tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post9213413689517548851..comments2023-08-02T08:55:39.775-07:00Comments on The Implicit & Experiential Rantings of a Person: My Kind of AnarchismIan Mayeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08624133872487044679noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-83064469219470202132021-11-07T20:37:55.594-08:002021-11-07T20:37:55.594-08:00Some compliments first...
Really nicely written. ...Some compliments first...<br /><br />Really nicely written. You are a good, clear, unpretentious writer expressing a very humanitarian outlook. And I love Landauer! He was a big influence on me, especiallyin my commune days. I didn't remember that quote. It's a great one.<br /><br />My criticism is that--at least if this was all I read by you, which it almost is--yours is a utopian anarchism, so gentle that I don't see it fighting the massive oppression people face and the immense power and violence of the capitalist states and the nexus of private power that maintains the oppression and exploitation that is absolutely integral to how the world economy functions. I most fundamentally disagree with a categorical rejection of confiscation. Private ownership is already a kind of confiscation, and it general involved a very literal and brutal confiscation as it's origin (where land is concerned especially). There's a reason Proudon declared "property is theft." The stockholders of the corporation will decry the confiscation of "their" factory if the workers seize control of it. Fuck em. Their ownership is the proles exploitation.<br /><br />I think what you are describing is the right ethic for a community that has already established the groundwork of equality. In the brutally unequal real larger world, it's the "we ain't takin this shit no more" side of anarchism that facing the system demands. Revolution ain't a Rainbow Gathering... although the afterparty might be. <br /><br />I used to identify as anarchist. I don't much care now. I am probably not one when it comes to how I engage in the world and political choices I make. The live choices that might make some difference in some peoples lives are imperfect and hard to keep consistent with dogmatic antistaism.<br /><br />I am for equality, complete and universal, at least for MY society, and that includes most of the world now that capitalism has engulfed nearly everyone. And no hierarchy--horizontal democracy. Marxist communism nailed the economic exploitaion part, the anarchists got the power relations part. I instincively sniff out the features of both in the status quo and movements for change. I am a believer in the unity of ends and means--in principle--but sometimes the ends do justify means that don't belong in the society we're striving for. This includes violence, although fortunately I think nonviolence is more effective now in my part of the world.<br /><br />I am a utopiam dogmatist in holding onto my desire for free communism, but much less purist in supporting whatever seems to be moving most that way, even if it is so far from the mark to be a mockery of the ideal. But the kind of revolution that really made a leap in that direction would most certainly involve confiscation, so I cannot oppose that on principle. I am certainly not going to wait for the ones profiting by the system to see the light and give it away. No, I don't have faith in that day coming. My faith in humanity is based much more on the fact that the exploited WON'T wait for that.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10954848422587711235noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-10684518721399554472018-06-29T14:29:42.111-07:002018-06-29T14:29:42.111-07:00I apologize for all of the typos earlier. I though...I apologize for all of the typos earlier. I thought I would also add to this something very crucial: Statist Realism. Statist Realism, or Hierarchical Realism, whatever you want to call it, is a natural anarchist conclusion to the book "Capitalist Realism" by Mark Fisher. Capitalist Realism illustrates how capitalism infects our imagination, permeating into all facets of life--whereby even schools use business ontologies. Capitalist Realism describes the ideological frame through which capitalism reinforces itself. Capitalist Realism thrives its own criticism, but how many times have we heard Churchill's words, "Capitalism: The worst economic system, except for all the others," manifested in many forms? It is becoming nearly impossible to imagine its alternative. It is the failure of the left to *provide* its alternative (beyond high theory). Shifting to Statist Realism, whereby hierarchical thinking infects our imagination as illustrated by The Starfish and the Spider, which opens with a description of how scientists initially thought the brain must store memories--neuroscientists thought that for the brain to be efficient it must use an extremely heirarchical method to store memories. This assumption, this ideology, this frame of Statist Realism, turned out to be totally off-base with reality. Now I turn this back to anarchist action accumulating to revolution, that gradient, in that every anarchist action combats this Statist Realism by poking at the alternative, which presents itself to others to be absorbed and reimplemented, extrapolated, built upon, and learned from, it incrementally introduces the real full alternative, the "revolution" through the accumulation of such actions. These actions go beyond critique and manifest descriptions of an alternative through real world action.<br /><br />I am feeling fuzzy-headed from the nitro the dentist gave me, but I hope that wasn't too hard to follow due to my fuzziheadedness.<br /><br />I would love to talk or collaborate in regard to your well presented concept in this article.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06625041173613079494noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-90339873691250406562018-06-29T09:37:17.676-07:002018-06-29T09:37:17.676-07:00What a wonderful article! I really love this way o...What a wonderful article! I really love this way of thinking about anarchism, and it resonates with how I think about it too, especially after reading David Graeber's Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology introduced to me the "step beyond" the conventional modes of thinking about structure simply as the code of social order (bylaws in an organization, laws in a nation, etc.). I think this "step beyond" is exactly laid out by this article. Zimbardo said that if we with to understand "bad apples" it is more important to analyze the system which engendered those vices. Likewise, if you wish to analyze the system you must look at the fundamental interpersonal relationships within this structure--and this is exactly what David Graeber poses as an anthropologist, that if we look at systems like capitalism from this kind of interpersonal/anthropological perspective of analysis, we see capitalism is a kin system, due to the analysis of relationships occurring within that system. You so accurately called anarchism a kind of social philosophy, I would add that it is something which occurs when you do it, anarchism is an action, and I feel this aligns with the tenants of anarchism which you describe herein (non-coercion, authentic connection between people, etc.). The difficulty of this philosophy is ultimately conveying a path of change that tackles these fundamental problems in an immediately-significant enough way to present people with the reality of the alternative. I am sure you, like me, are no stranger to our views being reduced to "hippy garbage," or "touch-feelsy," etc. But I will cycle back again to what I said, systems engender vices, and interpersonal relationships engender systems--as you have so perfectly illustrated here with this article. So how do we produce this alternative? I think it aligns to the concept of little anarchist actions accumulating to the eventual distant point of a full revolution, like the second hand of a clock being an anarchist action, eventually a full revolution will occur and the second hand will be back point straight up at 0/12. This kind of gradient is definitely less satisfactory and less romantic than notions of immediate revolution, but it is perhaps the best way to maintain current infrastructure people rely on to survive, while appropriating that structure into something better, continuously, until that structure is something completely different.<br /><br />As per how we get to "something completely different" and what that looks like, I think that falls into the caveat of a metanarrative, we should take incremental steps, not leaps, to the solution, so we are not fixed to a way of thinking about things from an earlier point in time, and we must always remain open minded and ready to accept the failures or successes of our experiments.<br /><br />Thank you for writing this wonderful article!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06625041173613079494noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-26122912843465273742016-12-04T19:38:25.422-08:002016-12-04T19:38:25.422-08:00Primitive foraging tribes had exactly this. Fierce...Primitive foraging tribes had exactly this. Fierce egalitarianism. It seems only to work in groups of 150 or less. The real issue is whether we can form fierce egalitarian tribes in the limited space we have with billions of people. Can we replace close human cooperation and empathy with technology?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-63186394230598389692016-12-03T17:58:42.747-08:002016-12-03T17:58:42.747-08:00I am not sure how the views of other anarchists di...I am not sure how the views of other anarchists differ so strongly from what you are advocating here. THese 8 principals seem a bit on the vanilla side. If anything, they do not go far enough or perhaps are not sufficiently elaborated. <br /><br />And if you are looking for this authentic communication and community, then what are you doing to manifest it in your own life? Out here in the communes we are practicing transparency tools and clearnesses and consensus on a regular basis, all strengthening communication. And living together, sharing almost everything (including operating businesses and raising children and growing food) builds deep roots in community consciousness and anarchist practice. Are you doing these things on a daily basis? Or are you content to be an anarchist philosopher, who has great ideas which other people should be practicing?<br /><br />memeticisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06391852694742133226noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8491758030360570659.post-42883497653256274632016-12-03T17:05:47.467-08:002016-12-03T17:05:47.467-08:00Anarchy literally means "without rulers"...Anarchy literally means "without rulers" and thus invited self-organization, to which your eight principles contribute. Beyond that, I agree with you about rising above the demand to label and define. More important, I believe, is spotlighting the distinction between anarchy and chaos that is so often confounded in the media and thus among all the other -archies. Susan Lhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11061240445450442569noreply@blogger.com