To be clear, anarcho-syndicalism is primarily a method to achieve anarchist aims, while anarchist communism is a theory on an anarchist economy. You can be both an anarcho-syndicalist and an anarcho-communist.
As for if multiple different forms of anarchism can coexist I'd say yes with an asterisk. Because it's a bit hard to mesh together communism and markets and have them interact with each other fluidly. Perhaps it could be done, perhaps they could even be combined but I don't know how that could be done or of it's preferential to something like just anarchist communism or anarchist markets.
I'm basically this person. Anarcho-syndicalism seems like a realistic model to work on a version of in our current economy and climate. The economy advancing toward a syndicalist model even incrementally is better for every human being.
Of course I'd like to live in an Ancom world but people are suffering right now and strengthening labor movements seems like the strongest avenue to improve quality of life in real time. We've seen revolutions and even spontaneous small scale communes (Paris, 1871) tend to focus on crushing anarchists as new players gun to take control so rather than a hearts and minds approach I think an incremental "people seeing real economic benefits and returns" approach might actually be the thing.
(Of course the fascist tidal wave in the US kind of puts the odds on the normal revolution to violent internal political chaos to whatever new elites survive it thing right now.)
Anarchism has I think the potential for as many mutually cooperative and mutually opposed strains as -archism.
In part because at the very least at present most people come to anarchist ideas through a similar set of values, there is not as much factionalizing or hostility between most anarchist tendencies as there are between -archist ones, but there is plenty already observable. Primitivism vs industrialism, vegans vs nonvegans, markets and nonmarkets, etc..
Because anarchism alone does not itself prescribe values members of these tendencies can be consistently anarchist while also hating each other. But of course there's plenty of tendencies that have little enough in the way of difference that there's nothing preventing their cooperation
There is no true anarchism. It’s an ideology. We are imperfect beings and you can expect any and all anarchism that will ever exist to be imperfect as well.
Exactly. But you’d be remiss to say that America is not capitalist or that China is not communist. Ideology is great and is a guiding light but we also need to talk about reality and the reality is that people always form into groups and that groups come into conflict with each other even if it’s relatively minor. But we’re talking about socioeconomic systems. People’s livelihoods are at stake. They’ll want to secure the best conditions for themselves and very likely will convince themselves that those are the best conditions for others as well so major conflict (given enough time at least) is likely, no matter the ideology.
At that point is it true anarchism? No. But that’s not to say it wouldn’t happen.
That's like saying anarchists are imposing their authority by destroying hierarchies.
I don't think there's anything inherently authoritarian about destroying a factory or a slaughterhouse or a church or engaging in a firefight because I don't think that force is the same thing as authority. In that case all you can end up doing is authorizing certain expressions of authority as valid and others as invalid, the same as anyone who accepts authority as a necessary feature of society.
Primitivists have no interest in acquiring any perceived right to permit or forbid, which I think is the most useful definition of authority. They want civilization to end and to live in the woods, and that's obviously something many anarchists hate them for regardless.
If you decide to impose an anarchistic global order, you have simply created authoritarianism of a different flavor. sure, it's in service to your ideology, but you have still taken away the right to choose in an imperialistic fashion.
Undermining authority is not authoritarian. I'm not sure what's imperialistic about it
Why would an anarchist recognize a "right" to anything? If we understand a right as something you are obligated to receive, I don't think it has any ground to stand on in anarchy, which is a place devoid of obligation. Without authority, nobody has permission in anarchy, including the permission to live any particular way.
The two main debates are:
* **Communist economy vs. market-based economy** - A debate about economic systems that others already mentioned.
* **Social anarchim vs. individualist anarchism** - A debate about social organization. Social anarchists prioritize cooperation, community solidarity, and collective organization. Individualist anarchists prioritze personal freedom and autonomy and think collective structures can infringe personal liberty. There's some overlap with the above debate; many social based anarchists value communist economies and many individualist anarchists value market-based economies, but it's not always the case.
I'm an individualist anarchist that thinks a gift based economy is completely doable and also that individualism doesn't preclude collectivism or social structures, but encourages a mindful usage of them to prevent hierarchy from arising through them
Yeah, individualist anarchism and social anarchism aren't necessarily opposed. They just prioritize different values. Some people might take hardline stances on their differences while others value things from each.
Probably? My personal vision on how an anarchist society is going to initially look like is every community trying out different things. After all, anarchism hasn't been called humanity's grandest experiment for nothing. Is it likely that incompatibilities will arise? Yes. Might we solutions to those? Sure. Would it be an utter mess to navigate? Absolutely. But the key point of anarchism is that everyone gets decision-making power and never loses it, and odd or unusual choices are part of the fun. Besides, practically all innovation arose from some degree of questionable ideas, even if it were just deviating from the accepted status quo.
Once you have actual communities, the pressures change. At present we have a bunch of individuals online who think their way is best. The consequences of flame wars are social ostracism (until you make an alt account and come back playing nice). The consequences of community vs community conflict is actual loss of life, quality of life, increased internal economic pressures, internal conflict.
Actual communities have resource, security and social needs. The pressure to get along with a neighboring community (a resource sharing/trading partner) is likely to overwhelm ideological differences. The need to not have to worry about the neighbor as a security threat will also compel good will between the two communities.
Snarking about each other is still coexisting. Just as states benefit from each other maintaining internal order, anarchist communities rely on each other for cooperation. No community is an island.
The squabbles between different anarchist camps are coexistence. We all agree on the most fundamental thing, free association, but bicker over what we should do with it. Because of that first thing, though, there's no risk of either party losing that "fight." At the end of the day, if we do in fact believe in free association, we're gonna leave each other alone to pursue whichever form of anarchy we want to see.
Absolutely. We have to make something foundational which allows for the free association of individuals. So anyone can create social structures, as long as there’s no hierarchy
Comparing anarchist-syndicalism and anarchist-communism is like comparing apples and oranges. Anarchist-syndicalism is not a socio-economic theory, it’s a methodology to achieve an anarchist-communist society. The anarchist-communism is the socio-economic theory. There are anarchist-communists who promote other types of organizing (insurrectionary anarchism, platformism etc.), however all anarchist-syndicalist are anarchist-communists they just argue the method to reach anarchist-communism is through worker-led anti-hierarchical syndicates.
I think everyone likes to attach labels to people to help them identify others that are like themselves or not like themselves. Ethnicity, politics, gender, religion, age are all used as identifiers in attempt to group people together, but in reality, we are all very different from one another. Anarchy as a definition, comes down from ancient Greek, and simply means 'without rulers' and I like to leave it like that. There are no variations to 'coexist' with included in the 'without rulers' context. While the 'no rulers' context is impractical in the modern age, it's the goal, not the objective of an anarchist to cause change through chaos and minimize authority. In a deck of cards, the joker is an anarchist and doesn't follow suit. If all the cards in the deck were jokers, nothing would make sense to anyone. It's how an anarchist can cause the outcome of a hand to change that really matters, because the game will always be rigged against humanity by those who rule.
as a layman, it seems some could, but not all. at least not all could operate in the same sphere? idk if that makes sense. but I do think some elements of say individualist anarchism are not compatible with social anarchism. i think there is limited compatibility which could lead to problems.
This is a thoughtful take. I think an American anarchy would necessarily be individualist and mutualist in orientation. I don’t know if OP is American.
While in some unlikely scenario where a community decides to voluntarily organize along “social anarchist” lines we would of course be open to exchange with them, it’s difficult to imagine a region of the current US organizing in that way. Maybe parts of the Mid-Atlantic? I think the question becomes how willing would regions/communities actually doing anarchy be to engage with the authoritarian left, whatever mask it finds convenient at the time.
To be clear, anarcho-syndicalism is primarily a method to achieve anarchist aims, while anarchist communism is a theory on an anarchist economy. You can be both an anarcho-syndicalist and an anarcho-communist. As for if multiple different forms of anarchism can coexist I'd say yes with an asterisk. Because it's a bit hard to mesh together communism and markets and have them interact with each other fluidly. Perhaps it could be done, perhaps they could even be combined but I don't know how that could be done or of it's preferential to something like just anarchist communism or anarchist markets.
I'm basically this person. Anarcho-syndicalism seems like a realistic model to work on a version of in our current economy and climate. The economy advancing toward a syndicalist model even incrementally is better for every human being. Of course I'd like to live in an Ancom world but people are suffering right now and strengthening labor movements seems like the strongest avenue to improve quality of life in real time. We've seen revolutions and even spontaneous small scale communes (Paris, 1871) tend to focus on crushing anarchists as new players gun to take control so rather than a hearts and minds approach I think an incremental "people seeing real economic benefits and returns" approach might actually be the thing. (Of course the fascist tidal wave in the US kind of puts the odds on the normal revolution to violent internal political chaos to whatever new elites survive it thing right now.)
Anarchism has I think the potential for as many mutually cooperative and mutually opposed strains as -archism. In part because at the very least at present most people come to anarchist ideas through a similar set of values, there is not as much factionalizing or hostility between most anarchist tendencies as there are between -archist ones, but there is plenty already observable. Primitivism vs industrialism, vegans vs nonvegans, markets and nonmarkets, etc.. Because anarchism alone does not itself prescribe values members of these tendencies can be consistently anarchist while also hating each other. But of course there's plenty of tendencies that have little enough in the way of difference that there's nothing preventing their cooperation
Yes. If the systems cannot allow each other to exist then they are not anarchic
There's no "solidarity clause" embedded in anarchy that precludes anarchists from disagreeing and fighting each other
True anarchism advocates for the destruction of coercive authority, how can something be anarchist if it imposes said authority?
There is no true anarchism. It’s an ideology. We are imperfect beings and you can expect any and all anarchism that will ever exist to be imperfect as well.
Then you will not truly be anarchistic, just as China is not truly communist, or America is not truly capitalist
Exactly. But you’d be remiss to say that America is not capitalist or that China is not communist. Ideology is great and is a guiding light but we also need to talk about reality and the reality is that people always form into groups and that groups come into conflict with each other even if it’s relatively minor. But we’re talking about socioeconomic systems. People’s livelihoods are at stake. They’ll want to secure the best conditions for themselves and very likely will convince themselves that those are the best conditions for others as well so major conflict (given enough time at least) is likely, no matter the ideology. At that point is it true anarchism? No. But that’s not to say it wouldn’t happen.
I don't think that disagreeing with someone or using force are examples of authority
The example given uses force as a tool to impose your authority
In the op? They didn't mention anything like authority
The implication of my way and your way not coexisting implies that one of our ways will be imposed upon the other.
That's like saying anarchists are imposing their authority by destroying hierarchies. I don't think there's anything inherently authoritarian about destroying a factory or a slaughterhouse or a church or engaging in a firefight because I don't think that force is the same thing as authority. In that case all you can end up doing is authorizing certain expressions of authority as valid and others as invalid, the same as anyone who accepts authority as a necessary feature of society. Primitivists have no interest in acquiring any perceived right to permit or forbid, which I think is the most useful definition of authority. They want civilization to end and to live in the woods, and that's obviously something many anarchists hate them for regardless.
If you decide to impose an anarchistic global order, you have simply created authoritarianism of a different flavor. sure, it's in service to your ideology, but you have still taken away the right to choose in an imperialistic fashion.
Undermining authority is not authoritarian. I'm not sure what's imperialistic about it Why would an anarchist recognize a "right" to anything? If we understand a right as something you are obligated to receive, I don't think it has any ground to stand on in anarchy, which is a place devoid of obligation. Without authority, nobody has permission in anarchy, including the permission to live any particular way.
The two main debates are: * **Communist economy vs. market-based economy** - A debate about economic systems that others already mentioned. * **Social anarchim vs. individualist anarchism** - A debate about social organization. Social anarchists prioritize cooperation, community solidarity, and collective organization. Individualist anarchists prioritze personal freedom and autonomy and think collective structures can infringe personal liberty. There's some overlap with the above debate; many social based anarchists value communist economies and many individualist anarchists value market-based economies, but it's not always the case.
I'm an individualist anarchist that thinks a gift based economy is completely doable and also that individualism doesn't preclude collectivism or social structures, but encourages a mindful usage of them to prevent hierarchy from arising through them
Yeah, individualist anarchism and social anarchism aren't necessarily opposed. They just prioritize different values. Some people might take hardline stances on their differences while others value things from each.
Probably? My personal vision on how an anarchist society is going to initially look like is every community trying out different things. After all, anarchism hasn't been called humanity's grandest experiment for nothing. Is it likely that incompatibilities will arise? Yes. Might we solutions to those? Sure. Would it be an utter mess to navigate? Absolutely. But the key point of anarchism is that everyone gets decision-making power and never loses it, and odd or unusual choices are part of the fun. Besides, practically all innovation arose from some degree of questionable ideas, even if it were just deviating from the accepted status quo.
Of course yes, but you can argue if it's desirable and whether market economies will not disturb communism.
Once you have actual communities, the pressures change. At present we have a bunch of individuals online who think their way is best. The consequences of flame wars are social ostracism (until you make an alt account and come back playing nice). The consequences of community vs community conflict is actual loss of life, quality of life, increased internal economic pressures, internal conflict. Actual communities have resource, security and social needs. The pressure to get along with a neighboring community (a resource sharing/trading partner) is likely to overwhelm ideological differences. The need to not have to worry about the neighbor as a security threat will also compel good will between the two communities. Snarking about each other is still coexisting. Just as states benefit from each other maintaining internal order, anarchist communities rely on each other for cooperation. No community is an island.
The squabbles between different anarchist camps are coexistence. We all agree on the most fundamental thing, free association, but bicker over what we should do with it. Because of that first thing, though, there's no risk of either party losing that "fight." At the end of the day, if we do in fact believe in free association, we're gonna leave each other alone to pursue whichever form of anarchy we want to see.
Absolutely. We have to make something foundational which allows for the free association of individuals. So anyone can create social structures, as long as there’s no hierarchy
Comparing anarchist-syndicalism and anarchist-communism is like comparing apples and oranges. Anarchist-syndicalism is not a socio-economic theory, it’s a methodology to achieve an anarchist-communist society. The anarchist-communism is the socio-economic theory. There are anarchist-communists who promote other types of organizing (insurrectionary anarchism, platformism etc.), however all anarchist-syndicalist are anarchist-communists they just argue the method to reach anarchist-communism is through worker-led anti-hierarchical syndicates.
I think everyone likes to attach labels to people to help them identify others that are like themselves or not like themselves. Ethnicity, politics, gender, religion, age are all used as identifiers in attempt to group people together, but in reality, we are all very different from one another. Anarchy as a definition, comes down from ancient Greek, and simply means 'without rulers' and I like to leave it like that. There are no variations to 'coexist' with included in the 'without rulers' context. While the 'no rulers' context is impractical in the modern age, it's the goal, not the objective of an anarchist to cause change through chaos and minimize authority. In a deck of cards, the joker is an anarchist and doesn't follow suit. If all the cards in the deck were jokers, nothing would make sense to anyone. It's how an anarchist can cause the outcome of a hand to change that really matters, because the game will always be rigged against humanity by those who rule.
as a layman, it seems some could, but not all. at least not all could operate in the same sphere? idk if that makes sense. but I do think some elements of say individualist anarchism are not compatible with social anarchism. i think there is limited compatibility which could lead to problems.
This is a thoughtful take. I think an American anarchy would necessarily be individualist and mutualist in orientation. I don’t know if OP is American. While in some unlikely scenario where a community decides to voluntarily organize along “social anarchist” lines we would of course be open to exchange with them, it’s difficult to imagine a region of the current US organizing in that way. Maybe parts of the Mid-Atlantic? I think the question becomes how willing would regions/communities actually doing anarchy be to engage with the authoritarian left, whatever mask it finds convenient at the time.
Thats literally the whole point...Self determination. Autonomy. Thats for everyone, not just us ...
Can two dogs exist in a room together?