Right, I suspect we assign blame/culpability rather differently but we agree on the root cause of the problem.
I got a question for you: In an anarchist society, by what mechanism(s) do you preclude/counter the tyranny of the majority? And how do you prevent that mechanism from itself becoming a tool of oppression?
(not a gotcha question, it's one I wrestle with regularly and have yet to come up with a satisfactory answer)
I am not persuaded it is a problem in the first place. Democracy, not the absence of government, promotes tyranny of the majority, or at least the political class pandering to the prejudices of the majority while setting minority groups against one another in a civide-and-conquer process. We don't "have a voice" in the election process.
Similarly, "wouldn't the corporations take over?" Not really a concern when you realize how dependent they are on subsidies, bailouts, regulatory capture, IP laws, etc.
Really now? While the term tyranny of the majority may be inextricably linked to democracy, the problem of majorities oppressing minorities has been with us far longer than democracy has. Divide and conquer may be one of the political class' favorite tactics but the dynamics upon which it is based exist independent of them. Removing the political class doesn't remove humanity's knack for othering, infighting, and petty cruelty. How do you stop someone from exploiting the same things the political class do for their own nefarious purposes? So what exactly separates your idea of anarchism from Hobbes' state of nature?
Similarly, have you forgotten the robber barons? Corporations are more than capable of running roughshod over anything in their way if insufficiently checked.
I haven't forgotten the robber barons. They arose out of a market heavily influenced by political intervention, not free market mechanisms. The minority might be oppressed without the state, but I'd like to see what scenario you imagine. Meanwhile.... points to everything today done by the state
I'm not pretending a free society will be free of problems, but government always inevitably magnifies those problems. Free people find ways to solve problems. Jim Crow was enforced by the State. Slavery was protected by the Fugitive Slave Act. Today, the tug-of-war for power over nonsense like marriage licenses and state monopoly schools is the root cause of conflict with the LGBTQ community. The War on Drugs, tax laws, license mandates, and welfare programs fuel nationalistic fear of "illegal" hispanic immigrants.
Corporations are creations of the State. It is a legal privilege granted by political power.
Hobbes was wrong about human nature. Society predates the State. This alone demonstrates that humans can cooperate and coordinate peacefully at a grassroots level, organically and without political authority.
Oh, and one more addendum about the "robber barons" might be in order... The railroads and iron magnates and the like who did not have special monopoly powers tended to drive prices down and wages up despite the corruption. They weren't all equally bad, and the outcome of their enterprises was not entirely bad.
And lastly, while I'm not a massive Ayn Rand fan, she was right when she said the smallest minority is always the individual. Skin color and culture are really just lazy ways to collectivize others conceptually. victims of coercion and aggression are always individuals first and foremost, as are the perpetrators of injustice.
How do you stop a monopoly from forming sans government? How do you stop religious groups from persecuting one another? How do you stop a pogrom? Or is all that just going to magically disappear with the political class?
You give the government far more credit than it deserves. You sometimes talk of our civic religion but it's not government, it's capitalism. Government is just one of capital's better rackets to protect itself. Getting rid of government does nothing to rid us of the inequities and inequalities inherent in capitalism. Mind you, dictatorships of the proletariat are not the solution either, just saying you need to dig a little deeper before you start assigning blame.
Slavery continues to exist, with or without government sanction, so how do you put a stop to that? The root cause of conflict with the LGBTQ community stems from religion, government is simply the means by which they wage it.
Sounds great. Until you need a solution yesterday and everybody has a different idea of what that should be. Problems are a lot more difficult to solve without a framework for cooperation, which is ultimately what I'm asking about I suppose.
Government is a territorial monopoly in violence, and the mother of all other monopolies. IP laws, regulatory capture, licenses, permits, subsidies, etc. are necessary to sustain mega corporations. Externalizing enforcement costs to government is the only way a monopoly is sustainable.
What exactly do you mean when you say "capitalism?" People are unique. "Inequality" is the inevitable outcome of differing talents, skills, time preferences, virtues, vices, and accidents of fate. Governments institutionalize inequality through coercion. Markets allow people to harness their unique attributes and exchange for mutual benefit. "Left anarchists" tend to blame the outcomes of political intervention in the market for the perceived shortcomings of the market.
Under government, we are guaranteed systemic slavery. Hell, it's tax day in 2 weeks. We are free range slaves for the political class now. There is no guarantee of perfection absent the State, but its presence guarantees abuse. We need many people trying many paths to progress to find out what works, and allow people who disagree with one another to coexist instead of playing tug-of-war over the government guns.
400 years ago, Europe was waging bloody wars over power in the name of religion. Today,we have Baptists, Lutherans, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and other faiths coexisting with even the most obnoxious edgelord athrists. When government tried to control faith, and vice-versa, the outcome was a mess. Now, we can point to problems, but the scale is tiny in comparison.
You seem to be demanding I present a Utopia where I design the perfect society and solve every problem to the satisfaction of everyone. That is not fair to me and completely ignores my position that such power cannot be held by anyone.
What a curious inversion of reality you've got there. Blaming all of society's ills on government is convenient but it's simply not true. I will concede that corporations are a legal fiction that couldn't exist in present form without government. The underlying 'money is power' dynamic doesn't go anywhere even if government were to disappear.
Capitalism--the worship of profit. The headlong pursuit of more at all costs and the structuring of society in furtherance of that.
It has definitely diminished a good bit but it still lurks just beneath the surface as the breakup of Yugoslavia demonstrated. You don't have to wander very far from Europe to find it is still very much the case. The Middle East, the Sahel, the Maghreb, China, Pakistan, India, it's still alive and well in much of the world. Being Sunni in Baghdad might not be the death sentence it was a decade or so ago but it still ain't healthy.
Thinking that humanity's problems would disappear with government strikes me as utopian in the extreme. In a society without government it's our responsibility to solve any issues that arise, refusing to consider potential problems and their solutions is at best an abdication of that responsibility. I never expected you to have all the answers but I am baffled as to how you expect to implement anarchism without addressing in practical terms the problems it will face.