Submitted by subrosa in AnarchistFAQ

Because the others have too many problems.

My usual preliminary doubts: In what I'm trying to say here I will once again annoy you with my own anarchism. The words I use, the points of critique I'm offering, the references I make, they all stem from my own "becoming anarchist" over the past couple years.

purpose

With some version of "the medium is the message" in mind I want to point out potential problems with writing an FAQ.

The very idea that there can be "an anarchist FAQ" assumes a certain coherency, consensus, shared history, shared vocabulary, and a sort of accessibility — that I'm afraid "we" don't have. We don't have an anarchism-in-general that knows its own basics, nor one that can account for the various splits, divisions and developments in "the movement". The frame is necessarily narrowing, the content decidedly colored. In Iain McKay's version, in red.

Does anyone really need the same in raddle-green, to be weaponized and used as a recruitment tool for "the good anarchism" just the same? Does anyone gain anything from a 'screenshot' of currently existing attitudes/approaches of some anarchists? Doesn't seem unlikely that we would be conserving our own obstacles and ambiguities, as much as we would help rid/clarify others.

I think we have to consider that an anarchist FAQ is, and can only be, an expression of 'red' anarchisms. (Who else would already know about how an anarchist society works? Who else would have digestible answers? Who else would pride themselves in being mainstream anarchism? Who else can rely on a general familiarity with lefty, activist talking points?) The anarchisms that I'm into produce problematics that render a good amount of actually asked questions kind of meaningless.

The anarchisms I value have a way of making things more complicated.

Anarchists must say what only anarchists can say.

And there's gotta be a more elegant approach than answering questions we would like to be asked.

words

Words and concepts like mutual aid, direct action, praxis, workerism, leftism, etc., are most useful and meaningful in contexts they quite often don't share — and putting them together and appropriating them for specific uses is an exercise in "constructing an anarchism". Which is a difficult enough task for any one of us, as individuals. I appreciate the anarchist tendency to explain shit, but if the idea is to make it a collective effort we'll need to sharpen our synthesist skills and figure out what our differences have in common.

An example that comes to mind: For what I'm up to I'd rather move past the praxis/theory split and leave the word in 'German' contexts — leave it to those who are drawn to Hegel, Stirner and Marx.

This point, by the way, is why the activist insult against theory/critique people has always aggravated me. I try to give the activist crowd the benefit of the doubt that they do truly believe in the political practice they are part of “in the streets” and are not just using regular people as cover for their desire to see the glittering rain of a window pane. (The least they can do is realize that a vigorous internal conversation is a verb and not “doing nothing” but whatever.)

This is not to say that "praxis" can't be useful in certain contexts. Just that it probably wouldn't show up in my own (imaginary) FAQ. The 'split' is only interesting to me as a way to compare and explore different relations between the two.

One way to recognize margarine-words is repetition: they are used a lot, functioning as code words or passwords, their appropriateness assumed, never shown.

To cut my own point short, and with a bit of irony, I wanna suggest that our writings tend to get a bit too oily for the task at hand.

...

Admittedly it doesn't feel quite right to badly critique a just-begun-effort like this without even contributing. And maybe what I'm struggling with is more personal than I'm suggesting here.

What all this boils down to is really a call for synthesis, for more clarity and preparedness, a push for a more 'untimely' anarchist FAQ — one that isn't just a survey of our current ideas. As useful as raddle's 101 stuff can be, I don't think it translates well to an FAQ that can present an alternative to the existing one. I think it's easy to underestimate what the task demands.

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ziq wrote (edited )

I originally wanted to call it Anarchy in the 21st Century or Modern Anarchy and just have it be like 5000 words to introduce people briefly to maybe 50 basic points of anarchy without it being steeped in spite for non workerists and anyone else who doesn't follow the syndie program.

The current faq having a monopoly on introducing anarchy to noobs is doing too much damage to go unchallenged.

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subrosa OP wrote

An Anarchist FAQ gets linked a ton because it offers those confident answers. If we want to challenge its position, its monopoly, maybe we should gather information first, see what the most common questions are these days and build from there. I dunno, maybe I'll find some time to outline a different structure or something.

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kin wrote

I completely agree with ziq continuous efforts to not let the Anarchist theory to fall into this Ancom rethoric of one true monolithic Anarchism.

Then in this very point I come to agree with you, my Anarchism is a personal perception, and in the same way that I don't bother to postulate my ideas as incisive as ziq does (that's why I don't feel that I am capable of helping in this Anarchist FAQ) I will never posit a conclusion to what Anarchy should be.

So maybe I am I the middle of the road agreeing with both at the same time, hoping that the new FAQ gets enough traction to replace any old propaganda

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subrosa OP wrote

I have a tendency to avoid saying "I agree" to people I appreciate and respect, whose ideas I already take into account. "Yes, and..." type of approach, without actually saying it.

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Tequilx_Wolf wrote

We have started with that, here:

What are genuinely Frequently Asked Questions of anarchism?

There are some questions over on r/Anarchy101 that happen weekly if not daily, those seem like they might be worthwhile.

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subrosa OP wrote

Thanks. I remembered that after commenting :P

Currently don't feel like doing it, but I might go for a more systematic approach, collect a ton of questions on r/anarchy101 and try figure out what the questions really are at their core so that we can bundle them together. It seems a rough taxonomy would split questions into categories like

  1. how would society deal with [thing we supposedly handle with governmental structures]

  2. I read some anarchist theory, what do you mean by [slogan, concept, ism] or what are the differences between [tendencies]

  3. Opinions on current/historic developments, public figures and entertainers, etc.

I think it's a good idea to go for a relatively short text. Basically, if we can produce an FAQ I think it would be of the kind that leaves the reader with a desire to ask better questions rather than be satisfied with the aforementioned confident answers. If that makes sense.

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subrosa OP wrote

The categories are probably bullshit. But it seems to me that most questions share an internal logic that can be addressed more directly. An Anarchist FAQ writes too many pseudo-policies for my taste.

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Tequilx_Wolf wrote (edited )

I'll read through this slowly and engage, but for now I'm at

The very idea that there can be "an anarchist FAQ" assumes

and want to disagree, I think the use of "An" rather than "The" implies one possible one of many. Maybe that can be made explicit though.

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subrosa OP wrote (edited )

Not entirely sure how to fix that sentence. I'll try to clarify.

I made a bit of an unmentioned transition, a pivot, from talking about the assumed coherency/consensus of one anarchism (that can produce an FAQ) that "we" (e.g. "we" on raddle, 'us' writing the new FAQ) don't have, to a more general point about not having an "anarchism-in-general". Which shares the same issues, it runs into the same problems. How do we account for the many different approaches and conceptual tools without watering them all down with very 'general' uses and unquestioned appropriateness? Or without contradicting ourselves?

This, I think, calls for conscious and careful synthesis, instead of listing things we associate with anarchy or things we oppose. And instead of assuming we charge our words with the same meaning. That synthesis in turn requires a good amount of mutual understanding, and probably doesn't always result in digestible answers for an FAQ.

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subrosa OP wrote

Maybe there needs to be a dozen more FAQs, and maybe it doesn't hurt to have one that reflects the ideas of a few of us on raddle. But I have my doubts about the utility of that, it's like writing manifestos for imaginary parties/movements. "Screenshots" that conserve our current ideas.

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vos wrote

I like the points you brought up. No questions to answer, only answers to question. Anarchy-as-negation can only really have anti-answers, as it were. So maybe it should be An Anarchist Anti-FAQ?

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Fool wrote (edited )

a push for a more 'untimely' anarchist FAQ — one that isn't just a survey of our current ideas

I was thinking how best to respond to this but I realised that you had already touched upon where my mind was.

As you identify, putting the concepts into text has the problem of cementing the answers into a static immutable form.

While it was already on my mind, "Dawn of Everything" really pushed into my mind the importance of impermanence. Anything that is static will become archaic.

I think the largest problem with the original, and the biggest mistake which could be made would to not acknowledge both the perspectives of the time and the writers - and how they affect the answers to the questions.

Having started with Anarchist theory in the last two years, I was often confused by the critiques of Anarchism from Communists and Capitalists always being focused on the early Anarchists, it was a shock to me how recent many of the texts I was consuming were.

While the concepts held by many here are timeless, they are not "Traditional Anarchism" (a term that I now note should ring alarm bells). "An Anarchist FAQ" is a representation of a "Traditional Anarchism"; that is an ideology of a specific time and perspective - immutable.

Hmm... I feel like I've stumbled into Taoism.

Woo Way! 🐿️

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