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ziq OP wrote (edited )

hi, thanks for your detailed and honest reply.

sunk cost fallacy

what's that?

any revolution will be forced to go through a process by which there is still some amount of hierarchy

that's why any half decent anarchist doesn''t believe in revolution. revolution IS hierarchy. every Marxist and fascist revolution in history has immediately resulted in mass murder of anarchists

And my whole thing about prisons was basically that I expected that they would be one such hierarchy by which it was unlikely to instantly remove from society due to the likely existence of reactionaries in the aftermath of a hypothetical revolution

well that's what MLs believe. a socialist state, socialist prisons, socialist cops, and then one day it somehow all fades away. what sets anarchists apart from marxists is we don't want 'temporary' authority, we reject all authority. it doesn't mean we're being unrealistic, it just means we don't desire a social system to govern people with, we reject outright all the systems that govern us. it's not unrealistic to do that, i'm doing it right now. i don't need to make a state and a prison and a police force and mass society before my anarchy is realized, it's already realized.

This is ironically more closely following the definition of anarchism used by post-leftists, specifically the one coined by Bob Black that anarchism is not a clearly defined ideology but a larger movement that works towards abolishing hierarchy over time.

post-leftists aren't looking to build a society, so you're misunderstanding that. anarchists reject all hierarchy, we don't accept less hierarchy or legitimate hierarchy or justified hierarchy and we don't negotiate with hierarchy or those who enforce it

Unfortunately I can't just delete it from the anarchist library to my knowledge)

sure you can, just ask u/subrosa or one of the other librarians to do it

and think that the whole social vs individual dichotomy is divisive bullshit made up by Bookchin whose behavior and attitudes were very bad choices to emulate.

yes

And that my opinion on the post-left is that their concerns are valid, but I disagree with their particular proposals as the best solution to those concerns.

i don't think they make proposals for solutions, post-left in my mind is about accepting that there is no blueprint to govern people with, or to 'solve' society with

some anarchists think the justified part refers to that certain situations temporarily justify not being able to remove all hierarchy all at once

hierarchy will never be removed. not all at once, not little by little, never. hierarchy doesn't go away, it needs to be constantly burned down

w/what_anarchy_means

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[deleted] wrote

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

sunk cost fallacy is basically that you remain invested in something that you shouldn't be because you've already invested into it

Story of my life.

I'm not a post-leftist

The problem with post-leftists is they assist in associating the left wing with anarchy when they're two different things. you can't base your identity on overcoming something that was never real to begin with

social change as constant struggle

That sounds like a waste of a life.

if you want to make more people anarchist

See my previous reply. Complete and total waste of a incredibly brief and beautiful and sorrowful existence

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Exlurker wrote

You said that authority had to be 'constantly burned down' so why are you against 'social change as constant struggle'?

Besides, my attitude's always been if it's not technically impossible it's just improbable.

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

social struggle is activism, it's protest, it's ritual, it's imposing sanctimonious moral values on others, it's collectivizing people into in-groups and out-groups so they can do war with each other, it's entrenched in dogmatic ideology and personality cults, it's self-aggrandizing and endlessly congratulatory, it's a constant push and pull between the system and those who struggle to seize control of it to reboot it in their own image

tearing authority apart needn't be any of those things

destroying authority where you see it isn't a struggle for revolution, it doesn't need to be done in pursuit of anything bigger than a simple personal desire to watch tangible implements of authority burn right in front of you and thus no longer blight your senses

the actions anarchists take don't need to be in pursuit of an imagined utopian society or an imagined epic battle between good and evil where we cast ourselves as the heroic protagonists in a social war of our own imagining

our actions don't need to be connected to anything beyond what we see and feel right in front of us, in our immediate vicinity. they don't need to be presented as part of some grand galaxy-brain plan to build a new, 'better' society or government that will solve all of humanity's problems

i can paint over a billboard or spike a tree or tear up a road or spread dandelion seeds or stab a dictator without it being a struggle to upend society to conform to my values

i can do those things just because i want to, without ever thinking anything I do will lead to a social revolution to remake the world in my image

Or in Aragorn!'s words:

(Strugglismo is) a critique of boring, stale, ineffective, ritualized activity and, recently, has given birth to a bunch of stale, boring, sanctimonious projects.

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kin wrote

I was thinking in a reply to this bc your take is what I try to convey in my irl discussions with left activists.

Besides my lack of oratory skills, trying to navigate between different understandings and different ideologies is hard. Whenever I try to bring anything remotely anarchist people shut down or assume the Anarchism™ is that of Ocalan, the anarchy without chaos, or the libertarian-socialism.

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ziq OP wrote

someone needs to write an essay embracing anarchy as chaos. the whole 'anarchy is order' thing makes me queasy

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kin wrote

You probably will write at some point your own version of it. I think there are some texts that deal with this at a superficial level, I am trying to recall a specific author, bit probably it will be a more poetic approach or full of spooks and very niche like

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Exlurker wrote

I really don't get it and probably never will, I get your idea about social struggle not being the same as tearing down authority but the rest just doesn't follow.

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