Whenever we organize a society big enough, it becomes susceptible to culture war and strongman leaders that reorder the society so that it’s authoritarian.
Actually teaching kids anarchist values and critical thinking skills might help, but this is why the power-mongers attack education and religious doctrine early on.
We’ve seen Marxists systems that get pretty big and work for a while, but even they have internal troubles that are resolved with political violence, and are put down by overwhelming foreign invaders (such as the United States invading Grenada).
I’m interested in anarchist theory. I’m just trying to figure out how it’s going to resist the consolidation of power, which is has been a problem for every civilization in history up to the present day.
That is the biggest issue, agreed. But as pessimistic as it is to say it, I’m willing to bet that humanity will scale back in the size and complexity of societies, willingly or not. The current systems are unsustainable, and what can’t be sustained, will not be.
I’m hanging my hope on whatever parallel societal structures people start to form in the cracks as the old systems start to crumble.
I view consolidation of power to be a consequence of thermodynamics.
Two non-consolidated power structures interacting have a natural friction between them owing to differing leadership and communication styles, not to mention redundancy. When they merge the redundancy is eliminated and with it goes the friction, bringing the whole system closer to equilibrium.
The other issue is simply the limitations of human brains and our capacity for relationships and managing reputation. In large structures we simply can’t know everyone, so we have to outsource our relationship management to an external entity. Naturally, central authorities are better at enforcing the rules (than decentralized ones) due to aforementioned friction issues and the ability of bad actors to move between jurisdictions or to form their own competing power structures.
Whenever we organize a society big enough, it becomes susceptible to culture war and strongman leaders that reorder the society so that it’s authoritarian.
Actually teaching kids anarchist values and critical thinking skills might help, but this is why the power-mongers attack education and religious doctrine early on.
We’ve seen Marxists systems that get pretty big and work for a while, but even they have internal troubles that are resolved with political violence, and are put down by overwhelming foreign invaders (such as the United States invading Grenada).
I’m interested in anarchist theory. I’m just trying to figure out how it’s going to resist the consolidation of power, which is has been a problem for every civilization in history up to the present day.
That is the biggest issue, agreed. But as pessimistic as it is to say it, I’m willing to bet that humanity will scale back in the size and complexity of societies, willingly or not. The current systems are unsustainable, and what can’t be sustained, will not be.
I’m hanging my hope on whatever parallel societal structures people start to form in the cracks as the old systems start to crumble.
I view consolidation of power to be a consequence of thermodynamics.
Two non-consolidated power structures interacting have a natural friction between them owing to differing leadership and communication styles, not to mention redundancy. When they merge the redundancy is eliminated and with it goes the friction, bringing the whole system closer to equilibrium.
The other issue is simply the limitations of human brains and our capacity for relationships and managing reputation. In large structures we simply can’t know everyone, so we have to outsource our relationship management to an external entity. Naturally, central authorities are better at enforcing the rules (than decentralized ones) due to aforementioned friction issues and the ability of bad actors to move between jurisdictions or to form their own competing power structures.