A Discordian argument against Anarchism

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Killer post, Cain.

I can't wait for Ratatosk and other anarchists to try and address this.

[Freeky]

Yes, I look forward to that discussion too. Wonderful OP Cain.

[BabylonHoruv]

As with all of Cain's post this is interesting, and reasonably insightful, however I think it is slightly misaimed.  Most modern Anarchists, at least the Libertarian Socialist sort as opposed to the Libertarian Capitalist sort, incorporate Marx.  Placing Anarchists in the same camp as Smithians who disregard Marx is innaccurate.

The part of this that hits closest to home for me, as an Anarchist, is the part about Anarchism naturally being an orderly, harmonious society.  This is a basic assumption of Anarchist thought on both sides, that with the oppression of the state removed people will naturally choose to form harmonious collectives.  Obviously our basic monkey nature says that this is not really all that likely.  It's something I have been struggling with since i first started to explore Anarchist thought, and it is certainly not something that has been ignored, it is just a tricky point to get around because the various approaches tend to have problems of their own.  The one I am personally most fond of is, perhaps, closer to panarchism, with each community being ruled in whatever way the members of that community choose, the only aspect that must be shared by all being the freedom to leave.  I also tend to focus on a smaller scale, with the growth of my own community and the resilience and independence of that community as my goal, not some sort of national or international revolution.  To me there is always going to be conflict, I was raised on a commune which operated on a consensus model and observed firsthand that even in a relatively small group of people who all care about one another there is going to be conflict, and that although this is frustrating, and makes things get done more slowly, it can also lead to positive results.  Anarchism may include an assumption of harmony, but that doesn't mean that Anarchist models that have been brought into reality have required harmony to operate.

[Thurnez Isa]

Anarchism to me means stealing your neighbors stuff and raping his daughter

It would be just like some African countries when a government collapses. You get... well... anarchy. It's humans at their most primitive state.
That's the problem with anarchy it relies on humans being nice to each, ignoring what people actually do to each other.

[The Wizard]

I tend to think of myself as an anarchist. I believe that it is the ideal, but like most ideals we are currently incapable of handling it as a species. It's like any Utopian society, in that it cannot work. I kind of hope that after some more evolution mankind will get it's head out of it's ass, but until then I go with what I think makes things better. 

My personal take on how an anarchist society would work would be essentially disorder with bits of spontaneous order popping up where needed. People would generally leave each other alone and pursue there own goals, banding together with like minded individuals to achieve said goals. After finishing their task, these groups would then dissolve back into the rest of society. Such goals could be as simple as setting up a meal or as complex as designing homes. But in all honesty, given it's impossibility, I haven't really put much thought into what exact form an anarchist society would take.

As for Cain's OP, it was very well written and makes several very good points. I agree that eliminating conflict from society is pointless, and in my opinion, harmful. Conflict is what keeps societies fresh, keeps them from stagnating. Organizational differences, arguments, and even wars serve a purpose. They force change. I do disagree with the idea that Anarchists cannot except real difference. I'm okay with what most people believe as long as they don't try and force it on other people, which as Cain pointed out. Anarchists do tend to be inflexible to the point of fanaticism, which is rather stupid but also not unexpected.

Anyway, this post has gone on longer than I meant it too. Great work Cain, and I hope my response was decent.

[Reginald Ret]

@ Cain  I intend to write a longer reply to your post but that will have to wait untill i am A: not nursing a glass of ice cold vodka and B: not exhausted.

Thanks for this, Cain.  It very neatly points out the funamental flaw(s) that most people tend to avoid.

I learned a spiffy new word today.

What really rings out to me is that anarchism, as a system of preventing hierarchal violence, creates lateral violence

Quite true.
As an anarchist I ofcourse believe that the lateral violence will be less than the hierarchal violence.
Is this enough to make my worldview disprovable?

I just finished watching Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story. In it he talks about it codetermination worker cooperatives, in which employees have a degree of democratic control over the company.

To me, this seems to be what anarchism was aiming for. Anarchism seeks to abolish THE MAN who can hire, fire, make, or break you with the swish of a pen. It's hard to live like a dignified human being when the state outlaws everything you want to do. The evil that anarchism wants to abolish is the monarch. But if we eliminate the authority of the law, we're left with the messiness of ungoverned monkeys. Violence becomes a pretty useful tool to generate consensus.

So maybe the answer isn't to abolish bosses, but to decrease the amount of authority they have. In a true democracy, if your boss is a dick, you can vote him out. The guy telling you what to do is taking home the same paycheck you are, so you don't get a chance to develop a lot of institutional jealousy.

Hmm i'm not sure you could make all the people accept equal paychecks without resorting to force, so this option is hard to accept for me.
A change in thinking/culture should work better.
(wishful thinking alert) If only more people would take control over their life and just walk away from shitty bosses/jobs/etc. That way having a sucky boss ruins the company.

Anarchism to me means stealing your neighbors stuff and raping his daughter

It would be just like some African countries when a government collapses. You get... well... anarchy. It's humans at their most primitive state.
That's the problem with anarchy it relies on humans being nice to each, ignoring what people actually do to each other.

This adds nothing to the thread, it's just repeating the same old 'The TV told me anarchists are violent' argument.
Guess what: noone thinks 'i am evil' and only socio/psycho-paths think stealing your neighbour's daughter and raping his stuff isn't evil.
Either your idea of how most people would act is damaged by bad experiences or based on your own personality.
If it is based on bad experiences then it is most likely caused by systematic powerabuse by those around you and i feel very sorry for you.
If it is based on your own personality: you scare me. When told of a hypothetical situation where your chance of getting caught drops by about 20% and the punishment changes from jailtime to most likely death and possibly torture+death you imagine you would immediatly do something so horrendous that not even your own mother would want to help you.

Also, even Number_6 added more. Shame on you.



I'm sorry if i am not being nice enough or whatever, but being called a rapist because i believe that power-disparity leads to power-abuse makes me angry.

[Doktor Howl]

Quite true.
As an anarchist I ofcourse believe that the lateral violence will be less than the hierarchal violence.
Is this enough to make my worldview disprovable?

Yes.  Liberia, during the Charles Taylor days.

[Thurnez Isa]

I wasn't calling your a rapist... but i was telling you what I think the results would be. I have no doubt you could live in such a society, but I have little or no faith in most of humanity. Maybe cause i have a very low opinion of humanity (and that might be a bit of a understatement)

Murder, blood hatred, tribalism, all parts of being a primate. There is no sense in denying that in my opinion.

[BabylonHoruv]

Anarchism to me means stealing your neighbors stuff and raping his daughter

It would be just like some African countries when a government collapses. You get... well... anarchy. It's humans at their most primitive state.
That's the problem with anarchy it relies on humans being nice to each, ignoring what people actually do to each other.

As regret already said this is the knee jerk uneducated response to Anarchy.  My response to it is usually as follows.

If people are, at heart that horribly rotten, then giving any one of those horribly rotten people more power than the rest is a really awful idea.  That person will then use that power to steal from all his neighbors and rape all their daughters.  So, if people are at heart vile rotten monsters Anarchism is the only feasible system because it limits the ability of each of those monsters to hurt one another.

Currently those in power do abuse it, although not nearly enough to validate this particular view of human nature.

[Requia ☣]

Excellent as usual Cain, thanks for posting this.  It's the longhand version of "it just won't work" which is the most civil response to serious anarchists I've seen on this board.  Heh.

As I cannot stress enough, when one "naturalizes" certain attitudes, trends or ideas, and combines the idea of "natural" with "good", the results are not very pretty.  It causes the sort of mentality one frequently finds among fanatics and fundamentalists – because it is precisely the same mentality, only religious bigots replace "natural order" with "natural law" ie; God's Law.  Naturalizing anti-statism and spontaneous order has some very serious implications, ones which I don't think many Anarchists have clearly thought through. 

This same argument can be made to counter bullshit evolutionary psychology theories.

I got more out of it that 'even if it did work, conformism would take over'.

Though, what exactly does Cain's argument have to do with evolutionary psychology?

It doesn't really, I've just been thinking about how evolutionary psychology is bullshit lately.

Do tell, cause it sounded like you were either implying ev psych makes moral judgments or that it supports social darwinism.

[Thurnez Isa]

but people don't need power to hurt people

[BADGE OF HONOR]

Excellent as usual Cain, thanks for posting this.  It's the longhand version of "it just won't work" which is the most civil response to serious anarchists I've seen on this board.  Heh.

As I cannot stress enough, when one "naturalizes" certain attitudes, trends or ideas, and combines the idea of "natural" with "good", the results are not very pretty.  It causes the sort of mentality one frequently finds among fanatics and fundamentalists – because it is precisely the same mentality, only religious bigots replace "natural order" with "natural law" ie; God's Law.  Naturalizing anti-statism and spontaneous order has some very serious implications, ones which I don't think many Anarchists have clearly thought through. 

This same argument can be made to counter bullshit evolutionary psychology theories.

I got more out of it that 'even if it did work, conformism would take over'.

Though, what exactly does Cain's argument have to do with evolutionary psychology?

It doesn't really, I've just been thinking about how evolutionary psychology is bullshit lately.

Do tell, cause it sounded like you were either implying ev psych makes moral judgments or that it supports social darwinism.

Just read up on the any number of guys who say "lol men must spread their seed becuz the cavemen did".  I'm at work so I can't give any examples right now.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

YOU WILL FIND that the STATE is the kind of ORGANIZATION which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too. - John Kenneth Galbraith as quoted in the Principia Discordia pg. 17

Many social philosophies aim for order in some sense. Libertarianism, Communism, Socialism, Capitalism, Monarchies, Oligarchies, Democracies and Totalitarian Dictatorships all aim for some sort of stability. Some assume that shared responsibility will bring about some kind of order, others assume that the smartest leaders would reduce chaos. Anarchism, at its core assumes that non-compulsory systems will bring about the most stable system. This is its one true difference. Anything beyond that depends greatly on which system of anarchism we're talking about. The various systems under the generic label "Social Anarchism" include diverse concepts such as regulated markets, communal systems and social systems where there is a shared burden of responsibility (for example, where all members might cover medical expenses for the group). Individualist Anarchism, another label for a group of different systems, focus on the individual over any social system (social norms, tribal traditions, governments etc). These are less wildly varied than the social anarchist systems, but there are still several differences (often found in Punk rock and Libertarians).

My point here is that an argument against Anarchism because it presumes that its perfect implementation will result in peace on earth, and good will toward men... is applicable to any and all systems of social organization. They all presume something about humans which will hold true some of the time, or most of the time, but not all of the time. In fact "anarchism" as a generic label includes systems which use the same mechanisms for trying (and failing) to achieve some kind of perfect social order.

No system is 100%. That goes for Anarchists, Capitalists, Socialists, Communists and as-of-yet 'undiscovered' tribes in the Amazon. We can say its human nature, the way of the Monkey or  the wobble of the Sacred Chao. Either way, aiming for a perfect system, or a naturally ordered system, or a compulsory ordered system plays like a short game that  ends with dead referees.

Flaws, so exquisitely laid out by Cain in the OP, seem to apply across the board to me. This quote popped out at me more than the rest:

The purpose of this was to show that one of the main foundations of Anarchist thought – that we can all get along, productively and without conflict – when actually tried in reality only works when those too weak to fight back or protest effectively are ignored and sacrificed for a nebulous greater good.  The claim that conflict can be overcome generally and that everyone can benefit from a single system generally is a lie, and that lie can only ever be enforced through military might.

Could we not say the same of Classical Liberalism, as he demonstrated? The current state of the US political system doesn't seem to help us all get along productively and without conflict. Currently, it seems to help us  poke at each other with sticks, pee on "platforms" and "talking points" while our leaders do everything they can to turn the other half of the leadership into "the enemy" with death panels and torture chambers. From the first Cabinet of the First President, the United States has been divided and that division is as strong now as it ever was. Communism thus far doesn't seem to have come up with peaceful co-existence without conflict. In fact, the most similar thing, it seems, between all of these systems is 'enforcement through military might'.

As a Discordian, this all seems rather trivial. Chaos leads to Discord which drags us into Confusion, after which we flounder in Bureaucracy until the sweet release of Aftermath collapses into Chaos and then the next year shows up. Big States doing Big things or Small States doing Small things...

Thus I reject all of the aforementioned political views. I am not a Individualist Anarchist, because they don't seem to consider the base nature of some human beings. Personally, I think most humans would probably try to get along, but it would only take a few Hatfield's and McCoys to blow the dream all to hell.

I am not a Socialist for the same reasons that my moral system doesn't come from religion. Sacrifice/assistance/help/sharing under duress is not sacrifice/assistance/help/sharing at all, its simply forced behavior and that doesn't seem like a very good idea to me. Besides, each of these systems put some small group of people in power. As those people are likely humans, some bad ones will eventually show up and ruin the party.

Social Anarchism, in its varied forms suffers the same flaws, because they use the same mechanisms (communist, socialism, capitalism, etc)

I have found a viewpoint, however, which seems compatible with my interpretation of Discordianism.

It appears obvious to me, that most humans (for better or worse) want some kind of government. All government, at best, rests on some form of mild compulsion and at worst, jackboot thugs and Cable News Commentators. Taken together, this means that  it is likely most Discordians will live in a place where there is a government. If they're fortunate, it will be one of those 'mild compulsion' sorts of government, if they're not so fortunate... well.. ick.

In any society where we assume a government, we assume some rise in order. Chaos comes from the inability to predict completely what dynamic systems will do. So if a Discordian is being ordered, via some form of compulsory system to act in a why that they do not want or that "everybody hates", they can apply Eris' advice to Mal-2 and "STOP".

In short, we all live in anarchy today. Every action we make is the result of our individual, conscious choice. Recognizing this choice allows us to rationally consider the effect of the action, the moral choice in doing or not doing the act and the consequences of the act. The system may be laissez-faire capitalism, but Bernie Maddof is still personally responsible for his actions. The individual actors within Magnetar Trade are still responsible for the high risk investments they put together and then hedged against. Abolitionists that assisted with the Underground Railroad and hid runaway slaves, for example, were acting as Rational Anarchists. Rationally had to disobey the State because they could not justify acting as the State demanded, even in a representative Republic.

In short, Rational Anarchism espouses only this: "Think For Yourself, Schmuck". No matter which current facade of Order is draped around you, you must think for yourself, because your actions will be yours to bear.

This is a different sort of Political view than Cain started this thread with. Cain's post discusses the sort of ordered systems which are bound to fail, bound to be imperfect, bound to be flawed and abused. This Political View, which I find compatible with Discordianism focuses on the individual attempting to act rationally in what will invariably become an irrational system. Not rebellion for the sake of rebellion, or freedom by bomb and molotov cocktail, but a political view which assets that we are already anarchists, acting as individuals and responsible as individuals.

Also, anyone that bases their political system on Discordianism should probably be ignored. 

[BadBeast]

Great thread. I've always thought that people's ideas of Anarchy (Anarchism sounds too "ismy" IMO) differs hugely, From the early 20th C of "bomb carrying Anarchists" to the more personal, less political view of a State free state of society. I prefer to take the word at it's most basic meaning, which is "rule of one", or self rule. Taking responsibility for our own behaviour, and it's consequences. I realise that violence, or the fear/threat of violence, can be the great leveller here, but there would be far less of it around, (esp in a potentially armed populace) if people had to think their own actions through. A State, with it's enforced Judicial system, assumes responsibility for the parameters of what is acceptable, in any society. If someone commits an offence against your person, the State assumes any level of redress, and administers punishment as it sees fit, often deleteriously. If people were to realise that any level of threat, or offence given, would be met with a response from the victim, that wasn't mitigated by a "Justice system", then we might be a little more respectful, and less offensive to each other. Not that anyone has the right to walk this life and not be offended, far from it, but it's not about "Love and peace, and harmony". Our personal behaviour can be quite a handful to take responsibility for, so it's not about "tearing down the oppresion of the State", just taking a bit more responsibilty for what we do. Instead of just thinking, "fuck it, it's not my problem", thinking "fuck it, that's pretty soon going to be my problem", and acting appropriately.
"Taking the Law into your own hands" is one of the most heinous crimes in any Judicial system, but whose hands should it be in then? Someone elses? What makes them more fit than you, to take responsibility for your behaviour?  Unnaceptable is unnaceptable, and if people had to live with the direct consequences of their unnacceptable behaviour, they would soon learn to compromise. Or behave. Maybe.

[Requia ☣]

Excellent as usual Cain, thanks for posting this.  It's the longhand version of "it just won't work" which is the most civil response to serious anarchists I've seen on this board.  Heh.

As I cannot stress enough, when one "naturalizes" certain attitudes, trends or ideas, and combines the idea of "natural" with "good", the results are not very pretty.  It causes the sort of mentality one frequently finds among fanatics and fundamentalists – because it is precisely the same mentality, only religious bigots replace "natural order" with "natural law" ie; God's Law.  Naturalizing anti-statism and spontaneous order has some very serious implications, ones which I don't think many Anarchists have clearly thought through. 

This same argument can be made to counter bullshit evolutionary psychology theories.

I got more out of it that 'even if it did work, conformism would take over'.

Though, what exactly does Cain's argument have to do with evolutionary psychology?

It doesn't really, I've just been thinking about how evolutionary psychology is bullshit lately.

Do tell, cause it sounded like you were either implying ev psych makes moral judgments or that it supports social darwinism.

Just read up on the any number of guys who say "lol men must spread their seed becuz the cavemen did".  I'm at work so I can't give any examples right now.

So you're criticizing a field of academic study based on what a bunch of people who haven't read anything about it in oh, ever, think it means?