A TRIBALIST ANARCHY

what do you mean by tribalism?
moreover, 'a limited power given to the government' and anarchy a bit contradictory, no?

 

suite yourself.just dont trust rothchild's.
hahahaha!!!!

 

nope, we are fighting any goverment, not setting up new ones, because they too would easily corrupt.

 

You're already making me think that this is a variant of primitivism, and even if you're not including the anti-technology aspects would probably run into the other impracticalities suffered by primitivism such as it being impractical for current population levels. You will also be encouraging the banding together of people into groups that actively aim to set about the destruction of the system and it's replacement with state communism/fascism/democracy (delete as appropriate) who from their position of autonomy could then pick off the other tribes one by one, unless they formed together once more to create a huge tribe (state) that could withstand the aggressors. The land mass occupied by the tribes would also be extremely vulnerable to aggression from other nation states. The historical reasons for the formation of many of the European nation states would merely be recreated and you are likely to be reinventing history.

How large are these tribes? When I think of the word tribe, I generally think of at most 1-200 people, and a police force would not be necessary for groups that small. However, once you start to get larger groups numbering in the thousands then you are really just breaking existing nation states into smaller nation states anyway. How far do you plan to take this? What if a murder in tribe A was committed by a member of tribe B? Do you also propose the setting up of a tribal FBI to investigate this? Maybe then you could have a tribal CIA as they might have been able to gather intelligence to stop the murder before it occurred. Tribal Department of Homeland Security anyone? I'm getting facetious now, but this really has no place in any anarchist vision.

If they have more power than any state or federal government would have, then your small federal government concept coming up in a few sentences makes no sense as it would be impotent. Semantics aside though, the idea of an elected community representative representing the tribe in a larger inter-tribe council who is only elected for a short amount of time and subject to recall at any time has been proposed by most of the more famous anarchist writers of the past.

Laws would be something of an anarchronism. Laws now are created to protect our freedom rather than limit it, but that concept is abused badly by those who know that the majority of the public are not sophisticated enough to withstand spin and manipulation. Most of the freedoms taken away by legislation during the dark days of Thatcher/Reagan and Bush/Blair were done with the assent of the people after a determined fear campaign to convince the public of their necessity. The nature of a law is to limit freedom.

And ideally I would have a tree outside my house from which I could pluck any fruit I fancied on any given day, but that isn't going to happen either. What are you suggesting? Would we have written tests that if failed would lead to banishment from the community or being put against the wall?

As I said earlier, laws in an anarchist community would be an anarchronism. All that is basically needed is a sea change in the thought processes of individuals away from the personal towards the communal. When I say "All that is needed", I don't mean to give the impression that it is easy to achieve, just that it is fundamental to any anarchist society surviving.

The only "law" that would be needed is for each individual to ask themselves two or three questions before doing anything.

1. Will my action restrict the freedom of action of another person?
If no, continue to 2 else stop now.

2. Will my action...
a. benefit the community?
b. be neutral to the community?
c. have a negative effect on the community?
If c then don't, else continue.

There are further levels to this, but effectively it means getting everyone to abide by rough variations of Asimov's Laws of Robotics, and to get that universally accepted and abided by will not be easy by any means. While this could occur over two to three generations, the interim would be a tough period to get through.

As already pointed out, if the tribes are more powerful than the council (or federal government in your words) then it would have no power to keep them in peace.

To fend off outside invaders a collaboration of the tribes would be likely to occur without the need for a government. However, this is never going to be as easy as it sounds. Once again see European mediaeval and pre-mediaeval history. To represent the tribes in an international setting would first require the tribes to be accepted by the international community. In order for this to happen, they would have to agree to international laws and protocols that would be alien to the whole concept of life within the tribal system. The nation states would have hidden agendas whatever. It would not be in their interests for the tribal system to succeed and any conciliatory words would be unlikely to be sincere. Those in power in other countries would be panic stricken that the mere existence of the anarchist land mass would inspire their own populations to rise up and overthrow them. Just look at the anti-communist rhetoric that was (and still is) rife in the USA during the last century and the excesses of the McCarthy era. They would be far more scared of an anarchist uprising.

And that would be the greatest challenge any anarchist society would face.

 

Yes and no, there are laws which exist to protect forms of freedom -murder, assault, etc
However, the central function of laws is to uphold hierarchical forms of social organisation, ie. private property relations under capitalism.

it is certainly the case that individuals would need to feel more collective responsibility in an anarchist society. However, should someone ignore their obligations to society, I do not deem it oppressive for the community to respond and hold that individual accountable for their actions, whether through exclusion or another contextually appropriate response.

 

Umm, the opposite is kinda the case...
We need no government, this is kinda like a central tenet of anarchism...
Care to read some stuffz about, say, the Russian Revolution?

Are you looking? They're not exactly hard to find...
this thread may help

 

Anthropologically, humans should be able to live in communities of about 250-300 without having many problems regarding crime and public order (assuming the community has enough resources to provide a minimum standard of living and the prospect of improvement from that point). Once the community grows past this number, people will begin to feel more detached from the community as a whole, and more likely to deviate from any societal norms in place within that community. That's based on observational studies conducted on apes, monkeys and chimps living in the wild. Further study of historical cultures may provide more human relevant information, but would also have to take into account any hierarchical structures in place.

A police force. Communities have to police themselves without the need to appoint police forces. Once you create a police force the majority give a lot of power to a minority creating an imbalance in the society, however many checks and balances you try to put into place to counter that. It's something that would have to be decided by each community according to their individual needs. Some may opt for a rotating neighbourhood watch scheme, others might prefer some kind of electronic surveillance. There are undoubtedly many other options too.

As butcher has pointed out, a quick Google search should have you up to your ears in reading in no time. http://www.marxists.org/subject/anarchism/index.htm is quite interesting as it contains the full texts of Proudhon's main two works as well as others. You'll also find plenty of information at the Anarchist FAQ www.infoshop.org/page/AnAnarchistFAQ. One problem with the older texts is that while the core tenets may be sound, those ideas need to be adapted to fit in with the modern world. It's not unusual to come across anarchists who can quote Proudhon and others at length, but end up sounding as relevant as right wing Christians blindly quoting the bible.

After posting yesterday I wondered if I'd misinterpreted what you'd originally written, but from that it doesn't seem so. If a list of laws is so long and complicated that it needs lessons to learn and understand them, then you have too many. A brief overview of what is expected of each individual towards the community along with what is expected from the community towards each individual within it should suffice. It's more a social contract than a legal system and based on all the rules that we already learn as we grow up.

I only said it needs more levels because after typing that I figured I could rationalize my way around those two questions without any great problem. Rather than delete though, figured it was better to put it out there and see if someone else picked the ball up and ran with it. I thought of Asimov because in order to construct his laws of Robotics, as well as trying to put into the words the functions of basic tools, he tried to simplify the basics of human interaction and compress it into as few steps as possible. Whether it works I don't know, but let's give it a quick pop.

0th: A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
1st: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow another human being to come to harm.
2nd: A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3rd: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

That would translate roughly as:

0th: A person may not harm the community, or, by inaction, allow the community to come to harm.
1st: A person may not injure another human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, except where that would conflict with the 0th law.
2nd: A person must fulfil any expectations given to them by the community, except where such actions would conflict with the 0th or 1st Laws.
3rd: A person may protect their own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the 0th, 1st or 2nd Law.

It doesn't quite fit together as nicely as I'd hoped, but may provide food for thought and further ideas.

 

pretty weird link though...
Ravachol & James Guillaume as the 'pioneers of anarchism' is bit weird imho.

 

oh yeah, and read some Zapatismo...

 

an armed populace is a shit load better option imho. One, pretty fucking hard to fight an entire society. 2. no bullshit military discipline.

 

uniforms and fucking discipline/blind obedience? never!
armed populace? in times of need yes.
but a tank in the backyard, assault gun and frag grenades under the bed - all the time?

weapons of war need special care from time to time, especially the motorized vehicles. and the stuff is just too dangerous for children or people with a bad sense of humor to keep them at home - so I would recommend arsenals, guarded by a short-term-rotating militia consisting of all able and responsible individuals, serving their term, learning tactics and necessary technical knowledge - and return to civil life afterwards.