Comments
ziq wrote
Aaron needs some re-education too.
Esperaux OP wrote
Ziq I've read your paragraph complaining about democracy it seems you conflate democratic decision making in general with the tyranny of democracy by the state. Democracy being used to supposedly legitimize the authority of the state is an issue but there is absolutely a time and place when people can utilize democratic decisions to confront problems within their community. If you feel strongly against participating in any form of democracy and just splintering off into small affinity groups with others that's fine too but that doesn't mean people who engage in democratic decision making to confront issues within their community is any less valid.
ziq wrote
you conflate democratic decision making in general with the tyranny of democracy by the state.
I really don't think I do, but regardless, this video is in favor of representative democracy and building clear hierarchies, so it kind of demonstrates the various forms of democracy ought to be conflated if americhists are so quick to forgo the "direct" form they're so fond of sermonizing for, seemingly oblivious to the claimed differences between the 2 forms.
Esperaux OP wrote
It's specifically referring to the use of spokes as a means of conveying decisions voted upon in a manner that doesn't require everyone holding frequent mandatory meetings to participate in. It's not that far off from the forms of democratic decision making employed by the CNT-FAI.
"What is the job of a spoke?
The "spoke" does not have to be the leader of the group, and holds no Democratic authority to make decisions on behalf of the group, unless otherwise granted. The job of the spoke is to go to the spokes Council meeting, bring up concerns or points of note and to take back the information to their respective teams so they can ratify what was proposed.
The spoke can also be given the ability to make decisions on behalf of each team if the team agrees to this. If the spoke makes a decision on behalf of the team that the team does not approve of, the spoke can be removed from the representative position"
In this specific context this was formed out of the efforts of a community to coordinate and organize something like a community fridge. You really wanna die on the hill that the community fridge was a tyrannical concept because the people involved decided that democratic decision making relayed through spokes persons would help streamline the process? Come on, every region and area is going to have a different answer to similar problems. The point of anarchism is not to provide a specific blueprint for everyone to follow but to be able to make clear the common problems for each unique community and individual to confront and solve in the most practical leaderless manner. Again I also stress this is only one presented solution to a situation that can have many different solutions. This isn't a competition to proclaim which form of decision making is the most anarchist.
ziq wrote (edited )
Replicating CNT-FAI's blatant authoritarianism 100 years after they were all murdered doesn't seem tenable to me, but what do I know, I'm an anti-social scumbag who doesn't think forced labor / concentration camps / prison guards / society arranged around factories is something to aspire to. I have no interest in replicating all the systems of authority but with "the people" in charge. My anarchy is purely motivated out of self-interest and it isn't in my self-interest to perpetuate workerist ideology, prisons, firing squads, and certainly not an ideology that builds concentration camps for dissenters to do forced labor in and murders nuns for refusing to renounce their faith.
spokes are just politicians with a new name, or at least that's what they'll morph into given a few months of concentrated power
Esperaux OP wrote
I didn't say it was necessary to emulate everything from the CNT-FAI though I am curious what you plan to do with fascist POWs in the middle of a war. Also comparing a spoke to someone being elected based on their campaign funding and ultimately answering to those who donate the most to their cause grossly oversimplifies the matter. Again this is also referring to situations like organizing a community fridge. Such a simple project in fact requires a lot of people and not everyone can just go to every single annual meeting.
ziq wrote
And I'd also like to point out that you're attempting to legitimize spokescouncils as anarchist constructs by associating them with CNT-FAI, so me pointing out how absolutely shitty and authoritarian those people were is completely within the bounds of the discourse you've set. If they thought institutional slavery and rounding up and murdering unarmed women was a-ok, why should anarchists entertain their representative democracy? The point is they're not worth emulating.
ziq wrote
And no, slavery isn't a "justified hierarchy" because it's done in the name of democracy in the workplace. I can't believe how ridiculous red anarchists are if slavery is now considered righteous and worthy.
Esperaux OP wrote
When did I justify slavery as a "justified hierarchy" now you're leaping to assumptions. Let me remind you this was surrounding the organization of a community fridge. Though I'm curious in what useful capacity you plan to fight for your own freedom if those who seek to suppress your freedom are either people you will choose to just set free at your own detriment or outright execute with no respect for their autonomy to life.
ziq wrote
When did I justify slavery as a "justified hierarchy"
How about the end of this paragraph, for instance:
Though I'm curious in what useful capacity you plan to fight for your own freedom if those who seek to suppress your freedom are either people you will choose to just set free at your own detriment or outright execute with no respect for their autonomy to life.
Let me dedoublespeak that for you.
Killing people who try to kill you isn't respectful to their autonomy so you should enslave them instead.
ziq wrote (edited )
i.e. "slavery is justified, killing isn't". You've justified slavery; a hierarchy, and attacked the force of self defense; which is not a hierarchy.
Esperaux OP wrote
Why would your mind jump directly towards making someone your slave? You do realize it's possible to resolve a situation without 1. taking it upon yourself to just murder an individual 2. letting them loose to overall harm both your own individual autonomy and that of others 3. turning them into only a slave with no ability to actually reintegrate in a society if they so desire
ziq wrote
If you're going to keep moving the goalposts, then I'm done. Killing a fascist who is trying to kill you is self defense, not murder. I didn't promote slavery, you did.
Esperaux OP wrote (edited )
I never promoted slavery and it's hypocritical of you to claim you denounce slavery but not see the issues of putting the entire lives and autonomy of others into the hands of other individuals. At that point it's just a rule of might makes right. Arguing from the position that you are opposed to the imprisonment of POWs in the name of freedom just to then claim you support killing them anyways is completely contradictory.
ziq wrote (edited )
What don't you understand about my position? I don't believe in assembling an army to fight a civil war to assert an ideology on a country, so I'm incapable of taking POWs. If I'm in a position where someone is trying to kill me, I'm going to defend myself, by killing them if necessary. That doesn't contradict with my ethical stance against taking slaves. Using the force of self defense against people who are trying to kill you does not violate their freedom. Forcing them to be your slaves after the fact, does violate their freedom.
I never promoted slavery
You quite literally justified slavery by saying killing fascists who are trying to kill you is a violation of their freedom, so taking them as slaves is more (moral).
My ethics are pretty easy to understand. If someone violates my autonomy, freedom and survival, I get to fight back in any way I need to in order to preserve my life. Taking them as slaves has nothing to do with preserving my life and is thus unethical.
Esperaux OP wrote (edited )
Your position is nonsensical and contradictory. People don't live in bubbles. They're inherently social creatures. You as an individual inherently rely on other individuals. We are not talking about a single individual trying to kill you. We are talking about a full blown fascist army. It's not up to you as an individual to decide if there's a conflict or not. Conflicts have existed even before the state. Individuals survive and protect their autonomy best when working with other individuals.
This is practically a liberal take to focus on this issue from a purely individualist perspective with no regards for other outside systemic factors.
Also again with the slave argument. No one is defending slavery. I'm simply pointing out that in a conflict it's unreasonable to either execute all your POWs or just set them loose.
ziq wrote
You are not the general of a socialist military force trying to establish a new world order. I refuse to buy into your fantasy. I'm not a general in a war. I'm a nobody on an internet forum.
Justifying slavery is justifying slavery, your reasons for justifying it ("My ideology is better than my slaves' ideology") don't change the fact that you're justifying it. Someone is defending slavery: you.
Esperaux OP wrote (edited )
Again you're deflecting from the actual point. We are discussing history right now not hypotheticals. A war occurred where a fascist military was sweeping across the country. In response anarchist militias organized against this military. The anarchists were not perfect but that is what happened. Now how exactly does this liberal view of yourself as an isolated individual fit into this? Do you think that people shouldn't have come together to fight the fascists at all? What do you think should've happened to the POWs?
As an anarchist you of all people should be aware generals are often not the ones to actually fight and die in these wars.
Also I'm done with the slavery nonsense you keep trying to accuse me of supporting slavery because you have no actual response.
ziq wrote
I'd kill a nun-killing democrat just as soon as I'd kill a democrat-killing fascist if either of them violated my autonomy or tried to involve me in their war to control the factories.
The mistake you keep making is assuming I'm on the side of syndies just because they support an alternative mode of production. I support no mode of production. I'm an off-grid remote mountain recluse who has no interest in participating in society beyond what I'm forced to do to survive.
If you're not the general in your fantasy then you don't need to keep justifying taking slaves. Let the fantasy general do that so you can just blindly follow orders and sacrifice your life for the great struggle and not have to think so hard about the ethics of your actions.
Esperaux OP wrote
Nun killing democrat? What do American liberals have to do with nun killing?
Social anarchists don't mind people being reclusive. Funny enough I live off in the woods by a mountain too.
Also modes of production aren't something that exist just because people "support" it. Just because someone doesn't support the capitalist mode of production doesn't mean they no longer operate under it.
Also you keep using the slaves and general talking point to deflect. This was an event that happened in reality. It happened in history. A fascist army was attacking and anarchists organized and fought back in response. What do you think should've been done to the POWs in this situation? Do you think people shouldn't have organized to fight back against fascists?
ziq wrote
I didn't say it was necessary to emulate everything from the CNT-FAI
You promote their govermentalism, so nun executions and forced labor shouldn't be too far removed from your imagination since they're an inevitable side effect of government and collective authority in general. What workerist society doesn't have forced labor and violence against women? Civilization, slavery and patriarchy are one and the same.
If you declare your group to be righteous and sacred and opposing groups to be bad and a threat to your new world order, it's easy to justify any manner of atrocities against any number of enemies.
Obviously defenseless nuns aren't an active threat to your blessed egalitarian factories, but the collective is going to perceive any and all ideological outliers as dire threats to the revolution in need of purging. Thus is the nature of ideological-born warfare in the name of world-building.
I am curious what you plan to do with fascist POWs in the middle of a war
I don't intend to lead a war because I'm not a government, but I sure as hell wouldn't enslave people if I was personally engaged in violent conflict with them. I'd either kill them or set them loose, not force them to do labor for me at gunpoint. How is slavery an anarchist option? If you need slaves to keep your machines running, maybe the machines aren't worth it and maybe, just maybe, you've lost touch with the entire notion of liberation from tyranny.
Esperaux OP wrote
Have you considered that maybe people could take lessons and learn from the past to apply what did work and what didn't? Also you seem to be going heavy on the CNT-FAI aspect but two factors remain in the fact that while there where cases of labor and killings of nuns that does not uniformly describe or judge the overall situation that occurred and again over simplifies what occurred. Also I'm pretty sure I already stressed I'm not saying the CNT-FAI has to be emulated in every aspect so I'm not too sure what you're getting at.
Also wars and conflict are issues that anarchists of any kind will eventually have to confront. If your choice when interacting with a fascist actively participating in a movement to suppress your freedom and you admit you will either just let them go to further suppress and murder anarchists or just outright execute them I'd say it's a lot more human to just let them keep their lives. Also I'm not even going to bother justifying slavery since I agree coercive labor shouldn't be required though again I will say if your choice is between executing a fascist POW or letting them keep their lives and further having them aid in efforts against fascism I think regardless it's less authoritarian to just outright murdering POWs.
ziq wrote
learn from the past to apply what did work and what didn't?
None of it worked. They recreated authority with themselves at the reigns, and then they all got slaughtered and fascists ruled Spain for decades.
I'm fully advocating learning from the past. Don't do what they did. Don't remake the authority of the state on a smaller scale and claim it's righteous this time because you're awesome and democratic and your factories only dump waste in the river on Tuesdays.
Also you seem to be going heavy on the CNT-FAI aspect
They're your entire argument for why representative spokescouncil democracy is anarchist, so what else do you expect me to engage with?
while there where cases of labor and killings of nuns that does not uniformly describe or judge the overall situation that occurred and again over simplifies what occurred
You sound a whole lot like a tankie insisting we view Stalin's massacres through a dialectical lens. It doesn't simplify anything, they decided the Church institution was their ideological enemy (it was), and took their war against reactionaries to defenseless nuns. They murdered them in cold blood.
What's the nuance I'm missing here? Were the nuns actually deserving of being murdered because they dared to resist conforming to their captors' ideological demands? Were the nuns somehow inhibiting the running of their precious factories? How am I simplifying what happened to them? Please explain why the nuns deserved to be murdered or whatever it is I'm over simplifying so I can respond without needing to take wild guesses as to what you're implying.
Also I'm pretty sure I already stressed I'm not saying the CNT-FAI has to be emulated in every aspect
Well you've defended their govermentalism and slavery, and now you've suggested the nun killing had some kind of justifiable nuance to it that I'm missing. So yeah, 3 for 3...
it's less authoritarian to just outright murdering POWs.
They're not prisoners of war if I'm not a government going to war with them as I've carefully articulated. You're applying your governmentalism to me when I've specifically said I'm not a government waging a war, I'm an individual. If someone is trying to kill me, I'm killing them, not taking them prisoner and then enslaving them to build my civilization for me. I don't care if it's not "human" to do so. It's certainly not authoritarian in any way to defend myself.
Also I'm not even going to bother justifying slavery
Too late, you've done it repeatedly, including in this very comment by calling slavery "human" and thus implying I'm inhuman for opppsing it:
it's a lot more human to just let them keep their lives. [...] I will say if your choice is between executing a fascist POW or letting them keep their lives and further having them aid in efforts against fascism
So there's no confusion - This is you promoting slavery.
Esperaux OP wrote
Again you're reading from a more confrontational viewpoint refusing to actually understand what I'm typing. The killing of nuns is not at all what I was saying lacked nuance. However describing an entire libertarian movement that very much was influenced by organizing outside of the state and orienting towards nonhierarchical forms of organization and collectivization as just a bunch of nun killers with prison camps plays right into both Stalinist and fascist propaganda. They showed in terms of organization and methods that it was entirely possible to exist and organize outside of the state. That these methods can and did work. They collapsed not because of their organizational flaws but due to a combination of isolation, attacks by fascists, and betrayal by Stalinists.
Also I said specifically in that quote of myself that it's more human comparatively to let a fascist keep their lives than execute them as a prisoner of war. Let me be even more explicit in saying that I personally believe focusing on a form of reintegration over imprisonment makes a lot more sense since A. it gives even fascists a choice to participate voluntarily and B. I am of the opinion that prisons ultimately serve to harm the ability of people to learn or reintegrate properly. So please stop trying to assume I agree with every single aspect of this image you have of a "red anarchist".
On the issue of war you as an individual are not likely to survive against an army. However get a group of people together to organize and fight against an army you have a better chance but you also have a war. Even as an individual however it's still extremely authoritarian for you to take the life of someone in your hands and just discard it. Killing is an extremely permanent solution. At that point you're not pushing for a free society if it's one where individuals can just take it upon themselves to execute individuals. That's very much a society based around domination.
AnarcheAmor wrote
Love all the criticisms y'all but this was meant for an entire community. Your arguments against this only work if you assume this was meant to function as solely an anarchist structure. Keep in mind, it's still a bad idea given that groups that have functioned like this in the past tend to dissolve or splinter due to internal strifes brought about by the "trickle-down" nature of the structure and the slow accumulation of power the elected tend to gain but arguing that its bad because it isn't anarchist isn't gonna work because it isn't meant to be anarchist.
subrosa wrote
This is f/Anarchism. Aaron advocates for anarchist communism. Pretty sure someone meant it to be anarchist.
AnarcheAmor wrote
That someone being Esperaux.
subrosa wrote
And re-educator Aaron.
AnarcheAmor wrote (edited )
Only if you believe so. It's not necessary for anarchists to have everything they advocate for be anarchist. Maybe for purposes of, say, organizing a community of nonanarchists, you would adopt structures that are more familiar to those people.
Esperaux OP wrote
Or you know you could just understand that the context being surrounding the organization of a community fridge project which apparently everyone here thinks will somehow lead to slavery if done in a democratic manner because they're too up their ass with Bob Black's bs.
anarchyfrog wrote
I don't think anyone knows what a community fridge is, seems to be a very regional concept.
ziq wrote
You literally defended slavery fam. Has nothing to do with managing a fridge. Own your shit.
Esperaux OP wrote
No I didn't I pointed out that the only other options you present as an alternative to POWs is to either outright murder them or set them loose. Then when asked further you retreated into this idea that all situations only ever occur on an individual level like a childish liberal. Oh not to mention you still haven't provided any actual case for why democratically running a community fridge is apparently an equivalent to enslaving people which seems to be your only weasel method of holding a discussion with me instead of reading what I have to say is to falsely claim that I was arguing in favor of slavery.
ziq wrote
Oh not to mention you still haven't provided any actual case for why democratically running a community fridge is apparently an equivalent to enslaving people
Because I never said anything like that? How am I going to defend a strawman you completely made up? I would never share a fridge. No one is touching my food. When I was in a shared living space for 3 years I just never used the fridge because I didn't want to risk anyone fucking with my food or their meat getting on it.
like a childish liberal.
That superiority complex, fam. Yes I'm an individualist. All anarchists should prize their individuality if they understand what anarchy entails.
No, I'm not going to fight a war to build democratic factories and oil rigs. I'd sooner demolish them than sacrifice my life to maintaining them. Stop assuming I share your bankrupt deadend ideology just because we're on the same site.
I don't support organized war in any way. I don't support prisons in any way. I don't care what the material conditions in your fantasy scenarios are, I'm not sharing a fridge, I'm not participating in your war, I'm not enslaving your ideological enemies to build your democratic tanks and I'm not murdering nuns for disobeying your orders. Fuck your democratic army, fuck your democratic factories and most of all fuck your democratic fridges.
Esperaux OP wrote (edited )
A community fridge isn't meant to force people to share food wtf? It's a method of dealing with food insecurity in a community. You understand that correct?
Also you are aware of the concept of abolishing commodity production and how that factors into things such as work abolition and moving away from extractivism?
You seem to be describing collectivized industry operating under the capitalist mode of production.
ziq wrote (edited )
Also you are aware of the concept of abolishing commodity production and how that factors into things such as work abolition and moving away from extractivism?
I'm aware of that Marxist fantasy, yes. Removing profit and exchange from the equation but maintaining industry won't stop extractivism even if profit and exchange were actually abolished, which no socialist revolution has ever done because it's impossible to produce the highly specialized industrial goods today's highly civilized people demand without profit and exchange.
In this fantasy where industrialism is preserved but with goods only being produced to meet the "needs of the people" rather than to make profit or to be exchanged for other goods, lavish "needs" as defined by 21st century yuppies will make it impossible to mine, process and manufacture the goods in a single location by a single population using a single ecosystem's resources, necessitating exchange and profit to acquire and coordinate all the global specialized resources, skills and technologies needed to manufacture the item.
Exploited labor will be utilized at some point along the mining / manufacturing / transportation chain since there's no way for you to control the labor practices of people in distant lands, including all the industries that are involved indirectly (e.g. energy).
Colonization, slavery and ecocide will be perpetuated to produce the specialized goods that are desired by the anarcho-technocrats the fictional society has been built to serve whether they're making a profit or not.
Resources will continue to be extracted and goods will continue to be mass produced whether they're labelled commodities or not. To suggest everyone will just stop extracting resources if everything their hearts desire were free for the taking is straight up delusional. If anything, they'll extract more.
collectivized industry operating under the capitalist mode of production.
No shit. There's the complete history of communism in one succinct sentence. Industrialism and capitalism are one and the same.
anarchyfrog wrote
what about this made you think it was compatible with anarchy?