this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2026
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To reiterate, your argument was that people in an anarchist society will, as a whole, not take on an ounce of extra work even if it means helping not poisoning their neighboring towns.
My argument was that there are social and material benefits to taking on that extra work of cleaning their waste water, and I believe most people would not feel good poisoning their neighbors unless they were extremely uneducated or sociopathic.
You believe that the only solution to that scenario is to have a hierarchical government with a big stick to force that group to clean their waste water.
I believe that most places under an Anarchist society would, on the whole, not need the stick. There may be some infrequent specific scenarios where even under Anarchism, that a settlement acts as you suggest. In those cases, especially if the harm was severe or could not be mitigated, the community(s) effected down river may opt to resort to other means to resolve that conflict, such as social shaming, or potentially even sabotage. Then that population would have to decide between the extra time and work that defense against them would require, or just clean the damn water.
I don't see how it conflicts with what I've been suggesting?
No, my argument is that when an anarchist commune makes an anti-social decision based on very reasonable and universal human desires, you have no means of conflict resolution which can stop any intransigent community from acting selfishly at the expense of other communities without going back to the question of "Enforcement".
Fuck's sake, most of us poison our neighbors every fucking day we buy something we don't fucking need. You feel good about that? Do you think about it, even?
... my point here isn't to guilt you, fuck's sake, I do it too. My point is that these are not rare problems we are discussing. People are very good at closing their eyes, or focusing on their little corner of the world, or offering innumerable justifications for their own behavior or why the burden should fall on someone else.
If a community refuses to stop polluting, your only options are some form of enforcement, or letting it happen. Your only response here is "It wouldn't happen often enough to consider", which is utopian to the point of absurdity.
Oh, social shaming has a good record on that, does it?
And sabotage? What happens when someone gets fucking shot for sneaking around in the middle of the night - and don't fucking tell me "All anarchists will be completely calm and extremely disciplined gun owners who would never shoot anyone unless they were 100% sure that their life was immediately at risk :)" What if the sabotage creates much more damage than expected? What if the sabotage itself kills people? What if no one admits to the sabotage? Is the sabotage lawful by the downriver community's decision? What's the next step then?
It's not enough for a society to be able to operate day-to-day. A society must be able to operate in crisis, or it will be replaced by a society which can - no matter how much more ugly it is, day-to-day.
Considering how people tend to band closer together when they feel under attack by 'outsiders', even to their own material detriment? And especially within an ideology, or rather a very specific interpretation of anarchism, that rejects the notion that outsiders have the right to tell them what to do?
By insisting on no violence, you set the stage for mass violence. Endemic warfare. These are the exact fucking conditions that arise in pre-modern societies; these are the exact fucking conditions which predominant in international affairs.
I've responded that it could absolutely happen, I think you're bringing up a real issue that would need to be faced, but my point of view is that it probably wouldn't happen super frequently, which is to say, I don't think Anarchism should be dismissed as a viable way to structure society due to not having specifically a centralized way to wield a big stick against non-cooperative or harmful communities.
I am not a Utopian. Anarchism won't solve all our problems, and conflict will still arise. I just think it's the best option we currently have, and will at least reduce many of the problems we face, hopefully making it easier to tackle the problems that are left and cannot be solved with Anarchism.
As @Dippy@beehaw.org elsewhere in the comments here, a regulatory body could be created, which the different communities could then join. This doesn't entirely solve the issue if the troublesome community refuses to join or adhere to those regulations, but that body could at least collectively give the troublesome community some consequences for continued pollution.
It's something they could try, I didn't say it would be super effective. Against the type of populace of Johnsville, it likely wouldn't work.
If we're assuming that no other community wants to help Tableville, that Johnsville refuses to listen to the regulatory body, that the pollution is severe enough to make Tableville's way of life downstream nonviable, and they refuse to move elsewhere, then yes; Tableville's community may decide to opt for sabotage, which could escalate to armed conflict, such as guerrilla warfare if Tablesville is much smaller.
My point is in response to the idea of Tableville being so against additional work that doesn't benefit them directly, they'll avoid it even if it's obviously hurting people. If it really just comes down to not wanting to take on more work, then it follows they'd want to avoid the extra work of fighting Tableville, especially if Tableville is telling them that they are being left no other choice than violence (to be clear, I don't think Johnsville would actually weigh the potential hours needed to clean the water vs fighting in a meeting, that would be kind've absurd. I mean if they did get to that point, holy shit that place is fucked).
Would the same not also happen under a centralized government trying to force them to abide by waste water regulations? What if they saw that as an outsider force trying to impose upon them, and thus decided to militarily fight against it? This would put them in a similar situation to Slave owning states before the confederacy formed. If there were other communities who also didn't want to clean their waste water, they could join together and rebel against that centralized authority trying to clean up all the poop water.
If instead the regulating power is an overwhelming force that would result in sure destruction, only then might they simply relent without conflict. Which, I mean yeah that solves Tableville's problem, but under a centralized government we now have to hope that it does not corrupt at some point, which is what Anarchism is trying to avoid, as it assumes all centralized power structures will at some point become corrupt.
I mentioned before that even struggling people acquire luxuries to make the grind bearable. I didn't say they wouldn't still want luxuries on top of having their basic need met. I agree with Kropotkin's POV.