HeavenlyPossum
@WolfChristensen @Huntn00 @Radical_EgoCom @spoons @mloxton
You grew up in a deeply hierarchical state society in which violence was normalized at every level of society to sustain the extractive rule of a tiny elite and concluded that this incredibly contingent and historically unique system of industrialized murder was somehow a universal human norm.
It’s not.
Matthew Loxton
@WolfChristensen
Mate, I sound like someone who grew up on the site of a British concentration camp, and whose playground included the its cemetery. I lived up close with state brutality, tribal warfare, and violence at every level of society - from punches freely doled out by older kids, canings dished out by teachers, and police that might leave you in a ditch. I grew up knowing the taste of blood in my mouth and the feeling of a fist hitting flesh
Azazel
@mloxton @Huntn00 @spoons @Radical_EgoCom you sound like a Brit justifying manifest destiny because everyone other than a brit is a barbarian. You aren't exceptionally enlightened for thinking people are better off working together. Humanity would have destroyed itself hundreds of times over in its 100s of thousands of years of existence if all we did was rape pillage and destroy. Stop applying your whiteness to the rest of humanity. Not every civilization has made its way by subjugating others.
Azazel
@Huntn00 @spoons @mloxton @Radical_EgoCom this is based on old defunct Darwinist ideas based on observation of animals in captivity. The burden of proof is toward the law of mutual aid, and the idea that humans and many other species have existed so long because they have cooperated rather than competed for resources for most of our species history.
Matthew Loxton
@WolfChristensen
Mutual aid ... mostly within groups and clans, and mostly suspicion of anything outside
Again, just look at how our species behaves. Yeah, we can be nice person to person and in short bursts, but overall we raid "them" to benefit "us", we value in-group over out-group, and we easily attribute bad events to hostility by a selected scapegoat community.
We will even bash a family member on the nut and toss them in a bog to appease the gods
Azazel
@Huntn00 @spoons @mloxton @Radical_EgoCom Anarchy does not equal violence. That is a product of propaganda. The fact that most anarchist societies were built to combat violence of fascist and authoritarian power, which necessitated violence, does not make anarchism violent
Huntn00
@WolfChristensen @spoons @mloxton @Radical_EgoCom I’m not hostile to your opinion, enjoy the discussion. 🙂 Watch one of many post-apocalyptic stories like The Post Man or the Book of Eli. There maybe great communities, but they will be countered by bad communities, inevitable war lords who seize power, have a large band of militant followers who seek to expand their power and control. What the average citizen gets is pot luck.
Huntn00
@WolfChristensen @spoons @mloxton @Radical_EgoCom I don’t know where you live , but imo the best chance to beat something like Global Warming is to be organized. However, I think we’ll witness via AI and automation, the unraveling of Capitalism, just hope this is an orderly transition towards socialism, or it maybe a full blown breakdown, with the anarchy some of the participants hope for, just hope it’s not a bloody change. 🤔
Azazel
@spoons @mloxton @Radical_EgoCom @Huntn00 I apologize for the ad hominen attack. You are correct, that was unnecessary.
Azazel
@spoons @mloxton @Radical_EgoCom @Huntn00 From my angle, and my comrades I work with, we have less than a full lifetime to topple the bourgeois class to obtain a liveable world for those who come after us. In my case my children. The slow crawl of electoralism has been painful to witness. Climate change is shortening the time we have to act dramatically, worse than the most pessimistic prior prediction. Engaging in bourgeois politics beyond calling it out as the unrepresentative and oppressive system that it is allows the shitty people beating us up to stay in power. It isn't reducing harm. The less shitty person allows the shittier to stay in power. It is just perpetuating harm and allowing the cycle of hate and destruction and lives lost to continue.
Azazel
@spoons @mloxton @Radical_EgoCom @Huntn00 As the disabled trans anarchist who has been housing challenged for years, that I am, I'd much rather you go out and actually create dual power rather than continue voting for the people who are punching us to death. Punching anyone to death should immediately be a reason not to vote for someone. What the fuck is wrong with you for voting for people who are beating us to death? That's sociopathic
spoon state
@WolfChristensen
It seems you missed the rest of what I wrote because yes, I too was advocating for people to do things other than voting as well.
Please be careful not to intentionally misunderstand people who want to be your allies. I could throw my own minority qualifications in your face and accuse you of various things, but I won’t, because I’m hoping your anger is just misdirected because of the injustices you face.
I desperately want to find solutions and work towards restorative justice for you and others and myself, and I am actively working on (a) disentangling myself from systems of oppression, but it’s a monumental, multifaceted project, and (b) growing skills and connections I can use to build different ways of living that are more equitable.
At a certain point you’ll just have to take my word for it, but even if you can’t, calling me and others sociopathic is deconstructive—it breaks down dialogue when there are other more constructive ways to advocate for your position that participating in the voting system is inherently cruel. It would benefit everyone, especially yourself and your argument, for you to try a different way.
@mloxton @Radical_EgoCom @Huntn00
Azazel
@mloxton @Radical_EgoCom @Huntn00 So your solution to the system of violence in place, is to participate in and perpetuate the system of violence....
spoon state
@WolfChristensen
it sucks but voting is harm reduction. when both parties are intent on punching the poor to death so to speak, but one party is wearing brass knuckles, we are obligated to vote for the party that’s punching bare-fisted. that takes maybe an hour of our time, and it’s literally the least we can do, so we also better follow up with real mutual aid, acts of solidarity, etc. if (big if) we actually give a shit.
we can vote, acknowledge it it still essentially advocating for profiting off abuse of the poor and powerless, but still know that it’s less harm than the other party. it’s nothing to celebrate or feel proud of ourselves for because it’s not the actual constructive work to be done (supporting people and helping them heal), but… it’s something commonly available to most people that they’re familiar with as an action to mAkE a DiFfErEnCe. so why not?
@mloxton @Radical_EgoCom @Huntn00
Matthew Loxton
@WolfChristensen
"how can you vote for ... a shitty apathetic neoliberal millionaire"
You choose the least shitty one, and keep doing that iteratively while encouraging non-shitty non-millionaires to run, and supporting them. Or, throw the dice on a revolution and hope that in a few hundred years time when the smoke has settled, things will be better for people in the future
"Hard not to be apathetic"
Which is harder, staying engaged, or the result of doing nothing?
Azazel
@mloxton @Radical_EgoCom @Huntn00 how can you vote for someone who is representative of your group when every choice is a shitty apathetic neoliberal millionaire? Hard not to be apathetic when no "representatives" actually represent you. The system is built to create and foster these feelings. When a system is designed to create a feeling and situation, those who exhibit proof of what the system is creating are not to blame for showing that. It is hard to wrap our heads around that with how abhorrent the qualities this system promotes can be, but the majority of those showing those qualities the system promotes are victims of propaganda and systemic oppression.
Azazel
@mloxton @Radical_EgoCom @Huntn00 You don't see any issues in "The elected" Being 100% comprised of people who make at least 7 figures? How is a group of only millionaires meant to represent the average person in the electorate.
Matthew Loxton
@WolfChristensen
Of course I do.
I also see a problem with how money is central to electability, and that corporations and shadowy groups pour millions into election campaigns. I see huge problems in the fact that the debates are funded, controlled, and in fact, owned, by corporations.
But all of those problems and defects, and more, rely on an apathetic, distracted, and gullible electorate.
Matthew Loxton
@Radical_EgoCom
True, but it is the only farce in town, and it is assembled in a way that reform tends to weaken the lesser of the evils and strengthen the greater.
The problem, I suspect, lies with the electorate, more than with the elected.
Huntn00
@Radical_EgoCom Just remember you have to be able to be electable regardless of how liberal you’d like to be. Democrats have been hindered by this reality for decades. 🤔
Radical_EgoCom
@Huntn00 That's precisely why the whole system of governmental politics is a farce.
Radical_EgoCom
Democrats And Republicans are Horrible
HeavenlyPossum
It’s quite difficult to imagine a majority vote to inflict harm on the minority voter as democracy—a meaningful say in the decisions that affect the participants—in a substantive way.
HeavenlyPossum
I should add: the *enforcement* of a decision to commit harm is precisely what makes the situation you’ve described undemocratic.
Democracy is a process of building consensus for shared decisions. Not everyone will always agree with every decision, and that’s fine—that’s life.
But if X people vote to commit harm against Y people, in opposition to Y’s vote, then we’re not really taking about democracy in the sense of *people ruling themselves.*
HeavenlyPossum
I’m suggesting that we not consider any system that excludes people from the decisions that affect them as “democracy” even if the proponents of that system call it a democracy.
AvengingFemme 🦀🏴
@HeavenlyPossum @mu anarchist opposition to democracy is not about “exclusion of people from decisions that affect them”, it’s about the fact that once decisions are made they are *enforced*, even on those who disagreed.
5 wolves and a lamb can all vote on equal footing about what’s for dinner, and the outcome will still be oppressive. how do you avoid this problem under any system recognizable as “democracy”?
HeavenlyPossum
@SocialistStan @Radical_EgoCom @mu @mloxton @EmbraceBecoming @Huntn00
If someone else is in power, it’s hard to say that those not in power are meaningfully participating in democracy.
That’s sort of the whole point of power.
We do not have to take propaganda at face value or assign it any analytic weight.
無 Mu
@HeavenlyPossum That's my point. Either kind of democracy can exclude either kind of minority.
HeavenlyPossum
@Huntn00 @mloxton @EmbraceBecoming @mu @SocialistStan @Radical_EgoCom
I’m not aware of any polity that has ever been governed by majority rule.
無 Mu
@HeavenlyPossum @Huntn00 @mloxton @EmbraceBecoming @SocialistStan @Radical_EgoCom When discussing polities, the "majority" can refer to those in power, not those who are more numerous.
HeavenlyPossum
@Huntn00 @Radical_EgoCom @EmbraceBecoming @mloxton @mu @SocialistStan
I would offer that opposition to democracy is primarily opposition to its form under capitalist modernity—mostly periodic voting for various state actors—and not to its substantive form of meaningful and equal participation in the decisions that affect each person.
無 Mu
@HeavenlyPossum @Huntn00 @Radical_EgoCom @EmbraceBecoming @mloxton @SocialistStan Democracy can be majority rule. It might be better to put in the long work of consensus or just disassociate to avoid forcing people to live with decisions they don't like.
無 Mu
@EmbraceBecoming @Huntn00 @SocialistStan @mloxton @Radical_EgoCom @HeavenlyPossum Some anarchists certainly are opposed to democracy.
EmbraceBecoming
@Huntn00 @SocialistStan @mloxton @Radical_EgoCom @HeavenlyPossum Anarchists are not opposed to organization and are certainly not opposed to democracy. We object to the state, which is a specific form of social organization characterized by hierarchical class structures, governments that claim sovereignty over territory and have the exclusive right to enforce that sovereignty through a monopoly on the use of force, and in the modern era the ideology of nationalism. There are other ways to organize a society on scales both large and small through diverse combinations of voluntary affinity groups, democratically managed workers councils, systems of mutual aid and community self defense, and federations of all the above. The world we envision is not mad max, nor is it a bunch of hippies holding hands and singing kumbya, but an alternate world system that incorporates modern science and sociology, spontaneous grassroots political organization, and indigenous lifeways to create a model on which a diverse set of societies can be constructed to fit the needs of humans and their communities in harmony with nature.
And even if we are not able to implement this vision in full, bits and pieces of it can be used to make people's lives better in our day to day lives through organizing dual power and mutual aid, and by promoting the values of egalitarianism, socialism, solidarity, curiosity, and opposition to nationalism and fascism whenever and wherever possible.
Huntn00
@SocialistStan @mloxton @Radical_EgoCom You don’t live in a vacuum. If you have millions of people living together and you hope to get any big things accomplished, like infrastructure, there has to be a level of organization supported by democracy, with an agreed to pay structure. You can either agree to participate or instead maybe wait for the local War Lord’s thugs to appear on your doorstep and dictate, to include dating your daughter.
SocialistStan
@mloxton @Radical_EgoCom @Huntn00 I don't need or want a ruler, this whole conversation is pretty meaningless to me as long as whoever on the throne leaves me alone. The problem arises when they won't.
Any politician is always going to try to mess with people's lives.
HeavenlyPossum
@AvengingFemme @mu @hakan_geijer
I am often very interested in diving into the historical and etymological roots of specific institutions and terms; it feels like a process of discovering what we really mean by these terms that we throw around. I read too much Derrida in my 20s.
But there’s absolutely nothing a priori wrong with majoritarian decisions or building consensus. These are merely social processes for making decisions among multiple people, the perfect solution for which doesn’t exist.
If five wolves voted to do X while one lamb voted to do Y, this has no real bearing on the “anarchist” nature of the decision unless those five wolves are voting to *impose* their decision on the lamb. Five wolves voting against one lamb to eat the lamb isn’t meaningfully democratic among the participants; it constitutes one segment of society agreeing among itself to violently impose its will on another segment of society.
Of course, this sort of thing might happen in the absence of the state—but a key difference is that the actors under anarchism bear the costs of acting on their decision themselves, including the lamb’s decision to engage in self-defense.
HeavenlyPossum
@hakan_geijer @mu @AvengingFemme
That’s fair—lots of people colloquially understand democracy to mean something like “a majority of voters periodically selecting politicians who then make decisions that are violently imposed on people.” And I happily oppose that, both substantively and the idea that this meaningfully represents freedom.
But there are *lots* of terms I hope to rescue from colloquial usage—terms like freedom and liberty and equality and property and economy and commons and a million more. I think we benefit from rescuing these terms and imbuing them with more substance (often archaic in meaning). I think it helps to take familiar-seeming concepts and show people how those terms have been twisted to recruit people into participating in their own oppression.
AvengingFemme 🦀🏴
@HeavenlyPossum @mu @hakan_geijer my primary contention is that “it constitutes one segment of society agreeing among itself to violently impose its will on another segment of society” is what everyone except a tiny group of anarchists determined to reclaim the word has *always* meant by “democracy”. i am
open to evidence otherwise, but i’m skeptical.
HeavenlyPossum
@AvengingFemme @mu @hakan_geijer
I do hope it’s possible to reclaim the word, both because it still has positive connotations for lots of people and because I think it best describes the sort of process that people really truly mean when they think about how democracy is meant to function.
But I absolutely agree that people can and should happily fissure upon disagreement. The ability to leave is one of the most foundational freedoms we could have.
Passenger
@hakan_geijer @HeavenlyPossum @mu @AvengingFemme
I'm coming to believe that it's better to talk about projects than groups.
For example, if a particular antifascist crew announces they're going to confront a particular TERF event, then not everyone in that crew will be involved (because people have lives) and some people not in that crew will be involved (because fuck TERFs.)
This sort of association makes it easier to build consensus about tactics, because there is no "agree with the project or leave the group."
Passenger
@hakan_geijer @HeavenlyPossum @mu @AvengingFemme
cf Graeber on "large heavy objects."
Although having said that I am a union member for exactly that reason: it trades away some of the fluidity and ease of projects, and in exchange becomes legible to the outside world in a way that allows it to intermediate when people need intermediation.
Deniz Opal
The right are just the continuation of the feudal system under the guise of individual economic freedom.
"Centrists" are enablers of these feudalists.
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