Are You An Anarchist? (the answer may surprise you!)

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Originally Posted by ermitonto

The structure is decided by the people themselves, in a truly democratic manner. The experiences of the thousands of anarchist collectives during the Spanish Civil War show that these principles can be used to organize a modern society on a mass scale, without people telling others how to go about things. Consequences for "right" and "wrong" actions would not be obsolete. People wouldn't be allowed to just go out killing and raping, as many people assume. We know that thousands of cultures have successfully lived without government or hierarchy and have still been able to bring murderers and rapists to justice.

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So the idea is to create a whole new government, then? But call it something else, maybe? Like "Managers".

Or is it like if someone is accused of raping someone or something, then the people will have to go to the polls and decide his fate? How would he be determined guilty or innocent of the crime? Would he be entitled to a fair trial? Who would pay for it?

And what does "justice" in this kind of society without a gov't mean?

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It's not just government that anarchists are opposed to. Power and hierarchy structures run a lot deeper than the state. Social psychologists have known for years that the best determining factor for whether someone becomes a violent criminal is whether they were subjected to authoritarian parenting techniques. The next factor is probably poverty, which is a result of the class structure of our society, a direct result of capitalism, another system of hierarchy and domination.

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Well, in response I ask this:

Which is less fair -

Being poor and without power while other people are rich and with power? In a society where you too can attain power and riches...

Or

Working harder and/or being more educated than your peers and recieving no greater benefit for it?

And as far as violent criminals being exposed to an authoritarian parental structure, if thats the case it was probably viewed more as abuse, not a result just from imposing some authority on somebody.

Its not the poverty itself that makes people violent criminals. Its basically comes down to how they were raised or if they were raised at all. People from poverty who stay in poverty in this country, in this day and age, there's a reason for it...like drug addiction, alcoholism, depression, being uneducated (big one!) and not having any guidance from strong, positive adult influences to teach these people they can be more, that they are more, and (probably the most significant factor) plain old fashioned lazyness. To get more it just takes: WORK.

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If people don't really care for others, it is because current societal conditions try to atomize society. Capitalism, for instance, instills the idea that everybody is in competition with each other, that society is nothing but a conglomeration of individuals glued together for the hell of it. But there is undeniably a human tendency for mutual aid. Humans are social creatures. We need each other to survive and be happy, and we have been successfully helping each other to do this for millions of years. That's why society exists in the first place. In the absence of atomizing social conditions, people band together to ensure mutual happiness.

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I honestly dont see how thats not prevalent in society today.

We care for people in that "if you meet me halfway, I'll meet you halfway" fashion but we aren't going to cater to the needs of opportunists, the lazy, the dependant, and the unmotivated, while working our asses off only to be considered the same. It doesn't serve them and it surly doesn't serve us as a society. I think as a society we cooperate quite well, and the violent criminals who choose the path they have show that they chose not to cooperate with the people and standards of our society. And I pay my government to take care of people like him who choose not to participate in the making of a greater life for all of us, and instead chooses to behave irresponsibly at the expense of society's well-being. He doesnt deserve riches if he wont cooperate, and I dont feel sorry for him. Just like I dont feel sorry for those who are perfectly able to advance in this world, but chooses not to, but then bellyache over how unfair life is because he's afraid of change and growth. Why should I take care of him? Why should I pick up the slack for him and be considered the same value as he is? Why should anyone be expected to? Why would anyone want to? How could anyone possibly expect the people to do that and not be resentful?

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And if human nature really is to not care about your fellow man, then what sense does it make to put such non-caring people into positions of power?

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Oh, but I didnt say that people are uncaring, I said there are people who dont care. The people in power are there to keep those who dont care and those who wish not to cooperate out of the peaceful society we work hard to keep that way every day. Which is why the uneducated and the unmotivated dont get the cushy jobs. Which is why the criminals get to go to prison instead of bothering me and my fellow citizens and risk putting the system of striving for happiness out of balance.

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Under anarchism, which is a form of socialism, all the means of production and the means of living would be shared by all members of society, instead of concentrated into the hands of a rich elite.

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That sounds fair to the people who put their blood, sweat and tears into getting it to work as a functioning system in the first place.

The rich are rich for a reason. I do not believe the rich should be classified as undeserving assholes who's families never worked hard for what they have.

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For instance, there is enough food in the world to feed everybody, but since that food is concentrated into the hands of self-serving capitalist corporations, enough grain to solve the African famine crisis is destroyed every year just to inflate food prices and ensure further concentration of wealth into the hands of corporations. Without capitalism, this would not happen.

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Of course I disagree with something like that, but I dont believe that is the heart of capitalism by any means.

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Competition serves the interests of those in power by making the dominated classes easier to dominate. The more divisions can be created among the dominated, the harder it is for them to band together to oppose the interests of the elite. The more non-essential issues you can get them to quabble over, the more distracted they will become from the real issues, like the fact that all corporate profits come from exploitation (workers never get the full wealth of their labor in return; a certain amount is always expropriated by the capitalists who own the means of production and do little productive work themselves).

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Well, I definitely have my opinion of how poorly corporations compensate the working man, but again, its also incentive to go for more in this life. Those without the drive for more are those who dont recieve more.

Again, our society punishes those with a lack of ambition, not those that are poor.

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Competition is essential for power systems to exist in the first place. If society were based on cooperation rather than competition, there would be no motive to dominate over others, since all problems could be solved according to the principles of egalitarianism and mutual aid.

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It would be really great if we all could cooperate. But I dont believe all problems can be solved through cooperation. Some people (especially if they think they're right) are unwilling to cooperate, unwilling to budge, unwilling to listen. If there's nothing that serves us monetarily to cooperate, and there's little threat for not cooperating...then how can we possibly expect that there would be cooperation?

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Not just government, but hierarchy and power systems in general. Children grow up being told to cooperate, to share, to be kind to their fellow man. But when they get into the real world of the state, of capitalism, of militaries, of sexual inequality, of domination and competition, and are constantly told that eliminating these things is just something that can't be done, they become alienated and bitter.

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Im finding it very difficult to see/believe the correlation. Im finding it difficult to see how cooperating in this society with rules, with classes, with government, and with corporations, is somehow tied into that we do a disservice to the people. Im still not really seeing it.

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Not everybody has to be smart and make good decisions all the time for a society based on cooperation and mutual aid to work. People make bad choices, that's part of life, but what sense does it make to put them into positions where they have the authority to force those decisions on others?
Anarchism isn't some intangible ideal that exists only in the minds of idealists. Anarchist societies have existed successfully before. It was the only form of social organization for most of human history. And even in modern times, there have been large-scale anarchist societies which have endured for years, such as those in the Spanish Civil War and in the Ukraine during the Russian Revolution. And they didn't degenerate into immoral cespools of chaos and apathy. Quite the contrary; people actually organized themselves along the lines of egalitarianism and mutual aid, and were able to run industries and communities with surprising efficiency. That's all the proof that's needed to show it isn't impossible.

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Im not saying its not impossible, Im saying it doesnt sound like the system that would best serve the people. How is what you all decide as a society enforced for those unwilling to cooperate? Who pays for the enforcement? How is it not creating government and ultimately giving power to the government... and how is it not asking for anarchy if what you as people decide has no enforcement? Is this an eye for an eye, take matters into your own hands and create your own justice kind of society?

I guess Im just not getting it. :(

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Originally Posted by Ousted

So the idea is to create a whole new government, then? But call it something else, maybe? Like "Managers".

Or is it like if someone is accused of raping someone or something, then the people will have to go to the polls and decide his fate? How would he be determined guilty or innocent of the crime? Would he be entitled to a fair trial? Who would pay for it?

And what does "justice" in this kind of society without a gov't mean?

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Anarchists don't have a blueprint for a future society. But of course there would be some need for some sort of system for dealing with such people. It just wouldn't be a hierarchical system in which people are able to tell everybody else what to do. As the Anarchist FAQ puts it:

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While anarchists reject the ideas of law and a specialised justice system, they are not blind to the fact that anti-social action may not totally disappear in a free society. Therefore, some sort of "court" system would still be necessary to deal with the remaining crimes and to adjudicate disputes between citizens.

These courts would function in one of two ways. One possibility is that the parties involved agree to hand their case to a third party. Then the "court" in question would be the arrangements made by those parties. The second possibility is when the parties cannot not agree (or if the victim was dead). Then the issue could be raised at a communal assembly and a "court" appointed to look into the issue. These "courts" would be independent from the commune, their independence strengthened by popular election instead of executive appointment of judges, by protecting the jury system of selection of random citizens by lot, and by informing jurors of their right to judge the law itself, according to their conscience, as well as the facts of a case. As Malatesta pointed out, "when differences were to arise between men [sic!], would not arbitration voluntarily accepted, or pressure of public opinion, be perhaps more likely to establish where the right lies than through an irresponsible magistrate which has the right to adjudicate on everything and everybody and is inevitably incompetent and therefore unjust?" [Anarchy, p. 43]

In the case of a "police force," this would not exist either as a public or private specialised body or company. If a local community did consider that public safety required a body of people who could be called upon for help, we imagine that a new system would be created. Such a system would "not be entrusted to, as it is today, to a special, official body: all able-bodied inhabitants [of a commune] will be called upon to take turns in the security measures instituted by the commune." [James Guillaume, Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 371] This system would be based around a voluntary militia system, in which all members of the community could serve if they so desired. Those who served would not constitute a professional body; instead the service would be made up of local people who would join for short periods of time and be replaced if they abused their position. Hence the likelihood that a communal militia would become corrupted by power, like the current police force or a private security firm exercising a policing function, would be vastly reduced. Moreover, by accustoming a population to intervene in anti-social as part of the militia, they would be empowered to do so when not an active part of it, so reducing the need for its services even more.

Such a body would not have a monopoly on protecting others, but would simply be on call if others required it. It would no more be a monopoly of defence (i.e. a "police force") than the current fire service is a monopoly. Individuals are not banned from putting out fires today because the fire service exists, similarly individuals will be free to help stop anti-social crime by themselves, or in association with others, in an anarchist society.

Of course there are anti-social acts which occur without witnesses and so the "guilty" party cannot be readily identified. If such acts did occur we can imagine an anarchist community taking two courses of action. The injured party may look into the facts themselves or appoint an agent to do so or, more likely, an ad hoc group would be elected at a community assembly to investigate specific crimes of this sort. Such a group would be given the necessary "authority" to investigate the crime and be subject to recall by the community if they start trying to abuse whatever authority they had. Once the investigating body thought it had enough evidence it would inform the community as well as the affected parties and then organise a court. Of course, a free society will produce different solutions to such problems, solutions no-one has considered yet and so these suggestions are just that, suggestions.

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Well, in response I ask this:

Which is less fair -

Being poor and without power while other people are rich and with power? In a society where you too can attain power and riches...

Or

Working harder and/or being more educated than your peers and recieving no greater benefit for it?

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Is not being better educated a benefit in itself? If you really thirst for knowledge, and you take the effort to educate yourself better, there is no way that education wouldn't help you out. In any kind of society, knowledge brings benefits.

And if you work harder, that's for one of two reasons. Either you enjoy working harder, in which case no additional benefit is needed, or you are forced to work harder in order to gain additional benefit, as under capitalism. A society in which technology is really geared toward meeting human needs rather than gaining profits could mechanize away a lot of the work we have to do, and a lot of the work people are forced to do could be done away with.

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And as far as violent criminals being exposed to an authoritarian parental structure, if thats the case it was probably viewed more as abuse, not a result just from imposing some authority on somebody.

Its not the poverty itself that makes people violent criminals. Its basically comes down to how they were raised or if they were raised at all. People from poverty who stay in poverty in this country, in this day and age, there's a reason for it...like drug addiction, alcoholism, depression, being uneducated (big one!) and not having any guidance from strong, positive adult influences to teach these people they can be more, that they are more, and (probably the most significant factor) plain old fashioned lazyness. To get more it just takes: WORK.

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You really think poverty doesn't contribute to crime? Then why is there such a strong correlation between poverty levels and crime rates? It only makes sense that people who don't have the material resources to fulfill their desires or even their basic needs are more likely to resort to illicit methods to attain them, especially under a society that enforces a worldview in which everybody is an isolated individual in competition with everyone else.

People in poverty don't stay in poverty because of drugs or alcohol or laziness. If working was all that was necessary to elevate yourself from poverty, then why would anybody be homeless? Why are there so many people who work their asses off all their lives and still live in poverty? The fact is, the poorest people are the most hard-working in our society. Who do you think works harder, the CEO of Nike or the child laborer in the Malaysian factory working for pennies on the hour? Does Bill Gates really do the work of 14,000,000 people? It's not just this country or just this day and age. This is the way society has been structured for as long as there has been a dominating class and a dominated class.

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I honestly dont see how thats not prevalent in society today.

We care for people in that "if you meet me halfway, I'll meet you halfway" fashion but we aren't going to cater to the needs of opportunists, the lazy, the dependant, and the unmotivated, while working our asses off only to be considered the same. It doesn't serve them and it surly doesn't serve us as a society. I think as a society we cooperate quite well, and the violent criminals who choose the path they have show that they chose not to cooperate with the people and standards of our society. And I pay my government to take care of people like him who choose not to participate in the making of a greater life for all of us, and instead chooses to behave irresponsibly at the expense of society's well-being. He doesnt deserve riches if he wont cooperate, and I dont feel sorry for him. Just like I dont feel sorry for those who are perfectly able to advance in this world, but chooses not to, but then bellyache over how unfair life is because he's afraid of change and growth. Why should I take care of him? Why should I pick up the slack for him and be considered the same value as he is? Why should anyone be expected to? Why would anyone want to? How could anyone possibly expect the people to do that and not be resentful?

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Under the current system you are paying for all sorts of people who don't cooperate. Who do you think pays for those prisons they live in? It only makes sense that if you don't contribute to a community's wealth, you should not be able to enjoy its wealth. But under capitalism, there is a huge class of unemployed people who are perfectly willing to work to stay alive but can't because the capitalists have not found any use for them. It is profitable for the corporations to keep this class of unemployed people. For one, it saves them money to keep their workforce as small as possible. Also it helps them to have a large pool of people who are desperate for work and willing to work for low wages, from whom they can draw new laborers if for some reason they are not satisfied with the ones they have.

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Oh, but I didnt say that people are uncaring, I said there are people who dont care. The people in power are there to keep those who dont care and those who wish not to cooperate out of the peaceful society we work hard to keep that way every day. Which is why the uneducated and the unmotivated dont get the cushy jobs. Which is why the criminals get to go to prison instead of bothering me and my fellow citizens and risk putting the system of striving for happiness out of balance.

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The people who get into positions of power are the ones who care the least about their fellow man. They are precisely the people who are willing to step on anybody that gets in their way of obtaining higher positions of power. People who are not willing to do that are weeded out by the system and are not able to obtain as much power as those who do. The same goes for money; the richest people are those who are willing to step on anybody who gets in their way of getting more money. And what's worse is that you need to be rich to obtain higher positions of power; not anybody can shell out the money to run campaigns for those high positions of power. You have to be a millionaire if you want to get to the top of the power ladder.

Do you really believe that prisons make the problem of crime go away? If somebody commits a violent crime, what sense does it make to put them into a place where social relations are dictated by violence, where there is nobody to love them or care for them, where they can mull over their hatred for the people who put them there, before re-releasing them into society? Prisons only make things a lot worse.

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That sounds fair to the people who put their blood, sweat and tears into getting it to work as a functioning system in the first place.

The rich are rich for a reason. I do not believe the rich should be classified as undeserving assholes who's families never worked hard for what they have.

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As I mentioned before, the hardest-working people in our society are actually the poorest people. The people who do all the real productive work, that is, the large class of workers at the bottom of the corporate chain of command, always get some of the product of their labor stolen from them by the people who just happen to be the owners of the means of production. Under capitalism, most people are just as willing to work as everybody else but are not rich. It's not hard to see why, in a system which requires a pyramidal power scheme. There has to be a small group of powerful people at the top who tell everybody else what to do. That is the basis of capitalism. Think about it. Capitalist corporations are arranged according to the fascistic principle that the people on the top give out orders and everybody below them is forced to just go along with it. There is no democratic decision-making process; the workers at the bottom who do all the real productive work in creating the material wealth of society have no input in how the work is organized.

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Of course I disagree with something like that, but I dont believe that is the heart of capitalism by any means.

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Well, I definitely have my opinion of how poorly corporations compensate the working man, but again, its also incentive to go for more in this life. Those without the drive for more are those who dont recieve more.

Again, our society punishes those with a lack of ambition, not those that are poor.

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How is that so? Poverty breeds poverty. If everybody with ambition was able to get themselves out of poverty, there would be rags-to-riches stories all over the place. Almost everybody loves money, so why is it that there are so many poor people? I come from a poor family or hard-working, ambitious people. It's fairly clear that the reason we're still poor is not because we're not working hard enough. It's because there's just not enough room at the top of the capitalist ladder for everybody. Are you implying that we poor people all don't care about providing things for our families, or that we're all just lazy or something? Because that isn't the case. In any society that has a class of rich people, there is a much larger class of poor people.

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It would be really great if we all could cooperate. But I dont believe all problems can be solved through cooperation. Some people (especially if they think they're right) are unwilling to cooperate, unwilling to budge, unwilling to listen. If there's nothing that serves us monetarily to cooperate, and there's little threat for not cooperating...then how can we possibly expect that there would be cooperation?

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All problem-solving in society requires some degree of cooperation. It would be difficult to see how any problem could be solved if everybody tried to enact their own solution. I can't think of a single problem that couldn't be solved in a cooperative, democratic manner. Of course it's impossible to reach complete consensus in a large group of people, and that's not what I'm proposing. Anarchism implies direct democracy, in which everybody plays a part in making the decisions that affect them. The experiences of anarchist societies in the past show that it is indeed possible to organize society on a large scale that uses collective decision-making processes. It doesn't mean that everybody has to agree with every decision, but the decisions that are made are much more reflective of the will of the people than they could ever be under a hierarchical power system.

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Im finding it very difficult to see/believe the correlation. Im finding it difficult to see how cooperating in this society with rules, with classes, with government, and with corporations, is somehow tied into that we do a disservice to the people. Im still not really seeing it.

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I don't see how cooperation and expression of the will of the people are possible in any system where power relations are tolerated. When you allow some people to tell everybody else what to do, you are undermining democracy and taking away people's rights to make the decisions that affect their lives.

Power corrupts, and it has corrupted in every power institution in human history. When people have the power to enforce their will on the rest of society, you can be certain they will use it to further their own interests rather than the interests of the people they are dominating.

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Im not saying its not impossible, Im saying it doesnt sound like the system that would best serve the people. How is what you all decide as a society enforced for those unwilling to cooperate? Who pays for the enforcement? How is it not creating government and ultimately giving power to the government... and how is it not asking for anarchy if what you as people decide has no enforcement? Is this an eye for an eye, take matters into your own hands and create your own justice kind of society?

I guess Im just not getting it. :(

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Anarchy isn't the same as the state because there aren't people on top with more power than the people on the bottom, and who use their monopoly of violence over a territory to force their decisions on everybody. In an anarchist society, everybody is on equal footing in the decision making process. Social decision making is a complex issue, and I could not possibly do it justice here, but I do believe that direct democracy would be a far superior way of approaching the problem than simply having people in power who get to make the rules for everyone else. If you still have any questions, you might want to check out the Anarchist FAQ.

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Originally Posted by Ousted

So the idea is to create a whole new government, then? But call it something else, maybe? Like "Managers".

Or is it like if someone is accused of raping someone or something, then the people will have to go to the polls and decide his fate? How would he be determined guilty or innocent of the crime? Would he be entitled to a fair trial? Who would pay for it?

And what does "justice" in this kind of society without a gov't mean?

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Anarchists don't have a blueprint for a future society. But of course there would be some need for some sort of system for dealing with such people. It just wouldn't be a hierarchical system in which people are able to tell everybody else what to do. As the Anarchist FAQ puts it:

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While anarchists reject the ideas of law and a specialised justice system, they are not blind to the fact that anti-social action may not totally disappear in a free society. Therefore, some sort of "court" system would still be necessary to deal with the remaining crimes and to adjudicate disputes between citizens.

These courts would function in one of two ways. One possibility is that the parties involved agree to hand their case to a third party. Then the "court" in question would be the arrangements made by those parties. The second possibility is when the parties cannot not agree (or if the victim was dead). Then the issue could be raised at a communal assembly and a "court" appointed to look into the issue. These "courts" would be independent from the commune, their independence strengthened by popular election instead of executive appointment of judges, by protecting the jury system of selection of random citizens by lot, and by informing jurors of their right to judge the law itself, according to their conscience, as well as the facts of a case. As Malatesta pointed out, "when differences were to arise between men [sic!], would not arbitration voluntarily accepted, or pressure of public opinion, be perhaps more likely to establish where the right lies than through an irresponsible magistrate which has the right to adjudicate on everything and everybody and is inevitably incompetent and therefore unjust?" [Anarchy, p. 43]

In the case of a "police force," this would not exist either as a public or private specialised body or company. If a local community did consider that public safety required a body of people who could be called upon for help, we imagine that a new system would be created. Such a system would "not be entrusted to, as it is today, to a special, official body: all able-bodied inhabitants [of a commune] will be called upon to take turns in the security measures instituted by the commune." [James Guillaume, Bakunin on Anarchism, p. 371] This system would be based around a voluntary militia system, in which all members of the community could serve if they so desired. Those who served would not constitute a professional body; instead the service would be made up of local people who would join for short periods of time and be replaced if they abused their position. Hence the likelihood that a communal militia would become corrupted by power, like the current police force or a private security firm exercising a policing function, would be vastly reduced. Moreover, by accustoming a population to intervene in anti-social as part of the militia, they would be empowered to do so when not an active part of it, so reducing the need for its services even more.

Such a body would not have a monopoly on protecting others, but would simply be on call if others required it. It would no more be a monopoly of defence (i.e. a "police force") than the current fire service is a monopoly. Individuals are not banned from putting out fires today because the fire service exists, similarly individuals will be free to help stop anti-social crime by themselves, or in association with others, in an anarchist society.

Of course there are anti-social acts which occur without witnesses and so the "guilty" party cannot be readily identified. If such acts did occur we can imagine an anarchist community taking two courses of action. The injured party may look into the facts themselves or appoint an agent to do so or, more likely, an ad hoc group would be elected at a community assembly to investigate specific crimes of this sort. Such a group would be given the necessary "authority" to investigate the crime and be subject to recall by the community if they start trying to abuse whatever authority they had. Once the investigating body thought it had enough evidence it would inform the community as well as the affected parties and then organise a court. Of course, a free society will produce different solutions to such problems, solutions no-one has considered yet and so these suggestions are just that, suggestions.

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Well, in response I ask this:

Which is less fair -

Being poor and without power while other people are rich and with power? In a society where you too can attain power and riches...

Or

Working harder and/or being more educated than your peers and recieving no greater benefit for it?

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Is not being better educated a benefit in itself? If you really thirst for knowledge, and you take the effort to educate yourself better, there is no way that education wouldn't help you out. In any kind of society, knowledge brings benefits.

And if you work harder, that's for one of two reasons. Either you enjoy working harder, in which case no additional benefit is needed, or you are forced to work harder in order to gain additional benefit, as under capitalism. A society in which technology is really geared toward meeting human needs rather than gaining profits could mechanize away a lot of the work we have to do, and a lot of the work people are forced to do could be done away with.

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And as far as violent criminals being exposed to an authoritarian parental structure, if thats the case it was probably viewed more as abuse, not a result just from imposing some authority on somebody.

Its not the poverty itself that makes people violent criminals. Its basically comes down to how they were raised or if they were raised at all. People from poverty who stay in poverty in this country, in this day and age, there's a reason for it...like drug addiction, alcoholism, depression, being uneducated (big one!) and not having any guidance from strong, positive adult influences to teach these people they can be more, that they are more, and (probably the most significant factor) plain old fashioned lazyness. To get more it just takes: WORK.

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You really think poverty doesn't contribute to crime? Then why is there such a strong correlation between poverty levels and crime rates? It only makes sense that people who don't have the material resources to fulfill their desires or even their basic needs are more likely to resort to illicit methods to attain them, especially under a society that enforces a worldview in which everybody is an isolated individual in competition with everyone else.

People in poverty don't stay in poverty because of drugs or alcohol or laziness. If working was all that was necessary to elevate yourself from poverty, then why would anybody be homeless? Why are there so many people who work their asses off all their lives and still live in poverty? The fact is, the poorest people are the most hard-working in our society. Who do you think works harder, the CEO of Nike or the child laborer in the Malaysian factory working for pennies on the hour? Does Bill Gates really do the work of 14,000,000 people? It's not just this country or just this day and age. This is the way society has been structured for as long as there has been a dominating class and a dominated class.

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I honestly dont see how thats not prevalent in society today.

We care for people in that "if you meet me halfway, I'll meet you halfway" fashion but we aren't going to cater to the needs of opportunists, the lazy, the dependant, and the unmotivated, while working our asses off only to be considered the same. It doesn't serve them and it surly doesn't serve us as a society. I think as a society we cooperate quite well, and the violent criminals who choose the path they have show that they chose not to cooperate with the people and standards of our society. And I pay my government to take care of people like him who choose not to participate in the making of a greater life for all of us, and instead chooses to behave irresponsibly at the expense of society's well-being. He doesnt deserve riches if he wont cooperate, and I dont feel sorry for him. Just like I dont feel sorry for those who are perfectly able to advance in this world, but chooses not to, but then bellyache over how unfair life is because he's afraid of change and growth. Why should I take care of him? Why should I pick up the slack for him and be considered the same value as he is? Why should anyone be expected to? Why would anyone want to? How could anyone possibly expect the people to do that and not be resentful?

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Under the current system you are paying for all sorts of people who don't cooperate. Who do you think pays for those prisons they live in? It only makes sense that if you don't contribute to a community's wealth, you should not be able to enjoy its wealth. But under capitalism, there is a huge class of unemployed people who are perfectly willing to work to stay alive but can't because the capitalists have not found any use for them. It is profitable for the corporations to keep this class of unemployed people. For one, it saves them money to keep their workforce as small as possible. Also it helps them to have a large pool of people who are desperate for work and willing to work for low wages, from whom they can draw new laborers if for some reason they are not satisfied with the ones they have.

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Oh, but I didnt say that people are uncaring, I said there are people who dont care. The people in power are there to keep those who dont care and those who wish not to cooperate out of the peaceful society we work hard to keep that way every day. Which is why the uneducated and the unmotivated dont get the cushy jobs. Which is why the criminals get to go to prison instead of bothering me and my fellow citizens and risk putting the system of striving for happiness out of balance.

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The people who get into positions of power are the ones who care the least about their fellow man. They are precisely the people who are willing to step on anybody that gets in their way of obtaining higher positions of power. People who are not willing to do that are weeded out by the system and are not able to obtain as much power as those who do. The same goes for money; the richest people are those who are willing to step on anybody who gets in their way of getting more money. And what's worse is that you need to be rich to obtain higher positions of power; not anybody can shell out the money to run campaigns for those high positions of power. You have to be a millionaire if you want to get to the top of the power ladder.

Do you really believe that prisons make the problem of crime go away? If somebody commits a violent crime, what sense does it make to put them into a place where social relations are dictated by violence, where there is nobody to love them or care for them, where they can mull over their hatred for the people who put them there, before re-releasing them into society? Prisons only make things a lot worse.

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That sounds fair to the people who put their blood, sweat and tears into getting it to work as a functioning system in the first place.

The rich are rich for a reason. I do not believe the rich should be classified as undeserving assholes who's families never worked hard for what they have.

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As I mentioned before, the hardest-working people in our society are actually the poorest people. The people who do all the real productive work, that is, the large class of workers at the bottom of the corporate chain of command, always get some of the product of their labor stolen from them by the people who just happen to be the owners of the means of production. Under capitalism, most people are just as willing to work as everybody else but are not rich. It's not hard to see why, in a system which requires a pyramidal power scheme. There has to be a small group of powerful people at the top who tell everybody else what to do. That is the basis of capitalism. Think about it. Capitalist corporations are arranged according to the fascistic principle that the people on the top give out orders and everybody below them is forced to just go along with it. There is no democratic decision-making process; the workers at the bottom who do all the real productive work in creating the material wealth of society have no input in how the work is organized.

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Of course I disagree with something like that, but I dont believe that is the heart of capitalism by any means.

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How so? When a society is structured so that resources are concentrated into the hands of a few, and people are motivated to acquire more and more wealth from themselves, such denial of resources to the people who need them is inevitable.

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Well, I definitely have my opinion of how poorly corporations compensate the working man, but again, its also incentive to go for more in this life. Those without the drive for more are those who dont recieve more.

Again, our society punishes those with a lack of ambition, not those that are poor.

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How is that so? Poverty breeds poverty. If everybody with ambition was able to get themselves out of poverty, there would be rags-to-riches stories all over the place. Almost everybody loves money, so why is it that there are so many poor people? I come from a poor family or hard-working, ambitious people. It's fairly clear that the reason we're still poor is not because we're not working hard enough. It's because there's just not enough room at the top of the capitalist ladder for everybody. Are you implying that we poor people all don't care about providing things for our families, or that we're all just lazy or something? Because that isn't the case. In any society that has a class of rich people, there is a much larger class of poor people.

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It would be really great if we all could cooperate. But I dont believe all problems can be solved through cooperation. Some people (especially if they think they're right) are unwilling to cooperate, unwilling to budge, unwilling to listen. If there's nothing that serves us monetarily to cooperate, and there's little threat for not cooperating...then how can we possibly expect that there would be cooperation?

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All problem-solving in society requires some degree of cooperation. It would be difficult to see how any problem could be solved if everybody tried to enact their own solution. I can't think of a single problem that couldn't be solved in a cooperative, democratic manner. Of course it's impossible to reach complete consensus in a large group of people, and that's not what I'm proposing. Anarchism implies direct democracy, in which everybody plays a part in making the decisions that affect them. The experiences of anarchist societies in the past show that it is indeed possible to organize society on a large scale that uses collective decision-making processes. It doesn't mean that everybody has to agree with every decision, but the decisions that are made are much more reflective of the will of the people than they could ever be under a hierarchical power system.

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Im finding it very difficult to see/believe the correlation. Im finding it difficult to see how cooperating in this society with rules, with classes, with government, and with corporations, is somehow tied into that we do a disservice to the people. Im still not really seeing it.

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I don't see how cooperation and expression of the will of the people are possible in any system where power relations are tolerated. When you allow some people to tell everybody else what to do, you are undermining democracy and taking away people's rights to make the decisions that affect their lives.

Power corrupts, and it has corrupted in every power institution in human history. When people have the power to enforce their will on the rest of society, you can be certain they will use it to further their own interests rather than the interests of the people they are dominating.

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Im not saying its not impossible, Im saying it doesnt sound like the system that would best serve the people. How is what you all decide as a society enforced for those unwilling to cooperate? Who pays for the enforcement? How is it not creating government and ultimately giving power to the government... and how is it not asking for anarchy if what you as people decide has no enforcement? Is this an eye for an eye, take matters into your own hands and create your own justice kind of society?

I guess Im just not getting it. :(

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Anarchy isn't the same as the state because there aren't people on top with more power than the people on the bottom, and who use their monopoly of violence over a territory to force their decisions on everybody. In an anarchist society, everybody is on equal footing in the decision making process. Social decision making is a complex issue, and I could not possibly do it justice here, but I do believe that direct democracy would be a far superior way of approaching the problem than simply having people in power who get to make the rules for everyone else. If you still have any questions, you might want to check out the Anarchist FAQ.

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Originally Posted by Crow Shindle

Are you a Nazi?

Chances are you have heard that Nazi's like to cook Jew's in ovens for their gold fillings.....

That couldn't be further from the truth. They are just a bunch of concerned citizens trying to do their part in reducing overpopulation and global warming.

More like a civic group really.

Not a bad bunch.

They serve tea and cookies at their meetings.

Free swastikas. It's great.

Good dudes.

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great...looks like makor/tholiak is back again...

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Originally Posted by ermitonto

Anarchists don't have a blueprint for a future society. But of course there would be some need for some sort of system for dealing with such people. It just wouldn't be a hierarchical system in which people are able to tell everybody else what to do. As the Anarchist FAQ puts it:

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It seems very unrealistic. But it states its just an idea of what "could" happen. Given what was laid out in front of me, I hope that system aint it cuz I see red flags all over the place.

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Is not being better educated a benefit in itself?

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It sure is.

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If you really thirst for knowledge, and you take the effort to educate yourself better, there is no way that education wouldn't help you out. In any kind of society, knowledge brings benefits.

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So in other words, the more educated you are, the more you'll be able to offer, and the benefit would be that you live exactly the same as your dipshit neighbor while he reaps the benefits of your education offering little in exchange.

I guess some people wouldn't have a problem with that. :confused:

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And if you work harder, that's for one of two reasons. Either you enjoy working harder, in which case no additional benefit is needed, or you are forced to work harder in order to gain additional benefit, as under capitalism.

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Or you HAVE to work harder because if you dont then the shit will hit the fan because you might be the only one who'll be counted on or expected to take care of it since, afterall, you are the educated hard worker, and JoeShmo-Fuckhead is the dimwitted goof off.

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A society in which technology is really geared toward meeting human needs rather than gaining profits could mechanize away a lot of the work we have to do, and a lot of the work people are forced to do could be done away with.

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Competition forces people to be great, to be greater. You think computers and cell phones and technology itself would be what it is today if competition was eliminated even as soon as 10 years ago?

No. It wouldnt.

So lets pretend technology is used only for human needs in this society for a second. What exactly are the needs to which you are referring? Dishwashers? Cell phones? Will this be a step above the Amish, like "Amish - now with technology! We use only what we need!"

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You really think poverty doesn't contribute to crime?

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i think those in poverty contribute to crime, I do not think poverty is the reason for crime, absolutely positively not. But it certainly is a nice "out" for some people. See my analogy with marijuana a few points down.

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Then why is there such a strong correlation between poverty levels and crime rates?

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I said this already, but I'll say it again: Because people in poverty who stay in poverty in this country, in this day and age, believe thats what they deserve, they become victims, and further the problem by accepting it, instead of breaking free from it. Anyone can break free from it, and people do all the time.

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It only makes sense that people who don't have the material resources to fulfill their desires or even their basic needs are more likely to resort to illicit methods to attain them,

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It makes sense when you just take a quick look at it and see a correlation. If you dont look at the real core problem, yeah, its a good "out." Its a great justification. Surely.

Kinda like how marijuana is a gateway drug. Afterall, almost all hard drug addicts started with marijuana...so it only makes sense that marijuana must be the problem...right? Not the issues that led the druggie to become one, thats too hard to think about. Let's just ignore the fact that only 10% of people who smoke marijuana go on to harder drugs but instead concentrate on the fact that 90% of addicts started with marijuana.

Whats the most obvious reason for the problem isn't always the correct one.

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especially under a society that enforces a worldview in which everybody is an isolated individual in competition with everyone else.

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Its not a bad thing.

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People in poverty don't stay in poverty because of drugs or alcohol or laziness.

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Yes they do. People who dont think they deserve more stay in poverty for that reason as well.

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If working was all that was necessary to elevate yourself from poverty, then why would anybody be homeless?

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Just working itself is not all that is necessary, drive is necessary, a desire for more is necessary with the willing to do what you can to get there and not just sit on the hope of "one day...one day things will change...Im not going to do anything to initiate change, but Im sure if I do the same thing I did yesterday as I did the day before that today, tomorrow and always, then I should be somethin'!" Wrong. Gee, I wonder why you became homeless or unable to pay your bills when you lived beyond your means (credit card debt: have now, pay later) and work a minimum wage job and father/mother children you cant afford to have...

Yes, its a real mystery.

Ive been dirt poor before. On my own financially, dirt poor while supporting a husband in college. I was poor, but I had a plan, and I geared my life around a well thought out, organized plan to rise above poverty. Could I have popped out a couple of kids and got help from the state? Sure. Could I have bitched and moaned about how unfair my life is and how I deserve more without putting thought into how to rise above where I found myself? Definitely. I definitely could have accepted my place in poverty, my bank account and assets certainly verified what a poor bitch I was, and had I not taken action, I would have stayed in that world, victimized myself blaming poverty instead of the core reason why I was sitting in poverty, and stayed the same and been bitter.

I was uneducated. I had no family. I had no soft place to fall. AND I had a husband in college and had to pay for his needs as well as my own!

The acknowledgement of the "core" problem, execution of a well-thought out plan, and taking action got me out of it and where Im at today, and where I'll be tomorrow. Had I gone down the victim road, I would be exactly in the same place I was: Poverty

If I can do it with nothing and facing the obstacles I had to face, anyone can.

Like I said, people in poverty often have drug dependancies, often didnt have good influences, and really often just dont believe they deserve more. They may think they should have more just because, but if they really believed...deep down in their core that they are capable of more, they would take the necessary action to attain it. You get in this life what you ask of it. Blaming poverty is not the issue. Blame the lack of positive influence and ambition and acceptance of their place in life.

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Why are there so many people who work their asses off all their lives and still live in poverty? The fact is, the poorest people are the most hard-working in our society. Who do you think works harder, the CEO of Nike or the child laborer in the Malaysian factory working for pennies on the hour?

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Working your ass off is not all that is necessary. You have to make yourself into someone of value. If you're easily replacable, you wont have much value in society, and you'll do the bullshit jobs that require a lot of labor and not a lot of pay.
The CEO of Nike is not as easily replacable as a child laborer, or the manager of McDonalds, or the stockboy at the Piggly Wiggly. Its not about labor, its about worth. And if you're easily replacable in a thankless job you work your ass off at and get paid peanuts...you're probably not that valuable of a contributor to society, not as valuable as someone who increased their worth and decreased their likelyhood of being replacable, anyway.

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Does Bill Gates really do the work of 14,000,000 people? It's not just this country or just this day and age. This is the way society has been structured for as long as there has been a dominating class and a dominated class.

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You're making victims out of those who willingly do the thankless jobs for less pay, and are lessening the importance and value of someone like Bill Gates who revolutionized the computer industry and how we view technology today?

Doesnt that seem somewhat like you've lost your perspective?

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Under the current system you are paying for all sorts of people who don't cooperate. Who do you think pays for those prisons they live in? It only makes sense that if you don't contribute to a community's wealth, you should not be able to enjoy its wealth. But under capitalism, there is a huge class of unemployed people who are perfectly willing to work to stay alive but can't because the capitalists have not found any use for them. It is profitable for the corporations to keep this class of unemployed people. For one, it saves them money to keep their workforce as small as possible. Also it helps them to have a large pool of people who are desperate for work and willing to work for low wages, from whom they can draw new laborers if for some reason they are not satisfied with the ones they have.

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We teach people how to treat us. Again, if your contribution is one that can be easily performed by many, then you have absolutely no reason to believe that you are being cheated in this life.

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The people who get into positions of power are the ones who care the least about their fellow man.

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Egad.

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They are precisely the people who are willing to step on anybody that gets in their way of obtaining higher positions of power.

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Have you ever worked before? I really have no idea how you can possibly believe such a silly thing if you had an understanding of business and leadership and the requirements of those in leadership or power positions.

Can bad people get into positions of power? Most definitely, but they didnt Melrose Place their way to that position or they would have been stomped out early on. Its difficult to get to the top for a reason, to weed out the bad eggs.

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People who are not willing to do that are weeded out by the system and are not able to obtain as much power as those who do. The same goes for money; the richest people are those who are willing to step on anybody who gets in their way of getting more money. And what's worse is that you need to be rich to obtain higher positions of power; not anybody can shell out the money to run campaigns for those high positions of power. You have to be a millionaire if you want to get to the top of the power ladder.

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But it makes sense. We need to weed out. We need those who have work ethic, drive, ability, education, knowledge and broad experience running for positions of power. If they are at that point in their careers, then yeah, they're gonna have money.

What do you think would happen if people who haven't paid their dues got power easily? The shit would hit the fan, thats what would happen.

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Do you really believe that prisons make the problem of crime go away?

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No.

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If somebody commits a violent crime, what sense does it make to put them into a place where social relations are dictated by violence, where there is nobody to love them or care for them, where they can mull over their hatred for the people who put them there, before re-releasing them into society? Prisons only make things a lot worse.

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I totally get that, and I dont like the prison system at all either. Im totally with ya there. I do think there should be prison, but I dont think that making it a punishment (rather than a place where inmates work towards something positive like a required rehab for whatever their sentence is) is the answer, and thats why it doesnt work. This is an issue that many people actively are striving to see changed, but it'll take some time, like everything. Compassion for criminals is difficult, we still are barbaric in a sense when it comes to people who commit crimes. We want them to pay cuz thats what instantly makes us feel better, even though investing in the rehabilitation of the criminals would probably do us much better.

-However-

There's also the issue of people trying to get sent to prison to get taken care of, and thats an issue now. Imagine how easy it would be to manipulate a system like rehab prison in order to get taken care of and coddled? Want to pay for those who commit crimes because they want to go to prison?

Im quite torn, actually, now that Im thinking about this particular issue.

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As I mentioned before, the hardest-working people in our society are actually the poorest people.

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As I mentioned before, working hard is not all there is. Its your value. And if you aren't valuable, you wont be compensated as though you are. Because you can be replaced.

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The people who do all the real productive work, that is, the large class of workers at the bottom of the corporate chain of command, always get some of the product of their labor stolen from them by the people who just happen to be the owners of the means of production. Under capitalism, most people are just as willing to work as everybody else but are not rich. It's not hard to see why, in a system which requires a pyramidal power scheme. There has to be a small group of powerful people at the top who tell everybody else what to do. That is the basis of capitalism. Think about it. Capitalist corporations are arranged according to the fascistic principle that the people on the top give out orders and everybody below them is forced to just go along with it.

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We elect those people for a reason and they make the decisions for a reason, I'll tell you why in the next point:

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There is no democratic decision-making process; the workers at the bottom who do all the real productive work in creating the material wealth of society have no input in how the work is organized.

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Why should they? Are they educated? Do know anything about it? Do they have the understanding of the entirity of the issues their society faces to make big decisions like that for you and me?

If this was a completely democratic society we would be looking at a big shit hole all around us and say "I didnt vote for this, how did this happen?"

We elect people who have understanding of the processes, of the complexities, who have the know-how to really make things work. We elect them to make the decisions for us because we aren't educated as a whole to make those kind of decisions. We dont have the ability to give the issues the attention they need as a whole. As a society we simply see the issue the way we see it, and often people dont take the next step and test if they could experience a paradigm shift if they really took an in depth look at the issue before them giving the issue the attention and analyzation that it requires.

The people in power serve the people. If we made all the decisions, then there would be some serious consequences we would have to pay for that.

I have a feeling you think people think more than they really do.

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How is that so? Poverty breeds poverty.

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And ignorance breeds ignorance. It goes hand-in-hand.

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If everybody with ambition was able to get themselves out of poverty, there would be rags-to-riches stories all over the place.

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People with ambition aren't in poverty for long.

And just because the stories aren't blasted all over the media, doesnt mean they dont exist and that there aren't a substantial amount of people rising above poverty and making something out of their life. I meet people who have everyday. Im one of those people.

Victims are in the media, not heroes. Thats why we glorify the victims instead honoring of the heroes. Its a damn fucked up perspective and we the people are to blame. The media gives us what we'll watch and what we want to hear. If we all tuned in to be inspired by rags to riches stories instead of tuning in just to shit ourselves from fear, then thats what the media would serve to us.

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Almost everybody loves money, so why is it that there are so many poor people?

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Because they dont love themselves and dont require more for themselves. If they did, life would be much different for them.

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I come from a poor family or hard-working, ambitious people. It's fairly clear that the reason we're still poor is not because we're not working hard enough. It's because there's just not enough room at the top of the capitalist ladder for everybody. Are you implying that we poor people all don't care about providing things for our families, or that we're all just lazy or something? Because that isn't the case. In any society that has a class of rich people, there is a much larger class of poor people.

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Im not going to make any assumptions on your family's situation and why it is what it is to you personally. You know the reason, whatever it is. And you are smart enough to know that placing blame can make one feel good and justified about their place and why they're in that place, but its not going to change anything because the real core problem is being left unidentified and unacknowledged. Change can only occur if the real core problem is acknowledged. If poverty were the core issue, no one from poverty could have escaped it and broken free from it because it would be an issue beyond anyone's control - like you're making it out to be.

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All problem-solving in society requires some degree of cooperation. It would be difficult to see how any problem could be solved if everybody tried to enact their own solution. I can't think of a single problem that couldn't be solved in a cooperative, democratic manner. Of course it's impossible to reach complete consensus in a large group of people, and that's not what I'm proposing. Anarchism implies direct democracy, in which everybody plays a part in making the decisions that affect them. The experiences of anarchist societies in the past show that it is indeed possible to organize society on a large scale that uses collective decision-making processes. It doesn't mean that everybody has to agree with every decision, but the decisions that are made are much more reflective of the will of the people than they could ever be under a hierarchical power system.

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I think as of right now, I completely disagree that that form of democracy would ultimately best serve the people.

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I don't see how cooperation and expression of the will of the people are possible in any system where power relations are tolerated. When you allow some people to tell everybody else what to do, you are undermining democracy and taking away people's rights to make the decisions that affect their lives.

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Again, people dont take the time to look at the entirity of the issues that may affect them. They have their view, and most often they go with what sounds easiest or simplist or most logical when frankly thats often not the right solution.

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Power corrupts, and it has corrupted in every power institution in human history. When people have the power to enforce their will on the rest of society, you can be certain they will use it to further their own interests rather than the interests of the people they are dominating.

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In our system I dont see that to be the case. Our system is set up to prevent such things. Does some shit pass through? Sure. But for the most part does the system serve the people to best over any other system? Yes, I do believe so.

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Anarchy isn't the same as the state because there aren't people on top with more power than the people on the bottom, and who use their monopoly of violence over a territory to force their decisions on everybody. In an anarchist society, everybody is on equal footing in the decision making process. Social decision making is a complex issue, and I could not possibly do it justice here, but I do believe that direct democracy would be a far superior way of approaching the problem than simply having people in power who get to make the rules for everyone else.

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Again, Id much rather leave the decision to someone who can make educated decisions on serious issues I have no business trying to pretend to understand, than risk what the decision would be by a nation who pretended to understand.

Shit, this was fucking LONG! Sorry, dude, you're probably like "Sheesh, she talks too much, my head hurts." So sorry. :( I kinda got into it, and before I knew it hours had passed and all this wordyness was the result. My ass hurts now.

Anyway, Im interested to hear your reply, but I understand if this exchange is getting exhausting. I honestly was expecting to just write a quick reply but I just got carried away cuz I was so interested in our discussion. Again, I do apologize for how long my reply is. :stoned:

Nice forum, ermitonto I learned alot just by reading the back and forth you had with just a few people, makes one wonder how much we could learn by large scale discussions of this sort. I'd like to thank you for the new light i now see the idea of anarcy in, I guess I always assumed the worst, now that I've seen more info on the subject it reminds me of alot of bhuddist ideals, only on a more seccular scale. Thanks again for the forum and I think you will be pleased to know that the whole thing made me think of what Lennon was trying to say with "Imagine"

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Originally Posted by Ousted

Anyway, Im interested to hear your reply, but I understand if this exchange is getting exhausting. I honestly was expecting to just write a quick reply but I just got carried away cuz I was so interested in our discussion. Again, I do apologize for how long my reply is. :stoned:

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I would like to reply to all of this, but I just don't have the time right now, and I just sliced my finger on a pair of scissors so it kind of hurts to type. Maybe I'll work on a proper reply tomorrow. You make some interesting points, but it's clear you still don't see how destructive domination and class society is, and you're still trying to blame the poor for their poverty. The fact is, in any society, no matter how many people are hard-working and want to get ahead, the vast majority of them will be poor. Capitalism by its very nature concentrates power and money into the hands of a few, and it's been getting more and more concentrated as time goes by. It would be impossible for a majority of the population to be rich, no matter how hard they work. Bill Gates owns more than the bottom 45 percent of American households alone. The most successful actors make millions, but no farmer could never dream to get that kind of money, even though they're some of the hardest working people on the planet and their work is absolutely essential to the proper functioning of society. This has not been the case in any anarchist society in history. And no anarchic society has descended into the kind of apathetic laziness and indifference to consequences that you fear. I urge you to look at what happened in the communes of the Spanish Civil War, and the Makhnovshchino during the Russian Revolution. Maybe it could give you some perspective on how much better society could function if we gave up all this pointless competition and embraced each other instead.

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Originally Posted by Esoteric416

Nice forum, ermitonto I learned alot just by reading the back and forth you had with just a few people, makes one wonder how much we could learn by large scale discussions of this sort. I'd like to thank you for the new light i now see the idea of anarcy in, I guess I always assumed the worst, now that I've seen more info on the subject it reminds me of alot of bhuddist ideals, only on a more seccular scale. Thanks again for the forum and I think you will be pleased to know that the whole thing made me think of what Lennon was trying to say with "Imagine"

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Indeed, Lennon admitted that his song was influenced by the principles of anarcho-communism. In fact, it's one of my favorite songs. I'm always pleased to know that I've helped someone realize what the true aims of anarchism are. Check out some of the links in my signature if you want to know more.