You’re onto something with your mentioning of revolution being formed around the notion of a final, sweeping moment of change. It’s an easy way of conceptualizing it, but I’d like to elaborate a bit on that point. This includes aspects of prefigurarion and mutual aid as well

The elevator pitch for anarchism (as I’ve come to understand it) is freedom, equality, solidarity. Those are the founding principles that guide our praxis of mutual aid and direct action. You can see these threads in library economies, makers spaces, co-ops, union organizing, time banking. These practices encourage self determination, communal independence and solidarity within and with other organizations/individuals. As an empowering and liberating force, these actions gradually strip away power from dominant hierarchies in society. They’re all acts of revolution.

The anarchist recognition of Revolution is not necessarily a deterministic prescription for how the world will come to adopt anarchy, but an acknowledgement that, much like we seek to shape the world to our own ends, the dominant hierarchies also seek to shape it to their own ends. This aggregate of heirarchies such as capitalism, patriarchy, imperialism, white supremacy (which I will refer to as “the system” for brevity, please excuse the mild cringe lol) has a life and momentum of it’s own through years of social conditioning, accumulation of infrastructure and capital among many other things. As that life is drained from the system, as it’s power wanes, it will seek to take it back. Much akin to ones immune system kicking into overdrive when you get a cold. The system doesn’t want to die and it will do what it can to maintain it’s existence by any means necessary.

So it’s.not necessarily a “Revolution is inevitable and necessary”, but “there is significant evidence that Revolution may happen if we are to be successful and we should be prepared”. You’ll find in your studies of the CNT-FAI, they weren’t really instigators of violence, it happened to them and they defended themselves. Even in the early days of the russian Revolution, citizens were victims of state violence and they merely stood up for the power structures they built. Not to say that anarchists haven’t been instigators in the past, they certainly have. Makhno is a favorite of mine and he hit the ground running. But it’s come to be recognized by libertarian socialists at large that starting shit isn’t a winning strategy and community defense is not only more tactically advantageous, but it’s been shown to work better. If your project is successful, it will gain its own momentum and spread further than you could ever hope to impose. It all kind of plays into that old saying of politics is about who has monopoly over the legitimate use of violence. It started in violence and it is likely to end there too.

I don’t have much else to say on prefigurarion outside of you hit the nail on the head. It’s a much more sustainable way of transforming society.

Its often described as “building the new in the shell of the old”. Part of this is included in labor organizing and utilizing the tools provided by the system, but shaped towards new ends. We don’t necessarily need to build new factories, stores, logistical infrastructure. Having a healthy, horizontal labor force in these places could very well be enough to start that transformation. So it’s not necessarily about, say, having a CEO who is sympathetic or even a comrade. It’s about having the ones doing the work as part of a horizontal council within these companies, offices, services who will resist the efforts of capital and the state from within. As you’ve said, power corrupts. And people in the proximity of power in these larger heirarchies are molded by the reality of their occupation and status in society to act in certain ways. Through labor we can strip power, and with enough support, remove them from these entities to be controlled by and for the workers. Abolishing heirarchies within and supporting the cause. Seizing the means of production if you will.

You were correct in saying these changes need to happen at a lower/local level. It’s not Marxist-leninist at all to suggest it. That’s just baseline socialism. Where Lenin went wrong was thinking that this sort of action was applicable to the state apparatus due to a pernicious interpretation of “the dictatorship of the proletariat” mixed with being convinced that people were unable to govern their own affairs and needed to be instructed on how to live. Bakunin called out Marx on his phrasing before Lenin was even on the scene and gave an eerily accurate prediction on where this train of thought would lead.

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat… In reality it would be for the proletariat a barrack regime where the standardized mass of men and women workers would wake, sleep, work and live to the beat of a drum; for the clever and learned a privilege, of governing: and for the mercenary minded, attracted by the State Bank, a vast field of lucrative jobbery.

An anarchist approach to achieve similar ends would involve delegates. People sent out to achieve a stated goal, immediately revocable at any time. Their power extends as far as they are permitted by the community and once their task is complete, they cease to have power. Perhaps there are some instances that this could be useful in infiltrating hierarchical structures, but it would need to be managed with the utmost care.

I’m also at work so I’ll leave it here haha. Despite my novel, I was trying to be brief and I’ve almost certainly left things out. I appreciate the conversation and if you’re interested in continuing by all means feel free to comment more or DM me! I’ll leave some reading/watching/listening suggestions below and come back to actually link them in a bit, so keep an eye out! My book suggestions will largely focus on the study and analysis of power, as what we’ve discussed largely pertains to that.

Kropotkin’s mutual aid is a wonderful piece. There are audiobooks versions available on YouTube and copies on the anarchist library. As I’m sure you know, he was the one that coined the phrase and studied it.

Rudolf Rocker’s nationalism and culture is lengthy but well worth your time. It focuses on the history, philosophy, and implementation of power. Also available on YouTube in audiobook form. Audible anarchists version has a narrator that does an excellent job.

Rocker’s anarcho syndicalism: theory and practice is shorter and lovely. Largely a history of anarchism and the development of syndicalism but at the very least I think you’ll find the first chapter to be great. It’s the best summary of anarchism I’ve personally come across.

James C. Scott’s seeing like a state is a bit lengthy but very informative. He isn’t an anarchist but you’ll soon see why many of us gravitate towards this book. The title does a good job of summarizing the booh

And last Rebecca Solnit’s a paradise built in hell. A book about elite panic, using the fires in San Francisco (LA? Can’t remember off the top of my head) as a case study.

I don’t have any specific suggestions for general anarchism outside of Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin’s anarchism and the black revolution. Another self explanatory book that I feel should be required reading for any would-be/self identified anarchist. In general Malatesta, Bakunin, and Kropotkin are often featured in many “Anarchism 101” style reading lists and they all do excellent work. Bakunin may be of particular interest to you as he was a contemporary of Marx and they often wrote/debated with one another. It may give you a broader lens on early socialist history and ideology.

For general media id love to suggest Anark, Andrewism, and Zoe Baker. They’re all youtibers that focus on theory and praxis.

Anark does longform video essays (1 hr+) on theory mostly. Great stuff that goes in great depth while not dragging. His essays on constructing the revolution, power, and the state is counterrevolutionary series were foundational in my adoption of anarchism. He’s also doing a synthesis series at the moment called “a modern anarchism” that is worth your time. He’s more of a “why anarchism” sort of guy in essence.

Andrewism does shorter work (10-30) minutes focusing more on social aspects of anarchism, intersectionality and lifestyle. He is passionate about solarpunk and degrowth, very much a “dreaming of utopia” sort of vibe that is hopeful and encouraging. He’s more “how to do anarchism” oriented

And lastly Zoe Baker. She’s a PhD in anarchist history that does a bit of both of the above as well as covering the history of anarchism (surprise surprise). She’s also written a book on means and ends, titled the same. Very informative and enlightening. I would definitely recommend picking up a copy!

No worries if you can’t find anything/don’t the time! I appreciate the conversation nonetheless

Just wanted to be clear, nitpicking their praxis from the comfort of my couch isn’t a denigration of their work. Rojava is doing something amazing. They’ve managed to make a relative utopia out of a horrible situation and they’ve advanced the cause greatly in their efforts. I have nothing but respect and admiration for their struggle.

I had no idea things were shaping up so poorly for the zapatistas. Hopefully they get their shit together, it’d be a shame for their legacy to be so underwhelming. I’m gonna have to look into all that a bit more. Got any recommendations?

If I may ask, why do you think that? They’ve been a big inspiration to me and most of what Ive read about them has been great. Outside of authoritarians wildly misunderstanding their recent restructuring I haven’t seen much in the way of criticism. If anything, I’m a bit more critical of rojava. They have something that appears to be (or could turn into) an embryonic state at the top of their organization. The fact that there is a “top” to their organization is cause for concern of we’re speaking strictly in terms of libertarian socialism

If I may ask, what is your view of an anarchist revolution? Many people imagine the masses rising up over a short period (for good reason, those are the ones that make it into the history books) and overthrowing their oppressors. And that has been a popular conceptions of it within anarchism at large for quite a while. However, most libertarian organizations have come to view prefigurarion and “little r revolution” as the path forward. Gaining gradual and calculated wins to erode hegemonic power structures, weakening it to a point so that when the “big R Revolution” inevitably comes the state/kyriarchy/mega machine/whathaveyou is easier to abolish. The zapatistas were pivotal in proving the viability of this strategy in their region. It’s far too much to sum up here but during your dive I’m sure you’ll come across their story to see this concept put to use. Theyve been going strong for almost 40 years now and have only gotten stronger and more horizontal in their approach.

Direct action and mutual aid, while being cornerstones of anarchist praxis are not all that we utilize either. Prefigurarion is a broad framework at our disposal as mentioned along with conceptions of means ends unity serve to guide thought an action in productive directions. Common tactics of political action aren’t out of bounds either, anarchists had a bit of an assassination phase for a while as an example. It didn’t work lol but there isn’t much that is off limits, so long as it empowers the people to have control over their lives.

You mentioned your admiration for anarchists’ proclivity for imagining a utopia. That’s also one of the things that brought me in and something I view as one of our finest qualities. You need to be able to see past present conditions in order to realize the future you wish to build. One of these visions that I’ve recently fallen in love with is library socialism, a praxis built around constructing “libraries of things” for your community to encourage mutual aid and communal living. This combined with a return to (and expansion of) the commons as well as the utilization of time banking would be a powerful combination revolutionary action that could transform social and economic relations in much of capitalist society. It’s not the end, but it’s a wonderful start that many orgs are actively working towards in their communities. Once it’s at a large enough point within it’s area, these could be combined and spread through democratic confederalism All of these small acts of revolution leading to a Revolutionary shift in the status quo.

If you’re interested in/sympathetic to anarchist thought and all youve read so far is kropotkin (not to say you have, I may very well be mentioning things you’re aware of haha), I would encourage you to keep reading, listening, watching. There’s well over a centurys worth of brilliant and enlightening work out there for you to discover. If you’d like I’d be more than happy to dump a bunch of links. Cheers!

We’ve already got the protest part covered in Florida. It’s apparently legal to run over protesters

Not today, science man. You ain’t foolin me with your “simple questions”!

Happy to give you a new rabbit hole! The more you learn about libertarian socialist tactics/theory the more you realize just how little of the popular conceptions of what “anarchism” is holds up to scrutiny. It’s not all breaking windows and punching cops. Currently, there’s very little of that. Most of it is starting unions, co-ops, non-profits and general mutual aid. It’s all prefigurative and done with intent. Sometimes the state apparatus is used (insofar as it doesn’t negatively impact your goals) sometimes it isn’t, it’s all contextual and nuanced. Something a lot of auth-left people seem to struggle with. Guess they’re not used to having a toolbox instead of a script

The entire point of the video is Engles misunderstood what constitutes “authority” in a libertarian framework. He created an overly broad conception of authority and proceeded to (poorly) attack that. If you’re going to critique an ideology you should at the very least have an understanding of what the core concept your criticizing means. Engles made some shit up, put that in the mouths of anarchists and acted like a little piss baby about it. How on earth did you get 15 minutes into the video and not pick up on that very obvious point?

Pure ideology? You’re hilarious. Like y’all haven’t been sucking at the teat of Marx well past the point of his half baked ideas being useful. It never occured to you geniuses that maybe there was a bit more at play than capitalism and anachronistic conceptions of class warfare? Marx’s ideas of power and complex systems are overly simplistic at best, and Engles is a bourgeois pig that somehow deluded your big “scientific socialist” brains into thinking he was one of the good ones. But go ahead and tell me how childish authoritarian conceptions of authority are righ and how I’m a big dumb guy for thinking otherwise

Outside of the odd troll here and there, fascism isn’t a huge problem (at least on lemmy). Exploding heads died in like a week and you haven’t really seen any popular resurgence of far right politics here since. Can’t speak for the rest of the fediverse but lemmy seems to have carved out a semi-comfy niche for itself

Meh. Tankies>fascists

I put a pinch of freshly roasted and ground cumin in my guac. Gives it a little oomph

Your mom sounds annoying lol. Hopefully youa don’t have to put up with that shit anymore

Adguard or mullvad dns filters, enjoy!

Anarchism is an inherently socialist and communist ideology.

Anarchism in short: heirarchy should be abolished

Socialism: workers should own the means of production. Being forced into wage labor is a form of heirarchy

Communism: a stateless (hierarchical structure), classless (social heirarchy), moneyless (a system of power that easily lends itself to hierarchical means) society.

One way to look at anarchism is a description of the way to realize communism, and continue past it into a more egalitarian social structure. Nobody has successfully realized communism for an extended period of time, but there are/have been projects that were well on their way. The zapatistas, CNT-FAI, and rojava come to mind. We’re lead to view the USSR and China (for example) as socialist/Communist because associating those places with the word understandably puts people off of the idea. Their insistence that they are socialist/communist doesn’t help that either. They never really met the mark imo

Wasn’t sure if that was a legitimate question or just another example.of the usage of authoritarian. But if it was a question, I’ll leave this video. It’s an anarchist critique of on authority. Short answer, yes. It is possible to have organization without an authoritarian structure

I just wanted to clarify, I’m not an authoritarian. I’m an anarchist. And the left/right distinction still does matter very much along the authoritarian/libertarian axis. I don’t think much of auth-left ideologies but I hold them in much better regard than fascists. There are similarities, but they are no where near the same. And liberalism is a center right authoritarian ideology

A lot of us spent an unfortunate amount of time on 4chan, you may be surprised at how unsubtle it is to most people here

The first use of authoritarian is in 1852, in the writings of AJ Davis apparently. Here’s the quote:

1856 A. J. Davis Penetralia 129 Does any one believe that the Book is essential to Salvation? Yes; there are many externalists and authoritarians who think so.

Authoritarian was also increasing in usage well before the cold war, beginning around 1910 or so. An example from Nationalism and Culture by Rudolf Rocker, written in 1933:

Nietzsche also had a profound conception of this truth, although his inner disharmony and his constant oscillation between outlived authoritarian concepts and truly libertarian ideas all his life prevented him from drawing the natural deductions from it.

That’s a thoroughly modern use of the word authoritarian, written almost 15 years before the start of the cold war. Authoritarian is used to describe those who support hierarchial systems of government. That’s the short and sweet of it, perhaps not a perfect dictionary definition but it illustrates the distinctive bit. Auth-left ideologies get equivocated with fascism because there’s an undeniable ideological throughline between the two, no matter how much they hate each other.

"The working class […] cannot be left wandering all over Russia. They must be thrown here and there, appointed, commanded, just like soldiers […] Compulsion of labour will reach the highest degree of intensity during the transition from capitalism to socialism […] Deserters from labour ought to be formed into punitive battalions or put into concentration camps.’

Trotsky wrote that. It may not be 1:1 but the similarities between his ideas and those.of fascists are pretty obvious.

All of this, written before the cold war. Tell me again how authoritarian is a made up word that serves only to slander “communists”?

Can we please avoid the eletism among cultivators in this community? For example, the uncle bens tek gets a lot of shit in the broader community even though it works well and has exposed tons of people to mycology. If it weren’t for uncle bens, I wouldn’t have gotten into this at all. Now I’m doing agar transfers, liquid cultures, testing different substrates and setting up to grow pans. And the beginning was frought with gatekeeping and shit talking until I found Uncle bens and /r/contamfam