As an anarchist who is opposed to accelerationionism, it’s frustrating how many people see it as an ideology that wants the state to immediately collapse.
I’ve had multiple arguments with liberals who say I’m not a real anarchist because I want pragmatic short-term progressive solutions like Medicare for all.
So yeah, I’m not wanting to condemn people to death for my ideology. Got me! (Not you, PugJesus)
I like to point people to Desert by Anonymous. It talks about how the plan should really be waiting for the State to recede as collapse progresses, and finding the spaces left behind where theres room for mutual aid based organization.
I like that. It turns your attention to what’s in front of you, rather than waiting for the mythical Revolution we’ll likely never see.
Ever hear about love? I checked and turns out its for everyone, can you believe it?
Republicans and Democrats are both perfectly ok with state violence so long as it’s against brown people, and preferably overseas. How many millions have died from lack of access to affordable health care and an almost non-existent social safety net in the US over the past century? But those aren’t counted as ideological deaths for some reason? If you think that choosing either of the two main parties which both have an official policy of supporting foreign genocides is the lesser evil somehow, you’ve been duped. America has killed more people in wars in the past 20 years than nearly any other state, except perhaps for Russia. You’re just bent out of shape because that state violence has been turned on the domestic population for once. Anything has got to be better than the status quo.
This has nothing to do with anything that I said. Please try to stay on topic and keep your strawmen in your own fields.
If you have to make up a bunch of bullshit about me to attack my position then you’re not attacking my position.
Anything has got to be better than the status quo.
Spoken like a true child of privilege without any imagination - or understanding of conditions outside of your cozy status quo, ironically.
History teaches us that collapse and revolution rarely goes well for anyone.
I’d much rather build systems that provide for people so we can all watch the old world crumble from a comfy chair with plenty of snacks.
Who am I kidding, I don’t want a society; people are too troublesome.
Similar
I always like to (admittedly, pedantically) point out that if anarchism is defined purely etymologically, all it means is “without hierarchy”.
My personal interpretation is that it doesn’t necessarily imply a lack of a state, democratic or representative government, or jurisprudence of established law; it only implies a lack of arbitrary and tiered authority or power.
What you described, gradual change , is the literal definition of a conservative. So that means you’re a conservative.
What you described, gradual change , is the literal definition of a conservative. So that means you’re a conservative.
“Harm reduction is conservatism” is where we’re at.
Fuck’s sake.
Stop using the term harm reduction. The crazies use that term to “subtly” push the “b b both sides same!” nonsense. Don’t fall for their framing.
Except harm reduction is a real and good thing. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
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Look, there’s one now!
Call it incrementalism then.
This is not about “perfect behind the enemy of good” because I after with that. What this is about is the crazies will stop at nothing to say “b b both sides same!” and they use the term “harm reduction” to sneak that idea in. Anything good they will try to categorize as “it’s merely harm reduction, not actually good. And because it’s harm reduction, it’s harm light, it’s harm, and I will not vote for harm!”
Well that’s just fucking wrong. I’m not going to give up on the meaning of words just because crazy people have.
What part of that is wrong? It’s two people looking at the same thing and seeing different things. You see the term harm reduction and see it as good. They see the term harm reduction and see it as bad because [see my explanation above].
That depends on the threshold for harm. But yeah, if you take the maximalist claim that any death or harm direct or indirect is unacceptable, you are basically arguing for no changes in society because we do not know the future and there is always uncertainty.
Conservative doesn’t mean reactionary, it is what it means now just like liberal now is taken to mean progressive, but that is not the real definition of the word it’s simply how people have been using them as a sort of shorthand.
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And Ukrainians, and Palestinians. But I guess they don’t matter either, so long as you get to celebrate the deaths of some American minorities at the same time, eh?
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Congratulations on having the absolute dumbest take I’ve seen on Lemmy!
It’s not a take if it’s a fact.
Conservatives thus favour institutions and practices that have evolved gradually and are manifestations of continuity and stability. Government’s responsibility is to be the servant, not the master, of existing ways of life, and politicians must therefore resist the temptation to transform society and politics. This suspicion of government activism distinguishes conservatism not only from radical forms of political thought but also from liberalism, which is a modernizing, antitraditionalist movement dedicated to correcting the evils and abuses resulting from the misuse of social and political power. In The Devil’s Dictionary (1906), the American writer Ambrose Bierce cynically (but not inappropriately) defined the conservative as “a statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.” Conservatism must also be distinguished from the reactionary outlook, which favours the restoration of a previous, and usually outmoded, political or social order.
It’s embarrassing that you think this is a gotcha.
I don’t think it’s a gotcha, mainly because I’m not arguing in bad faith you dumbass. I’m giving proof of why someone arguing for gradual change is the literal definition of conservative.
The only thing you’re proving is that simple definitions are for simple minds.
Ah the good old words mean nothing. Ok I guess we’re done here.
I’m not arguing in bad faith you dumbass.
lol
umm. no. direction of change is crucial lol. some of us want capitalism to wither away as well as the state withering away. that is not conservatism lol.
Explain the mechanism through which the state will wither away. Then when the state has withered away explain how it will take more than 5 minutes before it reforms again.
I’m not even trolling here, no anarchist has ever been able to explain this to me in a way that isn’t different from literal faith.
The state is the mechanism that stabilizes class antagonism.
Why would it reform “5 minutes” after it is not needed anymore, because class antagonisms ceized to exist?
You need to describe the organization of such a society: how do things get done. Who decides what gets done and how is it decided. How do you stop those humans who are smarter, and more charismatic from rallying a following and imposing their will? The natural state of humanity is hierarchical, now that doesn’t mean that because it’s natural it needs to stay that way but I am simply making the descriptive claim that without guardrails hierarchy will form.
I have thought about this a little though I admit to be ignorant about anarchic literature, Im basing myself mostly on the basic and most well known claims. But from what I know of the goals of the ideology, for me anarchism is only possible through the trans human project. Humans would transcend the genetical and physical differences that make us intrinsically different and therefore more capable than others. We would be truly equal, though not human in any sense of the word anymore. More like a program that can reach consensus without dissenting opinions causing rifts because we are in fact a one who also happens to be many if that makes sense? Like the Geth in Mass Effect. A hive mind.
You need to describe the organization of such a society: how do things get done.
Why? How should I be able to? No one in feudal times could have predicted how things would be done in capitalism. Why should I be able to accurately predict how a free society would look like?
Who decides what gets done and how is it decided.
In my (limited) model? Federated councils. So the people have a say in decisions proportional to how much they are affected by them.
How do you stop those humans who are smarter, and more charismatic from rallying a following and imposing their will?
How will these “smart people” be able to achieve such a following? Immediate hunter-gatherers have strategies against this kind of accumulation of power. For example by ridiculing people who are too full of themselves. Can’t find the youtube video that explains this concept, right now. It was one in this series, though.
Also: you do realize that liberal democracy has this exact problem of demagogues?
The natural state of humanity is hierarchical
Now where did you get that idea? Any sources for that? Also: naturalistic fallacy.
I am simply making the descriptive claim that without guardrails hierarchy will form.
Maybe. Anarchists are quite in favour of these guardrails, though.
I think you overemphasize competition in mankind. One foundational text of anarchism is “mutual aid” by Peter Kropotkin, which adds on to Darwin’s theory by stating (and observing) that cooperation within one species is a vital factor in evolution.
Edit: Found the video I meant
i can’t explain it from an anarchist perspective but I can let you know a source for some great commentary on that exact matter if you’re interested?
I am. Shoot.
https://www.marxists.org/ebooks/lenin/state-and-revolution.pdf
it’s well written and in a plain english form. a short read, honestly.
I’m already skeptical because of the author but I’m willing to give it a read. I do know that Lenin by the end of his life really did not like the state he had built so the ideas must be different than the practice.
There no polite way to put it, that’s dumb, stupid, and very wrong take. Conservatives want to regress. We aren’t in the Nixon times anymore where GOP will launch the EPA, nowadays conservatives are all about regression.
That’s because they are reactionaries not conservatives.
At best you are relying on comically outdated and outmoded definitions/ideas. What part of the current GOP do you see as wanting gradual progress? None. They want to regress.
Do I need to repeat it again? They are not conservatives, they are reactionaries. Two different things.
Conservative does not = GOP except as political shorthand. It’s like saying socialist = Democrat. Both parties are coalitions of many different views.
Do I and everyone else need to repeat it again? You are trying to rely on fucking hilariously outdated and outmoded ideas and definitions of Nixon and similar era.
They don’t want progress. You are wrong.
I’d love for Mr. Definition to give a single example of a self-described conservative who isn’t a reactionary, but I’m not going to pull his string again.
Outdated? So conservatives are only an American phenomenon? Because that’s the only way that conservative = GOP = reactionary. There are conservatives all over the world, and they are explicitly different from reactionaries and usually opposed to them.
That would also mean that the conservatives that exist in America either need a new name or don’t exist. But that’s not the case. They are more or less politically homeles, but many have remained in the GOP because they see it as the lesser evil (for whatever reasons, I’m not here to argue the merit of that belief) or have thrown their lot in with the democrats, but they still exist.
Lmao no, that’s not how this works.
The problem with wanting change without collapse is you have to figure out a way to live next to the millions and millions of people who didn’t want the change or believed they didn’t want it and will never change that belief.
The sad truth is for the kind of meaningful change any of us actually want, it would take enough collective trauma that it displaces the collective feelings of comfort and protection that allow people to have set-in beliefs at all.
This isn’t saying I want widespread disaster at all, nobody deserves the suffering of disease, displacement and starvation. Unfortunately it’s coming anyway, worse yet, it will only impact the people least deserving of this coming misery.
They are all using public transport. Already a win.
Some ideologies want to be the boot pressing down on other’s necks and set the world on fire.
The rest aren’t so bad compared to that.
I like this comment.
As much as I crap on certain leftists, they still have the ideology “I wish people were slightly more kinder” and I would love their ideology to be accepted common sense rather than current one.
I would be just as happier if they were considered the new “centrists.” And current right-wing considered far, far extreme.
What if I want the death of all humans… /s
I suppose you also want to make your own theme park with blackjack and hookers.
I don’t know what’s coming after this; better, worse, another version of the same.
I’m just tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
My money is on worse. The billionaire class has the means to take full control if society were to collapse and form it in their interest.
Even if a specific currency became meaningless, they’d still have wealth to transfer to whatever currency isn’t.
Oh and to follow on my last comment, I know there’s going to be widespread bloodshed. I’m not blind to that; neither do I welcome it. I know it because gestures widely at human history.
The deaths are already happening under the current ideology and are endless until stopped.
Oh cool, that’s totally a real and valid reason to embrace murdering as many people as possible.
Who’s planning on murdering as many people as possible? Seems like someone writing a fantasy villain and not at all related to reality.
Thank you for confirming you have no fucking idea what happens when a society collapses.
People start murdering as many people as possible??? Is that what happens?
It’s the most high-casualty course of events possible under most circumstances, yes. Sorry that the ample evidence of the past 200 fucking years hasn’t made that clear enough for you?
Is that true though? I mean I just did a mental review of collapses that came to mind and not even the USSR resulted in mass deaths? I mean the mass deaths were for causes the led to the collapse of the USSR but the actual collapse was not what caused the deaths.
Unless you mean that the new order that takes the place of the one before is the one that causes mass casualties because that does seem to be the usual case. No one actually falls in line with the ideology that wants to dominate, which I guess is your greater point.
Is that true though?
Somalia, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan (thrice), Sudan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, South Sudan, Yemen…
Yes. It’s very true.
To be fair the USSR started with mass death and slaughter. Then continued in with it for some time. Strictly speaking the government never collapsed. Oh sure they loosened their grip on former forcefully conquered vassal States. But the bourgeoisie of the party didn’t go anywhere. They simply gave up the pretense of sharing the means of production. And transition to outright owning them as proper bourgeoisie.
We shouldn’t fool ourselves though. Russia is actually still slowly collapsing as are many governments. Hundreds of thousands of Russia’s sons have been conscripted to fight for a fascist in their very own Vietnam. With a heavy death toll and no end in sight. As day by day the requirements for qualification to be conscripted are broadened. Putin literally just burning away a large chunk of their society. It’s happening, just quietly now that there 4th estate in the US and globally has been captured and stripped bare at the altar of capitalism. Doesn’t matter if it’s east or west. Journalist are regularly fired, disappeared, or just slaughtered for doing their jobs
What are you even arguing about.
“Present situation bad” is not a fucking reason to advocate for the collapse of society, which literal millions of people will die in the course of.
I didn’t realize that I had to fucking trace out that the collapse of society is bad, but I guess the OP was just too subtle.
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OP just fyi but i think that somehow reducing the human population by 99.99%, leaving around a million or so, would not be the worst thing ever for hardcore environmentalism.
So however way society collapsed or for whatever reason, the ensueing starvation of billions due to collapsing fertilizer and fuel supply chains, is the fantasy.
spoiler
/s
spoiler
kinda
My favorite part is this is exactly what the dems are doing with Trump, their startegy since the beginning was not to stop Trump and just wait for him to ruin the country enough that people vote for them again. They were saying as much earlier in the year too. Hilarious to see how they called all their detractors accelerationist before deciding to join in.
Stupidity knows no ideological borders, it would seem
no? literally no leftists side with maga (except for maga communism, but that’s fringe).
no? literally no leftists side with maga (except for maga communism, but that’s fringe).
You’re not reading the extremely simple comic very well, then.
Dems worked against Trumps opponents in 2015 in the hopes that the electorate would see how bad Trump is and deliver an easy Dem win. It didn’t work like that.
Leftists have been quite openly on here salivating over how working against Kamala and delivering Trump, and Trump being nakedly bad will lead to either the American people or the world as a whole seeing just how bad neoliberalism is, and deliver the long-awaited Revolution™. That’s just as fucking stupid.
openly
Any examples? besides some people who don’t want to vote dem?
Besides, the democrats are the neoliberal party. Trump is closer to fascism.Any examples? besides some people who don’t want to vote dem?
From this very comment section:
Republicans and Democrats are both perfectly ok with state violence so long as it’s against brown people, and preferably overseas. How many millions have died from lack of access to affordable health care and an almost non-existent social safety net in the US over the past century? But those aren’t counted as ideological deaths for some reason? If you think that choosing either of the two main parties which both have an official policy of supporting foreign genocides is the lesser evil somehow, you’ve been duped. America has killed more people in wars in the past 20 years than nearly any other state, except perhaps for Russia. You’re just bent out of shape because that state violence has been turned on the domestic population for once. Anything has got to be better than the status quo.
“There is no lesser evil, the only reason you’re upset is because it’s naked now, and that’s implicitly a good thing because it will lead to something other than the status quo”
Or, as I put it:
Leftists have been quite openly on here salivating over how working against Kamala and delivering Trump, and Trump being nakedly bad will lead to either the American people or the world as a whole seeing just how bad neoliberalism is, and deliver the long-awaited Revolution™.
Bonus, also from this comment section:
I respect the american will, they voted for this. It’s good for the world. These minorities didn’t care about the kids in gaza and have a way out compared to them. Why should I care?
Leftists have been quite openly on here salivating over how working against Kamala and delivering Trump, and Trump being nakedly bad will lead to either the American people or the world as a whole seeing just how bad neoliberalism is, and deliver the long-awaited Revolution™.
Besides, the democrats are the neoliberal party. Trump is closer to fascism.
A great many people here on Lemmy will say there’s no effective difference between neoliberalism and fascism.
I mean at least yall went from blaming the immigrants to blaming the socialists for the elections so that’s still some kind of improvement.
I mean at least yall went from blaming the immigrants to blaming the socialists for the elections so that’s still some kind of improvement.
Fucking what.
Remember when Kamala lost and lots of people were blaming mexians for voting for trump? They’re referring to that.
I remember when people were shocked that Latino voters swung towards Trump compared to previous elections. To say that that’s ‘blaming Mexicans’ or immigrants would be an astounding interpretation of that.
idk, there were a lot of liberals on twitter and bluesky saying that mexicans deserved to get deported for voting for trump. There absolutely was a lot of people who were blaming them, even if you yourself didn’t.
I won’t disagree, both because I’m not active on Bluesky or Twitter, and because I know that people are fucking immensely stupid and repugnant regardless of ideology - and liberalism is not exactly a sunshine and rainbows ideology to begin with. But most discourse I saw that applied actual blame to minorities wrt the election was around Arab-Americans.
While I regard protest votes and abstaining as universally unacceptable, the shift of Arab-Americans away from the Dems in 2024 lost us one state, at best - whereas we needed to pick up (or not lose, depending on how you want to see things) three. So while I condemn that on a moral level, strategically, it means very little, and the people who narrow in on that are either expressing some latent racism or trying to avoid the broader issue that the DNC royally screwed the pooch - something that Lemmy, for all of its other faults, quite freely admits.
Most of the discourse around the Latino vote I saw was either shock, or in the context of the male vote in general and without application of blame of the wider electoral failure to the Latino vote. But, again, I’m not trying to contradict that such things were said. I certainly run in left-liberal information bubbles where that kind of talk would be verboten to begin with.
I am being sarcastic. I still haven’t fully gotten over when people were blaming immigrants for 2024 elections.
There was a tiktok trend of calling ICE on your neighbors most of which could not vote in first place.
Are you talking about pre election? Of course you can do something about Trump by not electing him. After Trump won, there’s nothing left to do except let him show everybody why it was a bad idea.
After Trump won, there’s nothing left to do except let him show everybody why it was a bad idea.
“Let the fascist burn down society unopposed” is not exactly a fucking recipe for anything except empowering fascism.
People don’t touch the hot stove and learn their fucking lesson. People touch the hot stove and blame the liberals for burning them.
There is no effective opposition plan to fascism that involves ceding uncontested control to fascists
When I hear comments like this, I think that in your eyes democracy is optional when you have somebody like Trump in office. He’s clearly a fascist, so democrats need to arrest him and put a democrat in charge.
If you belong to a party that values democracy, you need to recognize that the fascist is an elected officials and do what you can legally do to maintain control and make sure the voters know who is to blame.
You do realize there are other options for opposing fascism than “A coup” right?
Yeah, and democrats are doing many things. I think what California is trying to do to counter Texas’s redisctricting is an example.
What are things you think Democrats should be doing that they are not?
That’s exactly what they believe.
But it’s an inherent issue with democracy, that it only really works if we all have somewhat of a shared view of the world. If the people in a democracy have many different, and opposite views of the world, democracy simply cannot work because we’re not just disagreeing in what the method to reach our goals are, we disagree fundamentally on what our goals are and what the very fabric of our society should look like. That’s why many on the right will say that assimilation is important. And yes that has been co-opted by racists, but originally the idea was that a democracy can only sustain itself if all its members have a shared culture. Pluralism, as has been observed since Plato, only leads to the collapse of a democracy because consensus becomes impossible.
I don’t find democracy flawed by itself, but it is nothing but a cherished and fragile balance that gets watered down and coopted if not constantly maintained.
Coexisting with other opinions is a work that doesn’t end once you get there, and natural foes of it like corporative lobbies, career politicians and now again pointless populists are always there to dismantle whatever was built. It being ‘a thing to fight for’ is reduced to a movie cliche, but it does, unlike feudal caste elite-guided medieval shit, require that effort at all times. Erosion of that understanding leads to what we can see today.
Sharing culture and integration can start right now, and it spontaniously happens on it’s own if not put down, but the same rightwing people would likely draw another isolated Israel on the map than break the barriers from their own side, than accept other people as equals and discuss.
My ideology is leaving each other the hell alone.
They all have the same ideology, forged and molded by the algorithm of social media.
Many of those people will not have developed political reasoning, and will consider themselves “apolitical” due to having never investigated their own political viewpoints…
Or worse, they’ll consider themselves “objective” when it comes to politics, claiming they just know when something is true, or good for people.
Once, I nihilistically mentioned to my friend that “I welcome the coming inevitable nuclear holocaust.” His reply was something that I will never forget: “I don’t think you realize what nuclear war entails.”
I haven’t wished for the end of the world since.
I’m honestly yet to meet anyone, online or otherwise, who genuinely advocates for the end of society as part of the movement’s program. The vast majority of revolutionary movements don’t build from the ashes of society, but rather seek to transform it.
Never met an accelerationist before? Not even online?
Haven’t met that many, probably because I don’t browse those kinds of spaces.
Even so, at least from what I know, their whole shtick is that they recognize how Capitalism constantly gets worse and worse, how it drifts toward reactionary politics that makes working class lives worse and how this kind of process cannot be reversed without world wars (to get rid of overproduction and stimulate war time economy, ww2 was key in beating the great depression) or other massive crises. Reforms seek to slow them down to make things better for a moment, but accelerationism seeks to prevent those from happening so Capitalism reaches another crisis faster and people revolt, etc.
Even though I think it’s stupid, being on the same level as fanatical belief of deprogramite ML’s infesting this site that capital will die on its own and communism will naturally pop up like it’s a force on nature, it’s still at it’s core a transformational movement and not “kill peopleism”.
Meaning stand up for your belief, and to the victor, the spoils. It’s ironic. 🤷♂️
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Presumably they all have different ideologies
