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So with your great imagination, please suggest a way to have a functioning society where we don't have people causing harm to others without a team of people trained to physically stop them, bring them somewhere where they can be rehabilitated, and if they can't be, isolated from the rest of society to prevent further harm?
My mind is open and my ears are too.
This is a pretty old talking point, and I'm about to go eat some dinner so here's some info from classical anarchist perspectives copied from reddit, which can work as a starting point for your learning journey.
Guillaume says “all able-bodied inhabitants will be called upon to take turns in the security measures instituted by the commune”, calling this a “Communal Police”.
Merlino posits a question from a non-anarchist asking “Would there be need for a government, a parliament, a cabinet, a police force, a judiciary?”, which he answers with "Nothing of this kind would exist in the anarchist system". However, he still suggests some kind of social defense institution organized as a public service, though I don't know the details.
Kropotkin believes most crimes would simply disappear in an anarchist society (under the common anarchist assumption that crime is only caused by capitalism), but still says "here surely will remain a limited number of persons whose anti-social passions − the result of bodily diseases − may still be a danger for the community". His solution for such people is a kind of quarantine, not in prison but in a community empowered to rehabilitate them. Call it an open compound, maybe. Presumably the community members are responsible for herding offenders into the compound.
Malatesta proposes giving citizens the right to defend themselves,"Perhaps we would come closer to a more comprehensive formula by asserting the right to forcible self-defence against physical violence as well as against acts equivalent in manner and consequences to physical violence".
tl;dr: Community driven, rehabilitation lead approaches. Violence is justified in defense.
That's not without police or orisons though... That's just calling them by a different name. If you have enforcers of the public code (law) and a place to send people who break the code (criminals) to where they can't leave (prison), then even if the goal is rehabilitation if possible else isolation, which it should be to be ethical, it's still the same idea as police and prison.
Police are paid employees by the state they are not community driven mutual defense.
The "state" in this case is the municipal district of a town or city, which is to say "a community of people".
my issue with this is that while this is what police say they are, it is not how they do things and the point of a thing is what it does. police officers other than sheriffs are selected not by other members of the community, but are selected based on their willingness to carry out violence in the name of capital.
In my country, the state is elected democratically.
Is this post just one of those Russian propaganda things designed to piss off the masses and divide people with nonsensical vague bold provocative statements?
I doubt it.
I don't know your country, but would I be correct in assuming you get a limited choice every few years on maybe choosing a representative who might share 1 or 2 values of yours?
It's telling that you're more pissed off by a post calling for changing an abusive system, than you are the system. But hey I guess every leftist idea is Russian propaganda to a clown.
That's just police and prisons with extra steps, and since theres no regulation for the police eventually you're going to be ruled over by a police gang when they refuse to change shifts.
The community would be the police, how can they rule over themselves as a gang if they already are in charge of themselves?
Please think things through a bit more before reacting.
Because they take shifts and if they refuse to hand over authority then they're now permanently in charge and will use force to regulate the rest of you.
It's called a "power vacuum" where in the absence of authority humans have always immediately created a new hierarchy, in some cases a democratic republic and in other cases a militaristic autocracy and everything in between.
lol.
"We refuse to leave our shift, we're going to own you"
"But we're also as equally armed as you?"
"Oh, but but your shift is over you can't defend yourself!"
Are they as equally armed as you? Are they also equal in number to your household? They also don't have a "quarantine" to hold people, then? In that case, wouldn't they fail to enforce anything in the first place?
Sounds like an HOA with guns. No thanks.
HOA with guns sounds like how a state is run.
Do HOA generally run open meetings where everyone votes together on issues? from all the horror stories I read it’s about old bitter people who have become the HOA president or some garbage dictating the rules to everyone else.
Yes, but nobody gives a shit or wants to spend their time on government, so the old bitter people get carte blanche to run everything.
I’m an anarchist. What you’ve quoted is naive. Yes, community rehabilitation is good for some sorts of criminals. The abolition of prisons, on the other hand, might be possible 1000 years from now with the proper technology, which makes the suggestion at best unhelpful and at worst actively counterproductive.
I didn't write that Guillaume, Merlino, Kropotkin, Malatesta did.
As an anarchist, you must be pretty conflicted if you think those 4 are absurdly naive.
Each of these people has written intelligent and wise things, abundant examples of which you’ve deftly avoided in order to quote shit that makes us all look like idiots.
Okay, well once again I didn't write any of that it's copied from reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchy101/comments/nleody/how_exactly_would_law_enforcement_work_under/
Go there and learn something about Anarchism. Community self defense is a large part of Anarchism and it's something you sound like you need to learn more about.
Thanks! I especially like Malatesta's perspective.
a team of people trained to physically stop them, bring them somewhere where they can be rehabilitated,
That would be great. Maybe we should try that instead of the police and prisons as they stand now.
But then you're calling for reforms rather than abolishing the current system which is what the post says
It's not like we don't want the ideal of what the police should be. Plenty of ways they can serve public interest and safety without being paid chimps with guns.
It does seem challenging to make sure everyone follows the rules if there's no dedicated enforcement of said rules
Communities can enforce rules on themselves, there's nothing about anarchy that is against that.
If there's dedicated people to enforce those rules, that's just police
And if everyone enforces those rules, is that what you think the police is today?
Anyway I'm going to go eat now, there's a link somewhere in here if you want to learn more about it.
I think that sounds a bit like mob justice/vigilantism.
Yes, following mob rules as decided by the mob.
Much preferable to the current system of rules written by rulers, enforced by abusers.
I mean my mind goes to lynchings and such. That's not great imo
When I think of cops my mind goes to bombing babies in their bedrooms, shooting the dog, burning down the house, and planting drugs on the corpse. That’s not great imo.
When I think of "mob rule" or community policing if you want to frame it with less sinister words, I think of people stepping up to defend their community
Sounds like the mob thing can be good or bad depending on the mob in question. Which imo makes it same as police in that respect
The core difference being you are part of the mob, you are not part of the police.
I don't know if that helps if the other people in the mob are shit and want to do shitty things tbh.
I suggest a historical perspective that I only recently discovered: Graeber and Wengrow's Dawn of Humanity has some very interesting anthropological/archeological examples of how communal police and security has been organized in the past (distant or more recent).
Most notably some cool "clown posse" police that's cyclical with summer/winter.
Police are a socialised version of something that already existed. If we didn’t have them what exactly is going to happen if somebody gets murdered?
Yeh I used to think like this as well but tbh here we don’t even have public safety despite the existence of police.
Couple days ago some people threw a big firecracker here that gave me temporary hearing loss and the constant firecrackers are really putting me on edge n I know police can’t help even if it’s illegal so uh sry for rant am just a angy
I'm sorry, is this post implying the solution to crime is paying repeat offenders a salary to not do it again?
This post is implying that OP is unfamiliar with sociology, psychology, history, and the texture of grass.
... no
...No.
Go on.
Well, I mean we currently give them a badge and a gun and pay repeat offenders to repeatedly offend.
no. it isn't. it's implying that our police don't keep our communities safe and our prisons aren't adequate deterrents or rehabilitation centers. a better solution to community safety would be a society that doesn't enforce poverty. within that framework we need the imagination to find community oriented solutions to investigating and punishing people who encroach on the safety, liberty, and autonomy of others.
these 2 questions are worlds apart are they not?
There was already an alternative to harvesting cotton without slavery. There is a solution to that problem.
There does not seem to be a solution to public safety that does not involve a central figure to enforce said rules. So police and prisons are the only solution we have.
They are not the same question
