• KevonLooney
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    10 months ago

    True, but the concept of an Anarchist government is also an oxymoron. Somebody has to make or carry out decisions in any group larger than 30 people. Even if the association is voluntary (like a club or sports team), there are leaders.

    AnCaps just take the mental gymnastics to the next level.

    • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      Not sure I entirely agree with that. FOSS is an excellent example of what Anarchism could look like; experts and those doing the work are the ones who make decisions, but anyone can fork it and there’s no actual power being held by devs over users. That’s not really a government.

      Decentralized, horizontal structures are still structures, but can be fully Anarchist. Anarchism isn’t just the absence of structure, it’s a complex web of flat structures.

      • KevonLooney
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        10 months ago

        Voluntary association isn’t anarchism by itself. That’s just a club or volunteer organization. Anarchism specifically advocates for the replacement of the state with voluntary free association. No, your book club isn’t necessarily “Anarchist”.

        Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including nation-states,[1] and capitalism. Anarchism advocates for the replacement of the state with stateless societies and voluntary free associations.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism

        • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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          10 months ago

          Yes, you’re partially correct, but speaking through me rather than to me. There are countless forms of Anarchism, Mutual Aid for example is a structure proposed by Anarcho-Communists. People can freely associate and work together to create FOSS style software. I didn’t say FOSS was Anarchist, but that FOSS is an example of how Anarchism might look.

    • rambling_lunatic@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      Anarchist government isn’t really an oxymoron if the governing is done via direct participatory democracy. There would probably be people in charge of carrying out specific policies (and indeed that is what we see in IRL examples like the Makhnovshina or the Neozapatista GALs), but doing something is not the same as deciding what to do. I have seen comrades talk about organizing councils in large regions through delegates that work on this principle. They aren’t supposed to make decisions for the smaller regions they represent like congressmen. Instead, the regions internally discuss what they would like and then send a guy or gal to advocate for the policies they agreed on. Anarchists see “the state” as a top-down structure where some people have power over others and preserve that power through a monopoly on violence. A form of government where no one has the power to make decisions for other people wouldn’t really be a state by this definition.

      Ancaps do be insane.

      Thank you for tolerating my wall of text. It may seem like a waste of time, but ambiguity wastes more time later on. Cheers.