The article does give an answer though. An “anarchist community” would not suddenly appear out of a vacuum and have to re-create everything from scratch. Arguing like that is indeed a tired trope and lazy strawman.
So any real “anarchist community” would have existing tools to make insulin (like the article says) and thus sufficient time to adapt them or come up with other means to produce insulin that are better suited for a non-hierarchical society.
It is a bit moot to speculate what these adaptations or alternatives might be, as we don’t know what this specific “anarchist community” will look like. But if you have experience with process engineering you might realize that existing production methods are rarely the best or most efficient, but rather a result of the pre-existing equipment and capabilities at the time of developing the process. Furthermore existing production processes are rarely further optimized unless there is a strong outside pressure to do so, and in today’s society it is usually easier for companies to rely on patents and monopolies to extract the maximum profit.
Pharmaceutical manufacture and process engineering aren’t subsistence farming. You can’t just have people pitching in when it suits them. You need tightly controlled supply chains, tightly controlled processes, strict change control, verification and validation. Good luck maintaining all that in an anarchist community.
Please don’t project your strawman view of an “anarchist community” here. None of these things you mention can not exist in an “anarchist community” nor is there even such a thing as a single “anarchist community”.
If anything, anarchist production principles are probably more suitable for all the things you mention, than the current ones that are at the wims of external investors with competing interests.
nor is there even such a thing as a single “anarchist community”.
How large can an anarchist community be so the decision process maintains the libertarian proposal of social organization (direct involvement/participation, no representation, decision mostly by concensus unless critical in time and blocked by an insignificant minority).
I’d say pretty small.
You’re discussing the technical side, while the parent comment is pointing out the main issue lies largely on the social / organizational side, which the article just conveniently handwaves away.
Sorry, but you seem to fail to understand the argument, both me and the article make regarding the “social / organizational side”: There is no technical reason why an “anarchist community” couldn’t produce insulin in sufficient quantities and everything else can’t be known at this point in time and is moot to speculate about.
Ok, let’s clarify.
We both agree that the technical aspect is not an issue. So let’s drop that point.
The question that usually comes up is, how might the community / organisation be structured in such a way that complex and critical goods can be reliably manufactured?
I’m interested in theories and proposals, methods by which this could believably be implemented. Nothing will happen without at least a proposal or blueprint to base discussion or action upon. Proposing to tear down the current system without a single idea of how we would replace critical functions is utter foolishness.
First of all, the core problem is the prevalence of diabetes and the need for remedy, and if so in a community we should speak in numbers if we were to entertain Marxian curiosity of ideological line and political program. If in my community there are 3 of us I can’t hardly think it is a communal problem to mass produce a remedy for the three of us. Maybe we should move somewhere where a remedy exists, before we run out of insulin that is.
