David Graeber Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You! 2000

If there’s a line to get on a crowded bus, do you wait your turn and refrain from elbowing your way past others even in the absence of police?

If you answered “yes”, then you are used to acting like an anarchist!

Are you a member of a club or sports team or any other voluntary organization where decisions are not imposed by one leader but made on the basis of general consent?

If you answered “yes”, then you belong to an organization which works on anarchist principles!

Do you believe that most politicians are selfish, egotistical swine who don’t really care about the public interest? Do you think we live in an economic system which is stupid and unfair?

If you answered “yes”, then you subscribe to the anarchist critique of today’s society — at least, in its broadest outlines.

Do you really believe those things you tell your children (or that your parents told you)?

“It doesn’t matter who started it.” “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” “Clean up your own mess.” “Do unto others…” “Don’t be mean to people just because they’re different.” Perhaps we should decide whether we’re lying to our children when we tell them about right and wrong, or whether we’re willing to take our own injunctions seriously. Because if you take these moral principles to their logical conclusions, you arrive at anarchism.

Do you believe that human beings are fundamentally corrupt and evil, or that certain sorts of people (women, people of color, ordinary folk who are not rich or highly educated) are inferior specimens, destined to be ruled by their betters?

If you answered “yes”, then, well, it looks like you aren’t an anarchist after all. But if you answered “no”, then chances are you already subscribe to 90% of anarchist principles, and, likely as not, are living your life largely in accord with them.

  • punkisundead [they/them]M
    51·
    8 months ago

    Can you be more specific what you mean by asshole?

    Because if someone has a shitty personality I just stop associating with them, like not inviting them to parties. An anarchist society ideally would greatly increase my autonomy when it comes to the decision on who I interact with.

      • MambabasaOPMEnglish
        5·
        8 months ago

        Anarchy means those kinds of people that have the power to concentrate huge amounts of hydrocarbons, spill it, and get away with the consequences wouldn’t have that kind of power to begin with. It’s our current system that allows assholes to create massive harm on the level that regular people are unable to avoid

          • poVoqA
            4·
            8 months ago

            Energy provision in an Anarchistic society would have to be much more decentralized, both due to environmental necessity and to prevent people being able to blackmail others though centralized control of the energy supply.

            That this would also largely prevent these kind of disasters as there wouldn’t be such a concentration of a massive amount of hydrocarbons (or nuclear fuel for that matter) in one place, is more of a necessary side effect of that.

            Of course, there would be a transitional period, but the Exxon Valdez story is also a story about worker exploitation and the company refusing to repair vital safety features (due to profit maximisation), neither of which would be acceptable in an Anarchistic society. It is likely that the disaster would have not happened if the workers would have not been not massively overworked and the collision radar would have been repaired in time (it was broken since months already, and deemed too expensive to fix).

            • zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev
              12·
              8 months ago

              “neither of which would be acceptable…”

              And how does one reject that? Do you think profit maximization goes away under anarchy? You’re missing very basic parts of your utopia to deal with things when people don’t act perfectly, intentionally or not.

              • poVoqA
                5·
                8 months ago

                If there is no money (as a store of value, as opposed to an freely inflatable means of exchange) and no private property (as opposed to personal property), both of which is a given in an Anarchistic society*, why would anyone try to maximize profit? The entire concept of profit maximisation would be absurd in such a scenario.

                And with no external force to maximize profit, why would a worker-owned cooperative that handles transport of hydrocarbons exploit their workers (i.e. themselves) or not do necessary repairs?

                I think you don’t understand the basic idea behind Anarchism… it is precisely the idea that people can be flawed but society doesn’t incentive such behaviour and has many defences in place to prevent people from trying to amass power over others.

                *as they can only exist when a state enforces these with violence

                • zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev
                  2·
                  8 months ago

                  Nifty, didn’t know much about the economic specifics of anarchy (ancaps give you guys a bad name and are much louder). I’ll have to dig a little deeper there as I’ll admit I’m ignorant.

                  I still don’t see how anarchy provides sufficient mechanisms to deal with economic bads. Like even if the worker-owned cooperative handles hydrocarbon transport perfectly, there’s still environmental impacts from the use of that product. The incentive to do damaging things to others (pollution, climate change) is still present even in the absence of non-personal economic incentives (e.g. portable fuel for personal vehicles). Do you have anything to point me at for learning a bit more about how anarchy deals with that?

                  • poVoqA
                    4·
                    8 months ago

                    Well, as I said… I think extraction of hydrocarbons in not really feasible under the proposed framework of an Anarchistic society, but there will probably have to be some sort of transitional period during which existing infrastructure is still used.

                    In general it is perfectly feasible to run industrial machines with biogas and bio-diesel (ideally produced from waste streams), which are easy to produce in a decentralized way when the overall demand is minimized to what is really needed. Personal transport can be easily electrified with trains and so on.

                    But as a general principle Anarchism doesn’t claim to have all the answers. It’s more of an method to ensure that a fair society can reached and that people have the means & will be smart enough to figure out the details along the way.