Anarchy in theory is great and it is fairly obvious for small societies but it’s complicated for me to imagine how a a functional anarchist society would work with more people.
It would need very proactive and trustworthy people. Anyways I want to know how you all think of solving these problems.
The penalty system. I mean like what now is judges, cops, lawyers. I am guessing there will still be laws? I mean who would decide those anyways and if there were no laws ig it would be case specific. I guess people could do that without needing cops and if you get enough people you cpuld also find a system for that instead of laws
Military forces. I mean like an anarchist country could already be a target. So like if you have no defenses you disappear eventually and if that happens what was the point of having an anarchist country. And then like who is keeping all the weapons and stuff. I mean it could technically just once again be a non-for-profit and people who wqnt to fight just fight.
And some person just trying to take the power while getting people join to them. Even if they don’t get control a lot of people could die.
Like Idk maybe I am missing something or I’m dumb, well I am but like fkdjmed I was saying like all of these would need proactive, trustworthy, dedicated and good people. But I don’t think that’s the mayority of people, maybe I may be wrong but idk. Besides from a lot of people being agaonst the whole idea in the first place making it vey hard or almpst impoasible to mantain.
I still wanna hear what you all think of this ans other possible problems that you know of to like clear things up a little more for me, ty!
Here’s a thought experiment:
Imagine trying to operate a modern county hospital as an anarchist organization. For the sake of the experiment, let’s assume this is a miraculous money-free post-scarcity society and we’re not worried about the cost associated with anything or handling billing nonsense. We are absolving ourselves of all of the complexities of the accounting department, thus simplifying everything. Materials and labor are supplied for free, somehow (handwaving details TK).
OK, so what we’re concerned with is system management. Inputs and outputs, and internal processes. Patient appointments, work shifts, task assignments, surgery schedules, emergency response, education and training programs, laboratory analysis, medication distribution, food distribution, waste disposal, supply requisition, shipping and receiving, inpatient and outpatient care, and above all sanitation for everything. The goal is to have the right resources in the right places at the right times. If you miss the goal, people die.
Is this a system that can operate effectively without dedicated authority figures? without centralized management? Can a hospital be run effectively as a coalition of equals, with no empowered oversight?
No.
Why would the rest of a society that exists around a hospital be any less complex in practice?
Anarchy is, at its simplest, just a rejection of involuntary hierarchy. You can have a centralized management- you just can’t force and coerce people to work within that system. If you mistreat your doctors, they can leave, because management isn’t holding their wage over them as a bargaining chip. Besides that one difference, it would function exactly as a regular hospital.
Management with no authority to enforce its directives is just an advisor.
So basically you feel that there are jobs which must be filled coercively?
I know there is labor that won’t be done voluntarily, yes.
For instance, cleaning shit smeared over the walls of a restaurant bathroom, or sorting through garbage to separate recyclables, or changing catheter bags and diapers for adult patients.
Sure, somewhere in the world you might find a few people who are happy to do that kind of work. Are there enough of those people spread throughout every community to actually complete the volume of work that needs them?
So, I have cleaned shit-and-blood smeared walls on an unpaid volunteer basis for that inic I volunteered at. Literally that. I didn’t have to be there, and the benefit that I got was a cleaned bathroom for a place that really needed a clean bathroom, even if someone occasionally fucked up an IV injection or had extreme poop issues or mental health stuff.
I wasn’t even the person most willing to to that work. I was just the one willing enough with few enough other responsibilities.
I’ve also done extremely gross hospice care where qualified medical people weren’t available. Especially for people I loved, back when I used to do that.
I should point out that this was how those needs were filled under your coercive regime with fewer/none of the community motivations that would be present in a more humane system.
It turns out your precious coercive power doesn’t solve this problem either, because the people with those sorts of needs don’t generally have much ability to coerce, and when the strong bully the weak, they don’t get much into the habbit of nurturing them.
Cleaning isn’t an inherently undignified job, it’s just that we associate it with poor working conditions, inadequate compensation, and low status. None of those are inherent to the work. Both you and I would do fine in a job like that, if we were respected and got what we needed from society. For work that is genuinely unpleasant, there’s no reason I know of there can’t be non-monetary perks that would make it worthwhile.
So what? It is still a job that most people don’t want to do. It is a job that people do when they can’t find other work. And typically the working conditions are poor.
The point isn’t whether anyone would “do fine in a job like that”. The point is that very few people are signing up for those jobs voluntarily.
This I agree with. As a society we should be rewarding people who fill these very necessary roles. Janitors, especially those who work in medical facilities and have to regularly deal with biological waste, should be getting a lot more compensation.
Regardless of whether that compensation is in the form of money or not, I don’t think that’s an example of anarchy. Providing such compensation would require some form of organized group that distributes it to the people doing the work, which means that group would have to collect whatever resources are necessary in order to distribute them, and then we’ve just reinvented taxes.
A quick few searches tell me that less than one percent (0.7%) of the population have janitorial jobs, at least in the US (easiest data to grab quickly here). It seems not at all insurmountable to find one in a hundred people who don’t mind bad smells and just want a simple job where they can listen to stuff and not think too hard. I’ve worked those jobs myself, and even without good pay it is pretty nice to just listen to books or music and not have to think too hard at work. If I could thrive on a job like that, I actually wouldn’t mind. It just seems like a bad example of why anarchism wouldn’t work, at least to me.
Rotate cleaning jobs. This turns keeping the surroundings clean into a collective responsibilty
It’s very telling that you hear “no involuntary heirarchy” and think “no heirarchy or rules at all”
At some level someone has to tell other people to do work that they don’t want to do, and those people have to do it or it won’t get done by anyone.
So, I’m an adult. I live alone. I don’t clean my house as much as I should. Always been an issue for me. I remember my mother had to physically grab me and put her hands over mine to make me clean my room as a child. I’ve got some trauma on the topic.
I do clean it. Even when its gross stuff like a toilet overflow. Why? Nobody tells me I need to. Nobody threatens me. Why do I do this?
This assumes that there is work that someone, somewhere doesn’t want to do, or that it couldn’t be passed off to technology.
Just because you might not want to do something doesn’t mean nobody does.
… or that a community can’t see that a nasty task needs to be done and split up the work so that everyone is happy.
The toilet-crew in Lüzerath supposedly worked incredibly well.
Good point, thanks!
Oh, that’s excellent!
Exactly.
And? Like ‘ten people volunteered for that, we need someone for Tuesday night shift so people don’t die and Wednesday morning shift isn’t wading through corpses to get to the treatment rooms’ is valid. But please address my earlier upthread comment first.
Also, if you don’t agree with me I’ll fucking kill you. Are you any more inclined to agree with me now?
You’re very zero-to-ten, aren’t you? As if authority necessarily means direct threats against life. How silly.
So the threat if killing you and raping your family to death and burning your village/neighborhood doesn’t make you fall in line? Huh. Looks like you and your whole pointlessly destructive ideology are full of shit.
That’s right. You win. Congratulations.
Wait, you’re saying threatening people is kind of shitty and rude and doesn’t accomplish things?
You don’t prove your claim, so “yes” is an equally valid answer.
Which is why it’s a thought experiment. Come on, this isn’t complicated. Proof doesn’t happen in a thought experiment. Instead, you make a compelling argument based on logic and relevant examples.
I gave an example of a situation that I believe is too complicated to function properly under anarchy. What is your counterargument?
Says who? Your conclusion of the thought experiment is completely vibes based.
The whole exercise is a farce, since you can’t prove a negative anyway.
But what are you trying to say? That hospitals wouldn’t work if they were implemented in the same exact manner as they are today. Ok, cool. The an anarchistic society would structure them differently.
Even your centralisation argument falls flat, because a central administration could be implemented via mandate where the people in question get clearly defined powers over processes (especially where these powers end). If these rules are determined by consensus and the mandate is revokable, it’s still within one definition of anarchism.
Lol, you’ve never actually studied organizational theory and logistics bullshit. Fuck off with your imaginary ‘just so’ nonsense.
I actually have studied this, read several books on the topic, and dozens on adjacent topics-and before that I volunteered (not as a medical professional) at an urban clinic that operated on nearly anarchist terms. There were no hand waves, buy some of the supplies were acquired without a lot of oversight from capitalist pigs.
It worked shockingly well, the patients all said it was the best care they had ever had, there was no unaccountable authority-doctors and patients had a lot of say in how everything ran, to the extent they understood what the fuck they were talking about, and a little even when they didnt, because it was for them and their concerns mattered even when they asked for impossible bullshit that didn’t exist. Every doctor who participated said it made them a better doctor. I bet its still running.
I can’t cite my source without partially doxxing myself, but I have actually seen this in person, and participated in it.
But I can point at Zapatista clinics, which operate pretty similar (the patients determine what they need, the doctors want to be there) to this continually for over thirty years. Those I can cite, and are almost exactly what you describe and say is unfeasable, but without the hand waves in the poorest most rural part of mexico serving the most oppressed people persecuted by capitalist regimes all around them.
The panthers(with medical research), ACT UP(with medical research that’s the foundation of most cutting edge shit today), and literally the invention of the concept of non-battlefield ambulances was invented along something close to but not exactly these lines.
A huge chunk of modern medicine(emt’s, anything based on genetic modification or mRNA) was kind of invented this way within living memory.
Please apologize for your delusionally counterfactual bullshit and edit your original comment to point out you were wrong in case anyone else reads it. Wouldn’t want to spread misinformation.
You all produced your own gauze, bandage tape, iodine, antivirals and antibiotics, I take it or were those generous donations by the filthy capitalists?
It was a clinic. Do your capitalist clinics make their own bandages in-house?
So your point is that they both depend directly on the actions of companies fueled by capitalism for medical supplies?
I agree. That was my point. It’s nice to find a kindred soul.
Thats like saying without a monarch to own the grain fields agriculture couldn’t exist lol
True. Bandages didn’t exist until capitalism invented them. Everything must be owned, or you can’t make gauze. Doesn’t work.
You are way too adversarial to have a conversation with. Touch grass or something.
Your blatant bullshit spread like it’s fact is fine and polite though.
Anarchists had no problem running hospitals in the past. Centralization just increases the amount of time information has to travel to get to its destination.
Distributed throughout Catalonia were twenty-seven towns with a total of thirty-six health centers conducting services so thoroughly that every village, every hamlet, e\lery isolated peasant in the mountains, every woman, every child, anywhere, received adequate, up-to-date medical care. In each of the nine zones there was a central syndicate and a Control Committee located in Barcelona. Every department was autonomous within its own sphere. But this autonomy was not synonymous with isolation. The Central Committee in Barcelona, chosen by all the sections, met once a week with one delegate from each section to deal with common problems and to implement the general plan …
The people immediately benefited from the projects of the health syndicate. The syndicate managed all hospitals and clinics. Six hospitals were opened in Barcelona … Eight new sanitariums were installed in converted luxurious homes ideally situated amidst mountains and pine forests. It was no easy task to convert these homes into efficient hospitals with all new facilities. One of them, for the treatment of tuberculosis, was considered among the best installations anywhere …
The anarchist collectives by Sam Dolgoff
Phage 99