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Title: Anarcho-Democracy Author: Jeffrey Date: 4/20/2019 Language: en Topics: critique, class struggle, organization, marxism, democracy, anarcho-communist, leftism, philosophy, political philosophy, ideology Notes: Anarcho-democracy is a political ideology that intends to create a unified leftist front to set the stage for a democratic transition from a modern liberal capitalist society to anarcho-communism while accounting for geopolitical realities and reactionary rightism.
“Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed.”
— Albert Einstein
“Abandon cleverness, discard profit, and thieves and robber will
disappear.”
— Lao Tzu
“No man can serve two master: for either he will hate the one, and love
the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye
cannot serve God and mammon.”
— Jesus Christ
The altar of mammon drips with the blood of Liberty, sacrificed to
quench the insatiable greed of the elite. Lust for wealth has led our
nations down a path to earthly damnation, a planet turned into a living
hell for millions. Suffering is ignored for the sake of profit when it
is not being created for the same. The political elite have whored
themselves to the economic elite for power and personal gain, and
billions suffer for their sins.
The natural world around us crumbles as our excesses consume us. The
poor are left without basic necessities or the means of escaping their
fate. Hateful and divisive ideologies are spreading like a plague. All
can see that there is something wrong with the world around them, yet
their collective response has been to keep doing the same harmful things
as always and hope it all gets better. Change is hard, it’s confusing,
it may even get in the way of profits. As a result of our crimes against
our fellow man we continue to wallow in misery, exploiting and competing
with one another to get to the top of a tumbling pile while trampling
and crushing those unfortunate people at the bottom. The masters of this
brutal frenzy have stacked the game in their favor to guarantee that
their will always outweighs the will of the masses, replicating a feudal
system with lords and aristocrats replaced by wealthy capitalists and
the old-money families whose coffers grew fat from long-forgotten
atrocities. Every day we come closer to complete domination of our
society by corrupt oligarchs and fascist strongmen that would like
nothing more than to take use back to the days of tyranny, backed by the
weapons and legalistic terrors provided to them by modern industry. If
our species hopes to ever escape this hellworld we have built for
ourselves then we must act now before death becomes the only freedom we
have left.
Our society is now and has always been under the absolute control of the
wealthy and power hungry. The electoral system has been so effectively
manipulated and rigged by conservative politicians and oligarch
capitalists that the possibility of a citizen’s vote having any
substantial impact borders on illusion. We are guided along by a
political class that is controlled and organized by and for the wealthy,
with the primary motivation of boosting profits and upholding capitalist
dominion over the economy. Maintenance of the current world hegemony
under America and the West relies upon the economic compliance of weak
and developing nations, translating outdated colonialism to wage-slavery
and resource exploitation by private corporations. The pursuit of their
geopolitical goals has resulted in the international suppression of
socialism, support for fascist regimes and dictators, allowing millions
to die of preventable lack and want, constant asymmetrical warfare
against political enemies and the militarized enforcement of the fiat
petrodollar as the primary global currency. The comfort, luxury and
economic dominance of Western elites has come at the cost of the freedom
and financial security for those in the lower-classes and the lives and
wealth of foreign nations.
The capitalist economy requires that there be an exploitable and
impoverished underclass in order to create the desperation needed to
drive people to sell their labor to the rich in exchange for a tenth or
less of their productive output. Capitalism is fueled by coercion and
fear, and thus could never be voluntary in a society that has the
technological and scientific capability to eliminate such poverty, as
the West is entirely capable of doing currently. Instead, the capitalist
class desires minimum-wage workers who can be financially intimidated
into perfoming menial drudgery and wage slavery, scrubbing toilets and
flipping burgers for bourgeois masters for fear of losing their homes
and being forced into destitution. The vast majority of jobs are
pointless, only existing as an extention of capitalism, with most
minimum-wage and office jobs being entirely unneccessary except to run
the grotesque capitalist machine. In time, these positions will be
replaced with inexpensive automation, thus making all previous arguments
related to labor and wages moot and requiring us to ask if those people
will be taken care of or if they will be expected to die off for the
good of the economy.
A coalition of conservative factions have willingly worked with
billionaires, provacateurs, the far-right and foreign operatives to
hijack the American political system, and with it in their hands they
have sought to destroy the world’s faith in liberal democracy. The
right-wing base has been brought under the heel of corporate interests,
with leaders willing to support divisive and regressive ideologies to
maintain corporate welfare and global capitalist hegemony. The justice
system has been unable to deflect the corruption of the 45^(th)
administration, in part because the corruption is essential to the
current status quo and reveals difficult truths about the weight of
wealth and conservative influence over the American legal system, and in
part because the institutions that are supposed to protect against such
corruption have been commandeered by those who work to hide it from the
light.
American reliance upon the petrodollar for global control has given it
an economic edge over all other countries, but it will eventually be the
nation’s downfall. With the rise of sustainable energy the United States
will have to alter its strategy for geopolitical control, and there are
few options in the coming decades that will ensure it can challenge
China for global influence and counter Russia’s economic growth and
expansion into Europe. There will be fewer chains to bind small
developing nations, allowing them to ally with other superpowers if they
are offered a better alternative, effectively conquering the West’s
neocolonies. Without other nations being dependant on U.S. currency for
access to oil there will be a collapse of the petrodollar, and thus the
basis of the American economy.
While the left may agree that capitalist hegemony is undesirable, it
will not be beneficial for the people if the system is merely destroyed,
as the void will be filled be a potentially worse world order. Instead,
we must have a means of transitioning towards a system that will work
for the benefit of all people while addressing the geopolitical
realities that will challenge any new society. This includes the hostile
foreign influences and the rise of far-right ideologies that are
manipulating politics across the globe.
The one thing that Western capitalist nations have sought to destroy
more than anything else is socialism. The idea that society functions
best through unbridled competition rather than cooperation is has been
pushed by government officials and the rich for centuries, and the
belief that capitalism is inherently fair regardless of outcome has been
used to justify the systemic cruelties that it requires for its
maintenance. Resources are plentiful enough that most of our food goes
to waste or is outright destroyed to prevent consumption, as it would
harm the profits of an individual seller to distribute the food to those
who cannot afford it. Tons of unused material goods are thrown away when
they could be used, as it may affect the bottom line of the seller, and
(in a display of capitalism’s ridiculousness) giving the resources to
poor nations may harm local economies by draining profits from farmers
and craftsmen. The system itself is unable to cure human suffering
without proof of usefulness in the form of trade or labor, and the
inherent discrepancies in this balance of power guarantees that the
labor and trade goods of the poor can be acquired for pitance wages
compared to labor that can be acquired from socially empowered workers
like those protected by unions. In almost all cases the CEO will make
profit dozens or hundreds of times greater than that paid their
lowest-wage employees, often paying them as low as the law will allow
them unless they are in need of a particular skill. Wealth has been
proven time and time again to trickle upward, pooling in the pockets of
capitalists, professionals and the bourgeoisie, never in the pockets of
the common laborer.
Class struggle has been erased from the minds of the average Western
citizen, being instead replaced with party politics that results in only
a handful of issues relevant to the people ever being heard, while the
will of elites and special interests remain the true dictators of public
policy. The democratic republic is barely a democratic system, designed
to provide liberal and conservative elites with a way to reap money and
power from the masses. Voting will always ensure one of a handful of
approved party members will win the election, as seen with the
Democratic party’s willingness to undemocratically run their
pre-selected candidate regardless of the public’s positive opinion
toward the socialist candidate, effectively being caught in the act of
rigging the system. Nothing will happen without the approval of the
ruling parties, who have an agreement to stop socialism from coming to
power. Freedom under such a system is merely an illusion. Fortunately
there are strong leftist voices taking office in the West that may help
turn the tide of popular opinion against the elite, but even with their
inclusion in the current political system there will never be freedom
under the corruptable legislature. The only way forward is to remove
power from their hands and place it into the hands of the people, and
the only way to do that is to form a direct democracy that can replace
the current political structure. Humanity is desperate for a new stage
of political development, but the powers that be have no intention of
giving up their control over the rest of mankind. They have taken hold
of the means of production and hold them high above the heads of the
common man, willing to allow the masses to take the fall for their
economic malfeasance. The social narrative can only be changed through
either taking control of the democratic system or violent revolution,
but the former path offers us a brighter and more viable chance for
success if the popular will can be wrestled from the hands of liberals
and the right. The formation of a populist democratic front comprised of
the unified masses of the left and center-left will be necessary for
real change, a difficult task to accomplish given the divisions between
their beliefs. By establishing a system that can effectively blend the
Western respect for personal freedom and democracy with the tenets of
socialism there can be intersectionality strong enough to challenge the
status quo. In response to this need I have created the basic components
of a system that I call anarcho-democracy, a blending of
anarcho-communism, democratic socialism and regulated capitalism that
allows for a voluntary transition of society towards communism and a
global Union with minimal coercion compared to the current system. In
this text I have outlined the basics of my proposed system and answer a
few questions that will undoubtedly be raised. Regardless of your
opinion about the system itself, may it give you cause to think of your
own ways to better the world around you. We need philosophers and
leaders. We need a new binding ideology that can create solidarity
amongst the left if mankind is ever to escape from the oppressive grasps
of capitalism and the state.
This is a selection of my essays and notes compiled in a reasonably
readable format and edited for clarity. My writings are intended
primarily for a leftist audience as well as humanists and those who
strive for a better world. I have sought to find an arrangement that
would hopefully allow for a smooth transition to freedom without driving
a wedge between the already fractious segments of society, a task that
is worth pursuing yet may very well be impossible given our species’
archaic habits and the historic tendency for regressive cultures to
resort to violence when their worldview is challenged.
This is not the final word on the subject of anarcho-democracy, only the
basic foundations and the underlying perspectives that are to be central
to the system. Much about its workings and operations needs to be
addressed in the future, some of which I intend to write myself and some
which must be created by others according to the customs and cultures of
their home nation, ideally with the core values of anarcho-democracy
intact. Most of my writings are from the perspective of a United States
citizen and focused on the politics of the Western world; any nation may
potentially benefit from these ideas, but they will have to be adapted
to the political and social environments of each region to be relevant.
I present my theories for examination and criticism, with the hopes that
others may be inspired to find criticism of their own beliefs as well.
The workings of anarcho-democracy are not to be set in stone, with only
the ideals of freedom, democracy and non-coercion and the basics
foundations of the system are mandatory. Even if this system doesn’t
gain traction I hope that it may inspire others to devise better systems
that will bring about unity of the left. The left needs solidarity in
action and elimination of dogma if we are ever to succeed in our
revolution. The black and red must unite under a new flag, bound by our
common goals.
For the political moderate, I welcome you to not only read this text but
to explore other leftist books as well. If you have an unbiased
knowledge of socialist ideology and historical materialism then you will
have a better understanding of my perspective than if you are reading
this without context or with right-wing bias. The philosophical basis
for this text comes from socialist thought, and I do not mince words
regarding my beliefs. To reassure the reader I would like to say that
this is not a call for violent revolution. Quite the contrary, this is a
call for a democratic revolution, one that brings us away from the
inherent violence of our current society.
To allow this book to be read quickly I have cut dozens of pages worth
of material from my initial draft, understanding that the worker’s free
time is precious. I have limited my rambling to a short few points, as
the terrors of the world under capitalism have been so deeply ingrained
in the minds of the people that bringing them up is tantamount to
beating a dead horse. The majority of people who would read this text
already understand the cruelties of the war on drugs, the subjugation of
minority cultures, the exploitation of the developing world, the lack of
police accountability, the evils of wage-slavery, the underhanded
manipulation of foreign politics, etc. More texts will be compiled in
the future, but it is my current intention to present the foundational
ideas of anarcho-democracy so that they may be further developed
according to the needs of each nation.
Readers that want to know more will benefit from reading Conquest of
Bread by Peter Kropotkin as an introduction, as it explains the
philosophy behind the formation of an anarchist communist society. This
is required reading for full understanding of this system. A basic
knowledge of marxism is helpful as well, although it is perhaps too much
to ask a working person to read the lengthy Das Kapital, one can easily
read The Communist Manifesto, a much shorter and more accessible text.
Understanding the historical and sociopolitical circumstances that led
to the creation of socialist ideologies and states can help us place
their struggles into context and show us the potential pitfalls of their
beliefs so that we may learn from the past to form a more perfect
future.
---
The philosophy of anarcho-democracy was developed with the intention of
creating a humanist society that will strive to reduce the suffering of
all people within it, replacing the current system that elevates the
elite to power to while the masses wallow in misery and toil to provide
for their lavish lifestyles. My empathy for my fellow man and my
disappointment with their collective lack of compassion has brought me
to despair, yet I refuse to give up hope that it may some day be a
better place. Empathy is what this current system lacks, and it is what
must be used to swing the pendulum leftward.
The purpose of anarcho-democracy is to provide a sliding scale between
capitalism and communism that can be moved both by society as a whole
and by each individual person. It is the middle ground between the
brutal and sometimes necessary society of today and the beautiful and
humanistic society of tomorrow, and the society that I believe will
strengthen the best aspects of modern liberal society without supporting
the short-sighted and corrupt flaws that would ultimately bring about
its downfall. By developing a new system that can bring about a
readjustment of the West’s geopolitical goals without making it
vulnerable to other nation’s own goals we can provide the best incubator
available for an advanced communist society. Instead of only promising a
bright future for our distant and imaginary descendants we can build the
foundations of communism today. We can eliminate the republican system,
establish direct democracy, reform the government to serve the people,
create the infrastructure for an anarchist-communist society, and
protect against the recurrence of the far-right.
Anarcho-Democracy — A system of government that provides a transition
from capitalism to anarchist communism by democratically manipulating
the republican system to create the policies, institutions, structure
and infrastructure for a peaceful and voluntary revolution. Establishes
a direct democratic socialism with a selective economic system, a
voluntary commune system and a shield state that protects national
stability and the rights of the people. Creates multiple institutions
and policies to advance public perceptions of self-governance via
anarchism, including the anarcho-constitution, the Alliance of Communes
and a communist economy that parallels the private economy, with the
long-term goals of separating the stability of a nation from the
capitalist economic system and integrating with other democratic
socialist nations to create a global communist Union.
Anarcho-Constitutionalism: A means of providing rights in a
transitioning anarchist society. When possible, the previous
constitution and bill of rights of a nation should be retained in its
entirety, only adding to the rights of citizens instead of removing
rights. Cannot be used to deny a right, except for instances such as the
“right to own a slave” or other coercive “right”. All groups and
communes that participate in society are bound by the constitution, and
any attempt to deny citizens their constitutional rights shall result in
action by the state and the Alliance of Communes to correct injustice.
Provides protection to the anarcho-communist system that prevents abuse
of the revolutionary goals by reactionaries and authoritarians.
Selective Economic System: A voluntary system that allows individuals to
determine the system of economics that they wish to live under. Citizen
may freely transition between the capitalist/socialist market, the
anarchist commune system, and sovereign homesteading. The individual may
change their preferred system at any time and may move freely between
all three. It is the hope that the majority of the population would
abandon or reduce their participation in capitalism when better and more
liberating options are available, allowing the capitalist economic
system to be decoupled from the health of the nation and reduced to a
non-essential triviality.
Left/Center/Right — Left wing will only refer to political ideologies
that include transferring the means of production to the people, with
little differentiating left and far-left other than the extent of
allowances for private property or capital within their society. Center
refers to moderates, left liberals and social democrats that wish to
maintain private ownership of the means of production but pursue social
programs. Right refers to conservatives, right libertarians and most
capitalists that seek to preserve the status quo. Far-right includes
fascists, monarchists, theocrats and autocrats and race-supremacists.
This often overlaps with alt-right, which refers to neoreactionaries and
fascist-adjacent ideology that seeks to replace traditional right-wing
parties and norms with a modernized form of conservatism.
Anarchism — Society free from oppressive heirarchy and capitalism and
guided by mutual aid. Analogous with anarcho-communism. One should read
Peter Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread and Mutual Aid if they want to
learn more.
Bourgeoisie — Middle class and upper-middle class, benefactors of the
status quo that may include owners of the means of production.
“Bourgeois” refers to the culture and lifestyles of the bourgeoisie,
marked by conspicuous consumption and a focus on the pursuit of material
comfort. Much of Western society has integrated bourgeouis culture and
comforts into all levels of society as a result of our modern standards
of living, at times blurring the line between the “culturally bourgeois”
and the upper-middle class business owners and capitalists that are
often associated with the word. In my writings I typically avoid
referring to the capitalist class as bourgeoisie for this reason,
instead simply referring to them as capitalists.
Capitalist — I generally use this term to refer to those who own the
means of production or profit from the labor of others, not the cultural
or ideological adherents to capitalism. Those who call themselves
“capitalists” because they like markets and trade are not truly
capitalists for the purposes of determining a person’s position in the
status quo. There is of course some overlap in the two categories that
make it useful to refer to them collectively as capitalists, so apply
context to any conversation with a socialist.
Liberal — A capitalist (of the ideological variety), most typically used
to refer to center-left liberals that support social justice and high
taxation, but I use this as a general term for ideological capitalists
who are left of conservative capitalists. Not considered part of the
left-wing but instead occupying the center, with center-left liberals
supportive of social democracy instead of democractic socialism.
Center-right liberals are classical liberals, which refers to
capitalists that support individualism yet are not always supportive of
social justice.
Libertarian — Refers to ideologies that are anti-statist and
anti-oppression. Classical libertarianism and social libertarianism both
refer to left-wing anarchist ideologies, while right-libertarian and
American-libertarian refer to anti-statist, pro-capitalist ideologies
and are may feature conservative values or extend into
anarcho-capitalism. Generally used in my writings to refer to broad
libertarian beliefs, but I do not believe that exploitation by wage
slavery is liberating to anyone but the employer and thus omit such
beliefs from my standard definition of “libertarian”. “Individualist
libertarian” will be used to refer to such ideologies that value freedom
for the individual over the common man.
Socialism — A society where the means of production are owned by the
people. Broadly used to reference any leftist ideology from anarchism to
state communism. I use the marxist definition of socialism, meaning that
it is not the transition from capitalism to communism as socialism
itself is communism. In marxist thought capitalism is the stage before
communism, itself being the transition away from feudalism.
Anarcho-democracy seeks to be the transitional system towards
libertarian socialism/communism that marx did not see as necessary but
which most modern people see as the definition of “socialism”. I never
refer to liberalism as socialism, although I sometimes describe social
democratic policies as “socialistic” to give credit to their attempts at
mixed economics.
Communism — A classless, moneyless, stateless society. Analogous with
anarcho-communism. Socialist states that referred to themselves as
communists and govern with authoritarian rule will generally be called
“state communisms” to differentiate them from the true definition of a
communist society.
Commune — Contrary to the typical mental image of a hippy farm or a
soviet kolkhoz, the communes of anarcho-democracy are to be model
villages and cities of the future, providing citizens a voluntary
alternative to life under capitalist dominion and wage slavery. Each
commune is to be constructed by the state with a focus on
sustainability, usability walkability, community and aesthetic beauty.
They are to provide for common necessities (food, healthcare, community)
and means of self-attainment (education, travel, self-governance,
protection from exploitation, freedom from unjust rule). Where new
communes cannot be built they will be retrofitted from neighborhoods and
city blocks that have democratically chosen to join the commune system,
integrating seemlessly and borderlessly with non-commune areas.
Communer — Communer refers to a person who has adopted the commune
system, while a communist is someone who believes in communism. A
communer can be a communist and vice versa.
Private Property and Personal Property — Private property in leftist
terms refers to property owned by private interests which may be used to
make profit, including factories and rental homes. Personal property
refers to possessions and things one uses for themselves, including
personal homes, your collections and your toothbrush.
Union — An alliance of anarcho-democratic or democratic socialist states
that unifies into a combined front against exploitative capitalism. The
basis for an international moneyless economy and a libertarian world
order.
West/Western — Refers primarily to capitalist European nations and
America, mostly governed by liberal democratic republics. Typically
supportive of personal freedoms. For purposes of describing the trend of
nations privatizing and liberalizing their societies, some countries can
be called “Westernized”, such as Japan and South Korea. My writings
often are focused around Western society and have been crafted according
to the American political system, yet they could apply to a Westernized
Eastern nation with sufficient reorganization.
“Competition is the law of the jungle, but cooperation is the law of
civilization.”
— Peter Kropotkin
The modern Western world was built upon the principles of democracy.
Egality, equality, fraternity; life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness: brave men and women have fought and died so that these ideals
may live on. The Tree of Liberty has been soaked in the blood of
tyrannts many times over in pursuit of beliefs that once only existed in
the dreams of serfs and peasants. With the collective struggles of the
past we have been freed from kings and lords and brought into the age of
the liberal democratic republic. This has been the most widely adopted
democratic system up until today, and the bourgeious meritocracy of that
system was a dream compared to the brutal tyranny of feudalism, but
today their dream has become a nightmare. The beauty that they suffered
and died to bring us has been soiled by the governments and systems they
thought would safeguard the liberty of the people. Despite their best
intentions, the capitalist republic has reached an endgame where the
rich have drained the population of their wealth, horded in the hands of
the elite.
The descendants of patriots are not free. The lower classes are trapped
in debt, working miserable jobs, under the thumb of masters and
oppressors that could end their careers and lives in an instant if not
obeyed. Politicians do not truly represent the people and are instead
owned by capitalist interests and conservative ideologues that seek to
make the masses into useful servants of the few. The voting system is
rigged and gerrymandered to benefit conservatives, guaranteeing a steady
voting base of single-issue voters that are pandered to and fooled into
supporting the means of their own economic suppression. Anyone who has
avoided this brainwashing knows that things must change if liberty is to
survive.
The establishment of a new direct democratic system free from the grasp
of corrupt congressmen is essential for our will to be heard. The
creation of a new society where the rich are not the only ones free from
oppression is a prerequisite to a peaceful planet.
For those who find fault with the current system of sociopathic
exploitation there should be a means of escape. I propose a voluntary
economic system that allows for multiple life paths that will suit the
personalities and beliefs of as many citizens as possible. People who
choose to engage in capital and private industry should be allowed to do
so, but it is essential that a system of free exchange be developed for
those that wish to participate in a community without the chaos of the
rigged capitalist game.
---
A system of advanced communities organized around cooperation — called
communes in this text for clarity and to avoid mincing words — must be
built for the benefit of the people, removing landlords, employers and
financial middlemen from their portion of society and replacing them
with self-governance and community-centered production of goods, with an
open exchange between communes to provide a replacement for the
capitalist market.
By establishing places where no man stands above another we can remove
the suffering inherent to unjust hierarchies. The commune system should
provide an escape from bourgeois society by allowing individuals to rid
themselves of the abstact laws and justice systems that oppress the
people. We can create a new form of self-governance that will maximize
freedoms of the individual while protecting the rights and lives of all
citizens.
By founding a new economy based upon cooperation and mutual aid we can
address the poverty and economic disparity that keeps us enslaved to the
arbitrary number faith of capitalism. With the ability to separate
ourselves from exploitative profiteering and wage slavery we can rid
ourselves of the insecurity caused by the fluctuation of markets and the
whims of petty bosses.
Although it is possible that money will never entirely disappear while
individuals have free choice in the matter, there will likely be a
decades-long shift away from capital as the older generations pass and
workers choose to free themselves from their chains rather than tolerate
petty and demanding employers. Once people have no reason to work for
tyrant bosses there will be far fewer workers available to exploit, and
the stranglehold over the working classes will be broken. Die-hard
right-wingers and political extremists will gladly fall into debt and
pay half their incomes to a landlord rather than ever be a “commie”, and
no one should ever deny them that option.
Some people may wish to live off the land, responsible for no one but
themselves. It is a natural reaction for some people to seek such peace,
and so there should be a means to allow them to pursue off-grid living.
A system that allows individuals to claim sovereign citizenship can
allow for a mutually beneficial alliance between leftists and
right-libertarians. They can be allowed to purchase rural land and not
be bothered by the outside world. As long as their income is below the
“no tax” level then they should not be required to report income, and
regional/national laws should not apply to them on their own personal
property as long as they abide by the requirements of the constitution
and do not commit a financial, violent, endangering or terroristic
crime; they must also abide by all national laws while in public areas
to maintain their end of the social contract. Inexpensive
government-owned land should be offered in the heartlands and in rural
areas outside of towns to guarantee that this lifestyle can be achieved
by common people.
For communers that wish to homestead there should be land set aside and
distributed according to location and value, with plots ranging from
small lots of less than a quarter acre in more valuable land to large
multi-acre spaces in inexpensive heartland. They should be supported
with access to commune and state supplies and provided with a means to
allow them to contribute to the markets or local communities.
---
The reformation of society should not reduce the people’s quality of
life and should not be disruptive or harmful to their daily lives. If
people wish to continue in their current occupations and maintain their
current lifestyles then they should be free to do so. Each person may
choose to work for a boss, start a business, own land and property, and
be free from confiscation of their homes or possessions. If so chosen,
each citizen may engage in capital and profiteering, and individuals and
independently-owned businesses are to be taxed low and fairly. By slowly
transitioning society away from capital instead of rapidly there is less
cause for conflict, something that the average Westerner is both
frightened to see and loath to participate in.
For the market system there is to be a practical limitation on profit,
utilizing measures such as a 70% tax on profits over $10 million and
90–100% tax on an individual’s profit over $100 million. However,
citizens should not be required to pay taxes on the first
$30,000-$100,000, to ensure that lower and middle-income citizens are
not negatively affected by the systemic change; people who make around
$250,000 dollars or less should not have taxes raised to gain
upper-middle class support. Multiple laws should be passed protecting
independently owned businesses such as artists and craftsmen, while
passing multiple laws to limit the strength of corporations. Eliminate
the billionaire class through taxation, passing laws and enacting
treaties with other nations that limit their abilities to export wealth
or hide their profits. Annihilation of oligarch/corporate control over
the government and the population are essential to the security of a
socialist society. Socialists should promote a subtle hostility between
the fair and honest independent businesses and exploitative
corporations. Finally, eliminate social security and welfare programs.
All social programs, with some exceptions for public safety, will be
replaced by the commune system. A negative income tax or small basic
income may be implemented depending upon the studied benefits of such a
system and how much it would affect the commune system, although studies
should be undertaken to guarantee that this does not damage the
revolution by instilling political complacency or by disrupting the
potential for a society free from capitalist control. The elderly,
retired, unemployed, infirm and anyone who cannot afford to survive
under capitalism may voluntarily join the commune system at will.
Children in the market system will be given free access to education and
healthcare.
Democratization of the economy must be achieved if the working class is
ever to be free of wage slavery. All corporations and multimillion
dollar businesses are to remain private for 10–30 years after the
founding of the business, and are to be nationalized or democratized
following that period. To prevent the corporation selling off all assets
before the transition, the corporation must give the employees a chance
to democratically choose to buy-out a corporation at it’s estimated
value before they sell or liquidate the business, with a scale that
reduces the maximum sale price determind by the percentage of time left
before they are legally required to democratize, with the price reduced
as they get closer to the end date. Without checks and balances on the
power of major corporations they will utilize their vast sums to buy
propaganda and influence with the intention of re-establishing corporate
dominion over politics and humanity. Following the end of their
privatized period the owners should be given honors and be publicly
rewarded for their societal contributions.
Natural resources and utilities should be democratized or nationalized
to prevent robber barons from controlling resources that may allow them
to manipulate government policy for profit. Having such a powerful
entity operate within a state in our globally connected world endangers
democracy and places nations in the pockets of the resource barons.
Furthermore, the government can distribute resources to the communes in
circumstances where the creation of a locally-produced material is not
viable or when there is a gap in the commune market. The resources must
belong to the people, to be used and protected as they collectively
wish. Never should nature’s gift to all be controlled by the few.
---
The single greatest achievement of the Western democratic system is the
creation of the Constitution, a document that forms the basis of modern
civilization and — in the absense of a collective culture or faith —
allows individuals to point to a higher authority than even the
government in defense of their rights. Bills of Rights are necessary for
upholding freedoms under a state, and while not always perfect it has
proven to be one of the few protectors from oppressions that would
otherwise be “justifiable” under autocratic and authoritarian regimes.
In countries such as the United States there is a deep reverence and
respect for the Constitution, with the documents being seen as nearly a
form of divine rule, as it is one of the few things outside of a
revolution that may stop a wannabe despot. It is a necessity in a free
society that one’s protections shall be written in permanence so all
people may have liberty. Everyone must be able to know their freedoms
and have room for recourse when they are violated.
Even in an anarchist society a constitution can fulfill a strong role in
the protection of the people. Utopia is a falsehood, at least in our day
and age, therefore it will come to pass a time when one or more people
in a position of power, (malicious council members, petty militiamen,
corrupt representatives, busybody abolitionists, charismatic
psychopaths, etc.) will overstep the limits of a libertarian socialist
society and abuse their power, requiring correction by law when possible
or or by force when required. Under conditions where the local
population has been overruled by an upstart tyrant, potentially with
backing from a portion of the community or through outside coercion,
there may not be a possibility for a local solution to the problem. Here
lies the benefit of a binding and enforced constitution, one that allows
a state or collective force to back the word of the constitution with
the rule of law and the might of arms. This constitution can be the
center of a society’s ideals, the document that one looks to for
guidance on how to live righteously. In effect the constitution is a
holy text for a nation, amounting to the word of god in cultural and
political significance.
A constitution can be written to reflect the general will of an
anarchist-communist society if done intentionally. This new document,
the anarcho-constitution, is the foundation of the anarcho-democratic
society. Combining the anarchist will to freedom with the time-tested
sanctity of the constitution, a libertarian socialist society has the
chance to avoid the corruptions and evils most common to nation-states.
It is impossible to have a society where all are free and security is
absolute; we sacrifice rights to live in any kind of community, even an
anarchist one. However, such sacrifices can be mitigated with the
Authority of the Collective Will, found in the form of a constitution
and bill of rights.
To gain the maximum benefit of an anarcho-democracy there should be a
transfer of all previously granted rights to the new document along with
amendments that will ensure the freedom of each person from hunger,
homelessness, discrimination, and the various forms of capitalist
tyranny. It should provide for protection against the enemies of
democracy and freedom, guaranteeing that anarcho-communism (by whatever
name) is protected by the state’s force of arms. Individual human lives
and rights should be considered above all else, and the constitution
should reflect that by valuing the people as a whole moreso than the
wealthy. Plenty of time, effort, and democratic inclusion into the
creation of the anarcho-constitution will be necessary: it will be one
of the most difficult documents of all time to make, and for very good
reason.
---
There is no greater necessity than to eliminate the republican system
and the corporate hold on our governments. There is no particular
specialty of the congressman or the parlaimentarian that could not be
done by all citizens in a direct democracy, and the age-old suggestion
that it is better to be ruled by the elected because they are among the
most intelligent and capable is based upon foolish optimism in the
abilities of the current system to find qualified people instead those
who are merely charismatic grifters, not to mention that good men do not
always strive for office with the same veracity of the self-assured
human filth that often occupy the seat of government. The average
congressman is more idiotic and corrupt than the average man, given the
propensity for any person that seeks such a lofty position to be
self-righteous and perhaps narcissistic, seeing as it takes great gall
for any individual to believe they have they right to rule over other
men. Even worse, it is now the career path of the corporate stooge to
become a politician, so as to better rig the system for themselves and
their masters. We have the ability and technology to replace these swine
with the equally weighted vote of every citizen.
The movement should begin with popularizing social democratic and
democratic socialist ideals within the standing political system, by
promoting and electing those who are sympathetic to the cause and using
their momentum to change the system from within. This allows the
anarcho-democratic system to utilize the progress of the current
democratic socialist movement to meet its objectives. Since few Western
people will appreciate or understand the benefits of socialism
immediately upon suggestion, issues that are parallel to socialism
should be proposed to build popular appeal in the early years of the
movement. When a substantial portion of the nation are receptive to
socialism then the revolutionary allies may promote direct democracy.
Creating a democratic revolutionary front that can safely dismantle the
republic from within and replacing it with a direct democracy without
rightist hijacking is the primary goal at this stage of the revolution.
Only after this has been accomplished may anarcho-democracy be fully
promoted. Building the shield state and the anarcho-constitution will
come next, resulting in the retiring of the republic and the start of
anarcho-democratic socialism.
The dismantling of the gerrymandered voting system shall be done by
computer, placing each voting region into politically neutral units that
do not benefit any party or demographic. The system should be designed
to easily divide regions into communes of roughly 15,000 people, with
subcommunes carved from individual neighborhoods and blocks to allow for
future development of the new system without constant readjustments.
Citizens are to vote by advanced electronic means designed to counter
hacking, with extremely important but non-urgent issues potentially
being made with paper ballots. Citizens should have a constant alert
system for upcoming votes on major issues and those relevant to them
personally, with an app-like quality that allows people to vote on
issues on a regular (even daily) basis.
---
But what of the fools and the careless, are they supposed to run our
lives? What if people remain uneducated, refusing to vote rationally and
instead vote along party lines? What about the masses of people who will
grow bored or frustrated at the responsibility and abandon their votes?
What of internet propaganda? These are indeed issues that need
addressing.
The fools already run our world, controlled by masters that benefit from
their foolishness. The era of weaponized outrage is upon us, with media
shills supporting the status quo in exchange for massive paychecks and
political provacateurs manipulating our bitter and fearful neighbors,
milking money from the political game. The American system itself is
designed to exploit that, with the voting power weighted towards rural
states and districts gerrymandered to give conservatives a stranglehold
over the population. If we count the popular votes from past
presidential elections then you will see that the Democratic candidate
would have beaten the Republican candidates if the system was truly an
unrigged democracy. It is with this knowledge in mind that I remind all
who are cynical of democracy that the current America Congress has been
filled with charlatans that are hated by almost everyone, with scarcely
a soul among them that does not take corporate money or whore themselves
for political power. With a direct democracy the general goodness of man
would shine through far brighter than under the intentionally broken
electoral system.
As for those who choose not to vote, that should be their right. One
should not be forced to participate in politics, as it is simply not for
everyone. However, issues of importance must be advertised on all media.
People will self-organize to push for issues that matter most to them,
and groups will form to motivate voters and inform people of key issues.
As all votes will be done through the same forums they will be
impossible to slip by, and any law can be rescinded if it become a
popular issue. Some people will vote constantly and on every issue, and
some people will simply turn off their notifications and wish to be left
alone. And in this way all people can be content, not simply the
political/economic elite and the blissfully ignorant.
The most pressing issue will be foreign influence and targeted
propaganda. While it is hard to corrupt and bribe an entire nation there
can still be falsehoods aimed at creating strife. Fake news and internet
trolls will work to destroy a new socialist nation by spurring
reactionary violence, with the hopes of starting a civil war. While
political opinions cannot be censored, fake news created by foreign
agencies and extremists groups should be flagged and dealt with by cyber
security organizations developed to root out hostile actions against the
people. To enhance voting security, quantum computing, blockchain or
other advanced form of secure computing technologies should be adopted,
using studies and real-world examples to choose the new system.
---
Below is a suggestion for the general step-by-step process of the
development of an anarcho-democratic nation. Note that this is by no
means an perfect order of operations, meaning that changes will need to
be made as future events develop.
parliamentary system and begin popularizing socialist causes. Promote
direct democracy and workplace democracy. Utilize patriotic aesthetics
to establish connections to moderates and generate goodwill. Criticize
systemic flaws. Admonish opponents for anti-democratic behavior, expose
the inhumanity and criminality of the system they uphold.
using anti-corruption and pro-social legislation to build public support
and create dissent against the oppressor regime.
emphasis on plans for a future anarcho-democratic society advertised in
a manner consistent with the popular opinion, using historical figures
(presidents, founding fathers, etc.) and major historic events (New
Deal, Revolutionary War, Civil War and so on) to demonstrate
left-libertarian compatibility with patriotism and promote its
popularization. Promote hostility between small businesses and large
corporations. Back small businesses with lower taxes while raising taxes
on large corporations.
the Civilian Conservation Corp to assist in the construction of
railways, bridges, factories, parks, communities and various clean
energy sources for domestic use and export. This time period will be
critical to the growth of the New Society as many of the first communes,
suburban villages and modified cities will be constructed during this
period or in the days to following the construction of the shield state.
complex and healthcare. Other industries that have harmed the public
welfare may also be subject to nationalization.
previous rights and ensuring freedom from capitalist exploitation. Add
language to defend the commune system and promote a path toward
self-governance. Adjust the documents to enable direct democracy, noting
that the world of our forefathers could not technologically handle this
freedom but that the time has come for our society to move forward.
Replace it with a direct democratic system.
transition from democratic socialism toward anarchist-communism. The
shift should be subtle, preserving as many previous structures as
possible while altering them to fit the new system.
developed and populated.
aggression in distant lands and denying the desire to dominate others.
Distance ourselves from alliances that are not in our best interests.
in a manner that does not endanger us geopolitically.
promoting communal lifestyles, demonstrating to the people a higher
quality of life than what was offered under capitalism.
and nations, never losing sight of this goal. Expect this to take a long
time.
revolution has passed the people may vote to eliminate the shield states
and organize under the Alliance of Communes or other voluntary anarchist
alliance, fully achieving communism.
---
In the absense of order there is always a struggle for power. Given the
divisions in our cultures and our species’ natural predisposition
towards tribalism, Western nations have required states to provide a
monololy on violence to maintain the solidarity of their nations. While
the governments themselves are often responsible for many of these
divisions themselves, the ones caused by religions, race, ideology and
so on are deeply ingrained in segments of society by way of their own
collective narratives. In short, there is a level of vitriolic division
in the West that would prevent a stateless society from succeeding
peacefully in the current era. There is no magic button that could be
pressed to fix this problem, and it may never go away when there are too
many people who stand to profit off our hatred waiting to stoke the
fires. It is with this deficiency of the human spirit in mind that I
must conclude the liberal republican democracy is both responsible for
divisions in society and responsible for keeping society held together,
keeping poors and undesirables downtrodden while attempting to prevent
the regressive mobs (created by rightist incitements) from publicly
lynching whatever cultural enemy they may hate the most that particular
day. Without a state or capitalism most of the reasons we have for our
divisions today will eventually fade, but instead of the hatred being
wiped out for good we will see that those reasons were actually public
justifications for mere prejudice, something that will take much longer
to eliminate than any political system.
Socialists must also take into account the natural urge of rightists to
follow a hierarchy, something that the modern left has mostly cast aside
as archaic and harmful to human progress. This is a major reason for the
divisions within the left that are mostly invisible amongst the right:
anarchists, democratic socialists and marxist-leninists are divided to
the point of near obsoletion, whereas conservatives, corporatists, and
right-libertarians can ideologically blend with every form of
nationalist and white supremacist without dividing the vote. Without the
state as an intermediary for their social aggressions these same
regressives would enact their will by force of arms, especially against
the anarchists and communists they have been taught to hate and fear,
and likely against the liberals that they would rather not have to
listen to and the minorities they would rather disappear. Under these
threats a utopian anarcho-communist society becomes impossible,
requiring a more practical and less optimistic path to liberation.
Libertarian socialists must find a means to account for the primitive
behaviors of our fellow humans when planning a revolution. Without a
peacekeeper our foolish world will fall back into the hands of strongmen
and morons, creating the necessity for an entity that can maintain the
monopoly of violence until regressive cultures have been modernized. In
short, a state that seeks to maintain order during a social transition
is necessary to prevent the right from dragging us back into the dark
ages. A state that guards against the base wickedness of our modern
civilization can, ironically, be the means of protecting the
anarchist-communist movement. I dub this the “shield state” because it
provides a progressive society a defense against the hostility inherent
in our world.
There is also the danger of foreign manipulation and invasion, a threat
that only a fool would overlook. It is the will of those who would see
the West be destroyed for us to be left divided and without
organization. Make no mistake, there are enemies to the West that do not
care about the freedom of our peoples. They would see us dead or
impoverished if given the chance, and there are many who would love to
grab a slice of our territories if they felt that they would face no
repurcussions for doing so. An organization that is capable of fighting
against a geopolitical opponent is necessary for the long-term freedom
of a people, and the refusal to acknowledge this is the most dangerously
childish result of solipsistic political thought. The defeat of one
state is not the defeat of all states, and if only one is destroyed then
there will be another to take its place, likely coming from halfway
across the globe. A shield state fulfills the necessary requirements for
defense against geopolitical rivals, keeping the nation and its citizens
free from international violence by preventing the shattering of the
Union.
---
The shield state is a replacement for the republican state, created to
prevent the personal interests of politicians from affecting the lives
of the people by removing them from the state and replacing it with a
semi-neutral, goal-oriented protector state. Guided by the direct
democratic will of the people and removed from partisan politics, the
shield state exists to protect the population from violence and
violations of their constitutional rights, maintains and controls
national finances while allowing for private industry, supports the
common welfare by providing for the commune system, and creates the
conditions for a voluntary transition from state-rule to self-rule.
The power of the nation shall be divided into two aspects, one that
maintains the structure of the old capitalist society, and one that
builds the foundation of a new world free from drudgery and poverty. The
former is not preferred, but it is understood to hold value in the
modern world for purposes of international trade and security, thus
making it a necessary evil when engaging nations abroad. Just as
importantly, the capitalists living through the period of transition
should not have their lives upturned like the kulaks of Russia, but
instead deserve the same respect as any other human. The shield state
will provide the conditions for a slow transition, likely over multiple
generations.
Operating as a helper rather than an oppressor, the shield state
provides a vent for social aggression by ensuring that lives are not
destroyed by capitalism’s carelessness. Likewise, the state would
guarantee safety and protection to capitalists by providing them with a
more tradition money-based economic system — complete with property
ownership — in which they can start businesses and corporations, with
some limitations enacted to protect society from oligarchs and robber
barrons.
The state itself is not and cannot be an anarchist structure, but
instead it enables the environmental conditions to allow
anarcho-communism to thrive. Under capitalism, money is required to
obtain land and build communities, which ensures that the poor have no
means of escaping their predicament without outside support. No
substantial community can be built without an amount of money far beyond
the savings of your average anarchist, especially on a scale large
enough to create meaningful societal change. Even co-op businesses are
held to the financial standards of capitalists, requiring profit and
toil for the sake of appeasing financial masters. There is simply no
escape from the need for money. The governments of today have guaranteed
this cruelty at the behest of their corporate constituents, using guns
and tear gas to uphold their will. To disagree with their order is to
invite poverty and prison. Resistance is destroyed by denying basic
human necessities. Mammon’s grasp on our lives is thorough and absolute.
In contrast to a capitalist government’s enforcement of individual
struggle, the shield state provides for the transition away from this
system of exploitation by building the communes and infrastructure that
grassroots socialism has struggled to find a means to develop. Villages
and cities can be created with intention and efficiency with the large
coffers of an entire nation. Once these communities have been built and
the occupants have moved in and been integrated, the shield state will
give the region autonomous rule.
The community is left to its own devices, save for a few exceptions.
Conflict and violence between communes will be mediated by the state and
the Alliance of Communes. If a commune engages in money exchange then
profit made by the commune will taxed at 50%. Violent crimes that are
unresolved by the community will be investigated by government agents.
In an instance where gangs, cartels, terrorist cells, authoritarian or
anti-communist groups have attempted to occupy a free zone, the
government can intervene to maintain a society free from opportunistic
coercion. Once an anarchist commune denies the tenents of anarchism,
then the state may intervene to renew the rights of the people. In this
way the revolution may be protected from Machiavellian manipulation and
the overthrow of its ideals.
For international representation there should be a “head of state” that
will fill the role of the president. Contrary to their modern
equivalent, however, this individual is only allowed to express the
popular democratic will of the people and cannot control or affect the
legislative system personally. The presidency must be naturally short to
prevent the people from becoming too comfortable with the arrangment,
with votes taken every 1–2 years and with a term limit of roughly 8
years in office allowed throughout their lives. They are to act as the
face and voice of the nation, being the servant and slave of the
people’s will, having more in common with a celebrity than a modern
president. They must also be the technical “commander in chief” of the
military, authorized to reign in a corrupt or reactionary unit. To allow
for the quick response of an armed force under a direct democracy the
president may also be allowed to send peacekeepers to a foreign region
for no more than 30 days before a national vote must be held on the
continuance of intervention, after which time it should be voted upon
regularly each month; at any time the decision may be brought into
question by the request of a popular petition. Upon any national
declaration of martial law, upon the request of a popular petition, upon
the use of the military, or upon the denial of a popular vote on any
policy, the presidency must come into an immediate vote from amongst the
last election’s candidates, and it must be repeated every day (or week,
if deemed more practical) until the end of martial law or the end of the
presidency. The nation could theoretically elect a popular celebrity or
a respected scientist and not be at risk of danger any more than with
they are now with their current stock of elected officials, but only if
the rules of the office are changed to eliminate much of their free will
in regards to national and international policy. If a president has any
more power or influence over the people than that given them by their
charisma then they have been given to much power for the prosperity of a
free society.
---
As long as there are nations the world can never be completely free.
Given time the state may be voted out of power, leaving the Alliance of
Communes and voluntary social spheres to organize society.
But when would this happen? I cannot say, as that will be a choice for
the people of the future. As a recommendation, the anarcho-constitution
must bind the Union until the socialist conversion of all major
capitalist nations or until the complete global shift away from
authoritarian and militaristic nation-states has been achieved. If
hostile and expansionary nations still exist they will move to dominate
the remnants of newly dissolved nation, either through war or
manipulation of societal divisions. This long-term timeframe is a major
reason for why the anarchist commune system should be implemented during
the transition to communism and not after the global success of
socialism, as seen in marxist-leninism. This is to give structure, form,
and social credibility to communist society until it can be popularized
and spread internationally.
When the requisite requirements for the vote have been met and the
public has chosen to place the subject of final liberation on the
ballot, it must be given a month of steady and accessible news
announcements to alert all people. The vote should be international,
requiring all nations in the Union to first have a successful popular
vote within their own nations before it can be taken between all members
of the union. If a vote results in the dissolution of the state and
Union then there should be a full year, 365 days, before the dissolution
takes effect, with the people given a monthly chance to cease the
dissolution of the state through a revote. This is intended to allow for
time for it to be determined if there are nefarious and nationally
endangering reasons behind the vote, such a a hostile organization’s
attempt to cause transitional chaos to further their geopolitical goals.
Perhaps our descendants will be comfortable with a partially socialist
society, or maybe they will one day seek to combine states across
nations to form a global federation. One could foresee a state existing
far into the future, carrying our people across the stars. Or maybe it
will be gone in a generation after a short burst of political turmoil,
who could truly know? Regardless, the will of the people will be enacted
and their governance will be their own. They will absorb all the risks
associated with this as well, meaning that we must never cease to
educate and inform our people before the Machiavellian and the ignorant
fill their heads with division and lies.
To protect against hasty decisions and voter regret, once the state has
been dissolved it can be revived again by democratic vote or by a vote
in the Alliance of Communes. Care should be taken to prevent emergency
powers from enabling the state to destroy the revolution, with checks
and balances placed in the hands of the citizens and the Alliance of
Communes.
---
The central aspect of anarcho-democracy, the commune system, is the
beginning of the “anarcho-” portion of the ideology. By establishing
state-sanctioned and state-built villages that are capable of
efficiently maintaining the social welfare of the citizenry, the tenets
of anarchism and communism can be solidified within the public
perception as institutions similar to Social Security, eventually
leading to widespread adoption of left-libertarian ideals. The communes
are not only efficient living spaces, they are potentially the greatest
means of achieving socialism without first having to eliminate the
capitalist system.
Establishing localized self-governance is a major goal for
anarcho-democracy, with the state building the foundations for a
civilization that must eventually live without it. The powers of the
state over the communes will be limited primarily to the protection of
the lives and rights of all citizens and control over capital. Most
importantly, the shield state must ensure that all communes abide by the
constitution and are in accordance with “standards of anarchism” that
maintain rule in the hands of the citizens and protect against the
expansion of capitalism. Communers are free from laws within the
boundaries of the commune, whether they be city, county, state or
national laws, thereby providing an ecosystem for anarchism within the
protective borders of the shield state.
The nation should be districted so as to allow for easy transition to
the commune system, drawing out communes of 15,000 citizens with wards
of roughly 150. Computers should be used to draw each district, with
suburbs and city blocks divided in ways that would maintain the original
structure of the community when possible. New wards will also be
constructed around these numbers but will inevitably be more adequate
for community living than most suburbs. The new communes should be built
to draw people in, with individual wards made to appeal people of
differing lifestyles and personalities. They must be capable of being
voluntarily organized into compatible social groups, which can
themselves be divided into subcommunes and microcommunes to provide a
sense of community to those living in the area. Special attention should
be made to assure groups of differing opinions and beliefs are
comfortably accomodated and integrated sufficiently into the commune in
a manner that does not harm them or others.
The infrastructures of the communes are to be built by the state and
crafted with quality, durability, usability and aesthetics in mind. They
should be made with multiple designs to prevent perfect uniformity and
staleness, with necessary measures taken to assure that all needs are
met and that there is plenty of space for living, manufacturing and
communal “businesses” such as restaurants and hobby shops. Centers of
education should be established, such as colleges, technical schools and
worker’s guilds. Captains of industry should be encouraged to adopt
communal lifestyles in exchange for workspace and occupations as idea
generators and project leaders in their field of expertise, always
subject to democratic oversight yet given the freedoms and benefits of
all communers.
The funds used to construct the initial communes should come from
multiple sources, with the current socio-economic situations of each
nation and region taken into account. Income should in part come from
taxing business owners and corporations and using profits from
nationalized industries. Costs can be reduced with voluntary socialist
labor and automation. Maintenance of the commune can be left to the
communes themselves or organized on a national/regional scale.
To aid in the development of efficient communities, a percentage of the
available space in a commune should be kept available for skilled
workers such as doctors and engineers, as well as leaving room for a
percentage of to-be-trained individuals. Communers from one commune
should be able to use resources or see medical professionals in other
communes, to cover travelers and to fulfill needs that cannot be met at
home. All initial communers should be required to be educated in
different forms of political theory and historical class struggle, with
special attention paid to mutual aid and cooperation. Insincere
applicants should be turned away.
---
The hatred of one’s occupation in the modern capitalist system is
primarily a matter of a) poor management, b) low-quality work, c)
meaningless work, d) the lack of flexibility in one’s work, e) the lack
of variety in one’s work, f) the lack of choice in one’s occupation due
to financial requirements. The communes must give a new meaning to work
if we are to free ourselves from toil. Kropotkin himself had many
interesting suggestions for the reorganization of work, but an update to
his ideals is needed to better suit the personalities and preferred
lifestyles of modern Westerners and to account for advances in
technology. The elimination of the 40+ hour workweek is mandatory for
all but those who enjoy such hours, to be replaced with a system of
voluntary labor. One should be encouraged to have several occupations as
a matter of social responsibility, taking part in each job for only a
few hours for a few day each week so as to prevent boredom in one field
and to allow others a chance to enjoy a particular occupation as well.
Some specialists and project leaders will likely have to commit more
time to a particular field than a non-leading worker would, although
these positions can be rotated as well to ensure everyone has adequate
free time.
Let us imagine a person who chooses to work 15 hours per week with three
hours applied to five jobs, one or two jobs in skilled fields, one or
two in factory/agricultural/labor work, and one as a member of the
militia or civil service. This person may choose his own hours when
possible, and they are not restricted to those jobs permanently and may
end or switch fields when desired. They are not even bound to the hours,
number of jobs or type of jobs, as one person may be more fulfilled with
10 hours a week with a couple jobs as they primarily value their free
time, or they may prefer 60 hours with six jobs as they value their
productivity and the respect such contribution gives them. Even if each
communer only performed 5 hours of work each week then a singular ward
can produce 750 hours of labor each day, 5250 each week, 21,000 each
month, and 252,000 each year, and with this modest participation they
would have 25,200,000 hours of labor from a single commune’s yearly work
output. Even at half this number there should be enough labor to provide
food, clothing and many basic necessities for the population: should
they find their output unsatisfactory then a portion of the population
would undoubtedly labor more often and more fervently if they can see
personal benefit in doing so, as many do now under the capitalist
system.
While there should be special protections for the disabled, ill and
elderly, the communes must have a means of purging the system of
manipulators that harm the community. This necessity dates back to
Athenian “ostracism”, where they would exile troublesome members of the
community for 10 years to preserve the sanctity of their democracy. The
members of a ward may banish a communer from the ward by consensus, not
only for their attitudes and behaviors, but also if the individual
refuses to participate and uses the commune to support their laziness.
It is hoped that in such a society where a person can pursue whatever
occupations they want and can learn most any craft or skill, there is
bound to be a field or two that can both entertain them and fill a
needed role.
The establishment of factories, offices and places of production can be
guided by the will of the people, with each commune to collectively
decide what projects their community wishes to undertake through a
series of votes. Each community should automatically be given the means
of producing food through advanced indoor growing facilities that limit
the physical toll taken to grow and harvest while maximizing the
potential output. While the citizens will likely be entertained by
producing luxuries such as alcohol and video games, it will be essential
that the communes also think wisely about producing what items may be
needed across the Alliance of Communes and devote time to producing more
necessary items to guarantee a system that is self-sustaining and
nonreliant upon capital. Communes that operate mines, metal foundries,
forestries and other difficult yet necessary industries should be
automated to the highest possible degree, removing the need for human
labor as soon as the technologies are sufficient.
---
The mode of production in each commune industry should be determined by
the people that live in those communities and work in those industries,
as no single method would work best for all of them. A factory that
produces necessities may wish to operate as syndicalists, with
horizontal hierarchies and democratic decision making at all levels. In
craft industries there may be a need for trained and skilled artisans to
teach other workers, therefore a guild that elects their master workers
to teach and train novice apprentices may be preferable. Some industries
may require scientific precision and professionalism to ensure quality
and safety, while others may benefit greatly from relaxing attitudes and
expectations to make the work fun rather than tedious. What is for sure
is that respect for other workers must be mandatory, and even if they
are “under” a “superior” they should not be treated like wage-slaves or
lessers as they often are under capitalist bosses, instead being treated
as comrades and equals.
---
Communes are expected to choose trading partners with other communes to
exchange luxuries and other resources that cannot realistically be
produced within a single community. The state is to develop a system of
open access for all communes to trade according to their needs. Communal
logistics experts and elected officials can aid in acquiring the proper
quantities of needed materials and items, compiled from the personal
orders of the communers or chosen by popular selection to be stocked in
commune stores (such as toothbrushes, bicycles, televisions, etc. that
are not produced locally) and expert-level equipment can be chosen by
professional organizations within the communes (medical or factory
equipment, for example). Individuals can also order items from an online
catalogue that is operated by the Alliance of Communes, designed to be
similar to online shopping of today. While each commune should have
advanced techniques for farming, either in greenhouses, towers or in
some other technical method, it is too optimistic to assume every
commune can sustain themselves at all times and make every needed
material for themselves, so those goods which cannot be traded easily or
are needed by all (medicine, machinery, clean energy) may partially or
in full be developed and distributed by the state or Alliance of
Communes, with some part of the excess being sold on the market (even
the international market) for national funds.
Communes themselves can sell a portion of their goods on the capitalist
market with the permission of the workers, with half of the profits
benefiting the community and the rest distributed to the state to cover
economic gaps that may not be filled by the non-money market or that may
be used to acquire luxuries from innovative private industries and then
distributed to the communes. To prevent capitalism from developing
within a commune, there should be a maximum limit to their savings
before the money is redistributed to the other communes via a fund
controlled by the Alliance of Communes.
A portion of the profits earned should go into a fund that will be
distributed to communers for when they financially interact with
capitalists in their restaurants and stores, and for when the communers
takes vacations and trips outside the community. Communers should be
generally restricted from selling to other communers, and hiring
employees while in a commune should disqualify individuals from the
commune system.
Individual communers may earn up to $10,000-$15,000 a year without
filing taxes, with all profits over that point transferred to the
commune. This includes a $100-$500 dollar monthly stipend that allows
communers to engage in society at large, to eat in restaurants and buy
small luxuries outside the commune. Making money in a commune should not
be banned, but using the commune system to hide an income or an illicit
business from the view of the state must be removed from the system and
the commune.
---
Human beings naturally gravitate towards small friends groups,
reminiscent of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. The lack of friendly
interpersonal communities has created a disconnect from our tribal
natures, which in turn manifests as depression, social anxiety and
antisocial or asocial behavior. The forces of competitive capitalism and
a fetishization for complete individualism has weakened our social
cohesion and left us with a society that encourages and benefits
psychopathy at the expense of the public welfare.
For this reason we must allow for the gathering of social groups based
upon personality and lifestyle to fulfill the natural desire to have
friendships and meaningful relationships. Within each commune should be
wards with devoted subsections designed to closely integrate likeminded
people that would prefer the company of similar people. While no one
should be forced into a subtype, people can willingly choose to
integrate with people who they would prefer to live with. Personality
type, religion, race, ideology, hobbies and so on can be taken into
account when one is searching for a community. As tough as it is for a
socialist to accept that some modern people choose to harbor racism, it
may be beneficial in the long run to accept a small percentage of wards
to be based around different cultures to maximize integration of
socialism within cultures that would otherwise be adverse to adopting
it, while at the same time allowing for a multicultural community to
surround them and slowly soften negative perceptions between cultures
with a voluntary integration. It is hopeful that future generations will
see no reason to maintain divisions and will themselves choose to
integrate with society at large in a manner comfortable to everyone but
the most die-hard extremists who would likely not have adopted the
commune system in the first place. Of course, society should not allow
an entire commune to be divided upon race, with no more than a handful
of racially/culturally focused wards allowed to form in each commune.
Doing so may potentially create the beginnings of a race-supremacist
society that will be able to break away from their neighbors or hijack
the revolution, with or without violence.
---
Communers may also choose to live in the homes they already own and
still adopt the new system, free to live where they want yet be allowed
to have social protections and claim communal benefits. They may utilize
resources from state stores, with the opportunity to use facilities at
nearby communes. Requirements for work and community involvement to
maintain their communer status may be required for a period of time to
determine that the communer is genuinely willing to accept communism. A
home exchange system should be developed to allow communers to trade
homes to live in regions more suitable to their personal tastes. Small
restaurants and shops can open in individual homes and garages, and the
commune or state can run community stores that sell to capitalists and
distribute to communers. This can breath new life into our suburbs.
---
The mode of production in each commune industry should be determined by
the people that live in those communities and work in those industries,
with no single system being the best for all of them. A factory that
produces necessities may wish to operate as anarcho-syndicalists, with
democracy at every stage of production and perfectly even hierarchies.
In a crafts industry there will be a need for skilled artisans to train
other workers in their craft, therefore a guild that elects master
workers to teach and train novice apprentices may be preferable. Some
industries may require scientific precision and mandatory
professionalism to ensure quality and safety, while others may benefit
greatly from having laid-back attitudes and lowered expectations to make
the work fun rather than grueling. What is for sure is that a common
respect for other workers must be mandatory, and even if they are
“under” a “superior” they should not be treated like wage-slaves or
lessers as they often are under capitalist bosses, instead being treated
as comrades and equals.
---
There will be some essential industries that will not easily fit it into
the clean and environmentally friendly communes, leaving gaps in the
economy that must be filled. For this purpose the state may develop
phalansteries, named after [write]. These are factory-communes that are
not intended to be permanently occupied but serve as temporary homes for
voluntary workers. By serving in a phalanstery for a period of time a
citizen may acquire a small non-taxable income, paid vacations,
community honors, and so on. I am hesitant to recommend that communers
receive access to luxury items through this system, as it would
eventually be manipulated to force citizens into a system similar to
capitalism and thereby ruin the liberating intentions of the
anarcho-democracy. I highly recommend other alternatives, as even
restricting the luxuries one acquired by labor to vehicles, vacation
homes, jewelry or other rare items will may create a slippery slope that
leaves people living in states of near poverty unless they labor for
their every basic comfort, or God forbid they get the ridiculous idea of
using labor notes and merely go full circle back to a money system.
There may be need for a basic requirement that first-month communers
undergoing community training must perform a short term of labor at a
phalanstery (two weeks would be sufficient considering the millions that
may choose to adopt such a system over time) to keep the industries
afloat until they can be further automated. Without the phalansteries
the anarcho-democratic system could not be entirely free of capitalism
without placing polluting and dangerous industries inside the communes.
Each phalanstery should be built with a moderate level of beauty and
have several facilities for entertainment that are stocked by
volunteers. Private businesses and restaurants should be encouraged to
build nearby to create entertainment centers around the working
facilities, giving the workers plenty to do in their free time. Even
done properly the phalansteries can become popular vacation destinations
in and of themselves, bringing in people from across the globe on
work-vacations to the area. Foreign non-citizen workers can be given
jobs legally in the phalanstery and be allowed to work for their
family’s accommodations and food, and given wages to encourage local
spending; in this way foreign immigrants may participate in the humane
commune system rather than be exploited by cruel bosses that pay them
poverty wages.
Farmers that adopt the commune system may stay on their property and
continue farming if so desired, and will be supplied with the resources
needed to maintain their farms. If they no longer wish to farm then the
land may be taken for use by the communes or made into state
agricultural phalansteries.
---
To heal our planet of the environmental devastation caused by mankind we
must reduce our ecological footprint. The global scientific community
has determined that unless we significantly alter our lifestyles Earth
will experience crippling damage from climate change, and we have very
likely already reached the point of no return and are now left to limit
the chaos. Our current communities are unfit to meet this demand, and
even the communes I have proposed may require more than non-zero
emissions for their continuation. With this in mind we must develop some
communities with a primary motivation to limit their environmental
impact to extreme levels. This will hopefully coincide with the mass
abandonment of the suburbs and the shrinking of the cities, leaving
urban decay that can be deconstructed and returned to a natural state or
rewilded and left abandoned for nature to overgrow and future
generations to explore and study. In the center of these wild areas will
be new communities called Forestuaries (for-est-u-aries), small communes
that may be the model for future rural living. These communities will be
responsible for maintaining the local environment.
Forestuaries, like standard communes, would come in many different
forms. Some would be similar to traditional villages that run on green
technologies, or they would be compact micro-suburbs built with tiny
homes, while others can be neo-primitive villages that will provide
space for various primitivist philosophies while retaining their access
to medicine and emergency supplies. There could be an entire community
built within a singular skyscraper or a series of scattered towers that
rise from the forests, perhaps surrounded by tiny hamlets, thorps and
farms. Private industry forestuaries must be limited, as their material
requirements are often incompatible with the ecological and
infrastructure restrictions such a community would have.
The forestuaries are similar to the communes in most ways and are
connected to the communist market system. Other than tighter
restrictions on energy usage and environmental impact the forestuaries
will have the same underlying structure as the communes. With time the
line between commune and forestuary may be blurred, but that would
certainly be in the distant future.
Experimental communes should also be built to develop the communities of
the future. Small zones with changes to infrastructure, living spaces,
social life and more should be built with the intention of finding out
what works and what doesn’t. We must always remember that what works for
some people won’t work for others.
---
Without encouraging paranoia and militarism, I must recommend that the
communes be in some way defensible. While the modern developed world is
mostly safe from violence and chaos, that does not mean that it will be
safe forever. If the communes have defensive structures built into them
over time, perhaps even perimeter walls and bunkers in some
circumstances, they will be able to more adequately withstand whatever
horrors the future may bring. We must consider the possibility of
nuclear warfare, foreign invasion, fascist revolutions, roving
post-apocalyptic gangs and the multitudes of unthinkable violences and
catastrophe that we cannot reasonably predict. If defenses are built
into the aesthetics and functionality of the communes then they can
become architectural art for the citizens of today and maybe serve as a
safeguard for the citizens of tomorrow. It may be impractical,
unfeasible, and unpopular to rebuild every city into a modern castle,
but each community should take defensive precautions to limit danger
from unexpected events.
---
Anarcho-democratic communes can take many forms. There would be communes
built from retrofitted neighborhoods that are occupied by citizens that
have elected to join the commune system, and they may look like any city
or neighborhood already built today but with added facilities and
converted infrastructure. Communes that are built close together or that
do not have land/people/industries/etc. to be self-sufficient will be
expected to cooperate with their neighbors for resource production,
meaning that a single city can consist of several communes that all work
together and integrate industries while still having semi-sustainable
self-governing communities.
Other communes will be built from the ground up for maximum efficiency
and quality, with potentially no end to the styles and designs that
would be used. Architects, artists, sociologists, psychologist and
variety of industry professionals can be responsible for designing
models for communities that can either chosen by vote by the locals
and/or future occupants or they can be built according to styles that
fit a particular bioregion or cultural aesthetic local to the area.
---
Many modern industries under capitalism overproduce items for the sake
of filling shelves with a variety of worthless and eventually unused
items, something which must not be repeated under socialism. For
instance, the communes themselves need not have fast-fashion factories
pumping out clothes that eventually will be thrown away unworn. As an
alternative, a variety of fabrics can be made and shipped between the
communes to be used by trained tailors from the local guilds, where a
communer may select from thousands of designs and customization options,
with the understanding that they will keep their wardrobe size moderate
and wear their clothes at least until they have grown worn with age. In
this way we can rid the world of millions of tons of fabric waste
brought about by excessive overproduction.
Food can be cooked in massive quantities in local communal restaurants
and cafeterias, limiting food waste and packaging that would be used if
people were required to cook at home to save money. By growing much of
the food locally and organically there can be an even greater reduction
in energy expenditure and pollution. For foods that are produced for
home consumption and long-distance distribution there can be packaging
made from organic environmentally neutral packaging to reduce plastic
usage.
Furniture is typically capable of being crafted by local craftsmen,
meaning that a community can import lumber and supply a vast quantity of
comfortable furnishings to the community without having to ship heavy
items across the nation. Bed frames, tables, chairs and so one would
only need to be shipped short distances in most circumstances.
Novelty items will be limited in their production before advanced
automation as it will be hard to convince a community to waste
significant amounts of their time on making useless junk. While the
materially obsessed and capitalist bosses will decry this as an economic
failing, it is the natural result of having a society free from
capitalist exploitation and is a beautiful thing. Only the best quality
items will be made, with the production of miscellanea, toys and
luxuries kept to what is popular enough for people to want to build them
of their own free will. As factories can produce different items each
day of the week or at other intervals you can have a single factory be
responsible for manufacturing several different items instead of being
limited to a single purpose, meaning that the factories will not need to
spend all year making toothbrushes that may never be used.
Communes are not meant to be reclusive compounds shut away from society
but are instead intended to be fully integrated into civilization.
Ideally there would be little to indicate that you have crossed over
from a state-controlled area to commune-controlled area to except for
maybe a sign or other designated marker. Within cities there should be
no borders between the capitalist and communists, but rather a free
mingling that is not stifled by economic status. Communers are not
forbidden from spending money at a capitalist establishment and should
not be ashamed for partaking in any aspect of a truly free society.
Members of the capitalist system should be given the right to ended
commune stores and pay fair prices for the goods, thereby keeping them
from being restricted from society as well.
This integration does not mean that unwanted capitalists must be
accepted in the neighborhood wards and distant forestuaries, as private
entities have rights to privacy and will often place guards at gates to
keep people out in the same manner. The wards have a right to place
guards at their entrances and deny access to non-communers and
non-residents as long as they do not deny access to a throughway or a
city street in a manner that would block free travel through or past the
area.
Communes can of course block access in case of emergencies and are
allowed to respond to threats of terrorism with security lockdowns that
prevent entry by outsiders. The risk of right-wing terrorism will
unfortunately be very high in some instances and will likely require
increases in defensive measures from time to time. What must not happen
is a physical division of our cities as this will play into the hands of
counter-revolutionaries that will seek to divide the population.
---
The commune system will be one of the biggest projects known to man and
would likely cost trillions of dollars to construct and maintain. This
should not be seen as an issue as the commune system will not only
eventually eliminate the need for money, but it will cause growth in
many sectors of the economy such as green energy and construction and
will also eventually be able to pay for itself during the early stages
of the transition. With the creation of billions or trillions of dollars
of advanced industry the nation will experience an economic boom that
will raise them to them top of the world economy in ways similar to
China’s rise via industrial power. While the commune system is intended
to supply the communes first and foremost, automation and sustainable
practices will allow excess materials to be made inexpensively and sold
across the world to gain additional funds and needed resources.
-------In the event of an economic downturn during this transition,
emergency measures can be taken to guarantee every home is filled and
that banks and debtors cannot claim them. Farm fields, factories and
construction materials can be temporarily claimed by the state (their
owners given a compensation) and brought under the state phalanstery
system, staffed with migrant workers and volunteer communers. --------
---
Any state — even a democratic state — is capable of being used as a tool
of oppression. It is only due to states’ overpowering systems of
coercive violence and the general lack of public knowledge about
anarchism/communism that it becomes useful for revolutionaries to
overcome the system from within. An organization of collectives or an
Alliance of Communes should form alongside each shield state, with the
eventual goal of having the collective dissolve the state or relegate it
to a background position or a forgotten relic.
--------Comprised of representatives from each commune, the Alliance of
Communes is to organize trade between themselves, provide for the
protection of life and rights in all communes, and maintain the welfare
of the people. The people themselves may choose to belong to multiple
community alliances, but the state is not required to provide support or
material to any alliance other than the primary Alliance of Communes.
The state may also prevent organizations within its area of influence
from allying or trading with foreign nations or groups to prevent
geopolitical disaster.--------
Each representative is to be selected by a vote within each commune, and
they are subject to immediate recall. Each representative may be
democratically forced by their commune to vote in particular manners,
and a single instance of abuse of power is grounds for a revote. Topics
up for vote are limited to economy, defense, and material welfare, and
issues are limited by the Constitution. Since the number of communes may
range in the thousands, regular representatives votes may be performed
digitally. Emergency issues that require immediate attention may draw
from among the commune representatives a single individual that may
represent that region as if it were a unit, and each region may send a
representative to a national convention. The Alliance of Communes should
never vote on an issue that could be effectively chosen through direct
democracy.
Voluntary militia and regional defense should be organized for defense
of the Union, operating concurrently with the shield state military.
Their forces should replace the function of national guard in liberated
regions when possible.
The Alliance of Communes should be constructed at the same time as the
commune system, allowing the communes to develop the first stages of a
post-government society. By enshrining the Alliance of Communes in the
constitution the commune system can be cemented as an institution
similar to Social Security or Medicare. The direct correlations to a
democratic republic should be seen as an update to the democratic
republic, with most means of corruption removed.
---
The chance of a grassroots movement becoming strong enough to challenge
a Western state has in the past proven very low, as the people will
divide into small units based upon their own pet projects and are
generally unwilling to tackle issues in solidarity with those outside
their peer groups unless they have a guiding hand to point the way. For
this reason there should be a collection of thinkers, activists and
allied politicians that can act as an ideological vanguard that can
organize the citizens towards common goals. While not a structure of the
state but rather a collection of leftist influencers, and perhaps not
even a political party but simply an activist social club, the vanguard
will be necessary both in creating the means and revolutionary tactics
that will be used against the electoral system and in sustaining the
political willpower of the revolution once society has adopted direct
democracy. The vanguard party will strive to protect democracy against
regressives, such as fascists seeking to take control of the shield
state or corporate oligarchs that want to keep their billions and their
power over the populace. They must combat future challenges to democracy
by alerting the voting base to dangers and by creating the strategy the
left will use to further their goals. Regular meetings and collective
think-tanks that combine science and social policy experts should be
established by the vanguard to create bills for national and regional
vote that they believe will best benefit society.
A revolutionary vanguard party should be formed to drive the will of the
people towards the dismantling of the parliamentary system, and when the
system has been dismantled they should continue to operate as a
permanent revolutionary force comprised of thinkers, celebrities,
socialites, political experts, socialist technocrats, popular leftists,
scientists and the core revolutionary members of the previous
parliamentary party. Even using the voices of popular ex-elites, such as
billionaire philanthropists and rich politicians and celebrities who
gave up their wealth, can encourage the people to take control of their
futures through participation in the direct democracy. Utilizing a mixed
narrative of anarchist, communist and patriotic ideologies, the vanguard
must gather the collective will of socialists while still maintaining a
level of appeal to liberals and social democrats. The vanguard should
also reaffirm right libertarian and lower-class capitalist interests,
especially when doing so may draw opinions away from corporate interest
and conservative political parties.
his will be a difficult battle against the status quo, as the masses
will be unfamiliar with real democracy and may vote in ways that
disappoint us. Propaganda from the right (including corporate liberal
news) will be our worst enemy, but it is being challenged by growing
portion the viewing public and can be challenged even further by legally
battling “entertainment news” that seeks to spread corporate propaganda
and lies, and by breaking up the social media echo chambers that feed
anti-science and antisocial “news”. The vanguard party must be
constantly present in the public sphere, always fighting for leftist
causes and promoting issues that further communism. They will be
responsible for directing the vox populi — the voice of the people —
towards the issues and problems that our nation needs to address. In a
way they are also responsible for helping keep the nation on-track and
away from actions that will bring us and our descendants shame. In a
society where all citizens are their own senators, the only people we
will have to blame for our bad policies will be ourselves.
---
The vanguard party must drive the rage of the people to decapitate the
strongest aspects of capitalism through legal means such as protests,
establishing maximum incomes, applying larger and wider taxes to the
wealthy, getting rid of slumlords, destroying monopolies, arresting
criminal members of the “elite” and other aggressive democratic actions
that could not be accomplished with more virtuosity than by enacting
top-down edicts that would create outrage from the right and could halt
the revolution. By promoting radical democracy over radical violence,
the right or far-right will have to initiate the conflict against the
democracy first and will therefore not hold the moral high ground needed
to sustain the support of the average modern Westerner. The shield state
— if properly evolved from the original institutions of power,
restricted by the Constitution, given a direct democratic mandate and
only staffed by citizens who may be directly recalled by their
constituents — will be a neutral stabilizing force that will prevent
physical conflict.
---
Many socialists hold the view that criminality is largely induced by the
cruelty of capitalism, with lack and want resulting in the majority of
violence. Social libertarians believe the way to discourage antisocial
behavior is to make sure that all people are cared for and helped when
the individual becomes troubled; threats to the collective are dealt
with by either disassociating from a hostile individual or by enacting
mob justice in extreme circumstances. This may or may not be viable, but
we can attempt to create an advanced system of criminal justice that is
adapted to a modern libertarian society by first providing each
individual with necessities for life, then with entertainment and luxury
substantial enough to limit greed.
Mental health should be promoted, with each person having access to
compassionate care. One could even consider that greed and antisocial
behavior are mental illnesses in and of themselves, glorified because of
capitalism’s fetishization of competition. These traits aren’t worthy of
locking one away from society but are nonetheless the result of a status
quo that upholds social darwinism as a means of discrediting the
benefits mutual aid.
Instead of tossing every thief and petty criminal into prison there
should be a system of rehabilitative facilities where people can be
medically assessed and re-educated. In instances where they continue to
offend, for reason of intense mental illness or wickedness, they may
indeed have to be removed from society, either to a medical ward or to a
separate community for offenders. Only in the most criminal of offenses
should people be placed into prisons, which should be operated by the
state and never private institutions.
Communes may have their own systems for handling criminal affairs. In
instances where a convicted criminal is deemed too antisocial to handle
peacefully, the commune may choose to send them to the state for
rehabilitation or imprisonment. If needed, state help may be requested
in the investigation, apprehension, judgement or transportation of a
suspected criminal.
Communes are not beholded to the laws of the state, only the
constitution, and no law passed by national vote can influence a
commune. All national laws passed only affect regions external to
communes but within the state’s region of control. The state may exert
control over the flow of currency within its borders to ensure that
capitalism does not run rampant over the population, and the government
is also responsible for protecting the constitutional rights of all
citizens and may use coercive action against a commune that denies the
inherent rights of the people. When an “anarchist” commune refuses to
obey by the tenets of anarchism and instead seeks the path of coercive
rule, the state may do the same to set the matter straight. This
function can also be handed to the Alliance of Communes by popular vote,
or joint control can be had between the two.
For defense of communes, local volunteer militias may be established,
from whom local “police” and specialist are chosen on a rotating
democratic basis and are to act in a manner similar to modern firemen,
not as oppressors or intimidators but as civil servants used only when
called upon. These militias may be scrutinized by the state and Alliance
of Communes to ensure that reactionaries, race supremacists and criminal
elements do not take over communities. Elected commune officials should
be in charge of these groups at all times, and militiamen should be
easily removed from duty if they attempt to violate rights or overstep
boundaries.
For defense of the nation a military should be maintained, with access
to heavy weaponry and vehicles. Although an ideal anarchist world would
remove all militant forces, it is simply not practical for defense
against hostile nations. A divided series of small units is no match for
a coordinated assault by an invading army. An organized force led by
elected military leaders with limited and recallable power is necessary
to counter the complex array of threats presented by our violent planet.
The desire to serve a cause greater than oneself will always attract
volunteers, and a ready framework for war mobilization can prevent a
blitzkrieg from annihilating a divided series of communities.
Weapons of mass destruction should not be given to the communes
individually, and the Alliance of Communes should not be given such
weapons until the shield state is dissolved to prevent a possible
nuclear stand-off with the shield state.
The state military is eventually intended to be downsized and then
replaced by militias led by the Alliance of Communes, with officers
elected by each division and rotated on a regular basis. The elected
officers themselves are to organize and peer vote for their regional
officers and commanders, and so on for each series of officers until the
high ranking generals and admirals of the nation may select the best
individuals to be presented for national vote, with transparency and the
sum of their careers and personalities held open to the public eye.
To maintain combat readiness, a portion of each militia may deploy a
number of their people to professional training facilities and forts for
immediate defense against foreign opposition. Some individuals may
simply prefer a militant lifestyle and may be allowed to live in
communes dedicated to training and equipping the armed forces, removing
or reducing the need for the military industrial complex. These communes
should not be used as military bases or they may be able to overpower
their neighbors. Instead the majority of heavy weaponry and military
facilities should be maintained by the shield state or the Alliance of
Communes.
The police should be fazed out of existence at the same rate as the
voluntary expansion of the commune system. First, legal means must be
taken to weaken the police unions and ensure that criminal behavior
amongst law enforcement is restricted and punished. Forbidding law
enforcement from operating on commune territory, including requiring
officers to contact local militia to settle disputes on commune land and
in housing occupied by communers (except in circumstances requiring
immediate attention to save a life), and by ceasing patrols in
neighborhoods that vote to become communes. Detective services can be
provided by the communes themselves, or the Alliance of Communes or the
state can be requested to send specialists to solve difficult cases. If
needed, state police or a joint militia force from the Alliance of
Communes can be requested to provide security or aid.
---
The temptation to engage in foreign intervention can bring about the
potential collapse of the system, even if it is meant to assist those
that are aligned with our interests. There is no doubt that the current
reasons for Western intervention are almost exclusively based on private
interests and should be either rethought or abandoned altogether, but
that does not mean that all intervention will be so distasteful to the
public. Even without the need to support a system of global exploitation
there will be justifiable reasons to use military force across the
world, but that doesn’t mean that we should engage in any conflict
because we can, or even because we believe it may be ethically correct
to do so. This may be hard for the empathetic and kindhearted to hear,
but we cannot always be responsible for fighting hopeless battles,
especially if we are not familiar with the situation enough to make
sufficient long-term judgements. Instead we should engage geopolitical
challenges with solutions that will result in minimal turmoil and
suffering when possible. While the idea of a free society marching its
armies all over Earth to liberate the oppressed people of the world may
be exciting and romantic, I promise that unforeseen problems will arise
at the worst possible moments. Even arming and supporting revolutions in
developing nations, with the home nation absent from the field except
for maybe advisors or special forces, will have its own causes and
effects that may bring great shame. My hope is that by democratically
placing the option for conflict in the hands of the people we will be
able to escape the cycle of violence that the West has exported to
socialist states and developing nations.
Without profit motive and without the incentive to destroy socialist
movements we can hopefully avoid most costly and unnecessary wars. The
public can be deceived and fooled, requiring a constant struggle for the
minds of the people, but the shame of a singular pointless war for which
they themselves can be blamed will instill a national fear of repeating
the same mistake, at least for a generation or two. To reduce our
chances of falling into a foolish war a major percentage of the nation
should approve of the conflict, with 75–85 percent required to invade a
nation, a similar percentage required to aid a revolutionary faction or
insurrection, and with 50+ percent required to aid another nation
against outside aggression. To prevent chamberlainism in the face of a
Nazi-like opponent we must set the bar at an even vote of 50% to assist
in the defense of an allied nation that has been or is likely to be
attacked. This is by no means a perfect system, but is rather a
foundation for the future development of more nuanced policies: to
summarize, we should not have a vote requirement low enough to allow an
emotional decision by a slim majority to drive us into a pointless
conflict, but we should allow for the popular opinion to allow us to act
in defense against an enemy to the world’s safety and freedom.
---
Anyone who is elected or given the responsibility of representing the
people should be held to the highest standards. This of course applies
to politicians and administrative officials, but it must also be applied
to the police, the military and the militia. The foundation of a free
society relies upon the public trust, and the breaking of that trust
threatens to tear apart the status quo’s credibility and replace it with
cynicism and pessimism for the governing institutions. A major fault
with the current system is its reliance upon coercive force against
lower-classes for the conservation of the capitalist status quo, with
the law enforcers given immense leeway with how much violence they are
allowed to apply to suppress dissenters and petty criminals. A cop can
shoot an innocent man and not face any charges or face any lasting
punishment, and this happens all the time. They can beat you, tase you,
rob you, and shoot you or your dog without any repercussions from the
law because the capitalist class relies upon their brutality to maintain
their wealth and the bastardized economy that promotes crimes of
desperation and the mindsets that cause the negative, hostile,
fatalistic and socially nihilistic cultures we live in today.
Lower-class and impoverished victims of the capitalist system are driven
to crime because of the economic imbalances caused by wealthy criminals,
with multi-million dollar thieves given short sentences in nicer prisons
than poor minorities that stole less than a hundred dollars. There is no
equality of justice. The life of a millionaire is worth more than the
life of a billionaire, and the death cult of capitalism surely has
inspired millions of people to agree with this sentiment without a hint
of self-loathing. It is expected that this is the way that it should be.
An honest man, one who seeks truth and justice, would deny this
corruption of the soul and instead apply the weight of the law with
fairness and equal respect for all men regardless of their material
worth, and perhaps he would even place those who are of higher status to
an equally higher level of responsibility than the common man, and
punish greatly those who gain from society’s status quo yet have still
chosen to break the trust or profit bestowed upon them.
---
The individuals in each ward and community will have the option to exile
others if they find them to be troublesome, non-cooperative or criminal,
or if they are manipulating the commune for their personal gain. A ward
can vote or use other means of adjudication to remove a negative ward
member, and a commune can hold a trial, vote by a council of elected
officials or use other approved means to remove a trouble member from a
commune. Every effort should be made first to rehabilitate the offending
person before they are abandoned, to determine if they are suffering
from mental illness or if their offense was only a passing event. If a
violent or financial crime is committed then the communer can be exiled
and reported to the state for judgement, with the worst offenders
subjected to government law and removed from the commune system.
---
Insurrectionists misjudge their popularity amongst 21^(st) century
Westerners and will likely drive the masses towards the right,
strengthening the already powerful tools of right-wing propaganda. Their
“propaganda by the deed” will be just that: a deed that provides
propaganda for conservatives and liberals against the left. Revolt
against the reaction, not against the nation. This is contrary to
traditional anarchism, which understandably has no desire for gods,
masters, and especially states. The state upholds social heirarchy and
capitalism, and is therefore the greatest enemy of anarchist and
communist thought. Why then should they participate in the political
process of such a government?
The civilized Westerner has no will for violent revolution and has the
desire for comfort, peace and order as their primary political
motivations. It is this common call for civility that stays the hand of
the cautious revolutionary, a humanistic personality that does not wish
to see their neighbors and loved ones suffer for their cause. This is
perhaps the great difference between modern Americans and their
forefathers: the founders needed only taxes and a handful of social
injustices to ignite the flame of war and rise violently against their
rulers across the sea, whereas modern Americans are willing to tolerate
the greatest evils and foolishnesses from politicians and their lackeys
before they begin to even consider a peaceful protest. Fear and comfort
have dulled the American revolutionary spirit.
On the matter of force, it is very true that power flows from the barrel
of a gun. Unfortunately for insurrectionary anarchists, the majority of
guns (and tanks, planes, bombs, and so on) are controlled by the wealthy
and the capitalist state. Direct conflict against the trained, equipped,
motivated, and well-paid forces of modern western governments is almost
certain to result in the eventual destruction of the revolution, both by
means of overwhelming force and a humiliating loss of public image. No
modern military will revolt alongside anti-government socialists,
removing any possibility that the average person will back it either.
Few people will be willing to rise up with communists and anarchists
that offer vague (and sometimes frightening) paths toward the future. We
must instead wrestle the narrative from the hands of the bourgeoisie and
show the world a path to liberation.
---
Many socialist writers have claimed that revolution against capitalism
cannot be achieved by peaceful means. They may very well be right, but
it is unlikely that this maxim is an objective truth. There is a
potential for achieving a bloodless change that has been overlooked by
many because of dogmatic and emotional thinking. People want freedom,
people want change, people want something to strive for. Most
importantly, with populist political allies we could shift the Overton
Window leftward, instilling into the social consciousness the humane
ideals of anarchism and communism without alienating future voters. It
is worth the attempt, especially when it may bring more positive
attention to socialism. This will be necessary for the future, whether
or not the anarcho-democratic system is successful.
---
The bourgeois suppression of a democratic socialist revolution could be
the flame that lights an insurrectionary revolution of the proletariat.
While the intention of a democratic revolution is to use the current
political structure to change itself, there is perhaps a greater
potential for a revolution to come about when the people’s hope for
peaceful and popular change is crushed beneath the heel of an
authoritarian state. Suppression of democracy creates an environment of
discontent that allows the people to be to stirred to protest and
revolt. One can predict massive protests and widespread civil
disobedience following the suppression of a popular democratic movement,
bolstered by the power of communications technologies such as cell
phones and social media. A nation’s capital can be flooded with angry
protestors in a matter of days or hours with proper organization. If a
fraction of a percentage of the people are freed of their apathy by
popular calls to action then there there can be no stopping them from
tearing the corrupt system apart.
If peaceful democratic change is suppressed by violence or rigging then
the nation has been dominated by tyrants. Revolutionaries of different
ideologies will collectively agree that they must be removed by any
means necessary to secure the freedom of the people. Tactically speaking
they are correct, as surrendering now will guarantee that the forces of
the ruling regime will be bolstered and their suppression tactics
updated, making future revolution more difficult with each passing
protest.
If a revolution manages to replace a capitalist tyrant government
without a strong political arm it is not likely to become a socialist
society. Most nations are still liberal or conservative and comfortable
with capitalism, meaning that the majority will not equate the tyranny
of the dictator with the underlying systemic oppression that allowed the
dictator to come to power. The revolution will end with people falling
back on familiar institutions in their search for order, with the
government being either a liberal republican democracy or a dictatorship
that’s likely to be run by the military or a right-wing faction.
Socialists will be asking themselves if it was worth it by the time all
is said and done, and that answer will depend on what world was
destroyed and what world was built on the backs of their struggles.
Leftist revolutionaries that wish to replace capitalism through war
against tyranny yet deny that they need a unified and credible political
front from which support can be built are fooling themselves and will
die for another man’s government if the a revolution does come their
way.
The thought of a violent revolution brings me great fear and unease, but
the desire for peace must not become a weakness in the face of enemies
that would laugh at your pacifism. When the state starts cracking down,
when the capitalist system can no longer tolerate democracy and the
rights of the people, then all of my hopes for peace will be lost until
society has grown past the archaic, brutal times thrust upon it by
equally archaic and brutal people. There is no hope for justice when
democracy is an illusion.
---
Western hegemony is built upon the strength of the American money faith
which is itself built upon oil, requiring that it be purchased in U.S.
dollars for access to the markets and that oil-producing nations not
sell in currencies other than the dollar, thus ensuring the adoption of
the capitalist American economic system by any country that relies upon
foreign oil. This in turn guarantees that the U.S. elite and their
global allies will always be given economic preference in all matters,
allowing Western and OPEC nations to live unsustainably extravangant
lifestyles on the backs of the people they once would colonize and
enslave. It was this ancient theft that gives the benefactors of
capitalism their advantage, having suppressed and stolen from indigenous
peoples for centuries until they found the easier route of enslaving
them economically rather than with costly and troublesome imperialism.
This neocolonialism may have guaranteed Western power for decades, but
it is fast approaching obsoletion with the rise in green energy. While
there are always resources that one nation can dangle above the head of
another, none are quite so efficient at inspiring desperation while
simulatenously being so hard to acquire, meaning that America does not
have long before they lose they their bargaining chip. You can see the
system cracking already, with Russia, Iran and Venezuela moving away
from the U.S. dollar for trade. China has for years been growing its
infrastructure and global influence for the day it leaves the American
economic system behind, likely drawing many nations with it and
destroying what is left of American economic rule. The current world
order is bound to collapse unless there are massive changes in U.S.
global policy.
---
It is apparent that capitalism will not easily be replaced. Even if
American leaders suddenly decided to abolish it they would have
difficulty doing so without endangering the nation’s strength. If we
were to instead make the changes gradually then we could prevent a
planet-wide economic crisis. If private industries are allowed to stay
in business then their economic output can be used to build the
industries that will eventually replace them.
Capitalism may bring suffering to billions of workers but it is a
culturally accepted institution that is approved of by many,
guaranteeing that it is here to stay in some form or another for a very
long time. This means that a socialist nation that is also a free nation
must allow private businesses in some form. Under anarcho-democracy
there is to be no restriction in capital for the average person, even if
wealth at higher levels must be greatly taxed to prevent oligarchic
corruption. However if the average person is not inconvenienced by
taxation then there will be greater appeal in the system for both
socialists and the majority of capitalists.
Over time the state and the communes can build a new economy free of
monetary requirements, and trade alliances with other socialist nations
can ensure that supply lines are maintained. Capitalism can still
influence the markets for a time, but little by little its influence
over our lives will be whittled away. This can be swiftened by passing
democratic socialist policies and by taxing corporations, but for
purposes of maintaining the moral grounds of the revolution and gaining
appeal from the political center it should not be destroyed so much as
it should be made obsolete.
---
Socialism demands that the means of production be held in the hands of
the workers, although each different ideology differs as to the method
of acquiring it. State communism seizes the factories and the farms by
rule of law, in effect reclaiming the land by force. This is a distant
plausibility in the West, not to mention that the blanket abolition of
private industry is both widely unpopular and potentially harmful to
innovation. Anarcho-communism as invisioned by Kropotkin was
theoretically not intended to be violent, as the means of production
were to be taken into the hands of the people of themselves for the
benefit of all, although in reality there would certainly be violent
repressions from the capitalist class and the law enforcement that work
for them. There is no chance that that the employees of a factory would
be able to walk into work, proclaim ownership of the facility and expect
the boss to just walk away. No, the police would come in with clubs and
tear gas to arrest the overoptimistic revolutionaries. For the anarchist
to claim ownership of a factory under the current system they would
almost certainly be required to either emulate the policies of a
communist state or engage in violence against the capitalists and their
protectors. Neither of these options are preferable to the humanist
anarchist that dreams of free and just society.
An alternative to the outright seizure of the means of production would
be to tax the wealthy to provide the funding of new factories, machines,
and the tools that will be used to bring most private industries to
obsoletion. By establishing a means of production without resorting to
claiming it for the people we can undo the system without unneccessary
aggression. This alternative also allows for the new system to maintain
moral standing that it would otherwise sacrifice by engaging in
coercion.
While the state may claim natural resource production rights for itself,
this is less repressive than claiming all factories and workplaces by
overthrow. The natural resources of the nation belong to all people, and
allowing private industries control over materials of high value has
given resource barrons power over entire nations. it is imperative that
such resources be kept in the public’s hands, something that even many
capitalist nations have agreed with.
---
There cannot be a free future without democracy in the workplace. While
I admire the steps taken by the socialists in congress to hammer away at
the power of the capitalist class, there is a long way to go before we
can have workplace freedom across the nation. Permit private industry is
essential to maintaining the freedom of the people to pursue individual
enrichment,, but that does not mean that the traditional model of
business needs to continue in the future. As said before there can be a
shift towards democratization after a period of 10–30 years after the
creation of the business, but there may also be a rough limit to the
number of employees or a limit to a business’s wealth/income that will
allow it to be nationalized or democratized.
While establishing worker’s syndicates and co-operatives may be
counter-intuitive to the development of communism, it is nonetheless a
step towards socialism. Furthermore, these entities are subject to
government oversight and should be tied into the state’s independence
from global capitalism and should be used to further the development of
the commune system. Without the guiding hand of billionaire oligarchs
the government can be free of the current system’s corporate
appeasement, replacing it with the direct democratic will of the people.
In the days after the creation of the commune system there will be great
collapse of businesses that are unable to adapt to the new system. This
will be decried by capitalists as the death of all things, the result of
socialism’s flaws. In truth it is capitalism’s flaws: being unable to
adapt to the liberation of mankind is the flaw of an inherently uncaring
system. This collapse will not be the end of the nation, nor the end of
capitalism, but rather a re-adjustment towards the democratic future of
both. There will be a loss of low-income workers and manual laborers as
the most suffering members of society flood the commune system to escape
their terrible employers and degrading jobs. Scores of terrible bosses
will be forced to automate or go bankrupt, a fitting end to all
exploiters. At least when they are left pennyless there will be a
compassionate and humanistic system they can fall back to if needed.
Their businesses, however, will remain empty of workers and be dead
zones in once-busy cities. This will be at first an unfortunate sight,
but it comes at the knowledge that it may be given to the commune system
and one day could be a lively area once again, or at the very least it
can be torn down and the land returned to its former natural beauty
before man ruined it.
In short, the system will adjust to a higher state of liberty one way or
another. What’s for certain is that the nation, backed by the strength
of nationalized industries and a growing commune market, is to keep
pushing forward with resource production to maintain the lives and
livelihoods of the citizenry. The capitalist economy may indeed
temporarily collapse (as it always threatens to do), so it is obvious
that government should strive to seperate the fluctuations of the market
from the health of the nation. When other capitalist nations are dragged
into Mammon’s hell then we can invite them to emulate our own systems
and, when beneficial, to create alliances, merge commune economies and
eventually form a Union. Together the nations will be able to escape the
fluctuations and manipulations of the capitalist markets.
---
Taxation of the poor worker is theft, taxation for the rich boss is the
state taking its cut of the profits: the markets that they use would not
exist without the state’s policies, its monopolies on violence, and its
enforcement of the status quo. Those who believe otherwise should burn
all of their currency, strike out for an open territory and build your
own economy from scratch. For a capitalist to adequately support their
claims of wealth and property they must pay for the government that
keeps their wealth from the hands of marauders and revolutionaries
alike. Those who choose to exploit their fellow man should be exploited
themselves, at least in a fair enough manner to maintain the systems
that defend them and support the people they profit from. To protect
society from accumulators and those who would build empires over their
fellow citizens, the state must extract that part of their wealth which
affords the police, armies and courts that hold their claims apart from
the rest of society. This form of coercion is necessary for the
existence of the bourgious and the elite, as without it they would
either form a neo-feudalist hellscape wherein the wealthy gather all the
land and the political power, building private armies to fight their
constant corporate wars and fiefdom cities where they can rule over
their worker/serfs, or they would simply be overthrown by their
workers/serfs in a moment of revolutionary violence that would end in
guillotines and blood-stained walls. Therefore it is in the best
interest of both the masses and the wealthy that the basic needs of all
be met, and it is in the best interest of democracy that the rich never
be able to acquire the wealth of nations.
The tax system must be modified to be equal but not unfair, and those
who have acquired homes and possessions before the revolution should be
allowed to keep them, remaining free from violence and oppression; those
who make willful pro-social changes should be given due respect, with
the state providing honors, awards, and jobs or the materials to develop
new work. Most importantly, billionaires should be taxed out of
existence, their tax dodges and means of avoiding payment scrutinized
and undone, with those who hide wealth in foreign banks to avoid paying
the society that fostered their success subject to criminal charges.
Alliances must be made at an international level to help allied nations
and our own country reign in the oligarch classes as they try to escape
their duties. Those with tens of millions or hundreds of millions are a
necessary “evil” in regards to maintaining the peace. A future society
that has rid themselves of their worship of wealth will do good to place
a maximum income on all people, to prevent the aspirations of one person
from being used against society.
Seizure of property is an understandably touchy subject, therefore it is
best to wait until the owner has passed before claiming it for the
people. All owners of more than 3–5 properties are to have their excess
property claimed by the state upon their passing and distributed to
communes, and if there is no heir to the remaining properties they are
to be claimed upon the owner’s passing as well. Empty homes should be
claimed, repaired, and distributed when possible. Higher end properties
such as mansions can have multiple communer occupants or be used for
state or collective purposes. Certain luxury locations would be too
great for any one person or even a small group, and should be used for
vacation homes, hotels for travelers, or social facilities (libraries,
museums, clubs, theaters, nursing home, space for community events,
etc.).
The tax rate should not burden the middle and working classes, as the
system will be unpopular and will halt or destroy the revolution. The
poor and those making under $30,000-$100,000 should be exempt from
taxation, while those under $250,000 should not have their taxes raised.
Those making over $10 million should have income over that amount taxed
at 70%. A tax of 90–100% for all people with an income over $100 million
should levied to abolish the billionaire class that threatens modern
society. Of course the value of these numbers change with the times and
should be altered accordingly. Tax income, capital gains and the hoarded
wealth of the rich.
---
No man alone can gain wealth without the labor of others or the
protection of the state, as all men benefit from the roads, the
logistics, the accumulated contributions of every member of a nation
since it’s very birth, and the mountains of laws that protect private
ownership and the legal claims of capitalists. To say that taxes are
theft implies that one could obtain money without the very system that
provides for the existence of money; the faithful seek to usurp the high
priest of Mammon and take his place, unaware that his gospel was a lie
built upon their belief. Without the power of the state, the numbers
faith that gives the wealthy their comfort is worthless, and the
civilization that holds the entire structure together would collapse
under the strain of irresolvable conflicts of interest and a lack of
support for infrastructure. Individuals will have to rely upon the
charity of the rich or pay taxes to private industries to retain
services, a lateral move away from state taxes at best.
Those wealthy men who deny they owe anyone for their success are
laughably mistaken in their childlike and selfish beliefs. Their own
personal success is deeply tied to the success of the entire system
whcih is held together by a strict heirarchy that is necessary for the
continued survival of the kingdom and the wellbeing of its people. The
state is the high king, keeping order amongst the nobles who would seek
to abuse their responsibilities and shirk their duties to their
peasant/workers. To maintain his kingdom he must pay his armies and
maintain the support and fear of the peasants to stay respected and
prevent a revolt. A lord that refuses to pay his dues is no better than
a traitor to his king and tyrant to his people, as the lord has taken
the wealth of the peasants and refused to provide his king the taxes
which give him the means of supporting his own claim to his title and
wealth and the lord’s status by-proxy. The king would be right to bring
this lord to justice for breaking the common trust and disrupting the
system of government in ways that could lead to its demise. The peasants
are discontented, and this anger and desperation reflects from their
lords actions to their king credibility. Without any means of appeasing
peasants they will either revolt or turn to crime, and the foundations
of the system begin to crumble. This directly correlates with the modern
state and the wealthy business owner, with the peasants of yesterday
being replaced by the wage slaves of today. The foundations of
capitalism are not vaguely different from those of feudalism,
necessitating a similar means of control to maintain it; feudal behavior
is a natural extension of concentrated wealth and privatized labor.
---
Mankind has progressed to the edge of a technological singularity, with
the advances in artificial intelligence and computer systems reaching
heights previously known only to science fiction. These advancements
have been compounded with steady improvements in all fields of science,
slowly for thousands of years of our species’ existence yet spiking
sharply within the last few centuries and even more sharply within the
last few decades. Our little communities have — for better and worse —
been opened to the entire globe, allowing the progress of one to
eventually become the progress of all.
There has been a cost for our “progress”: a series of exploitations that
divide our planet into what is essentially two classes. There is the
underclass that runs society and maintains its systems, and then there
is the elite class of non-workers that use the struggle of their
underlings — both those they pay and those lessers whose labor support
the structures that maintain their wealth — to prevent themselves from
being forced to labor and to allow them to hoard power that others
helped them attain. Our progress is hollow because it does not benefit
the human tribe so much as it benefits the elite. While society has
created the means to build homes, make medicines and grow food for all
people, it is not a certainty that the lowly laborer can afford to have
these things. No, they must be kept desperate and poor so that the rich
can live lives of obscene luxury. If you are lucky then you will be able
to afford a few electronics and intoxicants to numb you to the fact that
there are millions of people that live on the sweat and blood of
billions, adding almost nothing to the world but trinkets and pain. We
have essentially reached the maximum progressive potential of capitalism
and are now regressing towards feudalism, with a useless aristocracy
draining the life and wealth of our planet for their unsustainable
lifestyles. The Western liberal capitalist experiment is almost over,
and we are marching ourselves towards the end: it waits to be seen
whether it will be made into something great and beautiful or something
vile and horrifying.
---
The history of Earth has been one of violence and terror. Since the
early days of our species we have relied upon brutality and coercion to
enforce our leaders’ wills, inevitably resulting in the fiefdoms and
kingdoms that ruled over our peoples for millennia, systems far more
common than democracies and free societies have ever been. The natural
state of man is one of aggression and domination.
By the time capitalism gained relevance, sometime after the formation of
the bourgeoisie, the typical state of politics had been one of autocracy
and hereditary hierarchy since time immemorial. Any shift away from the
world of aristocrats and serfs was a welcome one. The idea that a man
could be born of ignoble birth and yet still rise on the power of a lord
was a revolutionary idea in its time. Furthermore, this system of
distributed economic responsibility, once held solely hands of feudal
kings and the hereditary aristocracy, was essential to the growth of
trade-based civilizations that led to the development of relatively free
societies. This was, in comparison to farming potatoes for the lord’s
tax, a huge advancement for civil rights. It is with this in mind that I
say that capitalism and is not evil.
Of course there have been issues with the capitalist system, ones that
have empowered malicious people and made it potentially hazardous to
society’s health. It is now reaching a stage where the capitalist class
has managed to accumultate the wealth of nations and stacking the
political deck in their favor, making themselves in some ways even more
powerful than the aristocracy of the past as they essentially become
lords of capital. The system has reached a critical mass often referred
to as “late stage capitalism”, meaning that we are nearing capitalism’s
endgame. We are regressing towards neo-feudalism, differing in
aesthetics and in form but with the same underlying hierarchies under
which our ancient ancestors toiled. The lord/serf dichotomy is being
mirrored more perfectly every day within the current employer/employee
dichotomy, nearing a perfect reflection with each new anti-labor law.
However, this is not the colloquial ideal of capitalism held by the
average person, but rather an inevitable bastardization of it. Despite
the good intentions of the honest man, the dishonest man is empowered
under the current system and rewarded for his Machiavellian traits, thus
ensuring that the many of the worst aspects of capitalism will never
disappear: if they have the upper hand it will be maintained with
underhandedness, if they have been beaten back they will wait in the
shadows for the right time to strike. This is a plague that infects
civilizations built upon profitseeking. If one man worships Mammon then
all men will suffer.
Despite its potential for abuse, even Marx and Engels agreed that
capitalism was a necessary step in man’s social evolution, as written in
the Communist Manifesto, [quote]. We should take into account the
complications of history, realizing that the past is at times morally
ambiguous and deserve complete understanding if we are to transcend
beyond the current outdated system.
I have formed anarcho-democracy not to be necessarily anti-capitalist,
but instead to be pro-socialism. While capitalists cannot be free to
exploit the common man and money should never be the lifeblood of a
nation, the pursuit of profit has gained a global cultural significance.
This modern tradition should not be eradicated by force but should be
decoupled with the health of the nation and limited to a hobby for
individualists, a game akin to gambling. This will, in the long run,
limit the incentive for capitalism to be associated with exploitation
and human suffering: once our lives are not governed by its inhumane
logic then perhaps capitalism won’t be as reviled by the left as it is
today.
---
Growth is overrated, at least in the way we perceive the word in western
society. It is believed by many that growth in one’s economic power is
the most important kind of growth, and I must disagree. Manufacturing
ability, economic output, the amount of stuff that one makes and
convinces others to buy is not true growth, but artificial and imaginary
growth based upon the capitalist assumption that a nation’s power comes
from money. This assumption has been forced upon the world by those who
benefit from the arrangement, with the capitalist lords In the current
world money means one’s ability to trade and influence, but in reality,
when one peals away the fiction of the numbers and the accounts, money
is nothing more than a new god to replace the one science and society
has killed. Money is useful, but only so far as people believe it is
useful. Nothing keeps currencies together other than continuously
renewed faith in its usefulness. Some people will need this god to
maintain a sense of order in their lives — mostly people who have plenty
of it already and are accustomed to its power — but like all faiths it
should not be forced upon the unwilling. To be forced to abide by money
is to be forced to bow to the altar of Mammon.
---
In capitalism’s wake lies the suffering and the broken. Starvation and
malnutrition kills more people on earth today than all other causes, yet
it is common knowledge that the world could be fed multiple times over
with what is made. Economists gripe that it is not feasible to feed
every mouth, that the producers and free trade would suffer, and the
capitalist system as we know it would be left in chaos. This is perhaps
true, as capitalism is bound to the will of Mamon to maintain
civilization’s equillibrium and thus does not care about the death of a
peasant in a foreign land. The same could be said for the sick without
care, and the destitute without homes. Similar can be said for the
laborer, who toils long hours for paltry pay, little more than a cog in
a machine destined to be replaced by better cogs. The trauma of barely
sustained life can be seen all around the world; poor people have as
many emotions as the wealthy can have, yet they have little to no access
to the help or care a rich man could acquire. Their needs go unmet and
their minds go unhelped, building layer after layer of trauma until
eventually they perish, their lives brutal and short, surrounded by a
world of advanced medicine and bountiful rescources. This sad fact
creates ripples of fear and negativity throughout our communities that
in turn creates the division and hostility that shapes our societies and
personalities.
Our communities have decayed, driving people across the nation and globe
in search of new careers and better lives, breaking apart our once
tight-knit communities into neighborhoods and cities of unaffiliated,
uncaring and uncooperative people. While humans as a whole have adapted
to these circumstances many of us have been left devoid of a sense of
community and purpose, falling into pits of depression, anxiety, fear
and hatred. The suicides of an untold number of men, women and children
have been at the hands of a cold and uncaring world. Drug and alcohol
addiction has claimed the lives of the those struggling to find joy and
pain relief in this cruel and cynical society. Petty thieves and robbers
are so removed from the bourgious benefits of civilization that they not
only have lost — or never gained — respect for other men, but they have
taken to seize what does not belong to them to claim a bit of comfort.
All these people are victims of capitalism, left to rot not because
nothing could be done, but because saving them is unprofitable; the
dregs of society would be better off dead, says the conservative, with
his actions if not his words.
The incels and the alt-right youth have been created in part because
their lack of positive social connections and public exposure combined
with the comfortable and ego-syntonic nihilism common to anonymous
Internet forums. They are drawn in by fascist recruiters, sociopathic
trolls and foreign provacators that invite disaffected young men into
their communities to teach them right-wing ideals and a hatred of social
justice.
This array of capitalism’s victims points to us the origins of the surge
in negativity, anxiety, fear and trauma in the Western world that I call
Post-Traumatic Capitalism Disorder. All traumas and terrors of life that
could potentially be solved by technology or social change but instead
persists to maintain the structure of Capitalism can create this
disorder, ranging from the fear and anxiety induced by
paycheck-to-paycheck living to the suicides and addictions brought by
our unfullfilling lives and our uncaring communities. Even the
disenchanted youth who become racists and fascists are reacting in
self-preservation to maintain fragile egos and a sense of belonging,
caused by their inability to cope with systemic changes to our cities,
communities and cultures caused by modern western economics. They are
taught to hate LGBT, minorities and socialists by internet fascists and
political provacateurs, as they make easy targets for them to manipulate
outrage against using hateful conservative talking points disguised as
centrism and rational logic.
PTCD affects people differently, but with fear and anxiety common to all
cases. It is seen in a low-wage worker who lies awake in bed at night
not knowing how he will pay his bills. It is behind the trauma of slaves
— still common throughout the world — who are kept for their economic
purpose, merely purchased goods to be used by wealthy criminals. Even
wage slaves live in terror at the thought of losing their job, and are
thus willing to endure horrible masters for their salaries. All people
who fear for lack or want and who could escape their terror through the
means of societal cooperation are instead traumatized into compliance or
suicide.
Similar to C-PTSD, such traumas can be endured over long spans of time
and can be made by multiple small events that form the personality of
the individual in ways that disguise just how much they have been
altered from their baseline. These need not even be major events like
starvation or illness, but even something as minor as losing money to a
charlatan or being indebted can lead to lifelong anxieties. One may lose
their savings to an unforeseen misfortune or have their property
forfeited to creditors. Muggers may assault someone for their wallet,
and though it may not equal the violence of raiders and brigands, both
of these traumatic actions are enabled by the function and form of our
methods of resource distribution. Indeed, the capitalist system is built
upon the fear of suffering, with the lower-classes subjected to various
levels of potential suffering related to the “worth” of the individual
filling the job, with menial workers given minimum incomes to ensure
their stress and societal voice never rises above a manipulable level.
Without this stress there would be no one to fill the ranks of fast-food
workers, pointless manual laborers, and other lackeys and servants of
the elite classes and the structure of their life-defiling world.
The structure of our neighborhoods and cities is affected by
profiteering, with entire districts built to segregate the poor and
minorities. The structure of suburbs lends itself to loneliness, with
nowhere to go within walking distances, each person hidden away in their
tiny Versailles. This arrangement only creates antisociality, rendering
each individual divided from the community around them.
The effects of capitalism-induced trauma are omnipresent, requiring
further study to determine the full extent of trauma on humanity’s
collective and individual psyches. Care must be taken not to broaden the
scope of the PTCD beyond rationality, yet it is difficult or perhaps
impossible to determine what effect a healthy society with an efficient
system of distribution would have on psychology compared to our current
situation. Since challenging economic systems is outside of the purview
of psychology, the links between the capitalism-induced trauma will
likely never be seen as more than a series of free-floating anxieties
and mental illnesses caused simply by “life stressors”. It is my hope
that one day the source of trauma and stress due to artificial lack are
called out for what they truly are so that global healing can begin.
---
Many socialists have been afflicted by PTCD. The insight into the
underlying causes of much of mankind’s suffering brings them misery and
pain, knowing that there is little they can do to save the hordes of
capitalism’s victims. The world in which we live is hollow, an uncaring
and selfish hellscape built upon the greed of the wealthy and the
desperation of the poor. Seeing this before their face on a daily basis,
unable to fight or even run, they become cynical and bitter. We are all
trapped in this expensive, ugly, greedy world and there is nothing that
the average man can individually do to end the suffering of their
families, countrymen, or any of the nameless victims in exploited
nations. After years of witnessing the decay of our society one becomes
willing to do anything to end the suffering. The weight of their
convictions can drag them to the bottom of a deep pit of despair and
angst.
Seeing the people you love in pain and being unable to help them is a
trauma that leaves you feeling weak and helpless. You can truly
understand the natural valuelessness of individual life when you witness
the pointless death from lack of care or want for food, or when the
games of nation-states ends their lives in a neo-colonial conflict. The
ridiculous numbers-faith that binds us to this disgusting pattern of
death and greed is the clear killer, yet the bulk of man are stuck in
their ways, under the thumb of their employers not only in body but in
mind and spirit.
In the face of this nightmare the socialist, his heart set upon the best
of all possible worlds, is driven near madness. The most empathetic
amongst them are harmed the most, with the only means of escaping coming
either from the bitter release of suicide or the desperation of action
against the cruelty around them. And after years of agony and the
determination that our species will continue to wallow in stupidity for
years to come will either break them, humble them or lead them a final
conclusion: that the liberation of mankind from the evils of the
capitalist machine must come at any cost. The noble socialist, betrayed
by the world, threatens to become the very thing he hates. The cynicism
towards others becomes apparent, having been disappointed so many times
in the past. He may even wish for the death of his political enemies,
and if he had the upper hand he would send them to the gulags or the
purges. This is the birth of the antisocial socialist, someone who has
tucked his humanity aside so that it may not get in the way of his
goals. This is a grim and destructive individual.
Devoid of optimism and forced to engage in the oppressive systems that
are responsible for the trauma and stress that led them down this path
in the first place, the antisocial socialist is primed for hostility
against everyone around them. Yet they are all too aware of the
inability to ever force change by themselves or in these times, and so
they settle for severing their connections with all but their niche
crowds, ironically isolating themselves from the people in their search
for a pure and just inner world. The need to defend their kind inner
humanistic ego becomes the source of their mental anguish, knowing that
our species is almost certainly bound for failure because of the
wickedness of the few and the ignorance of the many.
This is to say nothing of capitalist governments’ historic violence and
oppression against socialist that leads many of them to jusitified
paranoia, knowing that a cop or an agent may very well be trying to trap
them. After all, the government has been known to arrest or kill
leftists whenever their “free speech” became inconvenient to them. This
repressive behavior extends into the private sector, as many bosses and
coworkers would be unwilling to befriend or trust a socialist, and to
private life, as most people have neighbors, friends, and even family
who would think less of them or exclude them from their lives if they
knew about their beliefs. Even people who have only the most tenuous
grasp of socialist ideals rush to the barricades to defend against the
threat of “communism” in whatever form pops into their heads. Operating
against culturally ingrained propaganda is like swimming up a river and
soon becomes tiring. With the combination of a hollow society, an
oppressive government, and cultural propaganda that could lead to
multiple forms of social exclusion, the socialist may become reclusive
and isolated, and may even become the hateful antisocial socialist out
of a need to defend their vulnerable and gentle inner personality from
being harmed by a hellworld which they can neither fix nor escape.
---
Injustice Warrior
It has become apparent that Western society is in the midst of an
ideological civil war between the progressive left and the reactionary
right. The lines have been drawn around the heated topics of social
justice and racial conflict, with the left wanting unity for all people
and the right wanting division under the guise of free speech. The
radical right consists of fascists, neo-nazis, alt-rightist
neoreactionaries, nationalists, right-libertarians, Christian extremists
and the conservative masses lured into supporting the cause by the
capitalist oligarchs that profit from this alliance. If society does
does not limit the impact of right-wing radicalism in the coming years
we may have more to fight than just a culture war.
One of the major driving factors of the “new right” is the weaponization
of the internet. While there is of course state-run weaponization that
has accelerated their resurgence, It boggles the mind to know that
anonymous forum boards, “ironic” fascist or racist internet memes,
corrupted gamer culture and millions of hours of right-wing internet
videos have contributed to the moral decay of swathes of the young male
population. These right-wing communities have created an archetype I
call the antisocial injustice warrior: the inverse of the social justice
warrior, who is characterized as a loud, non-conforming, female LGBT
person that represents all they are taught to hate about our diverse
liberal society. The AIW’s have a second-hand hatred of the left
non-conservative culture yet are often critical of aspects of
traditional society unless it would personally benefit them or harm
their opponents. Stripped of the “traditional values” veneer of the
20^(th) century conservative Christian archetype, this modern
interpretation typically has little to no religious or narratived
motivation in their beliefs, instead opting to reactively despise things
they do not understand or that they perceive as weird, different, or
outside of their personal opinions about who should exist in the world,
essentially making them post-modern neo-fascists. A hatred of LGBT,
females, Muslims, people of color and leftists has been taught to them
by their favorite YouTubers and politically provocative troll-shills:
social schizmatists elevated to celebrity status by propagating their
cynical narrative to easily persuaded and socially adrift youth. The
victims generally come from middle class backgrounds and may either be
mistreated outcasts or budding sociopaths that are in need of a
community, a life purpose, or a place to vent their anger at the unfair
world that led them here. They will adopt the mindset of the alt-right
culture by being fed “ironic” racism and fascism and be encouraged to
engage in negative nihilistic behavior through a constant exchange of
cruelty, violence and pornography that makes them feel like they are
participating in a counter culture community. Forum veterans, some of
who are far-right recruiters, encourage new members to numb themselves
to hate and graphic violence until they feel like they are not of the
same mind as their fellow man, and they are trained to guilt one another
into believing that they are “degenerate” and that they should “an
hero”, “rope”, or “kys”: internet speak throughout the years that
encourages suicide, typically meant to harm a person’s self-worth to
make them more easily manipulated. They are trained to believe they have
risen above the moral conventions of society, while simultaneously being
shamed by one another for their social transgressions. Every time they
turn on their computers they are driven further and further away from
normality, being taught by the online rightist culture to negatively
perceive segments of society they never would have thought about or
acknowledged without being exposed to hours of provocative rightist
media. They eventually decline in their empathy and willingness to
accept others different from themselves; the most indoctrinated amongst
them will become so alienated from general society that they can no
longer view modern civilization as anything other than an enemy. This
“community” infects their minds and kills the optimism in their hearts,
yet it becomes the only place where the victim can consider themselves
at home and safe, feeling that the world has abandoned them for the
corrupted thoughts that swim in their heads, the thoughts fed to them by
right-wing internet culture.
This sullen and angry person then seeks acceptance amongst their fellow
“degenerates”, willing to do anything to belong to a crowd, and what the
most devoted and vocal part of this crowd wants is acceptance of
rightist ideology and obedience to the alt-right narrative. The first
ideology they usually will adopt is a right-libertarian ideology such as
anarcho-capitalism or randian objectivism, both of which glorify callous
individualism and are subtly popularised by traditional conservative
culture. Many intelligent people who get drawn into the right-wing
communities and videos often adopt “classical liberalism”, which is
typically a rebranding of familiar conservative ideals needed to attract
younger voters to the right, as the old-fashion narratives used to keep
the right afloat are becoming less popular with young conservatives.
They want to distinguish themselves from anti-science conservativism,
attempting to adopt a parallel rightist culture without leaving the
comfort of conforming to the status quo. Regardless of the reasons
behind why they reached those beliefs, the outcome in its most typical
form is a denial of social justice that parrots the words of the
far-right. They rally around the banner of free speech, seemingly
obsessed by their ability to offend minorities and threaten others who
think differently from them, far exceeding good-intentioned debate and
extending into the realm of intentional social warfare against modern
liberal ideals. Profiteers and ideologues have swarmed like sharks to
create conflict over every screaming liberal or video of antifa knocking
over trashcans, ensuring that they have fuel for spreading reactionary
outrage.
The most familiar internet rightist culture — made widely known because
of their connections to a number of high-profile shootings and terrorist
attacks — is the incel culture. Comprised of antisocial injustice
warriors that have adopted identities as “involuntary celibates”, they
are amongst the most fervent and involved members of the rightist
internet sphere. They become unable to seperate their core selves from
the incel worldview, typically having adopted the identity and the
community because of their disenchantment with society, usually due to a
lack of friends, a mate, status, and the social skills to obtain them.
They have been trained by their cultures to absorb negativity into their
identities, to hate themselves and others. It is nearly useless to
attempt to shame them if you are trying to convince them of anything, as
they will either enjoy the negativity you give them or hate themselves
even more, encouraging them move further to the right to protect their
egos, making your efforts counterproductive. They are unfortunate
victims of our modern world and, to a large degree, the capitalist
structures that created their negative interactions with society that
led to their predicament. For this reason I will not pursue the matter
any further as they are themselves victims and will need compassion if
they are ever to be brought out of the darkness.
Centrists are unfortunately complicit with the conservative status quo,
being the “don’t cause any trouble” and “sit down and shut up” faction
of every nation. They are either comfortable and well-off, or they are
the politically disinterested that wish to avoid deep thought and mental
pain, either passively or actively attempting to maintain cognitive
dissonance about all matters of life that confuse them or cause them
discomfort when considered. The saddest yet most understandable
centrists are forced into the mindset by being too tired from work and
life struggles to care about anything else other than a few hours of
looking at a screen and getting enough sleep to carry on tomorrow. They
have been beaten into submission by the capitalist machine.
The right-centrist is not usually a classical racist or openly hostile
and is usually someone who is searching for a righteous and honest
ideology, generally one that allows a greater sense of personal
responsibility and intellectual autonomy while still being able to keep
on the right side of their home region’s culture or their family
beliefs. Thus the appeal of Ayn Rand amongst right-wing youth, allowing
them to read a massive book their parents approve of that will make them
feel as though their selfishness is a virtue instead of a means of
upholding an unjust status quo.
Right-centrism is not in and of itself malicious, and neither are most
of the variants of right-libertarianism, but these groups hold myopic
worldviews that make them targets for far-right recruitment and
propaganda. The individualist freedom narrative has been taken over by
the right and given a cold and socially uncaring perspective, separating
personal freedom from goodwill towards others and respect for those that
live lives different from their own. Instead it has been made combative
against a whole host of paranoia-crafted enemies. In the end, it is
likely that most right-centrists and right-libertarians will support a
far-right/alt-right narrative of any kind if it is set against a leftist
or liberal narrative, making it frighteningly likely that they would
support fascism if it harmed their political enemies.
It is a fact that the vitriolic conservative rhetoric has spawned
violence from the right, and their leaders’ dismissive reaction to this
truth shows us that this was likely their intention all along, to drive
us to the brink of civil war because it was convenient to their
electoral and monetary objectives. It remains to be seen whether they
will acknowledge that fascists and white supremacists are waiting to
push us over the brink and into the depths of hell, and I believe we
will be waiting a very long time.
Those who believe that all human beings have equal rights will never be
at peace with the far-right. This is the line that has been drawn,
between the neo-nazis and fascists that would rip our cities apart for a
white nation and global human schizmatism, and the left that must fight
the feudal capitalist oligarchs and their fascist lackeys for unity and
justice for all. It upsets even me to know that there are few liberal
options in between that will not lead to the eventual rightist political
overthrow and economic enslavement of the people. The centrists that
support their goals even in parallel are merely useful tools for
would-be oppressors, blinded by a lack of historical context and too
comfortable with their lot in life to learn or care about politics
outside of what their superiors and television news hosts teach them.
The pseudo-fascist provacateurs that lead the ignorant to sell their
nation’s dignity and give power to the corrupt are enemies to Western
civilization and will be responsible for the violent right’s descent
into greater depravities in the coming days. If you seek to find a
middle ground, then you should look further to the left: the Overton
window has been shifted rightwards for decades, to the point where
anti-leftism and conservative social policies are now “centrist” ideals.
The right-centrist/right-libertarian is always at risk of falling prey
to the fascists, racists and foreign provocateurs that seek to
radicalize their communities. There is a tendency for many of them to be
politically illiterate, with the former typically lacking a broad and
deep political knowledge base, choosing instead to hide this ignorance
by assuming everyone is wrong and leaving it at that (the worst
offenders trusting only their family and conservative alt-news sites),
and with the latter acting upon opposition-defiant emotions and feelings
rather than cohesive ideology. They may be rather myopic in their
perception and will focus on how an issue affects their small
communities, whether it be their town, forum community, or hobby group
without concern for anyone who may does not align with them. The most
mentally grueling centrists are the lazy egoists who have gathered that
beliefs may sometimes be incorrect, so it is best to believe in nothing
rather than risk showing weakness by being proven wrong or ignorant.
They are unhelpful and proud of the fact, yet they are all too often
willing to listen to right-wing propaganda and find hatred for “SJWs” in
the midst of their equivocating. All centrist are targets for subtle
radicalization, as all it takes is a handful of biased internet videos
and the divisive words of a few popular and provacative troll-shills to
draw the attention of contrarians and antisocialists towards the right.
We must understand that this collection of far-right, centrist-right and
conservative ideologues have historically allied against the left and
sought to destroy democracy and egalitarianism whenever it does not suit
their preferences. Liberals are all too often willing to side with the
right instead of the left as well, willing to hand their rights to
fascists rather than face the uncertainty of an equal society. It is
under this uncomfortable truth that we must be wary of the liberal
admiration for capitalism and corporatism and their willingness to fall
in line behind them if they get a whiff of communism. Wealthy liberals
and corporate democrats should not automatically be seen as reliable
allies against the right-wing threat, but rather as fair-weather friends
who at best may fight alongside leftists until they get the chance to
safely dismantle them. At worst they will make a quick measurement of
their values and decide they would rather live in an ethnostate than
risk harming the capitalist system that elevates them to the upper ranks
of society.The right-wings ranks will include many liberals in the
coming days, drawn in by fear and propaganda. A tug-of-war for the soul
of Western liberals will be held between the left and right.
---
To clear misconceptions as to the intended direction of
anarcho-democracy, understanding my critiques of other leftist and
anarchist ideologies. While anarcho-democracy is built upon anarchist
and marxist thought, there are many issues surrounding revolutionary
methodology that need to be addressed. Right anarchism is antithetical
to anarcho-democracy, with each branch requiring a specific critique in
relation andem ideology. Anarcho-statism is similar but different enough
in key areas to require a more nuanced differentiation.
---
There is no greater influence on anarcho-democracy than anarchism,
perhaps the most humane and idealistic of political beliefs. The
creation of a better world, one free from coersion and exploitation, is
its noble goal. I believe that no other ideology, philosophy or faith
has touched upon the true spirit of man as deeply as the simple beauty
of anarchism, a doctrine of liberation and cooperation that comes from
the heart of both our collective will and self-interests. The men and
women who brought us these revolutionary ideas did so not only for
themselves, but for all people, and for that they deserve our respect.
Unfortunately, they have been forgotten and ignored by society for far
too long.
The words and deeds of anarchist thinker only occupy the fringes of
history, their brave thoughts having never come to fruition save for
during few brief periods in history, a handful of local revolutions
across the world, and in a few hippy communes or anarchist bookstores.
Society at large has failed them, instead choosing to hang onto familiar
systems that have led us to our current state of chaos. If we wish to
see their beliefs ever having an impact on global politics then we must
continue fighting, with a new set of tactics needed if we want to learn
from the outcome of the past 200+ years of struggle.
A lack of unified action has rendered anarchism a tertiary player on the
world stage. The people have been well and truly convinced that
government leadership is required to hold their lives together.
“Anarchy” is popularly perceived as a void in order that causes societal
collapse, and “anarchism” is typically seen as a fancy word for “chaos”.
Communism and socialism have been reviled to the point of near
irrelevance, and only now is the word “socialism” finally losing its
verbal barbs and is fast gaining popularity. Even though “socialism” as
a word colloquially means “universal healthcare and free college”
instead of “seize the means of production”, the shift in appeal towards
social democracy is a sign that the pendulum may swing leftward if
political awareness becomes widespread. This brings me to
anarcho-democracy, and the similarities and differences between it and
traditional anarchism, including modes and methods of revolution.
On its face, anarcho-democracy as a term may seem to imply that other
anarchist ideologies are not democratic. This is absolutely not the
case, as all anarchist societies utilize democracy in some form of
another. Rather, anarcho-democracy is named to differentiate the systems
by its most prominent feature, the use of a society realigned under
direct democracy to counter the parlaimentary/electoral system and the
rule of the political elite, with the abolition of the state being the
final stage of anarchism compared to the classical methods of abolishing
the state first and then realigning society from the void, or in
creating loose anarchist organizations that will replace the state after
a revolution. Under our current socialism-adverse society it becomes
imperative for an anarchist to utilize the greatest powers at his
disposal — the malleable and manipulable parliamentary political
apparatus — to drive popular support and create socialist-parallel
policies that generate goodwill toward leftist ideology. If done
correctly this will result in a leftward shift of the Overton Window,
with a growing base of socialist support and political awareness for
anarchist causes which will be used to undo the system from within while
using it to legally protect the revolution. Regardless of electoral
success, it will allow for publicity and normalization of anarchism that
will have long-term effects on public opinion.
Anarchism has become a lifestyle and a personal identity more than an
actual social movement. Other than a few successful indigenous movements
and some scattered “friend group” sized collectives, many of whom revel
in their ideological conformity and moral superiority. For some
anarchists, it is better to have no revolution at all than one that does
not match the revolution in their heads or in the books of popular and
obscure anarchist writers. Like many leftist intellectuals, anarchists
can be ironically dogmatic and subject to groupthink. No wonder there
hasn’t been a revolution, since leftists are so content in destroying
one another that they have forgotten that capitalism still holds a chain
around all of our necks. Thus the libertarian left stagnates, unable to
adapt against the capitalist republican system because they would rather
fight the government with a dozen of their buddies than unite under
democracy. Some anarchists will protest and riot but will be
ideologically repulsed by casting a ballot, unwilling to vote even for a
socialist because doing so makes them feel they have compromise their
beliefs. This behavior must change if anarchist thought is to be adopted
on a wide scale. Alienating themselves from the political stage has,
unsurprisingly, made them irrelevant on the world stage. Anarchists must
force themselves out of their comfort zones and engage the political
world from all angles, including from within the system. The greatest
thing an anarchist can do in the present day is ironically to take
office. From there they can fight to undo injustices, stifle the
advances of the far-right, advocate for socialism and make the people
conscious of class conflict in preparation for the revolution. We can
debate about the details of our new society when capitalism is no longer
wringing our necks, but until then the upper-classes only benefit from
the proletariat’s lack of solidarity.
---
There may very well be a time when a peaceful transition is impossible,
due to an authoritarian or violent regime that rules without regard for
the electoral will of the people. It may be necessary to attempt more
conventional methods of regime change when democracy is broken. If
anarcho-democrats have already entered office then they may provide the
voice of the revolution and guide the people towards the new society. If
there are no leaders in place then it may be wise to first reestablish
liberal democracy before forming an anarchist society, but if the time
is right and the people are wise enough to live in a free society
without collapsing it due to their foolishness then the people may be
able to transition past democratic socialism and anarcho-democracy. This
is not entirely possible today with our current state of societal
division, as our collective ignorance and individualistic cultures will
likely mean that a void of rule will result in a chaotic
post-apocalyptic hellscape rather than a just and kind utopia.
Liberation before mass social awareness leads to reactionary violence
and mob mentality. Divisive narratives — both foreign and domestic —
will influence the most ignorant and unempathetic among the people to
enact civil war and bloody revolution. Order must be kept not for the
benefit of the elite, but to prevent our sociopathic neighbors from
killing us because they don’t like how we think and nobody is there to
stop them.
While anarchists-communists inherently believe that humans are mostly
good and naturally cooperative, it is a sad fact of reality that all
people are capable of malice. Sadism, greed and cruelty can never be
fully erased from the Earth. Fortunately for mankind, the malice caused
by wicked men is outweighed by the malice of the ignorant, the
worldweary, the saddened, the troubled, the broken. This imbalance gives
me great hope, because this mass of suffering souls has the potential to
be healed. Who is ignorant can be taught, who is weary can be rested,
who is saddened can be gladdened, who is troubled can be helped, who is
broken can be repaired.
Without action these words are merely platitudes, only true for a
fortunate minority under the current uncaring system. The lack of
community and social cohesion, the lack of health care and medicine, the
crippling debt and financial anguish, the pointless toil and wasted
lives. This is what many instead have to look forward to in this world
where there is little love for others. For some it is better to never
have been born. No child should have to grow up to regret their
existence. These are the wrongs anarchists fight to make right: we must
never forget that oppression and cruelty are what we are fighting, not
each other. We are much stronger as a unified front, bound together by
common causes for the benefit of all mankind.
---
One anarchist belief is that communism is a natural state of affairs,
that with a lack of capitalism and hierarchy there would be a common
return to a state of sharing and mutual aid. This is in some ways true,
as peaceful and communally minded individuals would seek out such
circumstances as a matter of “enlightened self-interest”, so to speak.
The trouble comes from those who have unenlightened self-interest, the
predatory psychopaths and reactionaries: race supremacists, class
exploiters, fascists, gangsters and all manner of would-be conquerors.
Unfortunately there will be plenty of these people after the fall of
capitalism, their mindsets and worldviews crafted by our own uncaring
and individualist society. It is utopian and overoptimistic to imagine
that the vast sum of criminally-minded individuals would be instantly
cured of an entire life of exploitation and negativity. No, it will
require a long-term healing of our minds before society can escape its
hateful past. Even within the commune system there will be a potential
for gangs and extremist groups to use the freedom of the commune to
disguise their crimes against society. This is why I have come to
believe that some form of pro-anarchist order in the transitional phase
is required to ensure that chaos does not infect our societies because
of our poorly planned and emotionally guided revolution. The
anarcho-democratic shield state and the anarcho-constitution could
provide a defense of all the good intentions of the revolution, to
prevent a descent into tribalism or feudalism. Whereas most people would
either return to their daily lives or move onto something greater, there
are those select few who would rather become warlords and bandits,
slavers and terrorizers. The greatest shame that can come from anarchism
would not be the failure to destroy capitalism, nor a failure to
eliminate hierarchy, but the failure to adequately reform society after
the revolution into something other than a violent hellhole void of
order.
Socialists are, for the most part, intellectual individuals. To
adequately speak amongst a crowd of leftists requires learning from a
litany of ideas, authors and historical figures to understand their
complicated and oft-misunderstood language. To fully appreciate their
ideals requires intense study of not only anarchism itself, but also a
somewhat detailed explanation of socialism, communism, capitalism
property, and so on. Where the intellectual anarchist can go wrong with
his assumptions is their belief that all men could easily understand
their philosophies, that all men will instantly see the error in the
system and know how to react appropriately to it instead of finding an
infinite number of ways to make the situation worse. At worst it will
result in total annihilation of civilization and perhaps mankind (with
the current proliferation of nuclear weapons and other WMDs), but most
likely we will end up with a system similar to our current one with a
couple minor changes that will still result in the profiteering
exploitation of the people, as a majority of Westerners could not
possibly imagine a world without money, even amongst leftists. [rewrite,
run-ons]
---
Murray Bookchin made great strides in his attempt to form a free society
built upon marxist and anarchist thought, ending up with the concept of
libertarian municipalism, also known as communalism. In essence,
communalism attempts to establish a dual power between the state and a
loose confederation of communities that would eventually end in the
replacement of the state with the confederation. I wholeheartedly agree
with many aspects of Bookchin’s work, but I find the idea of a
grassroots organization replacing the current system to be an unlikely
scenario in the modern Western world. Furthermore, the intended outcome
of communalism does not create adequate organization to be capable of
standing up to geopolitical challenges, likely resulting in the eventual
collapse of the region due to civil war or foreign conquest.
To put it lightly, I do not believe that mankind in general is ready for
such a free society. The average population of any given area is
beholden to selfish and foolish ideals and behaviors that would result
in the downfall of many localized communities. While theoretically the
communalist movement is intended to be guided by grassroots socialist
ideals, it ultimately will be hijacked in a manner similar to how the
right-libertarian American Tea Party was hijacked by corporatists, and
they will use the creation of local democracy to ensure rightist rule.
Many communities have regressive cultures that would ensure a tyranny of
a stupid majority if they were to be thrust into local democracy. With
unchecked direct democracy they will not become a progressive and
enlightened society, but instead they will become ruled by cultural
traditions and reactionary against anyone politically left of them.
Imagine a rural religious community with direct democracy over its rules
and standards. They may pass any number of rules against the LGBT
population or a minority religion without oversight. Perhaps the
confederation has a set of standards that must be followed for
membership, but if they do not agree to follow the confederations
guidelines they will have little reason not to join another
confederation that would allow their ignorant — yet democratic —
decisions. Without a binding force that can protect against the
wickedness of man’s ignorance there will be chaos and violence, only
there won’t be a federal government there to make it better. Minorities
will be endangered when their neighbors are given full-reign over the
legitimacy of their existence. This is why anarcho-democracy must
maintain a shield-state during the transition: to protect society and
the population while allowing individuals to advance towards freedom by
their own accord. The shield-state is the gate that keeps the barbarians
at bay.
Bookchin was right to criticize the lifestylism of modern anarchists,
but his route towards freedom came with its own flaws. While his works
are worth studying they are unfortunately not yet applicable to our
primitive civilization and require a reexamination. In Kurdistan
democratic confederalism has been formed around his ideals, and we have
yet to see the outcome of that particular experiment. They have the odds
stacked against them in more than one way, but perhaps they can make it
work. Only time will tell.
---
National-Anarchism
To form a cohesive definition for the term “anarchism”, we must first
assume that anti-capitalism, anti-statism, and self-governance are key
aspects as anarchism is and has always been a far-left ideology aligned
with socialism and communism. Right-wing “libertarian” ideologies will
always result in the reinstitution of unjust hierarchies based upon
neo-feudalist economics and reactionary conservatism, as wealth
accumulation without public law will inevitably lead to tyranny from
those who have nothing over those who have everything. To protect their
interests — of which wealthy men have many — the lord/capitalist will
suppress upstarts and socialists either through purchased violence or
simply through exclusion from their services, which may be basics such
as water, electricity or road access. Unsurprisingly, few believers of
such systems see themselves as anything other than the benefactors of
their preferred worlds, with their identities firmly wrapped up in being
one of the rich, noble, or powerful instead of the numerous poor,
disenfranchised and powerless that inherently exist under such strident
social conditions. They rarely think of the health and wealth of
foreigners, scarcely consider the plight of the minority, and almost
never take into account the masses of unfortunates that require aid
beyond their ability to pay that would be left to suffer and die at
rates higher than we already have under the current system. Out of
personal goodwill and respect for man’s quest for freedom, I wish to
reach out towards those libertarians sympathetic to right-wing ideology
and ask them to listen to the perspective of their left-wing
counterparts and understand that one cannot be truly free under a
conservative or capitalist system.
Anarcho-capitalism is a ridiculous ideology, practically asking for the
world to be a dystopian corporate hellscape in pursuit of pure
capitalist freedom, as if though corporations do not have enough
freedoms to screw over their employees, the environment and general
society already. I have mentioned earlier that unbridled capitalism
would lead to feudalism and private control over the public sphere, a
major concern of liberals and socialists alike. Randian philosophy and
“free market” policies have led us to the corporate hell we live in
today, with billionaire ideologues pulling the reins of millions of the
poor towards a world of financial serfdom in the name of “financial
freedom”.
Ancaps will argue that mankind is both too selfish for socialism yet
charitable enough to provide for the sick and poor from their own
pockets. For those who aren’t Objectivist idealists or teenagers, these
arguement are made in polite conversation so as to gloss over
inconvenient truths, because saying “Who cares about those people?”
would out them as sociopaths. This is unfortunately the go-to philosophy
for antisocials as well as the lazy, attracting people that don’t want
to be bothered and don’t like thinking about the plight of the world
around them. Unsurprisingly there is a very effective
libertarian-to-fascist pipeline on the Internet — found in anonymous
forums and social echo chambers — that teaches young males to blame
females, minorities and lgbt for their social exclusion and lack of
success, finding a foothold with “anti-social justice warrior” talking
points, and alt-right “news” sites confirm the biases of conservatives
in an attempt to make pawns of them for their geopolitical and
neoreactionary games. Ancap ideology is held by both the instigators of
social violence and the pawns that fall for it: perpetrators and victims
hand in hand. I believe that most right libertarians are good at heart
and want freedom for all people, only held back from adopting leftism
because they lack class consciousness and knowledge of historical
materialism, and perhaps with beliefs they were taught to them by others
that hold their empathy at bay. I have faith that people can change, and
the left must work hard to appeal to their senses of personal
independence and economic freedom if they hope to wrestle their support
from the hands of corporate propagandists and racists. At the very least
we can draw support from pro-personal freedom and pro-independent
business policies as well as low-taxes on the working class. To right
libertarians: I say that we can create a world where we are all free to
live as we please, but this cannot be done under the current system of
coercive capitalism.
Anarcho-monarchism is mostly an aesthetic system of government, based
around Tolkien’s ideal world where a king would protect the peace and
maintain a free society. I mention this ideology mostly for audiences in
Europe and a few other notable nations, as they are still dealing with
monarchs hundred of years after their practical purpose has been lost.
Under anarchism (and anarcho-democracy) there must not be a popular
acceptance of nobility or society will eventually regress to feudalism.
Some people even today wish to return to the “simpler times” of living
under a hereditary autocrat. Unfortunately, monarchy has a habit of
producing genetic idiots and narcissistic tyrants. Let’s imagine a
society that has reverted to full monarchism. Perhaps the first guy who
earned the title of king was a good leader, but that does not mean that
his son couldn’t be an evil bastard. The same issues with traditional
monarchism apply to anarcho-monarchism. Although one could perhaps see
this arrangement being successful for a few generations, eventually the
rulers would overstep their bounds to suppress the popular will for
civil rights, ending in them acting in their own interests or in the
interest of the elite aristocracy above those of the common man. Without
recourse against an absolute ruler they will be trapped in whatever
system the king says they will be trapped in, with a tendency towards
systems that favor their upper-class supporters such as fascism. If the
people have a constitution or bill of rights there would likely be no
real weight behind it, seeing as the armies and police would serve the
royal family before the people in the event of social crisis or the
anarcho-monarchist system would be replaced by a bourgious government
such as a republic.
Aggressive capitalists and powerful nobles may grab the ear of the king
out of threat to his sovereignty, bullying the weakling autocrat into
complaince, and the anarcho-monarchy would either purge or be purged in
a bloody war of bourgious revolution. Unless the people are given bread
and circuses in a fashion similar to social democracy, perhaps even a
UBI, or there would be an eventual shift towards liberalism and
proletarian revolution; even under restricted markets with a socialist
economy there would still be the need for levels of taxation, coercive
labor and maintenances of status quos that would only be “anarcho” in
name.
Perhaps a system of taxation wouldn’t be required if the king survived
on donations while the people maintained an aggrarian lifestyle, with
his rule like that of a shepard watching over the flock, but that would
require either a willful population retreating to the countryside or a
Pol Pot-style destruction of modern society, and even then the nation
would be too technologically insufficient to defend itself against
aggressors. As an alternative to this state of things, I recommend that
modern monarchists simply find a crowd of people willing to move to an
unclaimed plot and submit their lives to a person they judge to be
worthy of kingship: It should be every man’s choice if they wish to
subject themselves to a master, as some people may require that level of
control over their lives. Build a village with your vast sums, dispense
land and labor to your voluntary peasants and live free under the
protection of a state that can keep your little world safe from foreign
armies and bourgious insurrections, and the masses safe from your
over-confidence and self-aggrandizement. Under anarcho-democracy a
monarchist could change their selective economic system status to
“homesteading (cooperative or experimental commune)” and be free to
obtain a small amount of land per person that could add up to a sizable
estate or buy private land and build their future kingdom, with their
only restrictions being the constitution, the bill of rights and laws
governing financial crimes and violence. However it would be hard to
attract serfs and peasants in a society where everyone could be free
from unjust hierarchies, relegating monarchy to the realm of novelty.
When the claiming of indentured servants and slaves is banned from
society it becomes very hard to assert nobility over anyone.
National-anarchism at first glance may seem similar to
anarcho-democracy, it could not be any more different. The word
“national” could be seen as having similar roots as “national
socialism”, meaning that they are essentially libertarian nazis.
Anarcho-democracy rejects racism, tribalism, fascism, and all forms of
nazi-like ideologies. The belief that different races and faiths could
separate into divided regions and not run the risk of eventual conflict
is overly optimistic, as eventually there will be entire nations under a
singular will, unbalanced by alternate opinions and cultures that may
sway a broken governing ideology away from the insanity of ther echo
chamber societies. Instead, we must defend the world against singular
dogmas and race supremacies by bringing all our ideas and beliefs into
the light of global scrutiny, breaking down divisions that may kill our
descendants and our planet in one of the technologically escalated wars
of the future. In a world that has nuclear bombs and bioweapons, such a
level of division will eventually prove to be catastrophic.
Anarcho-democracy refuses the idea of a permanent independent nation
built upon a singular race or culture, instead seeking to set the
conditions for a global society that is inclusive of all races and
cultures.
The best advice I can give to the national-anarchist (and by extension
all “Third-Way” nationalists) is to reassess your beliefs. If race
supremacists wish to claim a foothold in society they must be challenged
for the preservation of the future for all mankind. Being sensitive to
cultural and religious plights, the left should allow for some level of
community organizing along lines of culture and faith, but these should
be restricted to a handful of wards in a commune at most, with maximum
caps on such communities allowed in each region to deter racial
supremacy and cultural conflict. Nationalists and racists that (for some
reason) would want to join a commune must engage all people with
solidarity and cooperation, and their communities should keep themselves
(and be kept by the commune) to the highest standards of civility. The
future has no need for hate between peoples. It will eventually catch up
to us all.
---
Is anarcho-democracy the same as anarcho-statism? Surely it would be
impossible for such a thing to exist, a contradiction of ideologies that
would at best be communism with an anarchist aesthetic. One would be
right to ask: Is this system statist? The honest answer to that question
is yes and no. Yes, it is statist in the sense that it utilizes the
state apparatus for the means of revolution. I also argue that it is
inherently anti-statist at its core. The shield state is intended as a
temporary entity with a pro-anarchist mandate that supports and defends
the development of anarcho-communist communities while the world around
them catches up. While this may be a seeming contradiction, it is
actually based around the logic that one cannot force people to be free
and expect perfect results. If a state exists to keep the people of a
regressive system from discriminating against or harming those that
pursue a more progressive system, then the progressive system has a
better chance of surviving past its infancy.
The shield state is inherently non-anarchist. It is not an “anarchist
state”, and to call it such would be inaccurate. As said before, the
shield state is only pro-anarchist (perhaps even by another name),
backed by a modified constitution that gives them the purpose of
achieving self-governance for all people. The communes themselves, once
organized and formed, are the anarchist part of anarcho-democracy. The
state only interferes when a commune is endangered or when an
individual’s rights under the constitution have been denied; a commune’s
regression to criminality, extremism, capitalism, hierarchy and other
non-anarchist behavior will have technically voided the commune’s status
as an “anarcho-communist society” and will be subject to a weighted
response from the shield state. The state also has control over the
communes’ choice of association until the democratic dissolution of the
state, as the nation would otherwise fall apart and be susceptible to
outside influence; furthermore, an alliance between individual communes
and hostile groups/nations would tear at the unity of the nation and
endanger national security. There must be solidarity within the Union or
the people will one day be in the prison camps of an enemy they forgot
to worry about while they were having their little conflict.
Some anarchists maintain the fiction that they cannot engage in politics
outside of civil disobedience and direct action, which has caused the
near-stagnation of Western left-libertarian movements. This idea is
contradictory: an anarchist can participate in society in any way they
choose, due to the inherent libertarian nature of anarchism. It is
practically state propaganda to say that anarchists should not
participate in voting. Anarchists in general believe in the validity of
direct democracy but have doubts as to the efficacy of the current
system for very good reasons, but it is too simple to merely say that
voting “doesn’t work”, as it has surprising effects every now and then
that can make the attempt worthwhile. It is possible to vote for an
issue that may not 100% align with your ideals without feeling like you
are a fool, as the other option is usually much worse and would set back
social progress perhaps indefinitely. An anarcho-democrat likely hates
the state for what it is, but understands that it can still be used as a
tool against itself.
This answer is likely unsatisfactory to many traditional anarchists, and
I can understand the laughter and anger that such an unconventional
system will create. However, I do not care and have embraced the absurd.
Dogma was never my strongsuit, and I have doubts about the effectiveness
of current revolutionary strategies. I do not believe that a state
founded exclusively around the ideals of anarchism would effectively
govern a politically diverse society and would either become to an
inefficient and toothless state socialism or an authoritarian
bolshevic-style state communism, remaining that way until it’s reverted
to a liberal democracy or becomes a capitalist feudalism via
anarcho-capitalism.
---
My greatest critique of council communism is the same as my greatest
critique of anarchism: I only wish they were more successful. In my
opinion council communism, or councilism, was not morally incorrect when
they criticized the methods of their opponents and the use of the
corrupt legislative system, but they were unable to show substantial
gain from their ideology. Sadly, they have been mostly forgotten. “Left
Communism: An Infantile Disorder” by Lenin adequately sums up the flaws
of councilism. The largest flaw, and one we must take note of today, is
their denial of frontism. If the left remains divided then it might
never defeat the current corrupt systems.
---
In some socialist circles there has been a revival of marxist-leninism,
or a soviet style dictatorship of the proletariat. The cause of their
rise in popularity is the belief that liberal institutions are unable to
defend against the return of fascism, combined with some leftists
becoming disillusioned with libertarian methods of revolution. The
institutions that democratic socialists rely upon for revolution have
failed to address the corruptions and crimes of the current
administration. There is also a common belief amongst communists that
the intelligence and security agencies will violently quell all attempts
to democratically socialize the economy, a belief which has so far been
shown to be true across the globe. Law enforcement and the state
intelligence apparatus have acted in the past to defeat any attempt to
change the status quo, and investigations into Republican wrongdoings
have always been a pipe dream for liberals: unveiling the truth would
crumble the American system as we know it. Congressmen will rush to
protect their masters, willing to cripple the rights of the citizenry
and destroy the world around us for their true constituents. In this
light, anarcho-democracy may appear foolish to many socialists; only
force of arms can bring freedom to the people, they claim.
Many authoritarian state communists see historical atrocities as being
necessary to achieve social change, yet they ignore that they only add
fuel to the propaganda of the capitalists: living proof that communists
would kill to achieve their goals. There are several arguments and
points of debate as to how intentional and necessary the famines, gulags
and purges were for the revolution, and many marxist-leninists will
point to the vast numbers of the dead that capitalism has left in its
wake in their defense, but there is still not enough evidence that can
make the average Western citizen to ever praise Stalin or Mao. The
willingness of authoritarian state communism to engage in mass crimes
has forever soiled communism in the eyes of the peaceful man and the
moderate, whom the authoritarian communist is loath to work alongside
unless their will is obeyed. Thus they may be forever unable to reignite
their revolution.
The philosophies and sciences of Marx and Engels are central influences
behind the development of my philosophy, as scientific socialism and
historical materialism aid in seeing the class struggle in context.
Lenin is a more contentious figure, but he was correct in his critique
of factionalism, which has been the death of many socialist revolutions
and continues to drive wedges between leftist communities, and likely
will do so forever. Where his concept of democratic centralism falls
short of modern Western expectations is the creation of the single-party
system, and in some instances those that did not vote according to the
party line were subject to retribution. While this was an effective
system, it only gained traction in Russia because the people were
escaping the hands of feudal capitalists and were generally willing to
make extreme changes, whereas most modern Westerners do not have such a
brutal recent memory and are entirely unwilling to escalate their class
war to the level of suppression and oppression, and ideals such as
freedom of speech would inevitably cause a single-party system to decay
or would encourage the party to engage in oppressive tactics. Instead of
a single-party system, parties can effectively be eliminated by
establishing a direct democracy, which can blunt the divisive effects of
factionalism by targeting the political bodies themselves, replacing
them with popular opinion and the steady voices of influencial leftist
thinkers. Most Western nations that would be capable and willing to
adopt a congressless direct democracy in the first place would likely be
socially progressive enough to lean leftward. Look at the votes in
America for the last Republican victories and you will see that they won
only because an archaic system holds back the popular will. My arguement
against the need for a single-party system in the United States comes
from this fact, that the people themselves would be a party great enough
to democratically maintain the new system and that evidence shows that
they would have chosen the leftmost candidate by themselves if given the
chance.
Anarcho-democracy is designed as an ideological middle ground between
Western democracies such as the United States, socialist/communist
countries such as China and Soviet Russia, and libertarian anarchist
ideology. It is this combination that I feel would be a sufficient
transitional model for the West towards a free society, seeing the
Chinese and Russian models as incompatible with Western conceptions of
freedom. The revolution in the Soviet Union was fought against a feudal
capitalist empire , and China had endured millenia of imperialism, then
years of warlordism under the Republic of China followed by a brutal
occupation by imperial Japan. In light of these terrible circumstances,
one can understand how the world these people lived in bred violence and
death in their fight for freedom, and it is not the West’s right to be
angry at the millions of people who wanted so desperately to live in a
better world, free from imperialism and the exploitation of the poor.
The world these nations were born into was a violent one, full of chaos
and terror far before the revolutions. In light of this sad history I
can only say that the people of these nations were placed in a position
that was far more terrible than what we experience today in the West,
and that the situation here calls for action far less violence than what
the people of China and the USSR utilized in their revolutions. Indeed,
the USSR chose to fight the world around them and crumbled because of
the opposition, while China has only grown by embraced the world around
them and has the potential to beat the United States at its own game.
What about the enforcers of the status quo, the police, intelligence
services and lawmakers? There is no doubt that violent opposition from
the state has in the past crushed democratic socialists that tried to
change the system from within. The deck is stacked against social
change, an example of which is the American government barring
communists from intelligence agencies and the unconstitutional Communist
Control Act of 1954. But the cold war days are over and the red scare
has become a shameful memory, and a new perspective on socialism has
come over the Western world. The far right had a shot at claiming the
popular opinion in 2016, but they only managed to show the world their
repugnancy. Thanks to their concerted efforts we have been given an
insight into the weaknesses and strengths of the American system,
allowing us to see the possibility of a truly democratic transition in
the events surrounding the election of the 45^(th) president of the
United States. Although much of his ascension was due to the support of
billionaires, trolls and foreign propaganda, the ultimate cause of his
election was his popularity among the voting public and the unpopularity
of his political opponents. With the backing of a corrupt congress and
immunity from the law given to him by his allies and the unwillingness
of the intelligence services to act against him, the 45^(th) president
went on to commit a multitude of cynical crimes designed to enrich and
empower his family while destroying the global credibility of his
nation. The intelligence services knew of this corruption and could not
speak or act for fear of throwing the country into turmoil. The legal
system desperately attempted to fight back against the corruption, but
to little avail. This has proven that the government of a powerful
democratic republic can be driven to support the will of a tyrant, which
gives me great hope that an honest, just and patriotic socialist
government can use the similar but legal methods to modify the
democratic system in favor of the people. Without colluding with foreign
governments or committing electoral crimes a socialist government would
be difficult to legally dismantle. Furthermore, by not compromising the
system that ensures Western hegemony, but rather by adjusting it little
by little to ensure a calm transition while retaining global stability
we can potentially lessen the danger to the democratic socialist
revolution posed by the government. By not making enemies of the
intelligence services we can potentially avoid most of the oppressive
tactics common to the “red scare” period. This is infinitely easier than
entirely dismanting such a powerful institution by force.
What if that is not enough? What if after all this effort our democratic
attempts at a free society are still led to destruction at the hands of
the right or the capitalist state, proving that peaceful democratic
revolution is impossible? This is a good question. With perfect honesty
I admit that there is a possibility that the entire system will be
disrupted in the early stages of the socialist transition, but the route
toward social democracy in America has been called democratic socialism
by a handful of progressive politicians not because they do not
understand the tenets of socialism but because they know that the
majority of the population would not support the immediate and abrupt
change to the economy that anarchists and marxist-leninists demand. This
plan from progressives and socialists who are already in power can
readily integrate with anarcho-democracy whereas an attempt at
establishing marxist-leninism would result in an immediate discrediting
and defeat of the socialist movement as the justified fears of political
moderates solidifies the conservative base. To me the possibility of
democratic socialism’s succeeding is higher than the possibility that a
marxist-leninist revolution would ever occur in the West, and much
higher that it could occur without ending in civilization-crumbling
chaos of some form.
To summarize, marxist-leninism is unpopular in the West and thus
currently unviable as a revolutionary movement. While socialism is
becoming mainstream and anarchism and communism have gained some appeal,
the brutal history of many marxist-leninist regimes have limited their
popularity and credibility. The idea that one could repeat the Soviet
Union’s ascension in the United States is implausible. Anarcho-democracy
is built upon marxist thought and agrees with leninism in some ways,
especially the belief that state power is necessary to protect the
revolution, but it disagrees with its methods of achieving communism. I
believe that an anarcho-democratic society would be a suitable system to
adapt the best aspects of marxism without engaging in authoritarian
Bolshevic politics.
---
A habit common to the left wing is the purity test, an artifact of
argumentative socialist debate starting in the Paris Commune and
continuing on into the Internet forums of today. This habit consists of
two parts: the division formed between those that believe the words of
centuries-dead men to either be outdated trash or holy gospel. There is
constant petty division on matters of methodology that have historically
led to a stagnation of action or outright civil war complete with the
execution of non-believers. We have not had a solid, lasting alliance in
our entire history.
Leftists are products of the world they live in, and since many
socialists who have seen the harsh and Machiavellian world for what it
is — with meaningless jobs, uncaring communities and entire nations
revolving around greed and competition — the suffering leftist must
silence the mental agony in any way possible before the urge to commit
suicide overtakes them. Thus the most humane people are also the most
troubled people, driven to liberate the world yet unable to see a
peaceful path to a future that is not ruled by a wealthy elite. It is
under these circumstances that the most aggressive symptom of PTCD
becomes apparent: the urge to end the cause of suffering once and for
all, either through death of the self or through an overthrow of the
systems behind the suffering at any price, even if the price is one’s
humanity.
Modern socialists are the product of the individualistic and uncaring
society we live in today, and even thought they may feel apart from its
ideals and perspectives, they are still exposed to the cruelties of that
all men face, only with a deeper level of consciousness as to the
historic and sociological meaning behind their predicament that only
causes further despair. An understanding of the world’s flaws combined
with an inability to affect change leads to depression and helplessness,
knowing that the evils that surround us can only be escaped with
revolution or death. It is this manifestation of PTCD that leads an
average Western citizen to call for gulags and purges, representing a
coping mechanism akin to a faithful man adopting a retributive religion
to ease his fear and anger at what’s “wrong” with the world. The need to
preserve the ego has made them attach it to all aspects of their chosen
ideology, making them willing to form their personalities around the
ideology instead of adapting themselves and their objectives to new
events. While sometime a strict adherence to an ideal can be noble, it
is unfortunately also favored by those who have need to justify their
desire for revenge or else risk facing the deepest emotional core of
their cognitive dissonance.
The authoritarian urge within the socialist community has echoed through
history down to the internet forums of today. It is in this online
environment that I will focus, as it is most relevant to Western
leftists and people from developed nations to whom I believe this system
would be applicable. In our online communities we run the risk of
forming echo chambers that demand purity of ideology and suppress those
thoughts they consider “regressive”, oblivious to the schisms they
create in the socialist movement, driving themselves further and further
away from unity. To the dogmatic leftist ideologues, solidarity only
exists between those who believe exactly as they do, and everyone else
deserves to be forced into a gulag until they see the world how they see
it. These schizmatists have done as much damage to the socialist cause
as government agents, some of whom I’m not sure aren’t some form of
provacateur. A refusal to accept half-measures pushes the antisocial
socialist into isolation, with most of the people around them unwilling
to stoop to their level to see their viewpoints.
The answer to this behavior is to be open minded to things that are
similar to what one wants and to be willing to compromise with those who
are similar to yourself. After all, socialist communities are supposed
to be built upon cooperative behavior. The path to liberation will be
fought inch by inch, and the first battle has to be within our
individual selves. With solidarity we can fight together. With unity we
can be strong. With compromise we can rise above our differences and
move forward as a singular socialist wave. My hope is that this system
can bring unity to our disparate beliefs so that we may have a path
forward that all people may benefit from.
---
There will always be people who do not see things the way that we see
them. Many of the most pressing matters of our times are not exclusively
right or wrong, instead being matters of culture and perspective.
Therefore it is best to temper our disagreements with an acceptance of
other peoples’opinions. While some issues are somewhat easier to accept
(opinions on the drug war and the benefit of welfare programs for
example), there are other issues which strike at core beliefs (abortion,
gender and sexuality, etc.) and are much harder to reconcile. The lack
of acceptance for particular faiths and nationalities, the denial of
gender identity and sexuality, the battle over abortion and female
reproductive rights: these are issues which harm individuals far beyond
most people’s ability to accept. Why should I care what you think when
you do not believe I should exist or have equal rights? This is a
challenge to even the most pacifist of leftists, especially when they
are themselves a member of the affected group. We may be able to agree
to disagree with the particular of issues that do not strike at our
personhood and humanity, but what about those that do?
First, one must not fall for the paradoxical tolerance of intolerance,
which is manipulated by racists and nazis to turn your own civility
against you and the people whose lives they would destroy if given the
chance. They do not care for your liberal civility, but they know that
someone who does hold liberal beliefs can be dragged by the reigns of
their sympathies and tolerances. The nazi troll delights in making
bad-faith arguments, laughing at any debate that does not come in the
form of violence. These people do not deserve a worded debate as they
will never enter it with the intention of learning, only to please them
and their allies. Even non-nazi fascists rarely are sentimental for
human life and tend to be cold and unempathetic, making them hardly
worth talking to about matters of ethics: most people would have better
luck squeezing blood from a stone than trying to convert a dedicated
fascist in one sitting. This is to say nothing of the violent lunatic
racists that fill their minds with hate far more than ideology, or the
ones who are part of a white-supremacist neo-pagan cults, or the ones
willfully propagating racist/far-right internet culture, or the ones
that craft their own bizarre idiosyncratic fascistic worldviews, and so
on.
As for the average racist, sexist, homophobic or typically conservative
person, they are likely within reach of your understanding but will take
time and effort to deprogram their thinking, possibly more time and
effort than can be expended in a short conversation or an online debate.
Every leftist has the power to affect those in their families and
immediate social circles, at least in minimal ways that when added
together on a national scale become a force for cultural change. Anyone
who makes efforts to change these minds is a saint worthy of their own
statue.
Liberals will be needed to provide a popular base for an
anarcho-democracy. Center-left liberals often believe they are
socialists because of the right’s effective propaganda against social
democratic policies, meaning that they are typically within inches of
abandoning the system altogether once they have been exposed to leftist
theory and class consciousness. Others may never be convinced to agree
with socialist beliefs, but they may be willing to agree with you on the
dangers of far-right extremists and thus can make great allies. As some
liberals may be unattached to the leftist aspects of the ideology it is
unwise to assume that they will support socialism in a coming democratic
revolution: liberals are just as vulnerable to right-wing propaganda as
conservatives, with Randian objectivist-style classical liberals
essentially being right-wing. However these people are often quite
honest (perhaps with the exception of their public leadership) and
willing to engage with leftists as long as they are reaffirmed in their
beliefs on personal freedom.
Free speech is usually important to this person above all else, although
its use may be perverted by an obsession with their right to offend and
insult above all else, often with the belief that “my fist ends just
before your nose” as a justification for their behavior. Although
far-rightists propagate this behavior to further the culture war, the
vast majority of free-speech proponents are honest in their intentions
and are merely being manipulated by provacateurs and crypto-fascists.
These people are often the easiest to teach anarchist ideology because
as they both want liberty and freedom of thought, yet it must be known
that the typical leftist insults and barbs against their cultures and
national traditions are unhelpful for teaching them the humane and just
aspects of libertarian socialism that they would find compatible with
their own beliefs. When speaking to this type of individual it is best
to be politely truthful and find commonalities between you before making
an argument you feel that they would disagree with, using references to
those commonalities and shared beliefs that you feel will lessen the
impact of you opinion, especially if they never thought of it before.
You will also be required to hear their views and attempt to understand
their perspective. Of course you will not always get anywhere with such
a conversation, but many would be surprised how many leftists were once
honest and optimistic rightists before their opinions were flipped.
Where the real power of acceptance can be seen is in the conversion of
right-libertarians, many of whom love freedom at heart and are generally
willing to agree with anarchists on many topics, ranging from
self-governance to the acceptance of human rights. Issues such as guns,
drugs and freedom from police oppression are commonly shared opinions
between the two wings, provide the anarchist debater a convenient route
by which they can explain class consciousness. Right-libertarians
commonly frame their beliefs by saying that a gay married couple should
be allowed to defend their pot farm with ar-15s; this is the
whittled-down core of American patriotism, meaning anarchists and
right-libertarians have a lot more in common than either group may like
to acknowledge. As long as they act in good faith and are willing to
engage in a dialogue, anarcho-democrats absolutely must strive to appeal
to and convert right-libertarians. Even if you cannot bring them to your
side, you can help draw them away from the far-right extremists that
seek to manipulate them towards racism and political violence.
---
Some socialists will likely have a different viewpoint than the average
Westerner on practically every subject, usually with good reason but
sometimes for the sake of defiance rather than rationality. This does
very little to create solidarity or mass appeal and much to sew division
and stroke egos. For some it creates a great sense of control and
[beliving one is better than others], as though one has shattered a
grand illusion while the unwashed masses wallow in ignorance. In a sense
this is elitism, a way to create unneccessary complication and dogma to
the otherwise naturally simplistic basics of socialism, generally not
for the purposes of creating unity but to win petty debates. This is not
to say that they are necessarily wrong about any particular issue, but
an insistence that their personal opinion is the only one that has value
is where they lose much of their audience.
A rational and good-intentioned individual will be highly suspect when
someone dismisses their opinions outright and calls their culture and
way of life immoral, as well they should be. They should be even more
suspicious when the person telling them this has a clear bias and a
voice filled with condescension. An alternative approach would be to
acknowledge the good with the bad, for the speaker to bridge the gap
between leftist critique and the traditional narratives, or at the very
least acknowledge the emotional validity behind their opponents beliefs.
It is hard to convince people that they are simply wrong about
everything, but it can be much more effective (and honest) to admit that
there are grey areas in much of history.
This isn’t saying that you should go around defending the nazis (please
don’t), but rather that it can be an effective tool for building support
and negating hostility in those you want to bring to a mutual
understanding. You may have friends or family that you want to bring to
an understanding, or perhaps you are trying to convince a liberal on an
internet forum that you are not advocating for bloody chaos or a brutal
dictatorship. Even when you are debating someone who is acting in bad
faith, maintaining a moderate level of decorum while delivering your
counters can be influential to onlookers, both harming your opponents
image and solidifying your own in the eyes of truthseekers and people of
good-faith. Only the dogmatic ideologue, blinded by their opinions, will
deny and refuse an unbiased truth.
We can’t always bring people to our side, but we may be able to create
better understanding between cultures. You could know every leftist
theory ever written and be able to quote every last line of every last
leftist book, but if you deter every logical thinker with your purity
tests and scare away every emotional thinker with your anger then you
have only harmed your cause. Socialism is social, sociopathy defeats the
purpose.
---
The ultimate end-goal of anarcho-democracy is communism, and there is no
possible means of achieving communism without first creating a unified
alliance across the globe that can replace the current elitist
capitalist world order as the primary global hegemony. Only by
constructing a new society throughout the globe can there ever be a
socialist system not subject to annihilation from government spies and
orchestrated coups, a bridge between peoples and nations that can
weather the tides of trade wars, cold wars and embargoes from foreign
capitalist nations. Allies must be brought together under an agreed-upon
banner if they hope to ever form a free world. In the present day this
is impossible, as the left in the West is nearly neutered by infighting
and the state of political dialogue has shifted so far to the right that
we are more likely to build a wall than tear one down. We are far from
finished fighting, we must have hope. The people of the world must form
a more perfect Union.
Regional alliances between states must be arranged to ensure that one
region does not gain supremacy, in effect allowing for a “democratic
imperialism” of one region over another. To counter this effect it will
be wise to merge only with nations that have made significant progress
the creation of an anarcho-democracy, democratic socialism, or other
socialist/communist system that is sufficiently respectful of personal
freedoms. This merging would be done slowly and with each stage of the
process done deliberately. There must be an understanding between
regions that would allow for historical and cultural differences to be
protected from the will of a larger group of people. Instead of an
instant merging of shield states and economies, the two nations will
enter a series of votes once a year (or similar) over the state of the
union, allowing for the people to determine the terms of alliance
instead. These votes need not be done simultaneously, and there may be a
need for “primary voting” for each bill and ranked voting on each issue,
so as not to force people into a handful of voting options that may not
fully represent the wills do the people. Both regions must have equal
day in such issues, regardless of population, so expect there to be much
deliberation and primary voting between regions before an agreement can
be met. As for the shield states, they must not be merged until the
people of both regions agree that this must be done; it will likely come
to pass that some regions will retain a cultural identity related to
their past nationalities and may not be willing to assimilate with
foreign cultures. This should not prevent nations from merging, as we
can still mutually benefit and learn from one another without adopting
each other’s lifestyles. It is also critical that both nations be either
self-sufficient, useful to the alliance, or at the least not damaging to
the economy of another ally. Be aware that a large nation may still
overrule a small nation even under the best circumstances, and that the
balance of power will always be controlled by the nation with the
greatest resources and means of production. Therefore it is essential
that a small nation’s people, their political allies and vanguard
parties be vigilant in their pursuit of the best terms of agreement
between the to-be-merged nation’s, never allowing themselves to be
rushed, coerced or bribed, and placing the future happiness and
preservation of their people above any personal goal or immediate gain.
Let us imagine a future — a distant and rather unlikely one — in which
the leading superpowers of the world, the United States and China, were
to have reformed their nations into libertarian socialist states. If the
U.S. has moved left politically and economically and China has broadened
acceptance of personal freedoms, then the two states could potentially
form a Union. The two peoples would move slowly, both having much to
lose, and would almost certainly maintain their previous states and
regions indefinitely rather than give control to a past rival. Instead,
economies could be merged in manners that would benefit both peoples,
with free association and trade between communes and state industries,
allowing both nations to combine their strength and productive
capability. A constitution can be formed between the two, guaranteeing
each region’s rights granted in their previous constitutions while
making a binding pact that holds the merged nations to agreed-upon
standards of human rights. Treaties may only be ratified by joint vote
between all peoples, therefore each nation should be aware of the
geopolitical intentions of their potential ally, and neutral parties
should alert all potential voters to the facts of which they may not be
aware regarding future conflicts of interest. The two states should come
into an agreement with the expectation of being friendly or neutral with
the current allies of the other state. Since the population of China is
significantly larger than the U.S., there would be a clear disadvantage
for the latter if there was a direct democracy, to the point where the
system would never work in favor of the smaller state. To prevent such a
tyranny, the two states must both individually have a successful vote on
an issue to have an agreement on any issue that would affect the entire
Union; this would apply to every nation that joins the Union, as even
the tiniest state must have a say in the issue; for those matters that
are within one state’s own borders and do not affect outside regions,
there cannot be an international vote, only a regional one. In regards
to human rights abuses in a nation, these may only be addressed by the
Union if there is a constitutional violation, which must be corrected
with legal action or result in expulsion of the offending state from the
Union. Both regions may continue to mint currency but must not charge
fellow Union states for resources or manufactured goods. Usury must be
banned between the regions or they risk conflict. Both nations must
prevent their capitalist classes from disrupting the Union or exploiting
citizens.
With each new nation that comes into the alliance there must be a joint
vote between all nations, and any one nation may prevent a new state
from joining. Nations may be removed by popular vote of all opposing
nations, but this may only be done in cases of hostile action or
betrayal against the Union and should never be done in retribution or to
violate the rights of others.
This is a difficult and tenuous path to unity, but there is no hope for
peace without great difficulty. The alternative is an eventual future,
perhaps 100 years or 10,000 years in the future, where there will be no
other options than to either cooperate and unite, or fight and die. The
weapons of the future will guarantee world peace by removing all of
humanity from the face of the planet. If mankind somehow survives and
moves beyond the stars to form colonies and galactic empires, we must
ensure that we do not merely sew the seeds for 1000 new divided nations
fighting for dominion. The brutality and horror the future will bring if
we do not cooperate is barely imaginable in the most terrifying of
science fiction. Entire worlds in the distant future will suffer and
perish because of our human failings. -------With fear for the suffering
of people and nations who do not yet exist, I say it is better to defend
the human race rather than the status quo.
---
Imagine a situation in which a series of nations have joined together in
an economic union, with each nation developing into an
anarcho-democratic state or a democratic socialist state. They would
first build the industrial and infrastructural foundations necessary to
maintain their own commune system to ensure that they can become a
mutually beneficial part of the global commune society. Nations within
the economic union would be expected to provide a fair share of needed
resources and commodities to the other nations, provided that doing so
does not disrupt their development or environment. In the early days the
large nations may benefit little from this arrangement unless the
smaller nations have particularly rare resources, but I predict that
this will balance out in the years to come as the smaller nations find
niche resources and products to make them valuable trading partners. To
encourage the participation of states in the development of other
regions there should be a system whereby items of that have limited
quantity are traded between regions based upon their rarity and value,
with a minimum guaranteed amount of each resource/item that is to be
delivered with each ordered shipment. Food and must be guaranteed, but
luxuries traded across nations should be rationed and participation
incentivized. Each nation trades upon a percentage of their production,
with a guaranteed delivery of a small percentage of overall production
of each requested material to each nation (after or before counting
internal distribution, to be based upon international agreement), with
the baseline percentage increased for nations that supply needed
materials or valuable luxuries. The percentages distributed should be
determined by a measurement scale that is fairly weighted and agreed
upon by elected representatives from both nations (that have their
decisions alterable by national votes within each nation to prevent
their corruption).
For example (one which should not be taken literally), a nation is known
for making a particularly hard to build electronic item, and they
automatically distribute 5% of the production of the item to each other
nation after consuming 25% of overall production at home. With five
nations participating in the economic union they are distributing 50% of
their production of this item either at home or in automatic
transactions, leaving the other half for incentivized bargaining and
(after all needed materials are taken by the communes) sold on the
capitalist market. Say that another union ally requires more of these
items and also produces a needed resource for material production, and
that this resource is particularly hard to come by in the nation that
produces the electronic item. They fulfill certain requirements that
boost their access to the rationed trade materials, including the
electronic item, in exchange for their international cooperation. It is
hope that this system will not be permanent and will ultimately be
replaceable with technological advancements that will allow each
individual commune to produce needed materials locally and without need
for any form of rationing. Until that time it will be wise for materials
to be traded across cultures with some level of assurance that no nation
will be manipulated by another. Only by supplying these nations with
their own means of productions can the cycle of cruelty be stopped, and
it will only make our society stronger and longer-lasting if we have
allies that can sustain themselves, being bound to the Union by common
ideology and for common defense rather than out of desperate material
need.
An anarcho-democrat can be anyone that believes in humanism and
anti-suffering. They are unifiers and peacemakers, people who agree that
our divisions must be overcome if the people are to be liberated from
the struggles and oppressions of our society. They understand that a
collective movement must have realistic goals and take into account
modern geopolitical realities if it is to be successful. The andem can
be an anarchist that wants to be free from hierarchy, a communist that
wants to be free from capitalism, a liberal capitalist that sees the
benefits of a strong alternative economy, a right-libertarian that wants
to be left alone, an independent business owner that wants lower taxes,
or any number of people that believe that a person should have the
freedom to decide what’s right for themselves.
Anarcho-democracy does not require that a person take the system as
their sole political ideology, in fact it can be adapted to many
previously held beliefs. The core unifying factor in anarcho-democracy
is the belief that all people deserve the freedom to choose their life
path and freedom from the oppression of elites and despots, something
which most people can agree upon. Our world is comprised of various
types of people and personalities, and anarcho-democracy seeks to unite
them under a system that works for as many of them as possible.
Refrain from violence, unneccessary rioting and property destruction.
While it is essential that you protest alongside other socialists, it is
important that you not give in to chaos if you plan on engaging in the
democratic process. Make yourself useful to protests by supplying food,
water, and first aid. A well-placed camera and access to social media
can reach far more people and change far more minds than a broken
window. Be careful when engaging in self-defense, as modern rightist
propaganda relies upon leftist aggression for fuel. Even punching a nazi
can send the rightists, centrists and liberals into a frenzy, often
regardless of context. Differentiating the anarch-democrat cause from
enough to draw supporters from ideologies which may not initially find
commonalities with or may be offended by anarchist or communist
subcultures. Intersectionality with liberals and moderates is necessary
for widespread acceptance of any democratic ideology
As for representational images, utilize symbols that would be considered
patriotic in your homeland. Quote historic patriots and forefathers;
honor the symbols of freedom popular in your country. Anarcho-democrats
should experiment with symbols and styles to find ones that are popular
and effective, and must use the best parts of their nation’s history
honestly and respectfully if they hope to appeal to the average citizen.
Be proud of the general political and social developments of the West,
and understand that history is complicated and that we have developed
this far because of the work of past peoples who were products of their
times. Unburden yourself of your dislike of Western culture to gain an
appreciation for their efforts and to draw the goodwill of those who
would otherwise believe that you “hate them for their freedoms” because
of your vitriol for their culture. If you are seeking to make allies
with the masses it is better to direct your message toward drawing in
allies moreso than attacking your enemies.
In keeping with anarchist tradition, the flag of anarcho-democracy must
have half the flag as a black corner and the other half as the chosen
color of the anarchist faction. I believe that the best representation
for this faction would be for each region to divide the national flag or
national colors with a black corner, but for a global anarcho-democracy
flag it should have a color between blue (for democracy) and red (for
communism). As indigo is too dark to easily see on a flag, difficult to
differentiate from standard blue and purple, and because having an
instantly identifiable color behind an ideology can be used to great
affect, the color of anarcho-democracy should be specific. I’ve chosen
because it can be easily seen, identifiable, is peaceful and
non-aggressive, and in combination with black its individual components
represent the core beliefs of anarcho-democracy: democracy, communism
and anarchism. The mixture of the colors denotes anarcho-democracy’s
will to create an accepting and cooperative world. If a flag must be
sewn and such colors cannot be found then the colored corner should be
halved between red and blue, dividing the flag into the three colors.
---
“In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally,
how can the human race sustain another 100 years?”
— Stephen Hawking
Mankind will not last a thousand years. If we continue down our current
path of technological advancement we will eventually develop
technologies capable of destroying our world. This is not the fault of
science, it is the result of man’s imperfections of greed, hate, and
hunger for power. Science has dragged us into the future, taking us from
our caves and all the way to outer space. But science will never be
enough to fix our deepest flaws, and because of this our species is
losing a race against time to reduce and limit the worst of our human
nature before we develop the means of our collapse. Without world peace
and the unity of all mankind we will be destroyed by our aggressions and
buried by our hubris.
We cannot know the exact tools of our doom: weapons, robotics,
biologics, cyber technologies, etc. all provide a potential avenue for
global annihilation. The governments of today are nearly impossible to
revolt against due to the worst our advancements have brought us:
digital surveillance, riot control tech and harsh legal systems that
keep the population in compliance; the governments of tomorrow will have
powers once relegated to the gods, with access to the means of power
held permanently out of the reach of any rebels that would overthrow
them. And these tools are becoming easily available to the poorest of
dictators, and in time so will highly-advanced weapons industries.
Whether it be decades or centuries, even the smallest nations will gain
the means of creating technologies that can crumble all of civilization,
and not even an alliance of the great states can stop the end times.
Even if we manage to create world peace, climate change and the mass
destruction of the environment will likely end in the collapse of
civilization, and it none of our current plans for action will be
sufficient enough to stop this catastrophe. It may very well be that we
are already doomed as a species and that we do not yet know it. I prefer
to think that we have a chance to avert the worst of the damage, but it
will be impossible to convince enough of mankind to change their ways
enough to sufficiently prevent most of the tragedies we are about to
face.
Without cooperation between all peoples we will soon meet our ends. As
divided nations we lack confidence and security, which manifests in
resource wars, trade wars, cold wars and the like. Our fear and our
weakness drives us to feud, our inabiity to empathize and come up with
solutions and compromises will lead us to a point where technology and
violence will meet at a crossroads, ending our planet. The common
misanthropist reassurance is that mankind cannot destroy the life-giving
functions of Earth, only ourselves, and that life will continue on Earth
in some form. This is optimistic, as we may very well crumble the
fragile systems that preserve life on this giant rock. Never
underestimate how effective mankind’s destructive capabilities may be.
Without effort to prevent it we will destroy everything we have ever
known.
Even if we manage to avert planetary suicide we will never be safe from
the hostilities of the universe. To look upon the trillions of stars and
galaxies and deny that other intelligent beings are out there is
laughably foolish. Furthermore, we do not know how many millions or
billions of years longer than us other species have had to develop. With
our focus turned inward on our own petty squabbles we remain blind to
unknown threats beyond our globe.
Catastrophe awaits mankind if we refuse to act. We must acknowledge the
errors of our past and look forward to a brighter future, free from the
archaic flaws we still carry to this day. We must fight for a better
Earth, for an eliminate of unneccessary suffering and the enlightenment
of all people. If we struggle against injustice today then the people of
tomorrow may truly be free; if we act now, our species may still have a
future.
---