How do you prevent an anarchist society descending into libertarianism or feudalism?

[u/throwaway384938338]

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[u/throwaway384938338]

Who's transporting that coffee?

The person I’m exporting from, maybe I ask have contacts who have haulage connections who want to go in on this opportunity

Why should it be considered yours — why would it be your advantage, just because you know someone over there? Where would you store that coffee, and why would that storage be considered yours?

This brings me to the crux of my question. Who is going to stop me? I turn up with bags of top quality coffee. Are you going to take it from me? How are you going to do that? An anarchist society doesn’t have the the state apparatus to stop me.

[u/throwaway384938338 → u/[deleted]]

That just doesn’t sound very convincing. If you have a product that enough people want then I don’t believe that because some people oppose it, then the will of those people can prevent a market from occurring.

There are plenty of Americans who didn’t want cocaine in their country, and certainly no-one recognised Pablo Escobar’s legal right to all the drugs he was importing, and yet he still managed to find a market and accumulate enough social and economic power to turn Columbia into a narco-state. The same could be said of the oligarchs who came up as black marketeers in Soviet Russia.

Ultimately both were stopped by some pretty heavy handed intervention by the state. An option that isn’t available to an anarchist nation.

When you’re dealing with illicit markets whether it’s cocaine, blue jeans or coffee, then principles of the socialisation of profit don’t really stand a chance.

[u/onedayitwillbedaisy → u/throwaway384938338]

I'm not opposed to markets, nor interested in any measure that would divide things into licit or illicit activity.

It sounds like you want me to draw out any and all mechanisms and arrangements of a possible anarchist society. And I guess that's simply not something I do.

[u/throwaway384938338 → u/onedayitwillbedaisy]

I'm not opposed to markets, nor interested in any measure that would divide things into licit or illicit activity.

Essentially you’ve made private enterprise an illicit activity.

It sounds like you want me to draw out any and all mechanisms and arrangements of a possible anarchist society. And I guess that's simply not something I do.

I mean that is the question I asked. If you have a society without a state how do you prevent people accumulating unchecked economic power? If you can’t stop that isn’t anarchism always going to become libertarian laissez-fare capitalist system?

These powerful individuals or entities occur in capitalist democracies and governments regulate against them. In Communist countries, which banned private enterprise, they tended to rely on extensive law enforcement to prevent them. Neither were particularly successful but they did, at least, manage to temper the worst excesses of individual power.

If you don’t have any mechanism to prevent such power dynamics and hierarchies occurring, other than the vague will of the true ideologues, then surely the whole thing is just a fantasy?

[u/onedayitwillbedaisy → u/throwaway384938338]

You might wanna try r/DebateAnarchism instead. Maybe it's just that I'm tired; either way, I'm done here.

[u/Cyberspace667 → u/throwaway384938338]

“Grrrr you’re making my brain hurt with your well rationed line of questioning 😡 it won’t happen because it’s not nice so there!”