I don't think it's a derail. I think for any form of libertarianism to work as a political ideology, it needs to be backed by a view of humans as inherently able and willing to cooperate. But of course we're also capable of venality and selfishness, and all of us are shaped by our environments.
I definitely agree with this
I'd have to look at the New Hampshire example. But for me the state is ultimately negative and keeps inequality, injustice and the class system etc in place and will always be unfairly and unnecessarily repressive in some way - that it will always do these things. So it seems to me that it has to be dissolved, but definitely needs to be replaced - with organs of self-goverment like the commune (free federations of worker's assemblies and councils).
He's got different politics to mine, but I think I might be right in saying that he's kind of influenced by Kropotkin in some way.
bigflameuk.wordpress.com
Those communes would need to come together to make big decisions, though. To coordinate our response to the climate crisis, for instance, but more generally because we operate in a world of finite resources. How do motorways or railway lines get maintained? Who regulates air travel? How do we manage pollution, in particular the kind of activity that produces externalities? How do we regulate fishing? Ultimately, some things like climate change and biodiversity need a global response coordinated at a global level. We'd need large-scale organisations to coordinate an equitable distribution of resources worldwide while we sort out the various fuck-ups.
I found a free version of this btw.
I suppose that there's a clearer split between anarchism and marxism on the political side (although even there they're not necessarily mutually exclusive), whereas a lot of anarchism's compatible with marxist economics, so there's less need to reinvent the wheel? Cafiero's Compendium, for instance. I think Kropotkin and Malatesta might have had some critiques of Marx's economics, but then I'm not hugely fascinated by the economic stuff myself so not an expert there.
Completely agree. That’s what sci-hub is, by the way — like piratebay for academic papers. That’s why I was surprised the sci-hub link wasn’t working, but sci-hub does get IPs blocking its proxies regularly.
Ok, I've read this now. Some thoughts:
Yes, and I'm saying that it looks for all the world that orca (and humpback whales, and probably others) do that. They coordinate closely (incredibly closely), evaluate carefully, have clearly defined roles, which they can switch as necessary, and have a very clearly defined end goal that they are all working towards from the start as part of a hunting process that often involves multiple stages. In addition, each hunt is a little different and involves different stages, so they have some way of communicating their joint intention on that particular hunt to one another. We don't know enough about orca communication to say exactly how they do this, but we can know that they do it from their observed behaviour.
Communes could confederate if they needed to but they wouldn't have to be states.
Ok so setting aside how we get there from here (a big question!), communes would not only need to confederate, there would also need to be some kind of mechanism in place to ensure compliance with whatever it is they agree to jointly. How do you protect your system against malicious actors?
Yeah you're right, it wouldn't work. How did I not see it before? I'm jacking in this libertarian crap now and I owe it all to you.
Fwiw, while it's a bit heavy on the academic side, I remember the Abolishing the Police book from Dog Section Press had some interesting stuff thinking through what it'd actually look like - the "Policing and coercion - what are the alternatives?" chapter is probably the one to go for here.
Certainly capitalism very much moulds people's minds and how they behave and its a very significant factor that we have to deal with. And certainly if the revolution happened I guess there would proably be the need for a kind of transition from lower phase communism/socialism, hopefully onto a higher phase of communism, and that would probably be based around economics I guess. Thats how it seems to me anyway.
If you’re theorising, though, it’s not enough to say “if it happens”. It won’t happen based on subjectified norms that currently exist. For too many people, the society you propose is literally unthinkable. Literally. Existing norms have to be addressed explicitly and psychologically to change this.
I'm sure theres some truth to what you say and I don't know why you'd assume that I haven't yet considered that people would have to change their thinking etc. But then I don't use words like 'subjectified' so what do I know? Nice crystal ball btw.
There was a question in there. How do you protect your system from malicious actors? What would a confederation of communes look like? I don't think it's an unreasonable question.
Interesting but not quite what I was getting at. I was thinking more along the lines of resource distribution between groups, how you ensure equitable systems across regions and the entire world, how you ensure compliance at the group level, and how you tackle the big existential issues that we face collectively.
You seem to be finding problems where really there are none in a sense. I don't think its too hard to envision how it would work.
