If you do not have the answers then stop being dogmatic about how society should be organized. How can you be qualified to have such strong opinions about authority and decentralisation without knowing what kind of organisation you prefer? As you are, who can you convince to follow your ideals?
Understand where your class interests lie and then move forward from that. Be open and learn even from the people you’re told to hate.
A bunch of ego maniac sociopaths work their way in to the top positions and then start doing fucked up shit to further consolidate their power
Is that really how organisations work, or is the fucked up shit because organisations have to exist under capitalist regimes where fast growers take over and slow growers vanish into irrelevance, leading to a natural selection?
Is it the case that the very existence of positions causes trouble, or is it the benefits associated with them that lead to greed and competition?
A system that is dispersed enough that no individual or minority group can have so much power and influence to the point it can dictate the life outcomes for the majority
Is this not just a majoritarian direct democracy? I mean I don’t necessarily have a problem with it, but what is the relation to authority or dispersion here? Do you want some sort of absolute direct democracy where technical experts don’t have control over their respective fields? You need to be more clear.
I think people who continue to promote such a system lack the creativity to think outside the lines already drawn for them.
Or maybe it’s because they wish to build off prior experience rather than jump head first into the personal ideals of some guy? I mean why should we structure society in the way you want it? Why not in the way I want it?
Authority is a tool not a dogma.
PRC and Soviet are top down.
This means … what exactly? Do you understand the governance structures of these societies or are you just saying what you’ve been taught in capitalist textbooks?
There is no top in an anarchist society.
Setting aside the fact that I have 100% seen proposals from anarchists for societies that have a “top”, unless your proposed society only has 1 layer of organisation, it also has a top. But then you are just dogmatically limiting yourself to a very specific organizational structure rather than focusing on solving material problems or furthering class war.
This stuff isn’t hard but it’s clear to me that a few of the posters here don’t even understand the political philosophies they claim to support.
I don’t wanna hear this shit from “Communism is famous for centralisation and planning” which is nothing more than the meme version of communism spread by capitalist propagandists. I might as well start saying that “anarchism is the purge and chaos and violence” lol.
Communism is famous for centralized control and planning
Both of those things are also just tools. You can mix and match centralisation and decentralization based on problem application. Imagine if engineers dogmatically stuck to building with steel on everything. That’s just absurd.
Also, “famous” as in the memes you get from western media? Because the governance structure of socialist states has been historically quite decentralized. Both the USSR and PRC (today) have very strong local governance structures.
In the PRC arguably their problems related to uneven development and overleveraged debt come from too much decentralization. Every province starts to pursue an independent development policy leading to redundant industries (as is the case with EV and high tech industries). The hukuo system also forces decentralization by trying to slow down the migration of labor from rural areas to urban one’s. Of course the decentralization in China has many benefits too. The common prosperity program could leverage the wide range of technical/party infrastructure and spread benefits to rural communities. So really decentralization is a tool that needs continously refinement.
I don’t really see how you can argue that “it’s just a tool”
Because it just straight up is. You can apply it. Not apply it. Modify it according to your problem statement. Not to mention “decentralisation” is actually a closely related set of tools.
the whole premise of anarchism is resilience through decentralization.
Isn’t the “whole premise” of anarchism actually having a stateless society?
It would be if it could be
This is just fan fiction.
It tries in every arena but it’s just too weak to succeed.
When has Russia tried to take over the global economic system? What attempts has it made?
I don’t really see the point of swapping one piece of shit for another.
What does this mean? Since when is Russia taking over the governance of Europe even a remote possibility?
Decentralization is not an “anarchist philosophy”. It is just a tool.
Russia is not an imperialist country. Not only does it lack control over the world financial system, but it also is not extracting surplus value from the world.
Only a handful of countries even have the ability to enact imperialist surplus extract. It is American/European/Japanese firms which hold monopoly positions. It is America who gets to export its government debt in the form of US T-bonds that everyone is forced to buy. It is the US/EU which can create any protectionist trade policy they want while forcing structural adjustment programs onto the third world (aka forcing 3rd world countries to sell off public assets to US/EU capital in exchange for hard currency).
A country’s currency is the symbol and source of its imperial power. The countries with “hard currencies” are the imperialists who can dictate the economy of the world and leech off it. Meanwhile Russia’s currency becomes worthless in the global market by a simple sanction, and the imperialists steal 300 billion USD foreign reserves of Russia.
The idea of modern Russia being an imperialist power is just wrong and not supported by facts. Their class position is as imperialist as my class position is bourgeois*.
*for the record I don’t own businesses or land.
You’re missing the point. Putin is a bourgeois rat (as I like to call him) but supporting Russia is still harm reduction because Russia’s enemies are the imperialists. Literally everyone is better than the imperialists. The imperialists are the bottom of the barrel.
Putin? He’s just a typical liberal* in comparison.
*liberal in the non-prejorative ideological sense
You cannot just take values and proclaim them as belonging to your ideology. That’s ridiculous. I might as well then proclaim that kittens and puppies belong to communism.
It is an objective fact that communists have made great efforts to fight against the existing hegemonic order. Be they individual communists who have created many anti-capitalist communities, or mighty socialist states (USSR and PRC) who challenged the might of the imperialists and allowed many countries to have a chance at independent development.
You cannot simply gloss over it all and say that if a communist does something good that it was actually anarchism all along. That’s patently idealistic.
what I don’t really understand about some of the posting here is that there are many proud authoritarians of the communist variety getting upset about authoritarian laws
This decentralized platform was built by the “authoritarian communists” you decry.
there is no separation of private/corporate enterprise and the state
This is nonsensical. There’s no such thing as an industrialized society with a clear separation between private enterprise and the state. The state is the backbone of any industrial economy and anyone who knows shit about leftism knows that all capitalist countries are bourgeois dictatorships.
he’s an authoritarian nationalist
This description applies to every head of state. There’s no such thing as a “non-authoritarian” nation-state. Furthermore, Russia has substationally stronger minority rights than the west (where the idea of giving minority rights will get you accused of being racist).
he brutally suppresses dissent and is overtly militaristic
Is this your first year paying attention to politics?
The brave soviet soldiers defeated fascism the first time round, and now their descendents will beat it the 2nd time round as well, be the banderites of Ukraine or the zionists or Europe.
Even under the bourgeoise dictatorship of putin, in the life of a single Russian soldier there is more anti-fascism than the the entirety of western liberalism combined.
I’ve always maintained the EU doesn’t have much time left and this kind of overreach makes me more convinced. They’re panicking hard up top.
Well one thing you must understand about Europe is that their ruling class only cares about profit and the ruled class is very subservient to whatever the ruling class tells them. In the event that the European ruling class’s investments in America get fucked, there is a possibility of Russia opening investments for Europeans, which will immediately cause the European policy to revert.
Of course that would be a reversal of a decades long relationship of capital between the US and Europe, however, these are exactly the times where such decades long trends are being broken. Not to mention, as the US declines and a crisis of overproduction builds (AI), it is only a matter of time for investments in the US to be tanked.
The real factor is whether or not the Russians are willing to play ball and treat the euros with kiddie gloves. I’m sure they’ll extract some juicy concessions if they are. But fear not, the euros are experienced with servicing greater powers.
To increase military spending without causing unrest requires something to rally around, and Trump taking over Greenland would be exactly that thing to rally around. Even though the us already controls Greenland defacto, it doesn’t matter. The nationalism can be generated either way.
Only way for Europe to back down from further military spending is to first back down from foreign military adventures, then make a detente with Russia. Even then Europe will still need some manufacturing and military spending and energy spending to simply be able to hold against the US and avoid vassalisation. That’s the only realistic good ending.
Palantir also offers processing of user data for mass surveillance and gatekeeping purposes, with the additional benefit of being a scapegoat when whatever scheme is being cooked up in the background comes to light.
Trump, I beg of you, please invade Greenland. The euros need a taste of their own medicine. They’ll learn their lessons increase military spending.
Oh wait no! Don’t do it!
Term limits are anti-democratic as you are removing popular choices from government.
Imagine a politician who is competent and serves the public, the public keeps re-electing them, so you … block them from serving again? To replace them with an untested politician?
Term limits also limit long-term thinking as a politician in their last term has no real accountability or incentives.
Which is why I went to learn from every ideology. I studied anarchist theory. I studied bourgeois economics. I studied communist theory. I even had a socdem phase.
Then just say that from the start.
Which is why we should approach problems with a toolkit approach rather than sticking to one way of solving problems.
What exactly in your view is “authority”?
Communists use “authority” in the colloquial sense (as a synonym for “jurisdiction”, aka a designated field of formal decision making power). In the communist view, authority is nothing more than a component of dividing labor and responsibility which cannot be rid of in a complex society.
My doctor has the authority over prescribing medicines to me (which let’s be clear, I’m not a big fan of) and the streets sweeper has authority over the machine thing they use (so it is their responsibility to use the machine and prevent others from messing with it).
I am well aware that anarchists have their own definitions of authority but I have heard so many different definitions that I have to ask this every time I come across a new anarchist.