Does anarchy really mean more freedom? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. To see Sophie debate viture signalling and mob rule with Simon Blackbrun and Peter Tatchell, head to iai.tv/video/virtue-ethics-and-the-mob?UA-cam&
Anarchy means against government. Government is institutionalized self-legalized initiation of force. That is core to its very definition. Freedom is freedom to live as you like in voluntary interaction with others only without coercion. So yes reducing and even eliminating institutionalized coercion is pro-freedom.
Anarchy offers great freedom until a few sociopaths (or psychopaths) eventually use that freedom to garner as much power as possible by pushing the limits of their freedom early on in seemingly acceptable ways. But once they have enough power, they use it in nefarious ways to squash the freedom of everyone else so they can gain even more power. And there is nothing you can do other than start a bloody revolution to stop it. Anarchy only works in a world where there are no sociopathic personalities and everyone has a strong sense of empathy.
I think Anarchy is a way to much more than freedom from authoritarianism. It's a way to finally, and not just as a religious concept, live in a society where do unto others as you want done unto yourself is truly the guiding principle.
Anarchy means no rulers, not no rules. It does not mean without control, it means out of their control. Anarchism means decentralization to the point of individualism.
The truth can never be revealed to mortal men in this world. Our truth is simply the process of the truth being slowly internally revealed.. Anarchy, and abetter society is that process. We have stopped that process with the society we have formed now. Hints why tiktok, and weird people who have to throw god into everything scared that he might not exist. However a true believer has no fear of this friend. 😊
@@minihunt4093 We are not mortal men - we are consciousness, awareness, the unreachable. Try and lay a finger on it. You can't. That is what you are, not a 'mortal man' which is a mere happening in this eternally present awareness, just like the world. Can't wait till all the words pass.
Murray Bookchin is also important. His whole ideas about municipalism in his late years. It has been implemented in Rojava (Northern Syria) through the writing of Abullah Ocalan from his prison cell but has suffered from the restless effort by Erdogan's Turkey to destroy it. It is by far one of the most advanced model of anarchism and 'democracy' in action. Addendum: For those who are skeptical and wish for the continuation of the status quo, enjoy! As we are still expeirencing a rather peaceful arena of some sort and that we are unable to take this time to think of different models of existence, it will be thrown at us eventually when we won't be able to even think of a model without bloodshed and other unimaginable damage that will occur under our current trajectory.
Rojava sadly isn't and has never been anarchist. What ideas it did take from Bookchin were from his later years after he disavowed anarchism. Rojava has cops and prisons and representives and political parties and majoritatian voting systems and capitalism. The Syrian anarchist movement was crushed back in the early 2010s. While Rojava is often supported by the anarchist movement, it absolutely does not fit anarchist ideals. The Zapatistas are a far better example if you want a group that actually abides by anarchist principles, even if they don't call themselves anarchist explicitly.
I'm a graduate of the Institute of Social Ecology, the homeplace of Murray Bookchin's ideas. The disorganization and lack of administrative talent resulted in not being able to maintain a simple property that the summer program was hosted on. That could have been bought for $250K back in the mid-90s. Ridiculous. If using Bookchin's theories, not based on reality, could not build the most modest of institutions, the theories are thus garbage.
Chuckles, the fact that you equate maintaining a simple organization, a little sustainable cash flow to continue offering bookchin’s ideas - on municipal libertarianism and lots of fun Solar and permaculture - and maintain a site, a small piece of land, a building with decent student interest, and you equate that with capitalism…? This is the kind of nonsense that makes anarchists so preposterously foolish. Here’s a tip…if you’re going to condemn market based economies with a fair amount of government intervention….and then condemn hierarchies of competence and skill (which is basically by and large what we have now)…you’re going to have to offer some competent model. A competent economic model that efficiently organizes 370M American’s needs. Anarchism absolutely doesn’t do it, as romantic and charming and the Spanish revolution appeared to be.
@@paulraymond139 I'd be interested in your thoughts on an anarchist who believes in societies of 'competence and skill' not founded on hierarchy but something akin to what Sophie talks about in this video; sources of guidance and leadership, people we make the collective decision to listen to because of their expertise, rather than authority or power over us.
2 book recommendations for anyone interested in this line of thinking: Harry Browne's "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World" is THE classic book that deals with freedom "where the rubber meets the road" and maximizing it without having to convince other people of anything. The other is Michael Huemer's "The Problem of Political Authority". It's an air-tight philosophical breakdown of the validity of political authority that's rock solid. It reads a bit dry, but its arguments are locked up super tight. Highly recommend these...
As a '60s "anarchist," I don't espouse "burning it all down," as anarchy is often characterized, but rather the Question Authority model of same. It seems foolish to me to assert that there should be NO hierarchies of social control, but obvious that their legitimacy should be regularly reevaluated. 🙏
This is not an accurate view what Anarchism is about tho. We aren't content with merely questioning authority, authority does not care or bend to questions. Anarchism isn't about justified or regulated hierarchies either. It's about the abolition of hierarchy. This is not just consistent with the literature, but perhaps most importantly with the history of the movement.
I believe many have forgotten the power of directly speaking truth to power. Most constructs are just manipulative word play, group think, and the Narcissists and Dark Empaths that fight the battle.
@@lightofthelogos You possibly meant 'raises the question', as opposed to the fallacy of question begging, which is a common mistake. If value is ultimately subjective, in the eyes of the valuer, then there can't be one single best idea for all times - not even for a single individual, who may happen upon a new idea, or reappraise an old one...
"Anarchy is no guarantee that some people won't kill, injure, kidnap, defraud, or steal from others. Government is a guarantee that some will. " Gustave de Molinari
Correct. This is why anarchy requires humanity to evolve past resource-guarding and other base animalistic behaviors. We have a looooong way to go before that happens. People are still quite happy to act like animals if it suits their egoic psychopathy.
@fleurishadvisors232 we are animals. there's no evolving past that fact. violence is an immutable part of our species, but the industrialisation of such is an aberration we can mitigate by increasing the options of the people to deny the authority that commands it.
Its a system which is advantageous to everyone if those negative aspects aren't prevalent. If they are present, its disadvantageous to those who do lie, and cheat in the long term
Even chaos is a fixed idea. Don’t lead for we might not follow. Don’t follow for we might not lead. Just walk side by side as we carve a path through life.
I think Anarchism is the natural conclusion for those who maintain their faith in humanity but have no faith in leadership and those with ambition of power.
@@JanB56 well in that context who gave anyone the authority to say anything? Perhaps earlier in the quote, "it is my opinion" or, "I believe that smart responsible people should..." I dont think I quoted in any sort of authoritative manner, certainly Not ex cethedra! Its amazing what can be lost or gained in the translation of one human mind to another....in my opinion, lol.
look for dialectic. (Hegelian acceptation of the term) : Hegelianism refigured "dialectic" to no longer refer to a literal dialogue. Instead, the term takes on the specialized meaning of development by way of overcoming internal contradictions.
I know a great book, "The Dispossessed", that describes an anarchistic society/community and the issues about it, written by the author Ursula K. LeGuin. Well, she was a science fiction and phantasy author though. A brilliant one, but her story is about a foreign planet.
I think you mean "The Dispossessed" Just read "The Word For World is Forest", some similar themes set in the same universe, so might be one you would like too.
@@radroatchThank you for the notice, just `repaired` it, well english is not my first language. Yeah, I know the story, you mentioned, too. She´s a nearly forgotten genius. In "The Dispossessed" she shows very well and understandable, how and where the problems in a deregulated society come from. Well, the story has a kind of happy ending, not sure, if that fits reality.
@@Thomas-gk42 No worries, an easy mistake for native speaker too. We could do with more writers like Ursula K. Le Guin. Her Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness are still pretty well known.
Sophie Scott-Brown is al historian based at the University of East Anglia with research in modern European political thought and the history of education. She is the author of The Histories of Raphael Samuel: A Portrait of a People’s Historian, and Colin Ward and the Art of Everyday Anarchy.
It's funny that I didn't even have to look this up to know that it's the same corporation every communist and anarchist brings up in every conversation about anarchy or communism because it's the only one that's ever worked. You probably heard about it from Richard Wolff because he brings it up literally every time he opens his mouth.
Thanks for the example because for must of us, anarchists, what we want is the economy and politics done with more democracy. Basically “let’s turn everything we can into a coop”. Mondragón is not as they used to be. They have tiers of workers, but they are amazing compared to traditional capitalist companies
@@Spectacurl everything is contaminated by capitalism, be it state run such as China, feudal such as Russia, or "neo" liberal as in the Anglo Saxon model. For Mondragon to have survived such onslaught is incredible and is no bad thing as it has shown adaptation and progression rather than stagnation. I'm intrigued by the ideas of Murray Bookchin, he would support progress in the liberal anarchist tradition.
Absolutely agree with her that leadership is not problematic. In fact, I think its important that there are leaders. If the leader has special privileges because of their leadership, that's the problem. A leader is no better than anyone else.
Yea the mindset a lot of people take towards leadership and anyone they see as powerful is still a big problem. You don't deserve more just because you have power. We all have power anyway.
bro u are called anarchowolf n just explained democratic representative democracy or feudal christian lordship. And we have multiple times in history proving that anarchy is an impossible construct in reality because of the incentive structure and lack of rules to prevent centralisation.
Of course leaders have privileges they would have to make a decision even if it's just one and then they leave that's a privilege. If a leader just gives recommendations then they aren't really a leader they could just be a random dude that has an opinion
Talking about anarchism without ever touching on more direct critiques of capitalism, the state and related structural/systemic issues tends to sound too ethereal, and I feel like this happened here as well. Like, there's a question about freer systems being possibly used in harmful ways and it receives no push back about how current systems are definitely used in harmful ways, for example. I'm not criticizing Sophie, as this is just a short interview, but here it all ends up sounding like little more than a personal preference in style to me.
I agree. I feel like political theorists generally tend to be too abstract. For instance, her phrase "increasing democratic practices" to me is so abstract as to be near meaningless. Instead, I wish she would say something like, "Rather than outside shareholders, the employees of publicly traded corporations should elect the board of directors." Which to me is more understandable, more real, more achievable, and easier to rally around and act on than just saying people should, "increase democratic practices" or even "workers should control the means of production." Even though they all mean the same thing. Then again, she says she doesn't want to dictate to people how to be free. Which maybe means we can all interpret how to "increase democratic practices" anyway we want. Which seems not unlike saying, "All I have are platitudes. Figure out the details out on your own. If you think more capitalism and authoritarianism means more democracy that's fine." But if that's the case, why is she even granting an interview?
@@JoJofghjYeah. Being charitable, I can see not dictating how people should be free to mean that the specific details of how people organized shouldn't be pre-dictated and the same everywhere, but can still follow some guiding principles - which I think is fair -, but I can just as easily see it as being "to each their own just let me do my thing" - which is hardly actionable in any very meaningful way when it comes to the societal scale. As an aside, you mentioned "workers should control the means of production", and I think that's a phrase which was a bit of a victim of its own success. Like, when that first became a motto it was very practical, very contextualized and surrounded by both theory and practice. Nowadays it's a lot of the time used just as a motto with little update. Which I think is a bit unfortunate because to me the core of the message is still fresh
@@JoJofghj "I feel like political theorists generally tend to be too abstract." True, but are we at a stage in human development where our abstract minds have risen so far above the concrete world that the two can never meet? Have "all" our political systems become far too abstract? As an engineer, it reminds of the divide between the theoretical physicist and the engineer. One dreams...the other has to make it work.
@@anthonybrett I don't think our political or economic systems have become too abstract. However, many academics and theoreticians might be a bit too removed from anything outside of academia to be able to help us put much theory into practice. I think your comparison to physicists and engineers is a good one.
The suggestion that a small number of friends working out what to do on a Friday night (which is based on a very small number of self-selected unusually-compatible people, having more shared interests and values than the general population, and which still doesn't actually always work out or is decided by one 'organizer' or 'leader' friend) is a reason to think that society has the tools to coordinate in a similar fashion but across millions or billions of people and over years and decades rather than a single evening makes it hard to take anything else that follows seriously.
the idea of anarchy is literally just not being ruled. how that happens is what this kind of thinking is about. "Scaling" anarchy to billions isn't the point. Questioning assumptions and working to actually support and free ourselves from wage labor, corporate owners, political masters, an elite class hoarding wealth and resources...that's what anarchy asks.
Very interested to know how in such direct democracy we would be able to avoid people being swayed by those w more power/money/influence. bc i genuinely want to believe in radical democracy, but i don’t know if its a realistic concept in a society as unequal and polarized as ours is today….
If it's Anarcho-Communism, wealth would be shared pretty equally, so there wouldn't be people with significantly more money able to influence things. People could still be convinced by people making bad faith arguments sometimes, but I do think it would overall be much better.
Yeah that is a valid concern. It would be nice if we could just switch to that ideal world, but it’s going to take a lot of change to actually make the transition. I personally don’t believe that I’ll ever live to see the end result of our striving, but with enough effort to change, someone someday will eventually get to see what we’ve achieved
Because you are framing Democracy from the current capitalist perspective. Number one direct democracy is not direct vote. In an anarchyst society EVERYONE, works in government. What does that mean? One example, every 6 months your local council must have new members, and every citizen must participate in the local council at least once every 2 years, otherwise you can't vote. That would mean that you have first hand knowledge of the issues of your society, so it's muuuch harder that someone would spin tales that the vast majority would found credible. But that's not freedom. Anarchy has not got anything to do with freedom, is against oppression. No one forces you to do anything (and all your need are met) but if you won't participate in the bettering of society, you can't participate in the decision process.
she also does not mention that this is worked on and being called digital direct democracy. DAOs and real scientists do a lot of work on it. She got no clue what she is talking about far as I see
What a beautiful humanistic Anarchist pledoyer, weaving together the best of anarchist philosophy and respecting its deepest postulates and desires.!!! Sophie comes from Wisdom
"People don't recognize how frequently they operate in an anarchist fashion all the time....if you've ever coordinated something with a group of friends....etc. etc." I've heard this a lot from Anarchists but it always seems to me that A) these pockets of leaderless/authority free examples of cooperation generally occur within highly integrated social groups that have already identified both common interests and a willingness to cooperate. B) They occur as subroutines within a framework or meta structure based in hierarchical organization and authority What anarchists never seem to be able to answer to my satisfaction is this: In a system in which we all agree and are entitled to say "Nobody is the boss of me, and I will do as I wish" how does such system handle outliers who do not respond to incentives, refuse to cooperate and/or are actively anti-social or sociopathic? In other words, what does the Anarchist system do with the entity that says "I don't accept your direct democracy / community boundaries or artificial limits on the range of acceptable behavior."
@yetidodger6650 anarchism and libertarianism were terms coopted by right wing psychopaths who are hypercapitlist, so now we have to deal with the definitions they have coopted
This is so stupid. 'If you can have fun, organized activities with your friends then that means you can turn it into a political system'. How are you this old and not seeing the ideological dead end that anarchy is? This endless pursuit for true democracy has its roots on the ideological basis of liberalism. 'If it's not voluntary and spontaneous, then it's not direct democracy', how do you measure that? Where did you even get that? How would a system of direct democracy even exist if it's just something we do arbitrarily? How would you convince everyone at the same time to decide about something specific without a system/an organization that actually educates on the idea to participate? Does this mean the neolithic era was a system of direct democracy because everyone did what they wanted? Incredible how anarchists want to argue that their ideology/system isn't chaos or doesn't lead to chaos but every single sentence that they use to describe it convinces you otherwise
I'm an anarchist because It has been demonstrated ubiquitously that responsible self-government is more efficient, enjoyable, and survivable than tyranny.
seems like you kinda poisoned the well a lot with the words "responsible" and "tyranny". I mean, nobody of any political stripe would disagree with your statement!
@@ChannelMath But what they might say is that his perfect world cannot exist without some external force protecting it from the tyrants of the world. How does the anarchist society which spends presumably little to nothing on defense defend itself from an aggressive dictatorship that is spending 5% or more of GDP on a standing military?
@@jlpowell51 Folks that should think those things trough really don't. Their tunnel vision prevents it. They want the police defunded until their house is invaded by another anarchist of a less-ethical disposition.
@@thenathanimal2909 "Human Nature" is not a thing that actually exists. All it is is the traits we pick up from the culture and societies we grow up in, but even then everyone is different and can change over time. Yes, there are things that can be "natural" to us as individuals like skin color or some disabilities. Anthropologists - the people that actually study humanity - are the ones who say this.
@ozzie_theotter I'm not talking about something as shallow and skin deep as skin color. Humans are driven by their biology to behave in certain ways - to greater or lesser degrees. Just as biology drives all animals to continue their own existence and procreate - So do humans posses certain genetic behaviors to seek out and compete for mates and resources to survive. We are not tabula rasa, robots without programming. We have primal evolutionary drives, that is human nature - And part of that nature when indulged to extremes is to murder, steal, and destroy. Human nature is real, and denying it exists in attempts to engineer societys has lead to some of the greatest atteocities in mankind's history.
@@ozzie_theotter Yeah, that's no doubt true. And it seems like this chick has picked up on art of being an intellectual grifter, in this culture we are immersed in. Like I would ever look up to someone like this for fifteen seconds if I were going to form some new society. But it's true though, I would say people are totally malleable, and are vastly more defined by nurture rather than nature. We haven't had a chance to live in a different, better society, without being under constant duress to stick with the status quo. Maybe humanity would take to it.
This 23 min interview explains anarchism as an adult would. The HBO film "Anarchism" are bunch of grown ups acting like kids that think Anarchism is when you do just whatever you want
She very briefly mentions federalism - that's one of the proposed ways. The general idea is that people form groups which come together in nested and interlinked structures. What exactly these groups are, how the nest and how they link up can vary from society to society, depending on it's needs, previous conditions, the conditions under which revolutionary activity happens, etc. An example would be federations of producers and federations of communities coming together at different levels. As much as possible, things are decided on the most direct possible level, so that the higher levels are left for coordination. The participation on these different levels would be, where necessary, made through delegates, which would be chosen for a specific task and to defend a specific position and would be recallable. Transparency and efficient communication are key. This is of course a simplified overview, but this sort of method could, for example, flow nicely from a revolutionary process based on heavy syndicalist activity. As pointers, you can look up for example Rojava and Chiapas. They're not strictly anarchist, but are generally taken as important case studies for anarchism, and are influenced by it. There are of course more direct but more short lived anarchist experiences, such as Revolutionary Catalonia. For societies which have lived under social organizations which have aspects in common with anarchism, there's a book called "Anarchy works", by Peter Gelderloos. It can be found free online at "theanarchistlibrary". It's not meant to be a proposal to simply copy any of these societies, but it does help bring some things to a more concrete level. A very brief historical introductory text for anarchism is Malatesta's "An Anarchist Programme". His earlier "Anarchy" is a bit longer and also good as a primer. Both can be found online at "theanarchistlibrary". One thing to keep in mind when looking into anarchism is that most anarchists do *not* have an utopian view of society, humanity or anarchy itself. In some senses anarchism is actually fairly pragmatic when you get down to it - even it's strong position for a permanent unity of means and ends is not idealist. But anyway, I'll stop here, this wall of text has gotten long enough : p
IMO, anarchism doesn't scale. And one could argue that human societies _shouldn't_ scale, as it only leads to its own downfall, ref. the Anthropocene. So if anarchism is to work on a larger scale, I think it has to remain small-scale, distributed, horizontal. How _that_ might work is an interesting question. (BTW, it's anarchism, not anarchy.)
@@user-sl6gn1ss8p Anarchism is like Buddhism. The former isn't politics and the latter isn't a religion, but both get put into those categories. IOW we all need to discover the essence of our convictions.
I'm curious if there are examples of this form or leadership that works over time and what happens when a group formed this way is in conflict with different forms of governance.
This is quite a light touch, introductory sort of discussion, and some pointers to more recent theory and practice research would be useful. One of the central fixations of 19thC anarchist thought was of political power, the autonomy of the individual, and claiming a role on economic life, essentially by turning industry into a political arena and syndicalizing voice and participation. That's not the world we have. Enormous degrees of power and influence have be outsourced to corporations, producers of things, producers of information, producers of cultural products and norms, generally with the state proving rather weak to regulate and moderate. That then raises the question of how individuals can interact, share information, draw conclusions, and express preferences - eg by direct democracy - on the matters at hand. How does that happen at scale, and how do cultural shifts happen that see a critical mass of individuals adopt or advance those capabilities? My point is essentially the tension between power and culture, mediated through what's being spoken of here as a relatively narrow techne, or method. And - here's the kicker - which comes first? Does a group try the method in order to change the culture? Or does the culture have to change in order to make any effort at spreading the method feasible at all? There is a lot that theory can work over. I know there's an argument that we can't all be architects and some need to be blocklayers, which is fine, plenty of roles for all. Theory might also look into the presenting issues of how rights can be protected, abuses minimised, and risks mitigated. People want to know how their needs can be met, what happens in the event of accident or misfortune, how collective goods can be secured and maintained, how collective threats can be overcome (fr, an anarchist agenda that cannot answer genuine questions on resisting invasion, heating homes, decommissioning nuclear weapons, combating climate change etc is not going to be taken seriously. This goes way beyond the "well, who's gonna fix the roads?" questions.) It's the world of today that needs the solutions applied to it, not the imagined worlds of past theorists.
UA-cam is a horrible medium for this sort of discussion. The comments section just opens the floodgates for the poorly read and informed to tell us all why (based on their myopic world view) the ideas just cant work, how silly the people must be who find these ideas interesting enough to discuss, and even the physical appearance of the person being interviewed. How people can be so proud of displaying their lack of intellectual curiosity I will never understand.
The interviewer confuses leadership with management. It is a common error because the idea of leadership is such a romantic notion. It rose up as a way to validate the influence of those at the top of organizational hierarchies. If we follow this line of reasoning, then we know who is responsible for all the ills and crises of society, which raises questions about how leaders are held accountable for their leadership. Four decades of working in the world of leadership development has shown me that “all leadership begins with personal initiative to create impact that makes a difference that matters.” In other words, it is a function of human behavior. This is increasingly how leadership is coming to be understood today.
What she talks about here is a time limited leadership, that's bound to special tasks, a community has to fulfill. That's a much more romantic idea, as we think about the term today. Most native Americans bands worked that way.
I think that the big problem with leadership now is that we abdicate our own responsibilities and decision making. We delegate and forget about it and expect things to be taken care of, and then we complain and protest when it isn't. Trotsky was right of course: The revolution must be permanent. We can never take anything for granted, but must be vigilant and must watch everything very carefully all the time. Then the feedback to the coordinators aka leaders is instant, and they having a flexible mindset unlike our Dear Leaders of today, will take the right decision, having received the information they needed from the grass roots, directly from the people who have a problem. Modern IT makes that very easy, but it starts with our mindset, how information flows and is acted upon.
Leadership accountability has always been in question. I thought Anarchism was to make that point explicitly? Power corrupts people who seek corrupted power.
@@yngvesognen1092 better to be a coordinator with everyone else and solve whatever problem arises immediately, the internet is a tool we can use efficiently compared to telephone calls to other countries, the wheel keeps spinning, and Trotsky did some good, poor guy.
Well she sounded interesting even though she didn't really say anything about how this "Anarchy" would work she mentioned how Anarchy could be taken in wrong ways by others and it has in the past, but then she didn't explain why her version of "Anarchy" would lead to any good other than a kind of utilitarian view that people would be freer but, I don't see how that the things she mentioned could not still happen in a normal democracy and also what does Direct Democracy mean? She couldn't explain it because classifying it would create a system that controls freedom so it's paradoxical? Wouldn't you think that maybe it's paradoxical to think about it in the first place if that's the case? Dunno didn't really get the point of this convo it just felt like going around in circles and getting nowhere but it sounded nice, I guess.
What's to deal with? There are more property owners under property assignment norms that include contracts for sale, then under ownership by declaration, so we should continue to support the norms that create more private property owners. We certainly wouldn't want to outlaw being able to rent to others.
"The true remedy for most evils is none other than liberty, unlimited and complete liberty, liberty in every field of human endeavor." Gustave de Molinari
My main criticism of anarchy is that it’s magical thinking. What do you do about organised crime. …..imagine opening the prisons and disbanding the police. How quickly would the criminals take over.
Very nice. Thank you! In speaking of populisms, I see "sources of power" as the fears indulged in and held by True believers. The fears are fueled by (may even be created by) authoritarian would-be social dominators-rulers. A society will remain submissive (will not rid itself of rulers) so long as its members remain ideological thinkers. Anarchy means self-reliance nurtured by freethought, by the avoidance of dogma. It requires that individuals learn enough (self-learning) to make warranted assertions as they work to reject indoctrinations and duties for a scientific attitude and responsibilities. At minute 23 Sophie expresses what I find in John Dewey's instrumentalism-pragmatism and his theory of democracy.
The lady being interviewed here really is not an anarchist. Not in any meaningful, differentiating way. She likes a bit more freedom where it’s “possible”. She is a liberal, or probably a democratic socialist. Having a preference for the state being small (local village size) doesn’t change that. The state always grows. Even Rome started as a village. Anyone actually interested in anarchy might want to read Hans Herman Hoppe or Murray Rothbard are worth reading (Rothbard has really succinct essays, Hoppe fleshes ideas out in great detail).
When it comes to the statement "people already live under direct democracy to one degree or another" I would agree and put it in a very pointed way. We already operate within anarchy, each and every day, to one degree or another. In fact, I would go as far as to say, and here's where my particular conception comes in... We live in anarchies already. I aim to formalize a method of categorizing interpersonal and large-group relations in this way with some writing I've been doing. Suffice it to say, we already live in anarchy with many people, and those are the closest, most mutually benevolent relationships or at the LEAST are the least likely to result in coercive power used against someone.... What is an anarchy? Well, simply, it isn't a hierarchy.
Agreed. I’ve thought about this before where people argue we need the state because the state protects us from crime and violence, but two things are clear to me for why this is somewhat incorrect. Higher crackdowns on crime don’t prevent it or lessen it, and all crime is punishable only after it’s been committed. The state doesn’t prevent crime it dishes out punishment. Two is that we act like we need the government to stop us from murdering eachother but I think that’s very suspect, for one thing other people are likely to condemn murder and theft no matter what as a matter of principle and community another thing is who actually just had the desire to kill people, I don’t think the average person does and in our personal relationships I don’t think without a government we would just suddenly kill and rob eachother, and I say this because the idea we need government to enforce peaceful cooperation is ludicrous because what it should imply is the need for a police state to constantly force us to act appropriately, but we don’t need or want that and our laws against murder reflect a commonly held almost universal value.
When she uses the example of how we already organise things with friends or colleagues - who actually enjoys this process or feels satisfied with it? There are very few people with whom I find this process enjoyable or useful. Often a necessary evil that you need to just get done and over, yes. When I hear the idea that we want more and more of it I am filled with dread.
@@gabe20244 I just prefer doing my own thing like lots of people do. I also don't like discussing boring minutiae. For instance, I used to have a partner who wanted to book every detail of a holiday together - discuss all the travel options, accommodation options, what clothes, what food. To me that is just annoying. I like to just relax and go with the flow, not discuss and debate with other people constantly about everything in life.
These ideas are dangerously vague and undistilled. Chomsky has a far more concise explanation of anarchism based on the idea that it is the requirement that ANY form of authority or hierarchy or concentrated power has to justify its own existence. Then, if it cannot do that, we should dismantle it and, if necessary, replace it with a different institution. This process is the core of all anarchist thought.
It means without rulers, not without leaders. You can do what a leader says because you respect their competence. You do what a ruler says because you will be punished if you don't.
The problem with Government is they are incentivized by making it's people ever more docile and dependent on "big daddy". If we had less criminals we would have less police, if we had less unhealthy people we would have less hospitals, if we had a more satisfied job market job creation and upward mobility wouldn't be needed. Government is like baby teeth we all need it at some stage but eventually we grow out of it, I hope.
The baby teeth analogy doesn’t work. Government is a parasitic phenomenon. The analogy is more like a baby trying to grow with leeches on it. It can take one or two, too many kill it. But the baby is never better off developmentally with leeches on it.
Gee if you take an honest look at humanity then you can see the futility in weaning people off of the desire for big daddy. Religon has been hawking big daddy in the sky since it's inception. We're all raised with the image of big daddy in our parents. I see no proof that it will ever change in any meaningful way.
@@hostrow The Desire for for big daddy to me is akin to a puppet longing for his stings, or a bird yet to leave the nest. The larger system will change our nappies until we grow up and take care of our own sht. I understand the idea that a higher authority may know better than the average Joe, but Joe stays average until he starts paying attention and that has nothing to do with the larger system but everything to do with Joe. The system is a crutch we will toss aside not a viable replacement for fallible Joe.
Foolish hope. Read something, even You Tube replies, outside 'sane, safety.' Not god, or ideas keep humanity from literally, eating itself. Government, fear of, its big messaging, saves us. Contestable, depressing, yet true thought. People are just, very bright animals. Without a leash, experiment and history have shown, we are horrific, cretinous, even suicidal.
It’s understandable why some artists are attracted to anarchy due to the individual nature of our work, however, anarchy is something that can never function successfully in the world. People are tribal and will always need leaders, direction and law to successfully interface with each other safely. All of the many times in the past when these types of ideas have been used to destabilize societies, the vacuum has always been filled by unscrupulous leaders who see an easy route to complete power. It will always be this way. Anarchy and the isms always accomplish the opposite of what they intend. In attempting to eliminate leaders and management throughout society, they end up with one absolute leader with power over all.
‘An archos’ means no Ruler, not no leader, and it certainly does not automatically mean no rules or laws that the people, the anarchists would accept and use as social guidelines for behaviour and interaction .. and most certainly does it not automatically mean chaos. -
Could be like Gilligan's Island, or Lord of the Flies, depending on the personalities involved. But once you get a charismatic personality that promises meat and is able to deliver it, they're going to be chosen to be a leader by the tribe, and the anarchy is gone.
@@theboombody - yes, sadly that's the reality - .. and the reason for that quote by BFranklin about '... having a republic.. if you can keep it..' - it requires a populace educated about- and willing to uphold ethical- moral conduct - same is required for a functioning anarchist society; the people need to understand liberty, some basic philosophy, basic economic principles of human action, and why- and how other political systems inevitably, in the long run, lead to civil-society-destroying ideas taking hold and power -
@@PeterQuentercrimsonbamboo A shedload of people out there had no interest in anything outside of themselves. Capitalism is maybe the culprit, however, it goes way back longer than an -ism. People are fine earning enough to pay for housing, their family and a speedboat. Good luck getting Aussie tradies to become anarchists.
@@theboombody choosing a leader isn't the end of anarchy, obeying a ruler is. A leader is followed out of respect, a ruler is followed out of fear of violence.
@@MrHarumakiSensei Well there needs to be a better verbal distinction between the two types of society you mention. Because the term "anarchy" to me implies non-obedience to a leader or a ruler. If anarchy only means non-obedience to a ruler, what the heck would be non-obedience to a chosen leader?
7:05 Federations are the opposite of your anarchism. If you want people to actually make decisions themselves then you need a *confederation*, not a federation. And yes, I know that word has bad associations to the US civil war where local level rule was desired for rather sinister reasons...
I’m not an anarchist, despite sympathies in that direction, because I am too much of a pragmatist. I stick mostly to Existentialism which emphasizes the individual as a autonomous free agent directing their own existence through acts of will.
because you want your cake and eat it too? can "flow" whatever way it strikes you, and then exit if it start to get fugly, uncomfortable: anarchist church and its HYPER individualistic orientation
Huh, weird. I'm apolitical, but anarchy was always the idea that attracted me the most, just because decisions need to be made by the people, throughout time. The only lasting thing within time context is either constant change or perhaps something to do with black holes. Since we cant form our politics around black wholes, like we currently do, we should cling on to change. Anyway. What's weird? I've sat like so all my life (no, not ALL my life 🙂) too! It's very comfortable. But I only lean against one side. I know I have skuleosis today, maybe I did even as a child. Anyway, I'e always sat like that becuse I have a flat ass and this is the best combination between comfortability and stability. I guess anarchists like adapting to change, sort of like I adapted to my ass. 😁
What a waste of space. Her anarchist contemplations are pure luxury - made possible by all the diligent non-anarchist labors & sacrifices of those around her.
Anarchism is possible only in a mature society, in which everyone is a developed individual, and not a pre-made person as it is today. Anarchism is the inevitable future of human organization, unfortunately, a very distant one.
@@aristocraticrebel, immigration was the other irrational reason that led to Brexaster. The first one was not liking Europe. These are deeply seated in human nature, and unless there's a crisis and another Churchill comes along, nothing is going to change. Oh yes, direct democracy will happen, but only when we humans are more evolved. BTW I was very interested in Anarchism when I was very young, half a century ago. Now I think direct democracy is a better term, now that communication is instant.
The interview doesn't make this too clear, but it's important to note that anarchism *is not* direct democracy. Direct democracy is a tool, while anarchism is a social system (and/or the social movement towards it). So anarchism entails other things, such as an opposition to capitalism (and private ownership of the means of production and wage labor, as particular examples) and the state (as understood by anarchist, not necessarily as understood by some marxists). This all has implications on what, how, when and by whom methods of direct democracy are to be applied. This is not to say that anarchism leads to a singular mode of organization - the actual shape of an anarchist society would depend on the society itself, it's conditions, etc -, but it does come with some limits, mainly in the sense that people and their societies are allowed to defend their freedoms and refuse domination, so that things which are incompatible with freedom or bring domination do not need to be accepted. Anarchism is not "utopian" in this sense. It also does not need everyone to play nice out of the kindness of their hearts, but that's another topic. Of course there are many strands of Anarchism, and I'm talking in a general sense. There are exceptions, but they're not the main views and do not represent most of the history or of the current work of anarchists.
@@user-sl6gn1ss8p, yes, of course the goal is Utopia, Heaven on Earth. All ideologies proclaim that. I was concerned about the stigma of the words anarchy/anarchism. Long term I'm very optimistic for humanity, in the near term not at all. We are in the beginning of the sci-fi age, and in a century or two our world will be completely different. I find this subject of our future so fascinating! Yes there will be setbacks, but we humans aren't nearly done yet!
The main issue is the tyranny of the majority. The core purpose of a systematized form of government is, or at least should be, to ensure fundamental minority rights. Not sure how any anarchical “system” could perform such a function.
Could this be changed to the "core purpose of minorities is to ensure fundamental minority rights"? Perhaps the problem is that government protects those rights through a monopoly on violence?
There are many many forms of anarchism, it's such a broad field of political thought. Within it you can find systems that ensure that minorities are heard and respected. Anarchist praxis can employ various mechanisms to prevent tyranny of the majority. I'm skeptical of "systems" though, and much more sympathetic to Sophie Scott-Brown's view of anarchism as a process. To me, anarchism is more about creating a durable culture than designing a "perfect" system. As with any culture, its worldview would be paramount for the wellbeing of its members and the society itself. As an side, "rights" are not universal. But respect is. I think Simone Weil was onto something when she talked about obligations.
@@peskypesky As you command, my lord. I think I indirectly did? One with a strong culture where respect for others is a core value, an essential part of who you are as a people. Especially respect for minorities, as they are intrinsically more vulnerable. This would require a strong cultural identity and ensuring the continuation of the core values, where deviating from those would be taboo. Further, the decision-making process would have to be wise enough to include the views of minorities. I like the Quaker method that's neither majority vote (majority happy, minority miserable) nor consensus based (everybody miserable), but seeking a "sense of the meeting" (everybody happy). It does sound like consensus, but it's not. It's about seeking unity about the wisest course of action, with every voice being equally respected. It often leads to creative solutions rather than watered-down compromises. They're not stupid, these Quakers. This is all just in principle, I can't say how it would come about, as I don't believe in designing a utopian system. But I do believe it's a better approach than enforcing rights by force, which only leads to resentment, polarization and more conflict, without ever solving the underlying problem. Someone will always be miserable and hateful in such a society. You can't force people to respect one another, it has to come from within. In the real world, there's the democratic confederalism of Rojava, largely inspired by Bookchin and based on human rights. Whether it's actually anarchism is debatable, Bookchin is considered a post-anarchist. I think it's still within the broad scope of anarchism, and a good example of how some concessions have to be made in order for it to work, at least in a transitional phase. But this is the designed from above system approach that I'm skeptical of. I believe in growing organically from below. You can't force these things.
You could certainly increase the amount of "freedom" available to people by having a state provide its citizens the basic living necessities so that they don't spend the majority of most of their day taking orders from someone else....
I always get creeped out by ideas that are great as ideas but in action for the average Joe just doesn’t work. It’s a bunch of intellectualism - academic exploration - for elites - not to be confused with what works for most people.
The elites are those who order around the average Joe and as long as he isn't even slightly interested or curious about the possibility of a different arrangement, you're right. But as a start he could form actually democratic bottom up organizations to take care of functions which we normally would expect government or private interests to take care of, but you have to be independent minded enough to even think about that. I would say that most people are used to being slaves to bosses and "leaders" so as a first step we need to at least discuss it, as a preparation for acting on the ideas, so that's why I disagree
I'm not sure what you mean by Elites. So the business class isn't an elite? If you look at Elon Musk and how he abuses and Lords it over his subjects that's all okay if that's the way you want to look at it. But he is definitely an elite to me. Why do you look at academics as Elites? They don't have any power over you they can't order you around and you can just ignore their opinion if you want. But that's not the case with these other people I just described. I think you've fallen for this anti-intellectualism the Practical man isn't allowed to think outside the box he supposed to be a drone and not have any imagination or curiosity about a different way a different possible setup otherwise he's not practical he lives in the stratosphere according to you well you're entitled to your opinion. I think this website here probably is based on that you're not going to actually do anything you're just going to discuss this issue that's what all they want you to do but not actually act on it because this site is financed by business class. So they don't really believe you're actually going to do anything otherwise they wouldn't allow this discussion that goes against their interests which is what you are reinforcing because you're "practical" and "realistic".
Anarchism is antiauthoritarian socialism. Anarchists are both socialists and federalists. We oppose all dictatorships, political, economic, patriarchal, or religious.
Anarchism was a social movement in the radical left from the 1870s to ww2. It’s over. Anarchists would say you aren’t one, nobody now is as how can you be without a mass movement? It’s not something one can be on one’s own and the groups that are around have almost zero appeal to and projects with the workers and farmers of the world
"Anarchy is a form of society without rulers. As a kind of stateless society, it is commonly contrasted with states, which are centralized polities that claim a monopoly on violence over a permanent territory. Beyond a lack of government, it can more precisely refer to societies that lack any form of authority or hierarchy. While viewed positively by anarchists, the primary advocates of anarchy, it is viewed negatively by advocates of statism, who see it in terms of social disorder." This is not the same as a pure democracy where instead of electing leaders to run things everything is voted on by the whole population. The real problem with this is a naïve understanding of what will happen within any large scale society which makes a change from a democratic republic or some other more organized government into a governmental anarchy. What would really happen is a power vacuum into which would rise a feudal like power structure, which would very quickly replace the anarchy system, and the result would be like he feudal systems we have seen in history except with the use of modern weapons and technology. Those feudal power groups would then compete to become larger and larger, just like it happened historically, and we would get dictatorial kingdoms where the power might lie with a wealth based system, a class based system, a religious based system, or such; probably having some mixture just like happened historically. This process would also likely be very bloody.
@@theboombody Personally the majority of humanity seems to be going insane. I see more and more people acting with emotional irrational tribal like thinking, increasing intolerance, increasing racism, increasing nationalism, increasing extreme religious belief, a denouncing of objective facts while embracing clearly false narratives which serve this tribal thinking group or another tribal thinking group, and a literal growing desire for having an all out war with anyone not aligned enough with one's tribe. This is feudalistic thinking and we historically know the result is very long and bloody wars, except now we have chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons.
@@lechuck312 I consider myself a libertarian, though not in terms of associating to any party and I believe we have to apply rational logical thinking when seeking to maximize the liberty of individuals to do whatever the hell they want, because we are an advanced very social race and thus we must not only compromise with each other on what freedoms we have but help each other better achieve freedoms we could never achieve on our own. The huge elephant in the room with anarchist is they usually want things that if achieved would immediately catapult the society that achieved it into a brutal and probably quite bloody feudalistic struggle for power which would send us centuries backwards in social progress. Things like laws and law enforcement are a requirement to prevent society from turning into a collection of war lords ruling as dictators over their territories they seek to expand. Things like doing away with money is just stupid, because the most primitive form of money is literally direct trading of goods and services... which was incredibly inefficient and why people started using some common currency. Now, how our laws work, how our law enforcement works, how our money works, etc.; all that can use improvement. But, you can't just do away with it without going backwards in civilization by a whole lot.
Anarchists weren’t actually against government and laws, the confusion comes from the term state which meant something different to 19th century Hegelians. Anarchism really was just socialist democracy with a futurist/individualist philosophy guiding it. Anarchism was finished off by stalin and franco.
indeed, i support an anarchist-communist federation of nations, an anarchist world without money, without states, without classes, without authorities, without rulers
Direct democracy is therefore problematic as it empowers the majority. Who protects the minority if endangered by the decisions of the masses? We need anarchy because we need life based on empathy, solidarity and liberty.
@@MartinPeel History has repeatedly shown that the majority will either act directly or sit on its hands in inaction while minorities are preyed upon. Why would you think that this would ever change? Maybe it can, but where the evidence that it can?
@@MartinPeel ridiculous! Even a situation where a very few share a combined belief of benefit through force will destroy a system that doesn't have the defenses necessary to maintain social order. As little as a single force multiplier is all that is required to take control. How does a true Anarchist produce an equal resistance to this obvious tendency for social and ideological pathology.
Beau Of The Fifth Column is a channel on UA-cam and the guy is a self proclaimed anarchist. His videos are all worth seeing, though most are about current events including history for context. He's very good at predicting political stuff and conflicts. He has stuff about anarchy too.
Anarchy is suppose to be an exchange, but in practice, especially on places like Twitter it almost never ends up this way. Usually the person with more willpower end up trying to consolidate influence and clout for themselves. And proposes ideas that would never be tenable in any real system.
That's because the medium strongly determines what kind of messages can be sent. Twitter is unfit for communication between peers, so why is it surprising that communication between anarchists fails?
it's a good thing twitter isn't an anarchy, then. twitter is a dictatorship under the arbitrary control of one rich guy. imo, anarchy is not really an exchange, either. it's more of a theoretical scaffold intended to inform one's praxis.
It's a desire to return to early human society before class and law. Modern human society with laws governing the common folk can feel oppressive. It's understandable but impractical at this stage of the game. 5000 year experiment humanity has taken.
She did quote Rousseau saying essentially the same thing 250 years ago. Anarchism can work as small pockets within a nation state, though, and in aspects of our everyday lives. It already does, as she points out. It also works on the fringes of nation states many places in the world, as it tends to emerge in a power vacuum, at least where people aren't already heavily armed.
Yuk! Just watching this I feel soiled by the oozing stupidity and nonsense. It's as if she knows absolutely nothing and is trying to feel her way through this subject. That's not the way it works.
Unfortunately very dated and to properly attuned to power politics - the brutal reality of the striving for power. No idealism of an-archy or democracy will get us to a practical large-scale system. And we are indeed 'forced to be free' (contra what is claimed in this talk): the field of rights in liberal societies is highly prescriptive and sets out our possibilities to make claims, or be accorded immunities, or live with our 'entitlements' successfully. Those principles structure effective freedoms - and then certainly provide the limits and policing of our freedoms.
Difficult to listen to, this woman. In my understanding, anarchy is of course NOT chaos, disorder, violence, or anything of the sort, but rather the ultimate stage in the evolution of human socio-economic organization leading from slavery to feudalism, then capitalism, socialism, communism, and finally anarchism. It is basically a stage in which everyone (or at least the overwhelming majority of citizens, since no system is all inclusive or "perfect") is so well educated, civilized, conscious of reality, that the "governmental entities" commonly known as "the State" are no longer relevant or necessary. People then behave properly, morally and for the benefit of all out of a natural ease (as opposed to laws -and a State- imposing confirmity and legally bound behavior)
"from slavery to feudalism, then capitalism, socialism, communism, and finally anarchism." What you described was a gradual transition from external control measures to internal control. Slavery = total external control Feudalism = compartmentalized Capitalism = lane control Socialism = overlapping sphere control Communism = cone control Anarchism = open field I'm not saying you're wrong I'm just saying you're understood.
“Few men are capable of governing themselves, therefore even fewer men are capable of governing other men” Anarchy is Self Government, it’s human nature that turns it to chaos.
I have noticed that those that espouse anarchy live comfortably under system like representative republics. Peaceful anarchy is a childish ideal. Basically she just revealed that THAT is what she is, a child intellectually. Only the very privileged can live that way.
I can think of several folks that are anarchists that live under repressive regimes; for example I have a buddy living in Myanmar protesting against the military junta. While I'll agree that "peaceful" isn't viable, this idea that all anarchists live under representative republics is both demonstrably false, and also does a disservice to anarchists fighting against oppressive regimes
im an anarchist and a forklift operator who's parents were both dead in my 20s and ive been homeless twice... does that help? i'll say this much, anarchism requires more thought than simply accepting the world around you. people working 48+ hours a week naturally have it harder when it comes to finding philosophy. its one the reasons businesses are so hesitant to move to an objectively more efficient 32 hour work week. this system isn't just about money, its also about power and control.
Fundamentally, "liberal anarchist" cannot exist, as anarchism came out of a critique of liberalism (capitalism). They run counter to each other. Liberal implies the continuation of capitalism, which would entail the continuation of unjust hierarchies via that mode. Anarchism would deconstruct capitalism and the hierarchies that it naturally forms, while replacing it with a more horizontal structure. Being an anarchist inherently means not being liberal by definition. To say you are a "Liberal Anarchist" would make as much sense as saying you are a "Progressive Conservative". The ideas are fundamentally opposed to each other. Anarchism also doesn't imply violence upon physical structures like parliament. You are carrying this misunderstanding that anarchism is the destruction of physical establishments because you disagree with the governing body. This is a lighter version of a "mad max" style of anarchism often portrayed in much of the media, but is actually not what anarchism is necessarily about. Anarchism is about the dissolution of unjust hierarchies when possible. Anarchism is not about senseless violence and destruction just because you disagree.
I add to my comment: In my understanding of anarchism, it abolishes the notion of sovereignty altogether, whether it is in a king or an individual. There is no sovereign. People who claim sovereign rights as individuals are those who dont want to cooperate with others - the opposite of an anarchist. But they dont opt out altogether and become hermits. They want to receive the benefits of the system while refusing to carry any of the burdens that make those benefits possible. The idea of cooperation must be correctly understood so it includes competition. When two football teams compete to win, their competition occurs in a wider context of cooperation with rules of the game, it is a form of cooperation. Banks are supposed to compete with each other in the capitalist system of cooperation and its rules. The bank robber is not competing with the bank because he is outside the context of cooperation and its rules.
I don’t think this is true maybe you should learn more. Competition is by definition not co operation. Many anarchists believe in individual freedom and Liberty as the highest value the burden of society is shared by all because anarchism would be a free society of free association. That’s not utopian necessarily it just means people do what they which is live and work in society it would just be a society that has as little restriction of freedom and Liberty as is possible, so within reason you understand.
I ain't gonna lie, this write-up sucks and lacks introspection. There are anarchist groups, villages, and even some cities that don't operate the way you are defining. You are ascribing ideas to a group of people who do not take on those ideas for themselves. This is like an exonym in a way. I think you would benefit from reading some of the literature regarding anarchism or having a discussion with some anarchists. The internet is widely available and has many hours of content if you take the time to actually learn. If you don't, then this write-up just serves as word vomit to perpetuating ideas that are more akin to propaganda.
The principle is simple. A pretty big clue is in the name. From the Greek, "An", meaning without, and, "Archos", meaning Rulers or Rulership. That D O E S N O T M E A N, being without rules. Of course, if we share the principle of not tolerating dominance, (Rulers or Rulership), then we share the RULE, that none of us will practice such things, or support it from anyone. So where government is nothing more than administration, like when someone governs a Hospital, and allows everyone in it, to exercise personal responsibility and judgement, then that Hospital is not being governed, like a car is being governed. The car has no choice, it does not decide on anything, it just does what it's directed to do. That's just like a Fascist, (Authoritarian for the purposes of State), Government, where people are required to do whatever they are told to do.
Does anarchy really mean more freedom? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
To see Sophie debate viture signalling and mob rule with Simon Blackbrun and Peter Tatchell, head to iai.tv/video/virtue-ethics-and-the-mob?UA-cam&
Anarchy means against government. Government is institutionalized self-legalized initiation of force. That is core to its very definition. Freedom is freedom to live as you like in voluntary interaction with others only without coercion. So yes reducing and even eliminating institutionalized coercion is pro-freedom.
Anarchy offers great freedom until a few sociopaths (or psychopaths) eventually use that freedom to garner as much power as possible by pushing the limits of their freedom early on in seemingly acceptable ways. But once they have enough power, they use it in nefarious ways to squash the freedom of everyone else so they can gain even more power. And there is nothing you can do other than start a bloody revolution to stop it.
Anarchy only works in a world where there are no sociopathic personalities and everyone has a strong sense of empathy.
I think Anarchy is a way to much more than freedom from authoritarianism. It's a way to finally, and not just as a religious concept, live in a society where do unto others as you want done unto yourself is truly the guiding principle.
I cannot find any listing for Scott-Brown at University of East Anglia
Anarchy means no rulers, not no rules.
It does not mean without control, it means out of their control.
Anarchism means decentralization to the point of individualism.
“How to have conflict that’s creative rather than catastrophic” 👏👏👏 ❤❤❤ 9:52
@@dann_zan But prepare for self defence.
Sadly you can't choose your conflicts in reality.
"'What I believe' is a process rather than a finality. Finalities are for gods and governments, not for the human intellect." ~ Emma Goldman
Yeah right. You try developing that intellect, books and learning without God or Government. Process away up a tree or in a bog.
The process needs to end for the truth to be. That truth is simply what we see. As soon as the word touches it, it is destroyed.
The truth can never be revealed to mortal men in this world. Our truth is simply the process of the truth being slowly internally revealed.. Anarchy, and abetter society is that process. We have stopped that process with the society we have formed now. Hints why tiktok, and weird people who have to throw god into everything scared that he might not exist. However a true believer has no fear of this friend. 😊
@@minihunt4093 We are not mortal men - we are consciousness, awareness, the unreachable. Try and lay a finger on it. You can't. That is what you are, not a 'mortal man' which is a mere happening in this eternally present awareness, just like the world. Can't wait till all the words pass.
I'm pretty sure Emma wouldn't be an anarchist if she were here today. My dissilusionment in Russia kinda leads me to believe this.
Louise Michel, Lucy Parsons, Ursula Le Guin are some other women famous for anarchist ideas and action, but the point is sound. A terrific interview.
I love Le Guin's "The Dispossessed" as a thought experiment about the extreme poles of syndicalist anarchism and free market capitalism.
Anarchy of sitting on chairs weirdly
Edie Brickell vibes. 😁
Murray Bookchin is also important. His whole ideas about municipalism in his late years. It has been implemented in Rojava (Northern Syria) through the writing of Abullah Ocalan from his prison cell but has suffered from the restless effort by Erdogan's Turkey to destroy it. It is by far one of the most advanced model of anarchism and 'democracy' in action.
Addendum: For those who are skeptical and wish for the continuation of the status quo, enjoy! As we are still expeirencing a rather peaceful arena of some sort and that we are unable to take this time to think of different models of existence, it will be thrown at us eventually when we won't be able to even think of a model without bloodshed and other unimaginable damage that will occur under our current trajectory.
Rojava sadly isn't and has never been anarchist. What ideas it did take from Bookchin were from his later years after he disavowed anarchism. Rojava has cops and prisons and representives and political parties and majoritatian voting systems and capitalism. The Syrian anarchist movement was crushed back in the early 2010s. While Rojava is often supported by the anarchist movement, it absolutely does not fit anarchist ideals. The Zapatistas are a far better example if you want a group that actually abides by anarchist principles, even if they don't call themselves anarchist explicitly.
I'm a graduate of the Institute of Social Ecology, the homeplace of Murray Bookchin's ideas. The disorganization and lack of administrative talent resulted in not being able to maintain a simple property that the summer program was hosted on. That could have been bought for $250K back in the mid-90s. Ridiculous. If using Bookchin's theories, not based on reality, could not build the most modest of institutions, the theories are thus garbage.
That's not solid analysis. Particular people failing to succeed at a task does not necessarily discredit an infrastructural approach.
Chuckles, the fact that you equate maintaining a simple organization, a little sustainable cash flow to continue offering bookchin’s ideas - on municipal libertarianism and lots of fun Solar and permaculture - and maintain a site, a small piece of land, a building with decent student interest, and you equate that with capitalism…? This is the kind of nonsense that makes anarchists so preposterously foolish. Here’s a tip…if you’re going to condemn market based economies with a fair amount of government intervention….and then condemn hierarchies of competence and skill (which is basically by and large what we have now)…you’re going to have to offer some competent model. A competent economic model that efficiently organizes 370M American’s needs. Anarchism absolutely doesn’t do it, as romantic and charming and the Spanish revolution appeared to be.
@@paulraymond139 I'd be interested in your thoughts on an anarchist who believes in societies of 'competence and skill' not founded on hierarchy but something akin to what Sophie talks about in this video; sources of guidance and leadership, people we make the collective decision to listen to because of their expertise, rather than authority or power over us.
2 book recommendations for anyone interested in this line of thinking: Harry Browne's "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World" is THE classic book that deals with freedom "where the rubber meets the road" and maximizing it without having to convince other people of anything.
The other is Michael Huemer's "The Problem of Political Authority". It's an air-tight philosophical breakdown of the validity of political authority that's rock solid. It reads a bit dry, but its arguments are locked up super tight. Highly recommend these...
Thank you
An-cap is a sick joke.
@@radishpineapple74 Ut-uh you are! ( equal substance ).
As a '60s "anarchist," I don't espouse "burning it all down," as anarchy is often characterized, but rather the Question Authority model of same. It seems foolish to me to assert that there should be NO hierarchies of social control, but obvious that their legitimacy should be regularly reevaluated. 🙏
@@ralphmunn6689 in matters of shoe making i refer to the shoe maker.
This is not an accurate view what Anarchism is about tho.
We aren't content with merely questioning authority, authority does not care or bend to questions. Anarchism isn't about justified or regulated hierarchies either. It's about the abolition of hierarchy.
This is not just consistent with the literature, but perhaps most importantly with the history of the movement.
I believe many have forgotten the power of directly speaking truth to power. Most constructs are just manipulative word play, group think, and the Narcissists and Dark Empaths that fight the battle.
I usually base a hierarchy on the skills of the person practicing hard trades where results matter. Politics don't get a pass. It's all ass kissing.
For many anarchists, anarchy can be summed up in a single sentence: 'The permanent revolt against fixed ideas'.
Revolting against fixed ideas is itself a fixed idea. It begs the question. Which fixed idea is the BEST fixed idea.
@@lightofthelogos You possibly meant 'raises the question', as opposed to the fallacy of question begging, which is a common mistake.
If value is ultimately subjective, in the eyes of the valuer, then there can't be one single best idea for all times - not even for a single individual, who may happen upon a new idea, or reappraise an old one...
permanent revolt is a fixed idea!
It is in the name itself. It is the continuing revolt against hierarchy!
Not really. The root of anarchism is about challenging hierarchies. The philosophy grows as we gain a deeper understanding of hierarchies.
"Anarchy is no guarantee that some people won't kill, injure, kidnap, defraud, or steal from others. Government is a guarantee that some will. " Gustave de Molinari
Correct. This is why anarchy requires humanity to evolve past resource-guarding and other base animalistic behaviors. We have a looooong way to go before that happens. People are still quite happy to act like animals if it suits their egoic psychopathy.
@@fleurishadvisors232 It will never happen. We're "wired" from an evolutionary perspective to cheat when the majority doesn't.
@fleurishadvisors232 we are animals. there's no evolving past that fact. violence is an immutable part of our species, but the industrialisation of such is an aberration we can mitigate by increasing the options of the people to deny the authority that commands it.
Its a system which is advantageous to everyone if those negative aspects aren't prevalent. If they are present, its disadvantageous to those who do lie, and cheat in the long term
All the scary things you claim would happen without the state are things that are currently happening with the state
Thanks. Nice to see a young and eloquent woman defending the ideas that I've cherised for the last 25 years.
Even chaos is a fixed idea.
Don’t lead for we might not follow.
Don’t follow for we might not lead.
Just walk side by side as we carve a path through life.
I think Anarchism is the natural conclusion for those who maintain their faith in humanity but have no faith in leadership and those with ambition of power.
"Seek out forms of authority and question their legitimacy" -Chomsky
Answer: if they can f**k you up, then they legit. Thats it.
Read Marxist critiques of anarchism
@@JG-es5dj
What are they in short ?
who gave Chomsky the authority to say such things ex cathedra?
@@JanB56 well in that context who gave anyone the authority to say anything? Perhaps earlier in the quote, "it is my opinion" or, "I believe that smart responsible people should..." I dont think I quoted in any sort of authoritative manner, certainly Not ex cethedra! Its amazing what can be lost or gained in the translation of one human mind to another....in my opinion, lol.
🖤❤" Anarchism is Democracy taken seriously " Edward Abbey
🤔 Are you sure that it isn't having politicians being beholden only to the richest of society? jk
Nice idea, but communism is more feasible
Maybe you should stop having your head in you're own a$$
no
This is silly democracy goes against anarchism principles
The idea of conflict that’s creative rather than catastrophic is so appealing. I’d be curious to dig into that more on how that can play out.
Then read about the last 20 political years in Argentina and how it worked for argentinians...
Anarchists are just cowardly control freaks. Whatever, dystopian system they really have in mind waits off stage for its cue.
look for dialectic. (Hegelian acceptation of the term) : Hegelianism refigured "dialectic" to no longer refer to a literal dialogue. Instead, the term takes on the specialized meaning of development by way of overcoming internal contradictions.
Fantasy is appealing but it's not reality.
@@lepetitvapophile5054 And look to how many hundreds of millions of victims it led.
I know a great book, "The Dispossessed", that describes an anarchistic society/community and the issues about it, written by the author Ursula K. LeGuin. Well, she was a science fiction and phantasy author though. A brilliant one, but her story is about a foreign planet.
I think you mean "The Dispossessed"
Just read "The Word For World is Forest", some similar themes set in the same universe, so might be one you would like too.
@@radroatchThank you for the notice, just `repaired` it, well english is not my first language. Yeah, I know the story, you mentioned, too. She´s a nearly forgotten genius. In "The Dispossessed" she shows very well and understandable, how and where the problems in a deregulated society come from. Well, the story has a kind of happy ending, not sure, if that fits reality.
@@Thomas-gk42 No worries, an easy mistake for native speaker too. We could do with more writers like Ursula K. Le Guin.
Her Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness are still pretty well known.
@@radroatch yeah right, nice to meet someone who appreciates her. Wish you the best
Sorry, but sci fi is always about us. Foreign planets or distant times isn't but an expressive tool.
Interesting discussion. My first exposure to Sophie, thanks iai!
At least it wasn't Sophia the robot.
Sophie Scott-Brown is al historian based at the University of East Anglia with research in modern European political thought and the history of education. She is the author of The Histories of Raphael Samuel: A Portrait of a People’s Historian, and Colin Ward and the Art of Everyday Anarchy.
The second book I used for my PhD.
ok hope you will receive an agent's commission 💲💲💲
What was the name of the excellent book that Colin Ward did on public transportation, very much in the vein of Ivan Illich?
the Mondragon cooperative is an excellent example of current syndicalist practice. Currently it's the 9th largest enterprise in Spain.
It's funny that I didn't even have to look this up to know that it's the same corporation every communist and anarchist brings up in every conversation about anarchy or communism because it's the only one that's ever worked. You probably heard about it from Richard Wolff because he brings it up literally every time he opens his mouth.
Elaborate, sounds interesting
I would recommend looking at @unlearningeconomics9021 video on worker democracy, its long, but its high quality
Thanks for the example because for must of us, anarchists, what we want is the economy and politics done with more democracy. Basically “let’s turn everything we can into a coop”.
Mondragón is not as they used to be. They have tiers of workers, but they are amazing compared to traditional capitalist companies
@@Spectacurl everything is contaminated by capitalism, be it state run such as China, feudal such as Russia, or "neo" liberal as in the Anglo Saxon model. For Mondragon to have survived such onslaught is incredible and is no bad thing as it has shown adaptation and progression rather than stagnation. I'm intrigued by the ideas of Murray Bookchin, he would support progress in the liberal anarchist tradition.
Absolutely agree with her that leadership is not problematic. In fact, I think its important that there are leaders.
If the leader has special privileges because of their leadership, that's the problem. A leader is no better than anyone else.
Yea the mindset a lot of people take towards leadership and anyone they see as powerful is still a big problem. You don't deserve more just because you have power. We all have power anyway.
Who doesn’t agree with that?
bro u are called anarchowolf n just explained democratic representative democracy or feudal christian lordship. And we have multiple times in history proving that anarchy is an impossible construct in reality because of the incentive structure and lack of rules to prevent centralisation.
Of course leaders have privileges they would have to make a decision even if it's just one and then they leave that's a privilege. If a leader just gives recommendations then they aren't really a leader they could just be a random dude that has an opinion
If they are no better than anyone else, then why are they leaders?
Talking about anarchism without ever touching on more direct critiques of capitalism, the state and related structural/systemic issues tends to sound too ethereal, and I feel like this happened here as well.
Like, there's a question about freer systems being possibly used in harmful ways and it receives no push back about how current systems are definitely used in harmful ways, for example. I'm not criticizing Sophie, as this is just a short interview, but here it all ends up sounding like little more than a personal preference in style to me.
I agree. I feel like political theorists generally tend to be too abstract. For instance, her phrase "increasing democratic practices" to me is so abstract as to be near meaningless. Instead, I wish she would say something like, "Rather than outside shareholders, the employees of publicly traded corporations should elect the board of directors." Which to me is more understandable, more real, more achievable, and easier to rally around and act on than just saying people should, "increase democratic practices" or even "workers should control the means of production." Even though they all mean the same thing.
Then again, she says she doesn't want to dictate to people how to be free. Which maybe means we can all interpret how to "increase democratic practices" anyway we want. Which seems not unlike saying, "All I have are platitudes. Figure out the details out on your own. If you think more capitalism and authoritarianism means more democracy that's fine." But if that's the case, why is she even granting an interview?
@@JoJofghjYeah. Being charitable, I can see not dictating how people should be free to mean that the specific details of how people organized shouldn't be pre-dictated and the same everywhere, but can still follow some guiding principles - which I think is fair -, but I can just as easily see it as being "to each their own just let me do my thing" - which is hardly actionable in any very meaningful way when it comes to the societal scale.
As an aside, you mentioned "workers should control the means of production", and I think that's a phrase which was a bit of a victim of its own success. Like, when that first became a motto it was very practical, very contextualized and surrounded by both theory and practice. Nowadays it's a lot of the time used just as a motto with little update. Which I think is a bit unfortunate because to me the core of the message is still fresh
@@JoJofghj "I feel like political theorists generally tend to be too abstract."
True, but are we at a stage in human development where our abstract minds have risen so far above the concrete world that the two can never meet? Have "all" our political systems become far too abstract? As an engineer, it reminds of the divide between the theoretical physicist and the engineer. One dreams...the other has to make it work.
@@anthonybrett I don't think our political or economic systems have become too abstract. However, many academics and theoreticians might be a bit too removed from anything outside of academia to be able to help us put much theory into practice. I think your comparison to physicists and engineers is a good one.
@@JoJofghj Workers controlling the means of production is not abstract in the slightest. It means what it says.
The suggestion that a small number of friends working out what to do on a Friday night (which is based on a very small number of self-selected unusually-compatible people, having more shared interests and values than the general population, and which still doesn't actually always work out or is decided by one 'organizer' or 'leader' friend) is a reason to think that society has the tools to coordinate in a similar fashion but across millions or billions of people and over years and decades rather than a single evening makes it hard to take anything else that follows seriously.
the idea of anarchy is literally just not being ruled. how that happens is what this kind of thinking is about. "Scaling" anarchy to billions isn't the point. Questioning assumptions and working to actually support and free ourselves from wage labor, corporate owners, political masters, an elite class hoarding wealth and resources...that's what anarchy asks.
Very interested to know how in such direct democracy we would be able to avoid people being swayed by those w more power/money/influence. bc i genuinely want
to believe in radical democracy, but i don’t know if its a realistic concept in a society as unequal and polarized as ours is today….
For many, the very attraction of anarchism is that it tends to diminish the inequality of power and wealth warn of above.
If it's Anarcho-Communism, wealth would be shared pretty equally, so there wouldn't be people with significantly more money able to influence things. People could still be convinced by people making bad faith arguments sometimes, but I do think it would overall be much better.
Yeah that is a valid concern. It would be nice if we could just switch to that ideal world, but it’s going to take a lot of change to actually make the transition. I personally don’t believe that I’ll ever live to see the end result of our striving, but with enough effort to change, someone someday will eventually get to see what we’ve achieved
Because you are framing Democracy from the current capitalist perspective.
Number one direct democracy is not direct vote. In an anarchyst society EVERYONE, works in government. What does that mean? One example, every 6 months your local council must have new members, and every citizen must participate in the local council at least once every 2 years, otherwise you can't vote.
That would mean that you have first hand knowledge of the issues of your society, so it's muuuch harder that someone would spin tales that the vast majority would found credible.
But that's not freedom. Anarchy has not got anything to do with freedom, is against oppression. No one forces you to do anything (and all your need are met) but if you won't participate in the bettering of society, you can't participate in the decision process.
she also does not mention that this is worked on and being called digital direct democracy. DAOs and real scientists do a lot of work on it. She got no clue what she is talking about far as I see
全世界人類不應該用民族和國家這些概念，把我們分隔開來。人類不應該用膚色和人種去區分。
這些都是有錢人有權人的陰謀詭計。
我們都是智人，我們只應該分資產者和無產者。
要我說，我們唯一能做的就是，全世界無產者聯合起來！
打倒這些資產者，這些吸血鬼！他們通過生產資料和暴力機器對我們勞工各種盤剝壓榨，吸乾了我們每一滴血肉，把我們的剩餘價值吃乾抹淨。
所以，應該把他們通通殺光槍斃。世界屬於藍領階層，屬於我們勞工！
勞工萬歲！無政府主義萬歲！
I love Colin Ward's ideas. A real inspiration. The anarchism of daily life.
I think pontification without tangible examples would tune most of the audience out
What a beautiful humanistic Anarchist pledoyer, weaving together the best of anarchist philosophy and respecting its deepest postulates and desires.!!! Sophie comes from Wisdom
Plaidoyer
@@squeakeththewheel pluto is the 9 planet ...
@@vansirgriss it was a new word to me so I looked it up. quite a nice one, thank you. and pluto is a character in mickey mouse cartoons.
@@squeakeththewheel 💖
she lost the plot so hard and no reality backs her empty words.
"People don't recognize how frequently they operate in an anarchist fashion all the time....if you've ever coordinated something with a group of friends....etc. etc."
I've heard this a lot from Anarchists but it always seems to me that
A) these pockets of leaderless/authority free examples of cooperation generally occur within highly integrated social groups that have already identified both common interests and a willingness to cooperate.
B) They occur as subroutines within a framework or meta structure based in hierarchical organization and authority
What anarchists never seem to be able to answer to my satisfaction is this: In a system in which we all agree and are entitled to say "Nobody is the boss of me, and I will do as I wish" how does such system handle outliers who do not respond to incentives, refuse to cooperate and/or are actively anti-social or sociopathic? In other words, what does the Anarchist system do with the entity that says "I don't accept your direct democracy / community boundaries or artificial limits on the range of acceptable behavior."
Its refreshing to hear someone advocating anarchy that is not crazy with far right ideas. I am curious for more.
those are fake anarchists, anarchy has always been left-wing
@michasosnowski5918 far right? Anarchists are predominantly left wing.
@@yetidodger6650 there was one, but popular one.
@yetidodger6650 anarchism and libertarianism were terms coopted by right wing psychopaths who are hypercapitlist, so now we have to deal with the definitions they have coopted
@@EthanMitch You are confusing it with liberalism, which the left has borrowed to justify its social policies.
This is so stupid. 'If you can have fun, organized activities with your friends then that means you can turn it into a political system'. How are you this old and not seeing the ideological dead end that anarchy is? This endless pursuit for true democracy has its roots on the ideological basis of liberalism. 'If it's not voluntary and spontaneous, then it's not direct democracy', how do you measure that? Where did you even get that? How would a system of direct democracy even exist if it's just something we do arbitrarily? How would you convince everyone at the same time to decide about something specific without a system/an organization that actually educates on the idea to participate? Does this mean the neolithic era was a system of direct democracy because everyone did what they wanted? Incredible how anarchists want to argue that their ideology/system isn't chaos or doesn't lead to chaos but every single sentence that they use to describe it convinces you otherwise
I'm an anarchist because It has been demonstrated ubiquitously that responsible self-government is more efficient, enjoyable, and survivable than tyranny.
Well said!
seems like you kinda poisoned the well a lot with the words "responsible" and "tyranny". I mean, nobody of any political stripe would disagree with your statement!
@@ChannelMath But what they might say is that his perfect world cannot exist without some external force protecting it from the tyrants of the world. How does the anarchist society which spends presumably little to nothing on defense defend itself from an aggressive dictatorship that is spending 5% or more of GDP on a standing military?
@@jlpowell51 Folks that should think those things trough really don't. Their tunnel vision prevents it. They want the police defunded until their house is invaded by another anarchist of a less-ethical disposition.
When you say demonstrated, what are you thinking of?
This is a very privileged person making a living telling fairytales to bunch of other privileged people, must be nice.
Her ideas surely work! In a small community being surrounded by a richt, properous regular country. Try this is Somalia and see how far you get.
That's because the guys fighting to take over in Somalia want to be rulers, not leaders.
@@MrHarumakiSensei humans are humans the world over - Human nature, our evolved instincts and behavior, are not different.
@@thenathanimal2909 "Human Nature" is not a thing that actually exists. All it is is the traits we pick up from the culture and societies we grow up in, but even then everyone is different and can change over time. Yes, there are things that can be "natural" to us as individuals like skin color or some disabilities. Anthropologists - the people that actually study humanity - are the ones who say this.
@ozzie_theotter I'm not talking about something as shallow and skin deep as skin color. Humans are driven by their biology to behave in certain ways - to greater or lesser degrees. Just as biology drives all animals to continue their own existence and procreate - So do humans posses certain genetic behaviors to seek out and compete for mates and resources to survive. We are not tabula rasa, robots without programming. We have primal evolutionary drives, that is human nature - And part of that nature when indulged to extremes is to murder, steal, and destroy. Human nature is real, and denying it exists in attempts to engineer societys has lead to some of the greatest atteocities in mankind's history.
@@ozzie_theotter Yeah, that's no doubt true. And it seems like this chick has picked up on art of being an intellectual grifter, in this culture we are immersed in. Like I would ever look up to someone like this for fifteen seconds if I were going to form some new society. But it's true though, I would say people are totally malleable, and are vastly more defined by nurture rather than nature. We haven't had a chance to live in a different, better society, without being under constant duress to stick with the status quo. Maybe humanity would take to it.
I thought this would be more interesting . Lots of intellectualising but no substance.
This 23 min interview explains anarchism as an adult would. The HBO film "Anarchism" are bunch of grown ups acting like kids that think Anarchism is when you do just whatever you want
It seems like that was about anarcho capitalists. They are a whole different bag of worms
@@liam6250
The difference ?
Brilliant! Thanks!
Like the subject matter but didn't pick up a tangible impression of how anarchy would operate other than the small scale.
She very briefly mentions federalism - that's one of the proposed ways. The general idea is that people form groups which come together in nested and interlinked structures. What exactly these groups are, how the nest and how they link up can vary from society to society, depending on it's needs, previous conditions, the conditions under which revolutionary activity happens, etc.
An example would be federations of producers and federations of communities coming together at different levels. As much as possible, things are decided on the most direct possible level, so that the higher levels are left for coordination. The participation on these different levels would be, where necessary, made through delegates, which would be chosen for a specific task and to defend a specific position and would be recallable. Transparency and efficient communication are key. This is of course a simplified overview, but this sort of method could, for example, flow nicely from a revolutionary process based on heavy syndicalist activity.
As pointers, you can look up for example Rojava and Chiapas. They're not strictly anarchist, but are generally taken as important case studies for anarchism, and are influenced by it. There are of course more direct but more short lived anarchist experiences, such as Revolutionary Catalonia.
For societies which have lived under social organizations which have aspects in common with anarchism, there's a book called "Anarchy works", by Peter Gelderloos. It can be found free online at "theanarchistlibrary". It's not meant to be a proposal to simply copy any of these societies, but it does help bring some things to a more concrete level.
A very brief historical introductory text for anarchism is Malatesta's "An Anarchist Programme". His earlier "Anarchy" is a bit longer and also good as a primer. Both can be found online at "theanarchistlibrary".
One thing to keep in mind when looking into anarchism is that most anarchists do *not* have an utopian view of society, humanity or anarchy itself. In some senses anarchism is actually fairly pragmatic when you get down to it - even it's strong position for a permanent unity of means and ends is not idealist.
But anyway, I'll stop here, this wall of text has gotten long enough : p
IMO, anarchism doesn't scale. And one could argue that human societies _shouldn't_ scale, as it only leads to its own downfall, ref. the Anthropocene. So if anarchism is to work on a larger scale, I think it has to remain small-scale, distributed, horizontal. How _that_ might work is an interesting question.
(BTW, it's anarchism, not anarchy.)
It starts with us, our way of thinking. Then we can create the society we want based on that.
@@user-sl6gn1ss8p Anarchism is like Buddhism. The former isn't politics and the latter isn't a religion, but both get put into those categories. IOW we all need to discover the essence of our convictions.
@@ximono, I think it's not about scale, but about the fundamental ways we think. When that's changed we can cooperate freely on all levels.
I'm curious if there are examples of this form or leadership that works over time and what happens when a group formed this way is in conflict with different forms of governance.
This is quite a light touch, introductory sort of discussion, and some pointers to more recent theory and practice research would be useful. One of the central fixations of 19thC anarchist thought was of political power, the autonomy of the individual, and claiming a role on economic life, essentially by turning industry into a political arena and syndicalizing voice and participation. That's not the world we have. Enormous degrees of power and influence have be outsourced to corporations, producers of things, producers of information, producers of cultural products and norms, generally with the state proving rather weak to regulate and moderate. That then raises the question of how individuals can interact, share information, draw conclusions, and express preferences - eg by direct democracy - on the matters at hand. How does that happen at scale, and how do cultural shifts happen that see a critical mass of individuals adopt or advance those capabilities? My point is essentially the tension between power and culture, mediated through what's being spoken of here as a relatively narrow techne, or method. And - here's the kicker - which comes first? Does a group try the method in order to change the culture? Or does the culture have to change in order to make any effort at spreading the method feasible at all?
There is a lot that theory can work over. I know there's an argument that we can't all be architects and some need to be blocklayers, which is fine, plenty of roles for all. Theory might also look into the presenting issues of how rights can be protected, abuses minimised, and risks mitigated. People want to know how their needs can be met, what happens in the event of accident or misfortune, how collective goods can be secured and maintained, how collective threats can be overcome (fr, an anarchist agenda that cannot answer genuine questions on resisting invasion, heating homes, decommissioning nuclear weapons, combating climate change etc is not going to be taken seriously. This goes way beyond the "well, who's gonna fix the roads?" questions.) It's the world of today that needs the solutions applied to it, not the imagined worlds of past theorists.
UA-cam is a horrible medium for this sort of discussion. The comments section just opens the floodgates for the poorly read and informed to tell us all why (based on their myopic world view) the ideas just cant work, how silly the people must be who find these ideas interesting enough to discuss, and even the physical appearance of the person being interviewed. How people can be so proud of displaying their lack of intellectual curiosity I will never understand.
The interviewer confuses leadership with management. It is a common error because the idea of leadership is such a romantic notion. It rose up as a way to validate the influence of those at the top of organizational hierarchies. If we follow this line of reasoning, then we know who is responsible for all the ills and crises of society, which raises questions about how leaders are held accountable for their leadership. Four decades of working in the world of leadership development has shown me that “all leadership begins with personal initiative to create impact that makes a difference that matters.” In other words, it is a function of human behavior. This is increasingly how leadership is coming to be understood today.
What she talks about here is a time limited leadership, that's bound to special tasks, a community has to fulfill. That's a much more romantic idea, as we think about the term today. Most native Americans bands worked that way.
I think that the big problem with leadership now is that we abdicate our own responsibilities and decision making. We delegate and forget about it and expect things to be taken care of, and then we complain and protest when it isn't.
Trotsky was right of course: The revolution must be permanent. We can never take anything for granted, but must be vigilant and must watch everything very carefully all the time. Then the feedback to the coordinators aka leaders is instant, and they having a flexible mindset unlike our Dear Leaders of today, will take the right decision, having received the information they needed from the grass roots, directly from the people who have a problem.
Modern IT makes that very easy, but it starts with our mindset, how information flows and is acted upon.
Leadership accountability has always been in question. I thought Anarchism was to make that point explicitly? Power corrupts people who seek corrupted power.
many things in this whole video are plain wrong and psychotic
@@yngvesognen1092 better to be a coordinator with everyone else and solve whatever problem arises immediately, the internet is a tool we can use efficiently compared to telephone calls to other countries, the wheel keeps spinning, and Trotsky did some good, poor guy.
Well she sounded interesting even though she didn't really say anything about how this "Anarchy" would work she mentioned how Anarchy could be taken in wrong ways by others and it has in the past, but then she didn't explain why her version of "Anarchy" would lead to any good other than a kind of utilitarian view that people would be freer but, I don't see how that the things she mentioned could not still happen in a normal democracy and also what does Direct Democracy mean? She couldn't explain it because classifying it would create a system that controls freedom so it's paradoxical? Wouldn't you think that maybe it's paradoxical to think about it in the first place if that's the case?
Dunno didn't really get the point of this convo it just felt like going around in circles and getting nowhere but it sounded nice, I guess.
I appreciate her work in this area.
Well, as for democracy in the UK, whether local or national, how are going to deal with the landlord?
What's to deal with? There are more property owners under property assignment norms that include contracts for sale, then under ownership by declaration, so we should continue to support the norms that create more private property owners. We certainly wouldn't want to outlaw being able to rent to others.
Fall into paradox? We are never outside paradox, it is just our systems of meaning get very good at hiding it.
"The true remedy for most evils is none other than liberty, unlimited and complete liberty, liberty in every field of human endeavor."
Gustave de Molinari
My main criticism of anarchy is that it’s magical thinking. What do you do about organised crime. …..imagine opening the prisons and disbanding the police. How quickly would the criminals take over.
Government is organized crime
Not as quickly as the criminals take over when encouraged to do so by the police!
@@williamnajera1173 police are organized criminals
That's how we live in latinamerica.
We are currently being governed by organized crime organizations.
Very nice. Thank you! In speaking of populisms, I see "sources of power" as the fears indulged in and held by True believers. The fears are fueled by (may even be created by) authoritarian would-be social dominators-rulers. A society will remain submissive (will not rid itself of rulers) so long as its members remain ideological thinkers. Anarchy means self-reliance nurtured by freethought, by the avoidance of dogma. It requires that individuals learn enough (self-learning) to make warranted assertions as they work to reject indoctrinations and duties for a scientific attitude and responsibilities. At minute 23 Sophie expresses what I find in John Dewey's instrumentalism-pragmatism and his theory of democracy.
The lady being interviewed here really is not an anarchist. Not in any meaningful, differentiating way.
She likes a bit more freedom where it’s “possible”.
She is a liberal, or probably a democratic socialist. Having a preference for the state being small (local village size) doesn’t change that. The state always grows. Even Rome started as a village.
Anyone actually interested in anarchy might want to read Hans Herman Hoppe or Murray Rothbard are worth reading (Rothbard has really succinct essays, Hoppe fleshes ideas out in great detail).
The absolute irony of this comment. YOU are the one who is not an anarchist? Rothbard?! What a total joke. Take your right-wing nonsense and get lost.
@@totlyepic you going to make an argument for any of what you’re asserting?
I’d love to hear more about how rothbard is not anarchist…
Voluntary participation. No one is forcing you to do anything. An example of force or the threat of force would be Taxation.
When it comes to the statement "people already live under direct democracy to one degree or another" I would agree and put it in a very pointed way.
We already operate within anarchy, each and every day, to one degree or another.
In fact, I would go as far as to say, and here's where my particular conception comes in...
We live in anarchies already.
I aim to formalize a method of categorizing interpersonal and large-group relations in this way with some writing I've been doing.
Suffice it to say, we already live in anarchy with many people, and those are the closest, most mutually benevolent relationships or at the LEAST are the least likely to result in coercive power used against someone....
What is an anarchy? Well, simply, it isn't a hierarchy.
Agreed. I’ve thought about this before where people argue we need the state because the state protects us from crime and violence, but two things are clear to me for why this is somewhat incorrect. Higher crackdowns on crime don’t prevent it or lessen it, and all crime is punishable only after it’s been committed. The state doesn’t prevent crime it dishes out punishment. Two is that we act like we need the government to stop us from murdering eachother but I think that’s very suspect, for one thing other people are likely to condemn murder and theft no matter what as a matter of principle and community another thing is who actually just had the desire to kill people, I don’t think the average person does and in our personal relationships I don’t think without a government we would just suddenly kill and rob eachother, and I say this because the idea we need government to enforce peaceful cooperation is ludicrous because what it should imply is the need for a police state to constantly force us to act appropriately, but we don’t need or want that and our laws against murder reflect a commonly held almost universal value.
Well said, I agree.
bruh u trippin ahahahahahahaha
When she uses the example of how we already organise things with friends or colleagues - who actually enjoys this process or feels satisfied with it? There are very few people with whom I find this process enjoyable or useful. Often a necessary evil that you need to just get done and over, yes. When I hear the idea that we want more and more of it I am filled with dread.
That's very sad.
@@Dennis-xj8nh why?
@@TheGinglymus I can't answer for @Dennis-xj8nh, but it sounds like you have unhealthy relationships.
@@gabe20244 I just prefer doing my own thing like lots of people do. I also don't like discussing boring minutiae. For instance, I used to have a partner who wanted to book every detail of a holiday together - discuss all the travel options, accommodation options, what clothes, what food. To me that is just annoying. I like to just relax and go with the flow, not discuss and debate with other people constantly about everything in life.
These ideas are dangerously vague and undistilled. Chomsky has a far more concise explanation of anarchism based on the idea that it is the requirement that ANY form of authority or hierarchy or concentrated power has to justify its own existence. Then, if it cannot do that, we should dismantle it and, if necessary, replace it with a different institution. This process is the core of all anarchist thought.
They all justify it. Think of all the emergencies and crises that keep happening.
How can you start an anarchy without any leadership or intentional plans? I never understood what anarchy means and I'm nowhere closer after this.
It means without rulers, not without leaders.
You can do what a leader says because you respect their competence. You do what a ruler says because you will be punished if you don't.
The problem with Government is they are incentivized by making it's people ever more docile and dependent on "big daddy".
If we had less criminals we would have less police, if we had less unhealthy people we would have less hospitals, if we had a more satisfied job market job creation and upward mobility wouldn't be needed. Government is like baby teeth we all need it at some stage but eventually we grow out of it, I hope.
The baby teeth analogy doesn’t work. Government is a parasitic phenomenon.
The analogy is more like a baby trying to grow with leeches on it. It can take one or two, too many kill it. But the baby is never better off developmentally with leeches on it.
Yep. A huge army of bureaucrats all thinking up ways to get more jobs for themselves.
Gee if you take an honest look at humanity then you can see the futility in weaning people off of the desire for big daddy. Religon has been hawking big daddy in the sky since it's inception. We're all raised with the image of big daddy in our parents. I see no proof that it will ever change in any meaningful way.
@@hostrow The Desire for for big daddy to me is akin to a puppet longing for his stings, or a bird yet to leave the nest.
The larger system will change our nappies until we grow up and take care of our own sht.
I understand the idea that a higher authority may know better than the average Joe, but Joe stays average until he starts paying attention and that has nothing to do with the larger system but everything to do with Joe.
The system is a crutch we will toss aside not a viable replacement for fallible Joe.
Foolish hope. Read something, even You Tube replies, outside 'sane, safety.' Not god, or ideas keep humanity from literally, eating itself. Government, fear of, its big messaging, saves us. Contestable, depressing, yet true thought. People are just, very bright animals. Without a leash, experiment and history have shown, we are horrific, cretinous, even suicidal.
It’s understandable why some artists are attracted to anarchy due to the individual nature of our work, however, anarchy is something that can never function successfully in the world. People are tribal and will always need leaders, direction and law to successfully interface with each other safely.
All of the many times in the past when these types of ideas have been used to destabilize societies, the vacuum has always been filled by unscrupulous leaders who see an easy route to complete power. It will always be this way. Anarchy and the isms always accomplish the opposite of what they intend. In attempting to eliminate leaders and management throughout society, they end up with one absolute leader with power over all.
‘An archos’ means no Ruler, not no leader, and it certainly does not automatically mean no rules or laws that the people, the anarchists would accept and use as social guidelines for behaviour and interaction .. and most certainly does it not automatically mean chaos. -
Could be like Gilligan's Island, or Lord of the Flies, depending on the personalities involved. But once you get a charismatic personality that promises meat and is able to deliver it, they're going to be chosen to be a leader by the tribe, and the anarchy is gone.
@@theboombody - yes, sadly that's the reality - .. and the reason for that quote by BFranklin about '... having a republic.. if you can keep it..' - it requires a populace educated about- and willing to uphold ethical- moral conduct - same is required for a functioning anarchist society; the people need to understand liberty, some basic philosophy, basic economic principles of human action, and why- and how other political systems inevitably, in the long run, lead to civil-society-destroying ideas taking hold and power -
@@PeterQuentercrimsonbamboo A shedload of people out there had no interest in anything outside of themselves. Capitalism is maybe the culprit, however, it goes way back longer than an -ism. People are fine earning enough to pay for housing, their family and a speedboat. Good luck getting Aussie tradies to become anarchists.
@@theboombody choosing a leader isn't the end of anarchy, obeying a ruler is. A leader is followed out of respect, a ruler is followed out of fear of violence.
@@MrHarumakiSensei Well there needs to be a better verbal distinction between the two types of society you mention. Because the term "anarchy" to me implies non-obedience to a leader or a ruler. If anarchy only means non-obedience to a ruler, what the heck would be non-obedience to a chosen leader?
7:05
Federations are the opposite of your anarchism.
If you want people to actually make decisions themselves then you need a *confederation*, not a federation.
And yes, I know that word has bad associations to the US civil war where local level rule was desired for rather sinister reasons...
I’m not an anarchist, despite sympathies in that direction, because I am too much of a pragmatist. I stick mostly to Existentialism which emphasizes the individual as a autonomous free agent directing their own existence through acts of will.
@@trevormcneil9858 you are describing Individual Anarchy.
because you want your cake and eat it too? can "flow" whatever way it strikes you, and then exit if it start to get fugly, uncomfortable: anarchist church and its HYPER individualistic orientation
is that a special anarchist way of sitting?
Yes that’s how we all sit
Yes, it's the first lesson in the anarchist handbook
Huh, weird.
I'm apolitical, but anarchy was always the idea that attracted me the most, just because decisions need to be made by the people, throughout time. The only lasting thing within time context is either constant change or perhaps something to do with black holes. Since we cant form our politics around black wholes, like we currently do, we should cling on to change. Anyway. What's weird?
I've sat like so all my life (no, not ALL my life 🙂) too!
It's very comfortable. But I only lean against one side. I know I have skuleosis today, maybe I did even as a child. Anyway, I'e always sat like that becuse I have a flat ass and this is the best combination between comfortability and stability.
I guess anarchists like adapting to change, sort of like I adapted to my ass. 😁
@@adityaramesh1764 *cookbook
Pffhahaha is so pathetic
What a waste of space. Her anarchist contemplations are pure luxury - made possible by all the diligent non-anarchist labors & sacrifices of those around her.
She rues the lack of female anarchist thinkers and doesn’t even mention Ayn Rand…?
She implies that she hasn’t had a very broad look at Anarchism.
Anarchism is possible only in a mature society, in which everyone is a developed individual, and not a pre-made person as it is today. Anarchism is the inevitable future of human organization, unfortunately, a very distant one.
Oh the cool anarchists🤣
I lived on the road with anarchists; we did not have any leaders we just lived like decent human beings it is not hard.
Yes, direct democracy needs to grow organically, and can probably get a real boost after a crisis when we have tried everything else.
Well it has grown organically in Switzerland. Do you think it works well there?
I can't wait to see the progressive reaction on direct democracy when the people get to vote on immigration.
@@aristocraticrebel, immigration was the other irrational reason that led to Brexaster. The first one was not liking Europe.
These are deeply seated in human nature, and unless there's a crisis and another Churchill comes along, nothing is going to change.
Oh yes, direct democracy will happen, but only when we humans are more evolved.
BTW I was very interested in Anarchism when I was very young, half a century ago. Now I think direct democracy is a better term, now that communication is instant.
The interview doesn't make this too clear, but it's important to note that anarchism *is not* direct democracy. Direct democracy is a tool, while anarchism is a social system (and/or the social movement towards it). So anarchism entails other things, such as an opposition to capitalism (and private ownership of the means of production and wage labor, as particular examples) and the state (as understood by anarchist, not necessarily as understood by some marxists). This all has implications on what, how, when and by whom methods of direct democracy are to be applied.
This is not to say that anarchism leads to a singular mode of organization - the actual shape of an anarchist society would depend on the society itself, it's conditions, etc -, but it does come with some limits, mainly in the sense that people and their societies are allowed to defend their freedoms and refuse domination, so that things which are incompatible with freedom or bring domination do not need to be accepted. Anarchism is not "utopian" in this sense. It also does not need everyone to play nice out of the kindness of their hearts, but that's another topic.
Of course there are many strands of Anarchism, and I'm talking in a general sense. There are exceptions, but they're not the main views and do not represent most of the history or of the current work of anarchists.
@@user-sl6gn1ss8p, yes, of course the goal is Utopia, Heaven on Earth. All ideologies proclaim that. I was concerned about the stigma of the words anarchy/anarchism.
Long term I'm very optimistic for humanity, in the near term not at all. We are in the beginning of the sci-fi age, and in a century or two our world will be completely different. I find this subject of our future so fascinating! Yes there will be setbacks, but we humans aren't nearly done yet!
Full participation in the co-creation of our shared reality 🌞🤝🌞🤝🌞
The main issue is the tyranny of the majority. The core purpose of a systematized form of government is, or at least should be, to ensure fundamental minority rights. Not sure how any anarchical “system” could perform such a function.
It couldn't. Anarchism, like libertarianism, is a stupid idea that doesn't work in reality.
Could this be changed to the "core purpose of minorities is to ensure fundamental minority rights"?
Perhaps the problem is that government protects those rights through a monopoly on violence?
There are many many forms of anarchism, it's such a broad field of political thought. Within it you can find systems that ensure that minorities are heard and respected. Anarchist praxis can employ various mechanisms to prevent tyranny of the majority.
I'm skeptical of "systems" though, and much more sympathetic to Sophie Scott-Brown's view of anarchism as a process. To me, anarchism is more about creating a durable culture than designing a "perfect" system. As with any culture, its worldview would be paramount for the wellbeing of its members and the society itself.
As an side, "rights" are not universal. But respect is. I think Simone Weil was onto something when she talked about obligations.
@@ximono Give me an example of one way an anarchic system would protect minorities.
@@peskypesky As you command, my lord.
I think I indirectly did? One with a strong culture where respect for others is a core value, an essential part of who you are as a people. Especially respect for minorities, as they are intrinsically more vulnerable. This would require a strong cultural identity and ensuring the continuation of the core values, where deviating from those would be taboo. Further, the decision-making process would have to be wise enough to include the views of minorities. I like the Quaker method that's neither majority vote (majority happy, minority miserable) nor consensus based (everybody miserable), but seeking a "sense of the meeting" (everybody happy). It does sound like consensus, but it's not. It's about seeking unity about the wisest course of action, with every voice being equally respected. It often leads to creative solutions rather than watered-down compromises. They're not stupid, these Quakers.
This is all just in principle, I can't say how it would come about, as I don't believe in designing a utopian system. But I do believe it's a better approach than enforcing rights by force, which only leads to resentment, polarization and more conflict, without ever solving the underlying problem. Someone will always be miserable and hateful in such a society. You can't force people to respect one another, it has to come from within.
In the real world, there's the democratic confederalism of Rojava, largely inspired by Bookchin and based on human rights. Whether it's actually anarchism is debatable, Bookchin is considered a post-anarchist. I think it's still within the broad scope of anarchism, and a good example of how some concessions have to be made in order for it to work, at least in a transitional phase. But this is the designed from above system approach that I'm skeptical of. I believe in growing organically from below. You can't force these things.
You could certainly increase the amount of "freedom" available to people by having a state provide its citizens the basic living necessities so that they don't spend the majority of most of their day taking orders from someone else....
I always get creeped out by ideas that are great as ideas but in action for the average Joe just doesn’t work. It’s a bunch of intellectualism - academic exploration - for elites - not to be confused with what works for most people.
this is what drove me away from political science as a interest
The elites are those who order around the average Joe and as long as he isn't even slightly interested or curious about the possibility of a different arrangement, you're right. But as a start he could form actually democratic bottom up organizations to take care of functions which we normally would expect government or private interests to take care of, but you have to be independent minded enough to even think about that. I would say that most people are used to being slaves to bosses and "leaders" so as a first step we need to at least discuss it, as a preparation for acting on the ideas, so that's why I disagree
I'm three minutes in. So far, it seems like she really wants a full democracy, which works fine in small groups ~20 people.
I'm not sure what you mean by Elites. So the business class isn't an elite? If you look at Elon Musk and how he abuses and Lords it over his subjects that's all okay if that's the way you want to look at it. But he is definitely an elite to me. Why do you look at academics as Elites? They don't have any power over you they can't order you around and you can just ignore their opinion if you want. But that's not the case with these other people I just described. I think you've fallen for this anti-intellectualism the Practical man isn't allowed to think outside the box he supposed to be a drone and not have any imagination or curiosity about a different way a different possible setup otherwise he's not practical he lives in the stratosphere according to you well you're entitled to your opinion. I think this website here probably is based on that you're not going to actually do anything you're just going to discuss this issue that's what all they want you to do but not actually act on it because this site is financed by business class. So they don't really believe you're actually going to do anything otherwise they wouldn't allow this discussion that goes against their interests which is what you are reinforcing because you're "practical" and "realistic".
Anarchism is antiauthoritarian socialism. Anarchists are both socialists and federalists. We oppose all dictatorships, political, economic, patriarchal, or religious.
Anarchism was a social movement in the radical left from the 1870s to ww2. It’s over. Anarchists would say you aren’t one, nobody now is as how can you be without a mass movement? It’s not something one can be on one’s own and the groups that are around have almost zero appeal to and projects with the workers and farmers of the world
Hi mom, I am on TV!
Sophie Scott-Brown is a real iconoclast... she can't even sit on a chair like a normal person.
"Anarchy is a form of society without rulers. As a kind of stateless society, it is commonly contrasted with states, which are centralized polities that claim a monopoly on violence over a permanent territory. Beyond a lack of government, it can more precisely refer to societies that lack any form of authority or hierarchy. While viewed positively by anarchists, the primary advocates of anarchy, it is viewed negatively by advocates of statism, who see it in terms of social disorder."
This is not the same as a pure democracy where instead of electing leaders to run things everything is voted on by the whole population.
The real problem with this is a naïve understanding of what will happen within any large scale society which makes a change from a democratic republic or some other more organized government into a governmental anarchy. What would really happen is a power vacuum into which would rise a feudal like power structure, which would very quickly replace the anarchy system, and the result would be like he feudal systems we have seen in history except with the use of modern weapons and technology. Those feudal power groups would then compete to become larger and larger, just like it happened historically, and we would get dictatorial kingdoms where the power might lie with a wealth based system, a class based system, a religious based system, or such; probably having some mixture just like happened historically.
This process would also likely be very bloody.
Said from someone who thinks logically and not just romantically. Thank you.
@@theboombody Personally the majority of humanity seems to be going insane. I see more and more people acting with emotional irrational tribal like thinking, increasing intolerance, increasing racism, increasing nationalism, increasing extreme religious belief, a denouncing of objective facts while embracing clearly false narratives which serve this tribal thinking group or another tribal thinking group, and a literal growing desire for having an all out war with anyone not aligned enough with one's tribe. This is feudalistic thinking and we historically know the result is very long and bloody wars, except now we have chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons.
Well said. I find anarchism to be extremely naive just like modern day libertarianism
@@lechuck312 I consider myself a libertarian, though not in terms of associating to any party and I believe we have to apply rational logical thinking when seeking to maximize the liberty of individuals to do whatever the hell they want, because we are an advanced very social race and thus we must not only compromise with each other on what freedoms we have but help each other better achieve freedoms we could never achieve on our own.
The huge elephant in the room with anarchist is they usually want things that if achieved would immediately catapult the society that achieved it into a brutal and probably quite bloody feudalistic struggle for power which would send us centuries backwards in social progress.
Things like laws and law enforcement are a requirement to prevent society from turning into a collection of war lords ruling as dictators over their territories they seek to expand.
Things like doing away with money is just stupid, because the most primitive form of money is literally direct trading of goods and services... which was incredibly inefficient and why people started using some common currency.
Now, how our laws work, how our law enforcement works, how our money works, etc.; all that can use improvement. But, you can't just do away with it without going backwards in civilization by a whole lot.
Anarchists weren’t actually against government and laws, the confusion comes from the term state which meant something different to 19th century Hegelians. Anarchism really was just socialist democracy with a futurist/individualist philosophy guiding it. Anarchism was finished off by stalin and franco.
indeed, i support an anarchist-communist federation of nations, an anarchist world without money, without states, without classes, without authorities, without rulers
Direct democracy is therefore problematic as it empowers the majority. Who protects the minority if endangered by the decisions of the masses?
We need anarchy because we need life based on empathy, solidarity and liberty.
We hold to these virtues, yes? So why would we endanger a minority?
@@MartinPeel you cannot count on the totality of society to hold the same values
@@truedarklander The totality, perhaps not. Enough to cooperatively run society better? Definitely.
@@MartinPeel History has repeatedly shown that the majority will either act directly or sit on its hands in inaction while minorities are preyed upon. Why would you think that this would ever change? Maybe it can, but where the evidence that it can?
@@MartinPeel ridiculous! Even a situation where a very few share a combined belief of benefit through force will destroy a system that doesn't have the defenses necessary to maintain social order.
As little as a single force multiplier is all that is required to take control.
How does a true Anarchist produce an equal resistance to this obvious tendency for social and ideological pathology.
"I'm an anarchist, and I use democracy to make it work." Uh huh. Okay.
she's nice
The couple of friends is a good exemple. But could it work at a bigger scale?
You ever question the right/left narative?
Beau Of The Fifth Column is a channel on UA-cam and the guy is a self proclaimed anarchist. His videos are all worth seeing, though most are about current events including history for context. He's very good at predicting political stuff and conflicts. He has stuff about anarchy too.
I love Beau. He seems to have an insider's understanding of events while remaining grounded and sincere.
Prometheus and his showjumping trials of humanity. If you want anarchy move to India. they have the best organised anarchy ever...
No? Can you provide explanation or reasoning for this statement?
Anarchy is suppose to be an exchange, but in practice, especially on places like Twitter it almost never ends up this way. Usually the person with more willpower end up trying to consolidate influence and clout for themselves. And proposes ideas that would never be tenable in any real system.
Twitter doesn’t seem like the best baseline to compare to though since it’s an absolutely toxic hellhole.
That's because the medium strongly determines what kind of messages can be sent. Twitter is unfit for communication between peers, so why is it surprising that communication between anarchists fails?
it's a good thing twitter isn't an anarchy, then. twitter is a dictatorship under the arbitrary control of one rich guy. imo, anarchy is not really an exchange, either. it's more of a theoretical scaffold intended to inform one's praxis.
What drives the will to be free? And how can conventional learning suppress that will?
It's a desire to return to early human society before class and law. Modern human society with laws governing the common folk can feel oppressive. It's understandable but impractical at this stage of the game. 5000 year experiment humanity has taken.
She did quote Rousseau saying essentially the same thing 250 years ago. Anarchism can work as small pockets within a nation state, though, and in aspects of our everyday lives. It already does, as she points out. It also works on the fringes of nation states many places in the world, as it tends to emerge in a power vacuum, at least where people aren't already heavily armed.
Yuk! Just watching this I feel soiled by the oozing stupidity and nonsense. It's as if she knows absolutely nothing and is trying to feel her way through this subject. That's not the way it works.
I'm always blown away by how naive certain 'intellectuals' are.
Unfortunately very dated and to properly attuned to power politics - the brutal reality of the striving for power. No idealism of an-archy or democracy will get us to a practical large-scale system. And we are indeed 'forced to be free' (contra what is claimed in this talk): the field of rights in liberal societies is highly prescriptive and sets out our possibilities to make claims, or be accorded immunities, or live with our 'entitlements' successfully. Those principles structure effective freedoms - and then certainly provide the limits and policing of our freedoms.
one does it *outside* the structures of power.
Difficult to listen to, this woman. In my understanding, anarchy is of course NOT chaos, disorder, violence, or anything of the sort, but rather the ultimate stage in the evolution of human socio-economic organization leading from slavery to feudalism, then capitalism, socialism, communism, and finally anarchism. It is basically a stage in which everyone (or at least the overwhelming majority of citizens, since no system is all inclusive or "perfect") is so well educated, civilized, conscious of reality, that the "governmental entities" commonly known as "the State" are no longer relevant or necessary. People then behave properly, morally and for the benefit of all out of a natural ease (as opposed to laws -and a State- imposing confirmity and legally bound behavior)
IMHO the US population is not ready for this.
"from slavery to feudalism, then capitalism, socialism, communism, and finally anarchism."
What you described was a gradual transition from external control measures to internal control.
Slavery = total external control
Feudalism = compartmentalized
Capitalism = lane control
Socialism = overlapping sphere control
Communism = cone control
Anarchism = open field
I'm not saying you're wrong I'm just saying you're understood.
“Few men are capable of governing themselves, therefore even fewer men are capable of governing other men”
Anarchy is Self Government, it’s human nature that turns it to chaos.
I have noticed that those that espouse anarchy live comfortably under system like representative republics. Peaceful anarchy is a childish ideal. Basically she just revealed that THAT is what she is, a child intellectually. Only the very privileged can live that way.
I can think of several folks that are anarchists that live under repressive regimes; for example I have a buddy living in Myanmar protesting against the military junta.
While I'll agree that "peaceful" isn't viable, this idea that all anarchists live under representative republics is both demonstrably false, and also does a disservice to anarchists fighting against oppressive regimes
im an anarchist and a forklift operator who's parents were both dead in my 20s and ive been homeless twice... does that help?
i'll say this much, anarchism requires more thought than simply accepting the world around you. people working 48+ hours a week naturally have it harder when it comes to finding philosophy. its one the reasons businesses are so hesitant to move to an objectively more efficient 32 hour work week. this system isn't just about money, its also about power and control.
I detect projection.
Anarchism is the opposition against hierarchical power structures
She does a bad job explaining what anarchism is, in so many ways
I myself am a liberal Anarchist. I would storm parliament, break down the doors of Westminster !😡😡
Then offer to pay for the damage !😌😌
Liberalism and anarchism are opposing ideas
Fundamentally, "liberal anarchist" cannot exist, as anarchism came out of a critique of liberalism (capitalism). They run counter to each other. Liberal implies the continuation of capitalism, which would entail the continuation of unjust hierarchies via that mode.
Anarchism would deconstruct capitalism and the hierarchies that it naturally forms, while replacing it with a more horizontal structure. Being an anarchist inherently means not being liberal by definition.
To say you are a "Liberal Anarchist" would make as much sense as saying you are a "Progressive Conservative". The ideas are fundamentally opposed to each other.
Anarchism also doesn't imply violence upon physical structures like parliament. You are carrying this misunderstanding that anarchism is the destruction of physical establishments because you disagree with the governing body. This is a lighter version of a "mad max" style of anarchism often portrayed in much of the media, but is actually not what anarchism is necessarily about.
Anarchism is about the dissolution of unjust hierarchies when possible. Anarchism is not about senseless violence and destruction just because you disagree.
Anarchy anarchy I don't know what it is but I really like it!!!
I liked diarrhea until I found out what it is.
I add to my comment: In my understanding of anarchism, it abolishes the notion of sovereignty altogether, whether it is in a king or an individual. There is no sovereign. People who claim sovereign rights as individuals are those who dont want to cooperate with others - the opposite of an anarchist. But they dont opt out altogether and become hermits. They want to receive the benefits of the system while refusing to carry any of the burdens that make those benefits possible.
The idea of cooperation must be correctly understood so it includes competition. When two football teams compete to win, their competition occurs in a wider context of cooperation with rules of the game, it is a form of cooperation. Banks are supposed to compete with each other in the capitalist system of cooperation and its rules. The bank robber is not competing with the bank because he is outside the context of cooperation and its rules.
I don’t think this is true maybe you should learn more. Competition is by definition not co operation. Many anarchists believe in individual freedom and Liberty as the highest value the burden of society is shared by all because anarchism would be a free society of free association. That’s not utopian necessarily it just means people do what they which is live and work in society it would just be a society that has as little restriction of freedom and Liberty as is possible, so within reason you understand.
I ain't gonna lie, this write-up sucks and lacks introspection.
There are anarchist groups, villages, and even some cities that don't operate the way you are defining. You are ascribing ideas to a group of people who do not take on those ideas for themselves. This is like an exonym in a way. I think you would benefit from reading some of the literature regarding anarchism or having a discussion with some anarchists. The internet is widely available and has many hours of content if you take the time to actually learn. If you don't, then this write-up just serves as word vomit to perpetuating ideas that are more akin to propaganda.
The principle is simple. A pretty big clue is in the name.
From the Greek, "An", meaning without, and, "Archos", meaning Rulers or Rulership.
That D O E S N O T
M E A N, being without rules.
Of course, if we share the principle of not tolerating dominance, (Rulers or Rulership), then we share the RULE, that none of us will practice such things, or support it from anyone.
So where government is nothing more than administration, like when someone governs a Hospital, and allows everyone in it, to exercise personal responsibility and judgement, then that Hospital is not being governed, like a car is being governed.
The car has no choice, it does not decide on anything, it just does what it's directed to do.
That's just like a Fascist, (Authoritarian for the purposes of State), Government, where people are required to do whatever they are told to do.
Sophie is the hottest female historian of all times!
And intelligent as well?
@@ximono Not really.
If you were dropped into the middle of the desert with no food, water, or clothes.. would you still be free?