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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • Schmoo@slrpnk.nettoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldHuman Shield
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    3 days ago

    You are asking me to give you a simple answer to a question that does not have one. As I said before, that problem is foundational to anarchist theory, and the entirety of anarchist discourse is dedicated to solving it. Directing you to writings by anarchists discussing how to organize and defend an anarchic form of society is the best I can do. David Graeber is a prominent anarchist writer and anthropologist that I highly recommend checking out.

    You may as well be asking me to solve death. Death is a fact, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do everything possible to fend it off for as long as possible.


  • Schmoo@slrpnk.nettoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldHuman Shield
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    3 days ago

    I find this video by Andrewism to be a good introduction to how anarchy can be organized.

    This article focuses more on defending an anarchist society from an external military threat, but has relevant discussion of how to defend the social structures more specifically as well.

    The question of how to deal with power hungry people is fundamentally the same question as how do you prevent the establishment of hierarchy in the first place. That is essentially the foundational question of anarchist political theory, so any writing on anarchism is relevant to this.


  • socialism never works

    This is the main reason people are on your case. It’s an extremely reductive statement that’s been repeated ad infinitum by Procapitalist propagandists in defense of the status quo. Socialism is an incredibly broad and diverse philosophical and political tradition that has led to an enormous amount of positive change, even if a “perfect” socialist state has not yet been established.

    I’m looking for an alternative to communism/soc/anarchism that can actually work.

    That’s great! You can start by actually discussing communism/socialism/anarchism with other leftists in a nuanced manner, without repeating the same old tired tropes designed to keep us from even thinking about alternatives to capitalism. Front-loading every conversation with the presumption that every alternative to capitalism that has ever been conceived of simply “doesn’t work” and “could never work” is, again, reductive.

    Sorry if I came off as an asshole, but I’m so tired of the dreamers, what are you going to do when the capitalists come to your cozy village, how will you deal with egomaniacs and power hunger in your anarchy group, etc. are the questions to discuss, IMO, not if stalin did or did not kill more or less people (he was a brutal dictator, we don’t want that).

    It might surprise you to hear that anarchists do discuss how to deal with egomaniacs and power hunger quite often, but you wouldn’t know that because you are the one coming in and obnoxiously debating over how many people Stalin has killed. I must ask you again to please take responsibility for yourself instead of blaming others for the lack of productive discourse.


  • I got you banned? Take some responsibility for yourself, you were being insufferable in that thread. Obviously people are going to be speaking sympathetically about socialism in latestagecapitalism, you chose to antagonize everyone by making reductive arguments and moral grandstanding over historical events you know little about, like you’re doing now.

    I’m an anarchist btw, I’m not the biggest fan of the USSR or the PRC either, but you are simply refusing to engage with the topic in good faith.


  • I guess it’s easier to dream than to come up with something that could actually work or at least make a difference.

    It’s also much easier to cynically dismiss all proposed solutions, which is the path you’ve chosen. The things you mentioned before - free healthcare & strong social safety net - have only ever been implemented because people dared to dream bigger. The New Deal in the US was advanced in response to revolutionary socialists as a means of appeasement. Without the international socialist movement we would not have gotten the short break from unfettered capitalism that is now coming to an end.

    In addition, it’s a gross oversimplification to characterize the revolutions that established the USSR and PRC as total failures. No serious student of history considers these in isolation from the context of what came before. Though flawed, the first socialist states were a marked improvement over the oppressive Tsarist regime and chaotic rule by several Chinese warlords.






  • It’s great that you’re doing better, but your survival and mental wellbeing should never have been conditioned on employment in the first place. What you did - switching to a new career that gave you a sense of fulfillment - is something that countless others have extreme difficulty doing because the threat of homelessness and destitution is held over our heads like a sword of Damocles.

    You shouldn’t have had to take a pay cut to find happiness.





  • We need to be mad at non-voters, people who “lashed out” and voted for Trump, and people who let themselves be swept away by the lies of a grifter who we did nothing but warn them about. But we also need to be mad at the DNC

    Please also try to funnel that anger into meaningful action. Staying mad at non-voters is understandable but also entirely unhelpful. Staying mad at the DNC however is both understandable and rational, and has the potential to drive change if you allow yourself to channel it into something productive.




  • Why do you insist on absolving the Democrats of responsibility for their own decisions? It’s on them to learn the right lessons, and they didn’t. It is difficult to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on them not understanding it. Left-populism is the clear solution to their problems but it scares them because it is in direct opposition to their financial interests.