Anarchists Promoting Democracy?

Submitted by anarchoreposter in Anarchism (edited )

People use words in all sorts of unpredictable and unhelpful ways, but for there to be anarchy in our social relations we really need to dispense with not just the political state, but a whole range of things that have essentially the same structure, some variation of the polity-form. If we can manage to do without associations that have that kind of structure, then it will be relatively unimportant what we call our relations, but it's a big enough shift from the status quo that at least some of us want to be pretty careful not to confuse the issue with familiar, potentially misleading terms.

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Tequila_Wolf wrote (edited )

Yeah I find the way that CrimethInc expressed a version of the last bit quite compelling:

If what you mean to denote by the word democracy can only occur outside the framework of the state, it creates considerable ambiguity to use a term that has been associated with state politics for 2500 years. Most people will assume that what you mean by democracy is reconcilable with the state after all.

also in w/anarchists_against_democracy

hm. Not super easy to see hyperlinks in this CSS. Is CSS the right word here?

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veuzi wrote

This such a Shawn Wilbur paragraph, I can smell that style from a mile away

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ArmyOfOne wrote (edited )

Democracy whatever its form is authoritarian, as this implies a crowd of people (understood as a majority) deciding for the rest. Not only this leads straight to irrationalism, fascism, gangsterism and other bad politics but it blatantly denies the value of any person and their views, feelings and experiences. Taking part in very-democratic student politics can be a good school to learn this.

But there's also an ever-blooming cadre of wily people making careers outta manipulating and steering democratic processes for the highest bidders. Who knows if they aren't even part of your ancom workerist org.

Any supposed anarchists still rooting for democracy are either delusional or just lack experience of real-life politics between actual people.

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