Ask anarchists the hard-hitting questions. It’ll be “the people will figure it out when they get to it” “you convince people of anarchism by showing them it works” (individual action does not lead to structural change) “people will get together and build MRI machines if they want to and there’s a need for it”
I remember that last one as being actually uttered. MRI machines need specialists in various fields. And it’s not as easy as just putting them together, you need to test and calibrate them because deep down it’s still mechanical. It’s like how computer CPUs are made in white rooms, and the transistors are so small they measure them in nanometres (1 transistor is 1 hertz of your 3.8 gigahertz CPU, imagine how many there are in there). It’s very difficult to make every CPU of a given model have the exact same specs, so what they do with the rejects is sell them as lower-end CPUs with less gigahertz.
Certainly this doesn’t prevent MRI makers (even Phillips makes them) and CPU chips so anarchists probably think they can kinda inherit the current structure and make it work, business as usual but with anarchism instead of capitalism. But they have never understood the division of labour, the social relations of production, basically any inkling of how production happens in capitalism, why it happens this way and what production looked like before capitalism. And this goes as far back as Marx vs. Proudhon, so I don’t expect anarchists to start putting out groundbreaking economy works soon.
Talk to them more though and you will notice they are all anti-civilisation ultimately.
One thing I like to ask anarchists is what specific mechanism they will put in place in order to prevent centralization and hierarchies from forming. This has literally happened in every society, and societies with more centralization tend to rapidly outcompete those that are more federalist efforts.
So, let’s say magic happens and anarchists find some way to abolish the state. Now, all the people who benefited from the original state structure get together and start rebuilding it. This is the core reason why Marxists insist on the dictatorship of the proletariat. When you bring this up then anarchists will eventually be forced to acknowledge that some form of central authority will in fact be needed to prevent this.
My impression is that most anarchists make the implicit assumption that vast majority of people are homogeneous and think as anarchists do. So, once you abolish the state people will just revert to this natural way of thinking and it’s going to be all ponies and rainbows going forward.
Another thing I notice is that most anarchists are highly privileged. They invariably live in the imperial core, they’ve never had to experience true hardship in their lives, and naturally the aspect of society that they care the most about are their personal freedoms. Anarchism is very much a liberal ideology at its core. Marxist view is more aligned with Maslow’s pyramid of needs where we say that material conditions must be improved before we focus on maximizing personal freedoms.
Ask anarchists the hard-hitting questions. It’ll be “the people will figure it out when they get to it” “you convince people of anarchism by showing them it works” (individual action does not lead to structural change) “people will get together and build MRI machines if they want to and there’s a need for it”
I remember that last one as being actually uttered. MRI machines need specialists in various fields. And it’s not as easy as just putting them together, you need to test and calibrate them because deep down it’s still mechanical. It’s like how computer CPUs are made in white rooms, and the transistors are so small they measure them in nanometres (1 transistor is 1 hertz of your 3.8 gigahertz CPU, imagine how many there are in there). It’s very difficult to make every CPU of a given model have the exact same specs, so what they do with the rejects is sell them as lower-end CPUs with less gigahertz.
Certainly this doesn’t prevent MRI makers (even Phillips makes them) and CPU chips so anarchists probably think they can kinda inherit the current structure and make it work, business as usual but with anarchism instead of capitalism. But they have never understood the division of labour, the social relations of production, basically any inkling of how production happens in capitalism, why it happens this way and what production looked like before capitalism. And this goes as far back as Marx vs. Proudhon, so I don’t expect anarchists to start putting out groundbreaking economy works soon.
Talk to them more though and you will notice they are all anti-civilisation ultimately.
One thing I like to ask anarchists is what specific mechanism they will put in place in order to prevent centralization and hierarchies from forming. This has literally happened in every society, and societies with more centralization tend to rapidly outcompete those that are more federalist efforts.
So, let’s say magic happens and anarchists find some way to abolish the state. Now, all the people who benefited from the original state structure get together and start rebuilding it. This is the core reason why Marxists insist on the dictatorship of the proletariat. When you bring this up then anarchists will eventually be forced to acknowledge that some form of central authority will in fact be needed to prevent this.
My impression is that most anarchists make the implicit assumption that vast majority of people are homogeneous and think as anarchists do. So, once you abolish the state people will just revert to this natural way of thinking and it’s going to be all ponies and rainbows going forward.
Another thing I notice is that most anarchists are highly privileged. They invariably live in the imperial core, they’ve never had to experience true hardship in their lives, and naturally the aspect of society that they care the most about are their personal freedoms. Anarchism is very much a liberal ideology at its core. Marxist view is more aligned with Maslow’s pyramid of needs where we say that material conditions must be improved before we focus on maximizing personal freedoms.