Since every structure and idea has a flaw about it, whether it be big or small, I want to see what you guys think is a generally agreed upon issue about Anarchy, or what you feel is problematic with it.
Hey guys so I would say currently im more of a council communist than an anarchist but I think we share a lot of similarities in view point.
I was watching an Anark video about constructing the revolution and to be honest it made my heart sing to imagine a day when worker co ops and neighborhood councils and free schooling for all would be a thing in my city. A world in which everyone was equal and people took care of eachother and the economy was based on need and not the greedy few hoarding all resources.
But then I thought of how in my lifetime that will probably never happen. It almost hurts to have a dream for society that I might not see.
How do you get over that and does anyone relate?
(Ive thought of after college wanting to start a worker co ops or something to that effect to more ease this desire I have for a new future.)
I'm kind of new to anarchism and I just need some theory suggestions and maybe some theorist suggestions too !!
Attended one a while back to raise money for a cool group of lads (not gonna go too in depth lol). It made it's money back, and everyone had a great night.
Anyone organised anything?
Anyone got any tips? It seems like a good way to create community, intersect with various groups and also normalise leftist ideas/groups. The one I attended was openly anti-authoritarian, anti-fascist etc, and was free if you couldn't pay.
Anyone with relevant insight or tips - how to adverise, organise, security concerns etc, please respond.
Obviously raising children will always be a necessity, but anarchists fundamentally despise the idea of anybody answering to or having power over another, which is one of the cornerstones of parent/child relationships. At the same time, so-called "cool parents" who never deny their kids anything and always let them have and do whatever they want can be just as much of a recipe for disaster as being overtly abusive.
So, what would you guys do in your approach to parenting without any kind of hierarchy?
Disclaimer: I mean Leftist ethnonationalism. Nazism feels like a whole different can of worms to me given its inability to defend itself to the left
I feel like I cant avoid religious ethnonationalism when organizing outside of queer spaces. As the child of a "judeo-christian" evangelical preacher, I feel like many of the leftist spaces i occupy basically emulate zionism for themselves with their liberation ideology. As a mexican American I cant deal with the Aztlan ideology basically being fake aztec zionism but it's the biggest recruiting tool the movement has. I used to go to black churches for communist meetings and had to stop once I started seeing NOI and BHI stuff becoming mainstream discourse.
Everywhere I turn I feel like I see people touting literal nationalist movements as the end all be all of our liberation. These are the only organizers who have enough sway to get anything done. It feels like all praxis is being drowned out by people who want to be better than others.
I feel like a naive child hoping for racial unity when folks are using Israel's crimes (and frankly, israel's ideology) to justify why people of different races shouldn't organize together.
I know some other anarchists must have had similar experiences, especially in the past few years. Tell me how you've been dealing with it/not dealing with it.
First of all, I want to be honest with you guys: I'm genuinely very new to all of this. I’ve never been involved in activism or close to anything political because the idea of taking action in real life repulsed me, so please, excuse in advance my huge ignorance and the very likely stupidity of my questions.
Okay, let's start. I'm very new to all of this; in fact, I'm still researching the libertarian movement. From what I’ve been reading around here, many people have had a similar journey to mine: you start out a bit communist, you get disillusioned by Stalin, disappointed when you learn more about Lenin, and you end up seeing the flaws in everything that has to do with the state and hierarchy... As I said, I'm new to this, I've just recently started reading about the topic. I started with David Graeber—I loved "Debt" and read some fragments of "The Dawn of Everything"—then came Bookchin, and from there, what I read most now is anything related to Abdullah Öcalan. I know they might not be strictly anarchists, but anyway, I'm generally very interested in practical implementation, Makhnovshchina, Zapatistas... I want to know what an assembly is like, how it works, failures, successes, everything.
Getting back to the main topic: I'm from a small city in Spain, and I emphasize small. There's a CNT building, but not much else when it comes to anarchism. Everything else is or communist parties that are as we call it here "casposos" or some antifascist organization.
To be honest, I don't see myself joining a union, but I want to know: besides attending the different talks and debates organized by the CNT, should I be doing anything else? If I feel a certain organization might be interesting to me even if it's socialist, like CJS (Coordinadora Juvenil Socialista), is it a good idea to approach them even if they aren't anarchist? Does anyone have a similar situation to mine?
What are your thoughts on “piracy” of creative works and copyrighted materials?
Do you reject the institution of copyright itself as a state-enforced monopoly and an extension of private property, or do you accept it to some degree?
And do you think paying creators for their work is important from the perspective of mutual aid and solidarity, or do you believe that knowledge and culture are inherently a commons, and that it is better to make works freely available and shared with the community without charge?
If not paying for works became widespread, how do you think creators should sustain their livelihoods? Do you envision methods outside the market and money, such as mutual aid, donations, or collaborative production?
Also, if you yourself created a work, would you welcome other people freely sharing and redistributing it without permission, or would you feel resistance to that?
Furthermore, do you feel any tension or contradiction between “respecting the labor of creators” and “allowing culture to circulate freely”? If so, how do you reconcile that?
Assuming you reject copyright, what concrete anarchist mechanisms or practices do you think could allow creators to sustain themselves while still widely sharing their work?
I'm having trouble figuring out what definition would fit my views on the world and politics. I believe that the conditions and contradictions of capitalism will bring about it's demise. I believe that the American empire as it exists will fall through the aforementioned crises of capitalism and domestic oppression. I do not believe it will be a revolution in the way of storming the whitehouse with guns but that the revolution must be based on mutual aid and community strength in mitigating the collapse of empire. I also believe though that a government and "order" will and should naturally reform and that government must be a force that serves the people, defends the people, ensures distribution of goods, and maintaining foreign relations. I consider myself an Anarcho Communist currently as I appreciate the ideas of Marx and Lenin but I don't see the revolution as they describe it as realistic in any way in the modern day let alone the US but I also don't see a truly anarchist society being viable in the long term
I can't really find any works that are explicitly anti capitalism. I come from a Marxist background, so I'm used to being spoilt for choices. thanks in advance
Curious to know how money would go around with a very free ideology.
Hi,
I don't know if I worded the title correctly but I was wondering if someone could explain why it seems public resources are referred to as resources owned by the government instead of being owned by the people. I'd imagine government and corporate resources under Capitalist systems would be better defined as private resources but it sounds backwards? How do Anarchists understand this?
I've come to beliefs that are very similar to anarchism, so I've started exploring the space a little. I come from a somewhat conservative background so this is my first time ever intentionally interacting with the far left. I've met several people (mostly online, in-person is hard for me atm) who have been wonderful. Calm, knowledgeable, principled, helpful, in one case inspiring, just generally cool people who I'd like to be around more and to learn from.
Coming from a space that is decidedly outside the far left, one thing I've been worried about is the really angry people conservative groups like to focus on. I know that they'll be over-represented in outside media because they're A) more visible and B) good for opposition propaganda. I was curious to see what the actual vibe was like. Mostly I've been really happy with it. And then I met (online, thankfully) this one asshole who was constantly hostile, single-minded, made no attempt at even trying to understand the perspectives of people they were disagreeing with, and blatantly stated that they didn't really think anyone on the other side of the political spectrum could be redeemed. They had cause for thinking this way, a history of violence against themselves and people they cared about, but that doesn't make me feel any safer around someone so intractably angry, judgemental, and close-minded. They decried as dangerous things I and other another person said which veered even slightly away from their perspective or context.
This kind of person is exactly what I was afraid of finding on the far left. Quite apart from the intrinsic problems, I just don't have the mental/emotional resources to handle someone like that. I want to find someplace where I can help actually make our rotting world better, and to feel like I can belong, not where I have to worry about stepping one toe outside of someone's party line with no recourse except capitulation. It's not a matter of disagreement, I'm quite happy to have a productive disagreement where I learn something (and I did learn from this person), I'm just terrified of people who might hear me say one thing which disagrees with them and decide that I am a lost cause to be condemned.
I know that this might sound like an over-reaction to one hostile person, but I guess that's part of the point. I have my own trauma issues I'm trying to heal and my emotional resources are low. I still want to pursue a future free from ubiquitous tyranny, and where neither I nor anyone else has to worry about their basic needs. And so I need to know, I guess, how common people like this really are, and whether anarchist spaces tend to accept them.
I am a young Black-Anarchist living in the American South.
All I see is a future where islands of wealthy, highly-militarized, climate-controlled, AI surveillance states exist in a sea of underdeveloped, natural disaster wrecked, wastelands.
The time to stop this was a century ago (maybe even more) and I fear that my life will be spent watching the sun set on the liberal international rules based order. Real change will take centuries that we simply don't have.
Hi all,
Bit of a really niche question that probably only applies to a minority of you, but in the UK and I know in a lot of other countries as a immigrant you would need to make an oath of allegiance to the King, his descendants and any successors, this is also required for a few niche roles( admittedly roles any anarchist would unlikely to be in but still) where this is also required, I know sinn feinn abstain from it and Tony Benn tried to alter it but was turned down. How would you navigate it, would you just say the oath, maybe crossing your fingers, or risk being deported or losing out on that job?
I recently saw a Facebook post from a self proclaimed "anarchist" TERF who just repeats the classic TERF speaking points: "Trans people are erasing women" "Trans women are perverted men" "Trans men are manipulated lesbians" "Gender is a purely biological reality with menstruating people being victims and penised people being natural rapists", etc...
Luckily most anarchist communities here have entirely driven TERFs out and queer anarchism is one of the predominant movements inside anarchism right now. But it hasn't always been that way
Around 2019 there was a huge feminist wave all over Latin America. Here in Mexico feminist protests became massive. Most of the women who participated were just normal people who wanted very basic rights which didn't (and still don't) exist in Mexico. The movement seemed to be a response to how normalized gender violence was (and still is) with society victim-blaming women for rape, femicides, etc... 99% of the time.
However many of the "leading voices" in the movement (groups such as Brujas del Mar) were outright TERFs with ties to right-wing parties which were dismissed as conspiracy theories back then.
These groups were also highly eurocentric and marginalizing against poor and indigenous women. They almost entirely based their feminism on white European/US writers and portrayed themselves as 17th century white/US/European witches, while ignoring we have indigenous feminist writers and witches here too. Class or race oppression was completely to be dismissed in the name of "sorority"
I still identified as a cis woman back then and I remember receiving highly racist and classist comments inside of those spaces (while being accused of breaking sorority when denouncing them), not to mention the hate I received when I started to identify as NB and then as a man.
To the point of these post, many of these TERFs proclaimed themselves as anarchists and were pretty much accepted in anarchist spaces, there were many incidents of self-proclaimed "anarcha-fem" black blocs beating down trans women during protests and seemingly focusing on attacking trans women over anythign else (Look up Mikaelah Drullard and her incident at an 8 March protest for more info on this kind of stuff)
Most anarchist communities broke down during the pandemic and took a lot to rebuild afterwards. Fortunately queer anarchist highly participated in the rebuilding while most TERFs took their masks off and became downright conservative afterwards. Unfortunately TERFs are still highly relevant and accepted in academia and universities such as UNAM where "queer-patriarchy" and "erasure of women" being common themes in talks and classes promoted by the authorities. (You'll never see the TERFs giving these talks and classes denouncing gender violence from the school authorities....)
I was talking with a (principled) LeftCom friend earlier today who said that not ALL anarchists are moralists because that’s a generalized statement, but that a lot of them are. But it was a response to a Marxist who told me anarchists are moralists. I forgot their exact reasoning, but the LeftCom said something along the lines of “anarchists say hierarchies are morally or justifiably bad, and then they work backwards to create the society they want rid of it.” I also asked what separates/prevents communizors from identifying as anarchists and they said that communizors don’t really view hierarchies as a focal point.
Maybe it’s just me, but I also don’t understand what the project of communization is. They dislike the state and share almost all points with anarchists, but are they doing mutual aid or prisoner support and food not bombs and stuff?
But i guess back to my larger question, are anarchists moralists? doesn’t that assume that anarchists don’t base their claims and perspectives off current material conditions? Does that make anarchists materialists, and to what extent does Marxism have a “monopoly” on the application of materialism if its most popular form is historical materialism?
thanks
Edit: I think there’s a miscommunication going on. It was a Marxist who called anarchists moralists, not the leftcom. it was the leftcom who said not ALL anarchists are moralists