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Unlike authoritarian communism, anarcho-socialism never got the chance to succeed or fail on its own merits. It was strangled in the crib.

aalleavitch 7y ago
I’m interested to hear what part of my statement people seem to disagree with: this was largely the thesis of Homage to Catalonia. It was the point behind most of Orwell’s writing, he was an anarcho-syndicalist.
- because1 7y ago
  Even tough the internet is an invention of the anarchist movement, like any cool stuff it’s now filled with people who are just trying to make some quick and big money. And these people don’t want to argue with you because time = money.
  - gmfawcett 7y ago
    > the internet is an invention of the anarchist movement Could you elaborate on that statement? I've heard this same notion twice now in the past couple months, and I have no idea what it's based upon. It seems far easier to argue that the Internet is an invention of the military-industrial complex. I would enjoy hearing your rationale!
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      It stems from John Perry Barlow and the Cyberspace Declaration of Independence. There was a lot of discussion of what the emerging net was, and what it was going to be. A society, a state, governable or ungovernable, above or separate from such things, etc. Which led to the Declaration. https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence
      - gmfawcett 7y ago
        Ahhh, thank you. So not "Internet" as technical superproject, but "Internet" as emergent supersociety. (I don't believe that anarchists actually invented either of those things, but at least I get the reference now!) "We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace." Gosh, I had forgotten what heady times the Nineties were!
        aalleavitch 7y ago
        The anarchists didn't need to invent it, it described what people were already participating in. Anarchy is simply the natural state of man without an imposed hierarchy. The scientific community is an anarchy.
        gmfawcett 7y ago
        I wouldn't have been confused to hear that anarchists were participating in online community. What confused me was because1's statement that anarchists invented the Internet. > The scientific community is an anarchy. The scientific community is an organism that eats government grants and excretes pay-walled research papers. I wouldn't call that an anarchy!
        aalleavitch 7y ago
        That's simply how it pays for itself, and I think all scientists agree that is the worst part of science. But fundamentally science is not a profit-seeking enterprise, it is driven by the desire of people to benefit all of society and there is no central authority and yet through the individual actions and judgments of different scientists a community and scientific consensus is born.
        AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        > The scientific community is an anarchy. No? It's a meritocracy, with elite gatekeepers. How is it an anarchy?
- TaylorAlexander 7y ago
  People on HN downvote comments that are pro anarcho socialism without saying why they disagree. HN is a very capitalist place apparently. It would be nice if we could really engage in these discussions, but people seem to want to just downvote without comment.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    There's also a good degree of US interpretation of terms, where apparently communism, fascism, socialism, democratic socialism and sometimes social democrat are all indistinguishable from the USSR. It can make some discussions seem rather futile. :)
  - edmundsauto 7y ago
    That could indicate they don't find the discussions of political systems very interesting, or particularly relevant to HN. I'm one of those people -- I find a plot to kill Orwell interesting and I couldn't care less about the discussion of anarcho-* interesting, except very narrowly if it contributed to the context of the article. (Edit - not a downvoter however)
    - TaylorAlexander 7y ago
      It may be true, but my hunch is that discussions of capitalist market politics are fine and only socialism gets downvoted.
      - edmundsauto 7y ago
        This could be a mix of relevance (US-centric, startup centric message board) and confirmation bias.
partialrecall 7y ago
Could getting strangled in it's crib be seen as anarcho-socialism failing on it's own merits? If it wasn't strong enough to protect itself, does it not then lack merit from a pragmatic perspective?
- aalleavitch 7y ago
  Not if better starting conditions could've led to a strong, long-term success. The principle behind Leninism is that you have to protect it in its infancy, but the thing they built to protect it ended up strangling it to death. I'm not sure what conditions in the real world would allow it to thrive, capitalism is extremely aggressive about attacking and exploiting everything it can find because it is competition itself grown malignant. I'm of the mind of Proudhon, though: the only thing that is necessary for anarchism to thrive is for enough people to develop a strong enough understanding and sense of morality to realize that it's what we all really want. In my mind the road to a successful anarcho-socialist society is simply planting the seeds in people's minds and letting them germinate in their own dissatisfaction with the state of the world.
TaylorAlexander 7y ago
Anarcho socialism hasn’t succeeded yet, but I still believe it must succeed in the future if we are ever to see real freedom for the masses and to avoid near total destruction of the Earth’s biosphere. If anyone wants to downvote me, I ask that you choose one of two alternatives. First, tell me why you want to downvote. Or, read this article by Albert Einstein talking about the necessity of socialism: https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/ https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/
- systematical 7y ago
  Capitalism will reach its end one day, long after we are gone, but that will be because of its own technologic achievements and not because of 19th-century socialist philosophy. Capitalism will become so efficient at some point that in its quest for more and more efficiency, it will end resource scarcity. Once scarcity is eliminated, capitalism "withers" away. That's my hope anyway. In the short-term, I'd like to see free markets begin erasing more borders and reducing the number of nations. Hopefully, the recent nationalist fad is just that and we can get to more EU style setups, more globalism, and more cooperation. A disgusting amount of resources is spent on the military. Capitalism has the ability to solve our problems. Borders are in the way. Edit: Is it the socialists, anarchists, or capitalists downvoting me? Hard to say. My ideas definitely don't have many friends.
  - Miner49er 7y ago
    Your main idea is Marxist. Marx said the same thing, that Capital would end itself, through the elimination of scaricity. Though I think he was wrong about that, things like UBI proves that it always finds a way to survive. But anyway, you are both saying Marxist and pro-capitalist things, so I would guess you're just being downvoted by everyone.
    - miceeatnicerice 7y ago
      Surely it was going to be the rise of class consciousness that overthrew Moloch? Though if we're all involved in the process ourselves, and only gain this consciousness through work, the end of Capitalism isn't so much a violent overthrowing from outside as much as a growing, positive realization of what was inside it anyway. Maybe that's exactly what things like UBI point to: life as an adventure rather than a slave camp. The paranoid part of me then wants to find a bigger and more evil capital to criticise in the Marxian manner.

aalleavitch 7y ago

I’m interested to hear what part of my statement people seem to disagree with: this was largely the thesis of Homage to Catalonia. It was the point behind most of Orwell’s writing, he was an anarcho-syndicalist.

because1 7y ago
Even tough the internet is an invention of the anarchist movement, like any cool stuff it’s now filled with people who are just trying to make some quick and big money. And these people don’t want to argue with you because time = money.
- gmfawcett 7y ago
  > the internet is an invention of the anarchist movement Could you elaborate on that statement? I've heard this same notion twice now in the past couple months, and I have no idea what it's based upon. It seems far easier to argue that the Internet is an invention of the military-industrial complex. I would enjoy hearing your rationale!
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    It stems from John Perry Barlow and the Cyberspace Declaration of Independence. There was a lot of discussion of what the emerging net was, and what it was going to be. A society, a state, governable or ungovernable, above or separate from such things, etc. Which led to the Declaration. https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence
    - gmfawcett 7y ago
      Ahhh, thank you. So not "Internet" as technical superproject, but "Internet" as emergent supersociety. (I don't believe that anarchists actually invented either of those things, but at least I get the reference now!) "We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace." Gosh, I had forgotten what heady times the Nineties were!
      - aalleavitch 7y ago
        The anarchists didn't need to invent it, it described what people were already participating in. Anarchy is simply the natural state of man without an imposed hierarchy. The scientific community is an anarchy.
        gmfawcett 7y ago
        I wouldn't have been confused to hear that anarchists were participating in online community. What confused me was because1's statement that anarchists invented the Internet. > The scientific community is an anarchy. The scientific community is an organism that eats government grants and excretes pay-walled research papers. I wouldn't call that an anarchy!
        aalleavitch 7y ago
        That's simply how it pays for itself, and I think all scientists agree that is the worst part of science. But fundamentally science is not a profit-seeking enterprise, it is driven by the desire of people to benefit all of society and there is no central authority and yet through the individual actions and judgments of different scientists a community and scientific consensus is born.
        AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        > The scientific community is an anarchy. No? It's a meritocracy, with elite gatekeepers. How is it an anarchy?
TaylorAlexander 7y ago
People on HN downvote comments that are pro anarcho socialism without saying why they disagree. HN is a very capitalist place apparently. It would be nice if we could really engage in these discussions, but people seem to want to just downvote without comment.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  There's also a good degree of US interpretation of terms, where apparently communism, fascism, socialism, democratic socialism and sometimes social democrat are all indistinguishable from the USSR. It can make some discussions seem rather futile. :)
- edmundsauto 7y ago
  That could indicate they don't find the discussions of political systems very interesting, or particularly relevant to HN. I'm one of those people -- I find a plot to kill Orwell interesting and I couldn't care less about the discussion of anarcho-* interesting, except very narrowly if it contributed to the context of the article. (Edit - not a downvoter however)
  - TaylorAlexander 7y ago
    It may be true, but my hunch is that discussions of capitalist market politics are fine and only socialism gets downvoted.
    - edmundsauto 7y ago
      This could be a mix of relevance (US-centric, startup centric message board) and confirmation bias.

partialrecall 7y ago

Could getting strangled in it's crib be seen as anarcho-socialism failing on it's own merits? If it wasn't strong enough to protect itself, does it not then lack merit from a pragmatic perspective?

aalleavitch 7y ago
Not if better starting conditions could've led to a strong, long-term success. The principle behind Leninism is that you have to protect it in its infancy, but the thing they built to protect it ended up strangling it to death. I'm not sure what conditions in the real world would allow it to thrive, capitalism is extremely aggressive about attacking and exploiting everything it can find because it is competition itself grown malignant. I'm of the mind of Proudhon, though: the only thing that is necessary for anarchism to thrive is for enough people to develop a strong enough understanding and sense of morality to realize that it's what we all really want. In my mind the road to a successful anarcho-socialist society is simply planting the seeds in people's minds and letting them germinate in their own dissatisfaction with the state of the world.

TaylorAlexander 7y ago

Anarcho socialism hasn’t succeeded yet, but I still believe it must succeed in the future if we are ever to see real freedom for the masses and to avoid near total destruction of the Earth’s biosphere. If anyone wants to downvote me, I ask that you choose one of two alternatives. First, tell me why you want to downvote. Or, read this article by Albert Einstein talking about the necessity of socialism: https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/ https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/

systematical 7y ago
Capitalism will reach its end one day, long after we are gone, but that will be because of its own technologic achievements and not because of 19th-century socialist philosophy. Capitalism will become so efficient at some point that in its quest for more and more efficiency, it will end resource scarcity. Once scarcity is eliminated, capitalism "withers" away. That's my hope anyway. In the short-term, I'd like to see free markets begin erasing more borders and reducing the number of nations. Hopefully, the recent nationalist fad is just that and we can get to more EU style setups, more globalism, and more cooperation. A disgusting amount of resources is spent on the military. Capitalism has the ability to solve our problems. Borders are in the way. Edit: Is it the socialists, anarchists, or capitalists downvoting me? Hard to say. My ideas definitely don't have many friends.
- Miner49er 7y ago
  Your main idea is Marxist. Marx said the same thing, that Capital would end itself, through the elimination of scaricity. Though I think he was wrong about that, things like UBI proves that it always finds a way to survive. But anyway, you are both saying Marxist and pro-capitalist things, so I would guess you're just being downvoted by everyone.
  - miceeatnicerice 7y ago
    Surely it was going to be the rise of class consciousness that overthrew Moloch? Though if we're all involved in the process ourselves, and only gain this consciousness through work, the end of Capitalism isn't so much a violent overthrowing from outside as much as a growing, positive realization of what was inside it anyway. Maybe that's exactly what things like UBI point to: life as an adventure rather than a slave camp. The paranoid part of me then wants to find a bigger and more evil capital to criticise in the Marxian manner.