Withering away and technology

[Raisa]

I do not think the state is going to "wither away". I think alot more and more of the power will transfer into the hands of every one. And I think a considerable amount of this can be done right after the revolution.
But I do not think there will ever be no government. Even if the government just becomes an administrative government, that still to me is a government. I do not think that after we have reached all this technology that we are going to go back into little agrarian communes. We will become one intelligent world, of which our sucesses shall cover, and all of its inhabitants will enjoy.
I think there will always be some kind of "government" that knows what is where and can administer and keep things organized.
We are not going to want to do away with our intellectual and technological acheivements. and we dont have to, but in order to have them maintaned there needs to be organization.

No the government doesnt have to be another social class, or make personal decisions for people. But I think that these statistics and such will just be another job that some one does for society.People are going to organize this one way or the other, and I dont think they will have to, I think it will just already be there as a result. Its alot easyer to get things going or maintain things when there is organization like that. Whether you call it a comitte or administration or state or what ever. I think if you abolished it, people would organize their own government, and it has nothing to do with heirarchy or anything. When the state is done laying the foundation, in its place will be an administrative "government."

[DaCuBaN]

I think there will always be some kind of "government" that knows what is where and can administer and keep things organized

Technology could indeed provide us with the ability to have no government, by becoming it. Even today, although it would be horrifically expensive and plagued by bugs and attacks in it's early days, we could quite easily set up a system to take propostitions at a terminal and basically create a list, and have anyone who chooses to log into the system and cast their votes accordingly

True democracy :)

[Raisa]

Originally posted by [email protected] 7 2004, 08:33 AM

Technology could indeed provide us with the ability to have no government, by becoming it. Even today, although it would be horrifically expensive and plagued by bugs and attacks in it's early days, we could quite easily set up a system to take propostitions at a terminal and basically create a list, and have anyone who chooses to log into the system and cast their votes accordingly

True democracy :)
Yes the difference will be that the power is in our hands, but I think that after we were to make a choice on something, aided by the quick delivery of our technology, there still needs to be organization so that we can act on it.
To me this is a government. It knows what is where and all and that is why it can help us act on the decisions we have all decided. It can calculate what is needed. "we need some of this, there needs to be people who do this...." The people arent pshychic. We dont all know what is going on. There still needs to be something that makes something known and heard.


I call this kind of thing a government. I don't know...what are people calling governments these days?

[CommieBastard]

You may call administration a government, but that is a misnomer. A government governs. That is to say it directs the actions of individuals. To use a dictionary definition government is "The exercise of political authority over the actions, affairs, etc., of a political unit, people, etc., as well as the performance of certain functions for this unit or body". It is the confusion with this and the organisational role that governments adopt within societies that has lead to people's constant criticism that Anarchism will fall into Chaos (and disturbingly the use of one word in place of the other). Anarchism is not the idea that we should rid ourselves of organisation, it is the idea that we should rid ourselves of government, and the government's role in the organisation of our lives.

This tying in of the concept of government with the concept of organisation is so incredibly prevalent that it fails to shock me anymore. The two words are simply not interchangeable. I know of few if any Anarchists (or Communists when discussing what comes after the Dictatorship of the Proletariat) who advocate 'going to the forests and living off berries'. Which i know is not what you said, but the idea that agrarian civilisation is a logical consequence of removing government is incredibly similar. Technology, information and ideas are all a part of the way we organise our lives, but they are not dependant on somebody else organising them for us.