Question for Anarchists

[Philosophos]

OK here's the thing I'm going to meet with a group of anarchists next week so I'm going to take an answer but for my own reasons I would like to take as many answers/opinions as possible.

What I would like to ask to all the anarchists is: Do you support smaller societies? I mean you can't control a country or even a state in US if you don't have police or an army etc etc. If you don't support small societies then please explain the way you are going to "control" (I use this word with a little fear of being misunderstood) the society from misbehaving or dealing with any issues/problems in a democratic way with huge numbers of humans having to vote...

I hope I made myself clear. If I have any mistakes just ask again

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

Misbehaviour wouldn't usually occur as normally there would not be an incentive for it (e.g. lack of resources or socialisation that passes down negative forms of behaviour, which a social change would break). However there are methods for dealing with the situation. If a group of people decide to hoard food for some odd reason then they'll pay for it through trial and error (dying due to consuming more than the norm, that is to say if you eat too much food you'll suffer for it- a natural regulation) or others in society will convene and discuss how to deal with the issue e.g. exile as these hoarders are putting others at a disadvantage.

I suppose, correct me if I am wrong in any of this, that the term 'small societies' depends on what scale you are looking at. Clearly it would be quite an enormous task attempting to manage the economy on a scale equivalent to a modern state, so it would be easier to break society down into counties or something similar. This allows the business of running the means of production to be more... digestible, so you don't have to worry about the county next to you unless they require a certain resource, in which case they simply send over a delegate with the requirements and you provide them with what they need (within reason).

Also, I'd like to look at the word 'control'. Perhaps you mean organise?

[Decolonize The Left]

OK here's the thing I'm going to meet with a group of anarchists next week so I'm going to take an answer but for my own reasons I would like to take as many answers/opinions as possible.

What I would like to ask to all the anarchists is: Do you support smaller societies? I mean you can't control a country or even a state in US if you don't have police or an army etc etc. If you don't support small societies then please explain the way you are going to "control" (I use this word with a little fear of being misunderstood) the society from misbehaving or dealing with any issues/problems in a democratic way with huge numbers of humans having to vote...

I hope I made myself clear. If I have any mistakes just ask again

Generally speaking, anarchists are anti-authoritarian. This means that, again in general, they oppose authority. This does not mean that they oppose organization, cooperation, systems, etc... it does mean that these things need to be conducted in a transparent and democratic manner without an imposed hierarchy.

So with that in mind, it is difficult to equate a nation-state (which is based entirely upon unjustified authority) with anarchism. States don't really exist under anarchism. Nations could, but only in a loose use of the word and not in the sense that we know them today.

Furthermore, there are many different kinds of anarchists. Some will support worker councils (which answers your original question), others won't. Some will say that it's ok to elect someone into a position of authority so long as they can be removed at any time, others won't. Anarchists are not a homogenous body other than their opposition to capitalism and avocation of freedom (these are largely one and the same).

[tuwix]

If you don't support small societies then please explain the way you are going to "control" (I use this word with a little fear of being misunderstood) the society from misbehaving or dealing with any issues/problems in a democratic way with huge numbers of humans having to vote...

I am between Anarchism and Marxism but I think that society should deal with problems in its own way. If there are rules of behaviors approved by a majority of whole society, then there should be found ways to encourage people not to break the rules. It is their own way. I don't think anyone should know better what is best to other society.

[Mather]

OK here's the thing I'm going to meet with a group of anarchists next week so I'm going to take an answer but for my own reasons I would like to take as many answers/opinions as possible.

What I would like to ask to all the anarchists is: Do you support smaller societies? I mean you can't control a country or even a state in US if you don't have police or an army etc etc. If you don't support small societies then please explain the way you are going to "control" (I use this word with a little fear of being misunderstood) the society from misbehaving or dealing with any issues/problems in a democratic way with huge numbers of humans having to vote...

I hope I made myself clear. If I have any mistakes just ask again

All class struggle anarchists support the unity of the working class on the widest possible basis. There are no local or national solutions that provide a means to exit global capitalism.

Questions of democracy have nothing to do with the size of a society and everything to do with how the means of production are managed and which class rules in such a society. The Spanish Revolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Revolution) showed that it was possible to organise an industrial and developed society on a large scale, all without having to sacrifice grass roots democracy and working class rule in favour of bureaucratic centralisation and vanguardism.

Here are some links to some authors who have written on the Spanish Revolution and how anarchist ideas were put into practice:

Gaston Leval: Collectives in Aragon (http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/spunk/Spunk110.html); Collectives in the Spanish Revolution (http://libcom.org/library/collectives-spanish-revolution-gaston-leval)

Agustine Souchy: With the Peasants of Aragon (http://www.anarchosyndicalism.net/archive/display/158/index.php)

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

"Anarchists" is pretty broad, and "small" is pretty conceptually confusing. Like, in pre-invasion Americas, networks of trade and communication spanned the continents. At the same time, communities tended to be relatively autonomous? Small? Sorta yes, sorta no. Tough shit to quantify.

[DancingEmma]

I'm an anarchist. I support things being much more decentralized than they are currently, yes. I want local communities to manage themselves through consensus decision making where every person has an equal voice. Coordinating institutions at a higher level would only exist when absolutely, absolutely necessary. No person or group of people would therefore be "in control": that's the whole point. I believe that the attempts of some groups to control others is the source of social problems, not their solution. The only major purpose of the police and the military, for instance, is to enforce destructive social hierarchies--whether it's the economic hierarchy of capitalism or other social hierarchies such as patriarchy, white supremacy, and so on. The day when the police and military are abolished and cease to "control" things will be a marvelous day.

[BIXX]

I am an anarcho-communist, and here are my thoughts on this...

I support any non-hierarchical society that works and supports all people in it (as long as they try to contribute to the society according to their ability). I believe these communities would start out small, but eventually I think the communities would band together more and more and form stronger and stronger bonds, eventually forming communities that were potentially even the size of modern day states. I will type up my idea as to how this would work later, as it is very late here, but I wanna hear the positives and negatives of my ideas.

[Skyhilist]

OK here's the thing I'm going to meet with a group of anarchists next week so I'm going to take an answer but for my own reasons I would like to take as many answers/opinions as possible.

What I would like to ask to all the anarchists is: Do you support smaller societies? I mean you can't control a country or even a state in US if you don't have police or an army etc etc. If you don't support small societies then please explain the way you are going to "control" (I use this word with a little fear of being misunderstood) the society from misbehaving or dealing with any issues/problems in a democratic way with huge numbers of humans having to vote...

I hope I made myself clear. If I have any mistakes just ask again

a) yes to decentralization
b) take away the incentive to commit crime by eliminating the market economy and freely providing goods to contributors
c) enforce laws in ways that don't require any special parties out side of local communities and don't rely on violence (e.g. Cutting offenders of from non-essential resources)