Some questions about an anarchist society...

[Velkas]

I am an anarchist (an anarchist communist) but there are a few questions I have about how a libertarian socialist society would exist in the near future. Please answer my questions...

If an small anarchist society was established and gained independence in the near future as a confederation of anarchist communes...


How would this society be defended?
How would this society go about having foreign relations with other countries? (A necessary evil to protect the nation from being totally crushed by the rest of the world)
How would this society gain access to resources not available within its territory?
How would disputes between communes be settled?

[Misanthrope]

How would this society be defended?


A rotated workers militia. Some insist it be voluntary.



How would this society go about having foreign relations with other countries? (A necessary evil to protect the nation from being totally crushed by the rest of the world)

If an anarchic society were to exist among states, then militias of some sort would be defend. You should research Gaelic Ireland, a stateless society in which it took England about 100 years to conquer them.



How would this society gain access to resources not available within its territory?

Trade, just like under a state.


How would disputes between communes be settled?

democratic vote of some sort

[NecroCommie]

I am in no way an anarchist communist, but since my ideal society is kinda identical I will try to answer this one.

How would this society be defended?

Armed militia. No sensible attack would ever be launched against a country that has an entire population armed and ready to die for it. Besides, this voluntary armed militia would most propably organize itself properly, plan ahead possible scenarios, and co-operate with other regional militias. Even unarmed resistance might get something done if implemented in large enough scale, and in accordance with the armed one. Not saying that unarmed resistance alone could do anything. :rolleyes:

So to put it simply: If the people is truly ready to defend itself, the exact manner of defence counts for little else than saving lives.

How would this society go about having foreign relations with other countries? (A necessary evil to protect the nation from being totally crushed by the rest of the world)

With elected representatives. Like all other officials, these messengers too could only earn as much as an average worker, and could be called off at a moments notice by his/her electors. Instead of some lousy governments, these people would represent their electors directly.

If the question was about what the exact foreign policy was, then that is for the people to decide. All policies have their pros and cons.

How would this society gain access to resources not available within its territory?

Trade? The same way they do today, except that the orders would be done by democratic communal councils instead of cigar smoking head executives.

How would disputes between communes be settled?

Hopefully diplomatically. Since the negotiations would no longer have anything to do with intrests of the ruling class, the motivation to reach a peaceful deal would rise dramatically. A third party might also intervene as an assisting negotiator.

[F9]

How would this society be defended?

People can defend themselves, we dont need anyone to tell us to.So some people voluntary, will arm and be prepared.We would of course have and in our hands the defensive military weapons state used to have, so with those and by having most probably some technicians working on them, we can built our defense better threw equipment, so we need less human need for protection.
Machines are the future, are those who are going to let the person completely free, help him/her with her life and better the living standards.We are of course going to be focus on a defense technique which isnt and the best for such society, but there isnt and much to do when you know either you try or die..




How would this society go about having foreign relations with other countries? (A necessary evil to protect the nation from being totally crushed by the rest of the world)

I dont think any state will want friendly relations...We will have to settle on our defenses.




How would this society gain access to resources not available within its territory?

Beside trying to make impossible possible and make them available, which would may naturally most of the times fail.. seems unlikely any state to accept any relation and help it with trades.Of course we all hope that one revolution will help others explode too, so we hope not to be left with only one community "isolated" but with more..One isolated community has high chances to fail for this particular reason.No one is gonna give you what you need, they want you dissapearing from the map, so they continue their "ruling" amongst the people with no objections.One society like that threats their own, people may "like it" and gain power of it and revolt against them, so yeah states are going to be against this.
We need a more broad revolution than one specific in one place, though i personally still wont reject it if it comes!





How would disputes between communes be settled?

What disputes?Why have disputes?Seems unlikely to happen in such society...


Fuserg9:star:

[Post-Something]

To be honest with you, even from a communistic perspective, a rotating armed militia just sounds like a neighborhood watch with guns. If any other state wanted to attack, it doesn't really seem that dificult to do, considering the military might of some of them. I mean, all this talk of inheriting nuclear weapons and stuff is nice, but the fact of the matter is that you can't really use it, because the international community wouldn't forgive anyone for tearing a country to shreds with those weapons, so you're really restricted in what you can use. Furthermore, we've seen what happens in a post-revolutionary situation. The workers in the Soviet Union took a hard hit, and as a result many of the democratic institutions just couldn't function anymore.

[Misanthrope]

To be honest with you, even from a communistic perspective, a rotating armed militia just sounds like a neighborhood watch with guns. If any other state wanted to attack, it doesn't really seem that dificult to do, considering the military might of some of them. I mean, all this talk of inheriting nuclear weapons and stuff is nice, but the fact of the matter is that you can't really use it, because the international community wouldn't forgive anyone for tearing a country to shreds with those weapons, so you're really restricted in what you can use. Furthermore, we've seen what happens in a post-revolutionary situation. The workers in the Soviet Union took a hard hit, and as a result many of the democratic institutions just couldn't function anymore.

They sure did forgive the US.

What about Gaelic Ireland? A stateless society which took England 100 years to conquer. England as in the British Empire during the 1500's.

[Post-Something]

They sure did forgive the US.

What about Gaelic Ireland? A stateless society which took England 100 years to conquer. England as in the British Empire during the 1500's.

Yeah, what about Gaelic Ireland? The world has moved on since the 1500s. State terror is much more precise, and the world is more economically interlinked. It would be much harder to survive as a revolutionary state now.

[BabylonHoruv]

How would this society be defended?

I assume the Anarchist society was established through a violent revolution, as the Capitalists are not going to give up power peacefully. An armed force capable of overthrowing the Capitalist government should be more than sufficient for defense.


How would this society go about having foreign relations with other countries? (A necessary evil to protect the nation from being totally crushed by the rest of the world)

I wouldn't call this evil at all. As the nature of the federation would be clear other countries would have to know that those they met with were not rulers, or representatives of rulers, but only messengers, there to essentially translate between the people of the communes and whichever nation they were dealing with.


How would this society gain access to resources not available within its territory?

Trade


How would disputes between communes be settled?

The same as disputes between any two groups, get them to sit down at the table together, preferably with a neutral third party to moderate, and see what solution can be reached.

[Old Man Diogenes]

How would this society be defended?
A voluntary militia

How would this society go about having foreign relations with other countries? (A necessary evil to protect the nation from being totally crushed by the rest of the world)
Recallable delegates completely answerable to the people voted in democratically as representatives.

How would this society gain access to resources not available within its territory?
Trading and co-operating with other communes and countries (if countries still exist).

How would disputes between communes be settled?
Democratically and diplomatically.

[Old Man Diogenes]

How would this society go about having foreign relations with other countries? (A necessary evil to protect the nation from being totally crushed by the rest of the world)
I wouldn't call this evil at all. As the nature of the federation would be clear other countries would have to know that those they met with were not rulers, or representatives of rulers, but only messengers, there to essentially translate between the people of the communes and whichever nation they were dealing with.




How would disputes between communes be settled?
The same as disputes between any two groups, get them to sit down at the table together, preferably with a neutral third party to moderate, and see what solution can be reached.

They're two really good answers. :thumbup1:

[A_Ciarra]

"How would this society be defended?"

Alliances of course are also built with other communities for the purposes of collective security (http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/peace/treatment/collsec.htm).

"How would this society go about having foreign relations with other countries? (A necessary evil to protect the nation from being totally crushed by the rest of the world)."

Instantly recallable delegates (I completely reject the concept and practice of elected representatives and terms). A good community to study on this topic is the Zapatistas of Mexico, maybe even the documentary A Place Called Chiapas (http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=Chiapas&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv#) would be helpful. They have a lot of practice dealing with the Mexican government this way.

"How would this society gain access to resources not available within its territory?"

Fierce embargo's and sanctions have historically been placed on leftist communities. It would be critical to have strong alliances going with other leftist communities, and have this be part of revolutionary strategy. After that you have the black market and smuggling (this is how Gaza for example has been having to get supplies).

"How would disputes between communes be settled?"

That depends on the type of anarchist community and the even "autonomous zones" within anarchist communities. Social anarchists believe in a lot of organizational groups so they would have support facilities and what not for dispute resolutions. I'm not sure how the individualist/insurrectionary anarchists would assist each other on that account. Then of curse you have the family training their kids in self responsibility and co-operation, and communites running town hall type meetings so people can talk things over, argue, hear advice, and seek wisdom for solutions.

[ComradeOm]

What about Gaelic Ireland? A stateless society which took England 100 years to conquer. England as in the British Empire during the 1500's.Huh? This is probably not the right thread for this but I can't just pass by such a nonsensical interpretation of history

In the first place Gaelic Ireland was not a stateless society and nor was it comprised of some sort of network of militias. It was a feudal society in which authority was held by kings and a noble class. For most of the period the country was covered by a patchwork of petty fiefdoms and a handful of regional kings with a (usually disputed) High King at the top of the pyramid. To call this a "stateless society" is a complete flight of fantasy

Secondly, as with most feudal or proto-feudal societies, the responsibility for raising and fielding armies lay with the dominant military caste. Local lords would draw on a pool of professional soldiers (largely nobles and, often Scottish, mercenaries) and augment this by forcefully raising peasant levies. Hardly a model for any anarchist society... not least because it proved entirely ineffective against the much more sophisticated Norman armies

This leads on to the third point - it did not take the British Empire a century to conquer Ireland because the British Empire did not exist. The original Norman invaders conquered large swathes of Ireland in the second half of the 12th C without any real resistance from the native lords (who either welcomed them in or were powerless to resist). These invaders in turn 'went native' and adopted Irish customs. The actual English (still not British) (re)conquest did not occur until the 1530s and the length of time to complete it (considerably less than a century) owes less to Irish military prowess (note: its now Irish and not Gaelic) than the difficulties of establishing a central authority in such a backwards and fragmented nation