Scarcity-in-the-small
Scarcity-in-the-small
Discussions about scarcity and anarchism that I've seen online seem to always talk about "scarcity in the large", i.e. how does an anarchist society allocate production, food, labour, materials etc.
I've a question about anarchism and scarcity in the small. Say, a really nice location, eg. a breezy location in a very hot climate, or the room with the nice windows in the community centre, or Bag End at the top of the hill. Say, an anarchist community has decided to use the location for purpose X, but a minority wants to use it for purpose Y. Maybe an even smaller minority wants to do Z, and a bunch of other people have their own little ideas about how to use it. Some are transient and could be accommodated (you get it on Tuesdays 5-7) but others might not be ("our sculpture project needs to dry out in that specific spot for the next 4 months, we know it blocks the view but it's the only place the breeze hits just right!") or could be contradictory (the siesta people vs the loud backgammon players can't both use the spot at high noon) or antagonistic (the teenagers who want to party late vs the new parents who need quiet for the babies). And dis-association doesn't really help here because that's the nice spot for many kilometers around or there is literally no way to create another beach for our small island community because that's literally the only place on the island where sand exists, so we can't just off and leave. (* Many of these examples are imagining a hot summer in an anarchist Greece, sorry it's almost August.)
It looks to me like a simple non-life-and-death scenario like this could potentially completely poison and destroy a community and in the face of that it would be the little death of anti-authoritarian organizing. Like yea, when life and death matters are at hand, anarchists will band together and conquer the bread. But petty small-scale little shit where it's managing annoyances and small grievances, I don't think non-authoritarian decision making can solve. And I suspect it's crap like this that has killed off many intentional communities and experiments or made them veer away from non-hierarchical, anti-authoritarian organizing.
Have anarchist thinkers seriously thought of this?
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Your description doesn't give me any elements of a community that is trying to organize itself with horizontal principles. It sounds more like random people put together for some reason, trying to solve individual problems, without any sense of good will.
So this doesn't seem to me like a scarcity problem.
The vast majority of communities are exactly random collections of people. Even a carefully put together intentional community will become random 1-2 generations down the line.
Just to clarify that I talk about randon people in contrast to people who consciously want to be part of a community with horizontal organization principles.
It is true that children don't necessarily take on the convictions of their parents, but communities are build around structures of common purpose (and not primarily family bonds). What you seem to have in mind is a typical modern suburb with no shared purpose, which is pretty much the opposite of what anarchists think of as communities.
I'm literally thinking of Greek island villages.
And? Look at the economic structures on these islands. They are in no way sustainable and largely depend on outside inputs like tourism or agri-industrial projects that only survive because of EU regulatory protection and outside investors that prey on that. There is very little shared purpose left there.
I don't know where you're going with this. People grow up and live in the places that they do, in a network of friends, relatives and extended family. Before becoming "human capital", the only people that traditionally uproot themselves to leave and intentionally join a community would be monastics.
I haven't lived in a suburb, but even in cities there are neighborhoods with their community and extended social networks. That's the common complaint against gentrification for example, that it uproots urban communities.
Living somewhere just because you grew up there is not some byproduct of capitalism, it's what humans do.
the only people that traditionally uproot themselves to leave and intentionally join a community would be monastics.
This is not supported by the historical record, people in the past have been much more mobile than you think.
Living somewhere just because you grew up there is not some byproduct of capitalism, it’s what humans do.
And it is secondary to the economic conditions. If you live all your life under alienating economic conditions then you have little shared purpose left and there is no such thing as communities where you live.
And it is secondary to the economic conditions. If you live all your life under alienating economic conditions then you have little shared purpose left and there is no such thing as communities where you live.
I don't think this is accurate. It can be, at specific places, but given that alienating economic conditions is the literally the norm everywhere, I don't buy the argument that the world is a place without communities without shared purpose. On the contrary, some of the most vibrant communities are those created by exploited working people. Anyway, I'm not sure what the argument here is any more, thanks for your answer regardless.