
What anarchy isn't (free eBook) - drummer
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yd18waixbva1jae/WhatAnarchyIsnt-FREEBIE.pdf?dl=0
======
SirensOfTitan
I’d recommend Anarchism by Daniel Guérin for a history of the anarchist
movement and some of its philosophy if you’re interested in what real
anarchism is about outside of the pejorative usage.

~~~
p4bl0
I strongly second this recommandation. Daniel Guérin is a _very_ interesting
author.

------
georgewsinger
There are both left-leaning and libertarian variants of anarchy. For the
latter: the strongest, most "steelmanned" defense of (libertarian) Anarchy
(and it's not even close) is Michael Huemer's The Problem of Political
Authority: [https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Political-Authority-
Examinati...](https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Political-Authority-Examination-
Coerce/dp/1137281650/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=problem+of+political+authority&qid=1599317402&sr=8-1)

This is a _serious_ work of analytic philosophy by a highly cited philosopher
(who, before this book, was famous for his contributions outside of political
philosophy). The book considers all of the strongest arguments against
libertarianism and (seems to) decimate all of them.

~~~
roenxi
Libertarianism and anarchism are quite different though, it is hard to see how
anarchism works out in practice. Someone is going to have the most powerful
fighting force, and when people disagree to the point of violence that group
will become, effectively, the governing body.

The American civil war is a good case study. When a serious disagreement
arises, really all that matters is who can sustain the most effective army.
Anarchism can't work once professional armies get involved. I doubt it can
work even if a neighbouring country has a professional army. Professional
armies tend to win.

~~~
sudosysgen
Military confederations are a thing and work historically. Anarchists have
waged war against conventional armies and fought very well multiple times in
history. It just doesn't really check out all that well as an argument in
practice.

~~~
karottenreibe
Interesting. Can you please name one or two examples for me to look up as I'm
not personally aware of any large scale anarchist movemements with decisive
military victories.

~~~
skitout
2 recent examples, and 2 old ones :

Recently Syrian Kurds (YPG) are more or less anarchists and had decisive
military victories, mainly but not only against ISIS...

Zapatista Army of National Liberation is close to anarchism too... The
conflict never was an all-out-war, so I would not called anything decisive
military victories though...

During the Spanish civil war, anarchist had been instrumental against the
nationalist forces, especially at the beginning of the war.

And in post WW1's Ukraine, the Makhnovshchyna had played an important
historical role

------
rriepe
I like how Authoritania is a caricature of evil but they stop short of
invading Anarchia. They want to project their evil government control
everywhere but I guess they haven't figured out boats. This is very convenient
for the metaphor.

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geofft
I get that this book is trying to provide a quick overview, but some of the
arguments seem to fall flat:

> _To put it another way, warlords already did take over, called themselves
> "government," and convinced their victims that it was righteous and
> necessary for the warlords to dominate and exploit everyone else, "for their
> own good."_

How do we prevent that from happening again? Sure, we can live in a
voluntaryist society for a bit, but what prevents one of the voluntary support
structures in that society from deciding to become involuntary? (Hasn't the
history of basically all social organizations of all flavors - right-wing
revolutions, left-wing revolutions, religions, corporations, HOAs,
fraternities, romantic relationships - shown that they're all susceptible in
their own ways to the people who have been voluntarily given power deciding to
hold onto it without consent?)

I don't mean this in the "human nature shows that ___ never works" sense - I
mean this in the sense that I expect this to be a _solvable_ problem. What
sort of structure (perhaps voluntary, perhaps involuntary) can prevent a more
malignant involuntary structure from taking over?

> _This is why the presence of government drastically increases the chances of
> people getting robbed—in fact, increases the chances to 100%, since every
> government "taxes" the people it pretends to "represent."_

This is technically true, but I'm not sure it's a helpful framing. Currently I
owe, let's say, 40% of my income on paper to the government (not counting
sales taxes etc.). I still keep the other 60%. Sure, the government is
"robbing" me of 40%, but they are empirically doing an effective job of
preventing _other_ robbers from taking the remaining 60%, through everything
from beat cops to the FDIC. So there's a 100% chance of the first 40% being
taken from me, and maybe at most a 1% chance of the remaining 60% being taken.

Let's say the government goes away. Now I get 100% of my income on paper.
(Let's ignore for the moment that much of not all of my employer's
profitability depends on the existence of governments, and assume that somehow
I'm paid the same.) But now all of that income is at risk from other sorts of
miscreants, whether petty thieves or unregulated banks. If the risk of theft
is more than 40.6%, I'm worse off, right?

That is - this argument seems to rest on the idea that _any_ taking of money
from me without my enthusiastic consent is bad. But it's clearly not equally
bad. Losing 40% of my money is better than losing 50%, and much better than
losing 100%.

What is the actual risk to my money? That is, can you convince me that living
in a country with a 40% effective tax rate compared to a land with no taxes is
a _bad economic decision_ , and not just subjecting myself to a moral wrong?

------
zelly
Political manifestos don't belong on HN.

~~~
badRNG
Anarchist political theory has been associated with "hacker culture" since at
least the '80s. I don't consider myself one, but it'd be wrong to say that it
isn't apropos.

------
noch
A hacker once quipped: "Anarchy is that form of government where you _don 't_
get to choose who your dictator is."

~~~
schwartzworld
So, someone who didn't know anything about anarchy made a joke about it?

~~~
noch
> So, someone who didn't know anything about anarchy

Be wary of anarchist ideologues who:

\- Don't know the utility of jokes.

\- Don't discuss the game theory of social and economic arrangements and
incentives.

\- Suggest anarchist utopias are stable equilibria.

\- Don't point out that externalising costs and harms is a local optimum in an
adversarial situation.

\- Don't discuss what evolutionary biology[1] has taught us about fundamental
hierarchy, that is: status, dominance, and prestige.

\- Don't discuss in-group bias, out-groups and intergroup competition, and
lineage.

\- Don't discuss the features of successful societies that persist across
cultures, time, populations, and species.[0]

\- Don't discuss the Dunbar limit of social networks and the problems of
coordination and cooperation.[2]

\- Don't provide hard theoretical or experimental evidence for their claims.

\- Don't discuss the costs and tradeoffs of their hypotheses.

\---

[0]: Consider Economist Melissa Dell, on the effects of persistence across
time [https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/melissa-
dell/](https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/melissa-dell/):

" You see the towns that were part of the stronger, centralized state going
back before colonialism, so several hundred years ago. More recently, they
have better-functioning local governments. They’re richer. They’re better off,
which shows that places that have a long history of governance seem better
able to do that more recently. "

[1]: [U]nderstanding that natural selection, acting on genes [...]generates
non-genetic evolutionary processes capable of producing complex cultural
adaptations. (Joseph Henrich, "The Secret of Our Success")

[2]: Nicholas Christakis, "Blueprint:The Evolutionary Origins of a Good
Society":

" Each mutineer had absolute dominion over his share of the island, and life
was characterized by shifting private alliances. Social organization was fluid
and unpredictable. The community had no legal code, no central political
authority, and no monopoly on the use of force. Hence, given the absence of
ties of friendship and meaningful ongoing cooperation, there was no reliable
way to mediate disputes or enforce collective decisions. "

~~~
schwartzworld
Now that's a leftist meme!

------
ChomskyNormal4m
From the time of the cave paintings and Venus figurines tens of thousands of
years ago, to about 10000 years ago, there is no evidence of government, a
working class and a hereditary idle class, specialized police and military and
so on. If you go deep in the Amazon, hunter gatherer bands still live like
this.

In our modern day, where the average worker works more hours per week than
those people (see Marshall Sahlins), with the default trajectory being
continual global warming, with missile and nuclear treaties tossed as more
states become better nuclear armed, and US, Russian, Chinese, Indian and
Pakistani troops having minor incidents all over, as large mammals undergo
extinction worldwide, Bolsanaro cutting down the rain forest as Covid spreads
over the US and Brazil, as BLM and Antifa and MAGA and anti-lockdown riots
happen across the US, it's asked how it is imaginable we go off our current
course. As Slavoj Zizek says, the culture of corporate media can more easily
imagine the end of the world than it can the end of the 10000 year reign of
the hereditary idle class.

