
An Anarchist Critique of Democracy (2005) - pointfree
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/moxie-marlinspike-and-windy-hart-audio-anarchy-radio-an-anarchist-critique-of-democracy
======
danharaj
> Anarchists believe in unmediated relations between free individuals, the
> absence of any coercive or alienating forces in societies, and an
> unquestionable, universal right to self-determination.

If that sounds difficult to implement, I agree! I'm an anarchist because I
think the principles so succinctly put are a good pole star for my personal
life. At the scale of society I see Marxism as just as important. How to
square the two? I don't know

How to make a political program out of anarchism? I don't know, but I think
it'll be possible with the right philosophical and scientific mindset. I think
it would be a mindset quite radically different from how we currently approach
the world.

There are some immediate problems to ponder. For example, my fist is an
unmediated relation between individuals. Does the idea of free individual
preclude it? You can't base your politics only on what you think ought to be,
but also how it ought to change when there is a violation of that preferred
condition. Clearly there are times when a good anarchist (whatever that is)
will throw a punch, and how ought an anarchist society deal with that?

I like The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin as a thoughtful examination of
society that tries to grapple with such small and dirty questions. As well as
bigger questions of course.

In that quote, I don't see a solution, or a goal, but an orientation. It
frames the world in a way that asks you to focus on certain possibilities that
might seem remote, but have existed and will exist so long as humanity exists.
That's why I'm an anarchist and why I like and agree with this piece.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Anarchists believe in unmediated relations between free individuals, the
> absence of any coercive or alienating forces in societies, and an
> unquestionable, universal right to self-determination_

If you and I can interface “unmediated” and freely, and I decide to use that
freedom to take your shit, you need a “coercive or alienating force” to
correct the wrong. Controlling this force is the history of civilisation.

~~~
wavefunction
That's true of Libertarianism as well.

~~~
sigil
On the contrary, libertarianism regards the law as force organized for the
common defense and nothing more. [1] The protection of our negative rights is
the _one essential function of government_ in the libertarian view.

I've always been curious: how does anarchism reconcile your right not to be
harmed with the supposed right of other individuals to do anything they
please, including harm you? Do we even have a right not to be harmed? If we
do, how is justice served -- can we serve it ourselves, or should it be
delegated somehow? Or are these questions "out of scope" and justice is
handled on a case-by-case basis that's not prescribed by anarchism?

[1] [http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html](http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html)

~~~
wybiral
> Do we even have a right not to be harmed? If we do, how is justice served --
> can we serve it ourselves, or delegate it to others if we wish?

...And then the young anarchists assemble a small group for mutual protection
and justice. And then these small groups begin to share resources and find the
need for policies and infrastructure...

...And then they rebel against their new society because it imposes policies
on their "freedom"...

------
jmull
This is awfully childish.

Anywhere you have two or more people "asserting a direct and unobstructed link
between thought and action, between desires and their free fulfillment" you
are going to have conflict... which means not everyone is going to be able to
get and do everything and anything they want.

Notice that this has nothing to do with democracy. It's an inevitable
consequence of the existence of people who want things.

~~~
kiliantics
Anarchists don't think that they will all just be able to do anything they
want. They believe that the way people can reach a compromise with each other,
given the constraints you mention, could be very different. They want it to
happen on a horizontal and decentralised level, without the institutional
hierarchies of the power structures we are forced to obey now.

------
pointfree
With all due respect I would have liked if the hackernews moderators had kept
my original headline "An Anarchist Critique of Democracy by Moxie Marlinspike
(Signal SMS), Windy Hart"

I thought this article/transcript was of interest to hackernews in a large
part due to one of the two authors being the author of the Open Whisper
Systems Signal SMS app.

~~~
dang
I understand the feeling, but we've learned from experience that HN works
better when the focus is on content rather than personalities.

We've also learned that HN can't really have a substantive discussion about
ideology. Something about open internet forums causes such discussions to
revert to the mean, and from there to the bottom of the barrel, pretty
quickly. But at least your submission was off the beaten track!

------
pmichaud
A list of things that are wrong is pretty boring without plausible
alternatives. Like, even if you're right, it doesn't matter because we're not
comparing The Bad Thing to The Absence Of All Those Bad Things. That's
trivial, of course bad things are bad.

We're comparing The Bad Thing to A Different Set of Tradeoffs. That's the part
I want to see.

~~~
fiatjaf
It's not boring if the majority of people think these bad things are good.

------
cs702
"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of
sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it
has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all
those other forms that have been tried from time to time." \- Winston S
Churchill, November 11, 1947

Source: [https://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-
worst-...](https://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form-
of-government/)

~~~
ivm
"I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red
Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a
wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a
higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in
and taken their place."

"I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes."

"I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."

\- Winston S Churchill

~~~
kirk781
Churchill was a straight up racist. He was also indirectly responsible for the
Bengal famine of 1942. On being told about the famine, his only response was
"Isn't Gandhi dead yet". Of course, it helps that he ended up on the winning
side of the war. What confuses me is that his contemporary, Stalin also ended
up on the winning side though later on, his deeds[mis-deeds] came to the fore
and he is now known as one of the evil men of the last century[atleast in
terms of people killed]. Churchill, however, was voted the Greatest Briton of
20th century for some reason.

~~~
lacker
_Churchill, however, was voted the Greatest Briton of 20th century for some
reason._

Well, Britain didn't get taken over by the Nazis. That's kind of a good
accomplishment

~~~
kirk781
Soviet Union too didn't get over-run by Nazis and they infact, contributed
largely to the war effort[much more than the British]. By your logic, Stalin
should be the most worshipped guy of the last century.

------
0xBA5ED
If the relations between free individuals is unmediated, they can interact in
any way they choose. So if a group agrees to pool their resources and impose
their collective will on others, then you just lost your anarchy. To eliminate
"coercive forces", you'd need to ensure that no group or individual can
acquire leverage over another.

~~~
kiliantics
A big part of anarchist ideology is the notion of "solidarity". So if a group
were to attempt to assert authority by coercive means like this, then people
would ideally come together in solidarity to stop them. This is why anarchists
and antifa show up to stop neo-nazis that are threatening minorities and other
vulnerable groups.

~~~
0xBA5ED
What you're describing is mob justice, which is essentially pure democracy.

------
mac01021
They list lots of problems inherent in democracy. Then, in the conclusion,
they hint that the next show/article is going to describe a reasonable system
that doesn't have those problems.

But I can't find the next episode anywhere.

------
aaron-lebo
With all due respect, if this is the best the anarchists have (and this
article is from a respected individual and is decently written), you're
fucked. These critiques are not new or without response. The problem is, this
is 1000+ words of arguments about human nature, special pleading, etc, with NO
sources. They describe known phenomena like control of the agenda and never
call it that, I'm not sure if that's because they aren't aware of that term or
they just fon't feel like attributing hundreds if not thousands of years of
research before them. It'd be like if someone cloned Signal and acted like
Moxie didn't exist.

Cite something, anything that scholars who study politics and democracies have
written, don't put forward these vague critiques with nothing backing it up.
Many arguments that seem intuitive are wrong when faced with evidence, and
this article and anarchists in general seem to forget that democracies have
certain features (and misfeatures) that are responses to real world
situations.

Anarchism is a political ideology that's never met the real world, like a lot
of ideologies on HN and elsewhere. This might convince the random Internet
reader, but it's not going to convince anyone who has studied the topic.

Here's a few politics 101 cites that are decent:

[https://www.amazon.com/Models-Democracy-3rd-David-
Held/dp/08...](https://www.amazon.com/Models-Democracy-3rd-David-
Held/dp/0804754721)

[https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Its-Critics-Robert-
Dahl/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Its-Critics-Robert-
Dahl/dp/0300049382/ref=pd_sim_14_5?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0300049382&pd_rd_r=P9Q9DD56X4WQMGMMHWWB&pd_rd_w=2SjSW&pd_rd_wg=7b7k2&psc=1&refRID=P9Q9DD56X4WQMGMMHWWB)

[https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Second-Robert-
Dahl/dp/03001...](https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Second-Robert-
Dahl/dp/0300194463/ref=pd_sim_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0300194463&pd_rd_r=P9Q9DD56X4WQMGMMHWWB&pd_rd_w=2SjSW&pd_rd_wg=7b7k2&psc=1&refRID=P9Q9DD56X4WQMGMMHWWB)

[https://www.amazon.com/Future-Freedom-Illiberal-Democracy-
Re...](https://www.amazon.com/Future-Freedom-Illiberal-Democracy-
Revised/dp/0393331520)

Could tech people stick to what they are good at, or at least acknowledge the
wider world of experience when they are making arguments?

~~~
JetSpiegel
Let's take another political document I selected at random.

> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
> that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that
> among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Should we dismiss this statement as irrelevant since the authors did not cite
any sources? In fact, they go further, they reject any arguments from
authority and hold this statements as self-evident! They don't even cite
Aristotle or other "scholars who study politics and democracies".

A political statement is not falsifiable. To a 1000+ essay saying "I think
anarchy trumps democracy as a political system", dismissing it because they
don't cite source is a completely meaningless attack.

~~~
aaron-lebo
We don't dismiss that document as irrelevant because it had actions supporting
it. They actually built a political system that was closer to those statements
than what existed and it worked. Furthermore, those men (as evidenced by their
writings) were aware of contemporary political thought, that's not apparent in
this blog post.

 _A political statement is not falsifiable._

Political scientists do something like this every day.

I'm just saying if you want to do more than just philosophize, if you want to
convince people, if you want systems of government to change, you've gotta up
your game. You've got to at least acknowledge people who have already
responded to your critiques already.

------
kiliantics
Amazing to see this discussion on HN! Here's another article that I'm pretty
fond that explores how modern democracy has failed us and what we might be
better off with in its place:

[https://crimethinc.com/2016/04/29/feature-from-democracy-
to-...](https://crimethinc.com/2016/04/29/feature-from-democracy-to-freedom)

------
jancsika
> Direct Democracy Isn’t Anarchy, You Fucks

Here's a quick thought experiment:

Imagine for the moment that anarchy-- the type with roots in 19th century
Europe and fits and starts in Catalonia and Andalusia-- is _the key to
universal enlightenment and human cooperation_. (Not saying it is, just a
thought experiment-- humor me.)

Now imagine that there is a small but dedicated cabal of evil demons intent on
keeping the world from coming to realize this truth. If you were an advisor to
the cabal, how would you suggest they use their meager resources?

If it were me, here's what I would do:

1\. Split the demons up and send each to a burgeoning center for anarchy.

2\. Tell each demon to play up what is idiosyncratic and novel in that
particular region's understanding of anarchy. Eschew both clear, standardized
terminology and laymen's terms for something that sounds passionate, yet
somehow also particular.

3\. Discourage genre literacy, and don't cite sources.

4\. Favor novelty over intellectual rigour.

5\. Develop clever inside jokes.

6\. When faced with a powerful intellectual adversary, fall back on tribalism.

And once the demons are comfortable in their new surroundings, the kicker:

7\. Convince the demons that it is now safe for them to earnestly _believe_ in
their new form of fun-house-mirror anarchism. They are safe to defend and most
importantly _love_ the little tribe they have created.

Using such a technique, I'm fairly certain I could guide my demons to an easy
victory. In the event that any of the disparate anarchist groups tries to band
together in a spirit of cooperation or defense against a common adversary,
passive-aggressive tribalistic infighting will eat up a critical mass of their
resources!

 __*

Now, let's get back to reality and realize there is no such conspiracy to
derail anarchism.

Still: mission accomplished, no?

Edit: wording. Also-- I'm only critiquing the concept of anarchism implicitly
espoused by the authors. The anarchists of the early 20th century seemed to
have suffered from a much different problem, which was the inability to
manufacture enough arms-- to ward off both the fascists _and_ the communists
when they retook Barcelona, for example.

------
JumpCrisscross
“Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that
have been tried from time to time“

[https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill](https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill)

~~~
fiatjaf
Again?

People paste that quote everywhere, as if Churchill or whoever said that was
some sage with infinite wisdom.

~~~
kiliantics
He was also definitely not a good poster child for democracy, given his
passion for colonialism.

------
lumberjack
That is not the "anarchism" that I have read about in the past?! Did the
author just appropriate the name for a different kind of political ideology?

Seems like it.

~~~
uiri
In what ways does it differ from the commonly held notions of what "anarchism"
is as a political (or anti-political) ideology?

------
rootw0rm
Voluntaryism is the only moral way. We deserve to live a peaceful existence
free from threat of force.

------
baldfat
I thought all Anarchist now just called themselves Libertarians?

As a Punk Rock Kid I had Anarchist showing up at shows trying to get people to
join the movement. Then all the way through the 90s it go crazier. I can;t
tell how obnoxious and violent things got. Now 20 years later they are all
Libertarians now. It is safe to say I am not a anarchist nor libertarian but I
am amazed how many people fail to see the history of anarchy and libertarian
thought.

Anarchy falls into self-serving narcissism.

~~~
rootw0rm
First of all, violence is not Anarchism. The essence of Anarchy is non-
violence. Google voluntaryism.

So yes, of course real anarchists identify as libertarians, anarchism is the
embodiment of libertarian philosophy, especially the non-aggression principal.
(NAP)

