I’m politically agnostic and have moved from a slightly conservative stance to a vastly more progressive stance (european). i still dont get the more niche things like tankies and anarchists at this point but I would like to, without spending 10 hours reading endless manifests (which do have merit, no doubt, but still).
Can someone explain to me why anarchy isnt the guy (or gal, or gang, or entity) with the bigger stick making the rules?
Because no one knows anything whatsoever about actual anarchist political theory.
Largely due to it being heavily suppressed and propagandized against by States, capitalist or ‘Communist’, and their adherents.
Anarchy as thought of by the wide and vast majority of people is simply a state of chaos and violence with no clear rulers.
What Anarchy actually is is fairly simple.
Root words derive from Greek.
An- Prefix: Without
Archon: Tyrant/Cruel and Ruthless Ruler/Undefiable Authority
Non insane Anarchists are always critics of the state, corporate structures of organizing the work place, most forms of organized religion, oppressive social norms and anything that creates and maintains any kind of hierarchy in society that results in oppression, impoverishment or cruelty to any particular group of people for illegitimate reasons.
Anarchy is essentially very similar in many ways to communism as Marx envisioned it, in that it is an idealized, as yet not perfectly defined goal of a just, egalitarian and democratic society that heavily emphasizes people being adequately represented economically in their daily lives as workers, as opposed to the standard liberal capitalist model where your boss essentially has authoritarian power over you in the workplace.
Both Marxism and Anarchism are highly critical of the profit motive and the ability of a very small number of people to own all or much of the capital (means of production such as factories) of a society, for very lengthy and detailed reasons.
A very common misunderstanding is what is truly meant by ‘private property’: most people unfamiliar with Marxism or Anarchism believe that Marxists and Anarchists believe that no one should be allowed to singly, individually own /anything/.
This is false. While many different adherents have different precise definitions, generally speaking private possessions are just fine until they get to the point of owning something directly and singly that has a massive impact on the lives of others should you choose to unilateraly use your ‘property rights’ in a way that is beneficial to you personally, but harmful to a large number of other people.
Further, Marxists and Anarchists both generally agree that ‘property rights’ as we currently conceive of them really only functionally exist for the rich and powerful, and are enforced via the power of the state.
Anarchism significantly differs from many later Marxist derived theories such as Leninism, Stalinism and Maoism that generally emphasize that in order to actually achieve an ideal, non capitalist society, one must create a massive state structure (or subvert an existing one) and place all power to reorganize a capitalist economy into a class of totalitarian economic organizers and planners, and that during this process the state is entirely justified in basically any means of crushing dissent it deems necessary.
This is of course heinous to Anarchists, who view a totalitarian state as essentially criminal.
What modern Anarchists, who are, again, not insane, usually support are working both within and outside of existing norms and government structures to meaningfully improve peoples lives amd expand their rights:
Mutual Aid: Direct Involvement in you local community to feed the hungry, house the unhoused, provide aid to the sick and displaced.
Advocacy: Doing what you can to promote ideas and views that will be beneficial to the masses, or to protect at risk minorities, both within existing formal societal structures like governments and businesses, and also within society generally.
Many modern Anarchists are also very concerned about the power if states and corporations to abuse the environment and curtail freedom of expression.
Anarchy also has another useful definition in the context of a world of nation-states:
Anarchy is that same common understanding of a world without rules and chaos, but the realization that this simply describes our current world given the history of actions of and between nation states, who often engage in many harmful acts against other nation-states and their populations, and rarely actually follow any rules or norms which are supposed, but i actuality rarely do, govern affairs between states. States will often do whatever they believe they can get away with that will benefit themselves, even if it means massively harming another state or group of people.
Finally, if you want to also be a modern technologically savvy anarchist, aka a cyberpunk, you can realize that the advent of computer and digital technology means there no longer exist any actually valid reasons, in very many cases, to actually pay for software, and that you should be an advocate of open source software.
So, in summary, Anarchy is not a state of chaos, without rules.
It is a very complex and nuanced political theory of advocacy for a more equitable and more just society.
No serious Anarchist believes that the world would be better if everyone was free to rum around and do literally whatever they want on an individual scale.
What exact kind of society do they propose?
Well unfortunately that differs wildly from Anarchist to Anarchist, but again, as with how Marxist socialism is but a /process/ of transforming from a capitalist society into an as of yet not perfectly defined communism, Anarchism is a /process/ and /method of analysis/ of how to transform into a better society for everyone.
Nice explanation! Thank you. I’m kind of getting the hang of it now. Very glad I asked.
No problem.
Wow, that was a very interesting and informative read, thank you!
Thanks for the compliment! =)
Well, crud. I guess I am much more on the side of anarchists than I thought…
A lot of people are. We have bad press, partly our fault and partly because we’re dangerous to systems of power and those who benefit from them. The cultural idea of power doesn’t mind if everyone swaps places or if things get turned upside down. The framework of thinking persists, everyone in the system understands it. It’s easy. Destroying it though, that means basically everyone has to unlearn a lot. It demands we see the beggar and the ceo as equals influenced by their situation and circumstances.
But also I think one thing to understand that a lot of people don’t is that there’s folks I’d call optimist anarchists, and folks I’d call pessimist anarchists. Optimist anarchists believe that we as people can build a better world together because people tend to want to help people and abolishing hierarchy is the best way to enable that. Pessimist anarchists believe that power tends to fuck with your head and make you a worse person. To them abolishing hierarchy may not result in a good situation, but rather that allowing hierarchy is too high risk. The optimist may say that a benevolent dictator isn’t as good for society as a benevolent society of equals. The pessimist would say that a benevolent dictator is rare at best and highly unlikely to keep happening.
See, unlike the communist tankies who would at this moment chant ‘one of us, one of us’…
I will encourage you to aim to to good in an imperfect world where circumstances are often either morally gray, or involve complex factors that are non obvious, but very relevant and important, to learn moral and ethical theories and challenge yourself to actually answer ‘What is good?’.
I will encourage you to /never/ believe you have all the answers to everything, that there is always more than can be learned, and that there are very rarely one size fits all answers to unique and specific situations, and to know that admitting a mistake or error, and reflecting on why or how you came to be in error, is not the sign of a fool, but is the sign of a genuine person striving to be consistent froma starting point of incomplete knowledge and experience.
I will encourage you to challenge your own assumptions, but to be confident when confronted with rhetoric and theories that you yourself can prove are misleading, logically invalid, or outright justify atrocities.
As can probably be reasonably expected, there is an extremely wide range of Anarchist stances on basically the minutia of theory, as well as on what are and are not defensible or moral stances on specific current events or situations, and there are many Anarchist theoreticians who come from many different cultures and backgrounds, and many who focus much more on how Anarchist theory can or should apply to more specific features of our largely capitalist world.
I have tried here to outline the most broadly agreed upon ideas that… well again probably only really Communist Tankies would find fault with, they kind of have a whole history of incorporating anarchists into initial Social Revolutions, and then murdering them all after they have control of their newly acquired state.
They really do not like that Anarchists existed and still exist, they are very convinced, ironically, that they own the ideology that evolved out of Marx, when in truth prominent Anarchists such as Kropotkin and others actually both agreed and disagreed with each other on various issues, and helped form some of both of their views both by antagonism and agreement.
Anyway, entirely unironically:
Live Long and Prosper, and, the Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few.