anarchism
Anarchism is a social movement that seeks liberation from oppressive systems of control including but not limited to the state, capitalism, racism, sexism, speciesism, and religion. Anarchists advocate a self-managed, classless, stateless society without borders, bosses, or rulers where everyone takes collective responsibility for the health and prosperity of themselves and the environment.
Theory
Introductory Anarchist Theory
- Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution by Pyotr Kropotkin
- Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma Goldman
- Anarchy Works by Peter Genderloos
- Anarchism: A Beginner's Guide by Ruth Kinna
- Anarchism and Its Aspirations by Cindy Milstein
- Anarchy In Action by Colin Ward
- On Anarchism by Noam Chomsky & Nathan Schneider
- Anarchy by Errico Malatesta
Anarcho-Capitalism
Discord Legacy A collaborative doc of books and other materials compiled by the #anarchism channel on the Discord, containing texts and materials for all sorts of tendencies and affinities.
The Theory List :) https://hackmd.io/AJzzPSyIQz-BRxfY3fKBig?view Feel free to make an account and edit to your hearts content, or just DM me your suggestions ^~^ - The_Dawn
view the rest of the comments
This is my big frustration with modern anarchism. I am deeply, deeply sympathetic to anarchism and think that most of the critiques of authority and the corrupting influence of power are valuable and insightful.
But I am also interested in helping people not die and be able to get educated, age gracefully, and live securely.
Modern anarchism doesn't seem to have moved on in a world where nuclear weapons, digital surveillance, robotics, and electrification has dramatically enhanced the power of the state and arranged societies in ways that are difficult to decentralise. Holding up the same 3 failures with admirable characteristics and handful of small anarchish enclaves is frustrating, there are like 8 billion of us that need liberating dammit and it's only AES societies that are making meaningful progress.
You can enumerate flaws with China sure and I'm quiet sceptical they will successfully transition away from any capitalism, but poverty elimination and the construction of a high tech educated state is admirable as fuck. If you want to do better starting with "well how did they do that and not get destroyed by the west?" seems so much more useful than starting from idealistic martyred positions.
Interestingly, I find these the least sympathetic things about anarchism because they are 100% idealist. They don't get into any of the mechanism, they deal in psychology nor sociology. They essentially assert that the observations are explained by moral failings and then build their entire system design around moral hazard.
I find the most sympathetic part of anarchism their track record of actually organizing projects to deliver direct aid, build dual power, and supplant predatory providers. Like how they literally manufacture modern medicines, or build secure communications infrastructure, or educate people on first aid and routine health monitoring. I wish MLs were doing more of this.
The serious positions that look at how alternative social arrangements have been realised. Often anthropological.
I have found most people doing mutual aid are actually not doing it from some robust position of theory but just because humans are awesome (anarchists often pointing out this quality of ours and aiming to build on it).
moreso, if this is the metric of success than most churches and apolitical community organizations are pretty much on par if not at larger scale than anarchists in direct material aid. I live in a city with probably some of the largest anarchist groups doing material aid and one of the dozen local food banks serves more people than all the anarchists here combined. not to mention other organizations or churches. helping people without revolutionary theory doesn't build socialism, it enables capitalism by cleaning up the messes of capitalism
Yeah, you can see the impact of e.g. black panther lunches vs food not bombs (which I have done a bit and think it's admirable but without the larger theory and supporting organisation does not accomplish the desired shift in class consciousness).
the feds created the school breakfast programs because they were afraid of BPP recruitment. idk if that was actually founded but it makes for good agitprop regardless.
there's probably nothing you can do to get large swaths of the public to become principled communists in the timeframes that projects below the nation-state level operate on, shit even AES don't turn out a population of principled communists and they teach diamat in school.
we're far away from the state withering away but i would think that comes about as a series of people standing up and saying we don't need some state organ anymore until there's no coercion left.
It could also just whither from a lack of material basis. There's no need for cops that harass and harm the unhoused if everyone is housed. Remove enough roles from the police via their material underpinnings and policing itself will cease to exist. Of course we rightly hate cops now including the reason I cited and there will be struggle, but the stronger aspect is to completely undo the material forces behind the state.
As if we aren't?
That feels like you're fishing for some way to be aggreived by me explaining why I don't find modern anarchism very convincing.
I'm not going to be derailed into arguing about stuff I didn't write down.
I am unconvinced by anarchism because I don't see evidence of it helping millions of people in the same way other ideological projects have, nor do I see how praxis anarchists engage in will lead to this outcome in reasonable time frames.
Anarchist praxis has and does help lots of people in smaller local scales and for short times. Stuff like communities organising after disasters is an awesome example of anarchism being successful in crisis and on small scales for small periods of time. Much more successful than other ideologies in these circumstances.
I don't see where it addresses problems on the scale of millions and billions and centuries.
Okay sorry, I misread what you wrote.
The video answers these points in detail, in addition to the sources listed in the video. In particular, anarchist Spain organized on the scale of millions. Even in the very limited time that it was allowed to exist, it managed to do tremendous work implementing communism, and even after the republic fell to Franco, anarchists were resisting into the 60's, and there are lots of anarchist projects in Spain today. Video has more details.
I do not claim the anarchist society in Spain to be without flaw or even without hierarchy, but I think it's a demonstration that anarchism has merit.
If you don't want to watch this whole-ass video I respect your time, it's a chonky boi, but anarchists absolutely do have detailed answers for these questions.
I am not ignorant I am unconvinced, I have read bookchin, graeber, gelderloos, C Scott, anarchists against the wall, the breadbook, and a few books about the Spanish civil war. You've presumably read marx and not found his arguments about historical materialism convincing. You can engage with stuff and not adopt it wholeheartedly or be convinced of the positions.
The CNTFAI was quite remarkable but it still failed and hasn't successfully been replicated. It also built extensively on top of catalan identity and practices that aren't widespread and created a culture of solidarity that is distressingly rare. It was also a very different world.
If I had existed between 1800 and like ww2 I almost certainly would have been entirely convinced of the anarchist position. In the modern world and looking at what has shaken out I am just not.
Fair enough, I feel like I'm becoming the kind of condescending person I despise 💀
Just try keep in mind we're all here because we're interested in how to actually accomplish a post capitalist world. We learn by engaging with all information and trying to synthesis a correct way forward. The world keeps changing and ideologies must keep pace.
I think commies who dogmatically reject anarchist ideas and critiques are as foolish as anarchists doing the inverse. Perhaps moreso since anarchist tendancies are demonstrably part of the human condition and history.
It's easy to get your hackles up when the inbox goes wild, especially when some people are rude. That doesn't mean everyone disagreeing with you is an ornery wanker though.