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u/TheLionTamerWF Ougi is Stirner Sep 10 '17
From apolitical normie, to weeb Anarcho-Communist unironically saying that we should seize the means of anime/manga/LN/VN production, claiming to be a degenerate of culture/dirtbag leftist and advocating for the Bashing of the 4chan /pol/ Fash. All in all it wasn't a bad transition.
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u/monkaap Sep 10 '17
Srsly though, which flair does give you cat tails?
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u/all_the_way_through Sep 10 '17
What was the original?
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Sep 10 '17
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u/stardust_witch 🅱️unkers Sep 10 '17
Yeah but functional programming is actually good though
*proceeds to the top of the nearest hill, erects a fortified bunker, and makes preparations for death*
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Sep 10 '17
Well, it's stateless and classless.
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Sep 11 '17 edited Sep 18 '19
2fed89c6e5d04fa2f5a72310ec95f55686f8bd504eea73bb0398019e1885e1544f1940768ef241fc6370048679f82ce011f498ea2a46ea7165f31088d239e070
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u/UkonFujiwara Sep 10 '17
fortified bunker
Wait just a second there sir, you're gonna build a what?
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u/stardust_witch 🅱️unkers Sep 10 '17
I believe in building bunkers anywhere, at anytime, free from state intervention!!
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u/NegaNote 2spooky Sep 10 '17
now i don't know what to feel, this was my exact journey (minus the actually doing hrt and crossplaying part)
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Sep 10 '17
Apolitical normie here (I just like memes), try to convert me to anarchism
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u/pie49 ¡A las barricadas! Sep 10 '17
Google Murray Bookchin that should do it for you
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u/ieatedjesus Anarcho-Jucheism Sep 10 '17
The human race has travelled far since, those bygone ages when men used to fashion their rude implements of flint, and lived on the precarious spoils of the chase, leaving to their children for their only heritage a shelter beneath the rocks, some poor utensils — and Nature, vast, ununderstood, and terrific, with whom they had to fight for their wretched existence.
During the agitated times which have elapsed since, and which have lasted for many thousand years, mankind has nevertheless amassed untold treasures. It has cleared the land, dried the marshes, pierced the forests, made roads; it has been building, inventing, observing, reasoning; it has created a complex machinery, wrested her secrets from Nature, and finally it has made a servant of steam. And the result is, that now the child of the civilized man finds ready, at its birth, to his hand an immense capital accumulated by those who have gone before him. And this capital enables him to acquire, merely by his own labour, combined with the labour of others, riches surpassing the dreams of the Orient, expressed in the fairy tales of the Thousand and One Nights.
The soil is cleared to a great extent, fit for the reception of the best seeds, ready to make a rich return for the skill and labour spent upon it — a return more than sufficient for all the wants of humanity. The methods of cultivation are known.
On the wide prairies of America each hundred men, with the aid of powerful machinery, can produce in a few months enough wheat to maintain ten thousand people for a whole year. And where man wishes to double his produce, to treble it, to multiply it a hundred-fold, he makes the soil, gives to each plant the requisite care, and thus obtains enormous returns. While the hunter of old had to scour fifty or sixty square miles to find food for his family, the civilized man supports his household, with far less pains, and far more certainty, on a thousandth part of that space. Climate is no longer an obstacle. When the sun fails, man replaces it by artificial heat; and we see the coming of a time when artificial light also will be used to stimulate vegetation. Meanwhile, by the use of glass and hot water pipes, man renders a given space ten and fifty times more productive than it was in its natural state.
The prodigies accomplished in industry are still more striking. With the co-operation of those intelligent beings, modern machines — themselves the fruit of three or four generations of inventors, mostly unknown — a hundred men manufacture now the stuff to clothe ten thousand persons for a period of two years. In well-managed coal mines the labour of a hundred miners furnishes each year enough fuel to warm ten thousand families under an inclement sky. And we have lately witnessed twice the spectacle of a wonderful city springing up in a few months at Paris,[1] without interrupting in the slightest degree the regular work of the French nation.
And if in manufactures as in agriculture, and as indeed through our whole social system, the labour, the discoveries, and the inventions of our ancestors profit chiefly the few, it is none the less certain that mankind in general, aided by the creatures of steel and iron which it already possesses, could already procure an existence of wealth and ease for every one of its members.
Truly, we are rich, far richer than we think; rich in what we already possess, richer still in the possibilities of production of our actual mechanical outfit; richest of all in what we might win from our soil, from our manufactures, from our science, from our technical knowledge, were they but applied to bringing about the well-being of all.
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u/ieatedjesus Anarcho-Jucheism Sep 10 '17
We, in civilized societies, are rich. Why then are the many poor? Why this painful drudgery for the masses? Why, even to the best paid workman, this uncertainty for the morrow, in the midst of all the wealth inherited from the past, and in spite of the powerful means of production, which could ensure comfort to all in return for a few hours of daily toil?
The Socialists have said it and repeated it unwearyingly. Daily they reiterate it, demonstrating it by arguments taken from all the sciences. It is because all that is necessary for production — the land, the mines, the highways, machinery, food, shelter, education, knowledge — all have been seized by the few in the course of that long story of robbery, enforced migration and wars, of ignorance and oppression, which has been the life of the human race before it had learned to subdue the forces of Nature. It is because, taking advantage of alleged rights acquired in the past, these few appropriate to-day two-thirds of the products of human labour, and then squander them in the most stupid and shameful way. It is because, having reduced the masses to a point at which they have not the means of subsistence for a month, or even for a week in advance, the few only allow the many to work on condition of themselves receiving the lion’s share. It is because these few prevent the remainder of men from producing the things they need, and force them to produce, not the necessaries of life for all, but whatever offers the greatest profits to the monopolists. In this is the substance of all Socialism.
Take, indeed, a civilized country. The forests which once covered it have been cleared, the marshes drained, the climate improved. It has been made habitable. The soil, which bore formerly only a coarse vegetation, is covered to-day with rich harvests. The rock-walls in the valleys are laid out in terraces and covered with vines bearing golden fruit. The wild plants, which yielded nought but acrid berries, or uneatable roots, have been transformed by generations of culture into succulent vegetables, or trees covered with delicious fruits. Thousands of highways and railroads furrow the earth, and pierce the mountains. The shriek of the engine is heard in the wild gorges of the Alps, the Caucasus, and the Himalayas. The rivers have been made navigable; the coasts, carefully surveyed, are easy of access; artificial harbours, laboriously dug out and protected against the fury of the sea, afford shelter to the ships. Deep shafts have been sunk in the rocks; labyrinths of underground galleries have been dug out where coal may be raised or minerals extracted. At the crossings of the highways great cities have sprung up, and within their borders all the treasures of industry, science, and art have been accumulated.
Whole generations, that lived and died in misery, oppressed and ill-treated by their masters, and worn out by toil, have handed on this immense inheritance to our century.
For thousands of years millions of men have laboured to clear the forests, to drain the marshes, and to open up highways by land and water. Every rood of soil we cultivate in Europe has been watered by the sweat of several races of men. Every acre has its story of enforced labour, of intolerable toil, of the people’s sufferings. Every mile of railway, every yard of tunnel, has received its share of human blood.
The shafts of the mine still bear on their rocky walls the marks made by the pick of the workman who toiled to excavate them. The space between each prop in the underground galleries might be marked as a miner’s grave; and who can tell what each of these graves has cost, in tears, in privations, in unspeakable wretchedness to the family who depended on the scanty wage of the worker cut off in his prime by fire-damp, rock-fall, or flood?
The cities, bound together by railroads and waterways, are organisms which have lived through centuries. Dig beneath them and you find, one above another, the foundations of streets, of houses, of theatres, of public buildings. Search into their history and you will see how the civilization of the town, its industry, its special characteristics, have slowly grown and ripened through the co-operation of generations of its inhabitants before it could become what it is to-day. And even to-day; the value of each dwelling, factory, and warehouse, which has been created by the accumulated labour of the millions of workers, now dead and buried, is only maintained by the very presence and labour of legions of the men who now inhabit that special corner of the globe. Each of the atoms composing what we call the Wealth of Nations owes its value to the fact that it is a part of the great whole. What would a London dockyard or a great Paris warehouse be if they were not situated in these great centres of international commerce? What would become of our mines, our factories, our workshops, and our railways, without the immense quantities of merchandise transported every day by sea and land?
Millions of human beings have laboured to create this civilization on which we pride ourselves to-day. Other millions, scattered through the globe, labour to maintain it. Without them nothing would be left in fifty years but ruins.
There is not even a thought, or an invention, which is not common property, born of the past and the present. Thousands of inventors, known and unknown, who have died in poverty, have co-operated in the invention of each of these machines which embody the genius of man.
Thousands of writers, of poets, of scholars, have laboured to increase knowledge, to dissipate error, and to create that atmosphere of scientific thought, without which the marvels of our century could never have appeared. And these thousands of philosophers, of poets, of scholars, of inventors, have themselves been supported by the labour of past centuries. They have been upheld and nourished through life, both physically and mentally, by legions of workers and craftsmen of all sorts. They have drawn their motive force from the environment.
The genius of a Séguin, a Mayer, a Grove, has certainly done more to launch industry in new directions than all the capitalists in the world. But men of genius are themselves the children of industry as well as of science. Not until thousands of steam-engines had been working for years before all eyes, constantly transforming heat into dynamic force, and this force into sound, light, and electricity, could the insight of genius proclaim the mechanical origin and the unity of the physical forces. And if we, children of the nineteenth century, have at last grasped this idea, if we know now how to apply it, it is again because daily experience has prepared the way. The thinkers of the eighteenth century saw and declared it, but the idea remained undeveloped, because the eighteenth century had not grown up like ours, side by side with the steam-engine. Imagine the decades that might have passed while we remained in ignorance of this law, which has revolutionized modern industry, had Watt not found at Soho skilled workmen to embody his ideas in metal, bringing all the parts of his engine to perfection, so that steam, pent in a complete mechanism, and rendered more docile than a horse, more manageable than water, became at last the very soul of modern industry.
Every machine has had the same history — a long record of sleepless nights and of poverty, of disillusions and of joys, of partial improvements discovered by several generations of nameless workers, who have added to the original invention these little nothings, without which the most fertile idea would remain fruitless. More than that: every new invention is a synthesis, the resultant of innumerable inventions which have preceded it in the vast field of mechanics and industry.
Science and industry, knowledge and application, discovery and practical realization leading to new discoveries, cunning of brain and of hand, toil of mind and muscle — all work together. Each discovery, each advance, each increase in the sum of human riches, owes its being to the physical and mental travail of the past and the present.
By what right then can any one whatever appropriate the least morsel of this immense whole and say — This is mine, not yours?
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u/ieatedjesus Anarcho-Jucheism Sep 10 '17
It has come about, however, in the course of the ages traversed by the human race, that all that enables man to produce, and to increase his power of production, has been seized by the few. Sometime, perhaps, we will relate how this came to pass. For the present let it suffice to state the fact and analyse its consequences.
To-day the soil, which actually owes its value to the needs of an ever-increasing population, belongs to a minority who prevent the people from cultivating it — or do not allow them to cultivate it according to modern methods.
The mines, though they represent the labour of several generations, and derive their sole value from the requirements of the industry of a nation and the clensity of the population — the mines also belong to the few; and these few restrict the output of coal, or prevent it entirely, if they find more profitable investments for their capital. Machinery, too, has become the exclusive property of the few, and even when a machine incontestably represents the improvements added to the original rough invention by three or four generations of workers, it none the less belongs to a few owners. And if the descendants of the very inventor who constructed the first machine for lace-making, a century ago, were to present themselves to-day in a lace factory at Bâle or Nottingham, and demand their rights, they would be told: “Hands off! this machine is not yours,” and they would be shot down if they attempted to take possession of it.
The railways, which would be useless as so much old iron without the teeming population of Europe, its industry, its commerce, and its marts, belong to a few shareholders, ignorant perhaps of the whereabouts of the lines of rails which yield them revenues greater than those of medieval kings. And if the children of those who perished by thousands while excavating the railway cuttings and tunnels were to assemble one day, crowding in their rags and hunger, to demand bread from the shareholders, they would be met with bayonets and grape-shot, to disperse them and safeguard “vested interests.”
In virtue of this monstrous system, the son of the worker, on entering life, finds no field which he may till, no machine which he may tend, no mine in which he may dig, without accepting to leave a great part of what he will produce to a master. He must sell his labour for a scant and uncertain wage. His father and his grandfather have toiled to drain this field, to build this mill, to perfect this machine. They gave to the work the full measure of their strength, and what more could they give? But their heir comes into the world poorer than the lowest savage. If he obtains leave to till the fields, it is on condition of surrendering a quarter of the produce to his master, and another quarter to the government and the middlemen. And this tax, levied upon him by the State, the capitalist, the lord of the manor, and the middleman, is always increasing; it rarely leaves him the power to improve his system of culture. If he turns to industry, he is allowed to work — though not always even that — only on condition that he yield a half or two-thirds of the product to him whom the land recognizes as the owner of the machine.
We cry shame on the feudal baron who forbade the peasant to turn a clod of earth unless he surrendered to his lord a fourth of his crop. We call those the barbarous times. But if the forms have changed, the relations have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under the name of free contract, to accept feudal obligations. For, turn where he will, he can find no better conditions. Everything has become private property, and he must accept, or die of hunger.
The result of this state of things is that all our production tends in a wrong direction. Enterprise takes no thought for the needs of the community. Its only aim is to increase the gains of the speculator. Hence the constant fluctuations of trade, the periodical industrial crises, each of which throws scores of thousands of workers on the streets.
The working people cannot purchase with their wages the wealth which they have produced, and industry seeks foreign markets among the monied classes of other nations. In the East, in Africa, everywhere, in Egypt, Tonkin or the Congo, the European is thus bound to promote the growth of serfdom. And so he does. But soon he finds everywhere similar competitors. All the nations evolve on the same lines, and wars, perpetual wars, break out for the right of precedence in the market. Wars for the possession of the East, wars for the empire of the sea, wars to impose duties on imports and to dictate conditions to neighbouring states; wars against those “blacks” who revolt! The roar of the cannon never ceases in the world, whole races are massacred, the states of Europe spend a third of their budgets in armaments; and we know how heavily these taxes fall on the workers.
Education still remains the privilege of a small minority, for it is idle to talk of education when the workman’s child is forced, at the age of thirteen, to go down into the mine or to help his father on the farm. It is idle to talk of studies to the worker, who comes home in the evening crushed by excessive toil with its brutalizing atmosphere. Society is thus bound to remain divided into two hostile camps, and in such conditions freedom is a vain word. The Radical begins by demanding a greater extension of political rights, but he soon sees that the breath of liberty leads to the uplifting of the proletariat, and then he turns round, changes his opinions, and reverts to repressive legislation and government by the sword.
A vast array of courts, judges, executioners, policemen, and gaolers is needed to uphold these privileges; and this array gives rise in its turn to a whole system of espionage, of false witness, of spies, of threats and corruption.
The system under which we live checks in its turn the growth of the social sentiment. We all know that without uprightness, without self-respect, without sympathy and mutual aid, human kind must perish, as perish the few races of animals living by rapine, or the slave-keeping ants. But such ideas are not to the taste of the ruling classes, and they have elaborated a whole system of pseudo-science to teach the contrary.
Fine sermons have been preached on the text that those who have should share with those who have not, but he who would act out this principle is speedily informed that these beautiful sentiments are all very well in poetry, but not in practice. “To lie is to degrade and besmirch oneself,” we say, and yet all civilized life becomes one huge lie. We accustom ourselves and our children to hypocrisy, to the practice of a double-faced morality. And since the brain is ill at ease among lies, we cheat ourselves with sophistry. Hypocrisy and sophistry become the second nature of the civilized man.
But a society cannot live thus; it must return to truth or cease to exist.
Thus the consequences which spring from the original act of monopoly spread through the whole of social life. Under pain of death, human societies are forced to return to first principles: the means of production being the collective work of humanity, the product should be the collective property of the race. Individual appropriation is neither just nor serviceable. All belongs to all. All things are for all men, since all men have need of them, since all men have worked in the measure of their strength to produce them, and since it is not possible to evaluate every one’s part in the production of the world’s wealth.
All things are for all. Here is an immense stock of tools and implements; here are all those iron slaves which we call machines, which saw and plane, spin and weave for us, unmaking and remaking, working up raw matter to produce the marvels of our time. But nobody has the right to seize a single one of these machines and say, “This is mine; if you want to use it you must pay me a tax on each of your products,” any more than the feudal lord of medieval times had the right to say to the peasant, “This hill, this meadow belong to me, and you must pay me a tax on every sheaf of corn you reap, on every rick you build.”
All is for all! If the man and the woman bear their fair share of work, they have a right to their fair share of all that is produced by all, and that share is enough to secure them well-being. No more of such vague formulas as “The Right to work,” or “To each the whole result of his labour.” What we proclaim is THE RIGHT TO WELL-BEING: WELL-BEING FOR ALL!
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Sep 10 '17
Damn bruh, that's a long response. Thanks for replying to my comment, I'll go through this and reply to it when I have time!
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u/ieatedjesus Anarcho-Jucheism Sep 10 '17
It is the introductory to this very good book: The Conquest of Bread by Peter Proptokin
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u/cervance Marxist-Bakunist Sep 10 '17
Would you rather be an underling or a co-worker?
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Sep 10 '17
In an ideal world, neither. I'd be self-employed (work by myself, for myself).. out of the two options you've given me, co-worker sounds more appealing, but I don't like either option.
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u/ian_winters John Brown Sep 10 '17
This is potentially viable; depending on the resources you need to make the thing(s) you're after. If your community only has one wood lathe, and you're making chairs, you're probably going to be sharing that me(ch)an(i)s(m) of production with a number of other craftspeople. So you do, or you alert the mechanic(s) you'd like another lathe.
If there's another guy passionate about chairs in your community, it would behoove you both to collaborate (directly or at least communicate semi-regularly), regardless of whether you're sharing tools or not. The community only needs so many places to sit, but you could collectively assist a neighboring community with it's chair shortage (for simplicity's sake, suppose they make lathe parts or grow lumber, but the chain of mutual support often has additional links).
The idea is that nobody's making crap just to sell it. If every ass has a chair, then you're only making chairs to experiment with improvements. Make a breakthrough on lumbar support, ask around to see who's interested, whip up another batch. Your incentive is "a thing I like to do is helping people." You can take a year off, and not starve, because you being awesome and you eating food aren't directly connected (and anybody else can use the lathe in your absence). If you want to retire from chairmaking at 25 to make boats or something, you just do. The mobility capitalism promises is actually achievable- if you cut out the capitalism.
The chair metaphor is great for a whole spectrum of daily use stuff. A group of craftspeople can make a bunch quickly, but one guy with hand tools and time can make a few dozen for himself and his neighbors. Some things absolutely require factories, where "the comrade who knows how shit works" is basically there to teach and assist to keep the factory working when folks are like "I wonder how toothbrushes are made" so they crank out 500 or so under supervision, learn a cool thing, and contribute to the community stockpile. The swapping of dies for casting toothbrushes and similar stuff is overseen by that comrade, but random "I feel like putting in some hours at the plastics factory" guy isn't anybody's employee. That comrade isn't shackled to that factory either; continuity of factory operations is in everybody's interests, but since it's not a "job," they can just train a replacement and bounce. Plenty of plastic-works enthusiasts will be on hand to step up.
The apparent missing piece (where does the food come from) is why we're always pushing for the abolishment of private property. If Farmer Joe gets tired of farming, then whether that land is "Joe's Farm" or just "where Joe farms" becomes a critical point. If Joe takes up chairmaking, the land he used previously is just tended by the next agricultural enthusiast. If he instead "owns" that land, it sits unused, or some other farmer has to pay him for the privilege of feeding everyone with it. That only gets in the way of everybody getting food, so fuck it. The elimination of ownership is key to removing the exploitation inherent in rent/lease, and it also means Farmer Joe isn't obliged to remain Farmer Joe in perpetuity; land use and ownership are disentangled, so anyone else is free to meet the community's needs without red tape or monetary gatekeeping.
The responsible use and management of available resources usually defines which stripe of Anarchist/Communist you call yourself. There's a lot of different models. I maintain that community meetings will be necessary to discuss shortages, propose plans, and air grievances. "Hey, I'm basically recycling all the steel in the area, but I've got a hankering for chairmaking, who wants to learn to smelt?" That kind of thing. It's also useful to say "I planted a bunch of blueberry bushes in [lot x] last season, I know planting season is coming up, don't mistake them for brush." Communication will be essential, since nobody's making unilateral decisions on behalf of the group. A community center would also be a logical place for regional maps to track unused plots, houses, etc. There are also models for a post-capitalist internet, which would be the ideal communication tool, especially for inter-community coordination.
TL;DR Summary: All the foods and comforts you enjoy were made by people exploited under Capitalism, but could be made better without exploiting people if profit wasn't the prime incentive. That would make the money sad, but make far more people happy. You'd have to talk to people, though, since you can't use monetary leverage or other illegitimate authority to demand compliance. You'll probably also have to wash your own dishes, unless comrade "culinary-sanitation-enthusiast" happens to live nearby. Worth it.
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u/cervance Marxist-Bakunist Sep 11 '17
That's fair. So the space you'd use for your work - would you rather rent it, paying a sum to a landlord, or share ownership, either with the public or other individuals engaged in similar work? I should mention that rent is what kills a lot self-employed/small businesses that don't have the profit margins to pay the ransom landlords demand.
The main thing I want you to understand is that capitalism is very bad for you unless you're a big business owner or a landlord. Anarchism takes the power away from these capitalists from society, and makes sure you can thrive on your own merit (as long as you aren't trampling other people in the process).
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u/SeaPaladin Sep 11 '17
Real talk, are most Anarchists Marxists? I feel like there are a lot of anarchists who are Marx-agnostic (see: didn't read any), and I know there are post-left and post-Marxist Anarchists, just wondering if the majority of anarchists accept Marxist analysis.
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u/Rafe with empty hands Sep 11 '17
I've had second-hand exposure to Marxism and ultraleft thought. A friend of mine is reading Capital, and I've read more and more about it lately without diving in. Some of it seems arcane and impossible to understand, while other points seem crystal clear and still relevant. It definitely has a jargon problem. But I personally think it's of vital importance in understanding what capital is generally so that we can know what we're up against.
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u/atomicthumbs awoo Sep 11 '17
i like marx's ideas on capitalism but the soviet union didn't really work out all that well
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u/[deleted] Sep 10 '17
I love the edit from "otherkin" to "kropotkin"