https://lemmy.ml/comment/16430292
Brave take at the top of the screenshot which was then flooded by minions of the grad.
I tried to not post any Cowbee because it was too easy but you’re welcome to check out the thread and post your own findings.
https://lemmy.ml/comment/16430292
Brave take at the top of the screenshot which was then flooded by minions of the grad.
I tried to not post any Cowbee because it was too easy but you’re welcome to check out the thread and post your own findings.
Well, socialism is supposed to be a transition to communism. The problem is that people suck, and none of the communist countries have ever managed to successfully make that transition.
Turns out, when revolutionaries tear down the government and get handed all the power, they suddenly hate the idea of a stateless society.
What you call communism and what MLs call communism is usually different things. For them a state bureaucracy with wage labor below it is perfectly capable of being considered “stateless”. It’s quite absurd really.
But ML methods never create a stable socialist system. They all inevitably collapse into Capitalism proper.
I’ve heard this claim but only from critics. Is there somewhere I can find it from a ML writer? While I have heard some debate about what exactly stateless means from within anarchist thinkers, all were at least dramatically deconstructed compared to modern states. It’s hard to imagine how anyone could consider the idea of a stateless bureaucracy to be intellectually serious.
I hear they PM’d you. Did argue for that position adequately then? :D
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml believes so and usually can argue at length about it. You can see if they’re in the mood to elaborate.
Yeah, usually the people who are good at running a revolution are not the same people you want running the government after the revolution.
Basically this. Socialism and communism both fall down because they’re brittle systems. All it takes is one corrupt, selfish individual to exploit the system, accumulate wealth, use it to buy power, and the system falls over.
It’s true for every system. Any system can be captured and taken advantage of. But the systems without built in central control are harder to take advantage of.
Yes, though I think one difference is that capitalism just assumes that everyone is selfish and will act out of self-interest, and builds a kind of stability out of this. This doesn’t make capitalism good, but perhaps more realistic.
Gestures wildly hwhat?!
Anyway, anarchism deals with this issue by not allowing anyone to accumulate wealth in the first place.
Oh, yeah, well it only stays that way as long as there’s enough competition to prevent any single actor from gaining too much control. Like I said, it’s not good.
How exactly would this be enforced in an anarchist society? Who would be doing the “not allowing”, and how would they decide what constitutes too much accumulation, and what form would the enforcement take?
You misunderstand. Accumulation requires enforcement. Anarchists would just reasonably ask why one thinks they deserve to keep more than they need for themselves
If I am a woodworker, and I make furniture in a particular style, and that style becomes desirable so that other people want to have furniture made by me, and are willing to trade goods and services to me beyond what you might consider the normal value of the materials and labor cost of the furniture, am I now “accumulating wealth” by making furniture that is highly valued? Have I already accumulated wealth by acquiring the tools and the workshop needed to make the furniture?
If I am a painter, and my paintings become popular, am I accumulating wealth by continuing to produce paintings which I know will be highly valued?
If I start a library, am I accumulating wealth by collecting books?
How are these in any way “enforcement”?
Who defines “need” or “reasonable”?
Ultimately what I am understanding from what you are saying is that this anarchist society requires individuals to be self-monitoring and self-limiting. I think all of human history describes how unrealistic that idea is.
Further, it would require that all 8billion+ people in the world have some collectively shared definition of what is reasonable, deserving, needful. This is a kind of conformity and uniformity that I find deeply uncomfortable.
If we are talking about already being in an anarchist society, then this example makes no sense. This woodworker doesn’t exist in a vacuum. They need food to eat, and material to produce with. The workers providing these services would do so under the expectation that the woodworker would provide according to their own capabilities and take according to their own needs. Why would other workers keep enabling someone who appears to want to hoard in order to exercise power over others.
We all do, collectively.
Humans achieved civilization because we are the most cooperative of the animal kingdom. We’re so empathetic that we can feel emotional pain and attachment to inanimate objects. Human history shows that this is the most realistic scenario and that actually going against this with hierarchies and competition between us has brought not civilization, but the earth ecosystem’s capacity to maintain us to the brink.
Not at all. You don’t need 8 billion people to agree on what is reasonable for one to own. Just your immediate community, let’s say ~150 people. The rest happens through federation and cofederations