I would be more than happy to put the word cap into disuse.
I’m not sure what Pezermeregild’s pitch is, so I’ll take a swing at his post as a whole.
Bat 1:
P1. Infrastructure/Safety
I would like to begin with the example of nuclear power, which I feel Pezermeregild is gravely underestimating. He purports that “a group of people that live in the same area” could unite to maintain such a facility (which I will note is merely acquired from the “defunct” government). Even if the preexisting plant operators are “maintained” by the locals, how are proper regulations ensured, disasters averted or deescalated?
There is no margin for error in the construction of nuclear power facilities and training of its engineers, technicians and other personnel, as was seen in the Chernobyl and Three-Mile Island[1] disasters—and even then, it is not failsafe as was seen with the Fukushima-Daiichi incident[2]. Simply addressing the complexity of operation alone, to say nothing the of hazardous materials involved[3], raises serious doubts as to whether a rag tag group of anarchists could maintain the facilities, even given ample volunteers.
The vast resources, man power, heavy industries, engineering, architecture, etc. that go into building a nuclear facility make such an attempt under a true anarchist society a quixotic endeavor, so I do not feel the need to address this aspect in great detail. For a quick illustration, however, I will note that Three Mile Island Unit 1 required $400 million ($1.78-2.06 billion by today’s standards[4]) in initial construction.
While I cannot find a figure for the number of personnel required for design and construction, I can relate from personal experience[5] that a relatively simple waste water treatment plant requires (conservative estimate of average):
-at least one architect;
-at least one project manager;
-clerical staff;
-a survey team (a small team would be 3 surveyors and a CAD tech to draft the survey/site plan);
-three additional CAD techs (drafting foundation, floor, framing and roof plans, building sections, wall sections, exterior and interior elevations, details, schedules, etc.);
-six-eight engineers;
-regulatory commission (building inspector, fire marshall, etc.);
-60-100 general construction personnel on the site at any one point in time;
-roughly $112,284,323 in initial construction costs (average);
To close this section, I would like to address the “Adam Smith-ish assumption”, for it is just that: an assumption. I prefer claims based on evidence–over 3,000 years of recorded history points more towards James Madison: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”–and angels, men are certainly not.
P2. “Moral Policemanship”
I find this section of Pezermeregild’s argument to be predominantly speculative. Claims such as the cessation of crimes like theft (or at least “a percentage”) and that “war would cease on the scales we now see”, both supposedly resulting from anarchy, seem to me entirely unfounded. I will address these two before moving on to the “anarchist approaches” towards the deterrence of crime.
There are two circumstances (aside from humanity becoming perfectly “moral” or ceasing to exist altogether) in which crimes such as theft would be diminished or absent:
I: With no system of laws to define a crime, crime, by definition, ceases to exist.
II: Anarcho-communism is in effect, thus personal possession is not applicable.
With the former, the action previously constituting crime continues to exist but is not referred to as “crime”. With the latter, theft still exists in an outside party taking objects of some nature from the collective pool of possessions. This presents a predicament since enforcing the collective possession (i.e. combating the “raiders”) stands dangerously close to territorial rule; it implies authority over the “geographical location” and the collected possessions of the community therein.
On to the war front, I must point first and foremost to the Free Territory and its supposed anarcho-communist community of peasants turned militant under the command of “Batko” Nestor Makhno. If they were indeed an anarchy (which will be addressed in my pitch), they were at war for the entire three years of their existence, fighting both the Red and White armies. All large scale instances of anarchy have been similarly related to wars, be it civil or revolutionary[6].
I question how, if only in these two aspects, does anarchism offer more benefit than government?
Further, when addressing the issue of rape, although Pezermeregild has evidence to his advantage[7], implementing increased personal firearm use is not only contraindicative (one would assume increased presence of firearms would signify a decayed level of safety) but significantly escalates the potential for personal injury, manslaughter, murder, etc.
An interesting point Pezermeregild makes is on the correlation between violence and culture. I would agree that this may be the case for types of violence (i.e. racial, sexual, religious). However, I hold violence in general to be universal. Every demographic has violent individuals. Homosexuals have Alexander, women have Mary I, monks have Sohei, Christians have the Crusades, Muslims have jihad bil Saif…the list goes on.
In conclusion, if I am indeed “hard pressed” to indicate anarchy’s inferiority in terms of crime prevention, it is from a lack of non-violent, large scale sustained anarchic communitites.
Pitch 1: Anarchy cannot exist as the sole social structure and is transient in nature.
The Free Territory in Ukraine provides us with a splendid model to analyze in terms of real world application. It operated more or less to the design implied by Pezermeregild, including a military to protect it, and consisted of a remarkable seven million people. Sadly, the issue I raised in my opening statement (longevity, defense) bared its fangs and the Makhnovists were eventually defeated.
The first issue here I would like to address, though briefly, is of total cooperation. To abet the survival of a society, one must implement a system of exhaustive cooperation between a significant majority of the extant population. Anarchy has simply not demonstrated this capability. And how could it? Even among anarchists, the interpretations and methodology are variable excepting the war cry of “remove the state”[8].
Nestor Makhno’s influence on anarchism is indisputable, but was the Free Territory, protected by the Black Army, true anarchism? Makhno was, first and foremost, a “supreme” commander, a leader, a “father”[9]. While the army was indeed voluntary, the simple fact of having a commander violates the most fundamental tenets of anarchy[10]: it creates a hierarchy.
Even with the Black Army, Makhno’s “anarchy” lasted only 3 years. “Makhno continued to fight on, but the peasants of Ukraine, dispirited by three years of war, food seizures, reprisals, and outright genocide, no longer flocked to join the Black Army in numbers”[11]. Perhaps longevity is too much to ask of a stateless system, denying hierarchy and dependent on voluntary association.
Anarchy has always hinged on the use of existing knowledge and technologies—compiled under an existing government—for survival, with the possible exception of the initial stone tools in the Paleolithic. Anarchists are, in essence, the squatters of political philosophy.
Anarchy is a volatile system catering to peasant life, which is fine for low-tech communes with populations in accordance with Dunbar’s number, but is not suitable for humanity as a whole unless we are to make the entire world nomadic. Anarchy, in whatever hyphenated form, has historically created decadence or stagnation and has eventually fallen to ruin.
Is throwing a wrench in the gears of productivity, leaching off existing governments and making no significant progress–indeed taking backward leaps simply to chase an illusive impractical ideology–not good reason to deny anarchy’s overall benefit to society?
References
[1] “The reactors themselves were enormously complex machines with an incalculable number of things that could go wrong. When that happened at Three Mile Island in 1979, another fault line in the nuclear world was exposed. One malfunction led to another, and then to a series of others, until the core of the reactor itself began to melt, and even the world’s most highly trained nuclear engineers did not know how to respond.” Stephanie Cooke, In Moral Hands: A Cautionary History of the Nuclear Age
[2] Francois Diaz Maurin, “Fukushima: Consequences of Systemic Problems in Nuclear Plant Design”
[3] “Operating nuclear reactors contain large amounts of radioactive fission products which, if dispersed, can pose a direct radiation hazard, contaminate soil and vegetation, and be ingested by humans and animals. Human exposure at high enough levels can cause both short-term illness and death and longer-term death by cancer and other diseases.” (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/crs/rs21131.pdf, under “Nuclear Plant Vulnerability”)
[4] Wikipedia lists the initial construction cost as $1,781,448,883 in today’s standards. Using an inflation calculator (http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm) I arrived at $1,897,653,679.65 for 1974 (which is when the first reactor became operational) and $2,062,861,176.47 for 1973 to provide a reasonable range, as I am skeptical as to whether the plant, from start to finish, took only four months (I could not find a date of initialization of construction).
[5] This is my personal experience as a CAD tech for an independent architectural firm. The figures were arrived at by the head architect (my boss). Obviously, a nuclear power plant’s figures cannot be arrived at by a simple multiplication (of all personnel excepting the project manager by roughly 15.8 [1,781,448,883/112,284,323=15.865]), as the regulatory personnel involved alone is much greater in such a project. These estimates do not account for the heavy machinery involved, workers of facilities producing components off site (i.e. the manufacturing of the reactor, etc.) and only reflect initial construction (as opposed to regular employees, maintenance, etc.). However, citing the Chernobyl disaster:
“The battle to contain the contamination and avert a greater catastrophe ultimately involved over 500,000 workers and cost an estimated 18 billion rubles ($588,744,000), crippling the Soviet economy.”
[6] I cite the English Civil War, the French Revolution, the Russian Civil War, the Spanish Civil War and the Somali Civil War.
[7] Rape statistics can only be acquired through reports. Many sub-Saharan African countries (such as Zambia and Zimbabwe) are relatively low in official rape rates simply from lack of reporting the incidents. For instance: “In eastern Congo, the prevalence and intensity of rape and other sexual violence is described as the worst in the world” yet on the statistics chart provided by Wikipedia, the Democratic Republic of Congo is not even listed.
[8] “Proponents of anarchism (known as “anarchists”) advocate stateless societies based on non-hierarchical, voluntary associations.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism)
[9] Though he did indeed have a daughter, he was dubbed “Batko” by his comrades and subordinates after a particularly harrowing skirmish.
[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism (under the “overview” section)
[11] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Insurrectionary_Army_of_Ukraine (under the “Second Repudiation” section)
I apologize if this was too long.