Flippant Anarchism. A lighter take on social criticism with the aim of agitation.
Post humorous takes on capitalism and the states which prop it up. Memes, shitposting, screenshots of humorous good takes, discussions making fun of some reactionary online, it all works.
This community is anarchist-flavored. Reactionary takes won't be tolerated.
Don't take yourselves too seriously. Serious posts go to !anarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Rules
If you post images with text, endeavour to provide the alt-text
If the image is a crosspost from an OP, Provide the source.
Absolutely no right-wing jokes. This includes "Anarcho"-Capitalist concepts.
Absolutely no redfash jokes. This includes anything that props up the capitalist ruling classes pretending to be communists.
No bigotry whatsoever. See instance rules.
This is an anarchist comm. You don't have to be an anarchist to post, but you should at least understand what anarchism actually is. We're not here to educate you.
No shaming people for being anti-electoralism. This should be obvious from the above point but apparently we need to make it obvious to the turbolibs who can't control themselves. You have the rest of lemmy to moralize.
Join the matrix room for some real-time discussion.
Libs thinking we're on their side, until the point we reject electoralism and US imperialist propaganda. Then label as as "tankies".
Campists thinking we're on their side until the point we reject "AES" and "left unity". Then label as a "liberals".
Anarchists are clearly the rare species of "liberal tankie" π
I took college courses on comparative politics. It wasn't until I read The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin that I really understood what anarchy and communism are. I really love that book. It does a great job of portraying that world from both a biased, personal lens and then again from outsiders perspectives.
That being said - until we have a planet dedicated to it, I believe any attempt at anarchy will just get overrun by coordinated assholes with guns (read: states).
Finding a way to defend yourself without reinventing the machinery of the state is certainly one of the larger practical problems facing anarchism.
Anarchists can defend themselves just fine. We just need to learn not to trust MLs and libs to do it with as they'll backstab anarchists at the first opportunity they have to grab power. This sort of rhetoric is like claiming that democracy is a failed concept in the middle ages, because democracies "can't defend themselves from monarchies" or some shit.
What are you talking about? The only currently extant anarchish communities are in places where states are weak. Anarchists in places with highly centralised states tend to get attacked by everyone, and that's a serious problem you can't just vibes away.
Wars, even ones you win, are a tremendous drain. States tend to suck at fighting non states, but that doesn't mean it's conducive to human flourishing for the non state people. States are also moronically optimistic about their ability to "productively" war.
This isn't some fringe concern. There's any number of proposals you can read on anarchists library about how to deal with this.
It has nothing to do with being failed. If you wanted to start a democratic collective in manorialist times then yes, figuring out how not to get invaded was very important.
You're not saying anything new, anarchism can't happen in times where the system is strong. It can happen when the system is in crisis if we set the relevant groundwork. And when it does, we can defend ourselves from the likewise weakened states.
I didn't think I was saying anything new, just that it's a practical problem that needs solving.
What do you mean? Long drawn out Guerilla wars?
In part. States have a lot of trouble understanding anything that isn't as centralised as a state. Consequently state militaries and intelligence agencies are highly specialised towards attacking these targets and going after the infrastructure they depend on.
When confronted by more horizontally organised structures they tend to get drawn into situations that become long drawn out guerrilla wars. Or playing whackamole with insurgency cells.
Afghanistan, and after we destabilized it, Iraq are good examples.
I wonder if thatβs part of why the Taliban reportedly hate having to actually run Afghanistan?
Itβs still a bunch of assholes with guns though, which sucks.
Its 5 pm i just woke up and im too tired to argue this shit again. You're wrong. There are books about why you're wrong and you're wrong in most ways from the atomic level up to planetary scale shit. Every part of these ideas is wrong in a frustrating stubborn common way.
Honestly it makes me understand why tankies exist. I don't agree with them, but I get it. Just like I get capitalism. They both suck but they're both right for different reasons.
Lemmy has just ruined the word tankie but if you are referring to the more militant/dogmatic MLs then I would agree that I think a search for "realistic" solutions drives some of the more concerning/ardent believers.
You act like coercion is inherently a better mechanism of coordination. As if suffering is strength. This is my least favorite fallacy.
Even with our own planet, I fear someone would chuck an asteroid our way, Γ la "it's free real estate!" once the dust settles...
It really should be addressed: why are states assumed to be better at violence? The trend in doctrine over the past century, and among elite pro murderers, has always been to devolve authority, put decision making closer to the decision, create more autonomy. This is anarchism's entire shit, i think similarly ewuipped, similarly trained forces, a state has the disadvantage.
And indeed when you see liberatory forces going up against oppressors, usually fascists (or something like them; daesh comes to mind) they tend to function better than a traditional assessmejt might assume. Not always enough for the odds they face, but beyter than you'd expect.
What theyve got is already being established, and being able to reach deep into our lives to fuck us from thr start. Its all the labor and loot they've stolen and hoarded, which would at least equalize over time. It sounds like the problem in conflict here is just the usual problems of revolution-any revolution, with any politics.
And literally every ideology has won at least one of those.
It boils down to cooperation vs coordination.
A cooperative force has fewer week points. A single point of failure would be unlikely to cause the rest of the cooperatives to quit. Contrast that to a coordinated war machine where a coup d'etat could quite literally cause them to lay down arms.
Cooperatives by their nature are volunteers whereas state solders are frequently conscripted or coerced in other ways.
A state has hierarchical structures which allows a few leaders near the top to organize a large portion of the state's workforce and economy into a war machine. We have seen examples of that many times through history. Have we seen a counter example of an anarchist cooperative building a war machine to protect itself? Bonus: Has that ever happened without then turning into a state because of the systems it built took on a life of their own birthing regime soaked in the blood of its own? I digress.
In a defensive war the attacker does that.
Kind of. Ukraine. They didnt lose because red vs black, they kind of lost because look-at-a-fucking-map, and did win against the white army. Remember what happened when republican armies (even napolean's republican-built one) started going up against monarchist armies?
I feel like people just give authoritarianism a ton of points that... I dont get where they're getting them?
How near the top? Lets say youre fighting america right now, lets say you're in that position, trying to use that power. The nature of your power dwtermines so much of whqt you can and cannot do. In fact they're trying to do exactly what youve said and have been failing for months. You could give whatever orders you like, of course, but what actually gets done and what damages your authority or gets you fired in the attempt is a serious stumbling block-a king does not have freedom, only power, and that binds him.
Like, you're believing all the hype here.
The main advantage they have is that there's lots of people who buy their shit and lots of shit they've stolen. It's that they're established. Break that and i genuinely dont think they have much on more liberated forms of society. I think the rest is various degrees of bullshit.
The dispossessed had the same affect on me as well, though i only recently read it, about a year ago.
never heard of that book, I'll add it to my reading list;
++ recommend. Dont expect that there isnt criticism of the anarchist state
anarchist state? how can a state be anarchist?
Read the book...
I will.