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I've never understood (even after reading this article) how anyone who's anti-authoritarian can honestly believe that removing a government is a good idea. The

I've never understood (even after reading this article) how anyone who's anti-authoritarian can honestly believe that removing a government is a good idea. The author claims that it's human nature to abuse power as an argument in favor of anarchism. But to me it seems very obvious that that is exactly what will happen if people are left without constraints. Those who can get some power will get more, and there's nothing to stop them. So, is there anyone who sympathise with the author who would like to explain how a society could become more equal/fair/anything positive without a government?

jes 13y ago
I agree with your comment. I want a society that understands and cherishes individual rights, and a government that is limited to and efficacious in protecting them.
- cinquemb 13y ago
  I suppose that the amount of people that are willing to work in quantifiable/effective ways that give the individual, as much as any society, the incentive to push towards a society that understands and cherishes individual rights, and a government that is limited to and efficacious in protecting them will be less than the amount who want it, so in the logical conclusion of things: we will get neither until that imbalanced can be addressed.
- mhurron 13y ago
  > a government that is limited to and efficacious in protecting them (individual rights). Oddly, you just provided the downfall of such a government. From the obvious 'think of the children' type of abuse of power you would also have those that see protecting some rights as infringing on others. The FDA is an example of the latter. The FDA is a consumer rights organization, yet there are no shortage of people that see any protections as infringing on their rights.
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    > The FDA is a consumer rights organization No, not really. It does not even remotely represent patients needs, and patient organizations do not take part in any of the FDA decisions, as far as I know.
    - mhurron 13y ago
      Yes it is. Just because it doesn't rush the newest cancer treatment to market or that it doesn't work the way you think it should doesn't change that. I saw an old advertizement the other day declaring the health benefits of donuts. The other day we had a link here with Mickey Mouse hawking amphetamines as, again, a healthy way to perk up. You can't sell food or drugs in the US that make false health claims because of the oversight of the FDA. You can't bring a drug to market without extensive testing for the same reason. Your food has to be clearly labeled with it's contents and a real breakdown of its nutritional facts because of FDA regulations. The FDA is a consumer rights agency.
      - ekianjo 13y ago
        Then if it were the case why isn't the FDA paying way more attention the quality of clinical trials before approving new drugs? Why do they only require a single successful clinical trial to register anything? Why don't they audit the clinical trial sites to confirm that the results reported by the drug companies are reliable and not falsified?
  - jes 13y ago
    Thank you for your comment. Are you saying that a government focused on protecting individual rights cannot exist, because people sometimes disagree? If so, that's too big a leap for me -- I don't see how one necessarily follows from the other.
    - mhurron 13y ago
      > because people sometimes disagree? Because the majority may disagree. The majority will choose to infringe upon the rights of whatever minority there is if they disagree with it for whatever reason. Sometimes it's just the loud that push it and the majority don't care and stay quiet, but the result is the same. Protecting rights is an aim every good government must have but it can not be the only aim. It must also recognize when to step in to put a stop to the majority infringing on the rights of others. A government exists for the good of the society as a whole as well as the good of the individual.
jahaja 13y ago
I do sympathise with the author and I think that on the countrary, if people were more involved in their society, which is a major part of anarchism and the decentralisation it promotes, such people would have a much harder time aquiring such power than today. Today, those kind of people have whole instutions adjusted to such aims, the government and capitalism. Thus, the aim is to build a society that people want to defend by themselves, not just a paid subgroup - e.g the police or military. Regarding fairness and equality there's a lot of things that anarchism promotes, here's a few controversial: * Socialism * Decentralisation and organisation from the bottom up. * Abolishment of the ownership of land and private property. And no, the last point does not mean that someone will steal your toothbrush, rather that someone should not be able to amass the tools of explotation, such as more industry/machines than one can use by oneselve or acquire land that one cannot possibly culativate by their own.
- Nursie 13y ago
  >>if people were more involved in their society I think I see the flaw in your plan... Most folks would rather delegate AFAICT.
  - unicornporn 13y ago
    And that might be because politics seem distant, irrelevant, unalterable and (maybe as a result of this) plain boring. If politics and power became more decentralized, perhaps it would become more relevant and engaging to people.
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      Or maybe it could just be that we've had a taste of politics in our private lives, and decided we would much rather spend our time coding.
  - jahaja 13y ago
    I believe that if people feel they can make a difference, people will get involved. If generally people can't make a difference, like today, people get apathetic.
yetanotherphd 13y ago
I was a "left-anarchist" or "ultra-leftist" in my early 20's so I can explain this point of view in a moderately sympathetic way. The following is not my actual opinion, but rather a summary of the beliefs I once held. As far as I'm aware it's also fairly different from Goldman's viewpoint too. The starting point is to identify classical liberalism as a veneer over power structures based on arbitrary authority. For example, the same society that claimed to support freedom of expression would lock women away in mental institutions for acting in a way deemed inappropriate (not so much nowadays, but definitely in the 30's). Today we still see a lot of arbitrary authority (often illegal) exercised by the government and its agents. Only a small portion of this is deemed "political" enough to gain media attention, and perhaps be corrected in the courts. Furthermore, the ideology of individual rights can be used to create "rights" that couldn't even be justified from a natural rights perspective, but are rather created to bolster the idea of an atomized society. Government subsidization of roads (rather than public transport) is a good example of this. While there is no natural right to drive a car on a government subsidized road, the ideology of individualism leads people to suppose that people are somehow more "free" under this setup than under a regime of mainly public transportation. To summarize, left-anarchists view classical individual rights as a chimera, where the real agenda is a society of atomized individuals with no sense of community, all subject to the authority of the state. The main claim of left-anarchists is that in the absence of this oppression, a natural order based on community enforcement will evolve, in which strict legal rights are not necessary to protect individual's wellbeing, because the community is good and cares about its members. Various examples are given for this, such as primitive tribal societies, temporary anarchistic situations such as during the Spanish civil war, working class communities who self-police rather than cooperating with law enforcement, and social orders that arise around the use of common property, such as with surfing.
- ahultgren 13y ago
  First of all, thanks for just the kind of explanation I was looking for. > The main claim of left-anarchists is that in the absence of this oppression, a natural order based on community enforcement will evolve[...] And my problem with such claims is that it seems like you're actually just proposing another kind of government; a local and decentralized one. After all a government is just an agreement between a set of people to organize affairs of mutual interest, right? Would it be correct to say that anarchists (in general or the left kind) actually prefers several smaller societies rather than one big central one? Also one could argue (as you kinda did) that once upon a time there were only such tribal societies, and that the societies we see today have evolved from those. So if you (with the belief you once held) argue that we should revert to such a system, how would you propose to prevent the inevitable "degradation" to the current system?
sliverstorm 13y ago
it seems very obvious that that is exactly what will happen if people are left without constraints. Those who can get some power will get more, and there's nothing to stop them Then clearly after we abolish government, we just need to establish some kind of power structure to limit this effect. Perhaps to keep things fair, we can put this power structure subject to votes by the people. There. Solved. Anarchy!
- Millennium 13y ago
  But the moment you've done that, you've established a de-facto government, thus violating the definition of anarchy. This happens with a lot of utopian schemes, actually: the logistics of maintaining them require them to mutate into something decidedly other than the original intent. Eventually, in the case of anarchy, the de-facto government inevitably finds a way to cement its power in a more de-jure fashion, and from there corruption proceeds as normal.
  - aaronem 13y ago
    Have you ever investigated the origins and etymology of the word "utopia"? Most these days seem happy to sling the word around without knowing where it came from and what it means; should you be among that number, I recommend the subject to your attention, as you may well find interest in the result of such investigation.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    See: Poe's Law :)
InclinedPlane 13y ago
Pure anarchism has many of the same problems as pure communism. In practice it's a system that is typically unstable and rapidly degenerates into simple autocracy or oligarchy.
- nutball 13y ago
  Humans have lived for nearly 200,000 years without states. States, which for their ~10,000 year history have been very ephemeral. Civilization keeps barreling on while states collapse and begin again. The forces that lead to the flux of states like internal power struggles, class conflict, and environmental destruction wouldn't exist in anarchy/communism. Check out Clastres who argues that pre-civilization human communities had mechanisms to ward off the formation of states.
  - InclinedPlane 13y ago
    You're arguing with the wrong person, I'm not arguing for statism. I'm saying that naive anarchism is dangerous. Which it is. And primitive pseudo-anarchism (even 200,000 years ago societies had power structures) is probably not suitable for the modern, industrialized age. Does that mean that powerful central authorities, states, are the only answer? Not at all. But I would appreciate it if there weren't so many anti-statists who fulfilled every caricature of folks who liken libertarianism and anarchism with a desire to regress to the chaos of somalia or what-have-you. There are likely many ways to have a free and egalitarian society without a central authority but the idea that all it takes is removal of the state is extraordinarily naive and has the potential for as much human misery as has been caused by all of the failures of institutional communism in the 20th century.
    - nutball 13y ago
      Wasn't intending to argue with you, I was just using your comment as a springboard for a comment. I agree with all your points! I'm not inclined towards a pure conflict against the state without a currently-unfathomable communist process behind the insurrection that topples the state. Look at Egypt: pure conflict that toppled the state, but no great force underlying the conflict to sustain the necessary life outside the state. So you get the Muslim Brotherhood and the military quickly occupying the same state space. I'm interested in conflict, for sure, but only conflict supported by (communist, decentralized, anti-authoritarian, anti-statist) organization capable of sustaining beautiful lives amidst state collapse.
marsay 13y ago
I seems to me that hackers are by nature anarchists and even a simple idea of authoritative power(goverment) is repulsive to them. I don't see point arguing for or against goverment, it's just the attitude that matters in my opinion.
TausAmmer 13y ago
Anyone seeking power to "lead" people, never done it for the benefit of people. When you outlaw "leaders" then you might get somewhere.

jes 13y ago

I agree with your comment. I want a society that understands and cherishes individual rights, and a government that is limited to and efficacious in protecting them.

cinquemb 13y ago
I suppose that the amount of people that are willing to work in quantifiable/effective ways that give the individual, as much as any society, the incentive to push towards a society that understands and cherishes individual rights, and a government that is limited to and efficacious in protecting them will be less than the amount who want it, so in the logical conclusion of things: we will get neither until that imbalanced can be addressed.
mhurron 13y ago
> a government that is limited to and efficacious in protecting them (individual rights). Oddly, you just provided the downfall of such a government. From the obvious 'think of the children' type of abuse of power you would also have those that see protecting some rights as infringing on others. The FDA is an example of the latter. The FDA is a consumer rights organization, yet there are no shortage of people that see any protections as infringing on their rights.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  > The FDA is a consumer rights organization No, not really. It does not even remotely represent patients needs, and patient organizations do not take part in any of the FDA decisions, as far as I know.
  - mhurron 13y ago
    Yes it is. Just because it doesn't rush the newest cancer treatment to market or that it doesn't work the way you think it should doesn't change that. I saw an old advertizement the other day declaring the health benefits of donuts. The other day we had a link here with Mickey Mouse hawking amphetamines as, again, a healthy way to perk up. You can't sell food or drugs in the US that make false health claims because of the oversight of the FDA. You can't bring a drug to market without extensive testing for the same reason. Your food has to be clearly labeled with it's contents and a real breakdown of its nutritional facts because of FDA regulations. The FDA is a consumer rights agency.
    - ekianjo 13y ago
      Then if it were the case why isn't the FDA paying way more attention the quality of clinical trials before approving new drugs? Why do they only require a single successful clinical trial to register anything? Why don't they audit the clinical trial sites to confirm that the results reported by the drug companies are reliable and not falsified?
- jes 13y ago
  Thank you for your comment. Are you saying that a government focused on protecting individual rights cannot exist, because people sometimes disagree? If so, that's too big a leap for me -- I don't see how one necessarily follows from the other.
  - mhurron 13y ago
    > because people sometimes disagree? Because the majority may disagree. The majority will choose to infringe upon the rights of whatever minority there is if they disagree with it for whatever reason. Sometimes it's just the loud that push it and the majority don't care and stay quiet, but the result is the same. Protecting rights is an aim every good government must have but it can not be the only aim. It must also recognize when to step in to put a stop to the majority infringing on the rights of others. A government exists for the good of the society as a whole as well as the good of the individual.

jahaja 13y ago

I do sympathise with the author and I think that on the countrary, if people were more involved in their society, which is a major part of anarchism and the decentralisation it promotes, such people would have a much harder time aquiring such power than today. Today, those kind of people have whole instutions adjusted to such aims, the government and capitalism. Thus, the aim is to build a society that people want to defend by themselves, not just a paid subgroup - e.g the police or military. Regarding fairness and equality there's a lot of things that anarchism promotes, here's a few controversial: * Socialism * Decentralisation and organisation from the bottom up. * Abolishment of the ownership of land and private property. And no, the last point does not mean that someone will steal your toothbrush, rather that someone should not be able to amass the tools of explotation, such as more industry/machines than one can use by oneselve or acquire land that one cannot possibly culativate by their own.

Nursie 13y ago
>>if people were more involved in their society I think I see the flaw in your plan... Most folks would rather delegate AFAICT.
- unicornporn 13y ago
  And that might be because politics seem distant, irrelevant, unalterable and (maybe as a result of this) plain boring. If politics and power became more decentralized, perhaps it would become more relevant and engaging to people.
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Or maybe it could just be that we've had a taste of politics in our private lives, and decided we would much rather spend our time coding.
- jahaja 13y ago
  I believe that if people feel they can make a difference, people will get involved. If generally people can't make a difference, like today, people get apathetic.

yetanotherphd 13y ago

I was a "left-anarchist" or "ultra-leftist" in my early 20's so I can explain this point of view in a moderately sympathetic way. The following is not my actual opinion, but rather a summary of the beliefs I once held. As far as I'm aware it's also fairly different from Goldman's viewpoint too. The starting point is to identify classical liberalism as a veneer over power structures based on arbitrary authority. For example, the same society that claimed to support freedom of expression would lock women away in mental institutions for acting in a way deemed inappropriate (not so much nowadays, but definitely in the 30's). Today we still see a lot of arbitrary authority (often illegal) exercised by the government and its agents. Only a small portion of this is deemed "political" enough to gain media attention, and perhaps be corrected in the courts. Furthermore, the ideology of individual rights can be used to create "rights" that couldn't even be justified from a natural rights perspective, but are rather created to bolster the idea of an atomized society. Government subsidization of roads (rather than public transport) is a good example of this. While there is no natural right to drive a car on a government subsidized road, the ideology of individualism leads people to suppose that people are somehow more "free" under this setup than under a regime of mainly public transportation. To summarize, left-anarchists view classical individual rights as a chimera, where the real agenda is a society of atomized individuals with no sense of community, all subject to the authority of the state. The main claim of left-anarchists is that in the absence of this oppression, a natural order based on community enforcement will evolve, in which strict legal rights are not necessary to protect individual's wellbeing, because the community is good and cares about its members. Various examples are given for this, such as primitive tribal societies, temporary anarchistic situations such as during the Spanish civil war, working class communities who self-police rather than cooperating with law enforcement, and social orders that arise around the use of common property, such as with surfing.

ahultgren 13y ago
First of all, thanks for just the kind of explanation I was looking for. > The main claim of left-anarchists is that in the absence of this oppression, a natural order based on community enforcement will evolve[...] And my problem with such claims is that it seems like you're actually just proposing another kind of government; a local and decentralized one. After all a government is just an agreement between a set of people to organize affairs of mutual interest, right? Would it be correct to say that anarchists (in general or the left kind) actually prefers several smaller societies rather than one big central one? Also one could argue (as you kinda did) that once upon a time there were only such tribal societies, and that the societies we see today have evolved from those. So if you (with the belief you once held) argue that we should revert to such a system, how would you propose to prevent the inevitable "degradation" to the current system?

sliverstorm 13y ago

it seems very obvious that that is exactly what will happen if people are left without constraints. Those who can get some power will get more, and there's nothing to stop them Then clearly after we abolish government, we just need to establish some kind of power structure to limit this effect. Perhaps to keep things fair, we can put this power structure subject to votes by the people. There. Solved. Anarchy!

Millennium 13y ago
But the moment you've done that, you've established a de-facto government, thus violating the definition of anarchy. This happens with a lot of utopian schemes, actually: the logistics of maintaining them require them to mutate into something decidedly other than the original intent. Eventually, in the case of anarchy, the de-facto government inevitably finds a way to cement its power in a more de-jure fashion, and from there corruption proceeds as normal.
- aaronem 13y ago
  Have you ever investigated the origins and etymology of the word "utopia"? Most these days seem happy to sling the word around without knowing where it came from and what it means; should you be among that number, I recommend the subject to your attention, as you may well find interest in the result of such investigation.
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  See: Poe's Law :)

InclinedPlane 13y ago

Pure anarchism has many of the same problems as pure communism. In practice it's a system that is typically unstable and rapidly degenerates into simple autocracy or oligarchy.

nutball 13y ago
Humans have lived for nearly 200,000 years without states. States, which for their ~10,000 year history have been very ephemeral. Civilization keeps barreling on while states collapse and begin again. The forces that lead to the flux of states like internal power struggles, class conflict, and environmental destruction wouldn't exist in anarchy/communism. Check out Clastres who argues that pre-civilization human communities had mechanisms to ward off the formation of states.
- InclinedPlane 13y ago
  You're arguing with the wrong person, I'm not arguing for statism. I'm saying that naive anarchism is dangerous. Which it is. And primitive pseudo-anarchism (even 200,000 years ago societies had power structures) is probably not suitable for the modern, industrialized age. Does that mean that powerful central authorities, states, are the only answer? Not at all. But I would appreciate it if there weren't so many anti-statists who fulfilled every caricature of folks who liken libertarianism and anarchism with a desire to regress to the chaos of somalia or what-have-you. There are likely many ways to have a free and egalitarian society without a central authority but the idea that all it takes is removal of the state is extraordinarily naive and has the potential for as much human misery as has been caused by all of the failures of institutional communism in the 20th century.
  - nutball 13y ago
    Wasn't intending to argue with you, I was just using your comment as a springboard for a comment. I agree with all your points! I'm not inclined towards a pure conflict against the state without a currently-unfathomable communist process behind the insurrection that topples the state. Look at Egypt: pure conflict that toppled the state, but no great force underlying the conflict to sustain the necessary life outside the state. So you get the Muslim Brotherhood and the military quickly occupying the same state space. I'm interested in conflict, for sure, but only conflict supported by (communist, decentralized, anti-authoritarian, anti-statist) organization capable of sustaining beautiful lives amidst state collapse.

marsay 13y ago

I seems to me that hackers are by nature anarchists and even a simple idea of authoritative power(goverment) is repulsive to them. I don't see point arguing for or against goverment, it's just the attitude that matters in my opinion.

TausAmmer 13y ago

Anyone seeking power to "lead" people, never done it for the benefit of people. When you outlaw "leaders" then you might get somewhere.