Forum Post: Subvert global capital, defy authority, create Anarchy!
Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 24, 2011, 12:56 p.m. EST by Dionysuslives
(170)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Enough tinkering with purely symptomatic woes! Order and Chaos do not stand in opposition but mutually define each other as apparent opposites. The future is unwritten and absolute uncertainty means infinite possibilities. Success is never assured from the beginning, but whoever said that changing the world doesn't involve taking risks? It is time to set our imaginations free, experiment with new modes of social and economic interaction, and short-circuit the networks of domination!
For individual autonomy. For voluntary association. For a world without currency and commodity exchange.
Viva l'anarchia!
"Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian." -Emma Goldman
<3 emma goldman.
Yeah, Emma's pretty rad.
anarchy is a stupid, infantile, moronic dupe sheeple meme, which plays into the oligarchs game by making sure that there is not enough organization to obtain critical mass for change.
Anarchy is not in opposition to organization. All organization arises from it, as experiments in solving different issues, sometimes the experiments don't know when to end, the time is now. Centralizing power is the symptom of the political and economic systems of organization currently being tested, it is clearly time to end those experiments and prepare for new ones, hopefully this time with greater consciousness.
yes it is, and thats a fundamental problem occupy has.
"yes it is"
This is starting to remind me of Monty Python's "Argument Clinic" sketch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y
I tend to think that most anarchists these days fetishize the idea of organization. While I will acknowledge the fact that people need to associate with one another in order to accomplish certain goals, I think that these sorts of associations need to be small-scale, fluid, and temporary. The affinity group is a good example of this. As you say, it's good to know when a particular experiment has outlived its usefulness. However, a lot of the anarchists that I have met will agree on this point on the one hand and uncritically adopt the label of "activist" on the other. This, of course, leads to the formation of all sorts of top-heavy "organizations" whose primary goal is to preserve their own existence. Having said all that, I agree with your point that it is important to see centralized power as a symptom of a broader network of social relations.
certainly, but ofcourse we are speaking of two different things here.
Anarchy is 1) the natural order of the world in the broadest picture. Anarchy is 2) the way in which we can form agreements an affinity groups to end those systems which arise within the grander natural order, that organizes and oppress people. It is fair and rational that folks endeavoring to be Anarchists must be sure that as you say "these sorts of associations need to be small-scale, fluid, and temporary." In this way we can return to a life in which power is not centralized, and with consciousness continue to maintain it, not through top down organization but through not consenting to orders which act to oppress.
As anarchists, and as people in general, we need to all become more practiced in noticing when things get top heavy and putting the breaks on it.
My point really was to call Anarchy "stupid" is something like saying "ecosystem" is stupid, or "entropy" is stupid. Natural forces can not be stupid or smart, they are as the buddhists say hollow, or interdependent phenomena.
Okay, I appreciate the clarification. I could probably nitpick a little bit but I think we're mostly on the same page.
anarchy is not a natural system, it is a contrived and impossible anti system, which is in fact attempting to defy natural organizational laws, which will always favor oligarchy when sufficient organization is absent.
anarchy is thus utterly and pathetically stupid, it is merely and only a con scam sheeple dupe false flag ideology, which the corporate oligarchs use to divide and conquer morons too stupid to see that anarchism is self defeating.
If you have no compelling argument to present, I have nothing else to say to you. It's that simple.
i don't really need a compelling argument. its self evident unless your estapple clowned
Self-evident? Sorry, I'm not a Cartesian Rationalist. A prioris are for pious automatons.
For voluntary association. Start your Cooperative today.
An amendment: cooperatives which do not sacrifice the interests of individuals to an abstract "greater good." But I appreciate the sentiment. ;)
The core notion of a cooperative is the notion of greater good. There IS a greater good.
My issue with the notion of a "greater good" is that it is typically abstracted from the interests of the living, breathing individuals who supposedly comprise it. As soon as a collective is understood as an entity unto itself rather than a multiplicity of individuals acting in association with one another, the interests of everyone effectively become the interests of no one. Don't get me wrong, I think that this all depends on who is involved and the extent to which they understand the processes through which "groupthink" tends to emerge. I'm not saying don't form cooperatives, just to form them with an understanding that they have no substance beyond the individuals who comprise them.
Here come the anarchists.
I remember having a discussion with an anarchist once. He told me that it was ok for powerful countries to take over other countries by force.
I then asked him if it was ok for someone to rob him just because they were bigger and stronger.
Of course he didn't like that analogy.
"Anarchist" as a label is problematic for a number of reasons. For one, anything ending in "ist" smells of a pre-fabricated ideology that claims to possess all solutions to all of the world's problems. I do not make this claim. This is why I desire anarchy but do not consciously identify as an anarchist.
Anarchy as represented today is a socio-political theory - correct me if I'm wrong but OWS is against specific destructive elements in society, not installing a new method. That argument would seem to come afterwards?
Anarchy = bad. I do not believe you truly understand what you are promoting. And what you are talking about is communism. You should not bead around the bush like that and just be right out and say it. You want Communism and that is O.K. Communism is a great idea but humans cannot fathom being put in that position.
If capitalism, government and authority are so good how do you explain Madoff ripping of billions out of the pockets of the citizens, many retired people with no option to recover, all that to his benefit? What was SEC doing that time? They are the authority, supposed to protect the public. Get rid of them all, for sure we will never be worse off. At least then, we know that we are on our own. We trust the state, the authority and we pay them very generously I might add, for what? For starters, get the true meaning or Anarchy before you form an idea and talk about it.
ynot
You do not know what you are talking about, you have clearly read nothing about anarchist philosophy. If you have no knowledge on a subject isn't it foolish to apply it values such as good or bad? especially considering Anarchy like most phenomena is interdependent on the time and the actors engaged in it? And if it is interdependent can not be said to be good or bad?
So, yeah, what were you saying about not understanding what I'm promoting? Besides, I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything so much as to just get people thinking.
Anarchy is not a single "thing" and is, therefore, neither good nor bad in and of itself. Anarchy, at least in theory, is an evolving way of existing and interacting with other people in which hierarchical authority and diffuse social control do not factor in. And, yes, I am absolutely talking about communism, but of a very specific variety that flies in the face of how this concept is historically understood. If the Cold War demonstrated anything, it's that communism cannot exist within the context of national borders without devolving into totalitarianism. The sort of communism that I envision does not require a central authority to establish and maintain it's rule, does not sacrifice the individual in favour of an abstract collectivity, and, contrary to what many "anarcho-communists" have to say, does not even assume its own attainability.
Anarchy has never had a good connictation. Anarchy is a derivative of chaos, and strive for peace and serinty. There is no way that any country would last long without some group of people to take on the job of controlling the well being of the country, whether it be economically, socially or in promoting us. Do you truly believe in mankind's ability to live like that? I say Nay to this... at least to how fast people want this all to happen. And why must we defy authority? Why can we not work with the authority?
I take it you meant a good connotation? Of course it hasn't. It's in the interests of those who want to maintain their power to use all media at their disposal to demonize anything that threatens that power. And I have no interest in preserving "countries" as geopolitical territories. While I have no illusions about the fact that nation-states will not just to disappear anytime soon, it is something that I desire on a very visceral level and a long-term aspiration that informs all of my involvement in social struggles. As to what "mankind" has the ability to attain, I honestly have no clue. What I do know is that, while evolution is not a linear process, the human species is at a relatively rudamentary stage of its development and could go in any number of directions. This in itself gives me hope in at least what is possible if not certain or even likely. As to why you must defy rather than work with authority, I say work with them if you want to but I don't know why you would. Perhaps your goals are just different than mine. Perhaps you've chosen to settle for less than what you really want because you think it's all that's attainable. Or maybe you've just never taken the time to consider alternatives to just working with the system as it presently exists. I'm not sure and I'm not going to tell you to do otherwise if you don't want to. What I will say is our priorities are different and I think it is worth your while to question some fundamental assumptions about the very ideas of Order, Justice, Freedom, etc. Why? Because most of these things only exist because people in power say they do; which begs the question, how real are they in the first place?
See, now that is what I was looking for in your thread. I would like to see, from a good distance, how this idea of yours would play out if you truly got the masses to support you.
I have no interest in convincing "the Masses" of anything. A human population is a heterogeneous network of living individuals, not a collective "mass" to be moulded and shaped by the will of an external authority, be it mine or anyone else's. I'm not looking for converts here, I want people to start thinking critically about the world around them rather than just taking things at face value.
Hmmm, I thought you were trying to get a movement from this. I never contemplated thinking critically from this thread, but I see your point now.
"A human population is a heterogeneous network of living individuals, not a collective "mass" to be moulded and shaped by the will of an external authority" Lol, that is what the 1% think and they seemed to have been right on the money.
Exactly, although I think that the very notion of "the 99%" (and, consequently, the 1%) is problematic for precisely this reason. A human being is more than just a numerical unit that can be quantified and measured in relation to other numerical units. At the same time as there are qualitative similarities between every (or almost every) living individual, there are also qualitative differences that set each person apart and make each of us unique. I regard both similarities and differences as things to be celebrated and, for this reason, cannot ascribe to the purely quantitative notion that is "the 99%."