Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> And doesn't this take 100% consensus? In a crowd of 1000, all you
> need is one wiseguy to cause trouble. Suppose you have a crowd of 300
> who don't agree with the other 700? This model of anarchism sounds
> like a fantasy of perfect transparency and harmony - a completely
> impossible fantasy.
If I may translate your argument, I think it can be stated more simply as "There will be sociopaths, and we need a government to control them." (I take it you are not talking about simple disagreements and misunderstandings, for which there are obivously other possibilities of resolution than government force.)
Our present system of controlling sociopaths is to put them in charge of our communities as governors; fighting fire with fire, to to speak. But this doesn't work very well, as we can see from the present crisis, where one group of sociopaths is preparing to wipe out another group of sociopaths, and a few hundred thousand other people as well who happen to be in the neighborhood. I would think the 20th century would have cured us of any illusions about this method of controlling sociopathy.
Furthermore, the attractive argument of safety in conservatism ("Better the devil we know than the devil we don't know") doesn't operate in this area. It is clear that the danger of allowing sociopaths to govern us runs greater and greater dangers, as advances in technology put greater and great powers into their hands and the hands of their competitors and emulators. This devil is always new and strange and more dangerous.
"Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>:
> The dialectic of argument goes l;ikle this. What about cdases of determined
> noncompliers, the bullies you hear about in some small towns, at the
> extreme, serial killers, at a more normal level, jerks who want others to
> work for them while hey laya bout contributing nothing, not even art (say).
> Oh, the anarchist answers, such people will be very view. I think there will
> be more than you do, say the democrat, but suppose you are right, what will
> you do with them--even a few of them can be a problem. What will you use,
> harsh language? Yes, says the anarchist, and if that doesn't work, other
> sorts of social pressure. Ostracism, boycotts, no one will feed the bum. The
> democrat says, and that just provides violently antisocial behavior, maybe
> you'll kill him? After all, there are no laws for lynching to be against.
> That won't be necessary very often, says the anarchist.
>
> Well, set aside lynching, continues the democrat, you're telling me
> ostracism and boycotts aren't coercive? Yes they are, admits the anarchist,
> but it makesa difference that they're not carried out by the state. Sure it
> does, say the democrat,a difference for the worse. If you get screwed up by
> state coercion in a democracy, you have procedures for appeals,
> rectification, civil rights laws suits abd the like. Under anarchy you have
> no recourse against your possibily bigoted or obnoxious neighbors. Well,
> says the anarchist, I think people will be better than that under anarchy,
> and anyway most conduct will be carried out in a genuinely voluntary and
> noncoercive way. The democrat says, most conduct under democracy is
> voluntary and noncoercive, or anyway doesn't involve state coercion; the
> problem is is with those who test the limits.
>
> The anarchist says, it comes down to this, you are a pessimistic
> essentialista bout human beings. No, says the democrat, you are an
> optimsitic malleabilist and an individualsit; you havcen'y given thought to
> institutional incentives to getting compliance.
>
> And that's as far as I have taken it. Why don't we start there?
I'm actually pessimistic about human beings. I think any rational consideration of their prospects can lead only to the conclusion that they are an malformed and doomed species, accidently produced under some odd circumstance by the blind forces of evolution, to run wild on the earth for a little time and then to meet an early extinction. However, except for the closing Goetterdaemmerung, this prospect is boring, so I prefer to work on the admittedly long chance that there is some hope. If there is hope, it cannot possibly be in continuing to follow and obey the sociopathy of power, of death, terror and destruction, that is, the works of the State. State systems, including democratic ones, are not going to work, because they are based on coercion and violence, and thus attract exactly the sociopathic personalities and impulses which they are supposed to control. This is not just theory: it is what we observe. You can see it on television tonight, if you can bear to watch it.
By a process of elimination, we arrive at anarchy, that is, freedom, and the question is not whether anarchy is preferable to some other system, but simply how to achieve it, how to get it working before everyone is dead, unless of course one prefers to be dead, as many people seem to. I have had some ideas about an anarchist praxis, but they involve starting at the bottom, not the top, and thus, I suppose, aren't very interesting as items for theoretical play. But I don't see much of anything good or salvageable in the existing superstructure and so it is quite true that I don't give any thought to institutional incentives to obtain compliance or anything else. The point is to get rid of the prison, not spruce it up.
-- Gordon