I have a theory. (technically I have many but today I’m talking about this one.) Well actually it’s more of a visualization. As an anarchist I have spend a lot of time pondering on anarchist society and it’s relation to the archic one. This pondering led me to this scale. The Chaos-Order scale. It position political systems on a single point depending on the amount of chaos a society deems acceptable.
I decided to divide the scale into 4 sections. There could be more but i wanted clearly defined borders between them.
- Total chaos
- Anarchy
- Democracy
- Authoritarianism (Authy)
These sections are defined by clear boundaries (marked with #):
- The minimum required order for society
- Anarchy-Democracy border
- Democracy-Authorotarianism border
The arrows signify how every section can be entered.
It should be noted that anarchy and total chaos are separated by an impassable border. #1 The minimum order for society. This is because total chaos can only exists for a moment between archic systems collapsing and the formation of an extremely authoritarian society (The rule of violence). True anarchic systems should be immune to this collapse as it requires the complete breakdown of the social bonds between people.
The second border is the anarchy-democracy border. This border is defined by having any form of hierarchical society. It is passed when an anarchist revolutionary class takes control of the entire functioning of society or when an anarchic society collapses back into archy.
The third is the democracy-authy border. This is defined by having some form of democratic control over society. Essentially free elections. Most people should already be familiar with the concept.
Why post a graphic misrepresenting that?
How would you recommend displaying this graphic instead? horizontally? I guess it would work. This is just how I saw it in my mind so I drew it, and considering no-one else has commented I think most people get it.
Well, chaos will arise both from full freedom and full authoritarianism
But that’s not what this graph is presenting. It’s presents chaos as a lack of authority, and doesn’t acknowledge there can be too much authoritative control
Chaos should be at both ends of that bar
Are chaos and order not opposites of each other? If I make a scale from chaos to order should I not have complete order on one side and complete chaos on the other? Is that not how scales work?
order and disorder are opposites. But you’re right, chaos usually is very disordered. But this scale doesn’t go towards order, it goes towards authoritarianism. North Korea would be on that end
I guess that teaches me to not label both sides of my scale. It is meant to go from chaos to order, that’s why its called the chaos-order scale.
Is authoritarianism not complete societal order? A single vision of how the world should be enforced from above and preserved with bloodshed? Sounds like order to me.
Nop, I suppose the authority could enforce an amount of order. Like Iraq and North Korea do. But the social side of this can lead to quite a mess. Like in china, where they have to track people on an individual basis now
tracking people seems pretty orderly to me. After all the NSA does kinda same thing in the name of “catching terrorists” which for me reads as “stopping chaos” or “enforcing order among the population”.
and for me order and authoritarianism is the same thing. That’s why I put them at the same ends on the scale. Isn’t the point of supporting authorotarianism the sacrifice of personal liberty in exchange for societal stability/order.
When I see that kind of extreme approach, I see a response to disorder. One that makes people hide the issue, rather than fix it