Anarchy is a political structure where there’s basically no one in charge, right? But wouldn’t that just create a power vacuum that would filled by organized crime, corporations, etc.? Then, after that power vacuum is filled, we’re right back at square one, and someone is in charge.
Are there any political theorists that have come up with a solution to this problem?
A group deciding that one member is not welcome anymore is no hierarchy. It doesn’t structurally exploit the person “on the bottom”.
It only becomes a problem where the “anarchist” shared flat meets our current society. Exiling him might not be as easy, because of outside forces (true hierarchy). He has a contract and can enforce it with outside help. Maybe he ends up homeless because he cannot afford rent, or nobody gives him another flat.
In “perfect anarchist utopia” he would go into the “couch pisser flat” and be welcomed with open arms. And why wouldn’t he do it willingly? He is bound to be way happier with other couch pissers than being miserable with us, who don’t want to piss onto couches.
But the example is oc mood, because once again: did that ever happen to you? As I said, people tend to follow the rules of their group. I did never encounter a couch pisser or someone like it in shared flats or other groups organized without hierarchies. And usually, once again, if I heard of those stories, it was because of outside forces. People disagreeing about means of power like money.
The concept of intrinsic shame carries far in circles, where people know each other. I mean, read up on current anthropologic research about hunter-gatherer societies. For all we know “anarchy” is the default organizational form for small groups of humans.
That all works until “couch pisser” is “murderer” or those “entrepreneur” types or someone who wants to be a “king”. Or is a “manipulator”
Then you have several thousand people who like the idea of having a “king” and now you have a hierarchy.
Irrational people are more numerous then you think.
And a group that does decided a member isn’t welcome anymore is a hierarchy. It doesn’t require you to be exploiting the person at the bottom. I’ll be it a fairly flat one but hey.
My example is extremely simple and that’s on purpose. my point is you will never be able to get enough people to form little in groups where they all work together because without incentive people will just do whatever the hell they want and that small group of people can disproportionately affect the larger whole even if they are playing by your rules.
Anarchism works in small groups. But it falls apart as you scale up, by nature of the limited resources of our world some order must be kept or things will slide into chaos. Some amorphous blob of a group isn’t going to be able to do that.
We departed from
and arrived at
I like that and we even agree on it 👍