Spontaneous Order

[Prinskaj]

I recently came across this term in a debate with an anarcho-capitalist.
So could someone explain this concept to me, as my understanding of this is vague at best, and perhaps provide me with a critic.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Spontaneous order, also known as "self-organization", is the spontaneous emergence of order out of seeming chaos.

From wikipedia

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

The anarchist idea that out of the chaos of a revolution where the old capitalist order is toppled and the usual style of government is dismantled, human society will still function in an orderly and peaceful manner, without any need for the current institutions of church and state to keep order and stability.
I think :tt2:

[Book O'Dead]

"Spontaneous Order" is the sound of a million little monkeys typing away on their little monkey typewriters who, sooner or later, come up with a work by Shakespeare.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

"Spontaneous Order" is the sound of a million little monkeys typing away on their little monkey typewriters who, sooner or later, come up with a work by Shakespeare.

Who is gonna pay all the ink?

[The Jay]

It sounds a little like organizational and network theory to me. It's not as bunk as many think. A mathematician would be able to explain it better, or I could compile some material and post it on the matter if anyone is interested. There's plenty out there.

EDIT: I decided to do it. Here ya go.

azWh4zBHha85w5aJvVCc0Q
GVTlvortxMY6QIhaDvTHXklQkDL7TluQ0IroU3icUZi0

There's more but this should give a good sample.

[hatzel]

Pretty much one of two vaguely related things...

One is the idea of 'things' emerging as if from nowhere, not because anybody planned it that way; in that respect it rejects contractualism (and also, arguably, conquest-based theories), and it certainly has some strengths - our current society hasn't really taken the form it has due to some conscious planning on anybody's part. Ancaps generally use it in reference to the capitalist market and all that, meaning that the market doesn't exist because at some point in history people decided to construct a market according to certain principles, it just...was, it emerged spontaneously, the cumulative effects of people's activity was such that what we now call the market came into being in the interaction of these moments of activity.

This then starts to fade into the idea that this spontaneous order is both superior to any 'premeditated' order, like a centrally-planned economy (in this instance this links in with Hayek's knowledge problem, coincidentally), and - perhaps after a slight leap - that this order will spontaneously emerge in spite of these premeditated efforts. Which is half-interesting and half-true: the market (as our example) cannot simply be legislated away, some politician saying 'let's make communism now!' doesn't and cannot make it so, even if they start reappropriating shit left right and centre, that should be obvious to anybody.

A change of conditions may well result in new spontaneous orders emerging - and they may, in fact, be desirable - though ancaps tend to presuppose that the spontaneous orders which emerged previously - capitalism, generalised commodity production, proletarian labour etc., which is in fact half-spontaneous, inasmuch as nobody declared that capitalism would be instigated, though of course questions of power played a part in shaping the social activity of individuals - are inevitable, that they will emerge in all possible situations. That is to say, they neglect the influence of power over these orders' development, simply declaring 'do away with the state as it interferes with our spontaneous order!' rather than 'do away with the state so that wholly new spontaneous orders can flourish in place of the existent!'

[Anarpest]

It means that the an-caps are trying to hijack Proudhon again.

[Mr. Natural]

Prinskaj, I don't know what the anarcho-capitalist meant by "spontaneous order," but it does refer to life's self-organization, as RedRebel detemined. It also refers to the twin term for this most important phenomenon of life: "autopoiesis" (self-making).

This is in my area of specialty. I ceaselessly attempt to bring the concept of self-organization/autopoiesis to the left so that it may learn to successfully organize in the manner that the rest of life self-organizes.

Before I provide a little snapshot of self-organization, Prinskaj, I see that you are a member of Denmark's Red-Green Alliance. I sign all my posts "My red-green best," and I'm curious as to what your group consists of and is up to. Perhaps you will gift us with a rundown on the Alliance's politics and program sometime.

The most radical, revolutionary natural phenomenon of self-organization wasn't uncovered until 1967. The Nobel laureate, Ilya Prigogine accomplished this with his theory of dissipative structures, and a year later, working in a very different field, Humberto Maturana and Francisco published their theory of autopoiesis.

What self-organization/autopoiesis reveal is that each living system is self-organized by its parts into the overall system, which is then dynamically interdependent with its living and physical environment. The self-organization of the parts creates a whole that is dynamically related to its surround from which it obtains energy and living arrangements.

The life process on Earth is created by and composed of these living systems: self-organizing, integrated, material wholes that exist in dynamic interdependence with their environment.

Doesn't the above describe a human being and communism? Aren't people "self-organizing, integrated, material wholes," and isn't communism a system in which people self-organize their lives from the bottom up? Communism is natural.

Matter has self-organized into life on Earth. This is scientific fact, and it is a most difficult concept to grasp. Prigogine's dissipative structures are structurally open (take in energy, dissipate "waste") but organizationally closed. You, the reader, are such a living system.

All living systems--cells to biosphere (a self-regulating ecosystem)--are structurally open but organizationally closed. In illustration, a cell's parts self-organize into the living cell that takes in and discharges material, but just what materials the cell engages and how it deals with them are determined by the cell. Environmental relations trigger a living system, but that living system determines what stimuli engage it and how.

Take a dog. You can kick a dog and trigger a response, but the dog's breed and individual history will determine how it will respond. If you attempt this experiment, choose a small dog.

Take what i'm writing. Your brain/body is a living system, and your brain's self-organization will determine whether you read any of this post or not and how you mentally respond. What I'm writing is very foreign to the left and comrades' mental systems, and therefore tends to be ignored or heatedly disputed. Your established self-organized mental systems are perceiving my mental stimuli to be alien, and are automatically rejecting this critical new science. (Cut this out, please. We need to get organized)

What I'm trying to present, Comrades, is that life has a universal pattern of organization that was established on Earth some 4 billion years ago. Life's astounding diversity is all based in a universal pattern of organization. This is science, and this science has been completely ignored by a left that cannot organize.

Engels at Marx's graveside, "Science was for Marx a historically dynamic, revolutionary force."

Marx and Engels were only able to engage evolution, which I consider the first of the "new sciences of organization." Following evolution were the new physics (Einstein, relativity, quantum theory), cosmology, cybernetics, chaos theory, and the culmination of these sciences: systems-complexity science. This science has been almost completely ignored by the left.

These new sciences of organization confirm the general outline and laws of the Marxist materialist dialectic, as understood by Marx and Engels and illuminated by the scholarship of the Marxist dialectician, Bertell Ollman. His Dance of the Dialectic (2003) is a most important work.

So where is this leading? The living systems of life have a universal pattern of organization by which they maintain their being and the life process. Marxists must learn to organize in this pattern--the pattern by which material systems (people are self-organizing material systems) come to life.

The rest of life automatically enjoys this systemic organization and integration, but we humans are conscious producers and creators of our being. So how do we consciously create our lives in the pattern of life--the pattern of community? Just saying that life is community and that we must self-organize into community won't get the job done. How might this be accomplished?

Comrades, don't throw away your Manifesto, but the theoretical physicist, Fritjof Capra, has stumbled upon life's universal pattern of organization and models it in a popularly accessible conceptual triangle. In other words, we can now come to "see" and understand the organization of life and organize our lives accordingly. We can learn to design viable revolutionary processes out of capitalism into a realized human future.

However, all of the above demands a paradigm shift in human perception and consciousness. We must learn to see the organization of the things of life, and we are blind to them. Human perception and consciousness are partial: we see things but are blind to their critical organization.

Capra's triangle makes this possible. The book to read is his masterwork, Web of Life (1996), which unpacks the new sciences of organization and brings them down to Earth for the rest of us to comprehend. Web is a most readable book, and should be required reading for any lefty yearning for human liberation and looking for ways to organize.

I'm eager to explore the new sciences of self-organization with Revlefters and develop a red (Marxist)-green (sciences of organization) revolutionary organizing theory and praxis. I've been at these new sciences for a dozen years now, and believe I can unpack them for others, despite that consciousness barrier. These others will need to maintain open but critical minds, however.

A revolutionary organizing theory for our increasingly desperate times, anyone? My red-green best.

[Mr. Natural]

Yesterday's ignored post in which I began to scientifically introduce life's self-organizational universal pattern of organization to a left that cannot organize should indicate to comrades that there is, indeed, a paradigm shift in perception/consciousness that is required for humans to "see," engage, and employ life's organization in their lives.

It's really quite simple: life has an organization but human perception/consciousness is a partial consciousness that sees things but is blind to the organization of those things. Thus revolutionaries do not "see" or understand the organization they must bring to their efforts and as this information is foreign to their worldviews, they ignore or reject it.

The preceding, brief remarks are correct. Is any stuck comrade ever going to ask himself/herself if they do, indeed, habitually ignore the organization of life, community, and revolution? Are any comrades even going to admit that life has an organization?

I doubt it, but I'm a revolutionary organizing theorist in an era in which the human species is destroying itself, and I'm not going away.

My relentless red-green best.

[Sasha]

"Spontaneous Order" is the sound of a million little monkeys typing away on their little monkey typewriters who, sooner or later, come up with a work by Shakespeare.

ahum...


“There’s a statistical theory that if you gave a million monkeys typewriters and set them to work, they’d eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. Thanks to the Internet, we now know this isn’t true.”—Ian Hart

:D

[Book O'Dead]

ahum...



:D

"I'm in the mood for laughing, simply because you're with me..."