Again, if you want to get into an intellectual wanking session about how nice it would be if we lived in a world where absolutely no one attempted to use violence or seize power over other people, I'll kindly provide Somalia as empirical evidence that we live in a very different world and turn my attentions to the question of how a society of actual human beings* can function, and hopefully can function better than it currently does.

Now you're moving toward a more interesting argument. We see how humans behave but how much of that is because of our nature and how much is because of the environment we grow up in?

Yes, and? How exactly do we get those environments? Co-recursively, of course--the environment influences human behavior and human behavior influences the environment. In general that's the kind of system that, hopefully, reaches a steady state at some point. Empirically we've observed two--primitivism and governed civilization. Anarchic civilization doesn't seem to be an option. (I'm actually fairly open to considerations of primitivism, which is likely as anarchic as humans can get.)

I'm assuming you dismiss it after working it out in your own head without consulting the existing body of knowledge on the subject, and it sounds like you just confirmed that my assumption was completely correct.

On the contrary--I'm considering the actual knowledge fairly thoroughly. I'm also considering as much of the theory as I can (and I'm more familiar with it than you realize), but most of that theory is fundamentally useless as it lacks any empirical knowledge at all.

It's the height of arrogance to confuse any political theory with knowledge. Anarchist theory has certain assumptions of how an anarchic civilization would function, and if you're talking to fellow anarchists you can both take that answer as a given and operate from that basis, but that doesn't mean a damned thing, because it's not knowledge, it's a shared assumption based on non-empirical reasoning which fundamentally does not and cannot provide a rationally convincing answer at all.

And that is ultimately the fundamental flaw of anarchism--we live in a world with plenty of societies that function fairly well, with plenty of empirical evidence of how different social structures work out in practice, and yet anarchists want to throw all of that away in favor of a completely untested system just because of some ideological opposition to government and private property.

Actually it was outside governments imposing themselves on a populous. Yes, to get Anarchism this would have to be dealt with and so far they have not had much success.

>Again, if you want to get into an intellectual wanking session about how nice it would be if we lived in a world where absolutely no one attempted to use violence or seize power over other people

There will always be people who want to try this. My claim is that if most of the countries of the world were Anarchist then someone threatening that would be met the same way threatening democracy is met today.

>Anarchic civilization doesn't seem to be an option.

There are existing Anarchic systems, e.g. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/12/06/...

>as it lacks any empirical knowledge at all

Much of the literature is about real world events. The actual problem with it is that it's on small scales. The largest examples probably being Spain and part of Russia during their revolution. In the case of Spain literally everyone joined together to stop the Anarchists. We don't have large scale empirical knowledge because people in positions of power don't want us to.

For me this is the strongest argument that there is something to the idea. If it were a fatally flawed idea the smart thing to do would be to let some high profile country try it and watch them fail. Then the book would be pretty well closed on the matter.

>Anarchist theory has certain assumptions of how an anarchic civilization would function, and if you're talking to fellow anarchists you can both take that answer as a given and operate from that basis, but that doesn't mean a damned thing, because it's not knowledge, it's a shared assumption based on non-empirical reasoning which fundamentally does not and cannot provide a rationally convincing answer at all.

Actually it's a large part Philosophy and a large part of real world occurrences. The thing really missing, as I've said is the scale.

>and yet anarchists want to throw all of that away in favor of a completely untested system just because of some ideological opposition to government and private property

How well you think the system works depends on who you are. People who's homes are being destroyed in Afghanistan probably don't think too much of it. People starving to death while we in the west throw away tons of food every day probably don't think much of it.

Further it is false that Anarchists want to throw everything away. Every proposal I've seen used some form of democracy, for example.

Lastly, the bases of the idea is a moral one. Why does anyone have the right to be over anyone else. Given the levels of corruption in government around the world, this strikes me as a valid question.

Democracy is continually threatened all over the world and no one does much about it without some sort of explicit self-interest.

* There are existing Anarchic systems, e.g. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/12/06/...

I would classify that as primitivism, despite the presence of agriculture. It's certainly not a satisfying answer to your claim that we can have anarchism and still hold onto computers and the internet.

The actual problem with it is that it's on small scales. The largest examples probably being Spain and part of Russia during their revolution. In the case of Spain literally everyone joined together to stop the Anarchists. We don't have large scale empirical knowledge because people in positions of power don't want us to.

For me this is the strongest argument that there is something to the idea. If it were a fatally flawed idea the smart thing to do would be to let some high profile country try it and watch them fail. Then the book would be pretty well closed on the matter.

If the entire rest of the world was operating as a cartel, yes, the smart thing to do would be to let anarchism fail by itself. As it stands, setting up an anarchic society--especially in the middle of a revolution or civil war--just means there's tons of competing factions, each of which is better served by taking the anarchic territory for itself rather than letting it fall to a rival. At least unless the anarchic territory is more difficult to conquer than it is worth.

Lastly, the bases of the idea is a moral one. Why does anyone have the right to be over anyone else. Given the levels of corruption in government around the world, this strikes me as a valid question.

I used to have moral problems with this too, but ultimately it doesn't matter--I'd rather limit myself to making small changes on the real world we have to generate better results.

Not really. Maybe democracy of one place, but when the Russian revolution happened democracies everywhere were afraid it would happen to them so they responded to Russia. That's what I'm talking about.

>I would classify that as primitivism, despite the presence of agriculture.

Perhaps, but the point is that it's conceptually possible to have relatively large groups of people without government.

Personally I consider primitivism a non-idea because of the simple fact that primitivism can't support the amount of people we have today. If we forgo agriculture it is estimated the world can support about 500 million people. Who's going to select the 6.5 billion that have to die?

>I used to have moral problems with this too, but ultimately it doesn't matter--I'd rather limit myself to making small changes on the real world we have to generate better results.

I've done the same. I just entertain the idea that we don't have the best possible system and to get the best system may mean starting over at some point.

Democracies fought to preserve the Russian Tsar because they thought his overthrow was a threat to democracy? No. They fought communism because they thought communism was a threat to their regimes in specific, just as other monarchies fought the French Revolutionary Wars because they thought the French Revolution was a threat to their regimes in specific. The commonality is that there are regimes of elites fighting to preserve their own power. Anarchy doesn't have that by definition.

I just entertain the idea that we don't have the best possible system and to get the best system may mean starting over at some point.

You don't get to start over unless people get hungry and desperate. And I think we have a system that can sustainably keep people out of hunger and desperation. If I'm wrong, maybe the anarchists will get another shot.

Yes. And if we ever have full Anarchy and if it turns out to be as good as some people think I believe people will fight just as aggressively to preserve it as they have to preserve previous systems that weren't even all that great (sometimes downright awful).

>And I think we have a system that can sustainably keep people out of hunger and desperation

Some, but there are a lot of people that are both hungry and desperate. Further "starting over" isn't strictly necessary. A smaller Anarchist system could be created within the confines of larger existing systems and this has been done to some extent with varying levels of success.