You must log in or register to comment.
Was the credit cut? Bc Existential Comics really be a classic
Don’t know is EC has that signed in the image tbh. I just crossposted in this case.
Anti-anarchist pretty much think
- Anarchy = chaos
This is heavily promoted by mainstream media and language
- Anarchists are pacifist
Many people seem unable to comprehend how a community might defend itself without a standing military and so assume we must be unwilling to defend ourselves.
- Nothing can be accomplished without coercion
Because most of us have grown up within strict hierarchies coerced to do things we don’t want, we have trouble imagining any other way.
- Everyone is inherently a selfish asshole
This is probably projection in most cases
How do you keep an Anarchic Utopia then? What stops Dickie McDickerson and his thugs from establishing a state on top of you?
The same that stops them from taking over a democracy. Sometimes.
If a society became anarchist enough to abolish state structures, there obviously had to exist a reason - there had to exist popular support.
Thus, someone attempting to recreate a state would face questions and opposition. People would try to persuade them of their error. If they declared a state, anarchists would not recognize it. If it claimed sovereignity above a territory, anarchists might not recognize that either.
The new state might encounter problems - unwilling residents would leave and be accepted in anarchy, annoyed anarchists would organize trade boycotts and sanctions, ultimately it could go badly and armed confrontation could follow. In some scenarios, the state might remain and attract people who want to live there. In some scenarios, war would follow - and if the majority really was anarchist, the state would lose and disappear.
Oh no, you misunderstand. They’re not giving you a choice. They aren’t proponents of democracy or any kind of representative government. You have to go from an Anarchic state to resisting an organized group while they are grabbing community leaders in the middle of the night and taking young men and women to work camps.
To resist an organized group, you communicate the problem (in an anarchist society, communicating the problem of a nascent state seems like the easy part), present evidence of the nature and severity of the problem, and ask people and existing organizations to mobilize.
Whether the next step is obstructing the state peacefully or mass production of munitions, would already depend on how bad the state has got.
As much as I abhor the state and wish we live like the state of Cheran (ironic of me to say state in this case, I know), anarchy will only work in a very small group, where everyone knows each other, are like-minded enough to not abuse each other’s goodwill, and respect each other’s personal boundaries.
deleted by creator
Who said anarchists and their friends will not defend from outside threats? The Spanish anarchists organized and fought for 3 years against overwhelming odds when they had to.
Also notably, the Kronstadt anarchists held a general assembly to dicsuss the question of “shall we accept Lenin’s ultimatum, or fight a battle against the Red Army?” and decided democratically to fight.
(The battle was extremely bloody, anarchists lost and the Red Army won, at the cost of losing at least 5 times more people. Considerable numbers of anarchists escaped to Finland.)
In short: anarchists can use heavy artillery when needed, even if they know that war is not healthy - neither for them or the society they want.
Anarchy is not by nature disorganized. Lack of hierarchy doesn’t mean lack of organization. Probably a well-functioning anarchist organization is better organized than most hierarchical ones.
If friends are not there to defend the group of three, mutual aid is missing. That’s why it failed.
So you’re saying an Anarchy should have a group based authority to enforce the mutual aid and cooperation? How do you propose we disincentivise selling each other out for personal gain? And at large scale who makes decisions about defence organization, like where and when to attack? Does an anarchist non-heierarchal defence have to poll every hard decision and if so doesn’t that inform any opposition of plans ahead of time while completely gutting the ability to react in a timely manner to threats?
And don’t give that lame “just go read the theories bro you clearly haven’t read the theores” bullshit response I see all the time.
Actually, there seems to be a bit of a mix-up. Let me clarify.
In an anarchist group, enforcing anything goes against its fundamental principles.
If personal gain is the motive, one isn’t truly aligned with the group’s social contract and isn’t considered part of it.
Decisions are made collectively, without hierarchy. Voting or delegating organisational tasks to sub-groups is the norm.
I won’t go into words like “attacking,” “defense,” or “threats” as they are military terms, far from the anarchist ethos.
And I won’t call you “bro” or make you read theory. I feel you won’t.
So then Anarchy is completely defenseless to both internal and external strife, doomed to collapse in every circumstance.
We don’t need to incentivse not selling people out. Heirarchy creates a set of incentives TO sell people out. Remove those incentives and people will for the most part not sell people out. You’ve got it exactly backwards.
Ask your buddy mao about anarchist fighting forces. He literally took anarchist tactics around decentralized militias and used them to great success. The Vietnamese as well. Or have a look at the Spanish revolution, rojava, the Ukrainian black army, or the zapatistas if you need more proof that decentralized militant forces are effective and capable. It doesn’t warrant an in detail explanation because “but how fight if democracy???” is weak as fuck.
What’s your plan to “remove those incentives” because I think we’ve got more than enough sample data on what happens when a government falls and the disappearance of all crime and hostility is not part of it.
The fascists actually won in Spain WW2, FYI. Same with Vietnam.
Zapitista, Makhnovshchina, Rojava, Zomia, etc. didn’t all descend into mass crime and slaughter.
What we’ve seen is these movements benefit the people living there.
First of all, Rojava is a representative democracy with 2 Co-chair leadership positions and a congress of 43 seats.
YPG, the militia formed during the seperation of Rojava from the Syrian government, have been accused by Human Rights groups of using Child Soldiers.
What we’ve seen is these movements benefit the people living there.
That region is at constant war with two of their surrounding nations for over a decade. Hundreds of thousands of people died. They’re at high risk of losing and disappearing.
YPG, the militia formed during the seperation of Rojava from the Syrian government, have been accused by Human Rights groups of using Child Soldiers.
Correct… and notably, unlike the other forces around them (Syrian dictatorship, Turkish-sponsored islamists, ISIS, etc) they responded to the accusation within a month:
In June 2020, United Nations reported the YPG/YPJ as the largest faction in the Syrian civil war by the number of recruited child soldiers with 283 child soldiers followed by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham with 245 child soldiers.[141]
On 15 July 2020, SDF issued a new military order prohibiting child recruitment. The NGO Fight For Humanity conducted multiple training sessions with hundreds of SDF commanders about the UN-SDF Action Plan To Prevent Child Recruitment, and distributed informational posters and flyers about it written in both Arabic and Kurdish, as part of an ongoing educational process. Syria-based researcher Thomas McClure observed that “SDF are less likely to engage in such practices than any of the other forces in Syria, but seek to hold themselves to a higher standard of accountability and human rights.”[142]
On 29 August 2020, SDF announced the creation of a new system that anyone can use to confidentially report to specialized Child Protection offices any suspected case of child recruitment, in accordance with the action plan that the SDF signed with the United Nations in the summer of 2019.[143][144]
What’s your plan to “remove those incentives” because think we’ve got more than enough sample data on what happens when a government falls and the disappearance of all crime and hostility is not part of it.
Are you the one that said not to say “go read theory”? Because the urge to tell you to go read theory is pretty fuckin strong. I’m not going to summarize 200 years of political philosophy and history for you. Especially because I know you’re just gonna go “no you’re wrong and my heirarchical realism is right” no matter how compelling my points are. I’ll give you a couple of places to start, I guess.
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. E-book/PDF version. Audiobook version.
Anarchy Works, Peter Gelderloos. PDF/E-book version Audiobook version
Seeing Like a State, James C. Scott, pdf version
On YouTube: Anark (Theory essays), Andrewism (Theory and Praxis), Zoe Baker (PhD in anarchist history).
Also, the Spanish revolution is a lot more complicated than “the fascists won btw”. Your tone again suggests it’s not worth the effort of breaking it down for.you. I don’t have any specific recommendations on that other than to open a book. Have a good day and go fuck yourself
Thats a lot of words just to surrender. Are you French?
