IDK how Western anarchists think anything will be built. Are people supposed to just spontaneously self-organize to build solarpunk high speed rail?
the person in the commune who likes to build high-speed rail will do it in exchange for produce from the person who likes gardening. I’m not joking.
Anarchists don’t seem to put much thought into how their ideas will be translated into reality. The most complex organization they can envision is basically a street gang that paves roads instead of dealing drugs. As based as it sounds it’s clearly inefficient yet anarchists seem more interested in vibes and less interested in results.
as long as no one is telling them what to do, that is the most morally important aspect i’ve come to find
This applies to just about any left wing organizing effort, at least in Eastern Europe.
All of them will have been doing some real praxis. Either it’s theory, organizing protests, running food kitchens, other sort of mutual-aid etc.
Each of them wants to define what Marxism really is, assuming they even get that far to read marx and maybe whole 5 people here. Each year they throw more books at me and I have entertained them and respectably read their books.
Have they read my recommendations? No. They’d rather go debate with a liberal. Our governments have been stealing money from pension funds, medical funds, they’ve been stealing and plundering while we do nothing about it.
And I have never seen a leftist group here try to do anything to secure those funds instead. They deal with the consequences of consequences, but never take it a step further. Just like how they will blame USSR for collaborating with Nazi’s but ignore the fact that Western allies pushed them into that position.
Thus I have come to my conclusion, after years of both practical experience (real world interactions) and theory, they have conditioned us into what’s known and Splitting in psychology, we have Extremes, but we don’t have that much Radicals.
The difference between a Radical and Extremist mindset is that they are both willing to make huge amounts of sacrifices, but one of them is grounded in reality while the other is metaphysical. A radical can shake hands with their enemy and then come out of there uncompromised. An extremist will kill all hostages to save a few.
Anarchists don’t seem to put much thought into how their ideas will be translated into reality.
Is that true, or is that just what you assume about anarchists based on internet memes? Have you actually read anarchist theory?
It’s an observation I’ve made from interacting with anarchists.
I love my anarchist comrades but they don’t have theory. Their idealism is why I moved away “Left-wing” Communism and toward Marxism-Leninism.
they don’t have theory
Now that’s just an unacceptably ignorant view.
No investigation, no right to speak.
I’m not talking anarchism - which does have theory - I’m talking anarchists.
Modern anarchists in the West, specifically.
I think the real problem is that half the people here, including said anarchists, have only seen the memes. Let’s throw books at each other for the next seventy years dammit!
Yep, 20 billions people shifting the industry and the agriculture during the spanish civil war was definitely just a big street gang. You seems to be misinformed
Which lead to insane declines in heavy and light industry output. Which lead to the republican forces being without heavy weapons and most of the anarchist areas falling without a fight. If I were a more cynical man, I’d say anarchists were outright sabotaging the republican war effort against the fascists.
I’d like to see you numbers, because every sources I saw show that Spain was focus on agriculture and lack of those industries before the revolution. But I don’t see the link with solarpunk anymore; could you develop ?
remind me who won the Spanish Civil War
Anarchist experiment last longer than 4 years challenge: impossible
You point was : anarchist won’t organize to change the economy. This is a counter example If you have argument, we could develop. You know, like marxists are supposed to do
my point was anarchists don’t think big and was in reference to modern anarchists in the West, not whatever anarchists 100 years ago in Spain were doing
IWW and ICL is definitely “thinking big”. However this is not the main war western anarchists do organize. I do agree that their is an issue in organizing at bigger scale, including internationally. I don’t know if this issue is bigger through anarchists movement than in population. We working to make this thing change. That’s why I’m interested in constructive critics.
The only constructive criticism I can offer is to follow the examples set by Marxist-Leninist orgs but at that point you should probably just become Marxist-Leninists.
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Anarchists being the left version of libertarians is a hill I will die on.
Left-wing Libertarians/Libertarian Socialists are pretty much indistinguishable from Anarchists.
They do love to call themselves left-libertarians.
‘Libertarian’ was practically synonymous with (left-wing) anarchism before rightists co-opted it.
Still the ideology of both those isn’t much more complex than : “big gov bad, no rules no masters no toilet paper”
no toilet paper
“Give me le bidet or give me death!”
Honestly, there was not much to coopt. Rightists just looked at the contradictions inherent in anarchism and deemed them awesome instead of a good reason to rethink this anarchism thingy.
Libertarian literally was just the euphemism for anarchist when calling yourself the later could get you arrested.
It was intentionally reclaimed when it fell into obscurity by i want to say Rothbard I think who was angry liberal meant a social progressive and not what we now think a libertarian is.
I thought libertarianism originally was 1700s rich kids trying to find an ideological excuse to give their chamber maid syphilis.
That’s being a Libertine
I stand corrected, though I do see some similarities.
Anarkids: Let’s dismantle the state and return to small localized productions instead of large industrialized labor.
Disabled people, the elderly, people who live in remote rural regions with insufficient arable land: 😕
the power of friendshipAnd gifts!
Here have a free hip replacement!
I’m the commune orthopaedic surgeon this week. I make those decisions by community vote.
I’m not an anarchist, but a lot of people here are misrepresenting anarchism. Anarchists don’t reject coordination or planning, only hierarchical state control. Large infrastructure would be built by federated councils, unions, and communes, with common plans and technical bodies coordinated by accountable, recallable delegates. Central coordination without a state hierarchy is entirely possible.
My disagreement with anarchism is different: I think only a state with a strong coercive apparatus can survive sustained imperial pressure and capitalist encirclement.
Central coordination without a state hierarchy is entirely possible.
Its not a state, its a insert extremely convoluted term that does everything a state does
These gentlemen think when they have changed the names of things, they have changed the things themselves. That is how these profound thinkers mock the whole world.
- Engels
In fairness, a lot of socialist theory has a distinction between a “state” and a “government”. The former is the repressive apparatus (police, army and ideological state aparatuses) and the latter consists of the civilian administration which deals with centralised organisation of labor/economy. This is why marx could describe a “stateless society” as developed-communism.
Even the non-repressive function of states need hierarchies. All administration needs specialists, managers, organization.
Think of a hospital, or a large-scale engineering project. There is no conceivable way these could be run without hierarchies and centralized control.
Oh yeah the hierarchy stuff has always been out of control with anarchists. But anarchism itself is just stateless society. The rest, anarchists disagree on heavily.
But in that case we again land on square one problem of pushing the communism button instantly.
Yeah. I’m an ML
And if inevitably the projects reach outside of the commune line into another commune line, how would the intercommunal council be called lol. At what point do you just have a state without calling it a state?
You can call a federation of communes a “state” if you want. Anarchists are not against this kind of “state”. As long as power flows bottom-up by delegation and recall.
Sounds a lot like democratic centralism.
The “delegation and recall” part of it? Totally! The “vanguard party” and “DotP” parts? Not so much.
A Vanguard Party is just the most dedicated and ideologically advanced people working together. It doesn’t have to call itself a party at all.
DotP is the state machine being in the hands of the proletarian class. If one accepts the concept of classes, that should be a nonissue.
I’m just answering a poster saying anarchism is a lot like democratic centralism. Some parts are similar (delegation and recall), others are not at all (vanguard party, dotp)
Lol then I’ll ask the age old question of how do you expect to protect your revolution with no vanguard or DoTP? How do you stop the systemic issue of racism without an actual system to suppress it? That was the chief reason as to why I thought anarchism was silly.
how do you expect to protect your revolution with no vanguard or DoTP?
This is literally what I wrote in my first comment:
My disagreement with anarchism is different: I think only a state with a strong coercive apparatus can survive sustained imperial pressure and capitalist encirclement.
sorry i’m not good at telling tone and maybe i’m just not smart and not proficient at theory but is this not like the soviet system
Early Soviets maybe, before war communism, for like less than a year… There was a reason anarchists tried to assassinate Lenin as a counterrevolutionary.
mmm yeah thats true about its changes throughout ussr history but either way the idea of from the bottom going to top governance is something characteristic of most AES innit? genuine question
Definitely!
Yeah, you don’t know what Anarchism is I guess, and that’s fine. The media has made you believe a certain idea on purpose. It’s important to recognize this though and learn.
Anarchism is not “no government.” I’d argue government is required for anarchism to function. Instead, it’s “no hierarchy.” You don’t put people in positions of authority and leave them there to let them cement their control. Sometimes you do need a leader, but it needs to cycle. Often it could just be an organization where the members vote to decide the direction though, no leader required.
No one expects spontaneous organization. That’s what the media wants you to think Anarchism is. No, it’s structured organizations, but designed to not put some people above others.
Edit: You’ve got to love this community. You try to provide information, and you get downvoted for it. No comments disagreeing or anything. It’s purely just “you didn’t lie to support my idiology, so you get a downvote.” If you think I’m wrong, leave a comment explaining why. If you just downvote then you prove me right.
Sometimes you do need a leader, but it needs to cycle.
Sounds authoritarian to me. A leader, whether they’re voted on or not, or whether there are term limits or not, means there is a hierarchy.
Most importantly, how do you convince any other anarchists that this is not a hierarchy? Because as they always do, they will call you authoritarian.
You’re pretending like all communists, as an example, agree on how everything should be run. Of course there are issues that need to be sorted out. There always are. That’s not the point. The point is that the “no government” image of Anarchism is purely propoganda and has nothing to do with actual Anarchist theory.
We asked you to describe a “non-authoritarian government without hierarchies or leaders”, and you mentioned term limits and voting for representatives, features that exist even in capitalist dictatorships like the US and UK.
You only asked me how to convince other Anarchists to accept that some form of leadership isn’t authoritarianism. Also, I didn’t even mention voting or term limits. I mentioned leadership, where it’s needed, needs to cycle. This doesn’t even imply voting. Stop making shit up and saying I didn’t answer it. There are a lot of solutions out there. If you care, you can look into it. I’m not spending hours listing all possible solutions to vague questions that aren’t asked in good faith.
You sound like one of those people who go “communism can’t work because…” and then give some stupid reason it can’t work. It’s not worth discussing because they aren’t actually arguing in good faith the answers exist, and they’re only against something because they’re idiologically against it, not because they actually understand it.
I enjoy a bit of anarchist dunking but at the end of the day I see us as allies against a very imposing enemy so, personally, am not very interested in contesting anarchist theory. I will say though that your characterization of a largely ML community as accepting media narratives is probably the least charitable way you could have approached this disagreement. Then again, you were coming into an uncharitable take so I’m not holding it against you.
Allies
This, I second that. Excluding theMilei types of the “anarchist” right, of course (in truth they are turbocapitalists).
I keep thinking of Durruti in the Spanish Civil War. Someone who fights fachos deserves respect in my view.
The debate around what future is the best communism, if Lenin-style or ancom, is largely academic. Top-bottom and bottom-top politics are two sides of the same dialectic (socialism vs communism). It needs to be solved dialectically, but only after the Trumps of the century have been buried in the dumpster of history.
Therefore, thinking from historical materialism, I prefer to think of anarchism as part of a socialist or leftist tradition and not as an ideal society. The first is useful (Durruti), the second is political fiction. Fun but fantastical.
Media meaning movies and everything else. Where else do people hear about what Anarchism is? Clearly not from theory. Take it however you want, but media dictates what we know until we look further ourselves. If someone has an opinion of Anarchism (or whatever else) that doesn’t match reality but matches the portrayal by the media, I think it’s reasonable to assume that’s where it’s coming from.
Also, I didn’t say ML. I was referring to this particular person (and anyone else who shares an identical view too, obviously).
And yes, we’re allies. Leftists want to divide leftists constantly. We’re trying to do the same things. There’s far too much “purity testing” and needing to believe identical things or being outcast. Not just here, but many leftist spaces.
Same argument they use as to why Cuba’s lgbt legislature is actually bad. Someone from the DSA actually used that argument when justifying their decision to talk to gusanos in Cuba.
@Frogmanfromlake [none/use name] How does that work?
