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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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kittybecca wrote (edited )

Loving democracy.

lol wat

anarchist principles

you mean like direct democracy

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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kittybecca wrote (edited )

Why do you think democracy = majority rule? What about democracy implies that? Consensus-based decision-making is obviously a form of democracy. That's not a disclaimer, that's just using the word properly.

notable anarchists

I can't think of any "notable anarchists" who would have been comfortable with being looked at as the final word on anarchism or even as especially important to the mass movement and collaboration of the people. It honestly seems your view of anarchism is incredibly misanthropic and involves a sense of belonging to an elite class of woke people rather than to a society.

Worship of the "notable" is contrary to anarchism - but it doesn't make you not a genuine anarchist. A genuine anarchist is someone involved in anarchist organization, collaboration, mass movement, etc. for good-faith reasons. And in practice, anarchism is imperfect and doesn't always even involve total consensus. It's still better than "rule by the great thinkers" though.

tyranny of the majority

Do you think anarchists invented this concept?

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[deleted] wrote

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kittybecca wrote (edited )

I guess where we arrive at a philosophical difference is that you judge democracy as a form of authority, whereas I judge it as a broad movement away from authority, where the less hierarchy it involves, the more democratic it also is.

I view anarchism as perfect democracy, where people are masters of themselves. Democracy was an attempt to abolish autocracy out of a distrust of authority and a genuine desire (for most participants in the revolutions, who primarily were NOT members of the bourgeoisie) to take control over their own lives; anarchy merely takes this a step further.

Judging the history of democracy by various reactions and failures is like judging the history of communism by the same thing. You don't need to throw the word communism out to advance the spirit of the communist revolutions, nor do you need to throw the word democracy out to advance the spirit of the democratic revolutions, largely fought by proles from the very beginning even if the primary beneficiaries were the bourgeoisie.

I see anarchism as a radical form of the spirit of '89, the most complete form of what democracy has always claimed to be about: liberty, equality, etc.. That's not an attempt to salvage democracy for me; it comes naturally rather than being a series of mental gymnastics. It might require mental gymnastics for you to come to the same conclusions, but people's brains are wired differently. I think you just think about things in very different terms than I do.

Edit: Imagine the anarchist movement failing to achieve its promises and creating yet more forms of hierarchy and authority in the future; would that mean we should throw the word anarchism out?

I realize people say democracy and liberalism work as intended, but the reality isn't that simple. Things work the way they do because various power struggles resulted in things being this way. These power struggles ended the way they did because democracy was insufficient to deliver its promises. From the beginning, democracy promised liberty, self-government, self-mastery, etc., but it was unable to deliver its promises because of the fundamental contradiction between the liberal concepts of individual rights and capital, the latter of which undermined the former. Aristocrats systematically weakened democracy, and this effort was there from the very beginning; this doesn't mean most of the early democrats weren't genuinely trying to create a society of freedom and self-mastery.

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