Anti-Authoritarianism
So, I've recently come to the realization that anti-authoritarianism is the only political philosophy that any person should adopt. When you think about Politics for an extensive period of time, you realize that the primary concern is not in the creation of some sort of more utopian society, but almost exclusively with the abuse of power. You have to cope with attempts at subjugation before you can even do anything else. There are a lot of ideas and ideals within the libertarian Left, Anarchism, and even Liberalism that are worth substantiating, but, because power has come to be so effectively secured by, primarily, men who often even intend to abuse it, the most effective praxis would ultimately be of some sort of anti-authoritarian philosophy. It's not that I think that things like prefigurative politics or the substantiation of human rights should be totally abandoned; it's just that I think that anti-authoritarianism most adequately addresses not only what generally afflicts us now, but what more or less has throughout almost all of human history.
Comments (85)
Those philosophies are all anti-authoritarian to a greater or lesser degree (anarchism the greatest, liberalism the least).
Well, I mean, if I didn't think that then I wouldn't cite them as having ideas or ideals that should be substantiated.
What I more particularly mean, though, is that the praxis should be slated as a negation of authoritarianism. You ultimately care less about actually reifying what is veritable of the end goals of Communism, the abolition of the State, or effective democracy than you do of not being subject to people in power who abuse their positions. The idea can be summarized as that you have become liberated before you can create any sort of ideal society.
From an Anarchist perspective in what I can only think to refer to as "the West", for instance, a question is how to effectively create Anarchist communities. The primary concern, however, is what are you going to do about the Central Intelligence Agency, the Secret Intelligence Service, probably a set of political factions to have proceeded from the Gehlen Organization in Germany, the far-Right, the most culpable parties of wealth, the Mafia, factions of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, factions of the local police, certain either Neo-Liberal or Neo-Conservative economists, the think-tanks, certain factions of the United States' Military, certain factions of other militaries in the world, a set of somewhat established politicians in the American Right, a set of somewhat established politicians within the European Right, certain new political factions within the American Right, certain political factions within the Right in Europe, the North-Atlantic Treaty Organization, the School of the Americas, etc. etc., basically the various order-enforcing bodies that comprise what Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri refer to in Empire as the "network-power" that they, particularly, are subject to. Within the Anarchist community, of course, the general assumption is that some sort of effective revolution should take place. As violent revolution is likely to result in a sort of asymmetrical clandestine civil war, the prospect of winning seems to me to be incredibly unlikely, thereby suggesting a return to the political violence that occurred beginning more or less with the Red Army Faction in Germany in the late-1960s, which will only result in another wave of both legal and extra-juridical repression, aside from that that whole sort of thing was just kind of terrible in its own right, such strategy, to me, does not seem to be either effective, advisable, or even possible given the current structures of power that exist. Having come to those realizations, it seems like the focus should be upon how to neutralize their antagonists rather than to engage in what, at best, is an exercise in revolutionary reverie. I, of course, don't really know what to do about all of that either, though.
I should also like to point out that, while there are grains of truth to the theory that governance becomes as it does because of systemic flaws, I do mean that there are particular, primarily, men who are particularly responsible for out particular plights who have particularly become so because of authoritarianism. That lengthy list of antagonists may be different if you live in the Russian Federation or what is officially still called "The People's Republic of China", but almost all of the parties who are primarily responsible for almost all of the plights in the world are authoritarian men in their forties who never should've been let into any position of power at all by that they had evidently demonstrated that they intended to abuse such power to secure such positions in the first place.
The point here being that the problem isn't really that what is veritable of the end goals of Communism have yet to have been reified, the State has yet to be abolished, or that democracy is just simply dysfunctional; the problem is that such men have yet to be removed from power.
With all that being said, there's also the strategic aspect of anti-authoritarianism in that it is how you can win all of the political allies that you do want and none of those that you don't. It seems like, seeing that democracy is dysfunctional and revolution impossible, we'll just have to wait for people to luck out upon discovering anti-authoritarianism at a young age and just kind of sticking with that so that something can effectively be done about all of this. Hopefully that'll happen sooner, rather than later.
I used to be of that opinion (and thought it the natural conclusion), but I've come to think quite the opposite by now. You have to build an alternative, superior power structure to displace the old one; you can't just tear down the old one and then move forward from there. The reason is that power vacuums get quickly filled by the worst kind of power structures. In order to keep bad power structures from arising, there has to be some kind of better power structure in place: something that will protect liberty against those who would trample on it, without in the process on it trampling themselves.
That's why I argue that anarchy is not the absence of government, but the limit of good government: what progressively better and better government converges toward. If you just get rid of all government, it will quickly be replaced by the worst kind of government. Instead of doing that, we have to first build a better form of government, with which to displace the bad one. And then build a better one still with which to displace that. Etc. I don't think we'll ever manage to get to perfect liberty, but we can get a lot closer approaching it progressively like than than by tearing everything down and starting over again from the worst of the possibilities.
That's probably a better optimistic worldview to have than to suspect that only anti-authoritarian messiahs can usher in the new age, and I don't entirely disagree. I'm of a strange sort of syncretic political that is neither revolutionary, radical, nor reformist and, yet, all of them at the same time, or at least, was.
I'm an Anarcho-Pacifist, but I left the Anarchist movement in protest of its general proclivities towards crypto-Fascism and political violence and became decidedly a-political. What I found of nonviolent revolution was that believing in it more or less made you a libertarian socialist Pacifist or an Anarcho-Pacifist, and, seeing that those two descriptors can be more or less synonymous, you kind of de facto ascribe to Anarcho-Pacifism, which I actually do, but don't really have any qualms, as some other Anarchists do, with being called a "Socialist" or even a "Liberal". Because of this, in order to get anywhere, you have to get the Anarchist community on your side. As that entails talking them out of violent revolution, which there are a myriad of spurious justifications, appeals via invocation, and over-reactive defense mechanisms for, making it more or less what Anarchist ideology is, that can not be done. An attempt at effective nonviolent revolution is, at best, a sectarian protest, and, at worst, a political crusade. Perhaps other Anarcho-Pacifists will fare better, but dropping out of Anarchism has led me to suspect that I should probably just abandon Politics altogether, which I have, more or less done.
That's kind of off-topic, though.
To me, the situation that we're all in demands that something be done, but it also seems like there just isn't anything that effectively can be done. I realize that this is somewhat absurd conclusion, but I do almost believe that only an anti-authoritarian movement of some sort can effectively change things so that effective change can happen. I agree with your sentiments, however. To me, it seems better, though both arguments can be effectively leveled, to invoke something like the, though I don't really entirely agree with the distinction, positive liberty of free association rather than the negative liberty of the freedom from coercion. At the same time, via an appeal to a kind of realpolitik or something, the actual demand is the freedom from coercion. I would prefer, in good company, to discuss the free association, but, in a court of law, would state that I should be free from coercion. Perhaps that's a concession on my part or a form of interpellation or something. To utilize the distinction between positive and negative liberties, however, it seems like positive liberties can only become pertinent when negative liberties are no longer necessary. Perhaps that distinction should just be deconstructed or something, though.
I'm feeling kind of scatterbrained right now, and, so, apologize if this only seems to make so much sense.
Strange indeed. I think you are utilizing too many labels in your thinking. Pick a label, any label -- communist, neoliberalism, libertarian socialist Pacifist, crypto fascist, or Republican Assholes, and one finds that they really don't fit the intended target all that well [which I don't like because it irritates my discomfort with excessive ambiguity.]
I am an anti-authoritarian whenever the powers-that-be are getting on my nerves, but otherwise I don't see that big a problem with a fair amount of centralized power and authority. We humans are an unruly lot, and it takes a certain amount of centralized power and authority to keep a lid on, and prevent us from wrecking the means of our existence.
All that said, we could certainly do a lot better for ourselves and for the world. We have to find a way of prying the Republican Assholes, crypto fascists, neoliberal death cults, and so forth from their ensconced positions in office.
We'll I'm glad that we agree upon that point.
I do, however, think that the challenge to the concept of authority is well grounded. What has there been historically? There was the Roman Empire to follow the Roman Republic, a litany of feudal warlords or whatever, monarchies, the aristocracy, the nationalism that led to the First World War, Fascism, Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, what I, and some others, refer to as "Empire" that exists now. It's one thing to say not to let a few bad apples spoil the whole batch, but when you can only think of a few good examples, perhaps the idea is just somehow flawed? There is, of course, a difference between authority and authoritarianism. While I do agree with the abolition of all hierarchy, as things now stand, there is something to be said for good leadership or whatever. Even a good authority, though, to me, seems like it ought to abolish even itself, though.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I do identify as being an Anarcho-Pacifist. I had once conceptualized the political philosophy of anti-authoritarian Pacifist Anarchism, but felt that that was a bit redundant. I think that all effective praxis, nonviolent revolution, strikes, certain direct actions, marches, creative endeavors, leafleting, collaboration with the associated press, human rights legislation, civic engagement in the democratic project as it exists now, etc. etc., that reifies Anarcho-Pacifism can and should be simultaneously waged. By "Anarcho-", I do more or less mean libertarian socialism, though am both actually an Anarchist and well aware of that that can be a point of contention within the Anarchist movement. Like I said, though, I actually left the movement and more or less became a-political. I just wanted to find out as to how absurd my theory that people just have to luck out with anti-authoritarianism was.
I was very inspired by Emma Goldman's writing, some 40 years ago. Also inspired by anarcho-syndicalists, and various strands of anarchist / socialist thinking. The trouble with all of these movements is that they existed on paper almost exclusively, not in reality. There are a few anarcho-syndicalists around--associated with the IWW. But they are so few that it doesn't matter.
One can (so I am told) be a solitary monk and do good things (like pray) but being a solitary anarchist, anarchy syndicalist, industrial unionist, or for that matter, a solitary Neoliberal is pointless. Even being a solitary monk or a solitary Lutheran has severe limitations. We are made for community, for work, play, thinking, and mating -- all that stuff -- TOGETHER. Same for being gay; being the only gay guy in the world is very troubling; fulfillment comes in finding others of the same kind.
I was a member of a leftist party of two or three dozen people for some 20 years. We were as ineffectual as everyone else on the far left, but at least we weren't flat-out solitary marxists.
There are a few thousand Americans (maybe enough to fill a soccer stadium) who are seriously interested in socialism, anarchism, and the like. We all insist on our various narrow programs and methods. Too bad, but we can't get together and be community, because we all insist on our individual group's direct pipeline to the truth.
Are you distinguishing between libertarianism and anti-authoritarianism? Even libertarians like a police force to keep some semblance of order. They might argue for a privatized police force, that would be a libertarian stance. Even so they'd delegate the work to someone. I wasn't able to follow the distinction you're trying to make.
You can't be fully anti-authoritarian. I don't want the government constantly asking me how I feel about the soybean subsidies in the latest farm bill. I prefer to let my elected representatives decide these things so I don't have to be bothered. There must be SOME authorities, as open to abuse and corruption as authorities are. What would be the opposite? Popular vote on every single issue? That would be Twitter-ocracy and I think we've already seen that it's a disaster. Rule by the loudest and stupidest.
While big chunk of the people openly support fascism, there is no hope for anarchism of any kind, even if it could overthrow the existing government by force. For anarchism to work, for any form of government to work but especially anarchism, enough people have to actively want it, and few enough people have to actively oppose it.
So the mission is really one of education. Winning hearts and minds. You can’t win peace by violence.
Eh, I'm sort of a notorious "sectarian", and, so, you'll have to rally everyone else against me, but, I will concede the point that being of such an inclination is almost entirely pointless. That's a part of why I just became a-political.
From, let's say, the Left to a set of left-wing Liberals and even, perhaps, a few Centrists, there are a lot of people who ought to be able to get along well enough to engage in some sort of collaborative protest that brings about some sort of change. There are certain propensities or whatever that can result in that that sort of working relationship is just untenable. I can have a conversation with someone who is a Marxist-Leninist, but, because I am an Anarcho-Pacifist, I can't really do something like organize a protest with that same person. The same even goes for certain Anarchists, to be honest. Perhaps I'm just a little too disillusioned, but, I'd like to think that everyone ought to be willing to extend everyone else enough solidarity for things to go well, but I ultimately know that there are certain things that I just shouldn't engage in. To use Anarchism as an example, I'm not entirely sure as to how it is that I feel about showing up at a demo organized by someone with a fanatical bent towards propaganda of the deed, though I actually kind of liked Toward the Creative Nothing, Renzo Novatore, and who is likely to make vehement arguments in favor of the actions of The Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei, as I do suspect that such a person would be likely to be, at best, incredibly reckless.
Being said, though, there are a number of absurdities to ideological purity. Even if you are right, what's the point of being the only one?
Quoting fishfry
Libertarianism sort of began as a left-wing philosophy, but I am specifically referring to anti-authoritarianism and do not mean for it to be synonymous Libertarianism. You could, however, be an anti-authoritarian Libertarian.
I tell people that I think that there should either be an informal set of a-systemic Liberal democratic governing assemblages and Anarchist communes or a "loosely affiliated set of freely associated societies", I use the term "society" not to refer to an "ordered community", but because "groups" doesn't really seem to refer to what I am attempting to describe. The former is really kind of a programmatic approach to the creation of what Murray Bookchin called the "Commune of communes". In short, and without political jargon, I do not agree that there must be some authorities as you say that there must.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I sort of agree. Perhaps there just needs to be a cultural revolution of sorts before there can be any other sort of effective revolution, as I do find that people don't usually tend to know too much about what Anarchism actually is, in so far, of course, that it actually is anything at all, but I wonder if the information isn't just already as far out there as it can get. Anarchists are always trying to get people to read some obscure text or another. There's higher education, but good luck with that. Art, perhaps?
I think that's likely the only way. Get popular media to show people what actual anarchy is supposed to look like. Have scifi or fantasy movies where the status quo ante of the good guys' civilization is explicitly anarchic, then have space wizard fascists or whoever roll in and fuck it up, and the good guys have to fight to win it back without becoming the thing they're fighting.
I'm trying to figure that out. My position would be that a libertarian -- small l, to distinguish libertarians from the collection of oddball wackjobs that tend to make up the Libertarian political party in the US, at least -- sees the need for some authority, to keep order and run the schools and so forth. Libertarians just want as much of the authority as possible to be privatized. There's no reason in theory why police departments couldn't be privatized and quite a lot of other things people typically think of as communal. Highways and the like. But to have no authorities at all? That means that when it's time to build a road, we all have to get out there with picks and shovels?
I must not be understanding you. What does it mean to have no centralized authority at all? How can anything get done? We have to all get together in a big community meeting to decide how to build a road? Nothing could ever get done.
Quoting thewonder
I'd like to see something like this too, in theory. Maybe the loose tribal societies when we lived in caves.
But what about human nature? What happens when the tribe over in the next valley comes under the spell of a charismatic leader who convinces them to come over and steal all our stuff and make us their slaves? We'd have to organize for self-defense. And by far the best way to do that is a command-and-control structure. You could not run a military operation as a commune. As George C. Scott said in Patton: "We defend democracy here. We don't practice it!"
I happen to have seen some of your idealized society in action. In 2011 I attended many of the Occupy protests and was a regular visitor to the encampments in the San Francisco bay area. They had this crazy process of making decisions where everyone had to agree and it took hours to decide the most mundane things. "General Assembly" is the name for it. I'd always joke to myself that whatever the shortcomings of business, they know how to decide things in meeting. You get everyone in a room, everyone has their brief say, and if an obvious consensus doesn't develop, or there's a difference of opinion, the senior person in the org chart makes a decision and everyone else gets on board.
You simply can not function as a group by letting everyone have their say and argue till everyone agrees. There has to be a decision maker, they have to be willing and able to sometimes be arbitrary, and once the top authority figure decides, everyone else has to focus their energy on supporting that decision, even if they disagree with it. There is simply no other way for a group to function than some level of hierarchical power. Which we call authority.
What do you think? Why am I wrong?
It's clear here that you're talking specifically about libertarianism as understood in the United States since the 1970s, which in academia and internationally and historically is called specifically "right-libertarianism" and considered a continuation of liberalism (in the international, historical, academic, non-American sense), whereas "libertarianism" is short for "libertarian socialism" and is a synonym for anarchism. Even Rothbard, who largely pioneered the use of "libertarianism" to mean what Americans commonly take it to mean now, only 50 years ago, said:
[quote=Murray Rothbard in The Betrayal of the American Right, page 83;https://cdn.mises.org/The%20Betrayal%20of%20the%20American%20Right_2.pdf]"One gratifying aspect of our rise to some prominence is that, for the first time in my memory, we, 'our side,' had captured a crucial word from the enemy. 'Libertarians' had long been simply a polite word for left-wing anarchists, that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of the communist or syndicalist variety. But now we had taken it over."[/quote]
NB on a similar note that "anarchism" simpliciter is explicitly a form of socialism, and anarchists generally consider "anarcho-capitalism" to be simply not anarchism at all, because capitalism is incompatible with anarchism, precisely because privatized authority is still authority, it's just even less beholden to the people than democratic authority is.
Also note similarly that libertarian socialism was the older socialism, before so-called Marxists invented authoritarian forms of it; as well as being the original form of libertarianism, as explained above. To libertarian socialists, it kind of beggars the imagination to try to suppose you could have libertarianism without socialism, or socialism without libertarianism, because inequality breeds authority, and authority breeds inequality.
Society needs authorities to be kept from devolving into chaos. People need, and in many cases desire (even if they would deny this, it follows from their actions), to be ruled. Therefore, a discussion about anti-authoritarianism cannot be held without regard for what it would require from the people to live as such. A society without laws would rely on people's personal integrity to behave in a cooperative fashion.
In short, the need for authority is a result of mankind's imperfect nature, and living in a society without authority would require mankind as a whole to make significant steps forward in terms of its intellectual development.
Most governments in history have not been shaped by its people, rather shaped by a select few, or just one person.
Its comes down to how much power should one person, or a group of people, wield over the rest of us when the people wielding the power are just as imperfect as those needing to be ruled.
Once their accumulated power shields them from losing that power after mismanaging that power, then that is when those needing to be ruled should be worried. Life-long politicians like Joe Biden are a great example of this.
Is our voting power an illusion? Is our ability to vote people out of office that are mismanaging their power real and effective in today's political climate? The lack of choices, misinformation in the media, and the ability to buy your way to the top are definite obstacles to the people having real voting power. The divide between the people and those that govern us is becoming wider and wider. In the beginning, the U.S. might have been a government established by the people, but there has been a chasm forming between them for a while now.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Let me give you an example.
Why do politicians tell lies and make promises they know they cannot keep? Why do politicians focus on throwing mud at their competition instead of presenting voters with solid, future-proof policies?
They do these things because it is what gets them votes. If it gets them votes it means it is what the voters want to hear and see. Thereby the behavior of politicians is directly influenced by the voters' preferences, in accordance with the quote "Every country gets the government it deserves."
What would happen if the voters were less gullible that they weren't so easily swayed by false promises? Or if they would immediately reject any politician that engaged in mud throwing as 'unfit for leadership' (which they should)?
Of course one may argue that there are plenty of people who disagree with the politcians' behavior, however as long as that number is not significant enough to affect election results one must still conclude that the majority of voters either like the politcians' behavior or is apathetic towards it.
To be honest, I haven't really put too much thought into questions like "Who will direct the traffic, and so, and so on?" Libertarianism slowly became vaguely synonymous with liberal social attitudes and laissez faire economics during the twentieth century, which is not necessarily what I'm suggesting by anti-authoritarianism.
Quoting Pfhorrest
The depiction of Fascists as evil space wizards is definitely how to make Anarchism possible!
If one is anti-authoritarian he must also dislike coercion, which I think places him on the spectrum of the liberty-minded. What do you think of the concept of liberty and individual freedom?
I do dislike coercion. I believe that the freedom from coercion should be invoked as a primary right of sorts that should be a fundamental aspect of Politics. I'm an Anarcho-Pacifist. To frame this, again, though I don't entirely agree with the distinction, as it concerns positive liberties, I think that people should engage in Politics that are predicated by some sort of free association.
I am openly advocating anti-authoritarianism and so am "liberty-minded". I believe that egalitarianism follows from libertarianism. When engaged in Politics, I think that people should be attempting to effect continual maximal liberty, and, as it follows, continual maximal equality. My assumption is that, from that everyone will always rightfully demand to be as free a possible one can conclude that everyone should also be as equal as possible, as differences in equality are likely to result in implicit hierarchies which will let people take freedom away from others. I also advance that all of this should more or less be carried out through a fairly strict adherence to nonviolence, as violence is necessarily coercive, and, therefore, out of keeping with that people should be as free as possible.
The discourse centered around freedom, to me, seems to have been co-opted by the Right, and even, rather both ironically and ostensibly, the far-Right, which I find to be a very disparaging situation. I love freedom. I am the author of the maxim, "freedom proliferates by its expression alone." Something like total liberation is always necessarily the implicit project, in so far, of course, that there is one, of all of humanity, or even just simply life on Earth. Though I am atheist, I am even somewhat inclined towards a kind of liberation theology that posits that the common liberation of all of humanity is like an eschatological project that will result in an apothetical politic. I'm not, however, quite so optimistic.
I like your thinking here.
I do agree that the right has co-opted "the discourse centered around freedom", but mostly because the other side has largely abandoned it and replaced with some form or other of statism.
So with the continuing encroachment upon our liberties, freedom-loving individuals often find themselves on the side of conservatives given the common enemy. The problem is the tug of war between left and right can only affect the speed, not the direction, of current developments, and the right has many of the same collectivist tendencies of the left. That's why I think the liberty-minded should occupy a different space, away from that spectrum, because it is the only way a new direction can be fostered.
There's a difference between the accusation of "statism" and Stalinism. I don't think people who want things like universal healthcare are, at all, guilty of any form of implicit totalitarianism. I generally state that I'm of the "libertarian Left", and am usually willing to suggest that there is a Left and Right that can be meaningfully invoked, but there is something to that a politic could be created outside of that paradigm, as it can be rather limiting at times.
I fail to understand as to why you side with Conservatives against the "common enemy". It seems like a "freedom-loving individual" such as yourself ought to side with Libertarians and Individualist Anarchists, if you think that Social Democracy, which I do think pails in comparison to democratic socialism, is somehow "statist", which I don't think is quite the right way to put things, but there are grains of truth to.
There has been a historical problem of what you call "collectivism", being more or less the forms of totalitarianism that existed in the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, but I don't really think that, more or less, outside of China, at least, that sort of things is really all the much of a concern anymore. People have gotten over the cult of sacrifice for the greater good of all humanity by now.
As I understand it there are two major strains of 20th century libertarianism. Cosmolibertarians, who are the liberal wing; and paelolibertarians, who are the conservative wing. Paleolibertarians want to be free from government interference so they can educate their kids in evangelical religious schools. Cosmolibertarians want to be free from government interference so they can smoke dope.
Cosmo = https://reason.com/
Paleo = https://www.lewrockwell.com/
You're probably right. I never heard of libertarianism before I discovered a stack of Reason magazines (now reason.com) in the library one day and thought Wow these people get it! Free minds and free markets. I'm no theorist. I tend to agree with the perspective of reason.com, that's about as far as my theorizing goes.
By statism I mean the belief that the state should have substantial control over social and economic affairs. Those who advocate for it advocate for a form of authoritarianism. This is because the state maintains the monopoly on violence and can thus coerce its citizens to relinquish their property for use by the state. It's not despotism proper, but it is what De Tocqueville called "soft despotism".
I side with conservatives regarding their resistance to current tendencies, such as the aforementioned statism, socialism and the growing intolerance against their views. Libertarians and anarchists lack any political power, I'm afraid.
As for collectivism, it's true that it is probably on the decline in tandem with the rise of individualism, and for good reason.
Paleolibertarianism is kind of just a form of Conservatism. I suspect that they claim to be Libertarians for the sole purpose of seeming more liberal-minded. It is a philosophy that advocates for limited government, but, a lot of Conservatives advocate for limited government. Only "cosmolibertarianism" seems to be, at all, though I am kind of a Socialist, in ways, veritable.
Quoting NOS4A2
But what about the social attitudes that Conservatives have towards individual liberties? I don't understand, when you seem to be of an either Post-Left Anarchist or Rational Egoist, in which case, I could, in part, understand, inclination, as to why it is that you would support people who are in favor of social repression.
I’m just a liberal. I do not align with a conservative’s social or even fiscal attitudes. Though I find valuable insight from many conservative thinkers, I do not align with many of their views on how a country should be governed, especially because, as I said, they fail to offer a different direction for society.
A Liberal in what sense, then? Like, Classical Liberalism?
Like “classical liberalism“, yes, but I would just call it liberalism. Rather than compromise between the tendencies of right and left with all sorts of political triangulation, like so-called neoliberalism, liberalism would prefer to go elsewhere, towards liberty.
I understand that “liberal” and “liberalism” has little to do with any political movement that goes under that name today. But I will retain the label.
Liberalism is fine, but I am still confused as to why you believe the way towards liberty is to ally yourself with Conservatives, especially when you don't agree with them. It seems like you'd be better off just trying to find some more like-minded people or more amicable allies.
I don’t believe that’s the way towards liberty, nor have I implied that. Like I’ve said, I side with them wherever they resist current encroachments.
The consistent Authoritarion super ad hominem postage is generally a sign of lack of skills eloquence and paranoia.
And a weird touch of scatological homoeroticism as well. Sign of the times, I suppose.
Although they don't know anything about you, Asif, they have well fixed stereotype for you as you mentioned "Free Speech". Your know in the box of "people who speak of Free Speach".
Just like the weird dedication to a leader of a foreign country, our Canadian. Sign of times too? :snicker:
Ah,so "free speech" will now put me in some kind of "conservative" trope. If only they knew what politics I subscribe to!!!
Perhaps. I’m more American than Canadian. I suppose that’s the benefit of a multicultural society—I get to retain my culture at the expense of a new one.
Yep, you got it.
You have only made 20 comments on this forum and some people are eager to judge/disregard/condemn you from that.
I believe him. Becoming an American is easy. Becoming a Finn is really hard. My wife has lived in Finland for 18 years and she is an citizen (finally) of the country, but she really doesn't feel as if she would be a Finn and thinks she will never be one.
Its truely bizarre and patronising how people who claim to value truth and "oppose" authoritarian groups are so quick to get triggered by folks defending Free Speech. Pot kettle black.
It’s true. The melting-pot vs multicultural society is an interesting dichotomy. I have trouble identifying as Canadian despite my citizenship, no matter how much hockey or maple syrup I imbibe.
But out of respect for the OP we should return to the topic if you can think of any way to swing it in that direction.
A single elite group with a monopoly on law,taxation,violence,printed money,education yada yada.
Authority is having ONE Author a copy book of laws and traditions designed to restrict and treat people as purely economic resources for the benefit and stability of the said elitist authority.
No getting round this point. The current covid climate emphatically highlights what the motives and aims of govts have always been.
Freedom has ZERO relation to govern ment. (Latin for mind control.)
Divide et impera.
It is especially the philosopher types who fall for it. They are the first ones. Not all, but some.
You only have to sprinkle a bit of a benign ideology, refer to a good sounding cause, and their all for it. It is this certain type of philosopher that absolutely loves and cherishes authorities and authoritarianism.
Perhaps these certain type of "philosophers" hope that they are now living at a crucial point of time where something extremely important is happening and that the society will change dramatically, if they will participate in giving the correct push. And of course, as they are participating in this great endeavor, it makes them important. Hence especially philosophers can opt for the radical change, so away totally with the old!
Just ask yourself, how many great philosophers have been taken as a cornerstone of an ideology of an political movement that has tried to radically transform the society and that in the end has utterly failed with only ending up just killing a mass of people on the way? We surely don't hold the actual philosophers responsible themselves, but surely someone has had to take the cause very seriously.
Guys like Plato and moses laid the written foundations for large scale fascism and elitism. I blame them 100% they knew what they were doing. And its that narcissism
and will to power that drove these men.
What I was saying in my post was ironic, thats why I put the thinkers emoji there. I'm suggesting these people considered "philosophers" great or otherwise are really Authoritarian rhethoricians and politic sophists concerned with ruling and dictating to society.
Real philosophers are concerned only with individual and Real Freedom.
Well, don't blame Machiavelli for writing things as they were with power in his time. He made his most famous book for a genuine Prince, not the public. If someone correctly writes about an issue, it then really is about that issue.
We never should forget the time and place where these smart people lived and observed the World around them. They could not anticipate a totally different World that we now live in. So when you say "real philosophers are concerned only with individual and Real Freedom", notice you are talking from the viewpoint of today. Two or three hundreds years from now people might disagree with you just what philosophers ought to be concerned with now. With their hindsight of this century and the next one, they could make a convincing case why you are wrong.
We can do that, NOS4A2.
Because we both aren't Americans, but do understand how important for Americans is the belief in the US: the belief in their constitution and the freedoms on what their country stands and what it means to themselves. And those ideals in my view do stand for anti-authoritarianism, for freedoms of the individual.
(After all, it's just a revolt against taxes that has made you separate. If a British king would and his administration would have played their cards better, "the 14th Colony" of Nova Scotia might be part of the large North American state now part a Commonwealth and you would living with your southern neighbors in the same country with a post stamps depicting Queen Elisabeth II. Totally possible in a not so alternate reality, in my view. Yeah, there wouldn't be any US, just a Canada and Mexico on it's border at the south.)
Yet if Americans see themselves as beacon of Freedom, they surely have to have self criticism to be open about slavery and discrimination and things like that they indeed have supported authoritarian regimes. Unfortunately if that criticism is the only thing mentioned, then it is easy portray the American experiment to be a lie and really just as authoritarian as other countries.
My point is you cannot reform what is intrinsically Authoritarian and ruthless and so the real philosophers who see through this focus on individual freedom and truth. Think Guatma Buddha. Apolitical practical and concerned with human individual flourishing only.
I agree. People who believe that the existing forms of power and control are the only ones will have difficulties in thinking that things could be different.
Well, thank you NOS4A2.
Quoting ssu
Machiavelli was, I think, bit, but not too much more culpable than Nietzsche, who wasn't terribly, but sort of culpable. "Machiavellianism" was terrible enough, I suspect, for self-respecting libertarian socialists to refer to it as "barbarism". In Plato's case, though I don't really know think that his ideas were cited in the creation of the Roman Empire, his ideas were not in keeping with the times, so to speak, as they did have direct democracy in Ancient Greece. He did have a lot better of attitudes towards women than a lot of other people at the time, though.
Quoting ssu
I think that there's something to the ideals that inspired the American Revolution, but for American patriotism to have become so lost in jingoism, beginning, in this regard, more or less with the Vietnam War that I find myself rather unwilling to be willing to invoke anything other than the First Amendment in arguments over just what the democratic project is and how it is to be carried out. The United States has, since the Cold War, become sort of geo-political bale for most other nations in the world, which is how I can see where the resentment comes from. There's a quote from the film, Z, by a Communist who is affiliated with the Pacifist politician who gets assassinated. He says, "always blame the Americans, even if you're wrong." Because our Intelligence service, to my estimation, is responsible for the survival of the far-Right after the Second World War, there is something to that logic, but I have found that Europeans can become somewhat lost in an odd kind of anti-American European chauvinism even to the point of, proceeding from, perhaps, a veritable critique of Liberal democracy, becoming almost oddly anti-democratic. It's not everyone; that's just a thing that I've noticed.
Quoting Asif
I'm not who this question is addressed to, but, I'll go ahead and answer it. A belief system does imply that a person does a system, and, therefore, an order that does hazard becoming somehow regimated, of, well, beliefs. Even Anarchism, when it becomes an ideology, can become authoritarian. I'm of the opinion that people should be politically a-political and a-politically political, which is to say that they should be against Politics as such, as so much of it is comprised of a contest of ideologies, but not necessarily against Politics, as it does seem like it ought to be vaguely synonymous with something like "conflict resolution". Having found myself in more or less every circle on the Left, I've come the realization that some of what I suspect for most people who become a-political to suspect about Politics is true. Most political groups are only really sort of devoted to their cause and are just trying to use their supporters in some way or another. Politics, regardless as to what it should be, is comprised of kind of a lot of personal feuds, usually concerning political power, but, on more occasions than you might expect, can more or less be chalked up to male chauvinism, which most people have no real reason to engage in whatsoever. It is kind of just a lot of people shouting without having any real idea of what they're saying and everyone really does attempt to push everyone around. There are grains of truth to all of the common platitudes that you hear about Politics and other absurdities that people don't necessarily notice. Jacques Camatte, for all that there is that is veritable of his theories, and I do think that there are aspects of his theories that are veritable, really did kind of write Communism into being him living in his home in the wilderness. Even though I do sort of agree with Simone Weil, the prospect of actually abolishing all political parties does seem to be entirely absurd. What is a person supposed to do? Entry a political party with the sole intent of destroying it? How will the party become destroyed when you could just easily be kicked out of it? When you think about it all with an open mind, you come to a lot of absurd conclusions. They're not entirely true, but there are grains of truth to them that can be helpful to get across at times. Even being a-political is somewhat absurd, as effectively making it so that a person does not have to engage in Politics ends up involving quite a lot of Politics in the practice of doing so.
A governance that actually substantiates freedom, as it follows, equality, predicated upon nonviolence, the praxis in the creation of which should meaningfully invoke free association and solidarity, wouldn't, perhaps, have abolished authority entirely, but would be a step in the right direction in the general anti-authoritarian movement. It could be anything from a more participatory democratic Liberal democracy to the Commune of communes.
The entire ideology of politics is predicated on coercion and taxation. The only thing politics is good for to a philosopher is to criticise. The philosopher lives in the gaps of the state. And creates his own gaps. Mind the gap!
That’s one of the things I enjoy about western culture in general, and American culture in particular. It has more or less vanquished its monsters. We have recognized and transcended our crimes, and continue to do so. That’s something to be proud of.
Given that, a nation cannot forever identify with its monsters, especially when freedom won out over oppression. That seems to be the case with the anti-Americanism, and in my estimation, authoritarianism pervading the culture these days.
In so far that there is some sort of revolution or something, I actually have a plan for this. It's kind of nebulous as what I'm suggesting are basically ethical interment camps, but I do feel like it is the most humane solution to this problem. People who have abuse their positions of power and are likely not to wage a counter-revolution against whatever the new system of governance is could be placed in what I call "Communities in Isolation". It'd basically be like a cross between a white-collar mental institution and a retirement community. There'd only be two floors, you'd be able to go outside, there'd be activities such as music and arts and crafts, you'd be able to have visitors, there'd be comfortable beds, clean individual washing areas, good health professionals, good locally sourced organic food, a few televisions, good books in the library, video games, board games, cards, maybe even swimming, trips even, perhaps, basically anything that you could ever want for a mental institution to be like. In a way, it'd sort of be like a utopian planned community, but for people who have abused their positions of power, the purpose of which was to reform them. There'd only be two floors, with the bottom floor being the commons area wouldn't be too much of an issue because you wouldn't need to send that many people to them. The Central Intelligence Agency, for instance, only has 21,575 employees. Even if a fourth of them had to go to a Community of Isolation, the CIA, probably having the highest percentage of people who would need to placed in such a facility, that's only around 5,000 people. Let's say 40,000 people total, and that's kind of an overestimate. As the CIA would be dissolved, their 2.3 billion dollar budget could probably cover that by itself. They'd be so nice that anyone who is of such an ilk or whatever would just want to give whoever up in order to drop out of whatever the society that they're a part of is like. They could also serve as the model for prison reform. People'd probably only ever even be there for two to eight years. I haven't really done any research into how to actually carry this out, but, something like that, I think, could resolve the problem of what to do about the authoritarians. Putting them in ethical interment camps isn't the most ideal solution imaginable, as somehow convincing them to stop being authoritarians would be, but, as that'll take years for just one person, it's kind of the only ethical thing to be done. Even if you're okay with just killing them, which I'm not, you then inevitably have to think about how to get the military to decide not to fire upon its citizens in a revolution, eliminate them, in which case, when they could be placed in something like Communities in Isolation, why?, and, then, also have the military agree not to make you, then, subject to them when they just carried out the revolution for you, which is just far too nebulous to engage in.
With all that being said, though, I'd really prefer not to think about what an ideal society should be like in terms of what kind of ethical interment camp I intend to put people who are just currently incompatible with it or whatever in. Without there being systemic rewards for authoritarian behavior, I do think that, aside from special interest cases or whatever, the authoritarian personality type or whatever will just more or less disappear.
Coercion is impossible to do away with entirely given that there does not yet exist a perfect society, but it should always be being continually minimalized.
I also think this gaps idea is kind of interesting.
Society is one of those nebulous words.
Coercion is the original and only sin.
Haha. Let me know when the anti-authorities are in charge.
I've read a good bit of Nietzsche, but don't quite remember that bit. I might have to read that again if you remember where it's from.
My theory about original sin, though I'm an atheist, is that evil is exploit cruelty, usually in the form of coercion, but sometimes otherwise, and to conspire to continue to do so further, or rather that the foundational basis for evil is something like that. I think that it begins as psychological manipulation, progresses into psychological warfare, and then becomes authoritarianism. In a way, it's just psychological, or, rather, as I see, pathological, but there is also that society, as it stands now, rewards such a way of going about things to a certain extent, though, perhaps, and thankfully, only implicitly.
Well, I mean, I do realize that is sounds pretty absurd, but as more or less of even the libertarian Left's revolutionary praxis involves anything from just sort of strategically killing as few of them as possible to just kind of killing whoever however and for whatever reason, I do think that it is a better solution that what most people come up with. It is only given a nonviolent revolution. Otherwise, what leads people to be authoritarian should just be eliminated, which is probably the best way to go about things, anyways.
I agree with most of your psychological analysis of cruelty. I would add that it is explicit in the elite echelons of politics. Every natural politician has that innate cruelty
and this is one virtue all Authoritarians live by. And they are praised by the populace as being "great leaders"...
The folly of politics!
Like I said, that solution is only given a revolutionary scenario, though contemporary prisons ought to be reformed into being something like, anyways, in so far that they should even exist. If there's a revolution than there's going to be a counter-revolution and what can be done about the counter-revolution is to either kill them or put them in jail. Since killing them is fraught with ethical and strategic quandries, the only solution is to put them in jail. Rather than place them in prison as we have come to understand them today, I have chosen to conceptualize Communities in Isolation, which are technically internment camps, though they wouldn't have to work, and I should hope that such notions don't throw a rose-colored shade upon the history of internment camps, but are intended to isolate the minimal amount of people for the minimal amount of time in the best of possible conditions. Like I said, though, it's probably best not to conceptualize any sort of ideal society along such lines.
Realistically speaking, there's probably some sort of way, with a bit of imagination, to avoid even that, and, so, I may retract such statements at a later date.
I just reread Thus Sparch Zarathustra not too long ago. I'll have to leaf through it to find the quote.
There is still a kind of duplicitous cutthroat aspect to Politics, as well as the reverence for historical "great men", but I hope that those sort of things are on their way out. As contemporary Politics stand, I do consider for myself to be a-political, as I just don't think that they're all that great, but, I don't think that Politics, referring to what Wikipedia defines as "is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status", is necessarily flawed somehow, and hope that our circumstances will improve. There are all kinds of problems, but the biggest issue, to me, seems to be an avarice as it concerns power.
ruthlessly authoritarian! In other words just a changing of the vanguard. And in modern democracies the elite have know that revolutions are untenable given modern popular culture and are not good for business or stability.
You cannot overcome political coercion with more political coercion. Politics is intrinsically about an elite coercing a majority as long as the majority get enough bread circuses and ego esteem and nationalist pride.
Freedom comes from the Individual Outside the govt perusal.
Well, I mean, like, the Anarchist movement isn't really funded by George Soros. There could be such a movement without that kind of funding. I'm only so into nonviolent revolution anyways, though. Like I said, I became more or less a-political.
foxes. Revolution! How many lies have been told in the name of this concept!
Marx was really an evil man.
Eh, I have some, but not too many qualms with Marx. I think in the Soviet Union, it was pretty clear that the most culpable party was Josef Stalin. Vladimir Lenin and even Leon Trotsky were only so much less culpable, though. The issue with Marxism is, I think, how it has been put into effect, à la more or less Marxism-Leninism and Maoism, and not necessarily Marx himself. I don't blame Friedrich Nietzsche for the Third Reich, and, so, why should I blame Karl Marx for the abuse of the Communist project?
Being said, though, seeing that even my own minimally coercive post-revolutionary strategy somewhat absurdly seems to necessitate "Communities in Isolation", revolution, even nonviolent revolution, is probably not all that its cracked up to be. You could probably just get whomever out of power through peaceful protest however and just set up whatever so that they couldn't be able to overturn the revolution or whatever, but, you'd, then, have to banish them from the political sphere, which is also quite nebulous. When all of Politics needs to be so radically reformed that it ceases to exist as such, though, I'm not entirely sure as to what kind of ideal strategy could be put forth other than nonviolent revolution.
It seems like the best thing to do, politically, is to just create your own communities and try to change things however, though that would tend to rely more upon radical reform than revolution, but, I do think could still be leveled from an Anarchist, specifically Anarcho-Pacifist in my case, though, like I said, I did leave the Anarchist movement in protest of its general proclivities towards crypto-Fascism and political violence and become decidedly a-political, praxis. The community events and protest are really what to do and to engage in adventurist terrorism, believe that you can incite an effective global revolution, or that you are, in point of fact, the contemporary Mahatma Gandhi is not. We do live in a world with over seven billion people and do have effect upon them and it, but, any act that is not somehow of the final project of all of humanity isn't futile on account of not having actually created the best of all possible worlds. I've found that people tend to get swept up into things like "creating history". You should learn to mediate historical events so that you can retain agency with their occurrence, but, there's something that's kind of authoritarian to believing that you should cultivate a cult of personality as some sort of heroic renegade whose acts are somehow supposed to bring about some sort of new way of living. It's kind of like claiming to be a holy person.
I don't know. People should just be open-minded and not take themselves too seriously. The best that almost anyone can do is just simply to live and treat others well, anyways. I'm happy with having left Politics behind me, but do hope for the best for the future for everyone else. It's best to remain as optimistic as you can, I think. Anyways, I am going to leave now, as I have kind of a compulsive habit of using the internet and too many things to do now. I'll see you whenever!
Only thing that held societies together, is their authority, like politicians, army, police etc.
Let's call it "The Final Solution". Do you not notice how you have become your enemy?
Is not an authoritarian one who has a clear idea of how things ought to be and seeks to impose it on the others whether they like it or not? An anti authoritarian on the other hand, has a clear idea of how things should be...
...but only seeks to impose it on others that don't like it.
I'm not sure we can equivocate anti-authoritarianism with anti-authority because an authority is capable of defending rather than limiting individual freedoms. For instance I think it necessary that any free population organize a force to protect and defend themselves from attacks on their rights and property. If we are so anti-authority that we can't even create such a force to defend ourselves from threats to our freedoms, we are subject to Popper's paradox of tolerance.
I meant that the incentives towards authoritarian behavior should be removed and not that authoritarians should be systematically eliminated. The structure of society as such should altered so that it doesn't reward authoritarian behavior.
Once, after the revolution, you banish them from the political sphere, you effectively end up having to imprison them somehow when they attempt to violently overthrow whatever has to come to take their place. Technically speaking, that would be an internment camp. Rather than create a 'soft'-concentration camp for authoritarians, I was suggesting that a rehabilitative facility that people would only ever end up in for so long would be a better option.
All of this is given a hypothetical scenario wherein a nonviolent revolution has been effectively carried out. Once a government or governments are ousted, whatever new way of going about whatever there is will take their place. They can participate within that. In so far that they are disruptive, they may have to not be let to do so. In so far that they, then, decide to violently, as they will be let to protest otherwise, overthrow the new way of going about things, I can't really see another resolution to that crisis other than to place them in something like a Community in Isolation. You could protest them doing that and that may work, but they may just slaughter people en masse. As it is still conditional upon an effective nonviolent revolution for the security forces to decide not to fire upon a civilian populace, the security forces can, then, employ the kind of "soft-policing powers" that that guy from Aufheben received all of that flak for, somewhat justifiably, though I can see that that is useful in this regard, to arrest them without situations escalating to the point where there is an exchange of fire. There's probably bound to be a few cases, but, when you could probably greatly improve the livelihood of everyone on the planet on Earth by dramatically decreasing the number of people who are somehow imprisoned and dramatically increasing the livelihood of those who are, as well as the length of their sentences, with marginal casualties, I don't think that nonviolent revolution should be entirely ruled out because it somehow isn't quite anti-authoritarian enough or can not entirely do away with the State or whatever from the immediate outset. I don't know if you've ever encountered a person such as those who I am referring to, but, though I have qualms with that this is kind the best that I can come up with, as they are vile, debased, and have an excessive and ruthless avarice for power, that I am suggesting that they should be placed in something like a Community of Isolation for two to eight years is really more than kind. Most people just say that you should kill them en masse. As it is part and parcel to the idea that the Communities in Isolation will be nice enough for them to be willing to give each other up, I don't foresee too much danger in that people won't take what is a sincere attempt to, given an effective nonviolent revolution, enforce as minimal of repression as humanly possible seriously enough.
In so far that there is not a nonviolent revolution, what systemically allows for authoritarian behavior, provisions, laws, profit incentives, etc. etc., and what rewards it should be countered so that it can be abolished. As nonviolent revolution is rather grandiose, and does still pose an Ethical quandary, that sort of thing is probably primarily what people should be up to anyways.
Anyways, I am leaving, and, so, I'll just have to leave everyone with that, I guess. As I said before, it's probably best not to think of any ideal society upon such lines and to avoid them if, at all, possible. I'll see you all when or if ever, though. Until then!
It only gets them votes from their party members. No one tries to cross party lines any more. It seems to me that most independents are the ones that are tired of politics as usual while the Dems and Reps keep voting for the status quo. It is they that have established an "us vs. them" mentality, as if the only solutions can only by provided by one party and any solutions provided by the other shouldn't be supported because it is from the other party. And then there are those potential voters that don't vote for anyone. I believe that the resentment against politics as usual is growing and evident in the growing number of independents.
And whose fault is that? Surely this can be attributed to the voters as much as the politicians.
Do your revolutionary history. It's not just a theory of mine; you the revolutionary is just the sort of person that gets banished from the political sphere. You cannot help yourself, your every proposal is a litany of authoritarian language - impose, eliminate, banish, incarcerate.
[quote=Audre Lorde]The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House[/quote]
The ones that benefit from you voting for them and not the other guy. It is in the politicians best interest to get you to think that only one party or candidate is righteous and the other evil. If not to vote for them then vote against the other candidate, either way they get your vote because most people maintain the two party status quo.
This plays into what I was saying about the voters being barraged by misinformation perpetuates more ignorance by the media.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Every person has a responsibility in this regard, for thinking for themselves and being critical of what they are told.
This portrayal of voters as victims of misinformation is something I dislike, because this seems to treat people as children who do not know any better, rather than independent agents. Many voters may be ignorant, but I consider it within their capability and responsibility to make it not so.
As such, the misleader and the misled are both part of this problem.
It depends on you knowing that you're misinformed. It also puts the burden on voters to find the truth rather than the burden be on the politicians to tell the truth. Those with the power should be held to higher standard.
Quoting Tzeentch
So you're telling me that voters vote for people that they know lie?
Not quite. I regard the burden as shared.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Perhaps. Though, I find it difficult to imagine why the bar should be lowered for those who are not in power.
Quoting Harry Hindu
No. Like I said, many are probably quite ignorant. Yet, it is my view that those who are ignorant have both the capability, the means and the responsibility to make it not so, or at the very least recognize their own ignorance!
Raising the bar for those that weild the power isn't necessarily lowering it for others. Those without power don't have any responsibility in weilding what they don't have.
I like that Lorde quote, but you're not actually, like, reading what I'm saying.
I'm well aware of the history of the ban. Again, though, that's just what that is. Let's say that there's a nonviolent revolution and a participatory democracy is created. When a person who had a different status of power before and they, then, attempt to disrupt the new political process and you make it so that they can't participate in the new political process for that reason, you do effectively banish them. I would impose a ban as per Roman law or attempt to reduce the status of the person to bare life as per the Third Reich or something, but, it is probably the case that, given an effective revolution, there are people who you will have to make it so that they can't participate within the new political process. Somehow, Giorgio Agemben seems to think that forms-of-life resolve this conundrum, but, as his writing style is so arcane, I still don't understand how that is.
The point that I'm really trying to get at is is that even nonviolent revolution poses kind of a lot of Ethical quandaries that kind of lot of people don't really take into consideration. I don't really have the resolution for them. I'm just kind of tossing ideas out there. I'm not advocating some sort of ostensibly anti-authoritarian dictatorship of the proletariat following a revolution; I'm just trying to minimize the requisite repression given such a scenario. It's difficult to explain as to just what that is as the existent security apparatus is of a punitive framework. For instance, by "soft-policing powers", I don't really mean to imply what that actually refers to, but just of some sort of maximal minimization of escalation and harm. You can immediately establish some sort of ideal society, such as an informal set of asystemic Liberal democratic, proceeding from human rights law or whatever, governing assemblages and an Anarchist communes, the "Commune of communes" or what is veritable of the end goals of Communism, or whatever other kind of societies, communities, groups, w/e, as a kind of plurality of of political or even a-political communities predicated upon something like free association given a participatory democratic what I identify as "Anarchist", though some might claim is a "Libertarian Communist" project wherein participation is not compulsory, but is open to all, that people should like to create those things aside, but it doesn't seem like you can actually entirely do away with any form of repression whatsoever from the immediate outset. I'm not trying to make a crypto-authoritarian justification of heavy handed repression; I'm just trying to figure out as to how it is that the requisite repression can be minimized. Rehabilitative justice and a somewhat radically reconceptualized strategy concerning the security apparatus, wherein, by way of what is kind of a transitional program, though, again, that's another misleading term, such strategies would only be temporal and designed to abolish themselves eventually, which is not suggest that you shouldn't immediately begin to dismantle the security apparatus, but, as I am loathe to admit, there are, perhaps, aspects of it, such as those which the United Nations, with a certain degree of both veracity and pretense, claims to enforce, that may still need to be put into effect. I am an Anarchist, or, at least, was, but, if you want for something like human rights law to be effective, then, you do have to expect that there will be people who will ensure that it is.
All of this is pure conjecture, anyways, as it is probably unlikely that an effective nonviolent revolution will occur.
Trigger Warning: Brief mention of domestic violence.
Let's say that there is a coalition of anti-authoritarians who effectively wage a nonviolent revolution. It'd probably be more or less comprised of, exclusively, for the sake of brevity, in terms of only political inclinations in regards attitudes towards liberty and economics, as I, of course, wouldn't exclude people concerned with racial justice, LGBTQ+ activists, environmentalists, etc. etc., but don't want for this list to be more than a paragraph long, Libertarian Communists, certain left-wing Communists, some Communization theorists, libertarian socialists, some Autonomists, Anarchists, some democratic socialists, the peace movement, some left-wing Liberals, certain Libertarians, Centrists who are ultimately sympathetic to the libertarian Left, and a set of other theoretical political philosophies that can effectively be inclined towards anti-authoritarianism. As, in order to effectively wage a nonviolent revolution, such a coalition will have needed to have gained mass support, the new political process will, then, have a majority comprised of people who are necessarily inclined towards libertarianism and, in this example, and I would argue that it does follow, egalitarianism. If you are an Individualist Anarchist, which I am not not necessarily, you would probably create a different coalition, but, for the sake of argument, permit me an example. People who were of, for lack of a better term, more authoritative political philosophies, such as less radical Liberalism, Social Democracy, less radical Centrism, or other forms of Libertarianism, would probably want to participate within the political process created by the anti-authoritarian coalition and would form a significant minority, again, for lack of a better term, pragmatic wing. I'm inventing statistics, here, at random, but, let's say that sixty percent of the populace or whatever is aligned with the anti-authoritarian coalition and twenty percent of the populace forms the pragmatic wing. Eighty percent of the populace now agrees with the new political process. That twenty percent of the populace is in opposition to the new political process as such does present a significant threat to it, but does not warrant that they can be excluded from it, as, over time, most of them can be assimilated within the pragmatic wing or may even come around to any of the anti-authoritarian political philosophies that they were in opposition to. The problem is not necessarily that there will be people who disagree with the new political process, but just that, at least, from the outset, there are bound to be people who are either "reactionary", meaning that they are of an intransigent, for lack of better term, recalcitrance wherein they are just simply opposed to the new political process without really taking anything into consideration whatsoever, or "extreme", meaning that they are willing to attempt to overturn the new political process by whatever means that they can. Let's say that only ten percent of the opposition is either reactionary or extreme, with only five percent of it being extreme. It is a test of the validity of the new political process to cope with that there will be a reactionary element. That will have to be countered within the political process. In so far that that is effective, the reactionary element will diminish. Assuming that it does, in our somewhat idealized hypothetical scenario, we have now gotten ninety-five percent of the populace to more or less agree with the new political process. Again, as this is a hypothetical situation wherein something like the network-power of the Central Intelligence Agency has been dissolved through a nonviolent revolution, I am just inventing statistics at random. How does the new political process cope with the remaining five percent? It is likely that, given such a scenario, there will be a set of political factions, exo-Fascists, various Fascists and Neo-Fascists, various Third Positionists, authoritarian Neo-Conservatives, duplicitous Neo-Liberals, various Monarchists and other people who want some sort of return to the aristocracy, certain religious fundamentalists, as well as, though it is unlikely that these two sets of people will ally themselves with one another, certain Marxist-Leninists, Maoists, Marxist-Leninist-Maoists, people who ascribe to Mao Zedong Thought, certain Populists, though, as I did frame this as being a political movement that is more or less of the libertarian Left, it is likely that people of more authoritarian left-wing political philosophies will, at least, attempt to come around to the new political process, which is not to say that they don't pose a predicament in their own right, but, just to suggest that it will differ from that of the either reactionary or extreme Right, as well as, though they are probably likely to find themselves with whatever "strange bedfellows", people who ascribe to a kind of authoritarian Centrism, who, especially after having been removed from power, are likely to attempt to disrupt the new political process by any means necessary. In so far that they are effective in doing so and in violation of whatever substantial rights, so to speak, or whatever there are to ensure that the new political process is genuine, such as the freedom from coercion or something like free association, they may actually need to be removed from the political process. It does seem entirely absurd to let someone read passages from Mein Kampf for hours on end and openly advocate for the systemic elimination of Jews in the name of inclusion, given that there is something like a participatory democratic process. I don't think that a person needs to be dragged out into the street and shot because of that they had, in anger, called someone a "k**e", but there are spheres of discourse to where the freedom of speech just doesn't really extend. Let's say that two percent of the opposition extremists do have to be prevented from participating in the new political process. The remaining three percent could, perhaps, be entertained, so to speak, so long that their abuse of the new political process does not become so consuming that all that anyone any longer does is to attempt to talk them out of their authoritarian ethos. Now that we have, and I do use such language so as not to lie about what this is, though I clearly don't think that such Politics should be carried out as they have historically, banned two percent of the populace from participating within the new political process, what are we to do about how it is that they may retaliate for having been banned? Let's say that one percent of them may engage in some sort of protest or another that, perhaps, should be taken into some sort of consideration, but will probably just more or less be the sort of thing that is just sort of tolerated and can be considered to be akin to certain social phenomenons, such as, though I would not malign such an either spiritual or religious ethos entirely, someone who is a Satanist, but kind of takes the potentially evil aspect of Satanism a little too far. On some level, a young person who insists upon wearing an all-black trench coat to high school every day doesn't really have the right to freely express themselves as such, as they are kind of exploiting the cult aspect of their way of presenting themselves as an implicit threat, but if an Anarchist society is incapable of coping with something that could be akin to that some people just got a little too far into Black Metal, then I don't think that the political philosophy can be meaningfully invoked whatsoever. That there would be such people is, again, another test to the validity of the new political process. Let us, again, assume that it passes. We are now left with the one percent of reactionary opposition extremists who are likely to engage in political terrorism. Even though this set of political factions, left totally unchecked, is only likely to be able to garnish the support of ten percent of the populace, and, therefore, only provide so significant of a threat to the new political process, it does seem evident to me that that they will attempt to engage in political terrorism by way of some sort of counter-revolution should be prevented. There are strategies, à la the First Earth Battalion or the protest that sought to levitate the Pentagon, that could, perhaps, be tried, but, what realistically seems apt is that whatever it is that was veritable of the security apparatus should be repurposed, radically conceptualized, and put into effect. As I support the full decriminalization and legalization of all narcotics, though along with some sort of way to ensure their responsible use, the only criminal plights that I can foresee becoming a problem relate to coercion. As people would no longer be living under a hyper-competitive form of capitalism, I would project that, though, again, there would be some cases, coercion that isn't somehow politically motivated would dramatically decrease, leaving only politically motivated coercion, which, to an extreme degree constitutes political terrorism, as the only primary criminal plight. With that being said, however, I, even in this hypothetical, am only one actor and can not decide for the entire coalition as to how a nonviolent revolution should be carried out or what should be set into motion after the fact, though, given that we have hypothesized a genuinely anti-authoritarian nonviolent revolution, would insist that all narcotics should, at least, be decriminalized. To return to my argument, however, when dealing with reactionary opposition extremist political terrorists, you can either kill or imprison them. I am suggesting that you should imprison them. Rather than imprison within the punitive criminal justice system that exists now, I am suggesting that a rehabilitative justice system should be created. At a random conjecture, I would suggest that such people could get out of a Community in Isolation on good behavior in six months and that, regardless as to what they do while there, there should be a cap on sentences of fifteen years. As there are bound to be a lot of Psychologists who are fascinated by the problem of evil, I don't think that it would be too difficult to staff such a facility with good people who were sincerely devoted to a rehabilitative justice project. As, eventually, society should develop so that what originates such behavior would no longer occur, they would only be temporary. As I do also think that most of the security apparatus, as there is only so much of it that is veritable, should be immediately dismantled, I am not advocating some sort of quasi-totalitarian, but, ostensibly anti-authoritarian, transitional program. I am positing that the problem of what more or less will probably almost exclusively be Fascist terrorism will still exist, even given that there has been an effective nonviolent revolution and some sort of, probably participatory democratic, political process that would not be compulsory, but would be open to all, to have taken the place of the only so veritably Liberal democratic representative democracy that exists now. In order to cope with that, what I am suggesting is that, though largely diminished, some of the security apparatus can be repurposed sort of along the lines of what the United Nations, at least, purports itself to do. Given that there is an effective revolution, people will have to cope with that a counter-revolution will be attempted to be waged. What I am suggesting is that, in order to cope with that, a temporal, radically reconceptualized, and diminished security apparatus should, predicated upon things like deescalation, the minimization of harm, and the minimal requisite repression, be put into effect. It does seem like people will still, for a period of time, need to be protected from, what, again, will probably more or less exclusively be Fascist terrorism, and for human rights to be substantially upheld, even given an effective nonviolent revolution. As that such things are even necessary does indicate that such a strategy is not entirely ideal, I am willing to accept criticism in this regard, but, I do think that it would be somewhat delusional to assume that people who are prone to things like Fascist terrorism will be so taken by a revolutionary political process, though I do hope that some of them will, that they will just simply no longer want to engage in it.
Of Fascists and the like, I will say that you can, with a bit of kindness, sympathy, and willingness to entertain ideas that are totally outside of any form of "civility", get them to unbecome as such entirely so as to fully uphold the ideal of abolition, which I am sympathetic towards, though would also prefer to consider outside of this certain absurdity, but that that takes so much time that, to me, it seems entirely absurd to suggest that people should spend years of their life encountering each and every individual Fascist, or other nefarious person, and that they should, rather, either attempt to carry out an effective nonviolent revolution or to abolish what subjugates people to authoritarianism, which is to say that, though I am of the opinion that a person should just merely level a political debate from their own perspective, in so far that an appeal is made, in a person's case who is similar to mine, it should only ever be made so far out of a person's perspective to their most distant ally, being someone like a Centrist who is ultimately sympathetic towards the libertarian Left. That a person becomes a Fascist is actually rather sad, as, in most cases, they have become subject to what is either usually "Neo-Fascist", though, as I am of the opinion that Fascism just merely survived following the Second World War and did not really experience a revival beginning, perhaps, with the Greek junta in 1967, and, so, don't have too many qualms with just kind blanketly essentializing the entire far-Right with the charge of "Fascism", or what I refer to as "exo-Fascist", basically a form of what I suspect to usually be, though it can be otherwise, Intelligence entrapment, conscription. While there are elements of abolition that are to the benefit of even the far-Right, to attempt to substantiate the ethos as such hazards consuming it within Fascist pathology. Given that to entirely uphold the ideal of abolition requires that people engage in a nebulous project that involves an encounter with the far-Right, as well as that it does not adequately address the immediate concerns of what to do about existent Fascist terrorism, as well as a few other things, such as cases of domestic violence, what I am just simply telling you is that, at this given point in time, that ideal can not practically be upheld as such, which is to say that, in spite of that people should express solidarity with things like the prison abolition movement, there are aspects of the security apparatus that both do need to remain in effect and will, though, again, radically reconceptualized, still, even given the best of all revolutionary scenarios.
The short of which, though I will elaborate further, is that there are four strategies that can be employed in order to deal with either actual or would-be Fascist terrorists, which is just more or less every Fascist. You can engage them in a psychological encounter, which may be effective if you are a genius, extraordinarily well versed in Psychology, and about as good of an actor as John McEnery in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet, but for everyone else is likely to be, at best, dismissed as "Communist mind control". You can talk to them for an extensive period of time, which is effective, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend as Fascists are likely to lie about you engaging them in conversation as a form of entrapment. You can, otherwise, either kill or imprison them. Aside from that it doesn't seem too ethical to kill them, there is that they have a number of strategic advantages within a civil war, as well as that, unlike everyone else, they are not likely to engage in combat by any ethical code of conduct, and have some of both the official and unofficial sanction of certain parties within the Intelligence community. With all of that in mind, I can only recommend that they be imprisoned. Even though the criminal justice system is kind of terrible, regardless as to how anyone feels about abolition, if you suspect that a person is in danger of carrying out an act of Fascist terrorism, it would probably, at best, be negligent of you not to inform some sort of law enforcement. Given that there is an effective revolution, I would suggest that, rather than place Fascist terrorists within a punitive criminal justice system like what exists now, in so far that they are engaged in terrorism, they should be placed in a rehabilitative justice system. All of this is indicative of that the security apparatus can not be entirely dismantled as of right now or even after an effective nonviolent revolution. You could always just execute them all by firing squad, but what I am suggesting is that it would be better to reconceptualize what is veritable of the security apparatus so as to effect the minimal requisite repression necessary to cope with that such parties will still be active.
TL;DR entirely: Fascist terrorism is how only so much of the security apparatus can be dismantled and rehabilitative justice is what to replace it with.
That is a rather lengthy explication. As I have previously said, it is probably best not to consider utopia along the lines of how it is that people can deal with its more extreme detractors. In so far that such a revolution does not occur, as, though I am not opposed to that happening, it does seem a bit unlikely that such an event will spontaneously happen, I am suggesting that people should merely create and engage in the best communities that they can and to do what they can to abolish what subjugates people to authoritarianism, all of which, I do think, is, in good faith, in keeping with an anti-authoritarian ethos.
Anyways, I am leaving, and, so, I will have to just leave you with that. Thanks for reading all of that if you did. I hope that all is well and goes well and will see or hear from you when or if ever. 'Til then!