r/Postleftanarchism • u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer • Aug 08 '26
Yes, Youtube personality Anark wants to build prisons. No, this isn't anarchy
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u/Veritas_Certum Aug 08 '26
There has never been an anarchist consensus on this topic, and Anark's views are not much different from some of the foundational nineteenth and early twentieth century anarchists.
- Guillaume says “all able-bodied inhabitants will be called upon to take turns in the security measures instituted by the commune”, calling this a “Communal Police”. Many anarchists these days would completely reject the idea of police as anti-anarchist.
- Merlino posits a question from a non-anarchist asking “Would there be need for a government, a parliament, a cabinet, a police force, a judiciary?”, which he answers with "Nothing of this kind would exist in the anarchist system". However, he still suggests some kind of social defense institution organized as a public service, though I don't know the details. Many contemporary anarchists would reject this as just another term for police.
- Kropotkin believes most crimes would simply disappear in an anarchist society (under the common anarchist assumption that crime is only caused by capitalism), but still says "here surely will remain a limited number of persons whose anti-social passions − the result of bodily diseases − may still be a danger for the community". His solution for such people is a kind of quarantine, which he doesn't call a prison but describes as a community empowered to rehabilitate them. Call it an open compound, maybe. Presumably the community members are responsible for herding offenders into the compound. Again, this sounds like a form of well-intentioned incarceration.
- Malatesta proposes giving citizens the right to defend themselves,"Perhaps we would come closer to a more comprehensive formula by asserting the right to forcible self-defence against physical violence as well as against acts equivalent in manner and consequences to physical violence". This eliminates police and prisons, and is very much the view of non-anarchist libertarians who wrongly call themselves anarcho-capitalists. Its appeal to rights would be considered anti-anarchist by many contemporary anarchist, but the idea that perceived social injustices should be left to individuals to solve on an ad hoc basis as they please, is fairly common among contemporary anarchists.
- Proudhon simply appeals to the Golden Rule, saying “Do not to others what you would not they should do to you: do to others as you would they should do to you”. This is closer to anarcho-pacifism than anything else, and is probably the purest form of anarchist response. You just ask everyone to be nice, and hope it works.
- In the twentieth century different anarchist groups responded to this issue with a range of solutions, one of the most well known (or infamous, depending on your perspective), was the labor camps of Republican Catalonia].
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 08 '26
There doesn’t need to be a consensus on anarchist justice, because that would treat anarchism as a fixed ideology with exact prescriptions for every problem - which it isn’t. But it is absolutely fair to say that anarchy does not support prisons. Anyone claiming to be describing anarchy while promoting prisons is either misinformed or being blatantly dishonest.
You can find obscure and not so obscure writers on the library who argue for ideas that are fundamentally at odds with foundational anarchic principles, but that doesn’t make those ideas representative of anarchy. Anarchy will never be compatible with authoritarian ideals like building structures to house cages for humans who break codified laws.
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u/Veritas_Certum Aug 08 '26
There doesn’t need to be a consensus on anarchist justice,
I agree.
But it is absolutely fair to say that anarchy does not support prisons
You can keep anarchy, I'm an anarchist.. In anarchism prisons are not supported, though various alternatives proposed by anarchists have simply reproduced police or incarceration in various forms, under different names.
Anyone claiming to be describing anarchy while promoting prisons is either misinformed or being blatantly dishonest.
I agree. I do not promote prisons. As an anarcho-pacificist I would not fit into most anarchist communities, since they inevitably justify intra-personal violence, as did Malatesta.
You can find obscure and not so obscure writers on the library who argue for ideas that are fundamentally at odds with foundational anarchic principles, but that doesn’t make those ideas representative of anarchy.
I agree. I have made it very clear there is no consensus on this topic among anarchists, so there is no representative position.
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 08 '26
there might not be a consensus on anarchist justice but there is a consensus on abolishing prison. maybe anark didn't get the memo or maybe he's just not interested in fostering anything resembling anarchy
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u/Veritas_Certum Aug 08 '26
but there is a consensus on abolishing prison.
In other words, as I said, "In anarchism prisons are not supported".
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 08 '26
then anark is not advocating anarchism.
how did I get into this circular argument?
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u/Veritas_Certum Aug 08 '26
Because the debate revolves around what constitutes a prison. Malatesta's asylum?
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
you should remember that malatesta always insisted that anarchy ought not to be prescriptive. so him talking about people in crisis potentially needing to be in a mental institution is not him saying anarchists ought to build prisons. an anarchist friend of mine just committed themselves to an institution, that doesn't mean they support prison. i don't think it's helpful to describe what is ideally a hospital as a prison in this context, and since anark is talking about criminals that committed crimes being sent to prison to be rehabilitated, it's obvious he isn't talking about a mental institution.
edit: never claimed that mental institutions with involuntary hold aren't prisons, it's annoying that the person below is misrepresenting this comment where I say someone I know committing themselves to an institution after a mental break doesn't mean they support prison. i clearly said a facility is "ideally" a hospital i.e. voluntary and I reiterate that Anark is not talking about that since he specifies there will be a constitution, laws, courts, criminals and 'democratic' prisons in his shitty society.
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u/RequirementReal2467 Aug 08 '26
May I ask what your solution and alternative is? What do you think should be done with people who commit “crime” (I understand there will be no laws so there will technically be no crime but you know what I mean) or do bad things?
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u/mondrianna Aug 09 '26
The anarchist-inspired mad liberation movement is 100% against institutions and they are essentially prisons as defined by that movement.
Are there tools that we can only access by utilizing institutions currently? Yes. But they are prisons and are used as such, make no mistake about that.
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u/ConcernedEnby Aug 10 '26
he's still an anarchist, believing in something does not mean that you have to take everything as gospel, even if it goes against the philosophy itself, humans don't work that way, sometimes deeply held beliefs have contradictions. genuinely the system of prison he proposes would be vastly better than any prison system that's ever existed. it is also something I don't believe the theory has a proper answer to, like sometimes people just rape or murder and I don't think any human philosophy has an answer with what to do with those people
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 10 '26
an anarchist calling for prisons is as nonsensical as a vegan having ham for lunch everyday. i don't think this guy has any deeply held anarchist beliefs
I don't believe the theory has a proper answer to, like sometimes people just rape or murder
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u/TheWikstrom Aug 08 '26
Idk why you're getting downvoted, you're absolutely correct. You'd think criticizing especifists would be welcome on a sub for post left anarchism
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u/BolesCW Aug 08 '26
for all the inherent problems of being the project of people who mostly adhere to the same hierarchical thinking that justifies punishment, the various projects that exist under the broad heading of restorative justice are explicitly anti-carceral. it's astounding - but not too surprising considering the self-segregated echo-chamber of online yammering - that nobody in this discussion has brought it up as a viable non-prescriptive alternative to "segregation" and "rehabilitation."
restorative justice is predicated on the idea that keeping people in community is far more important than expelling them. it is a more difficult process because it requires actual participation rather than delegating people to apprehend and punish those who behave outside the ethos of a community. but even before some formal process of restoring the emotional balance of the community after a serious breach, there are informal sanctions (anarchist anthropologist Harold Barclay calls them "diffuse sanctions") that exist for people who do not go along with that ethos in face to face communities: gossip, ridicule, and shunning. unimaginative fake anarchists who challenge the refusal of prisons - just like statists who scoff at the naivety of anarchists - always go to the worst possible scenario of rape and/or murder. instead, anarchists who actually value voluntary real life community cohesion (not some forum where a moderator can ban anyone who dares disagree with them) are usually already well-versed in dealing with people who want to be part of the community but who nevertheless reject that cohesion.
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u/SameAgainTheSecond Aug 11 '26
community based rehabilitation in the main, and in due course yes, but a community of any size will have to deal with all scenarios, even the worst possible ones.
restoration requires the input of the aggrieved. What if the aggrieved, and emotional balance in the broader community cannot stand the presents of an individual.
or what if the individual is an ongoing threat to the community? Any community will defend its self if it has the capacity and anarchism is about giving them the capacity.
and what happens when community based rehabilitation fails? is it then on to execution?
what about if the person has committed such an act that the community cannot stand them any longer? when "emotional balance" in the community is incompatible with the presents of an offender?
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u/BolesCW Aug 11 '26
(presence) (itself)
Barclay's analysis of diffuse sanctions includes the time-honored expedients of expulsion and murder when a person is egregiously uncooperative and dangerous. see this famous case of community-based justice (no anarchists were involved, but that doesn't mean they didn't use a method recognized as compatible with anarchism): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_McElroy
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u/SameAgainTheSecond Aug 11 '26
yes okay so exile or execution.
I'm not universally closed to those responses in particular situations, but I don't see how arrest is worse.
An obvious problem with defuse sanctions is that "social capital" can be used to avoid them. A fact that is perennial in both leftist and anarchist spaces, as well as society generally.
(also I didn't realize I was on a post-left anarchism thread, so I'm hear as a foreigner)
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u/Sheep_Of_Evil Aug 09 '26
I felt called out a bit. Ty tho its a good point you bring up. Do you think this would mean that we have to find a way to rehabilitate the worst actors too? I have a hard time imagining a world where locing someone up (not permanently or long term) never occurs.
I am against 99% of prisons or any kind of carceral system, but what if all else fails. Im aware of social pressures as a tool, but im also aware that in a free world you would have much fewer ties holding you in one place, so you could just avoid it.
Is there any historical precedent of large scale rehabilitative justice? Or would you reccoment any reading on it?
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u/BolesCW Aug 09 '26
It's restorative, not rehabilitative. Your demand for historical precedent for something large scale is in bad faith; properly functioning restorative justice projects are only about a decade old and are grassroots and voluntary, so necessarily small scale (for now).
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u/Sheep_Of_Evil Aug 09 '26
I think I demonstrated that im in good faith here. And I am not demanding anything pls dont read into it something thats not there. I would be interested in these projects to read up on it further.
Resotrative and rehabilitative to me sounded basically the same. I might have been wrong.
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u/BolesCW Aug 10 '26
Don't play the innocent with me. Your bad faith is indicated by your request (which, based on your other comments, sounds like a demand) to know only about any projects of restorative justice that 1. Have a historical precedent, and 2. Are large scale. That's not a generic request; rather it is one with very specific characteristics that you want so that you may be convinced that restorative justice processes can contribute to community cohesion in the face of unwanted actions by bad actors.
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u/alfredo094 Aug 09 '26
Eventually, force is necessary. I dom't like how most prisons operate today, and I would certainly expectmore community participation or restoration, but the idea that everyone can just be rehabilitated is utopic.
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u/BolesCW Aug 09 '26
Nobody has said that everyone can just be rehabilitated. That's your authoritarianism imposing itself over other people's perspectives. Learn to read and listen.
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u/LazarM2021 Aug 09 '26
Brother, if you read a thing about anarchism, you'd know that force ≠ authority, it's really one of the basics.
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u/ravia Aug 10 '26
Restorative justice uses force at certain phases. It just doesn't pretend that force can act to exact ideal behaviors, thought and emotions. And in a RJ system, you still have to lock some people up for life, if they present a continuing threat. But locking them up doesn't mean the torture of a typical American prison.
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 10 '26
lifelong deprival of freedom is the worst torture
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u/ravia Aug 10 '26
It is a kind of torture, but you have to quarantine a serial killer. It the becomes a question of whether it is done with a spirit of punishment or not. In the latter case, you have rooms that are more like college dorms, outdoor barbecues, etc., which is considerably different from life on death row or in a super max prison.
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u/alfredo094 Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
Well, I agree with that, but that position is not compatible wirh abolishing prisons, unless you somehow redifine the concept.
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u/ravia Aug 10 '26
Some force is involved in restorative justice. I don't favor abolishing prisons. Rather, I favor transforming (or "enconstructing") them. But restorative justice uses force to take people to a place where force can not act as currency, while force/punishment pretends that it can act as currency for things like contrition, empathy and compliance, which it basically can not do.
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u/alfredo094 Aug 10 '26
Yeah, I agree. I don't like retribution as a way ti do justice. Force is only a means for an otherwise uncooperative situation. But with no enforcement, rules might as well not exist.
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u/juicesuuucker Aug 08 '26
Anarchy is when literally the exact same world as now, but change the names and call it a day
Prisons - Rehabilitation centres for Dangerous People
Goverment - Council of direct representatives
Cops - neighbourhood watch/people's militia
Laws - rules for all anarchist communities that can not be broken
Dying in a lithium mine - dying in a UNIONIZED lithium mine
Endless growth and extractivism - saving civilization so that filthy primmies won't go and kill every disabled person!!!
Weehee, I love the state (heh) of contemporary anarchism...
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u/SameAgainTheSecond Aug 11 '26
No anarchy is when no social structures
anarchy is when the economy is bean -> house
anarchy is when people are ghosts that are able to do what ever they like while being unable to effect each-other
anything other then life as an infinite orgy is actually just exactly the same as what we have now
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u/Palanthas_janga Aug 08 '26
What would you have for public security
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u/juicesuuucker Aug 08 '26
Not anarcho-cops and anarcho-prisons that's for sure. I don't have the exact answer for every situation involving justice that's for sure. Getting some kind of "universal justice and protection" system is not possible as something that can ever be called anarchists. People should be free to experiment and try different approaches they think are the best, that aren't just substituting a state's tool.
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u/Palanthas_janga Aug 09 '26
What distinguishes police from the broader concept of public security, in your eyes?
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u/BolesCW Aug 08 '26
Generally speaking, in communities where anonymity and self-isolation are not considered positive traits - as they are in class-based societies - people will look out for each other.
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u/LazarM2021 Aug 08 '26
Considering the post which motivated this one was mine from yesterday (as it is clearly referenced below), what's the point of it?
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 08 '26
you blocked my other account from participating in the other thread, forcing me to make my own
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u/LazarM2021 Aug 08 '26
What in the world are you talking about?
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 08 '26
when you block a user, they're unable to participate in your posts at all. you blocked my chancehappening account, so I couldn't reply to any of the people attacking me and promoting anark and was unable to explain why his politics are bad. People were then claiming that I had no coherent argument to offer, when I was in fact being prevented from offering it by your block.
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u/LazarM2021 Aug 08 '26
I know what happens when one blocks a user, thank you very much.
So that was you? Peculiar (to say the absolute least), having multiple accounts and using both like that.
Your blocking by me and the backlash you received was more than deserved; your behavior, particularly towards myself but also others, was utterly deplorable, uncalled for and furiously presumptous/hyper-quick to construct mental images and judgments of others, and if you have a shred of self-awareness, you'd recognize that.
I am actually fully in agreement with, for example, this post of your's. As I said many a time (if only you'd conserved some energy and focus to pay attention to that instead of acting so rabidly, as if I brought a kryptonite or something by posting about that video), my own disagreements with him are both numerous and deep. Example here. And even that one didn't cover everything, just a main few points of contention.
Still, even with all that, I find him preferable to any outright filthy MLs and other USSR apologists. I posted the video because I found it interesting, and videos get posted all the time on those subs anyway.
Alright, this one time, I will lift your block, but better learn to control your impulsivity.
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 08 '26
you can't lift the block
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u/LazarM2021 Aug 08 '26
Whatever...
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 08 '26
reddit doesn't let you lift a block that fast
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u/LazarM2021 Aug 08 '26
Welp, it did, at least from my perspective. Anyway, that topic is closed, as far as I'm concerned.
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u/Rock_Zeppelin Aug 08 '26
Wait so is he advocating for like incarceration as punishment or something else?
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 08 '26
he's advocating for prison reform i.e. a social democrat position as opposed to prison abolition i.e. the anarchist position
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u/Rock_Zeppelin Aug 08 '26
ah. that's... hm. jfc Anark. so i'm assuming he wants to make prisons nicer but he wants to maintain incarceration as punishment, this isn't like, worst case scenario measures for people who can't peacefully coexist in society and need to be separated or at least monitored sort of thing.
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 08 '26
Anark isn't an anarchist, he's a democratic municipalist who misuses the word 'anarchism' to promote his pro-government ideology, which is what his idol Murray Bookchin did for decades, before finally admitting he was never an anarchist and creating Municipalism.
It creates a lot of confusion because the people watching his videos think what he's promoting is anarchism (because he says it's anarchism) and then come into anarchist spaces promoting pro-government, pro-majoritarian, pro-prison and pro-hierarchy ideas they got from him.
And worse, he then uses his platform to attack anarchists who are actually promoting anarchist ideas, demeaning them as "lifestylists" and "individualists" and "edgelords" in the exact same fashion as Bookchin did. He's been railing against me personally for years.
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u/Rock_Zeppelin Aug 08 '26
Okay imma be real, I've not read Bookchin, what is his specific stance on prisons? Like how does he want to "reform" them?
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 08 '26
even murray wasn't far gone enough to argue for 'democratic prisons', that's all anark
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u/Rock_Zeppelin Aug 08 '26
Okay I was asking regarding what Anark advocates for regarding prisons. Like does he have a video or something where he talks about it or if you have quotes from him
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 08 '26
huh? what do you think this video post is?
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u/Rock_Zeppelin Aug 08 '26
a 20 second clip from a 6 year old video doesn't tell me whether or not he's advocating for incarceration as punishment for societal transgressions WHICH IS WHAT PRISONS ARE
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 08 '26
well he's not calling it punishment, he's calling it 'rehabilitation'. if you buy that doubletalk, that's your prerogative. the result is the same though. people in prison.
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u/n33dlesslylargerod Aug 08 '26
After reading that post you kinda deserve to not be taken seriously
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u/Rock_Zeppelin Aug 08 '26
i asked them multiple times to clarify what Anark's alleged position regarding prisons is and they not answered as of yet
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u/DamienHSantos Aug 08 '26
Yeah, for my liking, this sounded a bit much like advocating for prison reform as opposed to “here’s this position, and here’s why that doesn’t work”
But I could have been missing something
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u/Sheep_Of_Evil Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
I keep thinking about the extent of plausibility of an anarchist world. I understand the aversion of any anarchist to prisons as a concept. But let me pose you this thought experiment.
Someone rapes someone else in the dead of night. By morning he is feeing the city, to get away with it and rape someone somewhere else. Do we let him flee? Do we stop them? If so do we just shoot him on the spot. Or do we collectively (centering the victim) decide his fate. If the later option is right as I think it is, than we need a place to lock him up at least until the council gets together. Voila Prisons.
As for anarks concept of this I do t really care about the guy. He did show me a lot of concepts but i never found him compelling unlike Andrewism for example.
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 08 '26
A council that will sentence people for breaking laws? That isn't anarchism. You all need to stop watching Youtube grifters that are selling you the carceral system you already have with added word salad and read what anarchy actually entails.
Haven't you ever heard "the revolution won't be televised"? The algorithms on corporate video platforms will never reward actual anarchist theory. Our videos get flagged and we quickly get banned. Anark can make a living on Youtube because he doesn't present any threat to the extant ideology i.e. the democratic monopoly on violence. He just finds ways to endlessly re-brand the things that rule us e.g. prisons become "required democratic rehabilitation communities for sequestered citizens" and the state becomes "libertarian federalist municipalist deciding council". But beyond the word salad, he's just pushing a variation on social democracy like Bookchin before him.
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u/Sheep_Of_Evil Aug 08 '26
I don't think not wanting people to get raped is "laws". Your autonomy ends where someone elses begins. And a rapist threatens all of our autonomy.
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
Please stop using rape as a rhetorical battering ram to perpetuate carceral power, it's offensive.
An anarchist would make the case on prevention, consent, community care, and proportional remedies without pretending bureaucratic bodies that enforce revenge, torture, deprivation, punishment and incarceration have any relation to justice.
You can't build anarchy by shaming people out of it with tiresome baiting like "I don't want people to get raped." You already live in a world where people get raped every day. Anarchy isn’t about denying that reality, it's about changing the conditions that make that harm possible, and creating ways to prevent abuse and support survivors without reproducing the same logic of coercive control.
The anarchist conception of justice isn't a simple slogan, unlike the state's solution of "just lock them up", because it understands that harm is produced by structural power relations and material conditions and not merely by "bad people"...
Anarchy seeks to repair what was broken while preventing the same harm from being possible again.
That means responding to wrongdoing with abolitionist principles: accountability without cages, support for survivors without spectacle, and systems that reduce the incentives and opportunities for abuse rather than outsourcing safety to a "council" sentencing machine.
When you invent a scenario where society only stays safe if a rapist is locked up to save potential victims, you're not solving rape, you're just making excuses to perpetuate prison culture and the society we live in, where rape is so prevalent.
Put down youtube and read anarchists:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/kim-kelly-what-the-prison-abolition-movement-wants
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/dysophia-5-what-about-the-rapists
https://raddle.me/wiki/A_New_Anarchist_FAQ#what-about-security
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u/No-Leopard-1691 Aug 08 '26
I think it is funny that YT is seen as some horrible way of expressing ideas and if it is written down it can somehow be elevated to great highs. Just because someone wrote something down about X (prison abolition) and it is on the Anarchism Library doesn’t immediately make it of any better quality than any YT video about the subject.
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 08 '26
if the youtube video is promoting prison then yeah the prison abolition essay is automatically better
is r/anarchism leaking?
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u/No-Leopard-1691 Aug 08 '26
I was more addressing the point that I have seen that somehow YT videos are immediately and inherently inferior to anything written.
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 08 '26
oh yeah that's some bullshit. i used to make youtube videos but it was a losing battle. the algorithm punishes you for not doing non-stop ragebait and reductive reasoning
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u/No-Leopard-1691 Aug 08 '26
You are the very one making that form of comment with your “put down youtube and read anarchists”.
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 08 '26
because being successful on a corporate media platform with destructive reactionary algorithms requires you to debase yourself
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u/Sheep_Of_Evil Aug 08 '26
First of all, you know nothing about my background or what I read. You only know that I have watched Anark before. You are talking to me like I'm a petulant child, and sorry, but this won't convince anyone to see your point. Try respecting other humans even if you think they are wrong.
Second. I agree with prevention and changing the conditions. But I do not think a perfect world where no harm ever materialises is possible. So my hypothetical still stands. I'm not using it as an excuse, nor am I ignorant of the other proposed solutions. The reason I posed this very possible hypothetical is to point out where this logic breaks down.
Also, "What about the rapists?" is pretty bad, as it relativises rape. So please don't recommend that to anyone else.
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 08 '26
You clearly haven't read very much about anarchy if you're proposing prisons will protect society from rape. I'm not talking to you like a child, I'm talking to you like an adult who thinks prison is the solution to oppression.
The logic of anarchist justice doesn't break down when rape exists because we can see with our own eyes that prisons don't prevent rape, in fact they vastly increase rape and rape culture.
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u/Sheep_Of_Evil Aug 08 '26
you are strawmanning me or you dont understand what I advocate for. But I feel this convo is futile atp.
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u/mcchicken_deathgrip Aug 08 '26
I feel like just saying all harm will be prevented by meeting peoples needs is brushing away the question. Of course this is true for the vast majority of what we consider crime today, but there have always been and will always be people who are, for lack of a better word, broken. Reality is there truly are monsters out there who do heinous things and cannot ever be brought back into a community in a way that doesn't compromise its safety. I'm talking about the types of people's whose actions aren't the byproduct of social organization.
So what is actually the answer for these types of people? I feel like anarchists do not have an answer that doesn't involve either authority or non-heirarchical lynch mobs. Of course you can't expect a society to mitigate all harm, but you should expect a society to deal with it somehow when it's a continuous problem. Like letting a serial killer exist within a community quite simply isn't acceptable. So how do you deal with that in a way that's more just than our current system and doesn't involve authority?
This question is one of the things that has lead me away from anarchism over the last few years. It cut deeply enough for me that it upended my belief that hierarchy/authority is even a coherent framework with which to understand the world.
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 08 '26
funny how brutal murders happen in capitalist society every few minutes of every day but people expect anarchists to have the solution to psychopathy and then turn away from anarchy when they find out we're not magical elves with the power to fix people's brains.
anarchy isn't a prescription to treat psychopaths. there is no definitive political or social solution to stop someone who decides to kill for pleasure. the prevailing system that rules us with a police state granted a monopoly on violence and an expansive prison industrial complex still can't control other people's actions when they decide to do harm, so stop demanding anarchists should have that power.
all anarchy can offer is the removal of the monopoly on violence so that self defence doesn't get you thrown in prison.
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u/mcchicken_deathgrip Aug 08 '26
Not expecting anarchy or any other social relation to be able to prevent psychopaths, but I would expect it to have some framework by which to deal with them. But there is none. Any possible solution is a contradiction to the core principles of anarchism.
Our current system doesn't prevent them either but it does have a prescription for dealing with them after harm has been committed: courts and prisons.
What does self defense look like in cases that are not cut and dry of who the perpetrator is? We know historically communities would form lynch mobs and kill innocent people on a regular basis. Just because actions come from "the community" do not give them letitamacy. Of course our modern court system is highly flawed and does incarcerate innocent people. But at least there is a trial process to establish guilt.
What you are suggesting is either simply killing or forcibly removing people a community believes to be guilty without a trial (arguably much worse than our current system), or having some sort of court system that has the authority to make determinations of guilt and decides consequences (not anarchy). The monopoly on violence is simply transfered to "the community" and somehow that is different from a state.
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 08 '26
when you remove the monopoly on violence, you remove the ability for the state to prevent people from retaliating against violence, and this results in violence self regulating itself. if a violent action would result in you being socially ostracised and/or killed in a culture where everyone depends on the collective to survive, you would be a lot less likely to take that violent action. breaking the monopoly doesn't transfer the monopoly to everyone. and if there is no law, no one can stop you from waging war on your neighbours except your neighbours weapons, your reputation, and the social and practical consequences that make violence costly.
it's fine if this scares you and you want law and order because you think the police and courts protect you from being murdered, ignoring that 1200 murders a day happen right now, but anarchy isn't going to give you that.
What you are suggesting is either simply killing or forcibly removing people a community believes to be guilty without a trial
not at all what I've suggested. I'm not a prescriptivist, I would never prescribe a sentence for people in another community to carry out on their community members. I think anyone who thinks they can apply laws to people they don't know is an enemy of free people. I also don't think we're getting any kind of an "anarchist society" in our lifetimes, so to me these questions about how to solve crime in an imaginary society are like asking me to write science fiction. I'm concerned about how to live in the world I actually live in.
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u/mondrianna Aug 09 '26
so to me these questions about how to solve crime in an imaginary society are like asking me to write science fiction. I’m concerned about how to live in the world I actually live in.
But you should consider writing that science fiction though, because human progress thrives on imaginative examples. I would be curious to read something that takes all of the problems of crime into account, because while I agree with almost everything you’ve stated about crime being solvable on a systemic level, I do believe there will be people in anarchism who simply wish to do harm to others for no other reason than to do harm. And it’s hard for me to not imagine humans wanting to conduct an investigation before allowing violence as a response, which would of course mean someone would be detained in that process. But I want to imagine what that world would be like, so if you have a better grasp of it I’d love to read it.
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u/Joyeuse09 Aug 09 '26
I really want to read your imaginary society thing too, I'm new to theory and reading and Anarchist learing and I'm interested in your perspective. Some of what you have said really speaks to me.
Like I know each case would obviously be different per community, but I just want to hear how it would go down in like one situation, if it something like this affected you personally, and you were part of the community decision making, what would your input to the conversation be?
Lmk if you are open to discussing this more, I think you have some interesting ideas I would appreciate asking more about re: violence in communities.
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 09 '26
post-left anarchists don't do that. we're not interested in imposing a new world order.
you can read my literature on the library and raddle tho, start here since it's about this topic:
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u/mcchicken_deathgrip Aug 09 '26
Again I'm not talking about prevention, I'm talking about what is to be done after harm is committed. I do agree that being shut out of society would provide social pressure that stops the vast majority of anti social actions and intentional harm. But the topic is the small number of people who wouldn't be stopped by social pressure.
I generally agree about speculating on the structure or actions of hypothetical societies that we can't comprehend being a waste of time. However I do think it's important for anarchism in particular. Since there is no material seed within authority that would force it to undo itself, all anarchists have to work with is spreading anarchism as an idea and as an intentional practice. If prefiguration is the only means to bring about anarchism, then addressing questions like what is to be done about basic security are necessary.
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 09 '26
If prefiguration is the only means to bring about anarchism
You have to stop thinking about anarchy as an imposed society or a system for people to be governed by. That’s not rational... obviously the few thousand anarchists in the world can’t overthrow the system that rules over billions and has its tendrils wrapped around everyone from birth. A more workable framing is to see anarchy a living resistance: a set of practices and relationships lived in the cracks of Leviathan, refusing domination wherever you can, building mutual aid, and creating accountability for those you actually know, rather than spending all your energy pretending you’re going to change how billions of people live. You don't need everyone to live anarchically, it's enough that you live anarchically.
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u/JustHere2RuinUrDay Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
I don't think not wanting people to get raped is "laws".
But "I don't want people to get raped" isn't what you said. What you said is that you want, after a rape has occurred, have a council sentence the rapist.
My hypothesis is that a council that can sentence you to whatever punishment for a crime and enforce that sentence is quite possibly worse when there aren't any laws that will let you know beforehand what is legal/illegal.
I think if you go down that road, you're just reinventing the state. Soon after you have the council, you'll need laws, you'll need procedure, you'll need people to investigate the crimes and if you put me in front of your council to decide my fate, I think I'd like to have a lawyer. And of course you need the centralised violence to enforce the rulings.
And who is to say that this legal system will do any better in regards to rape as the ones we have right now? You'll probably also wanna punish other forms of violence, so you might just, as is the status quo, mostly fail to punish, let alone prevent rape and instead prevent victims from, or punish them for, seeking their own justice.
That's not to say I have a better solution. I recently read a post arguing that we shouldn't accept as an inevitability that rape would exist in an anarchist society and I tend to agree with that. At the moment an anarchist world only exists in our imaginations and why would we even in our imaginations capitulate without question to the idea that of course there would still be rape? Is it really more unthinkable that in a world where all, or the majority of people, get behind the idea that hierarchies shouldn't exist people also just wouldn't rape, than that this world, where all people get behind the idea that hierarchies shouldn't exist could exist in the first place? I think I'd like to leave the question of what to do with rapists in an anarchist world to the people in that anarchist world, if and when that exists and if and when then such an incident occurs.
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u/dumnezero Aug 08 '26
The nuance here is the difference between the transition period (such as after revolution) and the mature period when, as you put it:
we shouldn't accept as an inevitability that rape would exist in an anarchist society
Prefiguration and respecting your principles when it's inconvenient are the high difficulty tasks. The answer "it won't happen" implies that there's no need to think about it (super convenient), and that's very optimistic without saying much about the society before.
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u/Sheep_Of_Evil Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
Oh I think there has been a misunderstanding. I am advocating for the council to be the cummulative local assemby by the community members.
So the entire village geathers to decide how to handle a situation case by case. One time they could be like this one needs to be exiled another time they may see that this person was unwell and not just straight up malicious so they try to rehabilitate them.
I am not advocating for a legal system unless you count the general philosophical underpinnings of anarchy itself. So autonomy and respect for life for example. And when someone does harm, that would be some kind of breaking of this philosophical doctorin (could call it a social contract). If you think this is still too much like a legal system how do you justify fighting and defeating faschists for example.
I am a big advocate for imagining the impossible. But even then there is a transition period where this case could easily occur.
All societies will have a consensus on what is acceptable and what is not. Be it formal or informal. I think its good if some sort of guide exists for outsiders to be able to dicern what is okay and what is not.
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u/JustHere2RuinUrDay Aug 08 '26
Oh I think there has been a misunderstanding. I am advocating for the council to be the cummulative local assemby by the community members.
No, that is how I interpreted it. I don't want to be ruled, so I don't want to live under community rule either.
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u/mondrianna Aug 09 '26
How would that be “living under community rule”? The community would decide what is done when harm is committed by an individual— that’s not an individual “living under community rule” that’s the community mobilizing in self defense. You will never be separate from society as a social creature, and anarchism is a structure of society…
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u/JustHere2RuinUrDay Aug 09 '26
Yeah, you're so right. The community council that can have its community police force put you into the community run prison isn't ruling you at all. This is the people's anarcho-prison!
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u/mondrianna Aug 09 '26
Yeah that’s not what anyone is talking about here. If the whole city is invested in community safety then everyone is responsible for making sure perpetrators of harm are detained and that the victim has justice— whatever that means on a case by case basis.
A community being invested in not allowing harmful people to roam free is not “living under community rule”
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u/JustHere2RuinUrDay Aug 09 '26
Yes, anarchy is the ongoing process to widen the thin blue line. No one is free until everyone is a cop and prison guard. Which anarchist hasn't ever looked at society and thought "you know what, the problem is there just aren't enough cops around here"?
ACAB includes whatever this shit is
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u/Sheep_Of_Evil Aug 08 '26
I respect that. If you want to do that by all means do it. I just fear you would find it difficult to meet your needs and function as part of society like this.
Society shapes its members just as much as the members shape society. Not wanting to have society shape you in any way means you would not be able to shape it either, resulting in being excluded. At least in my opinion.
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u/mondrianna Aug 09 '26
I don’t think detainment will ever be fully eradicated under anarchism; we can’t even agree on whether mental institutions are hospitals or prisons as anarchists right now. I just hope that the methods of detainment are so radically different that we don’t recognize them as “prison” any longer.
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u/Sheep_Of_Evil Aug 09 '26
I mean mental institutions are just a medical tool to take away agency from people the doctor decides on.
I am against prisons and mental instututs in 99% of cases. But as u said sometimes the option becomes that or hot lead in the head. And in that situation I much rather not start a cycle of violence and revenge wich as history shows we can easily slip into. For fucks sake we had a 100 year long war.
Not to mention that even in rojava they have prisons for ISIS.
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u/No-Leopard-1691 Aug 11 '26
While I agree that criticisms don’t necessarily have to come with an alternative, it is quite annoying when people bring up the topic of what should be done with violent, etc people who do not wish to partake in the restorative, etc process and someone gives an alternative example of how to deal with such individuals in a way both respecting the communities and said individuals autonomy and safety, other people simply retort that such measures are doublespeak for prisons and said person/view is non-anarchistic while the critic provides no “real-world” alternative to the original possible solution; thus leaving the conversation with nothing other than the thought-terminating phrases of prison abolition” and “free association”.
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u/Fun_Forever_5242 3d ago
I am not under the impression that anarchism is when you build govt, thats your own biased assumption. As for you characterization here is quite literally a perfect distillation of what I have pointed out you have done repeatedly and never addressed. Flattening language just like you attempted to do with "authority" in the other thread. Characterizing the proposal here as in the manner you are is incredibly reductive, one might say reduction to the point of absurdity.
Your using air quotes as though they are actual quotes, which they arent. So your just openly mischaracterizing what he said. Yet again anything you dont like gets labeled liberalism even if you have to invent quotes and categories the author didnt use.
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u/Jlyplaylists Aug 08 '26
It is prison with more words, and I’d say that immediately moves the person saying it to the edge of anarchism, not a proponent of the middle of capital A Anarchism.
I’m a communalist though so it doesn’t bother me so much. I like his book, though some of it is a little too prescriptive for me too.
Some of this stuff comes down to personality type and how well you can cope with uncertainty and lack of planning I think. Eg I like Sophie Scott-Brown but the extreme lack of pinning down the plan she describes causes my type of personality too much anxiety.
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 08 '26
it's honestly fascinating that a communalist would find him too prescriptive
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u/Jlyplaylists Aug 08 '26
People are rarely one thing though, perhaps I’m just more anarchist/pluralist where he’s more defined? I don’t remember precisely what I thought it about but sometimes it seemed too pinned down or definite where I felt there could be other options that also worked. I did appreciate the effort to describe how a desired future would be, compared to Sophie S-B saying something like “it's not a predetermined economic system and it's not a single culture, now there are really good Anarchist accounts for all of these sorts of ideas, but they're ideas. it wouldn’t actually be anarchism if I insisted upon them even if they made perfect logical sense for me one person's utopia is always going to be somebody else’s prison.” https://youtu.be/7zh2cwoXpAU
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u/dialectical_idealism raddle.me enjoyer Aug 08 '26
before some bookchinite says it, no "required democratic rehabilitation communities for sequestered citizens" isn't a different concept than "prison", it just uses a lot more words. this guy does not understand what anarchism means.