[aaron-lebo]

With all due respect, if this is the best the anarchists have (and this article is from a respected individual and is decently written), you're fucked. These critiques are not new or without response. The problem is, this is 1000+ words of arguments about human nature, special pleading, etc, with NO sources. They describe known phenomena like control of the agenda and never call it that, I'm not sure if that's because they aren't aware of that term or they just fon't feel like attributing hundreds if not thousands of years of research before them. It'd be like if someone cloned Signal and acted like Moxie didn't exist.

Cite something, anything that scholars who study politics and democracies have written, don't put forward these vague critiques with nothing backing it up. Many arguments that seem intuitive are wrong when faced with evidence, and this article and anarchists in general seem to forget that democracies have certain features (and misfeatures) that are responses to real world situations.

Anarchism is a political ideology that's never met the real world, like a lot of ideologies on HN and elsewhere. This might convince the random Internet reader, but it's not going to convince anyone who has studied the topic.

Here's a few politics 101 cites that are decent:

https://www.amazon.com/Models-Democracy-3rd-David-Held/dp/08...

https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Its-Critics-Robert-Dahl/dp/...

https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Second-Robert-Dahl/dp/03001...

https://www.amazon.com/Future-Freedom-Illiberal-Democracy-Re...

Could tech people stick to what they are good at, or at least acknowledge the wider world of experience when they are making arguments?

[pointfree]

> Anarchism is a political ideology that's never met the real world, like a lot of ideologies on HN and elsewhere. This might convince the random Internet reader, but it's not going to convince anyone who has studied the topic.

Although there have been some widespread and fairly comprehensive implementations of anarchism, namely the Makhnovists in the Ukraine and the Spanish Revolution in Catalonia, Aragon, Andalusia, and some parts of the Valencian Community, anarchism is more of a political tension "from where you are standing right now" than an attempt to conquer a territory to establish anarchism. That should follow from the name itself.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alfredo-m-bonanno-th...

The Situationist movement had some enduring effect on French culture from the first-person perspective. (Situationism is not anarchist, but it is libertarian and communist). The Spanish revolution less so, because it was followed by General Franco's rule.

[aaron-lebo]

I'm aware of anarchism's role in the Spanish Revolution, but I'm not sure what we can really say about that experience. It lasted a very short time, mostly due to factors outside of its control, but also because it was part of an unstable political front with the communists and other liberals. How much of that instability was due to anarchism itself? It's difficult to say.

Don't mean to sound anti-anarchism, because I understand the sentiment. Thanks for more examples. Also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anarchism

[JetSpiegel]

Let's take another political document I selected at random.

> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Should we dismiss this statement as irrelevant since the authors did not cite any sources? In fact, they go further, they reject any arguments from authority and hold this statements as self-evident! They don't even cite Aristotle or other "scholars who study politics and democracies".

A political statement is not falsifiable. To a 1000+ essay saying "I think anarchy trumps democracy as a political system", dismissing it because they don't cite source is a completely meaningless attack.

[aaron-lebo]

We don't dismiss that document as irrelevant because it had actions supporting it. They actually built a political system that was closer to those statements than what existed and it worked. Furthermore, those men (as evidenced by their writings) were aware of contemporary political thought, that's not apparent in this blog post.

A political statement is not falsifiable.

Political scientists do something like this every day.

I'm just saying if you want to do more than just philosophize, if you want to convince people, if you want systems of government to change, you've gotta up your game. You've got to at least acknowledge people who have already responded to your critiques already.

[krapp]

>In fact, they go further, they reject any arguments from authority and hold this statements as self-evident!

No they don't, they argue from the authority of a Creator.

[kiliantics]

There are quite a few examples of serious academics that have endorsed anarchism and have more robust arguments against the status quo. Chomsky and Graeber are very well-regarded and have works on the topic that are properly cited the way you'd like.

That said, anarchism is all about refusing to acknowledge any legitimacy in the institutions it critiques. It's not surprising that these writers don't conform to your idea of how such a text should be organised. A dense, academic format also doesn't make for very good propaganda either.

[aaron-lebo]

Chomsky's not actually especially well-regarded in political science. I had a semester of linguistics, Chomsky was a god, we talked about his theories a lot. In political science, he's literally never been mentioned in readings.

That said, anarchism is all about refusing to acknowledge any legitimacy in the institutions it critiques. It's not surprising that these writers don't conform to your idea of how such a text should be organised.

Surely anarchists believe their arguments are better with evidence.

A dense, academic format also doesn't make for very good propaganda either.

If propaganda is averse to truth, discard the propaganda. Not asking for a page of footnotes, asking for a single citation. It's as though it was written in a vacuum, and it was not.

[Top19]

I very much enjoyed (and even laughed) reading your response.

It’s very concerning to see people talk so positively about anarchy. Another word for anarchy is “nihilism”, which is its philosophical twin.

Neither of these words are used a lot today, but “nihilism” you’ll see mentioned a lot in the build-up to WWII.

Am currently reading the below book, which argues in its final chapter that a German invasion of Poland is imminent and is the next course of action Hitler will take. It was published in May 1939 in German, and translated in August 1939 to English. Germany invaded Poland on September 1st, 1939.

The author is very clear that for all their flaws, capitalism and democracy are very reformable. And that a dictatorship of Fascism or Communism will dazzle with early successes before descending into violence both internally and externally.

The Revolution Of Nihilism: Warning To The West https://www.amazon.com/dp/1258001071/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_RZCn...

[wavefunction]

I strongly disagree that nihilism is so tightly coupled to anarchism as you claim. There is nothing in political anarchism that suggests life is inherently without value or meaning.

However I do see that exact sentiment expressed by many corporatists, who privilege corporations and their 'rights' above actual people and civil society. And especially from members of the far-right, who are all too willing to dehumanize "The Other" regardless of what rights and interests their declared enemies hold.

I don't necessarily think political anarchism is all that tenable in the modern world we inhabit built as it is on global commerce. In the limited places it is practiced today, it appears to only function in situations of survival and desperation where a group can be held together cohesively by shared interests and some sort of unifying identity, whether religious or ethnic.

[thescribe]

Under anarchism wouldn't the right just form a block to dehumanize the other? Wouldn't there just be a far-right solidarity group and nothing changes?

[mercer]

I could see how anarchism is compatible with (zen) buddhism, but I don't really see a clear link with nihilism.