- cross-posted to:
- flippanarchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- cross-posted to:
- flippanarchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
You must log in or # to comment.
Reminder to commentators here. Anarchy ≠ no organisation.
Wikipedia is organised. Does not mean that it has monopoly over violence. The fediverse itself is kinda anarchist.
State ≠ organization. State = organization that has monopoly over violence.
While this is technically true, it is a very abstract proposal.
Idk where you guys live, but I would not trust Houston groundwater for drinking or bathing. Industrial infrastructure like water treatment plants have a real and material benefit. But they require a significant investment of capital, engineering skill, and long-term management.
It is comparatively easy to dig a hole in the ground and pull water out, as an act of social defiance. But it is far more difficult to build and manage a complex component of modern infrastructure without some kind of bureaucratic buy-in. The former is more of a last-resort done in desperation. The latter is a predicate for a functioning utility servicing a high density population.
Thats a real odd choice of example when there are tons of actual examples to draw from
Corpus Christi is running out of potable water precisely because they’ve drained so much of what’s available.
That’s an actual example you can reference. One in which individual residents cannot simply defy the government to get what they need. At some point you need collective action. And collective action requires some amount of leadership, organization, education, and accumulated resources to draw from.
Collective action does not require, and in my view is not even helped by, the existence of the State. Defying the government is (insufficient and) unnecessary to push off the water crisis to the future, e.g. the government can physically import water from elsewhere (although I wouldn’t bet on it), but defying the government is necessary (but insufficient) to permanently (on human time scales) solve the water crisis there, precisely because the State is designed to prevent the people from solving their own problems when it conflicts with capitalists’ interests.
Any collective organization that can form a bureaucracy for the management of capital is a State, for all intents and purposes. Any large capital project needs administration and expertise to function and a means of socially reproducing these roles in order to continue to function over time.
The question becomes how to integrate yourself and your neighbors into the mechanics of statecraft without overwhelming people with bullshit or hedging them out into serfdom. But trying to prohibit statecraft is as much a fool’s errand as trying to impose it at a great distance through imperialism.
People will organize into state bodies whether you want them to or not.
But they require a significant investment of capital, engineering skill, and long-term management.
We can and should do this without the tyranny of the State. I’m not a water treatment engineer, but I am an engineer, and I don’t need nor want a cop or similar authoritarian and hierarchical structure breathing down my neck to organize complex technological systems with the continuous consent of the community.
We can and should do this without the tyranny of the State.
The act of managing capital is statecraft.
I’m not a water treatment engineer, but I am an engineer, and I don’t need nor want a cop or similar authoritarian and hierarchical structure breathing down my neck to organize complex technological systems with the continuous consent of the community.
You need mechanisms for uniform and consistent management which can be established and reproduced from individual to individual and generation to generation. Any bureaucracy involved in that labor is going to function as a state. Without that bureaucracy, the capital will fail, the economy will flounder, and the public will turn to infighting over increasingly scare resources.
I tend to consider the two key characteristics of a state to be the claim to the right to demand tax, and the claim to the exclusive use of violence. The definition of statecraft as the act of managing capital is a formulation I have not heard before, and doesn’t strike me as persuasive. It seems to have strange implications, like that Goldman Sachs is a state.
Your arguments here seem more in support of institutions than states. Asking whether one can have capable municipal water service without a state is a different question than whether one can have capable municipal water service without institutions. The necessity of institutions in this case seems an easier argument.
two key characteristics of a state to be the claim to the right to demand tax, and the claim to the exclusive use of violence.
I think the first runs afoul of the Tragedy of the Commons. If you don’t have some mechanism for collecting surplus and redistributing it between people, then you end up with individualist overuse/overconsumption or private aggregation of property through superior economic position. You need some kind of redistribution system to mitigate social risk and negative externalities on property. And that typically comes as an explicit or implicit tax on private earnings.
I’ll spot you the second… kinda. Because at a national level, its definitely true that exclusive right to violence gives dictatorial power to the chief executive. But, at the same time, at a given regional level you’re always going to have some professionalized or majoritarian superior force with very limited tolerance for competition. If you look at Yugoslavia following the collapse of the USSR, you see what happens when a single unified federal system is allowed (arguably encouraged) to Balkinize into a bunch of roughly-equal groups of ethnic groups pitted against one another for increasingly scare resources. The civil war in the Balkins effectively cleared the way for NATO to capture and reconsolidate Yugoslavia under a single EU banner-head. Anarchists traded Titoism for Merkel-entialism.
Asking whether one can have capable municipal water service without a state is a different question than whether one can have capable municipal water service without institutions.
The public at-large needs a functioning water service in order to operate as a cohesive municipality. But a series of professionalized water service providers offers a leverage point from which administrators can exert authority over the public at-large (by deciding who does and does not have access to cheap potable water).
So you need a proletarian lead administration to oversee the professional water services. You can’t just bank on the water services management to be unambitious indefinitely. Or immune to corruption or greed or intimidation.
Your arguments here seem more in support of institutions than states.
Institutions are the foundation upon which a state is built. Once you establish - say - a professional military, you’ve kicked open the door for a military dictatorship. Once you establish a professional financial sector, you’ve invited monopolistic banking interests. Even trade unions ultimately establish economic choke points through which power can consolidate and violence can be centralized. Just ask anyone in the mobbed up corners of Southern Europe or Latin America.
At some point, you cannot forego a dictatorship of the proletariat without paving the way for a dictatorship of the bourgeois.
This was the quote that lit it all up for me.
