why isn't there MORE anarchy in the world?

I have become much more of an anarchist, in some ways, as I have gotten older. How? Well, this may sound strange, but for me, for some reason, years ago I began connecting to religious thoughts, ideas, outlooks, perceptions that are less of our own time and religious dynamic, but more connected to historical moments in the past that I found very much worthy of consideration. The more I studied these and immersed myself in these (over many years) the more I could see the inner workings and motivations of the people involved, in large part because the faith we share between then and now was essentially the same, but it was expressed very differently than what is seen so commonly these days. It's as if we are trapped in thinking what is going on now is the only way of being when it is not. Anyway, the more I saw, my own options for personal expression and engagement expanded more and more. I became less entangled in the mode of the moment and lived more in time in general, gathering more and more freedom of expression from all this. In my mind it was a kind of triangulation off of known , trustworthy points to fix a sure course in the murky present. My personal options expanded wildly, yet at the same time remained essentially orthodox. It's an odd story perhaps, but this has been my life and I feel I have been liberated to color way, way outside the lines with very little inhibition at all!
 
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muir said:
Thats regressing again. What about trying to overcome that?
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Why overcome it, why is it something that needs o be overcame, competition has driven us forward in life, socialy and technologicaly.
 
Note, this comes from an anarchist:

I think we need to distinguish between two types of competition: friendly and hostile. Friendly competition is the desirable sort and can occur in the broader context of cooperation. It's goal is working toward a better tomorrow for all of humanity, while the individual's life is bettered in the process. I see this as being the desirable, balanced state humans should exist in. IMO, the problem with capitalism is that stresses individual benefit over the benefit of others/the whole. Capitalism encourages hostile competition because it only emphasizes individual benefit. When people only view themselves as fighting with others over limited resources, there's going to be lots of problems. Sure, capitalism has helped humanity progress, but perhaps another way of organizing society could do a much better job...
 
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Vulcan said:
Note, this comes from an anarchist:

I think we need to distinguish between two types of competition: friendly and hostile. Friendly competition is the desirable sort and can occur in the broader context of cooperation. It's goal is working toward a better tomorrow for all of humanity, while the individual's life is bettered in the process. I see this as being the desirable, balanced state humans should exist in. IMO, the problem with capitalism is that stresses individual benefit over the benefit of others/the whole. Capitalism encourages hostile competition because it only emphasizes individual benefit. When people only view themselves as fighting with others over limited resources, there's going to be lots of problems. Sure, capitalism has helped humanity progress, but perhaps another way of organizing society could do a much better job...
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but is not anarchy the lack of organised society
 
Barnabas said:
but is not anarchy the lack of organised society
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there's a difference between the dictionary definition of "anarchy" as opposed to the political philosophy of "anarchism". what you are talking about is in a way a misnomer, most people think that anarchists somehow support chaos and disorder. I suppose everyone has their own interpretations, but from what I know most anarchists do want an organized society, but a society organized from the bottom up instead of the top down, self-organized organically by freedom instead of constructed and controlled by force

randomsomeone said:
I have become much more of an anarchist, in some ways, as I have gotten older. How? Well, this may sound strange, but for me, for some reason, years ago I began connecting to religious thoughts, ideas, outlooks, perceptions that are less of our own time and religious dynamic, but more connected to historical moments in the past that I found very much worthy of consideration. The more I studied these and immersed myself in these (over many years) the more I could see the inner workings and motivations of the people involved, in large part because the faith we share between then and now was essentially the same, but it was expressed very differently than what is seen so commonly these days. It's as if we are trapped in thinking what is going on now is the only way of being when it is not. Anyway, the more I saw, my own options for personal expression and engagement expanded more and more. I became less entangled in the mode of the moment and lived more in time in general, gathering more and more freedom of expression from all this. In my mind it was a kind of triangulation off of known , trustworthy points to fix a sure course in the murky present. My personal options expanded wildly, yet at the same time remained essentially orthodox. It's an odd story perhaps, but this has been my life and I feel I have been liberated to color way, way outside the lines with very little inhibition at all!
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This sounds really cool, I'd like to hear more about it sometime
 
Barnabas said:
Why overcome it, why is it something that needs o be overcame, competition has driven us forward in life, socialy and technologicaly.
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Remember what your man said barny...'the meek shall inherit the earth'

There were radical ideas being thrown around 2000 years ago as much as there are today (Jesus was heavily influenced by the gnostics)

How do you know competition has driven us forward.....are you privy to a comparative dimension where people chose cooperation instead so that we can compare which would actually have advanced us the most? How do you know it hasn't hamstrung us in many ways?

Are we really that socially advanced? In your country for example the societies that were existing before Europeans arrived were actually socially very advanced....no one went without food or shelter.

Compare this with the European societies which were riddled with disease (from overcrowding), poverty, crime and were constantly at war with each other.

The Europeans were technologically more advanced because they had aquired the technology of gun powder from the chinese but they were socially primative and cruel

Competition should be overcome because as i mentioned in an earlier post it causes all the conflict. For example your country has invaded Iraq to get oil because it is competing with other aggressive capitalist countries for the worlds resources....it has also invaded afghanistan because it needs to pipe oil to the sea so that it can transport it and many of the pipelines must go through afghanistan......competition
 
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Anarchism cannot work in a world with nations and nation states. Anarchism creates a power void that will be filled by force by a nation without Anarchy. There would be no state defense, and easily overrun. Small communes and communities can theoretically thrive off of Anarchism, but a large enough area will be squelched by someone else. Power wants more power.

It would also be theoretically impossible for a state to adopt Anarchy, because the act of being a state goes against fundamental principles of Anarchy. If Britain was to adopt Anarchy (and somehow didn't remain Britain), it would be overrun by another nation. No state=no protection from other states.

Anarchy doesn't equal social equality, it's a complete lack of any discernible society. Individuals are at liberty (not to the extent of chaos), but there is no protection of individual rights outside of what one can defend for themselves.

Also, I don't believe Anarchy to be a natural concept. I cannot off of the top of my head think of any species of animals that has any form of a community that doesn't have a power structure built in. It would damn hard for humans to deny the "desire" for some form of control over another.

Anarchy (at a significant level) would only be possible if a large majority of those in power believe in it, and adopted it, and even then, they'd be using power over the citizens of their nation to dismantle the power structures in place. For it to be maintained, a large percentage of the population would have to be completely against any notion of states/nations/tribes. If at any time a large enough force was organized to recreate a structure of power, Anarchism everywhere would be threatened. I simply do not believe significant levels of anarchism are possible.
 
mf said:
Anarchism cannot work in a world with nations and nation states. Anarchism creates a power void that will be filled by force by a nation without Anarchy. There would be no state defense, and easily overrun. Small communes and communities can theoretically thrive off of Anarchism, but a large enough area will be squelched by someone else. Power wants more power.

It would also be theoretically impossible for a state to adopt Anarchy, because the act of being a state goes against fundamental principles of Anarchy. If Britain was to adopt Anarchy (and somehow didn't remain Britain), it would be overrun by another nation. No state=no protection from other states.

Anarchy doesn't equal social equality, it's a complete lack of any discernible society. Individuals are at liberty (not to the extent of chaos), but there is no protection of individual rights outside of what one can defend for themselves.

Also, I don't believe Anarchy to be a natural concept. I cannot off of the top of my head think of any species of animals that has any form of a community that doesn't have a power structure built in. It would damn hard for humans to deny the "desire" for some form of control over another.

Anarchy (at a significant level) would only be possible if a large majority of those in power believe in it, and adopted it, and even then, they'd be using power over the citizens of their nation to dismantle the power structures in place. For it to be maintained, a large percentage of the population would have to be completely against any notion of states/nations/tribes. If at any time a large enough force was organized to recreate a structure of power, Anarchism everywhere would be threatened. I simply do not believe significant levels of anarchism are possible.
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Anarchy doesn't mean no defence, it doesn't mean no organisation, it doesn't mean no protection of individual rights.

If britain became an anarchist state tomorrow it wouldnt be overrun by anyone else, because it has a nuclear defence system

The ironic thing is that capitalist society doesn't really provide these things effectively...listening to people on this forum you can get a pretty good idea of how capitalist society is treating people

It is a source of endless debate as to how the left should achieve these aims though without becoming the monster that it wants to put down
 
The richer the western world gets, the more our fundamental animal and human needs are met in 'acceptable' ways. Food, shelter, faux-purpose (work), virtual violence and sex, etc. At the same time, fewer and fewer of our communal needs are being met. The rise of suburbia has created cellular autonomy without the required interconnectedness.

A pig in a cage on antibiotics?

Like that rat on a hotplate pushing the nicotene lever, we're going to keep this up for the foreseeable future. The end result will be a more stable world. But the rats will not be happy. They will just be self-contained.

Anyway, that's what my intution tells me.
 
muir said:
Anarchy doesn't mean no defence, it doesn't mean no organisation, it doesn't mean no protection of individual rights.

If britain became an anarchist state tomorrow it wouldnt be overrun by anyone else, because it has a nuclear defence system

The ironic thing is that capitalist society doesn't really provide these things effectively...listening to people on this forum you can get a pretty good idea of how capitalist society is treating people

It is a source of endless debate as to how the left should achieve these aims though without becoming the monster that it wants to put down
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The defense system is run by the government. Organization of defense is a power structure. The only resistance in true anarchy state would be at the individual level.

Protection of individual rights would only occur when the individual could protect those rights for themselves. There would be no one else looking to do it for the individual, and if there were, it would be a power organization and wouldn't be a true anarchy.
 
acd said:
I'm not much of a philosopher, but there is an order to all things. There are natural laws. Animals (and humans are animals) have inherent instincts for their survival--an internal code of behaviors to aid in survival and passing on of genes..

I don't think that animals or people (generally) do things that they feel are unnecessary as it's a waste of energy and/or could pose a potential risk that could be avoided..

Most people don't steal and rob because they are able to make a living without doing these things--to do them, would be to cause risk to themselves in their society so the actions aren't deemed necessary.

There are places in the world now where violence and destruction are the norm--where it is a violent anarchy.

Most people don't accost others because humans are social animals who to some extent, are dependant on one another. Maybe in places where violent anarchy is the norm, people have stopped living interdependantly. I'm not sure what exactly would have caused that. But it's worth looking into.
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I think this.

Ultimately I think humans do what they believe is in their best interest. Often that is to work cooperatively, or at least not to mess with things. Sometimes though the benefit side of personal cost benefit analysis leads to shaking up the status quo or hitting someone over the head and stealing their stuff.

I do think when people feel safe they are more likely to leave things alone and work cooperatively. It's probably fear in some form that drives most "disruptive" behavior.

I guess there's not more anarchy (as you're using the term) because the balance is generally tipped toward people feeling their interests are best served by working cooperatively within society. I generally feel that way. Even when I want to change things or rock the boat, I acknowledge that the dynamics of the community I live in will interplay with my actions, so I might as well figure out how to best work with those dynamics. But then I mostly feel safe in the society I live in.
 
randomsomeone said:
True.
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Do people listen to what Thom Yorke actually says though or do they just like listening to the music, because he is very political:

"Rachel had recorded this Chomsky thing, Manufacturing Consent, and I watched it when I got home.....I was really interested initially as well in his reference to anarchism and how that had been misrepresented. And obviously the foreign policy thing."
 
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Ecton said:
The richer the western world gets, the more our fundamental animal and human needs are met in 'acceptable' ways. Food, shelter, faux-purpose (work), virtual violence and sex, etc. At the same time, fewer and fewer of our communal needs are being met. The rise of suburbia has created cellular autonomy without the required interconnectedness.

A pig in a cage on antibiotics?

Like that rat on a hotplate pushing the nicotene lever, we're going to keep this up for the foreseeable future. The end result will be a more stable world. But the rats will not be happy. They will just be self-contained.

Anyway, that's what my intution tells me.
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I agree with much that you say here

I wonder about the world becoming more stable though. The difference being for recent generations that we have the shadow of nuclear bombs cast over everything we do

Also if we in the west look outside our consumerist bubble we can see very clearly that our luxuries are having a cost for the rest of the planet and the people in it

We can't, if we are honest, see all our actions as happening in isolation...they aren't

All our consumerist goods require oil which wars are being fought over. They are produced in sweat shops in other countries where the poor are being exploted. Countries are unable to develop because the IMF and the world bank get them through nefarious means into cycles of debt which they cannot get out of. By this i mean they bribe corrupt officials in poor countries to take out loans to pay for infrastructure that the country doesn't need. When the country can no longer afford payments the payments are demanded in natural resources such as logging (from rain forests). Meanwhile people are increasingly squeezed for taxes to meet the payments. Consumerism is having a human cost

Positive technological breakthroughs are prevented for example the buying up of patents on carbon free technology by oil companies and their exploitation of tar sands instead of cleaner options (BP are about to begin exploiting Canadian tar sands using extraction processes that are damaging). Consumerism is having an environmental cost

Culture is being eroded by a pseudo western culture with no meaning causing friction around the world. To a large extent the islamic movement is a reaction to western influence

I think you have mentioned an important thing in 'interconnectedness' because that is what we must realise: that everything and everyone is connected and i don't mean in a metaphysical way i mean in scientifically verifiable ways which are having very real implications
 
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mf said:
The defense system is run by the government. Organization of defense is a power structure. The only resistance in true anarchy state would be at the individual level.

Protection of individual rights would only occur when the individual could protect those rights for themselves. There would be no one else looking to do it for the individual, and if there were, it would be a power organization and wouldn't be a true anarchy.
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Whats a 'true anarchy'?

The point about the spirit behind anarchy is that it is born out of respect for your fellow man, so you would not have to defend your own rights, you would have EVERYONE defending your rights, whereas in a capitalist system you have to pay a lawyer to do it and hope that your opponent doesn't have more money then you

Anarchy takes on many forms.....it's at a theoretcial level....its on the drawing board

There are many differing views as to how to create an anarchist system...here is a clip from the wiki page on The International Workers Association:

From its first congress the IWA has rejected centralism, political parties, parliamentarism and the state, including the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It also rejects the concept of economic determinism from some Marxists that liberation would come about; "by virtue of some inevitable fatalism of rigid natural laws which admit no deviation; its realisation will depend above all on the conscious will and the use of revolutionary action of the workers and will be determined by them [1]."

The IWA programme aims to unite all workers in their capacity as wealth creators, through combative economic organizations dedicated to bringing about the reorganisation of society into a global system of economic communes and administrative groups based within a system of federated free councils at local, regional, national and global levels. This would form the basis of a self-managed society based on pre-planning and mutual aid - the establishment of anarchist communism.

The international's Principles, Goals and Statutes argue that in the pursuit of this goal it should take on a two-fold function: "To carry on the day-to-day revolutionary struggle for the economic, social and intellectual advancement of the working class within the limits of present-day society, and to educate the masses so that they will be ready to independently manage the processes of production and distribution when the time comes to take possession of all the elements of social life[2]."

The international is also strongly anti-religious, rejects all political and national frontiers and calls for radical changes to the means of production to lessen humanity's environmental impact.

From an early stage, the international has taken a strong anti-military stance, reflecting the overwhelming anarchist attitude of the First World War that the working class should not engage with the power struggles of the ruling class - and certainly should not die for them. It included a commitment to anti-militarism in its core principles and in 1926 it founded an International Anti-Militarist Coalition to promote disarmament and gather information of war production[3].

However while regarding industrial acts such as strikes, boycotts, etc. as the primary means of struggle, the founding document of the IWA also states that syndicalists recognise "as valid that violence that may be used as a means of defense against the violent methods used by the ruling classes during the struggles that lead up to the revolutionary populace expropiating the lands and means of production." It is stressed that this should occur through the formation of a democratic popular militia rather than through a traditional military hierarchy. This has been posited as an alternative to the Dictatorship of the proletariat model[4].
 
muir said:
Thats regressing again. What about trying to overcome that?
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That's probably a worthy goal, but time and time again despite of intentions that seems to be how we end up acting.
 
Norton said:
Somalia.
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Hi Norton

Somalia has a free market economy.

It is divided up into power bases such as those under war lords who are running their own personal fiefdoms. Despite having an advanced ancient civilisation it has been plagued by aggressive imperialists such as Britain and Italy. More recently it has suffered the destablilising effects of the CIA who have set out to destabilise any country that didn't step onto their side of the line in the sand, in the polarisation of the cold war

If you skip back to page 1 of this thread and read my posts you will see what i think of free markets........i think they are terrible for the people. I have on a number of different threads argued repeatedly against free markets (anarcho-capitalism)

You might not want to listen to me so why not consider the views of George Soros, a student of Karl Popper and a believer in reflexivity and fallibilism.....he is one of the most successful speculators around and he made $1.1 billion betting against the pound on Black Wednesday.

There is a man who understands money and finance on a very fundamental level and has used his understanding to build an incredibly large personal fortune; yet he argues against what he calls 'free market fundamentalism'. This is what he says about it:

[P]eople came to believe in what former US president Ronald Reagan called the magic of the marketplace and I call market fundamentalism. Fundamentalists believe that markets tend towards equilibrium and the common interest is best served by allowing participants to pursue their self-interest. It is an obvious misconception, because it was the intervention of the authorities that prevented financial markets from breaking down, not the markets themselves. Nevertheless, market fundamentalism emerged as the dominant ideology in the 1980s, when financial markets started to become globalised and the US started to run a current account deficit.[

Well i agree with him on that. I do not see a mixed economy as the perfect solution to this problem though

I believe in anarcho-communism, the specifics of which are very much up for discussion as far as i'm concerned.

What i am trying to point to is the complete lack of dialogue in the mainstream. Even if you disagree with me on some things can you see how the silence on certain issues is deafening? I am not saying i have all the answers, what i am saying is that people should at least be looking at all the options available to them and discussing them. How else is society to improve? I think the improvements that have come have come through struggles by the people (eg civil rights); why? Because the system is oppressive and doesn't like positive change (positive change and the philosophies behind it undermines it and its own philosophy)

The reason for this is, i believe, that the people in power want to maintain the status quo because they don't want to relinquish power. They would rather maintain a system that relies on your hard work, honesty and taxes and willingness to work for the public good, whilst they get all the rewards

They are taking advantage of the best in your nature

What about trying to create a system which nurtures the best and discourages the worst?

I think it is all about trying to create the right environment for people.

Work places are fascinating because they are like a microcosm of the larger capitalist system. Listen to all the stories on this forum about: domineering bosses, oppressive work conditions, meaningless tasks, boredom, dissolutionment, office politics, lawyers fees etc

These are all aspects of a negative environment which is making people unhappy. Not those that are willing to embrace it though. These people will inevitably have developed a philosophy to mask the damage they do.....they might come out with lines such as 'its the survival of the fittest', 'it's a dog eat dog world' and many other ways of basically saying 'i am going to screw everyone else before they can screw me'

Sound like a nice world, cos that's the one we're in right now.

It is that kind of cutthroat approach which has lead the banks to behave the way they have and burden future generations with debt

I love the film wallstreet and the speech in it by Gordon Gheko as he talks about how greed is good

Greed isn't good and greed is ruining the world for our children
 
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