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The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

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Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#61

Post by systematical »

glial wrote: post #59
systematical wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I "outgrew" it. It's fun when you are in high school. I think capitalism works well so long as people can keep it honest. The invisible hand needs a visible hand because two hands are better than one. I also believe capitalism will eat itself and deliver us a pretty awesome world a hundred or so years from now (assuming we police it in the interim). Eliminate borders, then eliminate around one trillion a year…

> I also believe capitalism will eat itself and deliver us a pretty awesome world a hundred or so years from now I wish I could share your optimism. It's hard for me to believe there will be any future that doesn't include environmental collapse.

That's where we need to police it. Now maybe thats cap/trade, carbon tax, or whatever. Maybe its geoengineering. Remember this isn't just a capitalism problem, the Soviet Unions centralized economy wasn't exactly environmentally friendly. This is a humanity problem. Not many people share my optimism, but humans have been pretty good about surviving so far.

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#62

Post by Miner49er »

chrisdhoover wrote: post #58
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anarcho socialism hasn’t succeeded yet, but I still believe it must succeed in the future if we are ever to see real freedom for the masses and to avoid near total destruction of the Earth’s biosphere. If anyone wants to downvote me, I ask that you choose one of two alternatives. First, tell me why you want to downvote. Or, read this article by Albert Einstein talking about the necessity of socialism: https://monthly…

OP writes of anarcho syndicalism. Reply conflates it with anarcho socialism. Not sure these are the same things

Anarcho-syndicalism is a way to achieve/a form of anarcho-socialism.

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#63

Post by aalleavitch »

systematical wrote: post #48
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anarcho socialism hasn’t succeeded yet, but I still believe it must succeed in the future if we are ever to see real freedom for the masses and to avoid near total destruction of the Earth’s biosphere. If anyone wants to downvote me, I ask that you choose one of two alternatives. First, tell me why you want to downvote. Or, read this article by Albert Einstein talking about the necessity of socialism: https://monthly…

Capitalism will reach its end one day, long after we are gone, but that will be because of its own technologic achievements and not because of 19th-century socialist philosophy. Capitalism will become so efficient at some point that in its quest for more and more efficiency, it will end resource scarcity. Once scarcity is eliminated, capitalism "withers" away. That's my hope anyway. In the short-term, I'd like to see…

Capitalism doesn't wither away, it imposes artificial scarcity to allow its uneven power dynamic to continue. At some point the cruelty itself becomes the point. I would argue we're already past the point where we have to deny resources to anyone, we could feed and shelter everyone if we had the will to do it.

Actually I think that right now, when we are facing the potential reality of AGI not many decades away, is when we have to collectively make the choice to become the society we truly want to become.

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#64

Post by miceeatnicerice »

Miner49er wrote: post #53
systematical wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism will reach its end one day, long after we are gone, but that will be because of its own technologic achievements and not because of 19th-century socialist philosophy. Capitalism will become so efficient at some point that in its quest for more and more efficiency, it will end resource scarcity. Once scarcity is eliminated, capitalism "withers" away. That's my hope anyway. In the short-term, I'd like to see…

Your main idea is Marxist. Marx said the same thing, that Capital would end itself, through the elimination of scaricity. Though I think he was wrong about that, things like UBI proves that it always finds a way to survive. But anyway, you are both saying Marxist and pro-capitalist things, so I would guess you're just being downvoted by everyone.

Surely it was going to be the rise of class consciousness that overthrew Moloch? Though if we're all involved in the process ourselves, and only gain this consciousness through work, the end of Capitalism isn't so much a violent overthrowing from outside as much as a growing, positive realization of what was inside it anyway.

Maybe that's exactly what things like UBI point to: life as an adventure rather than a slave camp. The paranoid part of me then wants to find a bigger and more evil capital to criticise in the Marxian manner.

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#65

Post by aalleavitch »

chrisdhoover wrote: post #58
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anarcho socialism hasn’t succeeded yet, but I still believe it must succeed in the future if we are ever to see real freedom for the masses and to avoid near total destruction of the Earth’s biosphere. If anyone wants to downvote me, I ask that you choose one of two alternatives. First, tell me why you want to downvote. Or, read this article by Albert Einstein talking about the necessity of socialism: https://monthly…

OP writes of anarcho syndicalism. Reply conflates it with anarcho socialism. Not sure these are the same things

Anarcho-socialism is a broad term that describes a lot of different possible configurations of society, anarcho-syndicalism is an approach towards it.

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#66

Post by DuskStar »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #41
aalleavitch wrote: post #13

Unlike authoritarian communism, anarcho-socialism never got the chance to succeed or fail on its own merits. It was strangled in the crib.

Anarcho socialism hasn’t succeeded yet, but I still believe it must succeed in the future if we are ever to see real freedom for the masses and to avoid near total destruction of the Earth’s biosphere. If anyone wants to downvote me, I ask that you choose one of two alternatives. First, tell me why you want to downvote. Or, read this article by Albert Einstein talking about the necessity of socialism: https://monthly…

> Anarcho socialism hasn’t succeeded yet, but I still believe it must succeed in the future ... to avoid near total destruction of the Earth’s biosphere.

Why do so many people seem to act like some form of socialism is required (or even useful) to avoid environmental issues? It really doesn't help fight the right's narrative of "all this global warming stuff is just the economic left seeking more control over the economy" - in fact it plays directly to it. Are people just trying to attach their particular goals to a crisis they think might propel them forward?

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#67

Post by edmundsauto »

SequoiaHope wrote: post #39
aalleavitch wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m interested to hear what part of my statement people seem to disagree with: this was largely the thesis of Homage to Catalonia. It was the point behind most of Orwell’s writing, he was an anarcho-syndicalist.

People on HN downvote comments that are pro anarcho socialism without saying why they disagree. HN is a very capitalist place apparently. It would be nice if we could really engage in these discussions, but people seem to want to just downvote without comment.

That could indicate they don't find the discussions of political systems very interesting, or particularly relevant to HN. I'm one of those people -- I find a plot to kill Orwell interesting and I couldn't care less about the discussion of anarcho-* interesting, except very narrowly if it contributed to the context of the article.

(Edit - not a downvoter however)

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#68

Post by pasquinelli »

gedy wrote: post #5

I'm not versed enough in political theory to know myself, but why have seemingly all communist movements and governments been so riddled with purges, paranoia, and violence?

Because violence is power. Nice communists -- along with nice capitalists, nice anarchists, nice feudalists, etc. -- wind up purged.

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#69

Post by Symmetry »

dragonwriter wrote: post #37
Symmetry wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all, most democratic socialists like the Fabian society are willing to change their approach when they try something and it doesn't work. The result is mere inefficiency, not corpses piling up. If the SRs, say, had won the Russian Revolution things would probably have turned out basically all right. But it was the Bolsheviks with their plan of communism immediately, not in 20 years, who won. They treated their…

> If the SRs, say, had won the Russian Revolution things would probably have turned out basically all right. > But it was the Bolsheviks with their plan of communism immediately, not in 20 years, who won. The Bolsheviks won in no small part because they were a particularly violent, insular faction. Revolutionary situations don't really reward being accommodating and adverse to violence, even though that might be very…

Yup, totally agree.

Re: The Plot to Assassinate Orwell

#70

Post by NeedMoreTea »

dragonwriter wrote: post #52
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It stems from John Perry Barlow and the Cyberspace Declaration of Independence. There was a lot of discussion of what the emerging net was, and what it was going to be. A society, a state, governable or ungovernable, above or separate from such things, etc. Which led to the Declaration. https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence

That was in 1996. The internet was around a long time before that, heck, public use of the WWW was starting to take off then. That piece may have been an important contribution to thought that shaped the future development of how people approached the internet, but it wasn't responsible for the invention of the internet, which was not, in fact, a product of the anarchist movement, but rather something the anarchist m…

It's late, I read as web. 0/10.

I probably should have added more detail anyway, but the net prior to 1990 was a gently regulated, and self-regulating sort of place almost entirely consisting of scientists, geeks and techies. Adopt netiquette before posting to newsgroup, read the FAQ - and people actually did, etc. Even arguments could often stay mainly civilised. Bix, Compuserve, AOL were (partially) walled non-free and moderated venues of speech.

The early nineties changed everything. TBL gave us the web, the NSF ended the ban on any commercial activity, AOL let its hordes out onto the wider net in Eternal September, ISPs started including web space with every connection. VR was having its last hype phase, people were talking about virtual communities, and writing books about it. Suddenly this net thing was an uncontrolled space where anyone could have a free space to say anything...

Which led to the discussions of the net's anarchy, what it is, and the declaration I mentioned above.

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