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celebratedrecluse wrote (edited )

"You can't philosophically prove that any life has intrinsic value or meaning. We can ascribe it value but that's still just an artificial attribution."

The point of anarchism is to ground these first principles in concepts like mutual benefit and solidarity, not ascribe the principles to "natural" origination. This means necessarily that we are conscious of the fact that we are choosing to ground ourselves in first principles which we consciously construct, and thus consent to. The "artificiality" of which you speak is actually the foundation of anarchist ethics, and is a primary distinguishing trait between anti-authoritarian ethics and authoritarian morality.

In critiquing dominant social morality, your nihilist position seems to be overlooking what many left anarchists are trying to do. The point for many of them is not to create a universal system of morality, harkening back to monotheism and the state's monopolies, but instead to actively construct a working system of ethics which is flexible to the constraints of circumstance and individual/collective desires. It is an attempt to ground ethics in what is actually useful in a particular situation to the people involved (i.e., an "intersubjective" reality), rather than in absolutes or universals or the "natural". Its "artificiality" is its strongest trait, and emphasizing that is important in order to deconstruct the false claims to "naturalism" which authoritarian morality must make in order to sign itself as a coherent system. The nihilist argument you advance is very useful for deconstructing authoritarian morality, but it strikes me as disingenuous or unaware when it comes to the arguments of left anarchists and their fellow travelers.

"And it's not just that you can't prove that it has intrinsic value, it's also that declaring a sacred "right to life" is dangerous in itself"

In anarchism, even with the assertion of first principles, we are not creating a regime of rights. The creation of such regimes is a liberal notion, which should be discarded along with material and cultural construction of the state. "Anarchists" who talk about universal truths or universal rights are potentially dangerous, as they threaten to reestablish the state or other coercive mechanisms, and they may just be liberals deep at heart. Unfortunately, this attitude is definitely common in anarchist activity and community, and should be called out.

However, this does not mean that left anarchists and their ideas can be generalized to this lowest common denominator; that's a fallacy, and it refuses to engage with some of the most important aspects of left anarchist concepts and praxis. Insofar as it refuses an intellectually honest engagement, nihilist critiques reinforce the power of existing institutions like markets, the state, and even religious structures-- since these institutions have material power, unlike most anarchist efforts, nihilism's rhetorical deconstruction of "morality" will be mostly deferred onto anarchist efforts, including the anti-moralist left anarchist ethics which are distinct and offer a path to creating different social relations. In order to transform social relations, individuals must work in concert, and that means coming up with an intersubjectively valid set of ethic tools to resolve issues that will arise between these individuals, regardless of whether they identify as "left" or not.

tl;dr Nihilism is very important, and every anarchist should have it in their toolbox...but if it's intellectually lazy it just reinforces capitalism and the state, and sabotages movements, blah blah blah...

tl;dr of the tl;dr -- nuance, ya feel???

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