• FoundTheVegan
    link
    fedilink
    548 months ago

    Most people have a very flaws understanding of anarchism. It absolutely is NOT a society without rules, that’s chaos and where the most physically powerful will rule, which is objectively a terrible thing and a big step backwards.

    Anarchism is not really a system of government, but the philosophical belief that there should not be a heiarchy in societal laws. It can be applied in many different forms of goverment, most commonly with democracy but there are plenty of anarcho-communist out there. The gist is that systems that promote one group being shown favor, especially at the expense of another, should be dismantled. And what replaces it should be set up to serve and protect all people evenly.

    This usually means police abolition and refocusing that energy on the underlining reasons people break “the law”. Like providing a minimum level of housing, income and food to all.

    I can’t summerize the books succiently, but if you are interested The Dispossed and The Conquest of Bread deals with more examples.

    • @WetBeardHairs@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      138 months ago

      Just echoing Ursula K Le Guin’s The Dispossessed is an fantastic read. It does a great job of contrasting anarchism with hierarchical societies without really playing favorites.

      • FoundTheVegan
        link
        fedilink
        58 months ago

        Her entire body of work is just fantastic, honestly my favorite author. I just finished The Lathe of Heaven the other day and really appreciate her sociological approach to sci-fi.

        • @TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id
          link
          fedilink
          English
          18 months ago

          She was also Alfred Kroeber’s daughter, who, if you don’t know, was one of the principal reasons why UC Berkeley has one of the world’s premiere anthropology departments. In light of that, the environment in which she was raised, her body of work makes a lot of sense.

    • @ParsnipWitch@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      58 months ago

      This usually means police abolition and refocusing that energy on the underlining reasons people break “the law”. Like providing a minimum level of housing, income and food to all.

      Do these people really believe only homeless and poor people are hurting other people?

      • Chetzemoka
        link
        308 months ago

        Of course no one believes that, don’t make hyperbolic strawmen. But you can’t deny that poverty definitely drives a nontrivial percentage of crimes, and we have plenty enough resources to end poverty. Let’s do that, and the remaining actual sociopaths can stay in prison for life. (But also let’s make prison no longer a place where we torture and enslave people.)

        • fkn
          link
          fedilink
          48 months ago

          Many conversations I’ve had with leftist here on lemmy have resulted in them claiming that all crime is either a crime of greed or poverty. No hyperbole. It’s infuriating trying to talk with some of them on these topics because they simply will not accept that there are other forms of crime or violence… No crimes of passion, etc.

          • @RedAggroBest@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            78 months ago

            That’s only for economic crime, think theft. There can only be theft out of greed or necessity. The handful of cleptomaniacs that steal for personal satisfaction are such a small percentage that it’s not worth discussing.

            Anything like a crime of passion is probably murder or something along those lines. Less directly related to money.

            No honest leftist I’ve ever talked to has denied that, but they’re largely not relevant to the ideas around the restructure of society. Any system is gonna have an angry spouse making horrible choices.

            • fkn
              link
              fedilink
              38 months ago

              Of course. No true Scotsman. Right.

              • @RedAggroBest@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                48 months ago

                No true Scotsman would claim I’m making that argument because they’re full of it. I’m not claiming that those people wouldn’t be real leftists. I’m saying they aren’t real.

          • @Prunebutt@feddit.de
            link
            fedilink
            68 months ago

            Crimes of greed and poverty make up the vast majority of crimes though. And hierarchical systems do a shitty job of preventing those crimes anyway (since they focus on individual punishment rather than communal restoration of justice).

            • fkn
              link
              fedilink
              38 months ago

              How do you not see the irony here?

                • fkn
                  link
                  fedilink
                  38 months ago

                  I state that there are leftist who try to claim all crime is of type X. It is blatantly obvious to everyone, except apparently leftist, that crime is not all of type X. You come in and say “yeah, but bro most is type X.”

                  You can’t leave it alone. This isn’t a position you need to defend. Holy shit. That’s not even the worst of it… The biggest problem is that most things of type X that are the worst for society aren’t even crimes in most countries and yet you Lazer focus on the wording like it’s a magic enchantment.

                  Totally missing the forest for the trees.

                  The irony, is that on a post I made about lemmy leftist making bad arguments about crime, you replied with a leftist position and a bad argument about crime. I can’t make this up.

                  • @Prunebutt@feddit.de
                    link
                    fedilink
                    38 months ago

                    So, what is in your opinion the major reasonS for people committing crime? Or do you think it is evenly distributed, so you can’t properly study that stuff.

                    And how would you personally prevent crime?

                    It is the easiest thing in the world to defend the status quo by pointig out that alternatives haven’t been formulated to the most minute detail.

                  • @ParsnipWitch@feddit.de
                    link
                    fedilink
                    28 months ago

                    They won’t because they can’t. How to deal with people who aren’t nice is one of the biggest flaws in anarchist theory. Because there is no way to see whether their theory of “people will all turn into nice humans without a state” is actually true.

                    It’s basically an axiom of their ideology and some anarchists straight out reject all psychological or sociological theories that suggest humans aren’t naturally good.

                    In my experience most anarchists either just live with the fact that violence has to be accepted (I would put Stirner into that group, for example).

                    Or they believe in vigilante justice. So neighbours watching and judging each other. Which only works - again - if you believe the absolute majority of people will not seek to exploit or overpower each other.

        • @ParsnipWitch@feddit.de
          link
          fedilink
          2
          edit-2
          8 months ago

          Who will put them into prison though and run the prison if there’s no police?

          Who will pay for the prison?