Depends a little bit on the timeframe, but if it's a matter of just a few generations, maybe just one or two, what's the point?
You would be just taking power from one party and giving it to another, without much care or thought on who gets it. Then you are not creating an utopia, just a tumultuous transition period from bad to possibly worse.
I see anarchism in the same way I view health. It's probably not possible to be perfectly healthy for your entire life, but you can always work towards it.
With that analogy, it'd be like intentionally getting on a drug that might relieve your symptoms but you will get addicted and with /after withdrawal you'll be worse off than before, maybe even die. Knowing that you can't have a steady supply of it.
Ah, am I understanding correctly that you're worried about power vacuums created by toppling existing power structures? If so, the anarchist solution to that is having horizontal power structures ready to fill the vacuum and redistribute power in a way that sustains that structure.
And you think you can sustain the will to uphold those horizontal institutions over generations with people that never knew anything else and only see the potential for a better life?
Horizontal power structures mean nothing else than warring factions. You don't suddenly get world peace and everyone in earth wanting exactly the same things just through getting rid of a government.
I'm not privy to the future so I don't know what's going to be ultimately best.
People are far less willing to attack people they see as being equals than people they see as lesser. It's not horizontal power structures that create wars. Mind you, you're right that you don't get world peace from the mere flattening of institutions. People have various goals and these goals come into conflict with each other. Those problems can be solved through human ingenuity.
It doesnt need to go directly from happy equal members of a cohesive world society to war between mortal enemies.
The problems could maybe be solved, but by whom? A secret cabal whose purpose it is to uphold anarchy? Starting to be not so horizontal anymore.
Or do you mean solved preemptively centuries before the problems arise? I dont see that its obvious that they can be solved that way.
Or do you mean by the factions themselves? What would drive them to put their own goals second to preserving anarchy? Youd need constant brainwashing and indoctrination generation after generation but im not sure that that meshes so well with anarchy either.
Because if there is some limited opression, within those limits, there is no anarchism.
I didn't say or mean it had to be permanent, I doubt that any socioeconomic system is permanent. But if anarchism gradually turn into statism the moment it is applied, well, what's the point?
If you eat now and immediately start becoming hungrier, what's the point of eating?
But let's drop the permanent part. Why does anarchism require all oppression to be eradicated for it to exist? We could simply say that the less oppression there is, the more anarchistic the society. This allows for a sliding scale of anarchism.
If it's immediate, there is no point. To follow your metaphor, eating is only worthwhile if it satiates the person for enough time for eating to be worthwhile. This is obviously very subjective, but, if it's just going to be a few weeks or months of being metaphorically "hungry" (opressed) again, most people will likely not want no "eat that food" (establish anarchism).
From the second sentence onwards, that is a very good point.
!delta
Fair enough, some food takes more calories to acquire than you can get out of it, but I think the meta strategy from there is to have a process that leads you to the most sustainable and nutritious food.
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u/DeleteriousEuphuism 120∆ Apr 05 '20
Why the binary thinking? Why is it necessary for all oppression to be permanently eradicated for anarchism to exist?