Yes, that's a common view among several schools of anarchism. Reading Makhno's criticism of democracy, and his alternate proposals, which to my eyes seemed to be a railroad towards dictatorship, made me realize that I was not an anarchist but a social-democrat. Which is often a slur in anarchist circles.
A society where democracy can not work because it would be "corrupted by bourgeoisie" has even lower chances of making anarchism work IMHO.
Anarchists generally criticize representative democracy, not democracy in general. Makno's own experiments in the territory that his forces controlled were basically a form of very distributed and localized council democracy.
Having read the proposals he made after his defeat, his "Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists" [1] I disagree. He just talks about democracy, indeed talking mostly about representative democracy, but the system he proposes has no voting of any sort.
Actually, reading it reminded me of another such book I had read a while ago. Qaddafi's Green Book, where he lays down his ideal system, the Jamahiriya.
On paper, it is pretty cool: every matters of state are decided by local assemblies that can call for a higher level assembly when deemed necessary. But devil is in the detail. The Guide has a final say, in a bit of an unspecified way, exactly how Maknho stays pretty vague on the whole decision process.
I am sure that if Qaddafi had been defeated in his youth, many anarchists would be musing about this system in the way we do Makhno's.
Note that I was referring to the actual practices in the Free Territory, not Makhno's theorizing. The local councils did run things in most communities.
Qaddafi's green book is just a rehash of the council democracy. But yes, it can certainly be implemented differently - just as you can have a multi-party representative democracy on paper that is a totalitarian dictatorship in practice, as in e.g. DPRK.
I think better examples of functional democracy along these lines can be seen in the Zapatista-controlled areas in Mexico, and especially in Rojava/AANES. Rojava is interesting because they have an actual written social contract that captures the details of the electoral system, which is not very typical for such forms of governance: https://www.scribd.com/document/441234886/Social-Contract-of...
I think Anarchism is ultimately but radical direct democracy with strong emphathis on the principle of subsidiarity.
A paraphrase of a bit from the Makhno article on Wikipedia:
""" The first Congress of the Confederation of Anarchists Groups issued five main principles:
1) Rejection of all political parties
2) Rejection of all forms of dictatorships (including the dictatorship of the proletariat, viewed by Makhnovists and many anarchists of the day as a term synonymous with the dictatorship of the Bolshevik communist party)
3) Negation of any concept of a central state
4) Rejection of a so-called "transitional period" necessitating a temporary dictatorship of the proletariat
5) Self-management of all workers through free local workers' councils """
There may be a discussion to be had about these principles, but they certainly do not sound like "a railroad towards dictatorship" to me.
"Democracy is one of the forms of bourgeois capitalist society.
[...]
As a result, democracy is merely one variety of bourgeois dictatorship, its fictitious political freedoms and democratic guarantees are a smokescreen designed to conceal its true identity. " [1]
In his "constructive part" [2] he carefully avoids talking about assemblies or votes. It is clear he does not know really how to solve conflicts and just hope none will arise.
He also mentions the need of an army to have a unity of command, but just specifies this must be decided quickly, without giving clear advice on how to do that without dreaded centralization nor democracy.
Given that the "Platform" document was written with anarchists in mind as the target group, maybe the authors just took it for granted? It seems to be more about strategy and tactics than about ideological basics. Which makes sense, as it is an attempt to address and explain the anarchist movement's failures during the Russian revolution outside Ukraine.
One can claim anything about the goal of a democracy. Politicians are particularly good at "selling" it to the public with all sorts of marketing strategies.
In practice I think it's hard to fight that the ultimate goal of any form of government is to make the government itself persist.
I’m very curious as to how you define “work[ing]” in the context of a currently operating government. It would seem that democracies all over the world “work” for quite a few more people by ratio than other forms of government.
I’m also quite curious as to if you have alternatives; it’s all well and good to bash democracy, especially in the current moment, but are there better realistic alternatives? Are you advocating for revolution?
They certainly don't work for me. I have to pay something between 20-80% of all my income and financial gains to governments despite the fact I don't agree with anything they do, or with their existence. I never signed a contract with them agreeing on that sort of taxation, and if I don't pay the taxes the government imposes on me I can have my property taken away from me, get arrested and even be assassinated. I also have to comply with laws that are created out of some old man's ass, "respect" the police and the military otherwise they will kidnap, torture, or kill me, etc.
That said, I don't advocate for anything, nor I think revolutions or reforms would "fix" a centralized system that persists on the basis of the monopoly of force, such as the so-called "democratic" governments we have all over the world.
What I think, however, is that those centralized systems will inevitably and progressively fail due to their own inefficiencies, and as the transaction costs [1] diminish. As that happens, the centralized state's functions will leak into the decentralized market, until the state loses its ability to hold a monopoly of force.
I think we're a few decades away from seeing the end of the governments and states as we have today. The "alternative" will be a free, decentralized market that will emerge progressively as the governments disappear. We don't have to do anything "special" for that to happen. Just sit down and observe.
And who prevents the criminal or military leaders from taking over once the governments fail in your scenario? Are you saying there won't be anyone around who attempts to seize power? That isn't how things have played out in areas of the world where central governments have failed.
The more likely scenario is that we're headed toward a world state. That's the direction civilization has been heading since nation states and regional trade became a thing.
A third scenario (if cooperative globalism doesn't work out) is currently democratic countries gradually converting into totalitarian states in order to compete with China, who seem to be clearly demonstrating that Totalitarianism Done Right >> Democracy (and yes, with this approach comes greater systemic risk, but such risks can and are routinely ignored).
A fourth (ideal) way is a true New Enlightenment - true as opposed to (for example) what globalism is often mistakenly considered, imho due to hardly anyone thinking in a disciplined and critical manner, but rather rationalizing their personal in-group ideology.
That again disregards the fact that those regimes have to be sustained economically.
See, no matter what people believe, which gods they pray for, what ideologies they follow and how they manage their lives, they inevitably increase the means of production. Even if a given person is dumb and useless, that person would still prefer cheaper goods to more expensive ones, therefore generating economic signals for investments in production improvements.
Increased means of production mean lower transaction costs. Lower transaction costs generate decentralization. Decentralization progressively make centralized regimes not viable.
> That again disregards the fact that those regimes have to be sustained economically.
I don't really see how I'm disregarding that. I mean, sure, I didn't explicitly include a list of necessary pre-requisistes, of which this is just one, but I don't see why either of my scenarios are not possible because of economic constraints. I'm totally open to hearing any reasoning behind this belief though.
> See, no matter what people believe, which gods they pray for, what ideologies they follow and how they manage their lives, they inevitably increase the means of production.
Unless I'm misunderstanding (am I?), this suggests no examples can be found in history of ideologies being adopted that result in decreased production.
> Increased means of production mean lower transaction costs. Lower transaction costs generate decentralization. Decentralization progressively make centralized regimes not viable.
Sometimes, maybe. Many things are possible, this theory is just one of them.
"China, who seem to be clearly demonstrating that Totalitarianism Done Right >> Democracy"
I wish that was not the main take-away people had. China has a very unique economic system that does not require totalitarianism: free-market capitalism with many public actors especially in finance.
China could be democratic and maintain such a system. I'd like to see it tried somewhere else.
They could retain their micro economic system, sure, but could they retain their superior social harmony? Of course, it's possible, but totalitarianism (censorship, cultural cleansing, etc) is far from irrelevant.
And what about their ability to rapidly implement strategic policy initiatives, including displacing massive numbers of people against their will? Unfortunate for the individuals, but incredibly beneficial for the group, compounding over time.
The idea that "if a government fails, another government will take its place" only makes sense in an environment where centralization is viable economically.
There's this idea that "because things have been playing out in a way, they'll keep being played out this way", despite the fact the increased means of production (call it "technology") change things fundamentally all the time.
It's very expensive to maintain the military. It's only possible nowadays as governments can impose taxation and due to the currency monopoly they can print as much money as they want to fund that sort of self-preserving activity, which is technically called "debt spending".
As decentralization spreads over, the management costs of taxation skyrocket, and the currency monopoly disappears. Without that governments can't fund their own activities. Which means they'll shrink progressively. As time goes by, they'll start failing at providing law and order, and private companies start providing protection, insurance and private arbitration services to people. Further down the road those companies in their aggregate will start protecting people from the state itself. The state then either becomes a company which some people voluntarily contract services from, or it vanishes.
I'm pretty sure someone would say that the "evil companies" would then merge and become another government, but that's only if that person missed the whole point: in the long term centralization is not economically viable, and in a non-regulated free market environment monopolies are not really possible. As those companies are voluntarily contracted by people, an attempt to fight their customers would be catastrophic as they'd unrecoverably lose their business to competitors.
A society where democracy can not work because it would be "corrupted by bourgeoisie" has even lower chances of making anarchism work IMHO.
We HAVE to make democracy work.