More important than opposition to the current system is the prefiguration of an anarchic one. So much online discourse is about attacking, a lot less is about building. I drew this to remind myself and others that confronting the state is only a part of the puzzle and building new systems without it is also important.
Licence (as always): CC-0, No rights reserved.
This comment got me to look up if AFAQ had a section on this and it turns out it did:
I remember reading through this all more than a decade ago… I had my quibbles with it back then, but in general there’s a lot of good stuff in there.
Now… take a look at all the anarchist “influencers” on youtube, or just the generalised discourse you see in anarchist online spaces - and tell me if you see the disconnect.
neither the youtubers nor us online anarchist can provide a solution to this problem. To solve this problem you need people with experience of heavy industry alongside environmental experts to coordinate using self-managed principles. A bunch of propagandists (which is what we are) do not have enough understanding to create and maintain these processes. Our job is to get people to collectivize and start thinking critically of authority so they would be empowered to create an environment where they can do everything they already do without someone constantly looking over their shoulders.
Essentially: Leave the job of figuring out how to do things to the people. Or as AFAQ put: Is there a blueprint for anarchist society? https://anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionI.html#seci2
I also saw your comment earlier in the thread that was on the same topic:
When talking about anarchy the only thing we can talk about is what it mustn’t be. Because “what it is” is something that only be answered during the process after all of the different voices come together to build something. Or to use a quote from that AFAQ paragraph: “revolution should not only be made for the people’s sake; it should also be made by the people.” [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 141]
As anarchists we cannot build anything individually. Only after we have collectively come together and figured out how to work together can we look back and describe what we have made. When we say “organize” we don’t have anything specific in mind because that would go against the ethos of self-determination. No anarchist worthy of the name should have a concrete idea of what anarchy looks like. Sure you can have approximations and speculation but you cannot say with certainty what it is your building because that would require you to be able to read the minds of everyone contributing.
That’s a grand old way of saying that anarchists should only be comfortable and content with being edgy propagandists.
So where are they, then? Where are these discussions taking place? Where is the theoretical discourse that makes preconfiguration an actual possibility happening?
Do you know of any?
You are not going to get the working class collectivised with nothing but empty propaganda. The working class isn’t dumb, you know… they will always side with that which is more concrete - you know, that very thing anarchists seem afraid to offer?
Are you not of “the people?” It seems to me that leaving all the really difficult stuff to “the people” has almost become an orthodox holy cow for anarchists these days… that must be why they assume screaming “organize!” at everybody will someday (somehow) magically raise anarchism from out of the political leper colony it presently finds itself in.
And why is that?
Oh, certain voices are coming together, all right… but the anarchist one doesn’t seem to be in the room where it’s happening, does it now?
Nobody is saying that they should.
Yes. I know. That’s why it isn’t working.
Says who? Some Beardy McDeadguy, perhaps?
Ie, an actual theoretical grounding? There are only so many ways in which you can build a building, you know - it doesn’t hurt to actually know that BEFORE you are forced into building it under the most exacting of conditions.
An anarchist society isn’t a building. It’s a tree. A living, breathing, perpetually growing organism. You cannot say what a tree will look like before it’s grown. You can only plant a seed and hope for the best. As soon as you start planning and designing parts of this society you start ignoring other peoples contribution, stifling their liberty and self-determination. State socialists are the ones who are designing society according to their own vision and we’ve all seen where that leads.
If you want an actual movement and momentum check what the IWW is doing. They claim to be anarchist/syndicalists but I don’t know how much we are represented in the actual ranks. I’m sadly in a country that doesn’t have a branch.
I am just one. I am limited by my skills and specialties. I cannot really contribute to the discussion of heavy industry or agriculture, unless it’s about using tech and computers to simplify or automate, but even then I would need to listen to the actual people in these industries to even begin designing something that works. I know IT, I know Computers, I know programming. I also think I’m relatively good at recourse management and coming up with solutions that others might not. Those are the areas I know I can contribute. I would love to start a tech-collective but I don’t have the contacts. That’s why I spend most of my time on here, it feels like the only place I can actually contribute. If a person actually has enough anarchists around them to actually do something they obviously should do something more than just spread propaganda, but I don’t.
Which is part of the problem. Anarchy cannot be concrete. It’s chaos compared to centralized power structures, a free society cannot be anything else. The difference between anarchists and statists is that we embrace the chaos and believe something incredible can exist within it, that collectively we can withstand anything bad that chaos throws at us. Any concrete societal structure can only be maintained with control. This control will often result in inequality and exploitation.
Flipping the metaphors doesn’t change anything - except the metaphors. We know how trees work, too.
So whose “contributions” are you waiting for? Tankies? Liberals? Fascists, maybe?
Says who? You?
Pretending that anarchists getting serious about preconfiguration is comparable to tankie’s plans to murder, torture, starve and generally brutalise the working class into accepting their warped ideas of what they cynically call “socialism” isn’t just facetious - it’s downright incoherent. It seems to me that you don’t have much faith in your fellow anarchist’s abilities… apart from peddling empty propaganda, that is.
Well, I sure do know that you don’t know squat about trees… so, I guess you’re right on that count.
I asked you this before, and you didn’t answer. So here it is again… are you starting to see the disconnect?
Again… says who?
No, we don’t. Something tells me you haven’t actually seen much chaos in your lifetime.
No society can survive without control - and that goes double for an anarchist one. An anarchist society will have to be better at controlling things than a statist one - that is the whole point.
I also just found an essay on the anarchist library that deals with a lot of the topics we’ve discussed, perhaps give it a read: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/nishikant-sheorey-society-is-not-a-machine