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Among my non-anarchist friends, thereâs a common contention that we need to have leaders to get stuff done, so itâs inevitable that we need hierarchies, so anarchism is unrealistic.
This is a misconception. First, most anarchists societies were successful and functional, up until the point when capitalists and/or state communists bombed them; to call this a failure of anarchism is like saying indigenous societies are a failure because colonisers genocided them. (Indeed, most State-refusing indigenous societies share important ethical principles with anarchists, and indigenous folk were, and continue to be, a lot more politically sophisticated than white people give them credit). But even in the strict scope of modern anarchist theory, no one has ever argued that everybody in a group should do the same things. No one thinks that people are identical and interchangeable. If I want to build my own house, and I have a friend who knows about building houses and I donât, Iâll invite my friend to help, and if they tell me âdo this part firstâ Iâll do that part first, and moreover Iâll do what I can to reciprocate the good theyâre doing for me, to give them the gratitude and recognition that their skills deserve. What I wonât do is like, if my friend tells everybody âok so as the Buildmaster Iâm giving the orders here, so new rules: everybody who lives in a house anywhere has to pay me 10% of their earnings, also from now on everybody with brown eyes has to serve me sexually, so get a gun cos weâre invading the neighbours next weekâ. I would say âwhat? no, fuck you.â This is anarchism.
(Some anarchists call the first type of organisation, with a coördinator figure telling a group what to do consensually, a âjust hierarchyâ, and say that anarchism is about abolishing the unjust, coercive hierarchies only. Other anarchists will furiously reject that any kind of hierarchy can be good, get outta here with that vanguardist bullshit, and the first kind of thing isnât a hierarchy at all, obviously, itâs consensual recognition of expertise during perfectly non-hierarchial mutual aid. This debate isnât really about anything cos everybody agrees that the first thing is fine and the second isnât, but anarchists pick up fights all the time, it kinda comes with the personality type.)
Anarchist are allergic to words like âleaderâ or âcommanderâ, because they usually code for âpower-grabbing scammerâ. But in practice itâs fairly common to spot a clearly identifiable Anarchist King doing planning or coordination in various contexts; thatâs also a kind of labour, and in many cases itâs a relief when somebody else is motivated to do this labour if youâre in the mood to just doâor fuck upâstuff with your hands.Âč (Though distributed, spontaneous decisions are underrated in their benefits, not the least of which is to build up autonomy with responsibility). The difference from hierarchies is, the Anarchist Troops follow the Anarchist King because they trust her insight for *this* action, itâs not a special class of people; and we get to tell her no, to revoke consent at any time,ÂČ we donât elect one Anarchist President to decide everything, then regret it quietly for 3.99 years. And like, if my friend tells me âput the biggest window in the north sideâ Iâll say no, I want it in the south side, even if Iâm not an architect Iâm a gardener & my plants want the sunlight, is there a reason why you want it north-facing? And my Anarchist King will have to justify their commandments to me; Iâll only respect a decision if I believe each specific decision makes sense. (People who are into anthropology will have noticed this is how so-called âchiefsâ usually work in indigenous societies, too.)Âł
The problem with your boss, and with your government, isnât that coordinating is inherently evil; itâs that thereâs no safeword.
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So far this seems really obvious, and most people in the world would agree that yeah, folks shouldnât be forced to do stuff without ongoing consent, your liberty should be respected to the extent that it doesnât infringe on othersâ. Hot take, I know: freedom and justice are good. What makes anarchism different from other political approaches is how to reach this goal. I sometimes wish we would define it positively, what it _is_ rather than what itâs _against_; in which case my pick would be for âunity of means and endsâ. A core point of anarchist philosophy is that people are changed by what they do. It follows that you canât reach a good place by doing bad things; not just âcanâtâ in the ethical sense, in that itâs wrong to do a massacre, but even in the cold-blooded utilitarian realpolitik sense, if your revolution does guillotine massacres itâs going to become its own counter-revolution, every time, because now the leaders are massacrers, now massacring is a thing you do. If your State controls capital, your newfound interests are going to bounce you right back into capitalism. And if your revolution has a police class, youâre going to be a bastard.
See, the reason all cops are bastards isnât that you have to be a bastard to want to be a cop. I assume a lot of cop-candidates buy into pop media and want to be heroes, or are just after a job that will hire them, and that they see as a net good for society. The problem is that you canât stay a cop (or a capital owner, or a government official) without *doing* the daily acts of oppression-building; the position demands that, structurally. Which means that, for as long as you stay in the position, youâre performing actions that are the actions of a bastard. And if you walk like a bastard, talk with bastards, and armlock hungry shoplifters like a bastard, your *emotions* will become the emotions of a bastard.
When defending the need for the police, liberals often say that anarchists are too naĂŻve about human nature; insert Anakin meme here, from our point of view itâs statism which is naĂŻvetĂ©. Granted, people have the potential for terrible evil and abuse; but if so, why would you trust them with exclusive control of violent power? I certainly donât trust *me* to wield the One Ring. The anarchist contention is that humans will never remain nice âon the insideâ while in a social position that incentivises oppressive actions. Just by convincing yourself to perform these actions, however exceptionally at first, your subconscious is already coming up with all sorts of elaborate rationalisations on why this is actually a valid thing for you to do. If youâre doing that alongside a well-defined minority, then your class interests change, and when your class interests change you soon find yourself defending the interests of this new class, rather than the common interests you had set out to defend. It doesnât matter if the class is âlandlordsâ or âPeopleâs Revolutionary Commitee of Land Redistributionâ; landlording will, very literally, make a lord out of you.âŽ
On the positive side, every time we do things together in a constructive manner, weâre rebuilding ourselves in a positive direction, too. Think of how a couple may do counselling and therapy to develop the skills of consent and emotional awareness and negotiating mutually satisfying decisions etc. These things donât come out of being born a good person, theyâre skills that we build, and that extends politically, too. If everybody is practising how to listen to a whole group, how to decide together which demos are we going to put our energy into, how to resolve bitter conflicts about poster design etc., then when a hurricane hits we have the skills to organise how to get food for the people in the shelter, before the government hierarchies can even reach the neighbourhood. When the police identifies an âanarchist leaderâ and arrests them, nothing happens, everybody else was getting practice too. This is why anarchist practice focus on âsocietingâ, on doing things the good way right now however we can (âmutual aidâ, âdual powerâ, âprefigurationâ, âpropaganda of the deedâ and so forth).
Of course, no one maintains that we should *merely* move to a commune in the woods and live in a happy polycule of love while the world burns. (Though building a happy commune of love can be a very valuable insurrectionary act). You canât have a good society if you close your eyes to injustice elsewhere. And none of us knows whatâs the best solution to fix the current society (Gods know none of us agree on that point lmao). We just know what *isnât* a solution; we know that setting up the Anarchist Party to seize control of the Anarchist Republic and run the Anarchy Police is a foolâs errand; this has not only never worked, but it cannot. Whereas by resisting power with direct action youâre not only helping society right now, youâre also making yourself into the kind of person who wonât stand for injustice, and youâre propaganding the deed to everybody who hears of you, who will feel empowered to embody justice too, âwait you mean people break the law around here? :>â, and so on virally. The Zapatista insurrection began with 6 people in the woods, and their first 10 years were spent chatting with the surrounding villages, practicing jungle survival autonomy, and building momentum; they beat the Mexican State in armed struggle and are holding onto a free, autonomous community since 1994. The actions of small groups can feel insignificant compared to the might of the all-powerful State, but the State is rotten and crumbly, and a small light can start a big fire.
Especially when weâre all arsonists.
(in Minecraft).
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Asides:
Âč: Because this is the Internet, I want to clarify explicitly that when I say things like âAnarchist Kingâ or âThe Boss of Anarchismâ, Iâm being extremely silly for the sake of itâs funny.
However, it is the case that sometimes a coördinator figure gets in over their head and starts acting *actually* like the king of anarchists. When this happens the people in question have to be knocked down their peg, and mockery is an excellent way of doing it (itâs how many indigenous societies guard against hierarchy popping up). Just be sure to mock the hierarchism, not other unrelated attributes like so-called âintelligenceâ etc.
The difference between anarchists and other socialists isnât that weâre immune to the allure of power; itâs that, to quote Malatesta, we feel bad when we do it. So if your comrade starts acting like a boss, call them out, and theyâll regret it and take measures.
ÂČ: 19th-century theory predates the modern discussion of consent, but anarchists talked about the same principle as âfree associationâ, and the problems of consent translate to the political sphere, too (it can be manipulated, itâs sensitive to power dynamics, it must be fully informed and continuously renegotiable etc.).
In the past, the word âspontaneousâ in European languages (spontanĂ©, spontanea etc.) was often used in its original meaning: âvoluntary, done without coercionâ. Because today the derived meaning âimpromptu, done without previous planningâ took over, thereâs a lot of contemporary misunderstanding that some early anarchistsâ insistence on âspontaneous actionâ was opposing planned action, when what they were opposing is coerced action. (The meaning should be clear from their arguments taken as a whole, itâs just isolated quotes that can be misleading.) (credits to Zoe Baker for this observation.)
Âł: E.g. the Mayan âmandar obedeciendoâ, to command by obeying, which the Zapatistas took as their model of bottom-up ârepresentation which is not replacementâ, in explicit response to white-leftist vanguardism.
âŽ: A common trick used by door-to-door salespeople is to get *you* to do a small favour for them (Maâam, can you help me with my car tire? may I use your telephone, itâs an emergency, etc.). One might expect that the *seller* would do you a favour, to exploit a feeling of indebtedness, but that scam is too easy to spot. If, however, you perform an action to help someone, your subconscious will find it hard to continue to see that person as suspicious. Performing actions will modify your feelings to justify the action retroactively; if you helped this person they must be on your side, because you helped them.
In a positive use, this psychological technique is the âbehavioralâ part of âcognitive-behavioral therapyâ. In a terrible use, this was one tool to build consensus for colonialism (âyes these societies may look free and functional, but have you considered this argument: weâre enslaving and robbing them? they must be terrible, otherwise why would we do that?â).
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Theory implicitly cited here: Malatesta, Kropotkin, Subcomandante Marcos, Graeber.
(People who are not anarchists, was this an easy/fun read?)
(People who are anarchists, any disagreements or thoughts?)