The other option is even worse. You have a few people doing all the actual work and everyone else is worthless parasites. You can't have anything remotely like a commune without a way of gatekeeping and some form of governance, even if it's pure majority voting.
The funny thing is, I actually observe that the most in government institutions. If it's a free grouping I can yell at people who aren't pulling their weight, I can exert my own pressures and say "well if he's not doing that I'm not going to do this," and other normal and natural modes of human interaction. But in a "professional environment" all the power to rectify the situation is taken out of my hands and given to higher ups who don't understand the problem and therefore do nothing, or "handled by HR" who do nothing or take the layabout's side for one of several reasons.
The worst is that useless people begin to gather other useless people about them to back them up because worthless people find worth in numbers. Without the ability to withdraw my labour if I don't wish to, I have few ways to stop them. And that's what you find if you have a long conversation with an anarcho-socialist or anarcho-communist about this stuff - that at some point they say such people need to be "re-educated" or compelled to remain part of the community. Which is a complete violation of the idea of anarchism. At least anarcho-capitalists and minarchists respect the idea of non-participation.
Oddly I’ve worked in a couple of departments that pride themselves on flat hierarchies and they were completely dysfunctional.
Same. But what's disturbing is the way they will suddenly start to coordinate against it if someone does begin to take charge. It's like it's a threat to them to have someone in charge.
Other groups were like little malign terrorist cells, or Venetian duchies.
Yes - very much this.
I should have made that clearer. Your source of anarchists are from CHAZ/CHOP; my source of anarchists is from the Internet. We are actually seeing two different groups.
I was talking in general on how CHAZ/CHOP is a case study against anarchy in itself.
It's fine so long as we recognise we're talking about different things. You have been commenting about anarchists in the CHOP thread so I replied about such anarchists. That division recognised though, I still find it a little odd that you are focused on anarcho-capitalists. You said something along the line of them best illustrating the flaws of anarchism but I really feel that's off-base. I'm old and have been in politics and political discussions for decades and in most of that time, actual anarchists have overwhelmingly been of almost any flavour
other than anarcho-capitalist. And in so far as they exist they're more usually under the flavour of "Libertarians" in American discourse. Most anarchists see anarcho-capitalists as a wholesale perversion of anarchism because most actual anarchists predicate their ideas on some sort of perfection of society / beliefs in which everybody becomes 'good' and enlightened whereas anarcho-capitalism predicates things on self-interest.
I'd also tentatively argue that of the different types of anarchism, contrary to you using anarcho-capitalism as your go-to illustration of why anarchism doesn't work, it's the
most plausible as it doesn't presume that everybody is all lovey-dovey group-minded and it condones force between individuals as the only real binding on behaviour is that of contracts and agreements between individuals. It's imo, the closest to actual anarchism in that it embraces individualism whereas most of the others are some degree of mutualism / collectivism.
They're different groups, agreed. And if you want to specifically focus on that group that's fine. But it feels very odd to me that you do so given the group you pick is both very non-representative of most actual anarchists and also, imo, one of the most viable and true approaches to anarchism. Typically if you discuss implementation of their ideals with an anarcho-capitalism it quickly bleeds into minarchism, which is the smallest possible state required to function. Which is at least a lot more honest than anarcho-socialists and anarcho-communists (the majority) who want to build a state but just call it something else. I feel like perhaps anarcho-capitalists were just the group you stumbled on and made some formative impression. But if you want to discuss actual practicing anarchists or simply point out the hypocrisies and flaws in anarchism, in both cases the socialist and communist flavours would seem to be the go-to to illustrate with.
You can’t have anarchy with a population greater than one individual unless the range of movement per individual is so big they never encounter each other. Anarchy isn’t possible for any length of time. A soundcloud rapper will always emerge.
A group of two is inherently an anarchy because you can't have a centralised authority with two. When you get to three individuals, then you could have one enforcing how the other two interact, which is one definition of a state. Anarchism is the rejection of a centralised authority. One strong individual can exert power over another weaker individual, but that's just force. Anarchism isn't the rejection of the use of force (most of them seem to love it!).
That is one of my main problems with anarcho-capitalism; that requires that everyone there agree wi the system.
I don't get why you keep saying anarcho-
capitalism. That's the version that
least requires that everyone agree with the system. Ten people each with a gun and using some mutually agreed currency to trade with each other requires only that one thing - an agreed medium of exchange. Which can be backed by something with inherent value if you want, it doesn't even need to be fiat. There you go - anarcho-capitalism. Whereas anarcho-socialism would require everyone agree with contributing to the mutual pot, labour assignments, etc. Anarcho-communism would have an even stronger central committee. Both of these - and they're the majority of actual anarchists and anarchist theory - have far more requirement that "everyone there agree with the system".
I'm sorry to keep harping on with this stuff, it's not necessarily that you're wrong it's that it seem off to me. Like if we were discussing rodent infestations and you kept talking about deer mice and sure - they might nibble at your skirting boards or the corner of a packet of food. But I keep asking myself why isn't this guy talking about rats which are way more numerous and way more harmful and, stretching the analogy, have more obvious things to criticise?
