Are you an anarchist but not a member of an anarchist organisation?

[Pickman's model]

So, how do you persuade a city like London to become a series of communes? How do deal with issues like transport across the city?

How's it done now?

 

[AmateurAgitator]

How do deal with issues like transport across the city?

I feel I've already kinda given you an answer to this really, but as I say there are books dedicated to all this y'know. They're worth reading aswell.

Here are some titles : The Anarchist Collectives by Sam Dolgoff, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution by Gaston Leval, and With the Peasants of Aragon by Augustin Souchy.

There are other books and resources about this sort of thing that are worth attention aswell.

 

[danny la rouge]

So, how do you persuade a city like London to become a series of communes? How do deal with issues like transport across the city?

A. The problem is rather larger: the whole world needs to be persuaded of the necessity. It’s a task, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth hoping for or trying for.

B. Mail gets around the world without there being an overseeing global postal authority. I post a letter her in Glasgow to my cousin in Melbourne, and the Australian postal workers still deliver it.

 

[danny la rouge]

How's it done now?

Quite badly.

 

[Pickman's model]

Quite badly.

Yes. But it is done without Barnet having more authority than Merton. So any future scheme would have existing aspects of organisation without hierarchy between these potential communes to build on.

 

[teuchter]

Neither Barnet nor Merton organise cross city transport. TfL has authority over both of them on most transport matters.

 

[teuchter]

And transport is much better organised in London than in most other cities in the UK because it has a strong overseeing regulatory authority.

 

[chilango]

Huge swathes of the world have their transport organised on an ad hoc community level, and always have.

 

[Rob Ray]

NB// on a more serious level, the question "what would you do instead" is a largely unanswerable one, inasmuch as you're asking people to outline the operating system of a major city from scratch on a bulletin board. I couldn't do that accurately in detail for actually existing capitalism in any length short of a book, let alone a fully-realised alternative that's never been done before.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

There is absolutely no way that the needs of a large nation could be met on the basis you propose above.

Personally I think with the drive, participation and knowledge of a good number of people, that can grow, that its possible - so worth working towards rather than giving up and facing capitalist barbarism.

 

[Serge Forward]

There is absolutely no way that the needs of a large nation could be met on the basis you propose above.

Not with that attitude.

 

[Spandex]

Mail gets around the world without there being an overseeing global postal authority. I post a letter her in Glasgow to my cousin in Melbourne, and the Australian postal workers still deliver it.

There has been a global postal authority since 1874, the Universal Postal Union. It's been a UN Specialised Agency since 1964.

 

[brogdale]

NB// on a more serious level, the question "what would you do instead" is a largely unanswerable one, inasmuch as you're asking people to outline the operating system of a major city from scratch on a bulletin board. I couldn't do that accurately in detail for actually existing capitalism in any length short of a book, let alone a fully-realised alternative that's never been done before.

Exactly.
But it's the lack of spirit, imagination, ambition or curiosity that gets me about the "how would we [insert anything here]" brigade that gets me.

 

[Rob Ray]

There has been a global postal authority since 1874, the Universal Postal Union. It's been a UN Specialised Agency since 1964.

Which is a federation of postal organisations that replaced the former one-to-one treaties system, rather than a central cabal dictating terms. It may not be anarchist but does point towards a reality that States often agree to forms of federation because it's better than free-for-all competition or top-down dictatorship.

 

[ska invita]

Others may have a different vision but for me its not about burning down the state and all other institutions and building from scratch, its about how broadly existing structures are managed differently politically.

For example if you take state runs services (including ones currently privatised which obviously should be nationalised), in my imagining of it they wouldn't look all that different from a distance. Anarchism doesnt not have levels of responsibility within organisations... my understanding is its all about the importance of the principle of 'recallable delegates' i.e. that anyone given a position of power can have that power easily taken away from them from below.

Maybe i'm not a 'real' anarchist as i think layers of political institution from council to central government are basically unavoidable and would be inevitably recreated in a hypothetical from scratch anarchist utopia simulation. For me its about how those layers are structured and the political mechanisms, rules and principles on which they are run.

 

[JimW]

Always thought those sort of technical organisational things would be the easy bit, federating upwards to appropriate levels of organisation, would expect more trouble from funding/resourcing and conflict of interest resolutions on wider geographic scales. Balancing between resource rich and poor areas too.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

Others may have a different vision but for me its not about burning down the state and all other institutions and building from scratch, its about how broadly existing structures are managed differently politically.

For example if you take state runs services (including ones currently privatised which obviously should be nationalised), in my imagining of it they wouldn't look all that different from a distance. Anarchism doesnt not have levels of responsibility within organisations... my understanding is its all about the importance of the principle of 'recallable delegates' i.e. that anyone given a position of power can have that power easily taken away from them from below.

Maybe i'm not a 'real' anarchist as i think layers of political institution from council to central government are basically unavoidable and would be inevitably recreated in a hypothetical from scratch anarchist utopia simulation. For me its about how those layers are structured and the political mechanisms, rules and principles on which they are run.

Seems very 'libertarian municipalist' to me.

 

[locomotive]

And a dead man with a beard said...

Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism censure. I do not content myself with consulting authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.

If I bow before the authority of the specialists and avow my readiness to follow, to a certain extent and as long as may seem to me necessary, their indications and even their directions, it is because their authority is imposed upon me by no one, neither by men nor by God.

 

[ska invita]

Always thought those sort of technical organisational things would be the easy bit, federating upwards to appropriate levels of organisation, would expect more trouble from funding/resourcing and conflict of interest resolutions on wider geographic scales. Balancing between resource rich and poor areas too.

yes...and borders/political boundaries....

 

[Rob Ray]

Anarchism from within the system sits pretty much in Colin Ward's wheelhouse, seeds beneath the snow and all that. There's a large body of work, most notably from the 1970s-90s, which specifically dug into taking a decentralising/bottom-up approach to everything from schooling to social work and architecture, as reform rather than revolution. Some of that's also being carried on today in academic circles (eg. logistics).

 

[ska invita]

Seems very 'libertarian municipalist' to me.

sounds great to me

 

[The39thStep]

Seems very 'libertarian municipalist' to me.

Is there a country where libertarian municipalism has been introduced successfully?

 

[Rob Ray]

Is there a country where libertarian municipalism has been introduced successfully?

Elements, sure. Best known is probably the Kurds [1][2] who have made some efforts in that direction (albeit with the warping factor of war) and it's been influential in a wide variety of other spheres including the rise of the Indignados, Occupy, Exarchia, the Zapatistas etc. That said, it's always the case that such movements are by the nature of the beast taking place within and besieged by aggressive antagonists in the form of both State and Capital, so implementation and their ultimate limits are full of contradictions, haphazard progress and eventual collapse - which is not to say they aren't worthwhile!

 

[teuchter]

Huge swathes of the world have their transport organised on an ad hoc community level, and always have.

What kind of transport are you talking about here?

 

[Rob Ray]

Pretty much any of the more rural parts of the developing nations will tend to exist without a centralised service, and often without much of a formalised commercial one. Tbh I suspect you could find analogues in Britain if you looked - both State and corporate interests have abandoned or downgraded many of their prior routes these days. Hell poorer people in the village I grew up in who are both shy the money for a taxi and unable to catch a bus past 6pm are either asking a neighbour or not going anywhere.

 

[teuchter]

Pretty much any of the more rural parts of the developing nations will tend to exist without a centralised service, and often without much of a formalised commercial one. Tbh I suspect you could find analogues in Britain if you looked - both State and corporate interests have abandoned or downgraded many of their prior routes these days. Hell poorer people in the village I grew up in who are both shy the money for a taxi and unable to catch a bus past 6pm are either asking a neighbour or not going anywhere.

In other words, places with poor transport.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

Is there a country where libertarian municipalism has been introduced successfully?

Personally it strikes me as just state capitalism in disguise (I certainly don't regard it as libertarian socialism myself and am also of the view that 'state socialism' is an oxymoron). The example thats been put into practice is Rojava and the evidence suggests that its not gone well (and it can't be put down to Turkey and ISIS either), though they do kind of seemed to have maybe achieved some positive things for women. Whats been achieved elsewhere are better examples if you ask me and have achieved some degree of workers' ownership of the means of production and decommodification of the economy, for example - Makhnovist Ukraine, anarchist areas of Spain during the civil war and what the Zapatistas have done etc.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Maybe i'm not a 'real' anarchist as i think layers of political institution from council to central government are basically unavoidable and would be inevitably recreated in a hypothetical from scratch anarchist utopia simulation. For me its about how those layers are structured and the political mechanisms, rules and principles on which they are run.

This is it for me as well. I don't think I'm an anarchist at all nowadays. What you're describing is a state structure. That said structure can be done much better and with far greater accountability from below ought to be a given and would be my aim as a socialist. But we face a spectrum of problems that range right up to the global level, and some kind of confederation with some kind of coercion to stop confederates from cheating one another is needed at every level. To me, that's pretty much definitional of a state structure. Which ones, if any, you actually call 'states' is essentially arbitrary, but generally it is currently arranged along the lines of what level of organisation an army represents. I'd love to move away from that towards other forms of coercion/cooperation, but the essential nature of nested confederations would still remain in some form.

 

[Rob Ray]

In other words, places with poor transport.

Not necessarily, just places without options provided by capitalism or State services, in which the solution has been to rely on community self-organisation. Some of which is doubtless very bad, sure, but some is quite good - in fact the Campaign For Better Transport actively includes them within its main future-visioning document. Tbh you're supporting my point more than your own with this one given that we're both talking about a situation in which neither capitalism nor State intervention is capable of providing a vital service but a decentralised form of solidarity is.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

I have many interests, each, in the fullness of time, gets their turn.

Also based on importance, fringe politics comes way down the list.

If you really are interested in it (which I very much doubt) theres plenty of reading material and other resources available on it so its something you should definitely have a proper understanding of.

But it seems to me that you're very keen to dismiss something that you don't have a proper understanding of.