TLDR: Statists measure success based on the state, so in order to convince them that anarchism us successful we would need to stop being anarchists.

"For anarchists who do know something about anthropology, the arguments are all too familiar. A typical exchange goes something like this:

Skeptic: Well, I might take this whole anarchism idea more seriously if you could give me some reason to think it would work. Can you name me a single viable example of a society which has existed without a government?

Anarchist: Sure. There have been thousands. I could name a dozen just off the top of my head: the Bororo, the Baining, the Onondaga, the Wintu, the Ema, the Tallensi, the Vezo…

Skeptic: But those are all a bunch of primitives! I’m talking about anarchism in a modern, technological society.

Anarchist: Okay, then. There have been all sorts of successful experiments: experiments with worker’s self-management, like Mondragon; economic projects based on the idea of the gift economy, like Linux; all sorts of political organizations based on consensus and direct democracy…

Skeptic: Sure, sure, but these are small, isolated examples. I’m talking about whole societies.

Anarchist: Well, it’s not like people haven’t tried. Look at the Paris Commune, the revolution in Republican Spain…

Skeptic: Yeah, and look what happened to those guys! They all got killed!

The dice are loaded. You can’t win. Because when the skeptic says “society,” what he really means is “state,” even “nation-state.” Since no one is going to produce an example of an anarchist state—that would be a contradiction in terms—what we’re really being asked for is an example of a modern nation-state with the government somehow plucked away: a situation in which the government of Canada, to take a random example, has been overthrown, or for some reason abolished itself, and no new one has taken its place but instead all former Canadian citizens begin to organize themselves into libertarian collectives. Obviously this would never be allowed to happen. In the past, whenever it even looked like it might—here, the Paris commune and Spanish civil war are excellent examples—the politicians running pretty much every state in the vicinity have been willing to put their differences on hold until those trying to bring such a situation about had been rounded up and shot."

  • Sabbo [it/its]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
    11·
    3 days ago

    ~~Ok, how about ending the transatlantic slave trade? Proudhon didn’t invent anarchism, he himself admits that, only the word. He observed the slave abolitionists. All anarchism is is a banner to follow, not a book written by a man.

    The entire point of the post is that statists cannot accurately assess anarchism because it would require accepting that the western world is not better than what came before. And the assumption that it is is just cultural hegemony.~~

    Edit: Actually, scratch that. It’s clear based on your edit as well as your choice of article that you don’t read these things, you just skim. And my words deserve better than skimming.

    • Feed_el_Castro [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      16·
      3 days ago

      I’m not knowledgeable enough about the end of transatlantic slave trade in particular, but wasn’t the idea to bring in African slaves to the lands genocided by the Europeans to have slave labour? If so, how was this ended by anarchism? Again, from my very surface-level understanding, slavery in North America outlasted its efficacy and was substituted by wage labor once capitalism was developed and industrialized enough, and much of the rest of the Americas slavery existed well into the 1900s as American companies reaped the profits of slave plantations, and many of these were stopped in its tracks by socialist revolutions such as that of Cuba. Can you elaborate on your point regarding Proudhon, anarchism and the slave trade?

      The entire point of the post is that statists cannot accurately assess anarchism because it would require accepting that the western world is not better than what came before

      But I do accept that the western world is a genocidal monster, in many ways much much worse than what came before. I don’t see how that relates to inaccurately assessing anarchism, I definitely believe primitive societies are/were more fair and moral than modern capitalism, I just don’t believe the clock of history can be turned back and dissolve modern capitalism into primitivism.

        • yunqihao [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          17·
          3 days ago

          This is you:

          The entire point of the post is that statists cannot accurately assess anarchism because it would require accepting that the western world is not better than what came before. And the assumption that it is is just cultural hegemony.~~

          The author is telling anarchists that you can’t convince statists that anarchism is a good idea because they do not respect things that don’t adhere to western imperial values.

          Entirely skipping over the fact the largest and most successful socialist experiment thus far is China. Or the experience of the DPRK leading to it’s formation of a socialist state from the original people’s committees. You have a clear issue with viewing things with a Eurocentric lense.