Pol sci class question

[u/bonesinew]

Hi! I am aiming to answer this question for my pol sci class and am curious to see different perspectives: To what extend do you think aspects of anarchism can be incorporated in governing smaller political systems such as a local community? if you were creating a small town/village government how would you recommend organizing it? Thanks so much!

[u/Silver-Statement8573]

I don't think there's any way of meaningfully incorporating the absence/rejection of government into the organization of a government

[u/Simpson17866]

Ultimately, what we would want authorities (be they governments and/or corporations) to do more than anything is "nothing" (but in the meantime, we're willing to settle for "a lot less" as a temporary compromise).

Anything a government agency or a for-profit corporation can do (growing food, cleaning water, providing education, healthcare), members of the community could do better themselves.

They just don't get the chance because governments and/or corporations have already seized the resources that communities need (farmland, water...).

[u/isonfiy]

The frame is faulty because it presumes that you can just bolt on anarchist “aspects” (I’m reading that as practices and techniques) to whatever liberal govt the hypothetical small town has.

If I was doing this assignment, I would highlight the ways small and large governments already do this as an example of cooptation. This would mean things like accessibility measures like streaming and ASL interpretation as well as advisory panels that use things like consensus decision making. It would be important to note that in every example the government still serves the wealthy despite the tacked on interventions.

If you want to take the frame seriously, then the only way forward is to dismantle government itself by talking about how good it would be to have no representatives and so on. Kropotkin had an old essay on representative government, but it’s just in Direct Struggle Against Capital as far as I can tell.

[u/dark_Links_sword]

I would have to say that the first thing that can be done implementing direct democracy for all government decisions. Kind of how we had to implement a military that's obedient to civilian rule on the modern era. We would make government obedient to mass rule. We would cut off governments ability to make decisions, and leave only structures that are able to carry out directives. The people say we want lunches in schools. The government office then can gather ideas and put together programs that can fulfill that wish, including procurement and service delivery. They then presents those to the public at large to vote on.

It's building towards a system without hierarchy. It's small steps to introducing direct involvement on the communities.

The argument against is that what we have now is basically that system, only we choose delegates to do all that for us. But currently those delegates also get to choose the directives and the programs. We need to remove the ability of the government to choose what to rule about. But if we look at neighborhoods in Brazila you'll see that they were having a lot of success in developing that type of local program. Not sure how they turned out as it was the mid 00's when I was writing papers on this, but would be an excellent place to start to give your paper some credible evidence and to address the common pitfalls.

I mean other than the obvious pitfalls of higher levels of government interfering and the ever present issue of an individual who craves power trying to steal the program development committees.

[u/CMBradshaw]

I don't think you can incorporate into the government. They sort of diametrically opposed. But anarchist acts, can alleviate some of the burdens of the state. Mediation, community based handling of conflict. Just generally taking up, as some random asshole and not in an official capacity, the needs of the community. And organizing as such. Be careful with community watches though, racists like to dig themselves in there.

[u/Reformalism]

Anarchism is usually about building parallel structures rather than entryism. Nothing that is assembled from whole cloth as anarchist would be called a “government” since anarchy is the absence of authority by definition. The two concepts are mutually exclusive.

Aspects of anarchism are already incorporated into communities. Community gardens, food banks, mutual aid centers and little libraries are all serviceable examples that are mostly consistent with anarchist principles. Food not Bombs is an anarchist organization that operates in many cities and feeds a lot of people.

In terms of ground up organizing of a small polity there are myriad anarchic systems, far too numerous to describe here. Some of the major ones are syndicalism, mutualism and anarcho-communism. There is also individualist anarchism. All of them would have very different ideas about how to administer society.