Sorry for the late reply…

IMO, anarchism fails to confront the fact that there are malignant psychopathic in the world. As much as they claim not to fall into the Noble Savage trap, that was the essence of the book.

There will always be exploitative people, and assuming that a Return to Nature (regardless of the many other benefits to sustainability that I in no way want to impugn) will eliminate that is, in my view, somewhat naive.

Now THIS is an interesting topic! It’s also where I diverge from some who call themselves anarchist.

Anarchism itself says nothing on the topic. Anarchism is about society without rulers, that’s all. Everything else is some person’s POV, or some book, or some Redditor, etc.

I absolutely do not fail to confront the fact that there are malignant psychopathic people in the world. Here’s my views on this.

• Humans as a species have evolved to be a cooperative species

• Most humans are cooperative in most ways, if this were not true, leaving your house would be 1000x more frought with danger the world over.

• The near complete lack of ability to experience empathy is the defining quality of psychopathy

• Good and bad are actually easy to define in most cases. A bad act is one where someone causes suffering or is willing to cause suffering to others for gain. This is based only on 3 axioms – no religion or complex philosophy needed.

  • Life is desirable
  • Others can suffer just like I can
  • I don’t have any more right to cause suffering in others than they do to cause me suffering

• Like any personality trait in any species, empathy probably follows a “normal distribution”, i.e. some people have too little empathy, others too much, most people have about the right amount needed to thrive in the groups we evolved in.

• Effective anarchism (i.e. a lack of coercive rulers, not a lack of a respected non-coercive leader) was probably a common, maybe even the most common societal organization prior to “civilization”. Anarchism was the norm for thousands of years.

• This effective anarchism way of life was sustainable for so long despite the existence of psychopaths – because these tribes probably dealt with their psychopaths as they were not prevented from doing so by a state.

A person who committed a serious offense against the tribe, or that got the tribe in trouble with another may have been killed, and that death seen as necessary for the well being of the tribe.

The problem with the state, being a monopoly on violence, is that it prevents people and groups from protecting themselves and often doesn’t itself hold offenders responsible. The psychopath that might have been killed in the past, maybe even by their own tribe for everyone’s well being is now often protected by the law. Instead of putting psychopaths in prison, the state typically puts people in prison that are just doing what’s needed to get by or have grown to be fucked up (nurture vs nature) because of the fucked up community they were forced to grow up in due to others hoarding resources and oppressing their population. That is to say, I don’t think your typical criminal is a bad person deep down, they’ve been put into a situation where being a “bad actor” is a logical position.

–> For anarchism to work, we have to realize that while 99% of people are good and cooperative enough to make things work, the 1% of psychopaths must be dealt with and prevented from gaining power or we end up where we are now. Currently, our system tends to put psychopaths in position as our leaders.

–> Any system or ideology that claims that a huge portion of humanity is bad, rather than mislead, is a non-starter. What are we gonna do, purge?