Does anarchy require decivilization?

[falce e martello]

To me, the answer is yes, I'm not advocating primitivism though.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

why would it?

The only reason you would come to that conclusion is if you look around you and think that hegemonic capitalists, sweatshop labour, and greedy political institutions are the epitome of civilisation.

[falce e martello]

why would it?

The only reason you would come to that conclusion is if you look around you and think that hegemonic capitalists, sweatshop labour, and greedy political institutions are the epitome of civilisation.
I simply can't see a way to convert our society from capitalist and statist into a non-capitalist, stateless one without bringing any change into it, but I might be wrong.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I simply can't see a way to convert our society from capitalist and statist into a non-capitalist, stateless one without bringing any change into it, but I might be wrong.

Of course society is going to change. The question is why you think 'change' equals 'decivilisation' (whatever that means).

(Not to mention that your personal incredulity isn't much of an argument.)

In any case, social control of the means of production would be impossible without the accumulated technological advancement that makes up much of what people generally mean by "civilisation". You can't have planned production without writing (or if people are dying because they can't gather enough berries). Socialism requires civilisation.

[BIXX]

For anarchy? IMO, yes.

Anarchism is a whole different animal however. Its very civilized in my opinion.

[falce e martello]

Of course society is going to change. The question is why you think 'change' equals 'decivilisation' (whatever that means).

(Not to mention that your personal incredulity isn't much of an argument.)

In any case, social control of the means of production would be impossible without the accumulated technological advancement that makes up much of what people generally mean by "civilisation". You can't have planned production without writing (or if people are dying because they can't gather enough berries). Socialism requires civilisation.
I'm quite in doubt about it because I've read many times on this website that the average anarchist community would be made up of only 2-300 people; so all the big cities of the world with more than, let's say, 50-thousand inhabitants wouldn't disappear?
Or have I misunderstood something?

I don't know if I explained myself very well, but when I say decivilization I'm refering to the urban side of it. Have I made it clear now? Forgive my poor English skills.

[Mass Grave Aesthetics]

I hope not.
But I fear that might be the case, the decentralisation and localisation of the economy might lead to some degree of "decivilisation". If I have constant access to electricity in my daily live I'll be fine though.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I'm quite in doubt about it because I've read many times on this website that the average anarchist community would be made up of only 2-300 people; so all the big cities of the world with more than, let's say, 50-thousand inhabitants wouldn't disappear?
Or have I misunderstood something?

I think many people on this site have a very, ah, unique interpretation of what anarchism and socialism are (I'm not an anarchist; but 'anarchy' in the sense of 'the society that anarchists want' is the same as 'socialism' for all intents and purposes). I don't think there is any serious anarchist that would propose an anarchist "community" of 200 people. That's below the level of the late Neolithic, good grief.

Anyway, the point remains. How would you plan production with 300 people, without writing and numbers (and with your entire community being dependent on the vagaries of nature)?

[falce e martello]

I think many people on this site have a very, ah, unique interpretation of what anarchism and socialism are (I'm not an anarchist; but 'anarchy' in the sense of 'the society that anarchists want' is the same as 'socialism' for all intents and purposes). I don't think there is any serious anarchist that would propose an anarchist "community" of 200 people. That's below the level of the late Neolithic, good grief.

Anyway, the point remains. How would you plan production with 300 people, without writing and numbers (and with your entire community being dependent on the vagaries of nature)?
I understand your point. The thing is that I failed to explain my thoughts.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I don't know if I explained myself very well, but when I say decivilization I'm refering to the urban side of it. Have I made it clear now? Forgive my poor English skills.

Alright, that's something different than what people who generally talk about 'decivilisation' or 'rewilding' mean. In any case, the question remains: why do you think 'anarchy' or socialism would mean the end of cities.

(Obviously it would mean the end of cities as they exist today, but the general principle of having concentrations of labouring persons, together with industries and public services, is probably something that will be retained and expanded in socialism. To me it seems that, if anything, it is villages that will be a thing of the past in socialism.)

[falce e martello]

Alright, that's something different than what people who generally talk about 'decivilisation' or 'rewilding' mean. In any case, the question remains: why do you think 'anarchy' or socialism would mean the end of cities.

I simply can't imagine such a scenario. Yeah, millions of people living together in peace and freedom looks like a great thing, but, in fact, would it happen? A small community of just a few hundreds of people is most likely to last, rather than a big city (IMO).

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I simply can't imagine such a scenario. Yeah, millions of people living together in peace and freedom looks like a great thing, but, in fact, would it happen? A small community of just a few hundreds of people is most likely to last, rather than a big city (IMO).

But what I'm trying to find out is, why do you think that? Why would millions of people living in the same place be a problem, why wouldn't it "last", whatever that means?

[TC]

We should distinguish a few things.

- A state in the *general usage* meaning, which political scientists and the educated general public uses, is *an organization with a monopoly on the use of organized violence*.

- A state in the *speciality usage* meaning adopted by many self-defined left anarchists incorporates the prior usage and adds to it an additional definition *a state in the political science sense, which is also hierarchical in an oppressive and somehow undemocratic fashion*.

If we take the former general usage definition - then I would say that there is an overwhelming tendency for any void of state power to be filled by an emerging state, when the capacity exists to do so - and the capacity exists to do so in basically any technological level sufficient to support permanent settlements (and in some cases even when thats not true). Somalia for example isn't stateless - it simply lacks a sovereign internationally recognized state that has operates as a state within all of Somalia's internationally recognized borders. But Somalia has lots of little states that control different portions of it - they aren't called 'states' because doing so tends to legitimize an organization, but thats what militias in control of a city are.

- likewise a thoroughly democratic non-hierarchical neighborhood committee capable of excluding other organized factions from using physical force effectively is a state in the general usage/polisci sense of the word.

- In this regard, I would say, true anarchy is impossible with civilization - it is found only in places that are not densely populated and settled (and only when settled civilizations don't care about them).


- But, anarchy in the second sense of the word that is implicitly used by leftwing anarchists, where a state in the formal political science sense exists, but it is radically non-hierarchical and democratic and avoids the pretenses of officialdom and sovereignty, is probably possible at least for a time in advanced civilizations *as long as no better organized state entity decides to impose its will on it*. Whatever you want to say about undemocratic, command based hierarchies in terms of their morality, if one organization can remotely order different units of soldiers to advance in a coordinated fashion, without hesitation despite the certainty that many of them will die, and the second organization can't because they have to reach consensus in the local militia committee first, that second organization is going to lose most of the time. There might be theoretical solutions to this though, such as disciplined hierarchical armies at the borders under the control of a civilian radically democratic and egalitarian state, but without any kind of standing police force (such a society wouldn't be stateless in a formal sense but it could have defacto anarchism in the sense used by leftwing anarchists if the polities interior were without hierarchical standing police forces).

[Creative Destruction]

I'm quite in doubt about it because I've read many times on this website that the average anarchist community would be made up of only 2-300 people; so all the big cities of the world with more than, let's say, 50-thousand inhabitants wouldn't disappear?
Or have I misunderstood something?

I don't know if I explained myself very well, but when I say decivilization I'm refering to the urban side of it. Have I made it clear now? Forgive my poor English skills.

That's ridiculous. I think, as far as city life goes for anarchism, Murray Bookchin had the best handle on this. Michael Albert has a pretty good proposal for it, also. "Decivilizing" is an idealistic pipedream, and anti-human at worst.

[TC]

why would it?

The only reason you would come to that conclusion is if you look around you and think that hegemonic capitalists, sweatshop labour, and greedy political institutions are the epitome of civilisation.

Or if you think that the conditions that constitute civilization (lets say, fixed settlements of a non-tiny size to use one definition) create conditions incompatible with statelessness - such as a belief that, given the capacity for people to organize an institution with the ability to exclude others from the use of organized violence, people tend to create such an institution, and people who don't want to do so live under the rule of the people who do.

This becomes more complex because anarchists often use 'state' as a special term of art that excludes highly democratic minimal states from counting as 'states'. So you need to define what sense of statelessness you're talking about (as I describe in my previous post).

[Sewer Socialist]

Doesn't Engels refer to civilization as class society?

If civilization refers to groups of people greater than 1000, and anarchy required the death of 99% of the planet's population, then being against civilization and in favor of anarchy would mean being the biggest reactionary.

I thought that sort of sentiment died out about ten years ago, though. Am I wrong? :unsure:

[TC]

Doesn't Engels refer to civilization as class society?

If civilization refers to groups of people greater than 1000, and anarchy required the death of 99% of the planet's population, then being against civilization and in favor of anarchy would mean being the biggest reactionary.

I thought that sort of sentiment died out about ten years ago, though. Am I wrong? :unsure:

It should be pretty obvious that people who identify as 'anarchists' do not share one or more of your premises.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

If we take the former general usage definition - then I would say that there is an overwhelming tendency for any void of state power to be filled by an emerging state, when the capacity exists to do so - and the capacity exists to do so in basically any technological level sufficient to support permanent settlements (and in some cases even when thats not true). Somalia for example isn't stateless - it simply lacks a sovereign internationally recognized state that has operates as a state within all of Somalia's internationally recognized borders. But Somalia has lots of little states that control different portions of it - they aren't called 'states' because doing so tends to legitimize an organization, but thats what militias in control of a city are.

Surely this is besides the point as anarchists don't advocate the overthrow of the central government by regional warlords but a proletarian revolution, that would (as a Marxist, I would add 'in the end') remove the material conditions for any form of state organisation.


I thought that sort of sentiment died out about ten years ago, though. Am I wrong? :unsure:

I don't think it was ever alive per se, but yeah, it has declined in popularity quite a bit, not that you could tell from RL.

[Sewer Socialist]

It should be pretty obvious that people who identify as 'anarchists' do not share one or more of your premises.

There were, in fact, anarcho-primitivists who said such things in the late '90s / early 2000s, back when I identified as an anarchist. They were generally regarded to be a small minority of wingnuts, and I thought they had died out. So, if we are using the present tense, then I am pretty sure you are right, yes.

edit: To be fair, I am also thinking of a few crust-punk bands, who I assumed identified as anarchist. That assumption may be a false one.

[Sewer Socialist]

uBicsp9Aq2c

[ckaihatsu]

- But, anarchy in the second sense of the word that is implicitly used by leftwing anarchists, where a state in the formal political science sense exists, but it is radically non-hierarchical and democratic and avoids the pretenses of officialdom and sovereignty, is probably possible at least for a time in advanced civilizations *as long as no better organized state entity decides to impose its will on it*. Whatever you want to say about undemocratic, command based hierarchies in terms of their morality, if one organization can remotely order different units of soldiers to advance in a coordinated fashion, without hesitation despite the certainty that many of them will die, and the second organization can't because they have to reach consensus in the local militia committee first, that second organization is going to lose most of the time. There might be theoretical solutions to this though, such as disciplined hierarchical armies at the borders under the control of a civilian radically democratic and egalitarian state, but without any kind of standing police force (such a society wouldn't be stateless in a formal sense but it could have defacto anarchism in the sense used by leftwing anarchists if the polities interior were without hierarchical standing police forces).


This kind of (warring) behavior can only take place if it confers some kind of *material advantage* for some group, over another group -- but if the world gets to the point where one area is just about the same, material-wise, as another, then it no longer matters *where* one is because one can always obtain whatever it is one needs, wherever one happens to be.

Even *grouping* behavior -- especially of the formal, and militaristic kind -- may cease to have grounds for its occurrence, because everything can just be ad-hoc, and realtime, *without* the formalities of formalism, or standing institutions. People may just reach-out, appropriately, for any given situation, and certainly walled fortifications -- as for the city-states of the medieval age -- would be more trouble than they're worth.