I thought it was “hawk tua”?

They’re already putting the Ten Commandments in schools, and they’ve been strongly encouraging “under god” for decades. It already makes sense to opt out for irreligious reasons, depending on where you live.

I’ve been un-teaching my kids the police propaganda they all get at school. It’s less work than home schooling and helps teach them to question everything, I suppose.

I’m pretty sure every country allows it under special circumstances. For example I know a girl (European) whose parents were circus artists and she got home schooling during the long periods where they were touring internationally. It’s just not allowed to homeschool for no reason.

Sure but what are you doing instead?

Yep, that would ideal. Having to govern a vast population without leaders seems difficult. You could evoke some sort of democratic communism but that creates weak chains where corruption can take hold like in our current situation.

Glad to see I’m not the only one having rambling problems. Hope you’re ready for a swim (of an alphabetic variety).

But just quickly wanted to get in that I very much dislike cars, just a convenient example because of cars being notoriously long to get in the Soviet union.

the soviet union is the primary reason why I shy away from communism (technically state capitalism but that doesn’t matter).

any system has successfully met all the fundamental basic needs of health, shelter and food, and is no longer capitalist.

I’m using the word capitalist the classical (marx) sense of private ownership of the means of production. Companies are capitalist and coops are socialist. one is privately owned, the other collectively.

<sidenote> Yes. Soviet Union was capitalist. state ownership isn’t socialism, only collective ownership is, and just calling them collectives is not collective ownership. </sidenote>

Freely associated groups, who set rules amongst themselves? Doesn’t sound very anarchist at all, sounds quick democratic

Why? If there are no hierarchical structures, Eg the rules are made collectively, why would it not be anarchism? On the democratic part I would say that without majority rule, which is still rule and thus would be opposed by anarchists, it shouldn’t be called democracy as the original meaning of the word is “people rule”.

Sure, Europeans states are free to do what they want, with certain restrictions they agree to by being part of the EU.

States are fundamentally archic structures, and the EU is even more archic. They are all managed top-down. You have someone at the top of the pyramid who says what will be done. That’s archy. That’s vertical organisation.

Anarchy is managed differently, through horizontal organisation. Instead of choosing people who will have power over you, you use your own social potential to build collective power to resist the archic power. I view anarchy as a fluid machine. Like a water bubble in 0g. The parts of the machine (people) can move around and bounce off of each-other which changes the shape of the machine. Every cog shapes the machine to fit them. Archy is a machine made of steel someone comes along, sets up the shape, and if a gear doesn’t fit they get ground to dust. Anarchy is chaotic organisation. It doesn’t do in-groups and out-groups, instead seeing the world as a single group, and empowering everyone in that group to find their place. In such conditions any harmful activity is completely pointless.

Bad people will always exist. But archy rewards bad behaviour by allowing them to get to the top. Anarchy is nothing more than saying “people are imperfect, so no-one should have the right to rule, as every ruler will make mistakes”.

On the topic of defence. There is no need to have centralized defence. decentralized defence forces can work wonders. If someone comes and attacks your group the entire group will defend itself. Why should it fall on anyone specific. There are many ways to defend and an anarchist group would encourage everyone to defend the group in their own way.

supply and demand aren’t made up things we can leave behind in a post capitalist world.

Maybe supply and demand aren’t, but economics are: https://anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionC.html#secc12. (If you didn’t notice the AFAQ has different sections, The complete A4 PDF is 3077 pages)

Money is great. It’s just accounting, and allows for greater personal choice

Money is one of the foundations of archy. as soon as you have a concrete number that is associated with a single person those people have power and authority over those with a smaller number. You can’t have a fair society with money. And if everyone’s basic needs are met then why do you even need it. how can you have an economy if people can just opt out of it.

Small freely associating groups are no longer possible we have cities of millions.

Why? Computers have allowed people to stay connected to hundreds of people. And even though it’s currently used to incentivise consumerist isolationism, it doesn’t have to be. Why do you think that millions of groups of millions of people can’t work without some centralized oversight? I would say they would work better because they won’t have the bottlenecks of centralisation. Why can’t every apartment block be a commune? Why can’t the chef that lives next door make the meals for all of you? Why can’t the cleaner clean all of your appartments? Why can’t that truck driver bring the chef fresh produce from the farmer he’s known for 20 years so all of you can eat and be merry? Why can’t that work in a city of millions? If an apartment block doesn’t have a chef someone who wants to go to the nearby school and learn. Why does society need to be made up of people who don’t know each-other, doing everything they can to screw over everyone else because that’s how you get ahead in life? AND WHY SHOULD WE LIVE IN A SYSTEM THAT ENCOURAGES IT? That’s all archy is. Means for awful people to screw over others. If not everyone is good then no-one is capable of rule.

are you seriously suggesting not having a police force? Not having courts?

ABSOLUTELY! ACAB! (Originally an anarchist slogan until it’s mainstream adoption during BLM) The police are professional bullies, no matter what shape they take. If the responsibility of the enforcement of rules falls on a single group, that group makes the rules. Law enforcement should be the duty of everyone. you see something doing something you think is wrong, go up to them and tell them to stop. If other people are around ask them what they think is going on. no-one else is responsible for your safety but yourself, by keeping others safe. Tit-for-tat. By protecting those around you, you’re creating a culture of mutual protection so when you’re in trouble that culture will help you. The courts and police were not meant to protect people. They were made to protect property and the ruling class. The only reason they protect people is because the people that threaten the ruling class often threaten normal people as well. (Also the facade of justice gives them plenty of bootlickers) For every person that got justice out of the courts there is another that got screwed over. For every woman that sent their abuser to jail there is another whose life was screwed owner by false allegations.

Justice does not come from books and laws. but from the reactions of people. in a communal justice system the shame of being outed is far more motivating for not committing crimes than fear of jail. Just look at how effective christian rule was during the medieval ages.

Anarchy is about creating a culture that opposes archy. A culture that makes the security of all the people the responsibility of all the people. A culture that ensures everyone has a place in society that they have chosen, not been pushed into. A culture that doesn’t assume anyone needs to be governed.

To me anarchy is the society of kindness. Where the power consolidates among those that gain the most respect. Respect that, if abused, will be taken away.

Anarchy is society in it’s most complicatedly simple, chaotically ordered, and collectively individual. It’s my reason to live. So I hope you can see why these ideas matter to me.

I really appreciate this thread and I feel inspired to reply. I think a lot of why anarchism is difficult to understand is because it is hard for us to imagine anything other than the “capitalist realism” that has spread to the entire world. As they say, it is the air you breathe, the water you swim in, so it can be hard to see.

So if you want to understand how anarchism can possibly work, really what you have to do is look at places where it is, in fact, actually working. Find the edges of society where affinity groups are actually doing real work in supporting the unhoused, defending marginalized and vulnerable communities, feeding and empowering one-another without any hierarchy. Look closely at the actions of Block Cop City for instance, or the Zapatistas, or Rojava. Look at how things worked in the Spanish Civil War, or Occupy Wall Street. As an added exercise, find some other examples of non-hierarchical activities and actions in your own life (you may be surprised how many there are).

Lots of hierarchy-apologists will decry these things always fail, or are only applicable in very specific contexts, but judge for yourself. There are obviously autonomous tactics that clearly work within these examples, but can you imagine them working in other contexts? How are they organizing themselves if it isn’t by way of hierarchy? How are they getting things accomplished without rules and punishments? Keep an open mind, use your imagination, and you may just find yourself thinking that anarchy is indeed possible beyond these given examples.

The workers run things. The crazy idea is thinking that society can’t run without trust fund brats who contribute nothing while siphoning away 90% of the resources.

Millions of people can’t run things? It seems pretty clear by now that small groups of people especially can’t be trusted to run things. You’ve got to hear about this thing they call democracy. It’s the tits. It can balance precariously, but it’s the most free way to live.

The idea isn’t to have too many cooks. If management is required, workers elect them from among their ranks. They serve for a term or two, then get replaced and go back to being workers. The workers can impeach them by vote. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to fire your lousy boss? Doesn’t that make a lot of sense? The point is that nobody should ever be allowed on top for too long. Management should not be a position considered on top of others. The workers must have the final say in how a company and a government are run.

The only reason a few people are allowed to become fabulously wealthy and powerful is because we never established democracy in the workplace. The workers owning the means of production is the most basic principle of communism. Communism cannot exist as a dictatorship, it’s antithetical to it. Communism is radical democracy at all levels.

you’re describing bolshevik/bismarckian state ‘socialism’, a conservative compromise/trick/ratfucking that generally starts by executing all the communists, like the bolsheviks did. bismarck specifically talks about how he did this on purpose to keep actual communism from blooming out of these huge mutual aid projects that were happening.

the short version is: the workers own the means of production. individually or collectively. so the steel workers own the steel mill. the seamstress owns her serger. the plumber owns his wrench and snake. just that, and it all exists for the good of everybody, with everybody acknowledging that they can’t do it on their own, or offering a lot of public entertainment by trying to.

there’s a bunch of forks from there, and ways to make this function and eliminate the frictions, but that’s all communism is. some proposals still even include markets (though im not a fan), some are regional, some federated in a bunch of different ways, some are centralized, some are radically decentralized, some are ‘return to monkey’, some require cutting edge technology for communication and collaboration (a cool example of that from the 70s is called cybersyn, which was, like, kick starting the star trek future in chile before everyone involved was hunted down and killed by CIA proxies, except two guys who were out of the country, one of whom was literally taping a debate about it for the CBC at the time, which got REALLY awkward for his conservative opponent)

Tell me if I get off course but some bullet points:

Resources are not limitless.

Unrestrained capitalism always leads to consolidation of control over finite resources and exploitaton of other individuals.

Limiting opportunities for individual development is negative to the society.

Individuals in the society are a distribution of variable abilities.

So…

Governments role in a well regulated market would be:

Limit consolidation of resources by any individual providing equal access for responsible use.

Preserve resources by limiting and regulating their use.

Provide equal opportunity for all individuals to engage in the market.

Provide a support network for all individuals to allow them to take reasonable risks.