ReactionaryRichard wrote:I am a huge advocate for personal liberty. I don't totally agree with all libertarians, on some social issues. I do believe that we need some laws. This is the part of anarchism that I can't grasp. Can we have laws without violent enforcement? It seems that if you are an anarchist, proposing a state of any kind is directly opposed to your ideals. I mean how will an anarchist "state" govern anyone without coercion in some form. You even state that you think an army would be necessary as well as diplomacy. This seems impossible without leadership and a hierarchy. The closest thing that I can imagine being anarchist would be at a family level, where trust and interdependency would be natural, but even at the family level there is a hierarchy. I don't think humans can function without this collectivist ideal. I imagine that all anarchist would have to be strongly individualistic. The republican ideal is the only true hope left for liberty, anarchist should help us rid our republic of the corruption. We need to choose men of better moral character to represent us. These politicians don't go to Washington out of a sense of civic duty, they go to Washington for money and power. I think we can all agree that power corrupts. We need smaller governments at local levels that can be held accountable. Any federal bureaucracy and standing army is a slippery slope. Government is like a hungry beast that needs to continue to grow and feed itself, especially at the federal level.
A hypothetical series of questions:
The philosophical question that will hopefully be asked by more and more people as time goes on is ... do humans have an inalienable right to live free from coercion? If so, what does "coercion" mean in this context? Can a system that limits choices, thereby forcing humans to live under undesirable circumstances, be fairly considered coercive? If so, and if we view the right (of at least sane adults) to live free from coercion as "inalienable" ... and we follow this idea to its logical conclusion, then only a society where decision making is made through consensus, can be considered a "just" society. Under a scheme of parliamentary governance, decision making is invariably consequentialist. In other words, we balance the interests, adversarialism becomes a necessity, we sacrifice "a few trees" for the sake of the woods. In a consensus based society, the dichotomy of minority/majority becomes redundant. No one is sacrificed for the sake of anyone else, and in every decision, we solicit and address the concerns of all who will be affected by the decision. So, is the concept of "liberty" overdue for a new and more enlightened definition?
Anarchism does not imply chaos or lack of organization. Moreover, there is a split among anarchists (one that really hasn't been a serious impediment to cooperation among different schools of anarchism, but only because anarchism hasn't been taken seriously for a very long time, but I expect this issue will need to be addressed in a serious way at some point in time). The split is precisely over the issue you're highlighting here. Can a society survive (in a reasonable way) without laws? For those of us who share an affinity for anarchist philosophy, and who have studied anarchist philosophy, we have to admit, anarchist philosophy has never addressed the law and order problem in a comprehensive way (beyond addressing garden variety "Hobbesian" concerns with sort of emotive platitudes, postulating an almost mystical view of human nature ... that doesn't seem to correspond with reality very well).
The only philosopher who tried to tackle this issue in a thorough way, was (in my view at least) Peter Kropotkin. As a biologist (who specialized in zoology) he looked at the bad aspects of human nature, as postulated by Hobbes (and others), from the perspective of animal behavior. However, Kropotkin was writing in the late 19th century, and his theories are long overdue for updating (with new research, based on all the information regarding human and animal nature, science has accumulated since the late 19th century).
The real crux of the theoretical problem is the idea that self defense cannot be delegated to a third party. Individualist anarchists would say that only the individual enjoys a right of self defense (and thus only the individual may respond to threats against his physical safety with defensive measures, or take retribution for acts of violence against his person, or his family). The social anarchist would say the community (as a social unit) has a valid interest in defending its members, and thus, self-defense and corrective measures (to deal with antisocial behavior) is a right enjoyed by the community as a whole. However, both of these approaches to anarchism generally rejects the idea that self-defense can be delegated to a third party (like police departments, courts, etc.).
As someone who considers himself a social anarchist (anarchist with a small "a" ... maybe a minarchist), I acknowledge this as a serious pitfall in anarchist philosophy. However, I also believe that the "self defense" function can be delegated to a third party, as long as it's done consistent with the ideas of horizontal organization and consensus based decision making.
If a police department was structured as say a nonprofit (or conceivably a public agency under a participatory democracy framework), it's members unionized (so they had a voice in how their jobs are structured), but a police department which acted consistently with the consensus based decisions made by the community as a whole, then I wouldn't personally have a problem with the idea. It is true that some forms of coercion would remain, but only as against those who would seek to coerce others through their conduct (and if we view the principal of non-coercion in a way that prevents us from restricting coercive conduct, it becomes an absurdity).
Moreover, laws should serve as minimal guidelines for human conduct, but all too often, they wind up becoming the maximum standard; and as long as we can find a loophole to provide us with the indicia that we're acting under color of law, we pat ourselves on the back, justify our conduct, even where it's morally wrong. This is the negative consequence of a society based on an elaborate codification of what right conduct entails. Thus, in an anarchist society, we would want to guide our thinking using values (versus rigid laws governing conduct), and "law enforcement" would (in theory) become the rare exception, not the norm. I suppose another valid question would be, is a highly intellectual society a necessary prerequisite that must precede a society organized around anarchist principles? I personally believe this is a non-issue. I endorse gradualism (not an abrupt shift to a radically different social structure, which I believe would cause a serious degradation of living standards, which could take generations to reverse). If this sort of change is implemented gradually, at each discrete step, society will have a chance to absorb and acclimate to change. We don't commit ourselves in irreversible ways, we experiment (and through a gradual trail & error process, we figure out what works, what doesn't, and proceed accordingly). The key is resetting our trajectory, so we begin moving in this direction.
- By litwin
- By ingliz
- By JohnRawls
- By Potemkin