Does Shen-nung Idealism = Anarchism?

hello, and welcome!

well, my view is that this society had certain features of anarchism, although also some contradictions. (it's hard to tell from a short description.) i can see why this society appeals to you. (though i'm very skeptical about the part about living to 150, and that there is absolutely no conflict.) if you're attracted to this type of social set up, i think you will also find the ideals and goals of anarchism attractive. there's overlap.

my guess is you probably need to learn more about anarchism before making your mind up about how you feel about it or whether you think you're an anarchist or not, but i'll bet that the more you learn about anarchism the more you like it.

i suggest reading pieces of "An Anarchist FAQ" (it's extremely long, so don't expect to read the whole thing!) it's organized into various sections and subsections, which is great to find exactly the questions/answers you're looking for.

here's the main link
http://www.infoshop.org/AnAnarchistFAQ

Welcome Highlander!

I would echo all of Ultraviolets points and suggestions.

I think that what you've described sounds like a very horizontal and profoundly interesting ancient social set-up. However, I'm comfortable saying that this is not anarchism, though that is not my passing a negative judgement about the Shen-Nung set-up.

Anarchism as I understand it, is specifically a response to capitalism. As a theory and as a social movement it arose in industrial society. It aims to abolish capitalism and replace it with an industrial libertarian communism.

But, semantically, there is always an argument that "anarchy" just means "without hierarchy/rulers" and the Shen-Nung idealist society as you've described it, at least approaches that definition.

well said, boozeman!

highlander - where can i read some more about shen-nung? pre-capitalist societies with anarchistic features is one of my interests.

Not to sound to flippant or rude, but at the same time probably sounding incredibly so; there are very few first hand texts that are 5000 years old, even by 150 year old people.

Both ultra and Bozeman are right; what Highlander is describing isn't remotely a libertarian communist society.

Anarchism... Good word though, innit?

You can't say that in an anarchist society everyone must live in a local industrial economy though, any more than you can insist on yoga. No revolution that neglected agriculture could go very far either. Tao, anyone?

Well, I understand agriculture to be an industry, never said anything about insisting folks live in it, nor did I say the revolution can plough forward ignoring that gigantic and vital industry. . . ?

As for the folks who still hold on to this idea of "independence" post revolution through working some land somewhere. . .

In the US at present, so-called "off the grid" people are not really off of anything. Rather, they rely, just like the rest of us, on the vast social product of labour. There would very likely be this kind of person post rev, and if would serve them to recognize the fact and contribute to the common stores. Just cause you grow and can your own veggies does not somehow remove you from the interconnectedness of labour. If one think it does, and ones feels entitled to avoid any contribution to the communist society that produces all the things that make this so-called "independent" life so mysteriously easy, well, one is just a conceded ass. To these folks, I would be happy to tell em' that they had better find land with a nice deposit of obsidian.

One can say that that ancient society is anarchistic, but it's certainly not anarchist. As posters above already mentioned, anarchism is a historically specific political movement, not some timeless vague idea that can be applied anywhere and anytime. It grew as a response to the oppression of industrial capitalism by the working class.

To claim that that ancient society was anarchist is exactly why anarchism is always accused of being contradictory, always revolving around some abstract ideal, reactionary, and backwards looking. All of which is totally untrue if one took the time to learn about the history of anarchism.

Anarchism is forward looking to a (libertarian-)communist society. I do think we need to be careful when we say industrial. We certainly want a productively abundant society, and industry is definitely a means to get there, however some people have concerns about what impact current industry have on the environment.

I certainly agree with the entirety of your post sans the last part. I'm not in favour of pandering to the technophobic or avoiding the term because a few have associated it with smokestacks and blue overalls. Industry is the only way to have a productively abundant society for 7 billion.

Respectfully,

That quote is him defining a very abstract spiritualism of a sort, anarchist spirit, rather than anarchism itself.

there is really insignificant information about this Shen-nung Idealism to say if it is compatible to anarchism, it sounds like a myth, theres no info on how it is supposed to have been organized, but it apparently had a king, without whom the entire society collapsed, which indicate it was organized on fundamentally non anarchist (and hierarchical) lines. there is no mention of the relation ship between men women children etc. People where apparently required to do things like mediation. Theres no mention of the relationship to people outside this community, while with anarchism the freedom of all is of fundamental importance, so any anarchist community would spend significant effort helping people who lived else ware overthrow there ruling class. Come to think of it there is no mention of individual freedom at all, just the claim the people all did the same things, it sounds basically like the vary worst visions of communism

And quotes from famous anarchists are not an argument.

Highlander - a spade is a spade, a bucket is a bucket, and the hippy dippy fantasy world you're talking about is not anarchism just because you want it to be. Personally, I cant believe people have shown you the patience they have so far. You're hilarious. 150 year old people, my arse.

HG Wells? Are you kidding?

I think you are a hippy dippy fantasy!

You don't know shit about me.

Anarchism as a political theory grew from experience under capitalism, but if it's not timeless and universally applicable then what good is it after all?

H. G. Wells made some wonderful work - is this to be discounted on some notion of political incorrectness? Back to the future!

let's try to be nice to each other. on internet forums when there's disagreements it can be too easy to get snarky (or worse). but we all know that we need a mass movement to have a successful revolution. in our organizing work we're going to encounter people with ideas we disagree with, ideas we find bizarre or foolish... but in many cases these are going to be the very same people that we need as our comrades and allies. talking to each other like this is just going to push people away from anarchism, close their minds to it. when people feel welcome that enhances their interest and open mindedness to anarchism. it's the same thing with people who come to the internet forum. we should be honest in our critiques and disagreements when we have them, but kind and patient with them. (although highlander, you haven't exactly been kind and patient, either.)

how's THAT for being hippy dippy?

Yeah, like Webby, who at the beginning completely hated anarchism.

Anarchism, by inspirational facebook quotes.

I imagine it has something to do with the latter being an anarchist.

I have no big beef per se with the literary works of HG Wells, pretty good stories. The man himself had some pretty fruity ideas that, although much can be forgiven for the time and context he mused in, have been used by both left and right. The quotation that Highlander used starts off with a reference to race and is one sometimes used by the far right when they dribble on about übermensch, I'll try and dig it out, though tbh it isn't going to help. Highlander has come on here to teach the uninitiated.

"The way of nature has always been to slay the hindmost, and there is still no other way, unless we can prevent those who would become the hindmost being born. It is in the sterilization of failures, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies."

H. G. Wells
Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope, and Aims
The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. X, No. 1
July 1904

Sounding less like an anarchist now? Crazy old socialist with crazy old ideas more like.

Highlander,

Upon reviewing the thread, no one made this argument.

fwiw, I do have sympathy with the idea there are ideas and values that can be traced through different historical periods and societies, even if the way they're manifested is profoundly different depending on circumstances - industrial vs agrarian, or the way some such movements were/are explicitly religious while others explicitly anti-religious - and that anarchism can be seen in that wider vein. The basic idea that goods should be held in common, work done by those who are able and goods being distributed to those who need them, and an opposition to heirarchy, does seem to be a not unusual theme - elements of the peasant revolts in medieval Europe, for example, or figures like Mazdak, some interpretations of religious texts, etc. I don't really know enough about Shen-nung to be able to comment but I wouldn't per se rule out the idea that this could belong to the same category.

all class societies produce contradictions and conflicts, and sometimes proposed ways to resolve them can look remarkably similar despite the gap in time/distance.

But while it might be valid to point to common threads between these movements and anarchism, I think it's completely ahistorical and frankly silly to try and just group them all together as "anarchist" - as though there's some sort of universal "pure anarchism" connecting all sorts of geographically and historically disparate movements and thinkers together regardless of their actual circumstances. It also tends to result in focusing on some things (e.g. common ownership of the means of production) and leaving out a host of others (class, gender, race) - as though anything that seems a bit egalitarian or anti-authority is obviously "really anarchist". (doesn't Woodcock do this in one of his books?)

anarchism arose as a product of the struggle against capitalism and the desire for something better. if an anarchist society were to come about, I imagine that a: it wouldn't look like what we'd imagine now, and b: it would in turn create its own contradictions (ones we can't really envisage atm in anything but a hypothetical sense) - which would, in their turn, produce a struggle to move forward to something else. hence the part about it being "timeless" seeming a little strange - as though a movement born in a particular period in response to particular conditions is somehow part of a quasi-religious, universal, timeless "anarchist spirit" or whatever.

the other question is, well - so what? even if you could convincingly demonstrate that "Shen-nung = anarchism" all that would seem to indicate is that 5,000 years ago some people came to roughly similar conclusions. And then...?