TOTW: Disagreements About Anarchy

Disagreements about anarchy!

Isn't that the only thing that's left of it? Sometimes it seems so, judging by the ongoing discussions in the Anews comment section. Isn't that all there ever was? Sometimes it seems so, while engaging with Shawn P. Wilbur's ongoing workshop "Constructing Anarchisms". Isn't anarchy something that has consistently defied synthesis throughout its history? Specially considering since at the end of the workshop everyone will end up with their own unique anarchism, one could expect many unique versions with stark differences and points of disagreement and divergence. Is anarchy anything else but a series of specific disagreements?

What are your favorite disagreements about anarchy, perhaps some you'd like to see more discussion about? Which disagreements about anarchy annoy you the most? Which do you think are crucial to settle once and for all? Which would you prefer people to agree to disagree? Which are the disagreements about anarchy that you're fed up with and can't stand to listen anarchists bicker about any more? Which terminology and slogans do you prefer and which do you avoid? Which strategies and tactics, or which approaches to daily life, do you prefer and which do you avoid? How does your own unique idiosyncrasies about anarchy shape your daily life as an anarchist and how does it differ from that of other anarchists who disagree with you?

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probably pretty obvious but I like to lean in to the conflict. it's a bit like slash and burn agriculture, some of my better insights came out of really ugly, messy disagreements and I'm not talking about the internet, which is very low stakes and often insincere conflict, almost always less interesting.

but better analysis/thinking often grows out of the smoking ruins of relationships that needed to end haha

I also like to emphasize that most conflict is actually just bad communication or confusion in my experience, so when a heated discussion even manages to arrive at a genuine disagreement, that's an accomplishment! Cuz it's hard, you know? most conflict never even crystalizes like that.

something I heard somewhere: Nothing clears the air like a good split

exactly. Ok so, more on topic, I'll pull a stephen (piece of shit) crowder.

Here's my current pet peeve/favourite anarchy bullshit deconstruction

Any use of the word "moralism" is almost always code for "I hate your value system but I love my own value system. I'm going to use this shitty rhetorical trick to act like I'm somehow above value systems even though it's impossible not to have one."

change my mind @news!

PS if the person you're debating with is a bit too clever to fall for this "I'm the unique ascended one" crap, just start accusing them of having christian influences on their thinking and then vanish in to the night behind your smokebomb.

"it's a bit like slash and burn agriculture"

You realize that human imposed slash-and-burn is a horrible thing with horrible outcomes, right? Nothing "better grows out" from it. It depletes the soil of biodiversity. It's an inferno of human supremacy on the environment.

well it works sometimes with a sharp diminishing returns curve, to be fair lol

do you find this place to be a bastion of polite and respectful discussion? cuz I do that too. just not here. when in rome!

When you abolish all of these colors and hyphenations added to "black" and "anarcho" you remove the authoritarian ideological compromise from these and open up to the world of possibilities that the Unknown (or all-black) offers, then it'll all about each and every person's experience, feels and view of things. That is not the yet again the politicized, recuperated black of fascism, or these threads of black, fascist satanism. This is straight pure black, the "uncarved block" of Lao Tsu, the Strange Knowledge of Diéguez, or the "creative nothing".

So no pedant ideologue around telling them how they should think and what they should do, to mentally hijack them or morally shame them into doing specific stuff. Some people be like: "Anarchist should be with the Workers!", Anarchists should support our Revolution, or else!", "Anarchists should stay at home under Covid (or protest with Qanon)!", "Anarchists should respect our consensus based decisions!", "Anarchy should throw molotovs at anything they don't like.", "Anarchists live off robbing banks", "Anarchists should do direct democracy!", "Anarchists should RIOT regardless of why/when/how/who!", n such, n such...

So many SHOULDS for our SHOULDERS! It's like some people wanna commandeer us or something!

Anarchy with adjectives means anarchists with imperatives... save perhaps the adjective "eco-" that (aside from being a prefix and not a suffix unlike the other affixiated categories) to me seems increasingly like useless to add, as how can anarchy NOT be eco? Like how can one be actively and consciously supportive to the cybernetic *authoritarianism* of mass society and be "anarchist" with a straight face without being also a chump?

Before I became consciously anarcho, the black of anarchy was always a mystery to me, and that's where it should remain imo. After all this isn't an ideology, or a philosophy or even a system of beliefs. Anarchy is political nihilism. It is a rejection of authority, or as some call it rejection of external regulations. So this can mean many different things to many people... and always incomplete, partial, non-fixed things. Yet living within an authoritarian society, this is always more a question than answer to our relation to it as individuals, especially to its myriad of deceptive political garbage, mass produced for the masses to consume just like the rest...

I thought you didn't see color?
*RIPS BONG*
Black isn't the absence of color it's all the colors maaan!

And send the royalties to the ABC plz.

"What are your favorite disagreements about anarchy, perhaps some you'd like to see more discussion about?"

Discussions around anti-civ, it still seems marginal, and most mainstream anarchists (ancoms, anarcho-liberals) avoid it like the plague, aside from name-calling and fash-jacketing.

"Which disagreements about anarchy annoy you the most? Which do you think are crucial to settle once and for all?"

Any argument that seeks to make exceptions for any form of authority or obedience, any form of government or any concessions to government.

"Which would you prefer people to agree to disagree?"

About pro/con markets, communes, and other such micro-managing of how people should or shouldn't live or interact. As long as truly free, voluntary, circumstantial arrangements brought out of choices as to how best deal with situation and live your anarchy.

"Which are the disagreements about anarchy that you're fed up with and can't stand to listen anarchists bicker about any more?"

I can't stand any form of techno-euphoria, fortunately I stay clear of that as well as anyone arguing about how Spanish civil war or Krondstat or whatever should've gone, as well as ATR nonsense. I stay clear of non-violence and pacifism as well.

"Which terminology and slogans do you prefer and which do you avoid?"

I see there is dispute over the terms hierarchy, power, force, violence, coercion, authority, domination, submission, oppression. Of these the one I avoid because I find unhelpful is "violence", prefer to say the specific thing in question rather than the obfuscating all-encompassing moral judgement category. "Abuse", for example, though generic is more specific than "violence", murdering, hurting, harming, polluting etc. are more specific.

"Which strategies and tactics, or which approaches to daily life, do you prefer and which do you avoid?"

I avoid most of everything by default before accounting for anarchy, after accounting for anarchy I see that there are many possibilities for things to try if and whenever I feel like it. I'd still avoid most activism, assemblies, fronts, organizations, marches, riots, guerrillas. Just a personal choice, not a norm I'd put forth.

"How does your own unique idiosyncrasies about anarchy shape your daily life as an anarchist and how does it differ from that of other anarchists who disagree with you?"

I think most anarchists' life are shaped more by the built environment, the economy and political regime, and the information technology (computer and internet) and all of mass culture rather any unique or personal vision and notion of anarchy. I wish it weren't so. So we differ in how much we enjoy the status quo or not depending on how much we'd like to see change. Some want worker control of mines and workplaces, while others want to end mines and workplaces, etc.

This doesn't exhaust the topic, but it exhausted my desire to type at the moment so I'll stop here for now.

I don't find that anti-civ is avoided so much as there's not much interesting disagreement around it. That's just my experience with the anarchists I talk to in the last few years that none of them find any fault in a generalized critique ... in fact, it's becoming more and more obvious, even starting to mainstream, dare I say, if you include the broader apocalyptic climate change acknowledgement by younger folks.

I disagree, I'd say that what you're seeing is a generalized greenwashing. I don't expect it to be interesting or novel, since we've had different forms of civ for thousands and thousands of years, as well as forms of resistance to it.

The "broader apocalyptic climate change acknowledgement by younger folks" as well as government does not constitute a critique and an awareness of the type of arrangements that can arise from submissiveness and herding behavior of a lot of people and the power-grabbing behavior of others. Lame terms like "civilized" or "domesticated" do illustrate a submissiveness, a docility, a hyper-disciplined and normativity that makes anarchy the exception rather than anything that could catch on or be more generalized.

Most anarchists that are "for the environment" at most want a better management of civilization or "good government" though not all word it like that. Some like Wayne Price and Bookchinites do.

yeah sure if you're just talking about the whole political discourse but I thought you meant amongst anarchists? or that's the TOTW so you'll forgive my confusion perhaps?

I did mean among anarchists. Technobabble governance anarchists outnumber anticiv inclined.

On the other hand it's a pretty tough question to solve, as DIY/open source tech are a crucial part of what we can call "online anarchy", and provides with IRL benefits for those supporting it or just taking part in it. I think we'd be in a somewhat better place if the whole Facebook nightmare wouldn't have happened and instead we'd have had, say, the fediverse or something like the former Indymedia movement. Tho I get how the geek/code freaks got this super toxic online culture that too often ends up promoting same-old PCB fetishism and screen addiction... and it equally makes them techies.

well agree to disagree then. anti-civ is the default in my anarchist circles, very few older anarchists besides me. maybe this is about the circles we run in?

probably hard to even make a fair assessment of such a tiny margin

same here. but older @s are the norm in my world. need some young blood!!!

Before Shawn mired me in intrigue, anarchism was much like brunch. That is, if I hooked-up with another anarchist I would be engaging in anarchism, in the same way as if I ate food between breakfast and lunch I'd be engaging in brunch. Both these words being pretty meaningless as they would both be me in the process of doing my thing regardless of the constraining terminology.

Having come from a big city and socialist background I naturally became totally pissed off with and worn down by constructed "anarchism" and just wanted to chill the fuck out and be a beautiful and latent pain in the arse, amen.

I maintain semantic doubts about Shawn's endeavour purely because I simply desire anarchy. Basically, us meeting each others' cranky and quirky butts with a jeopardous wry smile, or for us to become illegible to any system beyond compassion and generosity.

In spite of my caution, I sense magic in Shawn's words. So as birds to a feather, I am along for the ride. I have ideas where Shawn may be taking us all, however large scale divination really isn't my thing... Still, I foresee benefit.

Perhaps vainly, I hope we don't out ourselves too much as to be recuperated toward "taking brunch" with all its inferred ̶c̶o̶n̶d̶i̶m̶e̶n̶t̶s connotations.

It would be perfect if there existed within the democratic contract the provision that voting was a transitional process which would be phased out when a tolerable equilibrium in individual needs had been reached.
Unfortunately as long as land and food remain not free,those in power can manipulate the vote to serve their own ulterior motives.

this makes no sense: perfect? democratic contract? tolerable equilibrium in individual needs?
the imposition of democracies on the world will continue to be the antithesis of anarchy, as all forms of governance beside it and before it

I can't believe anarchists disagree on being for one of the most basic freedoms one could conceive of, simply being. This is more basic than freedom of movement and freedom of expression and yet mainstream cultural values (society!) prevail or are even more harshly enforced by some self-identified anarchists: https://anarchistnews.org/content/consent

Wow, that's so negative like a disgruntled leftist revolutionary bemoaning the unwillingness of humble sìmple people to die for a cause up against a militarist hegemony, sad :(

yeah, that's so weird how anarchists aren't drawn in to his half baked death cult. why aren't they lining up to face the guns?!

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