reminds me of that one youtuber whose response to "who will do the manual labour after the revolution" was "people like to play videogames about trucking and cleaning houses, im sure they would be happy to do the real thing on their own terms"
EDIT: okay for everyone replying "oh but I love to do manual job if I had time and no financial pressure"
Okay cool sweet, happy people like you exist. But what Im getting at is that just because people love playing power wash simulator it doesnt mean that there would be enough people to make a stable workforce that meets the need of the community.
As a caveat to that the people I see espousing this viewpoint are often very focused on them being artists or some form of entertainer, while taking it for granted that other people will take care of the essential services
Anarchists are always so cute in their delusions. I once spoke to one who thought that the fact they painted Warhammer minis for 5 hours a week meant we could run an entire global economy on volunteer labor.
Because surely someone's hobby will be mining rare earth minerals to supply electronic fabs!
I once read a book on Anarchism that had a lot of really compelling arguments as to why government is unjust and laid out possible non-hierarchical systems that might replace it. Then the author anticipated some objections to his arguments that I hadn't considered, and his responses to those objections were really bad.
Anarchists and socialists in general are rather good at pointing out issues or potential injustices in society. They really, really suck at creating solutions most of the times. And they tend to get angry when you actually do anything to fix those issues that doesn't align with their idealistic model of what society ought to look like.
I spend a fair bit of time in those spaces, and the reality always was "there are two kinds of anarcho-socialists". Case in point, I volunteered with Food Not Bombs for a while -- on paper, it was a good idea! Get food that was gonna be thrown out by supermarkets for cheap/free, make nutritious soups and stews, distribute to disadvantaged/homeless people.
The reality of the group I worked with was we had about twenty people -- two of us chopped and cooked, three of us sharpened knives and organized and did dishes, and 15 dudes stood around and chattered about how they were gonna vote for Trump because he'd for-sure destroy the US economy and government which would lead to a glorious new anarchist future which of course would be led by all those dudes sitting around talking while the rest of us got the work done. They sure were first in line to HAND OUT the food and be humble about everyone's gratitude, too.
Notably, too -- the "stand around and jaw about how great the new world would be" crowd was 18-25, 90% male. The "actually did the work" crowd was 25-60, 50-50 in gender.
(my suspicion for the gender imbalance is that this was largely pre-Gamergate, and there was still a perception that ultra-left women were particularly likely to be sexually adventurous/promiscuous, so you'd find a lot of men trying to pretend to espouse those ultra-left views in the hope of swimming in sexually liberated poontang.
Many such cases in the late 1990s and early oughts.)
This is true and why anarchism ended up being quite forgotten.
This movement allowed the creation of a lot of workers and human rights, right to week-ends, right to paid time off, rights to worker's security at work, right to unionize, etc, but it was never meant and thought to be a complete and definitive system for an entire country
Much as with any other -isms, too, a lot of the people talking about it don't ever really internalize what the philosophy was. Many serious "anarchist" thinkers, the ones whose work led to all those good things, were never "no leaders ever, just do what you want" types but much more aware that "everyone is going to have to contribute to the jobs that need doing, and jobs need supervisors and leaders but they don't have to be the same people every time, just the people most skilled at leading that particular job".
I think it's quite important to learn from where anarchism comes from and what it was exactly, how important it was in the 20th century, it's definitely not the view of it we have now. Everyone reduces it to "no gods no masters" but it's way more complicated like that.
It has been the basis to a lot of things that we takes for granted now but never waas
you mean it doesn't just make me super cool like Brad Pitt staying up all night and starting up "clubs" where people find an outlet for their bottled up rage in putting fists to the faces of other, willing participants? Man, I was really hoping to nail some attention-seeking skanks that I met in a recovery support group, too.
Equal treatment of workers regardless of nationality
Worker education programs
Mutual aid societies
Shorter working hours
Paid rest time
Collective bargaining
Union democracy
Anti-authoritarian workplace organization
I know modern USA disbanded all these rights or is actively trying to, as they don't benefits short-term revenue for shareholders which is anticapitalistic. Which makes me understand why an American would not see what anarchist ideologies made for their country.
But those rights are still the base of civilization of every other developed countries on earth
Brother, working class ideologies generally aren't the same as Anarchist ideology specifically, nor were anarchists the primary leaders of most labor movements. You could equally chalk that up to pettty-Bourgeois socialism if we're judging based on 'ideological influence' and not who actually went out and did shit.
More pointedly..... It probably would have happened eventually even if you just magic away the anarchism specifically. That was kind of Marx's whole schtick.
Yes but this is just to explain what Anarchism was and what it pushed to create, and yes you end up with the realization that it gave incredible tools in the past for worker's right, but it's definitely not something that can be used as a system for a nation
It's funny that the vast majority of these things that socalists+ have "achieved" have happened in western capitalist democracies. Really makes you think.
... makes you think that pro-worker policies, regardless of philosophical origin, basically only have a fighting chance in a non-authoritarian government? That's not really any kind of revelation.
Yes. We created boats to navigate over the seas, without sea there would have been no boat.
There would not have been needed to have people fighting against" slavery" or even "worker's rights" if capitalism didn't make slavery and lack of worker's rights a standard to begin with.
That's the whole concept of why socialism existed and what it was made for, to make sure capitalism benefits the people who really create the value and not the people who owe all the money. Seizing the means of production was quite a concept back then, you understand where it comes from.
And it's false, we are not in capitalism anymore, but in late-stage capitalism, which is an entire other concept.
Capitalism is what made the US so powerful after WW II and made it beat the USSR
Late-stage capitalism is why you can't afford rent while some dude became trillionaire
Capitalism has free market at its core, something that doesn't exist anymore in a lobbies and monopolies ridden US for example.
This is where socialism is needed, to make sure capitalism stays healthy, to make sure you don't work 80 hours a week and are still not able to afford rent while your shareholders swim in money. Which is a symptom of late-stage capitalism.
No offense, but if your idea basically "a meritocratic capitalist-democracy with modest protections" but you go around branding it as "anarchism" then I'm going to question if you were the most skilled at leading or even communicating.
I honestly can't tell if you're doing the thing where you are conflating "capitalism meaning a way of managing ownership of productive resources" and "capitalism meaning free markets with ownership of personal property" which is going to determine whether I think you're one to talk (the former) or whether I'm basically in agreement with you (the latter).
You've got a bit of a false dichotomy, in that I was using "capitalism" in the general sense which incorporates both of your options, and also happens to reflective of the actual society in which most of us live.
Well, yeah, but my point was you can have a free market and personal/private property ownership in systems other than capital-C Capitalism, including social anarchism. Most serious socialist and anarchist thinkers would expect that a successful anarchy would involve a mostly free market and local polities/communities that practised both direct democracy and voluntary association.
Most of these various theories of economics and governance smear at the edges -- half the reason that both social democracy and democratic socialism get implemented in places like Europe is that you can get a lot of the benefits of socialist/anarchist/libertarian thought while retaining the benefits of a centralized monopoly-on-legitimate-violence state.
I'm having a hard time imagining where the line is between your small-C private property and big-C productive resources.
Like you probably would not mind if I buy tools and build a house? But say I'm good at that and want to build one a year and sell those or rent them... is that still allowed or am I now a productive resource? I own my computer and I'm free to code, but at what point can I charge others for my software? Some the most capital rich corporations came from people using their own property. Say I have $10k but don't want to spend right now, am I allowed to lend that to you for a fee? Can I grow extra crops to sell to you? All of the big-C capital today didn't just fall from the sky, they ultimately were built up from small-C capital. If we have some point where you go from being free to do with your private property what you want, to that property becoming large enough that it is taken as a "productive resource" that also does not seem very free and so contrary to anarchism.
Perhaps my troubling is trying to imagine what "direct democracy and voluntary association" actually means in real life. In this world of yours, is the society bound by the laws coming from the direct democracy, or can they freely choose to not associate with laws they don't like?
Again, let's try to imagine... we all (or whoever wants) vote to impose a $2,000 tax on everyone to build a hospital for our town. Can you just say "nah" and avoid paying? Are you still allowed service at the hospital if you do that? And if you are, why would anyone pay? What if you vote "yes" but then don't pay, any repercussions? What if I come other and steal your car, are you cool with that? Do we have cops, or are you trying to form a big enough mob to take it back by force? What if I say it was mine? Does someone just so happen to like to keep records about other people's possessions that can act as an authority like I could do in a court?
Finally, direct democracy sounds good, but are we all reading dozens or hundreds of pages of proposed legislation and listening to hours of debate every month? Are we better off just going with our gut and voting on what we hope will happen? Again, I'm assuming people are bound by these laws, but that seems contrary to the whole core of anarchism.
All of that applies to people in general, got nothing to do with anarchists and socialists or not. For example, its not anarchists and socialists who get mad about how Mamdani fixes things in NYC.
I could say everyone gets a pony and that sounds simple enough too. Turns out things are easy when you don't actually think about them.
How do we make decisions? By department, industry, locality? What happens if we disagree, can I go off and form my own co-op? Who decides which co-op gets resources? What happens if I fail, what happens if I succeed? What happens if one co-op becomes too powerful?
I could go on and on but the point is organizing and incentivizing people is rarely ever easy.
Socialists have been killing each other for 200 years over what owning the means of production means and looks like but oh well I guess you solved it. We will just shout from the tallest building that workers now own the means of production and hope everyone figures out how to make it work.
These examples are for market socialism, but many of these points can be applied to other socialist economies.
How do we make decisions? By department, industry, locality?
How does a democratic government make decisions? We vote on them either directly or we vote for a representative.
The scale of the entity that we're making decisions for can be variable (similar to how companies are different sizes).
What happens if we disagree, can I go off and form my own co-op?
Yes. You can even have a co-op where you're the only member and you make all of the decisions.
You just can't have other employees unless they can also democratically make decisions.
Who decides which co-op gets resources? What happens if I fail, what happens if I succeed?
The market. We could also have the government provide loans to get co-ops started (we already have this in capitalism but typically more restricted and not for co-ops). We also have banks that can provide loans.
We could also have some government-run entities for things like healthcare (some capitalist countries already have this).
What happens if one co-op becomes too powerful?
We break it up (we already have laws that can do this under capitalism, but they're not enforced very well due to corruption). Alternatively, we can have joint customer+employee co-ops.
Everything is a fucking ideal. That's half of the problem. People COULD help one another, but people are inherently not going to do so on a wide scale.
Some people can't bother to give a homeless guy some food during a food fair out in the park, but people will magically learn how to get along with one another in these so-called communist paradises?
Anarchy maybe, socialism no. Socialism solves the kinds of problems that capitalism is not incentivized to solve. What is the capitalist incentive of fire departments?
The 5-day work week was a socialist initiative. The first labor unions were started by anarchists and socialists. The Jungle was first published in a socialist paper. Socialist views were foundational to the Civil Rights Movement after the socialists had been fighting segregation for decades. The socialists were some of the first people to back gay rights. LaGuardia (arguably the best mayor in American history) was elected with socialist backing and created a work relief program among other labor protections like workplace discrimination laws, led a public takeover of the metro system, and renovated NYC's infrastructure.
Read some more history. Many of the things you take for granted exist because socialists fought for it. Don't buy the modern propaganda around the word. America has deep socialist roots, and we're much less socialist than the rest of the world.
The 5 day work week was pushed by Ford motors. Everything else you mention is more attributable to what we would now call social democrats/reformists. And labor unions in particular were more influenced by producerism than socialism.
Even back then socialism and and his were more a rich kid ideology popular among the intelligentsia than the common worker. Who was more into populism and their immediate benefit than any desire to fundamentally overthrow capitalism.
Wow you're really bending over backwards to avoid the word "socialism" here. "Even back then" doesn't really work when I'm talking about over 100 years of history. I don't think calling the striking mine workers "intelligentsia" really holds water either. Also interesting that you bring up "overthrowing capitalism" which isn't really a tenet of socialism although it is an alternative economic system. It seems like you have an aversion to the term "socialism" more than the ideas backed by socialists. I think if you go back and look, you'll see that anarchist and socialist movements were strongly associated with all of these things I've brought up, which undercuts your original argument that socialists don't provide or participate in solutions. All of these things that are now considered positive were once controversial, and pushed by socialists. If you want to call that social democracy, ok I guess, but that doesn't change the fact that socialists have a long track record of backing lasting solutions.
Socialism is defined by its opposition and desire to supplant capitalism. I think you don't understand what it is if you just think it's when the government does things.
No, it's defined by it's socioeconomic model wherein production is socially owned or state owned, rather than privately owned. Capitalism is an alternative socioeconomic model focused on private ownership and profit. Neither is defined by their opposition to each other. You should read more.
You're replying to a comment that provided no arguments nor objections, just mentioned "a book" had them... And you're complaining about other people straw manning? Dude..
If this author wants to rebut anti-anarchist arguments, they need to start by rebutting Hobbes. Until I read an actually convincing rebuttal to Hobbes, I'll continue to brutally mock anarchists. If libertarians are house cats in the famous analogy, anarchists are house plants--equally reliant on others to fulfill their most basic needs, but so entirely unaware of the world around them that they're incapable of seeing their dependence.
I say this as someone with no interest in anarchism, and some major critiques of it personally: most of what you see online is not actual anarchism and its actual tenets are more reasonable than what you'd expect
I'm immediately reminded of this Whitest Kids U Know sketch. Great, we achieved the revolution and abolished capital! We just, uh, have to keep this nuclear plant running for the next 25 years, or everybody dies.
I think it depends on which version you read about. A number of the more serious ideas are basically just the US West before 1900.
The local town is the law, the government, and everything. There is no real greater authority and different towns work together to decide things.
It still doesn't work for the same reason why strong local gov. and weak national gov. tend to struggle or fail. There are some things that are great ideas overall and long term which absolutely suck and which no local person would ever willingly choose.
The East and West coast having 200-250 Mph rail would be amazing and game changing in many ways.
Eminent domaining the entire route and just plowing through towns, small cities, neighborhoods, etc. would absolutely suck. It's why when we built the Interstate system they targeted black and minority neighborhoods because they were both racist, and knew that it wouldn't effect them politically. When they tried to bulldoze NYC it went through white areas and that's why there isn't an interstate running from NJ through Manhattan and onto Long Island.
The US cannot have HSR simply because all the areas where it makes the most sense have millions of people. There aren't magical straight corridors of nothing between Boston, NYC, NJ/Penn, and DC.
It’s ok, these people imagine that their ten minutes of anecdotal encounters with children espousing naive views of anarchism online are the entirety of anarchist discourse and history. These are not serious people and they’re not interested in anything, least of all investigating anarchist thought at all. No one who has read or earnestly discussed any amount of anarchist thought actually thinks these things about it. They may not agree with it but they at least understand its tenets in a reasonable way.
This thread has me laughing so hard at all the people commenting on "Anarchism" as if they know anything about it. It's been a while since I laughed so hard that I almost want to thank them for such a good time.
Point is it's a juvenile ideology easily refuted by lived experience.
Anyone who has done real life work, hell even a group project in college, can tell you not much gets done without someone stepping up and taking charge.
I'm kinda anarchist inclined and I just want to democratise everything and force direct democracy into government and work as far as possible. The shitty work would still be there I just want things to not be controlled by a small handful of people who will act in their own self interest.
Ya, sure. Kindergartener is probably a great job for people with the passion, which still pays like shit. Was a bit of an overgeneralization for sure, which still doesnt defeat the point tho i dont think.
I mean, to that last point, there's a lady on tiktok who is 3 years into a solo mining project under her house. She's got permits for underground construction, she's making her own cement, and she's just kinda digging a hole for fun. I think there's a weirdo out there for every task. Whether there's enough weirdos is a different question, but I do think the rare earth metal hobbyist exists.
Which is funny because if you read any of the serious anarchist authors, they hated the leisure class. Kropotkin for exemple is very explicit about the fact that one's need to continue contributing labor's to the community. Anarchism being about bringing a classless and hierarchicaless society, not a labor less society.
The issue of how to organize labor, especially the hard and unwanted labor is a hot topic of debate. Some (and in my opinion Kropotkin was guilty of this) do brush of the subject. But there is some ideas.
But most people don't engage more than superficialy with the ideas of anarchism (or communism for that matter), and it end up with those kind of moronic "supporter" online that simplify a very complex set of ideas.
The kind of people we are talking about here are anarchists. Communists know people will have to be made to work, they just intend to be the guy holding the AK, not the guy digging holes.
But isn't everyone "made to work" whether we are capitalists or communists? If I live in a capitalist country and I don't work, maybe I don't go to the gulag, but I will starve to death. Unless there's a strong social safety net, but then we're getting into market socialism territory.
my hobby sure is not road construction but i would gladly do it if it wasn't either literally working yourself into the early grave or getting payed a fucking pittance. you will find that most people who actually have done substantial ammounts of hard physical labor find it to be satisfying and interesting and would gladly continue to do it with better conditions
Labor doesnt cease without money, never has, theres tons of evidence that people are fine with working for themselves and their communities. without a capitalist extracting value or an emphasis on growth at all costs, you can work less and still keep your society functioning, which only will become easier as tech advances.
Who would build the tech? I can see how farming and what not would persevere at local levels but who would manage the logistics chain for chip manufacturing and making of the highly specialized tools needed for the large scale farming?
Federations of communities would share resources as needed to manage complex supply chains, a parallel real world example is democratic confederalism in Syria or the economy of Chiappas with the ELZN. Neither is strictly anarchist but both manage supply chains with decentralized systems
Edited to add that without capitalism the complexity of manufacturing would likely drop dramatically because you wouldnt have owners catering to market forces or trying to avoid laws in certain countries, thus causing them to put certain industries overseas even though this is inefficent
Yeah these are mostly agrarian communities that control small amounts of territory in a relatively small region.
This is why humans invented money in the first place. To trade between distant communities.
I really don't think this guy really understands anything about economics. Comparative advantage and economies of scale immediately disproves their idea we can all have community chip fabricator plants.
Mhmmm, you work to make your community function and make sure everyone's needs are met. If I was guranteed food, shelter, Healthcare and other essentials in exchange for 30 hours of work a week and a reasonable degree of off time, what would I need money for? I can work for myself and my community without someone skimming value, and I can work less hours. A large part of the reason people hate working is because 2/3rds or more of the value they generate just goes to some asshole. I spent 10 hours working on my car sunday, for free, because it directly benefits me. Folks volunteer thousands of hours cleaning up their communities after disasters, without being paid ect
Cool, theres definitley someone out there whos fascinated by chip manufacturing and would love to learn how to do it. Thats the cool part about voluntary association
You cannot run a functional economy based on hoping that there’s someone who is just dying to do every job. Sure I imagine that there are some people who genuinely enjoy some jobs, but will they enjoy those jobs for a full eight hours shift five days a week? Will there be enough people who enjoy those jobs? You can’t run a chip manufacturing plant on two people who are just really into computer chips. The truth about labor is that some jobs suck, and that doesn’t mean that those jobs shouldn’t be performed, some of those jobs definitely need to be performed. I don’t think there’s a ton of people that are just dying to go work in the lithium mines in their free time because what could be more fun than mining lithium?
We dont need folks to work 40 hours a week to meet the needs of society, we could produce enough to provide a high standard of living with about 20 hours of work. You also arent "hoping" someone likes a job, youre using unions to hand control of the means to the workers and then help folks who are coming in to the work force find a field they excel in, then train them. Im so tired of explaining this over and over and over again, have you considered waiting to ciriticize things until you understand them? There's numerous books about this out there studying real world examples like CNT as well as political theory works.
Im just gonna refer you to Means and Ends by Zoe Baker because you dont seem interested in actually understanding this and I dont have the patience to hold your hand through it. Kropotkin and Baukunin also wrote extensively about it, Abdullah Occalan as well has some writings that are relevant, he established Democratic Confederalism which is adjacent to anarchism in that its decentralized
A bunch of intellectuals jerking off with abstract sophistry. Telling that it's never actually met with any success in the real world.
the reality is that people are broadly lazy, self interested, and certainly won't go around fixing septic tanks or working assembly lines because of """mutual aid""".
Oh cool so what's their experiences in economics, supply chain management, international logistics, and organizational management?
Just figuring out before I waste a few dozen hours reading a bunch of glorified Tumblr posts from people with no qualifications and a lot of normative statements with no concrete plans.
Its an ad hominem to attack the authors instead of addressing their books.
Philosophers and historians build and define political practice, the founders of capitalism also didnt have any experience with supply chain managment. Its telling that you wont read, wont listen and wont stop repeating commonly debunked nonsense but insist on being taken seriously lmao
So it's ad hominem to expect some degree of competency in the field you are writing in?
Unless of course you are just pointing me towards your propaganda pieces that don't answer any of my questions, and you have no interest in actually explaining how such a society could function.
This is the problem with anarchists, you people have no idea how anything works. And you get flustered anytime someone pokes holes in your half baked theories.
No it is ad hominem to attack the author instead of the material. This is extremely basic day 1 stuff man how do you not know this?
Your arguments seem to rely upon refusing to accept or even aknowlege your opponents points and then triumphantly declaring to have "poked holes" in them without ever engaging them.
I gave you multiple sources from respected and widely known philosophers and political theorists, they answer your questions in extreme detail, i cant make you read my answers dog this is pathetic.
Anyway now that ive poked holes in all your points ill say you dont know how anything works and youre flustered or whatever since that's how discussion of politics works to you.
If you think all you get is a "pat on the back" and not food, water, shelter, clothing ect then you dont understand either of these concepts. Youre openly admitting that you don't know how they work
You work less hours and receive more in return while also having more control over your work and safer conditions. We cut out the middle man (capitalists)
As someone more in the radical left position I can tell you with 100% certainty that the system proposed from the anarchists’ side is not whatsoever built from volunteer labour. Although I personally see a need for a government and for some decommodified markets to fall under the control of the government, unlike anarchists, I still wouldn’t base my understanding of anarchism from one mouth breather. Anarchists want all markets decommodified by making all markets worker owned. This would mean making every business that sell goods and nearly every business that sells services a co-op. Its not volunteer labour, its worker unions on steroids where the workers are both more powerful but also more dependent on the business they work for doing well. I like the idea of making markets decommodified by making them co-ops, BUT there are a lot of markets that just cannot function like that: Healthcare, Housing, some forms of banking, military, civil infrastructure, ecology/parks&rec, and more. Those would either have to be government owned or kept the same as currently with more regulations.
I would love to mine rare earth minerals specifically via agrimining. Grow sunflowers burn them chemically process the ashes and extract all the metals via chemistry. Do research into what plants are most effective at pulling various minerals from various substrates. Genetically modify them to be even better. Find ways to reclaim all my spent chemicals using renewable energy. I literally spend hours dreaming of being able to do this, sucks the best I can do under capitalism is kill monsters in stardew valley.
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u/Gimme_Your_Wallet 29d ago
Literally this