US Politics, January 2022 — a pro-God, pro-family, pro-bitcoin state

sic, if I didn't know you just like trolling people for fun, I'd say go fuck yourself, but since it's all in fun, I say haha good one!

My point is more that, in the case of this deadly pandemic, the nature of the problem means the solution is not as simple as installing a better social system run by better people. That would go a tremendous distance toward solving dozens of social ills we all suffer, but it doesn't solve a raging pandemic that throws out variants like omicron. That's just reality, as demonstrated by looking at every nation and culture on earth that is trying to deal with this virus.

So pumping money into public health infrastructure instead of the MIC, commanding that companies make vaccines open-source or risk losing government funding, and utilizing what little social net remains to help people stay fed and sheltered aren't things that the current government could have done or could be doing? The problem with so much of what you argue on here, Aimless, is that you take this clear-eyed view that can often be correct in its diagnosis— I know we agree about many things, for example— but then you wave away the idea that maybe things could be done differently as insanity or something that could never happen, *even though it easily could.*

Anarchists love sitting through boring meetings

speak for yourself

go fuck yourself

just checking - you believe that no countries or territories are handling their pandemic response better than the US, or that none of them are handling it differently?

Brad, I don't do meetings either, don't worry.

https://i.imgur.com/BBO6LMj.jpg

can anyone tell me where the meetings are held

*even though it easily could.*

the difficulty I see in that "easily could" is that the only things I see as easily changed are things I have control over. I do have control over my imagination and I can *easily* imagine all those things being done and how beneficial they would be if they were done. when what is required to happen escapes my personal control, my ability to make changes in other people's actions or the way reality is constructed begins to involve ever more complicated and ineffectual gyrations. My sphere of influence is sadly limited.

question for table and Brad - what is the distinction between anarchy and disorder, and I guess in general I've never really understood what people who are anarchists envision for what an anarchic society would look like? basically libertarianism at a large scale?

Society by chore wheel

question for table and Brad - what is the distinction between anarchy and disorder, and I guess in general I've never really understood what people who are anarchists envision for what an anarchic society would look like? basically libertarianism at a large scale?

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown),

same question

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/robert-paul-wolff-in-defense-of-anarchism

It has been 15ish years since I really re-read this but part III (Beyond the Legitimate State) is a good case for an anarchist vision IIRC.

Also: Anarchy Poll and Discussion Thread

I just can’t think how anything will ever get actually done in an anarchist version of complex modern industrial society—and I’m sympathetic to their viewpoint. Anarchism has indeed actually happened in a pre-industrial agrarian setting.

Thanks, all.

Sometimes I think this board needs an in-person fight club, just to ease some tensions.

Nah, kidding. But man, there’s a lot of frustration to burn, it seems.

Imagine this place when Trump gets re-elected.

Better thread titles

Wow you really think hed beat hilary again

just checking -

sic is just a guy askin' questions

I agree that we’re not currently seeing anarchy but, rather, a devolved sense of stasis that has many wishing for anarchy instead. The net result of there being no illusions about a “greater good.” Biden’s pleas on behalf of one sound particularly feeble to opponents AND constituents.

Sometimes I think this board needs an in-person fight club, just to ease some tensions.

i did a lot of work organizing this and the results were horrible, just fucking terrible

The 200,000th Thread Anticipation, Celebration, & Physical Fights Thread

thanks for the links will check them out

i will fight you on those links
it's time to blow off some steam and duke it out

Capitalism and Covid has left us alienated and atomized. We need to organize into One Big Fight Club.

it's all one thing

Karl, wanna fight again

let's do it

but here's one thing about biden. i posted that long excerpt from the washington post earlier, about joe biden's no good terrible bad week. there are some things he could have done better - i was expecting someone to launch into a tirade on his covid response, including the embarrassing recent episode where some reporter asked psaki something like "hey why don't we have free covid tests, like other wealthy countries" and she's like "as if", like clueless, and then a week later they were all saying "d'oh!" and working on plans which led to the recent announcement that free tests would be available starting on the 20th. wow, that was dumb.

but in general, he is in a very, very bad spot. what's he going to do about manchin or sinema? so sick of reading backseat drivers that think they could talk to joe manchin in the right way and change his mind. it's very clearly joe manchin and sinema vs 48 other democratic senators. you can imagine a handful of other democratic senator assholes who are also in their pool but don't speak up, but i can very realistically point to the fact that new democratic candidates have an anti-filibuster litmus test -- the winds are completely in the direction of getting rid of it, and the only thing holding it up is manchin and sinema. biden just made a complete ass out of himself, the other day, trying to make it happen. dude is fucked! he's in a pickle!

it's not like I want him to run in 2024, that's for fucking sure. but good lord the anti-biden stuff is exhausting sometimes, his admin has been far to the left of obama's afaict, and no that's not total anarchy but neither is anything else

If that Wolff essay is the best expression anyone can offer of how anarchism might work at the societal level ... I mean, "utopian" doesn't even begin to describe it.

Humans are social animals, we function through collective organization, we always have. A little bit of anthropology and sociobiology would go a long way toward more sophisticated thinking about our realistic options as far as self-government goes.

Also, the economic model Wolff suggests is ludicrous.

Only extreme economic decentralization could permit the sort of voluntary economic coordination consistent with the ideals of anarchism and affluence. At the present time, of course, such decentralization would produce economic chaos, but if we possessed a cheap, local source of power and an advanced technology of small-scale production, and if we were in addition willing to accept a high level of economic waste, we might be able to break the American economy down into regional and subregional units of manageable size. The exchanges between the units would be inefficient and costly — very large inventory levels, inelasticities of supply and demand, considerable waste, and so forth. But in return for this price, men would have increasing freedom to act autonomously. In effect, such a society would enable all men to be autonomous agents, whereas in our present society, the relatively few autonomous men are — as it were — parasitic upon the obedient, authority-respecting masses.

Yes this is definitely something that could ever happen in any way and would certainly be a good thing if it did.

I'm not an anarchist and I'd say that Wolff isn't rejecting "collective organization" at all but economic organization is, uh, pretty much always the falling apart point of anarchism and why there's often a focus on social issues/personal autonomy within a left-wing framework (and thus why tankies call them liberals).

sic is just a guy askin' questions

you asked me to deliver research to you; I was clarifying on what topic.

She is a Bookchinist and I don't necessarily agree with her about some things, but my acquaintance Cindy Milstein does a decent job of thinking about what anarchism is and is not in this book: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/cindy-milstein-anarchism-and-its-aspirations#toc7

xps

Fair enough. I think a conundrum for the anti-state position is that while the state is obviously often (and everywhere) an instrument of oppression, it can also sometimes, certainly not everywhere, be an instrument of liberation. The idea of individual rights, e.g., is one that — at least in human history so far — has only ever been achieved to any degree with the power of the state behind it. In the U.S., the state enabled and slavery and segregation, but also ultimately dismantled them (and at gunpoint, at that).

So I'm much more sympathetic to ideas of the "just state" — plenty utopian in its own right — than I am to ideas of statelessness.

(My partner and Cindy used to live together— they often disagreed because Cindy was too positive, lmfao)

The idea of individual rights, e.g., is one that — at least in human history so far — has only ever been achieved to any degree with the power of the state behind it.

"Rights" are a creation by the state as a means of controlling populations, and exist, like law, on a field of pain and death.

oh cool this discussion again, I said everything I wanted to in the poll thread but

you can absolutely have effective organization without hierarchy, which is a lot of what "anarchy" is actually about, but it also involves lots of undoing of learned patterns and the inherent conflicts and contradictions (and inevitable hypocrises (sp?)) of trying to work for a better world while living in a dystopia

see also Deleuze & Guattari, rhizomatic vs. arborescent, etc.

"Rights" are a creation by the state as a means of controlling populations, and exist, like law, on a field of pain and death.

As theory, this is fine. As history and political science, I don't know how you get to rights without going through the state. Happy to see counter-examples.

it also involves lots of undoing of learned patterns and the inherent conflicts and contradictions (and inevitable hypocrises (sp?)) of trying to work for a better world while living in a dystopia

I'm all in favor of the undoing of learned patterns, but the most practicable vehicles for that are inherently state-based — e.g., public education. How do you get the undoing of learned patterns absent social structures designed to teach new patterns? And if your answer is that you're going to have new non-hierarchical social structures to accomplish this, I'm going to say that you're actually still talking about a state, you're just calling it something different. Any structure sufficiently organized to inculcate universal acceptance of behavior patterns is going to end up serving a state-like function, whatever you call it.

on what topic

if you are inclined, I'm asking you to identify public health initiatives not yet tried here that have a ghost of a chance of replicating their impressive success at stopping omicron elsewhere.

I'm literally saying that "rights" are an invention and don't actually exist, and yes, I do believe that.

I'm all in favor of the undoing of learned patterns, but the most practicable vehicles for that are inherently state-based — e.g., public education.

There are some lovely current examples of Indigenous communities taking their children out of colonial schooling frameworks and teaching them through traditional lifeways.

If I had kids, there is no fucking way I'd let them near public schools. I'd homeschool them.

"rights" are an invention

no argument about that from me. seems obvious.

and don't actually exist

invented things have been brought into existence. rights exist, just as money exists, by social convention alone. knowing this is true doesn't dissolve their reality.

Fair enough— but absent fealty to social convention, they do not.

If only there had ever been any other states other than the united ones we might have seen real world examples of how certaing things might be different, possibly even better but alas no way of knowing rly

Rights don’t exist unitil some people with more power than you start to take things from you and then you’re like damn why are these guys stealing my shit and forcing me to work for them for free.

I'd homeschool them.

Talk about anarchy.

Are anarchists just libertarians without a state to enforce property rights? Do they then active individually to act collectively to enforce justice, or do we get rid of that construction as delusion too, as with rights?

“act”