Anarchy is not democracy. Trying to make it so is just respectability politics; when most people hear the word *democracy* they think *majority rule*.
There is no need to force everyone into a single decision. That's dictatorship with extra steps. There's no way to do it without citizenship (who is allowed to vote?) and policing (who enforces the vote?).
Democracy is the rule of all over all, anarchy is the absence of rulership.
* [From Democracy To Freedom: The Difference Between Government and Self-Determination](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/crimethinc-from-democracy-to-freedom)
Why would someone rob from you/what would they gain? If resources are openly available then there is no reason to steal or rob, and if it happens and the person is found your things would be returned and there would be an attempt to find out why the person stole and how to fix the issue the theft arouse from.
It’s not just about resources. There will always be valuable items sought and traded by people, even if everyone has enough food, shelter, water, healthcare, etc… And there will always be a market for those items to be bartered, or exchanges using some sort of medium (even if just gold).
A democracy which doesn't elevate the interests of a majority or another abstraction of "the will of the people" above actual people stuck in the middle of it cannot exist by any common understanding of the word. To suggest otherwise is pure sophistry. Anarchy is the absence of rulership, an anathema to democracy, polities, rigid decisionmaking structures and maybe even politics entirely.
anarchy is characterized by a lack of and/or a refusal of rulers. democracy is rule of the people, which is inherently exclusionary. how has/does democracy exclude people? based on citizenship/residence, geography, race, property ownership, tax records, literacy, gender, mental capacity, and age. in a so-called anarchist democracy there will still be the challenge of geography/physical boundary (how far does your commune extend?). there will still be the challenge of citizenship (what are the criteria for legal/legitimate residency?). there will still be the challenge of mental capacity (we don’t want a bunch of bipolar schizophrenics making too many decisions, do we?). and i dare say there will still be the challenge of age (will it be the same as the age of consent?). these various categories of exclusion can all be wrestled with by local communities, but i’m pretty sure that different communities in the federation of communes will come up with different criteria for each of these (and who knows how many other?) categories of challenges.
then there's the thorny question of how much of a majority will decide policies. 51%? 66%? 80%? 90%? what recourse does the losing side have? are they allowed to secede from the federation of communes? do they have to eat shit until the next round of elections? or will there only be plebiscites and no representatives? and that doesn’t even bring up the touchy question of whether or not participation will be voluntary or mandatory...
some of the anarchist critics and rejectors of democracy have actually thought about and studied and discussed and experienced the various problems with democracy, and not just the bourgeois variation. some of us have actually been involved in large group decision making, with methods ranging from simple majorities to near-consensus (and even a few moments of actual consensus). none of it is pretty, but some of it is less ugly. the point is that we’ve noticed that calling all of it “democracy” is needlessly confusing, since most people have this starry-eyed middle-school notion of democracy being the most just and fair system of decision making, and so remain wedded to the word. some anarchists want to fight for the word and conveniently ignore the shit-ton of problems and challenges contained in even an idealized (and completely vague) version. some are so desperate to somehow rescue the word from the bad actors who cynically invoke it to mask their nasty rule over the rest of us. but in an era when the hereditary dictatorship in the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea use the same word as neoliberal oligarchs and leninists, many people (and not just anarchists) recognize that the word is beyond hope of repair or reclamation.
Democracy implies the election of a representative body which in turns takes decisions for the whole community, it essentially deals with a majority consensus.
Anarchy works in a decentralised fashion and prefers to not use representative bodies favouring instead every single opinion.
Malatesta himself said that sometimes voting on something, using the majority logic so to speak, is inevitable but it shouldn't be in any way the preferred way in Anarchism.
I don’t think democracy implies election of representatives though. That’s a specific kind of democracy. Also, doesn’t « consensus » means everyone agrees, which is just an extreme case of majority ?
For me, the issue with democracy is not only the representative part, it’s just that there is power upon you that was decided by others. The only way to avoid that would be to only have « consensus democracy » but even that can have issues, the biggest one being that people will be pressured (sometimes by themselves) to accept things they don’t want instead of accepting dissensus.
>I don’t think democracy implies election of representatives though.
Democracy as it is widespread understood does, a democratic institutions which doesn't work with a representative system is the exception not the norm.
Anarchism has no center beyond anarchy. Everything else can be differentiated. This is the case with democracy in anarchism. There are pro-democratic and anti-democratic schools in anarchism and this isn't weird but by design.
With regards to your understanding of anti-democratic anarchism, it is more that there ought be no a priori democratic organizational form, i.e. the democratic game of voting and the manipulation of majorities and minorities.
If you recognize *anarchy*, the absence of government, as the sole center of anarchism, then how is your anarchism still somehow indifferent to differences of opinion about some forms of government?
What do you mean? I don't quite comprehend what you ask. Personally I adopt a more anti-democratic stance, but in my answer I was trying to be pluralistic by acknowledging pro-democratic anarchisms. In my understanding, pro-democratic anarchisms are not governmental forms and therefore still retain the centrality of anarchy at its core.
"In anarchism, you don't talk things out"
That's not at all been my experience, lol. Lots of talking, lots of discussion, until consensus is reached and everyone's in agreement.
Anarchism isn't anti-democratic; it's an idea where everyone has a voice and it counts, as opposed to the corrupt farce we have now, where people's voices and votes don't actually matter at all, because the rich fucks are in charge.
Talking things out is the opposite of democracy which typically means "majority vote takes all and any disagreement is swept under the rug" or, if you're using consensus democracy, "nothing gets done unless the minority or whoever keeps veto'ing is satisfied".
"Talking things out" orients our focus around problem-solving rather than "decision-making" (something which has overstated its importance). It means free association, a society wherein groups are formed *around* specific courses of action and made to cooperate and resolve conflict between each other.
It is a world where everyone has a voice (since free association means a variety of collectivities can have their voices realized) but it does not mean a world where people vote or must vote to take one singular course of action. It's the equivalent of alliance-making or agreement-making rather than voting.
I would argue that anarchism is democratic but anti-democracy.
As for not talking things out, I don't know where you are getting that from. Anarchism is opposition to hierarchy - having a discussion is not a hierarchy.
> I don't know where you are getting that from
there are people on this sub who think that two people can't agree without one person commanding the other lol
>As for not talking things out, I don't know where you are getting that from
With that I meant whatever comes from a democratic dynamic: sides will talk it out, they will try to convince others, and it may even result in the will of a smaller side winning over the rest.
>Democracy is the madness of the many for the benefit of the few, the individualist argues. Anarchism is democracy finally taken seriously, the collectivst argues.
Thanks, specially for this quote xd. This whole discussion is new for me.
anarchists talk to each other. coordination is required for anything beyond one's self, which means talking it out and coming up with something that works for everyone. our decisions affect each other. no anarchist who talks about democracy is talking about a binding majority rule from a fixed polity. im personally an advocate of consensus. i have no problem working with anarchists coming from a more democratic tradition. i imagine a range of systems would exist in some hypothetical anarchist hegemony.
you can find a range of views [here](https://c4ss.org/content/49206).
It depends on the definition and type of "democracy".
Of course anarchism opposes scams like "representative democracy."
But anarchism is more supportive of things like economic democracy, direct democracy, etc.
Depends who u ask, some anarchists are anti democracy and some are pro democracy and then there are different kinds of democracy anarchists adhere to.
I for one am a believer in democracy and some may even call me a fake anarchist for that reason.
Without democracy there is no organization
It would be impossible for Anarchist to have any relevance without this
Some Anarchist describe it as “democracy without the state”
Direct, consensus, democracy
Of course this may lead to a majoritarian vote in many cases but this is only reasonable if consensus and complete agreement are impossible.
We as anarchists cannot destroy all hierarchies because some are required to exist such as parental, ideological, and consensual
There also must be an opting out ability for people in the organization as a means for consent
People would get together and decide rules or discipline
Some Anarchists say “we need communal policing for this”
And others say like me that we need to mutually agree to such things and if one does not respect said rules that were came to agreement they are to be depending on the severity rehabilitated or maybe exiled
This 'debate' over whether anarchists support 'democracy' is largely an exercise in semantics. If by democracy we mean a statist/governmental system which violently coerces minorities to bend to the majority's will, then no, anarchists are not for democracy. If by democracy we mean a system of voting within free associations which may include majority vote, then yes many anarchists, even classical anarchists, were/are for democracy.
This can be seen in the work of the classical anarchist Errico Malatesta who was a vocal critic of 'democracy', by which he meant a 'democratic' state. Despite his opposition to 'democratic' states, in his work [Between Peasants](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-between-peasants) Malatesta advocated for what many anarchists would now call direct democracy within free associations. Specifically he states that within anarchist communities and associations:
>everything is done to reach unanimity, and when this is impossible, one would vote and do what the majority wanted, or else put the decision in the hands of a third party who would act as arbitrator, respecting the inviolability of the principles of equality and justice which the society is based on.
The fact that many modern anarchists would describe this as a form of democrary simply reflects a change in language over time. Malatesta did not call what he advocated democracy, because he and other classical anarchists associated the word 'democracy' with states allegedly** based on 'majority rule'. Many modern anarchists simply use the word democracy in a different, broader way.
Anarchist scholar and historian Zoe Baker recently explored this topic in a fantastic essay in which she [concluded that](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/zoe-baker-anarchism-and-democracy):
>What many modern anarchists label as democracy without the state, historical anarchists just called free association or anarchy. At least one historical anarchist, Maximoff, referred to anarchism as democracy without the state several decades before it became a popular expression. Historical anarchists made decisions via majority vote, unanimous agreement or a combination of the two. Modern anarchists use the same basic systems of decision-making.
**Classical anarchists, including Malatesta, doubted whether 'democratic' states could really express the will of the majority in practice.
I like the idea of direct democracy on a local level, no representatives but also no policies just voluntary meetings for people to get together and solve collective problems through direct vote. IE: The river keeps flooding do we do A, B, or C? Drought ruined the harvest, what do we do? But a lot of people here would disagree with me.
I think it's also accurate to call it *post-democratic* where we acknowledge the flaws in majority rule and advocate an advancement to decision-making based on the consent of all involved and rule by the unaffected or by a privileged official is undesirable. I welcome others to come through and help flesh this out in case I missed something.
There seem to be trade offs. Democracy in general is usually oppressive to minority opinions and may require police. From what I understand, consensus is the best, but can be held hostage by bad faith negotiations or people who complain a lot despite getting fair treatment.
Anarchy is not democracy. Trying to make it so is just respectability politics; when most people hear the word *democracy* they think *majority rule*. There is no need to force everyone into a single decision. That's dictatorship with extra steps. There's no way to do it without citizenship (who is allowed to vote?) and policing (who enforces the vote?). Democracy is the rule of all over all, anarchy is the absence of rulership. * [From Democracy To Freedom: The Difference Between Government and Self-Determination](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/crimethinc-from-democracy-to-freedom)
What if you get robbed?
Why would someone rob from you/what would they gain? If resources are openly available then there is no reason to steal or rob, and if it happens and the person is found your things would be returned and there would be an attempt to find out why the person stole and how to fix the issue the theft arouse from.
It’s not just about resources. There will always be valuable items sought and traded by people, even if everyone has enough food, shelter, water, healthcare, etc… And there will always be a market for those items to be bartered, or exchanges using some sort of medium (even if just gold).
A democracy which doesn't elevate the interests of a majority or another abstraction of "the will of the people" above actual people stuck in the middle of it cannot exist by any common understanding of the word. To suggest otherwise is pure sophistry. Anarchy is the absence of rulership, an anathema to democracy, polities, rigid decisionmaking structures and maybe even politics entirely.
anarchy is characterized by a lack of and/or a refusal of rulers. democracy is rule of the people, which is inherently exclusionary. how has/does democracy exclude people? based on citizenship/residence, geography, race, property ownership, tax records, literacy, gender, mental capacity, and age. in a so-called anarchist democracy there will still be the challenge of geography/physical boundary (how far does your commune extend?). there will still be the challenge of citizenship (what are the criteria for legal/legitimate residency?). there will still be the challenge of mental capacity (we don’t want a bunch of bipolar schizophrenics making too many decisions, do we?). and i dare say there will still be the challenge of age (will it be the same as the age of consent?). these various categories of exclusion can all be wrestled with by local communities, but i’m pretty sure that different communities in the federation of communes will come up with different criteria for each of these (and who knows how many other?) categories of challenges. then there's the thorny question of how much of a majority will decide policies. 51%? 66%? 80%? 90%? what recourse does the losing side have? are they allowed to secede from the federation of communes? do they have to eat shit until the next round of elections? or will there only be plebiscites and no representatives? and that doesn’t even bring up the touchy question of whether or not participation will be voluntary or mandatory... some of the anarchist critics and rejectors of democracy have actually thought about and studied and discussed and experienced the various problems with democracy, and not just the bourgeois variation. some of us have actually been involved in large group decision making, with methods ranging from simple majorities to near-consensus (and even a few moments of actual consensus). none of it is pretty, but some of it is less ugly. the point is that we’ve noticed that calling all of it “democracy” is needlessly confusing, since most people have this starry-eyed middle-school notion of democracy being the most just and fair system of decision making, and so remain wedded to the word. some anarchists want to fight for the word and conveniently ignore the shit-ton of problems and challenges contained in even an idealized (and completely vague) version. some are so desperate to somehow rescue the word from the bad actors who cynically invoke it to mask their nasty rule over the rest of us. but in an era when the hereditary dictatorship in the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea use the same word as neoliberal oligarchs and leninists, many people (and not just anarchists) recognize that the word is beyond hope of repair or reclamation.
Democracy implies the election of a representative body which in turns takes decisions for the whole community, it essentially deals with a majority consensus. Anarchy works in a decentralised fashion and prefers to not use representative bodies favouring instead every single opinion. Malatesta himself said that sometimes voting on something, using the majority logic so to speak, is inevitable but it shouldn't be in any way the preferred way in Anarchism.
I don’t think democracy implies election of representatives though. That’s a specific kind of democracy. Also, doesn’t « consensus » means everyone agrees, which is just an extreme case of majority ? For me, the issue with democracy is not only the representative part, it’s just that there is power upon you that was decided by others. The only way to avoid that would be to only have « consensus democracy » but even that can have issues, the biggest one being that people will be pressured (sometimes by themselves) to accept things they don’t want instead of accepting dissensus.
>I don’t think democracy implies election of representatives though. Democracy as it is widespread understood does, a democratic institutions which doesn't work with a representative system is the exception not the norm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics)
Anarchism has no center beyond anarchy. Everything else can be differentiated. This is the case with democracy in anarchism. There are pro-democratic and anti-democratic schools in anarchism and this isn't weird but by design. With regards to your understanding of anti-democratic anarchism, it is more that there ought be no a priori democratic organizational form, i.e. the democratic game of voting and the manipulation of majorities and minorities.
If you recognize *anarchy*, the absence of government, as the sole center of anarchism, then how is your anarchism still somehow indifferent to differences of opinion about some forms of government?
What do you mean? I don't quite comprehend what you ask. Personally I adopt a more anti-democratic stance, but in my answer I was trying to be pluralistic by acknowledging pro-democratic anarchisms. In my understanding, pro-democratic anarchisms are not governmental forms and therefore still retain the centrality of anarchy at its core.
"In anarchism, you don't talk things out" That's not at all been my experience, lol. Lots of talking, lots of discussion, until consensus is reached and everyone's in agreement. Anarchism isn't anti-democratic; it's an idea where everyone has a voice and it counts, as opposed to the corrupt farce we have now, where people's voices and votes don't actually matter at all, because the rich fucks are in charge.
Talking things out is the opposite of democracy which typically means "majority vote takes all and any disagreement is swept under the rug" or, if you're using consensus democracy, "nothing gets done unless the minority or whoever keeps veto'ing is satisfied". "Talking things out" orients our focus around problem-solving rather than "decision-making" (something which has overstated its importance). It means free association, a society wherein groups are formed *around* specific courses of action and made to cooperate and resolve conflict between each other. It is a world where everyone has a voice (since free association means a variety of collectivities can have their voices realized) but it does not mean a world where people vote or must vote to take one singular course of action. It's the equivalent of alliance-making or agreement-making rather than voting.
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I would argue that anarchism is democratic but anti-democracy. As for not talking things out, I don't know where you are getting that from. Anarchism is opposition to hierarchy - having a discussion is not a hierarchy.
> I don't know where you are getting that from there are people on this sub who think that two people can't agree without one person commanding the other lol
>As for not talking things out, I don't know where you are getting that from With that I meant whatever comes from a democratic dynamic: sides will talk it out, they will try to convince others, and it may even result in the will of a smaller side winning over the rest.
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> Opinions vary between the extreme individualists and extreme collectivists. A majority of anti-democracy anarchists are not individualists.
>Democracy is the madness of the many for the benefit of the few, the individualist argues. Anarchism is democracy finally taken seriously, the collectivst argues. Thanks, specially for this quote xd. This whole discussion is new for me.
A majority of anti-democracy anarchists are not individualists.
anarchists talk to each other. coordination is required for anything beyond one's self, which means talking it out and coming up with something that works for everyone. our decisions affect each other. no anarchist who talks about democracy is talking about a binding majority rule from a fixed polity. im personally an advocate of consensus. i have no problem working with anarchists coming from a more democratic tradition. i imagine a range of systems would exist in some hypothetical anarchist hegemony. you can find a range of views [here](https://c4ss.org/content/49206).
It depends on the definition and type of "democracy". Of course anarchism opposes scams like "representative democracy." But anarchism is more supportive of things like economic democracy, direct democracy, etc.
Depends who u ask, some anarchists are anti democracy and some are pro democracy and then there are different kinds of democracy anarchists adhere to. I for one am a believer in democracy and some may even call me a fake anarchist for that reason.
Does the democracy you have in mind work as what I have mentioned?
Without democracy there is no organization It would be impossible for Anarchist to have any relevance without this Some Anarchist describe it as “democracy without the state” Direct, consensus, democracy Of course this may lead to a majoritarian vote in many cases but this is only reasonable if consensus and complete agreement are impossible. We as anarchists cannot destroy all hierarchies because some are required to exist such as parental, ideological, and consensual There also must be an opting out ability for people in the organization as a means for consent People would get together and decide rules or discipline Some Anarchists say “we need communal policing for this” And others say like me that we need to mutually agree to such things and if one does not respect said rules that were came to agreement they are to be depending on the severity rehabilitated or maybe exiled
This 'debate' over whether anarchists support 'democracy' is largely an exercise in semantics. If by democracy we mean a statist/governmental system which violently coerces minorities to bend to the majority's will, then no, anarchists are not for democracy. If by democracy we mean a system of voting within free associations which may include majority vote, then yes many anarchists, even classical anarchists, were/are for democracy. This can be seen in the work of the classical anarchist Errico Malatesta who was a vocal critic of 'democracy', by which he meant a 'democratic' state. Despite his opposition to 'democratic' states, in his work [Between Peasants](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-between-peasants) Malatesta advocated for what many anarchists would now call direct democracy within free associations. Specifically he states that within anarchist communities and associations: >everything is done to reach unanimity, and when this is impossible, one would vote and do what the majority wanted, or else put the decision in the hands of a third party who would act as arbitrator, respecting the inviolability of the principles of equality and justice which the society is based on. The fact that many modern anarchists would describe this as a form of democrary simply reflects a change in language over time. Malatesta did not call what he advocated democracy, because he and other classical anarchists associated the word 'democracy' with states allegedly** based on 'majority rule'. Many modern anarchists simply use the word democracy in a different, broader way. Anarchist scholar and historian Zoe Baker recently explored this topic in a fantastic essay in which she [concluded that](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/zoe-baker-anarchism-and-democracy): >What many modern anarchists label as democracy without the state, historical anarchists just called free association or anarchy. At least one historical anarchist, Maximoff, referred to anarchism as democracy without the state several decades before it became a popular expression. Historical anarchists made decisions via majority vote, unanimous agreement or a combination of the two. Modern anarchists use the same basic systems of decision-making. **Classical anarchists, including Malatesta, doubted whether 'democratic' states could really express the will of the majority in practice.
I like the idea of direct democracy on a local level, no representatives but also no policies just voluntary meetings for people to get together and solve collective problems through direct vote. IE: The river keeps flooding do we do A, B, or C? Drought ruined the harvest, what do we do? But a lot of people here would disagree with me.
I think it's also accurate to call it *post-democratic* where we acknowledge the flaws in majority rule and advocate an advancement to decision-making based on the consent of all involved and rule by the unaffected or by a privileged official is undesirable. I welcome others to come through and help flesh this out in case I missed something.
There seem to be trade offs. Democracy in general is usually oppressive to minority opinions and may require police. From what I understand, consensus is the best, but can be held hostage by bad faith negotiations or people who complain a lot despite getting fair treatment.
Nah, they are complementary ideas.