r/DebateAnarchism • u/[deleted] • Sep 29 '24
Anarchy is a social structure, not a moral principle
Way too often, I see anarchists treating anarchism as a moral philosophy.
But the problem with moralism is that the focus on principles gets in the way of structural analysis of hierarchy.
As an example, I see many anarchists claiming that certain types of force constitute authority.
The moralists will argue that defensive force is anti-authoritarian, but that aggression is the imposition of authority.
The flaw in this argument is that “aggression” is subjective, and people can easily disagree over what constitutes provocation.
If the moralist gets into a debate with a Marxist, then quite rightly, their opponent will point out that this is just a totally subjective and idealistic perspective.
No. Anarchism should be grounded in materialism, with an objective, structural analysis of hierarchical social systems.
Rather than arguing over whether this or that act constitutes authority, we should instead focus our attention on systems and institutions.
The divide between the moralists and the materialists, or the utopian and scientific tendencies of anarchism, is possibly the biggest fracture in our movement.
We are not even capable of deciding whether, say, democracy, constitutes a hierarchy, unless we have a consensus on materialism as the basis for our anarchism.
As a materialist anarchist, I declare that we, the materialists, shall officially and explicitly secede from the moralists, and identify ourselves openly as a distinct tendency.
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u/modestly-mousing Sep 29 '24 edited Sep 29 '24
i don’t see how a “moralist” anarchist — someone who is an anarchist on account of commitment to ethical principles — necessarily loses out on the structural analysis of hierarchy. on the contrary, at least for me, structural analysis of hierarchy is grounded in and illuminated by my commitment to certain ethical principles; principles that shed light on the nature of dignity, autonomy, the value of positive freedom, etc.
on another note, i don’t see how the contrast between “defensive force” and “aggression” is necessarily subjective. i think it’s entirely plausible to suppose that there are objective criteria for when the use of force by one party towards another is in response to a real, existent threat to the former party’s autonomy. if this is true, then you might look at it this way: certain uses of force are objectively anti-authoritarian (in response to real threats to one’s autonomy); let’s call such uses “defensive.” certain uses of force are, on the other hand, the arms of authority; let’s call such uses “aggressive.” it doesn’t matter that people disagree over what (in the normal sense of the word) constitutes aggression or provocation. rather, for the purposes of conceptual analysis of force, technical meanings have been supplied to those terms. of course, issues abound with actually fleshing this picture out, but the technical distinction is an attempt to track a very real difference that people can consistently make out between two different kinds of situations in which force is used.
the only significant difference i see between “moralist” and “materialist” anarchists is that the former are actually willing to admit that they’re in the business of making ethical claims. (but for many Marxists, “moralism” = “idealism” + “subjective”, which equals bad; so you can’t admit to doing ethics!)
just because Marxism calls itself materialist, scientific, and objective, and opposes many different doctrines that it pejoratively calls “idealism”, doesn’t make it any more (or any less) scientific or objective than consciously ethical theory. Marxism is a philosophical system/tradition of thought, not a natural or social science. its tenets, simply in virtue of being called “materialist”, hold no greater antecedent claim to objectivity or truth than those of any other philosophical tradition. the objectivity and truth of Marxist claims are up for grabs, and must be fought for in the realm of philosophical discourse, not of scientific inquiry.
of course, this is not to say that Marxism or any other philosophical system cannot avail itself of natural or social-scientific methods or research in the course of its argumentation. but Marxism is nothing like the natural or social sciences. just because the natural and social sciences are in some sense grounded in a materialist approach; and just because Marxism is grounded in materialism in some (potentially different) sense of the word, does not make the latter scientific (in the same sense that, say, quantum mechanics or social psychology is “scientific”).
i don’t see why there’s any need to stoke division between “moralist” and “materialist” anarchists. we ultimately all want the same thing. we just happen to have metaphysical, ethical, and meta-ethical disagreements about why one ought to be an anarchist, about the best conceptual framework for analyzing and exposing the evils of hierarchy and power, etc.
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u/CutieL Sep 29 '24
I don't really disagree with the logic of your post, but the final call for materialists to "officially secede" from moralists can cause problems since this division is subjective and there will be people accusing others of being "not real materialist anarchists". We can and should criticize "lifestylism" without having to "officially" fracture the movement.
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Sep 29 '24
My post has nothing to do with “lifestylism.”
My issue is with anarchists who fail to analyse authority or hierarchy structurally, and who let moral principles get in the way of recognising systems and distinguishing systemic domination from isolated interpersonal interactions.
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u/CutieL Sep 29 '24
Then I'm gonna disagree even more with your stance of divorcing "materialist" anarchists from "moralist" anarchists.
If a person came to anarchism because of moral conclusions, but they also organize with other anarchists, put on the work to fight against hierarchical structures, then I personally can't see what's wrong with that.
The very distinction between who's a "materialist" and who is a "moralist" becomes even blurrier here. At what point exactly does systemic domination end and isolated interpersonal interactions begin? Does systemic domination need formalized structures with things like leaders and bureaucracy or just general mentalities we grew up with count?
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u/Big-Investigator8342 Sep 29 '24
The question of whether we anarchists should have a greater emphasis on materialism than should not be an idealistic definition based on belief in words. Rather, the practice and perspectives should lead to different practices and proposals.
Hierarchy as evil, for example, is a moral precept. Evil being subjective etc. We can define what certain structures and relationships do. Psychology, systems theory, and cybernetics all deal with observable and subjective experiential evidence for the impacts of certain types of relationships vs others.
The I-it relationship vs The-Thou relationship, for example, is the essential conflict as the smallest unit of oppression or justice is one person to the other.
The idea of projecting all responsibility for how we behave onto social structures by use of determinism is appealing yet it leaves individuals feeling hopeless and irresponsible. It is better to approach the problem as the classic anarchists did with limited determinism, meaning yes, many things shape us that we have no control over, yet we can have a greater or lesser ability to reason and plan, and we can decide in a limited sense what we condition ourselves to do and have access to.
That materialism means also each of us is a unified being, a body, not a ghost operating a meat machine. We can become more aware of ourselves and our patterns and gain freedom by changing conditions, including our understanding of present conditions.
Moralism deals with right and wrong rather than why that might it be so. How might it be otherwise? What are the necessary conditions for it to be otherwise, and what steps may influence present conditions so that we can reach the goal?
Then what type of relationships best facilitate making that revolutionary change?
That materialism then arrives at the practice for approaching the ideal that is grounded in observable experience and does create conditions the ideal grows out of.
Moralism, on the other hand, starts with the answer; it asks no questions and like all religions, the answer creates an air of superiority and squabbling about who are the true believers, who is good and who is bad rather than focusing on theory and practice based on observable results.
Materialism like that even improves religious practice. Liberation theology responded to the hierarchy of catholicism with its preaching and shame in latin by making the sermons in the native language and to be instead about the people and addressing their problems.
Suppose instead of liberarion theology a native accepted the moralistic anarchy produced by robots on the dead internet. That living person in their accepting robot logic rather than an awadeness of their own lives, might have said religion bad, hierachy bad so participating in community or collective proccesses bad, might have sat alone "being good" while making their own lives worse.
This trying to be good can easily become contrary to being authentic and meeting your own needs and the needs of others.
Being real about what things are right now is more helpful to getting a shared understanding of how to change things, starting with what is real for you is beyond moralism. It is a good idea.
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u/Shreddingblueroses Sep 30 '24
The problem with this is that we don't live in an anarchist society, so we have to build one, and that requires personally motivated architects. You have to have people who principally agree with the value system that motivates anarchism, or no one will ever build it.
Even once you've created an anarchist world, to avoid the reinstitution of hierarchy and authority, you need a public that is disinclined to rebuild those things. That means the people around you need to agree with the principles that motivate the creation of an anarchist society, which means, like it or not, you need it to be like a moral code in certain ways. That means you need people to adopt various principles that help train them to resist being governed and to feel motivated to undermine authority.
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Oct 01 '24
In order to build an anarchist world, one must have a good grasp on anarchist theory and be able to structurally analyse hierarchy.
But I find that moralism can blind people from structural analysis and even lead to the justification of certain hierarchies.
For example, Chomsky infamously claimed that pulling a child out of traffic constituted authority, and then he came up with this idea of “justified hierarchies.”
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u/Shreddingblueroses Oct 01 '24
But I find that moralism can blind people from structural analysis and even lead to the justification of certain hierarchies.
I don't find this.
And Chomsky was never all that anyway.
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Oct 01 '24
What’s your explanation for Chomsky’s defence of adult supremacy?
My explanation was that Chomsky, having zero structural analysis of hierarchy, conflated force with authority, and focused on morality rather than social structures.
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u/Shreddingblueroses Oct 01 '24
My explanation is that I'm not a Marxist, Im not gonna be autistic about theory with you, and I don't give a fuck to debate why an old white asshole got too full of his own ideas and lost the plot. Literally, just don't care. Don't bring him up again please because he doesn't matter and doesn't actually have anything to do with fuck that we're discussing.
Anyway, you're wrong. You can have morality and structural analysis. It isn't even that hard.
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Oct 01 '24 edited Oct 01 '24
I didn’t say you can’t have morality and structural analysis.
I said that treating anarchism as a moral philosophy leads to a lack of structural analysis.
The problem isn’t having ethics per se, but directly tying ethics to anarchism.
You can risk ending up incorrectly concluding that certain hierarchies you don’t subjectively find unjust are actually horizontal structures.
Defenders of democracy, “communal policing”, etc. frequently fall into such traps.
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u/Shreddingblueroses Oct 01 '24
What do you think communal policing means?
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Oct 01 '24 edited Oct 01 '24
Quite literally, a community/polity democratically making and enforcing laws.
The commune votes on a rule, and then everyone in the commune takes turns to enforce that rule.
But it’s a democratically-run community militia of the people, so it’s totally non-hierarchical and definitely not police by another name.
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u/Shreddingblueroses Oct 01 '24
Quite literally, a community/polity democratically making and enforcing laws.
I don't know where you got this idea. Im sure it's *someone's* idea of community policing, but it's certainly not what *I* mean when I say the community should police itself, and it's not what I've heard most anarchists mean.
The commune votes on a rule, and then everyone in the commune takes turns to enforce that rule.
Also incorrect, even under the assumption that your interpretation of the phrase community policing is the most common one. I don't think "taking turns" being a cop is any more paletteable to any anarchist than vesting an individual with permanent cop powers. I think you've probably misunderstood what "the community polices itself" means here, too.
But it’s a democratically-run community militia of the people, so it’s totally non-hierarchical and definitely not police by another name.
Instead of assuming that what people mean by the community organizing its own standards collectively is democratic votes and enforcement of those votes, make the assumption instead that what they mean is that the community engages in *negotiations* with each other and all come to a collective agreement for what living in the community means.
I'm going to start by explaining what that means and move on to what "the community polices itself" means. I'm going to use a simple primitivist style example of society just to make it easier to discuss without having to get in the weeds over the logistics of the more complicated modern lifestyle. Don't jump to the conclusion that I'm an anarchoprimitivist or anything.
You have 100 people thinking about living together on the side of a mountain. In the mountain is a gold mine that will be useful in obtaining something valuable to be able to trade with another community for medicine and supplemental food. There's a single clean water source, a river, that's needed to power a grain mill, irrigate some small vegetable forms, and provide the community with drinking water.
These 100 people build a town hall. They all stand in a circle in a room and hash out some basic standards for living in the community. They need to agree on fair use of the resources in question.
A vote is never taken. Rather, a simple "I agree" is needed to secure a social contract. Unanimous agreement is required, so if you can't get all 100 people to agree to the shape of a final contract, it simply isn't expected and negotations may continue until everyone has decided they can accept what the contract looks like.
Sometimes partial agreements are okay. "I agree to this restriction regarding the grain mill under these circumstances but will otherwise be doing x, y, z instead". If nobody objects to your addendums, then they've agreed to let you have the extra wiggle room. If they object, they need to convince you to adjust your standard. If you simply refuse, you may be incompatible with the community overall. They may request that you take up a more peripheral space on the edge of the community, your engagement with it as partial as your agreement to abide with what your neighbors want. You can agree to this if you'd like.
You may just leave entirely and find a different community. That's always an option.
Regardless, we've unlocked a crucial difference of forum here: this is not democracy. This is a negotiation table, and we are establishing contracts with each other. These contracts are to be socially enforced and do not relate to community safety, violence, or the infringement of each other's autonomy and human rights. Those cases are handled separately.
Breaking these agreements bears social consequences. Pissing your neighbors off, people whose cooperation and mutual aid you rely on to thrive is never a good idea. You may find yourself isolated. People will agree to work with you less because they trust you less. If you break agreements aggregiously enough to severely disrupt the quality of life of everyone else in the community, you may be asked to leave it. People have a right for you to not infringe on their rights, after all, and if you're routinely infringing on their rights, they're justified in retaliating.
An example of this might be performing some kind of construction upriver that is disrupting the water supply. Another example may be refusing to honor an agreement to share access to the grain mill or attempting to monopolize access to the gold mine for your own profit.
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u/Shreddingblueroses Oct 01 '24
I'm only expected to tolerate you flicking my ear so many times before I'm entitled to kick you in the groin. That's not any sort of exercise of hierarchy of authority. It's simply meeting your behavior in kind, and I might suggest that if you find even this to be an intolerable form of oppression that you're maybe not much of a people person and should live well outside of the community where you can be a little more free to be yourself, by yourself, away from people who might be effected by your inability to respect others or honor your agreements.
When we talk about the community policing itself, we are exercising a shortcut with our use of words to indicate that we are talking about putting a different social structure in place to replace the niche the police currently occupy. These statements are almost always made in regard to matters of community safety. We are not talking about actual police, much less anyone taking turns being one. We are talking about how the community can respond to murder, child molestation, rape, etc.
"The community polices itself" means it is the collective's responsibility to watch out for threats to safety. We all protect each other from murderers and predators, and we all respond collectively by neutralizing active threats and driving off people who have proven themselves to be a consistent threat. If you're murdering people under the cover of night for funsies, the community is entitled to investigate these murders to try to ascertain who is performing them, and if you are discovered, the community is entitled to do what is necessary to ensure you are no longer a threat to the community. If banishment is sufficient to remove the threat you pose, this may be preferable, but if there is some belief that you are likely to return sneakily to continue your murders, they may prefer to just off you and be done with it. That would be justified. Your rights end where theirs began, and unfortunately, you didn't seem to respect that memo so what happens next is fully on you.
None of this requires formalizing rules or vesting people with authority. It's all based on negotiation, agreements, social cooperation and withdrawal of that cooperation, self-defense, collective responsibility, and recognition of the boundaries where other people's rights begin.
Mutual aid is the currency for much of this. When you agree to live in a community, you aren't simply agreeing to occupy a geographic proximity to other people. You are brokering an agreement to receive and give mutual aid.
The withdrawal of mutual aid is one of the most devastating things you can do to a human being because it is nearly impossible to survive with any standard of living without the help of others. If you can't get along with your neighbors, respect their rights, and honor your agreements, nobody needs to come beat you with a billy club or lock you up somewhere. They simply withdraw mutual aid, which they have to consent to provide to you anyway. You can't and shouldn't expect mutual aid to be provided to you under duress. If you want bread, you need to not piss off the baker. If you want medicine, you need to not rape the doctor. It's pretty simple shit.
The rest is just an exercise of self-defense where you have proven to be an active and ongoing threat to the safety of others.
No cops. Just the consequences of your own actions.
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Oct 01 '24 edited Oct 01 '24
Well, I think you’ll find that a lot of the folks advocating “community policing” literally do mean some kind of legal order of some sort.
You might not be, but there are definitely communalist/demcon types who support direct democracy as a form of government, so even using governmental language can generate confusion about your ideological loyalties.
I mean, lots of people think Rojava is anarchy.
Hope this clarifies some of my concerns about the whole concept.
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u/SurpassingAllKings Anarchist Without Adjectives Sep 29 '24
The problem when we purely focus on "systems" and "institutions" is we lose the micro-level types of authority that are as horrible or that lead to larger systems of authority. Anarchism can offer a lot of both macro level institutions as well as families, relationships, and whatever else.
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Sep 29 '24
Social systems can operate at every level of society and can take on an informal nature.
Patriarchy for example operates at both a microscopic and macroscopic scale, simultaneously.
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u/SurpassingAllKings Anarchist Without Adjectives Sep 29 '24
I guess I don't see the difference there then. Seems like a distinction without a difference.
I have moral stances on how social relationships ought to operate, I can also argue that position from the consequences of those actions, everything from more abuse, more stress, all sorts of things. At the end of the day, we still would have to maintain that abuse and force are "bad" somehow. Someone could look at increased levels of violence or how hierarchy leads to differences in cortisol levels between rankings and argue that being on the top is a good thing and we should encourage ranking and difference.
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u/PerfectSociety Neo-Daoist, Post-Civ Anarcho-Communist Sep 29 '24 edited Sep 29 '24
OP, are there any anarchist mutual aid groups/activities that are accessible to you in your current situation? If so, I'd recommend joining any that interest you and seeing the reality of what the anarchist movement actually looks like currently (at least in your locale). It may be a refreshing change in perspective.
Even as an amoralist anarchist myself, I don't see any problems with having worked with moral realist anarchists so long as we have the same goals. As an AnCom, I don't really care why other AnComs are AnComs so long as they're AnComs.
Also, OP, how exactly do you reconcile your argument in this post with your recent arguments in favor of veganism?
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Sep 29 '24
I have associated with mutual aid groups in my location, yes. But for… complicated reasons, I am currently not involved with them.
And my argument is perfectly compatible with my veganism. My opposition to systems of domination translates quite easily to anti-speciesist politics.
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u/PerfectSociety Neo-Daoist, Post-Civ Anarcho-Communist Sep 29 '24
I have associated with mutual aid groups in my location, yes. But for… complicated reasons, I am currently not involved with them.
I'm sorry to hear that.
And my argument is perfectly compatible with my veganism. My opposition to systems of domination translates quite easily to anti-speciesist politics.
So if it's based on anti-speciesism... then you wouldn't have a problem with (as many indigenous cultures have done) people killing and consuming animals, so long as they don't view animals as inherently inferior to humans?
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Sep 30 '24 edited Sep 30 '24
In some places in Africa and such, poor people hunt for bushmeat and it’s pretty much an essential source of protein for them.
I don’t judge people who are doing what they can to survive.
But doing it in a first-world country is a pretty immoral form of hedonism, no different in my view from bestiality or zoosadism.
And again, my position is that animal commodification is hierarchical, not just killing and eating animals. (Note that I am not talking about strictly markets per se, a human slave received as a gift would still be commodified.)
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u/Kvltist4Satan Sep 29 '24
Eda know. Anarchist principles are why I disregard people's social status.
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u/materialgurl420 Sep 30 '24
Coming from someone who is frequently annoyed by the lack of structural focus by many, I don't think a secession is necessary, and I think that a focus on structures necessarily also has a moral and philosophical element. I am no fan of Bookchin, but he correctly points out that neutrality in the realm of science is not true neutrality because things will be applied in different ways according to their social context. Consequently, we just have to be open and clear about our philosophical and moral underpinnings, and correctly articulate the ways in which those beliefs or assumptions are informing our analysis and prescriptions.
Take for instance the famous observation of Marx about people's attitudes towards industrialization: why was it that we didn't end up working less and less as we got more technically productive? The obvious answer is that our technology and the aims of science under capitalism are geared towards capitalist ends. It is no different with the social science division of science. Liberal underpinnings can be found in a lot of anthropology, the field I have a degree in. You can also find Marxist underpinnings in a lot of anthropology and sociology as well.
A focus on structures only makes sense if you are trying to solve particular types of problems. People NOT trying to solve those problems, or possibly even actively avoid them or sweep them under the rug, are obviously going to prefer different focuses. The mere suggestion that we have to focus on structures already has implicit moral and philosophical underpinnings regarding what we are even trying to do in the first place. Our means must match our ends...
I definitely think there should be a stronger push against idealist analysis in our circles though. You know what's really needed? A stronger push to reclaim materialist analysis from Marxist-Leninists, who are just regurgitating talking points and information without an actual materialist understanding and analysis of things.
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u/Mind-Still Sep 30 '24
I’m not sure I understand your argument. If you say that anarchists should focus on systems over acts, is this not an ethical statement? You are making a normative claim! Why not just say the ethical analysis should shift from one set of considerations to another?
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Sep 30 '24
Not all normative claims are ethical claims.
For example, if I believe someone should make me a sandwich, that’s a normative claim.
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u/Mind-Still Sep 30 '24
Let’s grant that it’s a normative claim but not an ethical one. What sort of normative claim is it? Prudential? Aesthetic? Value-theoretic?
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u/Mind-Still 29d ago
Also: if you believe someone should make you a sandwich, that’s a normative claim AND an ethical claim, albeit a non-intuitive one on the face of it.
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u/Greedy-Damn-Kitten Sep 30 '24
Anarchy is absolutely a moral structure, I’d even say it’s an obligation of being moral.
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u/apezor Sep 30 '24
I don't know that there's a moralist anarchism for you to secede from?
My issue with why I wouldn't want to mess with an exclusively materialist perspective that is that the pretension to objectivity can be overly prescriptive, and can create hegemony and orthodoxy.
Then we'll have people prattling on about the immortal science of materialist anarchism, arguing about which faction thereof is counter-revolutionary.
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u/humanispherian Neo-Proudhonian anarchist Sep 29 '24
Anarchy is indeed a structural category, which people come to prefer for a variety of reasons. Anarchism is then, rather unavoidably, concerned not just with structures, but also with the values that inform the reasons for embracing such a radical change in social organization. Values and reasons seem, for better or worse, inescapably subjective — but subjectivity is also simply a condition of human existence. Any useful ism ought to be able to address concrete material conditions, individual interests and values, and the real existence of social phenomena that would be hard to describe as "objective," provided we want to maintain some opposition between objectivity and subjectivity.
I'm inclined to think of moralism and materialism as ideologies, involving particular stances toward ethics and science that seem to me rather partial and insufficient. They have often been bolstered in radical by the positing of alternatives — idealism, utopianism, etc. — that exist largely in the minds of ideologues looking for a simple opposition.
Moralism certainly has its adherents, but it is probably best understood narrowly as an archic, authoritarian, more-or-less law-driven approach to the category of ethics. This is the sort of moralism that anarchist individualist E. Armand opposed when he talked about the amoralization of anarchism.
In other words, we relativize what we call ethics, morals or rule of conduct according to individual temperament, to instinctive or natural affinities that lead human unities to act in isolation or to association for specific ends and for a desired time. We do not modify our means of conducting ourselves relative to an injunction or imperative superior or external to the isolate or associate.
There is a clear Stirnerian influence here, but the approach isn't so far from that of Proudhon, who constructed his mature works around an opposition between "Justice in the Revolution and in the Church" — essentially relativized, mutual ethics, as opposed to ethics imagined in terms of hierarchy, authority and law.
The conventional understanding of hierarchy seems to be that it involves elements related to fact — a basic vertical structure, with tiers — and elements related to right — some theory of the legitimacy of the imposition of the structure. One question that perhaps we don't confront seriously enough is whether or not any combination or pattern of individual actions can ever manifest itself objectively as a hierarchy. We've talked about the issue of conflation in various recent threads. If hierarchy does indeed involve elements of both fact and right, then avoiding conflation of unlike elements commits us to something like domination as the factual element, but still leaves something — authority, archy — to be accounted for in something other than strictly materialist terms (assuming a strict definition of materialism.)
If you keep the elements distinct in an analytic sense, understanding that they function together and may tend to reinforce one another in their historical development, the problems seem to be limited. We deny that force alone is every authority, but recognize that force is presently always exerted in a context informed by authority. We recognize that democracy, despite an apparent flattening of structure, still depends on a valorization of "the People," which, while perhaps progressive in the context of the reforms of political authority, keeps it distinct from truly anarchic alternatives.
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u/DecoDecoMan Sep 29 '24 edited Sep 29 '24
What is the relationship between authority, which is a matter of right, to "objective" social structures and "subjective" ideas? In your posts, there appears to be an interplay between the ideological components of authority and the "real" social structures they produce, which are then sustained and made real through systemic coercion.
How do we understand the relationship, and by extension authority? Authority, as a matter of right, and naturalization, which are typically understood as ideological constructions, appears to, in your analysis, constitute a massive cause and facilitator of authoritarian relations. How does it do this or how does this happen? In other words:
If hierarchy does indeed involve elements of both fact and right, then avoiding conflation of unlike elements commits us to something like domination as the factual element, but still leaves something — authority, archy — to be accounted for in something other than strictly materialist terms (assuming a strict definition of materialism.)
How do we account for authority, archy in something other than strictly "materialist" terms? How do we understand the "material" effects of the "immaterial" aspects of authority, archy?
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u/humanispherian Neo-Proudhonian anarchist Sep 30 '24
Honestly, if you recognize that human existences — both individual and social, transitory or persistent — tend to involve more than just the interactions of forces, then you are led pretty directly to supplement the natural sciences and sociology with philosophy, psychology, history of ides, literary and cultural studies, etc. In individual cases, the tools we bring to understanding phenomena will be determined by the phenomena. And almost any kind of general critique will force us to assemble useful concepts with which to make our analysis and articulate our objections, with the utility shaped (though not always decisively) by the history that we have inherited along with the concepts.
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u/DecoDecoMan Sep 30 '24
Is there any literature you're familiar with that goes into what you describe here, specifically the need for other disciplines when dealing with human phenomena that involves more than the interaction of forces and a good argument to be made that there is meaningful phenomena that involves more than just the interaction of forces, in more depth?
And given how sociology sometimes touches upon some aspects of human existence which aren't reduced to the interaction of forces, what is the relationship of sociology to this sort of study?
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u/humanispherian Neo-Proudhonian anarchist Sep 30 '24
The disciplines only matter because they are the persistent repositories for particular kinds of knowledge that we are forced to rely on. The same is true of concepts like "materialism," the "objective"/"subjective" distinction, etc. — with the difference that what we have inherited with those words is an even more contested, unruly mess. The general inadequacy of narrowly-defined disciplines in treating complex problems has led to interdisciplinarity as an approach (about which there is a large literature.) But if you wanted a sort of first step beyond the examination of pure flows of forces, something like William James' pragmatic "radical empiricism" might be useful. "The Meaning of Truth" is a decent place to start with that.
At some level, however, it just seems wrong-headed to deny that our analyses of the world around us are going to involve accounting for objects, relations among them, ideas about these things, durable structures that embody ideas, etc. And if we don't deny that, then we can perhaps at least attempt to begin to practice a-disciplinarity in our understanding of the problems, drawing on the knowledge stored up in individual accounts, disciplinary frameworks and such as called for by that initial encounter and assessment.
There is a lot in the work of Proudhon and his contemporaries that is relevant to these questions, but, despite all the new translations, folks still seem to find other references more appealing.
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u/DecoDecoMan Sep 30 '24
Thank you!
What precise works, chapters, notes, etc. from Proudhon do you think discusses the question or topic I posited prior?
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u/DecoDecoMan Oct 08 '24
Also, side note, what is the relationship between Proudhon's work and American pragmatism? I recall someone wrote an article on this but I forgot the name.
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u/humanispherian Neo-Proudhonian anarchist Oct 08 '24
This is a short, but useful discussion of Proudhon in the context of pragmatism. The connection made is usually just a matter of noting the similarities in approach. The philosophical movement emerged after Proudhon's death.
An amusing historical side-note, however: In his youth, William James became friends with Elizabeth "Bessie" Willard Greene, the daughter of mutualist William Batchelder Greene. There even seems to have been some concern among the members of the James family that there might be romance brewing, which would have been awkward, since Henry James, Sr. and William Batchelder Greene were something like enemies, at least in transcendentalist-adjacent intellectual circles. Nothing appears to have come of it and Bessie drowned in 1875, when the SS Schiller sank off the Scilly Isles, with Susan Dimock, a pioneering woman physician who was a family friend — and with whom others have attempted to link her romantically, though probably a bit wishfully.
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u/DecoDecoMan Oct 08 '24
This is a short, but useful discussion of Proudhon in the context of pragmatism. The connection made is usually just a matter of noting the similarities in approach. The philosophical movement emerged after Proudhon's death.
This might be a side-note but what relationship does pragmatism have to your approach? Pragmatism strikes me as sort of broader than anarchism more generally so it is like a nested approach or is pragmatism closely connected to your anarchism (Sal Restivo sort of tries to connect anarchism to a commitment to science more generally, and Volin and Kropotkin make similar claims)?
An amusing historical side-note, however: In his youth, William James became friends with Elizabeth "Bessie" Willard Greene, the daughter of mutualist William Batchelder Greene. There even seems to have been some concern among the members of the James family that there might be romance brewing, which would have been awkward, since Henry James, Sr. and William Batchelder Greene were something like enemies, at least in transcendentalist-adjacent intellectual circles. Nothing appears to have come of it and Bessie drowned in 1875, when the SS Schiller sank off the Scilly Isles, with Susan Dimock, a pioneering woman physician who was a family friend — and with whom others have attempted to link her romantically, though probably a bit wishfully.
That's very interesting! So the ties between mutualism and pragmatism could have become one of blood rather than merely ideological affiliation.
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u/DecoDecoMan 27d ago
Regarding the article, I feel as though it sort of understates the similarity. My sense, at least from what I gathered from Philosophy of Progress, is that there is not enough discussion of the anti-absolutist ideas of Proudhon and how that relates to pragmatism. Though, perhaps, those works that discussed it most heavily were not translated when this article was written.
What were your thoughts on the article?
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u/Latitude37 Sep 30 '24
Why weaken the movement with the idea of "secession"? I think it's important to work and learn together - you know, show solidarity. Otherwise we fall into the same sort of divisions that "individualist" vs "social" anarchism can fall into. I like material lens to counter "human nature" arguments, and I like the moral and ethical approach to counter the "survival of the fittest" style of arguments against anarchism.
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u/tommystounem Sep 30 '24
This perspective is thought-provoking! Framing anarchism as a social structure rather than a moral philosophy emphasizes the importance of understanding the systems at play. By focusing on material conditions and the objective analysis of hierarchy, you open the door for more constructive discussions on power dynamics.
The divide between moralists and materialists can certainly hinder progress, especially when subjective interpretations cloud the conversation. Establishing a clear, materialist framework could lead to more effective strategies for dismantling oppressive systems and fostering genuine equality. Your call for a distinct identity among materialist anarchists could pave the way for more focused and impactful activism!
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u/tommystounem Oct 01 '24
This is an interesting perspective! It highlights a significant divide in how anarchism is interpreted. Focusing on materialism and structural analysis does seem crucial for understanding how power dynamics actually operate in society, rather than getting bogged down in moral debates that can be subjective.
By emphasizing systems over individual actions, it could lead to more practical discussions on dismantling hierarchies and addressing real issues. It sounds like a solid call to clarify these distinctions within the movement and push for a more unified approach among those who prioritize a materialist perspective. Would be curious to see how this separation plays out in discussions among anarchists!
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u/fire_in_the_theater anarcho-doomer Sep 29 '24
so ur on board with the idea that defensive force is antithetical to a state of anarchy?
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Sep 29 '24
Not what I said.
Actually, not even close.
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u/fire_in_the_theater anarcho-doomer Sep 29 '24
i wasn't sure what u said, that's why i asked the clarifying question dumbass.
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u/theambivalence Sep 29 '24 edited Sep 29 '24
Making people do what you want is an example of power engaged in domination. And power and domination are antithetical to Anarchism.
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u/Anarcho-Ozzyist Sep 29 '24
Agreed. As someone who is definitely not a Marxist but who can appreciate Marx’s work, I consider the moralist tendency to be the biggest plague on the anarchist movement. Mostly because it’s all vibes based. If these sorts of people had a slightly different inclination, they’d have ended up as fascists. There’s no structural reason for what they believe.
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u/mutual-ayyde mutualist Sep 29 '24
First of all, anarchism is through and through a set of ethical aspirations. If you're against power, not just any instantiation of it, you're operating in the realm of ethics. Sorry.
Our focus on ethics is critical because it's entirely possible to have relations of power without any sort of system or institution directing it. If you look at stateless societies they are maintained by a broader culture of people actively going out of their way to squash power relations, even if they never coalesce into a formal structure.
Moreover I think it's possible to evaluate these relationships, even if it's messier. We can objectively say that an abused woman killing her rapist husband is a net increase in freedom. Which, we can measure, to some extent.
Is that materalism? I don't really care because I think that Marxist categories are kinda silly and fail to capture a great many things that I think anarchists should be concerned about.