> Anarchists believe in unmediated relations between free individuals, the absence of any coercive or alienating forces in societies, and an unquestionable, universal right to self-determination.<p>If that sounds difficult to implement, I agree! I'm an anarchist because I think the principles so succinctly put are a good pole star for my personal life. At the scale of society I see Marxism as just as important. How to square the two? I don't know<p>How to make a political program out of anarchism? I don't know, but I think it'll be possible with the right philosophical and scientific mindset. I think it would be a mindset quite radically different from how we currently approach the world.<p>There are some immediate problems to ponder. For example, my fist is an unmediated relation between individuals. Does the idea of free individual preclude it? You can't base your politics only on what you think ought to be, but also how it ought to change when there is a violation of that preferred condition. Clearly there are times when a good anarchist (whatever that is) will throw a punch, and how ought an anarchist society deal with that?<p>I like The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin as a thoughtful examination of society that tries to grapple with such small and dirty questions. As well as bigger questions of course.<p>In that quote, I don't see a solution, or a goal, but an orientation. It frames the world in a way that asks you to focus on certain possibilities that might seem remote, but have existed and will exist so long as humanity exists. That's why I'm an anarchist and why I like and agree with this piece.
This is awfully childish.<p>Anywhere you have two or more people "asserting a direct and unobstructed link between thought and action, between desires and their free fulfillment" you are going to have conflict... which means not everyone is going to be able to get and do everything and anything they want.<p>Notice that this has nothing to do with democracy. It's an inevitable consequence of the existence of people who want things.
With all due respect I would have liked if the hackernews moderators had kept my original headline "An Anarchist Critique of Democracy by Moxie Marlinspike (Signal SMS), Windy Hart"<p>I thought this article/transcript was of interest to hackernews in a large part due to one of the two authors being the author of the Open Whisper Systems Signal SMS app.
A list of things that are wrong is pretty boring without plausible alternatives. Like, even if you're right, it doesn't matter because we're not comparing The Bad Thing to The Absence Of All Those Bad Things. That's trivial, of course bad things are bad.<p>We're comparing The Bad Thing to A Different Set of Tradeoffs. That's the part I want to see.
"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." - Winston S Churchill, November 11, 1947<p>Source: <a href="https://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form-of-government/" rel="nofollow">https://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-...</a>
If the relations between free individuals is unmediated, they can interact in any way they choose. So if a group agrees to pool their resources and impose their collective will on others, then you just lost your anarchy. To eliminate "coercive forces", you'd need to ensure that no group or individual can acquire leverage over another.
They list lots of problems inherent in democracy. Then, in the conclusion, they hint that the next show/article is going to describe a reasonable system that doesn't have those problems.<p>But I can't find the next episode anywhere.
With all due respect, if this is the best the anarchists have (and this article is from a respected individual and is decently written), you're fucked. These critiques are not new or without response. The problem is, this is 1000+ words of arguments about human nature, special pleading, etc, with NO sources. They describe known phenomena like control of the agenda and never call it that, I'm not sure if that's because they aren't aware of that term or they just fon't feel like attributing hundreds if not thousands of years of research before them. It'd be like if someone cloned Signal and acted like Moxie didn't exist.<p>Cite something, anything that scholars who study politics and democracies have written, don't put forward these vague critiques with nothing backing it up. Many arguments that seem intuitive are wrong when faced with evidence, and this article and anarchists in general seem to forget that democracies have certain features (and misfeatures) that are responses to real world situations.<p>Anarchism is a political ideology that's never met the real world, like a lot of ideologies on HN and elsewhere. This might convince the random Internet reader, but it's not going to convince anyone who has studied the topic.<p>Here's a few politics 101 cites that are decent:<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Models-Democracy-3rd-David-Held/dp/0804754721" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Models-Democracy-3rd-David-Held/dp/08...</a><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Its-Critics-Robert-Dahl/dp/0300049382/ref=pd_sim_14_5?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0300049382&pd_rd_r=P9Q9DD56X4WQMGMMHWWB&pd_rd_w=2SjSW&pd_rd_wg=7b7k2&psc=1&refRID=P9Q9DD56X4WQMGMMHWWB" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Its-Critics-Robert-Dahl/dp/...</a><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Second-Robert-Dahl/dp/0300194463/ref=pd_sim_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0300194463&pd_rd_r=P9Q9DD56X4WQMGMMHWWB&pd_rd_w=2SjSW&pd_rd_wg=7b7k2&psc=1&refRID=P9Q9DD56X4WQMGMMHWWB" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Second-Robert-Dahl/dp/03001...</a><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Future-Freedom-Illiberal-Democracy-Revised/dp/0393331520" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Future-Freedom-Illiberal-Democracy-Re...</a><p>Could tech people stick to what they are good at, or at least acknowledge the wider world of experience when they are making arguments?
Amazing to see this discussion on HN! Here's another article that I'm pretty fond that explores how modern democracy has failed us and what we might be better off with in its place:<p><a href="https://crimethinc.com/2016/04/29/feature-from-democracy-to-freedom" rel="nofollow">https://crimethinc.com/2016/04/29/feature-from-democracy-to-...</a>
> Direct Democracy Isn’t Anarchy, You Fucks<p>Here's a quick thought experiment:<p>Imagine for the moment that anarchy-- the type with roots in 19th century Europe and fits and starts in Catalonia and Andalusia-- is <i>the key to universal enlightenment and human cooperation</i>. (Not saying it is, just a thought experiment-- humor me.)<p>Now imagine that there is a small but dedicated cabal of evil demons intent on keeping the world from coming to realize this truth. If you were an advisor to the cabal, how would you suggest they use their meager resources?<p>If it were me, here's what I would do:<p>1. Split the demons up and send each to a burgeoning center for anarchy.<p>2. Tell each demon to play up what is idiosyncratic and novel in that particular region's understanding of anarchy. Eschew both clear, standardized terminology and laymen's terms for something that sounds passionate, yet somehow also particular.<p>3. Discourage genre literacy, and don't cite sources.<p>4. Favor novelty over intellectual rigour.<p>5. Develop clever inside jokes.<p>6. When faced with a powerful intellectual adversary, fall back on tribalism.<p>And once the demons are comfortable in their new surroundings, the kicker:<p>7. Convince the demons that it is now safe for them to earnestly <i>believe</i> in their new form of fun-house-mirror anarchism. They are safe to defend and most importantly <i>love</i> the little tribe they have created.<p>Using such a technique, I'm fairly certain I could guide my demons to an easy victory. In the event that any of the disparate anarchist groups tries to band together in a spirit of cooperation or defense against a common adversary, passive-aggressive tribalistic infighting will eat up a critical mass of their resources!<p><i></i>*<p>Now, let's get back to reality and realize there is no such conspiracy to derail anarchism.<p>Still: mission accomplished, no?<p>Edit: wording. Also-- I'm only critiquing the concept of anarchism implicitly espoused by the authors. The anarchists of the early 20th century seemed to have suffered from a much different problem, which was the inability to manufacture enough arms-- to ward off both the fascists <i>and</i> the communists when they retook Barcelona, for example.
“Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time“<p><a href="https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill</a>
That is not the "anarchism" that I have read about in the past?! Did the author just appropriate the name for a different kind of political ideology?<p>Seems like it.
I thought all Anarchist now just called themselves Libertarians?<p>As a Punk Rock Kid I had Anarchist showing up at shows trying to get people to join the movement. Then all the way through the 90s it go crazier. I can;t tell how obnoxious and violent things got. Now 20 years later they are all Libertarians now. It is safe to say I am not a anarchist nor libertarian but I am amazed how many people fail to see the history of anarchy and libertarian thought.<p>Anarchy falls into self-serving narcissism.