Liberal with a significant left
And Our Flag Was Not There: A History of the Second American Civil War.
- Thread starter Dab master
- Start date
- Location
- The great frozen north
VERY nice update, excellent to see a look at what Cascadia has become from a source not high on ideology! Unsurprisingly it sounds pretty disorganized. The inability to hammer out an organized criminal justice system for actual bad actors seems like the biggest problem they'll have going forwards in terms of getting respect from the non-Anarchist world.
I think Cascadia will have an important niche in the North American ecosystem as a release valve for all sorts of super anti-authority people and "free spirits", but otherwise not be a major player in the continent's politics and affairs.
More generally, what stops people in Anarchist territories who were sympathetic to the pre-war order from creating their own voluntary-at-time form of Archy from scratch?
Sounds like Greenland is back under the Danelaw. Speaking of rebels, what is the relationship between the oppressed locals and the refugees the Danes deported there?
I think Cascadia will have an important niche in the North American ecosystem as a release valve for all sorts of super anti-authority people and "free spirits", but otherwise not be a major player in the continent's politics and affairs.
What is the enforcement mechanism by which these towns are forbidden a police force? Sure if they openly bring back the Boys In Blue everyone will hate them and blockade them, but how on-guard are the neighbors to them establishing "full time law enforcement professional" positions or such?
More generally, what stops people in Anarchist territories who were sympathetic to the pre-war order from creating their own voluntary-at-time form of Archy from scratch?
I think Lexbury is a pretty cool guy. He interviews anarchists and doesn't afraid of anything. Also bolded is oh fuck.
Sounds like Greenland is back under the Danelaw. Speaking of rebels, what is the relationship between the oppressed locals and the refugees the Danes deported there?
Anarchists: Coming up with plans to reinvent more ethical versions of the state in the most confusing and convoluted matter possible since... since when was capital-A Anarchism a thing actually?
I'd argue that direct democracy in this case isn't necessarily a hierarchy as long as freedom of association (and disassociation) is kept.
Video on the debate about Direct Democracy in early anarchism by Zoe Baker
Video explaining Platformism by Zoe Baker for anyone who doesn't know the term
Video on the debate about Direct Democracy in early anarchism by Zoe Baker
Video explaining Platformism by Zoe Baker for anyone who doesn't know the term
- Location
- Back in the 90s (In a very famous TV show)
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Ve/Ver
Can freedom of association exist in a vacuum? Isn't "you can disagree with the status quo as long as you're willing to let us cut you off from social contact and probably food/society as a whole" still kind of hierarchical?
I apologize if I'm not getting it.
Freedom of Association means that you can associate and disassociate with a group whenever and for whatever reason you want without them coercing you in any way to stay. It isn't them threatening you with cutting off food supplies because you disagree with a decision, it's you deciding you don't like where an orgs going or don't have the energy to be in a collective at the moment, or merely wanting to move somewhere else and then just being able to leave it.
I'd argue Dab represents this concept with these couple of paragraphs.
- Location
- Back in the 90s (In a very famous TV show)
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Ve/Ver
Sure, but what if the org is involved in things like food production or local support groups or any kind of resource or service someone might need?
Then you DIE!!!!
Democracy, even direct, is still a form of hierarchical rule, so you are correct on that.
But from what I understood, in context, is that it was under a Platformist form of anarchism, the very same one used by Makhno and his soldiers during the Free Territory era before the Bolsheviks' betrayal.
Also, the other anarchists, purist or otherwise, have also called them out on it as well. It's just that at the time, at least what I'm reading into, they were disorganized and/or incoherent in their vision of what anarchism is/supposed to be.
As to the "move to other commune if you don't like," that's definitely more a societal/communal issue; one that's a flawed solution. However, compared to societal shunning, public vigilante/mob execution, and/or bringing back prison, it's a bit more humane(?) and most likely the exiled are allowed to take more than just the clothes on their back.
Or if you meant the freedom of association, then queerrebel had already described what that means and provided an in-universe example. If you mean leaving the org because you want to sabotage/ruin the whole socialism without -archy, well...
At least that had a good life up to that point(?) Technically everyone is still at war, so...
EDIT: Also, if my post seems incoherent, I started typing the first two paragraphs during the third hour of my morning shift followed by actually working and then taking a two-hour nap after getting home. It is 5:30 pm Pacific Time for me for reference.
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Part of the problem is that people, especially anarchists, are frequently imprecise when they talk about "direct democracy." People talk about town meetings as being "direct democracy" even if there's no actual voting; Graeber did this for instance. I'm not terribly fond of people doing this, but they do it.
- Location
- San Francisco, CA, United States
On a serious note, it baffles me you would think this when one of the main things anarchists care about is making sure *no one* goes unhoused, unfed, etc. Like mutual aid and a social contract based upon reciprocity is one of the most fundamental tenets of the ideology? And Cascadia's flavor of anarchism is going to be strongly rooted in the police/prison abolition movements and therefore inclined towards rehabilitative rather than punitive justice towards those that have fallen out of favor? Like yeah, there's technically nothing stopping one group from implementing a "he who does not work does not eat" type rule, but that sort of thing would be incredibly frowned upon to say the least, so rather than starving it would be a matter of like, moving to any of the communes one block over.
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- Location
- Back in the 90s (In a very famous TV show)
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Ve/Ver
Like I said before, I tend to see anarchism in a pretty poor light, so while acknowledging that I shouldn't've started this discussion in the first place, it might be better to agree to disagree. My stance is basically that anarchism either creates a (very weak) state and is thus hypocritical and unintentionally or not misrepresenting itself, or it actually just expects everyone to get along without any kind of hierarchy whatsoever, which to me seems transparently impossible and unlikely to go anywhere unless people get really into some deeply unethical computer-aided psychosurgery with its own complications.
If that sounds like a strawman, it might be, but I keep reading about and hearing about anarchism and it seems to me to be more of a set of rhetorical dodges and flimsy arguments contra to history than an actual practical idea. It's one that is either special pleading for their own state or going to lead to some kind of failure or collapse almost immediately.
If you're an an anarchist, I want to specify that I don't blame anarchists for this. I think they're wrong, but it's a beautiful dream. Truthfully, I'm probably flailing against a brick wall with this one, so feel free to dismiss it. My views on anarchism are too colored by disdain and frustration to be accurate, but to me it seems like a kind of con game when I keep seeing anarchists jump between "Of course we'd have a not-state that would function like a really weak state" and "no everyone would just consensually agree to be cool about everything."
So, not really a healthy stance for any kind of discussion. Agreeing to disagree, with the agreement including that I probably have a somewhat slanted view.
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I mean, sometimes it seems more like "united against a common anemone" or something.
Seriously, though, when it comes to Israel v Palestine, most of the time, I got nothing. Sorry.
Now, the rest of what I said, I tried to specifically keep on the subject of modern warfare, Western Hemisphere politics, and other things more relevant to the thread's actual topic, rather than Israel v Palestine specifically and implications for Middle Eastern politics. This is because I'm trying to respect Dab Master's wish that we not get focused in on this particular subject.
If this isn't satisfactory to him, I'm sorry; I genuinely misunderstood what his wishes were.
Speaking of anemones...
I mean, I don't think Biden would be doing that anyway. At this point there's essentially nothing in it for the US; funding someone who doesn't personally have a reputation for colonially exploiting Haiti is probably cheaper and definitely better from a PR standpoint.
Also, and this is me condemning the Biden administration for appalling cynicism...
I think that while rhetorically they "want to" "secure the border" which means brute squads whupping refugees in their brains, on some level they actually know that refugee waves the size we get from places like Haiti aren't actually harmful to the US's interests and actively help to offset our problems with a graying population. They're just nasty enough as people to try and get the benefits of immigration without admitting that this is what they're doing in a way that might alienate old white kinda-racist fuckos or leave the military-industrial complex anxiously puckering their butts because their PERIMETER is INSECURE.
Hmmmrm. I'm a bit confused by this passage. One thing I'll note is that the trench warfare aspects of the Russo-Ukrainian War seem to have a lot to do with the inability of the Russians to get their shit together in the early war enough to launch really decisive mechanized 'spearhead' offensives and knock out enemy capabilities in the opening wave.
The Russians had the kind of forces and weapons that on paper should have been able to do this, but in practice a lot of their best on-paper equipment is overrated, their personnel are undertrained and poorly coordinated, their supply and maintenance situation was patchy, and their overall operational plans and tactical doctrine were based on a lot of bullshit assumptions and underestimation of the enemy, with no real margin for error when things started to go wrong.
And you can't do deep mechanized offensives that way; they fall apart.
[nods along slowly]
While I'm not familiar with the facts of some of the cases there myself, I see what you mean.
Hmmm. I'm not sure I agree 100%, or rather, I think that "massive attritional superiority" can sometimes involve "having better shit than your opponent" in a broad sense. This is something we have rarely seen since the Iraq War because nobody who can afford to maintain a large well-equipped, doctrinally prepared combined arms force (including things like aerospace recon and air support) has thrown it against serious opposition in a long time.
The Russians were expected to throw this at Ukraine but they don't have their shit together, as noted above.
But I wouldn't be at all surprised if, say, to make up an example, some time around 2030 the Chinese get into a serious land war somewhere (i.e. not an amphibious crossing of the Taiwan Strait which has its own problems), and prove that it's totally possible for your troops to advance with terrifying speed and break up the enemy's OODA loop and all that good stuff... as long as you have the factories and determination to just make half a million suicidal grenade quadcopters and throw them at the enemy on the first day of the offensive, then throw away another half million on the second, and so on.
Which I think you'd count as "massive attritional superiority," so I'm not really saying you're wrong, I guess.
Off topic but you do seem very well versed in modern Warfare!
You do seem very well versed in modern warfare!I mean, sometimes it seems more like "united against a common anemone" or something.
Seriously, though, when it comes to Israel v Palestine, most of the time, I got nothing. Sorry.
Now, the rest of what I said, I tried to specifically keep on the subject of modern warfare, Western Hemisphere politics, and other things more relevant to the thread's actual topic, rather than Israel v Palestine specifically and implications for Middle Eastern politics. This is because I'm trying to respect Dab Master's wish that we not get focused in on this particular subject.
If this isn't satisfactory to him, I'm sorry; I genuinely misunderstood what his wishes were.
Speaking of anemones...
I mean, I don't think Biden would be doing that anyway. At this point there's essentially nothing in it for the US; funding someone who doesn't personally have a reputation for colonially exploiting Haiti is probably cheaper and definitely better from a PR standpoint.
Also, and this is me condemning the Biden administration for appalling cynicism...
I think that while rhetorically they "want to" "secure the border" which means brute squads whupping refugees in their brains, on some level they actually know that refugee waves the size we get from places like Haiti aren't actually harmful to the US's interests and actively help to offset our problems with a graying population. They're just nasty enough as people to try and get the benefits of immigration without admitting that this is what they're doing in a way that might alienate old white kinda-racist fuckos or leave the military-industrial complex anxiously puckering their butts because their PERIMETER is INSECURE.
Hmmmrm. I'm a bit confused by this passage. One thing I'll note is that the trench warfare aspects of the Russo-Ukrainian War seem to have a lot to do with the inability of the Russians to get their shit together in the early war enough to launch really decisive mechanized 'spearhead' offensives and knock out enemy capabilities in the opening wave.
The Russians had the kind of forces and weapons that on paper should have been able to do this, but in practice a lot of their best on-paper equipment is overrated, their personnel are undertrained and poorly coordinated, their supply and maintenance situation was patchy, and their overall operational plans and tactical doctrine were based on a lot of bullshit assumptions and underestimation of the enemy, with no real margin for error when things started to go wrong.
And you can't do deep mechanized offensives that way; they fall apart.
[nods along slowly]
While I'm not familiar with the facts of some of the cases there myself, I see what you mean.
Hmmm. I'm not sure I agree 100%, or rather, I think that "massive attritional superiority" can sometimes involve "having better shit than your opponent" in a broad sense. This is something we have rarely seen since the Iraq War because nobody who can afford to maintain a large well-equipped, doctrinally prepared combined arms force (including things like aerospace recon and air support) has thrown it against serious opposition in a long time.
The Russians were expected to throw this at Ukraine but they don't have their shit together, as noted above.
But I wouldn't be at all surprised if, say, to make up an example, some time around 2030 the Chinese get into a serious land war somewhere (i.e. not an amphibious crossing of the Taiwan Strait which has its own problems), and prove that it's totally possible for your troops to advance with terrifying speed and break up the enemy's OODA loop and all that good stuff... as long as you have the factories and determination to just make half a million suicidal grenade quadcopters and throw them at the enemy on the first day of the offensive, then throw away another half million on the second, and so on.
Which I think you'd count as "massive attritional superiority," so I'm not really saying you're wrong, I guess.
Yeah, even though plenty of people IRL are jailed due to injustice, and even though many of those that commit crimes even an anarchist would disapprove of can be turned into decent members of society through education and rehabilitation, there's always going to be people that choose violence as soon as they come out of the womb - and dealing with them in a society that's done away with jails, you either build places such as that one IRL sex offender town that I heard about, where they're set apart from the rest of society but can live a good life nonetheless, or you straight up sentence them to death.
My "ideal" society might be somewhere between those of @Dab master and @RiverDelta - anarchism has been proven to function quite well at the local level, so there's no reason why it shouldn't be allowed to do what it does best; for those functions that can't be easily tackled by the former, socialist thought can provide the framework, as long as this framework is under heavy oversight by the anarchist cells of the wider organism. As for what kind of anarchism and what kind of socialism, whatever man, as long as it's not a death cult and it works, it's fine - I'd rather have people like Mr. Rogers or Tolkien hanging out in such a polity, despite one being Protestant clergy and the other being very Catholic, than Lenin or Mao.
And the people running the place, they should be reminded daily that there is a reason why people, for example, risked their lives to escape the GDR despite it having a better track record than West Germany in certain fields - sure, you can have employment for all, good healthcare, and quite the good grasp on women's rights, but when all of this is coupled with a police/surveillance state and an absolute intolerance of any kind of dissent, no fucking shit they're trying to escape to the capitalist West. They could've reached those goals without needing to turn censorship and surveillance up to Orwellian levels, but no, the egos and wallets of the rulers of Moscow and of the Warsaw Pact were more important than the well-being of the populace. Capitalism or communism, it's all the same, if the same kind of people end up on top.
My "ideal" society might be somewhere between those of @Dab master and @RiverDelta - anarchism has been proven to function quite well at the local level, so there's no reason why it shouldn't be allowed to do what it does best; for those functions that can't be easily tackled by the former, socialist thought can provide the framework, as long as this framework is under heavy oversight by the anarchist cells of the wider organism. As for what kind of anarchism and what kind of socialism, whatever man, as long as it's not a death cult and it works, it's fine - I'd rather have people like Mr. Rogers or Tolkien hanging out in such a polity, despite one being Protestant clergy and the other being very Catholic, than Lenin or Mao.
And the people running the place, they should be reminded daily that there is a reason why people, for example, risked their lives to escape the GDR despite it having a better track record than West Germany in certain fields - sure, you can have employment for all, good healthcare, and quite the good grasp on women's rights, but when all of this is coupled with a police/surveillance state and an absolute intolerance of any kind of dissent, no fucking shit they're trying to escape to the capitalist West. They could've reached those goals without needing to turn censorship and surveillance up to Orwellian levels, but no, the egos and wallets of the rulers of Moscow and of the Warsaw Pact were more important than the well-being of the populace. Capitalism or communism, it's all the same, if the same kind of people end up on top.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I will observe that it's very easy to care about making sure of this when your resources are limited and you don't actually control 100% of your immediate physical community, so that you don't have to extend your caring and compassion to That One Asshole or immediately face the reality that That One Asshole is just as dependent on your group for survival as everyone else.
But there's a reason that small town communities can be famously stifling and controlling places for a deviant to grow up in, and it's not because each small town has a single designated Oppression Master who coordinates all the oppression. Sizeable groups of humans are quite capable of deciding that a human they find personally unlikeable is Not Our Sort, even without a clear hierarchy imposing that decision on them.
Furthermore, there's a tendency when thinking of those who our society shuns and marginalizes, to think of the "photogenic" examples. Those whose troubles clearly stem from hierarchy, and who can therefore reasonably hope that their troubles will be cured by removing hierarchy.
But not everyone is disliked or ostracized by their peers for reasons that ultimately stem from a hierarchy imposing that dislike and ostracism.
...
I'm reminded of an issue public schools face sometimes. People look at us and compare us to some private school and say "why can't you perform this well?" But the private school being examined, apart from any issue of the tests being spoofed or something, tends to have a carefully curated student body and/or a LOT of funding to take any students they might not otherwise want to handle.
When you have some degree of control over which members of the local community actually associate with you, and which do not, because you're "not the only game in town" and no one's going to judge you for expelling people, you're playing the game on easy mode.
Eh. I'm mid-tier but I try to pay attention and I've had a good long while to learn. So I've learned enough to spot a lot of the 'simple' mistakes that low-information people make, which makes me look pretty smart about things as long as you don't look too closely.
Honestly, the praise is making me kinda uncomfortable and I'd like you to dial it back a notch, because I really don't feel like I've done anything to earn that level. It's nice to be appreciated but I think you're overimpressed.
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Sabertooth
Currently on a road trip with Magnus the Red
- Location
- Portugal
Mister Anemone
"Why is Dab made Jay disappear in Lacey Games?"
- Pronouns
- She/They
I'll be honest, my military analysis on OTL (and ongoing) conflicts can be best described as "analysing battlefield trend that could be a full-on trend in future conflict, then try to describe it with my own views and studies (or informational materials such as videos made by Task and Purpose) over the topic that is scarce in the context of time where an likely battlefield trend sprouted in a particular conflict".
And yes, I sometimes made some mistakes over my personal analysis on somw subjects. 'Cause I liked to think outside the box on why the trend exists at the first place.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I doubt any of us here are doing a lot better. For people whose thoughts on warfare are very much a hobby interest and who are not plugged into any of the channels of information that most nations like to keep secret, it's probably about as well as any of us can do.
Bisexual-Mart
Far from the shallow ground
- Location
- The Great State of Warshington
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I love how post-2ACW sources call the 1973 oil embargo the "Oil Shock".
That's one of my pet peeves - when confronted not just with the crimes of the Cultural Revolution or of the Great Purge, but even with less bloody details such as inefficient bureaucracy and widespread cronyism, that plagued even contemporary capitalist countries (I mean, I'm Italian - the latter two are a fact of life over here, even today), many refuse to consider that "real communism", as if building a functioning anti-capitalist society, regardless of its exact attributes, should be an act of divine creation that's supposed to be perfect right from the start.
Thing is, this kind of unwillingness to look at the crimes and mistakes of statesmen that considered themselves and were considered by others, even by their opponents, 100% socialist, not only was feared by Marx himself in a way, but actively prevents the wider movement from learning from its mistakes, something capitalist countries have been very good at doing - sure, it's because those countries' systems need to change in order to preserve themselves but, why can't anarchist movements and socialist countries do so, too?
I mean, if you're an ideologically driven polity that's looked at askance by the capitalist world, who will surely take advantage of your weakness, peaceful reform, driven by popular sentiment, is a much better alternative than bloody civil wars and endless purges on one hand, or bureaucratic Alzheimer's coupled with kneejerk repression on the other hand - in the end, concrete results sway more hearts than ideological slogans, and what better way to show CEOs and stock traders that you're doing the right thing, than build the kind of society people from their countries want to move to, rather than the other way around?
Had I been in charge of the Soviet Union at certain points in its history, I would've let everyone from the Spanish Republicans to the Czechoslovak and Hungarian rebels do their thing, copying what they did right and avoiding what they did wrong, while taking some cues from capitalist countries, too; there's no reason why Emilia-Romagna's cooperatives, given their socialist heritage, shouldn't work in a socialist country, for example, censorship of the arts and sciences rarely goes well for those involved, and Amazon-like services are very useful, they just need to be heavily regulated to prevent abuses, since at the end of the day they're not that different from what post offices do.
Generally, someone would be able to either make use of surplus supplies or exchange labor/materials (or be part of another group which does that) on an ad hoc basis. For an example of the former, you could look at any one of the numerous FoodNotBombs projects, where people are not even remotely affiliated with a group can still pick up supplies from said group. For an example of the latter, well, I suppose you might compare it to being an independent contractor. Remember that Cascadia includes mutualists even if they aren't that popular. Importantly, neither of these things require that you move. People tend to talk about disassociation as moving, and that can be part of it, but it's not actually necessary.
Now, if you want absolutely nothing to do with any group that produces an essential thing, and you can't get it yourself, you are indeed shit out of luck. But there's only so much we can do here.
The answer most people will probably tell you is that as soon as people start to enforce their will on the unwilling, other people will step in and crush these proto-police and proto-states. Practically, I suspect you could get away with some shenanigans if you were careful to only target people everyone already hated--like a group of people who the town as a whole has agreed is the one to deal with rapists or cold-blooded murderers. The thing is the police aren't just "a group of people who are empowered by the state to deal with horrible people," they're a group of people who are the only ones allowed to deal with such people, and they enforce the will of the state on the population as a whole.
Your shitty proto-state might be able to get away with the first item on that list (and honestly, in most societies you can get away with a lot if you target the people everyone hates), but as soon as they move on to the second and third everyone is going to see what they are and they are going to destroy them. Again we return to the theme of people either overstating the individualist case or completely disregarding it--the individualists objected to some of the groups of armed citizens in Cascadia on these grounds. People either concluded that this was proof Cascadia was just another state or that they were full of shit. But to conclude that they were completely right misunderstands how states work, and to conclude that they were completely wrong does too.
States have a monopoly on legitimate violence within a territory. The systems being described do not make any such pretensions.
This is probably exposing my ignorance on anarchist social theory (which I will freely admit I am not as well read as I'd like to be), but in an anarchic society such as Cascadia, how would groups go about marshaling the resources required for building or maintain infrastructure? After all, while I'm sure mutual aid can go a long way, I'm assuming there has to be some mechanism to work around the free rider problem or the tragedy of the commons--e.g., everyone in town uses the sewer system, but what if no one wants to put the time and resources into making it sure keeps working? Would social pressure and expected norms be sufficient?
I'm not one to quote the bread book often but From Chapter 4: Expropriation Section 1
How are you going to prevent such a one from surrounding himself with lackeys and wage-slaves — from exploiting them and enriching himself at their expense?"
"You cannot bring about a revolution all over the world at the same time. Well, then, are you going to establish custom-houses on your frontiers to search all who enter your country and confiscate the money they bring with them? — Anarchist policemen firing on travellers would be a fine spectacle!"
But at the root of this argument there is a great error. Those who propound it have never paused to inquire whence come the fortunes of the rich. A little thought would, however, suffice to show them that these fortunes have their beginnings in the poverty of the poor. When there are no longer any destitute there will no longer be any rich to exploit them.
Let us glance for a moment at the Middle Ages, when great fortunes began to spring up.
A feudal baron seizes on a fertile valley. But as long as the fertile valley is empty of folk our baron is not rich. His land brings him in nothing; he might as well possess a property in the moon.
What does our baron do to enrich himself? He looks out for peasants — for poor peasants!
If every peasant-farmer had a piece of land, free from rent and taxes, if he had in addition the tools and the stock necessary for farm labour, who would plough the lands of the baron? Everyone would look after his own. But there are thousands of destitute persons ruined by wars, or drought, or pestilence. They have neither horse nor plough. (Iron was costly in the Middle Ages, and a draughthorse still more so.)
All these destitute creatures are trying to better their condition. One day they see on the road at the confines of our baron's estate a notice-board indicating by certain signs adapted to their comprehension that the labourer who is willing to settle on this estate will receive the tools and materials to build his cottage and sow his fields, and a portion of land rent free for a certain number of years. The number of years is represented by so many crosses on the sign-board, and the peasant understands the meaning of these crosses.
So the poor wretches swarm over the baron's lands, making roads, draining marshes, building villages. In nine years he begins to tax them. Five years later he increases the rent. Then he doubles it. The peasant accepts these new conditions because he cannot find better ones elsewhere; and little by little, with the aid of laws made by the barons, the poverty of the peasant becomes the source of the landlord's wealth. And it is not only the lord of the manor who preys upon him. A whole host of usurers swoop down upon the villages, multiplying as the wretchedness of the peasants increases. That is how things went in the Middle Ages. And to-day is it not still the same thing? If there were free lands which the peasant could cultivate if he pleased, would he pay £50 to some "shabble of a duke"[2] for condescending to sell him a scrap? Would he burden himself with a lease which absorbed a third of the produce? Would he — on the métayer system — consent to give the half of his harvest to the landowner?
But he has nothing. So he will accept any conditions, if only he can keep body and soul together, while he tills the soil and enriches the landlord.
So in the nineteenth century, just as in the Middle Ages, the poverty of the peasant is a source of wealth to the landed proprietor.
Basically, why would people who are not outright desperate to feed and house themselves willingly subject themselves to the renewal of capitalism and the state?
Like if you went up to a person and was like "hey, you, I know you get your food and housing for free and have an active role in your communities politics, would you want to start working for a wage to pay rent and have a politician make decisions for you again? Like the system that just collapsed into violent civil war?"
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- Location
- San Francisco, CA, United States
TLDR: Look at my grandpa who constantly rails against socialism and big gubmint but relies on medicare and loves buying weed with his VA check. Outside of the most diehard class traitors, people's politics will always mostly depend on their material interests, and whether consciously or not, they will act accordingly if those interests change.
I'm probably not the best person to ask about this, but from what I understand, the idea is that well - people need a sewer system, and somebody has to do it. So more or less, the people come together and figure out who among them would be most suitable/comfortable with that task. Despite what one might expect, there are people who are absolutely comfortable with dirtier or more dangerous careers - otherwise we wouldn't have people doing those jobs right now, as they are skilled labor careers that require special training - and ideally in an anarchist society, people who do work most wouldn't want to but everybody agrees is vital would be more respected. They would be rewarded with "social capital" if you want to insist on framing everything around self-interest.
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anyway, I don't think the bread book is very topical to modern anarchist ideas but I find it funny that it's the late 19th century version of "Y'all think anarchism is idealistic? Hope you have 10 hours and a numbers/logistics kink."
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