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+1 vote
I'm an anarchist myself and I can't understand that what's wrong with globalization. Why anarchists are anti-global?
by
im not sure i even understand what many people mean by globalism. but as i understand it, globalism refers to the prioritization of a global "state" (i.e., government) over individual nation states. kind of the "one world government" idea. it should be self-evident why that would go against anarchist desires; anarchists are against all government. there is the additional issue of centralization vs localization. just my initial thoughts.
What I meant with Globalism was "Open borders and zero hindrance in the movement of people and goods across countries." Let's just suppose for a sec that entire world undergoes a revolution and people overthrow their governments. Now that all the countries in the world are anarchist, would dissolving borders and turning the whole world into one huge anarchist society be a bad idea? If yes, how so?

my personal opinion is that one single world-wide society would be a horrific idea. i find mass society (what you describe would be the ultimate embodiment of that) to be antithetical to (at least my own) anarchist ideas. that is because mass society requires homogenization, standardization, and forced (often false) unity; it is inseparable from the institutions of domination and control that have always accompanied it.

it is my thought that the only way humans will ever be able to experience the kind of freedom that i personally desire, is if they choose to exist in much smaller, completely voluntary, fluid and dynamic, autonomous groupings based on affinities of desire (not such abstractions as the geopolitical borders drawn around where one was born, what color one's skin is, or who one likes to have sex with). those groups would interact with other groups exactly if and when they all choose to.

as for "goods" moving anywhere, that is a function of economic systems. i would rather see such institutions gone from all human relations. without mass society, the need for such systems - and the related exploitation and accumulation of wealth and resources - would basically cease to exist. sure, some individuals (or small groups) may still try to prevent others from accessing the resources needed for survival; but without institutional authorities to protect them, they would almost certainly be challenged and ultimately prevented from doing so.

i think of globalization primarily as an economic term, taking hold via institutions like the IMF (international monetary fund) and the world bank, which create and control the monetary system that governments attempt to force people to use to survive. i hate it for that reason, and also for the other aspects funky@ and dot described.

if globalization meant the destruction of borders and states, and simply the ability of people to move freely from one place to another without government control....(to borrow a line from young frankenstein) that would be a different matter entirely.
to me, globalism and globalization have two different meanings. funkyanarchy described globalism while bornagainanarchist described globalization. it should be noted that in this era of globalization, border policy has been the strictest than perhaps any other era.

1 Answer

+1 vote
globalization means a few different things, from the specific, like the increasing spread of markets ( http://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/globalization.asp ), to the extremely general -- the idea that people around the world are becoming more and more similar (again, related to business and money making, a single but dramatic example is the death of so many languages around the world, while english and chinese become more and more normalized). for a certain age of anarchists, it means the special interest groups that are governmental agencies like WTO, WHO, the UN (at least the UN as the face of the US), etc.

the point of globalization is that the factors that influence our lives become more and more centralized, and so further and further away from our/individual influences. democracy involving millions of people is quite different from democracy involving a couple dozen people, for example.
by (53.1k points)
i like this answer.  i particularly appreciate the last paragraph.
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