Mastodawn

It’s often the case that critics of anarchism will demand to know how we might obtain public goods without the state, because their entire frame of reference for public goods is in the context of state monopolies.

And I might reply that all sorts of public goods predate the state by thousands of years or more. Neolithic peoples were building trackway roads and monumental architecture and all kinds of neat things.

And critics of anarchism will often gleefully seize upon this as if it presents some clever gotcha. They think this means that *the best* we can hope to achieve without the state is a Neolithic-level of technology and cooperation.

And I find that response to be…so immensely sad. They see a dead-end; I see incredible achievements with only the barest of technologies and available knowledge, and can only wonder at the marvels we’d be able to achieve together now.

Green Roc Thoughts Nov 14, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum
I see what you see.
I do what I do, because I enjoy what I do. My motives are NOT money gaining. The majority of my stress, comes from trying to squeeze money out of my dominating carer I wish I could get out of my life.

Passenger Nov 14, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum

A critic of anarchism looks around at a country with no healthcare, sewage in the water and crumbling roads.

"But without a state, how would you ensure healthcare, clean water and usable roads?" they ask.

Steve Randy Waldman Nov 14, 2023

@passenger @HeavenlyPossum we do also see states like the Scandinavians, that provide all of those goods, and a degree of general security nearly unheard of in human history as a universal public good as well.

all states are imperfect, and even some very proud states might deserve the moniker "failed". it's unfair to compare only the worst thought-experiment outcomes under anarchy to only the best states. but there are and have been some remarkable states!

HeavenlyPossum Nov 14, 2023

@interfluidity @passenger

No, there haven’t.

Steve Randy Waldman Nov 14, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum @passenger agree to disagree, we must, i'm afraid.

HeavenlyPossum Nov 14, 2023

@passenger @interfluidity

States compelled to provide public goods—at public expense—by the threat of worker militancy do not somehow prove the goodness of states.

Steve Randy Waldman Nov 14, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum @passenger "the goodness of states" is a phrase like "the goodness of people"—too broad to be meaningful. Under some circumstances many people are good. All people have the potential to behave badly.

the Nordic states exist and have endured for some time with a political economy—that includes the threat of worker militancy, thank goodness—that has vouchsafed a remarkable quality of life for a remarkably broad share of their populations. it's an existence proof, not a guarantee.

HeavenlyPossum Nov 14, 2023

@passenger @interfluidity

I think you’re drawing the wrong lesson—not that states provide a high quality of life, but rather that states can, under duress, be persuaded to exploit less.

Steve Randy Waldman Nov 14, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum @passenger I'd argue the Nordics don't merely exploit less, but provide more and better public goods than literally any societies in all of human history. No state need exploit me in order for me to die in the wilderness. They are doing something more than nonexploiting.

Of course it is possible that stateless forms of coordination could provide the same. I'd love to see an example.

HeavenlyPossum Nov 14, 2023

@interfluidity @passenger

You’re begging the question that states “provide” these public goods, rather than just monopolizing access.

The Nordics merely exploit less. All of those public services the state mediates are provided by the public itself.

Steve Randy Waldman Nov 14, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum @passenger publics don't provide them in very many elsewheres though. those states seem like a part of a coordination arrangement that works remarkably well. i'm certainly open to other coordination arrangements that might work better, but so far those strike me as the most appealing demostrably feasible models.

HeavenlyPossum Nov 14, 2023

@interfluidity @passenger

Publics don’t provide them because they’re coercive prevented from doing so.

Don’t mistake correlation with causation.

Steve Randy Waldman Nov 14, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum @passenger It's possible that in the absense of things that exist basically everywhere, everything would be great. We can't observe that condition. It does suggest that, even if that were the case, it might be a condition difficult to sustain, given the places we have fallen to, pretty much everywhere. (not everywhere has a meaningful state, but the places that don't don't seem admirable. perhaps bc of the meddling of states! but we can't really say, or prevent that.)

HeavenlyPossum Nov 14, 2023

@interfluidity @passenger

I don’t understand what you’re saying here

Fabio G.Nov 15, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum @interfluidity @passenger

What they seem to be saying is that we can't know that the public everywhere would freely provide all those public goods if there we no states, because we can't observe the “there are no states” condition to tell, because there are states (and their influence is pretty much everywhere).

Violet Madder Nov 14, 2023

@interfluidity @HeavenlyPossum @passenger

The Nordic states, unfortunately, are all following the same trajectory as the rest-- their social safety nets are eroding, inequality and fascism are rising, and meanwhile they've been profiting off of the exploitation of the global south this entire time. Norway is a major offender in environmental destruction and continuing fossil fuel extraction. Finland just signed an enthusiastic alliance with Israel's genocidal leadership. They all have often overlooked issues with racism, too. Just because they've been doing certain things better than the US doesn't mean they got it right, or that they aren't subject to the same inherent corruption.

I used to passionately long for democratic socialism. After being confronted too many times with the undercurrents of hypocrisy, elitism, and tyranny it carries, I no longer trust that it is enough. Especially not when capitalism (which is to say, corporate feudalism) is what's truly at the helm.

Steve Randy Waldman Nov 14, 2023

@violetmadder @HeavenlyPossum @passenger Everything is terrible. We are grading on a curve. What is best among feasible alternatives? We can always imagine nearly perfect, but the further we jump from things that exist, the greater the risk of simple collapse to ugly forms of disorder.

Violet Madder Nov 14, 2023

@interfluidity @HeavenlyPossum @passenger

Don't let the "everything is terrible, this is the best we can hope for" narrative resign you to the inevitability of the intolerable shit we're expected to swallow.

Don't define your assumptions about what's "feasible" by the heavily propagandized standards of the dominant hegemony.

We have to crack open the prison in our heads to see outside this box. Then, and only then, can we work on building the alternatives.

Steve Randy Waldman Nov 14, 2023

@violetmadder @HeavenlyPossum @passenger I'm really glad to consider alternatives! But I think they have to be positive constructions — what should we do, and how, and this is why people are going to live and act together in ways that lead to good outcomes — rather than negative proscriptions (this is what we dislike, we just won't do that). I don't think eliminating what is bad is a sufficient path to creating what might be good.

Violet Madder Nov 14, 2023

@interfluidity @HeavenlyPossum @passenger

Yes exactly!

This is really important-- the best way to tear down a system that isn't working, is to start building something better and just render the bad stuff obsolete. It's crucial to focus on constructive, hopeful things we can get excited about instead of hostility and destruction. One of my biggest problems with the media etc today is how little attention is paid to solutions, cultivating despair and helplessness instead of courage.

That's why my main focus these days is working on my social skills, mental health stuff, studying worker co-ops and intentional communities and the like to get better acquainted with what works.

Violet Madder Nov 14, 2023

@interfluidity @HeavenlyPossum @passenger

One of THE biggest problems our current society has, is an obsession with blame and punishment. People are treated as if we have no positive intrinsic motivations, and must be hounded into being productive under constant threats instead of being trusted to make our own decisions or find our own ambitions. We run away, instead of towards.

In working on my own depression and anxiety it's been key to try to discover any positive reinforcement I can-- one of the nastiest symptoms of depression is anhedonia, an inability to feel good feelings, and I think what that does to individuals reflects our entire culture's tendencies to mock and squash the fragile, personal vulnerabilities that are our passions, hopes, and internal motivation. We internalize it and help the system by oppressing ourselves. Fixing it on an individual level works on the same dynamics as the systemic level.

When visiting a garden or helping a friend or learning something brings me a good feeling, I have to hang on to that fiercely and use it to build myself before I can build anything else.

When I think about this stuff I see little steps adding up, links in a chain of dominos that stack into something big.

Passenger Nov 14, 2023

This. This this this this this.

Steve Randy Waldman Nov 15, 2023

@violetmadder @HeavenlyPossum @passenger absolutely. much of how we’ve fucked up the world is by normalizing use of extrinsic, venal motivations for excellences and kindnesses that can only thrive when derived from intrinsic motivation. no “incentivizer” can make kindness profitable in ways that won’t be gamed and subverted.

Violet Madder Nov 15, 2023

@interfluidity @HeavenlyPossum @passenger

You've got it.

We can start by believing something better is not only feasible, but MORE feasible than continuing these dysfunctional systems that put us on a doomed path towards total environmental destruction.

What exact form the new systems will take, we don't entirely know yet-- it's new. But we know it has to be built from cooperation and compassion. It's going to take direct action, mutual aid, labor organizing, and a whole lot of landscape rehabilitation. Anything that can be organized and accomplished without coercive, oppressive control is a win and a building block.

Fluke McHappenstance

@interfluidity @HeavenlyPossum @passenger the goodness of sand. The goodness of things that exist. The goodness of transmission mediums

Passenger Nov 14, 2023

@interfluidity @HeavenlyPossum

That's a fair point. Some states are certainly better than others. The one I live in has some of the wealthiest and most educated people in the world, as well as some of the best infrastructure, but this is largely a legacy thing - the state has become a mix of paralysis and capricious cruelty, has been unable to face modern challenges, and is letting things decay. Not all have fucked it to this degree.

There are two-hundred-ish states in the world, depending on how you personally recognise them. Of those two hundred, how many would you class as successful? How many have mobilised the resources within their borders to face their current challenges (or whatever you personally define as "successful"; this is something that nobody's going to define precisely, so some subjectivity is fine)?

Of those successful states, how many are superficially fine but building up to a rupture? Lebanon, for example, was the great Middle East success story, until it suddenly fell apart under the weight of the corruption and inequality it had been accumulating during the good years.

Of those successful states, how many are only successful because other states or other peoples exist in a less-successful situation? South Korea and Taiwan, for example, are wealthy but very dependent on their electronics industries, which depend on rare metals extracted by slave labour in Africa and elsewhere.

Steve Randy Waldman Nov 15, 2023

@passenger @HeavenlyPossum i think analyzing these questions — why beyond our gauzy fairy tales do some states seem to succeed for a while? what part of that success represents genuine virtue, what part of it is due to awfulnesses we paper over? how can we sustain the success while increasing the virtues and mitigating the awfulness? — these are the crucial questions. 1/

Steve Randy Waldman Nov 15, 2023

@passenger @HeavenlyPossum what i don’t think is sufficient is to say, well, just don’t do the awful stuff and everything will be great. to the degree the apparent success depends on the awful stuff, things won’t be great if you just stop. you have to actually figure out what you can do to make thriving consistent with less exploitation and subordination. and that’s hard, but i don’t think impossible. 2/

Steve Randy Waldman Nov 15, 2023

@passenger @HeavenlyPossum when you analyze the world in functional terms, what is functional and what is moral don’t magically coincide. our work is to figure out how to make goods that contain strong tensions and contradictions between them able to coexist. /fin

Roy Brander🍁Nov 14, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum

I suspect that anarchism would work better in small groups than large. Actually, I know of no method of resource-sharing and work-sharing that does not.

And, I've got to tell you, anarchism did not work for my condo, everybody wanted a condo board.

The commune my brother joined in 1971 dissolved, because, as he put it "nobody wanted to do the dishes", and squabbles became endless.

But if you can make a condo, or other neighbourhood work on some principles, do share them.

HeavenlyPossum Nov 14, 2023

I don’t know of any state that doesn’t work via murder, so I’m less concerned with the challenges of coordinating in the absence of the state—something that people did for thousands and thousands of years—than I am about all the murder.

Mark T. Tomczak Nov 14, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum I generally wish anarchists the best, but most descriptions of how the world would work under anarchy widely-deployed remind me of this meme.

I can't fault the optimism though.

HeavenlyPossum Nov 14, 2023

Human beings have been around as a distinct species for at least 300,000 years. States date back to the Bronze Age, at the absolute earliest about 6,000 years ago, and didn’t come to dominate a majority of the global population until about 500 years ago. There are still extant stateless societies that states haven’t been able to assimilate.

Mark T. Tomczak Nov 14, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum You look at those facts and see "We have a lot more experience, organismically, being small disconnected groups than large organized states. If anything has a claim to being the 'natural state' of humans, it's anarchy."

I look at those facts and see "Wow, this 'state' technology sure did completely dominate the paradigm, to the point where the stateless societies only exist at the benevolent largesse of their neighboring states anymore. I don't know how to get into a mindset where I'd think anarchy is possible when it can only live until the nearest large group of people organized around a common collective myth can just beat them up and take their stuff."

... were anarchy to succeed at scale in the modern era with 8 billion people on the planet, I think we'd need, somehow, to arrange things so that a large enough group to engage in group self-defense does so while simultaneously maintaining the purity of ideology to allow their members to act independently and self-organizationally when the whole group isn't threatened. And I have no idea how to square the circle of the apparent inherent contradiction in those goals.

Not saying it's impossible; definitely saying I'm not smart enough to see it.

Fabio G.Nov 15, 2023

@mark @HeavenlyPossum

That interpretation is consistent with the facts, but is it likely given the facts?

States existed for thousands of years simultaneously with stateless societies. Then something happened a few centuries ago and the state became the prevalent form of social organization.

Given those facts, the prevalence of states is almost surely more closely related to that ‘something’ that happened a few centuries ago than to the state ‘technology’ itself.

Mark T. Tomczak Nov 15, 2023

@magitweeter @HeavenlyPossum Agreed. My wild guess would be the era of seafaring colonialism. Which is a pile of technologies one atop the other (that could be collectively labeled the "guns, germs, and steel" set).

Massive improvements in sailing, navigation, power, weapons, medicine, and communications happened in a very short amount of time, which summed up to the ability for a nation to force-project in a way never before possible. And organization fed upon organization: a country that already had an industrial base had means to seize the resources of people it may have otherwise, previously, left alone, and an industrial system to feed those resources to. An East India Trading Company exists in the context of people to take wealth from and people who you can trust will give you something of value in return on the other side of a very long ocean voyage.

(I actually have a pet theory in this vein that what made the Industrial Revolution special wasn't machines alone but regularized, standardized, highly-accurate technological process. They had wing-nuts, hasps, and fasteners in the suit-of-armor era in Europe, but if one broke you couldn't pull a replacement out of a standardized bin of them to do a quick-patch. Mass production and the standardization that came along with it brought about an era of "machine stratum" that let more complex machines and processes build on simpler ones... Suddenly, you could assume steel, of a certain quality and strength, was available, which lets you build more accurate machines, which lets you build better mining equipment, which lets you mine steel better, which &c).

Fabio G.Nov 15, 2023

@mark @HeavenlyPossum

Yeah, something like that.

Yet technology didn't stay put: it has kept advancing. Sure, it has advanced in ways that help the state, but also in ways that help resistance to the state.

The more feasible it becomes for people to satisfy their material needs without the state, the sooner the state becomes an obsolete form of social organization.

HeavenlyPossum Nov 15, 2023

@magitweeter @mark

I don’t think it was technology that facilitated and compounded this divergence. Early European settler colonists were often equally matched or outmatched by indigenous technologies. But, especially in the Americas, the effects of pandemic diseases (along with constant, deliberate violence) reduced the indigenous population to the point that two entire continents’ worth of resources became available to a handful of Western European states.

HeavenlyPossum Nov 15, 2023

@mark @magitweeter

Which isn’t to say that the effects aren’t real, but they’re likely also not replicable. For most of their existence, states have been absurdly fragile and most that ever existed have failed and no longer exist.

Fabio G.Nov 15, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum To his credit, @mark did mention “germs”—though that's admittedly fortuitous, a consequence of herd immunity rather than medical competence.

I think technology matters—more generally, the material context, which includes technology, matters. The material context is what made the colonial project possible as well as desirable. The material context is what will make global anarchy possible if it ever comes to be.

HeavenlyPossum Nov 15, 2023

@magitweeter @mark

I am less convinced that the material context is what makes anarchism possible or not.

Fabio G.Nov 15, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum Well, what's the key factor then, in your view?

HeavenlyPossum Nov 15, 2023

Some secret third thing.

Violet Madder Nov 15, 2023

@magitweeter @mark @HeavenlyPossum

I believe the "something" that happened, was agriculture.

The moment we started claiming swaths of land as property, and building up populations too large for our tribe comprehension to keep pace with, our current path was in some ways inevitable.

Violet Madder Nov 15, 2023

@magitweeter @mark @HeavenlyPossum

Oh and another big "something" that happened, was the moment we figured out how paternity actually works.

That's when children became property, too.

HeavenlyPossum Nov 15, 2023

@violetmadder @magitweeter @mark

I would encourage you to check out James Scott’s Against the Grain and Wengrow & Graeber’s Dawn of Everything, which both directly address this issue.

Fabio G.Nov 15, 2023

@violetmadder @mark @HeavenlyPossum

Agriculture didn't start a few hundred years ago.

Agriculture started several thousand years ago, and it's (very broadly speaking) what made states possible, but it would take thousands more years for them to become the dominant form of social organization.

“Something” is more probably somewhere between mercantilism and industrial capitalism.

Violet Madder Nov 15, 2023

@magitweeter @mark @HeavenlyPossum

Compared to the hundreds of thousands of years that came before, the 7,000ish it took to build up the new dynamics with sufficient population levels and tech to kick off massive invasions is a snap.

HeavenlyPossum Nov 15, 2023

@violetmadder @mark @magitweeter

We do know of stateless agricultural societies, as well as non-agricultural societies that had deeply hierarchical state-like institutions. I don’t think the connection is as causal as this.

Rhizomatic Arcade Nov 16, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum @mark not to mention the anarchistic systems of Rojava (yes I know it's democratic confederalism, but it's much more anarchic than current states) and the Zapatistas that are already doing great good.

Oli Mould Nov 14, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum An #anarchist future is a #solarpunk future! No states, only communities and cities from the ground up, using technology to liberate, not incarcerate.

Vincarsi Nov 15, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum it's such a cop-out when ppl seem to want to pretend that we will somehow forget all the technologies and social development if we don't have a state and capitalism enforcing constant production. Some ppl will forget, sure. But only the people who don't care about that stuff. There will always be people intrinsically motivated to retain that knowledge, and with supportive communities they'll be able to archive and pass on everything to each new generation.

Robin Cafolla Nov 18, 2023

@HeavenlyPossum you can try citing wikipedia, or the Linux kernel. There are more recent examples you can use.

HeavenlyPossum Nov 18, 2023

These are good examples of being living under modern state rule working together peacefully and voluntarily.

The reason I cite very ancient examples of complex voluntary cooperation is that they predate the state—there is absolutely no way that anyone could accidentally construe those very old examples as the product of state coercion and rule.