Question

In a situation of anarchy, how would roads be built, businesses cooperate, and salaries be organized and distributed?

Comments

Who builds beaver dams?

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What does the perfect chair look like?

Answer 1

No salaries—no middle class professionals to be bought off with the incentive to identify with their roles in the economy. That is a unique property of capitalism and of the class hierarchy therein. Anarchists are against capitalism. Thus there also would be no organizations buying human labor-power to produce things meant to have their social purpose expressed through exchange and accumulation. ("Businesses.")

Will there be roads? I don't know. I don't care either, since anarchy isn't an established social form. No "anarchist roads" around here, or anywhere. Surely, they are not impossible feats of engineering in the absence of institutionalized hierarchies, or any hierarchy. But I can say that if any people are suffering because of the construction of road systems then those roads need to be dismantled ASAP. Elevated thoroughfares constructed through black neighborhoods in the Bronx and other New York Burroughs come to mind, as does the Israeli state's efficient use of roads and barriers to isolate its racial enemies. Also, a 19th century, French engineer's clever design of urban roads and architecure in Paris's working class boulevards that were meant to deter barricades erected by rebellious proletarians and aid civil control comes to mind as well.

Comments

This is what you'd include as pre-requisites for something to be considered an anarchy?  So if the behavior of a situation pans out to where salaries, exchange and accumulation are still a part of society, then it is not an anarchy?

If Someone says "Hey, we are living in an anarchy now!" you'd be like "Naw dude, people are still exploiting each other, so this isn't the thing"?

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I am not sure.

Why or how would these relations exist in the absence of the institutions that ensure they are viable? I don't understand the problem you've encountered in my answer. Have I misunderstood the question? If something is no longer viable, and it is a question of how these things will continue to function, is it not enough to simply say, "No. It doesn't matter anymore. Those days are over."?

What is anarchy if social transvaluation is not a prerequisite of its appearance and then socialization? Is social revolution now an obsolete concept? If it is then I am no longer a relevant participant in anarchist social study and critique, I suppose.

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It wasn't a problem, it was just a point of clarity that you were presenting an ethical standpoint using speculation to say what an anarchist society could look like given your critical analysis.  One can't say what an anarchist society is until we are presented with a situation where we can examine society and say "Hey, you know what, we are living in anarchy or something like that" and you can back it up with various criteria at that time.

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So when somebody was all "Hey, the roads have crumbled and nobody is able to effect the massive repairs required! It takes months to get from New York to LA now!" your response would be "Roads are oppression, at least in Paris in Israel they are????"

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Copper: My response would be "Alright, go ahead and fix them yourself."

And if they set up a system of domination in order to do so, forcibly shoving aside the people who don't want the road built, using coerced/forced labor to build it and arms to keep it from being attacked, I would then treat them as an enemy.

Answer 2

i think what madlib is alluding to, somewhat poetically, is that there would be no businesses or salaries because there would be no capitalism.
people would build and maintain roads, if they did, because they wanted to, and because a road made more sense than a footpath, in that particular place.
for anarchists who believe that things would basically continue as they are now, only under full democracy, then meetings would decide things like recompense for undesirable labor, and where roads should go, and who would build them.
not a lot of those kinds of anarchists here though.