Can Anarchy Work?
The short answer is "yes." Now I know there are a lot of freedom loving people active on Steemit, and believe me, I'm one of them. But most anarchist views here and elsewhere are noble in their aims and intentions, but lack a realistic understanding of freedom itself.
Anarchy Grunge Flag | by Free Grunge Textures - www.freestock.ca
source: Flickr
According to anarchist- or voluntarist ideology, and I'm going to be painting the picture with gigantic strokes, people should be free to do whatever they want, as long as others don't get hurt, and as long as all interaction between people is on a voluntary basis. Violence is not allowed, unless when it's in self-defense and the same goes for one's property; it is to be respected and not violated by others.
This is such a beautiful and totally reasonable way to look at life: it basically says that my freedom ends where your freedom get's limited or violated by mine. Fellow Steemian @eftnow made a beautiful post about this anarchist view, with a 10 minute video in which he explains exactly what I mean. Please take a look at it, as I think he perfectly captures why anarchism has gained so much popularity, and why it is in principle a good idea:
Please go to his post and upvote the hell out of that! Even if I'm not totally convinced by the case he makes, I'll repeat what he says and agree with him that these ideas are a huge step in the right direction! We should be free and we should not be coerced to do anything against our will by any ruling power. Period.
Let me show you anarchy in action and prove, in some small way, that human beings are perfectly able to live without rules:
- Amazing Traffic Without Traffic Light. source: YouTube
Did you notice how no one loses their temper? How there's a leader and a follower in all of us and we naturally seem to know when to act in which role? Did you notice some "natural leaders" perhaps? What you see here is live organic rule-making among ourselves. If these pictures worry or scare you, then maybe you're not yet ready for a truly free society. True freedom will demand from us a constant awareness of each other's presence as we navigate through the society of people we belong to, a constant applying of the Golden Rule every step of the way.
When in a Scandinavian country (I forget which) the traffic lights on a very busy intersection, where previously a lot of accidents happened, were turned off, there were suddenly a lot less to no accidents anymore. Also participants in traffic suddenly approached the intersection with much more care and consideration and acted a lot friendlier to one another.
- THE MOST INSANE TRAFFIC EVER IN HANOI, VIETNAM! source: YouTube
Rules and laws make us morally lazy. We do things because we're allowed and we don't because we're forbidden, instead of letting our own judgement, our own morals speak. The Scandinavian intersection is but one, and a very graphic example of this but we all know it's true in all walks of life; it's in my opinion the main reason why the white-collar criminals get away with their schemes every time. In our subconscious minds we're remembered that they acted within the law, so they must have been very smart individuals, not criminal. It's why I'm afraid the Jerry Banfields and Trevon James's of this world will always have a faithful following.
So Anarchists are on the right track. They just need to adjust their views on property, trade, individualism and the individualistic nature of their freedom. What they truly seek is the applying of the Golden Rule to all of society, which is actually a call for a true and working democracy as it is consensus on large scales. And democracy cannot work in a plutocracy, freedom is lost in a plutocracy. And a plutocracy is the final station in any system that's based on the "free and unhindered" accumulation of private property. Any system that separates us in "haves" and "have-nots" is bound to end in a plutocracy.
This is why anarchy or any other form of a truly free society will never work alongside capitalism. How could it? Pleas feel free to enlighten me in the comments section. Since I'm still buried in work off the blockchain I still can't make promises regarding an elaborate reaction from me, but I do promise to read all your ideas, objections or agreements, so I can incorporate them in my own opinions for it's never too late to learn something new :-)
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@zyx066 - thanks very much for your well thought out response and featuring my post in here. I'm glad it has sparked some debate, especially as I'm not a big authority on this subject, so I've learned a lot both from your post and from @omitaylor in her responses to us.
What is apparent is that many of us now have a clear understanding of what we want to move away from and while we have some idea of what we want to move to, that has to evolve and, probably hasn't even been fully imagined yet.
It's a resteem for you!
Thank you so much, @eftnow! I'm also glad that you made that wonderful video-message; freedom is an important topic to keep alive in our community, as well as alternative ways to think about that freedom and the relationship between freedom and the way we distribute wealth. Thanks again for sparking that discussion! :-)
It could with the right "currency".
Go here https://steemit.com/@a-a-a to get your post resteemed to over 72,000 followers.
Nice read. I leave an upvote for this article thumbsup
Thanks so much, @tomask-de! Glad you liked it :-)
As you appear to be acknowledging, individual sovereignty is an important aspect of successful decentralized systems.
If all the social constructs of capitalism are removed and owner operators are the norm, capitalism works well. Direct peer to peer exchanges of goods and services, without statism or corporatism.
Even the potential for violence is tempered when individual sovereignty is respected. This is somewhat the important aspect of how a individualist republic functions. Democracies tend to not work, because there is little incentive for the collectives to recognize individualism.
Without private property, there is no individual liberty. If you are against private property, you are a collectivist and not a liberty defender. There's not much difference between a communist and a fascist. Both want to control others. There are two groups of people in this world. One seeks to control others. The other does not. Which are you? If I cannot accumulate wealth through fair means, there's no point in being productive. Communists don't understand that however because they are not interested in self ownership or individual liberty. Instead, they want to force people to be equally poor while an oligarchy maintains power. No thanks!
Hi there @finnian, thanks so much for stopping by and leaving a response! :-)
Well, that's just the question, isn't it? That's exactly where all anarchist noble theories about freedom break down, as I've tried to explain in many posts, including this one. Self ownership you say? I didn't make me what I am, how can I own that? I didn't decide where I was born, so how can I attach any sort of ownership or pride to that? Just some random questions there. The oligarchy you're talking about is real, and it's called the capitalist plutocracy.
In my mind it's hilarious that those who are most opposed to the oligarchy are the biggest believers in the tool that gave the oligarchs their position on top of the food-chain. I'll ask you to: How, in a free market without reigns, would freedom be distributed in your mind? Please tell me, I'm curious to know.
Also, why do you need to own anything? I don't have to own a CD, as long as I can listen to the music I want when I want. I don't have to own a house, as long as I can live in it and others respect my private space. I don't have to own bread to be able to eat it. I don't have to own a drill when I know I'll use it twice in my entire life. Ownership is nothing my friend, access is everything. And we should all have acces to anything we're able to produce together for each other. Ownership just hinders freedom. And that community you're so afraid of, is the only community that can grant you that freedom.
So, to your question "which one are you", the answer is none of the above; I'm me and you cannot place me in any of all of the three -isms that come to mind in all people that feel threatened in their way of life. Or did I misunderstand and did you not equate the absence of ownership and free market to everybody but the "oligarchs" being reduced to eternal poverty? I'm trying to understand you, but I cannot grasp how you could even think about richness and poverty when the basis of those things, namely ownership, is gone.
How would it be distributed? It would be distributed based on an individual's productivity and value in an open and free market. If you sit around all day doing nothing, you'd be poor most likely. If you worked your butt off, studied hard, etc., you would be more wealthy.
Why own anything? Ownership means control. You control your own body, right? You don't think you should? If I fairly gain property through my productivity, I should be able to control it.
Property is primary wealth. Primary wealth simply means I've stored my past labor in something to keep it for the future. If I am not allowed to accumulate wealth, then I will always be poor. That seems to be the objective of communists too. They want everyone poor.
Worse, I work my butt off for my children, and I do that to give them a better future. The last I checked too, I'm not part of a "capitalist plutocracy." The oligarchs are not capitalists. They are fascists. They want full control as an elite over everyone else.
You do not believe I should have private property, so you're a communist. There's no reason to discuss this further with you either. We'll never agree on these key issues. Thanks for your reply though. /bow