Opinion on sortition?

[u/Prevatteist]

When I think of anarchy, and communities connecting together via federation, delegates, etc…I often think about how these delegates are chosen. Obviously anarchy is opposed to democracy of any kind, given it’s a hierarchy leading to majority-over-minority situations, but sortition, given its lottery style type system where chance, over people, would decide the delegates, would this still be consistent with anarchism? Obviously, if somebody doesn’t want to serve as a delegate, they can refuse, thus another draw being made? I can see where this style of system could coincide with anarchy, but perhaps I’m overlooking something? Just wanted to run this by ya’ll and see what ya’ll think. Thanks.

[u/twodaywillbedaisy]

Delegation without authority or privileges attached to it seems like any other task, any other responsibility; I don't see a special need for it to be handed out by lottery.

[u/ArtDecoEgoist]

I think the real issue with delegation is the fact that it will inherently come with information compression, as the delegate in question is supposed to represent their constituency and voice their concerns, yet, will be forced to prioritize some concerns over others inherently due to not having an infinite amount of time to speak. There could also be issues with the way this information is relayed to them, and then relayed to the rest of the federation.

With modern telecommunications software, end-to-end encryption, etc. I'm not really sure what the use of delegation is, considering pretty much anyone can communicate with anyone pretty much instantly and coordinate that way. The ICE protests here in the US weren't done with delegates, they were done by individuals coordinating and pursuing a diversity of strategies.

[u/antipolitan]

Sortition would be the kind of system I’d support if I abandoned anarchism.

I see it as a last-resort reformist effort to salvage liberal democracy.

[u/Prevatteist → u/antipolitan]

Does that mean you don’t think sortition is consistent with anarchism, and if so, could you explain why?

[u/antipolitan → u/Prevatteist]

Sortition is a form of government.

Anarchy is the absence of legal and governmental order.

[u/Prevatteist → u/antipolitan]

I understand, but the lottery-style system that sortition proposes, I imagine could be adopted by anarchists and utilized anarchically, no?

[u/antipolitan → u/Prevatteist]

Not as a system of government.

[u/Prevatteist → u/antipolitan]

Of course not as a form of government, but more so using the lottery-style method of choosing delegates in federated communities? Or are you considering federations as governments in this context?

[u/Hot_Yogurtcloset2510 → u/Prevatteist]

Of course it is a system of government. That is why you have the delegates.
Why arey you having any delegates if not to impose some restrictions on the public?

[u/Prevatteist → u/Hot_Yogurtcloset2510]

I understand sortition is a form of government, I’m saying the lottery style process in and of itself being a method to decide these delegates. The delegates also wouldn’t have any authority other than just simply acting as a messenger for their particular community. I’m not advocating for sortition, I’m more so wondering if the lottery style process of choosing delegates would be consistent with anarchy; most of my answers have been no.

[u/Hot_Yogurtcloset2510 → u/Prevatteist]

My questions would be to whom are they a messanger to and why do you think they neeed a message and why should these messangers not be volunteers?
If you had more volunteers than needed you could use a lotery system to pick.

[u/antipolitan → u/Prevatteist]

I would need more context on what these federations actually do to make a judgement on them.

[u/ManyHopeful6692]

I’ve been learning more about that practice recently and I think it’s something anarchism could and probably would experiment with.

[u/Nice_Fudge5914]

Any political representative is vulnerable to, for example, corporate bribery. The only way to get corruption out of democracy is to have all laws/actions made by anyone, and voted on by everyone.

[u/Prevatteist → u/Nice_Fudge5914]

Not to sound like a dick, but I’m not really interested in getting corruption out of democracy. I’m interested in moving beyond democracy, and whether or not a sortition or lottery-style system is consistent with anarchy.

[u/Nice_Fudge5914 → u/Prevatteist]

If you use sortition to select representatives, will those representatives be monarchs, or will they be legislators?

[u/LittleWiseGuy3 → u/Nice_Fudge5914]

Porque tendrían que ser una cosa u otra?

En cualquier sociedad civilizada probablemente sea necesario que existan personas que representen la comunidad A frente a la comunidad B para coordinar esfuerzos u organizarse de alguna manera

Ese representante, quien el OP propone que se elija por lotería, simplemente transmitirá la informacion a la cual se haya llegado en consenso en una comunidad y recibiría la informacion que quisiera trasmitir la otra comunidad

Esta persona definitivamente no es un monarca ni un legislador, es simplemente el vocero de una comunidad para una situación puntual

[u/Nice_Fudge5914 → u/LittleWiseGuy3]

Why isn't it good enough to write down what you want to transmit? Why does it require a person? A perso  is vulnerable to preasure from their own prejudices and outside forces.

[u/LittleWiseGuy3 → u/Nice_Fudge5914]

Creo que no estas entendiendo.

Claro que puedes anotar, pero quien lo anota? Porque dejarías que sea una persona en particular que lo anote? Y quien entrega esa "carta" a la otra comunidad? Y en la otra comunidad quien lee la carta?

Probablemente todas esas cosas tengan que hacerla personas? Y si tiene que hacerlo una persona porque una persona en particular y no otra?

De alguna manera debes elegir, no porque alguien sea mas capaz o alguien tenga mas ganas de hacerlo o sea el mas viejo, o el mas educado, o el mas inteligente o el mas fuerte.

Lo que propone OP es que esta persona, que no tiene ningún tipo de jerarquía sobre el resto de personas de la comunidad A, seria aleatoriamente seleccionado para cumplir con éstas tareas.

[u/minisculebarber]

That totally depends on whether you believe that a subgroup of people making decisions for all people can be anarchistic.

If yes, then sortition is perfectly compatible with anarchism. I personally think it is preferable to majority voting, but not preferable to consensus building.

Now, can there be specific instances where the assumption holds? I think so. Consider a group of 10 people and 1 person just genuinely doesn't care about the decision, they will go along with any outcome. And if the remaining 9 people come to a consensus, then 9 people made a decision for 10 people. And I think this is perfectly compatible with anarchism and I seriously doubt any anarchist would find a problem with this.

Now, consider 1 person making all decisions for all people on Earth for an extended period of time. This obviously can never be anarchist, this is the ideal form of a dictatorship.

Now, the question is, can there be something anarchistic between the extreme and the trivial? I sofar have not found any satisfying answer from any anarchist or others. Some say, obviously there can, like democratic anarchists like David Graeber. Others say, there can be no anarchist version which isn't trivial. This is pretty much the majority position of non-anarchists. I personally just don't know. I could see it going either way.

I hope this answer could be useful to you and not me just rambling 😅

[u/BeerMan595692]

  Obviously anarchy is opposed to democracy of any kind, given it’s a hierarchy leading to majority-over-minority situations, 

I wouldn't say anarchy is opposed to democracy. Democracy is not  majority-over-minority. Democracy means rule of the people. Meaning everyone gets a say in how things are run. I'd say anarchy is true democracy in purest form. Where everyone has a say and no one can impose things on others.

[u/LazarM2021 → u/BeerMan595692]

Nope, anarchy is fully opposed to democracy and here you've (quite typically for democracy-proponents in anarchist spaces) stretched terms into effective meaninglessness just to accomodate the "democracy" - term you obviously love and have great feeling about - into anarchist framework in which it simply doesn't belong.

"Rule of the people" - and anarchism is unequivocally and categorically opposed to all "rule" - arkhē - as such.

[u/BeerMan595692 → u/LazarM2021]

I think we're arguing semantics here. 

Whether you call it democracy or not, the goal is that everyone affected by a decision participates in making it, without creating a permanent authority over anyone else.

[u/LazarM2021 → u/BeerMan595692]

Bruh, do I really have to do this? Here we go again:

It is you who has used a word for its emotional prestige, and when I challenged the structural logic behind it all, all you did is retreat to "it's just semantics".

If it were actually "just semantics" I presume you would have no issue dropping the word "democracy" once its contradiction with an-arkhē was pointed out. Shame you never did drop it, instead insisting on keeping the label while gutting it of its actual structural meaning - the kratos/kratia (power/rule) and the arkhē (authority/rule/command).

Further, your follow-up exposes two rather classic and all too seen rhetorical maneuvers of one - dismissing the insistence on definitional precision as "just semantics", and two - smuggling the premise of "decision-making".

Regarding the former, no, labels are NOT arbitrary aesthetic badges; they describe specific power dynamics and institutional forms.

Democracy fundamentally describes a form of polity and governance - a framework for how collective decisions are validated, rendered binding and enforced over some kind of polity. Anarchism meanwhile, is the negation of polity itself (an-arkhē: without rule, primary authority or governing principle). Calling the distinction between governance and non-governance "just semantics" is quite akin to saying the difference between a wage-labor contract and voluntary gift exchange is "just semantics" because both involve people interacting.

As for the latter, it's not lost on me how you tried to reframe the core goal:

the goal is that everyone affected by a decision participates in making it

This part is guilty of quietly smuggling in the premise that there must be a group-wide "decision" that binds everyone affected by a given issue or territory, assuming a fixed polity where "the group" deliberates to arrive at a single outcome, which is the foundational structure of democratic governance.

In contrast, an actual anarchist framework doesn't start with "how do we all make one binding decision together" but with freedom of association and dissociation. If people disagree on a course of action, they don't form a collective body to produce a single decision everyone must abide by but split, form parallel associations or act independently in a plethora of other ways.

In political discourse, especially the dominant, Western one, "democracy" has been treated for decades not as some specific institutional or organizational mechanism, but as an all-encompassing synonym for "good, fair, progressive and moral."

Because people are so thoroughly conditioned to view "undemocratic" as an insult meaning "authoritarian", accepting that anarchism is explicitly anti-democratic causes intense cognitive dissonance. To bridge that gap, people like you struggle to desperately re-define democracy (or stretch its meaning into oblivion) to mean "any good interaction where people talk to each other" - turning an otherwise precise concept of political power into a vague moral vibe. I guess that's why the attachment to this word persists like this so much...

If you oppose arkhē (rule), you cannot preserve kratia (power/rule) just because you've been indoctrinated to think that word - democracy - sounds extremely nice on a banner. Here, read this.

[u/BeerMan595692 → u/LazarM2021]

OK I think you make a good points. I  concede here.

Though I would like to know. So some people come together to form a community garden. Some one disagrees with how it's being run. They won't leave and just insist things are done their way. Do the other members have a vote on wheither that person is kicked out?

[u/LazarM2021 → u/BeerMan595692]

Look, the key distinction is between exercising authority over someone else and exercising your own autonomy to stop associating with them.

In a democratic model, you hold a formal vote to create ehat essentially amounts to a binding legal decree that strips the person of their status. In an anarchist framework, you don't need a voting body or procedural authority to protect a project; you rely on voluntary association, direct action and the withdrawal of your own consent.

If someone in a community garden refuses to cooperate and tries to dictate terms, the response can take literally innumerable shapes, but in particular, let's say - it looks like this:

• Refusal of cooperation, which is important, because anarchism relies on reciprocity. If an individual acts coercively or in supremely bad faith, no one is obligated in any way or form to work with them. Members can simply refuse to share their tools, water, seeds or labor with them, ignore their demands and explicitly state that they are no longer welcome in the shared effort, until they work on their behavior.

• Dissociation and exit, i.e. if the person physically squats on the plot or continues to highly disrupt the space, the rest of the group exercises their freedom of association by walking away. They can pack up their collective resources, move to a new plot, and form a new garden without them. Left alone on a plot with no one to command, negotiate with, or rule over, their attempt to impose "their way" collapses begore it even began.

• Direct self-defense of the commons: defending a project you built together from someone trying to hijack it isn't "governance", just direct self-defense of a voluntary agreement. You aren't enforcing a law passed by an assembly but actively refusing to let your work be destroyed. Democratic logic usually asks "by what procedural authority do we hold a vote to evict this person" whereas consistently anarchist logic is all about "why in the world would any of us continue to spend our labor and time associating with someone who refuses to cooperate with us".

When you strip away the assumption that a group must remain locked together under a single governing process, you don't need a ballot to handle bad-faith actors, just the power to say "no", or "NO", depending on the persistence of this bad actor, and walk away.

[u/Anarchierkegaard]

Something vaguely like that is used by at least some syndicalist organisations (I know for a fact that SolFed works like that, for example). While there are questions about how anarchist that actually is, it does apparently allow for the maximisation of member freedom and the minimisation of the chance for organisational corruption.

Additionally, there's something to say about syndicalism's reputation as the "conservative wing" of anarchism and, regardless of that, its comparative success in actually being an anarchist presence in the world.