this post was submitted on 03 May 2024
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Anarchism
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Discuss anarchist praxis and philosophy. Don't take yourselves too seriously.
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Yo don't need a state to defend against warlords. There's no greater motivation to defend yourself than preserving your liberty.
There's no resource accumulation in anarchy. That's the whole point
Right, but the problem is that anarchy by its nature isn't "enforced". So it exists in an ecosystem alongside other ways of living.
If others choose to accumulate resources and use them to destroy their anarchic neighbour to seize their resources, the anarchists will obviously have to defend themselves.
How do you defend yourselves against such a threat? To do so you are forced to accumulate resources. And thus anarchy ends up progressing to feudalism. While I like the concept of anarchy and believe it works on a small scale, in practice just about every society that is in conflict with others has followed the same path from anarchy->monarchy->democracy->oligarchy, almost as if it's forced by game theory principles.
I feel like anarchy does work, but only in isolation from competition.
Accumulation of resources implies exploitation. Anarchists will agitate those exploited to overthrow their exploiters.
That doesn't follow. Unless by "accumulate resources" you mean the generic practice of a society having stuff? Anarchists don't need a single person accumulating stuff to defend themselves.
I think you should read more about anarchism instead of imagining wild scenarios. Rest assured that anarchists have considered the defense argument.