Question about anarchism

[Savior]

In an anarchist society how would technolgy keep progressing? Like I want the human race to colonize other planets. But how would we get the nessary people and resources together to do this without some form of a state?

[x371322]

No state doesn't mean no organization. I think people are perfectly capable of working together toward common goals, without the need for any state. Just as we will still have schools, hospitals, and fire departments without the state; we could also have some kind of worldwide space association. Why should the state be necessary for organizations like these to exist?

[Savior]

How they get the resources?

[Revolutionair]

Right now we have two reasons to produce:
- Exchange Value
- Use Value

Exchange value is basically the money it costs. Use value is the fact that an item has utility.

In an anarchist society the only reason to produce is use value. This means that if people find it useful to colonize other planets, they can pool the resources they need to achieve that goal.
In modern societies you have to not trust the people around you. You cannot borrow a stranger your car because it has exchange value to them, this means that you might not get it back. When we produce to eliminate scarcity, there is no risk of that person not returning your car because it does not improve his situation. People will, I think, also not hog goods. When everything is 'free' at the supermarket people will, again I think, not take everything, because they don't have to fear that there won't be any. Utopia by Thomas More gives an image of what live would be in this kind of situation.

How does that relate to colonizing other planets? We don't have to fear that we lose our resources, because we no longer live in an exchange value based society but in an information based society. This means that we are able to associate without the constraints of capitalist based problems.

The Climate Change Conference today is unable to produce any kind of agreement because the foundation of society is based on the hogging of power and information. Countries can't just reduce their toxic waste because that would decrease their exchange value based power.

In an anarchistic society there is no reason for people to not focus on use value since exchange value is eliminated. There is no fear of people stealing resources because there is no use value in doing that.


I hope I got my point across. If I didn't, just say so.


edit:
If your question was simply: how do we mine the metal, then my answer would be: almost the same way as we do now. People can still organize voluntarily and they can determine how much metal is needed and just extract it from the earth.

[Savior]

Makes sense... How would we keep the infasture intact and maintained. Also this may sound weird...but let's say we have an hostile alien race... How are we to defend ourselves against them. And I don't want to sound like a nut my friend asked me that when I tried to explain anarchism.

[FreeFocus]

Makes sense... How would we keep the infasture intact and maintained. Also this may sound weird...but let's say we have an hostile alien race... How are we to defend ourselves against them. And I don't want to sound like a nut my friend asked me that when I tried to explain anarchism.

Guerrilla war? If aliens with superior technology attacked us today, that's what we'd have to resort to anyway if they occupied Earth. We don't have the ability to travel to another planet or attack their home planet somehow.

Also, please tell your friend he's a jackass and a dumb ass (if he was serious about the question), because the liberation of humanity and the elimination of capitalism is far more important than some moronic Twilight Zone fantasy in his head.

Anarchism works toward the abolition of capitalism, the state, and other forms of illegitimate authority and hierarchy. It is for organic, horizontalist organization where everyone's individual and group rights are respected so that we can fulfill our potential and contribute to human development in ways that are meaningful to ourselves and our communities.

[Savior]

Thank you and I will tell him. I asked it because I kind of Intrigued me how people would organize and I think he meant if we were an interplanetary civilization. And yes he is a dumbass

[Revolutionair]

Infrastructure is of use to us. I see no reason to believe that humanity will stop maintaining infrastructure post-revolution.


The hostile alien race is a bit of an undefined question. What kind of race is this? Are they humanoids? Are they advanced or primitive?

But I think the answer might lie with the militias in the Spanish Civil War. But honestly I wouldn't know. We are able to create an instant communication network that includes every single individual on the planet eg we could in theory choose a name from a portable computer the size of your watch, and then talk to that person in less than a second. Implementing this in an information based society will drastically change the world.

We might be able to process the thoughts of every single citizen in a computer and generate the best strategy to fight aliens.

This question is like asking in the medieval ages, what if people attack us with projectiles that can easily travel over our walls? In that time I would probably have said something along the lines of higher walls or less static defense. But now that we have the technology I can answer with: use missiles to intercept the rockets.

[NGNM85]

Makes sense... How would we keep the infasture intact and maintained.

Again, in principle, it wouldn't function that much differently than it does now, it would very likely function better, in many important respects.


Also this may sound weird...but let's say we have an hostile alien race... How are we to defend ourselves against them. And I don't want to sound like a nut my friend asked me that when I tried to explain anarchism.

It's not that crazy. First, it's really just a repackaged version of one of the most common assertions by people who are unfamiliar with Anarchist philosophy, that an Anarchist society would be unable to defend itself from aggression, which is fairly dubious on a number of levels.

Taking into account what we know about the size and composition of the universe, it is virtually guaranteed that extraterrestrial life exists, in some form or another. (Not necessarily sentient life.) Although, we can categorically deny these lurid tales of alien abduction as vulgar fictions inspired by an excessive television. We can be relatively certain that a superintelligent alien species would have betteer things to do than to travel millions of light years to examine some rednecks' prostate. In all seriousness, such a species most likely would not physically travel throughout the universe, but, rather, send out a series of sophisticated unmanned satellites, like von Neumann probes. Also, we can be fairly positive such an advanced species would not be hostile because we would not represent any kind of threat, nor would we have anything they could possibly want. They might be totally indifferent, but we can be almost positive they would not be hostile.

[Savior]

Thanks for the great info

[Savior]

No state does mean no organisation. You can't re-organise society without some form of central political system. There are far too many variations and unknowns in the process of macro-managing an entire nation to rely on anything else.

Guessing your not an Anarchist?

[Revolutionair]

No state does mean no organisation. You can't re-organise society without some form of central political system. There are far too many variations and unknowns in the process of macro-managing an entire nation to rely on anything else.

No state does NOT mean no organization. The very fact that groups are able to split off as you said means that there are groups and something to split off of.

No state only means that workers are free to do what they want, instead of being forced by a totalitarian capitalist state. Being free to do what you want includes organizing with like-minded people.

I guess you're not only anti-anarchist but also anti-communist, because Marx said that communism is classless and STATELESS.