[yes, we got a new Andrewism video for Labour Day!]
“Anarchism - a political philosophy and practice that opposes ALL hierarchies along with their ‘justifying’ dogmas and proposes the unending pursuit of anarchy, where free association, self determination, and mutual aid form the basis of our society.”
Well I think part of the answer comes from having a society that is more interconnected than we currently have.
If there were people that were both part of the gardening group and part of the builder’s group then those people would have the necessary common knowledge to be able to satisfy the needs of both groups.
That is part of why I think a society of anarchists necessarily needs people to be educated in ways that make them a lot more generalist than we are now (hence the emphasis most anarchists have with the idea of self-sufficiency).
Edit: Also in the cases where there isn’t significant overlap between the two groups having a third group that does have knowledge of both of them participate in the decision making would also serve the same function.
Yeah I mean there are lots of possible mediation strategies but my experience is that having a formal process of who should be consulted and how disputes get settled does avoid a lot of conflicts and bad feelings. Of course, this does add complexity, places where hierarchies can creep in, and inefficiencies in solving community problems. So there is probably no one perfect system but we may need to experiment with lots of structures to see which has the best balance of features for each specific circumstance.
Maybe I misunderstood but Andrew seems to be indicating that there isn’t a need for formal groups to manage shared resources, and that such groups will naturally arise and disappear based on common interests. But I think there will naturally be factions with different priorities in terms of how common resources should be utilized, just as there are today. Perhaps as you say with a more developed sense of solidarity these problems will lessen but I have a hard time thinking they will disappear.
I am not sure I can envision how this free association concept would work in practice for these controversial issues, but I certainly am interested to see this principle in action on a small scale to find out.
Now I’m not 100% sure of this because I’m working from memory, but I think Kropotkin gave examples for this in “Mutual aid”.
For Eskimos he mentions that anything an individual catches or gathers belongs to the clan as a whole, and then it is redistributed. People living in tribes (with no concept of a separate family) generally live ‘each for all’.
Village communities, on the other hand, recognized only movable property as privately owned, while land belonged to the community, and everything had to be done with the consent of the community.
When disputes did arise, they were treated as communal affairs and mediators were found to pass a resolution. If the resolution was not agreeable to one party, the case would go before the folkmoot and the decision reached was final. The party that had to provide some reparation could either accept, or leave the village and go somewhere else, but there were no law enforcers.
A little less rosy than Kropotkin, and not really anarchist, but Icelanders lived without a state until the late 13th century. They had a (bi)yearly gathering (the “Thing”) where all grievences could be brought forth before the judges and people. When a sentance was passed, it was up to the family of the ‘winner’ to see that the other side accepted it, there was no state figure to force them.