I have to admit I never really understood how anarchist societies were supposed to work. Now that you’ve pointed out they are just people banding together to make collective decisions based on expert information, I can’t fathom why I ever thought they could go wrong.
Left anarchism, like everything left, only works on paper.
Here’s a few holes:
Who decides who is and isn’t an expert? Jim Jones was considered an expert by the Jonestown people, RFK is considered one by maga.
Assuming we find a way to establish an “expert” category of citizens, that’s already hierarchical. You now have a ruling class since these people get more of a say than the average person by virtue of their role, and don’t have a completely flat anarchist society anymore but instead a sort of representative technocracy.
Moreover anarchist societies are supposed to not employ coercion, so even if you had experts whose opinion dictates norms, how are you going to enforce them?
Anarchists (left and right) reinvent the state, just shittier, less consistent, and without founding principles, every time they are put in front of the practical needs of a society where not everyone agrees with them.
Some go as far as inventing authoritarian oligarchies, just ones they happen to agree with and thus support.
They are authoritarian and marxist leftists, they are not mutually exclusive, if anything they are more likely bedfellows than not, by necessity.
You can’t have a free economy without decentralised price controls (i.e. a market) and you can’t have a market without ownership, so you will eventually end up having a control economy if you remove private ownership from the equation, and control economies are fundamentally authoritarian.
The ultimate means of production is the person, and you don’t get to own it exclusively, even if it’s yourself.
I think some market-based leftists have proposed various solutions for this problem, like mandating that all companies be run as coops. But I’m still skeptical of these for a number of reasons.
That’s also a non-solution, all it does is make scaling a company a huge mess, and contractorship basically mandatory for any kind of expansion.
I.e. I don’t hire anyone cause they would need to buy into the co-op, or they’d have their surplus value taken and thus be exploited, so instead everyone makes self-employed ““co-ops”” and hires eachother as contracting businesses.
It’s literally just capitalism with really stupid centralist extra steps.
I have to admit I never really understood how anarchist societies were supposed to work. Now that you’ve pointed out they are just people banding together to make collective decisions based on expert information, I can’t fathom why I ever thought they could go wrong.
Simple: they wouldn’t work that way.
Left anarchism, like everything left, only works on paper.
Here’s a few holes:
Who decides who is and isn’t an expert? Jim Jones was considered an expert by the Jonestown people, RFK is considered one by maga.
Assuming we find a way to establish an “expert” category of citizens, that’s already hierarchical. You now have a ruling class since these people get more of a say than the average person by virtue of their role, and don’t have a completely flat anarchist society anymore but instead a sort of representative technocracy.
Moreover anarchist societies are supposed to not employ coercion, so even if you had experts whose opinion dictates norms, how are you going to enforce them?
Anarchists (left and right) reinvent the state, just shittier, less consistent, and without founding principles, every time they are put in front of the practical needs of a society where not everyone agrees with them.
Some go as far as inventing authoritarian oligarchies, just ones they happen to agree with and thus support.
Sorry, I thought my sarcasm was obvious.
Oh god you have no idea how many believe this in earnest (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
tankies are authoritarian, their “leftism” is just a disguise to obtain power
They are authoritarian and marxist leftists, they are not mutually exclusive, if anything they are more likely bedfellows than not, by necessity.
You can’t have a free economy without decentralised price controls (i.e. a market) and you can’t have a market without ownership, so you will eventually end up having a control economy if you remove private ownership from the equation, and control economies are fundamentally authoritarian.
The ultimate means of production is the person, and you don’t get to own it exclusively, even if it’s yourself.
I think some market-based leftists have proposed various solutions for this problem, like mandating that all companies be run as coops. But I’m still skeptical of these for a number of reasons.
That’s also a non-solution, all it does is make scaling a company a huge mess, and contractorship basically mandatory for any kind of expansion.
I.e. I don’t hire anyone cause they would need to buy into the co-op, or they’d have their surplus value taken and thus be exploited, so instead everyone makes self-employed ““co-ops”” and hires eachother as contracting businesses.
It’s literally just capitalism with really stupid centralist extra steps.