The Inevitability of Anarchism

[Comrade Crow]

Is anarchy not inevitable? Take into consideration all of the things that have come out recently like wikileaks, Youtube, and other sites which are powered by user input. It seems to me that with technological progress like this used in a egalitarian way, that anarchy seems sort of inevitable. Not that a revolution isn't needed but just some thoughts.

[Commie73]

Is anarchy not inevitable? Take into consideration all of the things that have come out recently like wikileaks, Youtube, and other sites which are powered by user input. It seems to me that with technological progress like this used in a egalitarian way, that anarchy seems sort of inevitable. Not that a revolution isn't needed but just some thoughts.


No it isnt. If you look at these things you have mentioned, many of them are not so anarchist. Look at wiki leaks, it is a idealist liberal check on the power of governments, the belief that transparency in government makes a good government, it doesnt question the institution itself. Next youtube and sharing sites, I think under a communist system there would be free distribution of media, however currently these tools are strictly controlled, and used to create profit. Also, I think if we see "anarchy" as a real form of communism - a stateless, classless, moneyless society, then we need a critique of capital that looks not only at social interactions through the internet, but also looks at the social and economic relationships of the capitalist productive process. We have to look to the workplace. Even if the internet was completely open source, without an anti-capitalist class based revolution, we would still have the exploitative relations of capitalism in the workplace.

[MortyMingledon]

I think often the importance of the internet is exaggerated. It really bothers me when people attribute the Arab Spring to Facebook and Twitter. It's just a sneaky way for the USA to claim credit for the uprisings there.

Having said that, I do believe the internet had the potential to become an egalitarian form of media through which subversion of the capitalist system could have been made possible. More than YouTube this is mostly evidenced by alternative news sites and forums. When almost all forms of media except spoken word are dominated by capital, subversion is almost impossible. Steps have been taken, however, to limit the revolutionary potential of the internet, by for instance allowing companies to give priority access to certain types of information and block other types.

No matter the revolutionary potential of the internet, however, it is a neutral technology. And nothing makes anarchy "inevitable" except collective action.

[Zav]

Society has become slowly more Leftist and Libertarian ever since the invention of the State. If this trend continues, then yes, Anarchy is inevitable. It likely will, as the State is an unstable institution. The Internet is Liberal, not Leftist, and perhaps GNU/Linux, Gnutella, and Wikipedia would be better examples of Internet Anarchy.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Society has become slowly more Leftist and Libertarian ever since the invention of the State. If this trend continues, then yes, Anarchy is inevitable. It likely will, as the State is an unstable institution. The Internet is Liberal, not Leftist, and perhaps GNU/Linux, Gnutella, and Wikipedia would be better examples of Internet Anarchy.

One could argue that society becoming more 'libertarian', in a 'left-libertarian' sort of way, since the invention of the state, is some sort of paradox. I'd say more that society has become more liberal, though really the size of the state tends to swing in roundabouts in mature Capitalist societies.

To the OP: i'd say that, to someone with a Socialist train of thought, one would think that an anarchic, communist society would be the logical culmination of human development. However, it must be said that, hitherto, human development has been neither logical nor predictable. There are so many factors involved in human development/future, both intra- and extra-human, that it is really difficult to say that human development goes along any sort of smooth curve.