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tranarchy wrote

Hate speech loses a lot of its power in an anarchist society. Without a mechanism to turn individual bigotry into a system of oppression, hate speech really is just words and can be dealt with through social mediation.

"If a white man wants to lynch me, that's his problem. If he's got the power to lynch me, that's my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it's a question of power. Racism gets its power from capitalism. Thus, if you're anti-racist, whether you know it or not, you must be anti-capitalist. The power for racism, the power for sexism, comes from capitalism, not an attitude." - Stokely Carmichael

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rmblock wrote

This is still a hypothetical utopia though, correct? One where group identities have dissolved and there is no such thing as a mob mentality, no scarcity of resources... Right? I agree with you in spirit but I'd just like to clarify what you mean by 'in an anarchist society.' Many other leftists don't have the luxury of pointing to an ideal that has never existed at scale for an extended period in modern history.

For example, were I to say 'well, the state gradually withers away in a communist society' I'd be laughed away because we have examples to point to and no concrete case of that happening, even if it is the ideal we are striving towards.

(Not trying to troll, this is a genuine question/clarification coming from a libertarian socialist.)

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tranarchy wrote

"An anarchist society" as in a hypothetical society without a coercive hierarchical structure that also actively inhibits the construction of such.

I wouldn't call it a utopia per se, because that implies that it's not possible to create such a society, whereas I am of the opinion that we don't yet know for sure what the limits of human society are. I think we need to explore these limits and push towards a better society. The anarchist experiment is just that, an experiment, and even though we can't be sure whether it will work until we try it, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try it.

I'm definitely, despite my username, more of a libertarian socialist than a strict anarchist, but only because of the aforementioned fact that we don't know what the limits are. I'm not going to put all my eggs in one basket and say anything short of total anarchy is insufficient. But I'm not going to say anarchism is unrealistic when it hasn't been tried to any significant extent.

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