[0xddd]

What examples do you have in mind when you say this? The main case studies that I see get brought up are Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War and the Paris Commune, but the wartime pressures that led to their collapse strike me as much different from the present situation. I think the CHAZ will be an interesting experiment given the context.

[solidasparagus]

Specifically the music festivals I've been to. It's fun and a wonderful feeling for a while, but eventually the idiots/assholes will become a problem that needs to be dealt with. Or nature throws a disaster at you and there is chaos.

It's a little hard to come up with historical examples because the utopia portion is often quite short and overshadowed by the negatives that follow. Generally, I would point to almost any historical 'revolution' as a warning that tearing down a system and rebuilding it from scratch does not mean improvement, even if it appears to be at the beginning. You could probably point to the August 1789 period of the French Revolution as an example of the 'utopic' phase, but I'm not certain. The fall of Saddam's government in Iraq would be another example. Kurdish Syria is probably another decent example.

[Kye]

They're trying out the many proposed and proven methods of community management other than armed, poorly-trained cops. Music festivals aren't trying to prove the viability of alternative societal structures. They're different things.

[solidasparagus]

And I hope it works. But history says it's going to go poorly and they're going to need to end up with something resembling a police force, even if they don't call it that.

[Kye]

I don't know how your interactions with police have gone, but I've never had them show up when I called, and most accounts I hear are that they don't do anything at best when they do. At worst, they kill someone. Most of what they do is not stuff they should be doing.

There's some niche a well-trained police force can fill, but it's a lot smaller than what the poorly-trained forces do now. Almost no one is actually calling for a complete and permanent abolition of police. Just a redefinition of their role.

[solidasparagus]

The first line of the CHAZ demands:

> The Seattle Police Department and attached court system are beyond reform. We do not request reform, we demand abolition. We demand that the Seattle Council and the Mayor defund and abolish the Seattle Police Department and the attached Criminal Justice Apparatus. This means 100% of funding, including existing pensions for Seattle Police

Also, I would look at the Baltimore police/crime post-Freddie Grey to see how diminished police action leads to much increased crime. What the BPD did was horrifying but so was the rise in crime once they became less active.

[monocasa]

On the other hand, rather "diminished police action", the NYPD went on strike for a couple months in 2014-2015 and crime actually went down. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5

[deathgrips]

With regular assholes you have the right to self-defense. With the police you don't.

[djsumdog]

The book Animal Farm is a great representation of this concept as a fable.

[ivanbakel]

Animal Farm is not intended to be a fable. It is an allegorical retelling of Stalin's co-option of the Russian revolution - and that co-option is presented as only being possible because the populace is illiterate and ill-informed, which allows for revisionism from the Stalin-figure.

Orwell almost certainly did support anarchist revolution and utopia, given his role in the Spanish Civil War - and his concern about the suppression of anarchism through a totalitarian control of information is exactly what 1984 is about. He never would have felt that "Anarchic utopias do not stay utopic for all that long."

[tomp]

Is it? I thought Animal Farm was specifically about communism (it's been a while since I read it). Wouldn't Lord of the Flies be a better fable?

[standardUser]

The continued existence of Christiania in Denmark should prove to you sufficiently that these types of attempts are not automatically doomed.

[solidasparagus]

I mean would Seattle residents really consider CHAZ turning into Christiania a win? For a community of less than 1000 people, it seems to have a ridiculous amount of violence and crime.

[standardUser]

What violence? How many serious injuries or deaths have occurred?

[staplers]

  eventually the idiots/assholes will become a problem that needs to be dealt with

Like the police force?

[solidasparagus]

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. While many of the police actions are inexcusable, trying to have a society without an active group of people enforcing law and order doesn't work well. Just look at Baltimore for the downsides of police inaction.

[dwhit]

Baltimore police are not exactly inactive, they are more like an organized gang (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.baltimoresun.com/maryland/b...).

[solidasparagus]

Here's data on the drop in police-initiated policing following Freddie Grey's death - https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/07/12/baltim...

[kempbellt]

When people start policing the police force, don't they become....the police (by definition, not legality)? And therefore susceptible to becoming just like the "idiots/assholes" they were empowered to deal with.

Certainly an interesting recursion problem.

[salawat]

The solution to that is not having an "empowered" caste, and leaving it to a community to police themselves.

Everyone tends to get nervous about that though.

[Aeolun]

Something about witch hunts and lynching perhaps?

[zorpner]

Both of these represent the same phenomenon as the modern police force, which is class oppression (in the first case anti-intellectual misogyny, in the second the same base racism underlying the current struggle). Communities can and will self-regulate, when let out from under the thumb of state-sanctioned violence.

[jatone]

no, because they don't have authority to police civilians. there is no recursion here.

police force -> used to arrest dangerous criminals only

police wardens -> used to review, charge, change police policy, and arrest police officers who violate the law.

social officer -> used for all non-violent community enforcement. fines, ticketing, homelessness, mental health issues, etc. have no power to arrest anyone.

[jtr1]

Revolutionary Catalonia and the Paris Commune are interesting examples of libertarian socialism. You could also look at the Korean People's Association [1], Rojava more recently [2], or the Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities in Chiapas (EZLN), which seem to be exceptional in having lasted 30 years or so.[3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_People%27s_Association_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rojava [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebel_Zapatista_Autonomous_Mun...

[Nursie]

Look into what happened with the various hippie communes that sprung up across the US in the late 60s/early 70s, and how they fared.

Most came together with utopian ideals but fell apart as tension arose between those that just wanted to drop out and take acid and those who actually worked hard and tried to build something. Only one remains AFAICT and that one is atypical, enforcing sharing of everything, down to having a communal wardrobe, and having work schedules etc.

[earthicus]

There were quite a few utopian socialist (not necessarily anarchist) projects started in the United States in the 19th century, especially following the proto-socialist Charles Fourier. Wikipedia has a list based on a wide variety of different philosophies:

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