Can we just ban that fucking word please? It doesn't even mean anything except as a way to compare places like Cuba to the US.
It has no baring on anything going on in a society, except how much the US likes it.
It was literally invented as a term during the cold war during the years of sovietism and its perils being taught in classrooms.
If you're using authoritarian as a way to describe countries, especially ones the mother fucking US is at war with, you've eaten some bad propaganda and you need to expel it ASAP
The descriptor "authoritarian" is used to mean "using state power unilaterally against your opponents". But I think it doesn't matter quite so much as this question: "Do you concentrate power, or do you distribute power?" If you concentrate power, you are perpetuating a class division. But if you distribute power, you are tearing it down.
Informal hierarchies are a very real thing. They are what formal hierarchies evolve from. Many anarchists deny or downplay the prevalence of informal hierarchies, and often even bolster them. So you can sometimes have "libertarian" people that hoard power, and "authoritarian" people that disperse it. It doesn't have a certain correlation with that political axis.
AuThOrItArIaNiSm
Can we just ban that fucking word please? It doesn't even mean anything except as a way to compare places like Cuba to the US.
It has no baring on anything going on in a society, except how much the US likes it.
It was literally invented as a term during the cold war during the years of sovietism and its perils being taught in classrooms.
If you're using authoritarian as a way to describe countries, especially ones the mother fucking US is at war with, you've eaten some bad propaganda and you need to expel it ASAP
Autonomous communist perspective on this:
The descriptor "authoritarian" is used to mean "using state power unilaterally against your opponents". But I think it doesn't matter quite so much as this question: "Do you concentrate power, or do you distribute power?" If you concentrate power, you are perpetuating a class division. But if you distribute power, you are tearing it down.
Informal hierarchies are a very real thing. They are what formal hierarchies evolve from. Many anarchists deny or downplay the prevalence of informal hierarchies, and often even bolster them. So you can sometimes have "libertarian" people that hoard power, and "authoritarian" people that disperse it. It doesn't have a certain correlation with that political axis.
Paging OP, @Balerion on this.
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