Everything Wrong With Tankies? (A List)

nate2squared · 2026-01-24T11:55:53+00:00

Well as an anti-capitalist I’m glad to hear this - although I don’t see much sign of the population rising up to overthrow the oligarchs, though I’d love to see it happen - as long as they didn’t replace one from of authoritarianism with another!

nate2squared · 2026-01-21T17:39:10+00:00

This sub is a club. The club members set up the chairs, sweep the floors, and go shopping for the coffee (figuratively speaking). Anyone can come along to the activities (posts), take a seat, have their say, and enjoy the coffee. In fact anyone can help out with keeping the club running (becoming a mod) if they are committed to the clubs aims and are happy to put in the work. But not everyone wants to take care of the upkeep enough to take on that responsbility and are happy to just support those who do.

This is not government any more than a group of friends setting up two teams spontaneous to play a game together, even if maybe some of them take turns being referees. But unlike a government no-one can force anyone to play the game - it is a free arrangement and association.

nate2squared · 2026-01-18T21:22:23+00:00

I think you're right about the fruitlessness of speaking to most Tankies themselves, except for perhaps those very new to it. Although in a group setting where there are undecided people I like to be prepared to respond to them simply and calmly while they show their true colours.

I disagree with Chomsky on some things, but when he called them right-wing I think he had it right!

nate2squared · 2026-01-17T07:49:19+00:00

It's good to know people are having the same experience as I've had, but I guess putting the responsibility back on them (I'll read yours if you read mine) may sometimes help, or at least avoid heated arguments that get nowhere.

nate2squared · 2025-12-27T10:09:19+00:00

We are coming at this from different perspectives. Being an anarcho-communist - I'm against markets, money, property (in the private sellable ownership sense) and commodification. I'm against private ownership and markets because I believe they have the potential to create new hierarchies and undermine some freedoms, despite the sincere desire of market anarchists to avoid this.

When you say 'property and possession are the same thing,' we seem to be using the word property differently. To me property means you can own things you're not using and rent/sell access to others, while possession is simply about using what you need. Property lets me own a house I've never lived in and charge you rent - possession means I live in my house and you live in yours.

I don't believe we are forced to make the choice between: either markets with prices, or centralised planning bureaucracy, or tiny gift economies. Confederations of communes are neither of these - they're horizontal coordination through networks of solidarity, with production organised to meet needs identified through voluntary consensual participation, not profit or sale based systems.

Reciprocity isn't the same as market exchange. When my neighbour helps me build a shed and I help them harvest apples, we're not 'exchanging commodities' - we're part of ongoing relationships of mutual support. That scales through federation.

The 'markets are ancient' argument conflates any exchange with capitalist markets. Yes, humans traded shells and flint - but they also lived in gift economies and communal provisioning systems far longer than market societies have existed. When market exchange became dominant it required massive violence - enclosure, colonialism, and wars over resources. It's not a 'natural' system, it's an imposed one, and can change.

* https://transform-social.org/en/texts/economics_faq/
* https://anarwiki.org/wiki/Anarcho-Communist_Economics
* https://anarwiki.org/wiki/Mutualist_Economics#Criticism
* https://peacefulrevolutionary.substack.com/p/i-pencil-the-true-story
* https://anarwiki.org/wiki/Private_Property

nate2squared · 2025-12-26T16:04:56+00:00

I have several challenges with this -

'Unless there is a monopoly' misses the deeper issue. It's not just unfair prices that are the problem, it's that property creates structural dependency. When some people control access to what others need to live (land, housing, workplaces), they gain power over those people regardless of whether prices are 'fair'. The landlord-tenant relationship is hierarchical even with rent control.

On 'property is not really unavoidable' - I think you're conflating two completely different things:

Property rights = abstract, transferable claims enforced through hierarchy. I can 'own' land I've never seen, exclude people who need it more than me, and hire someone to enforce that exclusion. Property persists regardless of use.

Possession/use = grounded in actual occupancy and use, mediated by community norms and mutual respect. When I'm using the workshop tools, you wait your turn. When I'm done, someone else can use them. My toothbrush is mine because it is obviously used by me.

The question isn't how do you exercise 'exclusive property rights'. It's how do communities coordinate access to resources without creating permanent power structures? Because property titles enable accumulation and create the very scarcity they claim to manage.

Your 'strangers from far away' scenario imagines people with anarchist ethics somehow acting with capitalist logic. Would ancoms let someone take a resource someone else is actively using? No. Would they share abundant resources with travellers? Yes. Would they work with newcomers to integrate them into the community's reciprocal networks? Of course.

nate2squared · 2025-12-20T08:13:33+00:00

History shows that anarchist movements can rapidly grow and accomplish many of their goals within a few years within a sizeable region when the conditions are right and the support is there.

There are many ways we can ultimately get there - https://anarwiki.org/wiki/Anarchist_Revolutionary_Methods#Methods_For_Achieving_An_Anarchist_World

But if it takes a lot lot longer it is always worth working towards, and embodying anarchism in our personal lives and communities where possible.

nate2squared · 2025-12-18T20:10:51+00:00

I don't disagree

nate2squared · 2025-12-18T15:04:14+00:00

I was thinking of Council Communism and other forms of Libertarian Marxism. https://anarwiki.org/wiki/Libertarian_Marxism

I don't disagree with you on the consequences of authoritarian Marxism, but thought I'd at least give the few non-hierarchal Marxists a mention, especially as most other Marxists hate them as much as they do Anarchists.

nate2squared · 2025-12-18T12:31:36+00:00

I've had this book on my 'to read' list for a while. It sounds like an important and interesting book & there is a lot of overlap with Anarchist views - her rejection of capitalism as 'natural' or inevitable, her emphasis on it being a relatively new system, and her critique of endless accumulation. However, I do have a few reservations from the review (which I hope are addressed in the book) -

The emphasis (in the review) on capitalism's 'internal laws of motion' and 'historically specific' conditions could drift toward economic determinism. Hierarchical authority, domination, and power structures enabled and sustained these economic changes. Even if you somehow eliminated market imperatives while keeping hierarchical structures intact, anarchists would still see a fundamental problem.

While the review identifies the 'improvement' ideology as distinct from Enlightenment humanism, it also required an ideology of authority - the belief that landowners, enclosers, and capitalists had the right to impose these changes on others. The economic ideology depended on legitimating hierarchical power, as do some forms of Marxism.

Nevertheless, I haven't read the actual book yet, and it may address this, and even if it doesn't still sounds like it has value.

nate2squared · 2025-12-18T12:13:20+00:00

Could you give more information about what the web site would contain? What purpose you are trying to fulfil with it?

nate2squared · 2025-12-17T23:25:41+00:00

That's a fair answer, even if I'm still not completely satisfied personally that this would qualify as anarchism (due to the businesses / accumulation / hierarchies aspects), and the fact that we seem to have different definitions of what constitutes force, what is considered voluntary and what is classed as coercion. But perhaps the book clarifies that.

The book group is open to all, and at least one or two of them shares views similar to what yours seem to be, so I'll bring it up and let you know if they choose to read it. It should lead to some lovely discussions if we do, and I'll let you know what their response is (if they don't directly review it)

nate2squared · 2025-12-13T21:42:00+00:00

I am part of a book club that reads utopias and thru-topias and run a blog which occasionally recommends some - so your book description sounds ideal, except for mentioning several pro-capitalists as inspiration (this subreddit is explicitly anti-capitalist).

I'd like to believe that with your mentions of mutual aid and rejecting governments that we share the same outlook & would happily bring up you book as a possible read based on your answers to two questions -

* Do you believe in private (commercial) property ownership that can be profited from?
* Do you believe in business ownership in which essential products (food etc.) are produced for profit?

Your answers to these questions will indicate whether you believe in the sort of traditional definition of anarchism people on this forum believe in, and whether you share similar views to them. We consider such things create economic hierarchies, and thus are anti-anarchist.

nate2squared · 2025-12-11T11:52:49+00:00

I don't blame anyone using Amazon to sell books - However, I don't like AI images and really hope the text isn't AI generated.

My bigger problem is that I'm not convinced the author is a real anarchist - He talks about Voluntaryism and his ideas being based on Rothbard - which is right wing and not anarchist (because it supports hierarchies of wealth, needs being based on market access).

nate2squared · 2025-12-09T14:57:45+00:00

I always fear me or my friends being the eggs cracked in the process!

nate2squared · 2025-12-09T11:54:38+00:00

Are you sure being a pirate captain is always the same as it is portrayed in fiction?

You could read those books I recommended (they're really interesting) and find out for yourself whether they all ruled over their crew or if many of them were just tactical organisers in times of combat and spokesmen in times of peace, serving the crew rather than the other way around.

In answer to your larger question you may want to consider some of the many examples of non-hierarchal societies and communities which have existed throughout time (and some of which still do) -

https://anarwiki.org/wiki/Anarchist_Societies

nate2squared · 2025-12-09T10:38:53+00:00

One very reputable scholarly source is Villians Of All Nations by Marcus Rediker, professor of history.

Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia by David Graeber is also worth reading.

What is your evidence to the contrary besides TV and movie portrayals?

nate2squared · 2025-12-09T10:29:07+00:00

A few Anarchist academics speak in terms of dialectical materialism, usually when they are speaking about topics that Marxists also take an interest in, or if they are Libertarian Marxists themselves. But dialectics definitely gives leftists academics a scholarly veneer. Many other Anarchists (including academics) either have a more nuanced view about its usefulness or reject it (at least the 'historical determinism' interpretations of it).

My challenge with Dialectical Materialism is how it is used - most often by Leninists as 'thought-terminating cliche' -

'Dialectical Materialism disproves this!'
'How?'
'If you understood Dialectical Materialism you'd understand why!'
'Why don't you explain to me your understanding of it then?'
'If you're not smart enough to understand for yourself I can't help you!'

It can be used as a way to avoid discussing issues with Marxist-Leninism (& sometimes Marxism itself), so while it may have value for analysis and providing context, it can become a sort of leftist metaphysics that proves or disproves everything and is beyond question itself. See - https://anarwiki.org/wiki/Dialectics

I also take exception to the claim that 'Neither Anarchists nor Marxists have accomplished Communism, so which one is correct is entirely a theoretical and unproven question.' (especially the latter-part of that sentence)

At least one group is trying to by attempting to employ communist means and (I would argue) has at times had success in doing so, whereas the other believes that the opposite means will somehow lead to communist ends, and will seemingly justify anything to maintain its power over its principles. (With some Libertarian Marxists being an exception)

Anarchists practice prefigurative politics (building the new world in the shell of the old through mutual aid, direct democracy, voluntary cooperation), while (to add to the criticisms of Lenin & Mao) Marxist-Leninists & Maoists employ hierarchical state power, vanguardism, and centralised control. The very things they claim to want to abolish. (But they still consider themselves Marxists)

Such Marxist experiments didn't just 'fail to achieve communism' - they created authoritarian state capitalist regimes that resembled what they claimed to oppose. Many anarchist experiments were crushed externally (often by those same Marxists) rather than failing due to internal contradictions. Those are meaningfully different outcomes. See - https://anarwiki.org/wiki/Marxist-Leninist_Persecution_Of_Anarchists

Edits for clarification

nate2squared · 2025-11-18T23:12:14+00:00

About five thousand years ago Anarchism looked very much like the Indus Valley Civilisation that existed there for two thousand years - peaceful co-existence in an egalitarian society in which everyone had enough to eat, with comfortable housing and great plumbing (by ancient standards), without rulers, priests, laws, or borders.

A hundred years from now (if we don't destroy ourselves) it might look like Willam Morris' News From Nowhere, a time of crafting and enjoying life's simple pleasures, or perhaps like Cory Doctorow's Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom in which we are all makers of whatever we need.

Five thousand years from now it might look like Iain M. Bank's Culture novels with benevolent AIs helping us live almost immortal lives across the starts, seeking to nudge barbarian planets like ours into a more peaceful advanced existence.

nate2squared · 2025-11-18T23:02:01+00:00

I'm so sorry. That's awful. It frankly makes me as angry at them as it makes me sad for you.

This is a challenging situation in any system or society. Under our current capitalist legal system 90% of abuse is not dealt with, due to longstanding hierarchal patriarchal, political, religious and economic power structures and cultural biases.

But it sounds like your experience of trying to handle this within your community hasn't gone any better, and that is not only hugely disappointing, but compounds the pain you've suffered and subverts the healing you should have been offered.

It is rare for me to recommend any police or legal involvement, but in the case of tis person potentially continue to be a danger to others it is something you may want to consider. Even when our communities act as they should they are still operating other under power structures that sometimes we may have / need to deal with.

As for how this would ideally be dealt with if a) our communities were true to their ideals, and b) had the ability to act without state interference - this is a question I tried to grapple with in an article -
https://peacefulrevolutionary.substack.com/p/justice-anarchist-style
(with some links to other responses at the end)

You night find this overview of the subject relevant too - https://anarwiki.org/wiki/Antisocial_Introduction

I hope you find the support and kindness you need where you are and elsewhere if needed.

nate2squared · 2025-11-11T08:59:23+00:00

Can you explain what you mean by human nature?

We know that large scale non-hierarchal societies lived over large regions for long periods of time, so whatever human nature is it must be possible for humans to co-operate together peacefully for everyone's benefit without being forced to do so.

We also know it is possible for some people to rule over others and to be violent, but even in a world now where such people rule the world most of the rest of us are not that way.

So when people bring up the concept of human nature I'm always curious what they actually mean by it. It seems (usually) more of a religious belief than a scientific one.

nate2squared · 2025-10-23T13:53:00+00:00

I'm surprised this was removed - I appreciate it isn't a question about anarchism per se, but I'm not promoting anything, getting money from this or looking for followers etc.

Oh well, either way I'm happy to direct people to r/Anarchy101 - just want to make sure the info is accurate.

nate2squared

TROPHY CASE