- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
cross-posted from: https://piefed.blahaj.zone/c/politicalmemes/p/392491/do-you-agree
Do you agree?
cross-posted from: https://piefed.blahaj.zone/c/politicalmemes/p/392491/do-you-agree
Do you agree?
Do you understand the events that led up to the 1917 Russian revolutions, and how they became corrupted? Looking over some of your responses here seems like you want bureaucratic answers, when it was the bureaucracy that corrupted the USSR’s “noble attempt.”
What is your theory of societal change? Or what do you think would not work to change society to become more just?
I can furnish my own theories but would like to hear some of yours. I could also help to explain the what, where, when and how of revolutionary Russia, as it informs some of my own thinking about these problems
I’m not looking to bureaucracy for answers, I’m just looking for answers. My whole point was about the conflict of creating a system that can preserve rights without being able to violate them.
I’ll go back to my point about criminal justice: any system that puts every criminal in jail will put innocent people there with them, and any system that keeps every innocent person out of jail will put criminals out there with them.
Any system too weak to violate your rights is also too weak to prevent others from doing so. Obviously we don’t want a corrupt state oppressing us, but without some form of legitimized authority, there’s no way to prevent private individuals from oppressing us. We don’t get to live in a world without authority, we get to choose between a world where we have a say in the authority, and a world where authority is imposed upon us by warlords, mafiosos, and celebrity demagogues.
I believe there is no “right answer”, no perfect solution. Anything we come up with is going to be a compromise. Like I keep getting told “build non-hierarchical systems” like that’s a solution and not just the reframing of the problem. It’s like saying “FTL travel is easy, you just have to bend spacetime” as if bending spacetime isn’t the hard part.
I believe the US system is actually pretty robust at its core, despite needing some significant changes. I think implementing those changes will be more efficient than trying to restart from scratch.
I think you are lacking some context in what is meant by “build non-hierarchal systems.” Anarchists have a robust theoretical understanding of, but to people less acquainted with that understanding, it seems kind of empty and convenient. This jargon problem needs to be better addressed in political education, which is relevant to this discussion.
We conceive of these problems differently. When you (most people in my experience, including myself at one time) conceive of the criminal justice problem, and you locate a logical contradiction, you stop.
However, the primary contradiction in society is created when one majority group, dominates and therefore oppresses the majority. All other contradictions are effects and consequences.
We can’t develop a society free from social contradictions (such as poverty, carcerial justice, oppression, exploitation, racism, queer phobia, etc.,)" until class rule is abolished.
Now, that is very big and abstract. We are back to your FTL dilemma.
So we start with reflecting on the true nature of our material conditions and acting on them. But this is no small undertaking either. We’ve been taught to perceive of certain truths, in a certain way. So our role as individuals is to seek out education and organization, so that we can collectively struggle to reform and attack the basis of negative social contradictions.
In your carcerial justice example, where you describe a dilemma, I see a “site of struggle.” I want to get involved, learn, educate, affect change. Doing this develops us to become the people who will be able to solve these problems, institute reforms, not for the masses but as part of the masses (non-hierarchal). Until so much change has occurred within politics, culture, and material well being of the vast majority for the benefit of all, that revolutionary conditions become apparent. One anarchist formulation of this is called “Dual Power.”
When the people are educated, the power is with us, and the objective reality of class antagonisms is clear to the people, then a just revolution is possible.
But you’re right, it’s success is not guaranteed. I’m a partyist, so I believe in the creation of a political party by the masses to fight on the basis of our own interests against the ruling classes. Through the most democratic means, not common in our workplaces and government, we can collectively reflect and take action on the basis of our collective interests. These interests are ideologically dispersed, but there is a material basis that cuts across all of our experiences, as more or less exploited members of society.
The party is able to accomplish 3 very important functions. 1. It can synthesize and develop a political platform to inform our activity 2. Develop a long term strategy for our activity 3. Actualize immediate tactics that advance our agenda.
I could go on. I will if you want me to. It may seem unsatisfying but I will die defending this, is that our job is not to imagine a more just world and then work our way backward, but to engage here and now in collective political, cultural, material struggle to create the conditions for such a world to exist. Since we can’t know what that is, considering so many contradictions in society are productive (albeit evil) parts of society rather than something that threatens the stability, then we can’t try to prefigure it. That puts the cart before the horse. The answers to your questions are all things you can do right now: join an org that puts you in touch with people who are worse off, become educated on the theory, history and science of liberation, reflect on and criticize every part of everything.
You are already doing this. You are asking burning questions and aren’t quite satisfied with any answers. That, in itself, is an objective revolutionary condition. In my experience, this is what it feels like to begin to uncover actual truth. Don’t stop.
I agree with this. “Anarchy” means lawless chaos to the general population, and it means many different things to different anarchist schools. It seems the anarchists have a general consensus that it means a “non-hierarchical system” but exactly what that is varies greatly between those I’ve discussed it with: from literally no actual structure, to a multi-branch system of checks and balances which really doesn’t look fundamentally different to American representative democracy.
It’s difficult to have a productive conversation about a topic with so much fundamental variance of definition.
I think you misunderstood my point. I was not using criminal justice to, itself, justify any particular system. I was using it to illustrate the problem of conflicting goals in any practical system.
I could have used the conflicting goals of power and fuel efficiency in an engine to illustrate the same point. You can design an engine for maximum power at the cost of fuel economy, or you can design one for maximum fuel economy at the cost of power. In practice, you have to choose a middle ground which provides an acceptable balance.
My point being that you can design a system of government which is capable of preventing individuals from violating the rights of others, or a government which is incapable of violating the rights of an individual itself, but you can’t have both. In practice, you need a system with the power to “oppress” oppressors, but with checks and balances to limit its ability to oppress innocents.
The issue is that it is very difficult to educate the masses. Most people lack the interest, ability, or both. Especially when there’s so much antagonism from the in-group.
I think the best approach in most applications is both. We need to imagine the perfect world, and work backwards from there, while also looking at our current conditions, and working forwards from there. Obviously the utopia-back side of that equation needs to be focused on solution spaces, with some flexibility.
On the present-forward end, I also think a broad approach is best. Vote strategically AND collaborate with local orgs AND engage in direct community action AND educate your neighbors AND unionize your workplace AND etc. We can’t know what will be the most effective vector of action in the long run, but the more vectors we engage the more likely we are to get there.
You seem like you’ve given this real thought, and you’re willing to engage the solution space pragmatically. I encourage you to visit [email protected] , it’s a fledgling community I created for discussing leftist ideas with a focus on pragmatism over idealism.