credit to EL_Radical
this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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But then a warlord shows up, kills a bunch of you and enslaves everyone else. You can't mutual aid yourself out of that.
Of course you can. Anarchism is not (but can be) a pacifist ideology. However, the idea is to build up strong communities and relationships with those around you. I certainly would not sit by idly if someone came to hurt me, my loved ones, etc. An anarchist society would look to extend those bonds to those you live with/ near and associate with.
Uh huh. And who operates the hospitals? And I mean a modern hospital, with fMRI capability, a full surgical ward, a biochem lab, a research department, a pediatric ward, and a 24/7 emergency room.
Complex institutions require reliable infrastructure and task specialization, both of which require stability, order, and the resources of a larger, well-organized civilization to support them.
The same people would operate a hospital. There are already anarchists from every walk of life, so in a hypothetical post capitalist society they could continue to work together in a hospital.
As I have put forward in other comments, anarchism does not spring up overnight. It would take years of work to get to (if it ever does). They main thing is that we take responsibility for ourselves and work together in a system of mutual aid.
This all will look different in each community. In communities that are able to grow larger with many people, there will be larger hospitals with more specialized departments. In smaller communities, there may not be a hospital or it may have limited services. But that is already the case in our current system. The major difference is that people will not have to second guess going in for care for fear that they cannot afford it.
There are many obstacles to a truely anarchist society. But that doesn't mean that we can't work towards one. People do not lose the desire to care for others, to research, or to organize because they don't have a government.
If you are interested in learning more, I suggest looking at the Zapatista movement in Mexico. They have built multiple hospitals and clinics since they took the region. Again, this will look different in each area as anarchism is not a one size fits all approach.
The problem you are highlighting is that a system like many here want requires wall to wall adoption.
There aren't very many fmri engineers, heart surgeons, etc.
What if one of them decides to start offering their services at a "market rate" rather than benevolently assisting their neighboring communities freely?
Then what happens if one community happens to have access to resources that person wants, and the others don't?
Is the fmri engineer compelled by force to assist everyone and share their knowledge? Obviously impossible.
Mutual aid includes distributing weapons and training people to defend their homes. Revolutionary Catalonia had an army and went to war, and it was anarchist.
Yeah, and then Franco came in with more guns and Catalonia lived under fascism for the next 50 years. You can (and should) resist with violence if needed, but there's a limit to what a small group can do in the face of an organised military that doesn't care about who they kill.
And where is that fascist government now?
Replaced by a central, non-anarchist government, with a royalty, which is still opposing Catalan independence. And even though the party in charge is called socialist, they're not challenging capitalism because they know how that ends.
So Anarchism and fascism both lost. I'm sure liberalism will lose too sooner or later..
One can only hope it gets replaced by something better.
Today's empires.... tomorrow's ashes.....