It’s not the police that keep us from killing each other, or even laws that do so. Check out law and authority sometime if you’re able. It’s very short and worth a read. We don’t kill each other because we don’t enjoy being killed or killing. We’re social creatures, and don’t want to be shunned. Crimes of passion don’t really change based on laws, but the way we organize society may actually be increasing the number of murders, because some people are desperate enough to kill for food or shelter
I read half of it. It seems to overidealize the pre-law era to a large degree. Before law we had mass slavery, constant raiding of nearby tribes and nothing to prevent anybody from taking everything from a person. There is definitely a case where laws can become draconian and force people to break them but I’d argue that in most countries law prevent more unwanted behavior than cause it.
This especially doesn’t apply in modern times since you just need one person to create a private mercenary group to essentially create a mini kingdom within a loosely organised society. That person will very quickly be able to form a successful dictatorship by raiding, enslaving and demanding tribute from nearby settlements.
Even a laissez faire government with everything legal except violence will essentially make it legal to dump toxic waste on your front lawn everywhere without policing and laws. Toxic waste is currently being dumped with laws just under woefully loose law and I’d argue that we need more laws and regulation to prevent people from doing so.
I feel like anarchist theory quickly forgets that we had anarchy before law and people quickly formed kingdoms around settlements to defend themselves and aggressive kingdoms where more successful than passive ones.
Anarchism is a lot of work negotiating, setting standards and consequences, balancing forces. Constant politics without an overarching state. Any concentration of capability for violence or resource to be shared must be extremely carefully handled.
What you are describing is warlords filling a political vacuum caused by chaos.
Someone has been misrepresenting anarchism to you.
I think the point he’s making is that anarchism is one big power vacuum and those are usually filled with warlords and power brokers. Anarchism can still exist within a state such as Christiania in Denmark and from what I’ve heard it works pretty well.
It does seem like a power vacuum if you are fully convinced that power needs to be centralized.
I am reminding the thread that the absence of distributed power is chaos, not anarchism.
Anarchism is anything BUT a power vacuum. All the power is carefully doled out via negotiation and in no way lacking.
Strong propaganda is devoted to supporting your presumption that power only exists when concentrated, so it does feel natural and common sense to say that.
Really, you can replace police and laws with any form of more or less organized sanctions against the perpetrators.
Law and authority is a good read, but it shows exactly that - without centralized power, people do (and, according to Kropotkin, people should) put system of unwritten controls all by themselves. And that keeps us from sliding into the savage world where everyone preys on one another. But if something breaks in this chain, if we accept the violence against one another, we’ll get extinct very rapidly.
It’s not the police that keep us from killing each other, or even laws that do so. Check out law and authority sometime if you’re able. It’s very short and worth a read. We don’t kill each other because we don’t enjoy being killed or killing. We’re social creatures, and don’t want to be shunned. Crimes of passion don’t really change based on laws, but the way we organize society may actually be increasing the number of murders, because some people are desperate enough to kill for food or shelter
I read half of it. It seems to overidealize the pre-law era to a large degree. Before law we had mass slavery, constant raiding of nearby tribes and nothing to prevent anybody from taking everything from a person. There is definitely a case where laws can become draconian and force people to break them but I’d argue that in most countries law prevent more unwanted behavior than cause it.
This especially doesn’t apply in modern times since you just need one person to create a private mercenary group to essentially create a mini kingdom within a loosely organised society. That person will very quickly be able to form a successful dictatorship by raiding, enslaving and demanding tribute from nearby settlements.
Even a laissez faire government with everything legal except violence will essentially make it legal to dump toxic waste on your front lawn everywhere without policing and laws. Toxic waste is currently being dumped with laws just under woefully loose law and I’d argue that we need more laws and regulation to prevent people from doing so.
I feel like anarchist theory quickly forgets that we had anarchy before law and people quickly formed kingdoms around settlements to defend themselves and aggressive kingdoms where more successful than passive ones.
Anarchism just won’t work lol. People will band together, larger groups would survive and whoops! It’s countries all over again
Anarchism is a lot of work negotiating, setting standards and consequences, balancing forces. Constant politics without an overarching state. Any concentration of capability for violence or resource to be shared must be extremely carefully handled.
What you are describing is warlords filling a political vacuum caused by chaos.
Someone has been misrepresenting anarchism to you.
I think the point he’s making is that anarchism is one big power vacuum and those are usually filled with warlords and power brokers. Anarchism can still exist within a state such as Christiania in Denmark and from what I’ve heard it works pretty well.
It does seem like a power vacuum if you are fully convinced that power needs to be centralized.
I am reminding the thread that the absence of distributed power is chaos, not anarchism.
Anarchism is anything BUT a power vacuum. All the power is carefully doled out via negotiation and in no way lacking.
Strong propaganda is devoted to supporting your presumption that power only exists when concentrated, so it does feel natural and common sense to say that.
Is state enforced anarchism really anarchist?
When did we possibly have anarchy before law? Genuinely
Up to first civilizations, and practically also up to, like, XIX-XX centuries in many rural areas.
Really, you can replace police and laws with any form of more or less organized sanctions against the perpetrators.
Law and authority is a good read, but it shows exactly that - without centralized power, people do (and, according to Kropotkin, people should) put system of unwritten controls all by themselves. And that keeps us from sliding into the savage world where everyone preys on one another. But if something breaks in this chain, if we accept the violence against one another, we’ll get extinct very rapidly.
Will always upvote Kropotkin.