If you take their theory at face value, correct. If you observe their attitudes and actions, you see that they don’t really care about implementing those theories. They only discuss them to give themselves a veneer of moral superiority.
Stalin didn’t lift the proletariat out of poverty; he merely starved and murdered all the peasants who didn’t join his party. He didn’t liberate the masses, he implemented a highly oppressive surveillance/police state.
The average anarchist will be the first to try to bully someone into complying with their preferred systems of social order. They only want there to be no government so that nothing can stop them from forcing everyone else to conform to their will.
That’s what I mean by “covert” fascist. Nominally leftist, practically not.
Equating anarchists to fascists is genuinely in the top five most stupid fucking political takes I have ever heard in my life. What the fuck do you think anarchists want force on you?
“Fuck these anarchists, they want to get rid of hierarchy and government so I won’t have a boot to suck the polish off of.” Is what you fucking sound like. The comm is for shitting on tankies. Anarchists are not tankies. Tankie does not mean leftist, it means authoritarian communist.
Anarchists aren’t tankies, no. But a shocking amount of them, on Lemmy at least, cosy up with Tankies and even argue in favour of authoritarian states, or defend them. From my experience, the average anarchist hates the liberal more than the tankie, despite the latter being in direct opposition to their principles.
Yes, and I actively distance myself from them. Its why I moved from dbzer0 to quokk.au and from Lemmy to Piefed. Anarchists who cosy up to MLs are naive and fail to learn from a hundred years of history. Anarchism is just as incompatible with statism and authority as it is with capitalism. That is not to say I wont work with liberals and marxists, just that I would never trust them.
Its scary fighting back. You want allies, and many of them so the odds dont feel so impossible. Its hard not to fall into the thinking that capitalism is the bigger threat, so we should work together against the common enemy. “We’ll figure out which communism is best after the revolution” is what I often hear. Issue is, looking at history, we get backstabbed before we get to see the end of the revolution. In the end though, its hard not to end up trusting those you spend time working with.
Succinctly said. Personally, I think communists will have a better chance of achieving true communism™ by cosying with liberals and democracy, suggesting socialist and universal systems, pensions, healthcare, transport – Systems that most democratic nations already have implemented.
It’s telling that China, the de facto “communist” state, which isn’t exactly Marxist, lacks some of these universal systems, such as healthcare and worker rights and of course, the class disparity.
What I mean is that I don’t think an immediate, instantaneous uprising is absolutely necessary to achieve these concepts.
I think anarchists have more in common with communists, the issue is that the kind of communists that dominate the spaces are Marxist-Leninists who are the problem. I would be much more inclined to trust a council communist or a luxemburgist than I am a liberal or an ML. The reason being that (good) statist communists at least agree with anarchists on needing to abolish private property and capitalism, but disagree overmatters regarding the state. Liberals still believe in both capitalism and the state. I do not see a situation where liberals would ever allow anarchists to exist outwardly. I do not see it with MLs either. But I could see a very small chance of it happening if democratic communists (like council communists and luxemburgists) were the dominant force in statist radical left circles. Unfortunately though they are not. So unfortunately anarchists are pretty isolated for allies.
Do you think anarchism is even possible without an apocalypse? It’s very telling that, throughout history, there’s been no long-lasting anarchist community, unless you consider nomadic towns and villages anarchist.
There will never be a time where principled anarchists are not also called “tankies” by liberals. If you believe in the use of revolutionary violence and the defense of a revolution, you will be called a “tankie.”
To me it means liberals will side with fascists when push comes to shove. I wont fail to recognize that there are examples of liberals resisting fascism, but you also have many more instances where they enable, defend, or outright join fascists. Hitler drew a lot of inspiration from the US’s Jim Crow laws, and Hitler was chosen as New York Times Person of the year. The social democrats of Weimar Germany used proto-fascist to eradicate a communist revolution. The Weimar Republic is who put Hitler in power. The Kingdom of Italy as well allowed Mussolini into power. You also have situations like Pinochet and Franco. Pinochet being put into power by the US, and Franco’s fascist government being left untouched and allowed to exist.
Wonderful graphs, thank you. But how can you ensure that the state, which now has unopposed power, didn’t simply lie about how much they have? Personally I find it telling that those in state power never walk the streets of the peasants or live in the same houses, no, they have their palaces and mansions and armed military guards and personal army protecting them, and you’re telling me there’s income equality there?
Oh, I’m sure all that income equality was so beneficial to all the victims who died in the holodomor and other atrocities committed by the soviet union.
Also, try using a color scheme that doesn’t burn the eyes. I’m not giving myself a migraine just so you can lick soviet boots.
By the way, I’m not against socialism; I’m against tankies. You would know the difference if you were well-versed in “theory,” wouldn’t you?
every commie/anarchist I know IRL, and I’ve known quite a few, are HUGE bullies/assholes, and they tend to only be friends with people they have control over or can intimidate into submission to them. They HATE people who are independent of their mentality and character assassinate them.
It’s the typical use of high minded ideals to justify their shitty and hypocritical personal behavior.
That’s really more of what I’ve seen in the communist communities rather than anarchists.
But they too have a tendency of being all or nothing.
The ones who demand “social order” truly aren’t anarchist anyway. The whole point of anarchy is to approach an egalitarian community that rejects the idea of unearned authority.
Genuinely curious. How do true anarchists propose to prevent crime syndicates from gaining power and becoming a de facto government, committing extortion, racketeering, and human trafficking?
Or are they just running on the assumption that after the collapse of society, people’s appetites for wealth, power, and influence will simply evaporate?
wishful thinking mostly. it’s a form of escapism/fantasizing about a better future, rather than actually dealing with the complex problems of ones current reality.
just like a lot of poor people gamble their disposable income in the hope they will become rich, because saving it and investing it is too abstract/difficult of a concept for them. and the momentary hope/high of the activity is provides immediate gratification.
where as richer people see gambling as a leisure activity, they don’t see it as a path to riches. they understand getting richer requires saving their income and investing it and waiting for the payout 10-20 years in the future when those investments double/triple in value.
I mean, I was super into communist/anarchistic when I was a teenager. Then I went to college and realized the world is way more complex/chaotic than anything those theories can cope with, and most theory is really. But generally I prefer theories that acknowledge the basic truths of reality and don’t pretend there is a ideal form of anything.
Sometimes I see people say stuff like “Anyone who says ‘the situation is more complex than that’ is just using it as a cop out because they don’t want to face the solution”
And I’m like, can we not normalize seeking simple solutions to complex problems? That’s partly what got us here today, and every “simple solution” that people try only ends up adding another layer of complexity to the problem for someone else to try to figure out later.
Anyone who thinks the world and its problems aren’t complex is too ignorant to be in a position to demand everyone accept their simplistic solutions.
Yes, but those people are also the ones most prone to violence. Because rather than acknowledge ea complex reality (and feel dumb/inadequate) they would rather use force to compel others to agree with them.
Hence why ‘implementation’ of simplistic theories into a government… comes with a big helping mass murder, incarceration, and a police state.
I don’t like a lot of the self-proclaimed anarchists for that specific reason. They give the rest of us a really bad look. They miss the whole point of being anti-authoritarian, anti-heirchical, anti-coercisive, and anti-capitalist.
I understand why they are that way, I’m like 99% sure it’s a neurodivergent thing (black-and-white thinking, rejection of authority, failure to recognize social norms, we pretty much all do it to some degree, and some are much more obvious than others).
Like a doctor is an authority on health. Why? Because they earned it. They put their livelihood on the line by licensure and risk to avoid malprat. Governments where only a select few are voted for and the rest of the representation is all because of Republic stances rather than democratic ones are not deserving of authority.
Also, it might be that the anarchists you have met are not anarchists at all. It sounds much more like the communists I know.
Like a doctor is an authority on health. Why? Because they earned it.
If I were to design a novel political system, there would be privileged places for PhD holders. Political philosophy, political science, history, sociology, etc. I’m not quite certain of the mechanism of selection, whether they’re elected or appointed or something else. Perhaps there would be a direct pipeline from university faculties to the upper-echelons of government. Enough to fill a cabinet with a representative from each department, at least. The departments and agencies would be run by people who spent their lives gaining expertise in their respective fields.
Maybe the public could still elect a head of state, but they would have a more ceremonial role as a figurehead (like the President of Ireland). And the chief of state would be a prime minister. The legislative branch would be parliamentary, with proportional representation.
I say this because, I recognize that the current system in the US is ass. It had some good ideas, for an early iteration of a democratic-republic, but it’s been a few centuries of learning and some things could certainly be done better.
But just because this system is ass, doesn’t mean all systems are inherently ass. There has to be some means of organizing society to keep the gears turning and preventing everything from breaking down into disorder and chaos.
For the record, I’m totally in favor of the workers seizing the means of production, but it doesn’t have to be done violently. If the ultimate outcome is worker’s unions taking over in place of boards of investors, and running former corporations as co-operative enterprises where workers keep most of the value of their labor, and the rest goes to public coffers to fund social programs and civic infrastructure that benefit everybody; if that’s the goal, then it can be done without shedding a drop of blood. Only, the right people need to be in power to make that happen.
Hey, probably don’t blame it 99% on neurodivergence. I’m autistic, and why I do reject authority and struggle with social norms, I don’t see people and views in black and white.
it might be that the anarchists you have met are not anarchists at all. It sounds much more like the communists I know.
I can think of one in particular, a very arrogant and loud-mouthed, self-proclaimed anarchist, who if he had his way would force everyone to be vegan.
I understand animal rights, and I myself have been vegetarian for a few years. But if he’s truly an anarchist, then how does he expect to enforce veganism on everyone? Just seems cognitively dissonant…
For that matter, how do anarchists plan to stop racists and homophobes from doing racist and homophobic things? It just seems short-sighted, especially from people who profess to be vulnerable minorities. You’d think they would at least want a government that protects them and ensures their equal rights, no?
Just some inarticulate posturing and vague implications that I don’t know what I’m talking about, probably.
Like when someone else wore a PLA hat and I asked him how many civilians died in the great leap forward, clearly the reason he didn’t have an answer was because I was the ignorant one. “Oh, you wanna talk to me about the great leap forward?” Acting all insulted
If you take their theory at face value, correct. If you observe their attitudes and actions, you see that they don’t really care about implementing those theories. They only discuss them to give themselves a veneer of moral superiority.
Stalin didn’t lift the proletariat out of poverty; he merely starved and murdered all the peasants who didn’t join his party. He didn’t liberate the masses, he implemented a highly oppressive surveillance/police state.
The average anarchist will be the first to try to bully someone into complying with their preferred systems of social order. They only want there to be no government so that nothing can stop them from forcing everyone else to conform to their will.
That’s what I mean by “covert” fascist. Nominally leftist, practically not.
Equating anarchists to fascists is genuinely in the top five most stupid fucking political takes I have ever heard in my life. What the fuck do you think anarchists want force on you?
“Fuck these anarchists, they want to get rid of hierarchy and government so I won’t have a boot to suck the polish off of.” Is what you fucking sound like. The comm is for shitting on tankies. Anarchists are not tankies. Tankie does not mean leftist, it means authoritarian communist.
Anarchists aren’t tankies, no. But a shocking amount of them, on Lemmy at least, cosy up with Tankies and even argue in favour of authoritarian states, or defend them. From my experience, the average anarchist hates the liberal more than the tankie, despite the latter being in direct opposition to their principles.
Yes, and I actively distance myself from them. Its why I moved from dbzer0 to quokk.au and from Lemmy to Piefed. Anarchists who cosy up to MLs are naive and fail to learn from a hundred years of history. Anarchism is just as incompatible with statism and authority as it is with capitalism. That is not to say I wont work with liberals and marxists, just that I would never trust them.
that’s actually really respectful to your ideals.
why do you think so many anarchists, like those from dbzer0, cosy up to tankies?
Its scary fighting back. You want allies, and many of them so the odds dont feel so impossible. Its hard not to fall into the thinking that capitalism is the bigger threat, so we should work together against the common enemy. “We’ll figure out which communism is best after the revolution” is what I often hear. Issue is, looking at history, we get backstabbed before we get to see the end of the revolution. In the end though, its hard not to end up trusting those you spend time working with.
Succinctly said. Personally, I think communists will have a better chance of achieving true communism™ by cosying with liberals and democracy, suggesting socialist and universal systems, pensions, healthcare, transport – Systems that most democratic nations already have implemented.
It’s telling that China, the de facto “communist” state, which isn’t exactly Marxist, lacks some of these universal systems, such as healthcare and worker rights and of course, the class disparity.
What I mean is that I don’t think an immediate, instantaneous uprising is absolutely necessary to achieve these concepts.
Removed by mod
China is third world?
I think anarchists have more in common with communists, the issue is that the kind of communists that dominate the spaces are Marxist-Leninists who are the problem. I would be much more inclined to trust a council communist or a luxemburgist than I am a liberal or an ML. The reason being that (good) statist communists at least agree with anarchists on needing to abolish private property and capitalism, but disagree overmatters regarding the state. Liberals still believe in both capitalism and the state. I do not see a situation where liberals would ever allow anarchists to exist outwardly. I do not see it with MLs either. But I could see a very small chance of it happening if democratic communists (like council communists and luxemburgists) were the dominant force in statist radical left circles. Unfortunately though they are not. So unfortunately anarchists are pretty isolated for allies.
Do you think anarchism is even possible without an apocalypse? It’s very telling that, throughout history, there’s been no long-lasting anarchist community, unless you consider nomadic towns and villages anarchist.
There will never be a time where principled anarchists are not also called “tankies” by liberals. If you believe in the use of revolutionary violence and the defense of a revolution, you will be called a “tankie.”
But you guys can’t handle violence despite how much you larp on about it.
Genuinely would rather be called anarkiddie lmao. You know what they say, scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds
I hear this phrase a lot, and I’m curious to hear what you think it means
To me it means liberals will side with fascists when push comes to shove. I wont fail to recognize that there are examples of liberals resisting fascism, but you also have many more instances where they enable, defend, or outright join fascists. Hitler drew a lot of inspiration from the US’s Jim Crow laws, and Hitler was chosen as New York Times Person of the year. The social democrats of Weimar Germany used proto-fascist to eradicate a communist revolution. The Weimar Republic is who put Hitler in power. The Kingdom of Italy as well allowed Mussolini into power. You also have situations like Pinochet and Franco. Pinochet being put into power by the US, and Franco’s fascist government being left untouched and allowed to exist.
If you’re going around making people bleed for being liberal, then you’re a fascist.
Wonderful graphs, thank you. But how can you ensure that the state, which now has unopposed power, didn’t simply lie about how much they have? Personally I find it telling that those in state power never walk the streets of the peasants or live in the same houses, no, they have their palaces and mansions and armed military guards and personal army protecting them, and you’re telling me there’s income equality there?
Not convinced.
Oh, I’m sure all that income equality was so beneficial to all the victims who died in the holodomor and other atrocities committed by the soviet union.
Also, try using a color scheme that doesn’t burn the eyes. I’m not giving myself a migraine just so you can lick soviet boots.
By the way, I’m not against socialism; I’m against tankies. You would know the difference if you were well-versed in “theory,” wouldn’t you?
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
summed up beautifully.
every commie/anarchist I know IRL, and I’ve known quite a few, are HUGE bullies/assholes, and they tend to only be friends with people they have control over or can intimidate into submission to them. They HATE people who are independent of their mentality and character assassinate them.
It’s the typical use of high minded ideals to justify their shitty and hypocritical personal behavior.
Exactly! I’m sorry a tankie got butthurt and downvoted you.
That’s really more of what I’ve seen in the communist communities rather than anarchists.
But they too have a tendency of being all or nothing.
The ones who demand “social order” truly aren’t anarchist anyway. The whole point of anarchy is to approach an egalitarian community that rejects the idea of unearned authority.
Genuinely curious. How do true anarchists propose to prevent crime syndicates from gaining power and becoming a de facto government, committing extortion, racketeering, and human trafficking?
Or are they just running on the assumption that after the collapse of society, people’s appetites for wealth, power, and influence will simply evaporate?
they don’t. they, like communists, tend to ignore human nature and think their ideal society will have no scarcity or struggle.
they basically ignore human psychology and social behavior
That’s concerning. And yet they call anyone a fascist who doesn’t support their cause. Tsk tsk. Projection at its finest.
Why do you reckon that is? Naivety?
wishful thinking mostly. it’s a form of escapism/fantasizing about a better future, rather than actually dealing with the complex problems of ones current reality.
just like a lot of poor people gamble their disposable income in the hope they will become rich, because saving it and investing it is too abstract/difficult of a concept for them. and the momentary hope/high of the activity is provides immediate gratification.
where as richer people see gambling as a leisure activity, they don’t see it as a path to riches. they understand getting richer requires saving their income and investing it and waiting for the payout 10-20 years in the future when those investments double/triple in value.
I mean, I was super into communist/anarchistic when I was a teenager. Then I went to college and realized the world is way more complex/chaotic than anything those theories can cope with, and most theory is really. But generally I prefer theories that acknowledge the basic truths of reality and don’t pretend there is a ideal form of anything.
Sometimes I see people say stuff like “Anyone who says ‘the situation is more complex than that’ is just using it as a cop out because they don’t want to face the solution”
And I’m like, can we not normalize seeking simple solutions to complex problems? That’s partly what got us here today, and every “simple solution” that people try only ends up adding another layer of complexity to the problem for someone else to try to figure out later.
Anyone who thinks the world and its problems aren’t complex is too ignorant to be in a position to demand everyone accept their simplistic solutions.
Yes, but those people are also the ones most prone to violence. Because rather than acknowledge ea complex reality (and feel dumb/inadequate) they would rather use force to compel others to agree with them.
Hence why ‘implementation’ of simplistic theories into a government… comes with a big helping mass murder, incarceration, and a police state.
I don’t like a lot of the self-proclaimed anarchists for that specific reason. They give the rest of us a really bad look. They miss the whole point of being anti-authoritarian, anti-heirchical, anti-coercisive, and anti-capitalist.
I understand why they are that way, I’m like 99% sure it’s a neurodivergent thing (black-and-white thinking, rejection of authority, failure to recognize social norms, we pretty much all do it to some degree, and some are much more obvious than others).
Like a doctor is an authority on health. Why? Because they earned it. They put their livelihood on the line by licensure and risk to avoid malprat. Governments where only a select few are voted for and the rest of the representation is all because of Republic stances rather than democratic ones are not deserving of authority.
Also, it might be that the anarchists you have met are not anarchists at all. It sounds much more like the communists I know.
If I were to design a novel political system, there would be privileged places for PhD holders. Political philosophy, political science, history, sociology, etc. I’m not quite certain of the mechanism of selection, whether they’re elected or appointed or something else. Perhaps there would be a direct pipeline from university faculties to the upper-echelons of government. Enough to fill a cabinet with a representative from each department, at least. The departments and agencies would be run by people who spent their lives gaining expertise in their respective fields.
Maybe the public could still elect a head of state, but they would have a more ceremonial role as a figurehead (like the President of Ireland). And the chief of state would be a prime minister. The legislative branch would be parliamentary, with proportional representation.
I say this because, I recognize that the current system in the US is ass. It had some good ideas, for an early iteration of a democratic-republic, but it’s been a few centuries of learning and some things could certainly be done better.
But just because this system is ass, doesn’t mean all systems are inherently ass. There has to be some means of organizing society to keep the gears turning and preventing everything from breaking down into disorder and chaos.
For the record, I’m totally in favor of the workers seizing the means of production, but it doesn’t have to be done violently. If the ultimate outcome is worker’s unions taking over in place of boards of investors, and running former corporations as co-operative enterprises where workers keep most of the value of their labor, and the rest goes to public coffers to fund social programs and civic infrastructure that benefit everybody; if that’s the goal, then it can be done without shedding a drop of blood. Only, the right people need to be in power to make that happen.
Hence why I mention the communist thing.
Anarchy and communism have a LOT of overlap.
Most anarchists are anarcho-communists. I mean anarcho-capitalists exist but those are just oligarchs in favor of technofeudalism
Anarcho-capitalism isn’t remotely anarchy. It’s fuedalism full stop.
That’s what I said
Yes I was agreeing with you.
I keep seeing it pop up everywhere as if there are attempts to legitimize it.
Hey, probably don’t blame it 99% on neurodivergence. I’m autistic, and why I do reject authority and struggle with social norms, I don’t see people and views in black and white.
I can think of one in particular, a very arrogant and loud-mouthed, self-proclaimed anarchist, who if he had his way would force everyone to be vegan.
I understand animal rights, and I myself have been vegetarian for a few years. But if he’s truly an anarchist, then how does he expect to enforce veganism on everyone? Just seems cognitively dissonant…
For that matter, how do anarchists plan to stop racists and homophobes from doing racist and homophobic things? It just seems short-sighted, especially from people who profess to be vulnerable minorities. You’d think they would at least want a government that protects them and ensures their equal rights, no?
When you encounter this anarchist, I implore you to question them on how China treats animals. Very curious to see what will happen.
Just some inarticulate posturing and vague implications that I don’t know what I’m talking about, probably.
Like when someone else wore a PLA hat and I asked him how many civilians died in the great leap forward, clearly the reason he didn’t have an answer was because I was the ignorant one. “Oh, you wanna talk to me about the great leap forward?” Acting all insulted
That’s probably how it will go.
I think it’s telling that they can’t admit their ideology has faults or has made mistakes. It’ll never get anywhere.
They lack self-awareness for sure. I would never follow someone who can’t admit when they’ve been wrong about something.