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u/oleka_myriam · 21 pointsr/Anarchy101

Great post OP! I haven't seen the video in question (sorry) but as an anarchist I do feel confident in giving some of my views. First off, there are no right answers to these questions. Even within the same school of anarco-socialism, you'll likely get different answers to these questions from different people (ask 10 anarcho-socialists and you'll get 11 different answers) and in my view, that's a strength, not a weakness. However because I haven't seen the video, I don't know how much of what I'm about to say is addressed by it. I'm sorry!

I personally don't believe that lazy workers are as much a problem as you believe they will be and I base this on my personal experience. I have visited anarco-communes and also "temporary utopias" like climate camps and anti-globalization convergences. And, no, they were by no means perfect. In anarchist households dishes often don't get done to the extent that it's kind of a running joke. But there are lots of reasons for that. Houses aren't designed with communal living in mind. Under capitalism most of us suffer from depression and anxiety and it's hard to be motivated with that kind of thing when you're worried about your next deadline at your unfulfilling job or paying the bills by the end of the month. A more collectivist society could do things like ensuring no one ever has to do menial jobs alone (even by the simple provision of bigger sinks and bigger kitchens--ever notice how classically houses in western society were designed for use by a single-occupancy gendered labour force; my kitchen is barely twice the size of my wardrobe, but the living room, where the man of the house was expected to spend his off-labour time, is huge). And ultimately I would expect that anarchist societies would not only have a good working understanding of the sexism of gendered labour (most menial jobs are traditionally performed by women) but also be more lenient around all labour. Like maybe you can skip the washing up for that day if it's your period or if you're nursing, both of which are labour neglected by capitalism, just to choose a stereotypical and thought-provoking example. Going back to my own experiences, there were plenty of problems with places like the convergences and anarchist camps, but they never actually suffered from not having clean toilets because people understood that cleaning them was as important an activity as any other type of labour which needed to be undertaken. Ultimately, I agree with the point raised by the WNDWU (youtube link--above): "So you're asking me, who will do the dishes when the revolution comes? Well I do my own dishes now and I'll do my own dishes then. Funny that it's always the ones who don't, who ask that fucking question."

There are a lot of different thoughts about how economics can work in anarchist societies at large-scale. Most likely there would be several different economic models, possibly even within the municipal area, but certainly within different ones. In the future, Kim Stanley Robinson describes a system where small consumptive goods are created in situ, then optionally exchanged as gifts with traders. Underlying this, potassium is used as an exchange of hard currency and reserve, regulating the flow of resources throughout for the production of goods the solar system. Meanwhile, Ursula Le Guin envisaged a society organised by collectives (syndicals) where work was undertaken out of a sense of duty. Less speculatively, David Graeber has done a lot of good work documenting the use of gift economies throughout human history and it's hard to believe there's nothing there, given the overwelming preponderance and importance of gift economies to advanced human societies so far.

But I myself am not an advocate of gift economies. Michael Albert and co. have done a lot of writing on how non-gift participatory or democratic economies could be run and I highly recommend checking out his work. Albert's work is pretty much the closest to what I would like to see myself, I think and he also talks a lot about the psychological benefits of job rotation, e.g. a system where doctors also clean toilets. There is also a form of anarchism known as mutualism in which productive work is carried out by coops instead of companies or conglomerates owned by shareholders or an owner or owners. A coop can be structured along purely democratic grounds, where every decision requires a consensus meeting from relevant workers, through the whole gamut to a system with middle managers and bosses basically being like a company except that the workers form and control the board instead of vice versa. After producing goods, they are exchanged through a free-market mechanism as under capitalism. I myself am not a mutualist but really even mutualism would be a huge step forward compared to what we have under the current system, where productive labour is essentially organized by unaccountable and undemocratic corporate oligarchies.

The invention thing is quite interesting, I think. Just as in an anarchist society you might get several economic systems, so today we actually have several economic models under capitalism as well. One which I am quite familiar with as a software engineer is the open-source model of software development. Last year I invented a new and pioneering method for installing Wordpress websites using a fairly obscure collection of deployment software. The mechanism I invented is so niche that even I struggle to develop the enthusiasm to explain its benefits even to people within the same field but I was excited enough to develop it that I spent three months of my free-time doing that, and now that it is done I am still pleased with the effort even though no one uses it. So basically I invented something and released it for free which was the very definition of a project for which I receive no thanks: no economic compensation, no fame within my professional circles, etc. And yet I was still happy to create and distribute it for free, even allowing others to modify it if they found it useful. So I think that when you are very invested in a particular problem field it's actually very easy to develop the enthusiasm to figure out an invention for a better way of doing something, even if you know you'll receive nothing for it but the personal satisfaction of having simplified a particular problem. And of course in an anarchist society you could expect that most techniques and methods are open-source, and able to be modified and improved upon for free by any interested party. Receiving fame among one's professional peer group, being invited to prestigious conferences within your field to talk about your invention, maybe even being interviewed by the news media--these are all extremely good motivations for creating something, arguably a lot stronger than money actually. (Considering most invention these days is IP-protected and ultimately owned by corporations, I'm kind of surprised the myth of the solo inventor made rich by his own success succeeds actually.) And this happens a lot in software. The most common operating system software globally across all devices? By far, Linux. Windows only leads in the desktop, and that only because of entrenched capitalist user lock-in paradigms.

u/adichkofv · 6 pointsr/Anarchy101

Here's a short rundown of some the various ways people can interact economically that might help you navigate various economic discourse:

-------Different kinds of "exchange": gift-exchange and market exchange:

Market-exchange is an exchange of alienable things between transactors who are in a state of reciprocal independence.

Noncommodity (gift) exchange is an exchange of inalienable things between transactors who are in a state of reciprocal dependence.

Market exchange establishes objective quantitative relationships (prices) between the objects transacted, while gift exchange establishes personal qualitative relationships between the subjects transacting.

Gift exchange differs from barter or market exchange because the value of the gifts is judged qualitatively, not quantitatively as in the case of commodities. Gift-exchange is based on ‘the capacity for actors (agents, subjects) to extract or elicit from others items that then become the object of their relationship’.

In his famous book Gifts and Commodities, Christopher A. Gregory (an economic anthropologist) suggests this is a general tendency.

Gift economies tend to personify objects. Commodity/market economies, do the opposite: they tend to treat human beings, or at least, aspects of human beings, like objects. The most obvious example is human labor: in modern economics we talk of “goods and services” as if human activity itself were something analogous to an object, which can be bought or sold in the same way as cheese, or tire-irons.

Gregory lays out a tidy set of oppositions. Gifts are transactions that are meant to create or effect “qualitative” relations between persons; they take place within a preexisting web of personal relations; therefore, even the objects involved have a tendency to take on the qualities of people.

Commodity exchange (market), on the other hand, is meant to establish a “quantitative” equivalence of value between objects; it should ideally be done quite impersonally; therefore, there is a tendency to treat even the human beings involved like things.

-------Some non-exchange: Demand-sharing, pooling, "everyday Communism":

It's similar to what David Graeber calls "everyday communism", which he defines as:

"An open-ended agreement between two groups, or even two individuals, to provide for the other; within which, even access to one another’s possessions followed the principle of ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’."

(‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’, the old communist formula, basically means if you have a need and I have the ability to meet that need, I do it.

Keeping count or reciprocating is very frowned upon in these sort of situations.

This sort of communism is quite common (even under capitalism), in families, between friends and there's a little of it in every non-hostile relationship.)

What characterizes a sharing context comparatively is that it extends the circle of people who can enjoy the good implicated in a resource, for instance accessing a certain resource such as water. In other words, sharing food or drink is an action done for its own sake, putting the good of nourishment in the place of any specific goals that may be derivative of the transfer of food items, for instance the attempt to create obligations for the future. In this understanding, sharing is not a manifestation of an altruistic move, putting the goals of others above one's own goals, but rather one of renouncing derivative goals altogether in the face of intrinsic goods—its intrinsic value if you will. In gift-giving contexts, by contrast, goals of various kinds (whether held jointly by the exchange partners or not, whether altruistic or egoistic) override the intrinsic good of whatever it is that is being provided.

It's important to distinguish exchange, which is usually for “external” and strategic benefits such as having a network of partners, creating obligations for the future, etc. (gift-exchange) or and more impersonal and violent benefits when it comes to market-exchange – from sharing that entails the intrinsic goods of receiving a share (sharing out) and of being accepted as a member of the community of humans with recognized needs (sharing in).

Unlike what the economic fundamentalists would have you believe, sharing is not governed by either ecological need and pressure nor a diffuse notion of generosity and altruism. The ethnographic record shows that sharing takes place not only under conditions of scarcity, and that it typically takes the form of demand sharing rather than apparently generous gift-giving. In fact, a number of cultural conditions have to be in place for sharing to work. Unlike the case of exchange systems, these conditions are not formally institutionalized normative systems but, instead, complex systems of habitual practice. In the ethnographic cases (including those in capitalist societies), sharing works because people have a shared history of mutual involvements as kin, because they master numerous ways of initiating sharing through implicature and other forms of talk, and finally because they recognize the presence of others as the (often silent) demand that it constitutes toward those who have and who are in a position to give.

Many acts of sharing took place, and continue to take place, because they are initiated by the taker and social strategies are in place that decouple giving from receiving. Sharing may therefore take place (as said before) without the provider enacting and expressing charity. Often it takes place in a way that downgrades the act of giving as part of leveling any potential attempts of the giver to take political advantage from his or her economically advantaged position. Demand sharing not only inverts the sequence of action but also the tone of the transaction that is known as “charitable giving.” There is no sharing without a demand. The demand need not be uttered, and it need not be the demand of a specific interlocutor since it is a demand for provisioning that emerges as a consequence of moral role relationships or as incurred by a particular situation of copresence, as I would prefer to call it. We need to recognize that one’s mere bodily presence, underlined by addressing the other person in particular ways, is always a demand for being acknowledged as a partner, a personal being with legitimate needs. An appropriate definition of demand sharing is therefore much broader than the use of explicit demands such as “Give me . . .” leading to the appropriation of what one may think one is entitled to. The explicitness of the demand may differ and it may be entirely implicit very much like a “silent demand”. Humans are sufficiently able to put themselves into the situation of others to be able to know what the intrinsic goods of shared objects are for fellow humans without any demand being uttered.

Sharing is generally characterized by the preparedness to suspend measuring objects against one another (which means that sharing does not necessarily entail that everyone gets the same) in that situation and by the unwillingness to hang on to something in a particular situation.

You can read more about this in Thomas Widlok's book "Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing": https://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-Economy-Sharing-Thomas-Widlok/dp/1138945552

​

If you're interested in reading about Libertarian Marxist theories of post-capitalism I recommend taking a look at:

The Beginning of History: Value Struggles and Global Capital by Massimo de Angelis.

Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to Postcapitalism by Massimo de Angelis.

Crack Capitalism by John Holloway has the best take on abstract labor vs what he calls concrete doing.

Rupturing the Dialectic: The Struggle against Work, Money, and Financialization by Harry Cleaver has a very good analysis of the labor theory of value and the abolition of money.

u/attelierzz · 3 pointsr/Anarchy101

Caffentzis book critiques John Locke, not Adam Smith, if you want a book on Adam Smith there's The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation by Michael Perelman, which is very good.
If you're looking for books on societies that are (trying to) live completely outside capitalism I recommend taking a look at the book Living at the Edges of Capitalism: Adventures in Exile and Mutual Aid by Denis O'Hearn and Andrej Grubacic.

It takes a bit of effort and previous knowledge to completely understand it, but it's a pretty good book, you can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Living-Edges-Capitalism-Adventures-Mutual/dp/0520287304


The Beginning of History: Value Struggles and Global Capital by Massimo De Angelis also adresses the misconception you seem to be bringing up (that capitalism is a totalizing system), Massimo De Angelis comes out of the same grand tradition as famous Italian autonomists like Negri, Lazzarato, Virno, etc, but where the latter all seem to have sunk into a common obsession with the notion of "real subsumption", that there is nothing and noplace outside of capitalism, De Angelis argues exactly the opposite. In fact, he insists that it would be better not even to talk about "capitalism" as a total system (as opposed to as an ideology - as an ideology it obviously does exist), but rather, to talk about capital, and capitalists, and capitalist value practices (using money to make more money), but that these capitalist value practices are never the only game in town. There are always other ones. True, the capitalist ones are dominant at the moment, but there is a continual struggle going on, where on the one hand, the market sets everyone against each other, sets the livelihood of people in Africa against those in Germany, of one city, town, enterprise, community, occupation against another, so that even every invention or discovery that was originally intended to eliminate scarcity and improve people's lives ultimately gets diverted to the purpose of creating new forms of scarcity and keeping people in desperate competition against each other. In reaction, those motivated by other values (solidarity, community, ecology, beauty, security, tradition...) are constantly creating new forms of commons, of shared and collectively managed resources, and political forces aligned with capitalism are always attempting to break them up and appropriate them with new enclosures. Thus, what Marx called "primitive accumulation" has never ended. At the same time, the capitalists are always trying to create "commons" of their own, what they like to call "externalities", fobbing off the costs of production onto other people, communities, or nature. Much of the political struggle of the last twenty or thirty years, De Angelis explains, can be understood precisely as battles over the creation and enclosure of different sorts of commons, and behind it all, lie battles over the nature of value itself.


u/cristoper · 3 pointsr/Anarchy101

Below is my usual list of introductory material. It is not really what you want. I like your idea of a reading list which starts from the fundamentals, but I don't know of any. In your case I would recommend the first volume of Marx's Capital which is surprisingly accessible and still a very good description of capitalism. If you are unfamiliar with Marxist terminology, reading something like David Harvey's Reading Marx's Capital along with it could be useful.

----

Online introductions:

  • The Wikipedia entry for libertarian socialism actually gives a pretty good overview.

  • An Anarchist FAQ is dense but has good material -- it is especially good at differentiating traditional anarchism from US-style libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism. You will find many references to other works in the FAQ.

    Books:

  • The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin. It is old, a classic, but it provides examples rather than formal/philosophic arguments so it is still quite readable and relevant today. It will give you a good idea of where modern anarchist communists are coming from.

  • A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. It is long and sometimes repetitive, but each chapter can be read independently so you don't need to read it cover-to-cover. It provides a view of American history from a working-class perspective including the many contributions of anarchist and other socialist movements.

  • A book like Paul Eltzbacher's The Great Anarchists: Ideas and Teachings of Seven Major Thinkers which provides an overview of the various anarchist founding philosophers is a good idea.

  • I think Peter Gelderloos writes clear introductory material. I've not read his latest (The Failure of Nonviolence), but you can read Anarchy Works online.

  • John Holloway's Crack Capitalism [pdf] is an introduction to a libertarian Marxist approach to resisting capitalism and the state. It might be too "lifestyle" for some people's tastes (he suggests reading a book in a park instead of going to work as an anti-capitalist action, for example).

  • It's a bit outside the main thrust of the anarchist tradition (which is often focused on class struggle), but one of my favorite books is Crispin Sartwell's Against the State: An Introduction to Anarchist Political Theory which provides counter arguments to several justifications for states, especially the various contract theories.

    Other reading guides:

  • Phoenix Class War Council's Recommended Reading

  • Libcom.org's reading guide
u/jawaiah · 1 pointr/Anarchy101

I won't put too much in here because I have other stuff to do this morning, but you've got a lot more to cover if you want a well-rounded survey of anarchism. I tend to prefer economic/historical analyses myself so I'll leave a couple here:

AnCaps aren't anarchists but Market (aka Libertarian) Socialists are. Here's a good collection of essays available for free online from the publisher. It includes historical works by Proudhon and DeCleyre, moving forward with early 20th century thinkers like the American Benjamin Tucker, and culminates with some modern Market Anarchist essays on the origins of intellectual property, capitalism, and other modern forms of government enforced privilege.

Markets Not Capitalism

This next book is a meticulous and deeply methodological survey of a few classical anarchists according primarily to their economic philosophy. It's a great resource if you can handle the pedantic, almost-mathematical analysis it puts forth. It lays out some really semi-formal language at the beginning and proceeds to analyze the Anarchists in terms of this formality. In that regard it reminds me a bit of Marx's Capital, but we'll get back to him in a second.

The Great Anarchists

I'd suggest you take at least a couple of classes into analysis of figures and ideologies that are not traditionally thought of as anarchists but have a subversive and anti-authority message. There are TONS of these if you look around but the two I'd mention here are Karl Marx and Ted Kaczynski ("the UNABOMber"). I'll link the the Kaczynski overview here but his most famous publication was called "Industrial Society and its Future" (ostensibly written collaboratively with a whole group called FC or the Freedom Club).

Marx, theoretician of anarchism

What Marx Should Have Said To Kropotkin

Ted Kaczynski

Lastly you mentioned Catalonia, no reading on Anarchist Catalonia is complete without Sam Dolgoff's The Anarchist Collectives: Workers' Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution 1936-1939 which if I remember correctly contains at least one essay on the topic from the author Leval you cited.

The Anarchist Collectives

Cheers and have fun!

edit: ohgod where did my morning go

u/Oxenfree · 10 pointsr/Anarchy101

Good questions, actually. A lot of the Anarcho-technologists see that there's a massive amount of waste (toxic and otherwise) in our current form of technological production. So, you're correct on that.

Some, like myself, only believe that we can achieve true anarchy without capitalism after there have been a few small leaps forward in technology. The sort of leap that will allow you to make your own tech. Computers, phones, etc. are really only silicon, aluminum, brass, glass, rubber, and plastic. Aluminum, silicon, and glass can all be made from aluminosilicate, which is very abundant and found in common clay. (We just need a little technological boost to extract it.) Plastics can be made from hemp (I'm not joking) or can be recycled from old bits of plastic from consumer devices.

Check out this DIY cell phone: http://hlt.media.mit.edu/?p=2182

And, this guy makes a computer with one central board called a "raspberry pi:" http://revision3.com/tbhs/retro-computer

That guy turns his raspberry computer into an experimentation console, but raspberry pi's can run linux (free), and browse the web, just like regular computers.

Another big part of the new DIY movement is 3D printing. An open source version of a 3D printer that's very popular is called a Rep Rap: http://youtu.be/FUB1WgiAFHg?t=2m

And, there's a guy in Missouri named Marcin Jakubowski who's trying to create an aluminum extractor that can use clay: http://blog.opensourceecology.org/2010/12/open-source-aluminum/

(The majority of aluminum is right now made from bauxite, which is aluminum ore, mined from the earth.)

So, you can see. DIY technology could, in the next few years, really give the means of production to the worker not just collectively, but individually. And we'd be building things for ourselves that won't shit the bed in five years like consumer products. (That's called planned obsolescence and it's gotten quite a bit worse in the past 30 years or so.)

People are also making their own robots, vacuum cleaners, coffee pots, etc. Here's a series of books that starts with a very simple foundry made from a bucket and some clay, that progresses through drill presses and lathes, and finishes with an entire metalworking shop with a milling machine, all that you build yourself: http://lindsaybks.com/dgjp/djgbk/series/index.html

So, your fishing community might but up against a community of metal workers and one of computer nerds who just do this shit for fun.

There are a lot more concepts of tech-inspired anarchy. Home farming and homesteading. Aquaponics, permaculture, this sort of thing.

I've actually written a fictional book about it that pretty well explains it. And it's free from a large online book retailer (today's the last day for that): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008J7CNW4

And, it's free in other forms (.doc and .pdf): http://batcountryword.com/index.php/after-the-crash-a-novel-by-bat-country/

u/habit-us · 3 pointsr/Anarchy101

[continued] Lucy Parsons: 18th-cent. American anarchist communist, feminist, and labor organizer who was among the founders of the anarchist-influenced Industrial Workers of the World. Parsons was frequently arrested for distributing anarchist literature and for her powerful orations. The Chicago Police Department described her as "more dangerous than a thousand rioters." Wikipedia says, "Lucy was probably born a slave, though she denied any African heritage, claiming only Native American and Mexican ancestry." Notably, she and Emma Goldman came into conflict over Parsons' focus on working-class struggles and Goldman's seeming emphasis on gender and sexuality.

Voltairine de Cleyre: 18th-cent. American anarchist who was acclaimed by Emma Goldman, despite their ideological divergences (de Cleyre was much more individualist than Goldman for a time). The New York Times recently ran this sympathetic piece on her.

Now, a short interlude from the naming of authors (of whom "Anonymous" is spectacularly prominent, too...). The North American Black Rose / Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation has this reader, Black Anarchism. Looking for the link just now I also saw Anarchism and the Black Revolution by Lorenzo Komboa Irvin, a Black anarchist and former member of the Black Panther Party (!!). A really good article that deals with the primacy of the Black radical tradition in the US is this one by contemporary US anarchist Joel Olson.

The seminal work Desert is a very short, accessible anarchist text with a green focus and a critical stance on civilization.

OK. For a good while I dipped my toe in by reading works from accessible contemporary anarchists, and I'm glad I did. David Graeber is an anarchist anthropologist who wrote Debt: The First 5,000 Years, a pretty foundational work, and Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. Graeber's writing style is relaxed, fluid, and funny; I love it.

James C. Scott is an ethnographer who wrote The Art of Not Being Governed, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, and Two Cheers for Anarchy!: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Play. I haven't read the last one yet, but really want to. Scott was a huge part of my intro to anarchism and I have deeply fond memories of reading and writing about his work.

Colin Ward is a lauded contemporary British anarchist who wrote Anarchy in Action, among other works.

Uri Gordon is a contemporary Israeli anarchist who, among other things, has edited some anarchist publications, including Anarchists Against the Wall: Direct action and solidarity with the Palestinian popular struggle. I'm heartened by Israeli anarchist solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. It's been called some of the foremost direct action globally.

As written by the Black Rose Federation, its member Mark Bray is the author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook (first antifascist history) and Translating Anarchy: The Anarchism of Occupy Wall Street. He also wrote this article on horizontalism.

u/Firedraik · 3 pointsr/Anarchy101

Indeed! There is, in fact, an entire sub-reddit devoted to it. (/r/christiananarchism)

Having only briefly read what's already here, I'll wade in with my 2¢.

It amuses me somewhat when some Christians say that Anarchism can't fit with Christian belief. The only nation ever established by God in the Bible - Israel - explicitly had no king, and was charged with caring for it's poor and needy, and any from other nations that passed through as well. The early Christians of the New Testament welcomed everyone, and gave to everyone as they had need (Acts 2:45).

Despite my best efforts, I don't think I can say it better than Jaques Ellul says it:

"All the churches have scrupulously respected and often supported the state authorities. They have made of conformity a major virtue. They have tolerated social injustices and the exploitation of some people by others, explaining that it is God's will that some should be masters and others servants, and that socioeconomic success is an outward sign of divine blessing. They have thus transformed the free and liberating Word into morality, the most astonishing thing being that there can be no Christian morality if we truly follow evangelical thinking. The fact is that it is much easier to judge faults according to an established morality than to view people as living wholes and to understand why they act as they do"

I highly Recommend Ellul. There's also a bunch of good stuff to read here

u/throw-a-bait · 3 pointsr/Anarchy101

I was sure this was translated to English, but apparently it isn't. Sorry if it doesn't help then, but I'll throw it out there for anyone who might find it helpful.

"Petit lexique philosophique de l'anarchisme. De Proudhon à Deleuze" (or "Pequeño léxico filosófico del anarquismo: de Proudhon a Deleuze -Spanish-, as I knew it like 10 minutes ago before a quick google search) is a great book by Daniel Colson, really struck me as the kind of thing you were looking for.

You can buy it in French at amazon or in Spanish (Argentina only, though if you happen to be from Argentina I can just lend you my copy)

If someone happens to know about a translation, thank you! I could actually translate it to English myself, shouldn't be that difficult at all... maybe... maybe. I need to finish my translation of "Markets, not Capitalism" to Spanish first, though... but if there is some interest I'll do it! :)

u/Darkmaster006 · 4 pointsr/Anarchy101

Since people have already answered about the anarchist part thoroughly, just throwing my two cents out there: veganism is not necessary for being an anarchist (and in fact, depending on the country it is illogical to expect for everyone to be vegan). As for the fact that there can be 20 genders, that is a very complex topic. Essentially, gender is a social construct that assigns certain roles, characteristics, features, stereotypes to each sex (for example: women need to wear make-up, use high-heels in certain jobs, pink-color coded, long hair, they are more submissive, passive, and also nurturing; while men are strong, 'they like blue', are aggressive, usually short hair, etc. Super basic, but there are some books you can check if you're interested: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Delusions-Gender-Science-Behind-Differences/dp/1848312202#reader_1848312202) Gender would be something like 'femininity' and 'masculinity'. Women, in this axis, are and have been historically oppressed due to their sex (this all for Engels started with Agriculture, you can read his 'Private Property, Family and the State'). It is for that reason that gender differs from society to society, it is not a universal concept (for example, in China, girls had to undergo foot binding). Sex is a material reality, that is, humans as a species are sexually diphormic, that is, there are two sexes (which also include 'deviations' from these sexes which come with complications such as intersex and different syndromes but that are still included under sexual diphormism). But sex does not equal gender. Brains aren't gendered. The mainstream left seems to have sided with a very liberal notion that identity makes reality, in which everyone can decide their gender (whatever that means? and which has no impact on reality), and instead of abolishing gender and letting everyone just be, it seems to side with the fact that femininity and masculinity equal sex, rather than divorce sex from the social construct that is gender and accept it as a material reality. While radical/materialist/marxist feminism proposes the abolition of gender, in doing so, sex would have no connotations at all as to how a person should dress, behave, or what their role in society is, etc and would be free to be themselves. In my opinion, it is radical feminism which has more solid foundations and a very solid theory. This is not even scratching the surface on the topic, though, and I'm not sure it's understandable, but I hope my comment was of some help. I strongly recommend you research this thoroughly, always keep a critical stance on what you read (on whatever you read, honestly), and come to your own conclusions, which can change when you know more, and they should.


As for 'left-wing', many ideologies can be lumped there, so you've got to be careful and always have a critical eye.

u/The_Old_Gentleman · 21 pointsr/Anarchy101

Off the top of my head i think you can:

  • At work, avoid being put in positions of power over other people, and if you happen to be momentarily put in such a position do your best not to act in an authoritarian manner and always respect your co-workers - regardless of their position relative to yours - as your equals. During workplace disputes side with the workers against the boss and side with the victims of harassment against the harassers.

  • Do volunteer work for or donate to some organization that does actual good work helping the marginalized (Say: Planned Parenthood, Survival International, your local homeless and abuse survivor's shelters, Food Not Bombs, BlackLivesMatter chapters, etc) or to local leftist groups. Avoid money-grabbing shitty NGO's.

  • Join a union, convince your co-workers to unionize (try to keep that a secret from your boss though...) or to even join a solidarity network if one exists in your area (do keep that a secret from your boss if you do so!).

  • As others have mentioned, raise your kids on a libertarian way - teaching them to be autonomous and think critically about everything they do, convincing them of things with reasoning rather than commands, try to put them in the least-authoritarian school you can find in your area. Read Paulo Freire's book on education if you are so inclined. Also check out this children's book.

  • If you can, ditch the use of proprietary software and start using libre software and donating to interesting libre software projects - abandon Windows for a GNU/Linux distribution like Debian, Microsoft Office for LibreOffice (if your work does not require Excel), Twitter for GNU Social/Mastodon, etc. Take real steps to protect your privacy and security online (this is someone everyone should do for safety reasons alone, regardless of political positioning).

  • If you see something, do something - when you hear your acquaintances saying sexist or racist shit, don't let that pass for something "normal", make it clear that that stuff is not cool. Cut your ties to downright toxic people when you are able to.

  • If you are convinced by the ethical arguments against the ownership and exploitation of animals or by the pragmatic environmental arguments against the meat industry, become a vegetarian or a vegan. Consult a nutritionist and other resources to make sure you maintain a healthy and balanced diet.

  • Try to live a simpler and more frugal life - spend less time distracting yourself with commodities and more time with your friends and family and building healthy relationships with other people. Make an effort to cultivate virtues that will help you become a more independent, kinder and more empathetic person; and bring those virtues out in others.

  • Read and read and read more and question your beliefs often, make sure you are well-informed about everything that matters to you and that your analytical skills always stay sharp.

    Those actions by themselves won't exactly do much to topple global capitalism, but then again nothing an individual does will - obtaining liberty is a collective effort and the future of this project is always uncertain, no amount of lifestyle changes will really "free" people. However they are a positive step that you can take to help a bit with out jeopardizing your family's life.
u/[deleted] · 1 pointr/Anarchy101

There was a book published recently by AK Press on the topic of non-capitalist economics that is pretty good. Some of the stuff is a little strange and I only see it resulting in a different type of hierarchy, but most of the chapters are good.

You can read a review of it here.

A number of AK Press books popup for free on sites like libcom so if you don't want to buy it you could check there. It's a handy book to have though, I reference my copy often.

You could also read a bit about currently existing non-capitalist forms of exchange such as the so-called gift economies where goods are exchanged with the understanding that at some point in the future or the past the person you are exchanging with has or will do the same for you.

u/borahorzagobuchol · 2 pointsr/Anarchy101

This is something I originally learned in undergraduate economics classes. I hope they still teach it and, if so, it would probably be introduced in most online courses on modern economics at some point. Unfortunately, my primary reference since then was a Berkeley undergraduate course that was turned over to iTunes a couple years ago (which I refuse to use or endorse), so I can't reference the more comprehensive and professional history of the studies that lead to such conclusions.

In brief from what I recall, econometric studies by folks like Mansfield (Mansfield, E. et al., 1991. Academic research and industrial innovation. Research Policy 20, 1–12.
Mansfield, E., 1998. Academic research and industrial innovation: an update of empirical findings. Research Policy 26, 773–776. Mansfield, E., Lee, J.Y., 1996. The modern university: contributor to industrial innovation and recipient of industrial R&D support. Research Policy 25, 1047–1058.) have tried to put a quantitative number on the exact rate of return for public investment in basic research and pegged it around 28%, suggesting that it is underfunded in most modern economies despite outperforming general private R&D investment over time. However, these kinds of studies have been widely considered as much too limited in their scope, with many authors suggesting that they neglect less quantifiable benefits such as trained researchers, improved instrumentation and methodologies, the development of a tacit knowledge, and fostering of national and international networks. This suggests that the social rate of return for public investment is probably much higher than the capital rate of return, but also that it is inextricably complicated thus nearly to impossible to accurately tease out. The best summary and jumping point I have at the moment at the moment is on page 159 of Technology, R&D, and the Economy, the conclusion to Chapter 6 by Bronwyn Hall, which can be found on page 20 of this pdf as it outlines and compared the private rate of return to that of public investment by multiple proposed metrics. I hope that helps.

u/DarkxCrackerx · 16 pointsr/Anarchy101

The idea is that animals are sentient beings capable of pain and are self aware and thus should be included in the organizing of society along anti hierarchial lines and should also be given at least basic respect such as not being enslaved. exploited, killed or being the property of another needlessly. This is split within anarchism some viewing it as a logically consisent step others not so much. Some short good readings are animal liberation and social revolution by Brian Dominick as well as many other essays and zines that are easy to find. For more indepth long book i would suggest

Making a Killing the Political Economy of animal rights http://nkatz.org/animaliam/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Bob-Torres-Making-A-Killing-The-Political-Economy-of-Animal-Rights-2007-1904859674.pdf

The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-vegetarian Critical Theory- http://www.amazon.com/The-Sexual-Politics-Meat-Feminist-vegetarian/dp/1441173285

For a whole bunch of free ebooks try these two torrents

https://onebigtorrent.org/torrents/23299/Animal-Rights-Animal-Ethics--eBook-Collection--1-0-Oct-2013--Various-Authors--104-Books

and

https://onebigtorrent.org/torrents/23446/Animal-Rights-Animal-Ethics--eBook-Collection--2-0-Jan-2014

With those you should find books on any subject related to animal rights you could ask most unfortunatly not with a anti capitalist perspective but most easily fitting along with a anarchist worldview

Now to answer your specific questions

What are we allowed to do to them and under what circumstances?

I view anything that doesnt exploit them , murder them, treat them as property etc... as acceptable so for example your current relationship with your dog can probably stay although we have to reexamine the concept of ownership

Can we use them for labor in any circumstances?

Directly I dont think so although there are some animals such as horses where as long as they are allowed free roaming i see no problem with riding again as long as it follows the criteria i see no problem

Is there anything that could justify eating them/their flesh?

If there was no choice either eating them or dying or starvation I think it would be justified otherwise it should be avoided at all costs

Will anarchist society neccesarily have to be vegan (assuming no in-vitro stuff has been invented) in order to be morally consistent?

Again this is a split within the anarchist movement but I would say yes as I see no reason being less intellegent should exclude non human animals from critics of hierarchies

Can animals really consent to anything at all?

Animals can be said to consent to some things even though they cant communicate with langauge they can in other ways and it can be obvoius when an animal is being pleased with its circustances and when they are not even though they dont vocally communicate they still get their opinions out in other ways

I hope I helped and feel free to ask any more questions you have

u/drainmyfish · 2 pointsr/Anarchy101

I read an article about this book "A Rule is to Break:Anarchy for Kids" a few months ago. I don't have any kids but would be interested to read it and see what it has to say, it has some great reviews!

u/jebuswashere · 3 pointsr/Anarchy101

George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia discusses the anarchists in Spain (specifically Barcelona and the surrounding areas) at length.

There's also The Zapatista Reader, edited by Tom Hayden. It's a collection of newspaper articles, speeches, correspondence, and analysis concerning the EZLN in Chiapas, Mexico. I linked to Amazon because, as far as I know, there isn't a PDF version online. You should be able to get it through any public or university library exchange, though.

There are also numerous threads on /r/AskHistorians about Spain, Ukraine, and other anarchist movements; I recommend checking them out.

>Also, are there any other societies which attempted to construct an anarchist society? I heard Paris Commune was one.

The Paris Commune wasn't strictly anarchist per se, but it was close enough to count in my opinion. Additionally, there was the Shinmin Autonomous Region from 1929-1932 in what is now Manchuria, although I'm not aware of much (if any) primary documentation in English. Also, you may want to look into the Magonistas during the Mexican Revolution, as well as the role anarchists played in the Cuban revolution (and more generally, the role they played in that country's anti-imperialist struggles in the 19th and 20th centuries).

u/mosestrod · 3 pointsr/Anarchy101

this is a good book on the topic. Probably the best text is the Anarchist FAQ (again) and Section I - What would an anarchist society look like

u/rappaastute · 1 pointr/Anarchy101


Graeber has another book where he treats this stuff in more detail, it's his first book "Toward an anthropological theory of value: The false coin of our own dreams".

You can find here: https://monoskop.org/images/3/36/Graeber_David_Toward_an_Anthropological_Theory_of_Value.pdf

Or here: https://libcom.org/library/toward-anthropological-theory-value-false-coin-our-own-dreams/


There's also some stuff in his "Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion and Desire", which you can find here:

https://monoskop.org/images/c/c9/Graeber_David_Possibilities_Essays_on_Hierarchy_Rebellion_and_Desire_2007.pdf

You can find all of his books here: https://monoskop.org/David_Graeber


If you like Polanyi, you're going to like this one:

https://www.academia.edu/23497370/Capitalism_mutual_aid_and_material_life_Understanding_exilic_spaces

https://www.amazon.com/Living-Edges-Capitalism-Adventures-Mutual/dp/0520287304

u/doomsdayprophecy · 12 pointsr/Anarchy101

From the reviews it sounds like reactionary garbage.

Check out this plausible review, this lulzy review, and the bottom reviews and top reviews on amazon.

u/NoSelfOtherRating · 137 pointsr/Anarchy101

When I've managed people I've told them several things:

​

  1. I'm not your superior. We just have different roles within this organization.

  2. You're well-being is just as important as mine.

  3. I want to train you on how to do your job, so you can run your part of the show on your own.

    ​

    Resist the urge to tell them what to do. Present a problem and see what they come up with. There's a book called "Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Self-Motivation" which talks about how to support autonomy in the workplace. https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-What-Understanding-Self-Motivation/dp/0140255265/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1EYK0JG0VW6QO&keywords=why+we+do+what+we+do+understanding+self-motivation&qid=1555479585&s=books&sprefix=Why+We+Do+What+We+Do%2Cstripbooks%2C388&sr=1-1

    ​

    Don't make people bend the knee to you. People are not puppets.

    ​

    When one place I worked at was bought out by blood-sucking vampires, I told my reports what was happening and encouraged them to find other options if they could. I took severance pay and left.