The major flaw I see in left-wing (think coops) anarchism is the simple fact that wielding power is still work. There is an implicit assumption that the freedom to be your own boss, set your own rules, shape the future of the organizations you participate in is its own reward.
It can be. But, it's also work, toil, labor, that which must be compensated or fall to corruption.
Too many anarchist ideas of how, for example, a small town might work require a population filled with busy bodies.
@futurebird this is a valid concern, especially over how anarchism is often summarized as “direct democracy” or something similar. If that were the whole system, you’re right, it would fail to function pretty quickly.
The point though is to build complex, redundant systems that are autonomously capable of contextual adaption, and where delegation is possible but always immediately recallable—both with weary caution on how power ultimately must remain with the people
"But, it's also work, toil, labor, that which must be compensated or fall to corruption."
This builds upon a misunderstanding of human nature.
In a capitalist system, yes, you want your "reward" because you are always in a transactional and competition-oriented relationship with others, while everyone has an incentive to make you forever want more, to be insatiable, so that you'll always continue to feel hungry, "motivated", and thus easy to put to use.
@futurebird
I lived in an anarchist place. We had exactly those problems, with people starting to manipulate others to get more land and power. It existed for a long time and in the end fulfilled its purpose for existing (resisting a terrible corporate project), so I wouldn't call it a failure, but this is a real problem that appears once people stop working together towards the same goal.
@futurebird Also, even fully self owned and self organized businesses (and coops are businesses) exist to market some product or service. They can be nonexploitative on the inside, but without a system to very tightly regulate the market they are coerced to behave like any other company marketing the same stuff. In other words, they must remain competitive with exploitation based businesses.
@futurebird Most people don't want to do politics. They want the world to go on more or less as it has been, while other people look after that stuff most of the time.
Anarchists (of whom I am one spiritually), advocates of putting every question to a public vote, etc., tend to rely on everyone being interested in doing politics all the time. They are and all their friends are, so…
And of course when positions of power offer no reward for the labor but the power itself you have just designed a system that will attract all of the worst leaches to those positions. Who is more highly motivated to be on the road planning board than the person who sees a way to make bank on it?
(Why we need to pay government leadership positions well... but also take away their other sources of income.)
I'm deeply skeptical of the phrase "labor of love"
@futurebird Yes, and then these communities of busybodies are also incredibly exclusive to everyone who isn't them. The kibbutz movement was full of committed socialist idealist who eliminated the class system of the shtetl and then proceeded to treat Yemeni immigrants like shit and never really got that Israel didn't exclusively belong to the kibbutzniks.
This is indeed a problem. OTOH if there is no "bank" to be made then who would be attracted? Is it fair to say that someone will likes doing a given job?
Any totalising approach to organising human society is doomed to fail (either completely, or to fail a significant part of the population). Human society is too complex for anything other than patchworks of options.
OTOH choosing anarchic approaches where possible is probably a good heuristic.