Ancient Germanic and Celtic tribes, famous for having no unjustifiable social hierarchies
Is this a joke? I thought anarchists were in agreement that anarchy is more than just statelessness. You may as well have posted a picture of Somalia c. 2010
I hope it isn't sectarianism to say that I'm pretty sure Anarchists of today are not advocating for the small kingdoms and land barons of 220 BC Europe, but trying to build Anarchism based on the foundations of today.
It is not sectarian and this post is bad but the discussion and comments are good so I'm leaving it up for now.
I should clarify, your statement is not sectarianism, the post itself is shitty bait. What we should be talking about is the very real issue of Marxists tending to view social progression as a linear thing when it very much is not.
sectarianism is okay now if the anarchists do it
It is a terrible post but I feel like leaving it up because there are a lot of good comments that are thoughtful and informative.
This is a good argument with a bad example. The Mediterranean in 220 BC was definitely not anarchist in most places, just because a society isn't a "state" does not mean it was an anarchist society where people were free to determine the course of their own lives. If you roll this map back ~3000 years then yes, a lot of Neolithic societies were pretty close to anarchist ideals, where there were no "leaders" except for specific situations based on expertise, there was mass migration and tons of villages all with their own pottery styles and even languages mere miles from one another, a kind of veritable explosion of different ways of life all made possible by the recent spread of farming. States have only been around for roughly 5,000 years or so. Humans are millions of years old.
phylogenetically "human" does not specifically refer to homo sapiens, but the 'homo' genus as a whole
Sorry to be a
, but 'human' has no scientific definition and therefore is completely arbitrarySo we're going to include the entire genus when discussing social formations? That seems uselessly broad
Many different species of the homo genus adopted the same "technology set" of the Acheulean stone making packet, including Homo erectus, Neanderthals, and other early archaic human species. That's a widespread tool set that probably resulted in similar social formations across different human species, and we have lots of archeological evidence for this tool set. Given that such technology is shared across species, I don't think it's uselessly broad to assume there was also shared social formations.
Yeah "human" society, with tool making, kin networks, mobile bands of hunters creating stories, painting, all that stuff predates homo sapiens.
And is present it other species. So should we start forming our political opinions around what crows do?
The gauls technically weren't a kingdom.
Edit: ah I wasn't looking at north Africa
advocating for primitive european tribalism in which everyone disabled will die and slavery was okay
This is garbage. These societies likley treated the disabled with more dignity than we know today. There is evidence of people living with severe disabilities and living a full live. It is just developmentalist chuavanism to make the claims you assert.
I was trying to reference access to far less developed medical technology, not that they were just murdering disabled people. Also uh the slavery is a point you didn't touch on.
the OP was not a primitivist take, just attempting to demonstrate the possibility of 'anarchist' society existing in history. a misguided attempt, but you've definitely misrepresented it.
maybe i could care more to do it 'justice' but i really just fucking dont
The dice are loaded. You can’t win. Because when the skeptic says “society,” what he really means is “state,” even “nation-state.” Since no one is going to produce an example of an anarchist state—that would be a contradiction in terms—what we’re really being asked for is an example of a modern nation-state with the government somehow plucked away: a situation in which the government of Canada, to take a random example, has been overthrown, or for some reason abolished itself, and no new one has taken its place but instead all former Canadian citizens begin to organize themselves into libertarian collectives. Obviously this would never be allowed to happen. In the past, whenever it even looked like it might—here, the Paris commune and Spanish civil war are excellent examples—the politicians running pretty much every state in the vicinity have been willing to put their differences on hold until those trying to bring such a situation about had been rounded up and shot.
I think this is somewhat overblown. Aside from the regrettable instance of the Spanish Civil War Communists have generally supported Anarchist revolts, even if they've had (usually proto) states, as long as it isn't happening to them.
Lenin thought the Anarchists were not ready and supported the revolt anyway. Mao, in what should be famous but isn't, was a strong supporter of the ill-fated KPAM, the largest and longest lasting Anarchist experiment ever, and supplied it as much as possible. Refugees from its destruction fled to the CPC and had their hands in developing large sections of Maoist doctrine. The Great Leap Forward, in particular, tried to incorporate many anarchist ideas.
Aside from the regrettable instance of the Spanish Civil War Communists have generally supported Anarchist revolts
Care to elaborate on the Spanish Civil War? Afaik, USSR was the only state to sell weapons to the antifascists
Just, the whole May Days shitfest...Stalin should have openly supported the CNT/FAI as well as the Republican government (I can understand him not wanting to back POUM) and to hell with the protests of the PF government in France. The Anarchists should probably have been a bit more compromising especially about military integration.
Stalin should have openly supported the CNT/FAI as well as the Republican government
I guess Stalin should've deployed Soviet armor and airforces to help fight Spanish fascism, maybe even send Soviet armaments and training cadres.
Wait no he actually did that.
The actual blame, yet again, rests on France and England chosing "neutrality" while the Italian and German fascists were running hog wild in Spain before Soviet intervention.
There can be arguments made that there could've been more done by the Soviets, if we ignore historical conditions that the Soviets faced a very real possibility of a two-front war against the Japanese imperialists in Asia and the German-Italian fascists in Europe thus having to prepare for such events, yet insofar as I've seen the Soviets did the best they could in the limited capacity that they could afford.
I'm not talking about the material support which was good and cool and I am in fact more sympathetic to Stalin in this.
But I think he does open himself to critique on his support of the USPC's position of compromise with bourgeois Republican forces and their political position of not establishing a DOtP and, more damningly, rolling back the collectivisation established by the CCMA before it's dissolution.
It is my opinion that this lack of left unity fatally weakened Republican forces on a key front and moreover robbed us of a Western European Socialist experiment.
There were good reasons for these actions, but in hindsight, I feel left unity would have been more productive.
Pre-postscript message: Could you tell me what acronym USPC and CCMA stand for?
I disagree and stand with the decision made by the Comintern in pursuing the popular front strategy.
In the face of the contrarian trotskyite opposition and uncompromising anarchist uncooperativity, chosing to then immediately alienate the socialist, social democrat, and fellow traveler republican forces in an attempt to appease the vanity of the left opposition would've spelt a more immediate death to the Second Republic.
Trying to push the communism button when you're in a state of conflict and/ or instability is a form of dogmatism that puts the ideal ahead of the material. This was one of the bloody lessons that were learned during the Russian civil war.
United Socialist Party of Catalonia, and the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias.
this is usually true for 99 percent of events in soviet history, they did their best.
I guess Stalin should've deployed Soviet armor and airforces to help fight Spanish fascism, maybe even send Soviet armaments and training cadres.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tanks_in_the_Spanish_Civil_War#Tanks_supplied_by_foreign_powers
And they also supplied China against Japan at the same time.
in the spanish civil war it was anarchists deciding to break the united front because they were stupid. give me a good reason that isnt just stupid nitpicking over absurdities when youre fighting actual fascism.
statists: "those aren't societies; those are tribes. where people are forced to barter for food because they don't have money yet, and they experience solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short lives!"
but they are just tribes. saying "statists make this argument" doesn't invalidate the argument lol. you're acting like these tribes didn't have hierarchies and lineages and privilege based on both. (they did)
not having a state isn't the same thing as anarchism. anarchism is an actual and fairly refined philosophy that has to account for material conditions, social and economic reality and shape them with anarchist thought. it isn't just when no state.
and i mean no disrespect to you when i say this, but comments like this are why most leftists tend to leave anarchism once they're exposed to more "authoritarian" socialist theory. the "authoritarians" simply make a much better argument. anarchism sounds great until you've really considered the arguments that "statist" leftists make
At least by the Marxist definition, these societies virtually all did have states, they were just very small states. They enforced the oppression of women by men (patriarchy) along with other class relations.
not having a state isn't the same thing as anarchism. anarchism is an actual and fairly refined philosophy that has to account for material conditions, social and economic reality and shape them with anarchist thought. it isn't just when no state.
yall are giving em toooo much credit but yeah. The marxist leninists are the best anarchists at the end of the day.
Patriarchal* agrarian societies were brutal, though, and have nothing to do with anarchism if anarchism is worth anything. The "forced to barter bc no money" is a myth made up by capitalists though, since all of these societies were either self-sufficient or simply pillaged from other societies. The telling in which theses societies were reliant on trade between each other is so silly it doesn't even rise to the level of Adam Smith's "barter myth," which itself is discredited.
*in the old sense of men literally ruling as a rule, with all the women being in a condition not meaningfully distinguishable from slavery.
since all of these societies were either self-sufficient or simply pillaged from other societies. The telling in which theses societies were reliant on trade between each other is so silly it doesn't even rise to the level of Adam Smith's "barter myth," which itself is discredited
the hell are you talking about, trade is very well documented in the medditerrean since the bronze age
Trade is arguably a lot earlier, too. In the Mediterranean region obsidian (from volcanic regions) was highly prized during the neolithic for making sharp blades, and even though there are only a few sources of it in the entire region obsidian blades can be found all over the Med. Speaks to some kind of trading network operating during the neolithic, if not earlier.
Most societies for thousands of years did not barter. Bartering is a myth, but that does not mean trade itself is a myth. Most had some form of money and accounting. The complexity of ancient civilizations should not be underestimated.
a vulgar generalization! many "tribal" social organizations had monetary development and were plugged into a long range trading network. cornwall continuously exported tin from the bronze age through the medieval period, regardless of the state of political sophistication it was subject to
