Comment on How would an anarchist society work?
db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day agoThere was no funky business that person doesn’t understand anarchism whatsoever and uses that failed understanding to claim it doesn’t work. Ridiculous statements that the admins should be enlightened centrists or some shite.
lmmarsano@group.lt 1 day ago
Asofon@discuss.online 15 hours ago
You don’t have to be enlightened centrists, you are quite free to have whatever opinions you like. However, given your position as the organizing body of an anarchist community, the question is: why should your opinion carry more weight? Is your opinion more equal than that of others?
“The abolition of authority means, the abolition of the monopoly of force and of influence; it means the abolition of that state of affairs for which social power, that is the combined forces of society, is made into the instrument of thought, the will and interests of a small number of individuals, who by means of the total social power, suppress, for their personal advantage and for their own ideas the freedom of the individual” -Errico Malatesta, Anarchy
You have certain power and you specifically used that power to impose your own ideas on others.
"Instead all that happens in the world is done by people; and government qua government, contributes nothing of its own apart from the tendency to convert everything into a monopoly for the benefit of a particular party or class, as well as offering resistance to every initiative which comes from outside its own clique. " -Errico Malatesta, Anarchy
The anarchist code of conduct says that it’s “unacceptable to … degrade, insult etc. another person/group because of their… acceptance of any unfavorable or disfavorable group, whether this group is political, economic, social, or cultural.”. Further you failed to provide grounds for rational discourse, another anarchist ideal.
For Anarchism to work, there needs to be consensus, and an Anarchist community needs to do it’s utmost to ensure that all people in the community have roughly the same level of education both in terms of knowledge and ability for critical thinking. Without these, informed consent is impossible. While I appreciate that you as a Lemmy admin can’t make sure that everyone goes to school, you still could’ve done your best to give people the tools to think about the matter from the level of education they have. Instead, you presented the vote from the level of information and opinions you have - driving for the result you wanted.
*“It is natural that he who knows more will dominate him who knows less. And were this disparity of education and education and learning the only one to exist between two classes, would not all the others swiftly follow until the world of men itself in its present circumstances, that is, until it was again divided into a mass of slaves and a tiny number of rulers, the former labouring away as they do today, to the advantage of the latter”
“It is very often the case that a highly intelligent worker is obliged to hold his tongue when confronted by a learned fool who defeats him, not by dint of intellect (of which he has none) but by dint of his education” -Michael Bakunin, Integral Education
“In other words: educate them the “right way” — to be obediently passive and accept their fate as right and just, conforming to the New Spirit of the Age. Keep their perspectives narrow, their understanding limited, discourage free and independent thought, instill docility and obedience to keep them from the Masters’ throats.” -Noam Chomsky, The Common Good
db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 hours ago
It doesn’t. We asked for a vote for a reason. If people’s opinion changes in the future, they can ask for a vote to reverse it as well.
How did I impose my own ideas on others? By adding more members to the team? By a member of our team asking for a democratic vote? Sounds like you have some perverted ideas about what “imposing one’s ideas on others” means.
The voting thread had plenty of rational discourse.
No, actually. For anarchism to work, people just need to do learn to do direct action for mutual aid and reject hierarchical authority. Same level of education and critical thinking is not required.
It seems to me you just dislike how the vote went and are deciding that everyone who voted against the way you want, is too stupid. I.e. you’re an elitist.
Asofon@discuss.online 13 hours ago
You’re purposefully sidestepping the extreme bias with which you presented the case, which is something you need to account for considering the privilege you have of establishing the leading argument (creating the thread and the vote in the first place) - If you were to actually follow Anarchist ideals.
You “pulled out some choice morsels” from modlogs to illustrate your point. By selecting which data the community sees, you are using your technical power to dictate the level of information available to voters - exactly the “disparity of education” Bakunin warned about. You argue that obedience to anarchist principles is enough. But anarchism is not a set of rules to be obeyed; it is a method of self-organization. You cannot have “self-organization” if the “self” does not have the tools (education/critical thinking) to organize. By claiming education isn’t necessary, the you’re essentially saying: “You don’t need to understand the system, you just need to do what “WE” (“the authority that’s totes not an authority”) call “mutual aid” and vote the way we set up the ballot.” This is Vanguardism, not Anarchism.
Also, in the spirit of mutual aid, would it not be in your best interest to try your best to educate the people in your community and empower them to think for themselves?
And again, you are free to do as you please but then represent yourself accurately. You’re merely demonstrating that you like the vibe of Anarchism but as per my initial point, Anarchism lacks functional power. As a result, you abandoned the Anarchist ideals in order to gain functionality.
I haven’t said a single word about what I thought the result of the vote should have been. I have no inherent problem with the way you conducted the vote either, or what the outcome was, when stripped from the pretense of Anarchism. You are free to run your instance as you like, and people in it are free to interact with it however they want. I’m merely using it as an example of the point I’ve been making: Anarchism needs people to cooperate, yet lacks functional power to make cooperation to happen and so, people such as yourself will use some type of coercion (authority) to force cooperation the way they (the authority) wants.
To @Deceptichum@quokk.au:
While Orwell was a democratic socialist who fought with anarchists (the POUM and CNT/FAI) in Spain, Animal Farm is a critique of how a revolutionary vanguard (the pigs) uses their monopoly on information and language to gradually assume the same powers as the former masters.
The pigs didn’t just use force; they changed the “Seven Commandments” (the rules) and controlled the narrative to ensure the other animals “voted” or agreed with their direction. When an admin says, “We asked for a vote,” but provides a biased framework for that vote, they are acting as the “pigs” who manage the “farm” while claiming everyone is equal.
Deceptichum@quokk.au 10 hours ago
The voting process was started not by an admin but a user.
You are 100% misrepresenting what happened with the communities vote to push your biased narrative that it was undemocratic.
And the staff are allowed to have their own opinions. They do not need to be stoic bastions of neutrality, they’re members of the site and get to argue their position as much as anyone else.
Matter of fact is the majority of the community voted in favour of defederation, and not one user has proposed a vote for refederation.
You may not like the result, but it was a 100% fair and open form of governance.