Hello everybody and welcome back to ideology explained.
Today I am telling you about anarchism.
In general, all of it.
To the best of my ability.
Please note this is a very basic overview over some general anarchist ideas.
I will not go into detail about anything here.
In general Anarchism can be summed up as the ideology which attempts to reach anarchy.
Now, most people think about chaos and destruction when they hear anarchy but that’s not what
this is about.
In this case anarchy means a society without unjust hierarchies or without any hierarchies,
depending on which kind of anarchist we are talking about.
That means no queen, no president and no governments as we know them.
This is because to anarchists nobody can have the right to govern someone else without consent.
Individual freedom is very important in anarchism.
But this is not to say that there would not be any government anymore.
Anarchism just demands a nonhierarchical or completely voluntary government, sometimes.
Others really want no government.
That means there could still be a government but there could be no people with the ability
to decide over anyone else without the expressed consent of those people.
That means democracy is basically the only way this can work.
But not representative democracy since that one has representatives, not delegates.
The difference is that a delegate can be called back at any time while a representative get’s
elected and then get’s legal immunity for 4 years.
Alternatively is could also be direct democracy.
The prevalence of this depends on the type of anarchist.
As you can tell there is quite a diversity of thought in anarchism so it’s very hard
to say general things about it.
Almost all anarchists would abolish nations and governments as we know them completely
though.
Some would replace the function of the state with a 100% democratic commune and others
would trust in their guns and the decency of the average person.
All anarchist ideologies I am aware of would abolish the police force.
The reason is that people who are in positions of power, like the police, for a long time
can come to abuse it.
This is also the same reason why there must be no people who govern.
The theory is that absolute power corrupts absolutely and thus all power corrupts to
a certain extent.
The anarchist solution is to abolish positions of power like that.
There are different ideas as to what should replace the police force.
Some anarchists want a new type of law enforcement which is done by the people themselves.
There are lots of theories on this.
Pretty much all anarchists are pro-gun since that’s how they would defend themselves.
They also oppose anything that violates individual freedom, that means they are often times on
the side of antifa in order to oppose fascism, or on the side of whoever wants to legalize
abortion.
Some anarchists are anti-electoralists, that means they don’t take part in democracy
because they view it as an unjust system and they don’t want to legitimize it.
But others again argue that the state, even if unjust in nature and not capable of meaningful
reform, can still be used to reduce harm like by voting for a party that won’t put children
in cages.
Very broadly anarchists can be split into two groups.
Social anarchists and individual anarchists.
Basically, individualist anarchy is all about the liberty of the individual form outside
control while social anarchy is more about achieving most freedom for a whole group like
by mutual aid which just means helping those who need it in your community, like offering
to look after your neighbor’s kid or them giving you food and care if you’re unable
to provide for yourself.
Economically anarchists can be divided into anarcho-capitalists and anarcho-communists.
And they do not like each other.
As the names suggest anarcho capitalists or ancaps want to abolish the state while keeping
the institution of private property as well as the free market.
Their property would be defended by the so called Non aggression principle, or NAP.
It states that nobody can aggress against anyone else or their property or else they
are exempt from the NAP and they will presumably be lynched.
Anarcho communists or ancoms believe that anarchism requires socialism as well as the
ownership over the means of production by the people.
That means a factory would not belong to an individual but to the people who work there.
That ownership could be enforced by the workers themselves or by the commune.
Naturally ancoms are very much influenced by the writings of Karl Marx and other leftist.
And those two groups hate each other.
They accuse each other of not being real anarchists.
The ancoms say that capitalism is inherently authoritarian because it gives an employer
a lot of power over the lives of their workers, like by dictating when they must work and
so on as well as that private security organizations would just turn into the new state which would
be ruled by the rich.
And on the other side ancaps accuse ancoms of not being real anarchists because they
are using Marxism which killed 7 quintillion people and by oppressing the freedom of the
employers to own property.
And they hate each other so much that if you scroll down to the comment section you will
see anarchist angrily asking why I mentioned the evil not-real-anarchist-anarchists at
all.
There are a great deal of anarchist authors and they all have different theories as well
as different ways of achieving their anarchist society.
Please forgive me for not mentioning any, this video is supposed to be a very broad
overview over what anarchism is in general.
Around anarchists you will often hear the words praxis and theory.
Theory refers to all of the theoretical literature about anarchism which has been around since
the French revolution and praxis refers to the act of actually working towards that ideal
anarchism.
In general when doing praxis anarchists use horizontalism which is just code for a style
of leadership, in which everyone has a say in what they are going to do.
Anarcho communist praxis can include creating mutual aid networks in which members help
each other, taking part in antifascist action, taking over unoccupied houses and living in
them without paying rent as a protest against private property or taking part in a peaceful
demonstration against police brutality.
Anarcho capitalist praxis on the other hand is making a youtube channel with a furry avatar
that crosses it’s arms while rambling about how the labor theory of value is wrong because
of people with disabilities.
And that’s all I had to say about that.
Thanks to my patreons for giving me money and extra special thanks to Aaron J peton,
dordoise, Jenarchist 77, and Tyler Dang for your generous donations.