"I think the first problem that you'll run into is that, especially in the case of assault or murder, it will be very hard to find cases where people agree on whether the attack was justified or not. If the highly publicized police killings of African Americans in the US, beginning with the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, have taught us anything, it's that one party's murder is another party's justified self defense. Even if you could somehow come up with a definition for crimes that everyone could agree on, people would simply argue that their actions were justified. At best, we've wound up right back where we started with state monopolized violence and justice; a standard for murder that people can excuse themselves around when there isn't sufficient evidence to definitively prove otherwise (and sometimes even when there is)."
I think the Michael Brown example is a bit flawed, due to the politicization of the case, but I generally agree with the point you're making that people will disagree on whether a killing qualifies as murder and whether or not it is justified. Yet, where you see this disagreement as something which should be overcome, I see it as the key to achieving justice. Assume that in the Michael Brown case we stripped away all of the inequality involved, particularly the inequalities of police vs. citizen, and white vs. black. This is a necessary pre-condition to describe something as anarchic. Then what is left to judge other than the actual facts of the case? Still, there probably would be disagreement over who is at fault -- a pacifist will have a different perspective than most people, for example, but some of the costs would be put on the officer (albeit maybe not the full costs of murder) at the end of it.
Additionally, there is no pre-requisite that the whole of society or the community be involved. It could merely be a matter of arbitration between the affected parties, where both the man who killed and the family/interests of the person who was killed resolve the dispute with a mutually agreed arbitrator/judge/jury. They agree to accept whatever decision is made at the end of the process. Under a system with no/less hierarchy, and since both parties mutually agreed to the arbitrators, there is no/less worry of unfairness. Possibly, built into this agreement there is also an appeals process, where somebody has special protections. Ultimately, what is just and what is fair is decided by those involved and nobody else.
Consider an example in our current society of injustice caused by fixed laws. A 19 year old man was placed on the sex offenders registry, spent some time in jail, and was restricted from using the internet (despite being a CS major) after a 14 year old girl lied about her age and had sex with him.
Both the girl and her mother asked the judge for leniency, nobody felt harmed, yet he still was punished. Such a large misappropriation of justice, where nobody felt to be the victim wouldn't happen in an anarchic society. This is a perfect example of how fixed laws can (and I'd argue often do) fail to achieve justice out of an aim toward expediency. Expediency seems to be the main argument you are making throughout your response, that it would be too difficult or costly to have flexible rules and flexible justice systems. But isn't the point to have an accurate justice system which proportions the costs to those whom have been inter-subjectively evaluated to have induced costs upon others? Where the focus is on helping those in conflict resolve the dispute, rather than impose moral mandates passed down by fixed laws? This can only happen in the absence of rulers, rulers whose will is just as arbitrary as any of ours, but is imposed on us from above.
"The second and bigger problem, however, is that what is and isn't justifiable is itself...not something that everyone can agree upon, even for seemingly obvious things like murder. Take the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, which brought the controversial "stand your ground" law into the spotlight. In the weeks that followed the trial, there was constant debate over whether this law was simply allowing murder or protecting people from murderers, or perhaps both. This was and is a really important component of Florida's (and several other states) murder laws, and there were some pretty fierce back and forths about it. And while the law was, yes, ultimately created by the state, the amount and force of argumentation speaks to how much disagreement there is even on something as (what would hopefully be) simple as defining murder. I don't think a common consensus could arrive at a definition of "legitimate violence" as easily as you say they could."
So it's interesting how the whole question to be answered was about what the law is, rather than whether or not it should be the law, and whether or not justice is fulfilled. This is an example of how justice is reduced to what is legal rather than what is acceptable to those living in a particular society. One might argue that the law reflects the population's wishes, but there is so much disconnect between the creation of laws and the opinions of the various individuals which they bind that it doesn't really seem as if that is the case. Furthermore, a question should be asked about whether or not the public should have an investment in the dispute.
This is another case where you see disagreement as an impediment to justice whereas I see it as a key to justice (where no position is taken to an absolute extreme.)
"I think, to answer this, we need to boil down what exactly our judicial system does. In any trial, be it bench or jury, a person is determined whether or not they committed a crime, and then if they are found to be guilty, they are punished respectively."
Yes, that is how our current system works, but it doesn't mean it is merely what can work. For example, Jury Nullification is a valid part of the process which is looked down upon, because it threatens the authority of legislatures. One can ask the jury two do two things: 1. decide whether or not a person has violated a predetermined rule or 2. ask the jury to deliberate on the nature of the conflict and form a decision on what should be done to resolve it. I see nothing wrong with juries doing the latter, in so much as the parties in conflict have agreed to that particular jury.
"If you take that element away, all that a jury or judge does when they announce a verdict is essentially provide the public with information as to whether they believe the culprit's violence was legitimate or not."
Not merely the public, but the persons in conflict whom agreed to follow the ruling of the judge, jury, or arbitrator beforehand. The public only needs to be involved if there is a threat to the public or the particular community is especially communitarian and almost everyone's interests are entangled.
"And in the case of criminal trials that people are aware of, verdicts rarely change anyone's mind; see Casey Anthony, OJ Simpson, the two cases I just referenced (although one was admittedly a failure to indict rather than a trial and acquittal), the 1992 case with the LAPD and Rodney King, Robert Kelly, etc. When people are aware of a trial, social stigma exists regardless of whether the accused is found guilty or not guilty."
Sure, but again one must question why there is social stigma. Much of this stigma depends on internalized social hierarchies: racism, cop-worship, celebrity-worship, etc. As a precondition of anarchism, these internalization of hierarchies must be minimized.
"This also ties back in to the information problem mentioned earlier, where if people aren't aware of the trial taking place, they likely won't be paying the necessary attention to ostracize or otherwise retaliate against a guilty culprit in some way."
If a person is murdering others in the community it is typical for people to pay attention. I'd argue that people pay attention to these things more than they do, say, politics. Yet we put the burden of electing representatives on people and not the burden of acting in civil-society. Even if the entire community isn't paying attention, that's okay, a sample of the community that is most affected is sufficient.
"This might not be a big issue in smaller communities, but for larger cities where assaults, murders, and other forms of violence are unfortunately all too common, keeping track can be a problem. Even in small communities, while murder might be a big issue, assaults and other forms of violent crime would largely go unnoticed by most of the population. This ties into another problem that I'll address a bit later about how their guilt/innocence is determined."
Murders, assaults, etc are on the decline in most developed cities, and while a small part might be due to thorough legal enforcement I'd argue most of it is due to people proportionally leaving absolute destitution (and desperation.) Assaults and other forms of violent crime are things which I'd largely think wouldn't be in the business of the public, unless they are exceptionally brutal or the assaulter is a serial assaulter. These are things which would be resolved through arbitration or immediate social peers. One does not have to mobilize the whole city to judge every crime, but maybe the immediate neighborhood would be involved, or maybe merely the two private parties would resolve the dispute themselves. It depends entirely on the case and whether or not it affects many people.
"That wasn't quite what I was trying to say. My concern is with multiple definitions of legitimized violence acting inside of the same territory. I'm not as concerned with the specific size of the territory that they're in; I was more just using a nation as an example where laws pertaining to murder and other forms of violent crime tend to be fairly consistent. My point is that there would need to be work done (in this scenario where there is no state imposed guideline for legitimized violence) to ensure that, within the same location, regardless of how large or small it is, there should not be competing qualifications for justifiable violence. That, in turn, ties into the issue of whether people could come together on their own and form a single definition for violent activity."
I actually got what you intended. Communities and confederations need not be geographically contiguous, especially in our globalized and modern world. That is why I distinguished them from nation-states (regardless of the size of the nation-state), which are necessarily geographical with fixed borders.
"One issue I would carry in regards to individual communities forming their own definitions, however, is being able to consistently keep track of different definitions when traveling. To reference Stand Your Ground again, it's pretty hard to keep track of which states have implemented that and which have not. Trying to keep track of that on a community level would be...really difficult, to say the least."
So in the United States most communities already have such authority, gun laws and castle doctrines can be determined at the local level. Many other laws like zoning laws, laws regulating police, tax laws, etc are determined by communities and it works fine (some would argue better than having a unitary state do these things.) What I am suggesting is that communities not have fixed, discrete borders, but rather gradient ones. The community is bound to its members rather than a geographical area, and these members can leverage the community's common resources to seek justice. There is no need to keep track of laws, because the law is whatever comes about through the arbitrated dispute resolution. So this discussion is really about the pros and cons of dispute resolution via arbitration vs. dispute resolution via fixed laws determined by an external authority.
"Let's consider an example of how this could happen, then, starting with a look back into the history of the military. Any major military force in history, be it the modern day US military or Ancient Persia under Cyrus the Great, have functioned as well as they have in no small part due to a chain of command. A leader or group of leaders at the top, making decisions for everyone, while perhaps not always just, is very effective and, perhaps more importantly to this conversation, very efficient. A major part of why militaries function as well as they do is because people can order soldiers to be where they need to be, when they need to be, without question or delay. It's a well oiled machine."
I think you have a better case to argue this for ancient cultures where the ability to induce violence was much more disproportionately distributed than modern ones. Guerrilla warfare has significantly changed the landscape here. One of the best ways to prevent a military from succeeding at its goal is to exhaust its resources, and while organization is useful in so much as it might provide an absolute advantage in what can be done, it is also very costly and makes the military so centralized to the point of being vulnerable. It's why you have a U.S military that is great at debasing nation-states, but is horrible at dominating decentralized peasantry. The only way it can win is through total war, but that sort of defeats the purpose of oppressing and conquering.
Furthermore, militaries are by-products of nation-states, and in order for the military to exist there must first be a nation-state (with a fixed tax-base) to fund it. So under the conditions of an anarchic society where nation-states have been rejected by most people as legitimate entities, where exactly is this military going to get its initial resource allocation?
"Now let's assume, then, that we have a anarchic community where some organization wishes to impose its will. This organization doesn't have to be a military; it could be something as simple as, say, a well armed gang. The gang is well organized, as are many today, and because of that is very capable of avoiding most of society's retaliation. They're not concerned with being osctracized since they feel their own members are their community. And any small group attempting to retaliate with them by force is a dangerous and likely losing proposition since they are better organized, well armed, and have the advantage in numbers."
How did the gang come to exist in the first place? Gangs must start somewhere. If I lived in an anarchic community, and a bunch of people were proselytizing for people to join their gang -- a system of organization based on hierarchy -- I'd bring it up with my peers, we'd form a community militia, and then forcefully disband the gang which is acting in anti-social ways.
Furthermore, if I were a member of an anarchic society, where most of my needs are fulfilled to the extent scarcity allows because it is also a socialist society where all receive their maximum share of the labor-product what incentive would there be for me to join a gang? There is a reason why gangs are usually more prolific in poor areas of developed countries and/or in poor countries. They thrive on the exploitation that conditions of absolute poverty foster.
Additionally, many gangs get so powerful because they are in cahoots with the local authorities in their countries, whom provide the necessary protections and funding that are not afforded to other people.
In societies of near anarchy (pre-capitalist frontier America) there was no precedent of gangs. Organized crime only thrived under the context of capitalism (stealing from the capitalist banks) and state-mandated scarcity (alcohol/drug prohibition.)
"So what does the community do in response? Likely attempt to form some kind of group effort to deal with the gang, that may include many of the tactics used by police today, such as patrols, stops, and perhaps even raids. This, in turn, requires some sort of leadership; without leadership, decisions cannot be made quickly enough and (especially in the case of a raid if something goes unexpectedly) lives can be put at risk. Without someone to give on the fly orders (like in a military), people can very easily die if things do not go as planned, not to mention the sheer time consuming nature of having everyone participate in a debate over patrol routes or how a raid should go."
The difference between militia and a police-forces are two-fold: 1. the militia is egalitarian (nobody has higher rank than anyone else), there might be experienced leaders who show how something is done, but no managers who mandate that something be done, and 2. the police are permanent whereas the militia are not.
"Now let's also assume that this group of ragtag, new society defense force is somehow successful in retaliating against the gang and the members are driven out of the community (highly idealistic but we'll roll with it for the sake of argument). The higher level of protection and safety that people associate with this defense force, part of it likely due to recency bias, could very easily result in them asking for this force to be permanent. And, over time, this force begins to determine it should deal with more than just gangs, but rather all acts of illegitimate violence. And then all illegitimate acts. And then everything else that it considers indecent. And all of a sudden, we have reinstated a hierarchy because of the void in authority that exists. It's not a particularly difficult scenario to imagine, and it doesn't even require any elites who possessed significantly more power beforehand. All it requires is a threat, and if you'd argue in response that organized, hierarchical based threats wouldn't exist in an anarchical society, then the threat could easily expand from a community where hierarchy still exists. Many gangs in the US, for instance, travel across borders to reach here, and there's no reason to think they could not do the same in an anarchist society."
There is not much precedent for your example though. Plenty of militia existed in the early United States and most of them were not institutionalized, because the common people saw no reason to institutionalize them. They disbanded after they were finished dealing with whatever threat existed. Police, as we know them today, were very much institutionalized (originally in capitalist cities) on the behalf of capitalist interests to protect and/or subsidize the protection of their property. In those areas of the U.S where police weren't well-funded, you had Pinkerton armies running around to perform this missing service. It was from the already-existing hierarchy (the nation-state, chartered cities, and capitalists) that the hierarchy of the police force came to exist, not by the will of the common person. Today people support police out of a religious sense of duty.
So you're ignoring four things in this hypothetical: 1. the gangs need to recruit within the external society, 2. anti-gang people can associate just as easily as the gang can, and because of its hierarchical nature it only takes killing key managers in the gang to rid oneself of it whereas you can't do the same with an egalitarian organization. 3. gangs are most prolific in destitute societies with corrupted authorities already extant. 4. gangs fill a niche for people who feel they don't belong, but under socialism this sense of alienation becomes less likely as social bonds are a strong value.
I am not saying it is impossible to form a gang under the conditions of an anarchic society, but it sure would be very hard, just as it is hard to achieve anarchism in a hierarchical society. The respective institutions reinforce one another. Furthermore, the institutions and social values which were created (or accepted) to eliminate hierarchy in the first place will be especially attuned toward preventing hierarchy from arising. So I'd suggest a rule of thumb, "under anarchy it is difficult to produce hierarchies" and "under hierarchies it is difficult to achieve anarchy." Both require large input costs.
"That leads to an entirely different issue, then. If you expect this process to actively involve large scale debates like that, then you have to, somehow, convince individuals within the community to give up their time to participate in intelligent deliberations on whether someone's action qualifies them to be put into this database or not, which is no small task given how utterly abysmal participation in local and even neighborhood level government is presently."
The key word is "presently." There was a time when civil society and direct democracy were very important parts of people's lives. Think of the town meeting. It was through capitalism and the internalization of bourgeois values that this has been reduced. Even still, civil society is pretty strong in the United States, in so much as it is voluntary. Every one hates jury duty, of course, and only a few intelligentsia soc-dems would want mandatory voting.
"The tragedy of the commons comes to mind here; if this system is entirely reliant upon large scale time investment, participation will likely be minimal based on how small any one person's contribution could be. Why should I show up to what is essentially jury duty when I'm just one person, my opinion might not make much of a difference, and I'm going to lose a bunch of time that I could be spending doing what I want?"
You don't have to, but why join the community in the first place then? I'm assuming that if somebody voluntarily joins a community they'd be active in it. Otherwise they could merely be an atomic person, with all of the pros and cons which come with that. Under the conditions of freedom people will only associate if there is a benefit to association. If the individual costs of being part of a community exceed the individual benefits then of course somebody will exit the community. Those whom remain will be the ones who deliberate.
"On top of all that, you have to have such a consistent rate of intelligent debate across, at the very least, a majority of communities before people start taking it seriously. The federal criminal database is trusted because there is a fairly high degree of trust, corruption or otherwise, that intelligent debate from qualified individuals (lawyers and judges) went into the decision. Here? Who knows who was responsible for making the decision. Maybe there was an informed panel discussion, and maybe only a couple people showed up at the weekly meeting for these sorts of deliberations and just decided by themselves in front of an empty audience. If a perception forms about these meetings being untrustworthy, it's going to be very difficult to regain that...ever."
Do you think that an educated population can't have said intelligent debate in the absence of hierarchy? I don't think anarchy can be achieved without an educated population. If somebody feels they aren't qualified they can always appoint a friend to decide on their behalf. This is different from electing somebody because you directly appointed the person you know rather than elect somebody you don't know as a collective with people whose interests you might not share.
| MTZehvor said:
The point that I'm trying to make here is not that laws fix everything. The point is that popular movements and uprising commonly lead to laws, which in turn do take away the authority from corrupt individuals and distribute it elsewhere. The civil rights movement is actually an excellent example of this, because while, in many cases, protests were instrumental, they were instrumental largely in changing laws. Diner sit ins led to changes in laws allowing discrimination at restaurants. Bus protests, first and most famously by Rosa Parks, led to changing discrimination laws on where African Americans could sit on buses. There are other, less direct examples, but the point is that protests resulted in the authority being forcibly taken from corrupt individuals and kept from them. Without that taking of authority, corrupt individuals stay in power. Southern students don't get used to going to class with African Americans. Segregation remains common in southern states. The status quo remains the same. The issue with a changing towards anarchy (and this comes back more towards point #7), is that unlike child labor and civil rights where authority was taken out of the hands of corrupt individuals and placed elsewhere, here authority is taken and then just left in the open, and as long as it is out in the open, it can and will be easily taken, likely by another corrupt individual. In most cases, power structures are not destroyed simply by taking authority away from them and leaving it floating there to be taken back by someone else. The Catholic church is perhaps a particularly good example of this, as many of the protestant leaders and churches that filled the void of authority it left behind after the reformation were just as corrupt and abusive to their people (John Calvin and the various churches that succeeded Catholic influence in England and Sweden). That is the difference that, I believe, makes a transition to anarchy fundamentally unviable. |
These movements were aiming to change the laws, whether that is through abolishing them or creating new ones which negate them. I won't dispute that. But, laws only take away authority in those instances where the people who are harmed by authority can get some control over the political system. The civil rights movement was necessary in the first place because the existing laws were designed in a way to harm people. Without those laws there would never had been a need for the civil rights movement in the first place. Black men, women and their allies would've been able to defend themselves ( especially in counties where they were a huge majority) by associating and empowering one another. But since the Jim Crow states prohibited association and empowerment, they had to work within the system. That doesn't mean the system is valuable in itself, but it is necessary to work with in the short term.
Except its not, "just left in the open." Anarchy is not merely statelessness. It is the process of actively opposing hierarchies, including the state. All of the institutions in an anarchic society are designed to prevent hierarchy from arising, which is significantly different from "just left in the open." People associate into cooperatives, communes, and syndicates to prevent capitalist exploitation. People form militia to prevent exploitation through direct violence. People accept norms of property that are mostly fair and egalitarian. People participate in civil society in order to achieve the goals which they can only achieve with the support of others. So on and so forth. They don't need an authority or ruler to do these things.
Individual protestant churches might have been abusive and exploitative, but on the macro-level Christianity became much more egalitarian with the protestant reformation. I don't think that can be contested. Religion is a useful tool for authority, so it makes sense that authoritarians will use it.
