Written by “ziq” 🙄 I am tempted to discard it outright…
But from a quick skimming of the article it is a long treatise based on semantics and a strawman.
Obviously no-one that says “rules but no rulers” means that in the way ziq interprets it in the article. It is a shorthand for a specific audience that thinks “Anarchy” is about chaos and has otherwise little idea about it. Basically all it says is that a community isn’t a free-for-all and actions have consequences 🤷
If anarchists like ziq did not exist, capitalists would need to invent them.
Interesting read if nothing else. The author makes thought-provoking points about how communities that implement rules tend toward governmental structures rather than anarchy. I agree that we (anarchists) should strive to be as clear as possible about the distinction between personal boundaries, voluntary agreements, and enforceable rules. Even if studied anarchists understand the distinction implicitly (and e.g. understand that the “rules” of an anarchist community, online or otherwise, are really voluntary agreements that we make in joining the community), spelling it out explicitly for the new people could be important. Some folks understand things literally.
Live in an anarchist community, to see it in practice. I learned a lot from that experience, my main take away is that I don’t ever want to live in a community again.
the more i read about anarchy the more obvious that its a pipe dream built on hope and ignorance… ignorance of the behavior of the human species.
a complete fantasy ignoring all of human history… a childlike utopia mashed with rugged individualism
Quote from somewhere else:
I was reading Peter Kropotkin book and he made an AMAZING point that if anything, power structures and capitalism are utopian! To believe, that the people you place as higher with more Power, would make the right decisions for you when it goes polar opposite to them GAINING more power in a system that only recognizes furthering of power, is I’d say, far more utopian than to believe that people will literally work together to make communities where everyone is happy… like they literally did for MOST of human history before stuff like monarchies were established
I find it very curious that people come to this conclusion, when Anarchism is literally based on the opposite assumption, i.e. “all power corrupts” and has a long history of trying to find ways to prevent bad actors from taking over. I find any political theory other than Anarchism to be naive and child-like fantasy that is easily disproven by most of recent human history.
