You must log in or register to comment.
If the system wasn’t working for people with the power to change it, those people generally would change it until it suited their interests. More importantly, they’d try their damndest to keep it that way once it does.
Anarchy isn’t a government, it’s the empty space between the last one and the next. It’s a power vaccum. The inability to act together means we’d all be at the mercy of the next neighbor with an organized military, or stoke a Civil War.
I want to be wrong. Anarchism would be my first choice – if and only if, it’s viable.
Anarchy, as in the flavors that people actually advocate for, is all about working together.
Could we at least “fix” a few of those responsible, though? A little side quest, ya know, for The People. ✊🏼 I’ve got just the vet, and they’re very affordable —might even probono it as a civic duty. 🫡
You’re just debating which system to destroy to fix the bigger system it’s part of.
petrostate stays winning until we value the people and the land they live on more than we value the resources they stand on
You say that as if ordinary people got a say in any of this
we won’t so long as we don’t band together!
“Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
Ooh, a bumper sticker of that’d be super fun —but pretty unwise in this gestapi climate. 🤌🏼
Believe it or not, straight to jail
What if one group says the land another group is standing on is actually theirs and they want to take it back? For example, what if native Americans wanted to evict all non-natives?
what if native Americans wanted to evict all non-natives?
Why do you assume Native Americans would act exactly like white fascists do?
It’s totally just a hypothetical. I guess I should have used aliens or something.
It’s totally just a hypothetical.
Even hypotheticals must be based on grounding assumptions… what was yours based on?
I was originally thinking of Israel and the greater Israel project but didn’t want to touch on that topic and somehow I’m still regretting it. We’re getting away now from what the hypothetical was for aka scenarios where people in group X want people in group Y’s land in any sense or scenario no longer specified by anything or any hypotheticals whatsoever.
I was originally thinking of Israel and the greater Israel project
Israel is a white supremacist settler-colonialist project that acts like a white supremacist settler-colonialist project… it’s a pretty cut-and-dried situation.
but didn’t want to touch on that topic
Why not? It’s a very easy topic to touch.
Once again it’s just a hypothetical about any scenario where group X may want group Y’s land regardless of the details. Maybe group X is good maybe they are bad maybe this maybe that, I think we can step away from the specifics because we’re moving away from the original point. Now you’re kinda proving why, it’s because I thought it would guide the conversation into being about the hypothetical more than the original point which is why I said I guess I should have used aliens.
Honestly? If we had an actual plan in place for where everyone would go i’d play along. I’ve never been to europe but it seems very nice.
I’m not exactly keen on the idea but I can’t deny that it would be pretty fair.
Man I really should have used a different hypothetical… people are really fixated on it specifically. Also I doubt most nations would be willing to take 10 to 100 million people and how do we pick apart the nationality of individuals who are mixed or don’t have records and so on.
Maybe because the US is an apartheid state and we are absolutely the bad guys
And yeah it wouldn’t be very feasible but I can’t argue against it morally.
We’re still moving away from the original point and regret even bothering to give a hypothetical example.
generally speaking, that is not what landback advocates are calling for. landback means that it is the people who live in concert with the land who will lead its management, and it is the responsibility of others to listen and learn
the people who live in concert with the land
What does that even mean? It sounds an awful lot like noble savage mythology.
I’m glad you brought this up, because it’s something I want to make a distinguishment from. I do not want to fetishize or otherwise dehumanize indigenous people. I merely want to acknowledge that every culture has something they do better than anyone else. Us Europeans? We built pan-oceanic boats capable of traversing the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Arctic Oceans. That’s absolutely incredible! We are however, dogshit at land management. Hence the constant European desire to colonize more and more of the planet, taking up more and more land to meet the material needs of an aristocratic class that required closely shorn lawns for leisure activities such as polo and croquet.
Meanwhile, I also do not think that indigenous north Americans were perfect. For example, the Cherokee committed a genocide against the Osage, the Inca, Aztek, and Mayans all had theocratic structures that were not great for a large number of people living in their territories, the various peoples of the Americas hunted mega-fauna they encountered to extinction. However, in order for any plan for a hopeful future, we must draw wisdom from many sources. We know this because the current European global hegemony is failing. So we need to start looking for wisdom from other sources. One of the things when we interrogate history is that prior to Europe leveraging military violence to place the global south into a perpetual state of underdevelopment is that the people of the Americas had INCREDIBLE land management strategies that were interwoven with their cultural heritages (food, language, social structures) and agricultural outputs leading to some extremely interesting crops that have become staples worldwide such as corn, potatoes, sunflowers, beans, and tomatoes.
In conclusion: my point is to draw sources from subjugated knowledge
Cool idea, also yeah I was just giving a totally random hypothetical. I didn’t want to touch on the greater Israel thing or other real world examples of group X wants group Y’s land.
OK.
What happens when particular resources become necessary for public good?
That is, does the world in general have the right to extract the resources necessary to manufacture solar panels and grid-scale batteries &etc even if the local people object, because replacing fossil fuel power is a necessity for the survival of the human race entire?
What happens when acquiring and using a resource becomes a requirement for treating human life with value?
the mining of these resources must be done with respect and in cooperation with the people who would be harmed by doing so without respect and care. we must also take an approach of being considerate in our consumption habits, otherwise we’re just participating in eco-colonialism
That sounds great… on paper. A very Disney ending to the long story of international resource conflict.
It also doesn’t really address my question, which is:
What happens when the extraction of a resource is necessary, but the local people object? What if they refuse to cooperate?
What kind of resource is that, what makes it necessary, and to whom?
Counter-point; the State was created through a messy compromise between those who believed in democracy and freedom, and those who emphatically did not. They created a useful tool, we can take that tool, file the edges down so it stops hurting people, and then put it to use making things better for everyone but a select few rich assholes who have committed serious crimes to become rich assholes.
The other option, destruction of the state, means unleashing chaos, death, and destruction on everyone as assholes try to fill the power vacuum with violence, setting themselves up as warlords and pretenders to the throne.
The counter-counter point is that if your particular State was not created as such a compromise, and there’s no avenue for the People to have a voice in their government, then it is a moral imperative to express your voice in other ways, even if the State decides to kill you for it.
Seize the State, use as legitimate of means as possible, but seize it non-the less. It’s self-defense.
The other option, destruction of the state, means unleashing chaos, death, and destruction on everyone
What’s your proof of this?
Zombie apocalypse movies?
History books. Pretty much every single history book ever written going back the invention of writing.
A war of succession, or rather a civil war, will be the bloodiest war you can imagine. And at the end, the most bloodthirsty bastard is most likely going to win on the promise of ending the bloodshed via any means necessary (totalitarian dictatorship)
A war of succession, or rather a civil war,
So you haven’t actually read any of those history books, have you?
There is no war of succession that involved the destruction of a state in history, genius - that would defeat the whole point of succession, wouldn’t it?
And nearly every civil war in the history of humanity was fought either over the control of the state or independence from it, nutburger - not the state’s destruction.
So again… do you have any proof of your claims that doesn’t involve Mad Max movies?
A war of succession is a civil war.
Go read the war of the roses. Hell, read up on the Russian Civil War that Lenin started.
Or the Chinese Civil war.
Or read up on what’s happened in any country that’s had its government couped or toppled.
As I said, a history book, any one of them will do if they don’t gloss over shit that the Party doesn’t like.
As for destroying the State, every civil war does that, it’s the first thing to happen, the war is what happens next.
Hell, read up on the Russian Civil War
Guess what, Clyde? No states were harmed during the Russian Civil War!
The Bolsheviks, quite literally, seized the state! History is amazing, isn’t it?
As I said, a history book,
You have, so far, not managed to prove that you’ve read any, bright spark.
it’s the first thing to happen,
Lol! Do you even have the foggiest idea what it is you are talking about?
No states were harmed during the Russian Civil War!
The State, the organization and apparatus of control.
In a civil war, you must either A, seize control of the State, or B, build your own State and push the old one out.
You obviously don’t know that the Russian Civil War was more of a situation B kind of thing, so by definition a State was destroyed.
And yeah, you can have multiple would be States competing for control, because control is all that matters.
You can either gain control via violence, which can and will fail against a modern State, or via the will of the governed. That second one is only possible via processes seen as legitimate by those governed.
Once one has control of the State, it can be reshaped to suit one’s desires. We’ve all watched it happen half a dozen times over the last decade alone.
The state is a product of class struggle, and exists to serve the ruling class. A bourgeois state will only serve a bourgeois state, reformism is a dead end. Smashing the state and replacing it with a worker state is the basis of socialism.
Hey, you are a ML right? Can I have your opinion on this video?
I support socialist democracy, not liberal democracy. I don’t oppose hierarchy as I see administrative labor as socially necessary, especially for large-scale production and distribution. I don’t know if that answers your question in a satisfactory way, but I don’t really think the “key model” is very accurate.
Smashing the state, so you too are in favor of a 12 sided civil war, ending in a totalitarian dictatorship where people like you are the first against the wall. Okay.
Me? I say that the State is a tool, nothing more nothing less, and control of the State is key to everything. The State is necessary to have a functional society in the modern world. 99% of what the State does is boring regulations that make the world function at all.
Smashing the State means smashing society. Which means instant, bloody civil war where no one knows who will come out on top, except that it’s almost certainly going to be a bloodthirsty dictator, who will almost certainly engage in some form of genocide. We have thousands of years of examples of such.
No, the only path forward where things are actually guaranteed to not descend into sectarian violence is through seizing the State through as legitimate of means as possible.
Control the State, and by extension, you control the means of production.
Also, reform has done a fucking lot over the years. It’s the only thing that ever has.
Smashing the State means smashing society.
Again, where’s your proof?
Go read a history book.
Hell, even a recent history book will do it. There are a fuckload of examples throughout the world of a functional society having their government either couped or otherwise toppled. Syria is a prime example.
And I know, you’re just going to blame external meddling. But news flash, it’s impossible to escape external meddling. Even going back to antiquity when a civil war kicked off, the neighboring countries would often meddle, sometimes as an invading army, sometimes by cutting deals to support one side or the other, sometimes secretly both, or more than both if it was a truly messy war.
Go read a history book.
Says the person who doesn’t seem to have read any.
A coup does not result in the destruction of the state, genius - that’s the whole point of a coup.
Syria is a prime example.
No, Syria still has a state… unless you have any proof that it has been destroyed that nobody else in the world knows about?
And I know, you’re just going to blame external meddling
Why would I? You can’t even prove the basic assumptions your claims are based on.
The Syrian State lost control, resulting in a massive civil war where everyone meddled.
Loss of control is the destruction of a State. That’s what it looks like.
It became a quagmire of sectarian violence with about a dozen different sides. Some communities were actually doing cool shit, some were engaging in genocides.
In the end, a new State had to be created, and even now things are not quite peachy keen in the country.
Loss of control is the destruction of a State.
No. That’s not how states work.
a new State had to be created
Nope. Again, that’s not how states work. Somebody else seizing a state does not mean the state has ceased to exist.
The major problem here is that reform has never actually managed to change capitalism to socialism, and has only cemented bourgeois rule. Revolution has, on the other hand, successfully established socialism. Your depictions of revolution are highly biased against successful revolutions, and your analysis of the state puts it outside of class society, which isn’t how it works.
Removed by mod
Capitalism is a mode of production and distribution where private ownership is the principal aspect of the economy, and the working classes control the state. Socialism is a mode of production and distribution where public ownership is principal and the working classes control the state. By “principal,” I mean rising and dominant. Contrary to your claims, socialism has been established and solidified through revolution, and reformism cannot and will not work because the capitalist state has evolved around capitalism itself. That’s why all successful revolutions have destroyed the old state apparatus.
Okay, first, Lenin couped the revolution, and then banned dissent. He seized control of the means of production for himself. Full stop.
He then wrote about how a vanguard party (Totalitarian rule by what might as well be a king) was somehow socialism.
It’s about as socialist as national socialism.
Actual socialism has been partially implemented in the form of universal healthcare, universal schools, and basic social safety programs.
The fascists hate these things, because they’re what leads to Marx’s dream, not Vanguard parties that are simply another name for the same old oligarchs, just in a coat of red paint.
This is, frankly, ahistorical jibberish.
First, Lenin did not coup the Tsar, nor the Provisional Government. The October Revolution was popularly supported, and in the aftermath and the ensuing Russian Civil War a democratic front coalesced around the Bolsheviks, who managed to be popular among both the proletariat and the peasantry, when most groups on the left only managed to win over one of those two groups. This resulted in the establishment of socialism in Russia.
Secondly, the vanguard party existed even in the time of Marx. Marx was a member of communist parties, and supported the organization of the advanced among the proletariat, seeing it as the duty of communists to bring the proletariat up to their level. Lenin wrote about the necessity of a vanguard well before the October Revolution, as it was necessary for the revolution in the first place! The Bolsheviks only became a vanguard after they had worked tirelessly to become one.
The soviet union was a dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviets brutalized the capitalists, tsarists, fascists, landlords, and kulaks, while liberating the workers and peasants. The USSR had steady and consistent economic growth, and provided free, high quality education and healthcare, full employment, cheap or free housing, and fantastic infrastructure and city planning that still lasts to this day despite capitalism neglecting it. This rapid development resulted in dramatic democratization of society, reduced disparity, doubling of life expectancy, tripling of functional literacy rates to 99.9%, and much more. Living in the 1930s famine would not have been good, but it was the last major famine outside of wartime because the soviets ended famine in their countries.
Literacy rates, societal guarantees in the 1936 constitution, reports on the healthcare system over time, and more are good sources for these claims.
The USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about, and today we have Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance to reference.
When it comes to social progressivism, the soviet union was among the best out of their peers, so instead we must look at who was actually repressed outside of the norm. In the USSR, it was the capitalist class, the kulaks, the fascists who were repressed. This is out of necessity for any socialist state. When it comes to working class freedoms, however, the soviet union represented a dramatic expansion. Soviet progressivism was documented quite well in Albert Syzmanski’s Human Rights in the Soviet Union.
What you call “actual socialism” is instead simply welfare, and you are using it to dress up western social democracies in socialist clothes. However, the truth of the matter is that these very social democracies rely on imperialism and neocolonialism to fund these massive welfare states while maintaining capitalism. This is the price of class collaboration, the creation of what Engels calls the “bourgeois proletariat.”
That you would accuse existing socialism as “national socialism” while espousing support for imperialist and neocolonial social democracies as “partial socialism” is incredibly dishonest. Marx did not live to see imperialism the way Lenin had, but even he saw the beginnings of such a system and as such hated proto-social democracies like Bismarck’s system. Marx was a revolutionary through and through, and attempted to form a vanguard in his time, even if he failed. Lenin succeeded by carrying the torch.
The fascists, meanwhile, love social democracy. They are twins, after all, both founded in class collaboration and maintaining imperialism and neocolonialism.
Eliminating the state without that leading to anomie is possible trough a social revolution, that has been done before.
Seize the State, use as legitimate of means as possible, but seize it non-the less. It’s self-defense.
The state has a monopoly of violence, what would stop it from just becoming yet another liberal oligarchy?
Okay, first, the State has never been eliminated cleanly. Control has passed peacefully from a dictatorship to democracy, never has it been destroyed without complete societal collapse.
And two, one part of the “filing the edges off” is putting in safeguards. We know a fuckload more now about how to functionally create a more stable democracy than we did when this whole power by the people for the people thing first kicked off.
Unless the goal is to create a messy 12-sided civil war, then you can just destroy the state and hope you live long enough to regret it. i.e. look at Syria.
The most fucked up part is that 90% of the people in a civil war just want to go about their lives, but the assholes won’t let them, so they have to arm up or else get murdered by those who kicked the whole thing off in the first place.
Control has passed peacefully from a dictatorship to democracy,
Liberal oligarchy does not qualify as democracy.
If the people have a voice, then there’s a path forward.
I don’t know why that’s so hard to understand, but then again. I’ve seen what the fascists have done to the education systems of the world.
If the people have a voice,
And what does this “voice” matter in a liberal oligarchy? Doesn’t seem to me that it’s influencing anything…
I’ve seen what the fascists have done to the education systems of the world.
You haven’t seen squat. And, considering that you came here from .world, I don’t even think you’d know what a fascist is if one where to bite you on the arrse.
News flash, the only other option besides “the people have a voice” is “the people have no voice”.
No voice means dictatorship, or monarchy if the first fucker puts their spawn on the throne, Vanguard Party is the same shit, a dictatorship by another name.
Dictators, kings, oligarchs, would be dictators, fascists, conservatives, tankies, and anyone else who would deny a person a voice in their government are all the same sort of person as well.
They say their voice matters more than anyone else’s, and will often use violence to enforce it.
That’s what I see in a lot of people. Especially people who want to start a bloody civil war so that they can force a stateless existence on people without understanding that they want a power vacuum where the bloodthirstiest bastard around will see an opportunity.
News flash, the only other option besides “the people have a voice”
Then show me how your voice matters. Shouldn’t be too difficult, right?
conservatives,
Oh, sooo… liberals?
who want to start a bloody civil war so that they can force a stateless existence
Sooo… like Makhno?
Eliminating the state without that leading to anomie is possible trough a social revolution, that has been done before.
Er, for example?
This is the first thing that came to mind
That wasn’t clean, or successful, as much as I wish it had been.
Nestor Makhno is a personal hero, he was building a new State in an area where the previous State had been ripped away. He was ultimately unsuccessful, mostly due to the fact that he was a single faction fighting for control in a messy civil war. In the end, the totalitarian dictator won, and people like Nestor Makhno are either exiled or executed by the new State.
After siding with the Bolsheviks during the Ukrainian–Soviet War, the Makhnovists were driven underground by the Austro-German invasion and waged guerrilla warfare against the Central Powers throughout 1918. After the insurgent victory at the Battle of Dibrivka, the Makhnovshchina came to control much of Katerynoslav province and set about constructing anarchist-communist institutions. […]
Surrounded on all sides by different enemies, the Makhnovist line in the battle for the Donbas eventually fell to the advancing White movement in June 1919. The Makhnovists were subsequently driven into a retreat to Kherson, where they reorganised their military and led a successful counteroffensive against the Whites at the Battle of Peregonovka. With the White advance defeated, the Makhnovists came to control most of southern and eastern Ukraine in late 1919, even taking over a number of large industrial cities, despite being a predominantly peasant movement.
Yeah, nobody who aligned with the Bolsheviks gets to claim nonviolence or peaceful takeover of the state.
Nonviolence and peaceful takeovers are liberal myths to ensure the people never take back power from those who wield violence on the daily.
nobody who aligned with the Bolsheviks gets to claim nonviolence or peaceful takeover of the state.
Who said anything about “nonviolence” or being “peaceful”?
You’ll be happy to know that Makhno turned to banditry against the Soviets, which sparked a major conflict between the Bolsheviks and Makhnovshchina. Though, I don’t think anyone was claiming peaceful revolution was possible, just that revolution can result in a stable system post-revolution (which is true).
You’ll be happy to know that Makhno turned to banditry against the Soviets,
Your proof of this?
Not banditry, armed resistance against the red totalitarians.
He was in a bad spot from the beginning, and could never truly win. It’s sad, and Tankies and Fascists both paint the man in the worst light, because what he was trying to build was something beautiful.
The man had to pick sides at a time when both sides were actively his enemy, proving that the enemy of my enemy is no friend at all.
maybe it’s my autisms but the way I see it, it can be fixed, just we would change it so much it would be unrecognisable. destroying and rebuilding it is how we fix it.
it just seems a semantic argument rather than an material one.
unless by “fixing it” they mean some useless symbolic change that doesn’t fix anything, and therefore shouldn’t count as a fix.
Can we be more specific? I kinda like having electric.
and?
and organized medicine and healthcare, which is a global effort with a very small percentage done voluntarily.
things that might be difficult under anarchism.
Good thing were living under capitalism, where I don’t have access to basic healthcare either.
this has been posted like - 6 times on here already >v<
I call dibs on posting it the 7th time
I’m such a nonconformist that I don’t conform to your nonconformity. If you destroy the system a new system will take its place since people still need food, water, waste management and the like. Also people getting together, organizing to destroy the system is itself a system.
Also people getting together, organizing to destroy the system is itself a system.
Yes? We are not anti-system lol.
But you are anti-authority?
Authority figures get into the way of organizing more efficiently
Actually, centralization of management creates a lot of benefits in communication flow, resource allocation and operating efficiency. Lack of centralization results in confusion and task duplication.
Actually, centralization of management creates
Haven’t spent much time in the corporate world, have you?
Lack of centralization results in confusion and task duplication.
This sounds a communication problem, not a system problem. Decentralized systems are good at adapting to changing environments and are typically harder to destroy. If the complex systems theory side of organisation interests you i would recommend you to check out the desktop regulatory state..
Anti-unjustified hierarchy. Not anti-organized society.
OK. How is this society organized?
I mean, my political interest tends more towards “what’s the best tangible next step forward” rather than “what’s the ideal way to organize society in theory”. But generally speaking, I’d suggest it be organized from the bottom up through confederations of directly democratic bodies like workers’ councils and municipalities, making decisions via consensus and recallable delegates.
Wow very creative, never seen the “conflate multiple distinct usages of the same word” tactic before /s
You’re whale cum?
we can do waste management by kicking you out.
That’s not nice. I do find most prefer echo chambers where all statements and posts are in agreement with views they already hold.
you’re confusing primitivism for self governance.
i follow Tom Lerher advice, ask a stupid question get a stupid answer.
We don’t oppose society, but capitalism.
All i’m saying is there’s still going to be a system, value, value creation, value distribution and so on. How will we motivate people to do work that is needed that people simply do not want to do? How do we manage supply and demand? Capitalism or any other system still had to manage real world value, labor, and demand as well as human behavior.
Generally people are well mannered when they are taken care of aka have necessities like shelter, food, water, waste management, electricity, internet, healthcare, education, and so on. That said people generally care for themselves and their loved ones first and foremost. That is if anyone has an advantage they will use it for themselves and their loved ones essentially every single time. Also people will always be looking to create an advantage for themselves and their loved ones. This culminates in corruption of systems. Typically systems designed to mitigate this become corrupt themselves aka people get paid in some form or fashion to look the other way or for insider information as to dodge raids and arrest.
We can change systems all day long but we’re not changing human behavior anytime soon. I guess short of mass forced genetic engineering which would be horrifically unethical.
You never heard about egalitarianism have you? 😐
I’m a supporter of socialism, that’s how we should allocate labor and distribute resources and production.
Yeah but how do we encourage people to do work that’s needed that they do not want to do? Also how do we actually mitigate corruption aka people perpetually gaming the system for their personal benefit and paying off anyone intended to stop corruption. Like socialism alone doesn’t really directly solve either of those problems. It also doesn’t directly solve supply and demand.
Like I’m all for creative solutions but socialism as it is isn’t an ultimate philosophy about how to mitigate and manage humans irl. To be fair absolutely no one has solved these problems so far like ever. It’s the P=NP of humanity.
You can pay people for labor in socialism, and by the time of communism productive forces will be incredibly advanced, with polytechnical education for all, resulting in easy ability to transfer workers from one industry to another as needed and desired by the workers themselves.
Corruption can be accounted for via mechanisms like recall elections, and working towards elimination of the profit motive. Socialist countries often feature both mechanisms, and involve approval-based voting and bottom-up policy propositions combined with top-down implementation.
I don’t know what you mean by “solving” supply and demand. You can plan production and distribution in socialism based on economic inputs, Paul Cockshott’s Towards a New Socialism shows an example of how a cybernetically planned economy could work (though he’s a massive transphobe and a poor Marxist in many areas).
Socialism is just the first step towards communism, one that can and is implemented already today.
