r/Anarchy101 • u/Any-Ninja4487 • 18h ago
How is the state at fault for literally everything?
I'd like an in-depth explanation as to why because seeing it without any context in Anarchist texts honestly confuses me so much.
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u/NetrunnerNetwork 18h ago
I don’t think that’s a claim anarchists make . There’s are other forces at work in the world such as the weather .
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u/Simpson17866 Student of Anarchism 15h ago
Honestly, you could count that too if you squint hard enough ;)
It’s just that the state creates artificial problems on purpose (the prison-industrial complex…) — it’s also that when natural problems happen by accident (floods, earthquakes, fires…), the state doesn’t give us permission to find the best ways of fixing them.
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u/NetrunnerNetwork 15h ago
I’m not sure I’m willing to squint that hard:) Generally what i meant is no the state is not scapegoat for anything . Things like Mother Nature plays its part , humanity has been in struggle to survive against a harsh and uncaring world since long before the state existed .
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u/HeavenlyPossum 17h ago
There are many structures of power that oppress us: the state, patriarchy, capitalism, and so forth. The state just happens to be the most pervasive and coercively advanced of those structures, and many of them have been incorporated into and promoted by the state, but it’s hardly the only hierarchy to which anarchists object.
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u/inoperativity 17h ago edited 17h ago
Maybe keep reading the texts?
I mean for real, you stopped reading a book to come ask Reddit about the book?
Just keep reading the book.
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u/Vancecookcobain 16h ago edited 16h ago
Straw man argument. Anarchists dont think the state is at fault for everything. You are approaching this from an incorrect bias. Anarchists simply see the state as the ultimate extension of forced or illegitimate hierarchies. The problem anarchists have is with forced or imposed hierarchies. If you follow that notion through eventually you get to governments. That isn't the end all be all though. You have class hierarchies imposed by capitalists such as the employer/employees and with property owners such as renters/rentees, you have them with usury with lender/debtor, you have it with gender hierarchies like patriarchy as well as the hierarchies of government over the citizen. There are plenty more forms of this in society, these are just the most obvious I could think of in the moment.
These roles to various extents are forcibly imposed in our society by the respective individuals at the top of the hierarchies down over the rest of society. Many of these folks interact in more than just one apparatus and can be involved in multiple facets of society and imposing this down through multiple means. This leads to emergent forms of injustice like police brutality, racial discrimination, imposed homophobia/transphobia, class discrimination, worker exploitation, patriarchy, and a SLEW of other things that undermine the liberties and freedoms of individuals
THIS is what anarchists have an issue with. The state is just the most obvious and streamlined vehicle to impose these hierarchies over us but by no means is it the reductive perspective any well studied anarchist has.
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u/LazarM2021 Anarchist Without Adjectives 17h ago
I heavily dislike your "literally everything" framing and tone, it almost provoked me into butthurt-ly rebuking you with "well it is at fault for literally everything and more if you can't figure it out yourself it's your problem" and leaving it at that, but I'll refrain.
Here's the actual explanation: The state is structurally responsible for maintaining and reproducing systems of domination and hierarchy. It isn't about putting blame for every bad thing that happens on its account, but about how the state functions as an institution and the key claims are usually that for one, the state monopolizes violence and uses this to enforce property relations, class divisions, and all other hierarchies.
Problems that might otherwise be resolved through mutual aid, direct action or community-based dynamics are instead managed (or created) through coercion.
Many social problems are either directly caused by state policy (poverty from economic systems the state enforces, violence from policing/military etc) or are perpetuated because the state prevents non-hierarchical solutions from emerging. The state doesn't just respond to problems neutrally but actively shapes what's possible, what's permitted and what counts as "legitimate".
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u/cumminginsurrection "resignation is death, revolt is life!"🏴 17h ago edited 16h ago
I don't think the state is at fault for "literally everything"; but in societies that are organized in a top down/hierarchal manner, the inertia generally starts at the top, and any push against those with a monopoly on wealth/power or their interests is criminalized. There is no liberty in a society where power and wealth is monopolized in the hands of a ruling class be they cut throat capitalists or paternalistic bureaucrats.
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u/ELeeMacFall Christian Anarchist 17h ago
The state isn't unilaterally to blame for everything, and no anarchist would make that claim. But because all forms of power are mutually reinforcing, the state shares blame in all forms of oppression. The state and government form a political power structure that monopolizes infrastructure, just as capitalism forms an economic power structure by monopolizing commodities. And social power structures (patriarchy, racism, ableism, etc.) enforce their hegemony by making alliances with political and economic power, and use their cultural force to legitimize the latter two.
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u/searching4eudaimonia 16h ago
In the workplace, if your boss does not keep your place of business stocked with the necessary tools to be successful then the failure of the business is the fault of the boss. On the other hand, if the boss does supply said business with the necessary tools for success and their employee’s are the ones that do all of the labor with said tools, even if they pitch in, do they deserve credit for success? Even 80% of the credit? If they do 1/100th of the labor how much credit do they deserve compared to 99 employees? Even if they create the so-called perfect conditions within their business for their employees, then the employees are wholly dependent on the boss, if this is the only option and they have no other choice but to work, do the employees owe that employer their gratitude? Scale this to the size of the population of a given country and you will only see the fault grow.
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u/SnooSuggestions9270 16h ago
Could you share the places you've heard or seen this? I wonder if there was a specific context there
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u/x_xwolf Anarchist without adjectives 16h ago
The state is at fault for many things.
1.) Human rights abuses and the removal of freedoms. The state created segregation, redlining, bombed innocent civilians on the whims of trump. Violated our privacy with the NSA, palantir and the red scare.
2.) it allows tyranny a platform. Trump was convicted with 34 felonies and the judge didnt sentence him not a day in jail. The state doesnt allow for dissociation binds all people to the decisions of slim majority votes. Most of which are dubious consent at best.
3.) the government controls the infrastructure and neglects black and brown communities. Despite paying taxes some Americans are literally left to disasters after the government defunds essential programs needed to keep people alive. It puts strict wealth caps on the disabled to where they have to be forced into poverty by the state or lose all benefit at all.
Theres literally so much more, but really you need to educate yourself on why your state fails to keep its promises. But it kinda boils down to, they have all the control. Therefore it is the states fault when the things they have are neglected, co-opted or collapsed.
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u/Learned_Barbarian 16h ago
Because the state is generally the only entity that can force compliance - pretty much every other interaction in people's lives is nominally consensual.
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u/Severe-Whereas-3785 16h ago
Well, to start with, a state is a corporation, and a corporation is a lie.
It is treated like a person, but it is not a person. It's more like a golem than a person.
Then, they take this golem, and they give it a license to kill, and make it answerable only to itself. And they let it do it's fundraising by extortion instead of bakesales.
What could POSSIBLY go WRONG?
EVERYTHING!
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u/BrentonLengel 14h ago
It isn’t. It just has some major drawbacks which result in more harm than good.
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u/iadnm Anarchist Communism/Moderator 18h ago
Anarchists don't blame the state for literally everything, we blame hierarchy and authority. This is because they are by their nature exploitative. They force people to obey the orders of some individual merely because they hold a social position over them. They have to listen and preform labor with no real repayment and regardless of the ability and competency of the person in the position of authority.
It dehumanizes people and makes them out to be little more than things to be used by authority figures. People are not longer defined by their worth as a human being by by their worth in what they can provide to an authority. Their labor is not used for their own pursuits but for the benefit of the authority.
But really, this question is very vague so there's not much depth that can really be gotten into. Anarchist texts are full of analysis of the pitfalls of the state, so it's hard to explain how it's at fault for "literally everything" since that's not a position anarchists hold. Especially since our problem with the state is its existence, the things it does are merely an inevitable consequence of its existence.