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this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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Most people have a very flaws understanding of anarchism. It absolutely is NOT a society without rules, that's chaos and where the most physically powerful will rule, which is objectively a terrible thing and a big step backwards.
Anarchism is not really a system of government, but the philosophical belief that there should not be a heiarchy in societal laws. It can be applied in many different forms of goverment, most commonly with democracy but there are plenty of anarcho-communist out there. The gist is that systems that promote one group being shown favor, especially at the expense of another, should be dismantled. And what replaces it should be set up to serve and protect all people evenly.
This usually means police abolition and refocusing that energy on the underlining reasons people break "the law". Like providing a minimum level of housing, income and food to all.
I can't summerize the books succiently, but if you are interested The Dispossed and The Conquest of Bread deals with more examples.
Just echoing Ursula K Le Guin's The Dispossessed is an fantastic read. It does a great job of contrasting anarchism with hierarchical societies without really playing favorites.
Her entire body of work is just fantastic, honestly my favorite author. I just finished The Lathe of Heaven the other day and really appreciate her sociological approach to sci-fi.
She was also Alfred Kroeber's daughter, who, if you don't know, was one of the principal reasons why UC Berkeley has one of the world's premiere anthropology departments. In light of that, the environment in which she was raised, her body of work makes a lot of sense.
Do these people really believe only homeless and poor people are hurting other people?
Of course no one believes that, don't make hyperbolic strawmen. But you can't deny that poverty definitely drives a nontrivial percentage of crimes, and we have plenty enough resources to end poverty. Let's do that, and the remaining actual sociopaths can stay in prison for life. (But also let's make prison no longer a place where we torture and enslave people.)
Many conversations I've had with leftist here on lemmy have resulted in them claiming that all crime is either a crime of greed or poverty. No hyperbole. It's infuriating trying to talk with some of them on these topics because they simply will not accept that there are other forms of crime or violence... No crimes of passion, etc.
That's only for economic crime, think theft. There can only be theft out of greed or necessity. The handful of cleptomaniacs that steal for personal satisfaction are such a small percentage that it's not worth discussing.
Anything like a crime of passion is probably murder or something along those lines. Less directly related to money.
No honest leftist I've ever talked to has denied that, but they're largely not relevant to the ideas around the restructure of society. Any system is gonna have an angry spouse making horrible choices.
Of course. No true Scotsman. Right.
No true Scotsman would claim I'm making that argument because they're full of it. I'm not claiming that those people wouldn't be real leftists. I'm saying they aren't real.
🤣
Crimes of greed and poverty make up the vast majority of crimes though. And hierarchical systems do a shitty job of preventing those crimes anyway (since they focus on individual punishment rather than communal restoration of justice).
How do you not see the irony here?
Can you explain it to me? Genuine question.
I state that there are leftist who try to claim all crime is of type X. It is blatantly obvious to everyone, except apparently leftist, that crime is not all of type X. You come in and say "yeah, but bro most is type X."
You can't leave it alone. This isn't a position you need to defend. Holy shit. That's not even the worst of it... The biggest problem is that most things of type X that are the worst for society aren't even crimes in most countries and yet you Lazer focus on the wording like it's a magic enchantment.
Totally missing the forest for the trees.
The irony, is that on a post I made about lemmy leftist making bad arguments about crime, you replied with a leftist position and a bad argument about crime. I can't make this up.
So, what is in your opinion the major reasonS for people committing crime? Or do you think it is evenly distributed, so you can't properly study that stuff.
And how would you personally prevent crime?
It is the easiest thing in the world to defend the status quo by pointig out that alternatives haven't been formulated to the most minute detail.
🤣
Forrest for the trees.
Instead of being rude, you could just - you know - engage a bit here? Or are you jpst here to dunk on people's beliefs?
Hardly. To either. You are the one who injected themselves into the conversation here.
I'm sorry that I was engaging with a conversation that didn't include you and you had to come tell me how I was wrong.
Welcome to Lemmy, I guess? 🤷
Don't bring up German idioms to him, it's a touchy subject for him.
Aww, now you're trying to own me by digging up old comments? You're adorable! ^^
They won't because they can't. How to deal with people who aren't nice is one of the biggest flaws in anarchist theory. Because there is no way to see whether their theory of "people will all turn into nice humans without a state" is actually true.
It's basically an axiom of their ideology and some anarchists straight out reject all psychological or sociological theories that suggest humans aren't naturally good.
In my experience most anarchists either just live with the fact that violence has to be accepted (I would put Stirner into that group, for example).
Or they believe in vigilante justice. So neighbours watching and judging each other. Which only works - again - if you believe the absolute majority of people will not seek to exploit or overpower each other.
Who will put them into prison though and run the prison if there's no police?
Who will pay for the prison?
Prisons don't work.
But that's what the person I reacted to suggested: