I was debating the merits of incorporating some anarchist ideology, since my professor has been introducing some things to us.
Anarchism, different types, has its appeal.
but I keep running into multiple positions that i can’t for the life of me understand. This one in particular. How do you have solidarity when you can’t support states or hierarchies?
Also the existence of states, and what it takes to abolish them is of great interest to me. Because it seems to be as simple as uh, implementing direct democracy? Or some form of democratic functions in all society. So all institutions and borders can exist, but if you’re democratic you’re good? Do all situations really have to involve everyone?
so is literally a few elections and renaming institutions enough to replace the nation state? Seems incredibly easy then, i dont know what the fuss is about. (Although i think democratic armies are stupid why should that be a thing.)
Also my professor has an annoying tendency to hate on former socialism whenever its brought up. Also the sort of stereotypical obsession with rojava (which explicitly enshrines the right of private property, but otherwise i support the fight of the kurdish population for liberation) and the Zapitistas (who denounce western anarchism and explicitly identify as a sort of their own ideological deviation from marxism. Libertarian socialism in reality. Not hating on the Zapitistas of course, they’re cool as fuck and i support their fight against discrimination of ethnic minorities and natives. Other anarchists have a liking of Makhnovshchina, which gets a lot of undeserved hate in marxist circles but was more a warlord state than anarchist. But i’d be fine with that because it was a rough time and they were doing what they had to, but explicit denial of this and upholding it is very strange to me.
But these are… states??? Why is it Marxist states that get flak?
wait its probably the purges… yeah i’d be mad about that too if it was me…
Anarchists i think get lots of undue hate towards them as well, with many criticisms brushing them aside being equally applicable to marxism.
Also i dont want to see any marxists give a joking or sectarian answer, or ill report them. Im interested in learning the responses of anarchists, and the best ones i can find are usually here. I can get kind of defensive, i dont like being wrong, but i do genuinely want to learn.
no, not everyone has to be involved in every decision. the general idea is that the people affected by the outcome of the decision should be involved in making it. and that a decision should be taken at the lowest level possible. to take an absurd example, no one is going to vote about whether or not i have breakfast because it only affects me. or a more concrete example, there is no referendum or laws passed about whether or not gay marriage is acceptable. there is no state to control marriage, no legitimacy to marriage beyond what we choose to give it. the only people who need to decide that are the people getting married. but thats just a non-decision almost by definition.
so like, lets say there are people who produce food for a community. the people doing the work decide how it is done, perhaps in consultation with the community they are serving to properly understand their needs. but there is no community wide vote on how the farming is done, that is done by the people doing the work.
also, there are differences of opinion about whether decisions need to be consensus-based, or whether or not there should be some sort of voting and threshold for the decision to be make. i think it actually makes sense to use them in different contexts. as an example, we currently have a smol commune and everyone has to be in complete agreement about a new member joining, because especially at our current size, a new person is such a big change to how things work that if one person isn’t okay with it, it would be a massive disruption to the community. but if u have like a large activist org, or perhaps a meeting of federated smaller groups, a majority vote might be more appropriate.
okay i’m done. sorry this was incredibly long. i guess i got in the zone.