Explain Anarchy to me

[loodmoney]

Yeah, it's more than "no government". I'd best describe anarchism as the belief that all government is essentially illegitimate, and that no-one has the right to force you to obey the will of others.

So while an anarchist society could function with rules, if you disagreed with those rules you would not be forced to obey them (e.g. thrown in gaol for not following them), but could move elsewhere.

If you want something to read, check out Demanding the Impossible by Peter Marshall for a good history and explanation of anarchism, or In Defense of Anarchism by Robert Paul Wolff, which gives a philosophical argument for it.

 

[JoJo]

That no-one is universally considered to be in charge doesn't necessarily mean that nothing gets done, or that no-one is controlling things.

In states where the government has collapsed, many people will just get on with their daily business as usual.

Consider, how much direct influence does your government have over your average day.

Alot, since they are loaning me about £21000 over about 3 years to get a degree, and I take medicine funded by them every day to treat medical conditions. They provide our education, healthcare and laws. Look at Somalia where the government collapsed, the parts of that which haven't settled into automonous rule have come under the control of various war-lords who give their mercenanies a free reign and implement harsh Sharia law. Doesn't look very perfect to me.

 

[trouble_gum]

Anarchy is basically chaos as I understand it. No government, no rules, the only people who make it out alive are those who kill before they're killed.

Given that I would probably not survive through such a situation, can't say I'm a fan of it.

The common misconception of "Anarchy" is that involves a situation in which "do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." Anarchy derives from the Greek, "anarchos" meaning "without rulers" - Archon was a title for the chief magistrate in Ancient Athens.

To quote V for Vendetta - the book, not the film - "Anarchy means without leaders, Evie, not without organisation. This is not Anarchy, this is the Land of Do As You Please. This is Chaos."
To quote Immanuel Kant:
"A Law And Freedom without Violence (Anarchy)
B Law And Violence without Freedom (Despotism)
C Violence without Freedom And Law (Barbarism)
D Violence with Freedom And Law (Republic)"

Anarchy posits that the state is unnecessary and that human nature should give rise to a situation of "natural law" wherein all those living in a community can agree on simple rules and ethics in order to live free of the impositions of the state. This include concepts such as a lack of political structure (no ministers, chiefs, presidents, kings, whatever), equality of all, freedom from ownership - i.e all things exist as a communal resource and that no one individual or small group has greater authority or power than any individual.
What it does not mean is that there are no laws, that you are free to do anything you want up to and including freely murdering, stealing and raping other people.

In principle its an enlightened and excellent form of government wherein everyone is treated equally, resources are shared amongst all and people are free to exist regardless of their race, colour or creed. It should come as no surprise, really, that Anarchism formally develops as a political philosophy in 18th Century Europe, amidst a backdrop of revolution, ethnic groups within the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire seeking self-rule and self-determination, peasant unrest and a growing philosophical opinion that religious intolerance, the feudal class system and inherited rank and privilege were wrong.

It's also no surprise that Anarchism falls down from pretty much its opening base tenet - that human nature would lead to everyone agreeing about things. I think we can see where the Anarchists were going wrong there.

 

[00slash00]

I undertand theres more to anarchy than just "no government"

however personally I dont understand how our society could run under such a thing, no one is going to clean up the streets for nothing, and some people arnt going to stop killing others because its not a very nice thing to do

i have been an anarchist for a couple years so maybe i can help. it is all about everyone working together and doing their part. anarchy is a system in which everyone is equal and everything as shared, belongings and responsibilities. it doesnt usually work in large countries. for example, if america became anarchist rather than being broken up into cities and towns and shit like that, it would likely be broken up into communities. in these communities everyone works together and rather than using money, resources would be acquired from other communities by helping with a job they need or trading something you have that they need. not everyone would want to live in that type of system which is fine. as i said, anarchy is typically divided up into small communities and it ceases to be anarchy if youre forcing people to be part of that system. additionally, if its common opinion that the anarchist society isnt working, its simply a matter of holding an election and before long you will be back to the old system.

it can be kinda confusing and there are a lot of arguments people make for why they dont think it would work (and in america, it probably wouldnt. certainly not until the rest of the world begins to hate us less), but that is anarchy, as i understand it, on the most basic level

 

[RatRace123]

The common misconception of "Anarchy" is that involves a situation in which "do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." Anarchy derives from the Greek, "anarchos" meaning "without rulers" - Archon was a title for the chief magistrate in Ancient Athens.

To quote V for Vendetta - the book, not the film - "Anarchy means without leaders, Evie, not without organisation. This is not Anarchy, this is the Land of Do As You Please. This is Chaos."
To quote Immanuel Kant:
"A Law And Freedom without Violence (Anarchy)
B Law And Violence without Freedom (Despotism)
C Violence without Freedom And Law (Barbarism)
D Violence with Freedom And Law (Republic)"

Anarchy posits that the state is unnecessary and that human nature should give rise to a situation of "natural law" wherein all those living in a community can agree on simple rules and ethics in order to live free of the impositions of the state. This include concepts such as a lack of political structure (no ministers, chiefs, presidents, kings, whatever), equality of all, freedom from ownership - i.e all things exist as a communal resource and that no one individual or small group has greater authority or power than any individual.
What it does not mean is that there are no laws, that you are free to do anything you want up to and including freely murdering, stealing and raping other people.

In principle its an enlightened and excellent form of government wherein everyone is treated equally, resources are shared amongst all and people are free to exist regardless of their race, colour or creed. It should come as no surprise, really, that Anarchism formally develops as a political philosophy in 18th Century Europe, amidst a backdrop of revolution, ethnic groups within the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire seeking self-rule and self-determination, peasant unrest and a growing philosophical opinion that religious intolerance, the feudal class system and inherited rank and privilege were wrong.

It's also no surprise that Anarchism falls down from pretty much its opening base tenet - that human nature would lead to everyone agreeing about things. I think we can see where the Anarchists were going wrong there.

That makes sense, thanks for explaining it, it sounds like a decent philosophy, in theory. In practice I think everyone knows it would not work out that way. There's always going to be someone who believes he's better than others and should be in a position to reflect that.
Beyond ambition and greed, you'd get the murderous, rapist psychos who think that a lack of governmental oversight would justify their sick acts. True to our nature, we could never maintain the level of stability necessary for a system like that to exist. One small action and the entire thing becomes chaos.

 

[bigsby]

V for Vendetta was already mentioned, I suggest you give it a look as it is one of the best depictions of "true" anarchy I know of. But basically, anarchy is about self-governance of the people. If you ask me, the closest we as humanity have come to a working anarchy were the early years of the Athenian Polis.

 

[trouble_gum]

That makes sense, thanks for explaining it, it sounds like a decent philosophy, in theory. In practice I think everyone knows it would not work out that way. There's always going to be someone who believes he's better than others and should be in a position to reflect that.
Beyond ambition and greed, you'd get the murderous, rapist psychos who think that a lack of governmental oversight would justify their sick acts. True to our nature, we could never maintain the level of stability necessary for a system like that to exist. One small action and the entire thing becomes chaos.

Pretty much. It's a political theory that emerged as a reaction to the hereditary, autocratic monarchies of the time and the desires of those who were amongst the emergent middle and intellectual classes for greater freedom for themselves and by extension, the lower / artisan classes. In that sense, its very similar to Communism in that both systems evolve and order themselves around freeing those who aren't in power from the tyranny of those in power.

It's a philosophy based on the Romantic Ideal of human nature - that humans are by nature selfless and peaceful and able to put aside their differences by dint of their great intellectual capability. Shame that's really, really nothing like reality. I'll confess to being fairly facetious here, but basically, Anarchism wants us to be nice to everyone when millions of years of social conditioning has taught us to fear the stranger, reject those different from us, covet possessions and smash those we perceive to be a threat.

To my knowledge, anarchism has never been even tried as a system of government and, unless it was a global, total change, it would simply never function for very long whilst surrounded by other non-anarchist societies.

 

[Tulks]

That no-one is universally considered to be in charge doesn't necessarily mean that nothing gets done, or that no-one is controlling things.

In states where the government has collapsed, many people will just get on with their daily business as usual.

Consider, how much direct influence does your government have over your average day.

Alot, since they are loaning me about £21000 over about 3 years to get a degree, and I take medicine funded by them every day to treat medical conditions. They provide our education, healthcare and laws. Look at Somalia where the government collapsed, the parts of that which haven't settled into automonous rule have come under the control of various war-lords who give their mercenanies a free reign and implement harsh Sharia law. Doesn't look very perfect to me.

I didn't say it was perfect. Our own constitutional monarchy isn't perfect, either.
Yes, some parts of Somalia fell into infighting, along with much of post-colonial East Africa. But other parts settled into autonomous self-rule. Both are examples of anarchy.

My point was, I think, that anarchy can work. Not necessarily that disbanding our own "big government" overnight would be immediately beneficial to everyone.

 

[Keava]

V for Vendetta was already mentioned, I suggest you give it a look as it is one of the best depictions of "true" anarchy I know of. But basically, anarchy is about self-governance of the people. If you ask me, the closest we as humanity have come to a working anarchy were the early years of the Athenian Polis.

With the exception that in early Greek polis only citizens of given polis had any rights, and that excluded slaves, women and everyone not born in that polis. It was still very limited political system and was pretty centralized due to it.
In anarchy theory you do not have such bounds, everyone participates on equal rules, there is no single entity that decides what is wrong and what is right and communities are supposed to work for common goal because it's beneficial to everyone involved.

 

[Kopikatsu]

I undertand theres more to anarchy than just "no government"

however personally I dont understand how our society could run under such a thing, no one is going to clean up the streets for nothing, and some people arnt going to stop killing others because its not a very nice thing to do

'No government' is actually the true definition of Communism which alot of people mislabel with the those totalitarian Socialist trainwrecks that occured throughought these past 100 years. My understanding of anarchism is simply 'no laws'.

Not...at all.

I'll agree that there hasn't been an ACTUAL Communist country in...well...ever, but Communism isn't lack of government, it's government made up of the common man. ('Common' is the first half of the word Communism, even.)

Basically, there would be no government officials in a Communist government. The best example I could give is...Anonymous. 'We are Legion'. That's Communism in it's purest form.

But, as with Anonymous, Communism's flaw is that some humans will always aspire to be King, and the lack of any centralized government makes it incredibly easy for a rogue element to seize absolute power...hence the totalitarian socialist trainwrecks.

 

[Gerard Hughes]

Anarchy is like being an animal
its a dream and a dumb one to boot

 

[Cheesus333]

however personally I dont understand how our society could run under such a thing

It couldn't, that's the point. Some people see society, on the whole, as more trouble than it's worth, and want us to descend to our brutal, [http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101220003739/fallout/images/1/1d/Raider_Armor_set.png] primitive [http://scienceblogs.com/framing-science/upload/2007/01/Riots.jpg] roots.

 

[funguy2121]

I undertand theres more to anarchy than just "no government"

however personally I dont understand how our society could run under such a thing, no one is going to clean up the streets for nothing, and some people arnt going to stop killing others because its not a very nice thing to do

Anarchy has quite a few gripes, many of them legitimate, and nothing in the way of real-world solutions. Anarchy is also contradicted by all human interaction and by the product of such interaction: a true anarchist wouldn't speak any languages, wear clothes, listen to music or even take advantage of basic scientific discoveries such as fire. Anarchy = anti-society. A society cannot exist without some form of government, and without intelligent people collaborating to defend against threats and better the lives of those living within a group, the bigger brutes would overwhelm the others. Anarchy can't really exist in the modern age, with perhaps a few exceptions involving the mentally ill.

 

[Matthew Wilson]

If no-one's put it already, Anarchy is simply;
Fucking shit up.
Then putting a cause and reason to it.

 

[funguy2121]

I've got a comparison for you. In recent years one could say that with so little regulation the banking system was running on anarchy - left to be "self regulated". They ran rampant for some time and it was good, until the holes in that premise became painfully obvious. To fix it, governments imposed new rules to limit that freedom. Will it work, only time will tell. ON the same notion with anarchy it provokes chaos and chaos is sort of self regulated. When the streets become too dirty, someone will clean them so he could move, which will benefit everyone else. Just like tribes times after a while, when most people have died because of the complete collapse of the system, it wouldn't matter anymore. Rules are there because we are too many. If we were separated into smaller groups we could agree on other rules.

Simply put if you have one person, he makes his own rules. If you have a tribe the leader makes the rules. If you have a small ancient Greek type of society - everyone votes and shape the rules. Today we have huge societies and so the power is more centered. Behind every few million people there is a Representative, behind every few of them there are other and so on till we reach that golden Greek number of people who are enough to make democracy (less than 300 and more than 30 people).

Every political system actually works, but for different kinds of societies. Anarchy won't work for our right now. Oh and having a coup doesn't mean Anarchy it means simply forcible changing of the system to another or simply changing the parts of said system, not having no system at all.

Yes, there are quite a few parallels between anarchy and the laissez-faire Tea Party crowd.

 

[bigsby]

V for Vendetta was already mentioned, I suggest you give it a look as it is one of the best depictions of "true" anarchy I know of. But basically, anarchy is about self-governance of the people. If you ask me, the closest we as humanity have come to a working anarchy were the early years of the Athenian Polis.

With the exception that in early Greek polis only citizens of given polis had any rights, and that excluded slaves, women and everyone not born in that polis. It was still very limited political system and was pretty centralized due to it.
In anarchy theory you do not have such bounds, everyone participates on equal rules, there is no single entity that decides what is wrong and what is right and communities are supposed to work for common goal because it's beneficial to everyone involved.

I said the closest. I agree with your points, but the basic idea of self-governance of the citizens (atleast of what was considered citizens) was there.

 

[YesIPlayTheBagpipes]

basically, people would do clean the streets and eveything out of the sheer kindness of their hearts. to "anarchists" i say, read Lord of the Flies.

 

[Jodah]

Anarchy is kinda like Communism in that it seems like a good idea on paper but in practice...not so much. If people were mostly good it would work well, ones moral code would become the new law and everyone had the ability to punish people for wrongs. Problem is people aren't good when left to their own devices. For that reason Government becomes necessary.