I also don't know much about anarchist philosophy; would love some insight here if anyone can speak to that.
But if the US (same applies to other countries) became an anarchy today, then entities like Goldman Sachs and Constellis (formerly Blackwater) are going to fare much better than most. So a naive "burn it all down" anarchy doesn't seem an answer.
UPDATE: I remembered Noam Chomsky is sometimes called an anarcho-syndicalist but never looked up what meant. Turns out that is exactly the kind of "anarchism" that answers my question. (New concept to me, so not sure in what sense this might be called anarchism. No central government?)
Real-life anarchists aren't proposing the naïve "burn it all down" anarchy. Apparently that's just a media thing. (Some claim it's authoritarian propaganda, but I suspect it's just writers going: "we need a bad guy who wants to destroy society, but they need a reason, and we've had too many religious extremists: let's make this one an anarchist!"… though maybe this is a false dichotomy? Someone's probably written a book about it.)
> A revolution would be necessary to topple a political regime. But, if your starting point is the rejection of authority, if you don’t need “permission”, you don’t need the revolution either. Anarchy starts not with a bang, but with a whimper — not with an announcement on public television that it is the time to dismantle hierarchies, but with our collective work to slowly build something on the lack of the hierarchies themselves.
I'm not sure I understand the rest of this document, but this bit seems straightforward.
The link between anarchists and 'burn everything down' comes from the fact that in reality, many anarchists have very much taken the 'shoot first' and then hopefully build something better later path.
Those anarchists who didn't do that, were just never politically or socially relevant. So they can write nice pamphlets all they like about what 'real anarchism' actually is.
> we need a bad guy who wants to destroy society
Anarchist and Communists very much wanted a fundamentally different society, one so different that its essentially impossible to get there without destroying the existing one first.
Well, no… Anarchism can be achieved via parallel construction, provided that the existing society doesn't fight back. For example, mutual aid networks (as described by Peter Kropotkin). And an anarchist society could transition to a communist society (or pretty much any other society) – but even Friedrich Engels' "withering away of the state" route to communism (attributed to Karl Marx, but Wikipedia disputes that it was actually his idea) does not require the destruction of the existing society to precede communism.
I only have a superficial understanding of these ideas; but it seems to me that a good idea, whatever the ideology behind it, is worth implementing. And "we should make sure everyone gets fed by looking after each other" is a pretty good idea, so it shouldn't matter that it's technically "anarchy".
Sure and if I claim that you should do a 1-handed handstand and say 'communism' three times in a row, it will surely create communism right? I can even write it down on a piece of paper and call it a 'manifesto'. But in the actual real world writing stuff down doesn't make it true at all, even if the person that wrote it is famous.
> For example, mutual aid networks
That in reality have never even come close to achieving much more then mutual aid. That such action could be wide ranging enough to replace the state is nothing more then fantasy.
The closest thing to that is Muslim Brotherhood doing aid, but that is with a clear component of military power as well.
> but even Friedrich Engels
Why would you say 'even'. Engles is not in any way shape or form qualified to make such statements. In his times non of these ideas had been tested. And said different things at different times for different people. Engels specifically publicly called out mass death would happen.
In the real world it has never happened and there is no indication that it would ever happen.
Proponents of mutual aid networks aren't trying to "replace the state". I'm not sure which anarchist ideas are supposed to accomplish that (if any): as I understand, different philosophies have different views on that. "Provided the existing society doesn't fight back" was a reference to the repeated criminalisation of Food Not Bombs.
I say "even" because afaik Marxists don't seek to destroy the state: they believe the destruction of the state is inevitable (dialectics!), and seek instead to win battles in the class war – my "even" applied to the "withering away of the state" idea, not to Friedrich Engels himself. (I'm not familiar with all of his ideas.) Marxism–Leninism is the "the Bolsheviks were right all along" belief system, but is quite different to classic Marxism.
In the real world I don't think we'll ever have a group, region, or territory governed by any pure ideology, so I agree that a state of anarchy, or a classic communist society, would never happen in real life. That doesn't mean it's worthless to think about the ideas, any more than it's worthless to talk about uniform point masses on a frictionless inclined plane.
There are historical as well as contemporary examples of societies built on anarchist principles. They are few and fairly marginal, mostly because they tend to be crushed by the surrounding (centralized) cultures, but even so it's not all just hypothetical.
The most prominent contemporary example is the Zapatista territories. To a lesser extent, arguably also Rojava, although "libertarian market socialism" would probably be a more accurate label for that.
> Anarchist and Communists very much wanted a fundamentally different society,
They still want it.
> one so different that its essentially impossible to get there without destroying the existing one first.
Everything else they say is demagogy, in the end, all they are good for is fomenting strife and wars. After the bloodshed, these fools and their fantasies are quickly disposed of, the little tools they are.
Most anarchist tendencies would tear Goldman Sachs to shreds.
Even Rothbard wrote a pamphlet, I think he later disendorsed, justifying the breakup of any entity that contributes to war or state violence. I dont need to look up Goldman Sachs but I reckon I could justify them being in that box.
>anarchism
Anarchy the leftist tendency is the removal of Hierarchy. It can be debated into how you categorise that, but ultimately they all want corporations gone.
Its the right wing anarchists that are solely focused on the government
Yes, you could have a corporation that does not have an internal hierarchy. But (in a left anarchist view) you cant have a corporation without private property and corporate limitation of liability. Both of those are (in their view) hierarchical.
The problem from a left anarchist standpoint isn't (just) "CEO is boss, having boss bad" its that there's a group of people with special treatment everyone else is not subject to.
You might disagree with that view, and probably do. I am just familiar enough with their ideas to relay and explain them.
But if the US (same applies to other countries) became an anarchy today, then entities like Goldman Sachs and Constellis (formerly Blackwater) are going to fare much better than most. So a naive "burn it all down" anarchy doesn't seem an answer.
UPDATE: I remembered Noam Chomsky is sometimes called an anarcho-syndicalist but never looked up what meant. Turns out that is exactly the kind of "anarchism" that answers my question. (New concept to me, so not sure in what sense this might be called anarchism. No central government?)