Italian anarchists are very irritable because they are very conceited. Their longstanding conviction that they’re oracles of revealed revolutionary truth has become “monstrous” ever since the Socialist Party, through the influence of the Russian Revolution and Bolshevik…
@Blursty> That maximalist freedom they want includes the freedom to exploit and take away the freedom of others.
You do know that this is by far false, and you must be referring to neo-liberals. The anarchist tradition is of anarcho-communism/syndicalism and libertarian-communism and the perversion some fools describe as anarcho-capitalism (us libertarianism) is not accepted as anarchist by anarchists themselves. In some areas they would even fear of having a physical presence among the rest. So what good is it to base some conclusion on a false premise?
Do you think when Marx was spending time with Kropotkin discussing, playing chess, it was because Kropotkin was defending the freedom to exploit? Go read the consititutions of CNT, of FAI, the Italian Federation, and see whether there is a clear position against ANY exploitation of humans by humans.
Where the weakness of the libertarian proposal lies is that “society” on its own will not find a way to organize against capitalism, or be organized adequately to survive without a state. Society can and will not do such things without a revolutionary vanguard leading it to that direction. Anarchist organization has had to deal with this contradiction where itself becomes the vanguard “over” society or the working class, deciding for the class things like tactics, methods, goals, etc. The relationship between a political organization and society or the working class therefore becomes hierarchical and allows little “freedom” for those outside the organization to decide or even affect the decisions made. So, a revolutionary process becomes one where the vanguard imposes conditions and rules on the working class. The more anarchists try to organize the fewer stay with it as they feel uncomfortable with the contradiction.
In m-l tradition the vanguard is an acceptable and conscious decision to maintain this hierarchy, use the class struggle as a movement to overthrow the government and take over the state. Unfortunately those two branches of radical anti-capitalism can’t seem to synthesize any form of collaboration and possibility of coexistence. For historic reasons there is little trust or hope for such cooperation or agreement.
There is a trend (specially after 1950s cointelpro activities) of individualism that can extent all the way to anti-communism, otherwise called insurrectional individualist anarchists, who are also very much against any formal organization as being the source of oppression. Those fools write and write as individuals, appealing to individuals, and formulating individual beliefs that can never escape their lack of organization. Lack of a collective organ to promote their ideas keeps them well in the bottom of movement significance. They have never been able to achieve anything. But you can’t characterize 150y+ traditions by some neo-con trends of youth lifestylism.
How would you classify and explain the presence of IWW for two centuries? The presence of CNT in the 1930s Spain’s uprising against the invasion of Franco with US and German support?
If there is superiority of m-l over anarchism/libertarian-communism, there must be presented and analyzed on true premises not lies and characterizations empty of content. For the anarchist freedom can not exist without equality, but equality is as political as it is economic. It would be hard to believe that people of “equal” presence in decision making would produce a system of exploitation or oppression, or any other form of inequality. Systems of inequality exist because minorities serving individual interests form organizations to maintain inequality.
I didn’t know that no. Looking forward to hearing an argument against it.
I think it’s a terrible idea to base a conclusion on a false premise. I’d advise against it. I’m still waiting to hear a counterargument for this simple truth.
People play games for fun. This is what I would imagine the reason for them playing was.
I very much doubt if they’d state it openly. It’s a simple and obvious end result of “freedom maximalism”.
Presumably because the individuals’ freedom being inevitably curtailed by unavoidable realities contradicts their anarchist beliefs.
I’m going to guess that this is some copypasta you just tried to shoe-horn in here. Honestly without your comment history I’d guess that this is chatGPT copy paste. Who is characterising anything “by some neo-con trends of youth lifestylism.”. What for that matter even is a neo-con trend of youth lifestylism?
As proven failures. What’s to explain?
If there’s to be any counterargument for what I stated, I’d like to hear it. All I’ve got is weird randomly generated paragraphs of nothingspeak.
Hard to believe? Wait til you hear about Capitalism.
And such minorities are an inevitable product of systems designed for pander to individualism.
I’m still not sure if I’m talking to a robot.
I’ve never been even for curiosity’s sake in chatGPT, infowars, or any of that stuff because I sense that people there argue and debate for the sake of the individualistic interest to display they are better debaters. They have no interest in forming any vehicle towards change or even revolution. This is the problem with anything that is considered public domain and people without commone values and principles, or a minimal philosophical/ideological agreement. Just by identifying as different they display no intention of ever altering their initial positions, so it is fruitless whatever they talk about in there.
It is funny you accuse me of being a bot or doing copy paste, and to reveal a maybe poor personal trait, if I write something and try to copy it, or place it within another document, I can never do it. I change it so much that at the end it comes out very different or just doesn’t fit. With someone here we exchanged some personal messages and one day I hit the wrong button for submitting it and it was lost. I tried to rewrite what I had just written and it came up so different that after the fact I remeber writing something that just wouldn’t fit in what I wrote as a second time.
There is much confusion of what people mean by freedom and most of all this confusion has riddled the anarchist movement speaking about it in generic non-defines terms. There is personal/individual freedom and collective freedom. When Marxists speak of worker freedom they refer to the specific freedom of the class from the owners of the means of production. In this respect this is a collective freedom. In a community, a commune if you like, the maximum freedom anyone can have would be the freedom that doesn’t overstep others’ freedoms. So this collective freedom is the maximum freedom that can be attained by a regulated and organized equality of all the freedoms. So really freedom either has to be the product of social organization that aims for equality or it would be a chaotic condition where each and everyone in the community would abuse their freedom against others. Whether the commune is centrally organized and there is hierarchical authority on who regulates this equality or whether this power is spread among equals to hold this power is the true difference between a Marxist or an Anarchist commune. Same goes for the workplace/means-of-production, either centrally directed or by assembly of equals.
Individual freedom, for those who pursue it, is ultimate inequality and it best pursued by neoliberal capitalism. The more wealth you have the more freedom you have to do anything, order others to do what you wish, even governments to legitimize your freedom and inequality by passing laws to protect this inequality.
The freedom to get on a plane and travel to the other side of the world, have room and board and slaves to clean up after you, to visit and do things, you have in capitalism because of this inequality of wealth. If the commune doesn’t have the resources to pay for such experience for everyone you don’t have this freedom. It is either a freedom for all or for nobody. The propaganda about the SU and China was that certain freedoms were restricted by central government. The untold propaganda in capitalism is that many people can’t ever afford such luxuries as freedoms, but some can. There are people even in the US or western Europe who never flew with a plane, simply because they could never afford it. There are people in the US who haven’t even crossed state lines due to financial hardship. Nobody prohibited them from walking away but Biden forbid if they are caught in private or “state” land to be camping without paying a campground.
So again, freedom is useless without documenting equality. It doesn’t matter what your gospel is, Marxist or Anarchist.
PS If you have proof I copied this or anything else from somewhere provide it, if not plain and simply STF UP, because it is a baseless insult and I don’t have to take it from you or anyone else. Simply it shouldn’t have been tolerated by anyone here, mods or users, to be attacking and accusing somebody of anything without any evidence. I am surprised that charlatans like you, who provide ZERO rational arguments in a debate/discussion are allowed to accuse anyone of anything. And, let’s say I did copy a rational argument from a public forum here, this non-originality doesn’t constitute the rational argument as wrong. Where is your rational argument that invalidates it should have been the goal of discussing, not the origin of the argument.
So kindly, if you have nothing to offer in the discussion exercise your “freedom” and remain silent, and not try to silence someone else because you don’t agree with what is said.
tl;dr?
I am speaking of this post 70s-80s trend of this “black-block” tendency to utilize workers and other social movement demonstrations to form a front to battle the police without any expectation to ever gain anything from the clash other than the dispersion of demonstrators and the reluctance of ever reappearing. This is youth-lifestylism. Youth because it takes age and physical ability to run in front of demonstrators, surprise cops with an attack then run behind demonstrators for cover. None of these people ever handed out a leaflet or published their position, except for some really dumb blogs without signatures, on why they do what they do.
Neo-com, because this is the effect this activity has on the public and the food it provides on mass media to describe wider parts of the worker/social movement. Media and others like to portray this as anarchy, but anarchists (libertarian communists) would have nothing to do with such practice. The bibliography that exists on anarchy is very heavily anarcho-communist, not “insurectional individualist/black block” non-sense.
Pretending not to know this because you can bag as one thing the same that is prescribed by state-agencies and media because it serves your rhetoric should have nothing to do with critical theory or Marxism-Leninism. Focus on the true content of the object you are criticizing, not the capitalist definition of it.
So all this is a No True Scotsman based argument? Okay.
I recommend you talk to some western anarchists and disabuse them of the faulty notions you allege them to have, rather than argue with ML’s very correct observations of them.
You are a cheap provocator who thinks winning an argument by either insulting or tiring the opposite party is what makes you a WINNER. Just for stating this IN HERE you should have been banned and thrown out. You are nothing but a populist with zero substance and content to participate in any discussion.
Go back to capitalist facebook with your smart-ass commenting style,
Sir, you came in here blustering about false premises and offered nothing bu walls of empty text about your fantasies. You’re shadowboxing with your own notions and have no coherent response to anything I wrote. You’re a waste of everyone’s time here.