Very relevant tweet

Wake up, sheeple me up, before you go (go)

  • LoMeinTenants [any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    The police state isn't just the cops walking the beat, but the judicial, legislative, and penal system, and all those who uphold it. I'm not too keen on the gulags.

    • Anna_KOC [comrade/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      What's wrong with gulags? What would to do with people who carried out pogroms against Jews?

      • Nagarjuna [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Anarchists aren't opposed to self defense, they're opposes to punative justice. If you look at abolitionist texts on application, for example Generation 5's Towards Transformative Justice (cw child abuse), you'll see phrases like "minimum neccesary force." In another example, Malatesta's anarchist classis Anarchy and Violence explains that anarchists view revolutionary violence as self defense against structural harm, and try to limit it only what's necessary.

        In practice, the YPD for one example, has kept policing in its territories, but has also set up non carceral systems that are mediating conflicts with the goal of restoring relationships rather than punishing wrongs. I'd love to see how far they can push that system and if they can totally do away with punative justice.

          • Nagarjuna [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            I'm admittedly not well read on modern PRC or the GDR. Did they practice punative justice?

              • Janked [he/him]
                ·
                4 years ago

                Goddamn :gold-anarchist: :gold-communist: for real, thank you for effort posting in this thread

                  • Janked [he/him]
                    ·
                    4 years ago

                    :fidel-salute-big: Could not have said it better myself, we're completely aligned and you've articulated thoughts I've had around this for a while beautifully. :100-com:

              • Nagarjuna [he/him]
                ·
                4 years ago

                Right, again, I'm not asking about fascists and spies, as I said, I'm not against revolutionary violence. I'm asking about selling drugs (which I'll acknowledge has imperial history to it in China), assault, and hell, even murder. I'm not trying to discredit China, I'm trying to see whether or not policing is a site of struggle for anarchists within China. If I was trying to challenge China I'd be asking more about the policing of striking workers, minority ethnic groups and ultra leftists. But I'm not asking about that, I'm not challenging China. I'm trying to assert that an anti carceral politics (I think its inappropriate to call that abolitionist in this context) goes deeper than a Marxist politics.

      • LoMeinTenants [any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I think about it all the time but have no idea.

        I have just witnessed and been victimized by ruthless power, and once people have had a bite of the apple, there's no looking back.

        The best bet out of this quagmire is China's ascension to the world stage and following through on their socialist ambitions, but I'm skeptical of both humans and AI.

        • Janked [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          That's too close to some Malthusian human nature bullshit for me.

          The proletariat state is enforcing things for a completely different reason and with a completely different context than the bourgeois state. This context matters immensely.

        • Nagarjuna [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Many Marxist Leninists are also anti police. I think Ruthy Wilson Gilmore and Angela Davis are the most famous of these (although at this moment Gilmore is more of a revolutionary than Davis). Gilmore's Golden Gulag is a good analysis of prisons, but I think her upcoming book will offer more of a program than Golden Gulag. Of those thinkers, who are anti police but think with Marx and Lenin, Robin Kelley is my favorite.

          I suggest you look into them if you're thinking through these issues, since they all break out of the anarchist vs ML back and forth.

      • drhead [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I'm not going to offer a specific solution since others have and I haven't read that much theory regarding anarchist justice, but I would like to point out that overdoing things by any means would backfire badly. I can't think of anything people could do to inflame a counter-revolution than going on witch hunts and arresting people with low standards of evidence. Continue to pursue things overzealously, and you could easily fall into a trap of paranoia and end up doing stupid shit like with Stalin and the Doctors' Plot.

        You win by giving people freedoms that they don't want to give up. Anything that's perceived as taking freedoms away will end up being a liability. Because of this preventing a counter-revolution would largely end up being a propaganda war. Gulaging any amount of the wrong people is an easy way to make propaganda material for the other side, but if it happens to people who are very clearly threats it would show the necessity of whatever system -- with the caveat that this will make it harder to abolish the system down the line.

        Actually, now that I think of it, having people infiltrate counter-revolutionary groups would likely be somewhat easier under a decentralized system. Having no agency, you could just have people with no real background to discover under a call to arms to infiltrate, disrupt, and expose white supremacist groups, and having it being openly organized and widespread would add a lot of overhead to counter-revolutionary organizing.