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ziq wrote (edited )

I don't consume any of those things so I can safely say humans don't need them.

Besides, there are thousands of different 'teas' for each climate. If you can't grow a particular plant locally, big whoop. Anarchism isn't "Exploit Asia/Africa, ship everything to white people, everything stays the same but we call it anarchism now".

People will have to make sacrifices to live in a world without heirarchy. There's simply no way that maintaining our exploitative habits will ever lead to anarchism. People on the other side of the world don't want to labor all day growing chocolate for you. If you get chocolate in a society of equals, everyone gets chocolate, so billions of people - and slavery is the only way to achieve that. Often child slavery.

The fact that you think living within our means is 'primitivism' makes me sad for our future.

Think beyond your capitalistic imperialist impulses. If you think cocoa is so important (it isn't), figure out how to engineer it to grow in your climate. I can already think of several ways to do it in my climate.

And please don't reply to this saying something like "No... Africans will love continuing to grow/mine our luxury items for us because it'll be communism..." Capitalism has spoiled you. Make do with carob instead of chocolate like I do.

EDIT: There's no reason we can't continue to trade culture. That's what the Internet is for. There are now trillions of internet devices in the world, so even if the slave factories in Asia are shuttered, there's more than enough devices already made for everyone. We don't need a new phone / tablet / laptop / pc every year. We need to overcome deliberately wasteful capitalistic tendencies like that and reuse and retrofit our shit.

Freely sharing art between cultures isn't exploitative in any way so long as we can do it without tearing down the forests to make paper or pumping out carbon to distribute the art to 7 billion people.

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Blackbeard wrote

I feel like this is just right. A new way of living requires a new mindset- we don't get to indulge in all the same luxuries we had under capitalism in our anarchist utopia. Or, if we do, it's because we found some way to make it work in our locality. Otherwise, if you don't have steel for buildings, use earth, or rocks, or wood. Can't manufacture iPhones and computers with materials where you live? The world is probably better off for having fewer of those dumped into landfills, leaching toxins into our water. I love chocolate and coffee as much as anybody, but I can live without them just fine if it meant a more egalitarian world for us all.

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kestrel77 wrote

okay so. there is no way we are going to continue a functioning internet without having some kind of physical global trade system, i.e. ships going from one place to another. not everywhere produces the minerals needed for computers. every one of us doesn't need a new device every year but we can't just keep using capitalist devices built under planned obsolescence. all that shit is going to fall apart within ten years. so, if we're going to have to figure out some kind of non-exploitative global resource exchange system anyway why not have a cup of coffee every now and then?

i am well aware of the issues with the industries i mentioned, chocolate, coffee, etc. there are issues with almost every industry being racist and exploitative, especially those which take advantage of the fictions of borders and racism against the global south, because like we live under capitalism? i am very clearly an anarchist on an anarchist forum not talking about continuing capitalist policies in any way, so i'm not sure why you're implying that i'm racist for asking fucking questions. i'm going to be honest it feels like you're trying to passive-aggressively shut me down for asking questions that disagree with you slightly. this is not how i think that comrades should talk to each other.

in reality, you don't know anything about me, and i imagine we would agree on quite a bit of things and have a lot to discuss about (like, while we're on the subject, i barely consume chocolate, i don't drink coffee, and i have been known to grow my own tea in my own climate in the past, so i definitely get where you're coming from there!). i'm not going to tell you what to do. but perhaps consider being less thorny to people who disagree with you in the future.

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