I don't know of any society in
> world history which has not had some form of "government" or
> self-regulating entity.
The question is whether those "governments" are hierarchical power
structures applying violence and threats of violence. If not, you're
talking about anarchistic societies organized around cooperation, etc.
Peaceful and productive anarchy is IMHO a
> utopian dream unsupported by the historical record or by our
> understanding of human nature.
>
My (rather vague) impression of world history is this: there have
been many, many anarchistic societies that worked very well. Some
were destroyed from without, but none to my knowledge self-
destructed. On the other hand, experiments in hierarchical
civilization (i.e., patriarchies), when they're not destroyed by
another patriarchy, tend to self-destruct. Our present particular
version is arguably self-destructing as we speak. Are we going to
replace it with yet another society structured around hierarchical
violence? If not, why support what we already know doesn't work (by
voting to decide who controls the bombs, etc.)?
What aspects of human nature require hierarchical violence?
Brian
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mon Nov 14 15:00:06 MST 1994
Mon, 14 Nov 94 17:03:04 GMT-5
From: "Brian A. Luke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Organization: University of Dayton
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 1994 17:02:22 EST
Subject: RE: anarchy
> Are you seriously asserting that without a criminal justice
> system there would be less crime?
Yes. The primary purpose of the criminal justice system (i.e., the
police/prison system backed by the military) is political repression,
including in the US strike-breaking, putting down dissent by the
people, etc. But, it helps to have the people's tacit support for
this, so they make up a story about helping people keep down anti-
social behavior, or "crime." To make this plausible, they need a
class of criminals to fight against during the periods between
heightened revolutionary activity when the cops are busy doing their
real work. If there aren't enough working class people being anti-
social (the anti-social activities of the corporate leaders are not
classified as "crimes"), the police/prison/legislative system has
ample means for creating such activity. In the US lately this has
been done by criminalizing the drug trafficking of the working class
(again, not the drug trafficking of the capitalists, e.g., tobacco,
etc.). The cops also create more anti-social behavior by discouraging
the community systems people tend to have to discourage such
behavior. These systems are labelled "vigilantism."
> How would you deal with a rape case
This presupposes that the present system effectively reduces rape.
It doesn't. It's not designed to. Rape is intricately linked with
male dominance, and the police/prison system helps to maintain male
dominance.
>
> True, there are bad states. I would be in favor of the world rising up and
> crushing the Iraqi government for what they have done and continue to do.
Fine. But we have our own oppressive state right here to work
against, one that's killed far more people than the Iraqi gov't. Our
first responsibility is to take care of our own shit. Every american
who votes, pays taxes, etc., is partially responsible for the 150,000
Iraqis (almost all women, children and conscripts) recently murdered
and continuing to die in the Persian Gulf. That's our first
responsibility, our own death-machine.
>
> True anarchy (by that I mean absence of authority) has never boded well for the
> weak. One of the best examples of what happens when anarchy prevails can be
> found in "Andersonville" by MacKinley Kantor. No one could read this and
> maintain a belief in abandoning authority in the naive hope that human nature
> will keep us safe and secure.
>
I'm confused about this example--I thought "Andersonville" was a
prison camp, i.e., a hierarchical structure?
Brian
