Asklemmy

43898 readers

1110 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

280

ELI5 why is anarchy not "the guy with the bigger stick" making the rules? (lemmy.giftedmc.com)

submitted 10 months ago by haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

208 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm politically agnostic and have moved from a slightly conservative stance to a vastly more progressive stance (european). i still dont get the more niche things like tankies and anarchists at this point but I would like to, without spending 10 hours reading endless manifests (which do have merit, no doubt, but still).

Can someone explain to me why anarchy isnt the guy (or gal, or gang, or entity) with the bigger stick making the rules?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] beSyl@slrpnk.net 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You misunderstood my question. I did not mean to ask why there would be no murderers. My question is this:

If anarchism is not against rules but rather authority, how would you deal with murderers? If there is no authority to sentence them, would they remain free individuals?

[–] nicocool84@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 months ago

Anarchists usually think that a lot of murderers actually get away with it in our actual world, be it through war crimes, neglecting sanitary or safety rules to maximise profit; you can extend this list with a lot of legal murders.

Anarchism definitely does not define a specific rule for what to do with murderers. Different communities might want to handle that differently. They usually think that prison does not solve anything though, and that only the poor get sent there anyway.

I think a mistake is to think that anarchism is a "feature-complete" view of the world, when it really is the realisation that power corrupts, and that we should keep this in mind when organising ourselves. Arguably, over the long run, anarchist views are winning: institutions that prevent - in theory - crazy psychopath from taking absolute power, churches losing power over our lives, women considered as human beings; these are things anarchists have pushed for, for 2 centuries. This short essay might give you more insight: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-are-you-an-anarchist-the-answer-may-surprise-you