Is anarchy even possible?

[Graag]

Originally posted by Kramerman
1)
I dont believe in Karma. Things happen because of cause and effect. I dont think there is something that balances out the universe. Some people, with chance, just happen to not get screwed as much as others. Thats life, there is no fairness about it.

I didn't say it was fair or anything, or that there is some external force balancing things out. Karma is cause and effect working more subtly than the human mind can percieve.

2)
On a large scale i think we agree it would not work (especially not desirablely so). On the small scale, there would not be enough people to specialize in everything needed, so most would have to rely on self-reliance. they would have to fend for themselves, leaving them little time, i would imagine, for learning, the arts, and leisure, which i view as the gem of civilization. I am very progressive, especially in the realm of science and technology, which i couldnt see progressing much in anarchy (kinda like in Civ )

Now there you've hit on the main point for me. What sort of tech level do you go for? Maybe you'd have to go back to the old school ways. Re-learn all the manual skills people have practised for hundreds of years. Just bring along a few guitars, and tell stories round the campfire for entertainment.

Hmm. maybe if I could bring a laptop...

[Kramerman]

I didn't say it was fair or anything, or that there is some external force balancing things out. Karma is cause and effect working more subtly than the human mind can percieve.

then how do you know its there?

[Lord Merciless]

Maybe life is really good in such an anarchist society if everyone plays by the rule. But I have no doubt that such societies are short-lived: they either fall to the inherent human vices of their members, or they fall to an organized, outside force.

[Graag]

Originally posted by Kramerman
then how do you know its there?

Just a guess really
It isn't something I could explain, let alone prove, just a confused personal belief about something I have a sense of.

[Berzerker]

There seems to be some mis-perceptions about anarchism. It is not a rejection of government and authority, anarchism is a system based on voluntary associations - freedom. Any act that violates the voluntary nature of the system - like murder or robbery -
is subject to the governing authority. But since virtually every political system in our known history was either autocratic or at least, anti-freedom, the word anarchism has become synonymous with a rejection of all government. Of course, there are some left wing anarchists who don't really believe in freedom but use the anarchist label anyway to hide what they really are, socialist or collectivist. They cross the line from anarchism to socialism when they employ violence or the threat thereof to impose their supposedly anarchistic ideology on non-comformists who believe in property rights.

Ramo -

Government came with agriculture, as agriculture meant the development of wealth disparities.

Agriculture/domestication allowed for a settled way of life and an increase in leisure time leading to specialisations like a religious, warrior, and political class. Government didn't arise because of wealth disparities, it arose because agriculture led to a more complex economy. In H-G systems, the men typically hunted and the women gathered and prepared the food, not much complexity there, but once you have settled communities with a viable trade economy, specialisation enters the picture on a much larger scale.

[Corvi #6]

Less important than whether anarchism is possible is whether utopia generally a worthwhile aspiration. I've heard serious politicians who really should know better complaining that there are too many idealists in the world today, the implication being that the wrold will be a better place once everyone settles down to a nine-to-five job and stops complaining about the state of the enviroment or the plight of the homeless or the violation of human rights. Surely we should have a higher aspiration? Those of us who have trouble taking the quaint mythological stories of a middle-eastern desert tribe seriously should nonetheless be striving for a better society. Humans may have started out as social primates, but our intelligence and our imaginations give us the potential to overcome our limitations.

[Heresson]

Of course it is, and Poland is the proof -

again

[Ramo]

There seems to be some mis-perceptions about anarchism. It is not a rejection of government and authority, anarchism is a system based on voluntary associations - freedom. Any act that violates the voluntary nature of the system - like murder or robbery -
is subject to the governing authority. But since virtually every political system in our known history was either autocratic or at least, anti-freedom, the word anarchism has become synonymous with a rejection of all government. Of course, there are some left wing anarchists who don't really believe in freedom but use the anarchist label anyway to hide what they really are, socialist or collectivist. They cross the line from anarchism to socialism when they employ violence or the threat thereof to impose their supposedly anarchistic ideology on non-comformists who believe in property rights.

1. Why do you think locking people up is a justifiable method to insure societal liberty while collectivization of large property owners to be a totally unjustifiable method to insure societal liberty? After all, locking people up is an incredibly authoritarian thing to do, in fact it's the most authoritarian thing you can do short of killing them.

2. Why do you think that the property claims a government protects is automatically justifiable? Because government of their parents or grandparents generation protected those property claims?

Agriculture/domestication allowed for a settled way of life and an increase in leisure time leading to specialisations like a religious, warrior, and political class. Government didn't arise because of wealth disparities, it arose because agriculture led to a more complex economy. In H-G systems, the men typically hunted and the women gathered and prepared the food, not much complexity there, but once you have settled communities with a viable trade economy, specialisation enters the picture on a much larger scale.

There's no automatic need for government to manage a more complicated economy. Modern anarchist societies, particularly the one in Catalonia, had a very complicated, industrial economy. Yet, there was no need for a government to manage that economy.

The key difference between an authoritarian and anti-authoritarian societies is wealth disparity. Agriculture allowed for the development of wealth disparity since not everyone needed to work in food production duties, thus authority was viable for the first time.

[DinoDoc]

Why do you think that the property claims a government protects is automatically justifiable?

Where do you live Ramo? I'm coming for your computer.

[Ramo]

I didn't say it's never justifiable.