r/libertarianunity

I think Murray Rothbard put it well when he said that once upon a time, wars between rulers were seen for what they are: wars between rulers. But the rise of nationalism, particularly after the 1800s, helped obfuscate the nature of political conflict and make people believe that wars were between nations; essentially, my tribe vs. yours. It tapped into a very primitive and hard-to-quell aspect of human nature, and the result is that now, people view criticisms of the state as criticisms of their nation, their family, which needless to say is not easy for many to handle.

Mythology is also a powerful tool in the maintenance of state rule over their cattle. Myths are frequently told in order to add a touch of magic to otherwise ordinary phenomenon which would not be tolerated if people viewed them literally, such as in the case of state extortion. You'll hear all sorts of myths depending on where you are about how the nation was born, how the state was born out of a unanimous agreement between the government and the governed, etc. What's sad is that even among libertarians, who are often minarchists, people will tell stories about how the birth of a state allowed for law and order which allows people to have wealth and political freedoms that otherwise would not have come about, implying that if you enjoy the life you have now, you owe your gratitude to the state.

I think the difficult task here, for voluntarists that is, is getting people to disconnect their emotional ties to their nations from the idea that you need a state in order to have it. You can have cultures, civility and economic luxuries without a violent ruling class imposing their demands on everybody. It's a difficult task, but one that's imperative in the effort to create a free world.

I am 100% an anarchist, and a proud anarchist of color. Anti-hierarchy, anti-state, anti-capitalist, none of my commitments to these values are being questioned. My problem, as someone who makes zines on anarchist theory and used to make videos on anarchism on TikTok before being fed up with MLs, is that nearly all other leftist ideologies talk about liberation. Whether it is people talking about Marxism, Marxist-Leninism, Maoism, POC variations of Marxism, etc.

I fundamentally do not understand how these ideologies can remotely think or envision any, and I mean ANY, of liberation while intentionally upholding the state and not wanting it gone immediately. People then ask me how would the state be immediately gone? My response is always "the state won't be gone tomorrow, but we HAVE to create alternative structures OUTSIDE of the state to be dependent on." I understand that approach is slightly more "defensive" than "offensive" since we're not immediately disrupting the state other than excluding our presence in it. But either way, the brain's base is "I do not want a state" and the result is "I will build dual power" or "I will attack the state," both types of anarchists are invited to my cookout.

My problem lies with every single statist ideology. Do these people completely reject the existence of state violence and state domination? It makes incredible and inherent sense that anarchism, an ideology completely rid of the state, situates itself as a libertarian ideology since it treats individual liberty and personal sovereignty as the highest values. Few days ago I posted this

>Marxist-Leninism is only successful if you view success as something being able to grab power. Change your measuring stick to measure actual freedom, actual liberation, sovereignty, and autonomy, and it’s an incredibly failed ideology.

>“if the objectives of those who used the DC [democratic centralist] methods were simply to seize power, then their record during the 20th century was impressive. It has proved itself as brutally efficient and capable of outdoing anything the bourgeois forces are capable of.” - Russell “Maroon” Shoatz, “The Dragon and the Hydra.”

and someone retweeted it saying:

>lemme just tally up my Freedom Points

To which i quickly responded:

>Just say you don’t care about actual freedom, no need to talk all smug about it. this is how i know people who don’t care about that actually aren’t liberationists nor are they interested in genuine liberation for people. they just want some abstract ass revolution with zero actual progress to humanity.

Lately I've been getting more and more frustrated with leftists north of the X-axis in the authoritarian realm. I don't understand how they can have such detailed and complex analyses on damn near everything, and then turn around say they want to seize the state. From my perspective, anyone who wants to seize the state is not anti-state because they need it intact for it to be under their control. State-centered visions of liberation are completely meaningless to me, useless, and completely counter-revolutionary to me no matter how you spin it. How did going after the state become seen as something revolutionary if the state is a bourgeois creation strictly to oppress the many by decisions made by a few?

In my understanding, state socialism advocates for state ownership of the means of production. Industries and natural resources are state-owned, and like all types of anti-state socialists at the time thought it was the most effective form of socialism (which is a weird blanket statement to make on behalf of all socialists, but anyways). Economic systems of ML states were not socialist due to the continued use of commodity production and wages as remuneration. Even if Marxist-Leninists are anti-state because *eventually* they want it to wither away, why do they advocate for state socialism? How have they single-handedly convinced people that liberation will come and the state will disappear after a revolution that puts them in charge? It's completely unfathomable and illogical.

As someone studying Black and African anarchisms, I can say with my chest that there were severe problems with countries in the African post-colonial period that embraced state socialism, this is both my opinion and the opinion of African sociologists. It was attempted by 21 countries within the continent and I think less than 10 times in Europe. I do not understand why Marxist-Leninists or any other authoritarian leftist ideology do not look to the failures of state socialism and say that it was not a socialism problem but a state problem like African anarchists have diagnosed.

In Tanzania, Nyerere wanted to mix traditional precolonial communal values with the then-current ideas of socioeconomic development. His view of socialism did not focus directly on class struggle but rather on the family unit. From 1968-1975 he led Tanzania through a period called villagization which was the consolidation of rural Tanzania into village-style agricultural communities where resources would be collectively shared. His logic makes sense to me, even the part where he said village production would remove the culture of capitalist value and power. But nearly all of the state of Tanzania's agricultural production was done by independent owned farms that were not absorbed into the new state. In the article "Deconstructing Ujamaa: The Legacy of Julius Nyerere in the Quest for Social and Economic Development in Africa," they say that the cultural and lifestyle changes they were expected to embrace by forced collectivization didn't make sense. Even though 96% of children went to school (50% of which were girls), female life expectancy went up, and maternal mortality rates went down, overtime "the state assumed a degree of control over village management and production that some historians have labeled coercive and autocratic, claiming this contradicted the democratic values Ujamaa espoused." What is the trade-off here? How do we as libertarian socialists/anarchists view the strong state oversight of villages against clearly good rates and %'s that were in the green?

In Ghana, Nkrumah adopted a strategy of increasing state-controlled services while putting restrictions on privately owned ones. 60% of bank deposits were at state-run banks, 17% of sea cargo was handled by state-run firms, 27% of industrial production was ran by the state, and the state controlled 35% of total imports. Completely centralized planning, economic mismanagement, and an authoritarian regime is what described Ghana at this point. There was a suppression of political opposition, no free and fair elections, and Ghana became a one-party state. Yet today he is heralded as a Pan-African hero and anticolonial Socialist revolutionary. How do we consistently, CONSISTENTLY, use a measuring stick that that almost NEVER measures actual freedom of the people or sovereignty of the Ghanaian or Tanzania villages? Why is the pure and raw ingenuity of the African peoples (NOT leaders) almost never depended on?

Even in the case of Tanzania. Why did the state pass something the villages were clearly not ready for? Now they are in the drivers' seat of the state's entire production? I don't remotely see that as a problem of socialism because obviously there would be some variant of this European ideology that would value that non-state version of decentralized organizing. So once again I see it 100% as a state problem. Even if the %'s of literacy rates went up and the %'s of mortality went down, HOW did it go down? Could those rates have not changed had there been no state? Obviously those decisions about healthcare and education still need to be made, but shit how were they made BEFORE the state and BEFORE colonization? Sometimes people wag in my face that state socialism (or i guess, state capitalism technically) lifted 900M people out of poverty in China. First off, what is described as poverty? As of 2022, 21% of Chinese people are living in poverty under $5.50. So what if you make $6, is that not poverty anymore? That's still pretty shit. Even in India, 34% lives under a dollar a day? That's ridiculous to me, the arbitrary line of poverty makes no sense because people who earn $2 a day in India or $6 a day in China are still living IN POVERTY if not extreme poverty. Why is China seen as a successful socialist state by MLs and Maoists? People both in capitalist and state socialist societies are suffering. I don't care if they got a bullet train, they're not free! Even dictators and capitalists can build roads, that doesn't justify dictatorships or capitalists.

I know this has turned into a weird rant talking about state socialism and stuff, but my point hopefully is weaved throughout and I just don't understand it. Since authority and the state is clearly a problem in their own right along with being a core part of capitalism, why are these other ideologies such as Marxist-Leninism absolutely winning the propaganda war against anarchism? I'm done ranting, someone help me understand this.

Slowly the authorities are reducing and taking away our rights. It is like boiling a frog. If you put a frog in boiling water, it will jump out. But if you put a frog in lukewarm water, and slowly raise the temperature to boiling, it will get boiled alive. I don't know if this is true or myth. But it reveals two things. People will allow things to slowly deteriorate, without taking defensive action. And humans are cruel enough to experiment on frogs by boiling them.

You only have those rights that you defend. If you do nothing, while they take away your privacy and freedom, they will continue to take them away, until we are living in a totalitarian surveillance state. So exercise your freedom, your freedom to express your opinion, your freedom to protest. As many of you as possible, they can't put all of you in prison.

The mutual aid group that I am with has been developing and testing an app for collective organizing and routing requests for aid. We hope to develop this into a fully open-source, self-hosted, end-to-end encrypted, and federated node based program. It would allow collectives to communicate, offer services, form coalitions with other collectives, and develop projects that can operate across a number of different collectives.

Everything is consent based, and decisions can be unmade. Collective decisions are made by petition, and the thresholds required to approve those petitions are determined by aggregated governance preferences between all of the members of that collective. There are no super-users or admin.

Anyways, I won’t get too deep into the weeds, but we are looking for other folks to help test the program, and offer feedback on the GitHub repository. We have started an open alpha test server, and will share the link to that below.

There are warnings on the app, but the security features are not yet complete, so obviously do not use any personal identifying information. I feel like I shouldn’t have to say that, but just in case. Please don’t.

Lastly, there is a feedback form linked at the top of every page, so if you decide to try it out, please use the feedback function! Bugs, feature recommendations, security concerns, whatever, we want it all.

GitHub repository: https://github.com/anarchos501/commons.git

Commons test server: https://commons.chat

Thanks!

Hello everyone

Given how the former head mod is inactive and the subreddit subsequently dead, i have taken the liberty so as to assume the role of new head mod in this community.

The biggest mistake my predecessor made was not appointing other mods, which is a mistake i wont be repeating.

Please feel free to use this post as a mod application forum in the comments. Alternatively you can use mod-mail. We will attempt to create a as politically diverse mod-team as possible. I have taken the liberty so as to already appoint XXTPMBTI as a mod.

/r/libertarianunity is ready for a fresh start, new energy, new direction, and someone like you to bring it back to life. If you’ve been thinking about growing your impact without starting from scratch, this is your chance!

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