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Originally Posted by Godslayer Jillian
That's the one argument that has merit against Anarchism. I will still disagree: people are not inherently egotistic. Egoism would drive an anarchist society for the benefit of all, there's no problem with egoism. But egotism just makes no sense.
But in any case, if humankind were inherently egotist, and everyone had the same amount of knowledge to know when they're being fucked over, there would be so many people wresting power from those who try to have more than they deserve. It's illusory that you think that you can excel and have people under you if you admit that they're as 'bad' as you.
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No, because you fail to take into account the effects of fear.
Our fear of authority is biological. As social animals, we establish hierarchies instinctively, and we instinctively fear disobeying those higher up. People do not rebel even when they are being exploited because they fear the pain, humiliation, and death that authority figures can inflict on them. While numerically it might be true that the odds are low that you will personally bite it in an Anarch revolution, no one wants to risk it. It's a big reason people won't sky-dive.
Furthermore, while the only thing that can normally violate this fear is selfishness, it is typically a completely disruptive selfishness, which seeks to establish its possessor as the new, hierarchical head of a self-created system. In other words, in any unstable system - which Anarchy must needs be to provide freedom of choice (and here I use "unstable" to denote a lack of forceful control over human actions) - humans will instinctively seek to ascend over their brethren.
This is the fundamental failing of any system that seeks to provide a truly free or truly collectivist society: that the human animal is endowed with a self-centered need to not only take all it can get - an unenlightened selfishness so easily detectable that it need not be argued - but also the urge to dominate all others until the specific human meets an animal that cannot be dominated. This can be observed in almost any social situation - cliques, groups, and organizations are always dominated by a leader or pair of leaders - and even the pair is usually dominated by one or another of the two.
A leader leads - and I know this sounds Nietzsche-like - because his followers are afraid of the consequences of taking him down, and fear their lack of ability to confront the control structures that have elevated him. At the same time, they hope that the leader will use his power to provide for them, usually through the method of taking resources from someone else.
It might be argued that the fear of the community will thus enable the creation of an Anarchic "state". However, this is false - a truly Anarch state does not have an enforcing-sense, but only an agreeing-sense, otherwise it is not Anarchy, but Tribalism. In addition, even the tribal state is usually dominated by a rapidly rotating (in terms of who retains the office) alpha-male/female who has destroyed or subverted all effective opposition. The Anarchic society would not even have these protections.
Once an individual rebels against the Anarchic, he has effectively destroyed it. If his fellows destroy him, they have eliminated Anarchy, for they have effectively made themselves an oppressive democracy of the majority, and we know the fatal flaws of true democracy. Should they not destroy him, he will certainly recruit like-minded individuals to his side, and dominate by force his fellows for his personal benefit.
Another problem with your argument is that you are assuming Anarchy is better than the current system, from that arguing from that that egotism would thus entail rebellion because the current situation is deficient in comparison to Anarchy, and thus using that to prove that Anarchy is good and will work because otherwise people would be rebelling against the current system.
I could as well argue that people do not rebel against the current system because they realize that it is as good as it will ever get, since Anarchy is false.
Both arguments are invalid because they rely on an assumption of the idea in order to prove the idea.
Ultimately, even in our society we do get a large number of people rebelling against the ideals of our society. We call them criminals. In an Anarchic society, this number would be amplified by the lack of a coordinated response to such persons. And even though one might argue that some crimes are caused by conditions that you believe Anarchy will correct, it is glaringly clear that many, many criminals are much better off than others who do not commit crimes.
The fear of punishment - pain - is what keeps most people from doing evil. You may not believe this, but imagine the temptation that would be placed on you if, every day, a bag of cash ($45,000) is placed in an alley near you, and not picked up until midnight. Never supervised, no cameras, no policemen...and the cash can't be traced.
What would keep you from taking the cash? What odds would you give that the bag would be there at midnight if everyone in town knew about it? What about half the town? What about twenty people?
Most people wouldn't even give good odds on it being there if twenty people knew about it, under such circumstances. It is fear that drives people not to exploit others, fear that protects us from our neighbor's inner predator.
Anarchy removes that fear.
