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Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

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Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#61

Post by unity1001 »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #6

Seems Kropotkin was always doomed to be dubbed a "revolutionary" (in the negative sense) purely by dint of his observations. Humans don't live "in nature". We live within systems we build. The cooperative struggle against a hostile environment naturally becomes one against the incumbent system [1]. The system therefore naturally mobilises to disrupt cooperation, to divide and disorient. And therein lies the paradox o…

> And therein lies the paradox of digital communication, that the more we are connected - via the system - the more we are divided.

Its only because people are easily losing the sight what's important when the establishment manipulates them using emotional triggers. From nationalism to religion, from social issues to pop culture, everything is used to take people's attention away from economic issues.

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#62

Post by notch656a »

jpster wrote: post #46
incompatible wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard (of course) of anarchism a long time ago, but I always wrote it off as impractical: since without government, there's nobody to stop somebody from starting one. However, this may be incorrect, but it does require a population that is always willing to fight against the formation of a government. I think now that anarchism is practical, at least for a population of committed anarchists, and in the absence of h…

> Anarchism argues that no centralized government is necessary for people to lead happy, just and equitable lives. How does this work when one is a minority in a prejudiced society? This concern has always hindered me from thinking of anarchism as viable.

A minority in a prejudiced society is always fucked, but especially fucked in a democracy. Democracy is literally legitimization of force against the minority, by virtue of vote. Even the constitution, which supposedly protects minority rights, can be amended to remove those rights by a prejudiced majority.

IMO the prejudiced minority has the best chance when they can make it as painful as possible for the majority to harm them. That is, to disable the state's law as much as possible from being wielded against non-aggressor minorities.

>How does this work when one is a minority in a prejudiced society?

In practice in places like Northern Syria, which much of is essentially devoid of strong government, Syriac Christians banded together with machine guns and literally kill anyone who comes to aggress against them. Sure, Assad / the Kurds (who are their allies) / other majority around them could fuck them up if they like, but it's not worth the trouble.

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#63

Post by n8cpdx »

kqr wrote: post #59
CharlesW wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In other words, anarchism presupposes lack of significant prejudice. That seems to put it in "fun thought experiment" territory.

Or "conditional probability" territory. Of the people who would choose to espouse a philosophy of treating everyone as equal, it is unlikely to find someone significantly prejudiced.

Espousing ideology isn’t the same as believing it or living it. The moment the threat of the state recedes, and sometimes before, anarchist violence turns inwards; race, sex, and gender expression are just as suitable as status markers for anarchists as anyone else.

https://archive.org/details/BetrayalACriticalAnalysisOfRapeC...

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#64

Post by abeppu »

incompatible wrote: post #8
bxjx wrote: post #3

"Conquest of Bread" had a huge impact on my politics. It cut through the capitalist realist narrative that we're all in economic competition and that capitalism is the only sane solution. It made me feel like another world is possible. I changed my life to pursue these other possibilities ever since.

I heard (of course) of anarchism a long time ago, but I always wrote it off as impractical: since without government, there's nobody to stop somebody from starting one. However, this may be incorrect, but it does require a population that is always willing to fight against the formation of a government. I think now that anarchism is practical, at least for a population of committed anarchists, and in the absence of h…

> It was in Le Guin's novel "The Dispossessed" that I first read a convincing account of such a society

It's been a minute, but _was_ The Dispossessed a convincing account of such a society? From what I remember, the protagonist encounters academic gate-keepers who effectively control who gets to do teaching and research or what gets communicated to the main planet, centralized systems choose things as personal as what you're named, resources (food) are distributed unequally and untransparently (Shivek is surprised when the big university cafeteria has more/better food?). Coercive hierarchies still develop, but they're cloaked in the dogma of anarchism.

I read this as showing that even if you can isolate to an extreme (by being on a resource-poor moon), and have a language and education system which tries to suppress concepts of ownership, and a population goes through the shared trauma of fighting to feed themselves, people will still find a way to limit each other's freedom, and exercise power, and accumulate or control resources.

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#65

Post by Synaesthesia »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #21
bxjx wrote: post #3

"Conquest of Bread" had a huge impact on my politics. It cut through the capitalist realist narrative that we're all in economic competition and that capitalism is the only sane solution. It made me feel like another world is possible. I changed my life to pursue these other possibilities ever since.

What else can you recommend reading on the topic?

Anarcho-Syndicalism by Rudolf Rocker

Government in the Future by Noam Chomsky (essay/lecture)

The Anarchist FAQ (Online)

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#66

Post by davidgay »

notch656a wrote: post #62
jpster wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anarchism argues that no centralized government is necessary for people to lead happy, just and equitable lives. How does this work when one is a minority in a prejudiced society? This concern has always hindered me from thinking of anarchism as viable.

A minority in a prejudiced society is always fucked, but especially fucked in a democracy. Democracy is literally legitimization of force against the minority, by virtue of vote. Even the constitution, which supposedly protects minority rights, can be amended to remove those rights by a prejudiced majority. IMO the prejudiced minority has the best chance when they can make it as painful as possible for the majority t…

> A minority in a prejudiced society is always fucked, but especially fucked in a democracy.

The history of genocides and ethnic cleansing, plenty of which happened historically and recently outside democracies, disagrees.

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#67

Post by sershe »

bxjx wrote: post #3

"Conquest of Bread" had a huge impact on my politics. It cut through the capitalist realist narrative that we're all in economic competition and that capitalism is the only sane solution. It made me feel like another world is possible. I changed my life to pursue these other possibilities ever since.

Of course it's possible, it existed before capitalism and had tons of mutual aid and resilience. It's called "subsistence farming". Without surplus extraction + capital accumulation, it was always stuck at low equilibrium where everyone is poor. See e.g. [1] Also as a side note I don't discuss here, anyone quick enough to band together and abuse the mutual-aiding community was easily able to do so, hence feudalism, or e.g. cartels in our times.

In fact they observe it even in existing cultures where strong kin institutions prevent saving, both via "mutual aid" itself, but also cultural expectation of mutual aid creating an incentive to spend ASAP - cause if you don't, your family/friends/... are going to ask you for money. Meaning again everyone ends up poorer. Breaking kin institutions and "mutual aid" is one of the keys to actually improving QoL for most people [2]

[1] https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they... - Banqueting the Yields, and other parts

[2] The WEIRDest People in the World book

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#68

Post by sershe »

incompatible wrote: post #8
bxjx wrote: post #3

"Conquest of Bread" had a huge impact on my politics. It cut through the capitalist realist narrative that we're all in economic competition and that capitalism is the only sane solution. It made me feel like another world is possible. I changed my life to pursue these other possibilities ever since.

I heard (of course) of anarchism a long time ago, but I always wrote it off as impractical: since without government, there's nobody to stop somebody from starting one. However, this may be incorrect, but it does require a population that is always willing to fight against the formation of a government. I think now that anarchism is practical, at least for a population of committed anarchists, and in the absence of h…

Yeah, if everyone was like me, I bet AnCap would work (very different from most-common versions of anarchism, and in my view, the only non-morally-repugnant one - but still impractical). Heck I bet if you could clone some saints old-school communism would work just fine :)

The main problem is how a society can work without such restrictions...

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#69

Post by notch656a »

davidgay wrote: post #66
notch656a wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A minority in a prejudiced society is always fucked, but especially fucked in a democracy. Democracy is literally legitimization of force against the minority, by virtue of vote. Even the constitution, which supposedly protects minority rights, can be amended to remove those rights by a prejudiced majority. IMO the prejudiced minority has the best chance when they can make it as painful as possible for the majority t…

> A minority in a prejudiced society is always fucked, but especially fucked in a democracy. The history of genocides and ethnic cleansing, plenty of which happened historically and recently outside democracies, disagrees.

No one is disagreeing that governments are the biggest perpetuator of killing in the past 100 years. Government is responsible for far more killing than by non-government actors. Using your interesting logic, one would disagree with the existence of government if one were trying to minimize these deaths. Is this your argument in support of anarchism?

Re: Pëtr Kropotkin and Mutual Aid

#70

Post by ZeroGravitas »

_0ffh wrote: post #58
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article used those terms, in a way that cast Kropotkin in a "right libertarian" light which struck me as anachronistic given his time period. Your comment seemed to echo that, talking about some Anarcho-capitalist libertarian ideal buzzword society, linking that to his anarchism and then further attaching the generic word 'capitalist' to it. This felt like a stretch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitali…

I'd like to point you to a detailed rebuttal of this claim in text [1] and video [2] form. Wikipedia should not be anyone's only source. [1] https://springtimeofnations.org/2021/04/yes-ancaps-are-anarc... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJb2-bsWP6Y

Having an obscure historical claim to a word commonly associated with people who you disagree with is the best kind of Technically Correct, but not great for communication.

I was mostly trying to point out that there are disagreements about what "anarchist" means and avoid confusion.

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