There are all kinds of property systems, but most of them connect possession with the force necessary to maintain possession.
Whether ‘Capitalism sucks, it just sucks less than the alternatives’ probably depends on your point of view and frameworks. It certainly doesn’t suck for its elites. On the other hand, if it seriously degrades the environment (from the point of view of human survival) it will suck for quite a few people.
On the whole, to me it seems like something we could emerge from. And probably will: a fully dynamic system must eventually enter a state in which it ceases to exist. It could be a rough exit, though.
Ok Let’s say we did have a method to achieve a mass movement. What would be the things that we would want to change that have a specific tangibility to them based on a reaching a more humane and sustainable model?
Don’t worry about saying something that might be wrong we are just brainstorming here:
The video is terrible. It does not concretely identify anything bad, it does not offer any specific solutions, and most damning of all, it pushes the idea that with some array of changes we will turn a world that is all bad into a world that is all good. The world is not all bad (it cannot be), and for my own part, I can think of no other period in history I would rather be born in. More importantly, we should strive to make the world less bad, rather than all good - given the incredible diversity of people and their interests, someone at some point will always find some situation unfair to them, regardless of the system set up to maximise fairness. So we either turn ourselves into an army of lobotomised clones or make peace with imperfect systems.
It’s rather sexy to imagine progress as a short, decisive battle between the Big Bad and the upstart band of heroic rebels, but complex systems do not change that way. Progress is a long and hard slog of consistent effort from a large number of actors with things only becoming marginally less bad (and even then, rarely in a Pareto optimal manner) with every step. It’s just that if we keep at it for long enough, progress accumulates. Not something you can show in a beautiful six minute vid though.
Um, there is a mass movement in the US; the campaign to have Bernie Sanders elected as the Democratic Nominee. His policy platform pretty comprehensively answers your question.
Bernie has campaign finance reform as his number one priority, which in my view is bang-on.
Actually, depressing fact, but I suspect a lot of Jihadists are makers and engineers. You won’t find politicians making rockets out of fertiliser, fuel oil, and tubes from street signs. Leastways, not ones that work.
This kind of gradualism always irks me. We live in a social order largely established and maintained by and for elites, and thus at the expense of the rest of us. Change that benefits the rest of us often only comes when some of the rest of us fight for it.
Gradualism (is there a better name for this?) insultingly overlooks the hard work, risks taken and sacrifices made by those who fought for change, rather than passively trusting what their self-anointed superiors constantly claimed, that we’re all on a steady journey towards progress, so change is sure to come, some day. Please think about such movements, just for starters, as the suffragetes, or the civil rights movement (or hell, so much of what happened all over the world in just the one year of 1968). Think about how you’re basically erasing the work of those who didn’t sit back, waiting for improved conditions to just gradually happen.
Please think about such movements, just for starters, as the suffragetes, or the civil rights movement (or hell, so much of what happened all over the world in just the one year of 1968).
What those movements all had in common were clear objectives. I take issue with this video mainly because it doesn’t identify a single cohesive goal, let alone any plan of action to achieve it. The footage is all over the place - we have clips of icebergs, Maidan Square, Paris, Syria… What exactly are we protesting against, here? The message seems to be nothing more nuanced than “Down with bad things!”.
… and in a democracy, the right to grant such things to indviduals is granted to the government by a majority of those individuals. For a democracy to function well, the most important “rights of government” need to be supported by a vast majority of individuals.
We need more than just one term here. Is America capitalistic? Is Sweden? Is China? There’ve been many systems that blend capitalist and socialist properties. Some of them have failed, others have created some of the nicest spots to live in on the planet.
The property rights of one individual are fundamentally opposed to the interests of other individuals. Just watch a bunch of kids at a two-year-old’s birthday party. Any rule governing “property” or its absence will either limit one individual’s freedom to keep something, or another individual’s freedom to take something. And while a majority of individuals in any well-functioning society will always stick to that society’s rules without thinking about any threat of force that might be behind them, I don’t see how any society can function in the long run and in the presence of destructive individuals without at least some sort of “force” or other upleasantness to back up some of its rules.
True, “anarchy” is a philosophy. “Chaos” is not among the intended consequence of “anarchy”.
Also, let me say, that many philosophies, even many that I disapprove of, have made (or are still making) valuable contributions to society. “Anarchy” is also a term for the breakdown of public order. I will refrain from using the word in that sense in political discussions that touch on anarchy, the political philosophy.
Some people are saying that anarchism, when used as a way to organise human society, will lead to chaos, which in turn will lead to oppression again. I don’t think many people are seriously saying that anarchists are incapable of organising anything at all.
By lumping together all non-anarchist modes of government with “authoritarian models of government”, you are basically Godwining your entire argument.
I need some kind of order to be able to enjoy any of the liberties I have. At the very least, there has to be some mechanism to prevent other people from enforcing unwanted rules against me. Thus, “pure” anarchism, the absence of any and all rules, is unstable, as sooner or later people will come along who, for some reason or another will impose rules on others.
I’m sure that anarchist philosophy has come up with some way to address this fundamental problem, but most anarchists I had the joy of discussing this with so far limited themselves to denying the problem and name-calling towards all non-anarchists (hint: proponents of liberal democracy do not like being called “supporters of authoritarian government”).
'The difference between common-sense and paranoia is that common-sense is thinking everyone is out to get you. That’s normal – they are. Paranoia is thinking that they’re conspiring." (J. Kegler)
I’ll stick to the opinion that we live in a social order that is incredibly complex and understood by exactly no one. With plenty of semi-decent people profiting from some injustices without noticing, suffering from other injustices without noticing, getting worked up on others’ behalf about some injustices, and actively maintaining some injustices for their own benefit. I will also maintain that on average, things have been consistently getting better over the last few thousands of years.
History is full of people who have fought for improving one particular small part of it, and succeeded. History is also full of people who thought they could do everything better and made everything worse.
I experienced many conversations resembling @zathras’s description during Occupy.
And versions of those conversations happened during the WTO protests, civil rights movement, the ERA movement, suffrage, abolition … probably during and after the Ludlow Massacre and the general strikes in the U.S. in 1919 and 1934 … in France in 1968 …
Planned actions are sometimes subject to spontaneous minority veto or individual consensus-withholding nullification.
OTOH inflammatory proclamations or spontaneous demonstrations or improvised press interviews can occur at the whim of an affinity group member.
Shared decision-making about social justice work is challenging … in 2011, 1911 or 1811.
I never said they haven’t. You’re not nullifying here in that sentence, nor even really addressing, the point of mine that you chose to address: “We live in a social order largely established and maintained by and for elites, and thus at the expense of the rest of us.” Of course many things are getting better for many of us, but many things are also getting worse for more and more of us. And just because the ongoing domination of an elite class isn’t visible to you doesn’t mean it isn’t happening, nor that it requires conscious “conspiring” among the elite (ever heard of “cultural hegemony”?). So please toddle on away from me with your condescending and thus ironically clueless accusation of paranoia. And do take your simplistic notion of common sense with you. Maybe bring a better one back instead.
Sounds like you’re not the target audience, many of whom might instead here the message, “It really is possible to get off your ass and turn that discontent you’re feeling into productive action, like these people have!” It strikes me as an effort to inspire aimed mostly at young people, rather than to provide specific solutions to a specific problem.
“Challenging” might be the term to use when it’s about how to go about campaigning for a particular issue.
Sure, it might be annoying if one individual “withholds consensus” on something you want to do, or if an individual jeopardizes the reputation of the entire group. But when the consensus is about “not murdering people” or about “forcibly preventing people from polluting the water that I drink from”, then I would be really interested in how the political philosophy would deal with that.
I am sorry. That was meant to be humorous. A funny quote I read somewhere that I thought fit with my argument. Any use of humour while disagreeing can be misunderstood as condescension, but please rest assured that was not my intention. Can I assume your insulting tone to have been in response to this misunderstanding?
The point is that I think your dichotomy of “the elites” vs. “the rest of us” is an oversimplification. Which doesn’t matter as long as you have one concrete thing you’re fighting for or against. If you pick one particular issue, you can probably talk about “the elites that profit” and “the rest of us” in that context. But as a general characterization of “our society”, it’s too simple.
Your link about common sense is interesting, for once you distil away all the Marxist phraseology that it’s couched in, it’s just common sense ;-). The phrase “that’s just common sense” is an English phrase meaning “that should be obvious to most people”. I don’t think it means anything beyond that simple statement. And it should be obvious to most people that what seems obvious to most people depends on what assumptions and prejudices most people subscribe to. But I only mentioned “common sense” in a quote I tried (and failed) to use for humorous effect, so we can safely leave that for later.
Me too. I think trusting relationships and shared work make up the fragile stuff that hardens over time into fair procedures and institutions. I agree with @Comrade that liberty is prior to order. I also think trusting relationships are prior to meaningful liberty. The last part is sometimes too easy to forget in the heat of action.
There are a lot of anarchist tendencies; there is no “pure” anarchism, and it has never been practised in the way that you describe.
Those anarchist tendencies that have enjoyed the greatest success over the years have been syndacalist. With syndicalism, by definition, there is a lot of structure and a lot of rules–workers’ councils, delegates, foremen, officers, congresses, and so forth.
Other tendencies, such as insurrectionism, may be less forthcoming with effective organization, but then these have not been as successful or as widespread as syndicalism and similar varieties.
Granted, a lot of insurrectionists came out of the wood works during Occupy, partially because they were part of its formation in a lot of areas.
Anarchism is generally about not having a state (or capitalism) to rule over us, and about the best way to achieve that with lasting success. It is not and never has been about an absence of social structures or order, not even in its weakest versions, although it wants to transform or get rid of the existing order. This is why I emphasized the relationship between anarchism and its own need for order, quoting such an old philosophical source as Proudhon (1849). This lends a little irony to your response:
Hence, “Anarchy is the mother of order,” not its antithesis. If this were not the case, as you say, anarchism would have no successes at all, but instead it has many, although none include lasting revolution (which no one has achieved to the satisfaction of so-called “full communism”).
The CNT-dominated revolution in '36 Spain (in response to Franco’s fascist coup attempt) is a classic example of anarchism with a sense of “order,” although little about the resulting civil war could be described as orderly. The Spanish Cockpit and Homage to Catalonia both offer insightful accounts of the CNT’s successes and failures.
As part of their greatest success, the anarchists imposed social revolution on capitalists and the middle class (as well as on everyone else, of course, but the working masses were very much a part of this). In fact, most capitalists in anarchist territory were killed or fled, along with Franco supporters. Thousands of workplaces and millions of acres of farm land were collectivized as a result. As always, war devastated the economy, but they still managed to carry out production, maintain the infrastructure, keep the flow of food and supplies going, etc.
The point I am making here is, of course, that anarchists themselves (although certainly not all of them) do want to impose something on others–just not through the machinery of the state. In any case, you can’t abolish capitalism without being able to defeat and suppress its proponents.
Liberal democracies, of course, likewise impose their own order by suppressing revolutionaries and popular movements, and by virtue of the fact that in nearly all elections only a substantial minority of the population votes (everyone who votes for the loser, or who doesn’t vote, must tolerate the winner). So-called democracies are not even very responsive to popular demands; only when they are on the brink of real crisis do they generally respond to popular mass movements, and even then only in rare circumstances.
Additionally, and most importantly for a revolutionary perspective, representative democracies are ruled by (usually) about 1% of the population, the wealthiest elites. This has been confirmed in study after study. Not only does nearly all wealth and power go to these elites, but they control public policy, hold the highest offices, and brutally suppress any and all attempts at revolution, i.e. at ending their hold on power and redistributing it to the masses (socialism).
So, in a liberal democracy, we cannot “prevent other people from enforcing unwanted rules against” others, because this situation already exists. Society is a struggle, and is ordered by whoever wins. Hence, we demand democracy in public life, but tolerate dictatorship in the workplace.
This is why critics of liberal democracies, and of capitalism, often describe them as authoritarian.
Supporters of these systems generally don’t identify with the kind of oligarchy that I am describing, so I understand that it may be objectionable to hear such a critique of one’s preferred system, but it shouldn’t be taken as a personal insult. After all, as I have been saying, I don’t think that representative democracies are very representative at all. In fact, the lesson of electoral politics and the long history of “the lesser of two evils” is that the elites are counting on very cynical support, which is to say, the support of people who have no other options.
May look good on paper (or not, depending upon your disposition), but in practice it hasn’t shown itself to work very well. Most real communist governments (in the world, not on paper) are pretty crappy, which leads me to believe that communism is pretty much at odds with what it means to be human.
After all, capitalism can look good on paper too, despite the fact that it looks less good in the real wold (regardless, the US would have to really side a lot further for me to prefer something like North Korea (which is kind of the poster child for what it becomes when it’s allowed to run its course)).
