Folks, you should learn that On Authority is REALLY not the gotcha you think it is. Im saying this with good faith. Its a horrendous attempt at refuting anarchism.
I agree. I think Marx's conspectus on Bakunin's state and anarchy is honestly a better go-to as it is Marx himself being pretty explicit about most of the things he disagrees with.
With that said, it's not worthwhile doing sectarianism at all. On authority works in response to the people who argue all authority use is bad though because those people aren't even anarchists.
I'd be interested to hear you elaborate on that. I'm not interested in debating, as I barely remember having read the piece (should really do that again soon), but I'd love to read what you have to say.
In short: it's main mistake is that it assumes that anarchists view violent self defence, or merely simply organising as authoritarian, which is, if you look at the history of anarchism, something they regularly engaged in.
What i, as an anarchist am against in the name of authority is building up vast centralized national security states that regularly tends to produce encroachment and when someone raises their voice against that, theyre regularly set as "enemy agents" instead of solving the original encroachment. For example we here in hungary had a network of snitches to report on "any suspicious activity" which of course produced lot of unnecessary harassment of people who didnt really do anything wrong while the hidden fash - much of whom are in the political elite now - could just lay low and watch paranoia settle in.
Edit: This is my opinion tho and probably doesnt align with the radlibs on lemmy, just saw the text referenced a lot in the last few days and it bugs me, cause its just not that good imo.
it's not refuting anarchism necessarily, i use it to refute anti-authoritarian absolutists. now that they do happen to be "anarchist" usually is another issue, but i also mostly believe they are wreckers or 18 year old anarchists mad at their parents.
Folks, you should learn that On Authority is REALLY not the gotcha you think it is. Im saying this with good faith. Its a horrendous attempt at refuting anarchism.
I agree. I think Marx's conspectus on Bakunin's state and anarchy is honestly a better go-to as it is Marx himself being pretty explicit about most of the things he disagrees with.
With that said, it's not worthwhile doing sectarianism at all. On authority works in response to the people who argue all authority use is bad though because those people aren't even anarchists.
Wholly agree with this yeah
I'd be interested to hear you elaborate on that. I'm not interested in debating, as I barely remember having read the piece (should really do that again soon), but I'd love to read what you have to say.
In short: it's main mistake is that it assumes that anarchists view violent self defence, or merely simply organising as authoritarian, which is, if you look at the history of anarchism, something they regularly engaged in.
What i, as an anarchist am against in the name of authority is building up vast centralized national security states that regularly tends to produce encroachment and when someone raises their voice against that, theyre regularly set as "enemy agents" instead of solving the original encroachment. For example we here in hungary had a network of snitches to report on "any suspicious activity" which of course produced lot of unnecessary harassment of people who didnt really do anything wrong while the hidden fash - much of whom are in the political elite now - could just lay low and watch paranoia settle in.
Edit: This is my opinion tho and probably doesnt align with the radlibs on lemmy, just saw the text referenced a lot in the last few days and it bugs me, cause its just not that good imo.
Interesting, thanks! I'll revisit this post after I've reread the text sometime!
it's not refuting anarchism necessarily, i use it to refute anti-authoritarian absolutists. now that they do happen to be "anarchist" usually is another issue, but i also mostly believe they are wreckers or 18 year old anarchists mad at their parents.