Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

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IvanV
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Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by IvanV » Mon Jun 14, 2021 9:38 am

secret squirrel wrote:
Sat Jun 12, 2021 7:56 am
Where have Anarchist ideas such as those of Kropotkin led to failed states? I can only think of a handful of places where they have been tried, and in all those places external forces make it difficult to attribute failure to inherent problems with the ideology (e.g., can we really attribute the failure of the Makhnoists in the Ukraine to Anarchism? How about the present situation in Rojava?).
To separate this from the atheism thread, where I referred to arnachism as inevitably leading to a failed state, got some come-back.

It is a tenet of development economics that without a centralised state with credible security, you will not get any economic development, because instead people will fight for control. And you can't develop in a state of continuous war where someone may be along any minute to separate you from your newly built irrigation system. That's a brief summary, and doubtless a caricature, but if you want the longer version I would strongly recommend the classic modern development economics text, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Nations_Fail. It is not a dry academic text and is accessible to the layman. Nor is it a big fat book.

Essentially it is a human nature argument. Power abhors a vacuum. It is human nature that there are always people who will take advantage of the possibility to take over. It is not dissimilar to the similar observation that communism is doomed to fail because it depends on behaviours from individuals that are contrary to human nature. So if you have anarchism, then either that degenerates to perpetual insecurity and fighting (Somalia, DRC, Yemen, etc), or else someone wins and succeeds in imposing a non-anarchist stable state, be it nasty or nice, eventually.

I've never studied specific theories of anarchism. I had a quick flick through the wiki articles on Kropotkin and Makhno. But as far as I can see if it's anarchism, than means not having a central state capable of providing security. And so you will get people trying to assert control, whether external or internal. In the particular cases Secret Squirrel mentions, it was external parties who took advantage of the lack of credible security to impose their control. My argument would be that something like that was inevitable.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by plodder » Mon Jun 14, 2021 9:49 am

Money provides security without the need for a central state. (This is why libertarians are so excited about crypto currencies).

eta we need to be careful about defining anarchism. are we allowing laws, courts, contracts? property? etc.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by IvanV » Mon Jun 14, 2021 9:57 am

plodder wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 9:49 am
Money provides security without the need for a central state. (This is why libertarians are so excited about crypto currencies).
How does money stop warlords from terrorising your area, and torture you into handing over your crypto passwords?

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by plodder » Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:02 am

There are no police to stop me tooling up Ivan. Come and have a go etc.

This is a serious answer.

eta

Another serious answer is that some sort of anarchism-lite allows very small states to maintain security, but under very strict rules.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by lpm » Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:15 am

plodder wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 9:49 am
Money provides security without the need for a central state.
Lol no. Money isn't real, it's merely a shared assumption. Security, on the other hand, is a real requirement.

Throughout history people have been prepared to give something real in return for security.
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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by noggins » Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:27 am

Mao wrote: political power grows out of the barrel of a gun

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by lpm » Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:42 am

Mao was wrong.

History shows continual attempts to use political power to reduce the power of the gun, usually successful eventually. For example at Runnymede politicians wrote a document where the power of law would trump the power of armed forces, and the absolute ruler accepted these laws. The steady strengthening of the power of the law over the power of the gun took centuries, with ups and downs, but it's been a good 350 years in England since law has had supremacy.

Even in our lifetimes we've seen power being applied with guns - invading Iraq, say, or ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia - but ultimately failing to deliver. Humanity seems to have reached a state of maturity where the rule of law always delivers strong pressure to fight back against violence. Plenty of people who've believed Mao's axiom have ended up in a courtroom in The Hague.
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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by plodder » Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:44 am

lpm wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:15 am
plodder wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 9:49 am
Money provides security without the need for a central state.
Lol no. Money isn't real, it's merely a shared assumption. Security, on the other hand, is a real requirement.

Throughout history people have been prepared to give something real in return for security.
Lol, try not paying your soldiers or supply chains.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by Bird on a Fire » Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:46 am

plodder wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:44 am
lpm wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:15 am
plodder wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 9:49 am
Money provides security without the need for a central state.
Lol no. Money isn't real, it's merely a shared assumption. Security, on the other hand, is a real requirement.

Throughout history people have been prepared to give something real in return for security.
Lol, try not paying your soldiers or supply chains.
Yeah, the cops were on strike when I moved to Brazil a few years ago, because they hadn't been paid. Interesting times.
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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by IvanV » Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:53 am

plodder wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:02 am
There are no police to stop me tooling up Ivan. Come and have a go etc.
This is a serious answer.
Have a look at what happened in the Montreal police strike. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray-Hill_riot
Less than 24 hours and rioting and looting broke out. No police isn't a workable condition.

Other police strikes have gone through without this happening, but I think you'll find there was some residual form of security in those cases, precisely because people know what happened in Montreal.

I don't believe an individual with a pile of guns is going to do very well trying to hold out against a warlord. You'd need a coalition, so on your way to setting up your own warlord group/ militia. But eventually some larger forces will come along. That's mediaeval history for you.

Small states, not really able to defend themselves, generally survive because other states have reasons for tolerating and supporting them.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by lpm » Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:56 am

plodder wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:44 am
lpm wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:15 am
plodder wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 9:49 am
Money provides security without the need for a central state.
Lol no. Money isn't real, it's merely a shared assumption. Security, on the other hand, is a real requirement.

Throughout history people have been prepared to give something real in return for security.
Lol, try not paying your soldiers or supply chains.
Exactly my point. Try not paying over 1/10th of your crop to your local "security provider" or one roll of silk to your bodyguard who's protected it on the journey along the silk road.

Have you never seen an old town wall? 10,000 years ago people were forming central states to build walls around their town, giving up a sizeable part of their resources for this security. Money is meaningless. Waving "money" at marauding raiders was not generally seen as the recommended tactic...
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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by plodder » Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:58 am

I don't agree. I'm reading a history of the British in Afghanistan at the moment and it seems like waving money at warlords is exactly what you do. Warlords get tired and would much rather be Jeff Bezos.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by Bird on a Fire » Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:59 am

I'm never too sure about these "human nature" arguments like the ones Ivan is relying on.

Human nature is varied and complex and situational. There are plenty of examples of humans creating and maintaining great things without any great central control, from Wikipedia to covid mutual aid groups.

Indeed, in recent years on everything from climate change to race relations states have lagged behind what the mass of humanity wants. It's been states upholding the power of tiny elites, and popular movements defeating them to engender progress.

We're rapidly arriving in a world with no material scarcity (covid vaccines notwithstanding, where again it's states defending private intellectual property causing the holdup). All that's left are distributional challenges. Like Ivan I haven't read a huge amount of anarchist literature, but I bet there are some sensible starting points for how to plan and distribute resources within a community.

People join violent groups because it's the best way to get ahead, be it ISIS fixing infrastructure and opposing an oppressive regime, or the US military providing free higher education. Human nature suggests most people would prefer not to do that stuff if society treats them equitably in the first place.
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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by IvanV » Mon Jun 14, 2021 11:19 am

lpm wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:42 am
Mao was wrong.

History shows continual attempts to use political power to reduce the power of the gun, usually successful eventually. For example at Runnymede politicians wrote a document where the power of law would trump the power of armed forces, and the absolute ruler accepted these laws. The steady strengthening of the power of the law over the power of the gun took centuries, with ups and downs, but it's been a good 350 years in England since law has had supremacy.

Even in our lifetimes we've seen power being applied with guns - invading Iraq, say, or ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia - but ultimately failing to deliver. Humanity seems to have reached a state of maturity where the rule of law always delivers strong pressure to fight back against violence. Plenty of people who've believed Mao's axiom have ended up in a courtroom in The Hague.
Mao led China with an iron fist till he died in his bed. China is controlled by force to this day. Mao was only wrong in the sense that his way was not a way to prosperity. It was a successful way to rule and remain in control. North Korea shows that to this day.

What you do get with such dictatorships is in-fighting among the ruling group. It went on in China with Mao being marginalised for a while until he fought back by provoking the cultural revolution. It went on in Soviet Russia, for example with Beria trying to take over after Stalin, and Krushchev succeeding in persuading enough other leaders that wouldn't be very nice so they ganged up and had him shot on trumped up charges.

John tore up the Magna Carta more or less immediately after he signed it, and the Baron's War broke out. The resolution after John's death shortly after was essentially military, the Baron's having a child king they could enforce the principles of Magna Carta on. The relative stability resulting was self-reinforcing. But England remained a place where there was still the potential for fighting for control of it, and attempts followed, successful and otherwise. We recall the Wars of the Roses, the English Civil War, the Dutch military take-over cleverly rebranded after the event as the Glorious Revolution, and the (unsuccessful) attemped Jacobite take-overs. Britain is a stable country today because it is centralised and has sufficient internal security no one would imagine they could carry out a coup.

In numerous places we see opportunists taking advantage to consolidate powerful rule and dismantle legal codes that would seemingly prevent it. You need a powerful self-preserving system to prevent that. We worry about it gradually happening even in Britain if the PM takes an authoritarian stance.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by Woodchopper » Mon Jun 14, 2021 11:21 am

lpm wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:42 am
Mao was wrong.

History shows continual attempts to use political power to reduce the power of the gun, usually successful eventually. For example at Runnymede politicians wrote a document where the power of law would trump the power of armed forces, and the absolute ruler accepted these laws. The steady strengthening of the power of the law over the power of the gun took centuries, with ups and downs, but it's been a good 350 years in England since law has had supremacy.

Even in our lifetimes we've seen power being applied with guns - invading Iraq, say, or ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia - but ultimately failing to deliver. Humanity seems to have reached a state of maturity where the rule of law always delivers strong pressure to fight back against violence. Plenty of people who've believed Mao's axiom have ended up in a courtroom in The Hague.
Mao was actually arguing something a bit different. That everything the Chinese Communists has achieved in the commune in Yunnan province had been possible because the CCP was armed and was therefore able to resist and expel the authority of the central state in Beijing. The CCP developed their own institutions (albeit not democratic ones) so Mao's wasn't arguing for thuggery at the barrel of a gun.

As for your argument about laws, ultimately they are enforced at the point of a gun. Especially in Britain you don't see that on a day to day basis. But if someone were to openly break the law in a non-trivial sense then sooner or later they'd receive a visit from the police or a summons to go to court. Ignore that and the police will at some point use physical force, and if someone were to fightback then pretty soon they would be looking at the barrel of a police firearm.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by IvanV » Mon Jun 14, 2021 11:27 am

IvanV wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 11:19 am
lpm wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 10:42 am
Mao was wrong.
Mao led China with an iron fist till he died in his bed.
Hence the second part of the book I quoted at the top, which I have not mentioned yet. Without a centralised state and security, you have nothing. But a centralised state and security is not sufficient for economic development. It may be concerned only with maintaining its own power and wealth and sod everyone else, which was Mao's attitude.

So the centralised state and security is necessary, but not sufficient, for economic progress. Too much power is also bad. This was the tightrope-walk Britain succeeded with in the industrial revolution period. It had sufficient control for security, but not so much control that it prevented some degree of economic freedom in society, such that people would make investments and grow the economy. Today arguably Britain's centralised state is too powerful, and that is why we are falling behind more progressive states.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by Woodchopper » Mon Jun 14, 2021 11:29 am

A non-utopian argument for anarchism is that village level communities would be incapable of the worst forms of destruction that can only be achieved by centrally organized states. Self governing communities may be prone to coercive behavior by individuals or small groups. But they are never going to be able to, say, invade the Congo or Iraq, or carry out the Holocaust, Great Leap Forward, or Red Famine.

Centralized powerful states that respect their citizens' human rights seem nice for those citizens. But the picture is very different for outsiders, or if the state doesn't respect individuals and instead sends millions off to the camps to die.

At a global scale, the world might have been better off if somehow in 1800 the people of Europe had rejected states and decided to live in anarchistic communes.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by IvanV » Mon Jun 14, 2021 11:56 am

Woodchopper wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 11:29 am
A non-utopian argument for anarchism is that village level communities would be incapable of the worst forms of destruction that can only be achieved by centrally organized states. Self governing communities may be prone to coercive behavior by individuals or small groups. But they are never going to be able to, say, invade the Congo or Iraq, or carry out the Holocaust, Great Leap Forward, or Red Famine.
But even with fairly primitive technologies, empires came into existence and conquered whatever they could hold. From time to time they fell apart. Hordes from the east swept across Europe for centuries, from the Huns to the Ottomans, with varying levels of organisation. Cortes turned up in Mexico with a very small force and played the locals off against each other to begin the European conquest of the Americas.

The framework of NATO and the EU (and previously the Warsaw Pact) has been the catalyst for a relatively stable Europe including numerous relatively small states, because it facilitates both the military and economic cooperation that drove the unification of Europe mainly into a small number of large territories in the 19th century.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by Woodchopper » Mon Jun 14, 2021 12:01 pm

IvanV wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 11:56 am
Woodchopper wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 11:29 am
A non-utopian argument for anarchism is that village level communities would be incapable of the worst forms of destruction that can only be achieved by centrally organized states. Self governing communities may be prone to coercive behavior by individuals or small groups. But they are never going to be able to, say, invade the Congo or Iraq, or carry out the Holocaust, Great Leap Forward, or Red Famine.
But even with fairly primitive technologies, empires came into existence and conquered whatever they could hold. From time to time they fell apart. Hordes from the east swept across Europe for centuries, from the Huns to the Ottomans, with varying levels of organisation. Cortes turned up in Mexico with a very small force and played the locals off against each other to begin the European conquest of the Americas.
I agree. In practice, the big problem for anarchism is how to keep it that way. I don't see how to stop the self-governing communities from being taken over by an outside power, or from them clumping together to form a centralized state.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by Woodchopper » Mon Jun 14, 2021 12:06 pm

IvanV wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 11:56 am
The framework of NATO and the EU (and previously the Warsaw Pact) has been the catalyst for a relatively stable Europe including numerous relatively small states, because it facilitates both the military and economic cooperation that drove the unification of Europe mainly into a small number of large territories in the 19th century.
Perhaps the Holy Roman Empire North of the Inn and West of the Elbe is the best model in Europe of a large population that was governed by mostly very weak and small states but which was relatively stable for centuries. Yes, it had an emperor, but he wasn't powerful.

It wasn't very peaceful though, and couldn't survive the 19th Century.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by plodder » Mon Jun 14, 2021 12:19 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 12:01 pm
I agree. In practice, the big problem for anarchism is how to keep it that way. I don't see how to stop the self-governing communities from being taken over by an outside power, or from them clumping together to form a centralized state.
Libertarians would argue that unfettered capitalism achieves this. Governments are becoming increasingly irrelevant already. This is why things like climate change, covid etc get their ire so much - they can't factor in externalities and would rather ignore them, or assume that more business will solve them.

However it does beg the question - if business / capitalism doesn't solve net zero etc (and it's already playing a significant role with Covid) then who the hell will?

The libertarian argument does have some merits and these might be worth exploring (rather than, say, the collectivism potential offered to medieval peasants in a feudal society).

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by Woodchopper » Mon Jun 14, 2021 12:23 pm

plodder wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 12:19 pm
Woodchopper wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 12:01 pm
I agree. In practice, the big problem for anarchism is how to keep it that way. I don't see how to stop the self-governing communities from being taken over by an outside power, or from them clumping together to form a centralized state.
Libertarians would argue that unfettered capitalism achieves this. Governments are becoming increasingly irrelevant already.
I don't buy that argument. All but the most extreme capitalist libertarian accepts the need for governments to enforce things like laws, contracts and property rights. But as mentioned above, ultimately the ability to do that is based upon coercive power. I don't see how a capitalist economy would function with no central authority to prevent theft.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by plodder » Mon Jun 14, 2021 12:39 pm

The argument goes that in a capitalist society coercive power is earned. Musk and Bezos have more right to lord it over us than Johnson and Gove. And if we want to compete then it's on merit to a much greater extent.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by Woodchopper » Mon Jun 14, 2021 12:44 pm

plodder wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 12:39 pm
The argument goes that in a capitalist society coercive power is earned. Musk and Bezos have more right to lord it over us than Johnson and Gove. And if we want to compete then it's on merit to a much greater extent.
Whether or not they have more right to coercive power is far less relevant than the fact that they don’t have any. The state in which they are in enforces laws or grants them limited use of coercion in certain circumstances.

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Re: Anarchism - does it lead to failed states

Post by lpm » Mon Jun 14, 2021 1:07 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Mon Jun 14, 2021 11:21 am
As for your argument about laws, ultimately they are enforced at the point of a gun. Especially in Britain you don't see that on a day to day basis. But if someone were to openly break the law in a non-trivial sense then sooner or later they'd receive a visit from the police or a summons to go to court. Ignore that and the police will at some point use physical force, and if someone were to fightback then pretty soon they would be looking at the barrel of a police firearm.
That's a description of rule by law, not rule by gun. The difference is that law is not arbitrary, day-to-day or individual decision making. The fact that the police use physical force or a literal gun is totally irrelevant - it's not the gun that is providing the power, it's the law.

Rule by gun is more equivalent to corrupt police officers. They exploit their ability to be violence for personal ends. They take individual decisions instead of institutional ones.

Obviously we're not an egalitarian society and Bezos has more power than I do. But he's not enforcing that power through the gun, but by exploiting the imperfections in our society and laws. None of us expects contract laws and property rights to be perfect, because it's a messy business and people can always search for loopholes. It's not clear why anarchists think the existing powerful will become less powerful under an alternative system, other than the childlike mistake of seeing something imperfect and assuming replacement is better.
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