Posting to 'grad because I don’t know where that’d belong on 'bear. I hope it’s OK!
I genuinely cannot see how anarchism could work large scale, but there are anarchist spaces: anarchist communes. I think after a leftist revolution the world would be generally communist, but there would be independent anarchist communes. I think that’d be a true way anarchists and communists could coexist in reality. Alongside one another but not forced to abandon their political stances.
Why not just be a communist instead of an anarchist?? What’s so spooky about being a communist that you have to adopt a much more useless ideology?
Communism and anarchism aren’t necessarily in opposition - in fact, they’re usually not, and it’s pretty common for an anarchist to also be a communist, hence the term “anarcho-communism”.
Yeah, a redundant term that doesn’t make any sense. I used to be one till I found out they have no answer for deconstructing and preventing racism.
Any model for an anarchist society without an answer to how to dismantle and prevent racism - or any other kind of oppression of a minority - is not, in my view, anarchist. Anarchism requires the elimination of unjustified hierarchies. If racism exists, then a race hierarchy exists, which is inherently unjustified.
How that is achieved is a very different matter, and there’s a wide variety of thought on the subject and lots of differing opinions.
Personally I think the starting point has to be that our society is completely intolerant of anything which elevates or denigrates people based on race, gender identity, disability, sexual orientation, spiritual belief, etc. so long as their beliefs do not promote any other kind of intolerance.
As for how this is implemented, again there’s great diversity of thought, but in general I feel like the process should look something like education, then arbitration, then banishment. Obviously, in extreme cases of hate speech or for particularly hateful examples some steps might be skipped or abridged, I don’t think a one-system-fits-all solution can be designed or is even desirable.
An absence of inherent detail for how everything would be implemented is a feature, and not a flaw, of anarchism IMO, because it’s helpful that questions like this are resolved by consensus, not by decree or dogma. Anarchism is all about building a cohesive, peaceful society, not about enforcing our personal will on others.
For example, I have never experienced racism, so it would be totally foolish and ignorant of me to think that I have all the answers for how to solve it.
For example, I have never experienced racism, so it would be totally foolish and ignorant of me to think that I have all the answers for how to solve it.
And case closed.
This is such an absurd take that I can only assume you’re trolling.
What’s absurd about it? You don’t got the answers, Sway.
You: Anarchism doesn’t have any answers!
Me: Anarchism isn’t about “having answers”, it’s about FINDING answers as a collective
You: 😏 Yea exactly you got no answers dumbass 😏
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Yes, but how are any sort of regulations, rights, laws, or etc, going to be enforced on the communes?
There are federal sized entities for a reason, and using the United States for example, doing everything that the USDA, Corp of Engineers, CDC, FDA, Department of Commerce, Department of Education, and so on, would be next to impossible for a commune sized government.
For example, lets say the commune makes money in a socialist state by selling food products. How will they react when government inspectors roll in to make sure that food safety standards, workers rights, hygiene, and regulations are all being followed?
Another example, let’s say that there is a streamlined and standardized curriculum and learning standards for children in the country, operated by state run public schools with teachers on public payroll. How will education standards be maintained in the communes? How will literacy, education, and so on be enforced?
There would need to be government overreach and “intervention”, to maintain even the simplest of standards. So while it’s not “direct control”, a commune would still need to bend in some regards to a central power, something I doubt anarchists would like at all.
This exactly, how would anything work large scale at all?
The same simple question arises. Where are they getting medicine from?
Or are they going to treat stage 3 cancer with herbs and remedies?
The same way it does now - everyone doing their small part in service of a greater goal. At present, people are motivated by money - someone has money and will give you some if you do some small part in service of their greater goal. Imagine if, instead of that, people did things in service of a greater goal that benefits everyone, and in return, instead of money, they receive a share of that greater goal back to them - in the form of all of their needs being met.
People can organise very effectively and dynamically to achieve goals without coercion. For example, the entirely of the open source movement. Some of the largest, most complex software projects in the world are designed by consensus.
Why is the goal to force things onto people, instead of building things by consensus that works for everyone? If you have standards and rights that are actually made for the benefit of everyone, what reason would communes have to disregard them?
For your example: anarchists run food co-ops today and they manage to meet standards of hygiene and safety just fine under capitalism, so I don’t know why you feel like it would be any different under any other system.
Anarchists also homeschool very commonly in co-operatives, and in my experience the quality of education is significantly better, and almost more importantly, the kids are way better socialised and confident because of the number of trusted adults they have around to interact with and who help them.
I don’t think most anarchist would have a problem with the rights and health of people being put before their own freedom. The problem anarchists have is that states inevitably have led to oppression - the likelihood of a transitional state actually succeeding in implementing communism is pretty low, so understandably they are hesitant to support the creation of a transitional state.
money
country
I spoke of after the revolution, not before.
Also,
independent
The issue is the revolution is not an instant snap to full communism. There will need to be structures in place to prevent the slipping back into capitalism, and the undermining of the new proletarian state by internal and external forces. This means things like police, military, and government, but fundamentally different as the structure of the society they serve will not be designed to protect the wealthy. The transition from revolution to full stateless, classless, moneyless communism will take an unknown amount of time.
Do you think that a revolution creates instant communism?
You realize that it might take centuries for a socialist nation to fully become communist?
Do you think the USSR was a communist country? Or China?
Also independent is a complete oxymoron in this situation. You cant be independent from all aspects of the grander society.
Is the commune going to have its own power grid? How about a fully fleshed out hospital? How are they going to get materials and resources they legitimately have no way of acquiring on their own?
OP: I found a way for anarchists and communists to coexist after the revolution!
Every ML in the thread: anarchism doesn’t work.
Lmao
My biggest issue with it tbf is even trying to approach it as open minded as I could, I do not understand how you’d keep, or even maintain what you took. Eventually, the grinding of gears between the state and the commune(s) will lead to either a co-opting of the commune(s), or an utter shunning of them from an inability to standardize rules, regulations, and practices; and I don’t quite see how that helps either of us.
If there’s no profit incentive, and the standards/regulations are suitable, then there’s no reason for communes to disregard them. If the standards (or rules) are reached by consensus, then I don’t see why it couldn’t work. Unless, of course, the state is working for the benefit of a minority at the expense of society as a whole.
Unless, of course, the state is working for the benefit of a minority at the expense of society as a whole.
This is exactly what I was worried about. Who arbitrates who the state is working for when a communist state would be for the laborers, and by the laborers; or otherwise, not be communist? I don’t trust in the skills of discernment in individualists enough to have faith that one of these hypothetical communes wouldn’t just go wrecker because they perceive a ‘work towards the benefit of a minority’.
Who determines whether or not the actions of a state are in the best interests of society? That’s a great question, with a variety of answers depending on your preferred flavour of communism, anarchism, Marxism, etc. but the broad answer is that, well, we all do - as in, we, the working class.
Societies are necessarily structures composed of individuals, and therefore, individuals need to be involved in the decision making somewhere, it’s unavoidable.
There isn’t really anything you wrote which is uniquely applicable to a commune that isn’t also applicable to a transitional state. For example, what’s to stop such a state from determining that some innocent commune is involved in anti-communist, anti-worker’s rights activities and going wrecker, as you put it? Either by mistake, or for some malicious purpose, such as for the individual benefit of some individual in that structure?
You distrust individualists to exist outside of a state, but you trust them enough to be responsible with all of the instruments and powers of the state - that is quite strange to me indeed!
I tend to believe that, at the moment at least, humans are pretty selfish, ego-driven and tend towards making irrational choices. That’s why I believe that no-one should really be trusted with power over others that isn’t absolutely, 100% necessary for the functioning of society.
Also, just to clarify, there’s no such thing as a communist state - that’s a contradiction in terms. Communism, definitionally, is a classless, moneyless, stateless society - I’m guessing that you meant a transitional state, or a communist society, but a communist society couldn’t really “enforce” laws in the traditional top-down way that we think of those things.
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just give them a park to frolick on lmao
Abdullah Öcalan has a very sensible structural layout for blending Anarchist and Communist sensibilities into a constructive system for governance on the local, regional, and global scales.
That idea would make little sense. He attempts to use the idea of Democratic Confederalism as a way to show how Kurdistan can become independent, and had no connection to anarchism in any way.
Confederacy in almost every form has been a miserable failure throughout history. There are to many moving parts and points of failure.
