nice to see an explanation of anarcho syndicalism that focusses more on how anarchist decison making actually works in practice rather than dwell on philosophical/theoretical aspects.
@TriggeredPeasoup
8 жыл бұрын
+Donald Duck That is what is lacking to a lot of anarchist mouvement, ORGANISATION there needs to be more anarchist literature on the revolution 101 side of things, even if conditions are sometimes unique. We have all the reasons to revolt only we don't know how.
@realevilcorgi
8 жыл бұрын
The people who actually believe in anarchism and the people who just identify as anarchists to vent their anger at society are vastly disproportionate in number. You can see this by the number of liberal-progressive types who "become socialists", don't organize offline, only talk about liberal gender and race issues in a way that divides and perpetuates as opposed to uniting and solving, and generally just act like american progressives with a hint of red. Then you have guys like OP, who actually understand the theory and application of Anarchism. OP is in the minority. It's easy to talk about theory and to critique, but it takes both confidence and understanding to propose new systems and methods. Most of the 'socialists' you see online have neither.
@trentonr.8428
7 жыл бұрын
Your response is too reasonable and genuine. Please use more racial slurs when commenting next time. Thanks.
@professionalskit24
7 жыл бұрын
realevilcorgi couldn't have said it better man
@ashleigh3021
6 жыл бұрын
Lol, this doesn't take into account any practical considerations whatsoever. It assumes absurdities about humans, and then proceeds to claim that without any sort of hierarchical manner of legal system and norm-enforcing apparatus, society just "functions". Complete gibberish.
@MetalNick
4 жыл бұрын
I totally agree with emphasizing "autonomy" rather than "freedom". Freedom is relative and abstract. Autonomy speaks directly to the ability to act of one's own volition.
@anisau
3 жыл бұрын
@@aussenseitermagazin I never said I was against individualism tout court. It's not an absolute choice between binaries. No form of democracy can work without the creation of individuals who can think and act for themselves. Autonomy has two aspects: collective and individual. Autonomy requires these to aspects to be structured in such a way that they are co-operative and mutually reinforcing. But, ontologically speaking, the collective is prior. Individuation as a potential, a sociological process and an outcome rests upon and is made possible within particular social-historical contexts (and not others). It is grasping this that makes anarchists anarchist. It seperates them from the Marxists on the one hand and liberals on the other. If you know you history you will know that anarchism grows out of the socialist tradition. Its founding moment is Proudhon's 1840 critique of private property. Hence, anarchism is first an foremost a collectivism. But it is a collectivism that does not seek to suppress the individual, but to cultivate the individual through direct participation in collective deliberation. It therefore understands democracy as direct or not at all, and is therefore opposed to so-called "representative democracy, which it understands as simply another form of oligarchy, albeit one selected and ratified by plebiscite. It is also why so-called "individualist anarchism" is an oxymoron. It tends to be indulged in by idiots whose neurotic egoism is matched only by their ignorance of the terms and history they seek to appropriate. They tend to be young, middle-class wankers who would sing the virtues of capitalism if it weren't for the fact that their youth situates them temporarily among the exploited and the financial security represented by their parents means they can assume the identity of opposition while insulated from its risks. They are fine young cannibals, and, recognising them for what they are, we find we don't need them. Hope this helps.
@kingkyleiv7960
3 жыл бұрын
@@anisau new vid????
@anisau
3 жыл бұрын
@@kingkyleiv7960 I should do it, but I've got to find the time. It's much easier to respond to these comments in between doing other things. But, yes, I should do it.
@Arguments4Future
3 жыл бұрын
@@anisau Holy shit, you should comrade you should. Ive been using your video as a go to explanation of how ansyn orgs work for years now. And you say we can have more of that good stuff?
@thenightwatchman1598
2 ай бұрын
souds like the usual special pleading i usually hear from marxists...
@AudioPervert1
5 жыл бұрын
Hola from Spain ... Catalunya, Valencia and Murcia the erstwhile grounds of anarcho syndicalism.
@anisau
5 жыл бұрын
G'day, Samrat! Earstwhile? Surely the CNTE still has sections in Catalonia, Mercia, and Valencia... Anyway, thank you for sending me a non-Xmas greeting today. Fuck the churches of our priest-ridden lands. 😉
@martisole6249
4 жыл бұрын
Hola Rebel! :)
@yeatnumber1Dmuncher
4 жыл бұрын
Hey man, idk if u still check this comment, but is the party still called CNT/FAI or does it have a different name? Also, is it popular in places like Galicia, Basque country or any autonomous region for that matter? I mean, is it still debated, does the "common man" still talk about anarchism as a possible form of government?
@p.l5193
3 жыл бұрын
@@yeatnumber1Dmuncher Hi! After the dictatorship the anarchist trade union had to be "built" again and it separated in two: the CNT and the CGT. The CGT has more people, but the CNT is the only one which doesn't accept funding from the state or privileges amongst the workers. I believe CNT has only about 5000 or 6000 members now (it had 1'5 millions). Unfortunately anarchism is not as popular as it was, and is not considered by most people (since communism/marxism had most popularity or propaganda after franco) . But you can still see the circle A painted in most villages. There are occupied (anarchist/ self managed) social buildings in most cities, and the anarchist and non hierarchical values are present in most social movement or collectives.
@p.l5193
3 жыл бұрын
@@yeatnumber1Dmuncher I also believe anarchism is more popular here than in other countries, and in general and CNT in particular it's gaining popularity. CNT has chapter all over the country, And an important part of the population are critical with government and capitalism
@Red7Rogue
9 жыл бұрын
I appreciate and respect your efforts in making this video comrade
@Sabo-Tabby_Kitten
Жыл бұрын
@Scott's Precious Little Account Anarcho syndicalism and anarcho communism aren't normal communism because there is no leader in charge and without a leader in charge there can't be a dictatorship also no Anarchist i know uses the term utopia because propagating a utopia is just a propaganda tool of the state, we just want to make the best out of the current situation. Still Anarchy is build on the idea that everyone is equal because we are all just humans and the term comrade is used to express this unity.
@SomethingImpromptu
7 жыл бұрын
This is an absolutely fantastic introductory presentation. I will be sharing it. We need more clear, concise, graphically-organized explanations of left-libertarian principles if we want people to hear us out.
@normanmai7865
Жыл бұрын
I search up one clip about Monty Python and the Holy Grail and now I'm being recommended videos like this. Can't say I'm complaining, though, because it seems anarcho-syndicalism is much deeper than it seems at first glance, and my curiosity is piqued.
@anisau
Жыл бұрын
While the monty python boys were doing a piss-take, I think there was a genuine level of understanding when they wrote that scene. Either way, Thank you for the kind comment. Happy New Year, mate!
@nnonotnow
4 ай бұрын
All hail the algorithm
@Sasukegrl12
4 жыл бұрын
I do wish you would make more informative videos like this, it was really helpful! Thank you.
@anisau
4 жыл бұрын
I shall have to pull my finger out. Thanks for the nice comment!
@garethberg3794
9 жыл бұрын
This is a great presentation of Anarcho-syndicalist decision making processes and principals. It is clear and concise, a good tool for a teacher if it were not for the (understandable but perhaps unnecessary) little run of expressive expletives in the last 30 seconds. That aside, it was a refreshingly mature and professional presentation that will help many visualise the working of such a community. Thank you!
@brettabernathy6560
8 жыл бұрын
thank you for posting i am very sympathetic to this type of thinking and hope someday it is actualized
@ngrep
4 жыл бұрын
@@garibanibizzeka IWW is not anarchist, nor is its decision making process anarchist practice
@cooldude6651
4 жыл бұрын
@@ngrep much of the reason for its decision making process being the way that it is is american laws strictly encouraging top-down hierarchy within unions and diminishing the rights of collectivized bottom-up unions. Still, joining an industrial union is good, and as its membership is somewhat small a large influx of anarcho-syndicalist membership may change its shape. I agree it's not quite as committed to anarchist ideals as I would like, but it is a good platform for syndicalist ideals in general and would support anarcho-syndicalist action.
@davefregon2921
4 жыл бұрын
@@cooldude6651 The laws 'encourage' top down hierarchy within unions? You think that is something new and isolated to the USA? anarcho syndicalism is a particular practice of organising which deliberately avoids the representative democracy of general membership. It promotes the dissipation of power rather than its centralisation in a General Executive board. Arguing that the system can be changed by entryism is not my cup of tea, and the fact that those devoted to the IWW keep promoting it when anarchists are putting forward an alternative organising, and an alternative one big union in the IWA comes across as a deliberate tendency to undermine anarchist praxis with weak arguments that the government forces unions to be hierarchical.
@cooldude6651
4 жыл бұрын
@@davefregon2921 oh wait there's an alternative? Cool, fuck the IWW. I don't really like them that much anyways, their praxis isn't that great. I just want people to unionize.
@cooldude6651
4 жыл бұрын
wait nevermind I misinterpreted what you were saying
@s210761
4 жыл бұрын
I am far from an anarchist, but I love to learn about various political theories and ideologies. Great video man, super informative!
@Frisky_Beast
2 жыл бұрын
We're closer than you may think :]
@christopherleary8168
2 жыл бұрын
Very well, and clearly explained. Anarcho-syndicalism is the "Democracy" that the American revolutionaries cynically referred to. Let's destroy imperialism, and let democracy live, once and for all!
@albertcapley6894
2 жыл бұрын
I found this vid to be very informative. I've come to realize I was a syndie all along in recent times, and yr explanation really nails it comrade. I'm 7 years behind but, I'm really interested in the practice in Australia, as you mentioned at the beginning, and learning as much about it as I can.
@mastersake11
3 жыл бұрын
This has been very helpful in starting my search into anarchism beyond a surface level.
@anisau
3 жыл бұрын
Thanks for the nice comment. Good luck with your reading.
@dionysislarson6352
4 жыл бұрын
Well said and laid out. I'm quite impressed, especially considering that it's less than half an hour long.
@Graverman
2 жыл бұрын
Thanks for this video, when I did politics test, it showed that I'm anarcho-syndicalist, this video helped me understand what that really means and showed that there are communities that I can join! Thanks
@uberglowsarchive8632
Жыл бұрын
a fellow comrade! its nice to see another anarcho-syndicalist here!
@ignatiushazzard
2 жыл бұрын
Thank you for your labor and efforts in producing this, comrade
@anisau
2 жыл бұрын
Thank you for the kind comment, compañero!
@greenlantern14882000
8 жыл бұрын
What would you recommend for additional reading to supplement and further the understanding of your presentation? Which I must say is phenomenal, I've watched it numerous times.
@anisau
7 жыл бұрын
I apologise for neglecting to respond to your questions about things to read these last two weeks. Let’s remedy that. An excellent place to start is Rudolf Rocker’s short book, Anarcho-syndicalism: Theory and Practice (1936). From memory Chs 1, 4 and 5 are the theory chapters with Ch2, 3 being focused on labour history and historical antecedents of the anarcho-syndicalist movement, and Ch.6 being devoted to more recent (c. 1936) developments. Chs 1, 4 and 5 is where the juicy marrow is to be found. If you are interested on following up on the history of the movement, Vadim Damier has an excellent book called Anarcho-syndicalism in the 20th Century. I’m also going to recommend Van der Walt and Schmidt’s Black Flame (2009). It’s a controversial recommendation, given the scandal surrounding Schmidt’s (inexcusable and stupid) flirtations with white nationalism, but aside from some small sections usefully critiqued by Alexander Reid Ross (who exposed Schmidt’s activities), the book remains an important one. By all means read it in tandem with the series of articles containing ARR’s expose, but don’t be put off by the unnecessarily alarmist and sensationalist tone ARR adopts. Schmidt’s clearly guilty of much that ARR has alleged against him, but the book itself was written with due concern for academic rigour, and I don’t think the 97% of it which is very good should be tossed aside for the sake of the 3% which suffers from errors of interpretation. As with anything, you should read it, but read it critically. The Spanish Revolution is an important topic, but I’m embarrassed to say I’ve not yet delved as deeply into the wealth of publications as one might. Some books that I found interesting and informative have included Stuart Christie’s We, the anarchists! and Vernon Richards Lessons of the Spanish Revolution. Chris Ealham’s urban history of Barcelona, Anarchism and the City (originally published as Revolution and counter-revolution in Barcelona, 1898-1937) was very good read. I’ve had Jose Peirats Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution sitting on my bookshelf for six months, but have not yet found time to read it. I greatly enjoyed Mark Leier’s Biography of Barkunin, and have dipped in and out of Daniel Guerin’s anthology of anarchist writings. Things I need to do are to follow up on Proudhon’s and Bakunin’s writings in greater detail, rather than dipping in an out of volumes of their collected writings. I also need to go back and read Kropotkin in a more systematic way, but I didn’t find myself terribly impressed by his Conquest of Bread. It is also worth your while reading people who aren’t anarchists. I have found the writings of Cornelius Castoriadis to be extremely important to me personally. Castoriadis started out as a Marxist before rejecting it in the late 50s. His critique of Marx (first two chapters of the Imaginary Institution of Society) is especially comprehensive. Marx is someone you should read and understand, but it is helpful, as an anarchist, to know what to retain from him (the critique of capital, the theory of surplus value, the idea that humans create themselves as beings, rather than there being any essential human nature, and I also like his early, more romanticist writings from the 1844 economic and philosophical manuscripts) and what to chuck out (the coup d’etat plan for revolution, the fetishisation of theory, and the illusion that economics and history can be scientifically predicted). Most of the Imaginary Institution is pretty heavy going (very important philosophically, but boring and not necessarily helpful to the practicalities of revolution). I’d recommend the Castoriadis Reader published by Blackwell, and also his extensive back catalogue of essays (including everything he has to say on democracy). The later are freely available through the webzine notbored! www.notbored.org/cornelius-castoriadis.html Castoriadis never considered himself an anarchist, but he had sufficient in common to be seen regularly arguing philosophy and politics over cigarettes and coffee with old Spanish exiles at the CNT office in Paris during the 60s and 70s. Alongside Castoriadis, you could also do a lot worse than read Agnes Heller (esp. her A Theory of Modernity) and Marshall Berman’s All that is Solid Melts into Air. I suggest these because it is good to get a clear sense of what modernity is, how it is that the future is open to us in a way it wasn’t for previous ages, and also what the possibilities, limitations and dangers are. We want revolution (i.e. the extension of (direct) democracy to every intuition of society), but we also need to be critical and self-reflexive about how we do that, especially when creating economic arrangements that allow us to democratically control them, rather than have our economic arrangements non-democratically control us. This should be first and foremost a political question, and only secondarily an economic question. In overthrowing capitalism, we need to build the institutions and culture of democracy, not utopian systems in which we imprison ourselves.
@weaselhack
8 жыл бұрын
Make more content! This was incredibly well done. This mindset has to get more visibility.
@dungeontsar7749
3 жыл бұрын
Great video! I’m new to anarchism but this was a great explanation of both anarchism and anarcho syndicalism, I’m still not completely sold on the federation aspect but I’ll continue to do research on it. Thank you.
@michaelnovak9412
4 жыл бұрын
*Truely a Masterpiece.*
@ComradeDragon1957
7 жыл бұрын
Nice!Good video. Question though,is there a real difference between Anarcho-Communism and Anarcho-syndicalism?Are they closely the same with minor differences or what?
@TheArbiterReturns007
7 жыл бұрын
TheCommunistDragon from what I understand anarcho syndicalism is a way of organising an anarchist society and can allow for communism, collectivism and mutualism.
@obsidianman50
6 жыл бұрын
TheCommunistDragon I see anarcho-syndicalism as being an alternative to capitalism that retains the supply and demand trait in order to satisfy human nature, through organised workers unions (syndicates) workers would trade goods and products for mutual benefit, but workers hold control over their production due to the direct democracy within syndicates. Imagine an agrarian/agriculture syndicate wants houses, so a syndicate with builders that wants food for its workers says, alright we will build your workers in your agriculture syndicate houses, and we want a years worth of food for our workers. (This is a hypothetical and philosophical scenario I’ve made to explain what I believe to be anarchy syndicalism) Anarcho-communism would be workers in communes (basically the same to syndicates) that the workers have control of production, however since it is a communist society with the idea of “Contribute what you can, take what you need” these communes rely on mutual trust to contribute their goods and products into a universal pool that all communes can take from to satisfy the needs of their workers. These are pretty unrealistic and vague scenarios but are what I see to be essentially the difference.
@ngrep
4 жыл бұрын
Anarcho syndicalism is a method of working toward libertarian communism, or anarchism. Anarcho communism is a term used to explain pure communism, that is without a state, money or classes, to distinguish it from 'state communism'.
@cooldude6651
4 жыл бұрын
They're effectively similar, though syndicalism actually predates marxism. It advocates for militant strike action, taking control of the means of production through unionization and thereby gaining control over the government to make it democratically structured, with labor unions as the base democratic structure. Anarcho-syndicalists believe in communism, but have very specific praxis laid out when it comes to establishing and running communism, and in my eyes highly effective praxis. The revolution is [relatively] nonviolent, giving it a 53% chance of total success (compared to violent revolutions' 23% chance of total success), and is therefore more approachable to those with less revolutionary sensibilities. In addition, it uses much more familiar ideas - unions, strikes, work slowdowns - and much more detailed organizational structures than other forms of communist praxis, while retaining the qualities of democracy that anarchists enjoy and the powerful institutions that marxist-leninists look for. And not only do I think it's an extremely approachable and agreeable praxis, it's also one of the most plastic and able to handle changing conditions. At least, if you do industrial unionization. Workplace unionization by comparison is extremely fragile, industrial unions are a better way to go and they include those who aren't necessarily in big shops that can enact large strike action.
@thesoundis5186
4 жыл бұрын
Cool Dude where did the 53% and 23% statistics come from? Just interested, as I don’t know much abt this stuff
@grovenn
4 жыл бұрын
I really want to have an open mind to this ideology. I find myself always landing in the same vicinity on the political compass where the anarcho syndicalists reside but I feel like these kinds of strong symbols are the exact thing I want to escape. It feels nationalistic in nature and that is absolutely something that threatens the sanctity of questioning all authority. It gives off very strong animal farm impressions to me.
@anisau
4 жыл бұрын
Mate, if your level of intellectual engagement is limited to the feelings the symbols associated with the movement provoke in you, then you really aren't engaging in any way that is genuinely critical, and your criticism isn't worth much. My own criticism is that much that some people would like to pass off as anarchism is nothing of the sort. Anyone can wave a flag or paint a circle A on a wall. Yet the creation of free, direct democratic institutions that improve people's lives in the here and now, and which are capable of being built up in a way that might pose a genuine challenge to capitalism, like the unions of the CNT did from 1890 to 1936, is quite another thing entirely. Anarchism is a revolutionary social movement with roots in the socialist tradition of the popular classes (i.e. the peasantry and working class) of Europe. For this reason it has aquired a kudos, a form of 'cool' antiestablishment glamour which some people, often very young, have been attracted to and have sought to appropriate for their own ends. Some of those ends are fine, some less so. The point is that the circulation of political symbols, and the approprtion of cultural significations is unregulated, and not a sure means of understanding the strengths and weaknesses of anarchism's philosophy, or its genuine character as a movement. Only getting acquainted with anarchism's history and key texts can do this. If you don't know where to start, try Daniel Guerin's "Anarchism: From Theory to Practice" (1965, Eng. Trans 1970). It's not perfect, but I think it is the best general introduction to what is not the easiest political ideology and movement to get a handle on. However, in simplest terms, no other political ideology shares anarchism's commitment to the original direct and participatory meaning of democracy. In essence, that is what it boils down to.
@grovenn
4 жыл бұрын
@@anisau I should have prefaced my first comment by explaining that I know little to nothing about your proposed society and that my impressions were from the perspective of a curious outsider. My gripe has nothing to do with your proposed system itself. It seems like a pretty apt society to me. My criticism has more to do with the way I've been seeing people treat it. I'll definitely delve deeper, I'm not one to pass off an idea because of what I feel about it at first
@anisau
4 жыл бұрын
@@grovenn, no worries. I had guessed thay es the case. Best of luck with your reading. Feel free to hit me up here idc you have any further questions.
@cooldude6651
4 жыл бұрын
@@grovenn ohhhh, you're probably running into HOI4 kaiserreich fans. It's a game mod where france, britain, and north america become syndicalist because in that universe the central powers won ww1. If you've seen a torch and claw hammer inside a gear and a circle, or heard them shouting "Break the chains! Break the chains!" it's usually just a Kaiserreich fan, though many kaiserreich fans are genuine syndicalists and went to the series because they recognized their ideology and went "hey look it's me!".
@shin-ishikiri-no
2 жыл бұрын
"strong animal farm impressions" lol No idea why that amuses me, but I am coming from a similar perspective to yours. Here to learn more.
@hedgehog3180
7 жыл бұрын
Thanks for the clean and professional explanation :)
@thevoiceofthelost
6 жыл бұрын
Very wonderful video, comrade. I will definitely be showing this to everyone i know.
@chene-aurelgaudreau1072
4 жыл бұрын
“Anarchism is democracy taken seriously” - Edward Abbey
@anisau
4 жыл бұрын
I've not come across Edward Abbey. Thanks for bringing him to my attention.
@baileyy8857
4 жыл бұрын
All I wanna know is, do I have to get a job in this system? I just wanna sit back, in my own home, with food, water, heating, electricity, wifi, healthcare and all. Possibly welfare or UBI for luxuries but I’m not too fussed about that.
@anisau
4 жыл бұрын
The system describes the principles according to which anarchist unions presently operate. They do extend to a post-revolutionary society presuming we prevail in the struggle. After getting rid of the bosses, were not gonna put up with any other parasites. If you are able bodied and of sound mind, and want to share equally in our food you'll have to share equally on the work required to produce it. That said, the automation that currently contributes to unemployment will be used to reduce working hours for all. After doing your share of the graft, you can kick back to your heart's content and wank in front of any screen you choose... Just don't wank on mine!
@baileyy8857
4 жыл бұрын
@Anarchy is Autonomy Thanks for the reply. AWWW WHAT? I’m struggling with the basic fundamentals here now. What constitutes things like an ‘equal sharing of food’, or consumption of resources like electricity, water and all? Like, can I start filling a water pool in my garden, or sing for 1.5 hours of Backstreet Boys in the shower or is that deemed stealing. Regarding ‘equal food sharing’, are you going to calorie check my grocery shop or something? This might be a deal breaker for me because I’m a chunky monkey, but I think it’s innate in me since i come from a big family. I don’t think I’ll cope with someone confiscating my ice cream, I think I’ll start throwing hands. Wait, if I started throwing hands after someone confiscated my ice cream, how does policing work? Take my ice cream and I swear I’ll go berserk, like Hulk, smashing the city up, the only option would be to shoot me down probably. So who’d have the rights to shoot me? Anyway, so how does one ‘get rid of parasites’, if I refuse to work, whilst able bodied and minded, are you going to literally remove the ‘human rights’ I have, the crux point of socialist regime, regarding housing, healthcare, food, water and all? Are you going to leave me to suffer and struggle, just like in capitalist systems? What if I’m working as a video game streamer, or an artist but amassing no great revenue? Am I still entitled to all those ‘human rights’ as mentioned before, am I a ‘parasite’? Capitalist systems tends to leave these people struggling and suffering, by not having access to those ‘human rights’ as mentioned before, being unsuccessful, so they at least, part time, move on to other jobs like retail and all, but in your system can I just endlessly keep on going in my failure and be alright? I’d sure be happy playing video games all day with basic needs paid for. What exactly constitutes a ‘fair share’ of work? I know in capitalist systems this can also be deemed ambiguous as *some* people who do little, can still make a disproportionately large sum of money, off of others’ backs, but does your system leave room for even greater exploitations by *all* peoples to make, at least their necessities, off of other peoples backs too for little to no work? I’ve seen videos of people in socialist systems doing the literal minimum and most uninspired amount of work to ‘get their government cheque/resources’; for example once beautiful cultured communities/nations making amazing and great street foods, starting to all make simple, plain ham sandwich shops, waiting for their government pay... it doesn’t come at all from any customers.
@scammelle
3 жыл бұрын
You’re the reason anarchism doesn’t work😂
@sebenfc1982
7 жыл бұрын
This system you are advocating for would require a very well informed,curious and educated society for it to work.
@anisau
7 жыл бұрын
Wankologist, Perhaps... It would certainly require people who desire their life to centre around more than potato chips and television. But the degree to which people would need to be well informed and educated prior to embarking on such a project as a prerequisite for it to work is not clear to me. Participation is itself educative. (Perhaps it is the best education.) And people create themselves through what the do. (This was also understood by the Greeks. There is an excellent essay by Cornelius Castoriadis on the changes in the human self-image that took place during the first few decades of the democratic era in Athens, and which can be grasped by contrasting the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles. It's in the public service edition of "Figures of the Thinkable".) Additionally, it is a misunderstanding that all revolutionary institutions will suddenly need to be created from scratch on the day after the revolution. In many instances it will be to late by then. The strength of anarcho-syndicalism is that out allows us to create and practice the forms of organisation, sociability and self-dicipline required after the revolution, but to do so today. It also allows us to make mistakes and correct then at a time when failure is less critical. Also, it allows us to be less apprehensive that we are potentially sacrificing everything on a single,high-stakes roll of the dice, because that is not how anarcho-syndicalism as a strategy works. Involvement on a libertarian socialist union brings with it all the immediate benefits of collective self-empowerment through union struggle, as well as the confidence that we are affirming our autonomy in the attempt to realise it, and realise it more fully. Personally, I may never see the t revolution. But even of this is the case, I can do what I can to give those younger than me the best chance of succeeding. I think this needs to be the attitude and set of understandings that people require to go onto this with eyes open and to persist in the struggle through all the setbacks that will inevitably occur.
@a.n.l.aantineoliberalismas4504
4 жыл бұрын
@@anisau I feel like capitalism will cause the revolution through global warming since capitalists have become too comfortable and weak so when the time comes there be caught off guard
@a.n.l.aantineoliberalismas4504
4 жыл бұрын
@@anisau yes
@a.n.l.aantineoliberalismas4504
4 жыл бұрын
@@anisau I agree with you on this
@comradesleep2032
3 жыл бұрын
This was very easy to digest, thanks for making it
@johnbizarre5183
3 жыл бұрын
This was excellent. Thank you.
@foddlestocks1045
11 ай бұрын
this is great. fantastic and educational video
@ASTRA1564
3 жыл бұрын
Idk if I support not having property rights, I like the idea of a Social Democracy with the Constitution.
@oceania2385
3 жыл бұрын
Fascist !!
@johannsanchocuevas7854
25 күн бұрын
Dennis if King Arthur didn't interrupted him:
@anisau
25 күн бұрын
@@johannsanchocuevas7854 You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
@johannsanchocuevas7854
25 күн бұрын
@@anisau SHUT UP, AS YOUR KING, I ORDER YOU TO BE QUIET
@anisau
25 күн бұрын
@@johannsanchocuevas7854 Ah! Now we see the violence inherent in the system.
@johannsanchocuevas7854
25 күн бұрын
@@anisau SHU-SHUT UP!!! **grabs you by the shirt**
@anisau
25 күн бұрын
@@johannsanchocuevas7854 Help, help, I'm being repressed!
@KizonoYT
11 ай бұрын
I think this helped me well about anarcho-syndicalism, thanks for the information!
@guskalo1981
8 жыл бұрын
Good talk. Your description of the limits of direct democracy are similar ones raised by Robert Michels.
@anisau
8 жыл бұрын
+Goose1981 That's a good observation. But I think Robert Michels' conclusions about the inevitability of oligarchy are premature, and that Cornelius Castoriadis' suggestion that democracy is a tragic regime (i.e. that the freedom it embodies cannot be divorced from its the possibility of its own self-destruction) contains a better assessment of its risks and potentials ("What is democracy?" in Figures of the Thinkable, pp. 195-246, )
@Meta-trope
2 жыл бұрын
I love how you chose "Autonomy" as a more ilustrative term, as, in my opinion, servers both freedom and responsibilities that come with a collective freedom. I've seen various examples in this pandemic when people clinged to personal freedom even if it was against the freedom of other in a form or another. I've always thought, and developed that thought throughout the years, that the best way for the natural ruler-ruled polarity to manifest in a healthy society is that everyone to be a ruler of one's self, and thus and understandable approach to cooperation to other ruler's of self, but that can happen only through education. I'm curious to see your take on education in a anarcho-syndicalist reality.
@anisau
2 жыл бұрын
Some points of clarification: The organisational principles I described in the video is how anarchist unions have organised since the mid-1890s. ("Syndicate" comes from the French "syndicat" and Spanish "syndicado" and means labour union). Anarcho-sydicalism is a strategy for revolution by which we aim create mass organisations that carry forward working class interests today and which might successfully attempt revolution tomorrow. A successful revolution of the kind we seek requires that a culture of (direct, participatory) democratic practice be developed which is strong enough to withstand the stresses of revolution and civil war. The adjective "anarcho-sydicalist" does not describe a future society. If an anarcho-syndicalist revoltion is successful, the society that will result will be an anarchist society, which is to say a truly democratic society. It will be organised according to anarchist principles, but in overcoming both capitalism and the state, it will no longer comprise or have need for unions, since the workers will be in control. In place of unions, we will have collectives and federations of collectives. In broad terms, such a society might be called anarchist, libertarian socialist or anarcho-communist (although these terms are used with various minor differences depending on whom you read). As for your post, I find almost nothing in your second paragraph I can agree with. The presuppositions you are working from are different from mine. You say you have always thought that the best way a natural ruler-ruled polarity to manifest is if everyone is a ruler over oneself and enters into cooperation with other rulers over self. But... (1) If rule is reduced to "ruler over oneself" surely this destroys any "ruler-ruled polarity"? (Plus, autonomy shouldn't just be reduced to relations of political equality; just as, for example, the members of a group of equals cannot say they are autonomous if they are slaves to tradition.) (2) Why "natural"? Sociology, anthropology and social and political theory abandoned the idea of "naturalness" as a meaningful concept in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Given the diversity of social forms to be found in "primitive" and "archaic" societies, it is difficult to think what naturalness might consist in. Whatever inate potentialality we might have towards language and rationality, our sociability is "asocial" (i.e. it can be both anti-social and positively social) and so there is no such thing as human nature in any real or deep sense that is immune to the vagaries of socialisation. Without the "nature" of humans being open (and so not "nature" at all), there would be no potential for human freedom. (3) You imply that, ideally, individuals are soverign (rulers over oneself) and enter into cooperation on the basis of free agreement, but I don't think of individuals in this way and think free agreement between soverign parties is a flawed basis for thinking about autonomy. Individuals cannot be abstracted from society and few of our relationships with others are voluntary, except in relatively trivial situations. Individual and collective autonomy needs to be developed in the context of situations in which individuals have no prior independence from each other. Hence free association cannot be reduced to voluntary association. Rather, free association needs to thought of as a mode of reciprocity between individuals that allows them to relate as equals who negotiate shared outcomes and the means to achieve them. Only the democratic attitude orientated towards consensus (as an aim if not always as an acheivement) can cultivate freedom in this sense. I agree education is important. One reason anarcho-syndicalism works is that it teaches people how to do democracy through direct participation in it. It requires thinking for oneself and speaking for oneself, and building one's confidence to represent oneself in argument. Because we practice rotation of office, it also means cultivating the skills and confidence of your comrades in whom you are going to rely as delegates to congresses and as office bearers. We don't have paid offices. It's all voluntary, but it is expected that you will do your turn. As for education in a future anarchist society (which I think your question was mainly seeking an answer to), I don't think it would be radically different from education today. There will still be teachers and students. There will still be masters and apprentices. And best-practice methods of teaching will be much the same as best-practice methods are now. What might be different is that the ends of teaching will always be towards the creation of autonomous individuals: people who can think, act and speak for themselves. Education starts when a master takes a student or apprentice, cultivates that person's talent, and finishes with the development of an equal. This used to be how trades work. Capitalism doesn't do that. Sure managers replace managers as top dogs retire and shit eaters climb the greasy pole, but is not so much an exercise in education towards autonomy as the breeding of conformity and a preference for those who are docile and complient. Rocking the boat is the last thing that will see someone promoted. And why invest in cultivating workers' skills when they are only going to be poached by the capitalist down the road? If anything, anarchism will rehabilitate an appraoch to education which is gradually being lost, in which the wider personality is cultivated, rather than an increasingly narrow focus on work ready skills. If nothing else, this means reinvesting in the importance and value of Arts faculities in our universities and in history, literature and philosophy in our schools.
@RextheRebel
2 жыл бұрын
I think my main and sole criticism is the concept of spontaneity and autonomy. Which you described as something happening without an external force. That's simply not how reality works for everything is a reaction to an already occuring or already having occurred action. Nothing can be caused to move without a force equal or greater than the density and mass of that object. So an idea or a material condition much accrue that is greater than the one currently in place to create that movement. Things don't just happen. Cause and effect are what makes chain events that link up and spread out continuously. The more parts the now links are added and the more events/ripples that are echoed off if it.
@anisau
2 жыл бұрын
Thanks for your comment. You raise an interesting point. To address it, I'm going to restate what is at issue and then walk you through three levels of explanation (physical, biological, psychological) and explain how they interelate. Please bear with me. To start, you raised issue with idea of spontaneous motion, which I used as a metaphor to explain the concept of "spontaneity" in a political context. (I wanted to define spontaneity as "emerging from the resources of the self" and use it to reconcile this idea with autonomy as a potential for rational deliberation and capacity for planning, rather than the more usual connotations of "spontaneity", which, due to their association with improvisation, tend to associate it with whimsy and a lack of prior or sustained thought.) Also, I agree with you that the idea of spontaneous motion is, strictly speaking, contrary to the principle of efficient causality. The position you are advancing is called Determinism. I acknowledge it is a fundamental tenet of the physical sciences. It is not my intention to contradict it. I do however think its explanatory potential is limited to specific domains. The problem is that, followed to its logical conclusion, Determinism denies the possibility of Free Will. If we accept this, then also: (a) the sphere of Politics eases to exist as a domain of free (i.e. open, unpredictable) contestation (b) the emotions of hope and anxiety have no meaning and both ought to be supplanted by resigned fatalism (c) consequentially much of our lived experience ceases to make sense. In short, philosophical determinism, taken to its logical conclusion, confronts us as deeply (even existentialialy) paradoxical. So, how do we resolve the apparent contradiction? By limiting the concept of efficient causality to its proper domain: the physical and biological sciences and acknowledging that is applicability to psychology is both limited and partial. To explain.... Please recall that I deployed the concept of "spontaneous motion" as a metaphor to explicate the idea of spontaneity as a predicate of autonomy, defined here as a capacity for reflective deliberation and creative action emerging from out of the resources of the self. This appearance of spontaneity has something to do with the complexity of the systems in question. But it is not simply a question of complexity or our inability to adequately model it. For example, we may have difficulty predicting weather systems, but no one would argue weather systems develop in anything other than rigorous accordance with Determinism and the principle of efficient causality. And its not just a question of where we define the system/environment boundary. To explain, let's first consider a hypothetical microbiologist observing the movement of protozoa, and who might describe them as capable of "spontaneous movement". What he really means by this is that their movement under the microscope appears random and that their motive force is attributed to the movement of the cilia of each individual cell rather than to currents within their environment. In this instance, the microbiologist may use the phrase "spontaneous movement", but what he means is that the impelling force is attributable to the internal resources of each cell. In this moment he is not talking about the longer term energy exchange between the cell and environment that nourishes it, which is a perspective that would see them as part of the same system. Rather, he is arbitrarily asserting a system/environment boundary between the cell and its environment and "bracketing out" (temporarily ignoring) the fact that the protozoan cell is part of a more general system. In this he is not denying the fact of efficient causation nor the infinite chain of chemical or physical causes. He is not contradicting the determinism that underpins his vocation as a scientist. He is speaking figuratively to communicate the fact that the protozoa demonstrate propulsion that exceeds the means attributable to their environment alone. I was thinking of this sort of scenario when I originally suggested "spontaneous motion" as a metaphor to explicate the idea if spontaneity as "emerging from out of the resources of the self". But my explanation does go beyond it in a way that goes beyond determinism and the principle of efficient causality. Is this a contradiction? No. Why? Because figurative uses of speech are valid if they adequately communicate the intended meaning. Let's continue... The microbiologist in our example used figurative speech to as a means of locating the effective cause of the protozoa's movement internal to the protozoa itself. He did not speak contrary to philosophical determinism when describing the movement of protozoa as spontaneous because his meaning was figurative. Yet, the meaning I attempted to convey in the video goes beyond determinism and the principle of efficient causality, because I am not talking about protozoa but about humans: humans capable of political action. Humans are capable of reflective intentionality (including the comparative evaluation of means and ends) and of symbolic expression. Hence, humans are capable of acting in ways that exceed the effects of either instinct or of classical or operant conditioning. Perhaps this is an effect of system complexity, but it results in what seems to be a genuinely emergent set of phenomena that transcend deterministic explanation and yield a relative, fraught and incomplete, yet nonetheless real and significant, capacity for free will and genuine creativity. My point is that this creativity doesn't need to be relegated to making shit up on the spur of the moment because we are suddenly confronted with an opportunity. Our spontaneity can be expressed by a decision to enact a long term strategy expressed in the form of organisation building, such that we can foment revolutionary opportunities and increase the liklihood of success when these opportunities arrise. We affirm or spontaneity through deliberative action. We are affirm our freedom because we will something, and especially so when we will something in the face of opposition. We affirm our autonomy in the attempt to be autonomous, even if we temporarily or persistently fall short of our goals. Sorry for the long and complex explanation, but your question opened up a deep set of issues. Hopefully this responce not only clarifies things for you but helps you to feel confident that beneath an apparently simple and straightforward 24 minute video is a much deeper and more philosophically rigorous vein of thought than might otherwise be apparent at first glance.
@RextheRebel
2 жыл бұрын
@@anisau @Anarchy is Autonomy @Anarchy is Autonomy wow that's a lot to read and even harder to truly unpack and give a response. But I will do the best I can. 1: Free will doesn't exist. Plain and simple. We can make choices but none of them are truly "free" because none of us are "free" and never truly can be. Its impossible task to attain. As for the "will" aspect, it's usually meant to refer to a person's hardened conviction and willingness to arrive at a particular goal. But in order to have that goal, there has to be external sources influencing that. You referred to this "will" as the "resources of the self". 2: I'm very familiar with Determinism as I identify with the term. though I understand and appreciate the desire to throw in a more Compatibalist explanation of how things happen, it's just that; a desire. It's wishful thinking, a lie we tell ourselves to feel in control of our destiny. Well there is no destiny and there is no fate. Only the past, the present and the potential future decided by the events that came before it. Everything can be explained in q logical, scientific and rational way if we look hard enough for the answer. It might take hundreds of even thousands of years for confirmation of those facts but we will find them. 3: We are reflective creatures with great capacity for forethought and planning, as well as instinctively ingenuitive, some more than others for a variety of reasons. You are correct that just because we can't comprehend the complexity of something, it doesn't mean it occurred randomly. Chaos and randomness are not synonyms despite the common mistake to the contrary. But anything we think, decide and do whether it's impulsive and poorly thought our retributive plans of anarchistic terrorism or it's all thought out, intentionally planned action, is brought about by a series of conditions. Not to mention our natural genetic influence by our forebears. This reflectiveness is proof not of free will, but rather proof that we have an unparalleled mental capacity to observe, respond and deal with complex situations in our environment due to our large and highly structured brain that is rivaled only just barely by Dolphins, Octopus, Crows and Elephants. 4: It's not accurate to say something is external to the law of cause and effect. Nothing it beyond it, or else we get into religious, deity spanning entities that interfere and manipulate reality. People are nothing more but complex organisms that constantly are at war between seeking a functional and coherent system structure while competing in a constant conflict between those who have structural power who wish to organise and control the function of the system as well.like the events unfolding in Ukraine, there are many moving parts, even more catalysts that Putin himself may not be consciously aware of, and infinitely more possibilities that will stem from it. Everything anyone does is determined by something or someone else. That is why it's so important to decentralize power and have a democratic society, so that the realm of influence is not squarely on the shoulders of a few. But sadly, this will always occur. Nature demands it. As much as we wish to mitigate the nasty and brutish effects of the state of nature, we cannot escape it. There will be leaders, lazy people, disabled people, intellectual people, dumb people, dedicated people, people prone to criminality, people prone to altruism, people prone to selfishness. I appreciate your well thought out life philosophy and it's direct association with a material foundation for how to change things, but it simply won't result the way you wish. 5: In my opinion, there must be a state apparatus. It must be there to quell certain acts and behaviors. Things not entirely caused by economic growth and stability but often made worse explicitly because of it. Certain behaviors cannot and never should be accepted by the majority and once the majority accepts them, it's sadly left to the government to control what society can't on its own. Thomas Paine said it best when discussing the role of the State and it's relationship to the civil/private political sphere. Today, we live in a society that stands for nothing but degeneracy and arbitrarity. It's by design. If we can't agree on basic codes of conduct, if we can't agree on the problem then there will never be any meaningful solution. Personally, I wonder if it's too late. No amount of union membership or worker management will save us from social anomie, the destruction of the family (not specifically the nuclear family mind you, but the extended and multigenerational), the tossing away or discipline and the eradication of roles, typically associated with gender but not always. 5: I share your desire for a society, nay, economy, that is but around the people themselves, working and collaborating. But the argument for an anarchist society sounds dreadful because it's fantastical. People are meant to be led, to place trust in community elders and leaders. There will always bees it be a strong authority to keep things together. No matter what kind of father figure it is. Whether an actual father, which society is suffering from a lack of due to specific laws and cultural adoptions by Capitalism, or the State itself, which serves as a beacon of guidance and security. The effect of today's generation is a cultural decline paired with and partly created by inequality, uncertainty of roles, destruction of fatherhood and the incessant division created by the elite to convince men and women they are enemies rather than complimentary to one another. Until that gets fixed, nothing will. Because the motivation to be a contributing, productive member of society dwindles the more and more we fall into this "I don't need no man" and "I'm going my own way" nonsense. But each is a reaction. Created by a set of conditions whether real or imaginary. When I saw imaginary I'm referring to manufactured outrage and deviance to further the ends of the elite by destroying families and convincing those people they would be better off alone or without them.
@RicardoGonzalez-om7dk
3 жыл бұрын
Blockchain DAO’s I believe would help facilitate this vision, especially concerning matters of the national treasury. Very well done video👍🏻
@iainmair485
3 жыл бұрын
Modern technology can assist in the assembly of people, for anarchist purposes.
@yveltheyveltal5166
4 жыл бұрын
It's very respectable that you keep responding here despite the video being 5 years old. Do you have any plans for new videos of this nature?
@a.n.l.aantineoliberalismas4504
4 жыл бұрын
He said he will in another response
@popsickle3549
3 жыл бұрын
I’m a bit confused. In anarcho-syndicalism, do business that are worker cooperatives still exist ? I’m saying if there’s still a market. Would the business elect someone to represent them in the industrial Union ? Or does the industrial Union just control every business and plan the economy ?
@spe3dy744
3 жыл бұрын
There would be no businesses in an anarchist, communist society as private property would be abolished and all produce would be given to the people.
@TimoDcTheLikelyLad
2 жыл бұрын
watch the vid FFS, you ignorant.
@cody5630
9 жыл бұрын
Anarchy is Autonomy Just to make clear, is the federation like a meeting, where delegation is decided and where direct democracy occurs?
@PragmaticOptimist
4 жыл бұрын
What about arrow's impossibility theorem though? It proves that collective decision making isn't possible.
@anisau
4 жыл бұрын
Arrow's impossibly theorem does not in fact prove that collective decision making is impossible. (If it did, an empirical approach to political science would justify our rejecting it as idealist bullshit.) Arrow's impossibility theorum refers only to situations in which voters have three or more options to decide between, and states that no RANKED VOTING ELECTORAL SYSTEM* can convert the ranked preferences of individuals into a community-wide ranking while also meeting a specified set of criteria: unrestricted domain, non-dictatorship, Pareto efficiency, and independence of irrelevant alternatives. (*Note the restricted subject to which the predicate terms refer.) Rather than demostrating that collective decision making isn't possible (as your question suggests), it demostrates ONLY that ranked preference voting can't be used as a mechanistic panacea that would obviate the necessity of politics as a field of social contestation. If anything, it suggests that democratic politics, defined as the justice of universal participation in deliberating on that which affects us in common is a vital constituent of the Good and the only regime in which individual autonomy can achieve its maximal unfolding. But I would like to thank you for your contribution to this debate. 15 minutes ago I had never heard of Arrow's impossibility theorum. But it only took 5 minutes following up the links on Wikipedia to see the error in thinking that prompted your question. So we've both learnt something and everyone's a winner! Do come again!
@gabitheancient7664
2 жыл бұрын
I just realized that kinda looks like ancient athenience direct democracy, but more inclusive, I think at least
@jnanashakti6036
11 ай бұрын
As an American, hearing the term libertarian socialism caught me off guard for second lol
@anisau
11 ай бұрын
Yeah, I can understand that. There are a number of political terms (incl. "liberal" and "conservative") that have a a very different feeling to them in North America than in the rest of the world. When I used to teach politics at university, I used to do a classroom exercise with my students where we'd map out historically and geographically how the meanings of specific words shifted during the 19th and 20th centuries. Even the word "democracy" is understood by most people now in a way that was very different to how it was understood during the French Revolution or when the US constitution was drafted. It was understood then (c.1789) in a way that was broadly similar to what the Ancient Greeks would have understood. However, since WW2 it has come to be attached to the act of voting to elect people (rather than voting directly to decide an issue). The ancient Athenians, however, thought of electing someone to office as an aristocratic and anti-democratic method of doing things. They much preferred rotation and/or selection by lot when a standing council needed to be appointed. The problem is that it is rare for these things to even be taught outside the History department, but the problem has gone on for so long now that political science and political theory in the English speaking world have a vocabulary that floats free and no longer matches that used in history, anthropology and social theory. Back to "libertarian": anarchists only started to be described as "anarchists" in the 1880s. Prior to that, they were described as the "collectivist", "federalist" and "libertarian" wing of the revolutionary movement, as a way of differenciating them from the more centralist and "authoritarian" wing grouped around the ideas of Karl Marx. This way of talking about about the two groups made its way across the Atlantic by way of Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker, and from there to idiots like Murray Rothbard. The reason it got picked up as a right wing term in North America and stuck there is because "conservative" and "liberal" also came to have different meanings in the US than they did in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world. Where Americans say "libertarian", people in Britain and Australia say "neo-liberal" (which is short for "neo-classical liberal").
@user-xk3zf2yj5r
5 жыл бұрын
I'm a capitalist and an imperialist. How am I getting this as recommended. Nice video though. Anarchism is very misunderstood, but this is some crazy stuff.
@anisau
5 жыл бұрын
You're a capitalist and imperialist. Why are you getting this recommended? Maybe because your online handle is "Comrade Stalin"? (Who, incidentally, was also a capitalist and imperialist if understood correctly.) Anyway, thanks for the nice comment about the video. Why describe anarchism as crazy, though? It's just how democracy is supposed to be: direct or not at all.
@user-xk3zf2yj5r
5 жыл бұрын
Lmao, you're probably right
@user-xk3zf2yj5r
5 жыл бұрын
Y'all have a fantastic flag
@anisau
5 жыл бұрын
@@user-xk3zf2yj5r, yep. As a capitalist and imperialist, I thought you might dig the flag.
@user-xk3zf2yj5r
5 жыл бұрын
So by saying that Stalin was a capitalist, you are saying that collectivism is capitalism?
@mativonburrata
5 жыл бұрын
Anarcho-syndicalism injected with the idea of liquid democracy would be an interesting concept.
@anisau
5 жыл бұрын
Thanks for the suggestion. I just looked it up. I have to say that, to the extent that it cedes deliberative power to a nominated delegate (which is a very different use of the term "delegate" that anarchists intend), it is not a form of democracy at all, just as representative democracy is not a genuinely democratic form. Both are species of oligarchy. That aside, the management of preferences through multiple tiers, and how the breadth of derivative scope is to be managed, to determine just who has authority to carry deliberative power on which particular issues for certain others brings a level of complexity that is problematic. A similar issue exists with the arguments of those who advocate for multiple rival blockchain currencies competing against each other. The effort that needs to be invested on making informed choices within the confines of such a system quickly becomes overwhelming. And where choice is overwhelming, the functioning of the system as a whole becomes opaque, and this opacity becomes an issue of transparency and therefore legitimacy. If anarchist federation, which is the organisational basis for anarcho-syndicalism, is to be coupled with anything, it seems best to me that it be coupled with the sort of economic planning set out be Cornelius Castoriadis in his (1953-55) titled "On the content of Socialism", which outlines a planned economy, but doesn't preclude markets for goods and services at the point of individual consumption.
@mativonburrata
5 жыл бұрын
@@anisau I find the idea of direct democracy or as you put it yourself *democracy in the video, I find it hard to conceive that ordinary people would work 8 hours a day and after that go to a local council and talk about local governing issues like where to put new conduits or how much percentages a yearly budget would need to be put into education. Liquid democracy as I understand the concept is a system of delegators and delegates whereby all whom are entitled to vote can at any moment remove their delegated votes if the delegate is irresponsible. If someone exceeds in handling issues concerning education for example, they might have 19000 delegating votes one day, and the next day media exposes them for being corrupt loosing all their delgated votes. I find direct democracy, or *democracy, as a concept very interesting, but we also have to realize that most people are tired after working 8 hours a day.
@scottishbananaclan
2 жыл бұрын
You should upload again
@GuestDude_HandlesAreDumb
9 жыл бұрын
Excellent video, mate. Well done.
@Backwardsman95
4 жыл бұрын
Is it fair to say that the primary difference between ancoms and anarcho-syndacalists is just the removal of all heirarchical forms versus most of them?
@anisau
4 жыл бұрын
Just spotted your question. Anarchist communists and anarcho-syndicalism are not discrete terms. You may find people who, quite reasonably claim to be both. Some may opt for one term over another as a question of emphasis. Some people are definitely one and not the other. In short, the terms address different questions. Anarcho-syndicalism is a strategy for revolution achieved through the creation of unions organised on specifically anarchist principles. Anarcho-communism describes a particular post-revolutionsry social organisation that gets rid of money and distributes goods via free appropriation from communal stores. Personally, am not an anarcho-communist (or at least not in that "money is the root of all evil" sense). I do however understand anarchism as a species of socialism. I think it is a mistake to see politics primarily in economic terms, or to privilege the economic over the political. Economics is important. But it is a separate and distinct value sphere. Socialism should be understood primarily as a question of democracy and its extension to all areas of social life. That is what makes me an anarchist.
@ashleigh3021
4 жыл бұрын
How can you possibly remove all “hierarchical forms”? From the fact that mental and physical traits are normally distributed, and markets provide the best returns of any organisational method, how could it logically follow that we should “remove” “hierarchical forms”?
@anisau
4 жыл бұрын
@@ashleigh3021, You've posted two questions, a mere 40 words yet the amount of stuff you get wrong (i.e.the assumptions and false premises underlying those two questions) is profound. The reason no one has responded in four days is that the sheer quantity of words and the time wasted setting you straight in a detailed and coherent way is hardly worth anyone's effort. So, I'm just going to state very broadly some of the problems with your questions and the things they assume. 1. Firstly, you misinterpreted the phrasing of someone's question (one thatI responded to) as the statement of contention. You're thus taking issue with a contention no one has articulated and no one cares to defend because to do so it would give credence to a mischaracterisation. 2. The empirical perspective you adopt ("mental and physical traits normally distributed") is hopelessly naive. I appreciate you are implying a distinction btw the empirical and concrete on the one hand and the ideal and abstract on the other in order to suggest you inhabit the real world and your ideological opponents indulge in fantasies, but anyone who has studied any history and philosophy of science, yet alone any philosophy, will immediately be able to point out how the empirical perspective is shot through with idealist constructions (e.g. the abstract nature of numbers, the constructed nature of any ordering, the ideal origin of the values that render ordinal representations meaningful and so permit them to be interpreted as hierachies). Unbeknownst to you, the very premises of your questions militate against tropes you would employ in rhetorical defense of the ideology you inhabit. 3. You presume a natural relationship between individual aptitides and traits and their corresponding market outcomes that would render economic inequality just, as if there were some natural proportionality between the two, when all the evidence suggests that private property serves to amplify whatever differences are initially attributable to individual variability. Whats more, under conditions of multi- generational inheritance, wealth tends to shield lack of aptitude or talent from economic penalty. The idea that economic success is intrinsically linked to talent is a contention that presumes what it sets out to prove, i.e. the laughable contention that capitalism somehow expresses itself as meritocracy. 4. "Markets provide the best returns of any organisational method"? Returns to whom? Under what conditions? And in what aspects of life? There are at least six highly differentiated, quasi-autonomous value spheres operative in modern society, of which the economy is only one. (The others are law, religion, art, politics and science/technology.) Each has it's own medium and dynamics. An economic fundamentalism that seeks to impose the values and dynamics of the market onto these other value spheres not only results in the emiseration of great swathes of the working class, it results in corruption and injustice in the sphere of law, mediocrity and cliche in the sphere of art, reduced innovation in the sphere of science and technology (which requires other, non-market forms of investment if the risk of failure in the more radical and speculative research fields is to be overcome and they are to yield the profound advances we have become accustomed to, especially in the biological sciences), hypocricy and mystification in the sphere of religion, and corruption and oppression in the sphere of politics. 5. To push to the logical consequence of your presuppsitions, if inequality is an innocuous and benign outcome of freedom, why limit it to the economic sphere. Why not extend it to the legal sphere and the political sphere? Why stop at capitalism? Why not opt for fascism or some other form of neo-feudalism? Surely if you are committed to freeing the potential for unequal economic outcomes from the egalitation limitations law and politics impose upon it, then respect for the boundaries of these different spheres of life is just another idealist prejudice. Now thay you've been given some things to think about, lets answer your initial question. Anarchists don't think they can remove all hierarchies. We have no interest in hierarchies of artistic taste for example, which we (along with everybody else) understand to be intrinsically contestable. Yet we do, absolutely and unapologetically, seek to destroy political hierarchies. We also seek economic equality as necessary and coterminous with political equality. But even here our approaches vary: we seek arithmetic equality in politics and law, and proportional equality (based on need) in economics. This is because we realise that some inequalities cannot be removed, but only mitigated via proportional treatment. Hence the following maxim: To each according to his needs; from each according to his abilities. If we can achieve this, true diversity, such as the diversity of taste and talent, and the internal diversity to be achieved through cultivation of different aspects of the personality will be able to manifest themselves in everyone, not just the wealthy few who can combine plenitude with leisure. Those who see and seek difference primarily in terms of wealth and the status it confers all to often tend to be stupid, barbaric and little philistines, no matter how big their car and how expensive their taste in whiskey. In think we (and you) can be better than that...
@ashleigh3021
4 жыл бұрын
"Firstly, you misinterpreted the phrasing of someone's question (one thatI responded to) as the statement of contention. You're thus taking issue with a contention no one has articulated and no one cares to defend because to do so it would give credence to a mischaracterisation." I didn't misinterpret anything. I asked a fairly simple question related to the original comment, I didn't say he specifically held that assumption. YOU were the one who misinterpreted me. "The empirical perspective you adopt ("mental and physical traits normally distributed") is hopelessly naive. I appreciate you are implying a distinction btw the empirical and concrete on the one hand and the ideal and abstract on the other in order to suggest you inhabit the real world and your ideological opponents indulge in fantasies, but anyone who has studied any history and philosophy of science, yet alone any philosophy, will immediately be able to point out how the empirical perspective is shot through with idealist constructions (e.g. the abstract nature of numbers, the constructed nature of any ordering, the ideal origin of the values that render ordinal representations meaningful and so permit them to be interpreted as hierachies). Unbeknownst to you, the very premises of your questions militate against tropes you would employ in rhetorical defense of the ideology you inhabit." You don't need to understand obscure philosophy of science debates to perform the scientific method, you just do science. Trained scientists do it every day, it's not hard. If other systems were better at removing error, bias, wishful thinking etc (as the scientific method does) we would use them, but we don't for a reason - because the scientific method is the best method of arriving at the truth ever developed. "You presume a natural relationship between individual aptitides and traits and their corresponding market outcomes that would render economic inequality just, as if there were some natural proportionality between the two, when all the evidence suggests that private property serves to amplify whatever differences are initially attributable to individual variability. I don't presume anything, I can testify that other people (i.e. countless psychometricians and behavioural geneticists over a period of 100 years, through countless different psychometric test batteries) have performed sufficient due diligence to arrive at measurements such that we can claim that mental traits, along with physical traits are normally distributed. Of course private property amplifies differences in ability, that's the point. Capable people demonstrate their capability and acquire resources, that increases inequality and have existed since time immemorial. People have demonstrated preference for it since before the Bronze Age. "under conditions of multi- generational inheritance, wealth tends to shield lack of aptitude or talent from economic penalty. The idea that economic success is intrinsically linked to talent is a contention that presumes what it sets out to prove, i.e. the laughable contention that capitalism somehow expresses itself as meritocracy." Exactly the opposite is true - wealth doesn't mitotically divide itself, because we see regression to the mean occur, which is perfectly normal and what we would predict given knowledge of behavioural genetics and statistics. Most families lose a large proportion of their wealth by the 3rd-4th following generation because of that fact. Of course, we still tend to see retention of wealth and resources because intelligence, conscientiousness and industriousness are mostly heritable. "Markets provide the best returns of any organisational method"? Returns to whom? Under what conditions? And in what aspects of life? To the people who contribute to them. Natural selection existing doesn't somehow disprove that. "There are at least six highly differentiated, quasi-autonomous value spheres operative in modern society, of which the economy is only one. (The others are law, religion, art, politics and science/technology.) Each has it's own medium and dynamics." Reality is made up of multiple dimensions, and the abilities of individuals and groups determine the properties of systems, always and everywhere. Evolutionary laws do not change, and the communist false promise of escape from them has never happened. "An economic fundamentalism that seeks to impose the values and dynamics of the market onto these other value spheres" You're talking about rule of law vs discretion. If you have rule of law then you don't have those things, because the full scope of property is protected and immoral behaviour is prosecuted. Rule of law is not possible without private property, so again, you're contradicting yourself. "To push to the logical consequence of your presuppsitions, if inequality is an innocuous and benign outcome of freedom, why limit it to the economic sphere. Why not extend it to the legal sphere and the political sphere? Why stop at capitalism? Why not opt for fascism or some other form of neo-feudalism? Surely if you are committed to freeing the potential for unequal economic outcomes from the egalitation limitations law and politics impose upon it, then respect for the boundaries of these different spheres of life is just another idealist prejudice." You're right, that's why I do advocate rule of law, market fascism and ethnocentrism, because it's the most eugenic and optimal system for a polity ever developed, and nothing you advocate would ever survive in the market against it (hence why it never has survived against it, isn't widespread currently and never will be).
@dopentight
3 жыл бұрын
What I don't understand is how an anarchosyndicalist society could hope to protect itself from external threats. Military is a necessity, and itself necessitates central leadership.
@anisau
3 жыл бұрын
Anarcho-syndicalism aims to create an anarchist society not an anarcho-syndicalist society. Syndicalism means unionism. Anarcho-syndicalism is anarchist unionism and is a strategy for preparing for a revolutionary attempt. Regarding your military question, the answer can be gained by examining the structures and practices of the militia contributed by the CNT during the civil war in Spain in 1936. In short, members of the militia elected their officers, and developed the coordinating structure from the bottom up rather than an exercise of authority from the top down.
@realchoodle
4 жыл бұрын
where can i learn this stuff? where did you research?
@anisau
4 жыл бұрын
Where can you learn this stuff? I recommend two books to start with. You can probably follow your nose after that, as there are plenty of books available, and there is plenty on the internet. Daniel Guerin "Anarchism" (1970), (also published as "Anarchism: From Theory to Practice") is my favourite book to recommend to people just getting to grips with anarchism for the first time. It is a sound general introduction, and doesn't fall into the trap of looking a great theorists at the expense of the historical context and anarchism as movement of the popular classes (I.e. not just the working class but the peasantry, which were vital to the movement for example in Spain and Ukraine). You can find it in pdf here: b-ok.global/book/913250/817c8e Guerin has also published a useful reader of primary texts. I also recommend Rudolf Rocker's "Anarcho-syndicalism: theory and practice" (1936). This book is divided into chapters on history and theory. I'd just stick to the theory on a first read through. b-ok.global/book/962741/372f06 For sure, read as much anarchist stuff as you can, esp. Proudhon and Bakunin, but also read more widely. If you don't (a) you can't be sure anachism is the best approach to politics (which it is, but you want to be sure), and (b) you will never win the arguments you will inevitably get into with others (since the only way to really win an argument is to know more about your interlocutors' positions than they know themselves). So, read some history of political philosophy (Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Paine, Bentham, Mill). Read the Greeks, but not just Plato and Aristotle, but also Thucydides and Herodotus. Why? Because of all the political ideologies, only anarchism desires to institute democracy as the Ancient Athenians would have recognised and understood it, and Plato and Aristotle were both hostile to democracy. Read some history, particularly the French Revolution (anarchism emerges out of the unfinished business of the French revolution). Read Marx, but learn what anarchists find useful in Marx and what we reject. Read some sociology and social theory, both the classics (Durkheim, Weber, Marx, Ellias, Freud, E.P. Thompson), and some newer stuff (Castoriadis, Heller, Foucault, Habermas, Luhmann). Read Kant. Yeah, he can be boring, but he's important, esp. if you read Marx and Nietzsche and youbwant to read them critically. Read Schiller's book on Aesthetic Education (it's not about aesthetics but about politics and the French Revolution). Just fuckin read as much as you can. None of the time spent will be wasted.
@realchoodle
4 жыл бұрын
Anarchy is Autonomy Thank you so much comrade!
@IcePhoenixMusician
2 жыл бұрын
Do you ever plan on making more videos? This video was very helpful, and I understand the theory much better than before (where previously I had minimal knowledge.). Besides that, I’m not sure if this question has already been stated, but what sort of response would an anarcho-syndicalist society be able to have in response to a form of counter revolution? The main argument I’ve heard against anarchism is that it seems to lack the ability to coordinate a way to defend itself against would-be capitalists.
@anisau
2 жыл бұрын
I've got an hour long presentation on anarcho-syndicalism and the IWA that I need to fix the audio on. It was part of a presentation given at the invitation of Liberté Ouvrière journal in November, which I plan to post as soon as I find the time to fix it. In it I spend some time explaining how the commonly accepted public understanding of the term "democracy" was subject to change between 1790 and 1835, and that this had a direct effect on Proudhon's decision to describe himself as an anarchist in 1840, despite his politics clearly being democratic. I'm impatient to get this out there because I'm keen to arm people to critique the common misconception of democracy I'm especiallt sick of reading how the 6 Jan. 2021 insurrection by Trump's supporters was an attack on democracy. Certainly it was an attack on electoral representationalism within a state governed by parliamentary institutions, and of course Trump and the other fucktards involved are a first class shitcunts, but the middle class handwringing irks me as missing a number of key points. Electoral representatonalism is not democracy. The ancient Athenians understood this. Even the drafters of the US constitution understood this. (James Madison stated so explicitly.) Yet the historical amnesia and muddled thinking that affects (a) academic historians and political scientists and (b) their current and former students working in the media and in public policy roles is extraordinary and profound. That misunderstanding has as near to universal acceptance as it is possible to get. It's taught in schools and repeated ad nauseum in our newspapers and TV bulletins. It is what Castoriadis would describe as a cardinal social-imaginary signification; a foundation stone of our current Western liberal ideology so deeply entrenched as to be almost unquestionable. Talking about it typically meets with embarrassed incomprehension because it not only undermines the accepted worldview everybody shares, it throws into question the self image of one's interlocutors as lucid adults who have a rational and correct grasp of the world they inhabit. In terms of human psychology, it's much easier to dismiss someone who questions such a pervasively held view as a crank, conspiracy theorist or a philosophical romantic with their head in the clouds. Yet, I don't think the contemporary situation in the US, for example, can be understood without abandoning that misconception. Democracy, rightly understood, is coming together on the basis of equality to deliberate on what is common. This is not what goes on when and elected elite deliberate in a parliamentary setting, regardless of whether they are selected by plebiscite or not. A parliament is an oligarchy (oligos = few; arche = rule) and they deliberate in a chamber in the absence of the demos (people) they purport to represent. When a demos is not present at deliberations, it cannot be said to have a grasp on power (kratos = "grasp" and only signifies "power" via secondary derivation). Representative parliamentarianism is therefore logically, etymologically and historically something other than democracy. Electoral representationalism, as an institution, has always been much closer to fascism than people realise. Fascists too make a claim to being representative, even if the supposedly "authenic" people they claim to represents a narrowly circumscribed fantasy of national rebirth. In imagining the demos in idealised terms, and imagining themselves as the authentic representative of that demos and its interests, fascist leaders clothe themselves in the language of democracy as a method of political legitimation. But they can only do this if the discourse of representationalism is both available and sufficiently pervasive for cooperation. The fact is that the US, like most other places in Western modernity, is not a democracy, but a liberal oligarchy. The attack on the Capitol was not an attack on democracy per se but an attack on the liberal culture that balances out the authoritarian structure of governmental institutions and enables the elites that govern from them to share power by contesting periodic elections. None of the column inches currently wasted in analysing those events correctly capture this. They all conflate democracy with representation and so fail to recognise participation as democracy's true essence. Why is this? I think the answer is structural. Our society is just as invested in dividing people into experts and clients, managers and executants, politicians and citizens as it is in dividing people into bosses and workers. The media commentariat's place in the order of things relies on maintaining these distinctions as right and proper. And so their perennial misrepresentation of democracy as representative rather than participatory extends from this as a natural consequence. What is the anarcho-syndicalist response? To continually point out that if we lived in a democracy things would be different and to continue to offer a strategy for revolution that will achieve a genuine democracy.
@nicholaswelsch-lehmann3152
4 жыл бұрын
very helpful video! thanks for explaining - I am looking at this for the first time I guess what I'm not understanding is that what you seem to be describing is a system of government, but not an economic system. Is there a reason why this system and capitalism can't coexist, and why they are mutually exclusive? I realize there are other ways to organize the allocation of economic resources other than capitalism - to be clear I'm not interested in hearing about all the ways that other systems are better than capitalism, or anything like that. Is capitalism necessarily obviated through anarcho-syndicalism? Why? Couldn't government be organized according to the above and then people just go to work in the morning as they normally do?
@anisau
4 жыл бұрын
Anarchism grows out of, and is part of the socialist tradition. However, while economics is an important question, it is only of secondary importance in the order of things. Politics is primary. Yet people make the error of seeing economics as primary. Why? Here are three reasons. 1. Poverty highlights real needs. Socialism has always sought to solve economic questions because they are of pressing concern to the popular classes (i.e. the peasantry and the working class). (But the solutions are primarily through political action. Politics is cardinal and the source of solutions, despite the pressing nature of social needs satisfied through economic endeavors.) 2. Marxism's emphasis on materialism as a perspective on the social world has had lasting influence, nor lest because materialism has (justifiably) become the dominant mode of social analysis within the social sciences. It accounts for much that pertains to human motivation and technique. (Politics needs to take it into account. But politics as the sphere of social conversation and cooperation comprehends the economic, b not the other way around.) 3. It is useful for people in positions of power and authority to stave off political congestion by framing debates in economic terms. It allows them to constrain debate to options that don't challenge their institutional position while also projecting the illusion that their are no other options, because the status quo or object of their agenda is economically necessary. (The necessity is always "all other things being equal". The illusory necessity of any particular economic regime functions to hide its real contingency in the face of changes to the political regime.) You also asked why not capitalism. The reason is that it is essentially undemocratic. It is also essentially exploitative. Bosses may exploit their workers to a lesser or greater degree. But the fact of exploitation is intrinsic to capitalism. The right of property ownership, whether of land, industrial premises, or licensing of legally protected knowledge, gives its proprietor power to exact a premium from the labour of others, a premium which if reinvested, confers increased power to extract value from others' labour. Capitalism is at bottom a question of power, and that power manifests as a specific form of relationship between classes. At bottom, capitalists are able to exploit workers because capital is not democratically controlled. It is a question of politics, not simply of economics. Anarchists are those socialists who wish to extend democracy -i.e. direct participatory democracy, not electoral representationalism, which is oligarchic, and falsely called democratic - to every institution of society.
@a.n.l.aantineoliberalismas4504
4 жыл бұрын
@@anisau I see your point ime not an anarchist my self more of a socialist but I support all leftists ideologues
@oudeisss
2 жыл бұрын
thanks for the video! really helpful :)
@GordonMcWilliams
5 жыл бұрын
Nice video :)
@frost3840
Жыл бұрын
Thank you for the great presentstion. I'm writing down a fantasy world, where there is anarcho-syndicalst commune in place. The problem is struggle with is, what if the delegates can't come to an understanding?
@anisau
Жыл бұрын
Thank you for your kind words. In responce to your question, there is not and cannot be any such thing as an anarcho-syndicalist commune. "Syndicate" is one of the words the French use for "union" (as in "trade union" or workers' industrial union"). Certainly, you can have an anarchist commune. (The planet of Annaris in Ursula Le Guin's book, "The Dispossessed", is supposed to be exactly that.) But the idea of an anarcho-syndicalist commune isn't a logical one, since anarcho-syndicalism implies a particular relationship of struggle against the institutions of capitalism. The idea of an anarchist commune implies the members have escaped that relationship (possibly by revolt, rebellion or successful revolution, which is the end goal of anarcho-syndicalism). Please understand that the structures of anarcho-syndicalist organisations described in the video do not refer to an ideal future world. It describes how the member unions within the International Workers' Association (IWA-AIT) organise and relate to each other today, and have done since 1922. I suggest you research the IWA-AIT and look at the aims and principles of the IWA and it's members. This will help you understand how these organisations work, how the run their congresses (which are periodic events rather than standing councils), and how they reach agreement and mediate disagreement. Also, I've responded to these questions a number of times in the comments to this video, and am certain that if you explore those comments you will find answers to the questions you'd seek answers to. One more thing. Rather than merely write some utopian or distopian fantasy about a mythical future world, there is plenty of grist for context in the present struggles between the revolutionary unions of the IWA-AIT and the reformist and authoritarian factions have been forced to split off in recent years when their attempts to gain control of the IWA and its member federations have failed (or in Italy, Germany, Argentina and parts of Spain succeeded). You might also draw some inspiration from the democracies of Ancient Greece, since the anarchist ideal draws strongly on the idea of direct democracy. If you do this, it pays to he very careful about understanding the relationship between democracy and slavery in Athens. Much research fails to understand that the great majority of Athenian citizens were too poor to own slaves, and in fact that democracy emerged as part of a class revolt during a period when poorer citizens were at risk of being permanently sold off into slavery when they couldn't pay their debts. To get a good understanding on this issue and how it affects contemporary scholarship, it is worth reading what Cornelius Castoriadis has to say on the issues. His writings are freely available in English translation through the Not.Bored website. Good luck with your book!
@frost3840
Жыл бұрын
@@anisau I will certainly use the information you provided, but just to explain myself a bit here, the reason I used the word "Commune", was because the software I use to visualise my world does not have a closer category to represent a syndycalist movement :) Of course you're right, that the word isn't accurate, but that's the reason I used it haha
@johnw3540
4 жыл бұрын
Strange woman lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
@anisau
4 жыл бұрын
Well, but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
@oppslopper3017
2 жыл бұрын
Are we going to cover the individualist movement in the federations? Think for yourselves lads, we've been lied to.
@anisau
2 жыл бұрын
1. How can an individualist federate? Answer: by joining a group. Why? Because federations are, by definition, comprised of groups. If an individualist seeks to federate, is he still an individualist? I think not. Autonomy has two aspects, individual AND collective. They are two sides of the same coin. And an individualist is, quite literally, a halfwit. Think about it. If individualists could organise themselves into movement, as your question implies, they could only do so through some mode of collective action, since collective action is what constitutes a movement. Those who think of themselves as individualists tend to be fools who can't open their mouths without contradicting themselves. I think your question demonstrates this admirably. 2. Regarding your exhortation to (*ahem*) think for oneself, you mention having been lied to. Who do you think has lied to you? And why do you think this?
@sonnyjim5268
3 жыл бұрын
I have a number of questions but I'll ask just one - what is meant by equality? I'm sure you are not advocating equality of outcome but equality in the sense of one man, one vote. There it ends, correct?
@anisau
3 жыл бұрын
Feel free to ask as many questions as you want. Regarding equality, the video is specific to how the IWA, which is an international federation of workers unions that organise and struggle according to anarchist principles operate today. Because we are talking about the governance of institutions, equality is interpreted with this frame of reference, i.e. formal equality. You suggest the metaphor of "one man, one vote" as a possible means of interpreting it. This is reasonable enough, however in practice, it is "one section, one vote" at congress. Sections (i.e. each local union) do not necessarily have the same number of people, our local unions tend to operate on a consensus basis when forming positions. But essentially the interpretation of equality applicable here is formal equality. When you ask about equality of outcomes, you are stepping out of the frame of reference of the video and perhaps talking about the sort of post-revolution society we hope one day to realise. It would make sense to ask about whether or not equality of outcome would be realised in that context. The honest response is "it depends" and "it would vary from pace to place depending on what the different people in those places sought to achieve". There are different positions held by anarchists on these issues. The two classical positions are the collectivist position which seeks equal pay for equal hours worked regardless of job role, and the anarcho-communist position which tends to seek abolition of money and free appropriation on the basis of need from communal stores. Following Aristotle, we can call these "arithmetic" and "proportional" equality respectively. In practice, the collectivist position has tended to be moderated towards proportional equality by facilitating unequal distribution on the basis of need. Either way, however material distribution of goods is managed, the point is that it is collectively agreed and the basis for that agreement is rigorous and formal (arithmetical) equality between all members of the community. If this sounds like socialism, it is because it is. Anarchism is a type of socialism and has very deep roots deep in the socialist tradition.
@sarahhunter1114
2 жыл бұрын
Interesting. I’ve been identifying more with anarchy lately, but when I use the word, people freak out, so I’m trying to be more specific about my relationship with the philosophy. I’ve wondered how to implement anarchy into real world projects, especially so we can break the backs of corporations by giving workers more stake in their labor. Is it possible? Could we compete with Amazon with a worker led/owned business? Is greed and immorality always going to be a stumbling block to the simplicity of anarchic communities?
@anisau
2 жыл бұрын
The aim of anarchism is revolution, but we understand this revolution in a two-fold sense. Negatively speaking, what we are against is capitalism and the state. Positively, what we are for is the extension of (direct, participatory) democracy to every institution of society. The creation of democracy is (a fortiori) the destruction of the state, because what makes a state a state is that it is a hierarchical and bureaucratic apparatus of power that sits seperate to and above the people it governs. The creation of democracy is the destruction of capitalism, which is is the hierarchical and bureaucratic relationship in which the workers are subordinated to the bosses and shareholders who direct and exploit our labour for profit. Democracy is not voting for leaders to decide for on our behalf. An oligarchy selected by vote is still an oligarchy. No, democracy is the creation and changing of situations so that we can come together on the basis of equality to debate and decide by voting directly on all the issues that affect us in common. You asked about real world projects, so how is this to be achieved in the real world and on a real world scale? Through the strategy of anarcho-sydicalism! The International Workers' Associatiom (IWA-AIT) is a federation of workers unions organised and operating according to anarchist principles. It's aim is to advance and defend workers interests against the capialist and rent-seeking classes today whilst building an organisation capable of carrying through social revolution tomorrow. The key thing is that the organisations federated within the IWA are not waiting for tomorrow to bring democracy into being. To join is to start participating directly and immediately in the project of collective and individual autonomy. Collective and individual autonomy are two sides of the same coin. You cannot achieve a full development of your individual autonomy unless you actively create and participate in social institutions that realise and practice collective autonomy, which is to say democracy in its direct and participatory sense. While the end game all anarchists work towards is social revolution, the extension of (direct, participatory) democracy to all institutions of society, we affirm our autonomy in the here and now by making the attempt to build organisations with this character. Every meeting, every picket and every strike represents an event in which the power of capitalism and the power of the state meet resistance and are made to retreat. Every attempt at organising and extending or organisation further represents the fact of our thinking and acting for ourselves both as individuals and as members of the working class. This is what makes it a real world project. The revolution isn't some far off all-or-nothing event. The revolution is all of the steps on the way to and through and past any single climax of struggle. And nothing that we do to support each other through the organisation and militancy of an anarcho-syndicalist organisation is wasted. This is what makes it realistic as a long-term strategy for revolution. The benefits of participation are direct and rewarding despite the distance to our end goal. The values, actions and forms of relationship, (equality, autonomy, solidarity, mutual aid, direct democracy, direct action, federation) that we put into practice today within our organisations are the same values, actions and forms of relationship that will characterise a future anarchist and libertarian socialist society. And nothing builds confidence in oneself and real friendship with others than engaging in a struggle for better wages and conditions or to get sacked workers reinstated or compensated. We don't need the bureaucrats within mainstream unions to tell us how to do these things. We are more creative and achieve better results when we do it for ourselves. We can do without the bosses and the bureaucrats and politicians, but they cannot do without us. That is our strength and our power. All we need to do is think and organise and stand together when we act. We have the tools to do this. They are called anarcho-sydicalism and the IWA-AIT.
@d3athmate
3 жыл бұрын
Hi, Idk if you will respond, I'm 16 and kinda classify myself as anarchist because I HATE capitalism and feel today's democracy(which I also think cannot be called democracy) is weak. I'm pretty new to this and still getting the hangs of the diffrent anarcho and socialist movements. I come from a family that grew up in ussr, and before I was a communist kid, haha, and later in my 11-13 a capitalist because I got bored of the, communism is this, communism is that. Now I don't like the bolshevik/leninist?, stalinist? And maoist ideas and hate any form of capitalism, maybe there are a few I don't know and might like, who knows. So my question is, what books and etc would you suggest for me to understand the diffrent ideologies better without radical propoganda. I also would like to thank you for this explanation because the (direct) democracy was kinda my dream, like I'd always say the democracy in Greece was probably the only democracy in the world, so I liked it a lot when you helped me understand that what I thought was modern democracy was actually the aligarchy that I kinda thought it was. The only thing that caught me off guard, probably I didn't hear it or something, was how would you trade goods/services and would this type of anarchism be for the market? Because I think the market isn't generally a capitalist thing right? Once again, thanks a great lot, and I hope you can help me on my road in understanding these amazing and some not so amazing ideologies. Please don't flame me because as I said, I'm really new to this and half of my friends that began looking into politics are either Marxist or capitalist.
@Noytmer
Жыл бұрын
Welcome Freedom
@austinfranz2941
2 жыл бұрын
I have a question. Let’s just say that anarcho-syndicalism is implemented in the states.. I have a home on about half an acre of land. My family also owns a small construction company that has been around since the early 80’s. Would this political organization strip me of both my home and my families legacy? If the answer is yes, wouldn’t that be a direct violation of my autonomy?
@anisau
2 жыл бұрын
Anarcho-syndicalism is the formation of workers' unions that are organised and which struggle according to anarchist principles. But it is also a strategy for progressing towards libertarian socialist (i.e. anarchist) revolution through the building of mass organisations. The character of the revolution we desire is the extension of direct democracy to every institution of society. This implies the overthrow of capitalism and seizure of the means of production, distribution exchange and communication, which will be collectivised and subject to workers self-management and federated modes of coordination. If revolutionary attempt is successful, the resulting society will be anarchist, not anarcho-syndicalist, because there will be no more need for unions as such. So, to start answering your question, will your family's capitalist enterprise be collectivised? Well that depends upon whether it employs workers motivated to collectivise it. If so, then yes. If not, then no. If the number of non-family employees is very small, then it is unlikely to be collectivised by force. However you will likely face the prospect of your non-family employees abandoning your enterprise to participate in collectivised industry elsewhere. In which case you may find you have a labour problem. But the best way to see what might happen is to look at history. The history of the social revolution in Spain, such took place in the context of the Spanish Civil War 1936‐1939, is instructive. For part of this period the anarchists controlled Catalonia and Aragon and pushed forward with their plans for revolution. Industry and agriculture was collectivised, but it was also the declared policy of the anarchists not to collectivise the farms of peasant families by force. Large industrial farms owned by the aristocracy and worked by landless peasants were of course collectivised, but most small holdings were not forcibly collectivised. Admittedly, the situation was messy and in some areas small holders were not given a choice. But many small holders did voluntarily chose to collectivise. Some did it out of conviction, others did it because collectivisation enabled them to have access to the farm machinery they needed bit world otherwise have not been able to afford. As tome went on, those that initially held out against it chose to collectivise, because without doing so, they were not integrated integrated into the new direct democratic and federated political structures and had no influence in community decision-making. So, if your family's business is small enough, it will likely not be collectivised forcibly, however in the new post-revolutionary situation you may eventually find yourself compelled to choose collectivisation because it is in your interests to do so. Is this to impinge on your autonomy? From an individualist perspective that asserts the primacy of personal property rights, then Yes. But not in any way that is different to how social, political and economic forces impinge upon your autonomy already (or how you impinge upon the autonomy of the workers whose labour you exploit when you hire someone). After all, there is nothing natural or inevitable about the economy you operate in or the laws of the state you operate under. Is this individualist perspective philosophically defensable? No. Why? Because it is founded on a naive realism that, in terms of the history of philosophy, is about 170 years out if date and is subject to an understanding of autonomy that is narrow, blinkered, self-cotradictory and (ultimately) wrong. Not that you should feel bad about this. It's basically was everyone thinks until 6 weeks into their first university course on anthropology, politics, sociology, psychology, social theory or philosophy. If you didn't go to university, or you studied something different, like engineering or chemistry, you may not had opportunity to get acquainted with this stuff. But I promise you, if you really want to argue with random cunts on the internet, you'll do yourself a big favour by spending a couple of spare hours reading up about social constructionism from the perspective of the history and philosophy of science and neo-kantianism in philosophy. If after that you want to come back for an argument about the ins and outs of rival political philosophies, I'll be here.
@hospod163
6 жыл бұрын
Which group votes for the delegates? Will every factory have its own delegate? I am kind of stuck on the scope of the delegations. And also is free association of the federation meant like you don't have to participate in the federation?
@anisau
6 жыл бұрын
Good questions. But first a preliminary comment. Many of the people asking questions here presume that the presentation relates to a plan for a future society. It does, but only as a secondary implication. First and foremost, the principles outlined in the presentation describe how the IWA and its member sections operates TODAY. We want to translate these modes of organisation to society by one day pulling off a revolution, but I think it is important not to lose sight of the text that this is how the anarchist unions that make up the IWA work in the here and now. You asked which group votes for delegates. My answer is that that local groups select delegates for a range of tasks (i.e. any role the group agrees is needed and which the scope mandated responces and perogatives is defined. The score of anything the group agrees is appropriate). The task could be maintaining a website or keeping an eye on incoming emails, for example, or any other job. One of the critical jobs is representing the group at regional or national congresses when these are held. Congresses are periodic (biannual, annual or biennial defending on the level). It is a mistake to think of congresses as some sitting body of decision makers. (I'll explain this further in a moment.) Being one of a group's mandated delegates to congress is typically a matter of rotation rather than election. With election, the same people might go every time. But, we don't want that. We want different people every time. This is very important. (Plus, we always send more than one, so they can keep an eye on each other, and so we know they aren't overstepping their mandate.) What's also important to grasp is that the delegates are not decision makers. Decisions making (i.e. the defining of the group's position for our against proposals on the congress's agenda), is done the local level by everyone in the group. The delegates are simply tasked with communicating accurately the group's position. These positions for our against proposals are tallied at congress, and each proposal either passes or does not. This is how we maintain direct democracy in the context of federation. Note this might seem like a terribly convoluted way of arriving as decisions, but most of the activity that takes place is simply done autonomously at the local level. We want initiative to reside with local groups and are careful not to overburden ourselves with federal obligations. So this is how things often work: Local groups come up with initiatives that they put into practice themselves. Some of these work. Some of them don't. It's all trail and error. If initiatives do work, then other groups tend to hear about them and give them a go too. If the success continues, it might be wise to organise a working group with a federal mandate to coordinate the new intitative. Why? Because it might warrant financial support through the federation, and/or it might be desirable for regular reporting to take place through congress and the federation's newsletters. If so, it will be at this point that proposals in support of elevating the initiative will be put on the agenda for the next congress. I hope this helps.
@NateFredricksen
6 жыл бұрын
Wonderful, thank you. How do you feel about Sociocracy as an organizational method, and would a synthesis with anarcho-syndicalism be possible?
@anisau
6 жыл бұрын
Nate Fredricksen, thanks for the kind words. Regarding any possible synthesis between anarcho-syndicalism and sociocracy (at least as elaborated by Endenburg) at a holistic level, I’d say ‘no’, no synthesis is possible. However, breaking sociocracy down analytically, and asking whether some elements might be considered complimentary, then I’d give a guarded ‘yes’, but suggest democratically organised groups do those things anyway, without necessarily making those elements conceptually explicit. At a holistic level, anarcho-syndicalism and Endenburgian sociocracy are incompatible. Anarcho-syndicalism is anarchist unionism aimed at revolution, but seeks to achieve this by promoting worker’s interests and rights today, and so building its organisational capacity. It does contain within it a method of organisation that can act as a structure for the formation of a post-revolutionary, direct-democratic and federalist society, but at that point it would cease to be a form of unionism and just become anarchist federalism fully realised. My reading of Endenburgian sociocracy, by contrast, is that its model of dynamic governance that seeks to create harmony within more narrowly conscribed organisations. Yes, it is orientated towards consultation and ultimately consent, but it does not dispense with hierarchy. Yes, the seeking of consent makes it less autocratic than other forms of hierarchy, and to that extent it is a step in the right direction, but without dismantling hierarchy, it cannot fully democratise power. It merely endows work teams with a degree of autonomy over the area of work allocated to them by some sort of central committee. It’s possible that one’s “circle” may have representatives on the central committee, or on the mid-level committee that answers to the central committee (which is worse), or on the committee another tier down (which is worse again), and so on. The central committee may be composed of elected or rotated representatives, but in all likelihood they are a board or directors appointed by other processes. Either way, regardless of how the appointment is made, sociocracy seems to me to be predicated on a division between managers and executants (i.e. between managers and workers), by virtue of the fact that the ‘circles’ are organised hierarchically. That makes it bureaucratic at the very least, but also potentially, and many cases actually, capitalist. The best that can be said for it is that it is capitalism with a more human face. I think that this is demonstrated by the way that sociocracy is presented by many of those who promote it as apolitical or politically agnostic. Reading into it more deeply, this prpblem with sociocracy goes back to its original formulation by Auguste Comte in the context of his positivist philosophy. There is a deep link between his desire to find a positive ground for knowledge via an ordering of the sciences, and his hopes for a rationally ordered society directed and managed bureaucratically by scientifically-qualified experts. The question is who has the right to set the direction of the enterprise as a whole (be it company, NGO, or community/nation/society)? Comte’s answer is that the scientifically educated elite should decide. But elite scientists are also essentially specialists, and not necessarily qualified to adjudicate between competing claims made by different areas of speciality. Hence the need to give each disciplinary circle its due, via the right of veto: refusal of consent. But, this is still a vision of a technocratically organised and oligarchic elite. Into this, Endenberg seems to inject an ethical counterpoint premised on the axiom that all workers become experts in the practical minutia of what they do, and therefore makes consent a bulwark against unfettered technocratic autocracy. This is a good thing, but it is essentially reformist in nature, and fails to address the underlying problem, which is the difference in power of social initiative between different social classes as they are organised within the hierarchy of sociocratic circles. I think that the emphasis on minimal reciprocity given articulation in the expression or withholding of consent is a practical and ethical necessity, but it is by no means a feature exclusive to sociocratic organising. All groups based on equality and orientated towards concensus rather than majority tend to work this way when maximal reciprocity in the form of consensus is not practically realisable. They do it, but they may not have conceptualised it explicitly in the way advocates of sociocracy have. That said, I am not certain that Endenbergian sociocracy overcomes the key problem: that the terms of validly for withholding of consent are circumscribed more or less narrowly by reference to the collectively understood mission of the organisation. This returns us to the question of direction setting, and disparities of power within the hierarchy of circles. It seems to me that the harmony sociocracy purports to facilitate can only be achieved in the context of some (necessarily and always) previous determination of organisational mission. As soon as this is put in question, we return to politics as the arena of agon, and the only just method of deliberating in the context of social agon is radical democracy characterised by a thoroughgoing equality between citizens/members/workers. This will likely fall back to some sort of vote, but is at least legitimated by participation. These more existential questions, such as the determination of overall organisational direction, are prior to and therefore beyond the scope of sociocracy. Hence sociocracy’s claim to be able to achievement of harmony is based on a more or less totalitarian premise. Analytically, however, I can appreciate why you might suggest parallels between the methods of organisational consultation Enderburg envisages and anarchist federalism (which is a method of marrying local, democratic autonomy with the need for wider patterns of coordination). Both entertain the need to delegates to represent the views of their fellow workers, and Enderberg, to his credit, does deploy his concept of consent in a way that ensures outcomes are minimally acceptable to all involved. I can see the value in elaborating the concept of consent in this way, and it does mirror the way in which many initiatives within the anarchist groups I’m involved in work in practice. But at a broader scale, sociocracy’s positivist origins mean the great existential question regarding the overall form society is to take (no less admitting everyone to participate in that level of deliberation), are simply beyond it. I think anarchist thought concieved as a meditation on just forms of decision making, can attain to heights of critical social theory in the Kantian sense, as understood by the likes of Jürgen Habermas, Cornelius Castoriadis and Agnes Heller, by which I mean ‘critical’ in the sense of addressing itself to the conditions of possibility of knowledge and the conditions of possibility of free, self-reflexive, autonomous social formations. Sociocracy can’t act as an arena for that. But anarchist federation potentially can. I’ve rabbited on for a bit, but I hope this all makes sense.
@ashleigh3021
6 жыл бұрын
How do you solve the problem of providing incentives to maintain trust and cooperation, and preventing defection from maintaining the high trust norms necessary to sustain civilisation?
@cakebear9534
5 жыл бұрын
The German Empire shall destroy this video because of Syndicalist views
@anisau
5 жыл бұрын
You're a sockpuppet.
@themelancholia
3 жыл бұрын
This is totally legitness.
@janespright
3 жыл бұрын
Are you in favour for keeping money (currency) or get rid of it? What about the markets? What about property? Which kinds of property would exist within this worldview
@anisau
3 жыл бұрын
Anarcho-syndicalism is not a worldview. It's a strategy. Anarchism is a worldview. Anarchists tend to hold two contrasting views on the question of money. The anarcho-communists tend to favour its abolition and replacement by free appropration from communal stores. The other group, called collectivists in the context of this question, see money as a useful medium of comparison and exchange and advocate its retention. Consistent with the abolition of money, and free appropriation from communal resources, anarcho-communists see markets dissolving as a consequence. Collectivists see markets continuing as a spontaneous context of exchange, but see markets subjects to communal (i.e. political) control, mandating wage equality (absolute and based on hours worked, or proportional based on need, or mixed). The key thing is that it will removing labour power from market-based price setting. People will still have personal possessions, by private property over the means of production, distribution, exchange and communication will be abolished in favour of collective control. Liberals will decry this as limiting the prerogatives of the private individual and hence an attach on freedom, however they are typically blind to the fact that freedom has two dimensions: individual autonomy and collective autonomy. Collective autonomy is embodied through participation in collective decision making (i.e. democracy in the direct, participatory sense), and it is the maximisation of collective freedom that anarchists seek to realise. Liberals also mistakenly tend to see individual autonomy and collective autonomy as opposed. They are in fact mutually reinforcing, and one cannot realise the maximisation of individual autonomy without simultaneous investment in the maximisation of collective autonomy, which is its foundation and guarantee. Why are your questions focused on money and markets? And have we met here before?
@itsv1p3r
2 жыл бұрын
ancom doesn't work in reality bc its an oxymoron. it can only exist within the mind of the leftist "intellectual". the simple fact is that you dont derive personal freedom and anarchy out of complete governmental control over the economy. anarchy can only come out of complete rejection of totalitarianism & large concentrations of power, two things that big government socialism/communism cannot coexist with.
@donha475
7 жыл бұрын
Sounds like inception of governments to me!
@anisau
7 жыл бұрын
Judging by your black and yellow flag, it would seem there is much about anarchism you don't understand.
@donha475
7 жыл бұрын
Anarchy is Autonomy Um... I've come to realise that AnCapistan would resemble somewhat of competing monarchs (aka land owners)... If that's what you mean. I think this is preferable to democracy though.. because monarchs would get more wealth by selling land to entrepreneurs and by maximising freedom and economic prosperity in their "country"/property - and would take a long term view of maximising the value of their property for their heirs / children / future generation... democracy is pillage and plunder /mob rule - no meritocracy. The ugly truth. But I would concede that the term "anarcho" doesn't really apply to AnCaps very well but neither does it to AnComs... I don't think There can exist any stable system without leadership / ownership.
@anisau
7 жыл бұрын
AnCap Padawan, "AnCapistan" ? Ha! That's actually quite funny... "Monarchies" of completing landowners... Preferable to democracy? Sounds like you've been reading that Hans-Hermann Hoppe idiot (and he is an idiot)... No serious academic with an interest in these issues takes Hoppe (or any of the goons housed at that vacuous echo chamber known as the Mises Institute) seriously. And I'm surprised that a medical student, such as yourself -- someone whose intended profession exemplifies a commitment to the scientist-practitioner model, and who ought to profess an unshakable commitment to evidence based argument and empirical research -- would repeat the demonstrable falsehoods circulated by that neo-liberal charlatan, merely because you find them congenial to your middle-class worldview. In committing himself to the modes of argumentation indulged in by Ludwig von Meises and the rest of the so called Austrian School, Hoppe has descended into the peddling of fantasies rich enough on detail and internal coherence to fool the odd unwary undergraduate staying from his discipline of choice, but easily exploded by anyone with a little education in modern philosophy and social theory. Hoppe trades in abstraction: what he (like Mises before him) calls "a priori theory". Any student of philosophy knows about Kant's theory of a priori concepts (those fundamental concepts which Kant argued must be innate to the human mind if it is to order and make sense of its experiences, but even the poorest student knows that expounding an a priori account of human action at the level that Hoppe claims for himself is impossible. However what Hoppe (following Mises) asserts is that " a priori theory", as he consieves it, is not only immune to empirical falsifiability (a claim he makes on pages xv-xvi of "Democracy, the God that Failed"), but also capable of acting as a corrective to it. Indeed Hoppe's idea of the division between rational and empirical approaches to understanding the world is not only laughably simplistic, it's 250 years out of date! It's real value is rhetorical, to make those stupid enough to follow him in his elaborations think that they are bulletproof, when in reality, their constructions aren't even castles built of sand; they are castles in the clouds. Pure fantasy! To make matters worse, Hoppe descends into a sort of hysterical moralism, presuming to build a theory of civilisational progress and decline premised on a hopelessly coarse psychology of delayed gratification, which he expounds at the social level in a way that implicates democracy with an incipient barbarism. In doing this he ignores an intimately more subtle and nuanced tradition of philosophical reflection that contrasts civilisation with savagery along one axis, and rates a tendency toward barbarism along a separate axis with culture as barbarism's antipode. Is it ignorance that compels Hoppe to ignore this given it's greater explanitory power and nuance, or just willful blindness to anything that threatens to derail his justifications for plutocracy? Suppose we were to take him seriously, and entertained his claim that monarchy displays a greater tendency for civilisation qua material accumulation, and sought to test it as a hypothesis... Fortunately, a Polish bloke by the name of Jacek Sierpiński has done the work for us in painstaking detail. (Google his name, the article is freely accessible.) What did Sierpiński conclude? That Hoppe's theory lacks any sorry of historical rigor and fails on it's own terms. A conclusion that is not surprising to anyone that knows the history of the 17th and 18th centuries, when the minor princes of German-speaking Europe regularly taxed their subjects into poverty, and when this was no longer enough to support the luxury to which they treated themselves, conscripted the sons of the peasantry into their armies so that the latter could be sold off as mercenaries to fight in wars of imperial expansion on behalf of the larger kingdoms. If you want proof of this, look no further than the biography of the famous German poet and playwrite, Friedrich Schiller. (Hoppe should be aware of his life story. Both Schiller and his friend Goethe are to German literature what Shakespeare is to English.) Hoppe, like all people of his generation would have read Schiller extensively at school. That Hoppe could be ignorant of the facts of Schiller's early life, given the impact it had on his most famous play, is inconceivable. Hoppe is a shameless charlatan and academic imposture of the worst kind. The rubbish he publishes has no basis in fact and only serves as a foil intended to legitimate the depredations of the capitalist and rent-seeking class in the minds of the gullible.
@scytale6
3 жыл бұрын
Delegated decision making works better actually. You CANNOT SAY that parliamentary democracy is oligarchical - that's NOT what research shows.
@BattleNugget
3 жыл бұрын
Hey, not sure if youre still responding to comments here, but I was curious about something. I'm all for imposing the delegation and federation style limits on a democracy, but if that is the main difference between how representative republics and anarcho syndicalism works politically, would it not be easier to reform the system already in place? Or would you view that as a band-aid solution to a bigger problem?
@anisau
3 жыл бұрын
Hi Ethan. Still responding. You seem to have the relationship between some of the terms confused, and I suspect the underlying problem is that the definition of democracy that you are working with is not the same as the one I'm working with. Firstly, federation and delegation are not "limits" on democracy but mechanisms by which democracy can be made to function in large groups (upwards of 100 and potentially in the millions). Secondly, anarcho-syndicalism is not an alternative method of organising society. Anarcho-syndicalism is the anarchist method for organising workers unions democratically. "Syndicate" is the French word for union. Anarcho-syndicalism is not only the anarchist approach to creating unions to fight for better pay and conditions, it is a strategy for revolution in that it is the basis for creating a mass organisation that, through participation, acts to school its members in direct (i.e. genuine participatory) democracy. It is also a form of organisation capable of fighting a revolution should an opportune situation arrise. If anarcho-syndicalist unions create a revolution, our hope is that the forms of democratic organisation learnt by the members within the union can be applied to all institutions of society. The result would not be an anarcho-syndicalist society, but an anarchist society (i.e. a society that is genuinely democratic). Indeed, it couldn't be an anarcho-syndicalist society, because, with workers taking over enterprises and running them democratically, there will be no need for unions, which is a type of organisation that exists to fight capitalism. Liquidate capitalism and unions liquidate themselves as unions. As you may see, an anarchist society is also a socialist society, albeit a particular type of socialism. Now to get to your question about representative republics and the question of revolution or reform... The capitalist states nominally called "democracies" today are not in fact "democracies" . They are states characterised by "electoral representationalism" or "representative parliapentarianism" (which are two terms for the same thing). Yes, the are also "republics" (and even so-called constitutional monarchies like the UK and Denmark are in fact found to be republics if one examines their locus of soverignry through a functionalist lens rather than through a nominalist lens), but they are none are genuine democracies. So why are they called democracies? In short, because of ideology. Ideology works in part by confusing people by mixing up the names of things. (It is rare that you will find an anarchist quoting Confucius, but I will do so now because he was the first philosopher we know of to write explicitly about politics, and he said something very interesting about politics and ideology. Specifically: "that the first political act [i.e. the first act that is necessary if one is to think through the problems of politics in a rational way] is the rectification of names". What he meant is that we words we use to name things are often wrong, and if we are to think and speak clearly, we need to define things properly. Just because everyone (or almost everyone) calls electoral-representative institutions "democratic" doesn't mean they actually are. Imagine this scenario: Let's imagine you got your hands on a time machine and went back to Ancient Greece circa 420 BC and invited the very first bloke you met to travel back with you to the present time to get his opinion on what he saw. If you took said Greek to any capital city - London, Paris, Washington, Tokyo, Delhi, Canberra, Wellington, Jakarta, Buenos Aries, Olso, Stockholm, whereever - and you asked him what he saw taking place in Parliament, or even on election day, the one thing that is certain is that he WOULD NOT describe what he saw before him as "democracy". Any ancient Greek, not just those from Athens, would name what they saw as "oligarchy". They might even call it "aristocracy". But they certainly would not call it "democracy". Let's thank our ancient Greek and drop him back. Now set the dial for 1790, head to Pittsburg or New York and collect any one of the so called American founding fathers, tour them around the world's parliaments and ask them the same question. They would also NOT describe what they saw as "democracy". Republican institutions, certainly. But not democracies. We know this because they said so explicitly, or at least James Madison, James Joll and Alexander Hamilton said so explicitly. In fact they argued for the current US constiturion not because it was democratic, but because it wasn't democratic. (Read the Federalist Papers and you can see this for yourself.) Many (following Montesquieu following Cicero) have called it a mixed constitution - with the President representing monarchy, the Senate representing aristocracy, and Congress representing the democracy - but these are just metaphors. There is a sleight-of-hand that takes place if we mistake the essentially metaphoric nature of representation as being somehow real. This is partly how the ideological illusion opperates by which a "representative institution" is mistaken as somehow really characteristic of that which it represents. Don't fall for it! Learn and underatand how language works. We need language to think with, but if we are not careful, it can distort our thinking in ways we are blind to. So what went wrong with the words "democrat", "democracy" and "democratic"? When the word "demacrat" was originally used in both the modern French and US contexts, it was as an insult to hurl at one's factional enemies, especially those of the more liberal or populist faction. This was because the middle class equated democracy with mob rule. In the US context, it was initially employed in attempt to discredited people by associating them with the lawlessness of the French Revolution. However, as with epithets such as "whig" and "tory", eventually the insult was taken on as a badge of identification by one of the two self-proclaimed "republican" parties (that of James Madison), which adopted the title, "the Democratic-Republican Party". By 1828, the negative associations with the term "democrat" had largely dissipated, such that, after the 1824 split, Andrew Jackson felt confident to simply call his faction "the Democratic Party" tout court. It was only in 1836 that anyone thought to call the general situation in America "democracy", and that was the early sociologist, Alexis de Tocqueville. But he didn't use the term to refer to Amarica's political arrangements, but the "equality of conditions" he found there, specifically equality under the law, or what the Ancient Greeks had called "isonomia". Because of the success of Tocqueville's book on both sides of the Atlantic, people slowly began to refer to the political arrangements in Britain, France and the US as "democracy". But the problem with this is that the US simply isn't a democracy. Demo-kratos is where the people (demos) grasp (kratos) power in a direct and unmediated way. What we have in the US and elsewhere today are systems of electoral representationalism, which is "oligarchy"; an elected few (oligos) act as the origin (archē) of the laws. Now, here is the logic: if we can refer to an oligarchy of one person as "monarchy", then it is not a form seperate to oligarchy, but only its most extreme form. This leaves us with two cardinal forms of government: oligarchy (rule over everyone by a few) and democracy (collective self-rule on the basis of equality). So, what we have in the contemporary world is the absurd situation in which the term for universal and direct collective participation in government (democracy) is used to describe its opposite, rule by a minority (oligarchy). It matters not that this oligarchy is elected and supposedly representative of those it governs. One only needs to look at the different social origins of the elected minority and those they purportedly represent to see it's a lie, completely apart from the fact that in any electoral organisation, decision makers quickly become a class unto themselves, with their own interests. Back to revolution and its necessity: Any attempt to change the status quo will be vigorously resisted by those who benefit from the status quo. They will resist reform. But changing things is not just a question of revolutionary power, it requires a change in mentality from the workers who stand to benefit from change. Oligarchy breeds oligarchic mentalities both amongst the rulers and amongst the ruled. Yet, democracy, i.e. real democracy, requires a will to democracy. Part of the attraction of anarcho-syndicalicalism is that it provides a context in which people can grow their confidence in their own capacity to act democratically and shoulder some of the responsibilities its entails, and to grow confidence in their peers and democracy's modes of organising and relating to each other. It's appropriate to call the change that will bring about democracy revolution. Democracy means not only the end of the state, it means the end of capitalism. It means profound changes in the way people think about themselves and society, and in the way they act. The change required is significant, and it won't be effected without a fight.
@BattleNugget
3 жыл бұрын
@@anisau Right I understand the terms, I'm under no illusion that contemporary republics are anything but elective oligarchies, and not to be confused with true democracies. I've just been considering syndicalism for a few years now and I always come back to the argument of revolution vs reform. But I think I understand what you're saying. For a societal change so large and rapid, reform would be too difficult/impossible. I will say that I was a little concerned when you brought up federation and delegation, as it seemed like it would just be a repeat of a republic, but you made several very good points in regards to controlling it responsibly. I'm definitely interested in learning more about it and maybe participating in some capacity in the future.
@anisau
3 жыл бұрын
@@BattleNugget, I think it's really useful to pick apart exactly what is changing when something is described as a revolution. Often it's just a coup d'etat and nothing really changes. Take the Russian revolution for example. The February revolution was a spontaneous popular uprising and can legitimately be called a revolution. The October revolution, by contrast was a coup d'etat. Certainly, the communist party made important changes but politically, one aristocracy (the Party) imposed itself where the February Revolution deposed the old one. It is also questionable whether the revolution had a communist character at all or whether what was ushered in was a regime of state capitalism. At the end of the day, perhaps the question of revolution or reform is less significant than being precise about what exactly one desires as an outcome. I think that will decide the revolution or reform question for you. Anyway, thanks for the questions and sorry if I misinterpreted you position somewhat at the outset.
@BattleNugget
3 жыл бұрын
@@anisau Yes that does make a lot of sense, and helps me to think about it. Thank you for explaining and for the video, it was really helpful in understanding the organizational element whereas most of the things I've read are all philosophical ideas and whatnot.
@john-lenin
2 ай бұрын
Tying yourself up in knots to define a structure that "isn't" a structure. And you're ignoring the fact that status (however that is defined) is the ultimate structure.
@anisau
2 ай бұрын
@@john-lenin Honesty, one of the best things about having posted this video is the never ending stream of idiots who post foolish comments hoping for a rise. Today, sir, you are that fool. Thank you for the chuckle.
@john-lenin
2 ай бұрын
@@anisau People like you are why Anarcho Syndicalism is such a successful political movement today. You'll never fix the status problem by pretending it doesn't exist.
@ashleigh3021
2 ай бұрын
@@john-leninMore accurately said it’s an unsuccessful movement and failed (obviously) because it can’t compete against other political orders. If you can’t produce commons then you fail.
@aryaazhari8896
4 жыл бұрын
How many people at local levels to make this work?
@anisau
4 жыл бұрын
How long's a piece of string? The ASF is currently very small, made up of around 50 people, with local sections between three and six people (three being the number required for quorum and so the minimum number under statutes of the federation). Because we are collectivist, it is sections not individual people that vote. This prevents branch staking or bigger groups within the federation dominating smaller groups. If a bigger group feels their perspective is underrepresented through these arrangements, they can divide themselves into a number of smaller groups. It's an effective means of dividing power and preventing cliques taking control of the federation. Historically, the CNT in Spain operated using the same model (our statutes were based on theirs). In total they had had 900'000 members in 1930 and 1'590'000 members in June 1936. So the arrangements can and do work for true mass organisations. Our hope is that by using this model in our unions today, as we grow, increasingly large numbers of people will become see that it works, become aculturated to it, and this culture of direct democratic participation will survive the stresses of revolution. If the state is a hierarchical and bureaucratic apparatus of power that sits above and seperate to the people it governs, even the creation and extension of (direct) democracy to every institution of society is the destruction of the state. This is anarchism's positive content. It's one thing to say "Let's smash the state", but that can only happen by building organisations consistent with direct democratic collective self-management. Democracy is direct or at all. And the institutions governed by electoral representationslism (e.g. parliament) are not in fact democratic, but oligarchic. A parliament is always and by definition a minority who govern in the absence of the demos they claim to represent. The ancient Athenians understood this well. They considered election to be a aristocratic principle whereby the best (aristos) were selected. They did practice election, but only for positions of specific technical competence (e.g the generals or strategoi of the army and navy, of which 10 were elected every year). Anyway, back to your question: anarchist federation can be practiced at any scale, but their may be nested levels of federation (local, regional, national, international). Federations can also overlap. The CNT had regionally based federations, in which all the trades were federated together in the region, but at the same time metal workers, for example, federated directly with metal workers all around Spain. Federation doesn't need to be singular and monolithic; it can be plural and simultaneous because its fundamentally purpose is needs-based, rather than being an instrument of power as and control. Hope this helps.
@Gigachad-mc5qz
Ай бұрын
Oh man this is complicated. Im sorry. In a devout anarchist but im too dumb for all that theory stuff
@scrantonhesser4270
3 жыл бұрын
What would be the education system be like under an anarcho syndicalism?
@anisau
3 жыл бұрын
Your question doesn't make sense. Anarcho-syndicalism is anarchist unionism aimed at creating mass organisations capable of making a revolutionary attempt. If successful, we will have destroyed capitalism and so workers' unions (syndicates) will ceasevto exist as unions. Any post-revolutionary society created thereby will be an anarchist society, not an anarcho-syndicalist one. What will education look like? Much as it does now in some respects, different in others. I expect that there will be greater autonomy over the syllabus at local level, and therefore greater diversity between schools, but the fact is that food teachers use a variety of methodologies already, because the kids in their classes are diverse and respond to different techniques. The science and psychology of effective teaching will still be the same, so I wouldn't necessarily expect profound differences in that respect. Schools are already less regimented than they were 50 or 60 years ago because they have already accepted student centred modes of tuition.
@scrantonhesser4270
3 жыл бұрын
@@anisau Sorry for the lack of clarity I'm not that well informed about this. I have some questions as well just to get a better understanding. Is Anarcho-Syndicalism the same as syndicalism? I keep getting the idea that both are the same. I never knew that after all the effort that Anarcho-syndicalism or syndicalism, if they're both the same, it would just be an anarchist society. How would they act at an international level regarding several things? Most especially conflicts like war? How would they respond to civil unrest or disagreement? Finally just a clarification on the original question, despite it being confusing, would higher level education still be the same today, like colleges? Thank you, I'm just interested in these things.
@anisau
3 жыл бұрын
@Scranton Hesser "syndicate" is the French word for union. "Syndicalism" can just mean regular trade unionism, however in the English-speaking world, it is more common to hear it being used to denote industrial as opposed to trade unionism, esp. where a revolutionary aim is present and/or where direct action methods are favoured. But not always, so the usage remains somewhat contextual. Anarcho-syndicalism is something more. Anarcho-syndicalist organisations organise and struggle according to anarchist principles (direct action, direct democracy, mutual aid, free association, federation). To be anarcho-syndicalist, an organisation must be organised in an anarchist way. Direct democracy and federation. It must also have revolutionary aims, since it is a strategy for achieving libertarian socialism, which is a synonym for an anarchist society. Hence the IWA is anarcho-syndicalist, but the IWW is not, due to to its its council being electoral-representative in appointment and despite its history of attracting some anarchists in anglophone countries due to its direct action militancy. Your questions assume that because anarchism seeks to destroy the state, things like law and treaties are put in question. And I guess they are, if you don't have a very precise idea of what the state is. The state is a hierarchical and bureaucratic apparatus of power that sits seperate to and above the people it governs. Hence the creation of institutions characterised by direct democracy is (a fortiori) the destruction of the state. Anarchist revolution is the extension of direct democracy to every institution of society. But this doesn't mean there will be no rules. Anarchy means no rulers, meaning everyone participates in the collective self government of the community. It is democracy pure and simple, and not the electoral-representative travesty of democracy people have gotten in the unfortunate habit of calling democracy since 1830. This doesn't mean there will be no law. There is no society that hasn't created laws, just as there is no society that hasn't engaged in politics, art. Rather the law will be created and administered in ways appropriate to a democratic society. But it will differ from place to place. Regarding war, it still might happen, frpm time to time, but I think its safe to say that it's unlikely beaten anarchist regions. Anarchism is a form of socialism that is internationalist in its orientation. It is also committed to the creation of federations, which can form a plausible basis for international order. Hope this answers your questions.
@scrantonhesser4270
3 жыл бұрын
@@anisau It did thank you very much, I got a much more clearer understanding between syndicalism and anarcho-syndicalism. I got a better understanding in anarchism which I 'm going to start reading into since it's interesting. I wasn't able to hear quite well in the video as my hearing isn't as good. Thank you for taking the time to answering my questions.
@TriggeredPeasoup
8 жыл бұрын
Great Video m8.
@verit3839
4 жыл бұрын
How would Automation work under Syndicalism?
@anisau
4 жыл бұрын
Firstly, syndicalism isn't a type of regime (like socialism or capitalism or feudalism or whatever are types of regime). Syndicalism is the French word for unionism, so anarcho-syndicalism is forming and struggling together as a union, but with anarchist (i.e. direct democratic) goals, principles and strategies. Asking how automation works under syndicalism doesn't make much sense as a question. It's like asking how washing machines work under unionism? The answer is: same way they work under capitalism. A washing machine's just a washing machine (however wonderful it is as a labour saving device!) If your asking how would automation work in a truly democratic post-revolutionary society, then you need to ask a different question. But the answer still wouldn't be much different, because a washing machine is still a washing machine. If the workers have risen up, fucked the bosses off, and are running the show democratically and federatively, what do you think their attitude to automation would be? They are going to be all for it. Why? Because it will actually hold out the prospect of reduced work and greater leisure time for all. What does automation cause under capitalism? Greater profits for the rich and greater monotony, drudgery and lower pay for everyone else. Why? Because automation is associated with a replacement of skilled artisnal labour with unskilled factory labour, and the greater productivity of the machine is pursued without regard to the social consequences for the workers whose labour the machine replaces who disproportionately bear the traumatic burdens of modernisation. The problem isn't automation. The problem is the social relations in which the tendency towards greater automation takes place. If we can create a more egalitarian and democratic society (which will also be a much free society in more ways than one), the consequences of automation can benefit everybody. As Oscar Wilde said in his 1895 essay The Soul of Man under Socialism, man was made for better things than disturbing dust, and, in the future, if machines can do the work, they should. Does this answer the question you wanted to ask?
@CircumcisedUnicorn
4 жыл бұрын
Anarchy is Autonomy Not sure if it helped the op but it definitely made sense to me. I was wondering about the same thing and you broke it down perfectly. Thank you very much, I look forward to seeing more videos.
@SadisNic
Жыл бұрын
"Republics are not democratic", proceeds to say people selected to make decisions for you are delegates that meet and make decisions. Sounds a bit familiar doesn't it?
@anisau
Жыл бұрын
A republic may or may not be democratic. They are different concepts derived from different languages. And, although I disagree with his politics, James Madison was right to distinguish the two concepts. Speaking of distinguishing things, whatever point your trying (and failing) to make is lost because you can't articulate yourself clearly. Would you like to have another try?
@SadisNic
Жыл бұрын
@@anisau 9:35 "Representative democracy is not actually a form of democracy". Do you often make these kinds of simple contradictions?
@anisau
Жыл бұрын
@@SadisNic I stand by what I said. If you can mount a convincing counter argument, go ahead. The ball's in your court and so far you've failed to get it over the net. Have another try.
@SadisNic
Жыл бұрын
@@anisau "Representative democracy is not actually a form of democracy" and "A republic may or may not be democratic". "I stand by what I said" congrats, so not only do you make contradictory statements, you completely ignore them when addressed.
@anisau
Жыл бұрын
@@SadisNic Contradictory how? ...Can't explain? Thought so.
@bwpdylan
5 жыл бұрын
Academic language all the way through until you talk about capitalism, and rightly so.
@anisau
5 жыл бұрын
Is that a criticism or a compliment?
@bwpdylan
5 жыл бұрын
Anarchy is Autonomy definitely a compliment. I think it’s important we discuss these topics seriously while not entertaining the idea that you can defend anarcho-capitalism, or capitalism in general for that matter. I think capitalism deserves to be stuck with every bit of harsh rhetoric they’ve stuck to socialist movements as a whole.
@a.n.l.aantineoliberalismas4504
4 жыл бұрын
@@bwpdylan yes I agree if we swear and are unprofessional the right will jump at that opportunity and try to make us out as the "unreasonable" ones
@conradstyle5946
7 жыл бұрын
Thank you!
@RAMSEY1987
6 жыл бұрын
what is the cost of a thing? How much steel do I get for 1 tone of grain how much water will the water syndicate give to the flower syndicate, for roses and tulips and other flowers so they can grow their flowers....wait are their flowers under this system?
@anisau
6 жыл бұрын
So, you call yourself logical fruit. You decide to post a comment. You edit it at least once, and you still have no clear, coherently stated point to contribute? I talk about organisational structures and the value choices informing their institution, and you want to know about prices. You seem to be that proverbial man who made it his business to know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Well done. Do come again.
@ashleigh3021
6 жыл бұрын
It would quite obviously be impossible to coordinate those things, because economic calculation is impossible without market prices.
@anisau
6 жыл бұрын
uyghui ghbbjb, oh, your a blast from the past. But (and this hasn't changed) your still confusing the market with capitalism. You think that they are synonymous, i.e. that the relationship between them is metaphorical, but in this you are wrong. The relationship between market and capitalism is metonymical, not metaphorical: the relationship is not whole to whole, but whole (capitalism) to part (market). The fact that markets are necessary to capitalism, doesn't mean that the are sufficient for capitalism. The fact that markets are a sine qua non of capitalism, dies not mean that capitalism is a sine qua non of markets. This is why you fail to make sense of the world you inhabit, and tend to lose the arguments you engage in. You are, and forever will be, what sepos call a punk arse bitch. Good night.
@ashleigh3021
6 жыл бұрын
The problem of the determination of prices under any order doesn't concern me, the problem of the maintenance of an order that preserves the market cooperation (high trust) necessary for continual economic calculation does. Only parasites who prey on the accumulated capital of others wish to participate in a polity with discretionary, arbitrary law (communism), those with the ability choose to form or participate in a polity with nondiscretionary law which will insure their property from the imposition of costs in all transactions. Hence the preference of the majority of people for high-trust, and not the nonsense you or rothbardian lunatics advocate. Libertarians are unable to define aggression because they're unable to define property, communists fail for exactly the same reason. Both are unable to devise a system of law to preserve the extremely complex and often intangible forms of property (i.imgur.com/LOiXcCA.jpg) in existence, and therefore unable to preserve a level of high trust and eliminate cycles of retaliation. It seems I've actually transformed my thinking, yet you still practice nonsensical talmudic, low-trust parasitical ethics. Pity really.
@anisau
6 жыл бұрын
uyghui ghbbjb, you're an idiot, and I'll explain why. You think the internal consistency of your ideas guarantees their correctness. In this you are not unlike that other neo-liberal goon, Hans-Herman Hoppe. The problem with both of you is that you abandon reference to historical and empirical reality and build castles in the air that hold together only so long as they don't touch anything solid. Anywhere else they'd call this schizoid delusion, but you two seen to think it a virtue. An example of this is your identification of capitalism as "a polity with nondiscretionary law", and your contrasting it with communism. As capitalism's opposite, you ascribe to communism obverse characteristics, labelling it " a polity with discretionary, arbitrary law (communism)". What seems like a logical operations, here, is totally bogus, because it has lost all reference to reality. No society can exist where the law is discretionary and arbitrary for individuals, and communism, in those instances where people have sought to institute it, was in all cases instituted as a new set of laws grounded on a change in political power; the old regime of laws were suspended and a new regime of laws put up in their place. So, your claim that it is marked by "discretionary, arbitrary law" just sprays silly to anyone not blinkered by the hierschy of concepts you've wedded yourself to. Similarly, you claim that both libertarians and communists are "unable to define aggression because they're unable to define property". Yet anyone who knows even the slightest thing about Proudhon or Marx will know what you say, here, is rubbish. Both have perfectly adequate concepts of property and of aggression. The truth is simply that they have a different standard of justice to you, because they are animated by different values. Your discretionary, arbitrary decision not to recognise this demonstrates nothing other than your willful blindness, as if closing for eyes to what threatens your worldview will make of go away. You really are at sea in the world, aren't you?
@haydencase7886
4 жыл бұрын
Has anyone ever thought about forming a syndicalist party?
@anisau
4 жыл бұрын
This is something people keep getting confused about, possibly because the video gets reposted without the text that frames it. Syndicate is the French word for union. Anarcho-syndicalism is unionism with specifically anarchist aims and modes of organisation and struggle. It is a strategy for anarchist revolution through organisation building. So your question can be answered in two possible ways. Has anyone ever formed a party to advance union objectives within the bourgeois nation state? Yes. Labour parties tied formally or informally to the union movement exist in almost all countries. Sometimes they are referred to as social democratic parties. (Whether they are actually democratic is something I'd dispute, but that's another conversation.) The other way of answering you question is to ask whether anyone's ever created an anarcho-syndicalist party. At face value, it seems like a silly question. Anarchists are committed to direct democracy, and no anarchist would create a party for the contest of power within the institutions I'd the nation state because the state is the antithesis of democracy. But, some anarchists have questioned and been drawn to the idea of adopting party structures for their organisations. These anarchists are known as platfrormists and they've been inspired by the writings of the Ukrainian anarchist, Nestor Makhno, who, writing in exile from Paris reflected on the defeat of the anarchist movement in Russia and Ukraine at the hands of the communists and decided that adopting more party-like structures would benefit the anarchist movement. We anarcho-syndicalists have always opposed Platformism as an importation into the anarchist movement of authoritarian structures we feel are antithetical to anarchism and or values. Hopefully this answers your question.
@sneezweasel
3 жыл бұрын
IWW represent I'm going to work to unionize massage therapists
@anisau
3 жыл бұрын
Hi Alex Thank you for your comment. While I support your efforts to unionise your fellow workers and welcome your interest in anarchism, i'm at a loss to understand why a member of the IWW would be inclined post a comment on a video about the organisational principles of anarchist organisations. Historically, those sympathetic to anarchism, particularly in North America, have been attracted to the IWW for its revolutionary aims, its direct action methods, and its cross industrial rather than trade specific mode of organising. However the IWW is NOT an anarchist organisation. Its organisational principles and structure are electoral-representative in form, not direct-democratic and federalist in the manner that would qualify it as anarchist. Even the preamble of the IWW constitution is hostile to anarchism (see the reference to "anti-political sects" which is Marxist double-speak for anarchism). There are a lot of good people in the IWW, but there is also a pervasive misunderstanding about it possessing an anarchist character. It does not. From an organisational perspective its character is Marxist, centalist and, in the final analysis, authoritarian. It shares an isomorphism with the state, and its revolutionary aims therefore stand in contradiction to the organisational means it has developed to achieve them. If you have plans to organise a union amongst massage therapiats (or any other group of workers), I urge you to consider organising a union along anarcho-syndicalist lines and federating as an affiliate of the International Workers Association (IWA-AIT) such as Workers Solidarity Alliance (WSA) in North America, SolFed in the UK or CNT-AIT in Spain. It's a question of consistency between revolutionary aims and revolutionary means, and of creating a culture of worker's autonomy and genuine democracy within unions that have a structure capable of promoting them. I wish you well in your endeavours.
@sneezweasel
3 жыл бұрын
@@anisau what a thoughtful comment thank you. I will reply fully when I am not on a cell phone.
@nicholasleclair8711
6 жыл бұрын
This would make it appear that anarcho syndicalists believe that the economy aught to be controlled by the federation. How can you be an anarchist and also say that you don't deserve economic freedom? I may not be getting something.
@anisau
6 жыл бұрын
Nicholas Leclair, simple. Unlike you, I don't concieve of liberty in purely individualistic terms. Liberty has two aspects: individual and collective, and contrary to what liberal ideology would have you believe, collective autonomy is ontologically primordial. One can exercise economic liberty by spending the money in your pocket according to your individual needs and desires, AND one can exercise economic liberty by participating in the direct, democratic life of your federated group and thereby participating in the determination of the form the economy takes. Theses are not mutually exclusive propositions, however the do stand in a mutually conditioning relationship.
@nicholasleclair8711
6 жыл бұрын
Anarchy is Autonomy There is no need to get testy with me. I openly admitted that I may have misunderstood aspects of the point. And I am not a liberal. My thoughts are more toward liberitarian. Anyway, my response is this. What good is being able to spend your own money, when the collective desides what you can spend your money on? If the collective drives the economic progress then demand of goods and services is not directly involved in determining what the economy aught to focus on. Why would the collective make better decisions that the market?
@repubblesmcglonky8990
3 жыл бұрын
The only problem with even Direct Democracy is having still to deal with the likes of the Nationalists, Conservatives, Liberals and Fascists, if one wishes to talk about Anarchism then inevitably they have to talk about Panarchism...
@anisau
3 жыл бұрын
Mate, if it is "inevitable [we] have to talk about Panrchism", it is solely because we are perennially confronted with gobshites and idiots. "Panarchy" (viz De Puydt) was never anything other than fuckin silly, and, as a thing, hardly warrants being dignified with the term "idea". But if you would like to mount a defence of it, be my guest.
@repubblesmcglonky8990
3 жыл бұрын
@@anisau Woah woah! Calm down man, I'm on your side, I was just trying to make the point that even in a 100% Democratic Society the whole Anarchist Movement will still be highly Marginalised to the point that WE are beset on all sides with people who disagree on the basis of Interest or Counter-Ideologically-induced Ignorance...
@repubblesmcglonky8990
3 жыл бұрын
@@anisau furthermore, such a Democracy would lead us back to square One, this is a very old contention in Anarchist Thought, even you must see that...
@anisau
3 жыл бұрын
@@repubblesmcglonky8990, okay answer me this: (a) how would an overarching panarchic constitution (viz De Puydt) be established? (b) is such a scenario even remotely possible? (c) is such a scenario psychologically or sociologically likely? (d) even if it could be instituted, is a variegated polity of the type De Puydt describes sustainable given it presumes some parts of a population will make a free and rational choice to be unfree? Sorry, mate. Even you must realise that it's just stupidity of the most flabby and idle kind, and even the merest breath of clear thought disperses it like sunshine disperses fog.
@repubblesmcglonky8990
3 жыл бұрын
@@anisau Okay, okay, listen, I'm ngl, I thought "Panarchism" meant something totally different from an Etymological Standpoint ("Pan" = "All" and "Archos" = "Rule") and I'm sorry I was being totally pretentious, what I was trying to convey was that all the Factions and Ideologies are bound to have a say in a Completely and Direct Democratic System that will affect the outcome of Anarcho-Syndicalism, which may as well for the record be termed "Anarcho-Syndicalism with Pan-Democratic Features" at best, with Freedom comes the Freedom of Ideology and Democracy is Darwinian, not necessarily Marxian for instance but ignore me, I'm an idiot -.-'
@smilypsyrus3251
4 жыл бұрын
i think the IWA made serious organisational mistakes from the beginning, concerning the decision-making process, that caused the exit/kickout of their biggest sections... concretely i mean this "one country one one vote" thing even maoist/antiimperialist internationals collapsed because of similar mistakes... such things lead directly towards veto-dictatorship of minorities as you have it in "modern" anarchist "anti-organisations" causing tyranny of minorities... and in the end you have no other options than leaving it... my point is: you always have to play with structures to prevent unlegitimate powerstructures, and you have to be careful with it, because some mistakes maybe irreversible... for example within - what i call "modern anarchist" - structures with veto dictatorship, democratically you would need total consensus to kick it, which is impossible, so the majority would have to use violence or leave... no anarchist form of organisation alone guarantees a "nonpossibility" of unlegitimate power structures... what do you think about it, i would be very intersted in your opinion... meanwhile i am more into ML than ansyn but i think "we" have far more in common than ansyn has wit h - for example - "insurrectional anarchism", who - how i feel - treat you (ansyn) as kinda "evil protostalinists" before hand, because of your organised approach...
@a.n.l.aantineoliberalismas4504
4 жыл бұрын
Ime not really an anarchist my self ime more of am marxist-lennist/socialist but I support most leftists ideologyes
@darrylprojectile
9 жыл бұрын
Seems like a federation or delegation is pretty similar to a representative
@anisau
9 жыл бұрын
+Darryl Jones Yes, they are similar, but with the important difference that the anarchist mode of representation at federal congresses -- i.e. the sending of rotating delegates with mandates limited to communicating the collective decisions/opinions of their local groups -- is intended to be an mode of collective self-representation, rather than the mere representation of a group by an individual belonging to it. Anarchist organisations may delegate members to act as office bearers within their local group (e.g. secretary, treasurer, convenor of reading group, editor of the group's news sheet), and they may have some degree of discretionary power associated with such roles, but anarchists would never charge delegates-to-congress with power to commit the group to decisions not discussed and explicitly agreed to within the assembly of their local group. So, while delegates to congress do perform a 'representative' function, there are crucial differences between the anarchist mode of representation and the less circumscribed mode of representation associated with electoral parliamentarianism, in which the elected individuals *claim* a personal mandate to make decisions in the (inferred) interests of their constituents. If I can phrase the difference in terms of sovereignty, anarchists are inspired by a vision of radical (direct) democracy which seeks to retain sovereignty (both de jure and de facto) at the level of local groups, whereas electoral representationalism inevitably tends to bleed de facto sovereignty from the periphery to the centre through elected representatives *claiming* mandates that exceed the explicitly articulated will of their electors.
@darrylprojectile
9 жыл бұрын
Thanks for that. Yes I think it is an interesting alternative.
@irishdc9523
8 жыл бұрын
+Anarchy is Autonomy So every decision of a mandate can only be made with the consent of their constituents?
@anisau
8 жыл бұрын
+Deaglan Cullen A mandate is responsibility arising from a decision agreed to at local level that obligates a delegate of the group to represent that group, or act on its behalf, in a particular way. It's often not easy, because in carrying out this or that mandate, you will sometimes confronted with situations that were not anticipated when it was originally discussed. My experience is that groups that work well have learnt to spend time clarifying what the mandated responsibility entails and how far the the responsible delegate's scope to make decisions in accordance with his mandate extends. Sometimes, acting in good faith requires going back to the group and saying "This has come up, how should I (or we) deal with it?" But if the group has experience behind it, this can help a lot in specifying with clarity what a mandated responsibility requires in different situations and contexts. But, essentially, you are right: at the end of the day it is about the group not being bound by what they haven't explicitly agreed to.
@kalb1ss1blak21
6 жыл бұрын
Make a anarchisic commune and ancarco work forces
@ashleigh3021
4 жыл бұрын
P1) Ethnocentrism is the optimal group strategy. Ethno-Nationalism is its political expression. P2) The most intolerant group always wins. P3) Markets provide the most optimal means of resource allocation. Conclusion: in the market for nationhood, the group whose strategy best approximates that of market fascism and rule of law under natural law will win.
@anisau
4 жыл бұрын
Oh, dear! Where would we be without you boneheads to keep us amused? To bastardise Churchhill, let me remark upon your comment by saying that never before in the history of human conversation has so much fail been observable to so many in words so few.
@Tybold63
2 ай бұрын
Found the video interesting and informative about anarcho-syndicalism. However, Anarchism is really an odd ball as it could arguably be present in non socialistic context as well which is perhaps not the norm among most. Depending on what aspects you study and how you interpret "anarchy" it could e.g. be applied to extreme libertarianism especially if business only consisted of individual(s) i.e. no employed. And then again what is freedom or autonomy in human society as we are biologically social organisms and formed to work together and not individually! Feels like anarchy is not compatible with humans and just a theory that cannot fully achieved.
@anisau
2 ай бұрын
@@Tybold63 Thank you for the appreciative comment. I quite like engaging with people here, and at risk of having said some of this stuff before, I thought I'd reply to what you've said. The video was a description of how the worker's unions within the International Workers Association (IWA-AIT) oppertate today. The IWA has been around since 1922, and some of the unions within it date back to the mid-1890s, so the idea that the organisational principles set out in this video could only apply to a future society (one that is a nice idea but couldn't work in practice) is wrong. These principles also can work at scale. Out sister union in Spain, the CNTE, had approx 1.6 million members in July 1936, on the eve of the Spanish Civil War. But many people who comment on this video think it us just theorising about a future utopia, so you are not alone and can be forgiven that mistake. You also make an error common to people who are exploring anarchist ideas for the first time, and that is to be overly influenced by dictionary definitions and etymology. How could you not be? Almost everyone starts in the same place. I was there myself once. It affects your understanding in the following ways. Because you haven't delved deeply enough into the history, you see it as an ideology that is mainly anti-state. It is anti-state, but you have to have a precise grasp of what the state is. (Most books on politics or social theory don't bother to define "the state". Why would a fish define water? The result is that a tremendous amount of slippage and misunderstanding occurs, even amongst post-graduates and people who teach this stuff and who ought to know better. There are institutional reasons for this, but it risks dragging me too far off topic to go into them here.) The state is a hierarchical and bureaucratic apparatus of power that sits seperate to and dominates the people it governs. The state exists as a formal bureaucratic power whenever people do not have direct, actual and effective control over the political decisions that affect them. Which is the normal state of things in today's world. Nor all societies have had states. The state can be found as far back as ancient Mesopotamia. Rome and China are classic examples of civilisations with states. But the poleis of Ancient Greece were not states (although neighbouring Persia and Egypt were). The Greek polis is often described as a city-state, but it was not a State in any formal sense, and the term city-state is the dominant translatation, nit because it is precise ("community is a closer translation), but because translators are following a precedent that has been set with the intention of making explicit that each city was a sovereign jurisdiction not unlike nation-states are in the modern world. However, translating with one meaning in mind risks obfuscating another. The fact is that Greek poleis of the classical period simply did not have bureaucracies that dominated, and in large measure controlled, social life in the towns and cities of Greece. This is important, because it tells us that a community in which the citizenry actually and effectively govern their own affairs is not (and cannot be) a state. Ancient Athens was not a state. It had no bureaucracy. (Even oligarchical Sparta was not a state.) This tells us something. Where direct democracy is established in a community and is the effective power, the state does not exist. This is why the anarchist idea of revolution is to create and extend direct democracy to every institution of society. To do this automatically implies both the destruction of the state AND the destruction of capitalism, which is an institution of domination based on the relationship between employer and employee, and made possible by (even if it is not reducible to) wage labour. Capitalism grows out of the private ownership of the means of production, distribution, exchange and communication, but it need not be private. When control of society is managed by a technocratic elite organised as political party and bureaucracy, the relationship between managers and those who do the work is essentially no different to that in a capitalist organisation owned by shareholders and run by a board of directors. Which is why, from an anarchist perspective, the USSR was a form of state capitalism, and China today can so easily be a blend of state and private capitalism despite being nominally communist. Because hierachical and bureaucratic control invest both capitalism and the state, and anarchism is against both, anarchism is therefore a type of socialism, one aimed at direct control of the means of production by workers who decide things democratically amongst themselves. If we look at the historical facts, we see that anarchism emerged from within the revolutionary socialist movement and defined itself in opposition to three things: capitalism, the State, and Marxism. (They saw the authoritarian implications of Marx's plans for coup d'etat immediately.) This should also indicate something else. There can be no right-wing anarchism (despite what the many bullshit artists who plague the world would like you to think). Anarchism occupies the extreme left. It's commitment to direct democracy means it our flanks everything else on the left. The whacky neo-liberal shit that North Americans sometimes call Libertarianism (but which is as far from genuine libertarianianism as night is from day), is a radicalised form of classical liberalism from the 18th century. North Americans have a very weird and unique political vocabulary by virtue of not having had an aristocracy in the European mold, and their preponderance in cinema, TV and the English-speaking portion of the internet prevents them from seeing how parochial they are. This is why they call neo-liberalism "conservatism", progressivism "liberalism", and neo-liberalism without aytendant bible-belt social conservatism "libertarianism". With a political vocabulary so desperately fucked up, its no wonder they presently seem one election away from going down the fascist road.
@Tybold63
2 ай бұрын
@@anisau Am glad you took time to deliver this long reaction comment and that is appreciated and also done with a good amount of respect. Especially that you touch the connection or disconnection with what is broadly called socialism (which is kinda fucked up from many angles). Cheers from Sweden and good luck with your fight am not fully convinced but my respect is higher.
@dr.vikyll7466
5 жыл бұрын
So I was wondering how would stuff like militaries work in peace time. As we can see with the YPG and YPJ in war time, volunteers would come, but a military needs professional leadership and soldiers to stop an advance into its territory(more often than not). Would it rely on people volunteering as professional soldiers in peace time? I just wondered because I saw the comment of a complete asshat in another video, claiming that an anarchist country would not be able to have an army and you seem like you know a lot about the issue(?). (sorry for my English)
@anisau
5 жыл бұрын
My personal perspective (and I can't speak for anyone else) is that we would need a citizens militia, not unlike national service. It wouldn't be compulsory, but people ought be debarred from enjoyment of full political rights if they were able bodied and not volunteer. Why? If you want to enjoy freedom, you have to be prepared to defend it with arms. No standing armies: the people armed can defend themselves. (Durruti said something similar.) I don't like the idea of right to bear arms being an individual right, though. Only militia members on militia duty should carry arms, and the militia must be accountable to the citizenry through the assemblies in which we all participate directly on the basis of universal equality. I also don't like the idea of people being of single professions which define them in class terms. People who cultivate diverse aspects of their personality are more reasonable and more sociable than those who don't. specialists are all too often inhuman and inhumane. I have an ambivalent relationship with Marx, but think he was right when he said under capitalism I am free to be fisherman, or a gardener, or a herder of cattle, or a storyteller/critic just as I choose, but under socialism I can be a fisherman in the morning, a gardener in the afternoon, a herder of cattle on the evening and a storyteller/critic at night. He's phrased it poetically, but what he means is that a rich life is a diverse life, and infinitely richer that than tending factory machines 12 hours a day, 6 days a week for your entire life. Sure we will need specialists, but they should be vocations, not professions, and they should not be the sum total of what one does, because out of that grows power and classes, and we don't want power and classes; we want freedom and equality, and lives rich in diverse experiences for everyone, even if those experiences mean we sometimes need to do our far share of shovelling shit, and sweeping streets. We rotate our delegates to congress to share responsibility, don't we? So, if we are serious about shared responsibility, we must rotate the shitty boring jobs too. Volunteering for the militia is should be part of that. It's a commitment to the anarchist society we will build together. That's just how I see it. But I have thought long and hard about it. What do you think?
@dr.vikyll7466
5 жыл бұрын
@@anisau Yeah, that seems pretty reasonable. Thanks for the in depth explanation.
@pichu2468
4 жыл бұрын
@@anisau I understand what you mean by not wanting specialists, and it makes sense for people doing labour intensive jobs to try diverse options, but I think you completely underestimate or don't understand the amount of time it takes someone to be a skilled scientist, or doctor or other specialists of that sort. I'm working to be a scientist, and it would take up pretty much all of my time and dedication to do so and I am ok with that. Also, our world cannot function without these specialists.
@dburgessnotburger
2 жыл бұрын
Firstly, good video. Ancap here, and new subscriber. I want to learn about this school of anarchism. Question: if autonomy is paramount, then why is the collective valued above the individual? Doesn't make sense. Can someone please explain? Thank you
@anisau
2 жыл бұрын
Autonomy has two aspects: individual and collective. They are two sides of the same coin. Liberalism makes the mistake of thinking of them as opposed. Understood correctly they are mutually reinforcing. Consider: democracy is the political regime consistent with maximising collective autonomy. Yet democracy requires individuals capable of thinking and speaking for themselves. Similarly, individual autonomy can only run so far before it runs into social constraints. To push beyond those constraints, you have to convince people of the need for social change, to bring them with you as you travel down that path. In the modern west, we tend to be socialised to be highly individualistic, but this outcome is an effect of our socialisation. Further, because the seat of consciousness and reason is within the individual, we it can be forgiven for thinking that an egotistic individualism is natural, however as any anthropologist will tell you, most cultures require a high degree of mutual reliance between members of the tribe. Consequently, they tend to think in collectivistic terms. Our relative individualism is partly a consequence of a highly developed market economy, which enables us to satisfy our individual desires and act in a self-regarding, atomistic way. Yet this potential is a consequence of the social arrangement in which we exist, which is in no way a trans-historical norm. Our individualism as social actors is a result of a system of social cooperation and coordination. We tend not to see it because it is mediated by money, which facilitates highly impersonal modes of transaction. Nonetheless, these transactions are absolutely social and socially mediated. Ontologically, however, society is prior to the individual. You and I are near total products of our society. You and I are totally, totally, totally(!) socially and historically embedded. Our possibilities as individuals are socially-historically conditioned. There is no escaping this fact. Whatever degree of alienation you feel relative to the social norms of your society is largely a product of our society's modernity and is facilitated by the fact that we have social spheres (politics, art, science, law, religion, economics) with different values and mediums of operation. This allows us to shift perspective from one sphere to the next, reletivising each in turn. This is a major contributant to our ability to take a critical perspective relative to each. This is a socially conditioned potentiality. In respect that to these considerations, to assert one's individual autonomy in the face of our social conditioning is naive to say the least. We need to face up to these considerations I order to develop our collective potential for autonomy. So, no individual autonomy without facing up to these social considerations. Individual autonomy needs to be developed alongside our collective autonomy. They are two sides of the same coin.
@dburgessnotburger
2 жыл бұрын
@@anisau Thank you for that detailed answer. I've never heard of some of those terms, but appreciate knowing more about them. The language is a bit technical for me lol, but I think I grasp the gist of what you're saying. Correct me in my attempts to paraphrase below: So, in your view, the society or collective autonomy precedes individual autonomy because the collective autonomy determines whether or not individual autonomy can exist? Also, how would a democracy resolve individual disagreement against the collective? For example, what if someone disagrees with how a community is behaving under anarcho-syndicalism?
@anisau
2 жыл бұрын
@@dburgessnotburger You asked: So, in your view, the society or collective autonomy precedes individual autonomy because the collective autonomy determines whether or not individual autonomy can exist? Not quite. Individual autonomy and collective autonomy are mutually implicating and mutually reinforcing. They rely on each other. They are two sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other. But my point (which is largely drawn from the social theory of Cornelius Castoriadis) is that you will not find individual with a fully developed capacity for autonomy in a heteronomous society, that is to say a society governed by tradition and slavish adherence to tradition. You and I may disagree in our political perspectives. (I think anarcho-capitalism is an oxymoron, because I am aware of the history of anarchism and its emergence and deep roots within European Socialism of the 19th Century.) But even through we disagree on things, I recognise that you are an inquiring individual who can think and act and speak for himself. (Indeed, it seems to be that your self-image, or at least your online persona, is built around this capacity.) The point that I want to impress upon you is that for all your capacity for autonomy, you are autonomous to the degree you are precisely because you are a product of your environment, which is to say a product of the social-historical conditions in which you were raised. If you are able to put our current society into question and dream up other ways of ordering our society (i.e. to reform or revolutionise it in different ways), it is because you are a product of the social dynamics of modernity. So it is not that collective autonomy determines whether individual autonomy can exist, but that (except in rare and limited instances) individuals with a capacity for autonomy do not emerge unless they are supported by social process that also support institutions of collective autonomy. This is partly because the key tools that you use to think with (language and the intuitable figures of thought and expression) are social products. Autonomous individuals do not come from nowhere. They do not spring out of the ground fully armed like Athena sprang, whole, fully grown and fully armed, from the thigh of Zeus. There so a set of complex social-historical processes that needed to take place to make you the type of person you are with the sort of capacities you have. This is why I assert that society is ontologically prior to the individual. I also want to get people away from thinking that the individual and the collective that are opposed. The individual is irremediably enmeshed in the collective. If you wish to grasp opposing poles, then it is not the individual that is opposed to society, but the social imaginary that is opposed to, and gives meaning to, the psyche and its drives. The individual is a product of that interaction. To think of the individual as a sovereign atom opposed to society is a total misunderstanding of our reality. You also asked: how would a democracy resolve individual disagreement against the collective? For example, what if someone disagrees with how a community is behaving under anarcho-syndicalism? Firstly, anarcho-syncialism is not a type of society. Syndicat is the French word for union. Anarcho-syndicalism is unionism anarchist-style, meaning we organise and militate according to anarchist principles. It is an organisation building strategy for revolution, but is also a way of putting anarchism into practice, demonstrating that it works, and schooling people up so that if a revolutionary opportunity presents itself, people have a sound understanding in the principles of anarchist social organisation and are not forced to invent it all on the spur of the moment. This hopefully will make the revolution more successful and avoid some of the pitfalls that socialists have fallen prey to in the past (e.g. Marxism’s falling prey to authoritarianism). If anarcho-syndicalists are successful, they will forge a truly democratic revolution and an truly democratic society. The resulting society would not be anarcho-syndicalist, because in overthrowing both capitalism and the state, the rationale for unions will cease to exist. The resulting society would be anarchist and the economy run by co-operative enterprises co-ordinated into federations with a bottom-up rather than top-down mode of decision making. So back to your question: how would how would a democracy resolve individual disagreement against the collective? Answer: the same way it does today and in the past. In any democracy, it is the collective will that is sovereign, but if one is serious that collective autonomy and individual autonomy are two sides of the same coin, this does not mean that the collective will simply grind individual dissidents under their heal. Everyone in a democracy also has an interest in individual autonomy, and in such societies the creation of a private sphere is a socially produced outcome. The private sphere doesn’t exist because individuals have fought against the collective to institute it, but because collectives recognise and understand that personal freedoms are important and agree to create a space for this. But the important thing to understand is that individual freedoms are a social thing. Individual freedoms are a social product that is socially recognised, and the limits of individual freedom are always socially instituted and social mediated. There are some individual freedoms an autonomous society will tolerate, some it will actively cultivate, and some that they will not. Individual freedom requires participation in the institutions that create individual freedoms as socially recognised and socially protected. Do these things make more sense to you now?
@dburgessnotburger
2 жыл бұрын
@@anisau again, thank you for the respectfully articulate answers here. I really appreciate you giving me your time and thought on this subject. So, I'll try to keep my responses as straight forward as possible, just out of reciprocity. Firstly, I want to highlight where we may have overlapping agreements, and then I'll pop a few questions your way if you don't mind. We both agree, it seems, that traditions can become rather slavish in nature (in my view, this is the monopoly posed by the state, and others may say that capitalism is also entailed in this description). I know there may be some nuances here given our diametrically opposing schools of thought, but I think it's safe to say that there is some common ground here. In addition, I would argue that tradition can also be pro-libertarian. I see tradition the same way people see tools. Take a hammer for example. In the hands of a psychotic serial killer, this hammer has the potential to be used destructively. But give the hammer to carpenter, and you will may see beautiful creations produced. My point here is that tradition is important to set parameters for future generations to follow. I believe we can do this through ideas, not revolution (or other forms of violent rebellion). Second, yes. You're correct. Anarchism is traditionally an anti-capitalist/ anti-property movement of the left-libertarian spectrum. And yes, I do receive the whole "it's an oxymoron" argument a lot. But on a fundamentally definitional basis (without invoking Proudhon or any other traditionalist thinkers), anarcho-capitalism can still work in the following ways: 1) Anarcho (derived from Anarchy) refers to the organization of society on the basis of voluntary cooperation, without political institutions or hierarchical government. So, in basic terms, this just refers to freedom from state oppression. Anarcho-capitalism does advocate a government-free society (or a monopoly-free, state-sanctioned society), and this is why I think there is no philosophical contradiction in the name "Anarcho-Capitalism". 2) Capitalism (referring to free-market capitalism) is an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. This is where I think the major disagreement comes in... capitalism was a notably pejorative term coined by Marx, and although I think the free market does more justice, capitalism is what the ancaps have ended up with. But no, we do not support the government enforcing property rights. We generally believe that this can be done privately. In summary, semantics doesn't bother me much. If someone wants to say "ancap is a paradox" then that's fine with me. I'm more concerned with ideas, not nomenclature. Although I do think correct labels does help collective understandings. Your next point is about the nature of individual and collective autonomy. I think we both agree there too. I believe there is a synergetic relationship between the two. The individual seems to sprout forth from history and nature and nurture, and then c collective seems to develop from like-minded individuals. But I can't wrap my head around them both co-exisitng. Mainly because democracy shows that the majority has power (hierarchically and physically). This immediately puts the individual autonomy in a precarious position. Going by Noam Chomsky's advisement to question the legitimacy of hierarchies, then I think this is of the many contradictions that kept me from accepting syndicalist ideas. Am I wrong? Let me know. In regards to revolution (violent upheaval), I cannot wrap my head around this concept. I think violence is ineffective at changing human volition. As described in Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon concept, which showed that prisoners "acted" obediently if they thought they were being surveilled. But what about when they weren't being watched.... do you think the prisoners acted compliantly in private? My point here is that revolution forces people to act and capitulate through force, and not through the change of ideas. For instance, I give an anecdotal example (the weakest intellectual argument, I know, but I want to express something here) - children are good examples. Notice how some children act in private. Some children take advantage when their parents are turning the blind eye, others follow the rules of their parents voluntarily, regardless of who is around them --- this is why I believe ideas are more effective than revolution. Besides, one cannot supplant tyranny (the state) by using tools of the state (violent force and compulsion) - hope this was understandable in some way at least lol, soz if not. Feel free to respond to the other points above, and you really have given me some good ideas to mull over, thank you. Additional questions: 1. Do you think property is theft? 2. Do you think people own/ control their own bodies? 3. Why is capitalism/ free market trade tyrannical given that consenting individuals are trading for mutually beneficial gain? 4. Do you think value is subjective? 5. Is the majority in a democracy tyrannical or is it the result of a justified hierarchy? " In any democracy, it is the collective will that is sovereign," Thank you
@anisau
2 жыл бұрын
@@dburgessnotburger Sorry about the delayed response. I don't think you are quite right about legitimacy of tradition. It doesn't serve to set parameters we are in any way obliged to follow. Yes, we may institute and follow the libertarian characteristics of tradition, however, to act consistently with liberty, in such instances we must affirm it or contradict it it in accordance with the values we freely and reasonably choose. As soon as we locate in it an authority we are not free to countermand, it becomes a source of our own heteronomy, which is the opposite of autonomy. Unsurprisingly, I also disagree with you regarding the libertarian character of capitalism, but it is worth explaining why. Pro-capitalists mis-recognise capitalism's character because they are prone to interpreting social actors in the market as rationally self-regarding atoms abstracted from their real social context and needs. They therefore interpret transactions as free. But this ostensive freedom is an illusion, produced by the abstract nature of the analysis rather than a genuine freedom as seen in context. Consider: a starving man who pawns the shirt off his back for a crust of bread is not acting under conditions of freedom, nor the refugee who sells the jewels inherited from her mother in order to board a train away from persecution, nor the workers who return to work for reduced wages because the resources of the factory boss exceeded the time their families could survive on a reduced level of sustenance. Beware the temptation to read into the abstract nature of cash exchange a spurious freedom. It's a lebd that hides more than it shows. And beware of conflating the operations of the market with the social institution that is capitalism. The market is necessary condition capitalism, but it is not a sufficient condition. They are not the same. Capitalism signifies a specific relationship: the selling of labour power for a wage to the owner of capital defined as the means of production, exchange, communication or distribution. It is an unequal relationship and necessarily a relationship of exploitation. It is not free and cannot exist without the backing of the state. Just as the state is a hierachical and bureaucratic apparatus of power that sits sepertate to and above the people it governs, capitalist management is a hierarchical and bureaucratic apparatus of power that sits seperate to and above the workers it employs. Capitalism and the State are essentally isomorphic, and capitalism requires the state's monopoly on legal forms of violence to ensure its continuation. Both are odious to democracy rightly conceived. You advocate private enforcement of property rights, but I would like you to explain: (a) how a right is a right without public tecognition guarantee? and (b) how the privatisation of the public sphere's politico-legal functions does not represent a retreat into a form of neo-feudalism? Also, the idea of some original free act of appropriating land through homesteading is an incoherent fiction. This argument is straight out of John Locke, who proposed that property was acquired through the admixture of human labour, but while that might possibly give a man a claim to the crops produced, the land upon which the crops are grown belongs to no one and if possessed at all can only be rightly held in common. (I agree with Rousseau on this point.) Regarding democracy and the individual, you make of this a problem of majority and minority will. But the legitimacy of democracy derives from participation in the process, not the personal desirability of its outcomes. But I'd like you to understand that anarchism qua democracy needs not preclude either a marketplace or market transactions. It is opposed to capitalism, not markets. But it does subordinate the market and limit the scope of permitted transactions the demands of the democratically determined collective will. It will do this, for example, through mandating wage equality and thereby preventing labour's reduction to a bare commodity. How can it do this? I hear you ask. Isn't this: (a) the institution of rules and in effect law? (b) contrary to freedom? (c) ro presuppose the State? The answer to these questions is: (a) yes (b) no (c) no. How? Autonomy is the act of giving law (nomos) to oneself (auto). Giving the law to oneself is freedom. If the state is a hierachical and bureaucratic apparatus of power that sits seperate to and above the people it governs, then democracy (i.e. direct, participatory democracy in which people come together on the basis of equality to decide directly on the laws they choose to live by) is (a fortiori) the destruction of the state. Now the question of revolution: Revolutionary violence is only necessary because the forces of capitalism and the state will not respect the democratic will of the people and will not give up their privaledge without a fight. Yes, I understand the ancap idea that the market represents a violence free order of free transactions, but the property relations on which the capitalist market is based are necessarily backed by the overwhelming threat of state violence. This is a fact and our so called ancaps are a species of naive and deluded hippy to think otherwise. The only real guarantee of peace in the absence of state violence or its threat is equality: an equal stake in the social order as commonwealth of equals. The idea that "faith in the market as a sphere of free transactions" can prevent violence in the context inequality is the height of self-delusion. Violence is always a potential and the only things that can keep a lid on it is equality, a genuine stake in an egalitarian society, and democratisation of theq possibilities for individual human flourishing. Now your concluding questions. Property is theft: This is a reference to capitalism. What Proudhon was referring to was property as the means of production, i.e. as an individual's exclusive property and a means of exploiting those who are forced work for you. In the same 1840 essay he also described justice as the unity of anarchy and order (from whence the superimposed A and O as a symbol for anarchism is derived), and this only makes sense if one connects these concepts with the idea of (direct, participatory) democracy. The lesson: Don't get confused by Proudhon's love of apparent paradox. When seen from the intended perspective, the paradox is resolved. The point was to provoke people into asking themselves what was meant. By expressing himself in ironic and puzzling ways, Proudhon was trying to compel his readers to think for themselves. Do people own their own bodies? Of course, but that doesn't mean we should accept the body's reduction to the status of a commodity... ...Yes, a market transaction represents a benefit in the eyes of both transactors, but to consider the transaction as necessarily free means abstracting it from its real context. At best the context is innocuous. But it's all too frequently pernicious. Is value subjective? Value can be both objective or subjective. But as any undergrad philosophy or history of science student will tell you, objectivity doesn't exist independently of subjectivity. Objectivity's conditions of possibility are the product of science as a socially produced and mediated sphere of enquiry and knowledge creation. Objective valued are a product of socially agreed procedures of abstraction. For an example of this, think of any agreed standard of measurement. Is democracy tyrannical? No. By definition, no! Why? Consider these synonyms found in Aristotle's Politics: monarchy/tyranny, aristocracy/oligarchy, community/democracy. Aristotle considered these the public-interested and class-interested modalities of three basic forms: monarchy (rule of one), oligarchy (rule of few), democracy (power held by the People). But we can legitimately say that monarchy is simply an oligarchy of one. So, really there are only two basic forms: oligarchy and democracy, and of the two only oligarchy is tyrannical (e.g the oligarchy of "30 Tyrants" installed by Sparta in Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War). (And the Greeks invented these words, so who are we to tell them they understood them wrongly.) The concern regarding a potential tyranny of the majority derives from John Stuart Mill 1859 book, On Liberty. The propertied classes thought universal suffrage would result in socialism, and they was keen to ensure individual rights (esp. individual property rights) were tied to, legitimated by, and made consonant with the discourse of liberty. Notice however that the source of potential tyranny is the new 19th Century spectre of the working class as mass movement, and also the deafening silence on the actual, recent and (at that time) continuing tyranny ofthe propertied classes. JSMill, as a parliamentarian, was fully aware that, at the time of writing, holding taxable property above a certain valu acted as qualification to vote. He was also aware (but less keen to talk about it) of the intrusion and moral supervision by the propertied classes into the lives of the workers who rented from them, or in the colonial context they owned. In view of this, JSMill's middle-class hand-wringing about a potential tyranny of the majority seems a touch perverse. All of these concepts have a history and a different (often less savoury flavour) when understood in context.
@bryandwyer2204
5 жыл бұрын
Monty python brought me here.
@anisau
5 жыл бұрын
At last! A man with a sense of humour. Some people come here looking for an argument, and get annoyed when all I seem to offer is contradiction... ; )
@HenryKendall-m7m
2 ай бұрын
@@anisau No you don't...;)
@anisau
2 ай бұрын
@@HenryKendall-m7m Have you in fact got any cheese here at all?
@HenryKendall-m7m
2 ай бұрын
@@anisau wdym
@HenryKendall-m7m
2 ай бұрын
@@anisau i was simply continuing the Monty Python reference to the argument skit where john cleese and Michael Palin argue about whether their argument is a genuine one or contradiction!
@RadicalShiba1917
8 жыл бұрын
Why do you support anarcho-syndicalism over Marxism? Specifically over libertarian strands of Marxism, such as councilism or libertarian municipalism?
@anisau
8 жыл бұрын
HI David, You asked “Why do you support anarcho-syndicalism over Marxism? Specifically over libertarian strands of Marxism, such as councilism or libertarian municipalism?” My answer: because there is only so far one can stretch the core tenets of Marxism in a libertarian direction before the band snaps. The key reason, in my case, is that I found myself reading Cornelius Castoriadis, and I am persuaded by his critique of Marxism. In fact, I think the idealist ontology he sets out in the Imaginary Institution of Society is correct in all essential points. This eliminates any form of Marxism from the positions I can truthfully adhere to. Indeed, it was after pursuing this interest in Castoriadis that I arrived at anarchism in the first place. I’m uncertain why Castoriadis never embraced anarchism. (The aversion to the label ‘anarchist’ seems to be shared by Jacques Ranciere for equally perplexing reasons.) Castoriadis did however have enough in common with anarchism to debate with old CNT exiles over coffee and cigarettes at the CNT’s building in the Rue de Vignoles during the 60s. I imagine (but am not certain) that differences regarding preferred economic model and the role of money lay at the heart of it (compare Castoriadis’ “On the content of socialism” with, say, Kropotkin’s Conquest of Bread). Personally, so long as proper federal structures exist subject to bottom-up direct democratic initiative and decision-making, I see nothing in the centrally co-ordinated economic and industrial planning Castoriadis sets out (in those early SouB essays) and anarchism, especially given the Castoriadis’ commitments to collective self-management by workers over industry.
@jasonhamm7174
7 жыл бұрын
Anarchy is Autonomy Could you expand on specifically which of Castoriadis critiques of Marx you are referring to?
@anisau
7 жыл бұрын
First two chapters of "The Imaginary Institution of Society", however the ontological implications of the critique are worked out in the remainder of the book. These two chapters are largely based on essays Castoriadis published in 1964 and 1965 in Socialisme ou Barbarie, and which are included as Chapters 4 and 5 of the Castoriadis Reader published by Blackwell. The essence of the critique is that Marx's teleological claims regarding history, and his postulation of an additional post-revolutionary stage in which humanity will realise concrete freedom (rather than the merely formal freedom Hegel articulates in 1806 as representing the end of history with the bourgeois social order and the values of the French revolution being carried across Europe on the backs of Napoleon army). Castoriadis argues that Marx combines this teleological view of history (which for Hegel only had retrospective effect) with a concept of technical predictability drawn from the rationalism and materialism of the Enlightenment and the imaginary of science. Essentially, Marx's concept of time is deficient, and is mechanical in nature: the iterative succession of units, or the movement of particles/hands on a clock. What comes next can be predicted from the internal contradictions of what exists now. Orthodox Marxism's "faith" in the inevitablility of the revolution stems from this. Castoradis argues that this concept of time as production and reproduction of iterative periods needs to be augmented by a more profound concept of time: historical time as the ex nihilo creation of radically novel forms. Consequently, there can be no rigorously rational plan to which the revolutionary project must adhere, and so no plan that counts as the esoteric knowledge that would justify the leadership of anyone pretending to the position of vanguard party. Similarly the excesses of Stalinism also come down to the presumption that a plan must be followed (industrialisation that would enslave the living in the hope of creating utopia for future generations). This doesn't mean that there is no path to revolution. Rather those paths are multiple and contextual. History is more open and contingent than Marx or the Marxists would have it. Castoriadis' conclusion is that they only way to remain faithful to the revolutionary project is to abandon Marxism (while not necessarily abandoning everything within Marx, e.g. theory of surplus value, etc.)
@dickyboi4956
4 жыл бұрын
I'm half way through the video and have been half listening so forgive me if you covered it and I didn't pay attention but how do we avoid people using freedom of association to justify segregation
@anisau
4 жыл бұрын
Freedom to associate implies freedom to disassociate. And freedom to disassociate is a double edged sword. Denial of/to the other can come at a cost of denial of/to the self. But if you are referring to segregation as occured in the southern states of North America or apartheid in South Africa then I'd say that this not mere freedom of disassociation. It was imposed and inherently unfree in the way it was imposed. That shit cannot be defended according to anarchist principles. It contradicts equality and is predicated on forms of property ownership no anarchist world defend. But if actually raises an issue such was my stating point when thinking about putting together the video, which was Rousseau's observation in his Discourse on Inequality, that there is no wilderness left to disassociate into. Just as there are no pure values that always and everywhere take priority. They are always balanced against the claims of other values and reside in a constellation of values.
@dickyboi4956
4 жыл бұрын
@@anisau so if there were say an alabaman commune that voted and decided no blacks allowed and the ones that live there have to leave, what happens. I agree that southern segregation was a state enforced form of oppression but idk how you prevent an autonomous workers commune that happens to be full of racists from creating rules for their community that have the same effect.
@anisau
4 жыл бұрын
@@dickyboi4956 I think the hypothetical situation you propose is profoundly unlikely. Why? Because equality is just as cardinal to anarchism as freedom. Neither value trumps the other. They need to be thought together, and while one might be invoked in some situations, and the other invoked at other times, neither can be forsaken. Historically it can be thought of like this: Liberalism privileges freedom, and especially freedom to own and dispose of property as one wishes. Socialism critiques this, arguing that liberalism's freedom is negative in form (i.e. "freedom from" in Isaiah Berlin's terms) and so only realises freedom for the rich. Socialism counters with a broader conception of freedom (i.e. positive freedom or "freedom to") and concentrates not just on what limits freedom being exercised, but what acts as its conditions of possibility. It therefore tempers freedom with a need to balance it with equality if freedom is to be universalised. Anarchism grows out of socialism with the recognition that equality pursued without an eye to individual liberty courts tyranny. It therefore looks for ways of balancing and integrating freedom and equality in ways that avoid both the tragedy of capitalism as and the nightmare of Marxist centralism. But all of these ideologies (liberalism, socialism and anarchism) are children of the European Enlightenment, and are therefore universalist (rather than particularist) in orientation. They inherently tend to think of freedom and equality as desirable in universalistic terms, which is to say universally desirable and achievable for ALL INDIVIDUALS(!). The enemies of universalism are particularisms: namely conservatism and its perversely radicalised form, fascism. While racism isn't a necessary element of either, racism couples with them quite easily. Particularist conceptions of freedom don't focus on the individual. (Particularist individualism will manifest in egotism and narcissism, not forms of politics.) Particularist conceptions of freedom focus on the community, and individuals derive their value form thre community the were born into. Back to Alabama: it's not likely that a community will embrace BOTH anarchism and racism, because anarchism is deeply invested with a universalistic conceptions of both freedom and equality, and like liberalism and socialism, thinks these ideas through the lens of the individual. (Even Marxism aims at the individual good. It just imposes its idea of individual good from a centralist point of determination.) Even when they manifest as a concern for human interactions a grassroots and communitarian manner, individuals are accorded the dignity of an abstract equality. The way of imagining the world necessary to anarchism is just too foreign to the imagined racial particularismthat holds racists in thrall for anarchism and racism to be combined. Hence seeing free association as a back door for racists to pervert anarchism is a psychologically implausible. This will not stop racists from invoking free association as a value that legitimises their bullshit. But anarchists will always fight against racism because they know that free association is only a subsidiary value, and it needs to be invested with a universalist conception of equality if it is to have any value at all. Hope this makes sense.
@dickyboi4956
4 жыл бұрын
@@anisau I think I get what you were saying but I'd probably have to have read a lot of things I've never heard to fully get it
@anisau
4 жыл бұрын
@@dickyboi4956 No problem. Let me describe it this way. Think of an electronic jigsaw puzzle with LEDs set in the pieces that stand in for different stars. Each star is an idea and has it's own colour, but its intensity will vary depending on where its plugged in and what it is next to. You can put the puzzle together I'm a variety of different ways to make different constellations. Each constellation is an ideology. But you can't put it together any old way you choose. Some ideas only connect with other ideas if the pieces are orientated in the right way, and they will be central or peripheral and shine brightly or dully depending on the make up of the constellation as a whole. The point is that while there is flexibility to create different ideologies using the same elements in different ways, as you proceed to put something together, it constrains the combinations you can make. Racists in alabama might like the idea of freedom of association, but because they are racist and don't have an expansive idea about equality, and because it is not central to their thinking, whatever society they create cannot be anarchist. If they want to embrace anarchism, because some of its ideas hold intrinsic appeal, then they will be lead away from their racist beliefs. (Or they might stay the racist, right wing shit bags they often are. But they can't be racist and genuinely anarchist.)
@A.R.8755
2 жыл бұрын
How would a Police system and Public helthcare Work in syndicalism, and how to defend oneself against neibouring states and internal preasure to reestablish capitalism and " represantative democracy", because they think its more stabile and better? Nice Idea, but even If you Got enogh folowers, how do you deafeat fashism, rising to protect itself From all Kinds of communism? If you can make this Work, i consider this ideolegy.
@anisau
2 жыл бұрын
Anarcho-syndicalism is revolutionary unionism. It's a strategy for organisation building in preparation for a revolutionary attempt. Syndicat means union. It is not a term to describe a post-revolutionary society. Such society would be called anarchist or (direct) democratic. It would be a true democracy and not the pseude-democraric electoral representationalism we have today in the modern West. Note that an organisation building strategy involves precisely that: organisation. Anarchists are not opposed to organisation. Nor at they opposed to mass organisations. In June 1936, the Spanish CNT had more than 1.5 million members and in the cities they controlled, they had the capacity to take over the functions of the state. (If you would like to read more about this, check out Chris Ealham's History of Barcelona, "Anarchism and the City".) Note also the term "functions of the state". The functions we typically associate with the State are functions the state takes on because they are demanded of it, and are provided in order to maintain the State's legitimacy. But these functions are not the state. It is worth dwelling on this point. The functions of the state are not the state, but functions it takes on, functions it serves. These functions can be served by other means. For example, neo-liberals seek for these functions to be taken over by the market. So, if the functions the state serves are not integral to the state and can be separated from it and served by other means, what is the state? Most books on politics side step this question. They do so because they either assume (wrongly) that the state and its functions are the same thing, or they resort to Max Weber's characterisation of the state as a monopoly on the means of violence. But this is again to mistake attribute for essence. Protection from violence (due to the treat of the state's greater capacity for violence) is a function served by the state, but not the State itself. So what is the State? The State is a hierachical and bureaucratic apparatus of power that sits seperate to and above the people it governs. It is essentially oligarchical, and it's character as oligarchy (oligos, few; archē, rule of/by) is the same regardless of whether the few who rule are elected to stand in a parliament, take power by force of arms, or claim to be anointed by God. However, if people come together on the basis of equality to deliberate directly on that which is common (rather than through representatives who would think and speak for them) this not only to create democracy, it is(!) the destruction of the State. Direct, participatory democracy is(!) the destruction of the State. It is a different form. Now these preliminary clarifications are out if the way, I can respond to your questions about military and civil defence. I can understand why people closely associate an army with the state. Not only do states create them, bureaucracy is essential to both. Bureacracy is a hierarchical organisation with a particular flow of information: in at the periphery, up to a level empowered to make a decision regarding it, this decision is them communicated back down the hierachy to be acted in at the periphery. An army is such a bureaucracy. Bureacratic organisation is essential to the effective organisation of some functions of the state, but we have already discovered that a state and its functions are separable. If you would like to understand how an anarchist society would organise militarily, it is worth looking at two historical example of how (genuine rather that pseudo-)democracies have organised themselves in times of war: the ancient Athenians and the anarchist militias that fought during the 1936 revolution in Spain. Both the Athenisns and the Spanish anarchists elected their officers. This didn't mean combatants were free to disobey orders on the battlefield. Military cohesion requires this sort of discipline. The militias of the Spanish anarchists were drawn from members of the CNT, which is the anarcho-syndicalist confederation (i.e. the anarchist federation of trade unions. Those who fought volunteered. In ancient Greece, the ability to arm oneself and make oneself available to go to war, was a criterion of citizenship in all cities. In Athens, the urban poor (who might not have been able to afford hoplite armour and weapons, maintained their citizenship by serving as rowers in the naval trireme ships. One if the reasons Athenian poor were able to preserve its democracy against old aristocratic rich was that they were ready to fight and Athenian economy could not survive without naval power to secure its trade.
@anisau
2 жыл бұрын
There is a myth that Athenian democracy was founded on slavery, but while Athens (like all ancient societies) had slaves, they did not fight and they did not form the basis of the Athenian economy. People assume this, but it is an assumption not based on evidence but on the idea that the structure and makeup of Greek society parallels that of Rome and the slave owning states in the 18th century Americas. The only ancient Greek state with that sort of economics and social composition was Sparta, and we know that Sparta was seen throughout Greece as an anomaly. It's helot serfs were created through the conquer and enslavement of neighbouring Greek populations, principally the Mycenians. This was seen as scandalous by the rest of the Greeks. While it was normal in times of war to keep captured men, women and children as slaves, if they spoke Greek, they were usually ransomed back to their cities of origin. The Athenians did have a form of national service. The youths of the city would be garrisoned at forts in the rural hinterland where their military education would take place, and they also might serve in the navy, either as marines or sailors. But there was no standing army of professional soldiers. People needed to farm and to ply their trade if their family land was not enough to support them. All citizens had land and often had a trade as well, and it was a crime punishable by death for a father to fail to teach a son his trade. Socrates, for example, was a stonemason by trade. Also, everyone learnt to read and to swim. An Athenian who couldn't swim was not fit to sail. So, the ancient Greek poleis during the classical era were organised around cities or towns, but they were not states. The Greek word "polis" was typically translated as "city-state" during the 19th and 20th centuries, but it is a mis-translation. Soverign city might be a better translation, but the Greek word "polis" is much closer to our word "community" and the Greeks living in the same polis thought of themselves as a community and were much more communitarian in their outlook than we typically are living as social atoms in modern liberal state-governed (pseudo-democratic) metropolises. But I digress... You also asked about Police. Police are a very modern invention. Sheriffs and magistrates go back to medieval times. Customs officials are an early modern invention. But police are a very, very new thing and coincide with the birth if the city as metropolis. All societies have a legal sphere (just as they all have spheres of politics, science/technology, economy, religion and law. In modern societies these spheres gain independence and operate according to their own logics and media (e.g. the medium of politics is power; the medium of economy is money). How these spheres function is a problem that a societies need to solve. Whether we need a police force, and what character the police have depends upon how a society solves the question of how politics, law and economy function. In liberal capitalist society, the police were invented to secure property rights in the absence of public social welfare. Previously the army served this function. And there have always been officers of the courts. But people also starved in the streets or occupied the cells of debtors prisons. An anarchist society is necessarily a socialist society, but one organised on genuinely direct participatory democratic grounds and achieving broader coordination through anarchist mode of federation. With a greatly expanded participation in the political life of the community, it is doubtful we will need courts or a police force as they function now. The trials can take place in community assemblies, as was done at other times in history. And people will understand the law and its processes better by virtue of their frequent participation in political activities. Also, with this greater participation comes greater scope for rotation of office. People can be less tied to careers within single disciplines. Crime will still happen, but the composition and relative frequency of different crimes will change. The people armed can defend themselves. But how they do it depends on how society is composed. Today the state does it through the police because our society is not genuinely democratic. But in a genuinely democratic society we will need to choose how we do it, but, through our democratic assemblies, we can organise it as fits the changing nature, composition and scale of crime in the new society. Importantly, different communities may choose to do it differenctly. Some might trust to community members to take responsibility to bring charges of wrongdoing directly before the assembly. Some communities might choose to incorporate policing into general civil defence as a form of militia-based national service through which training and the cultivation of responsibility can be provided and regulated. I would also expect any right to bear arms would be less an individual right (as in the US), but a trsponcibility regulated by communal assemblies and predicated on training and demonstration of continuous responsibility (as in Switzerland whether those who have completed national service can keep their arms but only under strict conditions, and who carry them only rarely and in legally defined occasions: shooting practice at ranges, in-season hunting, pest control). Or they might be stored only in community armories. Some communities might ban them outright. My point is that there is no need to define these things in detail up front. There are many plausible ways of solving these questions, and the further one digs into the detail, the more these possibilities open up and present themselves. The critical question is meta-political: how is politics to be done? Once this question is answered in favour of (genuine direct, participatory) democracy, the people can and will ask and solve all manner of political questions among themselves. If we can get enough people to push for greater democracy in the form anarchists suggest, then, rather than uniformity from place to place, we will have a myriad diversity of subtle or not so subtle differences on a range of issues. This variability is what freedom looks like. And it is a fool's errand to predict the future in too much detail. Either way, I hope this responce helps.
@A.R.8755
2 жыл бұрын
@@anisau so basicly, any community could decide it individually, e.g. a Healthcare union for everyone. Some suggest to rehabitalise criminals. But one question remains: how do you takeover and avoid fashists, the police force, military, propaganda, conservatives destroying union rights, etc. Thank you for taking the time to answer so many questions. I guess many ask certain questions, so you could make videos about the often called questions, if you've the time.
@anisau
2 жыл бұрын
@@A.R.8755Post-revolution there will be no unions. During the revolution, the unions will take over the means of production, exchange, distribution and communication and will become worker's cooperatives, autonomous communities and federations of worker's cooperatives and communities. They will need to organise their military and civil defence. Because they are federated, it would make sense to do this in a regional or national scale, but there is no reason they could not do it on a trans-national scale. It world make sense to do it at least regionally due to economies of scale, and advantages to federating in ways that serve the same purpose mutual defense treaties do today. There would also be no practical limit preventing this, because the pattern of organising is always bottom-up rather than top-down, and anarchist federation does not imply ceding sovereignty upwards. In today's nation states, sovereignty is typically located at the national level. This will not be the case in a territory federated along anarchist lines. The pattern will be more akin to the old Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, although composed of democratic communities rather than aristocratic duchies. (Anarchist federations are always confederations, if you wish to apply the modern distinction between federation and confederation.) The Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth survived for 400+ years way yet was not a state and its is worth learning about it because it demonstrates that the State is not inevitable. There was a good episode about it a few months ago on BBC4's program, In Our Time, which is available as podcast through the BBC Sounds app. I do not see any anarchist society having a standing army of professional soldiers. But I do see them going down the road of civil militia and something analogous to national service, although it won't be called that. The historical example to look to to understand what might be done is the militia of the CNT during the Spanish Revolution of 1936‐39.
@ashleigh3021
2 жыл бұрын
It wouldn’t. There’s a reason such polities have never survived in the market for statehood.
@McMuffinV2
4 жыл бұрын
I ask as a genuinely interested lefty, would there be property or currency? How would commodities and consumer wants be handled? What would motivate people to innovate or invent new products?
@anisau
4 жыл бұрын
A "genuinely interested lefty", raising questions commonly associated with the right? I suppose there's no harm in taking you at face value... Firstly, my presentation deals with the principles of anarchist organisations and specifically with anarchist unions ("syndicat" = "union" in French). Yet you seem to be asking about the socio-economic structures of a post-revolutionary society organised along anarchist lines. Its nice that you have sufficient faith in anarcho-syndicalism as a strategy for revolution to want to jump so far ahead of the gun, but it's important to know exactly what's being presupposed by your questions. Unfortunately there is no hard and fast answer, since (surprise, surprise!) there is no commonly agreed position on this, and certainly nothing that would be accepted as anachist doctrine. Rather, there are a group of conflicting positions that revolve around and lay claim to a core set of political principles as set out in not video. But saying "it depends" never satisfies anyone, so let's take your questions one by one. Would there be property? Yes. But control over the means of production, distribution, exchange and communication would be held in common on the basis of equality. This implies democracy, which for anarchists can only be direct or not at all. Certainly people would have private effects. All societies differentiate between private and public spheres, which includes public and private property, but the boundary between those spheres would be collectively determined and would be situated differently. Would there be currency? There are two positions on this, the anarcho-communist one which says No, and which asserts that people will freely appropriate from communal stores; and a contrasting position associated with the term "collectivism" and which says Yes. The collectivist position advocates wage equality (which may be either absolute or adjust proportionally on the basis of need). Anarcho-communism presumes a planned economy, collectivism is more agnostic and is open to both a planned economy, a free market based on wage equality, or a mixed economy. I personally think the collectivist position is the more realistic and flexible. How would commodities and consumer wants be handled? I think my responce on currency indicates this sufficiently without going into detail. What would motivate people to innovate and invent new products? Largely the same things that drive innovation today. Most innovation today doesn't emerge from for-profit capitalist enterprises. Innovation is a product of research and development, and R&D is an inherently risky, high investment activity. Most of it comes out of publically funded university research and the scientific arms of public organisations. This research tends to be sold through patents and copyright, or otherwise bought into by private firms who invest in order to bring it to market, but which only do so when the hard yards have already been done. Sure there are private firms that contribute to innovation, but they tend to make old technologies better rather than inventing new technologies, and they are not immune from seeking public finding where they can make a case for it. Given public forms of investment tend to be critical to innovation, and given western economies are actually mixed economies rather than purely or even primarily free market, there is no reason to assume they have a monopoly on the capacity to innovate. And why is political innovation tacitly excluded from the presuppsitions of such a question in the first place? (I guess this hints at the paradox that sees those called "neo-libereal" in the rest of the world be called "conservative" in North America.)
@McMuffinV2
4 жыл бұрын
@@anisau Thank you for your answer. On the political spectrum, I am Authleft, although it confuses me a bit because I definitely identify as Libleft. I also agree the means of production and the workplace in general should be democratized. The only issue I've had with this ideology, is that it seems like there isn't a strong motivator for people who have a good idea for a consumer product. It takes alot to have a great idea, then see it through to the point of commercial success. I was mainly interested in finding out what an Anarcho-Syndicalist society would do to encourage new ideas or products. I also acknowledge that the taxpayer subsidizes research and development for most industries, and this ideology abides by my guiding principles. Thank you again for your video and your response, you've helped me finally find an ideology that speaks to my core values.
@anisau
4 жыл бұрын
@@McMuffinV2, I understand that you are relatively new to thinking through where you stand in regard to political ideologies, so please accept these suggestions as constructive. You mention AuthLeft and LibLeft and so have obviously been looking at some political spectrum diagrams. Any introductory text to political ideologies will contain these, however they are only useful as a jumping off point. Students of political science tend to put too much faith in them because they appear to be an objective way into the subject and therefore seem to hold a degree of scientific validity which they can place their trust in. The problem is that resolving differences into a left-right axis or combination of left-right (economic) and authoritarian-libertarain (political) axes, while providing students with a means of visualizing distance and proximity between various political figures/ideological perspectives, nonetheless tends to present an overly simplistic picture. It’s a good way or getting an initial orientation within the political landscape, but the devil is in the detail, and the sooner you get a grasp of that detail the better. I strongly encourage you to do some reading that will give you an historical perspective on how various ideological perspectives grew out of each other. I hear Wolin is very good and is favoured in North America, but he doesn’t treat anarchism. Haywood’s textbook is highly accessible, and while he is relatively weak on anarchism, at least he treats it, and I think his chapter on Liberalism is pretty solid and I’d recommend that to anyone. It is important to understand that all modern political ideologies are the bastard children of liberalism. Socialists (including Marx) are often understood as opponents of liberalism (and they are), but you can’t understand them unless you grasp them as arguing, not that liberalism is bad, but that it is insufficient. This will help you to understand some of the apparent paradoxes, e.g. that Communist Russia (which was undeniably authoritarian) had a more liberal approach to birth control, and women’s rights generally, than the UK or the US during the same period. Developing an historical perspective will also help you to understand why those called classical liberals and neo-liberals (i.e. neo-classical liberals) in Europe and the rest of the world are called “conservatives” in North America, and why those called liberals in north America are often understood to be socialist or social democrats everywhere else. IIf you say “libertarian” to someone from southern Europe and South America, they will understand you as referring to a socialist, and more specifically an anarchist (and not necessarily the loony right-wing fringe you find in North America who masturbate to copies of Ayn Rand). You’ll also hear people referring to libertarian socialists, and sometimes they mean anarchist, and sometimes they’ll be referring to Marxists of the autonomist, Council Communist or even post-Marxist variety. Socialism grows out of the liberal tradition as a critique, and anarchism grows out of the socialist tradition as a critique (i.e. a critique of both liberalism and the Marxist version of socialism). If you are interested in anarchism specifically, I highly recommend Daniel Guerin’s (1970) book on anarchism, called alternatively “Anarchism” or “Anarchism: From theory to practice”. Rudolf Rocker’s (1936) book on Anarcho-syndicalism; Theory and Practice is also good, but I suggest keeping to the theoretical chapters and skipping the historical chapters on a first read through. I also strongly recommend reading more widely in social theory/philosophy: Simom Critchley’s short introduction to Continental Philosophy is excellent and a good place to start, Agnes Heller’s “A Theory of Modernity”, is very good and a good point of orientation on the dynamics of the modern world. J.L. Talmon’s “Romanticism and Revolt” (1967) is excellent from a social history perspective (which is strange since his “Origins of Totalitarian Democracy” is profoundly wrongheaded, even if the detail is interesting). J.G. Merquior’s book on “Western Marxism” is quite good, if a bit dated. And I highly recommend anything by Cornelius Castoriadis, but wouldn’t recommend “The Imaginary Institution of Society” (his key text) until you’ve got some philosophy/sociology/psychoanalysis under your belt, specifically Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, Weber and Freud. Happy reading!
@McMuffinV2
4 жыл бұрын
@@anisau Thanks again for your thoughtful response. I feel I have portrayed myself incorrectly. I've always had an interest in politics, and I've always had some key opinions and values. I voted for Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020, and I consider myself a Social Democrat or market socialist. I have read some literature, but I will also give those a read. What I meant earlier, is I have never come across an ideology i agree with full stop, but Anarcho-Syndicalism comes far closer than most. I have read Marx and although I disagree with parts of socialist theory, mainly when it comes to the power of a centralized government, I agree with the basic premise of promoting a society where the productive, working class have the dominant say in their own lives and workplaces. I also completely object totalitarianism, and authoritarian governments which is the reason I brought it up earlier. I know very well that those tests aren't the end all be all. Thank you so much for taking the time to help me in my understanding and search for knowledge and ideals. You've been very helpful, and I'll be recommending this to other like minded peers of mine. I've got a lot of reading to do! Before hearing of these ideas, I thought the best idea humanity had ever devised for governing was that of Social Democracy; Sweden being a nation I look to as a model society, or even New Zealand. I now see these as more of a stepping stone towards something even more free, and open for the autonomy of individuals and the collective wellbeing as a whole. Thanks so much.
@mh4zd
2 жыл бұрын
"Collective Autonomy" is pure double speak. It's an oxymoron. You're jiggering the language to fix the convolutions in the spaces between your goal and the means to arrive at it. This is similar to what happens when you begin with the ideal of "Direct Democracy" and proceed to discuss its means (with albeit good ideas for making it better than present US representative democracy).
@anisau
2 жыл бұрын
So, what you are saying is that individual autonomy is possible but collective autonomy is not: that if one person deliberates rationally on the ends he wants to achieve and the best means he has available to achieve it, we can call him autonomous; but if two people deliberate rationally, agreeing on the ends they want to achieve and the best means they have available to achieve those ends, then we cannot call them autonomous. See what I've done here? I've set out clearly the implications of your assertion. Two scenarios: one person vs two people. Aside from this difference the structure of the scenarios is the same. I've done this because it shows clearly the problem in your thinking. You think agreement between two people is impossible. And you've implied that to assert its possibility is to engage in "double-speak". I think the issue here is less the logical consistency of the terms I've used and more your inability to engage in trusting relationships with those around you. The poverty of your philosophical anthropology is clear and apparent. But I'm worried about how you live your life and worried for those around you if your really think honest agreement between two people is impossible. I want you to reflect on this, because it seems that giving articulation to your stupid political opinions on the internet must be the very least of your worries right now. You have much, much bigger things to worry about.
@mh4zd
2 жыл бұрын
@@anisau You know, your dissection of "collective autonomy" makes a really good point. Let's take two people who happen to completely agree with each other all the time out of the equation for the moment. I was thinking in terms of the word "anarchy" (no rule), but I was being quite un-idealistic. If two people get together, have some disagreements, and some of those disagreements cannot be rectified in a single policy, we have a situation where compromise is needed. In compromise, one person's (or both persons', across a set of policy questions or even in one policy) wishes have to be subordinated beneath the others. This contradicts autonomy (the ability to act as one wishes). We all do it all the time. But this last fact has us wondering, if we do it all the time, then aren't we now living in a state of collective autonomy (and only not by way of our attitude)? I get that much democracy today is not as involved, thought out, or free of the usurpation of capitalists (that are betraying capitalism in the doing of the usurpation), but these are problems some of which AnSyn does not fix and others which it does, as outlined by yourself, but with means usable by democracy in it's present national form. But if one genuinely, a their core, finds purpose and contentedness in the subordination, one could say that they've entered into a state of collective autonomy, and that to me makes sense, so thank you for the clarification. Two wrinkles still bother me though, which is the inclusion of the word "anarchy" in all this, and, secondly, what in your mind keeps the inevitable arrival of discontents from causing either endless fracturing of the syndicates (resulting in weakness) and the resulting attractiveness of the opposite (via both said appearance of weakness and the prior discontent) of the now freely available passing of policies that favor consolidation of power and the suppression of dissenting voices and then all the more trope-ish horrors that follow? Or, cut off the last, more apocolyptic part of that, and simply ask, what's to keep things from gravitating toward what we have today? The answer is some sort of binding rules (and even this is not necessarily sufficient), and all I ask is that once we've arrived here, dop the anarchy word. I don't know if at some point you loved it (I'm not making a personal attack here, I just really don't understand). Anyway, I loved it, as some sort of Rousseaian ideal. I look at these AnSync visions and I see a lack of difference from democracy (other than some really good ideas for its improvement) and also a somewhat clear line of vision to its undoing in ways that most democracies are not so susceptible to. "Trusting relationships with those around you..." At first I thought this was wild ad hominem, but then I thought perhaps you're attaching this to the idea that I cannot see my way to a world where collective autonomy makes sense. Maybe we can agree that my personal ability to cede any particular amount of my interests is not explicitly revealed in my doubts, but rather that of a sufficient number to make this work. Agreement between two people is not impossible. It's just sometimes not happening, and, especially when times get really soft, people get more and more picky about what they deserve, or, when times are hard, they get more and more fearful about what power structures are up to and if starvation is, by said structure's doing, around the corner. Contentedness is the problem in all this, and it's a problem that needs fixing within (not that we shouldn't strive for better human systems, but we should know that perfection will never be). Thanks for your time.
@anisau
2 жыл бұрын
@@mh4zd No. In the scenario you presented, in which two two people cannot agree, you assume one person will be forced to subordinate his interests to the other and therefore autonomy cannot exist. But if so, the situation îs not democratic, because democracy is the coming together on the basis of equality to deliberate on that with is common. Psrhaps you also believe that even if they can agree to a compromise, neither gets what they truely want and both are subordinating their interests to the common good, so autonomy still doesn't exist. Part of the problem here is that you are invested in the idea of the utility maximising individual as a rational actor soverign to himself. This abstract image of a self-complete, pre-social individual was a mainstay of the philosophical anthropology that undergirded classical liberalism. Yet, this image was and is an incoherent fiction. The individual cannot be abstracted from society in this way. To ask "what came first, society or the individual?" is much like asking, "what cane first, the chicken or the egg?" But we also know from developmental psychology, that true individuation (not merely the expression of personal tastes but the ability to reflect on society and to put it into question), is a potential that emerges late in a person's development towards maturity. Historically, it also emerged as an adult norm only in modern societies (ones no longer governed primarily by tradition) and only rarely and sporadically in pre-modern societies. Therefore, we can safely answer our chicken and egg question by stating that society is ontologically prior to the individual. Individualtion is a social process that fabricates such thst they have a capacity individually defined (as opposed to socially defined (e.g traditional) ends. Consider also that no indivisible can attain to rational thought without the resources of his or her natural language, and that rational thought also facilitates a reflective use of language aimed at overcoming the ways natural languages tend to corral its speakers into societally specific patterns of thought. (Hence France produces French people with French customs and attitudes and Japan produces Japanese people with Japanese customs and attitudes. The implication of this is that autonomy and its potentialality is not a primordial quality of the individual, but a capacity of fully developed, individuals socicalised within historically specific communities. This also means that you make an error when you think of individuals as independent rational actors pre-possessed of an autonomy that they trade away for security when they enter society and bind themselves to others through compromise. Of course, tou are not alone in making this error. It's known as naive realism because we all tend to think this way initially, due to the fact that the seat of consciousness and rationality resides in the individual, and egotism is a universal trait of the young. But most of us grow out of it to a greater or lesser degree as we age and develop and learn more about society and the way it works. Many of us will have this illusion burst doe us in our first year of university. The upshot is that is that we are always bound to, embedded within and largely fabricated by society, and hence autonomy has two aspects which are inseparable and exist as two sides of the same coin: individual and collective. We cannot escape the collective aspect of autonomy. The political regime consistent with the full expression of collective automony is (direct) democracy. The only modern political ideology commiyted to democracy in its direct, participatory sense is anarchism, which emerged during the 19th century from within the revolutionary socialist movement and which opposed itself BOTH to capitalist liberalism AND to Marx's authoritarian centralism. Both capitalism and the state are authoritarian. Autonomy has both individual and collective aspects. They are mutually reinforcing. You cannot have one without the other. We affirm our capacity for autonomy in the attempt to be autonomous. But we cannot be truely autonomous without demanding, creating and participating in (direct) democratic institurions. Voting is not the criterion of democracy many think it tk be. In fact, it is only democratic when one participates in a vote as an equal member of an assembly and one votesdirectly on the issue at hand. As soon as you vote in order to elect someone to deliberate on your behalf, you have ceded your autonomy in crucial ways. The class of deliberators selected cis the mechanism of votingis an oligarchy, and parliament is an oligatchical institution. Don't just think that an-archē means no rules. An-archē means no rulers (archon = ruler), and this is why all of those aligned with the oligarchical faction in ancient Athens (Plato, Aristotle, Aristophanes, Xenophon) characterised democracy as anarchic: if everyone is equal, there are no rulers. That didn't mean there are no rules or that a truely democratic society cannot give rules to itself. Autonomy means to give the law to oneself. We do this through the collective aspect of autonomy, but only when we participate directly as equals when instituting of our laws. This is what anarchism is all about: the achievement of democracy in its radically self-consistent, direct participatory sense. I hope this clears things up for you.
@mh4zd
2 жыл бұрын
@@anisau I agree with your breakdown of individualism, as a thing in reality not actually in existence (chicken, egg, etc.). I think where were crossing paths in the night is that I'm not referring to the interests of the individual as some transcendant moral ground that I hold as valid, as an article of faith, but rather that, despite the reality of the socially driven underpinnings of most of our natures, we persistently do not behave according to this reality, and consistently, in interpersonal and political life, assert the immediate, or perceived in any considered term, desires of the individual. And of course this comes often cloaked as something other than it is - cloaked from not only others, but our own selves. This, along with the problem of the errant or immoral federation (capable of imposing its will on other federations and therefore leading to unequal opinions about the degree to which this threat needs to be prepared for, leading in turn to disputes regarding the allotment of communal means), are things I see not addressed in your vision. Perhaps I'll get there further into your response. But it seems that you are resting your dream on a moral state, the leveraging of which you lack because you lack a hell, or some other device upon which to have people have the social good at top of mind, sans even the cognitive foibles that stand in the way of even the greatest of intents to possess said state. It seems you've gone along - with all due love and respect (again, could be missing something) -believing that the only thing standing in the way of this extant state of the human being is the proper social mechanics, and perhaps some bad actors. We're all the bad actor, our relative disenfranchisement being the number one reason behind the degree to which we are not. I realize I'm not arguing against a socialist (I think...) and the above seems like I'm putting forth the reasons why it's unwise to place people in power in order that means get allotted properly (because, when the chips are down, these people always seem to "deserve" not to suffer quite as much as the rest, which is one half of the standard argument against socialism). Rather, I mention this element of human nature because you seem to suggest that direct democracy will be so beautiful as to cancel out the very existence of dissatisfaction with social systems, and the degree to which we regard our dissatisfactions with such incredible lack of objectivity. But you go too far in your definition of democracy, and it matters. The only place where democracy touches the issue of equality is where this means of social organization to most people implies one vote per one person - an equality of representation. With this in mind, and given any permutation of democracy one can imagine, people will often be subordinating their preferred vision to that of the majority's (which is the primary impetus for the concept of a constitution, owing to the understanding that majorities are capable of literally anything, including oppression of the minority, which, in strict terms, is what's happening all the time in democracies, albeit in less than horrific ways, thanks to the constitution, which attempts to predict are react to said horrors. One of the problems with democracy, which we are living through right now, is that the Overton window on what constitutes a horror moves, particularly when life gets easy. When you combine that with siloed media perpetuating myths, ugliness gets brewing, and, along with that, people start imagining nifty ways to reconfigure things such that fairness is maximized. "To deliberate that [which] is common..." Hmm, and whatever else they have to deliberate, like how to get along on that which is not held in common. Also, you take the individual versus society thing a little far by stating that ontologically we can say that the individual arises from the social. The arrival of reflection upon the society being late is only one, more conscious-level, manifestation of the individual. The child is acutely socially driven, but, mind you, for reasons of his weakness (pragmatically detected and evolutionarily designed means against weakness), and, importantly, one of the threats is other humans (at least evolutionarily speaking), which drives the child to the protection of (primarily) mother, and, to a lesser but emerging degree, clan (familiar faces). But the individual is always there and, in your layout, not disproven, and, by a close look at evolution, and observation (I have children), is always waiting in the wings and emerges to assert itself where it feels secure enough to do so. While appearing - with assertion and challenge - late (18 months or so) that does not mean the phenomenon was not present in the form of design. Rather, the design was present, lacking only the knowledge of what to engage with. I think we can agree this makes sense. In your model, the individual arises from the social, but the individual is the design represented by both the id (that which takes over for the self when the social fails to provide the necessary material needs but that is always present to ask, do for itself and receive for itself) and the ego (that by which the self senses its worth to the group - a phenomenon grounded in why that worth matters, namely, the group's ability to deliver a host of goods to said individual). Both parts are grounded in the needs of the material individual. Looked at like this, the driver of society is individual material need. But I'm happy to go with the chicken - egg trope, because so much of the design is evolved toward social dependence and social leveraging. But, it must be noted, that a primal view of evolution features the individual as carrier of the unique environmental-parlaying into species proliferation, and as such, evolution has placed a high degree of selfishness into creatures - a selfishness degraded by later stages of evolution wherein the advantages of sacrifice, for the species, has been cracked into by the phenomenon of life, albeit with quite evident limitations to the mechanisms herein for this group-success strategy, as the adaptive aspect of evolution still reside firmly in the individual (sacrificial features coming at a cost by way of watering down the average presence and proliferation - via sexual success - of successful traits). The child lays down associative habits in the brain whereby the draw of mother and the familiar has caused things like moral adaptation (doing as the group and individuals want) and this echoes into later life, making us, yes, extremely social. But the aforementioned dynamic of continual burbling up of individual desire continues into adulthood, and does so in a way synonymous with the childhood, and can be seen in social dynamics, whereby, for instance, a nation becomes less self-centered and more pre-disposed to subduing personal interest in times of (serious) war. In other words, when things are less secure. When things are more secure, people get less agreeable. But this reality that you paint delivers a problem - if it was always there, then why the problem that you wish to amend? Is it the presence of bad actors? How many bad actors? Where are the bad actors in your future world? How do you know how many bad actors there are, and the degree to which those that people your well-structured parliaments are not bad actors? (acknowledging of course that there are not simply bad and good actors, but shades across the spectrum coloring all, most important among which is not some level of individual good and evil, but rather the ability to be objective in self-analysis). "Both capitalism and the state are authoritarian." Ya, in a manner of speaking, although I somehow feel more ok with suffering the ills of this non-pointed, non-intentional (other than the intentions of selfishness) authority of merit capturing means that is the capitalist authority (if capturing means can be called authority, but I'll demure, as lions and tigers and all of nature exert an authority of a kind). I feel ok with this because there are no high-falut'n ideas behind them, and ideas for the final end to all that is bad is where the really sucky stuff comes into our history. I prefer the perpetual but bloodless state of revolution that is democracy (that you have good ideas for improving). But, while you seem dedicated to democracy, there's also a socialist vein in your thinking, and I don't think all people agree with you, particularly if you're vying for equality of outcome. This seems stupidly obvious, but I'm not sure your democratic mechanisms anticipate the presence of this disagreement. They seem rather to anticipate the existence of a present and predominate (or better) mindset whose only present obstacle is the lack of the proper governmental mechanisms.
@mh4zd
2 жыл бұрын
@@anisau ....."Capitalism is authoritarian" - Yes, in the way that lions and viruses and the cold and the volcano are authoritarian to the us all. Monopoly is not only a bad manifestation for all within a capitalist society, but also for capitalism itself. But monopoly arises naturally from capitalism. This is why capitalism, while being the closest representation to nature in the economic systems, is an artificial, socially preserved, state (preserved by the banning of monopoly). But it's true that ever since one could no longer "go west, son" (since there was no longer any land left), the availability of the fruits of individual efforts were to a degree that could be called discriminatory (beyond the state of discrimination that existed in the prior state of a broader meritocracy (in theory, of course)) cut off from certain types of people whose prior exploits owed themselves to energy and strength (with the remaining opportunities being sequestered more now into the realms of intelligence). "Consider also that no [individual] can attain to rational thought..." Is this, and the paragraph that follows it, trying to say that the way in which the individual manifests itself a product of the culture? In superficial ways, yes, but there are strong commonalitiies too that are precisely mappable onto the concerns of democracy and the ability for it to truly represent people. The ways in which the individual desire (autonomy) are not common across cultures deliver important insights, and the ways in which they do, I agree, do not always point to something best called primordial, as the primordial does collide with the phenomenon of groups in ways that bring about socially invented devices that are shared across cultures, simply because said devices are both effective and commonly available to the human mind. But in either case, there are common individual desires. "This also means that you make an error when you think of individuals as independent rational actors pre-possessed of an autonomy that they trade away for security when they enter society and bind themselves to others through compromise." Well, I never said rational, but, other than that, couldn't have stated it aby better myself. We are no where near rational, as we are no where near capable of accurate and objective introspection. Objectivity itself, in the context of social matters, being a fiction. I might also point out to you here that you may be segregating autonomy too much, in a way that contradicts your other purposes. I would say, and your other lines would seem to agree, that autonomy itself contains within it freely and selfishly chosen non-autonomous states. This seems to be what you're saying elsewhere. "We are fabricated by society...." Yes, in ways we don't even realize too. I get it. Where did you make the bend whereby autonomy was seen being proposed as an assertion of a moral ground or a state that can be internally and objectively reflected upon? I don't even believe in free will my man. Autonomy is a beast that boils up and our lack of objective self-awareness is the very awe -inspiring feature as to its power to defy any and all political systems. If you're looking to transcend that you need to start a religious discipline, not push a political system. "The political regime consistent with the full expression of collective autonomy is (direct) democracy." Using your definitions, I agree. Not sure what it results in, or if the more specific prescriptions you lay out survive, but, ya. O to the friggn M G. "An-arche....(Archon=ruler)." Dude, archy=rule. It's not Anarchony. I'm willing to meet you at your definitions, but in light of your condescension re youth and college and consciousness, etc., this unrigorous and dishonest argumentation is not unappealing to the point of being discrediting. "Voting is not the criterion for democracy you may think it is..." This is getting pedantic my friend. Who clicks on a anarcho-syndicalism vid and is not already versed in what you cover here?
@evolvedape2161
5 жыл бұрын
13:30 It’s almost like you would need to democratically elect representatives of the group whose job it is to represent the will of the people. Explained two minutes after you condemn representative democracy as being oligarchic.
@anisau
5 жыл бұрын
Rotation of delegates is a better system than election of representatives. It encourages mutual education and confidence building in the groups, as well as preventing individuals entrenching themselves in representative positions. The ancient Athenians were correct in identifying election as an aristocratic function (aristos meaning "best"), and therefore oligarchic.
@evolvedape2161
5 жыл бұрын
Anarchy is Autonomy So, sorry if I don’t quite understand the distinction. How would you determine who would, well, represent the populations? And I guess past that, what exactly is the difference you are making between “delegates” and “representatives”?
@anisau
5 жыл бұрын
@@evolvedape2161, rotation takes place at all levels. Office bearers at regional, national or international level are groups, not individuals, with powers limited by mandate. The current secretariat for ASF is Melbourne North. The current secretariat for the IWA (of which the ASF is a member) is Poland. The important thing of that proposals at congress typically come up from member sections, rather than down. The secretariat is largely a clearing house for official (i.e.group mandated) communication, not that this precludes informal communication of any sort taking place. Usually, the group delegated responsibility to act as secretariat will nominate one or more individuals to be Gen. Sec. Its unpaid, onerous, and there is no power or status to be gleaned from it, so only genuinely commuted and capable comrades volunteer. Ambitious types typically fuck off and join the trots or the labour party. We don't want them or need them.
@evolvedape2161
5 жыл бұрын
Anarchy is Autonomy Sorry, I again fail to see your distinctions. So you have regular set, oh I don’t know let’s call them “elections”. During these “elections” the people decide which representatives based on their... “campaigns” hold the public good in mind and they cast their votes for those “representatives”. How exactly is your system different? The only distinction I can find is that you would have no salary for your party officials. Wouldn’t that exclude then those people who would be unable to afford the position?
@evolvedape2161
5 жыл бұрын
Anarchy is Autonomy Also, your general secretary would be elected by your elected body rather than directly by the people. So more like elections in Britain. I really have not found any distinction you are trying to make other than semantic.
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