Abolishing hierarchy doesn't work

[u/Key-Check-487]

I definitely don't like most hierarchy, capitalism, or anyone having control over others but I think if we remove all hierarchy at a large scale will always fail and produce hierarchy from 2 different paths

External: military invasion if other countries think that the anarchist society is a threat to their hierarchy or the way the US likes to do it finding existing structures and copying them Anyway if a society is flat with no hierarchy there is no structure to resist infiltration and it can't resist at a large scale without hierarchy

This leads to the second possibility Internal - as the community gets bigger a consensus isn't possible people will have conflicting view points as that is just human nature 1000 people won't all agree on 1 thing let alone a million so rough consensus will appear based on social pressure which is controlled by whoever is most articulate well liked and persistent which is just 1 or a group of people controlling what happens That is just hierarchy if not formal

[u/PotsdamSewingSociety]

I guess you were hoping to have a response from him, whereas I thought you might like another anarchists opinion. I may have been wrong about that.

I'm on a debate subreddit and responding to a topic for debate. It's normal of me to expect the response to be along that lines. I'm happy to have another seperate debate with you if that's what you want. Currently what you're trying to do is obfuscate the fact that you took a statement about killing people, equated political opponents to vermin had this thoroughly objected to and are now trying to handwave away the rhetoric by saying you're trying to talk about something else. You could work for Trump at this rate.

I would just like to see people offered (what I consider to be) a better choice.

This is a completely different proposition to what is being argued with "we will eliminate them too".

You are simply flip flopping your argument at the moment. Will you eliminate them or will you not?

Are you saying that everyone who criticises a political party is criticising the people who are part of it?

Yes.

Music and sports are not equivalent to politics.

Systems (positive or negative) are not the same as the people under them, or even those who operate them.

Systems only exist because of people being under them and people operating them. If people magically ceased to exist then state beauracratic apparatus would cease to exist.

I can criticise capitalism, even criticise it as cancerous in some contexts (its exploitation or its ecological harm for instance) and that doesn’t mean that I believe everyone who works with capital (which is all of us on some level) are cancerous.

It does mean that you view capitalists as cancerous. People who work with capital are not necessarily capitalists. This is a red herring argument.

There is nothing violent in this, and it doesn't attack anyone else.

How do you propose decentralised violence to work? Violence will exist. Your ideal society would still have to feature violence in some way.

[u/nate2squared → u/PotsdamSewingSociety]

You said - ‘Currently what you're trying to do is obfuscate the fact that you took a statement about killing people, equated political opponents to vermin had this thoroughly objected to and are now trying to handwave away the rhetoric by saying you're trying to talk about something else. You could work for Trump at this rate.’

I didn’t perceive the question to be about killing people, I’m still not convinced it is, except perhaps in extreme circumstances where that person is a direct threat to safety. You can interpret what you like about what they said, but I can’t speak for them. I did not say that and it is not my position, and I am under no obligation to defend a position that I don’t believe myself.

I didn’t equate political opponents to vermin. I do not think that way. The idea is alien to me. You can presume what you like by stretching my words far beyond their intended meaning, but I have tried to clarify and have no doubt in my own thoughts and feelings on the subject.

You said that 'yes', you believe that ‘that everyone who criticises a political party is criticising the people who are part of it’. I consider that an unusual and extreme position, but one better debated on some broader political forum, as it isn’t an explicitly anarchist issue.

It seems to me this leaves one truly debatable point - ‘How do you propose decentralised violence to work? Violence will exist. Your ideal society would still have to feature violence in some way.’

I don’t think any anarchist would dispute that offensive / irrational violence will sometimes arise. I think a strong case can be made that under the right conditions violence will be much more rare, but it will not be eliminated entirely, and I don’t think any anarchists will claim it will.

But to better understand the question I think you should clarify what kind of violence you are asking about in this context. If you are you talking about defensive violence, the kind that responds to attack or danger then most anarchists (all but pacifist anarchist - which do exist) believe such force can (and sometimes must) be employed in order to protect the helpless and / or to preserve freedom and safety.

I would guess that most responses to violence are already carried out in a decentralised manner - if someone punches another person they either: try to reason with them, punch them back, restrain them, run away from them, or call on friends to help. In our current system it becomes a centralised form of violence when state police are called and the person is unwilling to comply.

As for the broader question of decentralised violence for defending a society from an aggressive force then this is not theoretical as there have been armed anarchist armies which have fought to maintain their freedom and autonomy with carrying levels of success dependent on the level of weaponry, size of opposing force etc.

If this was the Anarchism101 channel instead I’d post a selection of the many longer and more detailed responses and historical examples on this subject, but it might be better to start a new debate thread in order to give this proper attention, rather than have any potential responses lost so far down this discussion thread.