- cross-posted to:
- PLT@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- PLT@sh.itjust.works
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They are all using public transport. Already a win.
As an anarchist who is opposed to accelerationionism, it’s frustrating how many people see it as an ideology that wants the state to immediately collapse.
I’ve had multiple arguments with liberals who say I’m not a real anarchist because I want pragmatic short-term progressive solutions like Medicare for all.
So yeah, I’m not wanting to condemn people to death for my ideology. Got me! (Not you, PugJesus)
History teaches us that collapse and revolution rarely goes well for anyone.
Anarchists are incredibly caricatured in the popular mind. Curious though, how would you describe your pragmatic short-term progressive anarchism? Reformist Anarchism? Incrementalist?
I don’t know of a name for it, but it’s fairly common in anarchistic thought as far as I can tell.
Mutual aid is really the bedrock principle in anarchism, so setting up structures for it where we can is important even if they are imperfect.
I always like to (admittedly, pedantically) point out that if anarchism is defined purely etymologically, all it means is “without hierarchy”.
My personal interpretation is that it doesn’t necessarily imply a lack of a state, democratic or representative government, or jurisprudence of established law; it only implies a lack of arbitrary and tiered authority or power.
Similar
I like to point people to Desert by Anonymous. It talks about how the plan should really be waiting for the State to recede as collapse progresses, and finding the spaces left behind where theres room for mutual aid based organization.
I like that. It turns your attention to what’s in front of you, rather than waiting for the mythical Revolution we’ll likely never see.
Ever hear about love? I checked and turns out its for everyone, can you believe it?
💜💜💜
Bookchin gang unite.
Republicans and Democrats are both perfectly ok with state violence so long as it’s against brown people, and preferably overseas. How many millions have died from lack of access to affordable health care and an almost non-existent social safety net in the US over the past century? But those aren’t counted as ideological deaths for some reason? If you think that choosing either of the two main parties which both have an official policy of supporting foreign genocides is the lesser evil somehow, you’ve been duped. America has killed more people in wars in the past 20 years than nearly any other state, except perhaps for Russia. You’re just bent out of shape because that state violence has been turned on the domestic population for once. Anything has got to be better than the status quo.
Anything has got to be better than the status quo.
Spoken like a true child of privilege without any imagination - or understanding of conditions outside of your cozy status quo, ironically.
This has nothing to do with anything that I said. Please try to stay on topic and keep your strawmen in your own fields.
If you have to make up a bunch of bullshit about me to attack my position then you’re not attacking my position.
The problem with wanting change without collapse is you have to figure out a way to live next to the millions and millions of people who didn’t want the change or believed they didn’t want it and will never change that belief.
The sad truth is for the kind of meaningful change any of us actually want, it would take enough collective trauma that it displaces the collective feelings of comfort and protection that allow people to have set-in beliefs at all.
This isn’t saying I want widespread disaster at all, nobody deserves the suffering of disease, displacement and starvation. Unfortunately it’s coming anyway, worse yet, it will only impact the people least deserving of this coming misery.
I‘d say that @Zombiepirate@lemmy.worlds assessment is still the correct approach. If the system collapses anyways, the best thing to do is build local infrastructure through solidarity — which is best anarchist practice.
In scandinavia anarchist groups started „preppa tilsammen“ (prepping together). It is not about hoarding guns, but community disaster relief.
I’m of two minds about it. On the one hand I am tired of the unnecessary suffering that is common in the richest country in the history of the Earth. A step in the right direction is better than nothing.
Or is it? Every time we increase the social safety net, our righteous anger subsides. We stop boycotting, protesting, striking, organizing, etc, because faith in the system is restored. And then we delay the necessary work of dismantling this system that is based on greed and exploitation. Inevitably, the oligarchs bide their time and then strip away rights and economic opportunity as soon as we stop paying attention.
“Things getting worse will make people swap to MY side!” has a terrible track record.
Sure, but this doesn’t address the problem I’m noting above. We fought hard for worker’s rights, so they granted them and then dismantled/neutered the unions. Public outcry forced the fracture of Standard Oil and now the monopolies are worse than ever. It’s one step forward and two steps back.
Because you have to keep taking steps forward. The fight against greed and corruption will never end, the other side is going to keep swinging forever. We don’t get to rest on past achievements, we constantly have to defend them and push for more.
And the thing is, if you can’t rally the people to vote for incremental change, revolution is a non-starter.
I agree with everything in the first paragraph. However, every time we fight against the oligarchs they learn better strategies to divide and conquer us. We are a much more isolated people than we were 50 or 100 years ago. Individualism and consumerism are ubiquitous while our sense of community is virtually non-existent. So people feel powerless to confront fascism because no one can do it alone. This isolation is arguably by design.
And the thing is, if you can’t rally the people to vote for incremental change, revolution is a non-starter.
Time will tell. But there are historical examples, in other countries, of the corruption and hypocrisy being flaunted so blatantly that the people rise up and demand sweeping systemic changes.
In the U.S., we have forgotten our collective power. Our peaceful protests are ignored and even destruction of property is consider taboo. We haven’t seen wide-spread violent dissent since the Civil Rights / Anti-Vietnam movements. Conditions were ripe then, but the government deployed a combination of modest concessions and state enacted violence: carrot and stick. The way this Trump term is going, they might not give us the carrot next time.
Individualism and consumerism are ubiquitous while our sense of community is virtually non-existent.
It’s never been a better time to make it virtually existent. Look at us, here, now, puzzling out the best course of action. The information Age is the perfect opportunity to build robust social networks that transcend borders. But until we can cooperate and coordinate here in the most casual and forgiving circumstances, how are we going to coordinate collective power any other way?
the corruption and hypocrisy being flaunted so blatantly that the people rise up and demand sweeping systemic changes.
Accelerationism is a dangerous game of chicken with lots of collateral damage. I do not desire a pathway that rolls the dice on totalitarianism, even if you succeed countless of people will be chewed up by the acceleration. It’s the ideology of the privileged, who are betting they won’t be one of the ones chewed up.
In the U.S., we have forgotten our collective power.
We do still have the ballot box, we just have to use it in a coordinated way. We also have our workplace, which we can take steps to unionize and socialize. We should be arming ourselves, this administration actually changed my mind on the second amendment.
Accelerationism is a dangerous game of chicken with lots of collateral damage. I do not desire a pathway that rolls the dice on totalitarianism, even if you succeed countless of people will be chewed up by the acceleration. It’s the ideology of the privileged, who are betting they won’t be one of the ones chewed up.
Is it not the ideology of the privileged to maintain the status quo? Every second it is allowed to exist people are dying from easily preventable causes. You play chicken with their lives as you gamble on the chance to make 1 million small changes vs 1 big change.
What you described, gradual change , is the literal definition of a conservative. So that means you’re a conservative.
What you described, gradual change , is the literal definition of a conservative. So that means you’re a conservative.
“Harm reduction is conservatism” is where we’re at.
Fuck’s sake.
Stop using the term harm reduction. The crazies use that term to “subtly” push the “b b both sides same!” nonsense. Don’t fall for their framing.
Except harm reduction is a real and good thing. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Call it incrementalism then.
This is not about “perfect behind the enemy of good” because I after with that. What this is about is the crazies will stop at nothing to say “b b both sides same!” and they use the term “harm reduction” to sneak that idea in. Anything good they will try to categorize as “it’s merely harm reduction, not actually good. And because it’s harm reduction, it’s harm light, it’s harm, and I will not vote for harm!”
Well that’s just fucking wrong. I’m not going to give up on the meaning of words just because crazy people have.
What part of that is wrong? It’s two people looking at the same thing and seeing different things. You see the term harm reduction and see it as good. They see the term harm reduction and see it as bad because [see my explanation above].
That depends on the threshold for harm. But yeah, if you take the maximalist claim that any death or harm direct or indirect is unacceptable, you are basically arguing for no changes in society because we do not know the future and there is always uncertainty.
Conservative doesn’t mean reactionary, it is what it means now just like liberal now is taken to mean progressive, but that is not the real definition of the word it’s simply how people have been using them as a sort of shorthand.
Lmao no, that’s not how this works.
There no polite way to put it, that’s dumb, stupid, and very wrong take. Conservatives want to regress. We aren’t in the Nixon times anymore where GOP will launch the EPA, nowadays conservatives are all about regression.
That’s because they are reactionaries not conservatives.
At best you are relying on comically outdated and outmoded definitions/ideas. What part of the current GOP do you see as wanting gradual progress? None. They want to regress.
Do I need to repeat it again? They are not conservatives, they are reactionaries. Two different things.
Conservative does not = GOP except as political shorthand. It’s like saying socialist = Democrat. Both parties are coalitions of many different views.
Do I and everyone else need to repeat it again? You are trying to rely on fucking hilariously outdated and outmoded ideas and definitions of Nixon and similar era.
They don’t want progress. You are wrong.
I’d love for Mr. Definition to give a single example of a self-described conservative who isn’t a reactionary, but I’m not going to pull his string again.
Outdated? So conservatives are only an American phenomenon? Because that’s the only way that conservative = GOP = reactionary. There are conservatives all over the world, and they are explicitly different from reactionaries and usually opposed to them.
That would also mean that the conservatives that exist in America either need a new name or don’t exist. But that’s not the case. They are more or less politically homeles, but many have remained in the GOP because they see it as the lesser evil (for whatever reasons, I’m not here to argue the merit of that belief) or have thrown their lot in with the democrats, but they still exist.
gradual change , is the literal definition of a conservative
Lol no it’s not.
umm. no. direction of change is crucial lol. some of us want capitalism to wither away as well as the state withering away. that is not conservatism lol.
Explain the mechanism through which the state will wither away. Then when the state has withered away explain how it will take more than 5 minutes before it reforms again.
I’m not even trolling here, no anarchist has ever been able to explain this to me in a way that isn’t different from literal faith.
i can’t explain it from an anarchist perspective but I can let you know a source for some great commentary on that exact matter if you’re interested?
I am. Shoot.
https://www.marxists.org/ebooks/lenin/state-and-revolution.pdf
it’s well written and in a plain english form. a short read, honestly.
I’m already skeptical because of the author but I’m willing to give it a read. I do know that Lenin by the end of his life really did not like the state he had built so the ideas must be different than the practice.
Some ideologies want to be the boot pressing down on other’s necks and set the world on fire.
The rest aren’t so bad compared to that.
I like this comment.
As much as I crap on certain leftists, they still have the ideology “I wish people were slightly more kinder” and I would love their ideology to be accepted common sense rather than current one.
I would be just as happier if they were considered the new “centrists.” And current right-wing considered far, far extreme.
would love their ideology to be accepted common sense rather than current one
The crazy thing is that the current economic system we utilize isn’t considered nonsensical.
I guess an economic system that requires infinite growth made a bit more sense during the age of discovery, when people were actively finding new continents to exploit. One would think that now we’ve definitively concluded we inhabit a closed system with a finite amount of natural resources, maybe just maybe we could evolve our economic system to reflect that?
Eh, sorry it became kinda a WoT.
I suggest a tweak to the argument that the economic system requiring infinite growth made sense - I don’t think it was a deliberate choice. What probably happened was that someone noticed they could make money off that growth via stocks and slowly we tied more and more of the economy to the stock market. It used to be that fortunes could be lost in stock trading, think the 1920s in the US or even the Dutch Tulip Mania in the 1600s. It was for rich people or people taking a risk. Quarterly reports weren’t a thing. It wasn’t a place for the common person at all. The investment done earlier was wildly different than today.
Now, a huge amount of wealth and financial security of the masses are tied to stocks. Retirement plans in particular. It became profitable to offload defined benefit programs in favor of 401ks. It became profitable to open up brokerages for everyman. CEO’s job security is often tied to quarterly earnings. Personal fortunes are made in stocks with the only prerequisite being lucky enough to have money/given stock options to invest and making the right choice (which is why nobody earns enough salary/works hard enough to be a billionaire or hundred-milllionaire, it’s all stock). The line must continue upwards. Almost nobody makes money by opening new markets or making new discoveries anymore, it’s not 1950. Tesla would be a rare example of a new market. But nowadays company advancement is too incremental to be profitable for most. So they make the line go up by enshittification and buying up the competition.
With so much riding on stocks they’ve become too big to fail. We’ve gone past stock purchases being used to prop up a company’s ability to advance as a gamble on the part of the investor and now we demand infinite growth to prop up a huge chunk of the economy.
I don’t even think capitalism requires infinite growth. It’s just how we built it. Not even since the beginning. That is, you could buy stock in a company to help them grow. Then they make a profit, and give you a share of that profit. Everyone is happy. You could sell that to someone else, and maybe they pay more than you’d get in a year, but they’ll make more in a long run as long as the company stays alive and can keep distributing profits. Everyone is happy.
It’s this idea that the money you make from investment should grow exponentially. This demand from professional stock traders that they be able to sell for obscene profits. The company must grow, and those profits must grow, or the shareholders will all sell in a panic and abandon them, and even a profitable company may go under.
Like why can’t the company just make some profit and distribute that profit among shareholders and employees and everyone be happy? It doesn’t HAVE to be more profit next year than last year, we just made it that way over time.
don’t even think capitalism requires infinite growth. It’s just how we built it. Not even since the beginning.
Eh… It’s kinda baked into a system of competition modified via supply and demand. If there’s not enough demand to initiate the growth of supply then you enter into a recession. Competition forces companies to invest in their avenues of growth so they don’t get cornered out of their market, which means they have to invest more into the company than other companies year over year.
In the beginning stages of capitalism competition is great for building markets, but towards the latter stages of capitalism, especially in fields with high fungibility, competition becomes destructive. Once this destructive competition becomes the norm the only escape for companies to remain profitable and continue growing is to monopolize, conglimorize, or ironically become heavily regulated.
It’s this idea that the money you make from investment should grow exponentially. This demand from professional stock traders that they be able to sell for obscene profits. The company must grow, and those profits must grow, or the shareholders will all sell in a panic and abandon them, and even a profitable company may go under.
It’s not really an option for companies to stagnate, not only because they legally have to make as much profit as possible for shareholders, but because the nature of competition in the market will eventually force them to go under, or more likely be bought up by the competition.
It doesn’t HAVE to be more profit next year than last year, we just made it that way over time.
It’s kinda always been that way, at least since the emergence of business done on a national scale. A lot of the reason Federalism became popularized was because businesses required unified regulation across state lines. Just look at the economic history of railroads and oil tycoons and you’ll see the same scenarios were undergoing today on a smaller scale.
I can’t tell if you crap on leftists who are too far left, or what I seem to be interpreting this as where you’re crapping on american leftists that are actually not very left at all lol
both are valid. and proper left is somewhere between them imo lol
If post-apocalyptic media has taught us anything, it’s that the same systems will rise again, only now they are even more warped and fucked up than they were before the apocalypse.
Let me dream god damn it, its the closest I have for a hope for a better future
“We can still improv…”
No…
No shut up
What if I want the death of all humans… /s
It’s not about “my” ideology; that’s focusing on the wrong part. The problem is that it’s a ridiculous analysis. Most of the people who say this stuff nominally support a free society of some sort, basically a version socialism, but it’s not personal.
MAGA are not socialists but many of them wanted to see the system crash and burn.
They all have the same ideology, forged and molded by the algorithm of social media.
Ah the worst political people are those living in fantasy land
Meaning stand up for your belief, and to the victor, the spoils. It’s ironic. 🤷♂️
Humans….
My favorite part is this is exactly what the dems are doing with Trump, their startegy since the beginning was not to stop Trump and just wait for him to ruin the country enough that people vote for them again. They were saying as much earlier in the year too. Hilarious to see how they called all their detractors accelerationist before deciding to join in.
Stupidity knows no ideological borders, it would seem
no? literally no leftists side with maga (except for maga communism, but that’s fringe).
no? literally no leftists side with maga (except for maga communism, but that’s fringe).
You’re not reading the extremely simple comic very well, then.
Dems worked against Trumps opponents in 2015 in the hopes that the electorate would see how bad Trump is and deliver an easy Dem win. It didn’t work like that.
Leftists have been quite openly on here salivating over how working against Kamala and delivering Trump, and Trump being nakedly bad will lead to either the American people or the world as a whole seeing just how bad neoliberalism is, and deliver the long-awaited Revolution™. That’s just as fucking stupid.
openly
Any examples? besides some people who don’t want to vote dem?
Besides, the democrats are the neoliberal party. Trump is closer to fascism.Any examples? besides some people who don’t want to vote dem?
From this very comment section:
Republicans and Democrats are both perfectly ok with state violence so long as it’s against brown people, and preferably overseas. How many millions have died from lack of access to affordable health care and an almost non-existent social safety net in the US over the past century? But those aren’t counted as ideological deaths for some reason? If you think that choosing either of the two main parties which both have an official policy of supporting foreign genocides is the lesser evil somehow, you’ve been duped. America has killed more people in wars in the past 20 years than nearly any other state, except perhaps for Russia. You’re just bent out of shape because that state violence has been turned on the domestic population for once. Anything has got to be better than the status quo.
“There is no lesser evil, the only reason you’re upset is because it’s naked now, and that’s implicitly a good thing because it will lead to something other than the status quo”
Or, as I put it:
Leftists have been quite openly on here salivating over how working against Kamala and delivering Trump, and Trump being nakedly bad will lead to either the American people or the world as a whole seeing just how bad neoliberalism is, and deliver the long-awaited Revolution™.
Bonus, also from this comment section:
I respect the american will, they voted for this. It’s good for the world. These minorities didn’t care about the kids in gaza and have a way out compared to them. Why should I care?
Leftists have been quite openly on here salivating over how working against Kamala and delivering Trump, and Trump being nakedly bad will lead to either the American people or the world as a whole seeing just how bad neoliberalism is, and deliver the long-awaited Revolution™.
Besides, the democrats are the neoliberal party. Trump is closer to fascism.
A great many people here on Lemmy will say there’s no effective difference between neoliberalism and fascism.
I mean at least yall went from blaming the immigrants to blaming the socialists for the elections so that’s still some kind of improvement.
I mean at least yall went from blaming the immigrants to blaming the socialists for the elections so that’s still some kind of improvement.
Fucking what.
Remember when Kamala lost and lots of people were blaming mexians for voting for trump? They’re referring to that.
I remember when people were shocked that Latino voters swung towards Trump compared to previous elections. To say that that’s ‘blaming Mexicans’ or immigrants would be an astounding interpretation of that.
idk, there were a lot of liberals on twitter and bluesky saying that mexicans deserved to get deported for voting for trump. There absolutely was a lot of people who were blaming them, even if you yourself didn’t.
Are you talking about pre election? Of course you can do something about Trump by not electing him. After Trump won, there’s nothing left to do except let him show everybody why it was a bad idea.
After Trump won, there’s nothing left to do except let him show everybody why it was a bad idea.
“Let the fascist burn down society unopposed” is not exactly a fucking recipe for anything except empowering fascism.
People don’t touch the hot stove and learn their fucking lesson. People touch the hot stove and blame the liberals for burning them.
There is no effective opposition plan to fascism that involves ceding uncontested control to fascists
When I hear comments like this, I think that in your eyes democracy is optional when you have somebody like Trump in office. He’s clearly a fascist, so democrats need to arrest him and put a democrat in charge.
If you belong to a party that values democracy, you need to recognize that the fascist is an elected officials and do what you can legally do to maintain control and make sure the voters know who is to blame.
Cool, so there’s an ethnic cleansing going on. When it becomes full on genocide, do we still just shrug and respect democracy?
They’re currently attempting to rig elections and taking bribes, all out in the open. Trump attempted a coup, and managed to get back into office. They’ve pushed the unitary executive theory into practice, they’re ignoring both the courts and Congress when it suits them.
The rule of law is dead. No amount of following the rules will fix that. Our democracy has been hacked. The checks and balances have failed. Things will not go back to how they were.
There is only fascism until everything collapses, or progressives take hold of power and do reconstruction.
If you want to live in a democracy, respecting the will of people who don’t want democracy is not an option
So what are you actually suggesting we do, then? Take up arms and start a civil war against the nuclear powered government?
Let me hear some actual solutions. All I’ve heard so far is [very legitimate] complaints and fantasies where individuals are able to magically remove fascists from power.
We resist, and we take back power and give it to people who will use it.
We need to take every seat. From district school boards to US senators, every seat that comes up needs to go to someone who will fight.
And I really mean fight - everything from gerrymandering California to ordering police to arrest federal agents invading our cities. But smaller and more personal things too
If you’re so much as in charge of a book club, I want you to abuse that tiny amount of power to bully any open MAGA people
These people are trying to kill us and destroy our country. They don’t want democracy, they want to take away our votes and our freedom.
Their voices don’t matter, they need to be shamed and attacked until they can’t make eye contact. They should be made to realize they aren’t entitled to opinions.
No, there’s no glorious revolution coming. Just a period of fascism before the collapse of an empire. We are just fucked
But that doesn’t mean we can’t make a difference. Things can get better locally, we can drive the Fascists back and save a lot of people. We can slow them down until we can take back power.
We can start working on the cultural norms that will drive fascism underground for another century.
So if you want to make things better, fuck the rules. Things never would have gotten this far if we were more punk rock. We need to learn to be punk rock.
Hmm, I 100% agree, but I just want to point out that this is not incompatible with “respecting democracy”.
Fascists are incompatible with democracy and should be barred from holding any office.
Your take is either aggressively fucking stupid, or you are a fascist arguing in bad faith.
Please, tell me what the policy is that prevents the fascists from holding office. I think you are expressing a “feeling” not an actual policy that stands any chance of being created.
You want to bar fascists from holding office? I’d love that. Who gets to define who the fascists are? The Lemmy hivemind? Do we hold a vote to determine who the fascists are? I think Trump is a fascist, but I think most people that voted for him would disagree. What happens if Trump labels all democratic governors as fascists? Do they all of a sudden have to leave office? Also, how the *** do you expect this law to be created? You think the house and senate can pass this and the president will sign it?
I may be aggressively fucking stupid IRL, but I’m not hearing any real actionable policy ideas that would pass and also cannot be abused by the actual fascists.
Bare minimum, if at any point you’ve expressed as a politician negative views towards democracy or any core philosophical element of democracy or indicates a desire to remove or destroy it, you should be bared from running for office.
Any politician who expresses positive feelings or views of historical parties who dismantled or destroyed democracy should also bar them from running.
You wouldn’t even have to use the word “fascism”. Just create a law that establishes that its illegal to dismantle, weaken, or destroy democracy and that even conspiring or openly stating the criminal threat of doing so is also a crime and on top of whatever criminal penalties it also prevents you from running for office as punishment.
First, no chance in a million years this would ever make it through the house, senate and get signed by the president. And unless it’s a constitutional amendment, the courts would kill this under first amendment protection.
Even if none of that is true, this would be so incredibly easy to abuse, you would just be handing a dictatorship to anybody that wants to abuse it. For any idea like this, you need to ask, how could Trump abuse this? Sure, Trump, as he exists now, would be barred from running for office. But what if he was careful to hide his fascist side? Now that he’s in office, it’s game on!
The 50+ Texas democrats that have left the state to prevent redistricting? One might argue that act is undemocratic and immediately remove them from office and bar them from ever running for office again.
It’s easy to downvote and talk smack on a web forum, it’s hard to come up with a realistic plan.
I’m honestly yet to meet anyone, online or otherwise, who genuinely advocates for the end of society as part of the movement’s program. The vast majority of revolutionary movements don’t build from the ashes of society, but rather seek to transform it.
Never met an accelerationist before? Not even online?
Haven’t met that many, probably because I don’t browse those kinds of spaces.
Even so, at least from what I know, their whole shtick is that they recognize how Capitalism constantly gets worse and worse, how it drifts toward reactionary politics that makes working class lives worse and how this kind of process cannot be reversed without world wars (to get rid of overproduction and stimulate war time economy, ww2 was key in beating the great depression) or other massive crises. Reforms seek to slow them down to make things better for a moment, but accelerationism seeks to prevent those from happening so Capitalism reaches another crisis faster and people revolt, etc.
Even though I think it’s stupid, being on the same level as fanatical belief of deprogramite ML’s infesting this site that capital will die on its own and communism will naturally pop up like it’s a force on nature, it’s still at it’s core a transformational movement and not “kill peopleism”.
Once, I nihilistically mentioned to my friend that “I welcome the coming inevitable nuclear holocaust.” His reply was something that I will never forget: “I don’t think you realize what nuclear war entails.”
I haven’t wished for the end of the world since.
Instead you should have said “I welcome a vacuum decay event erasing existence and painlessly and instantly deleting all life on earth.”
