anaVal

I used country because I couldn't use state as "without the threat of violence it is no longer a state."

Isn't anarchy specifically managed bottom up? What if this state still has elections, government, ministries, state-run education and the like? Would that still be anarchy? I wouldn't call it anarchy, I'd call it minarchy. Because by being voluntary it is fundamentally minimising it's authority.

Borders and land ownership would be dynamic. If a citizen lives on a piece of land or citizens manage a company that land and company become part of the state. As soon as the people/companies move the border moves as well.

Fitting money into a minarchist state is tricky as even if participating in the state is voluntary money could still be exchanged outside of it. Unless you make the state currency digital and ensure that those who revoke their citizenship also lose access to their funds, but that's probably going to create a secondary "unofficial" currency. money is tricky.

And does a state need to have an elite? If the minarchist party is comprised of influential and trusted community figures that are focused solely on the benefit of their community would that make them an elite? Could a state function with a benevolent elite?

I guess all of this is describing less of a state and more of a voluntary elected bureaucracy. But isn't that what minarchy is? And couldn't we transition a state to that?

So what do you call a country that has voluntary membership and community policing? One that doesn't have a police force or a justice system and is instead maintained by the will of all of it's citizens, as those who don't wish to be a part of the country can just leave.

Anarchism doesn't have law. It has customs. Law is a specifically worded series of commands that must be followed and if broken be interpreted by the legal system in order to determine the punishment. You cannot have law without also having the justice/legal system. Crime in anarchism is handled not by the courts but by the surrounding community on a case-by-case basis.

That is at least how I see it. What is the point of writing down pages and pages of commands if the only ones that enforce them are the people themselves. I think with law people will just start arguing semantics or interpretation instead of the actual severity, effect and consequences for the crime.

Here is the AFAQ section on law: I.7.3 Is the law required to protect individual rights? https://anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionI.html#seci73

What anarchists propose instead of the current legal system (or an alternative law system based on religious or "natural" laws) is custom -- namely the development of living "rules of thumb" which express what a society considers as right at any given moment. However, the question arises, if an agreed set of principles are used to determine the just outcome, in what way would this differ from laws?

When I say minarchism then I mean “minimal archy” with “archy” being the same as anarchy. Capitalism is archy. Anyone I’d be comfortable calling a minarchist should oppose it, or at least try and minimise it. Anyone wanting to give power to any oppressing group is not a minarchist in my eyes.

We need a new name for them. I call them oxymorons but sadly I don't think that's distinctive enough. Totalitarian Capitalists/TotCaps? Fremcs (shortend from free-market capitalist)? Kinda hard to say. Maybe something with yellow or gold or money? golks? Dollups (from Dollar) (I think that's a word already)?

whatever they are they are 100% archic. no an- or min- in sight.

Are we really going to let them decide our terms? If you're letting others decide terms then anarchy means "The Purge". Socialism means state control. and communism means gulags and secret police or social scores.

When I say minarchism then I mean "minimal archy" with "archy" being the same as anarchy. Capitalism is archy. Anyone I'd be comfortable calling a minarchist should oppose it, or at least try and minimise it. Anyone wanting to give power to any oppressing group is not a minarchist.

how exactly you define a state

I'm seeing that from these comments. I consider the state a top-down managed structure with some form of governance and control/management of "it's people" aka citizens. A state has clear ruling class who dictate the customs or laws of the population.

It's at this point the enforcement of those laws comes into play and things get tricky. Having a separate group privileged with enforcement allows that group to decide how to enforce laws. As we've seen that wont do. 1312. The anarchist solution is security culture, making the enforcement of customs ^1^ the responsibility of every person. However couldn't that work with a state? It does requires more involvement and confrontation which is why I think anarchists should try and help out with this whenever they can. As any good anarchist would be used to de-escalation and conflict resolution.

^1^: using laws in this context doesn't seem right as laws are too specific to be enforced by everyone. Which would require some form of justice system which has the same problems as the police. they ~~13~~12 too.

And objectively it isn't that much more difficult to maintain a state, but because it's those same "jobs" and "culture" that are going to keep a lot of people back and I think we need to account for them and try and coexist and cooperate with them instead of just yelling "statist" and excluding them.

I'm not saying we try and turn the state into something anarchic. I'm saying we try and work alongside people who need^2^ the state to make sure they consider us if they get in power. It's a lot easier to oppose a state that doesn't try to control you.

^2^: read "aren't willing to let go of"

I'm just trying to have faith in people and think that even when they aren't willing to live like me they can still accept me, I feel like the right thing to do is accept them in turn. I'm probably very naive but that's why I'm an anarchist in the first place.

For the anarchist side, absolutely. But what about the rest? Those who aren't willing to let go of the "old ways"? Those who have been raised to believe that law and order must be maintained? There should exist some mechanism through with they can be allowed to engage with the social revolution, otherwise they turn against you. Allowing them to federate would ensure they have a place and could help instead.

what does this "culture" actually offer the rest of the working class?

Anarchism. Although I understand that that term means different things to us so I'm going to use the meaning you gave it a few comments back:

Anarchism consists of a critique of hierarchy

And this cultural anarchism is taking that critique and applying it to culture. To everyday situations. To the way children are being raised and workers are being hired. To song, writing and all the other arts. What it offers to people is anarchism. A way to live your life without archy. Or as AFAQ calls it: "social revolution" https://anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionJ.html#secj7

This is what I mean when I say revolution: A complete change to the entire social structure. The biggest driving force in any society is culture. While economic forces to play a part they can only exist as long as they are reinforced by culture. The value of money exists in culture. The concept of property exists in culture. An anarchist culture is about looking at these concepts in a way that consciously opposes archy.

Also participating in capitalism does not yet disqualify you from acting anarchically. It's not a all or nothing scenario. You do what you can, where you can. Obviously you should be on the lookout for better alternatives and constantly keep in mind what it is your participating in every time you shop, but as long as your thinking about it, considering your actions in an anarchic framework, you are acting anarchically.

And the more people keep doing this the more they start considering alternatives, at which point anarchic spaces become a vital component to in the process to collectivise the economy. You connect people with skills who don't like having to shop for food and some of them might start their own farm, and because they already have connections to other people in that space they start being able to benefit from that venture as well.

The social/cultural isn't separate from the economic which isn't disconnected from the political. Society is a collection of all and in order to effectively dismantle one we need the help of others. And culture is the easiest by far because all you need is for people to listen and consider the things you say. Culture is nothing more than the ideas we hold and ideas are a hell of a lot more easier to change than political or economic realities.

But that's just the framework that I use to think about anarchism and society at large. You probably have your own.

counter-culture there’s the word I was looking for when describing punk. That's what I meant with "only one side of it". Counter-culture is only one side of anarchist culture. The side called punk. But there are so many other facets to anarchy that punk doesn't cover. I agree that counter-culture can't build up social systems, which is why I don't call anarchist culture counter-culture. It's something different. Not simply about opposing what exists but also building and imagining what can.

I know the teen who made it doesn't know what it even means.

Are you sure of that? They might not know the theory but just by drawing it they showcase a willingness to act against the established rules. That's a good first step towards learning about anarchy, and while they could "grow out of it" they could also find actual anarchist movement and go deeper into it.

The person who drew it also doesn't matter. It doesn't change what I think when I see it. It doesn't change how much it matters to me. The symbol lives it's own life and even if the person who drew it didn't know that, the people who see it might. Some more curious might find anarchism because of looking up what the deal with them is.

perhaps you should reconsider your conception of "normalcy."

My "normalcy" is the direct result of the environment I was raised in and the people I interacted with. It is an idea that changes and evolves constantly as I interact more. I don't only reconsider my conception of "normalcy" but of every word I use as I grow and learn. But in the context that I exist in normal people do not act anarchically.

There is a big difference between merely rebelling against "normality" and posing an existential threat to the status quo - the risk profile of the latter comes with real bullets, real torture and lots and lots of real death.

Which is scary, which makes it unappealing, which makes it actively detrimental for outreach. There are many ways to fight battles, many ways to oppose the status quo and culturally is most certainly one of them. It's not inferior to military action just because people don't die doing it, but I also know it wont be enough on it's own. Just like militancy won't be enough.

One of the joys of anarchism is getting to choose where you belong. Being able to dictate what you do and how you do it. I am a pacifist. My aversion to violence is one of the foundations of my anarchism. I could never be on the front lines. It scares me. But I know I can do other things, help out in other ways, and that me being able to do that is foundational to anarchism.

You cannot force a person to be anarchist.

Why would I want to?

That was an assertion that needed to be true for the following to work, and another way anarchism differs from "liberalism" and "marxism". Because while you cannot force anyone to become those things too you can force them to be faked. You cannot fake being an anarchist.

it is absolutely not anything that can be called "cultural"

And there is the fundamental disagreement between our "anarchy"s. For me it is a culture. and not much else. Everything else comes from this cultural root. The critique of hierarchy is just this anarchic culture applied to political science.

When I see the black flag it fills me with a sense of belonging. Seeing a Circled A on a street corner frequently makes me smile. Reading anarchist literature gives me a sense of being a part of something bigger and what word could there be for that other than culture? Shifting through the near incalculable amount of stickers in an anarchist space with all the ACABs, black cats and antifa. What is it if not culture?

Although now thinking about I imagine you could call cultural anarchism "punk". I don't think I can. punk is too different. It's backed by the music genre which has a very specific sound and perhaps because I doesn't gel with me I don't consider it the anarchist sound. It's punk. It is anarchic, but it's only one side of it.

I wonder what it is that you consider culture, that it doesn't contain the collective effort needed to build anarchic structures.

Anarchists are not "abnormalities"

The current norm in almost every country is to be a worker in an industry and vote in elections, (even if they don't matter). That's quite far from anarchy.

When I use normal I mean the current mainstream. Or to give more examples: being an artist isn't normal, being self-employed isn't normal, not voting isn't normal (or voting is normal if you remove the double negative). Not working isn't normal. I could go on but I think you get the idea. Obviously anarchy is natural and exists in society but it certainly isn't the norm. But I probably should have used "mainstream" because it seems "normal" seems to invoke concepts of "accepted", "good". not "average"

You mean... what people were doing for thousands of years before states were invented? None of those people thought of themselves as anarchists, you know.

They weren't. Anarchy is the conscious opposition to archy. If those societies didn't have any interaction with archic structures then they didn't know to oppose them therefore they weren't anarchists, but they did live anarchicly and their culture was anarchic, and through that culture you could call them anarchists, because that culture probably had their own methods of dealing with archic structures that tried to impose themselves, which could be considered opposition, but it wouldn't be conscious, or would it... And this is getting out of hand, isn't it.

But that's words. imperfect abstractions over infinitely complex ideas. Shame anarchy is one the most complex ones, since it's entire concept defies singular meaning. The only one you can safely ascribe to it is "against authority", and even that's only if you have a specific meaning of "authority".

I spent one day almost entierly in my pod watching youtube, just like I would at home. For me the pod is my private space. But I understand that most people probably find it too cramped, I imagine in an actual living arrangement there would need to be private common rooms.

OK. here is my incredibly weird perspective on those pods. I like them. Recently I even stayed in one and the only complaint I have is that they are made of plastic and would squeak horrible whenever the person above me moved. I like small enclosed spaces, they make me feel safe, and if the pod was made out of wood or concrete then I would absolutely live in one, as long as there were adequate services nearby: like a kitchen and a bathroom.

They don't take up a lot of space allowing for more people to live in a single house. They offer enough privacy to be comfortable and as an anarchist I welcome the chance to live alongside other people. My apartment is a mess because I cannot bring myself to clean it. Having other people to share responsibilities with would solve that.