I'm not using my own definition. You are, since you are including politicians.
The bureaucracy are the people working in the various government organs, such as the departments and also the "frontline" workers which are the service people (such as the guys you meet with at the local licensing offices).
Politicians are specifically excluded from this because they do not work in the bureaucracy. They are elected officials (or appointed) who operate over top the bureaucracy.
I'm explaining this under the assumption that you are genuinely unaware of the definition of a bureaucrat.
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According to www.dictionary.com, "bureaucracy" refers to:
2. the body of officials and administrators, especially of a government or government department.
3. excessive multiplication of, and concentration of power in, administrative bureaus or administrators.
4. administration characterized by excessive red tape and routine.
Nothing there about excluding elected or appointed officials.
But this is drifting off-topic. Your basic point was that, even in the absence of government leaders, there could still be a government bureaucracy to care for the community's needs, correct?
Well, if there are no government leaders, who makes decisions about what the bureaucracy does? It can't all be done by direct democracy; in any large bureaucracy, there are too many decisions being made each day for that to be practical. If you want things to run at all efficiently, you're going to have to delegate power to certain individuals or small groups. And once you've done that, how can you still call your government an anarchy?
Oxford doesn't agree with you:
1a system of government in which most of the important decisions are taken by state officials rather than by elected representatives.
- [count noun] a state or organization governed or managed as a bureaucracy.
- [count noun] the officials in a bureaucracy, considered as a group or hierarchy.
edited 31st Jul '13 12:33:49 AM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling On@OP
Anarchy is a system that relies on people always choosing the best option, always being nice to each otehr and lacking any negative elements on their character.
it also relies on that there is no counter force. Ever.
I wonder how following system would work:
Let's assume we have a large area, relatively sparsely populated. One town, rather small, gets attacked by well organized bandit group who constantly keep Rape, Pillage, and Burn. Always just enough to let the town continue. Townspeople can't leave because this well organized group keeps watch on the exists.
So, how would in anarchy these bandits be defeated?
In any system that is not an anarchy, central government would collect bunch of people, arm them and tell them to go and kick some ass. Central government would most likely have a group, police or military or whatever, that enforce it's rules already, adn they are told to go and once again enforce rules. In this case, "Stay the fuck away from our town!"
In anarchy... it all relies that towns people can convince enough people to come to their aid. What if they don't? What if they are too far, or they don't want to piss of these bandits? In essence, unless the town can convince large number of people to come and aid them, others have abandoned them.
Continuing off this, a centralized government can exercise the ugly but sometimes necessary task of telling its people, "There is an enemy to fight and we need soldiers, so you, you, and you are now soldiers." As much as we've grown to despise the idea of the draft in the modern age, it's served a historical purpose, filling armies with much-needed manpower in times of war, in ages and cultures when it was considered an honor to fight for king and country, for a better life for your family, or for your god.
Modern people often consider military conscription to be a terrible travesty; some recognize that some battles need to be fought, but even among those, many consider that someone else's responsibility. I've ragged on this point before in other threads, but we live in an age of cowardice.
This doesn't just hurt conscription-based military, though; anarchist society would suffer more than any centralized government for the mindset of "civilized" culture, because it would be dependent solely upon a volunteer militia, and in an age of cowardice, those volunteers would be few and far between. When barbarians are at your door, your men need to be ready to stand and fight, not waiting for someone else to swoop in and save them.
edited 31st Jul '13 8:21:12 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Conscript armies are good when defending: You can have entire nations ready to fight and win through sheer numbers. It's also good when there is "Enemy can come at any moment", since you can have an army on moments notice.
However, when lacking an imminent enemy or you are going to be offensive side, professional army is much better.
Which what Romans did: Conscripted soldiers were fine and dandy, as long as they were defending. Once they started to expand... Marian Reforms replaced old citizen militia with professional soldiers.
Which kinda brings me back to my point: Where would brave defenders come, how ready they would be and would they even come? In anarchist system, there is no guarantee, for anything.
It seems that in this thread and elsewhere, what people describe is not an anarchy but a mob rule. The mob acts as per said by few charismatic people enough to sway the mob.
The vast majority of soldiers in the world wars were volunteers and was the same for the aggressive countries as well. I am not sure why there is a belief that an anarchist society would not defend itself. That is a pacifist society, which is not mutually exclusive of course.
I understand the view of an efficient central authority but you have to be careful about over inflating problems anarchists never had. Very few had problems keeping water running or electricity flowing. Most were defeated by especially bad dictators like Francisco Francis (and I certainly hope we are not arguing in favour of his style of rule) and most others were absorbed by nation states but continue to function the same otherwise.
Only some anarchists refuse to have police in their model and some others use community justice (and it's especially baffling to see Americans argue against this when they elect both judge and sheriff, what is more anarchist than that) and that's similar to separate state laws. Besides nothing precludes sharing the same law system is it's not likely that two towns think about that differently.
There is a conflation going pin here by some that the bureaucracy is the same as the political system to the point where raven is arguing they are the same term despite the other wiki specifically stating it is the body of unelected officials. The reason for difference is that one is about skill (or tries to be) and the other is about charisma.
Basically I find it odd that people who live in societies whose entire political system is about convincing people to vote for then via charisma then accuse how terrible it is that they see ways in which an anarchist society could develop leaders because they were charismatic.
Anyway the difference between a bureaucrat doing a job and a politician is the same difference between hiring an electrician from a union yourself and going to a condo management group and they tell you how to wire stuff (or who to hire).
Anyway I typed this on my phone so if there are typos apologise.
In world wars, these "Volunteer armies" were less about volunteer and more about "Join up with existing power structure". There were already an existing military power structure, that recruited armies.
Armies did not spontaneously pop up when needed, quite opposite, an existing army was given permission to gather more recruits.
In anarchy, these sort of systems do not exist. There is, at best, local militia. Otherwise, you have a hierarchy. Which defeats the point of anarchy. to have anything larger, you need an organization with persistent members. You need someone to tell train and command soldiers.
That is difference between soldiers and warriors. Armies and warbands. One is organized, disciplined and controlled. Other is just bunch of dudes with weapons, fighting as an individuals.
Also, isn't creating a police force creating an hierarchy? Hierarchy that imposes certain rule set upon others?
Also, as far as I know, could be different in US, but to my knowledge, judges are chosen from those who have studied law and got permission from the High Court.
And bureaucracy is a political system. It might not be open as democratic government, but it's an political system where someone is on the top giving orders to people below hwo carry them out.
edited 31st Jul '13 11:21:27 AM by Mandemo
Well what I am saying here is that there is an attempt to stretch terminology in order to invalidate anarchy with goal posts that are different with every person.
Of course, anarchist ideology being what it is, they also themselves do not agree what might constitute "true" anarchist society.
In any case, the existence of organisation is not what anarchism is meant to oppose. It is meant to oppose entrenchment.
For instance, there is a claim here of "but if people organise themselves then it is not anarchy". Well that is kinda ridiculous. Anarcho-syndicalism is based on communal economies (middle ages time period) or unions (modern time period) or cooperatives (contemporary situation). But in fact, by your definition of "organisation" you're simply excluding society in general! If people can't come together to make decisions then it is not a society and that is not what anarchism is about.
A police force is not anti-anarchist, only certain forms of anarchism oppose the establishment of a police force. In order for police to be anti-anarchist, they must have an entrenched power over others. Do police forces have an entrenched power over people in our society? No. And in an anarchist society the only real difference is that it becomes more like community police and would lack departments such as FBI or RCMP.
Let's not stretch the definition of bureaucracy again. Some people perform functions of administrative duty, and whatever you feel like calling them (because I don't think a semantics argument is useful here), they can do just that and not take power. The possibility always exists that someone can take power in any situation; how do our democracies prevent dictatorships from forming when people are too apathetic to vote? Does this mean that any and all democracies must therefore crumble into dictatorial oblivion due to increasing voter apathy over time?
These types of arguments against anarchism are "what-ifs" but we've already had centuries-long anarchist societies to show that those what-ifs are invariably not true. The primary way in which anarchist societies have fallen was by being conquered by non-anarchist societies.
In light of that, where is the need for massive standing armies? The only big major power invading other people today is the United States and I don't think the American people would support "invading random country because it is anarchist". If it was communist maybe but not anarchist.
Hypothetical situation:
An anarchist community has instituted a public bus system. One day, a bus driver picks up two passengers who almost immediately start backseat-driving, saying "You should have passed that car there!" or "You should have taken the right-of-way there!" Eventually, they tell the bus driver, "Why don't you take a seat in back and let us drive?"
Now, the driver does not own the bus; it's public property, and belongs as much to the passengers as it does to the bus drivers. So, if no one else is around to tell the passengers to back off, what right does the driver have to keep them from taking over the bus? They're all equals, and the driver is outnumbered two-to-one, so what's to keep the passengers from doing as they please?
The obvious answer would be that the driver has been entrusted with the bus by the community, while the passengers have not; if they try taking the bus away from its rightful steward, the community will punish them for their transgression. But that right there, an individual being given authority over community resources and/or other members of the community, is what anarchism is opposed to. Yes, as authority figures go, bus drivers are about as weak as you can get, but the principle is the same.
What you seem to be advocating isn't so much a society without leaders, but a society with decentralized leadership; certain people are still in charge of certain things, but there's no big kahuna at the top that everyone answers to. That is a much more workable idea; it's just not what most people mean when they say "anarchy".
edited 31st Jul '13 9:06:01 PM by RavenWilder
I think you're describing some rather extreme forms of anarchy. It's easy to merge many forms of anarchism together and then accuse one of not being anarchist based on the definition of a different type of anarchist. I've mostly been describing forms based around anarcho-capitalist, anarcho-syndical and other communal forms of anarchism.
So indeed, most modern forms of anarchism revolve around exactly what you say "decentralized" leadership, under the assumption that this removes (or greatly lessens) the ability to entrench authority. Thus, people can be entrusted with doing particular things because they are good at it and nothing more, thus allowing for someone else who comes along who is also good at doing it to become an equal figure.
In ancient times this may have meant that you chose the best tracker to lead the hunt. In modern times this means more that the best engineer does the grunt work of a project and someone better at organising does the project management.
I think there's largely been a misconception that anarchism means "nobody is allowed to tell anybody else what to do". That's not really the case. It's about nobody is allowed to somebody else what to do because they have entrenched authority. They need reasons, they need support and they cannot pass this onto anyone else; all subsequent figures in any leadership capacity earns it via benefiting the community with his/her skills. A bureaucrat who is in charge of roads is only in charge of roads and is only charge of roads because they displayed skill or trained in that industry (via civil engineering at a university for example). They do not gain the position because their father was a civil engineer.
The question is whether one believes that the community must, at times, commit unpopular sacrifices of people/resources from time to time. Whether some people should be thrown under the bus for society to progress.
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Let me ask you this: you posit that people should obtain positions of authority by demonstrating their skills.
Who are they demonstrating these skills to? Who decides, "You will be a road engineer, because you have sufficiently convinced me of your merit."
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.So the community determines who is deserving of a particular role. What prevents this from being a popularity contest?
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Absolutely nothing at all, as there seems to be no accreditation or apprentice process in an anarchy, unless you're talking about the type that's got some communism or socialism mixed in. And once you get that you've got some authority right there, saying "you and you have done this this and this to qualify for this other thing." And there are all sorts of ways to leverage that sort of power, all it requires is someone sufficiently ambitious and clever enough to think of and do it.
Uh, not really. Things like IEEE and so on, are pretty much what anarchists would argue for, so unless you think there's a global engineering conspiracy or something, accreditation process remains almost exactly the same as today. Remember, there's NO government involvement in professional licencing of engineers but do engineers rule the world? Almost, quite sadly, the opposite. :)
And "unless it's the kinds that have communism and socialism thrown in", actually pretty much all except for a select few American-style extreme anarchism have easy measures put in for the type of skill accreditation or apprenticeship. Yeah, I get that DP is the primary person you argue against but he represents basically the least number of anarchists that have ever existed and none that actively exist today (as in actual societies that are anarchist today). Even capitalist forms of anarchism can include unions.
There's no such thing as "the community". How do you figure someone is a good road engineer? How does anybody figure anybody is a good employee? You hire someone, if they do well you keep them and if they don't then you get rid of them. When your authority relies on delivering results in specific measurable categories the ability to entrench authority is greatly diminished. If your only job is to build roads and you fail at it, it will be difficult to argue your way out of that.
In comparison, a politician is typically in charge of a lot of things. Blame is easily passed around to the next guy thus allowing a politician to survive.
These aren't even questions that pertain to anarchism in the first place. These are questions you are posing that are problems in all societies and they all have these problems. How does a democracy choose the set of engineers to design its highway system? What if someone charismatic takes the role and fucks it up? What then? How do we determine how to run our hospitals with a guy who graduated with a political science degree? What could he possibly know about healthcare? Etc.
Got to love how these Anarchist worlds assume that the modern level of infrastructure remains intact.
It assumes that someone is willing to pour enormous amounts of resources to maintain space facilities and satellites, to maintain communication networks, to maintain roads... all kinds of stuff that centralized governments do.
Also, no. Politicians are not in charge of many things. Their job is to vote on solutions presented, based on their knowledge of nation-wide knowledge.
You are also presenting false example. In most cases, when looking for say engineer, it's not "Vote for the best guy!", it's "Your guys job is to listen to offers from willing engineers, compare them, check our budget and make decision based on cost-benefit analysis".
That's the main job of politicians: Determine cost-benefit ratio and try to maintain balance.
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...okay, so if determining qualifications is done solely on a basis of, "You do the job, and either do it well or poorly," I'm curious: how does the hiring process work? And, for that matter, how does the termination process work?
In the case of hiring, if eight people want a job for which there is only one opening, who determines which candidate gets the job? The way I understand it, as this has been presented, is that the employees vote on who to hire, but that's just another popularity contest.
Furthermore, who decides who loses their job? You seem to be taking it as a given that who is responsible for the road's failure will always be clearly indicated. If the road fails, does the community decide who's fault it was? Because that's also a popularity contest.
One common complaint of today's economy is that it's not about what you know, but rather who you know. It doesn't matter if you're the most brilliant road engineer that's ever lived; the job goes to that guy who slacks off and never studied instead, because he's best friends with the boss's wife. Your system sounds like it would make this problem ten times worse; under the system you propose, the only skill that truly matters is charisma, as the people who spend all their time making friends and chumming it up to the other instead of actually doing their job will be the ones that keep their job, while the ones that are too busy doing the work and thus don't have time to ingratiate themselves with the mob will be the ones voted off the island.
edited 5th Aug '13 8:12:04 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.

It's how the word is defined, what do you want me to say? :P