I will explain my username

Some of us anarchists want radical change now and will not settle for anything less, as in the slogan "if voting changed anything, it would be illegal!"
But I am a patient anarchist.
I vote in elections, because democracy is closer to anarchism than dictatorship is.
My paycheque goes into a credit union, because a credit union, ultimately run by members, is closer to anarchism than a bank is.
I shop at the locally owned grocery store in preference to the big corporate one, and the workers' coop health food store in preference to both, because local is closer to anarchism than corporate, and a workers' coop is anarchism in practice on a small scale.
I dream of a transformed world of free cooperation. I don't expect to see it in my lifetime, but I try to live in that direction.

This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »

BohemianBabe · M

In practice, I agree with your politics. But is Anarchy really possible? If we managed to eliminate the government, we would still have people making and enforcing laws. Chances are we'd be back to having local warlords. The nearest guys with the most power would make the laws, enforce them, and collect taxes with their private militias. We're always going to have government in some form, so instead of trying for no government, wouldn't it be better to just make government as democratic as possible?

ThePatientAnarchist · 61-69New

@BohemianBabe Thanks for your thoughts!

I derive hope from the fact that Indigenous Peoples around where I live, historically, had a very flexible structure of society that was pretty much the kind of anarchism that I envision, based on cooperation, mostly in fairly small groupings, and allowing for a lot of individual freedom including the possibility of leaving the group.

The other thing is that what we have got clearly is not working, so we have to imagine different possibilities, even if they don't seem practical. What we have got is absolutely not practical, we're just used to it.

BohemianBabe · M

@ThePatientAnarchist I'm a Socialist, so I'm all for drastic change. I just don't think going back to, what is essentially Feudalism, is a good idea.
I also think the history of Native Americans has been romanticized in a very unrealistic way. Yes, people within a tribe mostly worked together, but there were still tribal leaders, which were basically dictators. And of course, there were lots of wars between tribes. As always, material conditions played a huge role, regions with lots of resources had far less wars. But if resources were scarce, you'd have to worry about the neighboring tribe attacking.
In our modern system, we have wars, but wars between two democratic countries are super rare. We're able to trade with other countries when we need resources.

ThePatientAnarchist · 61-69New

@BohemianBabe It's true that Indigenous history (I'm in Canada btw so we don't use the term "Native American" here) has been romanticized but it has also been demonized. There are a lot of Indigenous People around where I live, to learn from, as well as a lot of conscientious scholarly work being done. So I stand by my depiction, at least for the Anishinaabeg who are the treaty holders here. Not that it was perfect, but it was workable and without a lot of the problems that our contemporary society just takes for granted.
Socialism is closer to anarchism than capitalism is, so I do vote socialist! :)

BohemianBabe · M

@ThePatientAnarchist

It's true that Indigenous history (I'm in Canada btw so we don't use the term "Native American" here) has been romanticized but it has also been demonized.

It's been demonized in that people act like indigenous peoples of the Americas were worse than Europeans during Feudalism. Really, they were about the same. But then on the other hand, this period was bad for both Europeans and the Indigenous. We can do better than Liberalism, but Liberalism was a step up from tribal living.

There are a lot of Indigenous People around where I live, to learn from

Yeah, but keep in mind these are people who live within our system of western Liberalism. In a tribal society, they would be forced to resort to violence for survival. And it's the same with any ethnic group. If Europe became anarchist, we'd probably have the Vikings make a comeback.

ThePatientAnarchist · 61-69New

@BohemianBabe We have a very different impression of tribal societies. To my knowledge, there was not a high level of violence among Indigenous People in the land I live in, historically. When there were wars, they were not the bloody conflicts of European societies. The founders of New France in the 1600s were frustrated with their "Indian" allies when they went into battle and were satisfied with killing a few individuals in retaliation for earlier raids against them, rather than killing off their enemies en masse.There are different paths that have been taken in human history, in different times and places -- we are not all doomed to repeat the same patterns over and over.