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celebratedrecluse wrote

Thanks for posting. Good stuff in here, and a topic which we should definitely be planning in a more systematic discussion than we've had so far on raddle. Here is my critique:

One would expect the most suffering to be distributed downward, to the already struggling, already without infrastructure, medicine, food, clean water, etc. How many more Puerto Rico's and Haiti's, favelas and barrios? The affinity group returns as an essential practice. Praise to the anarchists who helped there!

The affinity group model has totally failed to address structural inequality. All those criticisms of anarchism, of leftists in general, as white-dominated groups: affinity groups don't get us past that exclusivity problem at all, really. Then you get white anarchists going into predominantly POC ghettos, and its just inevitably going to result in a substantial element of white saviorism, regardless of how self aware those people think they are. So what do you mean, affinity groups return as essential practice? Sure, I wouldn't say we should discard that type or scale of organizing, its gotten us some gains. but the problems you listed are much better solved by some other method of organizing, perhaps something unfamiliar to most/all of us because it hasnt been tried yet/in a long time. Certainly, affinity groups alone will not overcome it.

the self-exiled anarchists who went to the PNW to crop farm can become relevant again in their willingness to teach food production when there's a lot of human labor power and no gasoline. Climate change there however has been an increase in heat and a drop in rainfall, also sea-level rise. Still liveable?

The problem with collapse and agriculture is that farming takes at least a couple months of logistics and organization. A situation of political and economic collapse is likely to not afford us an opportunity for this, as most people will be bled dry and worked to the bone right until the machines run out of gas. The reality is that a lot of people are going to starve or otherwise die in an unpredictably short amount of time, great bursts that destabilize the system. This will disrupt anarchist communities as much as anyone else, we are all mostly dependent on it for daily life, and those who are off grid are likely to adopt a survivalist mentality if they havent already. This mentality is totally opposed to communism, at least as far as the rest of the world is concerned-- the internal dynamics of a homestead are not relevant to this discussion.

One thing seems pretty obvious, the police and first responders will be weakened and so blockades and squats may last longer and become viable alternatives again.

I actually disagree strongly, if you look in most places in the West, squats and other occupations are getting weaker compared even to 2013-- gentrification has really taken a toll, imo. In a situation of collapse, you might not be able to call an ambulance too easily, but the military will certainly be occupying some areas. The repressive hand of the state will keep its pimp arm strong, as the hand that feeds retracts further away. Collapse doesn't mean the end of austerity.

Church property appropriation becomes reparations for two thousand years of murderous gloom or else houses of real love without the corpse-like pontiff, bishops and priests! Perhaps the nuns will take over and run things. Day-ites without fear.

Where I am, there is no real opposition to the clergy from an anti-religious standpoint, let alone an expropriatory one. Perhaps in your country, this is a more popular position. However, I don't personally see this being a generalizable strategy or praxis in my context.

We may get another chance to ruin the state, or at least to diffuse it in its infancy. In this we seem allied with the earth, water and animals versus the psychopathic state of Dick Cheney, Halliburton and Hillary Clinton. How to guarantee we've removed them from our own heads?

the problem with authoritarianism is that it is constantly re-emerging from struggles against authority. this is a complex question that deserves ongoing attention from anarchists, i agree

Another likelihood is the refusal of a servant class (caste) to serve, and so it seems some more liberation is possible. Will the wealthy have their paid lackeys? Yes and their professors, only without tenure! But its impossible to see how they'll last.

Why would servants refuse to serve? What makes a situation of destitution and collapse more suitable for wildcat strikes and worker autonomy than one of overproduction and historically large amounts of leisure time? I'm not saying your wrong per se, but I want to critically engage with the logical underpinnings of what you are arguing.

What will happen to indigenous authority when the borders can no longer be policed? Another Iroquois Confederacy? Can there not be an Anarchist Confederacy to meet them? Positive human relationships become revolutionary then!

What makes you think the borders will stop being policed? The state is just going to wither away? At any rate, I don't see anarchists cooperating with an incipient state, indigenous or not.

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Majrelende wrote

The problem with collapse and agriculture is that farming takes at least a couple months of logistics and organization. A situation of political and economic collapse is likely to not afford us an opportunity for this, as most people will be bled dry and worked to the bone right until the machines run out of gas.

Maybe foraging could be helpful. From what I have seen, edible wild plants are quite abundant, even if the majority of people know very few of them if any or, if they do, how to prepare them. As plants naturally grow where they can grow well, we may start to see different ones growing in different areas due to climate change, which is fine as long as there is enough documentation on how they can be used.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

Foraging will definitely have to be part of the education shared among people in a collapse situation. Still, though, it is very likely for there to be a lot of suffering and violent chaos

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