this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2024
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The system for all its significant faults is the only thing stopping Amazon from employing literal slave labor in the US, or any Republican who can pay / attract enough violent followers from firebombing every abortion clinic they can find the location of. Dangerous inequality of power isn't something the Americans created; it's a feature of the world which needs to be grappled with and moderated (whatever means you set out to use to do that.)
I'm not sure what you mean by "destroyed," but revolutions which set out to thoroughly destroy the unjust system completely have a track record of making things much much worse (e.g. French Revolution, Russian Revolution). If that type of thing is what you mean by destroyed I would urge you to look at places where what you want to do has been tried, and what happened after.
By that argument, the American revolution shouldn't have happened either. It's patently absurd to claim all revolutions always lead to the same results.
Removing a foreign occupier through violent revolution actually has a pretty good track record, yes (markedly different from destroying an unjust domestic system through violent revolution.)
Which one are you advocating for within the meme? Or something else? "Must be destroyed" can mean a few different things, all the way from FDR or Bernie Sanders which I'd be in favor of all the way to Russian Revolution which I'm not. I'm sort of just taking a guess at what it might be and responding based on the guess, but yeah I'm open to hear more explanation.
You realize that Britain was not a "foreign occupier" at that point, yes? Likewise, most liberal democracies you have now are results of revolutions against the monarchies. Exactly how do you think the world changed from monarchic feudalism to capitalist democracy? Magic? The Kings abdicated because they were all just nice people?
You're in an anarchist server talking to an anarchist. Take a wild guess :D
Britain was not a foreign occupier in 1700s colonial America? Must be news to the Algonquian, Iroquois, and Wampanoag.
Fair point but you know what I meant
Fun fact: There were hundreds of triracial isolates in revolution-era America, i.e. communities of mixed white/black/native people all living together in a little anarchist-style arrangement that said more or less "fuck this" to the whole concept that we have to join up with some larger entity that gives us official permission to exist as a society. They all died out as one particular one of the large entities won the conflict and waxed in power and gradually took over the place, but for quite a while they were apparently pretty good places to live.
My point is that the system of having people physically on one side of the ocean making decisions for the people on the other side, with no pretense of it being fair or justified or representation for people from the New World, makes violent overthrow a lot more unavoidable. I think it's more sensible to apply lessons from the American Revolution to the Mexican War of Independence than to what will happen if you walk into Washington DC armed, with a million of your friends, and announce that the system is going to be different now.
There are different responses appropriate to different levels of oppression. Violent overthrow of a monarchy is often the only way. Violent overthrow of a foreign occupation is often the only way. My point is that looking at the current system in the US, there are a lot of ways to "destroy" the system that will do a lot of damage to its positive aspects and not change much at all about its horrible aspects except for making them worse.
Of course, it's easy and surface-persuasive to say "destroy the system and things will be better" and keep the rest of it vague. Once you start getting into details is where you run into the oh shit it's actually not that simple factor.
Who knows; for all I know, once I hear your details I will be on board for them. But it's hard to say if it's all vague and feely-good-based.
Well I'm glad that you're so adept at moving the goalposts to fit the things you consider good, but that's just what it is. All of these were revolutions. If they worked, an anarchist one can work just as well.
If you're honestly willing to learn about anarchism, I can link you to things, but there's no point if you're here just to argue.
All the revolutions I listed made things way worse. If they were catastrophes, an anarchist one can be as well.
Not technically wrong, but also not that useful as a way to analyze. It's not moving the goalposts to clarify statements or to draw different lessons from different events.
Sure, what should I read?
If you interpret "Which one are you advocating for" and "for all I know, once I hear your details I will be on board for them" and "yeah I'm open to hear more explanation" as me just being here to argue, I think you are mentally unprepared for the kind of collaboration that'll be needed or the kind of resistance you might get to actually making an effort to destroy the system (by any definition of that phrase.)
Which, I mean, is fine; not everyone talking on the internet needs to be down to personally go out and seize the means of production. But I think if you're going to make that kind of bold statement about what "must" happen, it's fair to ask you to clarify and defend it at least a little bit.
The absolute best place to start imho is an anarchist faq. It goes into length into what anarchism is, what we believe and how we act on it
This section elaborates more on voting specifically: https://www.anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionJ.html#secj23
This section elaborates about revolution: https://www.anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionJ.html#secj71
Okay, I read a little.
Nor that it's the point, but Kelman was born in 1946, when it was about 65 percent that didn't vote, and it's been going down since then throughout his lifetime. In the modern day (i.e. long after this was written), about 60% of people vote.
They are dismantling it in many places in the US, I think specifically because there's starting to be a possibility again that it can effect a real change in the system.
You don't have to get into any kind of back-and-forth with me about this if you don't want to, but I am curious -- do you honestly believe that countries that don't use voting are not markedly less successful at giving the freedoms to their citizens that the writers here clearly believe are important?
That's one of my key points about the overthrow of "the system" in general -- a lot of times, the structures of power that replace voting if voting gets done away with are much, much worse. The type of injustice that exists in the modern American system is significant but what are you wanting to replace it with that you're asserting would have more justice? I mean, maybe. I would want to hear the details. But I think asserting that there's no reason why people would not want to be in a place that operates without voting is weird.
This part, I agree with. Just voting for the candidates presented and nothing else is guaranteed to perpetuate systems of inequality. Fully agree there for exactly the reasons that Ehrlich states. I think where we differ is:
That is my take on it. IDK, I skipped around to read up on more but my reaction was much the same to any selected sections I found. I think the problems they're describing are very real and difficult bordering on intractable. I think the solutions they're prescribing for them are likely to make the exact same problems very much badly worse.
I agree, re-instate native governments.
Iroquois Confederacy FTW
The American Revolution didn't destroy the existing system, it replaced the British control of the colonies with a federal control of the States, each of the colonial governments had a fairly smooth transition to state government, using the existing structure and most of the same people.
Potato potato. From the perspective of the British it certainly destroyed the status quo
Please don't take this as anything other than a legitimate inquiry, as that's how i intend it.
If we're claiming that all of this bad is by design, and the point of the revolution was to create this system, then aren't you saying that the revolution was wrong? Like, the founders intended to replace a monarchical people moving machine that killed some of the people and replaced it with a democratic one that kills some of the people. If they designed it that way, then the revolution was pointless, and if they didn't design it that way, then the argument that the suffering is a feature (instead of a consequence) is demonstrably wrong...what am I missing?