One tendency I’ve noticed among liberals is that they overwhelmingly subscribe to consequentialist or utilitarian ethics.

In fact, utilitarianism has become the dominant moral theory in Western cultures.

This is very bad news for anarchists. Anarchism is an abolitionist movement that categorically rejects hierarchies, no matter how “humane” they are.

But if you’re a utilitarian, why would you want to take the risk of an untested ideology like anarchism, when instead, you can just have a “nicer” capitalism or “nicer” government?

If you’re a utilitarian, you’re just going to end up at welfarism. You can never have firm principles if you think morality is about maximising utility.

Anarchists first need to convince people that utilitarianism is a fundamentally wrong ethical framework before even bringing up anarchism (or politics in general) in conversation.

We need to start the debate at the most basic and fundamental ethical foundations.

Admittedly I was very doubtful about the possibility of order in any way without some kind of person to guide them. However, I was watching a YouTube video and came to a really odd realization.

The video in question was about old board games equating to video games. The first one was a Pacman board game, which seemed nonsensical to me, as everything had to be manually moved. However, my true realization was when he started playing a Mario board game, as it was very absurd to me; it shouldn't work like it should, it was a card game of enemies and not a platformer. He was not genuinely playing these as much as he was showcasing, but it really dawned on me how the average Joe would've felt the same as the platformer if he was geniunely playing it. This arises something i've never realized. Before this, I thought structured anarchism was impossible. However, I have realized that board games are an anarchy. In an ordinary board game session, it is egalitarian, with no monopoly on violence; everyone can mutually reinforce the rules of the game and cheaters usually will be ostracized without any need for hierarchies. So, this could be an argument for something like an anarchy with a constitution to outline the structure of the commune. Thoughts?

Examples:

1. bodily autonomy: people have justified, legitimate power -- aka authority -- over our own bodies that overrides other people's 'freedom' or desires regarding our bodies.. Iow lack of consent creates a hard limit on what other people can or ought to be able to do to us. At the end of the day this is power, iow the ability to get another person to do what you want or need against their will.

2. smashing the state & ending capitalism: both of these systems of domination & oppression have people who stubbornly cling to these institutions & want one or more frequently both to continue. In order to end them anarchists will need to use coercive power to force these people to give up the state & capitalism. This will need to happen over & over, systematically, and anarchists will need to win repeatedly. This systemic, top down power over & against our enemies has a name: hierarchy. To the extent that society views this power as legitimate it has another name: authority.

3. protecting vulnerable people from their own actions: the classic example is stopping a kid from running into traffic.

4. deplatforming fascists & other bigots: this interferes with their freedom of speech (the general principle not the legal doctrine) against their will.

A common thread with 1., 2. & 4. is that the legitimate power is used to stop people from violating other people's freedom & safety. Number 3. is about protecting people from violating their own future freedom. In the #3 example if you allow the kid maximum freedom, including the freedom to run into a busy street, they are very likely to permanently lose their freedom to do anything by getting run over.

I know that many anarchists aren't going to like this framing. Most of us like to think that we're consistently 100% against hierarchy, domination & authority. But not even in a future anarchist society under the best possible conditions can we avoid the existence of conflicting, incompatible interests which therefore can't be reconciled. Iow there will be some people who turn out to have more power than others in certain instances. One way to think about this is to create an analogy to Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance. In this case it's a paradox of freedom:

" ...he argued that a truly [free] society must retain the right to deny [freedom] to those who promote [unfreedom]. P̶o̶p̶p̶e̶r̶ posited that if [hierarchical] ideologies are allowed unchecked expression, they could exploit [anarchist] values to erode or destroy [anarchism] itself through authoritarian or oppressive practices."¹

Chomsky also advanced a minimalist account of antiauthoritianism which specifically allows for justified authority:

"The basic principle I would like to see communicated to people is the idea that every form of authority and domination and hierarchy has to prove that its justified - it has no prior justification...the burden of proof for any exercise of authority is always on the person exercising it - invariably. And when you look, most of the time those authority structures have no justification: they have no moral justification, they have no justification in the interests of the person lower in the hierarchy, or in the interests of other people, or the environment, or the future, or the society, or anything else - they are just there in order to preserve certain structures of power and domination, and the people at the top."²

Keep in mind though that Chomsky's³ 'proof' & 'justification' are extremely unlikely to convince the people who are forced to do or not do something against their will. In addition the justification is going to look like a rationalization to anyone who doesn't agree with the action.

Finally I've seen people try to claim that 'force' somehow avoids being a form of hierarchical power or domination etc. Force is just another word for power though and successful force means prevailing over people, against their will. Succesfully justifying that use of force only makes it authority in the sense of "legitimate power." Successful self-defense = legitimate power/force over an attacker. etc. etc.

¹my edits in brackets; original quote from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

²https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9505294-the-basic-principle-i-would-like-to-see-communicated-to

³I agree with lots of criticisms that correctly point out how Chomsky is a liberal. One example is his Voltaire-like / ACLU style free speech absolutism. There are many other examples. But his account of antiauthoritianism (quoted above) is much better able to survive scrutiny than the impossible idea that anarchism is or can be 100% free of authority or hierarchy.

Hey guys I consider myself a libertarian socialist, but I still have a few questions on how it could function after a revolution particularly.

I've contacted solidarity federation in the UK but still got no response so I'm just wondering if you could help before I join?

1. Anarchism states that the majority is needed for it to work, my question is do you really think they're gonna let you get to a majority?

History shows that when radicals poll around 30% the capitalists always, ALWAYS initiate dictatorship to crush us. So what you gonna do then?

2. But okay, best case scenario, what if regions disagreed with the vote of the majority at federal conference? Or what if the majority starts calling for capitulation to capitalism because of the suffering?

(Like in Baku, Kronstadt and other cities the Bolsheviks had rebel where we know they're going to turn capitalist or allow capitalists in? Or like some farmers/collectivised factories that the CNT had to replace with bosses because of the same?) You need to remember, the capitalist world is going to do the most horrific shit they can to make us suffer. People are going to be tired, desperate, hungry and hopeless, what will you do when they want to capitulate?

3. Would we implement conscription to protect the revolution if we're attacked?

Revolutions show that while most people can be sympathetic, they will not fight, only the most conscious fight, sadly they're usually the first to die because of this.

4. What about defeatists who undermine morale? Do we arrest them?

5. After a revolution what if we're isolated (i.e France goes fascist), what do we do about nukes? What if people vote in capitalism so they stop blockading us?

That would mean our certain death btw, the capitalists aren't going to let us just stand down from power.

I'd love any and all your thoughts, comments, ideas, warnings, suggestions on this approach:

I'm running cultural project that would involve courses, tutorials, seminars for people who work in the cultural field (musicians, curators, conceptual artists, teachers, etc). It will be funded by grants thru the region's tax dollars, but is a separatist, anarchist, anti-institutional endeavor.

A lot of the anarchist work done where i am has a DIY, "slum" aesthetic, built by people whose parents are literal landlords in an extremely privileged wealthy country where "summer holidays" are a given, to generalize and summarize. To me this signals somehow that anarchist initiatives should look devoid of expertise (things crookedly hammered together vibe) and look or actually be "poor." To me, I run with the politics of slithering into institutions, stealing, bamboozling, lying, and using that to take care of all the things these institutions fail to do. Drawing loosely from a Black anarchist approach that doesn't pretend that their money isn't stolen in the first place or that exclusively living outside of those institutions takes them down or can be sustainable in the long term.

A bit of a messy hodge podge of stuff but if you made it through that please share thoughts :)

A lot of my fellow radicals are de-facto voluntaryists (anti-coercion), rather than true anarchists (anti-hierarchy).

Now, the reason I subscribe to the anti-hierarchy principle, but not the anti-coercion principle, is because it’s impossible to eliminate all coercion.

Even in a totally non-hierarchical society, unauthorised and unjustified acts of coercion, taken on our own responsibility without right or permission, are sometimes going to be a necessary evil.

For example, suppose a pregnant woman is in a coma. We have no idea whether she wants to be pregnant or not.

One solution would be to ask her family, but there’s a risk that her family could be lying. Perhaps they’re seriously anti-abortion, so they falsely claim that the woman wishes to be pregnant, to protect the foetus at the expense of the woman’s interests.

Personally, I think an unwanted pregnancy is worse than an unwanted abortion, so I would support abortion in the woman’s best interests.

This is undeniably a form of reproductive coercion, but we’re forced into a situation where it’s simply impossible to actually get consent either way. We have to pick our poison, or choose the lesser of two evils.

Another problem for voluntaryists, besides the fact that eliminating all coercion is an impossible goal, is that even “voluntary hierarchy” still seems to be a bad thing.

For example, people could freely associate in a bigoted or discriminatory way, choosing to shun or ostracise people based on race, religion, disability, or gender/sexuality.

This would be hierarchical, but not coercive. I personally think that bigotry is fundamentally incompatible with anarchy, and I find it morally repulsive at a basic level.

I’m an anarchist because I believe in equality, which I find to be a good-in-itself. Voluntaryism, unlike anarchism, isn’t rooted in egalitarian principles, so it doesn’t align with my fundamental values.

But perhaps the voluntaryists might just have different ethical foundations than I do, in which case, our differences are irreconcilable.

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about anarchism recently and thought about something which I feel is crucial to its success. How do we prevent a “might makes right” situation from unfolding by which organised, well-armed groups establish in order to achieve a particular goal. For example, say I particularly disliked a specific group of people/community; I could quite easily hop online and organise an armed militia of like-minded individuals to carry out attacks on said community. We have seen this in the past with groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, surpassing well over 3,000,000 members. And in a society without a state military/police, how could anyone feasibly stop a 100,000+ member armed group from rampaging around the nation committing terrible acts? Bear in mind that due to the abolition of the military, these groups could easily salvage armoured cars, tanks, aircraft, drones, missile systems etc. Sort of like the Taliban after the US military left tonnes of equipment behind while evacuating Afghanistan, except on a MUCH larger scale. Unfortunately, I cannot think of a good way of preventing such an outcome from eventually unfolding. Especially in a more disconnected society comprised of individual communes/groups.  

A market is a formal place of exchange or in other senses an abstracted idea of a place owning resources and exchanging them with another place. Usually markets do exchange through currency (because barter is horrendously inefficient). Usually currency is earned, not given. You have to do a task to get a compensated currency. Usually there is an assumption of private ownership; you have to own the things you are exchanging.

Markets are not capitalist. They do not necessitate private ownership of the means of production. Production can work collectively, while goods are still exchanged through a market.

With all that said, I simply can not see how markets are worthwhile in an anarchist society. Assuming that the goal of anarchism is to liberate people from systems that keep them from living truly fulfilled lives, then the market will only prevent this from being completely realised.

It's not so much about how good markets can work to exchange things, they obviously do well at this task. It's more about the reliance on money and the necessary condition that you have to do tasks to get that money. And it is necessary. If money was simply given out to people, it completely defeats the purpose of the market. Rhetorically speaking, anyone can simply buy anything they want. So why are people selling things to begin with? So the alternative is that people Must work to be able to earn whatever currency it is to be able to live.

And let's assume that basic necessities are not on the market, housing, food, water are all given. The only thing on the market are luxuries or less necessary goods. While yes you won't be forced to work to survive anymore, you will now simply be stuck at a simple standard of living and have to accept that. Or be forced to do work if you want anything else.
And this opens the doors pretty clearly to wealth inequality. Some people will have more money than others. Some people will have more of an ability to get what they want compared to others. Now you're surrounded by people who have a better standard of living, but you're just told to suck it up and force yourself to work if you want all of that too.

Doesn't it just sound so awful? And sure, I'm biased against markets in the first place but I don't think I'm being terribly unfair.

The alternative to currency is barter and thats convoluted. Simply understand the problem of wanting a good but not having a good the other person wants to exchange with. And the long fetch quest you'll have to go on to find a good they want that also you can exchange for.

So, Why would this system that forces you to work and clearly just creates wealth inequality be better than an alternative economic system that simply produces things and then distributes those things where they're needed? Where local communities don't own anything and you don't own anything (besides respecting personal property). Where we all simply share things amongst each other and not expect there to be some kind of exchange. Like some hub of goods where people can go to simply get what they want or give things they don't want, so that others can take it if they want it.

This, I believe, refocuses life to be about Actually living life (as opposed to playing a money game and being forced to work). You can spend less time thinking about how you're going to get what you want and more time thinking about how you want to spend your unique human life. And there will be other systems and beliefs in place to ensure that people help each other and collectively maintain society too. We are talking about anarchism here after all.

This sounds immensely more simple. And immensely more respectful to human life. Exchange simply doesn't need to exist. Money simply doesn't need to exist. A life focused on work and production doesn't need to be our focus. So we simply do not need markets.

I first became aware of Anoma on an episode from the "Blockchain Socialist" podcast (see here: https://theblockchainsocialist.com/anoma-undefininig-money-and-scaling-anarchism-with-christopher-goes-cer/ ), after which I read the vision paper and white paper. The vision paper is helpful in explaining the potential utility of Anoma from an anti-capitalist perspective: https://anoma.net/vision-paper.pdf (section 4 starts on page 35, describing Anoma itself in detail, though I recommending the rest of the vision paper as well in order to understand the context/motivations behind Anoma's design).

Basically, Anoma can make multiparty, multivariate exchange feasible in such a way as to make numeraires/exchange mediums (such as currency or credit) obsolete.

I'm interested to hear your thoughts.

According to this source, microchips manufacture is divided among 1000's of specialized firms spread among 8 nations. How would anarchist systems that make use of gift-economies facilitate/obviate/replace this?

Let's say that I am a full time artist. I want to contribute to the community with my art.
But, no one in the community likes or wants it. Then what?

What if I live in a very areligious community and I've had a personal revelation and I want my contribution to the community to be my teaching of the words of Christ? I want to dedicate every second of my life to studying the bible and preaching God's word. But, the community has ZERO interest in this? Then what?

In both instances I would be willing to freely contribute to the community, but in a way that the community doesn't value. What would happen?

-------------------

EDIT:

Thanks to everyone that responded. It seems that there is no general agreement on the answer to this question.

Some say,

"You would still have access to the same housing, grocery centers, and hospitals that you already had access to . Anarchism doesn't hold people's lives hostage by demanding "you have contribute what I want you to contribute before you can 'earn a living'."

others says,

"The community would likely simply not count the person's personal endeavors as a contribution. From there, they can simply take corrective measures until the person agrees to start contributing in ways that the community wants."

Ok so lets assume (since anarchists are anti-prison) that they would allow all inmates to leave assuming the state where abolished. Now the majority of people who are imprisoned aren't a danger to wider society, hence they wouldn't be too much of an issue to set free. However, how do you deal with those who are? e.g mass shooters, terrorists and the like. The main reason such people have life setences in the first place; is because they would likley seek to cause harm as soon as they where freed. Now before anyone says "rehabilitation", I have done some research into this issue and the general consensus was that not all people can be rehabilitated; regardless of how hard you try. Hence I'm asking today how anarchists can effectively abolish prisons while keeping the rest of society safe from such dangerous individuals?

Let's say, hypothetically, an anarchist revolution has toppled a developed nation-state somewhere in Europe. Its neighbouring capitalist states now have a vested interest in seizing and partitioning newly-redistributed wealth, installing a dependend regime and pre-empting a threat to themselves under the guise of "restoring order" and "enforcing international law". Some of said states have decided to pursue this interest through military means, deploying their well-funded professional armed forces, with willingness to sustain grevious losses before backing down.

How would an anarchist society effectively defend itself from this threat?

How would it manage production and distribution of advanced military hardware, such as tanks and aircraft?

How would it ensure its fighters and strategists are skilled enough to compete with people who have spent years preparing for war? I imagine that any anarchist revolution that would have made it that far would have also won over some soldiers and generals of its host country, but that's not a sustainable way of acquiring trained personnel.

How would an anarchy do all of that without re-establishing a dictatorial military structure that would threaten to end the anarchic project from within?

I don't think that defeating one state from within, through years or decades of revolution-building would in-and-of-itself render an anarchy greatly adept at winning wars with other states, as these are quite different feats.

In every case of authority, one party holds the right to punish another.

Parents are allowed to smack their children. Bosses are allowed to fire their workers. Landlords are allowed to evict their tenants. Governments are allowed to imprison their citizens.

But this right is always asymmetrical. The punishment is unidirectional, from the dominant party to the subordinate.

If a slave was to beat or kill their master, they would be challenging authority, rather than asserting it. The slave would almost certainly suffer severe consequences for their act of rebellion.

The right to punish can be easily distinguished from random acts of revenge or retaliation, which occur without social sanction and can even cross the line into criminal territory.

Acts of force or coercion, whether morally justifiable or not, do not actually constitute authority by themselves.

Authority is a very specific, and easily recognisable sort of social relationship, with real and material effects on people’s everyday lives.

Just wondering how many people here started out with a Marxist view before leaning into anarchism or other ideologies. Are you still on the fence or have you gone full anarchist? And for those who haven’t been involved with Marxism at all, what's your take on the whole spectrum of leftist thought?

on a funny note: I always think of the relationship between anarchists and communists as twins, who always fight but stand up for the other, if someone tries to attack them, do you agree with that?

I'l preface this post by aaying I've only recently gotten started reading any political theory in general, let alone anarchist writings (just started reading Anarchy Works). But one thought I keep coming back to is how the internet would operate and look like in a post-capitalist world.

The size and prevelance of the world wide web seems from an uneducated (my) view to be very deeply interlinked to the economy it's been built in, with companies having massive server farms for their high-traffic websites. So I'm curious as to what people think about the following questions: in what ways would the digital landscape change? How would the process of change even happen? Is it even feasable that it would still function at the same scale it does today, especially when it comes to things like social media websites that have become so interwoven in the day-to-day lives of people?

The foundational ideological myth of liberalism is that humanity began in a lawless state of nature, and developed systems of authority to solve conflicts in the initial anarchic state of affairs.

But the myth is just that, a myth.

Anarchy is the absence of all hierarchy and social stratification, not just the state. Pre-state societies are not representative of what an anarchist society would look like.

We can look at anthropological evidence to disprove this myth.

Australian Aboriginal cultures had a patriarchal clan-based social order, with elders wielding status and power over the youth. They had a whole tradition of oral customary law, backed by their Dreamtime religion, as well as a system of arranged marriages.

Since Australia was the only continent (besides Antarctica) that never went through the Neolithic Revolution, this kind of social structure would be the most representative of pre-state Palaeolithic human cultures.

Crushing the myth of the state of nature is the first step in deprogramming people away from liberalism.

Anarchism is not a return to how humans previously organised for the past 100,000 years, but a progressive movement that advocates a radical and unprecedented transformation of the old order.

We have never had anarchy before, and that’s okay. Innovation and change are good for human society.

Moral arguments are an attempt to rationalize sentiments that have no rational basis. For example: One's emotional distress and repulsion to witnessing an act of rape isn't the result of logical reasoning and a conscious selection of which sentiment to experience. Rather, such sentiments are outside of our control or conscious decision-making.

People retrospectively construct arguments to logically justify such sentiments, but these logical explanations aren't the real basis for said sentiments or for what kinds of actions people are/aren't okay with.

Furthermore, the recent empirical evidence (e.g. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3572111/) favoring determinism over free will appears to call moral agency into serious question. Since all moral arguments necessarily presuppose moral agency, a universal lack of moral agency would negate all moral arguments.

I am a moral nihilist, but I am curious how moral realist anarchists grapple with the issues raised above.

The ammount of suffering that animals in food Industries go through is inimaginable. Just try to think that since you being born, your whole life is already planned, for male chicks in egg industry it immidietly ends by gassing them or blending them ALIVE. For pigs for meat, their live ends when they are ONLY couple years old, often by electrocution or gassing them ALIVE again, they suffer, struggle for every breath before they pass out, to have a knife sliced across their throat, still often being concious, bc gass doesn't kill, only stuns for some time. Chicken body parts that you all see in KFC belonged to 6 week chicken baby at max, they were bread in horrible conditons similar to Nazi Death Camps, just scaled to chickens, when they walked they broke their bones due to being overweight by genetic modification, cows in dairy industry are regularly raped by farm workers to have babies, babies then are ripped from their mother and either made into another milk producing plant or sent to the slaughter house, if not immidietly murdered at the farm. That's a reality, reality that most of you probably take part in, you don't even have to be anarchist to recognize that it is the atrocity. We murder TRILLIONS (Including fish and sea animald) animals per year, if that is not an animal holocaust (term first used by the holocaust survivor) then I don't know what it is). There is no illness that prevents anyone from being vegan, in fact it's proven that going vegan can prevent some illnesses to occur.

Before you will say, that it's personal choice, just read it.

Personal choice is only a personal choice if there are no others involved in that choice, it's not a personal choice to go kick a dog just like it's not a personal choice to eat meat and eggs and dairy bc you actively take away non-human animals rights that anarchists claim to be for. Definition of freedom and self Determination (for what ALL anarchists stand for) is in direct conflict to take part in the biggest animal abuse on the planet.

And, before you say another thing like, "It's just HOW we do it is bad, not killing itself" let me ask you, does it matter if I kick my dog hard or soft? Does it matter if I only beat my child once a week or 7 days a week? Both of these things are bad, and shouldn't be accepted, so why is it accepted to murder these animals for no reason? No, making a living is not a reason to not abolish that thing, just like it wasn't when abolishing slavery, I care for real farmers not animal abusers. And again, look how it compares, just kicking a dog, most of the people would beat u up for it, but when it comes to MURDER of pigs, cows and chickens people will laugh when some want to protect them.

I don't call for people without means to go vegan, to go vegan, but dont treat it as if you are poor you can't be vegan, vegan diet is cheapest diet in the world if u eat whole foods, beans, grains, legumes etc.

That's a thing to think about, and act on what you can clearly see is better option. Go Vegan

https://veganuary.com/

https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch

Consider the following:

• In an anarchist society there is no authoritarian mechanism that would prevent an individual owning a variety of weapons. Feasibly an individual and their friends could own any collection of firearms, produce and own chemical warheads for mortars and artillery and a variety of military style vehicles as personal property - with the caveat that these are not actively being used to infringe on the personal freedoms of others. Accordingly a fascist could drive their personal APC to the socially owned grocery store, walk in with their fascist symbol on display, have their RPG slung over their shoulder and do their groceries.

• In an anarchist society there would be no authoritarian mechanism (via either force or beauracracy) to peacably manage or discourage unsavory ideological positions - like fascism or racism. It would be authoritarian to control people's political views or have any kind of legal system to prevent these views from being spread and actioned. A stateless system could not have an agreed social convention that could preventatively protect the interest of minority groups.

• In historical instances of fascism coming to power, individuals who disagreed with fascism but who were not the direct scapegoats that fascists identified as primary targets of oppression did not take any kind of action to prevent fascists from oppressing others. It was only after significant oppression had already occurred that actions, subversive or combative, began to take place.

With this in mind it seems that anarchism expressly enables intimidation and first action oppression by forbidding anarchist societies from enacting preventative measures against unsavory ideologies - directly impacting minority groups.

Why should this be taken seriously as a pragmatic solution to prevent coercion and hierarchy?

Should somebody do something that large numbers of others consider bad enough to look into, but it isn't obvious who did it, how, with no courts, will false accusations be kept to a minimum? Most anarchists accept that, without governments, large groups will get together to nonviolently shame those who overstep important cultural bounds into making up with those they've offended. But what will those interested do should there be no obvious culprit.

You might be tempted to point out the many miscarriages of justice in modern courts. However, courts specifically have mechanisms to keep this down. Jurors and judges have to lack vested interest, the jury's vote has to be unanimous, and both sides are guaranteed an advocate.

The biggest problems with the courts are rich people hiring the best lawyers, and jurymen being biased against certain groups, such as other races. However, these issues will likely be worse without courts. Instead of the rich hiring lawyers, we'll simply see the most charismatic people smooth talking their way out of trouble. And the other side won't be guaranteed a spokesman. Biased jurymen will just be biased neighbors.

And what of the actual gathering of evidence?

I'm still taking my first steps in truly learning about anarchy, and as I delve deeper, I keep asking myself: where are all the anarchists?

It seems pretty clear to most people in our society that socialists and communists are still quite present, but what about anarchists? When exactly did this beautiful word become almost synonymous with "chaos" or "disorder," while "communism" came to mean "dictatorship" or "autocracy", and "capitalism" "freedom"?

It's the struggles of anarchists that won us the 8-hour workday and other rights that workers today often overlook, forgetting how hard they were to achieve—and under which ideology?

It breaks my heart to know that many people have no idea what "anarchy" truly means, that searching for anarchist voices online yields only one or two (who probably don’t get much attention) compared to other ideologies.

How do we change this? How do we unite? How do we show people that this is real, this is our fight, this is freedom?

(As I said, I'm still learning so if I said any nonsense here, please tell me)

There was a debate on this subreddit about whether or not an anarchist can believe in the concept of evil and the responses led me to conclude that anarchists don't believe that human nature exists.

In other words, anarchists don't believe that the majority of people are born with a specific personality trait (a set of emotional predispositions) that limits the human species' behavior and its capacity to change for better or worse.

If people are not born evil or good or to be more precise, mostly good (inherently good) or mostly evil (inherently evil), then human nature probably doesn't exist. Likewise, if no one is born a serial killer or psychopath and no one is born an angel, then human morality cannot be an innate tendency and, therefore, human nature probably doesn't exist.

Do anarchists have to adopt the social constructionist view that human values and perhaps human nature itself are socially constructed? If morality is socially constructed and depends upon environmental conditions, then morality, however it may be defined, is not an innate human tendency.

For the purpose of this debate, I'm going to define morality as a social norm for harm reduction i.e. the idea that moral actions are actions that seek to minimize the emotional or physical harm caused to others.

Let's debate the idea that humans have an innate tendency to reduce harm in other humans and nonhuman animals rather than debate what the correct definition of morality is. This is not a debate about semantics.

Is human nature so infinitely malleable by environmental constraints (or material conditions) that it practically doesn't exist?

When I use the term "human nature", I'm not referring to basic human needs and desires such as thirst, hunger, and sexual arousal. I've not seen anyone dispute the idea that humans generally dislike bitter-tasting food, but in some cultures bitter-tasting foods are popular. I've also not seen anyone dispute the idea that most cultures will eat whatever foods are readily available in their natural environment even if that means eating bugs. I've also not seen anyone dispute the idea that humans have evolved to not eat their own or other animal's bodily waste and that coprophagia in humans is not a medical disorder. And lastly, even though there are debates about whether or not humans evolved to be carnivores, herbivores, or omnivores, I've not seen anyone argue that human nutritional needs are socially constructed. So, all of these variables are not what this OP is about.

It may well be the case that most anarchists believe that humans are born to be carnivores or omnivores, but must strive to be vegans to fully align their behavior with their anarchist principles. This too is not what we seek to debate in this OP.

What s a matter of contention and what social constructionists actually argue is that things such as gender relations, gender norms, religion and spirituality or the lack thereof, sexual promiscuity, sexual preferences and sexual fetishes, marriage traditions or the lack thereof, the practice of incest, the choice between hunting and gathering or agriculture or horticulture, the structure of a nation's or culture's economy, and its legal system or lack thereof, are all socially constructed and are not innate human tendencies.

Psychologists have formulated theories that presuppose that human nature exists and that all humans have innate psychological tendencies that are not directly related to human biology such as Social Identity Theory, Social Dominance Orientation, and System Justification. If human nature does not exist, then all these psychological theories are wrong and the social constructionist theory of human nature is correct.

Another theory of human nature aligned with the anarchist rejection of human nature is the psychological theory of behaviorism.

Do anarchists reject the psychological theories of innate human behavior in favor of social constructionism and behaviorism?

And if so, is anarchism more in line with social constructionism or behaviorism, or would it be best described as some kind of cultural materialism - the theory advocated for by the Anthropologist, Marvin Harris?

Religions also presuppose that human nature exists. Even religions that espouse the idea that free will exists are still interpreted in such a way as to promote the idea that human nature exists. For example, the Bible says that homosexuality is a sin, therefore, most Christians assume that homosexuality must a be choice for God to consider such behavior a sin. They believe God only punishes humans for wrong choices, but not for innate tendencies or preordained desires crafted by God because they believe God is omnibenevolent.

Does anarchism, as a political ideology, reject all religions because all religions assume that humans have some sort of fixed human nature that is not malleable?

Do anarchists believe sexual orientation is a choice? And do anarchists believe that gender and racial identities are choices?

Does anarchism or anarchist literature have a coherent theory of what set of human values are choices and what set of human values are innate and non-malleable human tendencies?

I believe human nature does exist and I believe in a mixture of theories: Social Dominance Orientation and Cultural Materialism.

While I am not an anarcho-primitivist, it's worth pointing out the falsehood in the widely held idea (even amongst anarchists) that humanity could not live without some form of mass-adopted agriculture given the projected peak population (10.4 billion within this century).

A couple examples of non-agricultural approaches that would provide ample food for humanity are the following (listed in no particular order):

Mass Microalgae Production is quite capable of satisfying the protein needs of humanity (and several micronutrient needs as well), with a relatively minimal ecological footprint. Furthermore, microalgae production can help mitigate global warming via mass production in a carbon-negative manner.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213453018301435#bib0055

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666833522000454#sec0005

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10.3389/fnut.2020.565996/full

https://ecommons.cornell.edu/items/4db4ef95-26a0-42d1-8284-810c2309e580

https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/60/9/722/238034

Mass Re-wilding + Hunting/Gathering is quite capable of satisfying the fat, carbohydrate, and protein needs of humanity (as well as several micronutrient needs). One example could be proliferating the Mongongo tree across all viable semi-arid habitats on the planet via nomadic horticultural practices, which could provide 328,418 kcal per person per year for a population of 10.4 billion humans (this is with a relatively conservative estimate of 250kg of mongongo nuts produced per hectare). To put this figure in perspective... Assuming the average human consumes 2000 kcal/day, 328,418 kcal per person per year is enough to satisfy the caloric needs of all 10.4 billion humans for 164 days per year (just from one food source!). To be clear, I am not advocating or suggesting that it would be healthy for anyone to eat nothing but Mongongo everyday for almost half the year. I am just presenting the figures in this way to convey just how ample a source of kcal (and micronutrients) Mongongo can be as one (of multiple) pillars of a non-agricultural food system.

https://journals.co.za/doi/pdf/10.10520/AJA20785135_33576

https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1079/cabicompendium.48788#:~:text=In%20addition%2C%20the%20fruit%20contains,ha%20in%20Angola%20and%20Namibia

https://www.naturalhub.com/natural_food_guide_nuts_uncommon_ricinodendron_rautanenii.htm

https://docsbay.net/doc/825739/arid-lands-challenges-and-hopes

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use#:~:text=The%20land%20area%20of%20the,%25%20of%20the%20land%20area

I am a democratic socialist and although I sympathise with anarchists, I do not consider anarchy to be the best possible alternative to current political systems. That is mainly because of four issues with anarchism which I have identified from my non-scholarly perspective. I would love to see said criticisms adressed by members of this subreddit, whom I assume to be more knowledgeable on the subject that I am.

Throughout this post, I will be contrasting my concept of state-based democratic socialism with my concept of anarchy in order to explain why I think the former is preferable. I acknowledge that the world is full of dire political systems that are vastly inferior to anarchy. I am simply interested in figuring out which leftist alternative is the best option.

1. The problem of provision

One thing that states seem to excel at at is mustering and redirecting huge quantities of resources, mainly in the form of tax money and to a lesser extent, goods and services provided by state-owned companies. While in deeply-corrupt capitalist states such the US, a double-digit percentage of these resources gets wasted on things like big business subsidies or imperialist wars, it doesn't have to be this way. In social democracies such as Denmark, the redistributive fuction of the state takes the form of a robust welfare system, which provides people unable to provide for themselves (parents with small children, the unemployed, the disabled) with the means to live a decent life in spite of their circumstances. Public healthcare and education, including highly expensive and specialised university education, are likewise fuelled by redirected taxes.

A democratic socialist state could retain and expand upon this beneficial form of mass redistribution, futher reducing poverty and eliminating homelessness. A prosperous state could even redirect a significant portion resources abroad, to less-developed regions of the world, not in the form of weapons but, for example, technology, construction materials and hired specialists needed to carry out energy transition away from fossil fuels. Democracy, itself safeguarded by anti-lobbying laws, frequent referendums and replacement of capitalist corporations with worker cooperatives, would make it difficult for any small clique of malignant actors to hijack the stream of redistributed wealth, as to do so, they would have to convince the majority of the population to their policy proposals.

In contrast, anarchy, as far as I undestand it based on descriptions by popular anarchists Anark and Andrewism, entails the abolition of taxation and bureaucracy, without which the redistribution of resources on a scale comparable to that carried out by states seems impossible. I understand that some anarchists emphasize sharing of resources on a person-to-person basis, but I am not sold on the proposition that cumulative acts of local charity would be sufficient to compensate for the dismantlement of the welfare state - frankly, I find such notion disturbingly similar to a libertarian argument against state provision for the needy.

I would challenge any willing anarchists to provide me with either examples of mass provision carried out by non-state, non-hierarchical entities, or a compelling justification for the view that such provision would be unnecessary in an anarchy.

2. The problem of conflict resolution

From my observation, people often have fierce disagreements about matters such as child custody, access to personal property (as distinguished from private property) and person-to-person business deals (understood as local exchanges of goods and services, as distinguished from advanced, multi-million-dollar corporate lawfare). Sometimes these disagreements can be resolved via diplomacy, but in many other cases diplomacy, even when it's prolonged and involves a mediator, simply fails. In a state, the opposing parties have an option to resolve their conflict of interests through the judicial system, based on a set of pre-determined and publicly-accessible laws dictating exactly who is entitled to what in which circumstances. Said laws, while not infallibly just and usually not approved in a referendum, are at least passed by a majority vote of democratically-elected officials and may be rewritten based on popular demand to better suit the public's interest (assuming that the state in question is actually a representative democracy, not an elective plutocracy masquerading as one).

I believe that in a democratic socialist state, the judicial system could be reformed out of pathologies such as elitism, systemic racism and sexism, turning it into a rather effective instrument of justice. Greater restrictions on slapp-suits, coupled with free legal representation, would even the ground between conflicted parties of varying material status, while a greater representation of minority groups among judges and members of the jury would counteract discrimination on the basis of identity.

In contrast, anarchists tend to advocate wholesale abolition of the judicial system, together with the legal order said system is meant to enforce. While doing so would immediately dispose of the biases embedded in those institutions, I am anxious that many interpersonal conflicts would continue into perpetuity or get resolved through violence as a result. One alternative I can think of would be to resolve such conflicts via local vote, but doing so runs the risk of granting whoever is more popular in a given community a privileged status in all their disputes.

Another detrimental consequence of abolishing the shared, nation-wide legal order in favour of fully decentralized lawmaking that I foresee would be the creation of a patchwork of greatly diverse local legal systems, which would impede the exchange of goods and services between regions, by coercing everyone involved to adhere to wildly different standards throughout their journey.

I would challenge any willing anarchists to elaborate how conflict resolution in cases where mere diplomacy fails would look like in an anarchy, and why it would be better than a judicial system improved upon with progressive reforms.

3. The problem of violence

This particular criticism applies exclusively to anarchist revolutions in a democratic or semi-democratic states, a.k.a. states where it is realistically possible to implement democratic socialism through peaceful reforms of the dominant political system, providing the majority of the population is convinced to said reforms. I acknowledge that a reformist approach is not viable in places like North Korea, where the masses are fully disenfranchised and the only possible path to liberation is a violent one.

While democratic socialism and anarchism both rely on construction of a mass movement, on swaying the majority of the population to leftist politics, only the former has the capacity to reach its end goal through peaceful, electoral means, with minimal explicitly violent interactions between the state and the movement along the way. Such means are greatly preferable to a violent revolution, given both the reduced need for militarism within the socialist movement and the avoidance of a civil war that, given the realities of modern military technology and practice, would result in hundreds of thousands or even millions of deaths.

In contrast, anarchy, as far as I am aware, can only emerge from underneath a state through mass violence. States are malleable and, in case of (semi)democracies, come with built-in mechanisms facilitating peaceful systemic change, but I don't think any extant state could be wholly dissolved without an all-out conflict with its military. Moreover, a violent destruction of a state would likely frighten a large portion of the population into defending state institutions more effectively than legal reforms would, presenting an additional problem for an anarchist movement.

Given both the practical difficulty of tearing down the state and the high humanitarian cost of doing so, it is not enough for anarchy to be somewhat better than democratic socialism in order for me to consider the former a preferable option. The superiority of anarchy over democratic socialism would have to be so profound as to justify the cost of implementing the former.

I would challenge any willing anarchists to prove such superiority of their prefered political system, or to provide me with evidence that achieving socialism through reforms under a (semi)democratic state is impossible. I would not consider the low voter support of contemporary socialist parties as sufficient evidence for the latter any more than I would consider the rarity of anarchic societies to be a damning indictment of anarchism, as in both cases we are dealing with mass-oriented movements whose popularity is yet to be built.

4. The problem of participation

This criticism of mine is probably the least severe of the four. Simply put, an anarchic society would require a far greater political involvement from its members in order to work than a democratic socialist one would. The latter may make use of elected officials as a form of power delegation, while the former seems to rely solely on consensus and/or direct democracy for decision-making. While the anarchic approach is likely the more democratic of the two, said approach could only function with a population deeply commited to partaking in decision-making on a regular basis.

In my country, getting two thirds of eligible voters to partake in an election once every four years is quite a struggle. I am concerned that if all the decisions currently made by elected officials would have to be made by the people directly, most people wouldn't even show up to most voting sessions, thus either enabling an organised, malicious minority to impose its poicies on the silent majority, or paralysing the decision-making process entirely.

I consider this problem the least severe of the four because I already know a potential solution to it, namely the creation of a new, anarchist culture, emphasizing public participation as a key virtue. The problem with this solution is that implementing it would be, in and of itself, a monumental task that a democratic socialist movement wouldn't have to contend with to the same extent.

I would challenge any willing anarchists to share their thoughts on enacting such a cultural shift, or to provide an alternative solution to the problem of participation.

I’ve observed this tendency way too often in anarchist and leftist circles to conflate hierarchy with coercion.

For example, many leftists will argue that the reason to abolish prisons is because prisons involuntarily hold people captive, rather than because prisons are a tool to enforce the law.

This position leads to nonsensical conclusions, such as an obligation to tolerate violent behaviour and never forcefully intervene, out of fear of being inconsistent anarchists.

Voluntaryists or “anarcho”-capitalists also use this anti-coercion reasoning to justify “voluntary hierarchy”, but of course, using their own special definition of coercion that conveniently excludes the enforcement of property rights.

I think the root of this conflation comes from the fact that coercion is often used to enforce hierarchy, so the coercion and the hierarchy get mixed up together in people’s minds.

But to be clear, these are different things.

You can have unenforced laws that are technically still on the books, but you can also have force which doesn’t enforce any law (such as armed robbery or mugging).

A hierarchy is a social system or organisation in which individuals or groups are granted different rights, privileges, or status.

Coercion can be used to enforce hierarchies or to resist hierarchies.

Hopefully this post clears up any misconceptions.

First of all, let me disclose that I'm not really familiar with any literature or thinkers advocating for anarchism so please forgive me if I'm being ignorant or simply not aware of some concepts. I watched a couple of videos explaining the ideas behind anarchism just so that I would get at least the gist of the main ideas.

If my understanding is correct, there is no single well established coherent proposal of how the society should work under anarchism, rather there seem to be 3 different streams of thought: anarcho-capitalism, anarcho-syndicalism and anarcho-communism. Out of these 3 only anarcho-capitalism seems not contradicting itself.

However, anarcho-capitalism seems to necessarily enhance the negative effects of capitalism. Dismantling of the state means dismantling all of the breaks, regulations, customer and employee protections that we currently impose on private companies. Anarcho-capitalism just seems like a more extreme version of some libertarian utopia.

Anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism seem to be self-contradicting. At least the "anarcho-" part of the word sounds like a misnomer. There is nothing anarchical about it and it seems to propose even more hierarchies and very opinionated and restrictive way how to structure society as opposed to liberal democracy. You can make an argument that anarcho-syndicalism gives you more of a say and power to an individual because it gives more decisioning power to local communities. However, I'm not sure if that's necessarily a good thing. Imagine a small rural conservative community. Wouldn't it be highly probable that such community would be discriminatory towards LGBT people?

To summarize my point: only anarcho-capitalism seems to be not contradicting itself, but necessarily leads to more capitalism. Trying to mitigate the negative outcomes of it leads to reinventing institutions which already exist in liberal democracy. Other forms of anarchy seems to be even more hierarchical and lead to less human rights.

BTW, kudos for being open for a debate. Much respect!