How does Anarchism deal with conflict within its societies? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14347439
This is the one question that boggles me about anarchism, and I would love to know how those who advocate anarchist societies get around this issue.

I try to be as open-minded as possible, but I just can't see how a stateless society may work when humans (either by nature or by life in society) do and will get into conflict. Without laws, without a State "looking over" people, how would we impede a reign of chaos and conflict stemming from human ambitions, selfishness, jealousy etc.?

I'm not only talking about general conflict, but also that arising from economic inequality. How would a self-governed society distribute their means of production and their products justly? What stops the "labourer" or "poorer" individual from getting hold of the other's private property? What stops the "big fish" or "most wealthy" individual from doing the same? And even if the means of production and the goods are distributed justly, justice can't be objectively measured, and any person might justify receiving more because of deserving more from work.

I look forward to hearing from others. Hope we'll be able to discuss the matter over!
#14347456
Become open to what you see, not what you are educated to believe in. Open-minded means you do not accept physical absolutes of self containment within your own skin and life as "we" know it is self contained to this atmosphere.

Laws that rule and rule of law, which law rules life and which laws regulate what reality's character roles get to think about.

Religion and politics do two things, keep the imagination away from seeing what is right in front of everyone's noses.

Beware of denial, it is contagious and affects every reality the same way, character counts and genders don't matter unless they adopt a theory or theology.

Safety in numbers only works when every body understands everything known equally. No rank has its privileges the ruled over must pay to play in societal evolution regulating what genetic continuation gets to perform as directed by laws that rule reality economically and academically to follow religious and political doctrine defending nobody knows everything philosophy.

Is church and state first and third world orders or is academics and economics first and third?

by the way, welcome to pofo.
#14347472
onemalehuman wrote:Become open to what you see, not what you are educated to believe in. Open-minded means you do not accept physical absolutes of self containment within your own skin and life as "we" know it is self contained to this atmosphere.

Laws that rule and rule of law, which law rules life and which laws regulate what reality's character roles get to think about.

Religion and politics do two things, keep the imagination away from seeing what is right in front of everyone's noses.

Beware of denial, it is contagious and affects every reality the same way, character counts and genders don't matter unless they adopt a theory or theology.

Safety in numbers only works when every body understands everything known equally. No rank has its privileges the ruled over must pay to play in societal evolution regulating what genetic continuation gets to perform as directed by laws that rule reality economically and academically to follow religious and political doctrine defending nobody knows everything philosophy.

Is church and state first and third world orders or is academics and economics first and third?

by the way, welcome to pofo.


Thanks for your welcome, but I honestly can't follow your train of thought.

Are you saying that there is a characteristic in our societies that drives us away from considering a different "order of things"? Because if you're saying that; I agree with you, which is why I'm trying to understand the core ideas of anarchism.

Now I don't understand what you said in the last two paragraphs. Is it that the privileged and the Church have control over society through religion and the propagation of the capitalist frame of mind in schools?

I would greatly appreciate it if you clarified your point of view. I couldn't relate it to my original question. Bear with me, I'm new here and not really used to having coherent serious discussions.
#14347479
In terms of a phrase to google for, I suggest "Dispute resolution organisations" (or DROs) with a word like "anarchism".

Dispute resolution and enforcement can take many forms. The simple fact that most people want peaceful dispute resolution means that there is inherently a market for it. Anarchists don't want a coercive centralised agency (ie government) to undertake the function. This does not mean that they don't want the functions themselves. That I don't want the Government to monopolise shoe production doesn't mean that I don't want shoes.

In the absence of religious, genocidal or political wars (which are a significantly different thing) Mad Max style lawless badlands is basically a myth. The vast majority of people do not want to run around smashing stuff up arbitrarily (if they did we would need a significantly larger police force right now which only numbers around 200-400 per hundred thousand people). If we did leave a region to its own devices they would probably be better off with better justice systems. There has been a lot of good research that shows that in the absence of any Government mandated policing and judicial system people will naturally devise their own emergent, self-ordering arrangements. Taking the Hollywood "Wild West" as an example, it turns out it wasn't ever the lawless place we have been led to believe:

Anderson and Hill - The not so wild, wild west wrote:Key points:

The West during this time often is perceived as a place of great chaos, with little respect for property or life. Our research indicates that this was not the case; property rights were protected and civil order prevailed. Private agencies provided the necessary basis for an orderly society in which property was protected and conflicts were resolved. These agencies often did not qualify as governments because they did not have a legal monopoly on "keeping order." They soon discovered that "warfare" was a costly way of resolving disputes and lower cost methods of settlement (arbitration, courts, etc.) resulted. In summary, this paper argues that a characterization of the American West as chaotic would appear to be incorrect.


The way farmers deal with each other, typically without recourse to the courts in the first instance, has been extensively analysed by economists and legal practitioners. A particularly well known study was conducted by Robert C Ellickson in 1991. In Order Without Law: How Neighbours Settle Disputes, Ellickson provides a detailed account of how farmers establish and manage property rights with virtually no formal legal actions. Ellickson's analysis is based on observations of cattle farmers in California but most farmers in Australia will endorse the conclusions drawn by Ellickson. The approach described by Ellickson can be categorised as follows:
• Norms, not legal rules, are the basic sources of entitlements;
– most farming businesses are 'consciously committed to an overarching norm of cooperation among neighbours'. Irrespective of the law which highly favours cattle owners in open ranges '… they believe that an owner of livestock is responsible for the acts of his animals'.
• Incomplete enforcement: ie, a 'live-and-let-live' philosophy;
– landholders recognise that everyone causes and experiences spillovers and need to manage them. As long as the costs incurred to prevent and manage them are roughly equivalent between landholders the ledger is square.
• Mental accounting of inter-neighbour debts;
– when one neighbour is causing more spillovers than his/her neighbours, neighbours will take note of the trespasses and settle the account at a later date.
• The control of deviants; through a hierarchy of influences from peer pressure to intervention by local authorities.
#14347483
It's a complicated question that requires a complicated answer. Let me see if I can break it down a little:

1. You mention economic inequality. That is precisely one of the central problems anarchism is meant to address. The state is the protector of wealth. All states throughout history have served the ruling class. Without the state, there is no ruling class. You ask about private property, which is one thing we seek to get rid of, and replace with simple possession. Possession means that you are entitled to maintain what you're using for as long as you're using it, but do not have the power to extract tribute from others for its use. Thus, for example, workers have a right to use a factory to produce goods, but no one "owns" the factory, so there is no one to extract surplus value from the workers.

2. As far as defense, citizen militias and neighborhood watch groups could be formed that would out for threats. This would differ from police in that the police, as agents of the state, are essentially an occupying army serving and protecting the interests of the ruling class. When communities themselves come together for their common defense, they are not serving a particular class, but rather looking after themselves. They may also form networks with other communities so that they can call upon others for assistance.

3. Regarding justice, anarchists generally favor an approach based on transformative justice, which seeks to get to the root causes of problems. Much of this is accomplished by eliminating the causes of inequality, which is a major cause of violence. When someone causes a transgression against their community, a solution will be sought that brings not so much punishment(though that may be part of it), but reconciliation. Punitive justice is not ruled out, but would only be used in extenuating circumstances where no reconciliation is possible. But by addressing the structural causes of violence, we vastly reduce the need to deal with it by other means.
#14347484
Matt24 wrote:
Thanks for your welcome, but I honestly can't follow your train of thought.

Are you saying that there is a characteristic in our societies that drives us away from considering a different "order of things"? Because if you're saying that; I agree with you, which is why I'm trying to understand the core ideas of anarchism.

.


there are charactristics in humanity's ordered social networks that govern societal evolution that work the same way defined differently.

Inverse visuals and reverse psychology to train the brain by framing the imagination to view life as a gift, not a result of specific events randomly spaced within the same moment all the time this atmosphere is home to every lifetime passing through equally conceived, not equally talented.

I am of average talent and ability mentally and physically. That makes me no greater than a social pawn or less than a royal king leading an ideology of saving reality, not surviving the moment never the same added details twice.

Albert Einstein had two quotes, one about insanity and the other about simple compounding interest being the most powerful force in the universe.

Exponentials are not accurately defined by linear speculation. Know what separates symbolism from substance. Balance in that realization. It is much deeper than reality's architects want to make possible.
#14347497
In terms of a phrase to google for, I suggest "Dispute resolution organisations" (or DROs) with a word like "anarchism".

Dispute resolution and enforcement can take many forms. The simple fact that most people want peaceful dispute resolution means that there is inherently a market for it. Anarchists don't want a coercive centralised agency (ie government) to undertake the function. This does not mean that they don't want the functions themselves. That I don't want the Government to monopolise shoe production doesn't mean that I don't want shoes.


I see. But I'm not convinced such a system would be any better than government courts. For one thing, who would be in charge of taking these decisions? As you put it, it seems like these organisations would take over matters concerning certain sectors of the economy or society. In your shoe example, wouldn't the DRO have a vested interest in their decisions? What I mean is, I don't see how these organisations wouldn't be influenced by economic powers. Why wouldn't the DRO favor the big shoe-maker, involved in a dispute with minor shoe-makes? And what's worse is that no one would audit them, unlike the State where judicial cases can be reviewed by higher courts. Moreover, if its activity solely depends on solving disputes in that industry, then they would be too involved in the market to make an independent decision.

Of course, judicial independence does not really exist in any country. But I'd rather have uninvolved judges who are paid no matter the outcome of the case and who can be audited by other uninvolved civil servants.

In the absence of religious, genocidal or political wars (which are a significantly different thing) Mad Max style lawless badlands is basically a myth. The vast majority of people do not want to run around smashing stuff up arbitrarily (if they did we would need a significantly larger police force right now which only numbers around 200-400 per hundred thousand people). If we did leave a region to its own devices they would probably be better off with better justice systems. There has been a lot of good research that shows that in the absence of any Government mandated policing and judicial system people will naturally devise their own emergent, self-ordering arrangements. Taking the Hollywood "Wild West" as an example, it turns out it wasn't ever the lawless place we have been led to believe:

Key points:

The West during this time often is perceived as a place of great chaos, with little respect for property or life. Our research indicates that this was not the case; property rights were protected and civil order prevailed. Private agencies provided the necessary basis for an orderly society in which property was protected and conflicts were resolved. These agencies often did not qualify as governments because they did not have a legal monopoly on "keeping order." They soon discovered that "warfare" was a costly way of resolving disputes and lower cost methods of settlement (arbitration, courts, etc.) resulted. In summary, this paper argues that a characterization of the American West as chaotic would appear to be incorrect.


I don't doubt the veracity of that quote, but I'm surprised you would use it to back up your claims. Of course property rights and civil order were maintained... in accordance with the economic powers of the time! Who do you think paid these private agencies? I doubt common labourers/peasants would have received any protection then!

And I disagree that can ever happen. Do you think people would willingly pay "taxes" (Ok, not the correct term, but you know what I mean, the service has got to be paid for) to establish a service which they might consider unjust? How would they know if others are paying for the service too, and whether the wealthy pay more for it or the same? In the case of the American West, it was in the interest of the powerful to guarantee their private property and civil order too. Yet I doubt a citizen without much belongings to protect would really care about something like that.

The way farmers deal with each other, typically without recourse to the courts in the first instance, has been extensively analysed by economists and legal practitioners. A particularly well known study was conducted by Robert C Ellickson in 1991. In Order Without Law: How Neighbours Settle Disputes, Ellickson provides a detailed account of how farmers establish and manage property rights with virtually no formal legal actions. Ellickson's analysis is based on observations of cattle farmers in California but most farmers in Australia will endorse the conclusions drawn by Ellickson. The approach described by Ellickson can be categorised as follows:
• Norms, not legal rules, are the basic sources of entitlements;
– most farming businesses are 'consciously committed to an overarching norm of cooperation among neighbours'. Irrespective of the law which highly favours cattle owners in open ranges '… they believe that an owner of livestock is responsible for the acts of his animals'.
• Incomplete enforcement: ie, a 'live-and-let-live' philosophy;
– landholders recognise that everyone causes and experiences spillovers and need to manage them. As long as the costs incurred to prevent and manage them are roughly equivalent between landholders the ledger is square.
• Mental accounting of inter-neighbour debts;
– when one neighbour is causing more spillovers than his/her neighbours, neighbours will take note of the trespasses and settle the account at a later date.
• The control of deviants; through a hierarchy of influences from peer pressure to intervention by local authorities.


People of the same social class managing a dispute peacefully. Not impressed. I can get to an agreement with my brother and know that we won't end up physically fighting, but we have the same background; the same education; and the same customs.
#14347513
I was starting with small, easily understandable examples. The key thing about the market is that it would naturally fragment into a series of overlapping service providers rather than a single monopoly. That is actually its strength because then near real time feedback can be given to the providers about the quality of the job they are doing and people's relative demand for each service. The separation of powers/functions is naturally demanded by people in the market for the very reasons that you'd be scared of a monopolistic private service provider in the area of policing, enforcement, arbitration and punishment.

As an example of one way it could work (there can be many), you sign up with a security provider to protect you. As part of that contract you agree to abide by the rules of arbitration if you find yourself in some kind of dispute. eg. if someone has stolen your car. People will generally only want to sign up with places where there is a clear record of fairness. Why would you sign up with a provider that used an arb system that was giving out bad verdicts favouring certain people all the time? How could you be sure you wouldn't be on the end of an unfair verdict one day? A judge who is corrupt and gives unfair verdicts to the rich would simply not be in demand. The arbitration mechanisms are likely to have some form of bond or surety arrangement buried within them as per many current private arbitration systems.

If there is a corrupt arbitration firm, you just don't go with a security provider that uses that firm. Simple.

You have to remember this will be like a web of security and arbitration firms. eg:
- Sec Firm 1 and Sec Firm 2 might use arb firm 1 for any disputes between their customers
- Sec Firm 1 and Sec Firm 3 might use arb firm 2 for any disputes.
- Sec Firm 2 and Sec Firm 3 might use arb firm 3 for any disputes
- etc

Thus if you don't like arb firm 1's rulings , then go with sec firm 3 because they don't use them and any disputes would be dealt with by arb firm 2 or 3. It would be in the best interests of an arb firm to be as fair as possible because that would directly impact how many customers the associated security firms would get. And this game is all about volume due to the competition. This is a world where you can choose to avoid bad service when it comes to security and law.

Would there be corruption? Sure, you are never going to wipe it out completely. But the incentives would keep it minimized especially as compared to the current situation.

To give you an example of what happens in this world. Your car gets stolen. Your security provider, with whom you have a contract to protect you and your valuables, tracks it down and finds the person who did it. He has a different security provider. There is now a dispute between 2 customers of different providers as to who has the right to the car. Under the terms of the contract, whenever there is a dispute you are both obliged to go to arbitration and accept whatever ruling is handed down. It is highly likely you will get your car back plus compensation in this situation due to the incentives. If the guy chooses not to abide by the ruling then also by the terms of the contract he has with his security provider, that provider no longer gives him protection at which point the car could be forcibly taken back or his bond is forfeit, without interference from that guy's security provider.
#14347516
Paradigm wrote:It's a complicated question that requires a complicated answer. Let me see if I can break it down a little:

1. You mention economic inequality. That is precisely one of the central problems anarchism is meant to address. The state is the protector of wealth. All states throughout history have served the ruling class. Without the state, there is no ruling class. You ask about private property, which is one thing we seek to get rid of, and replace with simple possession. Possession means that you are entitled to maintain what you're using for as long as you're using it, but do not have the power to extract tribute from others for its use. Thus, for example, workers have a right to use a factory to produce goods, but no one "owns" the factory, so there is no one to extract surplus value from the workers.

2. As far as defense, citizen militias and neighborhood watch groups could be formed that would out for threats. This would differ from police in that the police, as agents of the state, are essentially an occupying army serving and protecting the interests of the ruling class. When communities themselves come together for their common defense, they are not serving a particular class, but rather looking after themselves. They may also form networks with other communities so that they can call upon others for assistance.

3. Regarding justice, anarchists generally favor an approach based on transformative justice, which seeks to get to the root causes of problems. Much of this is accomplished by eliminating the causes of inequality, which is a major cause of violence. When someone causes a transgression against their community, a solution will be sought that brings not so much punishment(though that may be part of it), but reconciliation. Punitive justice is not ruled out, but would only be used in extenuating circumstances where no reconciliation is possible. But by addressing the structural causes of violence, we vastly reduce the need to deal with it by other means.


Thank you for such a good answer. Straight and to the point. Let me answer back in the same order.

1. I absolutely agree that all states serve the ruling class. Now, the idea of simple possession sounds sort of incoherent. What defines "use"? Say I have three pairs of shoes. Does that mean I can't have them because I can't use them all at the same time? Or do I need to watch my TV all the time to claim it as my personal possession? Maybe I am approaching this issue from the wrong perspective of consumer goods. Let's look at the matter considering the means of production instead. It's easy to say that my labour will always be in use, if it's the only thing I have. But what happens with capital? First, I don't see how the "possession norm" would create a more egalitarian society. Nothing stops the landowner from hiring labourers to work his land, from hiring workers to produce the factory, etc. - and doing all at the same time. Unless... the distribution of the means of production were collectivized. That's what I think your idea was driving at. These organisations would work as cooperatives do, from my point of view. Cooperatives are a benign form of business and they're a socialist dream. However, their negative aspect is that they stifle investment in technology, as they do not want to replace labour with capital. Moreover, it's difficult for them to survive when the economy is not doing well, for example, and they have to lay off workers (or produce less, and approach losses or minimal profit). So although I strongly support them, I doubt cooperatives can get big enough or drive economic growth, even if capitalists allowed them to.

2. This is also a nice idea, but it really depends on how well a community gets on. I can see it happening in a village or small neighbourhood, but would it work in cities, where people hardly know each other? Would the members of these groups really bother to do their job right? Maybe I'm being too cynical, after all, police officials have no special interest most of the time in catching criminals. But the difference is, they're well-paid. Which gets me back to my earlier question in reply to the user "Voluntarism": how would this service be maintained? After all, participants of the group need to make a living off it, otherwise not many would be interested in wasting their time with those activities. Who will pay them for their service? Since there are no taxes, the community would have to come to an agreement on it. But that may lead to many disputes over who controls the tribute received (if everyone paid their share for the service) and who exerts payment. I find the idea correct in theory but difficult to execute in practice.

3. Now regarding justice, as I've pointed out the difficulties in really achieving equality and protecting "possessions", I do not believe there would be no violence. I'm no Hobbes, but one has to admit that man is conflictive (either by nature, or by life in society, but that's a different issue). Furthermore, to assert my point; even if equality were achieved, this does not mean man will keep to his new egalitarian economic position. The way I see it, any man driven by desires or passions could spend his/her income on something superflous; be part of an accident (say a fire, an earthquake); or he/she could damage a personal possession. And inequality would arise again, however unfrequent, and would lead to generations of men on a "lower economic scale" (because of the vicious circle of poverty) unless somebody came out in their rescue, which wouldn't happen since there would be no State.
#14347520
@Matt24

I should just clarify that I am an anarcho-capitalist/Libertarian who believes private property is intrinsic to individual liberty etc. Hence, unlike Paradigm, I am describing systems with private ownership of "the means of production" (which is commonly misused phrase by the socialists). I haven't given much thought to the exact nature of the solutions that the anarcho-communists propose and, like you, I think the system is fundamentally flawed as it loses the very important price signals in key aspects of complex investments. Community support/policing groups can still go a long way however, as evidenced by the Friendly Societies in the past (except they themselves effectively required people to have underlying private property rights to function efficiently).

Edit: Hmm, on re-reading the Anarchist FAQ's in this forum, I think this anarchist forum is actually for the socialist versions, which explains a lot (I'm new on here as well). I'm used to an-caps using the term anarchist but it seems to create confusion on this website.
Last edited by Voluntarism on 02 Jan 2014 04:31, edited 1 time in total.
#14347521
Voluntarism wrote:I was starting with small, easily understandable examples. The key thing about the market is that it would naturally fragment into a series of overlapping service providers rather than a single monopoly. That is actually its strength because then near real time feedback can be given to the providers about the quality of the job they are doing and people's relative demand for each service. The separation of powers/functions is naturally demanded by people in the market for the very reasons that you'd be scared of a monopolistic private service provider in the area of policing, enforcement, arbitration and punishment.

As an example of one way it could work (there can be many), you sign up with a security provider to protect you. As part of that contract you agree to abide by the rules of arbitration if you find yourself in some kind of dispute. eg. if someone has stolen your car. People will generally only want to sign up with places where there is a clear record of fairness. Why would you sign up with a provider that used an arb system that was giving out bad verdicts favouring certain people all the time? How could you be sure you wouldn't be on the end of an unfair verdict one day? A judge who is corrupt and gives unfair verdicts to the rich would simply not be in demand. The arbitration mechanisms are likely to have some form of bond or surety arrangement buried within them as per many current private arbitration systems.

If there is a corrupt arbitration firm, you just don't go with a security provider that uses that firm. Simple.

You have to remember this will be like a web of security and arbitration firms. eg:
- Sec Firm 1 and Sec Firm 2 might use arb firm 1 for any disputes between their customers
- Sec Firm 1 and Sec Firm 3 might use arb firm 2 for any disputes.
- Sec Firm 2 and Sec Firm 3 might use arb firm 3 for any disputes
- etc

Thus if you don't like arb firm 1's rulings , then go with sec firm 3 because they don't use them and any disputes would be dealt with by arb firm 2 or 3. It would be in the best interests of an arb firm to be as fair as possible because that would directly impact how many customers the associated security firms would get. And this game is all about volume due to the competition. This is a world where you can choose to avoid bad service when it comes to security and law.

Would there be corruption? Sure, you are never going to wipe it out completely. But the incentives would keep it minimized especially as compared to the current situation.

To give you an example of what happens in this world. Your car gets stolen. Your security provider, with whom you have a contract to protect you and your valuables, tracks it down and finds the person who did it. He has a different security provider. There is now a dispute between 2 customers of different providers as to who has the right to the car. Under the terms of the contract, whenever there is a dispute you are both obliged to go to arbitration and accept whatever ruling is handed down. It is highly likely you will get your car back plus compensation in this situation due to the incentives. If the guy chooses not to abide by the ruling then also by the terms of the contract he has with his security provider, that provider no longer gives him protection at which point the car could be forcibly taken back or his bond is forfeit, without interference from that guy's security provider.


I must admit the idea sounds much better now.

Nevertheless, I still have my reservations about it. Because, as you said, everyone chooses the service that is most convenient to them; that's where disputes over a dispute could arise. Say I, as a factory worker, choose to pay an arbitration system that I know tends to favour (or at least not harm much) worker's interests. But maybe a corporation or a wealthy landowner chooses one which tends to favour the big economic powers.

Now, what would happen if a company next-door pollutes my house's water resources (I don't know, I'm just making stuff up off the top of my head), and I decide that something needs to be done to settle the issue? Which arbitration firm would be chosen? I'll want mine, the company will want theirs.

But that's not what really worries me. As you said, firms respond to the market. They're private enterprises. So their existence depends on their clientele, on their demand. If they make rulings in favour of workers, then more workers will want their service and less capitalists would. As a result, the company has no other option but to radicalize their rulings, as it becomes pointless for them to really even consider the other group. And viceversa with those that favour capitalists. And even MORE worrying is that those that remain in the middle would only lose clients. It is a simple economic principle that people will do what they can to improve their position; they are rational beings. If you can choose a firm which will support your cause even more than this one (in the middle, trying to be fair to both causes) already does, then your decision is a no-brainer.

For now, based on all I've argued (thanks for the discussion, seriously!!) I'm finding anarchism impossible for the same reason communism is. Because people are just too self-interested.
#14347522
Voluntarism wrote:@Matt24

I should just clarify that I am an anarcho-capitalist/Libertarian who believes private property is intrinsic to individual liberty etc. Hence, unlike Paradigm, I am describing systems with private ownership of "the means of production" (which is commonly misused phrase by the socialists). I haven't given much thought to the exact nature of the solutions that the anarcho-communists propose and, like you, I think the system is fundamentally flawed as it loses the very important price signals in key aspects of complex investments. Community support/policing groups can still go a long way however, as evidenced by the Friendly Societies in the past (except they themselves effectively required people to have underlying private property rights to function efficiently).

Edit: Hmm, on re-reading the Anarchist FAQ's in this forum, I think this anarchist forum is actually for the socialist versions, which explains a lot (I'm new on here as well). I'm used to an-caps using the term anarchist but it seems to create confusion on this website.


Thanks for the clarification Voluntarism. I did find it awkward for you to defend anarchism with private enterprises, but now it makes more sense.

Never mind anyhow, keep the discussion going. I want to consider all kinds of anarchism, but I know there are many diverse schools of thought.

Indeed, for me it all sounds very difficult to apply. Especially when considering people have to come up with it all by themselves. I've never heard about the Friendly Societies before, I'm going to do some research on it later. Which friendly societies are you specifically talking about? From a quick google search I only found English friendly societies from the past.

By the way, welcome to the forum as well.
#14347523
The key is that the low cost resolution of disputes are peaceful ones. Hence, if the firms do fragment towards poor workers and rich workers then in fairly short order they will not be wanting to solve new disputes with each other. As their very business is solving disputes it is actually in their interests to utilise mutually acceptable unbiased arbitrators. Yes, they will want to move to more biased ones just like lawyers today want to delay cases etc to get the "right judge". They will likely succeed here and there but any frequent or continual misapplication of justice will result in disputes escalating and trust eroding. To stay in business it is actually in their interests to watch what the others are doing and speak out as loudly as possible about the injustices and corruption of your competitors and the fairness of your services in order to win customers. This sort of self-interest is actually beneficial.
#14347527
Matt24 wrote:I've never heard about the Friendly Societies before, I'm going to do some research on it later. Which friendly societies are you specifically talking about? From a quick google search I only found English friendly societies from the past.

I suggest THIS LINK as a good starting page. They were very common in England, USA and Australia but other examples have existed in other countries. The hard part is finding information since they largely flew under the radar because they were non-government solutions to the problems resulting from an industrialising society. People like Tom Palmer have done a lot of research trying to dig out the old records. Naturally however, they have focussed on the English speaking countries.
#14347528
Voluntarism wrote:The key is that the low cost resolution of disputes are peaceful ones. Hence, if the firms do fragment towards poor workers and rich workers then in fairly short order they will not be wanting to solve new disputes with each other. As their very business is solving disputes it is actually in their interests to utilise mutually acceptable unbiased arbitrators. Yes, they will want to move to more biased ones just like lawyers today want to delay cases etc to get the "right judge". They will likely succeed here and there but any frequent or continual misapplication of justice will result in disputes escalating and trust eroding. To stay in business it is actually in their interests to watch what the others are doing and speak out as loudly as possible about the injustices and corruption of your competitors and the fairness of your services in order to win customers. This sort of self-interest is actually beneficial.


Well, yes, it all depends on how disputes can be settled when two firms do not agree. It is true they may need diplomacy to survive on their business. But that still puts me off, as I imagine much wheeling and dealing going on behind closed doors, and I wouldn't trust a private enterprise on that. Maybe to compensate the loss of clients from X decision, the losing firm will demand from the other a payment of X. I don't know, that's at least how I imagine it. However, it may well be that I'm just overly-pessimistic of new ideas.
#14347529
I suggest THIS LINK as a good starting page. They were very common in England, USA and Australia but other examples have existed in other countries. The hard part is finding information since they largely flew under the radar because they were non-government solutions to the problems resulting from an industrialising society. People like Tom Palmer have done a lot of research trying to dig out the old records. Naturally however, they have focussed on the English speaking countries.


Thanks! I'll go over it sooner or later. Kind of surprised me because it looks like Wikipedia, but with 10x more information than Wiki's article on that topic.
#14347530
Matt24 wrote:Well, yes, it all depends on how disputes can be settled when two firms do not agree. It is true they may need diplomacy to survive on their business. But that still puts me off, as I imagine much wheeling and dealing going on behind closed doors, and I wouldn't trust a private enterprise on that. Maybe to compensate the loss of clients from X decision, the losing firm will demand from the other a payment of X. I don't know, that's at least how I imagine it. However, it may well be that I'm just overly-pessimistic of new ideas.

Let the ideas start and take your time mulling through the implications. It takes a while and a lot of other reading to see through many of the consequences/solutions (I'm still finding new ones).

There a (fairly bad) joke about it:
Q: What's the difference between a Minarchist-Libertarian and an Anarchist-Libertarian?
A: About 6 months.
#14347531
Voluntarism wrote:Let the ideas start and take your time mulling through the implications. It takes a while and a lot of other reading to see through many of the consequences/solutions (I'm still finding new ones).

There a (fairly bad) joke about it:
Q: What's the difference between a Minarchist-Libertarian and an Anarchist-Libertarian?
A: About 6 months.


Ok, thanks for the advice! Yes, I realize that these discussions are intricate: I think it will take me more than I thought to find my political ideology!

The joke is good, I went from thinking "Anarchy? Eww nooo" today early in the morning to "Anarchy? A good idea but difficult to implement" right now. Just shows how our views can radically change as we have more and more information. To be honest, nobody knows that better than me. I went from liberal to socialist in the course of a year. As you consider more and more options, the richer your political views become.
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Matt24 wrote:Now, the idea of simple possession sounds sort of incoherent. What defines "use"? Say I have three pairs of shoes. Does that mean I can't have them because I can't use them all at the same time? Or do I need to watch my TV all the time to claim it as my personal possession?

Anyone who's ever had roommates can understand how possessions work. At my house, we have different rooms, and certain personal affects that we can all claim as our own, but there are also things we share, like the oven, microwave, toilet, shower, refrigerator, etc. The point of possessions is that it doesn't require some legal code to work it out. Social conventions are perfectly fine for that purpose. Anarchists seek to extrapolate these kinds of relations to society in general.

Cooperatives are a benign form of business and they're a socialist dream. However, their negative aspect is that they stifle investment in technology, as they do not want to replace labour with capital.

The idea of "investing" in technology is a rather capitalist notion. Innovation is a natural outgrowth of the inherent creative capacities of humans. People enjoy being creative, and that creativity is stifled by jobs that force people to be cogs in the machine. As anarchists, we seek a society which frees people to pursue their creative passions.

Moreover, it's difficult for them to survive when the economy is not doing well, for example, and they have to lay off workers (or produce less, and approach losses or minimal profit). So although I strongly support them, I doubt cooperatives can get big enough or drive economic growth, even if capitalists allowed them to.

The problem is that you're looking at co-ops within the context of capitalism. I'm talking about have an economy that is itself cooperative, not one based on profit. Things like economic downturns and layoffs would be obsolete ideas within such an economy.

This is also a nice idea, but it really depends on how well a community gets on. I can see it happening in a village or small neighbourhood, but would it work in cities, where people hardly know each other?

Part of the thrust of capitalism has been to isolate people from each other more and more. Part of the work of revolutionaries is counteract this and connect people with one another. The Black Panthers managed to do this brilliantly back in their heyday, with community policing and free breakfast programs. So yes, the current system is very much stacked against such cooperation, but that is precisely what we seek to fight against.

Which gets me back to my earlier question in reply to the user "Voluntarism": how would this service be maintained? After all, participants of the group need to make a living off it, otherwise not many would be interested in wasting their time with those activities.

No, they don't need to be reimbursed if they actually live in these communities. All they have to do is have an interest in their community's safety. Plenty of neighborhood watch programs already exist, and they are comprised of volunteers. And as I mentioned, this would be in combination with addressing the root causes of crime, so there would be less violence to worry about.

Now regarding justice, as I've pointed out the difficulties in really achieving equality and protecting "possessions", I do not believe there would be no violence. I'm no Hobbes, but one has to admit that man is conflictive (either by nature, or by life in society, but that's a different issue).

I don't claim that violence would be abolished once and for all. That'd be silly. But it'd be equally silly to ignore the social factors that increase violence, such as socioeconomic inequality.

Furthermore, to assert my point; even if equality were achieved, this does not mean man will keep to his new egalitarian economic position. The way I see it, any man driven by desires or passions could spend his/her income on something superflous; be part of an accident (say a fire, an earthquake); or he/she could damage a personal possession. And inequality would arise again, however unfrequent, and would lead to generations of men on a "lower economic scale" (because of the vicious circle of poverty) unless somebody came out in their rescue, which wouldn't happen since there would be no State.

See, you're still thinking in terms of capitalist property relations. Anarchists seek to create a society based on mutual aid. As Kropotkin meticulously documented, mutual aid was the original form of exchange in human societies, and has continued to play some role in all human societies even when it is de-emphasized compared to other forms of exchange. While some anarchists advocate outright abolishing money and replacing it with mutual aid, there can also be community credit systems that operate on the basis of mutual aid, as was the case in many Medieval towns. When we speak of equality, we don't mean that everyone will literally have the same amount of stuff at any one time, but rather that the goods of society will circulate in an egalitarian manner. We seek to abolish a society based on accumulation and replace it with one based on mutual aid. Toward that end, we seek to overthrow the violent power of the state, which makes the current system of accumulation possible in the first place.

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