Non-revolutionary anarchism
Edit: I'm just gonna list the recommendations I found interesting for my future reference
Proudhon - One of the first anarchists. Wrote a lot about mutualism and tried to come up with mechanisms to share resources based on usufruct
The Dispossessed -Describes an alternate society. Supposedly written more like an anthropological study than a narrative
No God's, No Masters - Written by David Graber, who also wrote the 3 Problems with the Revolution
The Dawn of Everything - Talks about the organization structures of early societies
Participatory Economics - Talks about economic organization without compulsion
Walkaway - Recommended when I mentioned stealth anarchism
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I'm gonna be honest, I'm pretty sick of all the existing forms of politics. Conservatives, liberals, progressives, libertarians, I dont feel like I jive with any of them.
The closest thing I've found to a philosophy I can get behind is anarchism, but I'm not really a fan of revolutionary anarchism either. I'm interested in just discussion of the constructive aspects of it. Like how the alternative vision of the world they advocate for works in practice, and what different options there are for implementation.
I find it hard to really get into, because whenever I try to read up on any kind of political philosophy I run into the people who are trying to evangelize and it just really turns me off to the whole thing.
Does anyone have some good reading recommendations that skip past trying to recruit people, and just is a good discussion?
I am having a hard time clocking what your requirements are. I don't really know what "revolutionary anarchism" means; all anarchism is revolutionary, i.e. argues for massive systemic changes. I hate being preached at too, but some amount of convincing is what politics is. It is side picking, even if that side is neutrality. This FAQ might be helpful for reference, or if that's too gigantic, this one could work. I am happy to offer suggestions, I just don't have a good sense on what you are looking for specifically.
Jesus Christ. That FAQ has 13,000 words worth of prefaces, and that's just 0.7% of the total thing. I put it in an online word counter and the tab crashed.
I'm glad you posted it, and I'm going to give reading it a try, but good lord that's gonna take some time. I wish I could say this was atypical, but I know leftism too well for that.
Arguably that's fundamentally what politics is: convincing different parties to go along with a plan. The biggest problem with fixing things in a democracy isn't coming up with a viable solution but on agreeing to priorities, and that's a fundamentally subjective thing. Every change has its trade-offs and not everyone is going to agree that the trade-offs are worth it. Unless you want to live in a dictatorship you'll need to both convince opposition that your priorities take precedence and, failing that, to find a compromise that everyone can live with.
Everybody hates high ranking politicians for being two-faced and selling out, but that's the nature of the job at that point. You can't please everyone, and if you want to please the most people, that's going to require compromise, aka selling out. The alternative is to rule by fiat, but if you're looking at anarchy as an alternative then I'm guessing that's a no-go.
If anything, any kind of anarchist rule would have more politics given the lack of hierarchy to streamline decision-making.
Most of the writers and thinkers that philosophically inform the concept of anarchism were/are definitely not categorically opposed to the very concept of social institutions as we know them, and in fact there are many real world examples of existing and large scale organizations and projects and even businesses that are more or less compatible with anarchism, and many more that are on “the right track” relative to instruments of the state and traditional for-profit businesses. In fact, there are even prominent anarchist thinkers such as Noam Chomsky who happily admit that any social institution that requires you to rely upon another person in some way is a hierarchy (although this is extremely controversial in the anarchist community, although I think it’s really silly and semantical) and that what’s important is trying to minimize these inequities and when they are completely unavoidable, make sure they are not based solely upon the interests of the person with the power.
Rather, the anarchist perspective says that we should strive for a society where every institution is a so-called “free association”. In other words, a society where you never feel like you can’t “walk away” from an unfavorable social situation, and the only social situations in which you feel compelled to participate in are the ones you actually are enthusiastic about. Is such a thing even possible? Probably not, but we can definitely get a lot closer than we are. Even in wealthy liberal democracies making personal sacrifices for your job that does not give you any kind of reward for making the sacrifice is a pretty universal experience.
I think what OP means by non-revolutionary is non-violent, which what I believe was what Proudhon was arguing for; an organic and gradual systemic societal change.
And damn, I was literally just getting interested in anarchist philosophy recently so this topic provided some interesting reading material for me.
Proudhon was an interesting character. Markedly anti-semitic even by the standards of an era that is largely characterized by the severity of its anti-semitism, militarist and nationalist in the extreme. And yet ideologically advocating for stuff that would make those aspects of his politics basically impossible to execute on.
You might struggle to find non revolutionary anarchist texts, but it you do some reading maybe you'll come round to it :)
These texts are important to me, but certainly non exhaustive. In no particular order:
https://crimethinc.com/2019/10/08/interview-with-the-internationalist-commune-in-rojava-facing-the-threat-of-invasion
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-debt
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-bullshit-jobs
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/michael-knapp-anja-flach-and-ercan-ayboga-revolution-in-rojava
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread
George Orwell - The road to Wigan Pier, Homage to Catalonia, Down and Out in London and Paris
https://davidgraeber.org/books/the-dawn-of-everything-a-new-history-of-humanity/
You might also be interested in the zapatistas, and exarchia. I can't recall specifics, but there are some texts out there studying the long history of mutualism in Africa
I appreciate the effort you put in, but I don't really think this is what I'm looking for at all.
This is exactly what I was hoping to get away from. I just want to have a world where everyone else doesn't think it's their prerogative to make up my mind for me on everything. I dont like that everyone thinks they're so much smarter than me that they have to control the narrative around my discussions to guide me to what they think is the right answer instead of letting me just have information and figure out opinions for myself.
I heard that anarchism is about "non-compulsion" so I thought I might like it, but maybe it's just not for me.
That's an interesting take. I'm currently reading Kropotkin, and I don't really feel like he's coming from a high and mighty place where he's imparting The Truth to us mere mortals. He just believes in what he writes and explains his beliefs and rationale.
If you're going to read just about anything philosophical, political, etc... you're going to encounter opinions and arguments. I don't think that has anything to do with compulsion, especially for anarchists. There's a difference between having your own opinion and arguing for it, versus pushing it through. The entire point is to come together and figure out a way to get to consensus in a non-compulsary way: Debate and opinions are a part of that.
Now if you really want to try and form your own opinions with non-biased, 'dry' information, you're in for quite a struggle. Everything is biased. The closest anarchist texts I can think of which try and avoid explicitly telling you their opinions and thoughts might be the more journalistic texts of Naomi Klein. But again, the information is presented in such a way, in such an order and structure, as to make you form a specific conclusion. The same goes for any historical or journalistic text.
Does that help you out a bit?
My take on it is somewhat agnostic to what Kropotkin personally thought.
It's kinda like how libertarianism sounds like a nice idea when you first hear about it, but when you meet libertarians a lot of them end up being racists and bigots who only were drawn to the ideology because it empowered them to be their worst selves.
Similarly, I think there is a big coalition of assholes who aren't really interested in trying to uplift people. They just like progressivism because it puts them on the right side of history, and it allows them to be rude and critical of everyone else in the world without actually having to think about any of their positions. And that type of person has killed most of my interest in trying to make the world a better place. So I'm hoping to find an ideology that inherently rejects that kind of behavior.
I dont believe in this anymore. I did at one point, but over time I dont really think there's much value in that kind of debate.
What I am looking for is an ideology that has a built in understanding that some of us aren't like everyone else, and sometimes people have different needs than you, and that should be fine, and isn't something to fix. I'm sick of people thinking they're fixing me when they're really just making me sad.
That...makes a lot of sense. I still think that what you are looking for falls somewhere under the umbrella of anarchism. However, simply due to its nature, anarchist thought is fractured into endless bickering small groups who are all trying to convince eachother, which I think is an unavoidable feature/problem from what you describe as your ideal ideology.
I think a lot of anarchists do understand that different people have different needs... But those needs should be met through participation in society, through self-advocating (or, of course, advocating for your loved ones), and (preferably peaceful) conflict will arise from that as needs clash.
I understand your point about 'that type of person', and your disillusionment with debate and communal problem solving. It's not easy, it's tiring, it's full of assholes and a breeding ground for narcissistic power-grabbing. But I equally don't believe there is an ideology out there that has a better answer for our many, many differing needs without falling exactly into what you describe: People telling you what to do, what to think.
I think your main struggle might be that, even though anarchism claims to be open to all and non-compulsary, its thinkers still claim to know 'the truth'. Just keep in mind that there is a difference between voicing an opinion or theory, and enforcing that on someone. It's valid to tell your ideas to the world like these authors do, so long as they don't force their ideas on anyone by any other means then argumentation and example.
Thank you. I feel a lot better just hearing someone say that some of what I think makes some sense.
I see your point about self advocacy. For a while I figured that's all there was to it. I believe that was Max Stirners philosophy, that everyone should advocate for their own self interest. That concept is somewhat at odds with "solidarity" though. The idea that you should actively support other peoples advocacy, even if you don't quite understand or agree with it. I think that specific part is what leads to corruption of a movement.
Let me give an example. There was this term POC, and then in the last 5-10 years progressive activists have largely pivoted to this new term, BIPOC. Which is really fucked up when you think about it. Because we used to be "all in this together", and now we're all in this separately, and some of us are more in it and more important than others, and YOU(me) are at the back of the line.
Do you see why this is messed up? I'm being marginalized in a community thats all about uplifting the marginalized. People talk about dismantling hierarchies and institutional racism, and then they set up an institutionalized hierarchy based on race within their subculture. Everytime I have to listen to them it's a subtle passive reinforcement of the notion that I'm in some way lesser. And the worst part is that they're all smug like they're doing the right thing by telling everyone my problems don't matter. Solidarity turned them all braindead. Or they were lying and they knew the whole time.
Maybe that's not considered a problem to other anarchists, because it's just "argumentation" and not true compulsion. But I still hate being gaslight, and I'd prefer to just "escape" capitalism and let it destroy humanity without me than have to just accept that kind of behavior over and over and over.
I would like the communist paradise of a classless stateless moneyless society to exist, but I don't want to have to live there. I want that to exist for them, and to be able to build a different world that works for me. Which means NOT trying to convince others or change their minds, because what's on their mind might actually important, just not important to the person trying to change their mind.
Honestly I see a lot of myself in what you say here. A lot of people leap at the opportunity to be smug for smugness's sake, rather than just being correct for its own.
I have found at least personally that I don't really subscribe to or describe myself as any particular specific leftist ideology. Most of these have good ideas, but my view is that the real world is simply too complex, not to mention that the context that many of these books and ideas come from is just wildly different from our current moment.
IMO, a successful leftist movement in the US must then necessarily be syncretic. Our material conditions don't match Mao's China, or Lenin's Russia, etc etc, so we should be pragmatic in what we do. Take the good from the different ideologies and mix them together, and leave out the bad.
I unfortunately don't have a good answer for the specific question of "is there a leftist ideology that explicitly rejects smugness and the brutal part of being brutally honest?" I think the best solution is to build local community and just perform actual mutual aid. That's always made me feel better.
I've been volunteering at a food bank occasionally for the past couple months. They basically go to all the local grocery stores and collect the stuff that's close to expiration where the store would throw it out, and then low income families make appointments to come to their store where they can pick out a selection of items to take for free. I think it's a good system that works to address a servere but solvable problem in a lot of people's lives, just by making use of the resources we have available today.
I think thered be lots of ways to do similar projects to solve other community problems in a ground up kind of way. I think that's kind of the path I'd like to be involved in.
That's awesome! I don't have the time/energy to do a lot of stuff at the moment on account of juggling full time job and hobbies and relationships, so I mostly just end up donating money to local causes + people as necessary. When I'm more able to I definitely want to volunteer at the food bank - I have one in walking distance, and it would def be a nice way to give back.
I think you'd be interested in mutual aid. It's exactly what you're describing. Check if you have a local Food Not Bombs. They hand out free food and supplies to whoever needs it, and they're very grassroots.
You're dealing with the tension between ideology and personal virtues. Having the "right" ideology is orthogonal to being a good person. It just means (in theory) that you know the success criteria for how to be a good person. But that's like the difference between being an aerospace engineer and being a test pilot. They're completely different skill sets. One has to do with knowledge and understanding of technical systems. The other has to do with experience, skill, instinct/intuition, and the courage/fortitude to strap yourself to a machine that might explode under your crotch.
I dont think they're fully orthogonal. I think if you look at different ideologies there are flawed people in all of them, but the flaws are not all the same, and there is a correlation between the ways they are flawed and the ideologies they attach themselves to.
True, but in that case I'd say the ideology is downstream of the personal flaws.
You particularly notice it with people who drift from being obnoxious religious fundamentalists to obnoxious reddit atheists to obnoxious redpill misogynists, etc. etc. The core driver is a need for simple and easy grand narratives that summarize the complexities of human experience. A binary view of "truth." A strong impulse to control people into behaving and believing "correctly." They drift across ideologies that fit what they're hung up on right now.
Bear in mind that most of these foundational texts were written in the 19th and early 20th centuries under economies that were barely a generation removed from running on the labor of literal slaves and serfs. The employment arrangements and social relations they're talking about were basically evolutions of similar dynamics (they still are, but they've been evolving for longer). These people are all coming from a particular perspective when they're talking about this stuff that is somewhat alien for us today.
The evolution of socialist/leftist thought kind of stagnated after the Bolshevik revolution. There used to be a lot more diversity in what it actually meant to be a socialist or a communist prior to that. Once Marxism/Leninism became the default model for socialism, and the rest of the world had a counter-reaction where they hardened their commitments to market economies, a lot of the thinking outside those two paradigms atrophied. Nobody wanted to hear from Georgists or Market Socialists or any of the varieties of non-Marxian socialism (such as anarchists) anymore. They either turned into advocates for mixed-economy welfare states after the New Deal or, in the Soviet sphere, turned into soft advocates for markets or they went off to form little utopian experimental communes. But it started to feel pointless to discuss fundamental reorientations of how people relate to the means of production or how firms and states should be organized and governed.
I think now that the Cold War has ended we're seeing a return to the more experimental phase where people are more willing to think bigger. The changes in governance systems made possible by communications technology are still being worked out, but we're starting to confront the dark side of that as well (psychographic manipulation, dopamine addiction, spam, abuse, etc.) But it'll be some time yet before the philosophizing is able to break out of thinking about things from the perspective of 19th and 20th century industrial economies and start thinking more deeply about how we work now.
Some long discredited ideas are still sort of foundational to Marxist thought that people seem weirdly committed to not revising, as if they're articles of faith where adherence to the doctrine is more important than having an impact on the world. The labor theory of value, for example, is a core premise under a lot of it that mainstream economists have thoroughly dismantled. It makes sense intuitively but just doesn't hold up under any kind of scrutiny. The view of history as a sort of deterministic process guided by the invisible hand of dialectical materialism is pure ideology. It's not at all predictive of world events or human behavior and it's based on erroneous and outdated views of history, anthropology, and human behavior that encode a ton of 19th century, Eurocentric biases and a protestant Christian worldview into everything.
There is a marked resistance to questioning a lot of these fundamental premises (in the same way mainstream economists will sometimes lose it if you question things like the 'rational actor' assumption or the idea of trying to quantize utility just so we can build models around it) and I think it holds most leftist movements back. I actually don't think the armchair/intellectual/book-club strain of talking about these things is particularly useful as a result. These ideological tendencies are treated as sort of pseudo-religious dogmas that rely entirely on an eschatological deux ex machina (revolution) to actually effect change in the world. The theorizing is useful as different lenses or frameworks for thinking about problems, but they're meant to be tools. You use it if it works for the job but you can't decide what job to do based on the one tool you decided you like, that's just gonna have you spend your energy on pointless activities.
I think the real change will have to be organic and come about through simply rethinking how we make decisions collaboratively. We'll need to continually experiment with different management structures and corporate governance systems to put more of the decision-making about how we should work and what good work looks like in the hands of the people who do the work and consume the products of that labor is where it's at. But that stuff is boring and generally requires actually caring about having a job and doing labor instead of fantasizing about fully-automated luxury communism, so it's not something you'll find among internet shitposters who don't have much life experience managing projects, lack a solid understanding of exactly how complicated the modern world is, and fundamentally just care more about having easy responses to win rhetorical points in debate than really understanding the real world in all its complexity.
It is about non-compulsion, but for literally everyone. You have to consider what your life would be like, for instance, if suddenly there was no access to cheap manufacturing in developing countries. You have to also realize that these people are only willing to work for so little purely because of circumstance. You also have to consider how much governments and businesses from the countries that depend the most on the produce of this labor interfere with the sovereignty of these working countries, even going so far as to overthrow their governments, all specifically to maintain these conditions and stop anyone from meaningfully improving them.
This isn't a real world example, but I would highly recommend reading The Disposessed by Ursula Le Guin which explores how an anarchist society could function and places it in juxtaposition to a capitalist one. It has a Sci-fi backdrop to establish a setting but a lot of how the anarchist society operates doesn't seem to out there. Save for maybe how it avoids total annihilation by the capitalist one.
One of my favorite parts of this book is just how nuanced the picture it paints is. There are aspects of The Disposessed that make you yearn for the lifestyle but a lot of the book is just a morally ambiguous look at the anarchist society in the book. There's none of the utopian, revolutionary fervor that most anarchist literature has.
I have seen references to The Dispossessed online. It seems to be very well regarded. I like the last thing you said, maybe I'll check it out.
One of the things that drew me into the book was that one tagline for it reads "An Ambiguous Utopia". It's not painting the anarchist society as a perfect, seamless machine. There are challenges to living in it, particularly when you stress the foundation of the ideology when it comes to outside threats. It highlights the uniqueness of human individuals and how not everything is a one size-fits-all solution. Having said that, you can certainly tell which way the author falls when it comes to the comparison between the anarchism and capitalism, and I can't say that I disagree with her.
I actually share this exact sentiment. Highly interested in Anarchist ideas just because of the opportunities to deconstruct and be aware of the convenient fictions we buy into to make the world turn. But generally extremely frustrated by the tendency of extant anarchist movements to elide any of the actual interesting questions about how we do stuff with some vague handwaves. It make it seem like they’re uninterested in it as an actual economic project or vision.
A core of anarchist doctrine (insofar it exists) holds:
No heirarchy enforced via violence.
Defend violently if needed, swiftly.
They may well not be able to handle bad actors or nation states, given the lack of coordination. However, anarchy comes from within, and thus even in the strictest authoritarian states there are anarchists.
Community self defense pacts would be the way. It doesn’t mean they have no hierarchy at all, it just means no unjustified hierarchies. So they can still organize under local captains to delegate strategic decision making to.
Basically not possible against nation-state actors though, so you’d be dealing with some kind of underground sabotage type of campaign. But there’s a reason most anarchist communities tend to be on the margins of society or in peripheral areas where state capacity is weak or not threatened by them.
I had that thought too. That's part of why I'm looking for "nonrevolutionary" approaches.
I feel that there's probably an option somewhere of something like "guerilla" anarchism.
Like, guerilla tactics work well because they are decentralized and self organized and can quickly disperse whenever they're attacked and regroup elsewhere. I would think that if people wanted to self organize around mutual aid, they could do so in a way that's difficult for the establishment to quash.
That way you wouldn't really need to usurp or fight capitalism. Capitalism would still exist for whoever wants it. But there'd by an escape route for people who decide they don't want to put up with it. And if the anarchists do a good enough job, eventually people would just decide they want to participate because it's working well for everyone else, rather than needing to be convinced.
In a similar line to @C-Cab's suggestion of a fiction book, I think you might be interested in Walkaway by Cory Doctorow. Your last paragraph is almost exactly the premise of the book.
Sounds cool, thanks for the recommendation!
Your sentiment about "guerilla" anarchism reminds me of... some piece of media I recently consumed. Unfortunately I can't quite remember if it was a video or an article with a video embedded, and I can't remember if it was posted as part of a thread here on Tildes already (I've really got to work on my memory, I know, but I searched and couldn't find it immediately) but it reminds me of the sentiments found in this article.
Basically, groups in urban centres gathering to make sort of "guerilla infrastructure" changes to better humanize the streets and reclaim some road usage from cars. Honestly, I kind of dig the sentiment and I'd love to see more of that in action, as well as general public support for independent alterations & improvements to the infrastructure that affects the lives of those in the community.
Edit: I also recall this story about a guy who had identified a problem with a highway road sign in LA and fixed it himself, ultimately resulting in the change being maintained when the signage was upgraded down the line.
One possibility might be to live somewhere in a peaceful country, assume someone else takes care of it, and do your own thing? Not every community needs to be a nation. There are plenty of challenges without taking on full independence.
(Including what to do about smaller-scale violence.)
I agree. I think people as a whole kinda coalesced around the strategy of flipping the federal government to their control and solving all the problems all at once. But I'm not convinced that's the best, or even a good, approach.
I think between things like co-ops, tool libraries, and community level mutual aid we could meet a lot of people's needs in fairly unintrusive ways, and which could be started on right away, without having to wait for Capitalism to collapse.
Over time it's actually ended up making the Federal Government distinctly incapable of effectively meeting political demands. Since the top leadership just whipsaws from one extreme to the other every 4-8 years, the institution under them has evolved countermeasures to maintain status quo, and these countermeasures mostly involve slowing everything down to a crawl. The core competency required to get your job done as a govt. bureaucrat is in hacking bureaucratic rules, which isn't really correlated with making great products/services/experiences.
I'm struggling very hard to understand what it is to be an anarchist without being a revolutionary. I'm not trying to be an asshole, but I don't have any idea what that means.
I feel that most of the discussion I have seen in the past argued very heavily by arguing the negative, ie that capitalism is really bad and therefore we HAVE to do their idea, but their idea is not fully conceived. I want to see more of just a rational discussion about what the alternative means of social organization are possible, what their advantages and pitfalls are, how they can be adapted to different scales of settlement, why some options might seem appealing but are primed to fail, how you can maintain freedom of expression and creativity while also establishing a consistent ethical framework that people can agree upon without coercion, how to manage logistics without a top down view of resource allocation, how to establish federation protocols without a governing authority, etc.
And I'm sure that's all put there, but I tend to just stop looking when all I find is the former.
One possible answer to some of these questions might be the recent book 'The Dawn of Everything' by Graeber and Wengrow. In it, they try and sort of deprogram our standard conception of history, which was written, by and large, in a colonialist, western, capitalist and nationalist mindset. When you take away those prejudices, you find tons of societies with very different ethical and political frameworks. Different ways to organise logistics as you say without a top-down approach. (Their Crimean / Basque example comes to mind)
The final third of the book also contains their theory of the formation of centralised power (i.e. the State), which is quite interesting to be aware of when trying to consciously avoid such a hierarchical way of being. (And which some cultures actually successfully did for centuries!)
I realize his work is mostly anthropological, but I wish Graeber's works spent more time trying to grapple with market-oriented pre-capitalist systems that were abundant in much of the Islamicate world while Western Europe was still mostly a theocratic, feudal system. For work trying to look outside the Western lens of history, it doesn't really establish a historiography that looks beyond the West.
I get that, but I think Graeber tries to focus on the places he is knowledgeable about, and native American cultures can hardly be described as Western. I do hope his influence will be felt across the field though and we get some historians with an Islamic (and so many others!) focus and continue to write with such critical iconoclastic lenses.
I consistently find this to be one of the weakest parts of the online, modern Left. It's very good at identifying problems in capitalistic systems but very tepid at proposing solutions to them without handwaving massive details. I found Participatory Economics by Albert and Hahnel to be the best work in this space. I have plenty of criticisms of the Parecon model, but unlike everything else it's a real system with enough meat to actually criticize.
I'd be very interested in hearing your critiques of the Parecon model.
My main concern comes from all the downsides of having that much bureaucracy. Real bureaucracies have lots of problems. For one, lots of compromises happen which end up watering down the solution to something that no party is happy with. Secondly, bureaucracies tend to generate lots and lots of politics because every actor is incentivized to try and carve out some little bit of the pie for themselves. Thirdly, bureaucracies take time to come up with solutions. If a production decision is held up through multiple rounds of failed consensus it'll grind economic forecasting to a halt.
I think the Parecon model can work a lot better with executively charged parties who have the ability to break political stalemates and execute without consensual input. Much like most federal democracies today work.
This quote from The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress never fails me. Anarchism comes from within. There's no intrinsic need to be a revolutionary, but I suspect it comes with the territory.
Will you break the law to do what is right? Then you might be an anarchist.
An anarchist digs up the grass between the sidewalk and curb and plants vegetables. They don't bother to look up if its legal, but they might check with a few neighbors to make sure they're cool with it.
I think there is so little material on this topic because it's hard to imagine how a liberal democracy would gradually evolve into anarchism. The owners of the world's resources wouldn't willingly give them up to the public, and these people also being the owners of most mass media outlets, they'd make sure that basically everyone else agreed with them. This is what in Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model is called manufacturing consent.
There unfortunately seems to be a much more clear path from liberal democracy towards authoritarianism and fascism, via right wing populism. Over much of Europe we're now seeing right wing populist parties forming coalitions with the market liberal parties. In my home country, the right wing populist party literally started out as a Nazi party only some 30 years ago, but like other fascists across Europe they figured that there is a non-revolutionary path towards fascism for as long as you just don't openly call it that.
Cory Doctorow's Walkaway explores the idea of an anarcho-communist society in a (relatively) post-scarcity world.
It lives seperately, kind of adjacent to the existing authoritarian-capitalist society (which is also a post-scarcity utopia for many).
I wager that an anarchist society will evolve organically as the liberal democracies struggle to properly address the scale of the coming climate disasters. Think about how Katrina was handled, and then extend that to happening annually along the coasts. Add in the wikdfires and crop failures and the existing systems of 'wealth makes right' will collapse on their own.
I can totally understand this line of reasoning. My hangup is that I don't see the same degree of critique directed inward. If populism risks devolving into authoritarian fascism, then I'm very worried because the undercurrent of anti-capitalism is very populist right now. I dont think there is a counterforce that self regulates the insurgent group, so if the current counterculture movement ever succeeded and became the new establishment, it would still devolve into an authoritarian disaster. That's why I'm interested in finding alternative takes.
When I say that there is a more clear path from liberal democracy towards fascism via right wing populism, it's not to say populism in general. In particular, left wing populism will never have the support of the owners of great capital, because left wing populist ideas go directly against their interests. Per Herman and Chomsky, they will play their propaganda model roles accordingly, using mass media to divert the working class' attention towards other issues and non-issues, and to disseminate ideas that justify their dominance.
Especially in modern right wing populism, where there really isn't even a facade of anti-capitalism, there is no real challenge to capitalism. It's rather a great tool to direct workers' frustrations inwards and downwards, towards things like LGBTQ+ folks, immigrants, reproductive rights etc. that might otherwise have been directed upwards towards capitalists.
Check out the book
“ no gods, no masters: an anthology of anarchism”
By Daniel Guerin
It can be tough to read, but it lays out a lot of history of anarchism and the practice of the movement.
I didn't find that one from a quick Google search, but I found this by him
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/daniel-guerin-three-problems-of-the-revolution
It was a nice read and I feel like it captures a lot of frustrations I feel.
That’s good!
Here is the book I’m talking about.
https://libcom.org/article/no-gods-no-masters-anthology-anarchism-daniel-guerin
I’m with you, I am disillusioned with current political movements.
Thanks! I'll try looking through it.
I mentioned this in a reply, but check out Participatory Economics by Albert and Hahnel. It proposes a political and economic organization system along with analogues to capitalist structures, such as the place of innovation or the role of the firm. There's no revolutionary rhetoric, just a fascinating look at an alternative form of political and economic organization.
That sounds interesting, thanks!
Im sort of in the same boat. I find the concept of anarchism fascinating and appealing but in an apoliticized kind of way. I just haven't really gotten around to readi g so deeply into it.
Out of curiosity, what have you been reading so far?
What does apoliticized mean in the context of your point? Anarchism is a system of allocating and governing labor and other resources; it's an inherently political idea by any conventional definition of "political".
I really don't think it is. It's a philosophy, one that the self is the most important unit of governance. One of nonviolence and voluntary participation.
Any economic consequences or temporary alliances are incidental to that. Its a philosophy diametrically opposed to authoritarian states, and not opposed to communism (as in the idealist utopian communism, not state-socialism).
I understand anarchism in this context as the political philosophy that voluntary participation is a good basis to build society around, so I think our disagreement is simply a matter of terminology.
As they say, ask 10 anarchists for a definition of anarchism and you'll get 12 answers.
You are correct, i was referring to my interest towards Anarchism as apolitical-- going back to OPs sentiment of looking for things that are 'non-revolutionary'. Maybe not the best word to use here.
I feel like I must inquire as to your intention with that?
Because Anarchism is political. Definitionally.
You could talk about apolitical Conservatism or liberalism just as well, except that those two take place within the existing framework and anarchism by most measures will aim to replace the entire paradigm.
You are correct, i was referring to my interest towards Anarchism as apolitical-- going back to OPs sentiment of looking for things that are 'non-revolutionary'. Maybe not the best word to use here.
A lot of my reading was stuff from reddit, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone else. That's part of why I'm seeking suggestions.
I just read through this though, and found it a good piece of meta commentary.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/daniel-guerin-three-problems-of-the-revolution
I might try reading Proudon, based on what this guy describes.
While it was more others acting based on how they interpreted his views rather than him himself, it should be noted that Proudhonist ideas were a major influence on the short-lived but rather revolutionary Paris Commune of 1871
If you allow me, I'd like to propose an alternative or actually more additional perspective to your "problem". I'll refrain from advocation for or against any specific form of political or economic system unless you ask for my opinion on something.
Your initial post focuses mostly on the different political and/or ideological ideas as to how a government should be structured and function. And in your subsequent replies to various comments you express dismay about various political and ideological movements always trying to convince you that their way is the best way.
My recommendation is to step away from the "how" for a bit and look into the "what" and "why" of politics more, completely decoupled from any preconceived notions of what is or isn't good and bad government.
For this I deeply recommend you check out CGP Greys video Rules for Rulers. It's essentially a 20 minute summary of The Dictator's Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith, told in an excellent format.
The book talks about how people/groups get into power and what they have to do to stay there, completely independent of any ideology. It challenges the way most people (me included) usually view politics from the outside and explains the actions of dictators, democratic politicians and everything in between. It's a little bit like a modern version of Machiavellis famous The Prince.
The book (and video by extension) can be a bit ideologically disillusioning, but it points out all the challenges that any and all political systems have to face, be it from inside or outside.
I hope you check out at least the video and that it helps you in your political search.
If you want to discuss anything mentioned in book or video (or somewhere else), feel free to do that as well.
As a between to CGP Grey's good but short summary and the excellent actual book, Netflix has (had?) a series based on it, which I have had friends recommend.
Personally I stopped somewhere in or after the first episode, but it might speak to others.
I think I remember watching something that sounds like what you are describing, but just like you I've stopped watching it during the first episode.
While it's possible that the series may speak more to some people, I'd still recommend the book over the series if someone likes the video.
There is also a very good audiobook version of it on Audible, which actually was the way I "consumed" it.
I should also mention Greys followup video Death & Dynasties, which is only 5 minutes long but explains how and why so many power systems are hereditary (even in democracies).
I'll give that video a watch, but if you don't mind me asking, why was your recommendation to look more at the "what" and "why"?
Sure thing! I'll still try to remain as neutral as possible, but naturally some personal biases regarding politics will seep into this ^^
Also, naturally a lot of this is mostly just based on my assumptions about you after reading through your replies to comments in this post. I hope I got a mostly accurate picture, but if I've read something wrong into your replies, please correct me.
With that said, onto the point: you said in your original post that you are dissatisfied with (almost) all political systems you've looked into, asking for recommendations about non-revolutionary anarchism that don't try to recruit the reader.
And in one of your first replies to a comment you state you "just want to have a world where everyone else doesn't think it's their prerogative to make up my mind for me on everything. I dont like that everyone thinks they're so much smarter than me that they have to control the narrative around my discussions to guide me to what they think is the right answer[…]."
(Ironically I'm almost doing the same thing here, just not with a specific political system but instead with a way of thinking about and looking at politics so that you can come to your own conclusions. I may hope you come to conclusions similar to mine, but what you do with the tools I offer is completely up to you. Feel free to reject them entirely if you want to.)
To me your issue sounds almost like a self fulfilling prophecy. If you wish to make up your own mind on something, asking people for complete solutions will only result in them giving to you exactly that. And since they think that their way is the best way, of course they will try to convince you they are right. Comparing and analyzing different approaches can give you valuable data for your search, but no tools to forge your own path. And to me it seems you've now been almost overwhelmed with all the different ways people that propose are the one and only right way to organize a society, becoming almost lost between all these options.
And using the saying a bit loosely, "if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging." Take a step back and stop looking at all the different proposed solutions, forget all ideologies for a bit, and instead look at the core issue they all try to tackle. The one thing all political leaders, dictators, revolutionaries, democratically elected representatives or even sports club presidents have to deal with: how do you get people to do what you want? And I don't mean that in a selfish manipulative way, but in most pragmatic sense of "you may have the best possible idea how to achieve world peace and global equality, that doesn't matter if nobody lives by that idea." You need other people to actually implement your changes. And if history has taught us anything, it's that just saying "I have an idea!" isn't enough to convince people.
It's not about comparing the virtuousness of different political systems/movements, but whether or not any given one is a good way to achieve a particular goal. And different political ideas fit to some goals better than others. If you wish to become Eternal God-Emperor of Mankind, having yearly free-and-fair elections may not be the best idea. IMO, a political system shouldn't be an end onto itself, but a tool to achieve a specific goal. And to ensure that that goal stays achieved.
I'll stop here for now because otherwise I'll probably get preachy about the topic and I promised to hold my opinion back as much as possible unless you ask for it.
What you say about "how do you get people to do what you want" reminds me of another comment that said "Arguably that's fundamentally what politics is: convincing different parties to go along with a plan."
And I don't think I agree with that. Surely that's how it works in modern politics, but modern politics in America has 538 people that get to make decisions on behalf of everyone, and you need a majority agreement to be allowed to do anything. So in that case you have to convince people to do what you want.
But politics could have been alternatively defined as "figuring out what you and others already agree about and then collaborating on that".
There's 300 million+ people in my country and an information superhighway. There's not really that many tasks that require 300 million people. Some people have set priorities that only work with everyone's involvement, but I don't think there's a hard justification for that other than some people think it would be best that way.
I had this friend in college who liked to go on about how if we nationalized agriculture, we could feed everyone for free and solve hunger. But he never ended up getting elected to anything, so that never went anywhere. And then later I found out that there are food banks and I started volunteering at one recently. They get all the food that grocery stores can't sell and distribute it to people in need for free. And it turns out that lots of people just help out for free, without having been told to. You don't need to convince anybody, because there are lots of people who are already convinced.
I think I understand your point and also that we could be surprisingly close to agreeing with another.
Parliament here has 736 representatives in 6 parties (well, 6 are non-attached members. Don't ask...) for just 80 million people, and getting a majority there can be a pain, too, so yeah...
In regards to your statement of
I have two thoughts: First, I doubt you could get much of any consensus on anything in the US at the moment (or Germany for that matter). Compromises, sure, but then I'd argue we are back at the more traditional definition of politics. After all, the statement of the other commentator you quoted was "convincing different parties to go along with a plan", not necessarily your plan.
Second, if you limit the scope to just subgroups that already agree on something, you not only put a hard limit on the effectiveness of anything you as a group attempt to do, you still have to get at least everyone in your group to go along with the plan. I'd argue that "figuring out what you and others already agree about and then collaborating on that" is in essence the same process as "how do you get people to do what you want", just more limited in scope.
To stick with your foodbank example: I assume you do that (at least in part) in order to help those in need (a very laudable goal, if I may break my self-imposed rule about neutrality for a second) and for simplicities sake I also just assume that that is the only goal the organizers of the foodbank have (again, I am all for it). The organizers still have to get the grocery stores on board of donating the expired food. This may be as easy as just saying "helping those in need is the right thing to do" or could get rather tricky, maybe leading something like "if you just give us the food you don't have to pay to dispose of it, hence giving you an economic advantage", or at worst maybe having to answer the question of "why should we give you this food when this other foodbank loads it into their trucks themselves and also advertises our store when handing out the food, giving us good publicity".
And then the organizers have to get the volunteers to help with everything. Here the "solution" was already provided through their moral framework: helping those in need is considered a virtuos deed, doing the morally right thing is reward by itself. But I hope you would agree with me saying you would probably have even more helpers if you had the money to pay them.
I don't have a lot of time right now, but I can try and dig more things out later if you want.
The book that's had the most impact on my recently is Joyful Militancy.
You may find prefigurative approaches to be your kind of thing. Rather than working towards grand revolution and overthrowing capital/state/Empire/..., they focus on building better systems, relationships, ways of being and doing today, that operate in the way we want, and provide an alternative to existing systems.
Community-based participatory research can have a strong resonance with prefigurative politics. Also look up asset-based community development.
Think about your own life and what's missing: what do you want? Talk to people in your neighbourhood and community. Come up with ideas and do stuff. Organise a potluck or a community litter pick. Set up a community newsletter, or events listing website. Look up mutual aid and set up a group in the area (these really took off during COVID, probably there is an existing network nearby that you can rekindle). Organise an unreading group, or a town hall meeting on climate resilience. Not everything has to be big projects working at a large scale. Instead, focus on building relationships locally and organising small things that give you all energy, and build a sustainable community.
I think prefigurative is a big part of the answer I was looking for.
I saw your response about looking for deeper inspection into the potential structure and how it would actually look like and be implemented.
And honestly, that's probably a fair concern.
But I'm not entirely sure of your thoughts Re non-revolutionary anarchism. If you are talking about avoiding militant revolution, then there have been those who argued for the creation of, essentially, parallel systems which can eventually render unneeded and ineffective the existing supposedly authoritarian government.
Yet all anarchism, as far as I've seen at least, aims to supplant the existing sociopolitical structure, eventually.
I'm not as familiar with right-leaning, egoist, strains of anarchism which might be considered as less radical in the aimed-for socioeconomic level of change, but even that, in it's endstate of anarchism, cannot coexist with the existing system of governing countries.
Revolution is inherent to anarchism. Or literally any other system that challenges capitalism. The capitalists will not give up their capital/private property without a fight. You would quite literally have to pry it from their cold, dead hands or die trying.
That said, from your other comments, OP, it sounds like you're looking for a calm, rational discussion of anarchism, and not necessarily flat-out rejecting the idea of revolution being necessary. If that's the case, check out Dr. Zoe Baker's YouTube channel or her blog (specifically the essays or recommended reading sections) or her book Means and Ends.
I don't have the answers you are looking for but I like you want to know more about anarchism so iv started lurking here.
https://raddle.me/all/hot
My hopes are that over time I will get a better understanding of anarchism.