Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000) • Hacker News Board

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#571

Post by komali2 » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 7:37 PM UTC

ByteJockey wrote: post #419

komali2 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What examples of communism are you looking at that "haven't worked?" I really hope you aren't about to suggest the soviet union, that would be silly, considering it had a state, social classes, currency, and no general ownership of the means of production, and therefore wasn't communism. Might surprise you to learn that communism is working this very day, on communes all across the world. Also, the basic tenants of i…

>I really hope you aren't about to suggest the soviet union, that would be silly, considering it had a state, social classes, currency, and no general ownership of the means of production, and therefore wasn't communism. Y'know, this is a fair point for a philosophical conversation. It's a terrible point in a conversation about deciding how to actually organize society, however. You can't ultimately know what people'…

> d. Let's say someone comes to you and says "Hitler got fascism totally wrong". It's actually a really great ideology that Hitler violated by doing X, Y, and Z. Would you give this person power in the real world?

What? No! Because hitler got fascism perfectly right, and fascism is a terribly unethical way to organize government.

I meant specifically I am all about anarcho communism, it's happening and working right now in communes all around the world, has worked in the past, and imo is better than massive nation states forced to point nukes at each other on a hair trigger to sustain themselves.

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#572

Post by komali2 » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 7:38 PM UTC

erinnh wrote: post #357

komali2 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What examples of communism are you looking at that "haven't worked?" I really hope you aren't about to suggest the soviet union, that would be silly, considering it had a state, social classes, currency, and no general ownership of the means of production, and therefore wasn't communism. Might surprise you to learn that communism is working this very day, on communes all across the world. Also, the basic tenants of i…

If a system doesn't work in a larger society it's not a system that can replace our current one that somewhat works on that scale.

Falsely assumed premise: that this "scaled" society is necessary or ethical.

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#573

Post by komali2 » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 7:40 PM UTC

srtjstjsj wrote: post #490

komali2 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I will tell you again. In my community, people wear masks and social distance without being forced or told to. They do it for the same reason they wait in line at the bus.

What's the reason?

Because we're keeping each other safe from coronavirus. But I guess you caught me: we've replaced law and police with a virus that enforces our behavior on pain of death, lol.

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#574

Post by komali2 » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 7:43 PM UTC

RandoHolmes wrote: post #568

komali2 wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All one has to do is read a single article discussing law enforcement finding and preventing a bomb or a shooter to know that our laws are, in fact, preventing these scenarios I don't find articles like this very often. I do find many articles of cia and fbi failure, of the nsa trampling constitutional freedoms, of tsa failing 98% of audits though.

that you've found even a single one means the laws do, in fact, prevent these things from happening. That's just how logic works.

Okay but at what cost? Perhaps they're creating far more problems than they solve? To take from your argument, freedom comes with risks. If we have to risk the occasional sociopathic murderer and in return not have to worry about being shot by the national guard for the crime of standing on our porch, maybe that's a valid trade off.

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#575

Post by zanny » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 7:44 PM UTC

srtjstjsj wrote: post #483

zanny wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is fundamentally built on competition, it pits all participants against one another. It stratifies social bonds and breaks people apart because any cooperation represents unrealized exploitation. Its why people are so miserable en masse, hostile, and chomping at the bit for targets to attack and hate. Its worse in America because theres almost no socialism at all to raise the floor of society - the country…

Ask the hundreds of millions of murdered Chinese or a Russian how well alternatives to capitalism work out. Maybe the problem isn't the economic model.

Stalin and Mao, and their successors, were totalitarian dictators. Trying to call the states they commanded socialist is as disingenuous as most other arguments in defense of capitalism. Its like saying the National Socalist German Workers Party was socialist or in the interest of workers. Instead it might just be that those of evil intent will co-opt the hallmarks and language in the peoples interests to undermine their efforts and seize power in their stead for their own tyrannical ends.

But yes, if you want to participate in a socialist revolution, make sure your movement isn't taken over by fascists.

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#576

Post by rhn_mk1 » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 7:45 PM UTC

b112 wrote: post #566

marricks wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, did they rob peasants or the lords of the land with their amassed stolen wealth...? A community can decide to cast someone out, reprimand them, imprison them, etc. The whole idea of restorative justice can actually exist when a community is able to address it.

What the? A "community" which makes "communal decisions" is a form of government, not anarchism! How can you cast someone out, without gates? Guards? Walls? How can you throw them out? Prevent them from returning? Do you think the robbers will just stop, because you said "Stop!". I feel like you're trolling here. I could of course be wrong, but it feels that way.

Anarchism is a form of self-governance.

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#577

Post by zanny » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 7:46 PM UTC

lr4444lr wrote: post #485

zanny wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is fundamentally built on competition, it pits all participants against one another. It stratifies social bonds and breaks people apart because any cooperation represents unrealized exploitation. Its why people are so miserable en masse, hostile, and chomping at the bit for targets to attack and hate. Its worse in America because theres almost no socialism at all to raise the floor of society - the country…

You think socialist and communist counties don't have drug addiction problems?

If a socialist state fulfills its mandate to provide what it can for the betterment of its peoples condition than it would see many fewer cases of addiction than traditional capitalist economies with little or no socialism as a safeguard against destitution. See the Nordics, as per usual.

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#578

Post by Hoenoe » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 7:47 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #190

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> anacistic organisations, charities and protest movement have done a lot for the environment. In fact they are the only ones that have done anything at all. This is not true at all. Protecting the environment isn’t just about actions like planting trees and buying up the occasional extra property parcel to dedicate as a land reserve. It requires government scale regulation to impose negative consequences on people a…

The anarchist argument is distribution of power. Take the example of pollution. Say you're an employee of a fossil fuel cooperative. Is it in your interest to continue polluting? Yes, because you after all own some of the ressources of that company and control it. So what is the anarchist solution? Well, it's in the interests of everyone to stop pollution, right? So you'd need people to come together, decide that pop…

Elinor Ostrom come up with the 8 design principles[1] for dealing with the tragedy of the commons for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize. She concludes that top-down regulation doesn't work because of complexity and laissez-faire because private companies will try to maximize their profits. So she studied common pools and found out that if they missed these 8 principles between groups involved it would lead to depletion or conflicts. This I think is an anarchist solution to the problem only she called it polycentric governance.

[1]: https://evonomics.com/tragedy-of-the-commons-elinor-ostrom/?...

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#579

Post by baryphonic » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 7:48 PM UTC

drblast wrote: post #538

I think in many ways it's impossible to have this discussion with a U.S. audience. The idea of force and violence being the solution to everything is deeply, deeply ingrained in U,S, culture. Simply suggesting that reason and cooperation can solve some of the problems we in the U.S. attempt to solve with more violence is usually met with the "starship troopers" ideology that violence is the actual source of legitimac…

War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. The machinery of government sets and enforces the drastic penalties. The minorities are either intimidated into silence, or brought slowly around by subtle process of persuasion which may seem to them really to be converting them. Of course, the ideal of perfect loyalty, perfect uniformity is never really attained. The classes upon whom the amateur work of coercion falls are unwearied in their zeal, but often their agitation, instead of converting merely serves to stiffen their resistance. Minorities are rendered sullen, and some intellectual opinion bitter and satirical. But in general, the nation in wartime attains a uniformity of feeling, a hierarchy of values culminating at the undisputed apex of the State ideal, which could not possibly be produced through any other agency than war. Other values such as artistic creation, knowledge, reason, beauty, the enhancement of life, are instantly and almost unanimously sacrificed, and the significant classes who have constituted themselves the amateur agents of the State, are engaged not only in sacrificing these values for themselves but in coercing all other persons into sacrificing them.

--Randolph Bourne, The State, 1918 (http://fair-use.org/randolph-bourne/the-state/)

Bourne was a Progressive, but was a critic of WWI, a minority position among his peers. This led him to significant ostracism before his death from Spanish Flu. I find it almost undeniable that Bourne was correct, especially in the contemporary political situation. Progressive president Woodrow Wilson was jailing socialists for sedition, and his administration was thoroughly in love with its own power.[1] It stands to reason given what we've seen since that groups in the media, the academe and the state itself have explicitly adopted the warlike posture Bourne criticizes.

So I think you're right, but it's a phenomenon from the last century or so that had originated sporadically in the decades after the Civil War. The reductionist debasement of all problems into enemies vanquished by a conquering army is mostly an artifact of the constitutional structure we've had since then, and the institutional founts of power that sustain it.

[1] See e.g. Philip Dru: Administrator (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Dru:_Administrator)

Re: Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you (2000)

#580

Post by pqhwan » Sat, Sep 05, 2020, 7:52 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #426

komali2 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite so simple: this is what "community policing" is all about. Many portland protesters were there because they wanted the national guard out. National guard soldiers who didn't live there, weren't members of the community... Who could act shitty to community members with no consequence.

Sure, but that's a reset. "I don't like the persons who do the law enforcement, I want to become the law enforcement". And then, of course, not be replaced by somebody who doesn't like that style of law enforcement. That would most likely quickly lead to massive segregation by any major criteria available, as "community policing" essentially means "no written laws, no recourse, we'll apply them as we see fit", ergo i…

> “I don't like the persons who do the law enforcement, I want to become the law enforcement"

IMO that’s an overly pessimistic view of those who push for community policing. In reality, it’s more like “we want people with stakes in the community’s wellness to police it, not those who see it as their daytime stomping ground.”

> That would most likely quickly lead to massive segregation

Really? Community policing = “no written laws”? You don’t think there’s a middle ground between “friendly neighborhood policemen” and Judge Dredd?

> if you're not tightly aligned with the majority in your specific area, you're going to have a terrible time

Right, because we currently live in a society that’s totally not segregated by wealth, race, culture, religion, sexuality, or political views. And clearly, the police system has been our bulwark against non-aligning minorities being persecuted! That’s what the protests are all about, right?