I have a friend like this and damn is he frustrating to talk politics with. He is convinced that his politics are cutting edge and transcend left/right but he mainly gets his news from msnbc. Never read any theory and seems to have no real interest in leftism. Likes to talk about "personal liberation" in some kind of vaguely spiritual sense. Trust fund kid who's never had to worry about money. Went to a fancy arts college. Feel like there are a lot of people out there like this.
I’m convinced this is why anarchism often gets a bad rap. It’s very easy to call yourself an anarchist and not have to challenge a lot of American propaganda and setter colonialist beliefs. Anarchism in the popular understanding lends itself really well to extreme individualism, and you can still criticize American enemies like China and Venezuela on the basis that they are states, and you are against the state. Every college anarchist I knew was like this, as was I at one point. It’s like you are critical of both liberals and conservatives, you know you’re on the left and not a chud, and anarchism is the ideology that you can most fit with your as yet unchallenged beliefs that you have been raised with your whole life. So you say you’re an anarchist when your actual beliefs are more just liberal.
Yeah I have a few actual anarchist friends who read theory and do a shit ton of mutual aid and actual direct action, and they're all great. Especially because on things like China and Venezuela they go, "why would I give a shit, there's nothing we can do about them here and everything we know about them is state propaganda lies." Should be the default position for any "anarchist" imo, and often is amongst the more committed ones. Don't have to actively support China or Venezuela or Cuba or anything, but actively just being like "hey maybe don't worry about them one way or another and leave them alone." That's good enough for me.
Literally should be every socialists default position imo, but noooooo we gotta have a bunch of nonconformist dipshits who thinks its radical to buy a Comrade Che Guevara shirt from Hot Topic, commodify socialism into culture war bullshit, eat hotchip, and lie.
I mean I would argue that the default socialist position should be explicit and enthusiastic support of actual existing socialists states, but yeah I'd take that as the default for now considering the alternative of "CIA bad unless it's about socialist states."
I do mean socialist in the broad sense of the word from social democrats to whatever kind of ultra or anarchist tendency is the left-most prior to becoming post-left cranks
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idk even Final Straw platformed a HK lib, and besides that they're pretty based as far as anarchist news media goes
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Very true, ultimately questions like these are what pushed me more to the ML camp. Contemplating questions of power and organization of a society.
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Yeah I think both anarchism and ML-ism both have very important contributions, and to fully reject or solely immerse yourself in either one has some serious consequences. Also, as I understand it, both anarchism and Marxism have the same end goal, that is, "free association." And so when we discuss anarchism and Marxism, we are really trying to figure out the best way to get to the same place.
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For me, the core concept of my ancom-ism is to be "fully critical of and eliminate any unjustified hierarchy and power structures", certainly a noble mission. We know that if things are all well and good (FALGSC mode) everyone can pretty much do whatever they want, cause what could go wrong? On the other end, we aren't going to have a ranked-choice vote if we're in some sort of battle or other emergency situation; even the most principled anarchist should realize that the hierarchy is justified. If you want to save your own skin/defend your community/save others' lives you need to shut the fuck up and listen to your squad leader/command chain for better or worse (there are boundaries, of course, but you know what I mean).
As we can see, there's some material analysis beginning to form in that thought process, so after working my way across the spectrum of when hierarchies justify their existence, I've noticed that Marxists generally had the right idea about things. There are even many ways to criticize the things that Marxist political leaders/parties did "wrong" within Marxism!
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I didn't phrase it well, but I would consider myself a former ancom, though it is obviously very influential on my thinking. Glad to hear that I and/or our other ancom comrades have been an impact on how you see things though! We all have a lot to learn from each other, and I know we appreciate the dev and admin teams for working to make it possible for us :)
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Well, I don't focus too much on tendency labels, but you've seen me semi-ironically shoot "socialism with American Characteristics" across your inbox, and I guess that would describe my politics. My class standing and brain overload leave me less driven to politics than many of our comrades here, but I definitely enjoy understanding what makes the world tick. The sub/chaposphere has been my main online hangout for a few years now, and the Marxists have consistently been right (it's like the Palpatine pasta, I needed to "learn that power").
Turns out the Marxist worldview is a very powerful lens! (as you know), also turns out that it isn't particularly exclusive to lib-soc ideas, but it explains why they were ineffective compared to Lenin and DemCent and such. I guess where that leaves me is with a stack of books to continue working on my material analysis skills, but politically I'm gonna go to whatever has a chance at making a difference in my community. If that's volunteering for Bernie, I'm gonna do it (even knowing that the Dems will shut it down). If that's a left-org (DSA is the leader in my area, and many others), I'll be in the mix there, even though they're full of libs and PMCs yada-yada, till something else comes along.
The most powerful driver for me though, has been the philosophical concept of instrumentalism. I try and incorporate concepts, theories, and analyses that are useful to helping me better understand what's going on in the world, and if they aren't useful any longer, then I'll set them aside. Sure, anarchism is how things "ought" to be, but I didn't find enough useful information about how to actually implement it, so I had to set 70% of it aside, and move on to material analysis.
Anyway, always learning, so ask me again in 6 months and I'll have something different to say.
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Seconded.
It's cool to see the !userunion@hexbear.net getting use and the feedback we get/things being bought to us there.
Yup I think I found it from Historic.ly.
It’s my guiding document in organising.
I'll be honest I really don't see how we can have a functioning society without some power structures. Might be unpopular but I don't think power structures in and of the themselves are always bad.
I think the typical ancom response to this (and I happen to agree with it) is that not all power structures are inherently bad. But any hierarchies have to continuously justify their necessity to the community and always strive to be as horizontal and voluntary as possible.
/u/enver_hoxha fucking destroyed
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There is something that rubs me the wrong way when some worker centered anarchists talk about labor compensation. The way it's articulated feels very ancappy where receiving the full value of your work is strictly monetary rather than in the framework of a communal society where resources are shared. One of the worst takes I've seen along this line of thinking is that people who do not work should not be allowed to be a part of society.