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Fire Departments

By • May 20, 2015 • Question • 8 Comments

Lois asks:

“If there was a fire, would anarchists call the fire department?”

Yes. I can’t think of any reason why an Anarchist wouldn’t call the fire department.

Fire Departments are actually a good service that exist solely to help people and communities. They save people, put out fires, and stop fires from spreading. It’s a social service that everyone benefits from.

In an anarchist society, there would probably be a volunteer firefighter system, or maybe even fire departments in larger cities. It makes sense for there to be specially trained people to deal with fires.

The police are completely different and will be discussed in a future post.

 

Alternate answer from A.K. Applegate:

Absolutely! Unless we’re the ones who started it, of course.

When it comes to matters of life and death, insisting on some sort of authenticity by refusing to enlist the state’s help would be foolish. Consider yourself lucky to live under a state that at least gives away some crumbs in the form of public services as your compensation for submitting to their exploitation.

That aside, a fire department is an extension of the principle of solidarity, but for a social organization as large as a city. Since time immemorial, neighbors have always helped each other out in emergencies, including fires. I see no reason why a stateless society wouldn’t have them. Anarchists are not opposed to organized civilization (well, anarcho-primitivists are, but that’s another question), and fire departments are necessary for organized civilization. And really, fire departments are probably one of the easier problems to solve in a stateless society. They would work basically the same as they do now, except instead of being funded via coercive taxation, the needs of the firefighters, like the needs of all workers, would be provided via a system of free distribution. People would choose jobs that interest them, and some people are interested in being firefighters.

But I think this question gets at a matter a lot of people are concerned about when it comes to anarchism. People need social services that governments usually provide, like roads and fire departments. But it’s only because of an arbitrary distinction that is a result of capitalist ideology that we look at the state-provided social services as being any different than market-provided social services. We need roads and fire departments, but we also need food, shelter, healthcare, and energy. There’s no reason to conceptually split these goods into goods that the state provides and goods that the market provides; they’re just goods. And as anarchists, we want all goods to be provided free to all. Civilization, in order to function, needs many state employees just as it needs many private sector employees, but it needs neither the state nor capitalism to provide these employees. Every worker (and “worker” includes the unemployed and the retired) is a part of society, we all provide something that society needs in order to operate. We need firefighters to fight the fires just like we need people to pick the crops, care for the children, scrub the toilets, heal the sick, wash the clothes, build the houses. These are all things that we, as humans, are intrinsically motivated to provide for ourselves, and therefore each other, because these things can often only be acquired through collective action and the division of labor. We want to live well, and care for one another. What we don’t need (nor should we want) are states or the capitalist class employing coercive systems like private property and taxation to get in the way, and insert themselves needlessly into the equation so they can run the system for their benefit at the expense of everyone else.

 

Do Anarchists Vote?

By • May 1, 2015 • Politics, Question • 4 Comments

Thanks to Lois for the question!

Generally, Anarchists are against voting. For a number of reasons:

On principle, it provides legitimacy to the government and the system.

Anarchists don’t believe there should be rulers who decide things for others. Representative democracies try to solve this by allowing the people to choose who makes the decisions. But voting is still choosing the rulers, it just feels nicer.

Participating in that system by voting provides it with legitimacy and approval. It allows those in government to say “See? The system works. The people are voting”.

Voting pacifies the people.

Voting gives people the illusion that the rulers are representing them, are working for them, or that the government is them (“A government of the people, by the people, and for the people”). When in reality it is clear that most politicians represent corporate “persons” more than their living, breathing constituents.

And for many people voting is the only legitimate way to engage in the system. And governments like it that way because it is a release valve for discontent: “Oh something is wrong? Don’t change the system, just change the people. It’s the [Republican’s, Democrat’s, Fill-in-the-blank-party-here] fault! Just vote for us!”

“For non-corporate human citizens there’s a ‘Democracy Theme Park’ where we can pull levers on voting machines and talk into microphones at hearings. But don’t worry, they’re not connected to anything and nobody’s listening except us”. – Jane Ann Morris

It doesn’t change much either way

Beyond the theory and the principle, I think the main reasons Anarchists don’t vote is because we don’t see it change much and we don’t see much of a difference between candidates.

When your politics are so different than the main parties, the candidates look more and more similar. Do you want the left wing or right wing of the Capitalist Party?

It’s like voting between two Republicans or two Democrats. Imagine choosing between McCain and Romney for President. Yes, you could find some differences. And I bet in a campaign they would seem huge and important. But really, the differences are small. So why spend a lot of energy choosing?

Alternate answer from A.K. Applegate:

Yes! And also no! Anarchists have historically had a variety of views about whether or not one should vote. Some say you might as well because it only takes five minutes and there’s at least a slight chance you will advance our goals of a world based on liberty, equality, ecology, and solidarity. Others say that voting means you’re consenting to this intolerable system and if you wish to maintain your moral integrity, you can’t take part willingly in the state’s legitimizing procedures at all.

The one point almost all anarchists agree on is that the state and the capitalist class will never let us vote away their power. Our dreams cannot fit in their ballot boxes and voting is, at best, only going to win small reforms; at worst, it siphons away energy and attention from efforts that can really change things: direct action and revolution. Emma Goldman said, “If voting did anything, they’d make it illegal.” Every two years we have a national election in the United States and things always seem to go the same way they’ve always gone, the elites do whatever they want and urgent reforms that solid majorities of the population want never materialize. It’s not that anarchists oppose democracy, far from it; it’s that we think the electoral “democracies” in the world aren’t real, and participating in them is a waste of time.

So what do you do on election day? Whatever the fuck you want, whatever you think will help and can still sleep at night after doing. The important thing is what you do every other day besides election day. Are you waiting for the next election, or are you getting people together to force change, whether the powers that be like it or not?

What do you think? Do you vote? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments!

Branches in a Storm

By • February 5, 2013 • General • 3 Comments

blankets

Epic blanket fort

Last winter, there was a slight freeze followed by a strong wind storm that blew down brittle branches and downed many trees in Eugene. Power was out for a lot of the city and there were branches everywhere. In response, the community house where I live made a rockin’ blanket fort in the living room and watched the Lord of the Rings. A good time was had by all (except probably for the city workers who had to clean up the mess).

The next morning, a bunch of branches blocked part of the sidewalk near the house. They stayed there for probably two weeks while city workers focused on more important power outages and major blockages.

A small vision of anarchy

As I walked around the branches blocking the sidewalk, I realized that in an anarchist society, they would have already been cleaned up. The day after the storm someone would have gone out, seen the damage, asked a few neighbors for a saw and some assistance, and the neighborhood could have removed the branches in a few hours. Maybe other neighbors could have cooked dinner for the workers and there could have been a nice potluck afterwards where people could warm up. Everyone could have gone home feeling a little closer to their neighbors, knowing they helped contribute to the well being of the community.

But, of course, that didn’t happen. There are many reasons it didn’t happen: People are tired after a long day of producing wealth and leisure for others; there are no (or few) pre-existing ties between neighbors, making it awkward to knock on a stranger’s door; it could take away the city workers’ jobs; we are told that it is not in our interest to do work that doesn’t directly benefit us; and I wouldn’t be surprised if it were illegal for individuals to clean up storm debris. Everyone waited for the City to take care of it for them. How much faster could the roads have been cleaned if people felt empowered to take action?

Where did the power go?

This is a minor example of a much larger problem. The current system discourages people from solving problems themselves so they will depend on other institutions (government, businesses) to solve problems for them. Everyone is trained and taught to give away power to someone else: First at school, then in jobs, and in government, we are always deferring to someone else to make decisions. So, when something needs to get done, we expect someone else to take care of it, like they do everything else.

Really?

Do we really need a product to hold used apple cores? And you could eat way more of that apple!

You can see it in the government, which makes new laws for every little nuisance. You can see it in the court system, where people turn to the government to solve interpersonal problems.And you can see it in products that solve non-existent problems.

“When ignorance reigns in society and disorder in the minds of men, laws are multiplied, legislation is expected to do everything, and each fresh law being a fresh miscalculation, men are continually led to demand from law what can proceed only from themselves, from their own education and their own morality.” – Kropotkin

Let’s stop deferring

politics

So let’s stop deferring! Even if it’s just a little bit at a time, it’s a good muscle to strengthen. Next time there is a storm, I will ask the neighborhood for help so we can clean up as a community. It will remind me, and others, that we don’t need other people do to everything for us and can accomplish great things if we work together. And the next time there is a need, it will be that much easier!

Can you think of any other examples where people defer to others? Is there anything you’ve thought about doing with a community? Let us know in the comments!