Being anti-authoritary is cringe and the biggest mistake plaguing very-online anarchists right now. It's completely utopian and not grounded in reality.
To hold true to anarchist theory without being cringe you should consider instead adapting this mindset into being anti-unjust-hierarchies instead of anti-authority. We must use authority, we must use authority in the revolution, we must use authority to defend the revolution afterwards, anarchist or not, a shit load of authority will be used including policing, prisons, camps and shooting offenders dead. We can't be unrealistic with ourselves on this, even in the absolutely perfect scenario of an anarchist revolution that barely needs any help from MLs we would still run into all the same problems MLs run into, and with a lack of resources we will be forced through conditions to take up solutions that we otherwise would not want to take, because they will be the only available option other than releasing a fascist, murderer, or other extremely serious problem. We already know this to be a fact because we have already seen it happen in the anarchist Catalonia, I strongly recommend learning about the problems they faced as anarchists when they succeeded.
It is completely utopian to think otherwise.
I am currently pursuing MLism through necessity due to the extreme shortage of time we have. I can not live with the knowledge millions are going to die to climate change coming in the next 20-30 years and am well aware that anarchist praxis is not going to achieve the revolutions necessary in that timescale to avert it, that leaves taking up ML as the proven tool to start revolutions and the necessary one to save at least some lives. However I believe in anarchism, having been an anarchist for 20 years, it is still the goal.
Offtopic -- We desperately need community customisation (banners/images) so that people more easily recognise that they're in the anarchism comm before responding.
Anarchists just need to realize that they aren't alone, simple as that. You can create a hierarchy, authority free community all you want, but the outside world still exists. What's the plan for dealing with the remaining Capitalist world? Are anarchists going to align with Capitalists against the evil China and Cuba? What are the plans for the petit-boug and bourgeoisie? Are they just gonna love anarchy so much they don't do a counter revolution (not saying all Anarchists ignore these questions, they just don't have easy answers in their model).
The past two major Anarchist projects (the Commune and Catalunya) both failed pretty quickly whereas "authoritarian MLs" are still kicking and even growing.
There's a few others. The KPAM was completely conflict-free with MLs helping them set up, it existed at the wrong time and in the wrong place though, collapsing with the assassination of their leaders. Mao was very friendly with them but they were probably only able to exist because they had communists in control in the territory next door. As soon as the situation in the civil war changed and they didn't have the communists in the next door territory they got destroyed.
I think there's space for MLs and anarchists to coexist. I believe that as long as anarchists aren't presenting a threat to the ML nation then they have no reason to interfere with what the anarchists want to do next door. Living in the shadow of communists is probably the only way for any anarchist society to survive right now.
Anarchists would probably play a very significant role in the fading away of the communist state in a post-capitalist world, being the major advocators of it and leading by example in any of their own societies that they managed to set up and hold. I'm actually pretty sure that there would be a few that would immediately attempt to leap to this once capitalism is no longer a global threat.
Isn’t easy answer for bougie same as communist revolution? Hippity hoppity your factory/farm is now our property. The rest of capitalist world - yeah, they either have to be shielded, be prepared to vietcong their way for 10 years or be inside the imperial core
How you gonna take people's property without authority? What if they're charismatic and convince their subjects to give it back (c'mon man, y'all know this business is like a FAMILY where we treat everyone well!)
How could they retake it without auothority? it’s same as strike finished to logical end point.
If they are charismatic (or likelier, actually do something useful) and workers want to share, sure. I doubt amazon crew for example would welcome bezos.
We desperately need community customisation (banners/images) so that people more easily recognise that they’re in the anarchism comm before responding.
How easy would it be to pin a "Welcome, you're in XYZ comm" comment at the top of each thread by default? This might be an interim solution.
Comments can't be pinned. It's obviously another feature that would be good but no idea how far out that'll be. The customisation features and image embedding features literally exist, they're just disabled right now due to a security vulnerability that was discovered.
Offtopic – We desperately need community customisation (banners/images) so that people more easily recognise that they’re in the anarchism comm before responding.
Just a note on the state of things and how likely we are to get new features soon: this site is nearly one year old and you still cannot view page two of a user's history.
Actually you can, you just need to press refresh after you hit the page 2 button. Quirky bug, that hasn't been around a year though, half that I reckon, probably low priority because it still actually works if you press refresh.
You don't think it's just to maintain some sort of hierarchy in order to defend their revolutions until such a time as that defence is no longer necessary?
I am not convinced that it is possible to have a simultaneous global revolution, especially with the way mass media is today. Given this, it may be necessary for us to accept the need for the earliest revolutions to operate in this way. As time goes on, as capitalism weakens more and more, the need for such states decreases and I imagine the last revolutions will be incredibly token in the level of use of state and/or authoritarian measures because they simply will not be necessary.
The earliest revolution on the global scale have to contend with an absolute monster trying to crush them utterly. Their conditions will be vastly different to the later ones.
Being anti-authoritary is cringe and the biggest mistake plaguing very-online anarchists right now. It's completely utopian and not grounded in reality.
To hold true to anarchist theory without being cringe you should consider instead adapting this mindset into being anti-unjust-hierarchies instead of anti-authority. We must use authority, we must use authority in the revolution, we must use authority to defend the revolution afterwards, anarchist or not, a shit load of authority will be used including policing, prisons, camps and shooting offenders dead. We can't be unrealistic with ourselves on this, even in the absolutely perfect scenario of an anarchist revolution that barely needs any help from MLs we would still run into all the same problems MLs run into, and with a lack of resources we will be forced through conditions to take up solutions that we otherwise would not want to take, because they will be the only available option other than releasing a fascist, murderer, or other extremely serious problem. We already know this to be a fact because we have already seen it happen in the anarchist Catalonia, I strongly recommend learning about the problems they faced as anarchists when they succeeded.
It is completely utopian to think otherwise.
I am currently pursuing MLism through necessity due to the extreme shortage of time we have. I can not live with the knowledge millions are going to die to climate change coming in the next 20-30 years and am well aware that anarchist praxis is not going to achieve the revolutions necessary in that timescale to avert it, that leaves taking up ML as the proven tool to start revolutions and the necessary one to save at least some lives. However I believe in anarchism, having been an anarchist for 20 years, it is still the goal.
Offtopic -- We desperately need community customisation (banners/images) so that people more easily recognise that they're in the anarchism comm before responding.
Anarchists just need to realize that they aren't alone, simple as that. You can create a hierarchy, authority free community all you want, but the outside world still exists. What's the plan for dealing with the remaining Capitalist world? Are anarchists going to align with Capitalists against the evil China and Cuba? What are the plans for the petit-boug and bourgeoisie? Are they just gonna love anarchy so much they don't do a counter revolution (not saying all Anarchists ignore these questions, they just don't have easy answers in their model).
The past two major Anarchist projects (the Commune and Catalunya) both failed pretty quickly whereas "authoritarian MLs" are still kicking and even growing.
There's a few others. The KPAM was completely conflict-free with MLs helping them set up, it existed at the wrong time and in the wrong place though, collapsing with the assassination of their leaders. Mao was very friendly with them but they were probably only able to exist because they had communists in control in the territory next door. As soon as the situation in the civil war changed and they didn't have the communists in the next door territory they got destroyed.
I think there's space for MLs and anarchists to coexist. I believe that as long as anarchists aren't presenting a threat to the ML nation then they have no reason to interfere with what the anarchists want to do next door. Living in the shadow of communists is probably the only way for any anarchist society to survive right now.
Anarchists would probably play a very significant role in the fading away of the communist state in a post-capitalist world, being the major advocators of it and leading by example in any of their own societies that they managed to set up and hold. I'm actually pretty sure that there would be a few that would immediately attempt to leap to this once capitalism is no longer a global threat.
Isn’t easy answer for bougie same as communist revolution? Hippity hoppity your factory/farm is now our property. The rest of capitalist world - yeah, they either have to be shielded, be prepared to vietcong their way for 10 years or be inside the imperial core
How you gonna take people's property without authority? What if they're charismatic and convince their subjects to give it back (c'mon man, y'all know this business is like a FAMILY where we treat everyone well!)
How could they retake it without auothority? it’s same as strike finished to logical end point.
If they are charismatic (or likelier, actually do something useful) and workers want to share, sure. I doubt amazon crew for example would welcome bezos.
deleted by creator
Anarchists (allegedly, as I’m not enough read) are not opposed to army, they had army units before, just structured differently
How easy would it be to pin a "Welcome, you're in XYZ comm" comment at the top of each thread by default? This might be an interim solution.
Comments can't be pinned. It's obviously another feature that would be good but no idea how far out that'll be. The customisation features and image embedding features literally exist, they're just disabled right now due to a security vulnerability that was discovered.
Just a note on the state of things and how likely we are to get new features soon: this site is nearly one year old and you still cannot view page two of a user's history.
You have to refresh after clocking the "Next" button. It's annoying, but it's possible.
I'm not sure if I'm happy to have this knowledge or not. Thanks, though!
Actually you can, you just need to press refresh after you hit the page 2 button. Quirky bug, that hasn't been around a year though, half that I reckon, probably low priority because it still actually works if you press refresh.
deleted by creator
You don't think it's just to maintain some sort of hierarchy in order to defend their revolutions until such a time as that defence is no longer necessary?
I am not convinced that it is possible to have a simultaneous global revolution, especially with the way mass media is today. Given this, it may be necessary for us to accept the need for the earliest revolutions to operate in this way. As time goes on, as capitalism weakens more and more, the need for such states decreases and I imagine the last revolutions will be incredibly token in the level of use of state and/or authoritarian measures because they simply will not be necessary.
The earliest revolution on the global scale have to contend with an absolute monster trying to crush them utterly. Their conditions will be vastly different to the later ones.