What were the most influential factors which lead you to anarchy?

Submitted by Majrelende in AskRaddle (edited )

For me, it was the realisation that statism was neither effective nor desirable in creating a non-oppressive communist* society— I had had a distain for capitalism since hearing told that it was not the sole possible form of society.

What were yours?

*I use this term in the broadest sense of a state of statelessness (forgive my choice of words), moneylessness, classlessness, and marketlessness (please also forgive my invention of random and tedious terms that probably should not exist). Anarcho-communism is for the ideology, communism for the state of being.
15

Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

OdiousOutlaw wrote

When I was younger, I would always hear Thomas Hobbes-esque arguments about how humans are inherently evil and that we need the state to keep us from raping and murdering each other. There was never any explanation for why we should let a smaller group of the same inherently evil people rule over a much larger group or how this small group of people wouldn't still end up indulging in the same activities that justify their rule (because, as most here would know, there is no adequate justification to their rule nor guarantee that power will make them a lesser evil) so I never bought into the idea that being ruled was a desirable state of affairs. After a while, I found no fault with the idea of not having a government, so I stopped calling myself a libertarian and started calling myself an anarchist instead.

6

Majrelende OP wrote

That is interesting— I have mostly heard “we need specialists who just happen to have never met us to run our lives for us”, which almost assigns a type of divinity to politicians.

2

rot wrote

2016 election

reddit anarchists linking to anarchist u-tubers

books i guess?

5

greentea wrote

For me it was growing up in South Africa and witnessing the general messiness of state discourse trying to scoop up and hastily "correct" undesirable narratives, moving from apartheid, to "rainbow nation" non racialism, to trying to co-opt outside resistances around land, all the while doing everything possible to participate in global capitalism.

5

n_n wrote

Living in poverty and being repressed by the state apparatus made me met anti-system people that led me to anarchism.

4

ziq wrote

People forever trying to control, shame, abuse and dominate me. That's all.

4

LostYonder wrote

Good question! Not really sure it is traceable back to a single experience or reading or idea, but a process of slow movement and awakening. From my early high school days I leaned towards Maoism which was shattered when I traveled to China in college. That left me wandering a bit, leaning towards postcolonial critiques of the west, critical theories and politics that disrupted the current system, but with no real vision of what came next.

I focused much of my graduate education and academic work on critiquing liberal formations and ideas, particularly the nation-state and have always been adamantly anti-capitalism (though operate within it very much, so a bit of a hypocrite, I know).

What really pushed me towards anarchism though was probably the Arab Spring and then the Occupy movement. I saw the diverse possibilities of people working together to transform their worlds. The extent to which such non-movement movements were destroyed by the state and state interests was shocking (not that the state had such vindictive power, but that there seemed to be so little resilience of such anti-state practices). Thus I turned to anarchism to start learning more about how to imagine and foster values and aspirations that have the capacity to actually resist state oppression.

Still learning and still wondering how to imbibe such ideas into people who are otherwise so comfortable with the false security of the state/capitalism system we live in...

3

Majrelende OP wrote (edited )

Interesting.

Still learning and still wondering how to imbibe such ideas into people who are otherwise so comfortable with the false security of the state/capitalism system we live in...

This was why I posed this question in the first place— to find out what led people to embrace anarchist ideas and see if there were any commonalities.

2

Bezotcovschina wrote (edited )

Don't know exactly. A little more then year ago I was stumbled acros some lectures of some philosophy professor on youtube, where them discussed the philosophy of anarchy. So that's how I've learned about Proudhon, Kropotkin and what anarchy actually means. But I can't say I haven't felt that way before. For my entire life, as I recal, I always despised authority, power and one forcing their will to other. Don't exactly know what factor were the most influential, just life.

Edit: having orthodox christian stalinist parents, apparently.

2

MHC wrote

A very bad boss!

2

An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

I spent years trying to make myself as open to changing my opinion when better information came along as part of a belief that it was always better to always seek out better ways to live.

Then I walked into an anarchist infoshop, curiously, and was a collective member within a month.

2

Spinfuga wrote

The argument that it's the moral position. That convinced me. In a micro-second. lol What do people think about topics related to this issue? Is this the biggest factor? What would be if not this? What is the most significant thing? What is entirely over-recognized in its value by many? lol Ethics matters. I won't sway from that. Ethical things are on my mind in my day. They won't leave. lol

1