u/ArthropodJim

morning rats

anarchist grad student here researching the

1. failure of state socialism in newly independent African countries

(by sharing the thoughts of African and Black anarchists and their critiques of authoritarian socialism)

1. top-down, hierarchical model of groups claiming to be working towards Black liberation

(Black anarchists who were former MLs themselves now critiquing the hierarchical and sexist natures of BPP, RAM, etc)

i am claiming that both groups (Black organizations in America + newly elected African leaders embracing socialism/the states they made) reproduced political dependency through centralized authority, decision-making by the elite, and greatly limited the capacity of communities to organize social and economic life outside state structures. they also both recognized that top-down models are structurally vulnerable because they’re very easily to be taken down (CIA and FBI infiltration, surveillance, incarceration, assassination) and the whole movement would die because they organized around top-down leaders.

i’m asking more specifically at how some of the changes these socialist states did aren’t inherently bad (Tanzania had 90% of children in primary school, and vastly reduced mortality rate of women), but that state forcing what can basically be described as single-family farms into villages (villagization) was detrimental because the farms themselves were never really absorbed into the state. they now had the sole production of the state on their backs but since they were never absorbed, the notion of African socialism under Ujamaa didn’t really work.

so i want to learn more about state socialism (and state capitalism since they are synonymous), but also i am in an african studies program so i don’t know if dense quantities economic analyses would likely be helpful. I want to understand the big picture and see how state socialism helped and or hurt the African peoples ranging from villagers and farmers and working class. i would also like some basic canonical texts understanding state socialism.

i’m very knowledgable about the large renaissance of 50s/60s African literature that existed when they were writing heavily about “buzzword” topics, books like “Pan Africanism or Communism?” or “African socialism: a radical reader!” type of stuff. I haven’t done through those yet, but it seems to be more socialist fused with traditionalist/communalist values than a critique of what would later be made which are the socialist states. i’m calling them failures because they involved the state and not because it was socialism. But also making the point that the ruler we use to measure differences can be very vague. It will yield positive results, for example, if we measured the improvement of that women’s mortality rate. But it would be poorer results if we’re measuring on how independent and empowered villagers were after statehood.

thanks, PM me please if anyone has questions

if not, what happened to them? I’ve heard of a lot of historic ones in Seattle and etc, i’m just curious why they don’t have anymore or why they shut down. If they didn’t, i can’t find any information of why or when.

Title!

I’m a teacher just trying to get back into cruising around, maybe now I’ll try to do a tailwhip. It’s convenient taking it on the train to where my class usually is. However maybe on the side I’ll just take it cruise around, i remember having a good hop when i was a kid, maybe i can do a couple stairs too.

But my bars were really short, like 24 or something. Super comfortable now with 28 or 28.3 or something. I just don’t really wanna spend $100 on a larger deck that’s 5.5 x 23 or something. Maybe in the future if it’s absolutely needed. I haven’t spent the most time riding what I currently have. Maybe if some decks like in the $40-50s show up on marketplace i can get it.

But i wanna keep the forks and the wheels and all that stuff. If I get a new deck can i put everything i have on it? i think my friend even put a shim or something in it when the new bars when on. But anyways, what’s up with the deck stuff? Can I stick with what I have now or am I gonna blow my back out like I would have with shorter bars?

Or something like that. Honestly was just clicking through the incoming notifications. Is there an updated LibreWolf I should download? Using a 2022 M2 macbook air. It said something like the current version won't be supported in the future or something.

so there’s two Toreros technically? so at Viva El Gonzo they did Faena?? that’s crazy

grad student here. i would leave class a few minutes early at night to catch the 8:45 train home to san bernardino (i get home at 11PM). now that they’ve cancelled that train, so it skips directly from 7:45 to 9:45 (i’d get home at midnight), does anyone have any solutions? Anyone else doing this commute who will be affected? just frustrated, i know they’re not reading that metrolink survey.

ran into an administrator who worked at my prior institution and they said they’re actually trying to recruit more students from the IE. Hope they’re just talking about undergrad, because these night classes are difficult if students have to wait an hour before leaving. and if that train gets canceled, i don’t know how i’d get home. i can drive, but that’s 240ish miles weekly.

morning

i’m traveling from california and i’m in houston for a single day. just a couple hours. i wanted to know if there’s any bookstores inside the freeway loop where i could get books on anarchism. could be old, could be new, preferably used books, just any. i know prairieland stuff is going on so i just wanted to be vigilant. even if they’re just used book stores that would have large theory sections for politics or sociology, send them my way thanks.

i know houston anarchist bookfair was just a month or two ago so i’m hoping some of those folks would know. thanks, i’m close to the medical hospital area

Here is what I think.

The Marxist definition of socialism is defined by it's usage in a transitory sense. In other words, I see it as the first landmark step a society will be in upon the passage of capitalist society. Mode of production will change, wage labor relationships will be reevaluated, etc etc.

The anarchist definition of socialism is the libertarian socialism on steroids, but maybe talks more of a society with hierarchical structures that emphasizes individual liberty + solidarity.

to my brain, i think they both talk about opposing capitalism, class exploitation, they both want collective ownership of production.

I am thinking about how various leaders of African nation states were infatuated with socialism giving way to African Socialist variants. But I want to know if that inherently makes them Marxists or if socialism on it's own can be a thing equally routed to anarchism. I know people say anarchism is just the non-state variant of socialism, but then I want to understand where the Marxist definition relates to that because I figured the Marxist definition would still want the state even if it's temporarily

Okay so I was on my home planet and saw an NPC ship on fire that needed to be repaired. I did it and remembered i can sell stuff, so i sold it and it gave me I think $3M. It was enough to consistently buy almost all ships that came into the station and now I have $30M.

the ship I started with was a C-class but right now a B-class came in looking like a Star Wars X-wing. and guess WHAT, a yellow tennis ball looking ship came in and it was an S-class! I bought it immediately and all of its stats were like +100.0 better than everything my original ship was.

So i’m keeping the B-class because it’s better than my C-class (which i just sold) and keeping the S-class. I made sure to take out all the cargo and upgrades and put it on a freighter or something, and i’ll put it on my next ship.

The inventory sizes are pretty good on both, i think they’re both better than what I had. I don’t understand why the open inventory slots are spread out though and not all cubic. But these are good. Now I want to have a good ship with high stats and high inventory space. But I think to purchase more slots for the B-class, it’s like 3M each but 11M for the S-class.

Are there easier ways to upgrade the slots on my ship other than paying those millions? and also do you all have multiple ships with high upgrades? Or should i get rid of my cool looking B-class and move all the upgrades to the yellow tennis ball S-class that’s all thank you reddit go traveler s kzzzt

My understanding is that a wide amount of people became radicalized to be anarchists during the current american administration. There will undoubtedly be people who say that a “less vile” leader will always be better than a “more vile” leader. How can we continue to stand our ground?

When the current admin is out, and an equally violent group (but less violent to some people) comes into power, do and did anarchists historically have to defend their ideas even more? what is the best way to analytically say (not just morally) that “better politicians” aren’t materially changing anything? struggling to word this, thank you

people need to be taken care of and have their needs met regardless of who far away is in power. but for some more deeper things, how can we stay committed to anarchism?

76 is my sweetspot for this song but I just wanna hear what he’s doing during jams. thanks

just came out of a conversation with people critiquing anarchism saying that it has no consistent definition of hierarchies.

i guess it’s just frustrating because i stand by a lot of what anarchists say. i run an anarchist literature circle as well. i felt weak and uneducated when they popped holes into various arguments. they were asking something like “when the American North forced the American South to desegregate, is that a hierarchy anarchists would be against?” Obviously ending segregated society is the way a world should be ordered, but it seemed to trap me in a weird spot where the ONLY way it could happen was if the North militarily situated themselves above the South. annnndddd since anarchists are against hierarchies, they would be against it.

i tried repeatedly explaining that anarchists are against unjustified hierarchies and acts of domination and coercion, and they said “you’re making my point for me. anarchists are only against hierarchies that THEY do not like, not ALL hierarchies.” i gave the whole “if there a kid about to get hit by a car, are you exacting your authority over that person” and they all agreed. They even said that the anarchist definition of state, via the Weber definition of “having a monopoly on force” is incorrect and that a state is just anything that maintains class structure.

I felt so cornered. How can we have such detailed conversations and theory on insurrectionism and syndicalism and stuff if we, or I, can’t have objective definitions of what a hierarchy is?