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ziq OP wrote

How is that the argument I"m making? I'm arguing authority will always continue to be manifested with communism, meaning communism fails to liberate people and has never succeeded historically and will never succeed.

Authoritarian behavior can only be repeated if society is structured around authoritarian institutions. Institutions communism always manifests because it requires that people be controlled by the authority of bureaucrats.

All controlled mass-society creates authority; bodies of people that hold power over others. That power grows over time and takes the society further and further away from its revolutionary origins.

"Anti-social" people (which btw is a bullshit term that could apply to any anarchist or anyone that doesn't conform to the white supremacist status quo) are only a problem if the society imbues them with authority. If they have no authority, there's nothing stopping others from dealing with them if they try to oppress. If someone kept cutting down all the trees to bake bread, they'd just get their ass kicked until they stopped.

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[deleted] wrote

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

because in a communist society, much like in a capitalist society, baking bread is legitimized and he is provided legal protection from having his ass kicked since he's providing a service to the community. his industrial output / work / goods / production is valued over the forest and its inhabitants because the people in the village want to eat his bread and the cost of that bread (environmental degradation) is not valued in industrial society.

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[deleted] wrote

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

legal protection on whos authority?

"the people's" authority.

why can't the communal stores be dealt with in the same way the woodland is

because that isn't communism. in communism everything is free for the taking and resources are treated as if they're infinite. if you decide you need something, you take it from the communal store. Kropotkin said no one has the right to judge how much an individual needs, except the individuals themselves.

if you start beating up people who take more than you think they deserve, then it's no different than installing a bureaucracy to manage the resources. in fact, the beatings would probably be the trigger for installing the bureaucracy if it's somehow not installed from day one. the beatings become institutionalized and legitimized and suddenly every community has police who decide what each person is worth.

but the bureaucracy will happen no matter what and this is why communism isn't tenable. the bureaucracy will quickly morph into a state.

any system that allocates resources and polices people is a state in everything but name.

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

in that case why would beating people up for cutting down too much woodland be any different to installing a bureaucracy? 

There's a big difference between legitimized institutional violence and the isolated use of force by a lone actor unconnected to social institutions. The later isn't authority forming. Direct action against a logger isn't the same thing as forming a police squad to judge how much people deserve to eat.

Every anarchist should understand the difference between force and authority.

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[deleted] wrote

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

Because it's authority-forming. One person taking too much from the store is just the trigger that leads to authority being installed by the community. It starts with you telling one guy to fuck off, but it doesn't end there. You then have to police the store 24/7 so he doesn't come back when you're not there and ultimately you'll need to give everyone who comes by the third degree if they're taking more than you think they have a right to. Especially when food is scarce and the people who actually live in the community and grow the food need it to survive.

How likely is the community to give their food away to strangers and then watch their children go hungry? Kropotkin assumes food and other resources will be unlimited because he was rich and never had to work a day in his life to get fed. But in the real world, in an industrial society, scarcity isn't something that goes away when you declare communism. People will still need to acquire scarce resources to manufacture anything, and they'll have to do backbreaking labor both to acquire the resources and manufacture the goods. So they're going to naturally be incredibly defensive if someone undeserving tries to take the fruits of their labor from them.

Unlike taking direct action to stop loggers from destroying a forest, policing who can use a communal store and how much they can take is something that's officiated and legitimized by the community. It requires that authority be instituted and authority figures be given the power to make decisions for the whole community. It's a replication of statism.

Here's an example closer to home - what happened to f/shoplifting. A couple of people from that forum were bad actors, so it led to outrage in the community and demands for collective punishment. The forum was deleted as a result despite my loud objections (which got me branded a reactionary). All it takes to create authority is a couple of shitty people and resulting collective outrage.

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[deleted] wrote

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

It's an example of people (and anarchist people at that) being flawed. People don't stop being flawed because someone announces society is anarcho-communist now.

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[deleted] wrote

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ziq OP wrote

People in this thread are even claiming we can easily make hierarchy go away altogether. There's nothing fallacious about me bursting that naive utopian bubble.

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[deleted] wrote

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ziq OP wrote

I'm not claiming I have the power to recreate global society in my image so I have no "view" that needs to be realized.

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