u/Mammoth-Ad-3642

I've been reading some of Marx's writings lately, I always knew the basic gist of his beliefs but I wanted to be properly informed, or at least, I thought I did, the more I read the stuff he said the more I agreed with him!

Of course all the stuff about a transitional state didn't really sit right with me obviously along with every other anarchist on the planet but, as I recently read some of his last writings, he seemed to do a damn near one eighty!

After the Paris commune it seemed as though he'd woken up a new man, he wrote about how the means of production must not be acquired by the state but by the workers themselves, using them communally in a decentralized manner, he said that the army should be abolished and in it's position militias should exist to protect the people, he even seemed a bit more questioning of labour vouchers!

The only two "authoritarian" positions you could claim he still held were the labour vouchers and the "administration of things" which for those who don't know would basically be a radically democratic state with instantly recallable delegates that were meant to help coordinate the federated factories with each other.

But, you must take into account the circumstances of his time! He lived in an Internet less world were scarcity was still a problem, unlike Kropotkins and our eras after his,

That's what the vouchers were for! To encourage extra work to bring about abundance and to cut a few corners, even he himself said many times that he saw it as awful but necessary which in all fairness it kind of was at the time!

And on the matter of the administration of things, this was a time before the internet and our efficient ways of transporting goods and coordinating production, while even then I still don't think it was completely necessary, his viewpoint is very understandable!

What I'm trying to get at with these two examples, is that in our world both of these issues have been dealt with through the internet and the fact we're in a post scarcity world! He only believed in his things not out of some principle but out of necessity, if he saw todays world or even Kropotkins, there's a major chance he would have leaned more into Anarcho communism! Especially when considering how he was already rapidly trending toward that realization himself in his last years.

In short, cut Marx some slack, if he were here today, he'd (in my opinion) most definitely be an Anarcho communist

I've been thinking about this for a while, but there's this widespread massively dominant cultural tendency to believe that humans are evil and or incompetent, I constantly see it in both fiction and non fiction, this belief that humans are Just inherently evil and submissive at the same time and are somehow meant to be led.

Of course every anarchist/libertarian socialist is very well accustomed to these stupid Psy-ops, but what I don't see often pointed out, is how directly they are taken from the same logic of race realism and all that shit about "the black man being inherently more submissive and of course evil than the hwhite man!"

It's the same shit! The exact same shit! Every time the ruling class wants to excuse their dominance over the people, no matter the era they always default to biological pseudo science! Painting the people they're oppressing as barbaric and weak willed things to be led, it was so with the slaves back then and now more than ever it is done to the working class as a whole. (they were saying it back then too but you catch my drift)

Now, Just hear me out on this cause this is an understandably controversial opinion but, electoralism DOES have advantages in furthering anarchist goals.

Obviously I don't believe that any worthwhile systemic change can come from electoralism, it's a pretty good propaganda tool to push people toward the left.

For example, during that time where Bernie was like, one of the most popular guys in American politics, even though he's obviously bad, the people, seeing someone who's considered a leftist bring about even marginal good changes to their lives WILL see leftism in a more positive light or straight up look into socialism more!

So it can either serve as a tool to drop peoples guards at least or straight up help in bringing some people over to us.

I know none of this is perfect but by far the most important thing we can do right now is get more people on our side and we gotta use anything we can to do so

Edit: yeah you guys were right, I dunno what I was cooking with that second strategy (I removed it) but the first one still stands!

Luffy, while obviously not an anarchist in the sense of identifying himself as part of the formal anarchist movement, holds a big amount of shared ideals and sentiments.

First and most glaring of all, is that while he doesn't oppose every he sees hierarchy since he's friends with a number of monarchs, he does so because he believes that the people should be allowed to decide if they want to be ruled or not, he doesn't enforce his own beliefs on others.

We know this isn't his own belief because it has been stated multiple times in the story, that no matter what, he will not accept having any authority dictate his actions, he wants to be completely free from all coercion, that's what his whole character is about.

Secondly he also constantly unflinchingly breaks the law to correct any political Injustice he sees, he doesn't protest, he actually just fixes the problem, which is very very similar to direct action, one of the most foundational pillars of anarchist thought.

Now, I know that there are definitely some holes here and I definitely don't think he's supposed to be a classic anarchist, there's definitely a lot of stuff here that does at least thrust him into the vicinity of anarchism which makes me think that oda was probably trying to wave at the concept without showing his hand too much

With how striking his similarity to anarchism is, I can't imagine that oda didn't do it intentionally.

This post was mainly made cause I've seen a lot of people quickly dismiss the idea of anarchist Luffy but really it's not THAT far fetched to see him as a subtle allegory for anarchism