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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kin 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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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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thekraken wrote

I see your point, but I think that after a certain point that distinction goes away. We'll just have to agree to disagree on this one perhaps.

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firewalk wrote

Had not taken ancom ideas seriously? That is an enormous chunk of anarchist thought to dismiss out of hand. Maybe the answer you seek is in the body of literature extant on the subject and not from someone online who claimed the label and had some bad takes.

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ziq OP wrote

It's s parody of the post I linked to with a few words changed (anticiv to ancom)

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firewalk wrote

Got it. It is just so hard to recognize parody these days. My bad.

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