Anarchy

[Slybacon]

I am increasingly becoming more and more interested in Anarchy but have found it difficult to find Anarchists around me. I am at work at the moment but thought I might throw it out there to the SAB folk who may know a bit more about it. I also found this comment from George Orwell on Wiki, so I'll post that to get the topic started....

"I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragon one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life--snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc.--had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master."

I can't understand why there is so little appeal for this amongst the general population. Do we really need to even have a Govt?

Edited June 15, 2011 by Slybacon

[paradox]

last night i put some RAW mp3's on the ipod to listen to at work today & heard this, which is him giving a very simple rundown of his thoughts about anarchism... quite interesting..

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQczen4rECY

i've known a few anarchists in the past... none that i drilled very much regarding their political perspective... some of them were very interesting intelligent people, who seemed to have very cool outlooks... other people i've known that label themselves anarchists, it's clear they were more interested in self image than standing up for noble political ideals... but all that could be said by just about any groups i've met who define themselves as something, either political or religeous or anything else..

[occidentalis]

I am an anarchist

in the sense that I think humans are inherently capable of working for the common good and making rational decisions. I see it as the most optimistic political philosophy.

However

that capability is not always used. And perhaps is only really a potential, that can be only be realised through education and self development. For that reason I see an anarchic system as something that will arise spontaneously when society is ready for it. perhaps at the moment we still need the steady hand of government telling us what to do on one level or another.

There are also practical considerations. Without centralised government, how can responses to major national or global issues be coordinated? No doubt there are many networking technologies that will improve our bootstrapped ability for bottom up decision making in the pipeline, but still, what happens in a situation where public opinion is deadlocked? Someone has to make a decision. Our current system of government can hardly deal with this situation, I can't see it being better in a world without any central decision makers.

[synchromesh]

Anarchy 4 Life

[Psylo]

People are too lazy and self-centered to expect any real anarchism movement en-masse. And the Australian government, along with industry, have society set up so that you simply cannot be an anarchist.

Try it, Go for one month without paying taxes or being instructed what to do my someone else.

[nabraxas]

People are too lazy and self-centered to expect any real anarchism movement en-masse.

After the Queensland floods or the earthquake in Christchurch we saw people coming together in a very communal way to help each other, so while most ov the time it may seem that people are lazy & self centered, given the right conditions people can be amazing.

when government authority all but vanished in parts of Egypt last weekend, nobody called it anarchy. This is because people came together, as communities, neighbors -- as Egyptians -- and provided for their own needs. So far, we see that ordinary people have organized security, sanitation, emergency health care, and communications without government. I suspect in coming days we'll hear stories about how neighbors have organized food distribution and other public services. In a word: anarchy.

http://www.zcommunications.org/anarchy-in-egypt-by-brian-dominick

Anyone interested in anarchism should read ABC of Anarchism By Alexander Berkman. You can find the whole text online here

Alexander Berkman (November 21, 1870 – June 28, 1936) was an anarchist known for his political activism and writing. He was a leading member of the anarchist movement in the early 20th century.

Berkman was born in Vilnius in the Russian Empire and immigrated to the United States in 1888. He lived in New York City, where he became involved in the anarchist movement. He was the lover and lifelong friend of anarchist Emma Goldman. In 1892, Berkman attempted to assassinate businessman Henry Clay Frick as an act of propaganda of the deed. Though Frick survived the attempt on his life, Berkman served 14 years in prison. His experience in prison was the basis for his first book, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist.

After his release from prison, Berkman served as editor of Goldman's anarchist journal, Mother Earth, and he established his own journal, The Blast. In 1917, Berkman and Goldman were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiracy against the newly instated draft. After their release from prison, they were arrested—along with hundreds of others—and deported to Russia. Initially supportive of that country's Bolshevik revolution, Berkman quickly voiced his opposition to the Soviet use of violence and the repression of independent voices. In 1925, he published a book about his experiences, The Bolshevik Myth.

While living in France, Berkman continued his work in support of the anarchist movement, producing the classic exposition of anarchist principles, Now and After: The ABC of Communist Anarchism. Suffering from ill health, Berkman committed suicide in 1936.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Berkman

[synchromesh]

After the Queensland floods or the earthquake in Christchurch we saw people coming together in a very communal way to help each other, so while most ov the time it may seem that people are lazy & self centered, given the right conditions people can be amazing.

 

The worst fear of every government... New Orleans anybody?

Divided and Conquered

[The Dude]

Good read!

[nabraxas]

Capitalism and the State are genuine social structures, but like most matters of social structures they have also been internalized. In that sense, we are the state .It exists in our minds, and we produce it in our day-to-day existence. The banalities of everyday life, the meaninglessness of most work, our profound isolation from others, and our being treated (and treating others) as objects - these are not by-products of capitalism: they are key mechanisms of social control.”

Howard J. Ehrlich

If you're interested in Anarchism you may find Situationism amusing:

With their ideas rooted in Marxism and the 20th century European artistic avant-gardes, they advocated experiences of life being alternative to those admitted by the capitalist order, for the fulfillment of human primitive desires and the pursuing of a superior passional quality. For this purpose they suggested and experimented with the construction of situations, namely the setting up of environments favorable for the fulfillment of such desires. Using methods drawn from the arts, they developed a series of experimental fields of study for the construction of such situations, like unitary urbanism and psychogeography.

They fought against the main obstacle to the fulfillment of such superior passionate living, identified by them in advanced capitalism. Their theoretical work peaked with the highly influential book The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord. Debord argued in 1967 that spectacular features like mass media and advertising have a central role in an advanced capitalist society, which is to show a fake reality in order to mask the real capitalist degradation of human life.

The spectacle is the unified, ever-increasing mass of image-objects and commodified experience detached from every aspect of life, fused in a common stream in which the unity of this life can no longer be reestablished.[62] Reality considered partially unfolds, in its own general unity, as a pseudo-world apart, an object of mere contemplation.[62] The specialization of images of the world is completed in the world of the autonomous image, where the liar has lied to himself.[62] The spectacle in general, as the concrete inversion of life, is the autonomous movement of the non-living.[62]

 

We live in a spectacular society, that is, our whole life is surrounded by an immense accumulation of spectacles. Things that were once directly lived are now lived by proxy. Once an experience is taken out of the real world it becomes a commodity. As a commodity the spectacular is developed to the detriment of the real. It becomes a substitute for experience.

—Lawrence Law, Images and Everyday Life, [64]

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International

Spectacular Times

Larry Law compiled and edited a series of small 'pocketbooks' in the late 1970s/early 1980s entitled 'Spectacular Times'. They serve as a brief introduction to the ideas of Situationism. Each consists of newspaper clippings, quotations, handwritten text by Law and illustrations, all compiled and arranged with great humour!

They can be read online here

[Psylo]

After the Queensland floods or the earthquake in Christchurch we saw people coming together in a very communal way to help each other, so while most ov the time it may seem that people are lazy & self centered, given the right conditions people can be amazing.

 

Agreed, that level of camaraderie expressed in times of disaster is inspiring. The flip-side of course is what else it brings out of the human spirit. Looting, Charity Scams, Insurance Fraud.

My utopian social fantasy would be to see the reinstatement of smaller, decentralised village communities of say 50 families, where the community is governed by a group of civic minded volunteers elected by the people, whose role it is to conduct regular elections on small matters such as the value of goods and services as bartering tender. One family produces 50 loaves of bread, another provides 100 tomatoes, the cattle farmer slaughters two animals per week, the chicken-keeper several dozen eggs and so forth. Non-producing families can contribute labour to those who can, in exchange for currency 'points'. Without a form of leadership/panel of Elders to keep the structure together, the baker's going to claim that his contributions are worth more than the farmer, he wants more for his bread and wants to work less. Left to their own devices, the structure collapses. So too with an mass-anarchist concept of human existence.

[botanika]

Nature is the biggest anarchist of all - wait till the next big comet hits our planet. It will happen.

[Slybacon]

Agreed, that level of camaraderie expressed in times of disaster is inspiring. The flip-side of course is what else it brings out of the human spirit. Looting, Charity Scams, Insurance Fraud.

My utopian social fantasy would be to see the reinstatement of smaller, decentralised village communities of say 50 families, where the community is governed by a group of civic minded volunteers elected by the people, whose role it is to conduct regular elections on small matters such as the value of goods and services as bartering tender. One family produces 50 loaves of bread, another provides 100 tomatoes, the cattle farmer slaughters two animals per week, the chicken-keeper several dozen eggs and so forth. Non-producing families can contribute labour to those who can, in exchange for currency 'points'. Without a form of leadership/panel of Elders to keep the structure together, the baker's going to claim that his contributions are worth more than the farmer, he wants more for his bread and wants to work less. Left to their own devices, the structure collapses. So too with an mass-anarchist concept of human existence.

 

But than there would be an opportunity for a New Baker. In a free market your only worth as much as someone is willing to pay. Can't see how the baker wanting more would cause the system to collapse. More likely it just lead to everyone charging the baker more for their goods, not really a win win for the baker.

[Psylo]

But than there would be an opportunity for a New Baker.

 

So you have been swayed by Blood Trance Fusion's post on the worth of a Baker's ability?

[synchromesh]

Nature is the biggest anarchist of all - wait till the next big comet hits our planet. It will happen.

 

Do you think that anarchy is only about destruction?

[botanika]

Rebirth

[The Dude]

Voluntary cooperation.

[Mycot]

Agreed, that level of camaraderie expressed in times of disaster is inspiring. The flip-side of course is what else it brings out of the human spirit. Looting, Charity Scams, Insurance Fraud.

 

On the flip side when a person has been brought up in a society built on exploitation, the artificial creation of scarcity, dog eat dog competition of every man out for themself so there is little sense of community, and values of greed is good then the behavior you describe has a good likelihood of occuring because that is how they have been conditioned.

In an anarchist society built on co-operation and mutual support one may indeed bring about a major change in value systems where this type of behavior comes close to non-existant.

There was once a time when we didn't lock our doors.

When we look at our present institutions and trajectory it becomes increasingly obvious to me that it will bring about the death of us. Buckminster Fuller said that our choice may be between utopia or oblivion. We transfer to an anarchist system or we die.

A basic model.

http://ec2012.org/

A discussion of theoretical models.

http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/01nvc/nvcp05.pdf

Another world possible - valuable theoretical discussion.

"More writings from Anarcho" also recomended.

http://struggle.ws/anarchism/writers/anarcho/talks/alternatives.html

Ecological perspectives.

http://www.earthrepair.net/

Anarchy in reel time - lessons to be learnt.

http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=03/05/16/2321832

Additional material of value.

http://www.thevenusproject.com/

More interesting material may be found in a search of "Alternatives to capitalism".

[Slybacon]

^ Very well put

[Quill]

I think all you anarchists have to get organised

[Mycot]

Terence Mckenna - Culture is your operating system

 

 

[yaguareté]

I am increasingly becoming more and more interested in Anarchy but have found it difficult to find Anarchists around me. I am at work at the moment but thought I might throw it out there to the SAB folk who may know a bit more about it. I also found this comment from George Orwell on Wiki, so I'll post that to get the topic started....

"I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragon one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life--snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc.--had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master."

I can't understand why there is so little appeal for this amongst the general population. Do we really need to even have a Govt?

 

Anarchists are fairly easy to find.

go to an anarchist bookshop, there are two in sydney

blackrose

http://blackrosebooks.org/

and jura books

http://jura.org.au/

both are full of great people who are active anarchists and if you want to get involved you would be welcomed.

You will find all the info on anarchy you would want in either bookshop.

[yaguareté]

People are too lazy and self-centered to expect any real anarchism movement en-masse. And the Australian government, along with industry, have society set up so that you simply cannot be an anarchist.

Try it, Go for one month without paying taxes or being instructed what to do my someone else.

 

i know plenty of ppl that do it, but yeah you have to make sacrifices. how much do u really love that iphone

[shortly]

The flip-side of course is what else it brings out of the human spirit. Looting, Charity Scams, Insurance Fraud.

 

Yeah, and that was just the state government

[Slybacon]

Anarchists are fairly easy to find.

go to an anarchist bookshop, there are two in sydney

blackrose

http://blackrosebooks.org/

and jura books

http://jura.org.au/

both are full of great people who are active anarchists and if you want to get involved you would be welcomed.

You will find all the info on anarchy you would want in either bookshop.

 

Thanks. I wonder if I can find something in the Hunter?

[FancyPants]

I'll simplify what I think for my frozen fingers' sake...

I think humanity has a lot more reincarnational evolution to go through before we could reasonably expect any sort of "civilised" anarchy ideal to work.

Edit: Not to say the current capitalist elite system is the best either.

Edited July 12, 2011 by FancyPants