If not capitalism then what exactly?

john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Did I really read all that just for this?

"The global and local communities can then decide what organisational structures they wish to establish. It is not useful to try to determine now exactly what these will be because this will be the task of society, not the revolutionary organisation. However, as Revolutionaries we must argue for egalitarian structures accountable and accessible to all. It seems most likely that these structures will emerge from the workers and community councils which the working class created during the Revolution. We also foresee that a federal structure will emerge globally to co-ordinate such things as the production and distribution of resources, the making of decisions which concern a number of communities etc. This is the organisational basis for an Anarchist Communist society. Collective decision making leaves no room for governing authorities, and voluntary co-operation will mean that laws and policing can be done away with."
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In other words - it will be much better after the revolution but we can't tell you exactly how? No-one will ever have to do anything they don't want to do so we won't need laws?
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I'm just struggling with the idea of 'anarcho-communism' - surely to put in place and maintain a collectivist economic system requires the exact opposite of anarchism, namely a vast and all-powerful State? The only economic system I can see being compatible with anarchism is Vimothy's beloved libertarianism.
 
C

crackerjack

Well-known member
Mr. Tea said:
I'm just struggling with the idea of 'anarcho-communism' - surely to put in place and maintain a collectivist economic system requires the exact opposite of anarchism, namely a vast and all-powerful State? The only economic system I can see being compatible with anarchism is Vimothy's beloved libertarianism.
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Not at all. The entire working population will be gainfully employed in the construction of camps, where people like yourself will reside until you learn not to ask awkward questions.
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
Mr. Tea said:
I'm just struggling with the idea of 'anarcho-communism' - surely to put in place and maintain a collectivist economic system requires the exact opposite of anarchism, namely a vast and all-powerful State? The only economic system I can see being compatible with anarchism is Vimothy's beloved libertarianism.
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Well yes, it's a bit of an ask to get everyone to club together in these schemes. I usually counter friends' grandiose political plans by suggesting that if they can't even get sympathetic people like me to agree with them (or alternatively: their family members), then what chance have they with everyone else of a different mind? The inevitable 'solution': coercion until people 'see sense' and play along.
 
matt b

matt b

Indexing all opinion
Mr. Tea said:
I'm just struggling with the idea of 'anarcho-communism' - surely to put in place and maintain a collectivist economic system requires the exact opposite of anarchism, namely a vast and all-powerful State? The only economic system I can see being compatible with anarchism is Vimothy's beloved libertarianism.
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communism as is community- so anarcho-communism, very broadly means self-determination through egalitarian, direct, self-made decision-making undertaken by individuals living in geographical/physical communities.

beyond that, it is a broad church, with a long history (see; gerrard winstanley and the diggers movement, for example) and many strands.


there would be no state.


to respond to your final point: "Anarcho-communists[...] believe that market competition, even non-capitalist markets, inherently create inequalities in wealth and land which would lead to inequalities of power - thus the recreation of the State and capitalism as some workers would have more access to capital and defence force than others..."


don't go confusing it with anarcho-syndicalism now.
 
G

gek-opel

entered apprentice
IdleRich said:
I think that Gek is the only one who constantly advocates the total (and preferably catastrophic) collapse of capitalism and if Bojangles can pin him down to what he wants instead then he's a better man than me.
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Hmm yeah true but only through capitalism itself is this ever actually possible (ie to prevent the amelioration effects of a two sided battle)-- not through any form of socialist project or revolutionary revolt. The problem comes in imagining the impossible, which is what a genuinely new political system appears to be, under the conditions of capitalism itself. Hence the need to concentrate only on accelerating capitalism to a point where its side-effect of creating a sense of its own inevitability subsides. Communist revolutions were trapped in the conditions of capitalism, as well as being confused with nationalistic struggles against imperialist occupiers or industrial expansion...
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
I think those texts highlight a central problem which has been touched on by other posters - can you actually sit down in 2007 and describe a workable way for an entirely new world to operate?

Personally I don't think so. Nobody sat down a few hundred years ago and said "right, this is how I think things should work now, it's called capitalism" and everyone said "woah! dude! sweet!". It evolved over time because of specific social and economic conditions.

People who map out the future down to the last comma end up being tyrants, and surely that is people's biggest criticism of past attempts at communism?

The fundamental questions for me are:

a) Is capitalism the perfect way to organise the world - can it be improved on?
b) What is wrong with capitalism?
c) What are the sort of fundamental principles I would like a new world to operate under?
d) Is this possible?

We can have all the pipe dreams we want, and can even spend our lives looking back at past societies, or little examples of another world in more recent history, but this won't really amount to very much. At best, for me, all this is a signpost to something greater.

Really my day to day life has little space for such navel-gazing at present. It's all swallowed up with work and commuting and doing the housework and shopping.

One day things might be different, though...
 
G

gek-opel

entered apprentice
john eden said:
can you actually sit down in 2007 and describe a workable way for an entirely new world to operate?

Personally I don't think so. Nobody sat down a few hundred years ago and said "right, this is how I think things should work now, it's called capitalism" and everyone said "woah! dude! sweet!". It evolved over time because of specific social and economic conditions.
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The lack of anyone being in control, its diffuse nature, the way it is successful as a system because of how it mirrors basic human drives makes it impossible to attack as you would any normal physical enemy or political body.

john eden said:
People who map out the future down to the last comma end up being tyrants, and surely that is people's biggest criticism of past attempts at communism?
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There are many reasons why they failed (to implement an entirely innovative political and economic system) -- the way it got sucked into nationalism, and lacked the proper internationalist approach necessary to truly execute the project effectively, the fact it occurred in highly undeveloped societies for the most part...

john eden said:
The fundamental questions for me are:

a) Is capitalism the perfect way to organise the world - can it be improved on?
b) What is wrong with capitalism?
c) What are the sort of fundamental principles I would like a new world to operate under?
d) Is this possible?

We can have all the pipe dreams we want, and can even spend our lives looking back at past societies, or little examples of another world in more recent history, but this won't really amount to very much. At best, for me, all this is a signpost to something greater.
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The key problem with capitalism is its ability, as a by-product of the aggregate of billions of tiny interactions, without anyone in control, to warp time itself and place fundamental, tho invisible, blocks on the ability of people to think otherwise, to think the unthinkable, to be genuinely innovative. But because of this problem you cannot think after-capital inside it... its totally paradoxical to imagine that you can! But in many other ways there are a lot of quite interesting and useful aspects to capitalism- its ability to potentially disrupt and dismantle the state of course being the primary example. It is as much the nation state which is at fault as capitalism itself....
 
C

crackerjack

Well-known member
Really my day to day life has little space for such navel-gazing at present. It's all swallowed up with work and commuting and doing the housework and shopping.
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This is why the revolution's fucked before it's started. In the old days Marx and Engels had servants to do all that for them.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Quote:
"Originally Posted by IdleRich
I think that Gek is the only one who constantly advocates the total (and preferably catastrophic) collapse of capitalism and if Bojangles can pin him down to what he wants instead then he's a better man than me."
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"Hmm yeah true but only through capitalism itself is this ever actually possible (ie to prevent the amelioration effects of a two sided battle)-- not through any form of socialist project or revolutionary revolt. The problem comes in imagining the impossible, which is what a genuinely new political system appears to be, under the conditions of capitalism itself. Hence the need to concentrate only on accelerating capitalism to a point where its side-effect of creating a sense of its own inevitability subsides. Communist revolutions were trapped in the conditions of capitalism, as well as being confused with nationalistic struggles against imperialist occupiers or industrial expansion..."
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See what I mean?

"Personally I don't think so. Nobody sat down a few hundred years ago and said "right, this is how I think things should work now, it's called capitalism" and everyone said "woah! dude! sweet!". It evolved over time because of specific social and economic conditions."
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I'd say this is pretty much exactly right.

"People who map out the future down to the last comma end up being tyrants, and surely that is people's biggest criticism of past attempts at communism?"
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This is probably true in practice if not in theory as well.

"...and place fundamental, tho invisible, blocks on the ability of people to think otherwise, to think the unthinkable, to be genuinely innovative. But because of this problem you cannot think after-capital inside it... its totally paradoxical to imagine that you can!"
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I just don't accept that - why is it paradoxical?
 
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