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lettuceLeafer wrote (edited )

I'm going to bat for you but you are wrong here. Yes agorism is a leftist ideology but it's more often than not coopted by an caps who take the leftist elements out. And this was obviously the case here that those two aren't anarchists by any means.

Never once did they talk about hierarchy being bad or disapproving it of the first half hour I watched. Those two seem more like well meaning anti government people who just havnt had deeper thoughts on social issues so the characterization of them as hardcore ancaps is ridiculous. But like I highly doubt those two dislike capitalism.

Also Im glad ur arround and don't think you are harmful or anything. Tho you def could do some more reading on what anarchism is and that would alleviate a lot of the conflict here. Which is okay because literally everyone has not known everything before and most people aren't terminally online anarchust nerds.

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pileonnn wrote

Tho you def could do some more reading on what anarchism is and that would alleviate a lot of the conflict here

cyberD wrote for AJODA

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lettuceLeafer wrote

ah ok. I just kinda assumed they were knew mailnly because they claimed zapatista is anarchist which isn't and the people who run it don't think its anarchist either and just not noticing how the guests weren't really agorists

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pileonnn wrote

i assume someone is new when they have a dualist understanding of anarchy (this is anarchist, this is not; anarchists are good, not anarchists are bad, etc) and discuss it with the nuance of a football fan discussing his home team

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pileonnn wrote

Never once did they talk about hierarchy

i've been talking about anarchy for two decades now and i've never once used the word hierarchy. my anarchy is against the state.

chomsky was the first to start defining anarchism as 'against hierarchies,' which tells you all you need to know about that definition.

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ziq wrote

Kropotkin was the one who used the word hierarchy. Chomsky is the one who warped it to try and make allowances for so-called 'legitimate authority' and 'justified hierarchy'.

Anarchists have never only been against the state, they've always been against all government and all authority.

Malatesta:

To destroy authority, to abolish government, does not mean the destruction of individual and collective forces which operate in society, nor the influences which people mutually exert on each other; to do so would reduce humanity to being a mass of detached and inert atoms, which is an impossibility, but assuming it were possible, would result in the destruction of any form of society, the end of mankind. The abolition of authority means, the abolition of the monopoly of force and of influence; it means the abolition of that state of affairs for which social power, that is the combined forces of society, is made into the instrument of thought, the will and interests of a small number of individuals, who by means of the total social power, suppress, for their personal advantage and for their own ideas the freedom of the individual; it means destroying a way of social organisation with which the future is burdened between one revolution and the next, for the benefit of those who have been the victors for a brief moment.

Bakunin:

And when we vindicate the freedom of the masses, we are by no means suggesting the abolition of any of the natural influences that individuals or groups of individuals exert on them; what we want is the abolition of influences which are artificial, privileged, legal, official

L. Parsons:

A believer in Anarchism; one opposed to all forms of coercive government and invasive authority.

Goldman:

Anarchism directs its forces against the third and greatest foe of all social equality; namely, the State, organized authority, or statutory law, — the dominion of human conduct.

Berkman:

Only the abolition of coercive authority and material inequality can solve our political, economic and national problems.

Even in this simple instance you can observe the effect of authority: its effect on the one who possesses it and on those over whom it is exercised. Authority tends to make its possessor unjust and arbitrary; it also makes those subject to it acquiesce in wrong, subservient, and servile. Authority corrupts its holder and debases its victims.

Black:

For their first million years or more, all humans lived as hunter-gatherers in small bands of equals, without hierarchy or authority. These are our ancestors. Anarchist societies must have been successful, otherwise none of us would be here.

Kropotkin:

(Anarchism is) the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government — harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups

The conception of society just sketched, and the tendency which is its dynamic expression, have always existed in mankind, in opposition to the governing hierarchic conception and tendency — now the one and now the other taking the upper hand at different periods of history.

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pileonnn wrote

Thank you for this, but most of the quotes you've provided don't use the word hierarchy either.

The original claim was that because the people in the interview didn't say 'hierarchy is bad', they can't therefore be anarchists, or their anarchism is weak, or they must be new or something.

My point is that most anarchists don't use the H word. This focus on hierarchy is a new phenomenon, one that can mostly be traced back to Chomsky and Bookchin. The Kate Sharpey library had a piece on this. I can dig it up if you'd like.

Even today, despite Chomsky's best efforts, most anarchists I know aren't focused on hierarchy. The anarchists I know and love and have spent much of the last decade in the company of are anarchists of the hunt sabbing, tree spiking, home brewing variety. Not once have I ever heard anyone even mention the H word. We talk about cops, hunters, loggers, politicians, priests, patriarchs... That's who we live our lives against, not some abstract like 'hierarchy.'

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ziq wrote

Well I wasn't providing quotes about hierarchy, I was showing that all anarchists oppose all authority and government, not simply the state.

Here are a few quotes of Kropotkin directly talking about hierarchy if you won't take my word for it that it wasn't Chomsky's invention.

That is why Anarchy, when it works to destroy authority in all its aspects, when it demands the abrogation of laws and the abolition of the mechanism that serves to impose them, when it refuses all hierarchical organization and preaches free agreement — at the same time strives to maintain and enlarge the precious kernel of social customs without which no human or animal society can exist. Only, instead of demanding that those social customs should be maintained through the authority of a few, it demands it from the continued action of all.


If unions give themselves a social-democratic hierarchy, we could not enter them until it has been demolished.


Contrary to the rest of Greek philosophy, aiming to blend nomos and physis in harmony, Cynics dismissed nomos (and in consequence: the authorities, hierarchies, establishments and moral code of polis) while promoting a way of life, based solely on physis.


That mass of hierarchically organised and disciplined functionaries; that system of schools, maintained or directed by the State, where worship of power and passive obedience are taught; that industrial system, which crushes under its wheels the worker whom the State delivers over to its tender mercies.


True progress lies in the direction of decentralization, both territorial and functional, in the development of the spirit of local and personal initiative, and of free federation from the simple to the compound, in lieu of the present hierarchy from the centre to the periphery.


The peasant suffers to-day not only in having to pay rent to the landlord; he is oppressed on all hands by existing conditions. He is exploited by the tradesman, who makes him pay half a crown for a spade which, measured by tile labour spent on it, is not worth more than sixpence. He is taxed by the State, which cannot do without its formidable hierarchy of officials.


Let us repeat that these hundreds of committees and local groups are not organized hierarchically, and are composed exclusively of volunteers, life boatmen, and people interested in the work

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cyb3rd4ndy OP wrote (edited )

I prefer to use the terms “subjugation” and “domination” to “hierarchy”… mostly because it’s easier to understand bottom-up organizing (councils, delegates, etc.) without giving someone the impression that anarchists are horizontal absolutists.

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ziq wrote

Same, but I do use the word authority often because it's the best way to describe the entire system of subjugation and domination.

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cyb3rd4ndy OP wrote (edited )

Thanks…

What I need to read more about is agorism. I have been an active anarchist since 2001. I am very confident in my knowledge about it and you can visit my site https://cyberdandy.org to verify.

The reason why I think that my guests aren’t ancaps is because they oppose their ideas about agorism to ancaps. All the examples of agorism they mentioned were types of untaxed self-employment. I don’t think they are theory nerds nor super ideological since at the end they spoke about how much absolutist thinking bothers them. So IMO they know what the basic differences are and agorism is where their comfort zone is. I am fine with that. I think it is non-committal when it comes to ancom vs ancap, but I don’t think that’s terrible. I see brave people living the same uncompromising lifestyle a lot of crimethinc anti work dropouts live and I don’t think it makes any sense to just dismiss them as ancaps. I actually think it’s really shitty after what they have been through to do that.

Anyway thanks again.

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