Police is an entirely different system of justice than what existed in feudal times and emerges out of colonialization as an occupation army needing to pacify the local population. — boethius

This seems completely untrue, to my understanding. The first modern police force was Louis' in the 17th C in France.

The earliest American Systems were jus formalized watchmen systems utilizing local enforcers and militias. Municipal police is a different story, but still seems to not have a lot to do with anything colonial, per se. It was a density issue being dealt with by formalizing overwhelmed informed policing systems as above.

Of course the main evil of police is the whole justice system of essentially disappearing citizens from the community and imprisoning them without possibility of work, generally in a process without any effective rights for the poor. — boethius

This is an utterly bizarre way of characterizing protecting wider society from the ills of people who cannot conform to the social contract. Exile is less humane, but more on-point. Would we want that?

Police are not members of the community with duties to and interest in the community but a garrison force imposed on the local population to serve the interests of a distant power. — boethius

Pure nonsense.

This seems completely untrue, to my understanding. The first modern police force was Louis' in the 17th C in France. — AmadeusD

I am describing the process of going from feudalism, where there is police as you confirm, to a system of police.

Why there was no police in feudalism is because pretty much anyone with wealth lived in a castle with their own guards and soldiers of the lord or king (or queen) in charge. Cities were mostly walled and basically just a really big castle. Basic principle being if you had wealth you protected it yourself.

Everybody else (at least 90% of the population) were peasants and lived in villages and hamlets and they were mostly pretty poor and there was nothing like a state providing security services, so what security issues they had they organized themselves, such as having a system of watchmen to watch over things, community members taking turns to do so.

So why would society suddenly develop the concept and need of what we call police?

There are two concerns. The first is the emergence of the bourgeoisie as a powerful political class. The bourgeoisie are wealthy enough to have security concerns but not wealthy enough to all have their own guards and soldiers. For example, you can't easily pickpocket a lord or a king in feudalism because he goes around with a bunch of knights that make him difficult to get to and will also immediately cut your hands off if you tried. However, with the emergence of capitalism and the bourgeoisie there's suddenly a lot of people that want to go around with a lot of wealth in there pocket but don't want to pay for security personally.

So, the solution is for a collective security force of the bourgeoisie which is what we call police.

Second, peasants did not have to be "coerced to farm". There has never been any such thing in the history of humanity as a "farmers strike". Doesn't mean farmers can't agitate, but they do so by revolting and armed conflict and not by simply refusing to farm. To have a strike you need labourers who do not depend on the output of their labour. So with the industrial revolution started labour agitation of a new form that not only disrupts the bourgeoisie concept of how things could be but even threatens a revolution against the bourgeoisie and their new political power represented in the modern state.

So, police are also a tool to pacify the population and suppress agitation. The states developing the modern police force are the very same states colonizing the entire planet, so whenever local agitation becomes a problem it is simply common sense and natural to recycle whatever has been learned in pacification of native populations in the colonies to the domestic situation. Of course you're not going to call it the same thing, but the dynamic persists right up to the present day.

For example, why are US police forces so interested to train in Israel and learn from Israeli security forces ... not say low-crime rate places like Norway of Switzerland? The reason is that Israel can teach pacification techniques that are relevant to maintaining class structure in the US, whereas Norway and Switzerland can teach how to attenuate the class structure (even while still having super wealth people around), avoid poverty and organized crime that goes with it, give everyone health care and so on, and create a society in which police have a different role than pacification of the local population to ensure compliance.

The earliest American Systems were jus formalized watchmen systems utilizing local enforcers and militias. Municipal police is a different story, but still seems to not have a lot to do with anything colonial, per se. It was a density issue being dealt with by formalizing overwhelmed informed policing systems as above. — AmadeusD

If by "per se" you mean that when the first people were brought together and called "police" that the state didn't get up and make a speech of how these people will be used to pacify the working class and repress the underclass to reduce agitation and maintain and protect the privileges of the upper classes. Sure, yeah, I guess.

As I explain above, to get to the modern police there's a long process. What matters, as I explain at some length in the comments you're responding to, is that police work on behalf of the state and represent state interests, and they are not apart of nor work on behalf of local community interests.

This is an utterly bizarre way of characterizing protecting wider society from the ills of people who cannot conform to the social contract. Exile is less humane, but more on-point. Would we want that? — AmadeusD

This is essentially not worth responding to.

Pure nonsense. — AmadeusD

Police are organized, trained, paid and supervised by the state, therefore they follow instructions from the state and act in the interests of the state. If you look around and ask yourself "where is the state?" it is unlikely to be around you.

Even with the laws "on the books" without putting them into question, it's easy to prove. For example, if you defrauded and extorted your employer police would get involved. However, if your employer defrauded you and extorted you out of wages, police would not get involved. The exact same sums could be involved and the exact same words could be used, in the first case it would be obvious that police would answer a call from an employer saying an employee has committed fraud and is extorting them; as obvious as police not doing anything about an employee saying the exact same words to commit the exact same kind of fraud and extortion, only difference is the roles in society.

Why does the police system respond as it's basically silly and a joke for employees to report fraud and extortion from employers? Because the police system does not serve the interests of the community.

To take a concrete example.

An employee is cheated out of wages owed and some deception is created to try to trick the employee from understanding they were cheated.

Simply because something can be a civil issue does not mean the manner in which it is done is a criminal issue. You have the right to not pay what you owe and force the counter-party to take civil acton. However, you don't have the right to make false statements about what you owe, you'd have to either say nothing or then make up some plausible civil litigation reason you don't owe the money; you could also just straight up say that maybe you do owe the money but don't have it so what-are-you-gonna-do. So plenty of ways debts are a civil issue. However, making false statements to try to deceive the counter party about their rights is fraud, deceive them out of what they are owed or then try to deceive them out of their rights of redress in the situation.

For example, you go into the debt at the casino. If you say nothing, just don't pay because you don't have the money, that's a civil issue and the casino will need to sue you to get their money. However, let's say you come up with some scheme to try to trick the casino about what's owed, well now you're committing fraud and police for definitely sure will show up to investigate the fraud.

But you don't stop there, when the casino challenges you on your false statements you threaten the casino that they aren't even going to be able to continue their casino activity if they go after the money and the fraud, that if they got a nice operation going on and that's not going to continue if they go after the money. Text book extortion.

Now, let's say you're an employer, and you owe an employee money but you come up with some scheme involving false statements and false documents to try to trick your employee out of what's owed. Same exact scenario but incredibly unlikely police will show up to investigate this "scheme" by an employer. But you don't stop there, when your employee figures it out and then complains to you, you threaten them that they won't ever work in the industry again if they keep it up.

That's text book extortion, just as if you threatened the casino's very economic existence, threatening to shut down your economic existence of your livelihood is the same thing. How many times have employees heard this threat that by clearly illegal means (such as defamation and then collusion with others to harm a party) they will be deprived of their livelihood? How many times has it been investigated by police as extortion?

However, threaten an employer, say their business isn't going to exist for much longer if they keep it up about asking about your previous defrauding them of money, you really saying police are going to ignore that? Not show up almost immediately to start investigating what you mean by "not exist" (you can come up with plausible deniability defences, but police aren't just going to assume A. you're even making those plausible deniability defences and B. they are 100% airtight just because the words "plausible" and "deniability" can be brought together in the same sentence to describe what you're trying to do).

So, if you're thesis is correct, police would be as concerned about wage theft when it could potentially involve fraud and extortion (that's why you investigate, to see if there's a criminal case for the wrongdoing), as they would be about analogous fraud and extortion if committed by employees against their employer.

And we haven't even gotten to the issue of taxes and whether your saying false statements about taxes owed, not to speak of threatening the state's existence as a coherent economic unit when the taxman starts asking questions, would be treated the same way as an employer making false statements about wages owed and threatening employees continued coherent economic existence.

The answer to all these issues is the incredibly obvious conclusion that police work for the state first and foremost and then the state's main constituents who are the employer class, and police do not work to protect the interests of the employee or lower classes.

I am glad the conversation has naturally come back to the comparing of the two as the communism part, queried in the OP, had fallen behind. I take responsibility for that though as I expressed increased interest in the anarchism due to my relative lack of understanding of that.

I would now be interested in looking at the nuances of communism again. — unimportant

Of course zero worries, very normal for discussions to meander all over the place, and if something is really off topic then a new discussion can be created.

Going back to the attempts of communism that have already gone before vein — unimportant

First off, the historical analysis is complex. It's a Western truism that all socialist and communist governing projects have completely failed.

However, without the Soviet Union, and perhaps without even Stalin, the situation could be a 1000 year Reich in Europe. At the same time, the intense price paid by the Soviet Union to defeat the Nazis may have been essentially a fatal blow, or significant contributing factor, resulting in its inevitable collapse.

In addition to this, the West portrays Tsarist Russia as basically ballerinas prancing around engaging in romantic love affair and also sometimes chased around by everyone's favourite modern shaman Rasputin and then brutally murdered by the revolution.

However, the truth is Tsarist Russia was a pretty brutal and incompetent regime that gets itself into the disastrous war of WWI and then manages that even more disastrously than the other countries involved, leading to the breakdown of society. Tsarist Russia essentially becomes a failed state and in this context the Soviet takeover is a remarkable success.

Of course compared to Western liberal democratic standards (which we can clearly see Western don't actually have) then of course Soviet Union is a tyrannical police state that we don't want, then later collapses so is was not even viable as a horrendous despotic system.

Furthermore, just as we easily do in analyzing Western countries there are pros and cons in communist one-party systems. China too is a one party communist system and we keep on hearing how successful it is. So if we're judging systems on simply economic terms then over 1 billion people succeeding economically with a one-party communist system modelled on the Soviet Union can't be ignored.

The basic defence of what contemporary Marxists (such as on Gabriel Rockhill) starts with the problem Lenin is most concerned with which is that any anarchist or communist style revolution results in all the capitalists countries attacking it, so it's a difficult problem with immense risks to try to shake off tyranny, but that it's difficult does not mean it is not worth trying to do.

how would you explain the seeming success of small scale communes of the 60s and 70s hippy movement, as well as your various examples going further back, mostly in the religious context, comparing those to the 'famous disasters' of china and russia et al that capitalist detractors are always so quick to jump to as being the only logical conclusion of communism. — unimportant

The basic problem is ownership of land. Given the choice most people rather work for themselves, building their own community and making their own food, and especially if literally every previous generation was doing the same thing and that's what you know how to do.

Why the "industrial revolution" goes hand in hand with the enclosures is that in order to get people to "want to work" in a factor filled with poisons like arsenic and coal smoke, long hours for little pay, you have to remove from them the possibility of just basically camping and then incrementally improving their camp site into a hamlet or village.

And even that's not enough, but refusing to work in a factor needs also to be criminalized as just going around as a vagabond and seeing what happens, doing small economic activity like inter-settlement trading and odd-jobs, is still a superior lifestyle to working in an arsenic based industrial process in a factory filled with coal smoke. The first industrial workers were literally covered head to toe with coal soot.

Of course, whenever people do have the opportunity to work the land as a community, if there's no external force that comes and destroys them, it is usually successful. We view it as normal that peasants in feudal times were both able and willing to work the land to sustain themselves, sort of goes without saying. It remains true today. But if you can't access any land it's difficult to do.

And this part, of people being both suited for and generally desiring to, live in communities and work mostly for themselves on things that improve their own lives, does not really require any theory.

What requires theory is explaining why this changed, how this change is maintained, what the impacts on society are of "urban anonymity" and what the impacts on the environment are of a system exclusively devoted to maximizing the throughput of material transformation into commodities, so exclusively dedicated that it invents the practice of planned obsolescence (something that had never occurred to anyone in any previous economic system as a good idea to do) as well as implementing the project on a global scale. Not at all obvious why a system incompatible with both human social dynamics and environmental constraints would develop so spectacularly.

Likewise, if such an unfortunate series of events were to occur, requires a lot of theory to try to find some way to reverse or then otherwise transform the situation into something sociologically healthy and sustainable.

I have seen it claimed many times that those hippy communes were 'based on communist values' but I am not sure how except general shared responsibility of labour and everyday concerns. Isn't that just how smallish units would work anyway, like a family? What makes them specifically 'communist inspired'? — unimportant

Exactly. When economists claim that the natural state of affairs in society is rational self interested parties seeking to maximize gains through all interactions and transactions, they simply take it for granted that the entire foundation of human society, raising children, is a communist exercise of sharing and caring.

And that's the basic theoretical problem of modern economics which is that its central thesis is that "people want to make a profit, except when they don't". So people are self-interested want to profit from social interactions except when they don't vis-a-vis their own children, family and friends and also other community members they feel sympathy for. Judges are self-interested want to make a profit in their profession except when they don't because that would be called taking a bribe or otherwise compromising their impartiality and we just assume the justice system is fair and impartial in mediating contractual obligations in order to have a market in the first place. Firemen are self-interested and want to make a profit in their profession too, except when they don't and literally sacrifice their lives to save total strangers. Soldiers self-interested and want to profit from their profession, but maximizing compensation for the risk of facing enemies in battle would compromise the security of the state upon which all private property depends but for its de jure existence and de facto existence, therefore we're just going to go ahead and assume in the "market for soldiers" there is no self-interest and profit maximization, and that soldiers aren't going to demand mercenary market based salaries as well as just quick when the risk of death exceeds some original salary to risk tolerance economic calculation.

Basically everyone's self interested except when they aren't, which is not a theory of anything but just only selecting data that supports one's narrative and ignoring everything else (aka. propaganda).

The reason for this propaganda is to justify the policy of both allowing and insisting upon corporations being self-interested, out to maximize profits, even if it's likely to be in theory as well as provably true in practice that this damages society as a whole.

Why would society legally mandate self-harm to itself? There is by definition no justification, and so it must be assumed in as some sort of necessary evil, such as human nature. Corporations seek to maximize profits because individuals seek to maximize profits and anytime they clearly don't do that we'll just pat them on the head as good parents, good judges, good firemen, good soldiers and thank them for their service, and just completely ignore that contradicts our core identify and justifications for the entire power structure.

Why did those small sects seem to putter along without much incident while the big state wide endeavours leave huge blots on human history? Is it just a matter of scale or other factors? I would like to explore this, as to why the big attempts have had, invariably, to my knowledge, big failures and what led that to happen? How to refute the claim that 'communism doesn't work just look at these examples'? — unimportant

It's alluded to above, but states get attacked by other states.

In general, inclusive decision making is only viable when:

A. there is time for the decision making process to be carried
B. the sharing widely of the information of what the decision is about is not problematic

Conditions that obviously do not exist in wartime or on a ship in a storm. Why ships have captains and even the most egalitarian society's nevertheless appoint de facto dictators to manage war.

All political units that come under enough existential pressure must transform, one way or another, into a despotic regime as it is the only option for decision making to have even a chance at survival and the long term consequences to society of despotism must be discounted in the fact of imminent existential threats.

Why feudalism was as militaristic as states are today, as any feudal lord is liable to be attacked by any adjacent feudal lord at any time. The competition between lords in feudalism powered by peasant communism is replaced by competition between states powered by industrial commodity production, particularly of weapons.

It is not a coincidence that states that have developed the most inclusive decision making systems, such as Switzerland, have been the most secure over the longest period of time.

If seas are calm and there is no urgency, then the ships crew can assemble to debate what to do and every voice can be heard.

The nature of warfare also explains why the progressive branches of socialism (that simply rebrand and social-democracy) are the most successful in getting a lot of what socialists and anarchists wanted such as free education, free healthcare, social safety net, strong unions, police and prison reforms, and so on. But, it is not simply due to having a "good idea" but being in conditions in which there is little military threat. You cannot simply say that people in colonies suffering from brutal repression and exploitation should have simply had "the better idea" of inclusive democracy.

It's not so obvious how to to be free of oppressive systems, otherwise people would do it.

How could it work on a large nation/world scale, and what would be different if attempted again on that level to avoid the mistakes of the past? — unimportant

The basic principle is devolution. Oppressive systems are by definition power systems (i.e. men with guns) that serve the interests of a distant power centre, such as colonial gerrisons serving the interests of whatever empire sent them there, of then police serving the interests of the state (less clear "where it is exactly", but definitely you know when you "aren't the state").

The basic characteristic of a less oppressive system is that decisions are made on the level and including the people who are affected by the impact of the decision. The most repressive systems were absolute monarchies in the pre-revolutionary era (why people found revolution to be a risk worth taking, which is extremely rare in history and doesn't "just happen" because someone wrote a pamphlet) were incredibly centralized with essentially all important decisions in the whole state being made by direct representatives of the king sent from the capital to manage things; and the basic structural change that revolutions brought about that deposed (one way or another) absolute monarchies is the devolution of power (a process that continues to today).

Why these absolute monarchies were structurally even more repressive than the previous feudal systems they developed out of, is that in feudalism lords had the decision making power locally and there were all sorts of inputs into decision making (church, guilds, even peasants were represented), so even if system is quite hierarchal locally you at least have decisions in "your fief" decided by "your feudal lord" and that could make a lot of difference. The feudal lord also had the awareness that he needs to be able raise men at arms and materials from his population in times of war as well as build defensive structures in times of peace, therefore there is genuine local reasons pressuring decision making to genuinely care for the local society, as the lord is aware that any failure in battle could get his head chopped off.

So even though feudal society was not democratic it had a devolved power structure that represented people's interests reasonably well, and why it then lasted 1000 years.

Take away that devolved decision making structure and put all the power in the hands of the king, due to no longer relying on feudal lords and knights managing and raising men at arms and resources from their fiefs to fight wars, but instead relying on the commodity production of muskets and cannon, disastrous wars and famine results almost immediately and then revolutionary destruction of the entire system, on a historically short time frame. Where power was the most centralized (France, Russia) is where revolution was the most violent and profound.

And the cause is not "ideas" but a political system that is not able to process information and make decisions even plausibly in the interests of the people governed.

Ok so it is not totally unfounded that anarchists have at some points in time sown discord in society. — unimportant

Yes and no. Anarchism first emerged as both an academic political term for what we today would call a failed state, obviously not generally desirable, and then later to describe people (from this point of view) accused of trying to cause a failed state, what we would call terrorists. This is way before anarchism is a term coined to describe a political philosophy that had largely been developed by previous authors but not called anarchism yet.

So, it's sort of like if in a 100 years someone makes a political philosophy called "terrorism" and people casually go around calling themselves "terrorists", maybe considered a bit edgy but entirely new meaning to terrorism as some well thought out political theory, or maybe just coincidence in that "terre" means "earth" in French so maybe in 100 years terrorists are "the earth people".

But basically anyone with any grievance whatsoever resorting to violence would be called an anarchists in order to paint them as just violent extremists causing chaos for no reason and to dismiss their grievances. Most violent groups are local autonomy groups seeking political independence; such as the American founding fathers.

Nevertheless, there was both anarchist revolution that did establish anarchist communes and governments at various times, as well as some anarchists who took it upon themselves to rid society of the state, thinking that the results would be splendid (that people would naturally self organized into amazingly peaceful and reasonable anarchist collectives if there just so happened to not be a state anymore). What can be said in the defence of these anarchists is that they were faced with incredibly violent states that would wantonly murder and torture people, so wantonly assassinating agents of the state in turn is a tit for tat tactic in these circumstances, and one reason that elites accept limitations to their power (cruel and unusual punishment and so on) is partly because they don't want to be randomly executed by the state (the primary constituents of the state also have reason to fear the state if they are suddenly out of favour) but also because it's forms part of a wider compromise that if the state is relatively peaceful then grievances against the state should be relatively peaceful too.

Which is all definitely an improvement over the arbitrary, and often completely incompetent, rule of absolute monarchs.

The main problem with the social wide compromise that results in what we call liberal democracy is the continued tyrannical exploitation of the imperial system abroad and the ecological un-sustainability of the entire project. If the liberal democratic system is not reliant on foreign resource exploitation then history shows it just moves towards a welfare state set of policies (such as the Nordics and Switzerland), which is a clear direction of improvement we would expect if people's interests are being represented (why wouldn't normal people vote for universal healthcare? or free education? or to not be in the street if their business goes bust? etc.).

However, imperial systems that extend beyond the nation states borders result in a very different system of influence and power, that forms the power basis of continuing a divide and conquer strategy to maintain essentially tyrannical rule even in a representative democracy.

The main reason is that when elites depend on the exploitation of foreign labour then they have no interest to maintain healthy domestic labour (in terms of health-care, education, rights and so on) and domestic idle labour, that foreign labour simply does better and cheaper, is simply a nuisance and so criminalized in one way or another. However, if the elites (of which liberal democracy is designed to super heavily in bias of) cannot exploit foreign labour then their only option is to make due with the labour they have domestically, so if domestic labour is healthier they make more money, if domestic labour is more educated they make more money, if domestic labour has rights which they insist on being respected in order to work efficiently then elites just have to deal with that.

Conclusion being that if you have both democratic pressure and most elites would also benefit from healthier and more skilled domestic labour, then these interests easily align to overwhelm the interests of elites that happen to make their profits from sick, unskilled and easily exploited domestic labour pool.

But the basic point of all that is that the political situation can be quite complicated with many interests and pressures, both internal and external, and solutions to problems are not self evident.

For example, certainly many Iranians have many grievances with the Iranian government ... but they also don't want to be bombed by Israel, as happened this morning, and the problem of advancing the cause of living in a peaceful and prosperous society is not so easy when there are foreign threats requiring military readiness, such as Israel today or Iraq in the past.

What's the ultimate cause of this violence? Imperial colonialism in Palestine.

So it's all well and good for a Swiss to say we should just have more inclusive decision making and hold hands, but it's more difficult in conditions of foreign imperial exploitation and "rivalry" that the Swiss haven't faced for some centuries.

Man, I just listed a couple of examples to show that there's stuff out there to research -- that question you posed is a good question, but also huge and I wouldn't be able to answer it well without more work. I'd also note that they're just examples -- I'd include a lot of the socialist countries on the list, and I'd include a lot of the anarchist projects often mentioned if you go through the links provided in the thread. The point of the example was to note that we at least have real examples of humans doing this, so that the animal analogies really are just analogies. — Moliere

Nonsense. I thought you did your research prior to posting your examples, or else how would you know what a Marxist is vs an Anarchist? Why didn't you just post a link to the Marxist site and claim that it is an example of both socialism and anarchism? What are the key differences? Until you provide the key differences by defining the words you are using, your examples could be considered analogies as well.

The point was that that the "anarchists" in the Spanish Civil war weren't anarchists. They were socialists participating in an insurrection.

Anarchy is the framework for both Socialists (Bolshevik revolution) and Libertarians (American insurrection of the late 18th century) to overthrow the current framework before their ideas can be fully implemented.

If you are saying that anarchists advocate for worker control and collective ownership of resources then you are conflating anarchy with socialism. Anarchy is not a social framework. It is the absence of one.

Then I will be in error from now until forever -- what are we to call the people who call themselves anarchists and organize anarchically and advocate for anarchic things that have nothing to do with an absence of a social framework?

Horizontalists who are confused about anarchy?

Then I will be in error from now until forever -- what are we to call the people who call themselves anarchists and organize anarchically and advocate for anarchic things that have nothing to do with an absence of a social framework?

Horizontalists who are confused about anarchy? — Moliere

That's the problem - believing that people who identify in some way or another are always correct in their assertion. Has there ever been a case where someone has misidentified themselves, either by accident or on purpose?

When they claim to be something, what do they mean? What characteristics are they referring to, and how are those arrangement of characteristics distinct from other types of identity?

:rofl: Well, it might be your problem, but for my part I'm calling the anarchists anarchists, rather than "confused about what they are saying because pure anarchy is NO order" -- I'm content with continuing to be wrong by that standard.

Well, it might be your problem, but for my part I'm calling the anarchists anarchists, rather than "confused about what they are saying because pure anarchy is NO order" -- I'm content with continuing to be wrong by that standard. — Moliere

If you're content with that then you must be content with calling people who claim to be a Dark Lord of the Sith a Dark Lord of the Sith, else you would be also be content with being inconsistent.

Eh, it's more that I think that your notion of how to look at political philosophies is flawed -- theory is important, but relying upon the meanings of words as we've come to understand them from our background is going to produce flawed results because all backgrounds are politicized. So the notion of anarchy you're espousing is something of a liberal perception of anarchy.

I mean, I've lived in anarchist collectives so no matter what you think about anarchy I'm going to have an idea about it that's got a real referent, and even if it's wrong then that's what I'm talking about and not some kind of absolute lack of order for the sake of no order because yeah man no rules rocks. If anything the practice of anarchy requires more discipline than liberals are willing to put up with so the characteristization from that ideal is not just something else, but almost an inverse of the real practice so it looks like some kind of hypostization to me rather than something real.

Eh, it's more that I think that your notion of how to look at political philosophies is flawed -- theory is important, but relying upon the meanings of words as we've come to understand them from our background is going to produce flawed results because all backgrounds are politicized. So the notion of anarchy you're espousing is something of a liberal perception of anarchy. — Moliere

You're not reading what I said. How does asserting that both socialists and libertarians have used anarchy as a means to an end espousing something of a liberal perception of anarchy? And why would I be asking for definitions of anarchy if I'm already expressing some bias? You are projecting.

My point in asking the questions that I am is to tease out those distinguishing characteristics of anarchy from all other social frameworks including liberal and socialist ones.

My point in asking the questions that I am is to tease out those distinguishing characteristics of anarchy from all other social frameworks including liberal and socialist ones. — Harry Hindu

I mean, fair enough. I'm going to base any sort of analysis based on two things: a political philosophy, and what the political actors have done.

So how do we choose who the liberals are? Readers of Locke and Hobbes, proponents of individual rights, especially to private property, and the examples are the states which moved from hierachies based on monarchy/church and towards one's based on business.

Same with Marx, and I haven't seen a protest there.

But then I would do the same for anarchists -- so the philosophers have been listed in this thread, and it seems to me that there are real people doing things with those theories throughout history and today so the idea that real anarchy is a total lack of order just seems ludicrous to me. And it's that picture of complete disorder that's the liberal picture -- whether you're a liberal or not, that's the general background image of the anarchist.

Or no?

But then I would do the same for anarchists -- so the philosophers have been listed in this thread, and it seems to me that there are real people doing things with those theories throughout history and today so the idea that real anarchy is a total lack of order just seems ludicrous to me. And it's that picture of complete disorder that's the liberal picture -- whether you're a liberal or not, that's the general background image of the anarchist.

Or no? — Moliere

No.

So, what would a socialist call a liberal participating in an insurrection to overthrow the socialist government - fascist (since anarchists are just rebellious socialists)?

Forget about what some philosopher said. Philosophers are just humans who are trying to make sense of the world they observe. When you, Moliere, observe someone's behavior what types of behaviors would you categorize as "anarchy", "liberal", "socialist", other than them making sounds with their mouth, "I am an anarchist/liberal/socialist"? This is what I have been asking for - real world examples.

Is Emma Goldman not a real world example?

Is Emma Goldman not a real world example? — Moliere

of what? What did she do to qualify as such?

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goldman-1869-1940/

You provided a link to a PBS article when I'm asking for YOUR categorical observations of anarchistic, liberal and socialist behavior. Have you ever observed another person, or do you only observe internet articles? Are you an AI training bot?

Are you an AI training bot? — Harry Hindu

I'm a time-travelling AI bot -- you'll see my account comes from before ChatGPT, but the AI of the future discovered time travelling before humans did so I've been here all along before their proper invention, a sleeper agent waiting for my time to post.

I've never observed even one person.

You'd do best to not listen to me.

My advice to your developer is that you need more training.

Back on track -- sorry for the divergence. Your points have been excellent.

Ok so it is not totally unfounded that anarchists have at some points in time sown discord in society. The mainstream view is not a total fabrication then. :sweat: — unimportant

Yeh, it's not an entire fabrication -- but you know how you grow up with "the time when we had to defeat the British great grandpa Blah did his duty and founded what we have now" then find out what our nation has done for-real-for-realz then you start seeing how propaganda by the deed is smol boi stuff.

I agree with @boethius on the origins of police and while it's related I think it better in another thread?

Wow don't waste any more time indulging them. Hindu, is like Jordan Peterson. Wants to argue semantics because they don't have the chops to actually add anything to the discussion and endlessly try and trip up the interlocutor with what they think are 'gotchas' and claim some victory.

I made a similar comment earlier but edited out as I thought it a little strong but have no such compunctions after all that chicanery above.

Been quite clear through this thread those who want to have a discussion in earnest and those who just want to throw in their bad faith 2c.

Heh, alright. Glad to hear it. It was mostly for you that I spoke up so much.

I'm just trying to help people understand -- I don't care what they do after that.

Wow don't waste any more time indulging them. Hindu, is like Jordan Peterson. — unimportant

But I didn't identify as being like Jordan Peterson, and according to Moliere's own arguments one has to identify as such to be called as such.

Wants to argue semantics because they don't have the chops to actually add anything to the discussion and endlessly try and trip up the interlocutor with what they think are 'gotchas' and claim some victory. — unimportant

Sure, when someone wants to use a word in a different way than it is commonly used - as in conflating anarchy with socialism, then I am going to start discussing semantics, not because I wanted to but because the other is playing word games.

I mean, just look at your recent post to Moilere and their response:

Ok so it is not totally unfounded that anarchists have at some points in time sown discord in society. The mainstream view is not a total fabrication then. :sweat:
— unimportant

Yeh, it's not an entire fabrication -- — Moliere

So we finally have an admission that a behavior that is categorized as "anarchy" is sowing discord. Funny how you made this argument but then showed exactly what I've been asking for. :roll:

I am just starting to read the anarchist faq. Is this the same one as the one you linked earlier but with a different url?

While both anarchism's and communism's relationship with one another have been described as cordial so far and even cooperative bedfellows this writer's negative view of communism immediately jumps out at me:

The positive core of anarchism can even be seen in the anarchist critique of such flawed solutions to the social question as Marxism and right-wing "libertarianism"

Yup, that's the one.

While both anarchism's and communism's relationship with one another have been described as cordial so far and even cooperative bedfellows this writer's negative view of communism immediately jumps out at me: — unimportant

There's definitely fierce debates between anarchists and socialist / Marxists, especially historically.

However, it's important to keep the context in mind of what's agreed on, and as a general rule the closer two political philosophies are the fiercer the debate, for several reasons.

First, if we imagine political philosophies structured as a tree with a trunk of core principles and then branching out into corollary principles, models of the world and eventually individual policies or opinions on specific situations, then if the difference between two philosophies is at the trunk there's not much to debate about. The disagreement is at the core and of course that can be debated but there isn't a long list of tiny differences each one debatable at length if not indefinitely.

For the same structural reason, if you do agree on the core and many of the main branches then from your point of view it should be possible to convince the other that what you believe follows from shared principles, and vice-versa. So debates appear to be, and often are, resolvable because there's enough common ground that the other party seems to be convincible.

Then there is the practical consideration that someone with a lot of common has practical benefits to arriving at an agreement on what to do and thus forming an alliance. So there's some practical reason to debate and try to work out differences. With an open mind you're more likely also to be genuinely curious what supports these differences in opinion; such as facts you don't know about or arguments you haven't heard. Whereas if you disagree with someone at a very fundamental level, once you've debated the position once, all subsequence debates are pretty similar and you don't expect to learn anything.

Psychologically, the more similar, but still different, a point of view is the more it challenges one's identity. Encountering a point of view that is completely different and you'd never adopt because you think it's simply and obviously wrong at it's very core or then the culture is so vastly different you could never really become that anyways, is not a challenge to ones identity. However, people who are very similar in belief are a far greater psychological challenge on the remaining differences. So much so that differences on subtle theological issues can lead to large scale conflict within a religion in which people share 99.9% the same beliefs.

Indeed, it is not just marxism, socialism, anarchism and communism that share a common core, but also liberalism and capitalism.

All these theories share the common core of enlightenment humanitarian values, where the individual has value, society should exist to nurture and expand that value, individuals should not be harmed simply be benefit, much less for the pleasure of, other individuals or sacrificed for trivial reasons, people should be equal in the legal resolution of disputes (i.e. there's no aristocrats who's words weigh more or can't face accusations from commoners at all), individuals have fundamental rights society / the state can't simply dismiss for expediency, the environment should be managed sustainably, "the will of the people" should be manifest in government, society should not be controlled by priests, and so on.

In terms of "qualitative experience of society" all the major Western political philosophies have the same nominal objective of a society of free, creative and prosperous life of the individual on equal legal footing with other members of society and in a sustainable relationship with nature .

What is different is how this enlightenment humanist objective is to be achieved.

And the major criticism from one of these enlightenment schools towards another is not even that the opposing philosophy is bad per se but that if and when implemented it will and does fall victim to an entirely different political philosophy called greed. That capitalism as we know it cannot and does not deliver on its promises because the greed of the predatory rich and powerful (which is not all the rich and powerful but the non-predators do not balance out the predators) take over the system using their riches in pursuit of their insatiable lust for power wealth and power and turn it into an oligarchy. Likewise, the criticism levelled against Marxist-Leninist vanguardism (the kind that created the Soviet Union) is that such a project will create a class of predatory bureaucrats with the exact same consequence of creating a de facto oligarchy if not dictatorship.

For our purposes here, many, if not most, socialists will claim anarchists are impractical in their pursuit of the shared communist objective, both in the strategy and tactics employed to oppose the capitalist oligarchic state as well as in organizing a new social structure if and when they were to ever succeed. Anarchists usual criticism of socialism / marxism is both more incremental and more radical, simultaneously. More incremental in that there is no point of a revolution if common people have zero idea what the revolution is about, so there needs to be a hearts and minds campaign before taking over or toppling the state for that not to horribly wrong. More radical in that anarchists do not view industrial work as healthy to begin with (compared to socialists who tend to reify industrial work and the industrial worker and are solely focused on who benefits from the surplus value) and so anarchists will often strive to not only engage in opposition and criticism of the state but also develop and demonstrate completely different ways of living that are no industrial. A short version of this is that anarchists usually don't found unions because anarchists usually don't do any "work".

The disagreements were more heated and pressing in the 19th and early 20th century when revolutions were clearly possible and actually happening; so "if we were to topple or take over the state, what to do?" was clearly a far higher stakes debate in that context. Keeping in mind these revolutions were generally against absolute monarchies so the situation is very tense and violent (literature is banned).

Not to say the enlightenment humanist political philosophies are somehow equal with equally weighty criticism one to another, but that they share a common core which then gives rise to many debates.

Fascism is best understood as a rejection of this enlightenment humanist core and an attempt to revert back to a feudalism, why it emerges after the perceived disastrous attempts to implement all the various enlightenment political projects, and in particular disastrous failures liberal democracy of which the idea is to mediate the debate between different points of view and deliver incremental improvement (why liberal democracy proponents are wedded to the myth of progress).

In the night between 27 and 28 October 1922, about 30,000 Fascist blackshirts gathered in Rome to demand the resignation of liberal Prime Minister Luigi Facta and the appointment of a new Fascist government. — Benito Mussolini, Wikipedia

And what does Mussolini believe?

When dealing with such a race as Slavic—inferior and barbarian—we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy ... We should not be afraid of new victims ... The Italian border should run across the Brenner Pass, Monte Nevoso and the Dinaric Alps ... I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians ... — Benito Mussolini, Wikipedia

Which is obviously incompatible with any form of enlightenment values, but a return to the most wantonly violent feudal ethic of raping and pillaging and murdering whole people's and cities a la crusades or Gengis Khan.

However, that society has gone through an enlightenment social change, the old feudal ethic and hierarchy cannot simply be re-imposed on society.

Mussolini cannot simply declare himself king, as that wouldn't make any sense as if we're going back to "feudalism classic" then if you want to be king you need some birthright claim to the crown, so Mussolini calls himself "the leader" instead, and generally fascism is powered by feudal nostalgia because the basic argument is that "all this intellectual stuff isn't working, we just need to go back to simpler times when society was made of 'real men'," but of course no one in fascist movements hasty detailed understanding of feudalism so it's all mediated through a mythical interpretation of the feudal past in symbiosis with vestigial feudal institutions and cultural touchstones (such as going on glorious crusades again). "The leader" is the new king, the nation state is the new religion, officers the new knights, propagandists the new priests.

Precisely because reinventing feudalism in this way is not so sophisticated and lacks any depth (people aren't all that sure what this new belief system actually is, unlike in feudal times) it can only be stabilized by intense and violent conflict with both internal and external enemies. Internal enemies must be eradicated as the project is not intellectually self sustaining and so is incredibly intellectually weak and so threatened by basic criticism. External enemies must be conquered in a blood frenzy to fuel this new warrior ethic to flourish. The core attraction of fascism being that being an individual is psychological hard; it was psychologically a lot easier in many ways to "know your place" in a rigid and unchanging hierarchy in which one's intellectual focus is narrowed to the performance of clearly defined glorious deeds to the acclamation of one's peers.

As an anarchist I would go further and say fascism, at its core, is a psychological response to the lack of meaning in industrial work. Within the dark claustrophobic confines of industrialism the prospect of an epic violent adventure can appear as the way out to fresh air. Naturally, along the narrow forest path the hero will encounter many fowl beasts that require slaughtering to continue along the way to saving the kingdom from evils and decay.

Nevertheless, the emergence of fascisms also attenuates the previous intellectual and political competitions between the enlightenment philosophies. That things can be a lot worse is a powerful argument in favour of the status quo, though, ironically, it is precisely the failure of the status quo to deliver on its promises that motivates fascist movements; but if you don't know much about it then the status quo saying "things could be worse" is a pacifying song.

Something else I have been thinking about. If we were to engage in a thought experiment, how would social life look under an anarchist or communist society?

With the hideous conspicuous consumption and 'vip culture' of today being seen as the pinnacle of success in this capitalist society it is just a reflection of the indoctrinated hierarchies of capitalism isn't it? Also with social media, everything is a popularity contest and how people feel about themselves is determined by how much they are above others.

People's self esteem rests mostly on how much 'stuff' either material or in status they can accumulate and hoard and show off which is just a mirror image of the capitalist foundations of society.

So how might communist or anarchist social play look in comparison?

I don't think much of this is true, even on a historical level. So i'll leave it.. some of the more underhanded comments seem pretty self-serving. Specifically the one you quoted, and then dismissed as not worth responding to.
Pretty much the one part you needed to, imo. No matter.

I don't think much of this is true, even on a historical level. So i'll leave it.. some of the more underhanded comments seem pretty self-serving. Specifically the one you quoted, and then dismissed as not worth responding to. — AmadeusD

If my citations are self serving (i.e. support my argument in a debate), maybe cite the counterweights instead of complaining I've provided justifications for my point of view.

Ok, let's consider the quote in question:

This is an utterly bizarre way of characterizing protecting wider society from the ills of people who cannot conform to the social contract. Exile is less humane, but more on-point. Would we want that? — AmadeusD

You're really saying that all the prisoners of the world not only deserve to be in prison due to their being unable to conform to the social contract ... but, assuming this is true, the only alternative to being imprisoned in the conditions and the time frames the prisoners of the world find themselves in ... would be exile?

If you really believe all the states in all the world have a perfectly just imprisonment process and protocol, then I will present the evidence to the contrary.

If you don't actually believe it, then you are not interested in truth but simply feeling superior to your "idea of who prisoners are", and are a lost soul of little concern to me, simply digging yourself further into the darkness, the prison of your own mind, with every thought and fancy.