academiccompositionab
Empowerment Equalizer
SSaragian
Antony Sammeroff
Ann Sterzinger
Rodney
RJ
busterjames
cainusmaxus
Craig FitzGerald
David Heleniak
Caity & Dan Greene
keirmartland
Keith Preston
Bill the Butcher
ljp711
MRDA
Jack Donovan
Rachel Haywire
comrade hermit
Michael
Vince
robertstark2014
Noonan
S E Pearson
Rachel Haywire
Nexus X HumectressAragorn Bang’s podcast. Also, check out Little Black Cart.
A great program discussing many pertinent issues.
Anarchists have largely agreed on the big two. Central to our politics is opposition to the State, or as we discussed last week the monopoly on violence (or corrected by some as the monopoly on the legitament use of violece) and opposition to Capitalism. This week let’s discuss what that means. Unlike the State, that we can largely ignore outside of paying taxes, being corraled at protests, and a brief hesitation prior to committing murder and the like, capitalism is largely something we “do” or at least experience every single day. So we both despise and participate in this system of organizing exchange relationships.
What does this mean for anarchists? Largely it means that we sound crazy when we discuss alternatives to the existing order. Being in this world and of another means that we discuss moral, ethical, and philosophical topics rather than practical or “reasonable” ones. We have very little to say, and less to offer, poor people. We argue the destiny that we are sure of like lunatics and mostly argue these points with some of the only other people who identify as anarchists who we insist are not.
And our natural allies are among the largest mass murderers of the twentieth century in Russia, China, and Vietnam. For some reason that has something to do with marketing and the way that the Internet makes people either lose their mind or forget the past Old Fashion Red Communism has come back into some sort of vogue. And closer to home one of the largest leaks in this little rowboat we call Anarchism is the even more obscure communisms of Pannekok, Luxemburg, and Theory Communiste from Holland, Germany, and France respectively. Europe is back baby as if it every went away.
This week our challenge is to stake our position on Capitalism. Great oppositional system against human self-expression and self-worth or greatest system? Call in and let us discuss capitalism, it’s strength’s, which are many, and its weaknesses.
Attack the System
Categories: Anarchism/Anti-State, Economics/Class Relations
Are these folks at odds with your and ATS? I actually find a lot of what they talk about aligns with a lot of what ATS is trying to do. What is the actual disconnect between there post left interpretation and yours/ATS?
I wouldn’t pretend to speak for them, but I think it comes down to the fact that ATS accepts “non-left” (or “non-left or non-post-left”) forms of anarchism as legitimate branches of anarchism, like Rothbardian ancaps, national-anarchists, or those with some kind of traditionalist, conservative, religious, or (especially) Eurocentric orientation. They may be “post-left” but they still seem to hold to the standard “culture war” paradigm of POC-womyn-LGBTQs-oppressed others vs. privileged hegemonic straight white Christian males. I’m interested in moving past that and embracing all self-determination oriented, alternative culture movements, from romantic medievalists to Oranians to monastic orders to Dolezalites to furries and otherkin. Anyone who generally favors a society based on free associations, voluntary communities and (consequently) decentralized pluralism is welcome under the ATS umbrella.
To use the sci-fi analogies once again, ATS is like “Star Wars,” i.e. the rebel alliance against the empire with as much diversity as the creature cantina. Or “Star Trek,” i.e. infinite diversity in infinite combination united by the “prime directive” (non-aggression principle, non-interference, self-determination for all). That includes all heresies (medical, scientific, historical, philosophical, spiritual, political), all conspiracies, all identities, all religions, all moralities, all subcultures, all countercultures, all sexualities/anti-sexualities, space colonizers, seasteaders, primitivists, transhumanists, subterranean colonizers, etc.
I don’t think the “post-left” milieu has really reached that point yet.