this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2024
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Ye Power Trippin' Bastards
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It's not a problem with anarchists in general, I think, but that the kind of anarchists who put themselves into positions of power are generally... not the ones you want in power. Regardless of ideology, power, even the smallest, pettiest kind, tends to attract a certain kind of person more often, on average.
I thought the point of anarchy was not having positions of power.
There are always positions of power. Anarchists are interested in minimizing the institutionalization of power and individual offices. And also, that even anarchists don't live in a currently-anarchist society/structure, and have to work within that. Don't believe Lemmy has implemented
Just to add on to your mention of there always being positions of power, I believe there is a difference between someone having power/authority in a specific moment or in a limited capacity versus a hierarchy.
A hierarchy enforces compliance from the top down, while individuals are capable of ceding to limited authority in specific situations; see every Anarchist military unit like the CNT, RIAU, BOAK, YPG and YPJ. Any individual member has the right to disobey, to leave. It’s not a contract enforced by the UCMJ, with codes criminalizing dissent and desertion, like in the US military.
I think the difference between positions inherently having power and hierarchical power have been explained much better in other comments, but I just wanted to add that there are real world examples of Anarchists consenting to power/leadership, and it resulting in effective small unit combat effectiveness, outside of thought experiments or generalities.
I mean, I feel the need to point out that dissent, refusal of orders, and desertion were all punishable in CNT militias.
Any wartime unit is necessarily going to be stricter on such things, as coordination, timing, and accurate estimations are all vital in military operations.
The anarchist militias were very effective in the Spanish Civil War, though, you are correct about that.
Thank you for the clarification, that’s really interesting.
Was desertion specifically deserting a line unit on rotation? Could an enlisted person willingly leave when their unit was rotated off the line for resupply for example? Or was it more a situation where upon enlistment you willfully submitted to the commands authority for the period of enlistment?
Do you have any recommendations for reading material on that subject specifically? I had just assumed the CNT operated like most of the other militias I mentioned, although now that I’m thinking about it I guess most of the anecdotal evidence for fighters dropping in and out at will are foreign (predominantly white) volunteers, so that just might be my privilege showing.
It's been a long time since I've done serious reading on the subject, unfortunately. Article 4 of the CNT regulations for militiamen outlines offenses, though, and treating abandoning one's post and desertion as separate offenses suggests it wasn't just leaving the front line that counted as desertion.
Yeah, but if your system is anarchist, those are exactly the kind of people who are going to wind up running things.
There’s a lot of overlap between anarchism and good sense. I’m not trying to be snarky about it. But it does seem that it has a couple of fatal flaws, and that is one. You could say that the early anarchists and the American founding fathers both identified the same types of failure modes in government and societal hierarchy, and where the founding fathers came up with a flawed system that nonetheless made a sincere effort to design a society of free individuals who could each live their lives in a pretty anarchist-friendly fashion, while still taking account of the realities of power and how to mitigate the problems of it… the anarchists just decided, “If we don’t pay attention to these problems then they won’t exist, much easier.”
It all sounds very good. I don't, honestly, feel like I have any questions at this point, but it sounds really good, thank you for your message.
It's... more complex than that. You should pick a more serious anarchist's brain. They do consider these problems.
Personally, I think the term 'anarchy' works against them because of its literal meaning and its connotations. I always mentally replace it with the synonym of libertarian socialism, and find it works wonders in reducing preconceptions.
Is there someone I should read? I read some of the Wikipedia article to try to educate myself but I didn’t get all that far.
Edit: I think the fact that I made someone so salty they felt the need to downvote this comment means I’m doing something right.
Discussing the matter with actual anarchists is preferable. There are fewer central agreed-upon texts to anarchism (appropriately enough, lmao), and many of those that remain influential are... quite thick. Kropotkin is available if you are the patient sort.
I read the abridged version of the abridged version of Kropotkin just now. I like it quite a lot. I more or less stand by my assessment of the flaws in it, as compared with an approach like the founders of the US, but it sounds like good stuff. I think like a lot of things the devil is in the details.
I am mostly being snarky about the laughable brand of faux-anarchism that got me banned and deleted in this instance, not trying to throw too much shade at real anarchism.