Post by Liberaregno on Apr 7, 2005 10:06:04 GMT -5
Workers said:
There are hundreds of potential ways of limiting pollution, we'd probably have to experiment.
i mean the possibilities of reducing the pollution are infinite. the problem is how to make people do it. as far as i know, as long as the human society has existed, we have just dumped our garbage to the closest and fitting place. the hundreds of potential ways of limiting population could, yes, be experimented, but who would do it? it is "expensive" and time consuming to do so and who would make sure everybody (or anybody) is going to use those those new ways then? i think that any kind of pollution-decreasing method is money consuming. if you want to save the nature, then you must pay for example,
catalytic convertor for cars or reducing the productivity of of factories or creating storages for nuclear waste etc. i don't see anything stopping a greedy community (they want, naturally, as much profit for their hard work in the medicine factory as possible) for dumping the environment in order to make their lives more enjoyable. and what would stop everybody for doing the same? of course some would also care for the environment, but vice versa, some wouldn't
Workers said:
I personaly oppose the concept of money but different communities would probably have their own way of dealing with things. If everything was publicly owned and available to everyone, what point would there be in a currency?
well i think the point of currency in an anarchist society would be that if there are four (in reality, thousands) communities, producers:
A, producing fish
B, producing clothes
C, producing medicine
and D, producing fruits and vegetables
then if A produced fish and in order for them to survive they would need proper clothes, which are produced by group B AND they would also need medicine produced by group C. now group A tries to sell the fish to group B who gladly buys the fish and gives them clothes in return. now group A would also try to buy some medicine from group C but the group C doesn't want to eat fish, but they rather trade their food from group D who sells fruits and vegetables. now group A can't get any medicine because those who produce them don't care about their fishes.
now if money existed A could just sell all their surplus to everybody interested and with the universally accepted currency buy as much medicines and clothes as they need, without the big hassle of direct trading.
this idea just came out of my mind so please correct if you see flaws in it. and please don't say that A could develop the medicine themselves because maybe they could, and they could maybe also trade them from other producers of medicine, but with money, the hassle is much easier and nobody will die of searching the right guy to trade with.
Workers said:
People do think they can't do anything to stop pollution: does that mean they will always think this way? People change, and when the effects of pollution become rapidly more visible in the next fifty years or so, they will.
in fifty years, they are a little bit late i'm afraid, the mass pollution has been there for over two hundred years already. yes, of course people can change, but i don't think the change from hierarchial capitalist society to an anarchist one would be so drastic to human ways of thinking or to their personalities that they would automatically stop polluting and caring about the world.
Workers said:
Why wouldn't a 'police force' nominated, elected and controlled by their local community like the one I proposed be any less able to do this?
well is that anarchism where the nominated (to higher hierarchial positions, since they have the rights to tell what is right or wrong) people tell me if i can have "self-defence measures" or not? i don't know but sounds like the modern "democratic" state.
Workers said:
Hitler was elected because of numerous historical factors, who's to say similar events won't occur in your society? You think the only reason our countries aren't run by fascists (debatable I suppose!) is because our politicians generously provide laws to prevent this? I think it has more to do with the fact that there is too much popular opposition. Our governments do not benevolently allow us not to be ruled by fascists, if they could get away with it I'm sure most of them would prefer a fascist Big Brother type of government to the ones we have today. The only thing stopping them doing so is their intuitive knowledge that there is a limit on oppression which a politically conscious population can take. Also there would be nothing to stop a racist politician passing a bill to change anti-racist/fascist laws in your socialist republic if they had enough support, in an anarchist society they couldn't.
na, i think these "democratic" countries aren't run by fascists because, as you said, of the too few popular support. anyway the set-up laws against fascist dictatorship etc. which are guaranteed by the police and military protect the militant fascists to coup the nation.
you said that there wouldn't be anything to stop a racist guy to pass a bill to change the laws in my socialist republic. well, he would need the supermajority of the population behind his back for altering the constitution. (there could be also any kind of safety laws for example, that the bill must be voted a supermajority again after 6 months. so that the people has really thought about it and that it's not just a sudden demonstration of hatred etc for altering the constitution). true, but in the anarchist society, he wouldn't need to change any laws, he would do his own laws and start a group of militants and not wait for any useless support.
of course the anarchist country could have the nominated militia to prevent the militants of terrorising the nation, but who would then have the ultimate morals to judge other people etc. aren't those upper-class persons then fighting against the anarchist society itself?
Workers said:
I think you misunderstand what I meant by 'voluntary' in the context of a 'police' or 'militia': they would all have to nominated by their communities and regularily changed so as to prevent the formation of an elite. The part about them being 'voluntary' just meant that they wouldn't be recruited.
ah, but isn't nominating pretty much the same thing as recruiting? and wouldn't that create class society if those guys were nominated? of course a good looking, intelligent, long persons would then be nominating over the ugly, stupid, and short? wouldn't that kind of create a class society where only those who belong to the "upper-class" (in this example, upper-humans) would be allowed a higher position? of course technically everybody could join but practically no.
Workers said:
My point was that in the abscence of a hierachical power structure (like in tribal Eskimo society I'm assuming, I'm no expert on their social organisation) it's impossible for despots to climb to the top of it.
can you please give me a definite answer as to why it would be impossible for depots to climb (or first create it and then climb) to the top of it? i mean they could force people with whatever i have mentioned, but say, guns...
Workers said:
Yes it would be possible for a group of outsiders with the backing of a large corporation or state to impose an authoritarian rule over a native population but it's far from easy, especially if they aren't any corporations or states. The wars between the native Americans and colonialists for example lasted hundreds of years. The only historical example of a small group of individuals establishing a kind of state over their own local decentralised comunity in the way you suggest might happen in my conception of an anarchist society would be Ghengis Khan and I think it's safe to say he was one-of-a-kind.
yes but most of the anarchist societies have been changed to a hierarchial systems or they have been made to change. the questions is, why wouldn't it happen in your anarchist society?
Workers said:
But non-hierachical methods of social organisation didn't cease to exist because they didn't work; they had worked for thousands of years and continue to work in certain places. If it was natural for humans to develop hierachical societies in the way it is natural for bees to make honey all of them would do it and historically always would have done. Perhaps the development of hierachy in certain parts of the world were logical considering their own unique historical circumstances; but then again perhaps the development of capitalism in Europe was logical considering ours, does that mean we should accept it as the natural economic system for human beings and not oppose it?
i don't mean we should just accept everything as they are as 'natural economic way for humans' and of course we should oppose inequality and such...the question just is, to what will it lead? if we now oppose it with anarchy and return our society to the state it was before of the maddening, what is there to stop it returning to this rotten society again?
