AndyI didn't join the revolution to read
TheSeveralJourneysOfReemusAnarchists have their resources too, don’t you think?
Even being a anarchist takes some skill, after all.
How much over intellectualizing does it take to need to read about anarchy?
I mean, standing in the shoulders of giants and all that. May as well lean into the human ability to be more effective by learning from generations of experience.
Learning and passing down knowledge are great human capabilities. That goes without saying. I was questioning how much that applies to the idea of anarchy before you’re simply thinking about it too much. Like, are you making rules for how to anarchy?
Cowbee [he/they]Anarchism has a good deal of theory associated with how a horizontalist society can come to be and function. It very much isn’t just 'vibes," even if I disagree with it.
See that’s the problem I have with this position. Knowledge is something you either have or don’t. Its something tjat can be kept from you. If someone can be ‘in the know’ about anarchy by studying it, that creates systems of hierarchy and power. Defining it is intellectual oppression. It becomes just another form of political domination and control. Anarchy is, in fact, just vibes.
This is the most extreme form of vibes-based politics I think I’ve seen in a while. By that standard, schools should not exist. This is peak anti-intellectualism to the point of absurdity.
WTF are you talking about? I’m talking about anarchy. Not whether schools should exist. If your employing anarchy as a system of government and expecting schools I don’t know what to say. That’s absurd no matter how much you love the concept.
Have you actually read anarchist theory? I have. I don’t agree with it, but the idea that education is an unjustifiable hierarchy is absurd.
Unfortunately, if I read any text about anarchy it will only lead me further away from what anarchy actually is. That’s the nature of the beast.
No it isn’t, you’re inventing a concept and believing it to be the concept.
And now you’ve made my point about power and control for me. Anarchy is freedom and liberation. Here you are using it as an intellectual prison.
No, I am discussing anarchism the concept as it has evolved over time and has actually existed in real life, even if only for short periods. You’ve invented a brand new ideology that rejects itself as such and undermines its own premise.
And my point is that your idea of anarchy that’s ‘evolved over time’ and has ‘actually existed in real life’ is antithetical to what anarchy actually is. You’ve confused yourself by over intellectualizing the concept.
No, you’ve confused yourself by dogmatically extrapolating what you think anarchy is from vibes and conjecture.
Yes. And if you have a problem with that, you don’t get anarchy.
I don’t want anarchy, I’m a communist. That doesn’t mean I can afford to invent strawmen to argue against, I take anarchism seriously precisely because I don’t agree with it. I evaluate it on its own merits and theory, not by my own invented strawman.
I’m doing pretty well, thanks! Essentially, I disagree that anarchism is a viable path forward for large-scale change, and my reasoning for doing so is that production and distribution have evolved to become more interconnected, complex, and distributed, not horizontalist, individualist, and communalist. It therefore makes more sense to solve the contradiction between privatized profits in the hands of fewer and fewer people, and the socialization of labor globally, by socializing the profits, ownership of production and distribution, as well as abolishing class.
Hierarchy isn’t intrinsically bad, in my view. Organization with various levels emerges as a common structure in society over time often out of necessity, as production and distribution grows in scale and complexity. The solution to problems of class society isn’t to attack the concept of hierarchy, but the material basis of class, that being private ownership of the means of production.
That’s the gist of it, really, in a small bite.
I see the take! I may just be a bit too idealist to agree fully, but obviously that world would be way better than our current one. Thanks for sharing.
No problem!