Comment on How would an anarchist society work?
db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 hours agowhy should your opinion carry more weight? Is your opinion more equal than that of others?
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.
You have certain power and you specifically used that power to impose your own ideas on others.
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.
Further you failed to provide grounds for rational discourse, another anarchist ideal.
The voting thread had plenty of rational discourse.
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.
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.
Instead, you presented the vote from the level of information and opinions you have - driving for the result you wanted.
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 19 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.
db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 hour ago
I’m not misrepresenting anything. You declare that by the fact that we have a red A next to our name, it gives us some massive boost in pushing our ideas through, even through democratic decision making, which if you knew anything about real-life anarchists, and particularly the neurodivergent sort we go to great lengths to attract, you’d know that people in position of undesired authority (even thouse imposed by the software) are given even more scrutiny than most. The fact that our instance community went with the vote (which as others mentioned, was raised by a member of the instance, not the admin team) goes to show how overwhelmingly desired the defederation was. Despite all your “But you lead these sheeple by the nose” degrading of the intellect of our members.
Which goes to show that you’re merely upset the vote didn’t go the way you wanted. If this was merely “some choice morsels” I guarantee our comm would have unearthed the rest and rubbed them in our faces.
Not what I’m saying at all. When I say we need no education, I mean one does not need to read infinite amount of theory before engaging in anarchism, like Marxist-Leninist vanguardists claim for their own movement. People can just do anarchism, and its praxis radicalizes them and invites more education. You should try to be more charitable instead of superficially trying to gotcha people. In our case, indeed we self-organize around anarchist principles, and one of those principles is the right of association (where people choose to associate with other members of our instance and not to associate with zionists), and the right of consensus making through democratic means.
We already do that. But we’re not going to avoid all democratic decision making until everyone is “enlightened” or some whatever shite you’re positing.
You can jump up and down all you want about how we “abandoned the ideals of anarchism”, but the mere dint of the matter that actual anarchists choose to voluntarily continue associating with us (and not raise a shitstorm), rather than the armchair theorist with the most superficial understanding of the theory (like you), is all the proof we need we’re going in the right direction.
You’ve yet to point out any form of coercion except your pet definition of “Well, you’re so much more charismatic by being an admin, you led everyone by the nose” which flies in the face of reality.
Asofon@discuss.online 19 minutes ago
Except that people have already chosen to get into your system. If they didn’t desire your system, they wouldn’t be in it. They have already chosen for you to have some authority.
Who are you to tell me what to do?
You didn’t tho. Despite who organized the vote etc. the post stands posted by an Admin, and the post is in clear violation of your own stated Code of Conduct.
The “shite” was following prominent Anarchist thinkers (Bakunin, Chomsky) in making the point. I never argued for infinite theoretical education, I argued that critical thinking and awareness of power dynamics are necessary to prevent informal elites. Without tools to recognize bias, framing, and authority signals, “self-organization” becomes a tool for the charismatic or well-connected to dominate.
Unsurprisingly, the people who choose to associate with you agree with you. Have you considered that perhaps anarchists who don’t agree with you simply don’t feel that it’s worth the effort to try to challenge your power structures? Judging by the way you respond to me, it would be futile as anyone who disagrees with you isn’t a true anarchist.
db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 minutes ago
oooor, they know that they can demand my (and every other admin’s) recall, and the fact that they haven’t proves they just trust us.
bed-time is authoritarian, amirite?
Nu-uh. Lol. Ok you’re stuck in a loop, buddy. You’re gonna have to try harder than that.
Mate, it’s an niche online forum run by neurodivergents. Charismatic and well-connected we ain’t.
Of all the political people, you think it’s anarchists that would be loathe to call out bad power structures? Are you sure this is the argument you want to run with?
Deceptichum@quokk.au 16 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.
Asofon@discuss.online 12 hours ago
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You think the red A stands for Anarchism?
Also you’re clearly not reading what I wrote so, not much point in replying further. I already covered the points you attempt to make.
Deceptichum@quokk.au 10 hours ago
The initiative was started by Draconic Neo, who made the post is irrelevant.
I’ve read what you’ve said, and it’s clear you’re a dishonest shitstirrer than anyone with a legitimate complaint based on facts/