Gosh, this is really an encyclopaedic article, well done.
I'd go the whole hog on politicians: not mini-rulers, they're actually rulers. :-)
First, I wrote about this subject a few years ago, and perhaps you'd be interested to see what I wrote, all off the top of the head, meaning I worked it out myself without reference texts: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/anarchy-in-the-uk-raine-pondering (you're right of course: if there were anarchy in the UK, as the Sex Pistols proposed, there'd be no UK for there to be anarchy in.)
I feel a little about anarchism the way I feel about impressionism, or an unfamiliar religion: I understand some of its precepts, enough to know what it is, and they are without question attractive. But, in terms of the necessary skills, and because there are certain practical hurdles to abolishing the nation states that we live in, I always default back to "interesting but a pipe dream".
I know of some people who take control of certain aspects of life in order to subtract them from the big business that rules us: making their own pharmaceuticals, for instance. And, of course, the most basic form of anarchy is the commune or kibbutz, or Switzerland. Maybe not Switzerland (I mean the cantonal democratic voting system). But communes, yes, and really that's about as large as I can imagine it getting.
I like your description of Anarchy as ‘a system by which each individual takes responsibility for their own existence’ (from your article). It is interesting you use the example of the Ukraine, given that it once attempted being an Anarchist republic until the Soviets put an end to it. Anyone attempting to overturn existing power structure to build something better will always have to face that difficult reality first.
I think it's great that people can imagine Anarchism working on the community level because that is where most of us do, could, would and should interact with it, around our family, friends and neighbours.
But the fact that people find it hard to imagine on a larger scale means Anarchists need to work harder to explain and share the vision of how that has, done and can work across larger regions and the world. Anarchist sci-fi writers have done their part, but historians and other scholars have tended to have only had their work seen by other academics (Graeber's & Wengrow's The Dawn Of Everything being a recent exception, albeit focused on the past).
I don't think we need to destroy what is currently working or completely replace it. What is currently directed by one person could be directed by a non-ruling council / committee with direct accountability, what is currently done for profit could be done for need (if it needs to be done). We already have the expertise and skills and people in place, and most of these aren't motivated by money now (most scientists, doctors, engineers would have made more money being stock brokers if they were in it for the money).
When it comes to where change is needed we look at what is working now on a smaller scale (but is prevented from growing by outside constraints / hostile conditions & forces), look at what has worked in the past on a larger scale (up to the millions over large regions), and with the benefit of technology make these work better. In this area we are spoilt for choice - Stafford Beer's Cybersyn & Kevin Carson's Stateless Society, & Michael Albert’s Parecon & of course Bookchin’s Confederalism, Rocker’s Syndicalism, and other models which follow similar non-hierarchal decentralised economic models).
If replacing Capitalism is the only way to save the world (and I believe it is) then I believe humans are capable of being very resourceful when they see something is possible and desirable (and the major obstacles are removed out of their way), otherwise I think an economic collapse will force them into it and they'll do it because they are motivated by survival.
But I still have more to do, and I'm intending on writing a broad article on the issue of scale in the near future, and dedicating the second half of this year to questions (and examples) of the practical applications of these principles.
Politicians in modern republican Democracies are like kings and rulers, except that the kingly power is divided among hundreds of politicians. Anders lobbyists, megadonors, etc
I think that must be right, Floating Frog. At least in theory. Being the "res publica" that a republic is, the theory is actually that kingly power is divided among the entire population. But in representative democracy, the people trust their members of parliament to do the right thing, and I'm increasingly asking myself what ever possessed them to do that, especially since the agency implied by the word "representative" is putatively exercised by way of elections, which seem to be manifestly inappropriate these days to determine who will do the right thing. But as it is, no one expressly asks them, so it's all a bit theoretical.
There's also the issue that many voters make decisions about things that affect people halfway across the world. For example, people might vote for a president who wants to bomb a foreign nation. In both modern democracy and old monarchic systems, the "king" rules the fate of the people.
I have a bias towards more locally driven government and libertarianism, so I believe that communities will make better decisions about their affairs than Washington DC leaders. And I think individual choices, such as drug use and school choice, should be left up to individuals, not representatives.
Because we can't trust our government to do the right thing. Individuals are better equipped to do this. But as you say, some people have too much trust in the parliment/congress/president.
I think your bias is justified, but before we wander too far from the subject, I think it's worth spending time to compare and contrast "anarchism", or, more specifically what we entertain as being the likely form assumed by anarchism, were it to be given space to establish itself, so potentially two models of comparison (like "good" anarchism, in which benevolence and mutual cooperation come to the fore not as acts of generosity, but as acts of essential survival, on the supposition that those who currently are disinclined to cooperate will buy themselves out of the invocation to be sociable; and "bad" anarchism, where the lack of constraints leads some, even if not all, actors to abuse the freedom suddenly bestowed upon them, like kids running riot when teacher leaves the room) and, on the other hand, the model of our actual society in its benign form, such as Iran under the prime ministership of Mohamed Mossadeq 1951-53, and that model imbued with less benign features, such as Hungary under Viktor Orbàn now.
Which of these would afford people like you and me "liberty"? Would we even have a legal system, a criminal law? Do you think that, if we did not, we would at some point yearn for one? Do some things inherently need national or even transnational coordination and, if so, what is the difference between national coordination at the scale of Luxembourg and that at the scale of China? Maybe some policies need scale for efficiency and oversight; others need local decision-making in order to feed into people's relevance and awareness.
School choice should very much be a local matter, I agree, but how do you reconcile that with the need for systematic standards that tell employers what precisely each child's qualifications are? Would there even be qualifications under anarchy? Or, for that matter, employers?
If you read about household preparations and elixirs that were openly and legally sold in stores and from the backs of caravans in the 19th and early 20th centuries, you'll find out that the average house was drowning in poisons: mercury, arsenic, opiates, and those were just the things that were meant to be in the bottle. Congressmen started to make impassioned speeches to their governments: it was government's duty to ensure that publicly sold goods were wholesome. Nowadays we have the PFAS scandal, of quite incomprehensible scope. Technically 98 per cent of people are supposed to have ingested some form of PFAS, yet researchers have yet to find the other 2 per cent. The secrecy, deviousness of 3M in burying the research that it itself commissioned from its own scientists to find out the extent of its sins. So, you can spread poison around and it can be okay. And you can sell a couple of grams of poison and go to prison for 15 years. It is in that kind of scenario that the "whether or not" of having a legal system gets completely overhauled by the manifest irregularity and impropriety with which the legal system that we do have - yours or mine - is actually applied and administered. I find it hard to believe that drugs cannot be controlled. Cigarettes can be, so why not crystal meth? Perhaps because crystal meth, aside from turning your brain into Emmental cheese, is enormous fun. And it's controlling fun, as Mr Disney quickly learned, that is the main goal of having a legal system.
I have saved your very best comment for last, because it greatly moves me and, whether you realise it or not, it is the biggest root cause of the vast majority of the misery that plagues our world: distance. You could do worse than read a very short work (usually published along with one of his plays, I have it together with "Bingo") by Edward Bond: A Short Book for Troubled Times. He draws two simple scenarios in it: a bomber pilot who drops bombs on civilians and thereby kills children, and then returns home to kiss and hug his own children: how can he know himself? asks Bond. The second is a stance against nuclear weapons. We approve of them (assuming we do - we don't really think about it too much, do we?) but Bond asks: what if we gave everyone who's in favour a flame thrower and told them to walk up to the people we would nuke and burn them alive, before our very eyes, our hands on the trigger? It's fundamentally the discovery of a new use for gunpowder in Europe in the 15th century, after 700 years of the Chinese doing nothing more belligerent that scaring off bad spirits with it, that marked the start of our abilities to destroy "at the push of a button". In the black comedy film from 1960 with Jack Lemmon, "50 Ways to Murder Your Wife", at one point there is a court scene in which Lemmon conjectures that, if the witness could bear with him: what if there were a button installed in the woodwork of the witness stand? And if he pressed it, which is all he needed to do, his (manic) wife would be gone for ever. It's funny, and it's quite chilling. After a tussle of "should I, shouldn't I", the character presses the imaginary button. Well, it's cleaner than impaling someone with a halyard, but at least with a halyard you know you killed someone.
Personally speaking, I am a libertarian, not a true anarchist. I agree with government regulations that protect consumers and the environment -- such as stopping 3M from putting forever chemicals in their products.
"Do some things inherently need national or even transnational coordination and, if so, what is the difference between national coordination at the scale of Luxembourg and that at the scale of China?" I've often thought that the federal government might prohibit certain things that are widely accepted and/or proven to be harmful. Examples include: murder, pedophilia, and many chemicals. For more controversial matters, where various viewpoints are valid (like raising taxes), it should be mostly up to cities. I don't say states, because North Carolina or Florida each have millions of people, and the state governments cannot come close to meeting the needs of all their constituents/citizens.
So, am I in favor of abolishing a federal income tax? I'm not sure, I'd have to research it more. But let's say, if a city A taxes its people more, and raises a lot of money for schools, libraries, etc, and if the residents prosper, that is the best choice for the city. And if another city B has low taxes, and the residents suffer, they might look at city A and imitate their better policies.
With federal schooling standards, I'm more in favor of cities (not states or the Feds) having their own systems. Maybe one city implements a set of educational standards, and the students there get better grades and honors, so other cities would imitate them. In a country where cities can experiment freely, the best methods of schooling would become prevalent. It's like a free market where the best products are bought and used more by customers. Though I do realize that some cities might be backwards or corrupt, and might be resistant to changing their laws. In that case, hopefully people will move to the better places.
My point is that I think that each locality tends to know what's best for itself.
And I agree: "it is the biggest root cause of the vast majority of the misery that plagues our world: distance." If only politicians and voters knew how much their actions harm people! In modern warfare, you can sign an executive order and indirectly kill hundreds without seeing their deaths. If the president saw first-hand the suffering caused by giving weapons to Israel, he might reconsider. (Though our current "leader" might not hesitate in any circumstance anyway, given his abysmal morals.)
I appreciate the reasonableness with which you share your views and am glad we found some points of agreement. I'm glad we share an opposition to corporations poisoning us, a belief that communities should organise themselves, and are against government hierarchy and violence.
However, I should point out that I'm probably as anti-right-wing-libertarian as they come when it comes to capital and property, and would like to see the word libertarian return back to its left-wing anarchist roots.
You are right that Anarchism is libertarianism - the word was invented to describe Anarchists, not those right-wing pro-Capitalist propertarians (who stole the word in the 1960s).
In comparison to modern Capitalism you are right that Anarchism is extreme - it works in the complete opposite direction and has opposing aims - it is for all the things Capitalism is against - equality, fairness, and co-operation.
We are already living in a world of illogical extremes, and those extremes usually go unchecked, unrestricted, and unconscionable.
Anarchism just realises that people shouldn't be trusted with power over others, maybe (for some Anarchists) that comes from lack of faith in humanity when placed in such a position, and for others comes from the realisation that people do better when they have better conditions, incentives, organisation, and accountability.
Always thought provoking and inspiring. I like taxes though, as a convenient way to do things collectively. I want public services of all kinds, well minimal military, but I never contribute as much as is taken by payroll - even though i believe i should-so how would we have big public projects based only on donated money and labor?
I agree that under the current economic system taxes can and do help make provisions for important needs, although people will always have needs that need to be met under any system. I don't believe we need Capitalism in order to co-operate locally or worldwide at scale. I'd argue it is often what gets in the way of such processes. ...
Currently big public projects are carried out by someone at the top (a politician or someone appointed by one) making a decision to allocate the money they get from taxes to do this.
Of course politicians may listen to their constituents about what projects are a priority especially if it is likely to get them the votes to get / stay in power, and if it doesn't take money away from the military, and doesn't compete with what people already pay corporations for, then it may get done.
When the work gets eventually carried out it is often a pricy process because all along the way of it getting accomplished there are different companies that are contracted that want to make a profit (some which coincidentally happen to be friends of the politician). This (and cartels, price gouging, cost overruns) increases the costs it takes to finish and the taxes used to accomplish it.
This seems like a very bureaucratic, often corrupt, and inefficient way to do anything to me. I think that explains why many projects (like high speed and light rail) that you'd expect to see everywhere in America decades ago (like in Asia and Europe) happen slowly and fragmentary if at all. When it comes to social services this is also why those needing them are always in a precarious position, and why the richest country on earth is the only developed one without universal healthcare and with medical bankruptcy.
I suppose you could say that Anarchism would be 0% taxation or that it is 100% and you'd be right with both answers, depending how you define taxation or what is needed at any given moment! Because if a community or region gets together and decides to use its resources for a project then the contributions to make that possible could be minor or substantial. They could require a lot from some areas or people and a little from others. It would all depend on what is needed from where and who, so maybe taxes isn't the right word for this kind of distribution.
Likewise I'd imagine public (community / regional) services to be 100% covered (at least up to what is possible given the resources available), so I'd expect there to be far more services available for far more people under Anarchism than the most generous Social Democratic system. But public services wouldn't be the right word either as no 'public' body grants or denies what everyone is entitled to.
Of course ideally there'd be no payrolls to pull taxes from, because there would be no wage slavery, and ultimately no states to defend without hierarchy and borders - although I expect there will be defence forces trained and ready should they need to be, and in the process of getting from here to there defence may very well be involved & there have been Anarchist armies in the past and Anarchist soldiers now.
(forgive me for ranting a little ...)
This is such a different paradigm from how the world operates economically now that it seems almost alien, and yet we already have all the tools and resources to do it, and it is how humanity operated for most of its history. We've found ancient civilisations of millions of people over large regions that lasted over a thousand years that seemingly had no hierarchy or money, but had better diets than we do today, and had flushable toilets and hot water.
With the hundred of thousands of hours of pro-Capitalist propaganda we all grow up with, clogging our imagination of what is possible and telling us any alternatives are impossible, despite history (even recent history) showing us that they are wrong and their system is unnecessary (except for the wealth and power of a few of them), that better ones can an have and do work, its a wonder any of us ever questions them and finds dissenting information, but I'll keep doing my best to spread the truth that a Better World Is Possible - https://peacefulrevolutionary.substack.com/p/a-better-world-is-possible
Thanks for the thinking. One thing I liked about the Spanish anarcho- syndicalists is that families got to keep their own little gardens. It wasn't all collectivised. I'm fine with a certain amount of collectivisation, but we need autonomy too
Solidarity! Thanks for giving some really solid background info on anarchism and clearing up some common misconceptions about it!
Gosh, this is really an encyclopaedic article, well done.
I'd go the whole hog on politicians: not mini-rulers, they're actually rulers. :-)
First, I wrote about this subject a few years ago, and perhaps you'd be interested to see what I wrote, all off the top of the head, meaning I worked it out myself without reference texts: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/anarchy-in-the-uk-raine-pondering (you're right of course: if there were anarchy in the UK, as the Sex Pistols proposed, there'd be no UK for there to be anarchy in.)
I feel a little about anarchism the way I feel about impressionism, or an unfamiliar religion: I understand some of its precepts, enough to know what it is, and they are without question attractive. But, in terms of the necessary skills, and because there are certain practical hurdles to abolishing the nation states that we live in, I always default back to "interesting but a pipe dream".
I know of some people who take control of certain aspects of life in order to subtract them from the big business that rules us: making their own pharmaceuticals, for instance. And, of course, the most basic form of anarchy is the commune or kibbutz, or Switzerland. Maybe not Switzerland (I mean the cantonal democratic voting system). But communes, yes, and really that's about as large as I can imagine it getting.
Thank you: how do we make it real?
I like your description of Anarchy as ‘a system by which each individual takes responsibility for their own existence’ (from your article). It is interesting you use the example of the Ukraine, given that it once attempted being an Anarchist republic until the Soviets put an end to it. Anyone attempting to overturn existing power structure to build something better will always have to face that difficult reality first.
I think it's great that people can imagine Anarchism working on the community level because that is where most of us do, could, would and should interact with it, around our family, friends and neighbours.
But the fact that people find it hard to imagine on a larger scale means Anarchists need to work harder to explain and share the vision of how that has, done and can work across larger regions and the world. Anarchist sci-fi writers have done their part, but historians and other scholars have tended to have only had their work seen by other academics (Graeber's & Wengrow's The Dawn Of Everything being a recent exception, albeit focused on the past).
I don't think we need to destroy what is currently working or completely replace it. What is currently directed by one person could be directed by a non-ruling council / committee with direct accountability, what is currently done for profit could be done for need (if it needs to be done). We already have the expertise and skills and people in place, and most of these aren't motivated by money now (most scientists, doctors, engineers would have made more money being stock brokers if they were in it for the money).
When it comes to where change is needed we look at what is working now on a smaller scale (but is prevented from growing by outside constraints / hostile conditions & forces), look at what has worked in the past on a larger scale (up to the millions over large regions), and with the benefit of technology make these work better. In this area we are spoilt for choice - Stafford Beer's Cybersyn & Kevin Carson's Stateless Society, & Michael Albert’s Parecon & of course Bookchin’s Confederalism, Rocker’s Syndicalism, and other models which follow similar non-hierarchal decentralised economic models).
If replacing Capitalism is the only way to save the world (and I believe it is) then I believe humans are capable of being very resourceful when they see something is possible and desirable (and the major obstacles are removed out of their way), otherwise I think an economic collapse will force them into it and they'll do it because they are motivated by survival.
I’ve tried to do my part with a few articles -
* Organising Without Rulers - https://peacefulrevolutionary.substack.com/p/organising-without-rulers
* I Pencil - https://peacefulrevolutionary.substack.com/p/i-pencil-the-true-story
* How Anarres Works - https://peacefulrevolutionary.substack.com/p/how-anarres-works
But I still have more to do, and I'm intending on writing a broad article on the issue of scale in the near future, and dedicating the second half of this year to questions (and examples) of the practical applications of these principles.
A wealth of further reading, and I intend to read your article again in minute detail later this weekend.
Again, thank you for being a still voice of calm.
Politicians in modern republican Democracies are like kings and rulers, except that the kingly power is divided among hundreds of politicians. Anders lobbyists, megadonors, etc
I think that must be right, Floating Frog. At least in theory. Being the "res publica" that a republic is, the theory is actually that kingly power is divided among the entire population. But in representative democracy, the people trust their members of parliament to do the right thing, and I'm increasingly asking myself what ever possessed them to do that, especially since the agency implied by the word "representative" is putatively exercised by way of elections, which seem to be manifestly inappropriate these days to determine who will do the right thing. But as it is, no one expressly asks them, so it's all a bit theoretical.
There's also the issue that many voters make decisions about things that affect people halfway across the world. For example, people might vote for a president who wants to bomb a foreign nation. In both modern democracy and old monarchic systems, the "king" rules the fate of the people.
I have a bias towards more locally driven government and libertarianism, so I believe that communities will make better decisions about their affairs than Washington DC leaders. And I think individual choices, such as drug use and school choice, should be left up to individuals, not representatives.
Because we can't trust our government to do the right thing. Individuals are better equipped to do this. But as you say, some people have too much trust in the parliment/congress/president.
I think your bias is justified, but before we wander too far from the subject, I think it's worth spending time to compare and contrast "anarchism", or, more specifically what we entertain as being the likely form assumed by anarchism, were it to be given space to establish itself, so potentially two models of comparison (like "good" anarchism, in which benevolence and mutual cooperation come to the fore not as acts of generosity, but as acts of essential survival, on the supposition that those who currently are disinclined to cooperate will buy themselves out of the invocation to be sociable; and "bad" anarchism, where the lack of constraints leads some, even if not all, actors to abuse the freedom suddenly bestowed upon them, like kids running riot when teacher leaves the room) and, on the other hand, the model of our actual society in its benign form, such as Iran under the prime ministership of Mohamed Mossadeq 1951-53, and that model imbued with less benign features, such as Hungary under Viktor Orbàn now.
Which of these would afford people like you and me "liberty"? Would we even have a legal system, a criminal law? Do you think that, if we did not, we would at some point yearn for one? Do some things inherently need national or even transnational coordination and, if so, what is the difference between national coordination at the scale of Luxembourg and that at the scale of China? Maybe some policies need scale for efficiency and oversight; others need local decision-making in order to feed into people's relevance and awareness.
School choice should very much be a local matter, I agree, but how do you reconcile that with the need for systematic standards that tell employers what precisely each child's qualifications are? Would there even be qualifications under anarchy? Or, for that matter, employers?
If you read about household preparations and elixirs that were openly and legally sold in stores and from the backs of caravans in the 19th and early 20th centuries, you'll find out that the average house was drowning in poisons: mercury, arsenic, opiates, and those were just the things that were meant to be in the bottle. Congressmen started to make impassioned speeches to their governments: it was government's duty to ensure that publicly sold goods were wholesome. Nowadays we have the PFAS scandal, of quite incomprehensible scope. Technically 98 per cent of people are supposed to have ingested some form of PFAS, yet researchers have yet to find the other 2 per cent. The secrecy, deviousness of 3M in burying the research that it itself commissioned from its own scientists to find out the extent of its sins. So, you can spread poison around and it can be okay. And you can sell a couple of grams of poison and go to prison for 15 years. It is in that kind of scenario that the "whether or not" of having a legal system gets completely overhauled by the manifest irregularity and impropriety with which the legal system that we do have - yours or mine - is actually applied and administered. I find it hard to believe that drugs cannot be controlled. Cigarettes can be, so why not crystal meth? Perhaps because crystal meth, aside from turning your brain into Emmental cheese, is enormous fun. And it's controlling fun, as Mr Disney quickly learned, that is the main goal of having a legal system.
I have saved your very best comment for last, because it greatly moves me and, whether you realise it or not, it is the biggest root cause of the vast majority of the misery that plagues our world: distance. You could do worse than read a very short work (usually published along with one of his plays, I have it together with "Bingo") by Edward Bond: A Short Book for Troubled Times. He draws two simple scenarios in it: a bomber pilot who drops bombs on civilians and thereby kills children, and then returns home to kiss and hug his own children: how can he know himself? asks Bond. The second is a stance against nuclear weapons. We approve of them (assuming we do - we don't really think about it too much, do we?) but Bond asks: what if we gave everyone who's in favour a flame thrower and told them to walk up to the people we would nuke and burn them alive, before our very eyes, our hands on the trigger? It's fundamentally the discovery of a new use for gunpowder in Europe in the 15th century, after 700 years of the Chinese doing nothing more belligerent that scaring off bad spirits with it, that marked the start of our abilities to destroy "at the push of a button". In the black comedy film from 1960 with Jack Lemmon, "50 Ways to Murder Your Wife", at one point there is a court scene in which Lemmon conjectures that, if the witness could bear with him: what if there were a button installed in the woodwork of the witness stand? And if he pressed it, which is all he needed to do, his (manic) wife would be gone for ever. It's funny, and it's quite chilling. After a tussle of "should I, shouldn't I", the character presses the imaginary button. Well, it's cleaner than impaling someone with a halyard, but at least with a halyard you know you killed someone.
Personally speaking, I am a libertarian, not a true anarchist. I agree with government regulations that protect consumers and the environment -- such as stopping 3M from putting forever chemicals in their products.
"Do some things inherently need national or even transnational coordination and, if so, what is the difference between national coordination at the scale of Luxembourg and that at the scale of China?" I've often thought that the federal government might prohibit certain things that are widely accepted and/or proven to be harmful. Examples include: murder, pedophilia, and many chemicals. For more controversial matters, where various viewpoints are valid (like raising taxes), it should be mostly up to cities. I don't say states, because North Carolina or Florida each have millions of people, and the state governments cannot come close to meeting the needs of all their constituents/citizens.
So, am I in favor of abolishing a federal income tax? I'm not sure, I'd have to research it more. But let's say, if a city A taxes its people more, and raises a lot of money for schools, libraries, etc, and if the residents prosper, that is the best choice for the city. And if another city B has low taxes, and the residents suffer, they might look at city A and imitate their better policies.
With federal schooling standards, I'm more in favor of cities (not states or the Feds) having their own systems. Maybe one city implements a set of educational standards, and the students there get better grades and honors, so other cities would imitate them. In a country where cities can experiment freely, the best methods of schooling would become prevalent. It's like a free market where the best products are bought and used more by customers. Though I do realize that some cities might be backwards or corrupt, and might be resistant to changing their laws. In that case, hopefully people will move to the better places.
My point is that I think that each locality tends to know what's best for itself.
And I agree: "it is the biggest root cause of the vast majority of the misery that plagues our world: distance." If only politicians and voters knew how much their actions harm people! In modern warfare, you can sign an executive order and indirectly kill hundreds without seeing their deaths. If the president saw first-hand the suffering caused by giving weapons to Israel, he might reconsider. (Though our current "leader" might not hesitate in any circumstance anyway, given his abysmal morals.)
I appreciate the reasonableness with which you share your views and am glad we found some points of agreement. I'm glad we share an opposition to corporations poisoning us, a belief that communities should organise themselves, and are against government hierarchy and violence.
However, I should point out that I'm probably as anti-right-wing-libertarian as they come when it comes to capital and property, and would like to see the word libertarian return back to its left-wing anarchist roots.
https://peacefulrevolutionary.substack.com/p/taking-back-libertarianism
This Compendium of Anarchism made my day.
Thank you for taking the time to put this together I'm going to share it out across the web and among my friends all could benefit from it.
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
Feels like you wrote this one for me. Solidarity
I'm always glad if just one person finds something in my writing they can relate or aspire to - thank you!
Anarchism is libertarianism taken to an illogical extreme due to an unwarranted faith in humanity.
You are right that Anarchism is libertarianism - the word was invented to describe Anarchists, not those right-wing pro-Capitalist propertarians (who stole the word in the 1960s).
In comparison to modern Capitalism you are right that Anarchism is extreme - it works in the complete opposite direction and has opposing aims - it is for all the things Capitalism is against - equality, fairness, and co-operation.
We are already living in a world of illogical extremes, and those extremes usually go unchecked, unrestricted, and unconscionable.
Anarchism just realises that people shouldn't be trusted with power over others, maybe (for some Anarchists) that comes from lack of faith in humanity when placed in such a position, and for others comes from the realisation that people do better when they have better conditions, incentives, organisation, and accountability.
Always thought provoking and inspiring. I like taxes though, as a convenient way to do things collectively. I want public services of all kinds, well minimal military, but I never contribute as much as is taken by payroll - even though i believe i should-so how would we have big public projects based only on donated money and labor?
I agree that under the current economic system taxes can and do help make provisions for important needs, although people will always have needs that need to be met under any system. I don't believe we need Capitalism in order to co-operate locally or worldwide at scale. I'd argue it is often what gets in the way of such processes. ...
Currently big public projects are carried out by someone at the top (a politician or someone appointed by one) making a decision to allocate the money they get from taxes to do this.
Of course politicians may listen to their constituents about what projects are a priority especially if it is likely to get them the votes to get / stay in power, and if it doesn't take money away from the military, and doesn't compete with what people already pay corporations for, then it may get done.
When the work gets eventually carried out it is often a pricy process because all along the way of it getting accomplished there are different companies that are contracted that want to make a profit (some which coincidentally happen to be friends of the politician). This (and cartels, price gouging, cost overruns) increases the costs it takes to finish and the taxes used to accomplish it.
This seems like a very bureaucratic, often corrupt, and inefficient way to do anything to me. I think that explains why many projects (like high speed and light rail) that you'd expect to see everywhere in America decades ago (like in Asia and Europe) happen slowly and fragmentary if at all. When it comes to social services this is also why those needing them are always in a precarious position, and why the richest country on earth is the only developed one without universal healthcare and with medical bankruptcy.
I suppose you could say that Anarchism would be 0% taxation or that it is 100% and you'd be right with both answers, depending how you define taxation or what is needed at any given moment! Because if a community or region gets together and decides to use its resources for a project then the contributions to make that possible could be minor or substantial. They could require a lot from some areas or people and a little from others. It would all depend on what is needed from where and who, so maybe taxes isn't the right word for this kind of distribution.
Likewise I'd imagine public (community / regional) services to be 100% covered (at least up to what is possible given the resources available), so I'd expect there to be far more services available for far more people under Anarchism than the most generous Social Democratic system. But public services wouldn't be the right word either as no 'public' body grants or denies what everyone is entitled to.
Of course ideally there'd be no payrolls to pull taxes from, because there would be no wage slavery, and ultimately no states to defend without hierarchy and borders - although I expect there will be defence forces trained and ready should they need to be, and in the process of getting from here to there defence may very well be involved & there have been Anarchist armies in the past and Anarchist soldiers now.
(forgive me for ranting a little ...)
This is such a different paradigm from how the world operates economically now that it seems almost alien, and yet we already have all the tools and resources to do it, and it is how humanity operated for most of its history. We've found ancient civilisations of millions of people over large regions that lasted over a thousand years that seemingly had no hierarchy or money, but had better diets than we do today, and had flushable toilets and hot water.
With the hundred of thousands of hours of pro-Capitalist propaganda we all grow up with, clogging our imagination of what is possible and telling us any alternatives are impossible, despite history (even recent history) showing us that they are wrong and their system is unnecessary (except for the wealth and power of a few of them), that better ones can an have and do work, its a wonder any of us ever questions them and finds dissenting information, but I'll keep doing my best to spread the truth that a Better World Is Possible - https://peacefulrevolutionary.substack.com/p/a-better-world-is-possible
Thanks for the thinking. One thing I liked about the Spanish anarcho- syndicalists is that families got to keep their own little gardens. It wasn't all collectivised. I'm fine with a certain amount of collectivisation, but we need autonomy too
Agreed - little gardens for the win! I have a little balcony one that I’m just about managing to keep alive.