Quote 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?
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:
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.
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?
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.

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.
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.

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?
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.

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.
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.

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.
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.

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

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.
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.

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?
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.

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.
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.

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.
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.