Are Anarcho-Communism and Civilization ideas Ableist?

Submitted by ziq in Anarchy101

So I've considered myself some kind of Anarchist anticiv for at least a year or two, but I hadn't really taken Ancom ideas seriously, thinking they were a meme or something.

Then a few weeks ago, I got into an argument with someone who was Pro-civ, and they argued that after their revolution, that the only logical step forward is for everyone to make MORE stuff, and build more local factories, because industry as a whole was needed to create their globalized mass industrial society.

They argued they weren't tankie because they like having nice things, and want the factories to make lots more new things for them. Really, it just sounded like Tankie with extra steps.

However, one problem they refused to address, were those who required a lack of industries to live—namely clean air, clean water, clean food, much free time, non-alienating social relations, a general lack of mass extinctions / pandemics / locust swarms / erosion / desertification / floods / wildfires / famine / imperialism / slavery / prisons and an strong antiwork ethic.

You need a controlled destruction of industry to create a chance of survival for humans, including oxygen, access to food and a stable climate, and this requires other people around you to sustain the destruction of factories. Not to mention other tools and equipment that industries rely on to function.

I never got a straight answer on this problem, and after the conversation I started wondering if Ancom-adjacent ideas are ultimately ableist, in that they advocate depriving humans of their health and survival, at the cost of asthmatics, malnourished, clinically depressed just sorta dying once the industry is prolonged. So what is the Ancom/Pro-Civ solution to this?

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thelegendarybirdmonster wrote

Are locust swarms caused by civilization?

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CaptainACAB wrote (edited )

It'd be more accurate to say that agriculture causes locust swarms. Civilization can't exist without agriculture due to the fact that the surplus of food gave people more time to do shit like mining, crafting metals and the like. The fact that hunter-gatherer tribes still exist in some parts of the world is because societies don't always develop agriculture and are content with their current methods of survival.

The surplus of food means that people need a way to store it and that the human populace would increase; so those people have more incentive to be sedentary rather than nomadic. Stored food meant more contact with animals because animals don't have any notion of food being property, more contact with these animals lead to more disease because of how disease can mutate to infect other species. More people meant that more food had to be grown, which meant more pests, such as grasshoppers, crowded together to feed; more food meant that the population of pest species grew and their predators couldn't really keep up because prey species evolved to breed in greater numbers. Grasshoppers are fucking weird, because the more of them there are, the more seratonin they get; once they get enough seratonin, they turn into locusts, becoming hungrier and breeding more and devouring any crops in the area.

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

I disagree because the rainforests were all curated by humans who spread / tended to the useful plants so they could use them.

That's an example of pre-civ agriculture.

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CaptainACAB wrote

Yeah, agriculture is a pretty general term; I didn't take other methods of cultivating food into account.

I don't really remember if it was monoculture that desertified Neolithic civ or some other form, so I decided to be as general as possible.

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Kinshavo wrote (edited )

For me I think that the red anarchism still rely too much on Utopic Solutions, like post-scarcity, global ecosocialism, free technology and so on.

And there is a clear divide between the social anarchist with half baked ideology, namely the one that supports harm reduction, radliberal ideas; and the ones that really have a Kropotkin morals, and believe in the progress towards the "general well being", etc.

Imo, the red anarchists that have real base and we're not "confused communists" can give you a response but this response will depends on an Utopic condition for a "clean" industry and societal "changes" that will need to be imposed from above

Edit:Not even 15 min for the mod there remove your post... They don't want to discuss this issue?

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[deleted] wrote

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ziq OP wrote

i got banned from breadtube for talking shit about vaush

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[deleted] wrote

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ziq OP wrote

just tell them you're a fascist, fam. he'll not only debate you, he'll send you a lovely gift basket after

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subrosa wrote

Ha! Wish I'd thought of that when the thread was still fresh.

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thelegendarybirdmonster wrote

don't forget that ancomland is very different from current civilization

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

consumption needs to come to a full stop.

that's not anarcho communism, it's post-civ

Anarcho-communism is

common ownership of the means of production and direct democracy as well as a horizontal network of workers' councils with production and consumption based on the guiding principle "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"

It's not the abolishing of industry, it's the democratization (and thus the prolonging) of the workplace.

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Basil wrote

consumption needs to come to a full stop

That's not anarcho-communism, it's post civ

That's taking the quote out of context and you know it. the original quote refers solely to the consumption of fossil fuels, not consumption in general.

common ownership of the means of production and direct democracy as well as a horizontal network of workers' councils with production and consumption based on the guiding principle "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"

It's not the abolishing of industry, it's the democratization (and thus the prolonging) of the workplace.

I don't think this is a valid criticism of the work because the whole point is that it's possible to have the best of both worlds, the amenities that an industrial society can offer while still providing for the Earth, and through that the people you're concerned about in the original post. It's just a different method of getting to that point than what you proposed, but just because it differs in method doesn't mean that it can't be considered a valid viewpoint.

Don't get me wrong, there are definitely things wrong with what the author wrote, such as the continued mass manufacturing of metal things, and the extremely utopian view the author has, but I don't think your criticisms are really valid.

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

you know it

?

I didn't know it, I thought he was talking about consumption in general (in addition to the use of fossil fuels) but I guess he's a lot more basic than I assumed. Looks like he's going more for a solar punk vibe than postciv.

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it's possible to have the best of both worlds, the amenities that an industrial society can offer while still providing for the Earth

This would only be true if we ignored the reality that billions of people living in an industrial society aren't going to suddenly decide they've had their fill and stop consuming when they have the choice to continue consuming to their heart's content. It also ignores the reality that it's too late to turn back since we've already crossed the collapse threshold and will be feeling the effects of yesterday's production years down the line. That is to say, everything is going to die and nice dreams of solar punk factories (literally impossible btw*) won't change that.

*It requires metric tons of fossil fuels to run factories. It takes so much fossil power to make a solar panel that the solar panel needs to be in use for years before it begins to make up the carbon deficit exerted to produce it, and the panels have a very limited lifespan and all end up in a landfill when they're spent. making solar panels also creates mountains of toxic waste that all gets dumped and poisons communities for generations

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Basil wrote

Sorry, I often make the mistake of assuming that whatever I 'get' other people do too. My bad!

In regards to your second point, specifically that it's too late to turn back, wouldn't that only work to further prove this guy's point, kinda? That we need instead to speed through technology as quick as we can so that we might find a way that really is sustainable for humans to continue living with industrial amenities? I know that's not really what you're talking about and definitely not what you meant to imply, but that's what I got out of it.

Also, while today many solar panels end up in landfills, it doesn't really have to be that way. Lots of solar panels can be mostly recycled, with some apparently reaching up to 96% efficiency. That's not to say that makes the panels green, or really anything, but it does kick the problem down the road, and allows for better disposal of what waste is left over rather than getting dumped somewhere.

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lastfutures wrote (edited )

Lol deserved the deletion but very funny & correct

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thekraken wrote

Frankly, this kind of question is why I'm a Transhumanist. We're simply never going to be able to get everyone on an equal playing field when we're constrained by the random vagaries of nature in regards to people's innate capabilities or handicaps. Obviously it's trivial to point at my stance and say I'm relying on 'Utopian goals', but ultimately you have to have a goal to get somewhere. I think we'd ultimately be better served eliminating barriers between people than trying to work around them all the time.

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ziq OP wrote

So your goal is to grant 8 billion people an equal industrial footprint ("playing field")? Do you know how rapidly the planet's ecosystems would collapse if everyone had the same industrial throughput as North Americans and Europeans?

What you're proposing isn't utopian, it's positively genocidal.

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thekraken wrote

You're using the current situation (we cannot with current technology have 8 billion people on the same playing field) and saying that it should not be a goal because we can't do it right now. I disagree, I think we ought to work towards equality and find way to improve everyone's situation. Not being able to do a thing at the present time doesn't mean not figuring out a way to do it in the future, that's just the story of humanity in general.

Also, you're being positively hyperbolic about your take on it - genocidial - which I find odd, but whichever, maybe you've got really strong feelings against Transhumanism for some reason, who knows.

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ziq OP wrote

If you're really concerned about equality, increasing our dependence on technology is going to do the opposite of make us equal. Expertise creates inequality and the more advanced the technology, the more advanced the expertise and thus the bigger gap there is between experts and non experts.

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