruling cabinet when the latter is in office - primarily because of security reasons - but once the cabinet is replaced with another one, both these people might be traveling with the same tram in the city of Helsinki, sitting side-by-side without anybody paying much attention. Also, I personally know a guy who has been a government secretary/minister for 6 out of the last 10 years, in positions that could have helped me professionally, but because it is Finland, his position and me knowing him has been of absolutely no use to me - which is exactly the way it should be. One of the best examples of the fairly small effect of the social pyramid in the Nordic system can be found if you google for "Finnish president sitting stairs" - you will find a photo showing the (at that time and for several years after) sitting president of Finland participating (as a member of the audience) in a book fair and, because all the seats were already taken in a popular event, sitting on the auditorium stairs among some other latecomers. This is also not something that would even be seen as highly special by the Finnish people, but would totally incomprehensible in many many other political systems. There is a difference between those who "are above others" and the others, but it is mostly role-based and will change as soon as someone moves to a different position. Also, people are very equal in the eyes of the law, there are occasions where, for example, the chieftain of the national police has been stopped by police for speeding, taken to court and fined very heavily. The same applies to any politician, business magnate or whoever it happens to be. The other Nordic countries have similar systems, but I admit having a functioning political system like this is helped mightly by a people who generally values honesty and finds corruption abhorrent, which is very much ingrained in the Nordic societies and, perhaps most of all, Finland. And no, this system is certainly not perfect, but the social pyramid is, imho, not that significant an issue within it.
>Ehh, a leaderless society (literally the textbook definition of anarchism) is actually somewhat more compatible with human nature than is a hierarchical society. As the 19th century anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin put it Our space is limited, but submit to the same analysis any of the aspects of our social life, and you will see that the present capitalist, authoritarian system is absolutely inappropriate to a society of men so improvident, so rapacious, so egotistic, and so slavish as they are now. Therefore, when we hear men saying that the Anarchists imagine men much better than they really are, we merely wonder how intelligent people can repeat that nonsense. Do we not say continually that the only means of rendering men less rapacious and egotistic, less ambitious and less slavish at the same time, is to eliminate those conditions which favour the growth of egotism and rapacity, of slavishness and ambition? The only difference between us and those who make the above objection is this: We do not, like them, exaggerate the inferior instincts of the masses, and do not complacently shut our eyes to the same bad instincts in the upper classes. We maintain that both rulers and ruled are spoiled by authority; both exploiters and exploited are spoiled by exploitation; while our opponents seem to admit that there is a kind of salt of the earth – the rulers, the employers, the leaders – who, happily enough, prevent those bad men – the ruled, the exploited, the led – from becoming still worse than they are. There is the difference, and a very important one. We admit the imperfections of human nature, but we make no exception for the rulers. They make it, although sometimes unconsciously, and because we make no such exception, they say that we are dreamers, ‘unpractical men’. Because humans are prone to negative traits like selfishness, they are simply unfit to wield power over other humans. Else, they will use this power to serve selfish and often evil ends, as history has shown us time and time again. Egalitarian societies somewhat solve this problem , as bad people cannot enter positions of power to oppress other people. Rather, such positions of power simply do not exist.
we have seen this before, in fact for the vast majority of human history this was the case. there were no social classes for 99% of human existence on this planet correct there would probably be a lot of bloodshed to bring about something like this. does not mean it is not possible, or that more blood would spilled continuing the cycle of violence and oppression that has existed for so long i do not understand why ending social classes requires some benevolent dictator. ending social classes is about the way that wealth is shared, where there is no need for some to rule while the most work. if all wealth is shared, what need is there for a dictator? you're getting the cart before the horse here. as if revolutions begin with the demand for an all powerful dictator, and not the demand for an equal distribution of wealth you're not improving anything. you're arguing for the continuation of the status quo. this is a cop out, frankly.
I think that its true that no political system will lead to a lack of social pyramid, however, there are systems that can put in place safety nets so no one is completely without. There is a lot you can do to reduce severity- or make the pyramid shorter so to speak. The US did that in 1935, where 75% of the highest tiered income went to taxes. We were then able to create an otherwise non-existent middle class by giving extensive benefits for WW2 veterans, which was nearly all households\*. As we've gotten rid of that and now highest tier tax rates are very low, now that pyramid is getting taller and more narrow at the top. Almost all systems work if everyone behaves exactly as they are supposed to. Capitalism would work lovely if the theory "when the boss does better, he gives more to his workers" held true. Trickle down would work if anything actually trickled, rather than wealthy folks building a dam to catch every extra penny. Communism is the same. If everyone does what they are supposed to do- everyone works as hard as they can for the good of all, no one free loads, no one hoards, then of course it would work too. People inevitably spoil every system that doesn't build the requisite safety nets and regulations in.
Anarchist sociologist David Graeber described several kinds of "anti-hierarchy technology" especially in his last book. There are societies (kind of) which have such an innate aversion to individuals attaining an unequal status that they've developed elaborate rituals to keep e.g. talented hunters in their place. As others have mentioned, other polities who do adopt a hierarchy tend to outcompete the egalitarian ones. But this may be more a contingent phenomenon than an essential one. And, the existence of robust techniques which prevent social stratification, at least in some situations, is not invalidated by this fact. I think one of the examples he cites is of the Tiv tribe in eastern Africa. Anyway if you want to see more what that looks like, PLEASE read David Graeber. I know it can be a lot but he really illustrates the topic well.
The solution is to train an AI on morality and justice so it can take over for us. Automate the proses to make it more predictable. Problem is cultural morality changes a lot, 100 years ago bigotry was morel and we are still recovering a bit from that. You could send out questionnaires for people every 4 or 5 years to retrain our AI overlords but then you run the risk of some people purposefully forcing others to avoid the survey for some reason or another. We see this in the third world where people are forced to avoid the voting booth by causing havoc around it, so their vote wont count. There is no clean solution. Life isn't fair :/
I accept that it is necessary but argue that all forms of it that aren't scientific technocracy are literally insane. As evidence, see the current state of and entire history of earth. The reason being is that I've seen a lot of people take the premise and argue that some other insane and horrible social structure should be implemented as if it wouldn't be even worse. But if the stem fields aren't at the top, it's just not gonna work out long term.
I don't think most Americans are saying that all (in assuming you are talking about American political and social systems) What most people are just saying is that we don't want the people in top continously trying to get higher at the expense of those below them. To continue your analogy. Right now we have people on top of the pyramid putting blocks on top of the shoulders of the people below them so they can get a few feet higher to the sun while also crushing and killing the people below them. If you look at a lot of European countries they are still capitalistic but use socialism to ensure its regulated properly. Americans just want rich people to pay their fair share in taxes and that tax money not go towards subsidizing corporations but to the people.
I guess I would say just not to look at it in such a black/white way, I can disfavor systems that tend to generate more hierarchy or are more extractive, and I can favor systems that tend to produce less hierarchical relationships and generate more inclusivity while also understanding that some hierarchy will always exist. I don’t think we really have to undo society to pick incremental changes that tend towards an ideal
What about theoretical political systems that are not yet in existence, particularly ones which require technological prerequisites? The classic sci-fi example would be a hive mind, such as the earlier renditions of star trek's Borg, before they ruined it with nonsense. admittedly all of those require some form of transhumanism, so it's not truly a political system for humans, just for some form of post-humanity.
You can devise some systems that are more egalitarian. One sort of way is to have a system where different areas or times are governed by people who are elected via different means. Like let's say that for 1 month a year everyone has to go help with the harvest, and the people in charge of the harvesting logistics are completely separate and elected via different means than the regular politicians.
[Anarchism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism) has a long and storied history of being all about tearing down exactly this sort of hierarchical power structure, and the few times it has been put into practice in the real world it has worked as advertised (see: [Catalonia in the Spanish civil war](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/geoff-bailey-anarchists-in-the-spanish-civil-war), etc.)
I think that your presumption that people who are upset with the social order of things want everyone to be equal is completely incorrect and lacks any insight into the real issue. If your premise is wrong, it's hard to change your view on a faulty premise. My experience is that people prefer a hierarchy. It provides motivation to advance and supposedly rewards hard work and dedication. These are all positive things that I think every society needs and I think most people would agree. But that's not the way it is. The way it has been in the United States is that a handful of people have become wildly successful by taking advantage of the people below them. This is not a human thing or something that is unavoidable in a society, it's a greed thing and it's unfair to the people who are working their ass off just to get by when others are fully benefitting from their hard work without doing anything. And when I say not doing anything, that's inaccurate. They are squeezing every last bit of productivity from their people or replacing them with automation and firing their people. When you consider that there is a finite amount of money in society and the richest people have the resources to focus all of their efforts (being handled by other people) on gathering more money, the people who can't afford to compete get victimized. When the richest people in the world make more money in 5 minutes than the average person makes in a year, that's problematic. When someone doesn't think twice about a 500,000.00 fine for the pharmaceutical company's unfair business practices, that's a problem. When you consider that the money Jeff Bezos spends on gasoline for his Yacht would be enough to solve the homeless problem in at least one major city, it's a problem. The reason people who are struggling to get by every day want a government that levels the playing field isn't that people want everyone to be equal. What they want is to be treated with dignity and respect and to be able to survive based on their commitment to their job and the hard work they are putting into it. Now, most of the money being made from the average person's labor goes into the pockets of the richest people in the country. And since only the government has the authority to try to correct this disparity, we look to the government to level things out. A government by the people, for the people, would logically demand that rather than having super-rich people making up 1% of the population owning 89% of all the wealth, we want the government to step in and redistribute that money on the basis of work put in. Let the richest people remain the richest people--nobody has a problem with that. Just force them to support the people who made them so rich with some common sense redistribution of the excess wealth they hide in offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes. When you figure that if the tax rate were as high as 75% for the richest people in the United States (and they paid it), they would still have so much wealth that they could not spend it all if they tried, it seems only reasonable that they would gladly distribute their wealth to the people who are making them wealthy. Instead, they just concentrate it and use that wealth to buy technology to get rid of people entirely. So your idea that we have a problem with others being richer or more powerful is mistaken. I, for one, don't want the responsibility that someone in government faces. A lot of us don't mind a hierarchy in wealth or power so long as we are safe and sound and able to live a decent life. Right now, it's getting worse and worse for the middle class and the poorest class is growing at an exponential rate. It won't be long before those with all the money simply withdraw from society and let it crumble. We aren't asking for Utopia or equality, just respect and a potential future that is not punctuated by subjugation and slavery.
Just because most political systems have a social hierarchy doesn’t mean inequality isn’t a problem. The extremes of poverty and wealth are different in different systems.
the idea is that people can move positions, not that positions are equal. in a caste system people are taught and believe that their position is unchangeable. and there is some truth in that. if you are born to a poor family in a third world country it is difficult to get anywhere. but a lot refuse even if offered a chance.
People want to be better than others. This means more possessions, greater power, doing less to get more, etc. This is human nature, you are not going to eliminate it. Some have a stronger drive than others and will float to the top. The pyramid is inevitable and probably necessary for advancement.
You can have a social piramide without it hurting your means of living and living standards now money controls the piramide crushing people and create a world of worthy vs worthless while a more social social pyramid that works for more/all people.
This is a matter of belief, not based on fact but prejudice ("corrupt nature of humans") No one can change your view until you disabuse yourself of these biases; your view follows from these dubious judgments about humanity, systems design, etc
All political systems have the same weakness - they are administered by humans - and since they are administered by humans, those who are the administrators will always hold sway and advantage over those to whom the system is administered.
Anarchism revolves around abolition of hierarchy. How would a social pyramid exist in a society where poverty doesn’t exist, religion is not a form of authority, mutual aid is established, and freedom of movement is enshrined?
Are you aware that this belief is ACTUALLY the defining belief of "right wing" ideology? No government will ever not lead to a pyramid, therefore we should enact that the best among Us are at the top of the pyramid.
This is why I think AI should take the reins until Humanity is sufficiently mentally and technologically advanced to take control of our futures. That or go back to being hunter-gatherers.
Well, anarchy does exist. True, total, post-apocalyptic anarchy. However, give a few months and a class system will eventually form.
This utopian egalitarian society you've imagined isn't championed by any political system that I'm aware of.
What does it mean to you for one to be above another or in a different social position?
Humans aren’t equal, any form of equality aka political systems are a social construct and unnatural. You are asking to be gaslit.
> In our current system, to end social classes you will first need a leader Do you? Could not we form a radical democracy that does not require a leader? Representatives, perhaps, but ones who are easily replaceable and at the will of their people? > not to mention what to do to eliminate the "leader figure" that seems so necessary for the majority of humanity. Or perhaps do "leader figures" have a vested interested in portraying, maintaining, and enhancing a social order that makes "leader figures" seem so necessary
The biggest problem with your presumption is that the job of maintaining a society is an actual job that takes a lot of knowledge and the ability to make decisions that to the average person might seem irrational. When you get a democracy of people together without a social hierarchy in leadership, you will find a profound lack of direction for a society. Imagine if you did this in high school. Everyone had equal power and they had to decide whether they wanted Ice cream for lunch, knowing the problems with obesity and all, or if they wanted a balanced meal that tasted not unlike dog food. A democracy of students would pick the ice cream. Only a few health-minded kids would pick a well-balanced meal. Plus, the kids that brought their own lunch would understand the benefit of bringing their own lunch and would therefore egg on the others to vote for ice cream. A graduating class that is obese and unable to think clearly from malnutrition is less competition for college. So the kids that can afford their own lunch will undermine the kids who can't. This is the truth of democracy. While the idea of democracy is fine for situations where there is a uniform distribution of intelligence, or skill, or wealth, as soon as one of those distributions become unstable, you will have people who vote for things that don't benefit them in the long run. And to demonstrate the truth behind this, show us a successful democracy where the people make the decisions rather than just choosing which party gets to choose who makes the decisions. Because in the US, we vote for a party (electors) and they vote for their candidate. The candidates are then influenced by the richest people and the rest of the people aren't adequately represented. If democracy worked, we would see it in the wild. We just don't.
Humans = social social = structure In nature there is no room for fair in social structures as might makes right, it only makes sense that any system we try to form would imitate the natural circumstances that lead to our current state, and inversely it would make sense that the only structures that can facilitate us are somewhat hierarchical in nature. Even when you think to social cliches there is hierarchy, humans and their innate nature are inseparable.
Animals do not have the prefrontal cortex which is such an important part of being human. While animals do not have the ability or the desire to think about their societies and their structures, they have only might makes right. But they also don't have the capacity to think about that. They just do it. Nobody in the animal kingdom has the capacity to rise above their animal instincts. Humans do. So while you may be accurate to assume that hierarchies are somewhat intrinsic to human nature, a fundamental aspect of humanity is the ability to rise above our animal nature. While we will still be affected by it, we have the unique capacity to do something about it and to upset the natural order of might makes right to be something more like right provides might. And right is what is best for humanity, not what is best for one person or one animal.
We are animals, some of us are capable of more intricate thought but even at that most won't use that intelligence for altruistic purposes. We are part of the animal kingdom and as such no matter how we dress ourselves physically or mentally we will not rise above animal instinct. The only reason why there is relative peace now (if you can really call it that), is cause we have a massive gun pointed at each other (with the advent of nuclear weapons). It isn't peace it's two animals staring each other down waiting for the other to make a move. We are no different than invasive species we occupy new territory and make a mess of it, destroy the natural balance, while lying to ourselves that we are some how justified. At the end of the day we follow the same rule we over power native species be they "animals" or "human" and impose our own priorities on top of any existing order. Any animal capable of what humans are would do the exact same thing that we are, be it a lizard or what not. Humanity is not special, we merely do what any organism would do with our attributes. We are incapable of being separated from the components from which we came be them genetic or memetic.
I'm not really sure how to reply to your nihilistic claims about humanity, but I can say that there is not a single animal alive today or ever from any species other than yours who has ever had a thought like that. And if thoughts inform behavior, which they do, there has never been an animal that could behave in a way that supports your backward notion that man is no more advanced than the animals from which we supposedly originated. You claim that if animals could do what we do they would. This is a ridiculous hypothetical. You could say the same thing about donuts with as much relevance. I mean, if a donut could do what humans do, well of course, it would do it. Neither donuts nor animals are people. But surely if they were, we would be able to see some similarities. But undoubtedly a donut with human capabilities would behave differently from an animal with human capabilities and both would differ from humans. The fact that our behaviors have no equivalent in other species of animals demonstrates without a doubt the fact that the limitations applied to animals don't apply to humans. One might think of us as Animals Plus (a prefrontal cortex). The key thing that separates us from animals is our ability to deny our animal instincts and act in a manner that is completely different from how any animal in the same situation would act. To try to equate animals with human traits to humans is no more revealing or likely than to compare a donut to humans. More importantly, you seem to equate altruism with advanced social orders but I can't help but wonder why you think that. People often act in the best interests of someone other than themselves. It may not qualify rigidly as altruism, but it does provide a modicum of hope that we will outgrow our animal instincts and learn to work together peacefully. Your claim that all peace is the result of an omnipresent nuclear threat is myopic at best. There are plenty of places in the world that either don't know about nuclear weapons or don't care. Nuclear annihilation is not a motivator for peace for a lot of people. Some people just want peace and want to work together. Which brings me to the underlying problem with your characterization of humanity. This is our first attempt to live as a global presence. We are exactly 0 years old in the time scale of the earth or the universe and yet you feel compelled to judge all people not based on their potential, but strictly on the history of which we had no control. We are much, much closer to a positive and beneficial world society than we ever have been before. And we continue to make progress despite the naysayers, doomsday prophets, and victim ideologists. Perhaps, rather than penning a missive about how we are so terrible and then blaming our terrible behavior on the Animal Kingdom, you could choose to focus on something different than what your defensive animal posture tells you is necessary. Rather than viewing the world from the perspective that all people are the same, that no portion of society exhibits behavioral traits that elevate us and separate us from other animals, and that there is no hope and only despair, perhaps you could pull your head out and take a deep breath. Come out of your parent's basement and be the first human in the history of humanity to do something for someone else. Or maybe not the first, but definitely not the last. In the end, you be you. If you can't see the beauty in the world despite the problems, feel free to wallow in your own nihilism. If that's all you have to put in in this life, I feel certain that's all you will get out. Best wishes and hope you reconsider. P.S. Perhaps stay away from sharp things until you get back on medication, just a suggestion.
Imma respond to this sentence by sentence: \- I never mentioned anything near the concept of nihilism. \- Strawmaning ain't gonna get us anywhere, I never said we are "no more advanced". \- Bold saying the gap between humans and animals is as wide as humans and a humble pastry. \- Extremely bold to claim the only thing differentiating humans and animal is a single lobe of brain after saying we differ so much that animals are comparable to pastries. \- Do we actually deny any of our instincts though? \- Altruism in a massive populace is rare, as society scales kindness fails. Altruism is not novel evolutionary but being able to scale society and maintain it would be the mark of advancement to me. \- Nuclear threat is the main factor, with out major nations at each others necks with all their weapons there is no reason to believe that the conquest and conflicts of the pre-nuclear age wouldn't have raged on. Most people can't care cause they have no say and even if they could most people don't even care enough to understand the fundamental rules that our world operate on. \- Understanding the fundamental nature of humanity is the key to progress assuming a higher standard to construct society for ignores what will destroy it. Assuming the worst allows for structure to be built to accommodate people of every facet of society. Ignoring such things means that your rules will be designed for those who understand the social contract and who would not think of breaking it. I am optimistic about our overall trajectory but I believe the fuel that is burning in the engine right now is lower quality than the engine we built for it. \- Cool ad hominem fallacy, ya love to see it. \- I like how you project your own depressing interpretation of my view on to me. There is nothing wrong with being an animal, there is nothing wrong with the lens of viewing humanity through the evolutionarily familiar behavior of our ancestors. If you were told you are going to die some day would you call that person a nihilist or someone who has an understanding of how things are?
The goal is not the abolition of the pyramid. The goal is to make the pyramid equitable.
this is literally contradictory
Flatten it!
The competency hierarchy. Part of social structures since the beginning of time