Ah, but there’s the beauty. The only way an anarchist is going to have the power to act on a global scale is if they’ve acted in good faith.
Humans are multi-faceted beings. We develop the parts of ourselves that help us in the environment we find ourselves in. All humans are capable of good faith and of bad faith depending on what they think will help them. Capitalism rewards bad faith behavior, resulting in people cultivating their bad faith sides. Anarchism does the opposite.
Because anarchism is free association, the only anarchist communities that survive are the ones that maintain a culture of acting in good faith with one another; the ones that don’t become places nobody wants to go to. And because anonymous currency, hoarding of goods, and other forms of amassing wealth are red flags to be unmade, people can’t raid one anarchist commons to get a leg up in the next; whatever damage they cause results in them having less power than if they cooperated.
Anarchist societies continuously develop new procedures to prevent the development of hierarchy, abuse of power, and other bad faith activity, as their situation evolves and as they learn new ways from other anarchist groups or through experience. Ones that don’t get corrupted and fall apart, which none of their members want because society is where everything they like is. So everyone is working to improve the procedures to make bad faith actions harder and harder.
By the time you’re working with communes that can trade punches with multinationals and nation-states, they have risen above such a gauntlet of bad faith people intentionally or unintentionally trying to tear them down that there’s a very good chance they can handle the next conflict in good faith too.
This isn’t blind trust, of course; blind trust is a great way for bad faith to flourish. Anarchist societies that succeed cultivate a culture of checking each other’s work. Guerillas would be expected to be as transparent as opsec allows, and there would be reporters on location ready to get the homefront to revoke their material support for the guerilla the moment things get unacceptable.
Ok, so this system relies on humans acting in good faith on a global scale. The US is showing pretty conclusively that’s a bad bet.
Ah, but there’s the beauty. The only way an anarchist is going to have the power to act on a global scale is if they’ve acted in good faith.
Humans are multi-faceted beings. We develop the parts of ourselves that help us in the environment we find ourselves in. All humans are capable of good faith and of bad faith depending on what they think will help them. Capitalism rewards bad faith behavior, resulting in people cultivating their bad faith sides. Anarchism does the opposite.
Because anarchism is free association, the only anarchist communities that survive are the ones that maintain a culture of acting in good faith with one another; the ones that don’t become places nobody wants to go to. And because anonymous currency, hoarding of goods, and other forms of amassing wealth are red flags to be unmade, people can’t raid one anarchist commons to get a leg up in the next; whatever damage they cause results in them having less power than if they cooperated.
Anarchist societies continuously develop new procedures to prevent the development of hierarchy, abuse of power, and other bad faith activity, as their situation evolves and as they learn new ways from other anarchist groups or through experience. Ones that don’t get corrupted and fall apart, which none of their members want because society is where everything they like is. So everyone is working to improve the procedures to make bad faith actions harder and harder.
By the time you’re working with communes that can trade punches with multinationals and nation-states, they have risen above such a gauntlet of bad faith people intentionally or unintentionally trying to tear them down that there’s a very good chance they can handle the next conflict in good faith too.
This isn’t blind trust, of course; blind trust is a great way for bad faith to flourish. Anarchist societies that succeed cultivate a culture of checking each other’s work. Guerillas would be expected to be as transparent as opsec allows, and there would be reporters on location ready to get the homefront to revoke their material support for the guerilla the moment things get unacceptable.