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.
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.