anarchism
Anarchism is a social movement that seeks liberation from oppressive systems of control including but not limited to the state, capitalism, racism, sexism, speciesism, and religion. Anarchists advocate a self-managed, classless, stateless society without borders, bosses, or rulers where everyone takes collective responsibility for the health and prosperity of themselves and the environment.
Theory
Introductory Anarchist Theory
- Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution by Pyotr Kropotkin
- Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma Goldman
- Anarchy Works by Peter Genderloos
- Anarchism: A Beginner's Guide by Ruth Kinna
- Anarchism and Its Aspirations by Cindy Milstein
- Anarchy In Action by Colin Ward
- On Anarchism by Noam Chomsky & Nathan Schneider
- Anarchy by Errico Malatesta
Anarcho-Capitalism
Discord Legacy A collaborative doc of books and other materials compiled by the #anarchism channel on the Discord, containing texts and materials for all sorts of tendencies and affinities.
The Theory List :) https://hackmd.io/AJzzPSyIQz-BRxfY3fKBig?view Feel free to make an account and edit to your hearts content, or just DM me your suggestions ^~^ - The_Dawn
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Thank you for the thoughtful response, I look forward to reading your essay I'll definitely try to get to it. I busted out the laptop to give a thoughtful response to you here lol. I apologize for how long it is, like it's ridiculous but I can't help but be long winded.
I guess for some background on where I'm at politically which may not matter but here goes lol: I've read very little theory myself. I think I got more radicalized in a communist direction after I went to college and studied Latin America and learned about colonization, imperialism, and socialist revolutions in different Latin American countries. I also was taught a tiny bit about Marx in college as well when I took some labor history classes. I have done a bit more research on my own about Cuba specifically, and over the years, kinda became more interested in learning about North Korea and wanting to break down internalized American propaganda. So I think my experience in college helped me to favor communism while I never was taught anything about actual anarchism. I'm familiar with some theorists and have done a tiny bit of research about it. I believe mutual aid and any other praxis happening on the ground now is critical and important. I am just starting to try to get myself more serious about reading theory and such, and before I slide more and more towards ML, I am hoping to kinda learn about both at the same time so I can actually decide where I stand politically. I do wanna challenge myself and be as informed as I can about both. I do agree with you for what seems like the dick measuring contest between the two lines of thought lmao. I find it really silly and that’s another reason why I want to learn for myself and probably want to take ideas from both anarchism and communism and apply them to how I think and operate politically. I ultimately wanna study indigenous struggle though and strive towards incorporating that thought first and foremost tho.
To give my thoughts on the quotes I provided, and explain my thoughts on consensus after engaging in it: I think what bothers me about those phrases is that often, I don't see the explanations go much further than that, and I kinda find them contradictory. Like, okay, so on one hand anarchists believe that society and the way that humans cooperate together is fluid and constantly changing, and so that plays into why we don't know what anarchism will look like. There is a base structure that's been thought out as to how consensus and horizontal decision making can work now, during, and after the revolution, but that can and will change so the "end goal" is unknowable. What I find contradictory is that fluidity and evolution is being applied to anarchism, but not to communist revolution. A communist state doesn't seem to operate the way that a capitalist state does, so why is it that we can't evolve that state structure, and keep changing it, where the anarchist structure of consensus that was created is afforded that freedom? We are always learning from our mistakes, and from Lenin to Mao to Castro, no revolution has looked exactly the same and as far as I know, they try to look at the errors made and try to apply what works to their version of communism and discard what didn't work in prior revolutions.
Another point that has probably been addressed in anarchist literature: When anarchism is talked about, it seems that it is portrayed as immune from hierarchy and certain people gaining more clout/influence/social capital, whatever it might be called. At one point, I worked at a job that based all of it's decision making around consensus and a horizontal workplace. All positions were paid the same and every decision in the agency was discussed in individual department meetings, then consensus from that group was brought to the larger agency wide meeting where those thoughts/proposals were again decided through consensus. For a long time, anyone and everyone was able to join those larger agency wide meetings and participate. The workplace engaged in this type of decision making for probably close to 50 years.
There were many things that ended up happening that I felt replicated social hierarchy and what made it feel like not truly consensus decision making. Even when taught how the consensus model worked and when people were encouraged to participate, there are many people who did not engage. That could be due to apathy, anxiety, feeling that their voice would not echo as loudly as others, etc. So, people who felt more confident, were better at public speaking, or had more knowledge about the process and the work were often the most influential in the group. Sure, we would come to consensus, but there were many people who just kinda went with the flow, even if they didn’t necessarily agree with whatever decisions were made just because they didn’t care enough to participate or any of the other above reasons. The “social capital” piece also felt very inequitable; if someone came to the meeting with a personal request, or any kind of proposal and they were very well known, charismatic, well likes etc etc, they would often get the most feedback, more people would participate and they would also get decisions that would work in their favor. At the same time, other people who did not enjoy those qualities might not get equal treatment. The inequity was not a conscious choice but that was just the nature of the group. So through this, the very hierarchies that anarchism wants to abolish seem to replicate themselves. There are people who hold knowledge who try to raise the consciousness of others, there are delegates and representatives for group decision making, the charisma and ability to make social connections influences the direction of the groups. Now, I recognize that there are failsafes in place that could probably discourage these problems, and this was not called anarchism in name, so I do see how it’s different but the way the discussions were structured were the exact same way as our local anarchist collective structured them, so I feel like it’s an apt anecdote. Considering all that, it makes me feel like criticisms lobbed towards communism for its faults are also faults that exist in the anarchist system, and that anarchy can just as easily replicate systems of inequality.
ANYWAY thank you for coming to my ted talk I’m so sorry for the length lol if you stuck around this long I’m stoked to hear your thoughts on this.
Thanks for your response! I'm gonna do a brief response to each topics:
First: I support your method in engaging in both side's theory, that's the way to do it imo, so good on you for that! I'm not against marxist criticism if it's informed by the knowledge of anarchist theory (lots of the shitthrowing around marxism and anarchism comes from people not engaging with source material from the other side only criticism of said source material which i try to avoid, that's why i read marxist literature as well).
Second: What you say is true, there's a lot of anarchists (especially on the internet) who are applying this double standard (they generally come from a place that the two ideologies can't be synthesised at all) but there are some who think there can be a synthesis between the two ideologies, apart from the essay about Spain i would also suggest Daniel Guerin's For a Libertarian Communism (and Guerin in general, i think he's pretty underrated) to see where it could end up. Hell i've even read texts praising Tito on The Anarchist Library.
Third: You're right, informal reproduction of social hierarchy is a problem that anarchists are grappling with, since some people will be more confident and less anxious in these situations. I'm not that well versed on the theory on that but one essay i found helpful is this one. Apart from that what i can advise you is to, if you are in a situation like that is to ask the people organising, what they will do in order to avoid this happening, like, will the people who seem more withdrawn given a platform deliberately? Will the people who tend to get asked everything willingly step back? I think this is an important problem to grapple with especially in the mentally gripping system we live in, but also i think that there could be (and maybe there are i just don't know about them) methods to reverse it.
This is a valuable insight.
Formal power discrepancies do not spring into being out of nowhere; it usually emerges organically from informal power discrepancies. The main focus of anarchists has been to decry the formal sort, but they are largely silent or inept or even complicit when it comes to the informal sort.
Any anarchist praxis, which does not include mechanisms of preventing or narrowing informal power gaps, is going to be crucially deficient.