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celebratedrecluse wrote (edited )

If you just keep doing harm and blame your actions on capitalism, you're no different than any CEO dumping toxic waste in a river in China

See this is why I think people who share your perspective on this subject tend to be anti-materialist. Let me explain:

Obviously there is a difference between a worker and a CEO, a shareholder and a homeless person, even a middle class professional (college teacher, for example) and the billionaire class.

In saying this, you are basically equivocating the actions, even though there is this enormous difference in the scale of political power of these individuals over the questions of damage to the environment.

You say, take some responsibility! But in order to take full responsibility, we need to take power, and we cannot do that solely alone-- not on a lot of key issues, and I'm unwilling to cede those issues as unapproachable.

Don't get me wrong, some individuals have the capacity to do a lot of good praxis totally alone. And that's great, but there are limits to fetishizing either collectivism or individualism, and both those roads lead squarely back to liberalism.

The collective is just another state

I'm sorry that's been your experience. I really disagree tho. For example, the state exercises political power through surveillance, incarceration, basically forms of violence against its members and targeted out-groups. The kind of egalitarian collectivities that are participated in by anarchists, however, almost universally take a lot of pains to avoid setting up those kind of structures, and it doesn't seem at all reasonable to me to term that a state, or even something in the same category as that horrific institution. Even when anarchist collectivities use violence to resist fascism, institutional oppression, or even interpersonal violence within the group, there is a huge difference between the behavior, attitudes, goals, discourse, processes & outcomes of anarchist collectivities and any state in history.

Like you gotta admit...you're painting with a broad brush, no? Even though other anarchists can be frustrating to deal with, JFC they're not the government. Except for the informants ^_______________________^

The entire "no ethical consumption" argument is just an excuse to justify oppression that "anarchists" want to keep engaging in for deeply selfish reasons.

No, it's an acknowledgement that our consumption literally has a negligble impact on the world we share with others, since the forces of production and waste operate beyond our political power, and thus it is a refocusing of priorities on sharing that world with others over spending energy on cultivating a sense of individual purity. For many anarchists, this is the most reasonable choice, because we have the opportunity to connect with others and do anarchy together. If you are isolated from everyone, and there is no other option...maybe move, if at all possible? That sounds fucking miserable imo, and I'm clinically depressed or something.

But if this is a self-imposed isolation, because you just don't value collective politics, then that's sort of different isn't it? You'd be opting out of collective action because of bad experiences, woven into an ideology that elevates individual praxis over collective praxis, because you'd think the problems with collective praxis are intractable. That's fine if that's the case, it's understandable and I really empathize, but to be clear that's not going to get most people or creatures to the kind of world that we all really need.

Which of us is the true individualist? Me caring about all life and my effect on everything I come into contact with, or the "collectivist" who laughs at vegans for being "lifestylists" and chows down on a leg of lamb and orders a new iphone, a new macbook pro, a new ipad and a new apple watch from Amazon and a bunch of disposable furniture from Ikea while parroting the "no ethical consumption" catchphrase?

This is a ridiculous strawman argument, come on ziq...

Food forests will be planted alone

I really don't think that's going to work very well. Even a million seeds will not make a forest if they are scattered around disaggregated areas geographically, a bunch are uprooted by developments, the soil is contaminated with poisons, and there aren't a community of species living together symbiotically-- I'm sure you'd agree with that, right?

You may do your best to concentrate on one area, but if there's human activity that comes through it can disrupt what you've started. You can try to get your hands on the complementary plants & fungi, even animals, but that can be pretty costly or at least time-consuming for a single person. You can try to clean up the poisoned land, but ultimately there are certain fields where nothing will grow from the lead, mercury, and other metals in the soil. And nobody's going to move a strip mall parking lot by themselves, not without some heavy machinery.

These are all challenges with making food forests which are definitely best solved in cooperation, not as a single person. What is difficult, is making a kind of group sociality which is not just tolerant or even respectful of individual autonomy, but which enables that autonomy to be maximized in tandem.

This, in the void left by the collapse of the feudal mode of politics, is the fundamental contradiction of liberalism, the question it is never able to answer satisfyingly. Fascism or other reactionary ideologies could be defined as the rejection of this question entirely and the reassertion of the ancient hierarchies. Revolutionary ideologies (including socialism, communism, anarchism) are basically trying to give an alternative way for people to interact with each other as opposed to both liberal capitalism, and the ancient regime: hopefully, one more functional egalitarian than either of its predecessors. But we all, even individualist anarchists, hold in our heads a way for people to interact socially without allowing hierarchies to emerge or reassert themselves. The problem is if you don't address this problem directly, it is really easy to fall back on liberal tropes.

We're social creatures. Human beings have physiological responses to being socially isolated, to feeling that they have no broader community that we feel truly part of, and that's why a lot of queer people, trans people, anarchists, POC who are in isolating or alienating environments take their own lives. There is a poverty in forced individuality, I hate to say it but it's just emotionally & experientially undeniable for so many of us!

It's a scapegoat, same as the word "lifestylism" and the notion that any anarchist that works alone on anything is a liberal. Some of us will always be alone, surrounded by a sea of apathetic bootlickers. That's no reason to disparage us or the work we do.

As an anarchist who was politically isolated for over a decade, I have to point out that the goal of the state with regards to radical political tendencies is to isolate us in order to render our efforts less effective, and to get people to spiral into purism, cultivate misanthropy, and eventually burn out.

And it works. :(

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

Obviously there is a difference between a worker and a CEO

The people that live in the villages near me all drive to the top of the hill above my house and dump their trash over the edge. It's a literal mountain of their trash. Methane buids up over the years and it keeps catching fire so every tree on that hill has burned up.

These are regular workers and poor farmers. They'll beat up anyone that stands in their way and they couldn't care less that I live at the bottom of the hill, they dump their trash right in front of me.

They also keep cutting down trees in the night to sell as firewood. They also shoot dead literally every animal that moves, including my pets and at the end of hunting season they abandon their hunting dogs in the woods so they don't have to feed them, and buy new dogs next hunting season. The floor of the forest is permanently covered in plastic shotgun shells.

Some of the hunters also put down poisoned meat several times a year to kill other hunter's dogs so they have less competition. The poison gets eaten by hundreds of hedgehogs, foxes and birds of prey and then the woods are littered with dead animals.

Oh, and people set fire to the wildlife reserves every year to force the animals out onto the hunting grounds where they can legally shoot them. The fires burn down thousands of trees and kill countless animals, and sometimes people. Literally every year, multiple people set fire to multiple reserves.

Regular workers are not holy and sacred and blameless. A regular worker can do plenty of harm to the ecosystem.

The kind of egalitarian collectivities that are participated in by anarchists

We're not talking about a small affinity group of anarchists, we're talking about a collectivized society.

When you give a majority group legitamized power over minorities, they always use it to oppress them. All power corrupts. Collectivism breeds hierarchy because the interests of the dominant group e.g. factory workers aren't the same interests as minoriry groups e.g. peasants or indigenous herders or queer folk or sex workers.

If you think workers are going to suddenly become enlightened when you give them the power of direct democracy, you haven't been paying close attention to the world around you.

Even when anarchist collectivities use violence to resist fascism

You're misusing the word collective. Antifa aren't a collective. They're a disparate bunch coming together to engage in direct action and then dispersing after it's done. When you try to turn that loose common interest into a society; that's when hierarchies pop up everywhere eventually resulting in a state.

Even though other anarchists can be frustrating to deal with, JFC they're not the government. 

The vast majority of people aren't anarchists. Even among people who call themselves anarchists. A collective includes everyone - you can't make people take an anarchy test before you let them join society.

Individualists form small communes of likeminded anarchists. That's not collectivism - it's literally lifestylism. Collectivists (plan to) form big collective societies that include everyone. The majority of people today are authoritarian-minded. Addicted to materialism. These people, as a clear majority, will then harness the power of the collective to dictate policy. They will be a state in everything but name.

I don't want the majority population to make my life choices for me. The majority population live completely different lives to me.

No, it's an acknowledgement that our consumption literally has a negligble impact on the world we share with others,

It's easy to say something like this when you live in sterile concrete bubble where the effects of consumption are swept away by gov workers every morning. But when you live in nature and have to watch as workers dump their mattresses, spent engine oil and tires at your feet, you feel the impact of their consumption in a very real way.

spending energy on cultivating a sense of individual purity.

Today I learned everything I do is meaningless because an elitist collectivist on the other side of the world says so.

This is a ridiculous strawman argument, come on ziq...

It's not a strawman, it's a valid critique of Bookchin's bullshit hateful "lifestylist vs collectivist" strawman that you've attached yourself to.

maybe move

You can't move to anarchy. Anarchy is wherever you make it. Joining a Kropotkin reading club in some settler-police-state because a rando on the internet thinks your anarchy isn't real enough won't change anything.

I really don't think that's going to work very well.

My eyes don't seem to be lying to me but I guess you know better.

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