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dailyanarchistposts · 21 hours

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A.2.16 Does anarchism require “perfect” people to work?

No. Anarchy is not a utopia, a “perfect” society. It will be a human society, with all the problems, hopes, and fears associated with human beings. Anarchists do not think that human beings need to be “perfect” for anarchy to work. They only need to be free. Thus Christie and Meltzer:

”[A] common fallacy [is] that revolutionary socialism [i.e. anarchism] is an ‘idealisation’ of the workers and [so] the mere recital of their present faults is a refutation of the class struggle … it seems morally unreasonable that a free society … could exist without moral or ethical perfection. But so far as the overthrow of [existing] society is concerned, we may ignore the fact of people’s shortcomings and prejudices, so long as they do not become institutionalised. One may view without concern the fact … that the workers might achieve control of their places of work long before they had acquired the social graces of the ‘intellectual’ or shed all the prejudices of the present society from family discipline to xenophobia. What does it matter, so long as they can run industry without masters? Prejudices wither in freedom and only flourish while the social climate is favourable to them … What we say is … that once life can continue without imposed authority from above, and imposed authority cannot survive the withdrawal of labour from its service, the prejudices of authoritarianism will disappear. There is no cure for them other than the free process of education.” [The Floodgates of Anarchy, pp. 36–7]

Obviously, though, we think that a free society will produce people who are more in tune with both their own and others individuality and needs, thus reducing individual conflict. Remaining disputes would be solved by reasonable methods, for example, the use of juries, mutual third parties, or community and workplace assemblies (see section I.5.8 for a discussion of how could be done for anti-social activities as well as disputes).

Like the “anarchism-is-against-human-nature” argument (see section A.2.15), opponents of anarchism usually assume “perfect” people — people who are not corrupted by power when placed in positions of authority, people who are strangely unaffected by the distorting effects of hierarchy, privilege, and so forth. However, anarchists make no such claims about human perfection. We simply recognise that vesting power in the hands of one person or an elite is never a good idea, as people are not perfect.

It should be noted that the idea that anarchism requires a “new” (perfect) man or woman is often raised by the opponents of anarchism to discredit it (and, usually, to justify the retention of hierarchical authority, particularly capitalist relations of production). After all, people are not perfect and are unlikely ever to be. As such, they pounce on every example of a government falling and the resulting chaos to dismiss anarchism as unrealistic. The media loves to proclaim a country to be falling into “anarchy” whenever there is a disruption in “law and order” and looting takes place.

Anarchists are not impressed by this argument. A moment’s reflection shows why, for the detractors make the basic mistake of assuming an anarchist society without anarchists! (A variation of such claims is raised by the right-wing “anarcho”-capitalists to discredit real anarchism. However, their “objection” discredits their own claim to be anarchists for they implicitly assume an anarchist society without anarchists!). Needless to say, an “anarchy” made up of people who still saw the need for authority, property and statism would soon become authoritarian (i.e. non-anarchist) again. This is because even if the government disappeared tomorrow, the same system would soon grow up again, because “the strength of the government rests not with itself, but with the people. A great tyrant may be a fool, and not a superman. His strength lies not in himself, but in the superstition of the people who think that it is right to obey him. So long as that superstition exists it is useless for some liberator to cut off the head of tyranny; the people will create another, for they have grown accustomed to rely on something outside themselves.” [George Barrett, Objections to Anarchism, p. 355]

Hence Alexander Berkman:

“Our social institutions are founded on certain ideas; as long as the latter are generally believed, the institutions built on them are safe. Government remains strong because people think political authority and legal compulsion necessary. Capitalism will continue as long as such an economic system is considered adequate and just. The weakening of the ideas which support the evil and oppressive present day conditions means the ultimate breakdown of government and capitalism.” [What is Anarchism?, p. xii]

In other words, anarchy needs anarchists in order to be created and survive. But these anarchists need not be perfect, just people who have freed themselves, by their own efforts, of the superstition that command-and-obedience relations and capitalist property rights are necessary. The implicit assumption in the idea that anarchy needs “perfect” people is that freedom will be given, not taken; hence the obvious conclusion follows that an anarchy requiring “perfect” people will fail. But this argument ignores the need for self-activity and self-liberation in order to create a free society. For anarchists, “history is nothing but a struggle between the rulers and the ruled, the oppressors and the oppressed.” [Peter Kropotkin, Act for Yourselves, p. 85] Ideas change through struggle and, consequently, in the struggle against oppression and exploitation, we not only change the world, we change ourselves at the same time. So it is the struggle for freedom which creates people capable of taking the responsibility for their own lives, communities and planet. People capable of living as equals in a free society, so making anarchy possible.

As such, the chaos which often results when a government disappears is not anarchy nor, in fact, a case against anarchism. It simple means that the necessary preconditions for creating an anarchist society do not exist. Anarchy would be the product of collective struggle at the heart of society, not the product of external shocks. Nor, we should note, do anarchists think that such a society will appear “overnight.” Rather, we see the creation of an anarchist system as a process, not an event. The ins-and-outs of how it would function will evolve over time in the light of experience and objective circumstances, not appear in a perfect form immediately (see section H.2.5 for a discussion of Marxist claims otherwise).

Therefore, anarchists do not conclude that “perfect” people are necessary anarchism to work because the anarchist is “no liberator with a divine mission to free humanity, but he is a part of that humanity struggling onwards towards liberty.” As such, ”[i]f, then, by some external means an Anarchist Revolution could be, so to speak, supplied ready-made and thrust upon the people, it is true that they would reject it and rebuild the old society. If, on the other hand, the people develop their ideas of freedom, and they themselves get rid of the last stronghold of tyranny — the government — then indeed the revolution will be permanently accomplished.” [George Barrett, Op. Cit., p. 355]

This is not to suggest that an anarchist society must wait until everyone is an anarchist. Far from it. It is highly unlikely, for example, that the rich and powerful will suddenly see the errors of their ways and voluntarily renounce their privileges. Faced with a large and growing anarchist movement, the ruling elite has always used repression to defend its position in society. The use of fascism in Spain (see section A.5.6) and Italy (see section A.5.5) show the depths the capitalist class can sink to. Anarchism will be created in the face of opposition by the ruling minorities and, consequently, will need to defend itself against attempts to recreate authority (see section H.2.1 for a refutation of Marxist claims anarchists reject the need to defend an anarchist society against counter-revolution).

Instead anarchists argue that we should focus our activity on convincing those subject to oppression and exploitation that they have the power to resist both and, ultimately, can end both by destroying the social institutions that cause them. As Malatesta argued, “we need the support of the masses to build a force of sufficient strength to achieve our specific task of radical change in the social organism by the direct action of the masses, we must get closer to them, accept them as they are, and from within their ranks seek to ‘push’ them forward as much as possible.” [Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, pp. 155–6] This would create the conditions that make possible a rapid evolution towards anarchism as what was initially accepted by a minority “but increasingly finding popular expression, will make its way among the mass of the people” and “the minority will become the People, the great mass, and that mass rising up against property and the State, will march forward towards anarchist communism.” [Kropotkin, Words of a Rebel, p. 75] Hence the importance anarchists attach to spreading our ideas and arguing the case for anarchism. This creates conscious anarchists from those questioning the injustices of capitalism and the state.

This process is helped by the nature of hierarchical society and the resistance it naturally developed in those subject to it. Anarchist ideas develop spontaneously through struggle. As we discuss in section I.2.3, anarchistic organisations are often created as part of the resistance against oppression and exploitation which marks every hierarchical system and can., potentially, be the framework of a few society. As such, the creation of libertarian institutions is, therefore, always a possibility in any situation. A peoples’ experiences may push them towards anarchist conclusions, namely the awareness that the state exists to protect the wealthy and powerful few and to disempower the many. That while it is needed to maintain class and hierarchical society, it is not needed to organise society nor can it do so in a just and fair way for all. This is possible. However, without a conscious anarchist presence any libertarian tendencies are likely to be used, abused and finally destroyed by parties or religious groups seeking political power over the masses (the Russian Revolution is the most famous example of this process). It is for that reason anarchists organise to influence the struggle and spread our ideas (see section J.3 for details). For it is the case that only when anarchist ideas “acquire a predominating influence” and are “accepted by a sufficiently large section of the population” will we “have achieved anarchy, or taken a step towards anarchy.” For anarchy “cannot be imposed against the wishes of the people.” [Malatesta, Op. Cit., p. 159 and p. 163]

So, to conclude, the creation of an anarchist society is not dependent on people being perfect but it is dependent on a large majority being anarchists and wanting to reorganise society in a libertarian manner. This will not eliminate conflict between individuals nor create a fully formed anarchist humanity overnight but it will lay the ground for the gradual elimination of whatever prejudices and anti-social behaviour that remain after the struggle to change society has revolutionised those doing it.

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ofthenoseclan · 6 months

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tell me about kanako pls

WHY BUT OF COURSE (sorry this took so long ^^;)

kanako is one of my absolute favourites in the cast because shes the character that to me brought what i like in the franchise into focus in full form. while there were hints of political satire in touhou starting around the tail end of the ninth game and its following spinoff literature, it wasnt until i reached the tenth mainline title that i really fell in love with touhou, and the driving force of that change was yasaka kanako.

kanako is such a fun character to me because her very concept is so compelling, and its delivered in an extremely satisfying way. she is a god who treats religion like running a business, and is pragmatic to every end. this is both one of her greatest strengths and a source of literally all of her issues. everything about kanako is a vignette that illustrates how her capitalistic drive for innovation creates the troubles she faces in advancing further toward her goals, and her misunderstanding of spirituality as an economic problem to be solved for efficiency creates roadblocks for her lifestyle that she is entirely, confidently blind to.

once again i have to stress, this does seem to work for her in some aspects! when she took over leadership of the suwa shrine, she did so by being calculating and planning ahead against anything suwako had up her arsenal, then sweetened the deal for both of them by offering a compromise (sharing residence as the local kami, with suwako acting as the native god and kanako being the face of the shrine who gets the worship). she made a judgment call by choosing to move the shrine from the outside world to gensoukyou when she realized that it was no longer feasible for her and her company to rely on worship from outside world humans. all of these things are demonstrably good business decisions made in the name of keeping her livelihood as a shinrei stable. however, after she moves into gensoukyou with her wife and daughter, she begins to get, well, greedy isnt the right word, but...

capitalism is a force that has to inherently grow, as that is what its entire existence encourages. so what happens when you introduce an individual whose skill is in her capitalistic business prowess into a society that has no knowledge of it? you get kanakos assumption that she needs to introduce it into their culture. she could always have more people worship her. so she tries outperforming her competing... shrines. what would make me a better god? what would prove im more fit to lead gensoukyous humans? these things start running through kanakos head very very quickly. and it isnt out of self-importance either (unlike certain other religious leaders in gensoukyou cough cough miko), she just sees it as the natural extension of running her shrine.

but of course, when you introduce capitalism into a culture, you Introduce Capitalism Into A Culture. in kanakos pursuit of refining her worshipers into customers, she makes it clear to others in her field that there is even a race for power at all. her insistence to assert her presence in gensoukyou through gaining human worshipers via the hakurei shrine alerts reimu to her as someone who is influencing the status quo in the first place. her arms race for nuclear fusion (of which she is the only participant) is directly responsible for the introduction of the myouren temple to gensoukyou, which in turn leads to the introduction of miko and her band of taoists. not to mention her many, many unnecessary entrepreneurial ideas she comes up with in the print works (although they seem much more respectable when shown side-by-side with the anarcho-capitalist schemes of the kappa). these things never would have threatened her position had she not attempted to expand her reach.

in one sense, this is a huge character flaw for her. however, the other side of this coin means that no matter the conflicts kanako brings about for herself, she always views it as inevitable; something that is bound to happen over time regardless, and just another stepping stone on her business ventures. this aspect of her is what i find most interesting—her complete inability to see the big picture in her endless strive for religious success is somehow her most reliable asset. its what makes kanako wonderful to me, and endlessly engaging even after almost two decades since her introduction.

#touhou #kanako yasaka #blub #hydrophone

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kayas-kosmos · 1 year

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Flowerpunk - An introduction.

Hello everyone.

I thought I should make an introduction post to the webcomic I am developing called "Flowerpunk." If you would like to see the trailer for this webcomic, it is currently up on both Webtoon and Tapas.

Webtoon -

Tapas -

Flowerpunk is a modern-day dystopian story set in an alternate reality where the world map is flipped and magical elements exist. In the city of Wyrdon, a supernatural plague known as "the rot" has taken hold, infecting everything and everyone. As a result of this plague, many of Wyrdon's citizens have been turned into maggots, but instead of doing anything meaningful to help the situation, the Government has instead made the choice to simply bury the former citizens under the city pavements and ignore the problem.

Disaster Capitalists have turned the few remaining magical elements of this world into a commodity to be bought and sold, ensuring that these life-saving technologies necessary for staving off the rot are put behind a steep paywall. A lot of these technologies are purposely faulty so that they break within a certain timespan, ensuring a constant need to purchase more.

A group of rebels known as "the lovely anarchists" are fighting to combat this injustice by stealing the technology and removing the "planned obsolescence" element so the tech functions more effectively. The goal of the lovely anarchists is to spread a message of radical compassion and hope, but they are embroiled in a brutal war with the mainstream media trying to paint them as violent terrorists trying to sew chaos.

One of these anarchists is Ludwig Striker, AKA the "King of Hearts", a member of the commune's community defence team and defender of society's most vulnerable members.

He comes to the rescue of the wayward soul, Kimi Hopper, who was recently made homeless after his parents kicked him out.

After this chance encounter, the duo begin spreading radical compassion across the city with the help of their friends, fighting off the rot one soul at a time.

If you like stories about fighting against a Capitalist dystopia, queer love and rebellion, found family and hope in the face of hopelessness, please consider checking out this story.

This project is currently under development and if you would like to help me get it launched faster, I have a Ko-Fi page you can donate to:

Thank you, and I hope you like the look of this project! I will be doing more blog posts on this project, so keep an eye out!

#queer romance #queer comics #flowerpunk #solarpunk #found family #queer anarchism #webcomic #webtoon canvas

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peligrosapop · 3 months

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i believe in God deeply yet whenever i see this freaks on ur page telling you to beleive in God i just think "do YOU!?" there is no way God wants people doing all of this in a random tumblr anon box right? hmmph....

Hi. Thanks for your message. I’m not surprised this happens because religious bigotry is just as idiotic and irrational as any other bigotry; it’s almost a psychotic to me, you hate people bc they don’t believe in your invisible person(s) in the sky? the invisible friend you ask for things? sounds like an mental illness. I went to a Christian church in December bc my sister asked me to and I couldn’t believe how people believe that BUT I respect that she does, she finds peace, she finds community there and she is not a bigot; not anti-gay or anything, mostly a feminist etc, same as some Muslim girls I’ve met here who are great fucking people but I also see how religion limits them at times, shames them, besides all the limits and shame we have to deal with a capitalist patriarchal society (which most religions thrive in). For me organize religion and even not organized, culty shit, is incompatible with my world view and politics, as an anarcho-feminist, as religions tend to have hierarchies and conservative views on body-autonomy and non-inclusive authoritarian “my way or be damned/die” tendencies.

Now, talking of god, I find living without the idea of god/gods and after life quiet freeing. I try to be nice, kind, think if others, try to be as unselfish as possible; want other to be as free or have as much as me, seek justice etc because I want to, because it’s the right thing to do, you see it when you do it, not because some book that is made to be divine told me or because I want to be in the “good place” or be born again as something better when I die. I know this is a one time thing and when it’s done, life will flash by, I’ll be grateful, hope the people I loved remember I loved them and then it’s done.Like sleeping but you never wake up. And knowing that to me is better than god but existencial dread is super real, happens to me, and I know having the idea of god(s) is better than thinking you are here on a floating rock in space in a very arbitrary way for a few years without any purposes. But you know what? We don’t need a purpose. The path, life, is the goal. Enjoy it. It also makes it easier to understand why every awful thing that happens, happens (it’s other people, not god lol)

I believe in life deeply, I grew up Christian (was a absolutely out of it by last year of HS) and the feeling that was put upon me to be god being with me I have found not in church but everywhere. When I feel water underneath by feet, seeing the sunset, listening to music in my living room, when someone I like gives me a hug, the euphoria of hundred of happy screams in a concert or a sports event, when I see a painting in person, when I read a postcard a friend has sent, making love, etc etc. I hope you find it too. Have a great day.Sorry for the long reply lol

#god #atheism #anon answered #life

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canchewread · 2 years

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Editor’s note: The War on Sharing is an informal journal about my life as an anti-capitalist dissident in a burgeoning Pig Empire police state, during a time of normalized fascist reaction. Given the deeply personal nature of this writing, please consider citations to be arbitrary, profanity to be praxis, and slang to be artisanal.

“You told me to go back to the beginning, so I have.” - Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride

The War on Sharing: Understanding the Evolution of Ecofascism

Let me ask you a simple question; when I say the word “ecofascist” to you, what do you picture in your mind’s eye? If you’re anything like most people, there’s a pretty good chance you’re picturing a white supremacist in Norse religious cosplay, or a racist chud co-opting the struggle against climate catastrophe to justify eliminationist politics.

Given the current state of journalism in our neofeudalist hellworld, this is nothing to be ashamed of. Indeed, I would argue that surface-level definitions like this can be quite helpful if used to spawn a larger conversation about what ecofascism really means, and how it is changing our society. By that same measure however, these extremely narrow signifiers can serve to limit our understanding of ecofascism, and the present ecofascist moment if used improperly. After all, is ecofascism not a form of fascism? Since when are broke rednecks capable of imposing a fascist order, no matter how many guns they own?

In fact I believe such a limited and plainly immaterial definition of ecofascism is quite dangerous if it represents the end of your intellectual journey. Frankly, these surface-level definitions of ecofascism fall into the common liberal trapping of mistaking fascist foot soldiers, for the fascist movement; much in the same way mainstream commentators in the media would greatly prefer to define fascism as brownshirt Proud Boys, and not as dozens and dozens of fascist politicians who voted to overturn an election and the billionaire nazis who own them body, mind, and soul.

So how do we find a better understanding of what ecofascism really is? By examining the material realities around us and the presumed intentions of powerful actors in our society. For example, we know now that it’s capitalism or the planet; both cannot survive. We know that the billionaire class has no intention of giving up capitalism. We can reasonably infer that the billionaire-funded rise of eliminationist politics and fascist movements is not wholly unrelated to the socialism or barbarism moment we’re now facing. Finally, we know that the in-pocket politicians who serve the rich in our society, are already making climate promises that can only lead to ever-widening acts of genocide. Does that sound like it adds up to nothing more than “nazis who’re also fake environmentalists” to you?

No ecofascism isn’t about neo-nazis who love pagan jewelry and camping. And it isn’t really about racist mass shooters leaving wall of spaghetti manifestos behind to justify their murderous actions either. Ultimately, ecofascism is the decision to continue the capitalist way of life for some, at the expense of others, no matter how many lives that costs, and even if that strategy is ultimately unsustainable. Like all fascists movements, it has been nurtured and propagated by a wealthy ruling class, for their own benefit and at the expense of everyone else; starting with brown people, foreigners, trans folks, the poor and otherwise marginalized in our society, and working on upward until there is nothing left to consume.

After all, that’s the problem with all fascist movements - in the final analysis, they’re just death cults that serve the wealthy and powerful till the bitter end; and ecofascism is really no different.

- nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook.

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

#climate catastrophe #nina illingworth #fascism #anti-fascism #ecofascism #defining ecofascism #The War on Sharing #Journal #informal writing #capitalism #neofeudalism #anti-capitalism #saving our planet #terms and definitions

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pazodetrasalba · 5 months

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Girlbossing (and 3)

Dear Caroline:

There's a book I once translated for a friend, who was running a non-profit, small, philosophically-oriented publishing house. I wasn't too keen on the book itself, but it was some food for thought, after you extracted the naiveté, woo mysticism and the weird undertones in sexuality. It was TAZ, by Hakim Bey.

The main gist of it is the creation of autonomous zones, places that elude temporary power structures and controls and allow for an instantiation of anarchist utopias. Said utopias are, perforce, impermanent, as State(s) and Society are always chasing after them and snuffing them out. And yet like a virus, or a persistent fungus, they sprout again, just out of reach, in a place you didn't expect and get to live for another day.

Leftists generally love to wax lyrically about these 'spaces of resistance', but the anarchy can be capitalist as well. From a certain point of view, Hong Kong was this sort of capitalist utopia in a sea of Chinese red, a weird product of refurbished colonialism. I think I mentioned in a previous post my fascination with Kowloon Walled City, a story I came about through the intermediation of the sci-fi writer William Gibson, who is particularly good at painting weird, dirty, lived and fascinating liminal spaces of anarcho-capitalism.

But all things must pass. Since 1997 Hong Kong's share of China's GDP has dropped from 18.4% to 2.1%. You were living, perhaps, through the last stages of that oriental dream that has woken up to find the city subsumed into the PRC's dystopia. Not that the dream didn't have its sharp edges to begin with, though. Such is the nature of the world we inhabit.

Quote:

The book describes the socio-political tactic of creating temporary spaces that elude formal structures of control. The essay uses various examples from history and philosophy, all of which suggest that the best way to create a non-hierarchical system of social relationships is to concentrate on the present and on releasing one's own mind from the controlling mechanisms that have been imposed on it

#caroline ellison #hong kong #capitalism

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somerandomg33k · 2 years

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An rambling rant incoming

"How are you today?" Asked by no one so far. Only because I just started my day. Well, since you want to know, I'm Angry. What started this? My friend Johanna Roberts said that she still needs money for food and pills in DMs. As she often said, life on SSDI forces her to beg online for money in order to live. So after checking my credit cards accounts, bank accounts, as well as my past Paypal and Cash App transactions (I'm glad I checked those. I've been burned by that before.) I had only $30 to give Johanna. I won't get any more money until the 28th, my next payday. So unless others are also able to give, check my pinned tweet and Facebook post, it is going to be a tough week for Johanna. The end of the month is always tough on her because she get her full SSDI of only $1400 at the beginning of the month. And this is after I spent money last night to buy Fork Knife skins. I also got skins for my friends, and I don't regret that.

I know I shouldn't feel guilty for spending money on myself. And, of course, I am not blaming Johanna or anyone else who asks for money. But I will always hate it when someone asks for money, and I don't have any to give.

This is why I don't really like it that I can't work weekends like I used to. Coming on Sundays is part of the 'excessive hours' my manager talked to me about. I mentioned my shitty pay for what I do. And I have to work with him to get a raise, essentially. Meaning not work Sunday. Still haven't gotten the raise yet. And I know the importance of relaxing and not overworking myself. Believe me, I am not working hard all 10 to 11 hours of my weekday shifts. Half the time, I am on the PC on Twitter, Twitch, Discord, Facebook, and Youtube. But not getting as much Overtime pay when I did work 70 hours a week is very noticeable for my take-home pay. And I honestly wish I could wake up sooner on the Saturdays I do work so that I can clock in 11 to 12 hours of overtime work instead of just 8 when I sleep in until 10 am. I also dislike it in I sleepin a bit on the weekdays too because that does mean less clocked in hours. And while on the days I don't work, I get to Twitch stream which I do love doing and get to have great conversations there. Twitch streams doesn't make as much money for me as working overtime does.

Anything I hate, Liberals and the Democrats. Liberals mostly because they uphold the State and Capitalism. And especially in the USA, if you tell them that Liberalism is a right-wing ideology, they will get mad. Capitalism is inherently Ablest, and Capitalism requires poverty to function. And my friends are begging online for money because of Capitalism. And I get made fun of for being so vehemently Anti-Capitalism by Liberals. I bet a Liberal would see my rant post and go, "See, this is why we need to vote in the Midterms." I UNDERSTAND HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO VOTE!!! SHUT UP ALREADY!!! But voting is just harm reduction. And it is questionable how much harm reduction it does. That is probably something that Liberals will never understand with me. The only time I will trust and have faith in The Democrats is when all of its members are as progressive as Bernie, Omar, AOC, etc. etc. And Bernie and AOC have their own issues too. And that will never happen to the Dems because the Dems are a conservative Capitalist Right-wing party with leadership that is vehemently Anti-Communist too. They want to means test any and all benefit programs so folks "wouldn't abuse it."

There are even some Liberals that are against an UBI too, agreeing with the Democrats leadership on that. Now I have my criticism for a UBI as well but that is because I am an Anarcho-Syndicalist that says we should learn to live and build a society without relying on the State and Capital. I know that previous statement conflicts with me saying I wishing I can clock in more overtime hours to give money to my friends in need. And that me charging up my credit cards to give to my friends in need is me relying on capital to help them. Well, THEY NEED TO PAY RENT NOW! THEY NEED TO EAT NOW! THEY NEED TO PAY THEIR POWER BILL NOW! Besides, all Socialists, Communists, and Anarchists live in cognitive dissonance because we are forced to live under Capitalism.

Yes I will vote in the midterms because I do understand how important it is that the Fascist party of the Thuglicans are not in power. But that doesn't mean I believe that change will happen when the Democrats keep power. It has always been proven that the party won't fight with its own members anyway. So the Dems are only as progressive as its most conservative members. This time, it is Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. But there have been many others before like them. And there are many other conservative Dems in the party. It is just Manchin and Sinema that are taking the lime light and attention away from the rest of them. Remember, Joe Biden said to Wall Street, "Nothing will Fundementally change." That is the choice each general election in the USA. Your validable choices are the Conservative Capitalist 'Nothing will Fudnementally change' party or the Fascist party. CAN I SAY I HATE THEM BOTH!??!?!

And it is clear to me that Liberals are fine with Nothing Fundementally changing because it doesn't bother them as much. Or again, their faith that, "We can pull Biden to the Left." No you can't. He refuse to forgiven up to $50,000 dollars of student debt. Only did $10,000 just before the Midterms. Biden has increased the Police budgets way more than the previous president. And Many of the Dems support increased Police budgets. All after one of the world's largest racially charged Anti-Police uprisings in 2020.

Remembers, Liberals, The Dems leadership are the White Moderates that MLK Jr warned about that are far more willing to work with White Collaborators then Anti-Racists. Because the White Moderates can not view White Supremacy in any way that also includes them in the picture. So they choose to view White Supremacy as just a personal failing of someone hurting someone's else feelings base on race instead of a system of power that favors one race over other races. And the White Moderates also hates to see themselves being privileged by said system of power. Hence why they don't challenge it.

And Liberals know that The Dems will break campaign promises. They are used to it by now. Joe Biden did promise $2000 checks if the two Dems win their Senate seats in Georiga. They did. But we only got $1400 checks. "I know we were only getting $1400 checks." Thanks, I hate it. Johanna would love $2000 instead of $1400. Some haven't even gotten that too.

And now the Dems wants our votes agains despite not doing much with the power they have. "Well, yes. The Dems only have a slim majority. That is why we need to vote more. VOTE HARDER!!!" Urg. See why I don't have faith in them. If the Dems lose the midterms, it is their own fault for not passing voting protection at all when they have the slim majority to do so, if they wanted too.

And Liberals even say it is a good thing that this system is as slow as it is. Some Liberals say that even if all of the Senators are as progressive as Bernie Sanders, he still has his flaws, and even if all of the members of the House of Representatives are as progressive as AOC, who still has some Ablesm too, the system in the USA will still be slow. And that is a good thing, apparently. I don't know why. Perhaps it is a good thing for power to be in the hands of the few. Liberals are probably okay with benevolent dictators, so long as it is one that they voted for. "Don't blame me. I voted for Kudos." Because of that tiny bit of participation that they feel like they have influence on the system. Even though there choices are limited to the Conservative Capitalist 'Nothing will Fudnementally change' party or the Fascist party. "It is still a choice and a clear one. Choice for the lesser of two evils." So you do agree that the Dems are evil then, right? Great to see we agree on something, I guess. "If everyone votes, that fixes all of the problems with the system." Really? Really? So if the only options for President was Joe Manchin or Mitt Romney, all of our problems will be fixed if everyone votes? I doubt that.

This I why I don't have love for Electoralism. Electoralism is a dead end. The most you get is harm reduction. Electoralism doesn't fixes Johanna situation with her life on SSDI. At least not until something like 20 years from now. Because UBI is very very far off, according to Liberals. I do agree with that and I hate it. But it is because of that that I don't have a love for voting like they do. It is important but is it just a bit of a stopgap against Fascism, currently. End of rant, for now.

#capitalism #ssdi #capitalist hell #democrats #politics #money #begging #republicans #republicans vs democrats #representative democracy #voting #midterms #liberalism #neoliberalism #neoliberal #neoliberal capitalism #liberals #election #electoralism

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jasonisntreal · 2 years

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Here are the things I know about my dad:

- he used to be very good friends with one of mg best friend’s dads. They hate each other now.

- he says he is not racist. He is racist. He is scared of Asian people, I have no idea why.

- he is an anarcho capitalist. This means he wants a capitalistic society without a government. Don’t ask me how this would work, because it wouldn’t.

- he is gaslight

- he hates his parents for no reason other than they had depression

- he has gone through the following obsessions: model helicopters, roller skating, chess, wood working, cigars, model cars, model cars again, drawing, music, off-roading.

- he has done cocaine once, and never again because he didn’t like it

- he got a tattoo of my mom’s name, divorced my mom, ran off to Nashville to become a star, lived in his car, and came back home in the span of three months

- his ex girlfriend cleans our house

- he looks strikingly like Henry the 8th

- he says I was an accident, my mom disagrees. Not sure what happened canonically

- he is in love with Jennifer Aniston and Ryan Reynolds’s

- he owns own company. Not sure how.

- he made my mom’s only other boyfriend break up with her so that my dad could date her

- he almost fought my music teacher once

- he calls himself a real estate mogul only semi-ironically

- hits on his gay friends??

- seems kinda adhd

- runs in the family ig

- moving on

- all of his gfs since my mom have been redheads except for one

#Jason’s dad chronicles #my dad is insane #shitpost

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gaytransbimbo · 3 years

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what do you think the political views of the wilds characters are?

ooo this is interesting. well i’m gonna start with a disclaimer and say that the girls are still only 17 with a lot of stuff to process so a lot of this might rather vague and not precise and this is very much just for the fun of it so yeah. also this is gonna be long lol

dot: anarcho-communist. a worker at heart how could she not support the liberation of the working class? also she just thinks living in a nonhierarchical coercion-free society would be super neat.

toni: leftist/(anarcho?)communist. very by the book, all for the liberation-seize the means of production kinda gal. strongly disagrees with electoral politics, doesn’t believe in the concept of nation states and sure as hell doesn’t believe that the US has any legitimacy whatsoever. no borders no gods no masters

fatin: growing up uber rich made her a bit indifferent to politics. she believes in equality of all people and will call out racism and homophobia and other isms but she never had to dig deeper into it. socially liberal fiscally never thought about it

martha: she doesn’t follow politics as in parties and delegates. she follows a belief based system: every being on earth deserves to be loved and respected and hatred will NOT be tolerated in any form. she focuses on spreading kindness rather than getting into political debates and their technicalities. she is a pacifist over all

shelby: oh boy just a confused mess. shelby has been echoing her fathers words for all her life but she is now realizing that his worldview is toxic and full of hatred. she is just now stepping away from that and she needs time before she figures out what exactly she believes in. but deep down shelby is a very kind and sweet soul and she likes helping people. with Toni (and martha) on her side i see her getting radicalized and throwing herself to mutual aid

leah: right now i think leah is kind of a centrist? but mostly because she probably never thought about it and just went with whatever her parents say and they scream liberals to me. like they loved obama, gushed over clinton and probs think when biden was elected every problem was magically solved. but i can see leah growing into a very active and fierce feminist. she just needs some positive role models like AOC. she’ll eventually join the soc dems imo

rachel: pre island rachel was swept up in the capitalist myth of “if you work hard enough you’ll get rich and achieve your dreams”. but she learned that’s not true the hard way and now just like shelby she has to reinvent herself. honestly idk i feel like she would be a bit passive and just take the time to take care of herself without getting too involved. cottagecore rachel headcanon where she just lives a happy and quiet life by a lake lmao

nora: lowkey also a leftist. idk just the vibes. i am sure the whole thing with gretchen would radicalize her and she reads so many books you know? i just feel like she would be one of those people who go to the protest with a first aid kit and milk cartoons just in case someone needs help.

#a little torn on what i see toni as #lowkey see her as an anarchist but also can see her as a commie #well it doesn’t matter she is a leftist both those ideologies are close ish #the wilds #asks #what a wonderful ask thank you #is this too biased towards the left? idc i love them they can’t be fucking liberals

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all-things-are-nothing-to-me · 2 years

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The Bourgeois Roots of Anarcho Syndicalism

We favor the development of a worker’s movement based on direct democracy, not just because it will be more effective in the present day fight against the employing class, but also because it foreshadows — and lays the basis for — a society of freedom and equality, without authoritarianism or exploitation.

From a flyer put out by the Workers Solidarity Alliance, an anarcho-syndicalist organization.

In the fourteenth or fifteenth century a social transformation began to take place which reached its dramatic peak in the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. This period was the uprising of the bourgeoisie against the feudal system and the power of the Catholic Church. In place of feudalism, the economic system of capitalism and the political system of political democracy arose. Rather than allow a non-elected aristocracy or a king to rule, liberal democracy demands that “the people” rule through their representatives or their vote. Like the anarcho-syndicalists quoted above, the bourgeoisie wanted a “society of freedom and equality, without authoritarianism or exploitation.” Leave out the parts about “workers” and “the employing class” and Thomas Paine might have written the quote.

Of course, the anarcho-syndicalists will tell us that they aren’t using the words in the way the bourgeois revolutionaries did. I’d take them at their word if it weren’t for the fact that anarcho-syndicalism reflects bourgeois ideology in much more significant ways than merely borrowing its terminology. The values upheld by anarcho-syndicalists do not significantly differ from those of the more radical of the bourgeois liberal theorists, and their project, upon examination, proves to be merely the extension of the liberal project.

As I’ve already said, the economic system that came to power with the bourgeoisie is capitalism. I won’t go into a lengthy description of capitalism — suffice it to say that the defining quality of capitalism, as compared with other economic systems, is not the existence of capitalists but the production of excess capital allowing for continued economic expansion. Capitalism is a highly moral system — that is to say it requires values which take priority over individual needs, desires or greed in order to expand smoothly. These values which are essential to capitalist expansion are production and progress. Every technological advance is, thus, to be embraced unless it can be shown to be a threat to further expansion of capital. Essential to production and progress is work and so the bourgeois highly value work — and, contrary to the image painted by “radical” labour propagandists, it is not uncommon for capitalists to work many more hours than industrial workers, but it’s organizational rather than productive work. Those who manage to avoid work are the moral scum of capitalist society — parasites off the working people.

Anarcho-syndicalists embrace every one of these capitalist values. Their goal is “the real human mastery of production.” In spite of the high level of anthropological evidence to the contrary, they assume that primal people spent most of their time just striving to survive and that it is only thanks to the production of technology and its progress that we can live the wonderful lives we all do now, and enjoy all the lovely commodities — oops! Sorry, I’m waxing sarcastic! The syndicalists recognize a few specific technologies as threats to survival but see technology in general and progress in general as positive things. In light of this, it is no surprise that they rhapsodize over work, because without work there would be no production or progress. Like the bourgeoisie, they see those who avoid work as “parasites.” (See Chaze Bufe’s Listen Anarchist!) The only real problem they have with the capitalist system is who’s in charge — they’d prefer the One Big Capitalist, the international union of working people, rather than various individuals, corporations and states to be in charge. But the basic structure would be the same. Like the bourgeoisie — and maybe even more than the bourgeoisie — the anarcho-syndicalists embrace the values essential to capitalism.

If production and progress are positive values, making work essential, then social conformity is equally essential. I’ve already said that work avoidance is seen as parasitism. Any pleasure that cannot be commodified and so brought under the control of production is unethical. The vagabond, the tramp, the gypsy, the outlaw, any individual who makes no positive contribution to society is condemned as a failure or a criminal. Even the bohemian — the non-conforming artist, musician or poet — is suspect in bourgeois eyes — at least until a way is found to recuperate their renegade creative urges.

This same attitude towards those who don’t fit into society is held by anarcho syndicalists. Chaz Bufe’s castigation of “marginals” in Listen Anarchist! makes this quite clear. The way the CNT constantly put down the anarchist outlaw Sabate (while continuing to take and use the money he gave them from his robberies) is truly disgusting. Throughout its history, anarcho-syndicalism has tried to quench the fire of unruly rebels, sometimes through persuasion and sometime through insult, to move anarchic rebels to conform and to accept society. Wherever anarchic rebellion went beyond the reforms the anarcho-syndicalist were calling, these supposed non-believers in law would be the first to cry, “Criminal! Terrorists!” Like the bourgeoisie, they want production to progress smoothly, and that requires social conformity.

Hand in hand with social conformity goes a love for social peace. It is true that the bourgeoisie has exploited wars between nations to expand capital, but this is always precarious since any violence can upset the smooth running of capitalism. Only violence instituted by the proper authorities with a rational and ethical basis has any place in bourgeois society. Personal conflicts are not only not to include physical violence but should be polite, dealt with through rational discussion, negotiation or due process. Certainly passions should not flare. The social peace is to be broken only under the most extreme of circumstances.

Anarcho-syndicalists also value social peace. From Luigi Fabbri’s Bourgeois Influences in Anarchism to Bufe’s Listen Anarchist!, they try to warn anarchists away from violent verbal expression — ironically, trying to claim that this springs not from false conceptions of anarchism created by the bourgeois press — why they think people with courage and intelligence to rebel against authority would accept the word of the bourgeois press, I don’t know. Like the bourgeoisie, the anarcho-syndicalists call on us to express our disagreements rationally, free of passion, in a peaceable way. Any active, violent expression of individual rebellion is considered irresponsible, counter-revolutionary and unethical by the anarcho syndicalists. The perpetrators are labeled, at best, as dupes and more often as common criminals and terrorists. In fact, outside of a “revolutionary situation,” anarcho-syndicalists reject most form of illegal activity as counter-productive (but is that necessarily bad?). Only the uprising of the working class (the “proper authority” in anarcho-syndicalist theory) can justify violence — and that violence must be rational and ethical so as to keep the instruments of production intact and make as smooth of a transition as possible to anarcho-syndicalist production.

Anarcho-syndicalists also wish to create a rational, ethical society. They call on us to “attack irrationality...wherever and whenever it arises.” The problem they see with the present society is that it is not rational or ethical enough. Since reason is the source of ethical behavior (in their view), it must prevail in all areas of life. Not our passions or desires, but our “rational self-interest” should be our guide, say the syndicalists, echoing the utilitarians. It is both more rational and more ethical if the producer controls the means of production, they proclaim, blithely ignoring the question of whether it is possible for anyone to control the means of production in industrial society.

Both bourgeois liberal theorists and anarcho-syndicalists want a rational, ethical society based on freedom, equality and justice, guaranteeing human rights. Both want a smoothly running economy with high levels of production guaranteeing scientific and technological progress. Both require social peace and conformity to realize their projects. It is difficult not to think that their projects are the same. I see only two significant differences. The bourgeoisie sees the economy as an apolitical force that can progress efficiently and ethically in the form of private enterprise. The anarcho-syndicalists recognize the economy as a political force which must, therefor, be run democratically. The bourgeois liberals believe that representational democracy can create their ideal. Anarcho-syndicalists believe that democracy must be direct — though they never seem to ask us if we want to spend time directly voting on every social issue that comes up. The project of the anarcho-syndicalists is really just an extension of the project of the project of bourgeois liberalism — an attempt to push that project toward its logical conclusion.

This brings me to the final parallel between bourgeois liberalism and anarcho syndicalism, a parallel not of ideas, but of ignorance. Neither seems capable of recognizing the realities of the social system we live under. “The every day activity of slaves reproduces slavery” (Fredy Perlman). While talking about freedom and democracy, the bourgeois liberal and the anarcho-syndicalist both only see the human authorities that control them; they are blind to the social activities in which they participate which are the real source of their slavery. Thus, the bourgeois liberal is content to get rid of priests and kings, and the anarcho-syndicalist throws in presidents and bosses. But the factories remain intact, the stores remain intact (though the syndicalists may call them distribution centers), the family remains intact — the entire social system remains intact. If our daily activity has not significantly changed — and the anarcho-syndicalists give no indication of wanting to change it beyond adding the burden of managing the factories to that of working in them — then what difference does it make if there are no bosses? — We’re still slaves! The “name-change does not exorcise the beast.” But there is a reason why the bourgeois liberal nor the anarcho-syndicalist can see the slavery inherent in the social system. They do not see freedom as the ability of the unique individual to create her/his life as s/he chooses. They see it as the ability of the individual to become a fully and actively integrated part of a progressive, rational society. “Slavery is freedom” is not an aberration of Stalinist of fascist thinking; it is inherent in all perspectives which ascribe freedom to society rather than to the individual. The only way to guarantee the “freedom” of such societies is to suppress non-conformity and rebellion wherever they arise. The anarcho-syndicalists may talk of abolishing the state, but they will have to reproduce every one of its functions to guarantee the smooth running of their society. Anarcho-syndicalism does not make a radical break with the present society. It merely seeks to extend this society’s values so they dominate us more fully in our daily lives. All true rebels, the renegades, outlaws and wild free spirits could no more accept an anarcho-syndicalist society than the present one. We would have to continue raising hell, creating a radical break with society, because we don’t want more control over our slavery — and that’s all the anarcho-syndicalists offer us — we want to throw off the chains and live our lives to the full.

#anarcho syndicalism #anarchism #post left #feral faun #wolfi landstreicher #egoism

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kapitaali · 3 years

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The New Hippies

THE NEW HIPPIES: The work abolition movement, anarcho-primitivism and biodynamism as ways to combat climate change

Essay for the course LOGS13b The Strategic Role of Responsibility in Business by Teppo Saari

Introduction

The course LOGS13b The Strategic Role of Responsibility in Business had the students think about and discuss the various ethical dimensions in business, moral dilemmas and choices to be made that a decision maker in business world come across every day.

This essay is motivated by our case study with a headline ’Investors urge European companies to include climate risks in accounts’ (Financial Times 2020). In this essay I will explore values and ethical principles that I see as the solutions to our case study and climate change in general. This is not to say that I could stand up for them in business world. Ironically, my main thread and leitmotif here is the untransformational nature of capitalism and business world. Thus, standing up to the values I will discuss here means doing less business, not more.

This essay is divided in three parts: problem – reaction – solution. These three parts will talk about the chosen values and ethical principles. They are by no means new: pragmatism – The Golden Rule – parsimony & naturality. They just seem to be in conflict with our modern way of living.

Thinking pragmatically about the problem

As part of our course assignment, we got to read about a group of investors managing trillions of dollars worth of assets who urged European companies to include climate risks in their accounts (Financial Times 2020). Scientists have warned us for decades, that pumping extreme amounts of CO2 into our atmosphere will result in melting of the polar ice caps (Mitchell 1989; Jones & Henderson-Sellers 1990), which will raise the sea level and drown some of the coastal cities (Peters & Darling 1985). Finally, capitalists are acting responsibly!

It would seem that capitalists actually cared for the planet and not just their profits. Or would it? Maybe they are scared of losing their future profits, and this kind of media escapade would bring back public trust and confidence in the system. It would be a sign that capitalists can act transparently, openly, accountably, respecting others (O’Leary 1993). But is changing the allocation in your investment portfolio really a sign of empathy? Would there be other ways to better express empathy in business?

Shareholders are interested in the risk their assets are facing, not necessarily in the welfare of the people. Investors acting virtuously can be just virtue-signaling or pleasing other elements in the society to take off media pressure and negative PR from them in a conformist way (Collinson 2003). Maybe they are just greenwashing their own conscience. Why is George Soros’ climate buzz astroturfing industrial complex (Morningstar 2019a) financing Greta Thunberg to do public PR campaigns targeting the youth? Maybe there is money in it. It is unlikely that it would have been dubbed ”A 100 trillion dollar storytelling campaign” without some particularly good reasons (Morningstar 2019b).

But there is something else in it too than just money: power and control. The person who gets to limit choices gets to dictate what kind of choices remain. And if a person has that kind of foreknowledge, then that person can be two steps ahead of us. And being two steps ahead of us means securing future profits. Including climate risks in accounts will imply controls. Controls are imposed on accounts, but ultimately it will mean controls imposed on people and their daily activities. Workers are the ones who will naturally suffer the consequences of management decisions. In this case management decisions are ’urged’ externally, from the owners’ part. After all, it is the corporations that are producing most of the climate change effects, in terms of pollution and greenhouse gases (Griffin 2017). People doing their jobs, working everyday, producing things but also at the same time producing climate effects. I would still love to hear politicians use more terms such as ”pollution” when talking about these issues. For it is unclear how reducing carbon emissions will reduce overall pollution that is also a contributor in the destruction of our environment (see eg. Bodo & Gimah 2020; Oelofse et al. 2007). Issues like microplastics, holes in the ozone layer, biodiversity loss, acid rains and soil degradation need to be talked about just as much, if not more so.

The problem is simple: too much economic activity producing too much climate impact, mostly pollution and greenhouse gases. Solving the Grand Challenge (Konstantinou & Muller 2020) of our time is harder if we wish to keep the fabric of our society intact. There’s a clear need for dialogue among stakeholders (Gardiner 1996), but how is it a dialogue if people are not actually listened to and don’t get to say how things will progress in society? What I am proposing is a meme-like solution that has the greater impact the more people adopt it. My solution is: stop working. Produce less. Stop supporting systems and mechanisms that produce climate effects. Stop supporting the mechanisms that don’t listen to your voice. Disconnect from the Matrix. Working a dayjob is one of these mechanisms. Although many people have realized the benefits of working from home (Kost 2020), a lot more needs to be done. Remote work is not available to everyone. Not all jobs are remote work.

Bob Black (2021) in his texts has advocated for the total and complete abolition of work. Stopping working naturally does not mean stopping doing things, it will merely mean stopping working a job, a concept which itself is a social construct. Black’s theses are simple but powerful. Working is the source of all ills, it is not compatible with ludic life (allthemore so in 2021), it is forced labour and compulsory production, it is replete with indignities called ”discipline”: ”surveillance, rotework, imposed work tempos, production quotas, punching -in and -out, etc”. Black does not only describe the negative ontological aspects of working, he goes deeper and invokes many familiar names of Greek philosophers:

Both Plato and Xenophon attribute to Socrates and obviously share with him an awareness of the destructive effects of work on the worker as a citizen and a human being. Herodotus identified contempt for work as an attribute of the classical Greeks at the zenith of their culture. To take only one Roman example, Cicero said that “whoever gives his labor for money sells himself and puts himself in the rank of slaves.” His candor is now rare, but contemporary primitive societies which we are wont to look down upon have provided spokesmen who have enlightened Western anthropologists. The Kapauku of West Irian, according to Posposil, have a conception of balance in life and accordingly work only every other day, the day of rest designed “to regain the lost power and health.” Our ancestors, even as late as the eighteenth century when they were far along the path to our present predicament, at least were aware of what we have forgotten, the underside of industrialization. Their religious devotion to “St. Monday” — thus establishing a de facto five-day week 150–200 years before its legal consecration — was the despair of the earliest factory owners. They took a long time in submitting to the tyranny of the bell, predecessor of the time clock. In fact it was necessary for a generation or two to replace adult males with women accustomed to obedience and children who could be molded to fit industrial needs. Even the exploited peasants of the ancient regime wrested substantial time back from their landlord’s work. According to Lafargue, a fourth of the French peasants’ calendar was devoted to Sundays and holidays, and Chayanov’s figures from villages in Czarist Russia — hardly a progressive society — likewise show a fourth or fifth of peasants’ days devoted to repose. Controlling for productivity, we are obviously far behind these backward societies. The exploited muzhiks would wonder why any of us are working at all. So should we.

Black notes that only ”a small and diminishing fraction of work serves any useful purpose independent of the defense and reproduction of the work-system and its political and legal appendages”. In similar vein, the late but great David Graeber saw the futility of most work. Calling this phenomenon ’bullshit jobs’ (Graeber 2018), Graeber sets out to describe what many of us are familiar with: we do useless things to make ourselves feel useful. Because modern society legitimizes itself with having people ’do’ stuff and not ’be’ a certain person. How can you (objectively) measure being? You can’t. But doing, that you can measure. This measurement then qualifies you as a member of society: productive, doing your part (an idiom that is a perfect example how you can’t escape the doing paradigm on a societal level). Graeber’s definition of a bullshit job is: if the position were eliminated, it would make no discernible difference in the world. In many cases these types of jobs are found to be supporting some kind of buraucracy, reporting, assisting decision makers, etc. Our current Matrix has its ways of creating more of these with the clever marketing concept called ’value’ (Petrescu 2019). They don’t make a difference, they create value.

Why would you want to overload the world by doing things that you nor most everyone else see no point in? Why would you waste your time doing pointless things? The easy answer to these questions is ’subsistence’. But there are many other ways to live on this planet. If you keep doing what the society tells you is acceptable or convenient, you will shut your eyes from the problem at hand: climate change.

Legitimizing anarcho-naturism as a solution with The Golden Rule

Our responsibility is to ourselves. We can not properly be held responsible for anything else. Yet the system of representational democracy does just this, holds us collectively responsible for many things, borrows money from creditors with our names on the loan collectively and then makes us pay for the loans. The way this Matrix works is yet another reason to disconnect from it. Or at least stop supporting it as much as possible.

The Golden Rule states: ”Treat others as you want to be treated” (Gensler 2013). From the perspective of climate change, it can first seem curious why you would quit your job and head for the hills. After all, we are facing a global issue here. There are people in need for help and I am running away? But I would see it as a way to get around our predicament. The Golden Rule can be also interpreted in Kantian way as the categorical imperative, particularly its first formulation: ”Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”. This formulation is somewhat more proactive in nature. It talks about acting, doing things, and doing things is what is appreciated in our society, even when your goal is to exit the society.

Why exit the society? Is it enough to just quit your job and find something else to do, something that is more fulfilling and not bullshit? What an excellent question. Long before the advent of smart phones and 5G and DNA-vaccines, this question had been brought up to the table. In the 1800s, people were realizing the negative impact industrialization was having on society at large. People were rooted out from their family homes in the countryside, forced to move to a large city to look for a job, crammed into small apartments with dozens of other workers, coerced into working long and hard days at factories to make a living. The lowly misery of these people attracted the attention of a certain Friedrich Engels, who felt their situation was not adequate to make up for the suffering they had gone through. He meticulously described the working conditions of the English working class in his ”The Condition of the Working Class in England” (2003 [1845]), originally published in German. Sociology as a science was established by Karl Marx, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim to study these changes. Slowly but surely, the influx of people into cities started to cause issues, something that mayors and other municipal representatives had to start taking care of. Planning and zoning were given a lot more attention, since the earlier modus operandi of old European cities had been rather laissez faire (Sutcliffe 1980).

Against this backdrop of massive societal change, people started to question the changes and their direction. Are we really nothing more than slaves, just working in a different environment? Slavery might not be the right word or context here. Many people believe to be free, govern themselves and their property, and yet their daily actions and options to choose from seem to be eerily limited. They have only so many choices, most of which seem somehow related to running their errands. A more appropriate term, with all its connotations, here would be the Greek word ananke, ”force, constraint, necessity”. Like a force of nature, progress towards modernity necessitates that people leave their family homes and go work in large factories, compulsively manufacturing endless amounts of products, some of which are necessary, others merely decorations, and some just pointless.

Many names in 19th century New England worked upon a vision for the future society at a time when unprecedented changes were taking place and the standard of living was rising faster than ever before. The Transcendental Club was a group of New England authors, philosophers, socialists, politicians and intellectuals of the early-to-mid-19th century which gave rise to Transcendentalism, the first notable American intellectual movement. Transcendentalist believe in the inherent goodness of people and nature, but that society and its institutions — particularly organized religion and political parties — corrupt the purity of the individual. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2003; Sacks 2003.) Transcendentalism is a unique mix of European Romanticism, German (particularly Kantian) philosophy, and American Christianity. The impact of this movement can still be seen in the many flavours of American anarchist and radical Christian movements.

Out of the ranks of Transcendentalists rose a couple of names that can be viewed as the progenitors of modern anarcho-primitivism and natur(al)ist anarchy. Ralph Waldo Emerson was the central figure of the Transcendental Club, who together with Henry David Thoreau critiqued the contemporary society for its ”unthinking conformity” and advocated for “an original relation to the universe” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2003). Emerson’s Nature (2009 [1836]) poetically embellishes our view of the natural world, while Thoreau’s Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1995 [1854]) is a call for civil disobedience and revolt against the modern world. Another influential natur(al)ist writer has been Leo Tolstoi whose name is frequently mentioned by anarchists. Tolstoi himself was a Christian and pacifist, and his writings have inspired Christian anarcho-pacifism that views the state as ”immoral and unsupportable because of its connection with military power” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2017).

Before the Transcendentalist movement, Europe experienced similar trend in philosophy with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s natural philosophy. Rousseau touched upon many subjects: freedom, free will, authority, nature, morality, societal inequality, representation and government. Like Transcendentalists, Rousseau held a belief that human beings are good by nature but are rendered corrupt by society. ”Rousseau clearly states that morality is not a natural feature of human life, so in whatever sense it is that human beings are good by nature, it is not the moral sense that the casual reader would ordinarily assume” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2010). Rousseau’s work is relevant to many of the social movements that currently fight against COVID restrictions, vaccination agenda, building of 5G antenna towers next to where people live, polluting the environment, systemic poverty and general disconnection from the natural world. Rousseau, although regarded as a philosopher, saw philosophy itself negatively, and to him philosophers were ”the post-hoc rationalizers of self-interest, as apologists for various forms of tyranny, and as playing a role in the alienation of the modern individual from humanity’s natural impulse to compassion” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2010).

Rousseau’s days did not see capitalism as we see it now. It was later Marx (influenced by Hegel, who in turn was influenced by Rousseau) that put together a treatise that considers the societal change we have seen ever since from industrialism and circulation of capital. But Rousseau’s thoughts about the social contract (1968 [1762]), “child-centered” education (Rousseau 2010), and inequality (Graeber & Wengrow 2018; Rousseau 2008) are still relevant today. Especially when we are faced with many societal forces that are contradictory in nature, each of them pushing us into certain direction, demanding our attention, wanting us to change our beliefs about that one particular aspect that connects with other aspects and forms the Matrix of our reality.

We are once again facing a similar situation as the people did back in the days of the first industrial revolution. Now the industrial revolution has reached its fourth cycle, unimaginatively called ”Industry 4.0” (Marr 2018; WEF 2021), where machines are starting to become autonomous and talk to each other. I used to think technology was cool, and went to work for Google. But at Google I learned that technology is not cool, after all. Not until technology becomes completely open source, it will be used by massive conglomerates to build autonomous weapons systems (Cassella 2018; Johnson 2018) and the industry will keep paying ethics researchers to keep writing arguments for them (Charters 2020). Even though I could work for an industry that, given the current trajectory, will be among the biggest producers of CO 2 in the future Vidal 2017), the idea that I would work for an industry that sees weaponizing their products as the grandest idea of mankind’s future is still gnawing.

Because, it is all just business (Huesemann & Huesemann 2011):

One of the functions of critical science is to create awareness of the underlying values, and the political and financial interests which are currently determining the course of science and technology in industrialized society. This exposure of the value-laden character of science and technology is done with the goal of emancipating both people and the environment from domination and exploitation by powerful interests. The ultimate objective is to redirect science and technology to support both ordinary people and the environment, instead of causing suffering through oppression and exploitation by dominant elites. Furthermore, by exposing the myth of the value-neutrality of science and technology, critical science attempts to awaken working scientists and engineers to the social, political, and ethical implications of their work, making it impossible or, at the very least, uncomfortable for them to ignore the wider context and corresponding responsibilities of their professional activities.

It all seems to be connected with state imperialism and the military-industrial(-intelligence) complex. Lenin’s statement (2008 [1916]) equating capitalism with imperialism still prevails this day: ”imperialist wars are absolutely inevitable under such an economic system, as long as private property in the means of production exists”. The conditions change, but the war machine keeps on churning (soon with autonomous weapons!), with wealthy but crooky investors financing projects that are even more dystopian (Byrne 2013). We may remember what president Dwight D. Eisenhower said about the military- industrial complex (NPR 2011):

”In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”

It is exactly these kinds of doomsday scenarios that inspire people like Theodore John ”The Unabomber” Kaczynski. Kaczynski, famous for sending mail bombs to various university professors around the US, holds a doctoral degree in mathematics. (Wikipedia 2021.) Kaczynski was bullied as a child, and it has been suggested that he was part of an MKULTRA experiment in college (The Week 2017). Kaczynski did not send his bombs haphazardly. He wrote long theoretical pieces to justify his actions, most of them being thematically anarcho-primitivist. In 1995, after sending several bombs to university personnel and business executives in 1978-1995, he said to ”desist from terrorism” if he got his text published in media outlets.

In his Industrial Society and Its Future (Kaczynski 1995), a 35 thousand word essay published in The Washington Post, which the FBI gave the name ”Unabomber manifesto”, Kaczynski attributes many our societal ills to ”leftism”. In the manifesto Kaczynski details how two psychological tendencies, “feelings of inferiority” and “oversocialization”, form the basis of ”the psychology of modern leftism”. Feelings of inferiority are taken to mean the whole spectrum of negative feelings about self: low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, guilt, self-hatred etc. Oversocialization is the process of socialization taken to extreme levels:

24. Psychologists use the term “socialization” to designate the process by which children are trained to think and act as society demands. A person is said to be well socialized if he believes in and obeys the moral code of his society and fits in well as a functioning part of that society. It may seem senseless to say that many leftists are over-socialized, since the leftist is perceived as a rebel. Nevertheless, the position can be defended. Many leftists are not such rebels as they seem.

25. The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can think, feel and act in a completely moral way. For example, we are not supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt, they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives and find moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality have a nonmoral origin. We use the term “oversocialized” to describe such people.

Kaczynski goes on to describe how this oversocialization causes a person to feel guilt and shame for their actions, especially in the context of performing as society expects them to perform. He writes how this concept of oversocialization is used to determine ”the direction of modern leftism”. Further on, Kaczynski describes how modern man needs goals to strive for, to not run the risk of developing serious psychological problems. This goalsetting activity he denotes ”power process”. But these goals can be real or artificial. Setting a goal is “surrogate activity” if the person devotes much time and energy to attaining it, does not attain it, and still feels seriously deprived. It is just a goal for goalsetting’s sake, the unfulfilled other side of the coin of power process. Kaczynski then connects these concepts to the many societal ills (excessive density of population, isolation of man from nature, excessive rapidity of social change and the breakdown of natural small-scale communities such as the extended family, the village or the tribe) by describing how modern society, with all its marketing and advertising creating artificial needs, disrupts the power process, mankind’s search for itself and meaning-making in life. He sees social hierarchies and the need to climb up them, the ”keeping up with the Joneses”, as surrogate activity.

”Because of the constant pressure that the system exerts to modify human behavior, there is a gradual increase in the number of people who cannot or will not adjust to society’s requirements: welfare leeches, youth gang members, cultists, anti-government rebels, radical environmentalist saboteurs, dropouts and resisters of various kinds”. This gradual increase, then, the system tries to ’solve’ by using propaganda, ”to make people WANT the decisions that have been made for them”. In regards to technology, the ”bad” parts cannot be separated from the ”good”, and thus we are constantly facing the dilemma between technology and freedom, new technology being introduced all the time, and new regulations being introduced to curb the negative effects of the technology and at the same time stripping us of our freedoms. Kaczynski concludes, that revolution is easier than reforming the system.

Later, Kaczynski released another of his anti-technological theses. In Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How (2015) Kaczynski presents a ”comprehensive historical analysis explaining the futility of social control and the catastrophic influence of technological growth on human social and planetary ecological systems.” This time Kaczynski talks more about how to start an anti-tech movement and how to keep it going. The text reads like a mathemathical proof of sorts, it presents ”rules”, ”propositions” and ”postulates” why the technological system will destroy itself (eg. Russell’s Paradox resulting in chaos in a highly complex, tightly coupled system) and why a successful anti-tech movement needs clear goals to avoid some of the errors revolutionary movements have made, which are elaborated in the book. Violence is not offered as a solution in the book, it is seen more like a mishap of sorts, a suboptimal outcome of a revolutionary movement. But it talks about power. Kaczynski got to learn the hard way how the feeling of powerlessness breeds desperate actions that would have been otherwise unnecessary. The book also talks about climate change and related issues, from a mathematic systems theoretical point of view.

Institutions that are in the business of social engineering and behavioral modification, such as the Tavistock Institute in the UK or the CIA in the US, would have us believe that Kaczynski’s actions were ”defences against anxiety” that can be seen as ”withdrawal, informal organization, reactive individualism and scapegoating” (Hills et al. 2020), and to some extent this is true. But Kaczynski interprets the actions of these institutions stemming from technological progress in our society Kaczynski 1995):

117. In any technologically advanced society the individual’s fate MUST depend on decisions that he personally cannot influence to any great extent. A technological society cannot be broken down into small, autonomous communities, because production depends on the cooperation of very large numbers of people and machines. Such a society MUST be highly organized and decisions HAVE TO be made that affect very large numbers of people.

This uniformity of a large hierarchical modern society then forces its will on people (Kaczynski 1995):

119. The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system. This has nothing to do with the political or social ideology that may pretend to guide the technological system. It is not the fault of capitalism and it is not the fault of socialism. It is the fault of technology, because the system is guided not by ideology but by technical necessity.

We have once again encountered ananke, necessity. Now, if we consider ourselves as the lonely decision makers in this society, what could we do? We can try and fight fire with fire, but such fights end up producing only pain and casualties (Taylor 2013). Anarcho-naturists and anarcho-pacifists understand that (unnecessary) fighting in most cases does not work. Sometimes fighting is warranted, but it is beyond the scope of this essay to examine those cases. Sending bombs to people’s offices may get you some attention and even make somebody quote your manifesto in an essay, but it is not solving the issue, something which the Unabomber addressed in his later texts. If working a job indirectly supports the military-industrial complex NewScientist 2011), what good does it do? The military-industrial complex is the biggest source of pollution in the world (The Conversation 2019; Acedo 2015), detaching yourself from this complex is imperative. Even if they would manage to convince us with their psyops that they are willing to change and that climate change is an important issue (Ahmed 2014), it would still be the biggest polluter that is controlling the conversation. It has even been suggested that they are behind this climate buzz (Light 2014). Is your job doing that much good in society that it outweighs the cons? If I need to act responsibly, but cannot fight the system nor conform, while at the same time keeping in mind our looming climate disaster, the only reasonable and peaceful response is to exit the system altogether.

Biodynamism’s naturality and parsimony

Owning responsibility and transforming the world implies taking some kind of action. We have already seen how feelings of powerlessness and lack of self-worth can lead to destructive actions. But there are an unlimited amount of actions that can be taken, that are not based in feelings of powerlessness but empowerment.

Exiting society might sound like a lonely project, and some people might rightfully feel lonely when all their peers still want to live in the illusion. But it does not have to be so. A lot of soul-searching needs to be done, and that is usually done in privacy, focusing upon oneself, but beyond that there are ways how to go off-grid and drastically reduce your carbon emissions.

One of the key concepts that will be our guiding principle here is degrowth (Paulson 2017), which ties into values such as organicity, naturality and parsimony. We will want to have less production of artificial things, and more organic and natural things. By artificial we mean long supply chains and many phases of production with modern high technology that produce a large amount of climate effects. By natural we mean using primitive technology, mostly all-natural or recycled materials and something that can be produced even alone, given enough time. Primitive technology does not exclude electricity, it just means producing it differently.

Rudolf Steiner, Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and theosophist, the founder of Anthroposophy and a great reformer of science in matters of spirit, started the first intentional form of organic farming, known as biodynamic agriculture, after he had given a series of lectures on the topic in the last year of his life. (Paull 2011.) Steiner had many spiritual experiences during his life, which lead him to start the Anthroposophy movement. He wanted to apply the scientific process into spiritual realm, inquiring it as it would be as real as our material world. Inquiring this spiritual world helped him access knowledge he claims to not have been access otherwise (Steiner 2011 [1918]). Anthroposophist self-inquiry can be seen as Foucauldian ”technology of the self” that ”provide an intervention mechanism on the part of active subjects, injecting an element of contingency to everyday encounters and alleviating the determinist effect that technologies of power would have otherwise” (Skinner 2012).

Steiner’s thoughts about agriculture are still relevant (Paull 2011):

In 1924 Steiner commented that, “Nowadays people simply think that a certain amount of nitrogen is needed for plant growth, and they imagine it makes no difference how it’s prepared or where it comes from” Steiner, 1924b, pp.9-10). He made the point that, “In the course of this materialistic age of ours, we’ve lost the knowledge of what it takes to continue to care for the natural world” (Steiner, 1924b, p.10).

Our current system seems to think exactly in this way, that if we just compensate our wreaked havoc by investing in ’green’ technology (Elegant 2019), it will all be ok and rainbows in the sky. But it will not. No one is even double checking if the companies that say that they are now carbon neutral actually proactively try to make our world greener. They can just buy a renewable energy company and say now we are green and do nothing else. Some would argue that going ’carbon neutral’ like these massive corporations are doing it is not the way to do it: “’green’ infrastructures are creating conflict and ecological degradation and are the material expression of climate catastrophe” (Dunlap 2020).

Steinerian biodynamism ”encompasses practices of composting, mixed farming systems with use of animal manures, crop rotations, care for animal welfare, looking at the farm as an organism/entity and local distribution systems, all of which contribute toward the protection of the environment, safeguard biodiversity and improve livelihoods of farmers” (Turinek et al. 2009). While modern biodynamic studies focus on agroecological factors such as nutrient cycles, soil characteristics, and nutritional quality (Reganold 1995; Droogers & Bouma 1996), Steiner himself was quite metaphysical in his lectures and paid attention to details such as kingdoms of nature, planetary influences, biorhythms, incarnated and environmental ethers, and the Zodiac (Steiner 2004 [1958]; Nastati 2009).

By shifting to more natural ways of living, we may help Gaia (Lovelock 1991; Singh 2007) heal in many other ways than just reduce our climate emissions. By realizing that we are actually living on the skin of a fairly large and complex organism, we will stop treating it as a plain source of material resources, and start bonding with it, tune into its consciousness and establish two-way communication, just like the natives have done in America.

The way of the natives ought to be our current way, since there is no reason why the natives could not guard the lands they have before. One of the greatest fears of people speaking for private property rights is that managing resources collectively would mean exhausting them. There is no Tragedy of Commons. Just because you are materially poor does not mean that you are any less competent steward of land and wealth, as proposed by Elinor Oström (2009). Acting for climate is not an investment allocation problem. The natives need their land back so that they could do their best to fight the destruction of our ecosystem. The Outokumpu supply chain in Brazilian rainforests, Elon Musk and Bolivian lithium mines, Papua New Guinea indigenous conflict, mining in Lapland in traditional Sami herding areas, Australian uranium mining in indigenous lands… these are all pointless conflicts.

There are also many other ways of staying grounded and in touch with nature, while at the same time cultivating sovereignty. Many of these things revolve around feeding the most immediate community next to you. They reflect ideas such as mutuality, solidarity, organicity, and naturality. Permaculture is a term coined by David Holmgren to describe ”an approach to land management and philosophy that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems. It includes a set of design principles derived using whole systems thinking. It uses these principles in fields such as regenerative agriculture, rewilding, and community resilience” (Wikipedia: Permaculture 2021). Permaculture has many branches including ecological design, ecological engineering, regenerative design, environmental design, and construction. It also includes integrated water resources management that develops sustainable architecture, and regenerative and self-maintained habitat and agricultural systems modeled from natural ecosystems (Holmgren Desing Services 2007).

Earthships are 100% sustainable homes that are both energy efficient and modern. Earthsips are built with natural and repurposed (recycled) materials, they heat and cool themselves without electric heat, they use solar energy to power electric appliances, they collect all of their water from rain and snowmelt, they re-use their sewage water to fertilize plants, and there’s an indoor garden that grows food in vertical growing spaces (Reynolds 2021). Ecovillages are a ”human-scale, full-featured settlement, in which human activities are harmlessly integrated into the natural world in a way that is supportive of healthy human development and can be successfully continued into the indefinite future” (Gilman & Gilman 1991).

Clifford Harper had a set of drawings imagining an alternative in his book Radical Technology (Harper & Boyle 1976). In them, he shows many of the ideas that were themes in the German garden city movement in the beginning of 20th century (Bollerey & Hartmann 1980), such as collectivised gardens, autonomous housing estates, and community workshops. The book introduces us ’radical technology’, which spans basically all of the concepts we have discussed up to this point: organic agriculture, biodynamic agriculture, vegetarianism, hydroponics, soft energy, insulation, low-cost housing, tree houses, shanty houses, ’folk-built’ houses using traditional methods, houses built from subsoil, self-built houses, housing associations, solar dwellings, domestic paper-making, carpentry, scrap reclamation, printing, community & pirate radio, collectivised gardens, collective workshops for clothesmaking, shoe repair, pottery, household decoration and repairs, autonomous housing estates, autonomous rural villages, etc.

These concepts, while they seem simple, are still empowering, they are meant to let people enjoy they fruits of their labour. Last but certainly not least is the concept that all of these things fall under, alternative (or, appropriate) technology. Alternative technologies are those ”which offer genuine alternatives to the large-scale, complex, centralized, high-energy life forms which dominate the modern age” (Winner 1979). Alternative technologies seek to solve the problems technocentric thinking has caused in society: technical scale and economic concentration, level of complexity or simplicity best suited to technical operations of various kinds, division of labor and its alleged necessity, social and technical hierarchy as it relates to the design of technological systems, and self-sufficiency and interdependence regarding the lives of individuals and communities. Many of these solutions have been developed in Africa, where problems have had to be solved, but resources have been scarce in actuality.

Appropriate technology holds great promise in ways that are currently underappreciated in our society (Huesemann & Huesemann 2011):

As has been mentioned repeatedly throughout this book, the primary goal of technology in our current economic system is to increase material affluence and to generate profits for the wealthy by controlling and exploiting both people and the environment. In view of the reality of interconnectedness, this is neither environmentally sustainable nor socially desirable. In this chapter we discuss how to design technologies which reflect the values of environmental sustainability and social appropriateness. We also emphasize the importance of heeding the precautionary principle in order to prevent unintended consequences, as well as the need for participatory design in order to ensure greater democratic control of technology. Finally, as a specific example of an environmentally sustainable and socially appropriate technology, we discuss the positive contribution of local, organic, small-scale agriculture.

Conclusion

This essay has presented the reader with ramblings of a person who is familiar with Critical Theory, who would like to build a stronger connection to nature, and who is having a major identity crisis in life. I have expressed, albeit feebly, my will to emancipate myself, to exit the Matrix. In Finnish they would say ”Sota ei yhtä miestä kaipaa”, and in George S. Patton’s words this expression would be ”Hell, they won’t miss me, just one man in thousands.”

In this essay I seem to have extensively quoted the Unabomber manifesto. This is not to say that Kaczynski had exceptionally good motives or justifications for his actions. He killed many people and is in prison now. Kaczynski’s ideas are not unique. Quoting his manifesto serves merely to prove one point: he is the product of his environment. Mental illness is no longer a taboo and things have progressed somewhat since Kaczynski’s days. It could be argued that Kaczynski’s writings were just projection of his own feelings of shame and guilt he had gone through. But his mental condition, should he be diagnosed with one (Amador & Reshmi 2000), does not invalidate the things he’s written. In many ways his writings are now more relevant than ever. When we have tech billionaires talking about inserting neuralinks into your brain and downloading thoughts straight from the headquarters, we can really see the manifesto dots connecting.

I wish it would have been just the mental load caused by a ’surrogate activity’ of keeping up with the Joneses that was the cause of all this, but no, it’s the real deal now. When we have corporate executives and federal commissions defending autonomous weapons systems and saying building such systems is a ’moral imperative’ (Gershgorn 2021), you know we have reached peak civilization. It’s all downhill from now on. All participation in society will support this moral imperative, and I don’t want to have anything to do with it. While many would get back to nature for reasons of convenience, such as better health, Rousseau himself would have gotten back to nature ”to feel God in nature” (LaFreniere 1990). It is this kind of humanist transcendentalism (not transhumanism) that we will need again, to realize what we have done to our planet, to realize what needs to be done to abolish the war machine consuming it, and to make ourselves whole again.

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