Agnapostate
Rookie
- Banned
- #81
I'm not going to accept your definition, because it's simply inaccurate and at odds with the flatly converse definitions of every major anarchist theorist. Anarchism is "the no-government system of socialism," as Peter Kropotkin termed it. Chomsky contradicts what you're evidently asserting, that "anarchy" in the political sense involves "chaos" or "disorder." It doesn't. Anarchist theory is and always has involved a high level of social and political organization, simply with the absence of hierarchical constrictions and institutions. The etymology of the term renders its meaning "without rulers." Since an actual "lack of organization" is literally impossible in every sense (even the warlord who rules the primitive society or the various constituencies in Somalia are based on social organization), the greatest and most effective means to create a society "without rulers" is therefore to create a system of political organization that minimizes hierarchical authority in every realm.
No one would claim otherwise, but to assert that that's a basis for ultimate and total failure would be to commit the perfectionist fallacy. A lynch mob is a form of "democracy" in the crudest sense, but it's truly a form of uninformed and irrational popular reaction. Of course, uninformed and irrational popular reaction characterizes our current republican political system to a greater extent than is typically acknowledged, but we must recall the necessary distinctions between "bourgeois formal democracy" and "genuine grass roots functional libertarian democracy, where each individual participated directly in the revolutionary reorganization of social life." I'm inclined to believe that the participatory elements of the latter create a more genuine and rational form of democratic political participation than the republican system could ever achieve, and is thus that much more divergent from the lynch mob.
You do seem to believe that a democratically elected group can do no wrong, you know.
Hence my reminder that a lynch mob is also a form of democracy.
This mob statement in no way negates the merits of your system, you know.
It's merely a reminder that mankind's nature (both individuals' psychopathologies and mass psychopthologies) can fuck up even the best devised goverment that exists.
No system is fool-proof, AG, because there's no limit to fools' abilities to screw things up.
No one would claim otherwise, but to assert that that's a basis for ultimate and total failure would be to commit the perfectionist fallacy. A lynch mob is a form of "democracy" in the crudest sense, but it's truly a form of uninformed and irrational popular reaction. Of course, uninformed and irrational popular reaction characterizes our current republican political system to a greater extent than is typically acknowledged, but we must recall the necessary distinctions between "bourgeois formal democracy" and "genuine grass roots functional libertarian democracy, where each individual participated directly in the revolutionary reorganization of social life." I'm inclined to believe that the participatory elements of the latter create a more genuine and rational form of democratic political participation than the republican system could ever achieve, and is thus that much more divergent from the lynch mob.