Anarchy sounds good to me then someone asks "Who'd fix the sewers?"
edit: This is lyrics from The Dead Kennedy’s “Where Do You Draw the Line?”
this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2025
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My experience organizing non-profit events have shown that most people actually have no problem doing dirty jobs for no material compensation. If the following things are true:
- They understand why the job is important
- They feel responsible for the job (usually comes from being given autonomy and trust)
- They get recognition for doing it (social rewards are actually very powerful)
- No one else is getting compensated either.
I understand that this seems foreign to a lot of people, because this is not how work is generally motivated in capitalist society. You are used to your job being rather unimportant, with little autonomy, little trust, not much recognition from society and some people definitely profiting more than others. Your primary motivator is the threat of violence (via homelessness, starvation etc.), so it's hard to imagine what would happen if that was removed.
That to me is the core idea of Anarchism, to base your organization on volontary cooperation rather than coercion.
An interesting side-note is that the people who do the dirty jobs in these circumstances often take great pride in it, forming an identify around doing what others are not willing to and calling attention to it as a way to get more recognition.
non-profit events and mucking a sewer are very different.
I assumed it was just a very dirty, tough job requiring some specialized equipment and skills. Are you saying it's somehow fundamentally different from other human activities?
Yes I believe organizing and doing are very different and sewer work falls firmly into an area of work that most wouldn't do without substantial gain for that work. Humans are not inherently altruistic on that level
Perhaps it was a poor choice of words, when I said "organizing" I meant everything required to run an event (with thousands attending). From planning and programming to picking trash and cleaning toilets.
Having cleaned many toilets it is nowhere nearly as unpleasant as the life risking work that can take place in a sewer system.
Anarchist response would be "people who want functioning sewers, which should be everybody."
Yeah it's a dirty job. So is wiping your ass. Does someone need to threaten you to wipe your ass? Take a shower? When your toilet breaks at home do you shrug and just shit on the bathroom floor?
No, you fix the toilet. Same with the sewers.
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A lot of people think it means total chaos, but it really just means an opposition to hierarchy.
People living comfortable lives will rationalize any critique of the system away, even if that comfort is built upon emiseration and exploitation.
Genuinely thought that said "anachronism" and was ready to go on a tirade about how cool cloaks are and how they should make a comeback
Fuck yeah, I'd wear a cloak.
People calling themselves anarchists seem to reliably be less of a red flag than when they call themselves communists.
I think there's a lot of sentiment to sympathize with and a lot of ideas to learn about.
Implementation of anarchism seems hard and maybe sometimes a bit naïve, but on the other hand I don't actually understand the specifics nor is there any one opinion.
Anarvhism refers to a vlass of ideologies moreso than any one in specific.
When I was younger, I believed that it was an ideal worth striving for. Now I don't have that much faith in people anymore and I think that the best you can ask for is to try to live life your way and stay true to your beliefs and morals as best you can, according to whatever circumstances that you've been given.
Its interesting idea but i wonder if humans are capable of running it beyond so small groups that it wouldnt matter. It would require huge amount of planning and creative thinking to get anarchy working in such way it would benefit everyone and to mitigate its problems.
Then there is also the problem of our current system influencing the new system. Lets say we manage somehow overthrow the current opression and start implementing somekind of anarchy that has been planned in such way it functions beneficially for everyone. By its nature, there couldnt be any authority that defines what anarchy is by its core since it would be up to the people themselves.
I can imagine anarchy easily fragmenting into pieces and then some pieces gaining more support than others and then we would have several competing ideas. Ultimately one would win and others might or might not survive too. And then we would have new ruling system that is probably not anarchy. I dont mean this would happen immediately but eventually. So there would need to be somekind of defensive system against that that would prevent harmful ideas from gaining power, but how to make something like that without it becoming oppressive? And how do you restrict anarchy in the first place since the whole point is there is no central authority? And if you try to have authority that isnt central, you end up with multiple ones that become central authority within their area of influence.
Maybe i'm not as well versed on anarchy as i should to be throwing these thoughts around, but these are some thoughts i have on the subject. As far as i know, anarchism is that people make the rules themselves instead of there being central authority that tells them what to do.
So ultimately anarchism is idea that would require a lot of planning and researching to be even considered worth trying if you want to implement it in controlled way. And i dont see any government allowing such planning to happen since it would be direct threat to them if you manage to create something that is worth trying. And very likely if they still were to allow it, they would just want to influence your work in such way they gain more power from it at the expense of others. And if we had some government that would want it because they want what is good for everyone, then wouldnt that government type be what you wanted to have with anarchy in the first place? Anarchy for sake of itself doesnt seem very useful.
And if you want to implement it "naturally" by just removing all authorities and allowing people to settle things by themselves, i think we can all imagine how that would go.
When I think about it that way, anarchism seems more like "initialization" or starting point where you start building something more complex. Everything we currently have is founded on anarchism afterall, at least i dont think first humans could have had any other system. You cant really hold on to it because it will change either by the people or by the power that wants to preserve it.
Now this turned into kind of an essay
- What led to the Haymarket Massacre, which might have been the main catalyst behind the 8-hour workday... So I cannot hate it out of principle
- Seems reasonable but I don't know how to actually implement it
- For some reason is more associated with Anarcho-Capitalism rather than the other variants, which I thought was... Interesting
It was the way for most of human history. And I’m not saying that in a good way, like “it’s totally normal, we should not be afraid of it.” I think the past was a uniformly awful time that’s slowly been getting better.
Anarchy working well depends on the people involved. Though at this point, we live in such a rules based world that I wonder if anyone would be able to function entirely without.
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