• 5 Posts
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Joined 5 years ago
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Cake day: August 29th, 2019

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  • I’m only posting in good faith, so far as I can tell. In a similar way to how I understand many of the users here to see anarchists as potential marxists, I’m curious to understand the ways I might reach Marxists.

    I think your point on ad hominem fails though. It’s appropriate to the case of Einstein but not to Marx, for exactly anarchist reasons. It’s this reframing that I’m curious to enact.

    For an anarchist, ad hominem is not a fallacy, because we believe in prefiguration. If you don’t live anarchistically in the now, your politics are garbage. Anarchism is about what you do, not about what you say. And Marx’s broader lived politics reflect his bigotry, paternalism, and authoritarianism, whether we’re talking about this quote, or the ways he went out of his way to create conditions that would oust Bakunin from the international, or in the way he stole much of his analysis of capital from Proudhon and denied it, etc. etc. etc.

    You can do science and socialism without being a marxist, and it is not uncommon marxist’s engagement with science is mere scientism, or merely ideological.

    You people are too old for this shit.

    It’s just me talking, you can address me directly.




  • anarchisttoLeftsthetics - Leftist Aesthetics*Permanently Deleted*
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    5 years ago

    I am doubtful that most forms of industrialism are ecologically sustainable or conducive of full communism. Usually they require extractivist economies that depend on finite resources and ultimately become colonial enterprises as they seek out those resources elsewhere. And the kind of centralisation of power that comes with the levels of scientific and technical specialisation, together with the actual means of production themselves, inherently will tend to reproduce hierarchical arrangements that prevent the dissolution of the intermediary state under any communist regime, or conversely, in an anarchist territory would be the grounds for the reemergence of hierarchical institutions.


  • I’m not really one for rage, so if I quit it will just be because it’s not pragmatic for me to be here.

    The main reason I brought up the Gelderloos piece is because I’m familiar with Pop from their accounts on reddit and raddle and I’ve always found them to be very sincere and genuine in their engagements, together with having a strong understanding of the philosophical groundings of the theories they speak of. I’ve been able to expand on my thoughts on multiple occasions because of directions they’ve sent me on. So in that sense I vouch for Pop’s arguments where I wouldn’t for many others on that site. Actually, seeing that they were a moderator for the anarchist forum is the main reason I started participating here.










  • anarchisttoFULLCOMMUNISMA U T H O R I T A R I A N
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    5 years ago

    I am an anti-imperialist in the global south, along with my comrades. I’ll have a shot at answering your question in earnest, in general terms, because different places have different historical answers to this question, and there’s no unison of response to it.

    1. Personally I think that Marxism has a great analysis of capitalist processes, especially those of Marx’s time. It’s very empowering for many, though alienating to those who don’t have the privilege to study it. Unfortunately this amounts to the first stratification of Marxist society - the privileged vanguard and the masses. Nevertheless, the analysis of capital is good.

    2. Marxism is more effective at organising a war machine against imperialism, but unfortunately at great cost. Capitalism cannot be dismantled unless we also dismantle relations of authority.

    3. I also think that Marxism is simply easier because one does not have to unlearn a deference to authority from the get-go on top of having to absorb a radical critique of capitalism. Marxists can cling to their desire give power over their lives to representatives/vanguards (who will likely be corrupted by the power structures they participate in), or alternatively they can live out their desire for power over others by joining the vanguard and pretending to be able to speak for a huge, heterogenous group. Anarchism is harder, it demands more effort and greater imagination.

    So those three reasons.

    You didn’t answer my inquiry.


  • anarchisttoBeardTubeRichard Wolff on Noam Chomsky and Anarchism.
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    5 years ago

    Though I’m sure that by far most anarchists are anarcho-communist, Wolff still can’t use an often-healthy skepticism of many forms of organisation to dismiss all of anarchism, and certainly he can’t use it to dismiss Chomsky, who is absolutely the sort who wants organisations etc.

    It seems to me that you have a very limited experience of anarchists (I’ll guess you mostly have just engaged white anarchists in the USA?), and furthermore that it’s limited by a specific lens on anarchism; i.e. that the critiques etc that you’ve been exposed to have been highlighting the worst rather than the best of any of the tendencies you’ve engaged.


  • anarchisttoBeardTubeRichard Wolff on Noam Chomsky and Anarchism.
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    5 years ago

    What I’m trying to get across is that what he is saying is meaningless. Because obviously an organised anticapitalist resistance is desirable. It’s structures, like the military, like republicans in the US, like cops and prisons, racism sexism and so on, that undermine organisation. So the lack of organisation is in direct relation to those power structures - they cannot be separated from each other.

    Let me know if I’m still not clear, I’ll try again.








  • anarchisttoBeardTubeRichard Wolff on Noam Chomsky and Anarchism.
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    5 years ago

    Obviously people don’t want to be told what to do in their volunteer political activity. It’s exactly a world of being forced to work shitty jobs and live shitty lives that we rail against. People want to build real material alternatives to capitalism and of course that means trying to instantiate your values in that alternative.