this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
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[–] squaresinger@feddit.de 74 points 2 years ago (27 children)

I love that story! I tell it every time someone tries to sell me on anarchism.

Christiana was an old military complex that the government gave up on, so anarchist squatters moved in.

Soon they realized, that they needed some way to decide matters that concerned everyone. So they formed small councils, and in these councils they each chose some people to represent them in one big council. These people weren't elected politicians, just people chosen to represent them. They then voted on issues, and no, that wasn't a form of democracy. It's still anarchism.

Then then realized, that the upkeep of common areas and infrastructure costs money, so they required that everyone paid their share. That obviously weren't taxes. Just mandatory contributions.

When organized crime started to spread, they decided on some mandatory rules (you read right: these weren't laws, just mandatory rules that you had to keep if you didn't want to face punishment). Then they chose some strong men that should make sure the rules were followed. No, not police men. Just concerned strong men.

They worked together with Kopenhagen's police. Basically, they'd call the cops and then drag the offenders outside of Christiania to the waiting cops.

Part of the rules were that it wasn't allowed to consume hard drugs or to wear motor cycle gang attire.

So in the end, they had no politicians, no government, no taxes and no police force. Just things that where basically identical to these things. The only thing they really don't have is a prison, because they outsourced that to Kopenhagen.

Anarchism directly leads to a form of government, no matter how you call it.

If you want an opposite example, how anarchism lead to an anarcho-capitalistic nightmare, where the community decended into a rule by organized crime, google the Kowloon Walled City. It's equally interesting.

[–] cacheson@kbin.social 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

The difference is than in an ideal anarchist polity, the minority can secede, even down to the individual. "Majority rule" only happens to the extent that the minority doesn't find secession to be a worthwhile option. Whereas under democracy, the land and resources of the minority, and even the people themselves are considered to rightfully belong to the state. Any serious attempt at secession is met with violence.

Actually-existing "anarchistic" societies may not completely live up to this ideal, but it is what we strive for. Anarchists consider freedom of association and freedom of disassociation to be paramount.

[–] squaresinger@feddit.de 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That's a nice concept that maybe could work if you live in a society without any shared resource, no infrastructure at all and no things that are built in a shared way, since everyone needs to be independent and self-sufficient enough to secede at any time.

I think, even at neolithic times we might have been too advanced for that to work.

[–] cacheson@kbin.social 7 points 2 years ago

It doesn't mean that people can't coordinate, just that the coordination needs to be voluntary. Think networks rather than hierarchies.

It's similar to how the fediverse is organized. Any instance can defederate from any other for any reason, but we all try to mostly stick together, because there's benefits to doing so. Those that are dissatisfied with the policies of the instance that they're on can break off and form their own (ideally we'd have account migration too, but that'll take time). No one is forced to connect, but the whole thing works regardless.

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