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[deleted] wrote

Reply to comment by _caspar_ in by !deleted26641

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_caspar_ wrote

I feel these are good introductions to anarchist thought for the "Overview":

Anarchism by Voltairine de Cleyre poetically breaks down different tendencies of the time, then describes her own

What is an Anarchist? by Émile Armand is another older, but eerily relevant take

The Anarchist Tension by Alfredo M. Bonanno is listed under "Further Reading" but really belongs in "Overview," as it sums up very well the anarchist position in the post-industrial era.

maybe someone knows a good contemporary intro that critically takes the internet age into account?

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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ziq wrote

Haha this "abide by my demands or you're an authoritarian" shtick is hilarious. Keep it up :8)

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[deleted] wrote

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ziq wrote

Each of those essays came about from convos on this site. My process is to have a long convo with people (especially anarchy noobs) where I answer questions and then edit my side of the convo into the first draft of an essay, post the essay to f/anarchism, which creates another convo as people ask more questions and offer feedback, then I take all that and add it to the next draft. Then I link it on reddit or anews and get more engagement, which leads to the final draft.

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[deleted] wrote

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ziq wrote (edited )

This is an anonymous online space, not a commune. Any random troll could easily make 30 accounts and use them to vote for an all-Stalin list. Democracy on the internet is like a well bucket with no bottom.

The simple reality is we're not equals. Some people in the space do a whole lot, while others are lurkers who do nothing, or newcomers who have a burst of activity for a week and then disappear never to be seen again. Those who haven't put in the time don't have any right to make an account and immediately dictate the content of the sidebar to people who have spent years working hard at curating the space.

You earn a say in how a space is run by contributing to it and building it up, not by showing up one day with a list of demands, insisting you be able to vote to remove the hard work of people who are actively engaged with the space and replace it with theory written by dead white men.

The people who do the work should absolutely be the people who manage the space, just like the editors and writers of an anarchist magazine get to decide what shows up in the magazine: not the readers who passively consume their content.

"The customer is always right" is a very capitalistic viewpoint, and it's essentially what you're doing here. It won't work because no one is paying me to use this site, quite the opposite in fact. I pay for everything month after month, I contribute the overwhelming majority of the original content, post about half of the links, start a big chunk of the conversations, and I do the majority of the admin work. As much as you'd like it to be true, this isn't an equal relationship. I'm not going to pretend we're all equal contributors just to placate ideological naivety.

The essays are part of the fabric of the site, they've been intimately informed by the site's green nihilist milieu, just as the wider anarchist sphere has been increasingly informed by the essays (see r/completeanarchy's sticky for instance).

Everything we've done here these past 4 years has been absorbed into the greater anarchist movement and taken it in new and interesting directions. Expecting us to do away with the fabric of the site overnight to meet the whims of one new user isn't reasonable. No essay by a historic anarchist can be as important as the ideas that were formed in these very pages by the people who inhabit this space.

It takes time to establish yourself in a new space, you can't reasonably expect everyone to change the fabric of the space to meet your personal notions of what anarchy should be. Removing everything we've created to suit your personal politics would only strip the forum of its unique identity and make it just another generic red circlejerk, indistinguishable from every left-space on reddit.

I think there are more accessible texts available

The sidebar has links to 3 different wikis: w/reading includes all kinds of literature and anyone can add to the list. w/anarchy101 are articles written by me and others for beginners that detail the basics of each anarchist school of thought and again, anyone can contribute to them if they're so inclined.

I really don't see how the 3rd w/ziq_essays wiki takes anything away from the other 2 wikis in the sidebar. Original content is what sets this site apart. The ideas the users of raddle have manifested over the years are collected for perpetuity in those essays.

These ideas, re-formatted into essays, are raddle's biggest contribution to the greater anarchist culture, and with any luck, our late night conversations analysing the ramifications of authority will outlive us all.

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[deleted] wrote

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[deleted] wrote

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Bezotcovschina wrote

Anyone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you already can create a topic with the proposed voting. Nothing stops you. Maybe, enough people will participate.

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_caspar_ wrote (edited )

I disagree. I think what someone believes matters quite alot, as it frames the story. a story has been told for many years that Chomsky's perspective is what anarchism either looks like, or should look like. this recuperative effect conflates anarchism with Chomsky's brand of democratic socialism, or maybe at his more radical moments, a sympathy with anarcho-syndicalism. because of his clout within the academy, various media outlets, and publishers, the myth has been able to propagate to the extent that he has become "the world’s most famous anarchist who isn’t one." - from Bob Black's review of "On Anarchism" (and Chomsky's position in general) which explains this myth in detail.

the problem I see with having that text in an intro to anarchist ideas list, is that it further propagates this myth.

thanks for offering to add suggestions, Ill try and think of some. /u/subrosa offered some good ones.

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