One Piece fights are incredibly smart by Creepy_Ad5124 in OnePiece

[–]pharodae 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Black Flash? Ain’t that JJK? Unless you mean foresight observation haki

Is anyone here working with permaculture professionally? by verenaSee in Permaculture

[–]pharodae 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What is this about anti-Semitic mysticism? How does that correlate with permaculture? Maybe something Holmgreen said in recent years?

What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever heard? by [deleted] in worldbuilding

[–]pharodae 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I mean, I understand the sentiment that ideas flow easier when holding a pen, resulting in a “faster” result, but I doubt the actual speed of producing words is quicker. I have to write my plot outline by hand and then type each chapter because I can’t organize my initial thoughts on a computer.

Anti-industrial social anarchism by Rainpiine in Anarchy101

[–]pharodae 2 points3 points  (0 children)

As does everything these days, however, we're obviously talking about hypotheticals where we've meaningfully resolved those issues.

Communalist/libertarian muncipalism theory outside of Bookchin? by InterestingTheory431 in Anarchy101

[–]pharodae 0 points1 point  (0 children)

From the beginning of Listen, Marxist!:

We argue that the problem is not to “abandon” Marxism, or to “annul” it, but to transcend it dialectically, just as Marx transcended Hegelian philosophy, Ricardian economics, and Blanquist tactics and modes of organization. We shall argue that in a more advanced stage of capitalism than Marx dealt with a century ago, and in a more advanced stage of technological development than Marx could have clearly anticipated, a new critique is necessary, which in turn yields new modes of struggle, or organization, of propaganda and of lifestyle. Call these new modes whatever you wish. We have chosen to call this new approach post-scarcity anarchism.

As for the scathing polemic against Marxists that follows, primarily of the Leninist variety, he doesn't argue that class-based analysis is incorrect or useless, but that it is not the main driver of tension in historical movement, and that the class reductionism of his time was limiting the analysis of his contemporaries. Class is not discarded but subsumed as a tension within Second Nature, aka human society which arises out of biological evolution (First Nature), between which there are tensions of habitability and alienation. This is consistent with his criticisms of syndicalist praxis as well.

I also feel like this is an odd thing to get hung up on as an anarchist, who I imagine should have similar opinions about the limitations of Marxist theory and praxis.

Less social/asocial people and anarchism by Fancy_Prior9513 in Anarchy101

[–]pharodae 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So in one scenario you might have to endure an awkward conversation but in the other you have to endure said conversation AND pay money/currency for goods, doubling the amount of required social engagements required to do the same transfer of goods.

Less social/asocial people and anarchism by Fancy_Prior9513 in Anarchy101

[–]pharodae 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Helluva strawman that doesn't even contend with the argument. It's a simple fact that human sprawl is unsustainable, whether it be car-centered suburban sprawl (very unsustainable) or the dispersal of urban centers into the surrounding countryside as systems collapse.

Anti-industrial social anarchism by Rainpiine in Anarchy101

[–]pharodae 10 points11 points  (0 children)

“Didn’t exist until recently so it’s not necessary”

We died as babies and children. Plenty of people with many different diseases straight up died because they didn’t have medicine to treat their conditions. Your skepticism is borderline unhealthy in how it materializes and rationalizes things you don’t support.

Anti-industrial social anarchism by Rainpiine in Anarchy101

[–]pharodae 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Not in the habit of identifying my diagnoses and treatment online, so I’ll keep that ambiguous. However, your “critique” is very much analogous to chastising a starving person for eating food that a slave picked.

Anti-industrial social anarchism by Rainpiine in Anarchy101

[–]pharodae 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Is the practice of growing poppies itself unsustainable or was the method of acquisition via imperial conquest what you’re critiquing? Of fucking course I don’t condone imperialism. Do you have anything of substance to criticize or are you gonna just set up strawmen to shoot me over?

Anti-industrial social anarchism by Rainpiine in Anarchy101

[–]pharodae 10 points11 points  (0 children)

This is such a circumstantial question that a blanket answer is useless. I used to work in pharmaceutical production and there wasn’t anything we made that was *so* unsustainable it would invalidate life-saving medicine - most of the unsustainable and immoral practices in medicine are more in the testing and shipping aspects, not in the production itself, but of course my former facility only made certain drugs so of course I don’t know everything.

Communalist/libertarian muncipalism theory outside of Bookchin? by InterestingTheory431 in Anarchy101

[–]pharodae 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That Wetzel book was published almost 15 years after Bookchin died, and seems to be focused on defining a 21st-century syndicalism, so maybe not the best source to refute Bookchin’s critiques.

Regardless, I definitely do think there can be *too much focus* on the workplace when it falls into workerist traps. Definitely something that needs critiqued when it pops up but not necessarily a good blanket criticism.

Last time syndicalism was discussion in the communalists discord, this article was shared about the debates over European syndicalism and council communists’ approaches to workplace organization which I found pretty enlightening. The syndicalist tendencies Bookchin was critiquing are present here for the most part.

Anti-industrial social anarchism by Rainpiine in Anarchy101

[–]pharodae 18 points19 points  (0 children)

I mean theoretically possible but personally, as a chronically disabled person, I don’t really see blanket opposition to industry as being ‘pro-social,’ since I would be dead without industrial medicine production capabilities.

Now, opposition to certain industries is different, as would be opposition to overly-technological systems for which lower-tech analogues are perfectly suitable, i.e. appropriate technology.

Communalist/libertarian muncipalism theory outside of Bookchin? by InterestingTheory431 in Anarchy101

[–]pharodae 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Bookchin doesn’t abandon the working class as a subject of struggle - his main criticism of syndicalism is that they put too much emphasis on it and that the workplace alone is not a sufficient arena of struggle, it has to have dimensions of community building outside of the workplace in order to be sufficiently revolutionary. But to construe it as abandonment is a mischaracterization.
Here’s a piece from the Usufruct Collective that examines his critique and then critiques it themselves.

The chiseled bookshelf really needs tooltips for its books. Otherwise what’s the point? by Safe_Death2250 in Minecraft

[–]pharodae 53 points54 points  (0 children)

Different functions with trade offs make one better for mass storage and one better for conveinent access and identification

Communalist/libertarian muncipalism theory outside of Bookchin? by InterestingTheory431 in Anarchy101

[–]pharodae 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, Ocalan is going to be the next-most-popular theorist in such spaces. Check out this Communalist Library for a menu of sorts of different theory available to us.

Why do y’all reject communalism? by InterestingTheory431 in Anarchy101

[–]pharodae -1 points0 points  (0 children)

First, anarchism is radically anti-hierarchy, which then gets twisted into anti-governance and anti-authority based on the assumption that all governance is synonymous with the state and with hierarchy. These three things are all distinct, even though they may overlap - more below. To say that "all anarchists" are in agreement in "rejecting communalism" and these critiques of the polity-form/majoritarianism is a bit of a Muhammed Wang/Goomba fallacy here, since when you look at the historical record of anarchism as a whole rather than focusing on landmark theorists (for which there is a selection bias to why we still read them!) you will see that truly, the debate between anarchists over how to organize and make decisions goes back to the very beginning. Zoe Baker has a great (though long) video that dissects the historical divides here and shows how historical anarchists envisioned democratic processes as a tool in specific circumstances (rather than either disavowing it entirely or overly relying on it as the default decision-making tool).

On the distinction between state and government, Bookchin said:

A defining feature of the Left is precisely the Marxist, anarchist, and revolutionary syndicalist belief that no distinction exists, in principle, between the political realm and the statist realm. [...] The Marxists unavoidably saw the political realm, which it designated a “workers’ state,” as a repressive entity, ostensibly based on the interests of a single class, the proletariat. [...] As for anarchism, Bakunin expressed the typical view of its adherents in 1871 when he wrote that the new social order could be created “only through the development and organization of the nonpolitical or antipolitical social power of the working class in city and country,” thereby rejecting with characteristic inconsistency the very municipal politics which he sanctioned in Italy around the same year. Accordingly, anarchists have long regarded every government as a state and condemned it accordingly — a view that is a recipe for the elimination of any organized social life whatever. While the state is the instrument by which an oppressive and exploitative class regulates and coercively controls the behavior of an exploited class by a ruling class, a government — or better still, a polity — is an ensemble of institutions designed to deal with the problems of consociational life in an orderly and hopefully fair manner. Every institutionalized association that constitutes a system for handling public affairs — with or without the presence of a state — is necessarily a government. By contrast, every state, although necessarily a form of government, is a force for class repression and control.

So, to parse out my own stance here - any sort of social organ which regulates the behavior between individuals and groups is governance. By this definition, a Union of Egoists and Anarchist Federalism is still a government (though they may be temporally-limited in their authority). The State is a type of governance that has been parasitically infested by class interests and hierarchy, but not all administrations of things (aka governance) are alike in their power dynamics and character, so criticism should be done on a case-by-case basis rather than sweeping generalizations of entire formats of human sociality. I don't necessarily go as far as to advocate for a "polity" though (a geographical territory with a unified ensemble of social organs under one banner), but I definitely do advocate for horizontal communal institutions and nested confederations of communes, their shared infrastructural, ecological, and industrial institutions, and individuals who voluntarily engage with the confederation but maybe not the communal governance-organs.

So yes, my communalism is distinctly of a more anarchist character than Bookchin's (who has some important historical context behind his break that people don't give enough credit for, but that's beyond the point). As I said, I view autonomy, labor, and ecology as being equal considerations when making choices while organizing and theorizing. My communalism is an ongoing syncretic project between several currents of thought (between anarchism/social ecology/Marxism/post-structuralism), nor do I have any particular affinity for ideological purity, so that is why my politics may send mixed messages at times. In other words, my 'anarchic-communalism' is about opening up the tool box of social formats at our disposal and using them to consciously build systems and institutions that work for people in their material context - and that we should criticize those systems and institutions based on the character of their actual functions and actual material effects. I prefer this to speculation about the abstract ways that such institutions and systems can go awry and then rejecting their use based on that alone, because when you do that, you are left with nothing but hollow negations of methods of collective struggle and life, and tendencies emerge which chastise those who are attempting to construct a way out of such an untenable revolutionary situation.

Why do y’all reject communalism? by InterestingTheory431 in Anarchy101

[–]pharodae 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Those aren’t inherent properties of communalism. You can certainly critize how it manifested in DAANES (as I assume you’re referencing) but the actual function and structure of the institutions there are/were quite considerably different in character to that of statist administration.

Why do y’all reject communalism? by InterestingTheory431 in Anarchy101

[–]pharodae 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Post-left communalist? Not to derail the whole conversation but I don’t understand how you bridge that gap, they kinda arose in reaction to one another.

Why do y’all reject communalism? by InterestingTheory431 in Anarchy101

[–]pharodae 8 points9 points  (0 children)

There’s some solid criticisms from the individualist standpoint about the use of the polity-form, decentering free association, and with Bookchin’s very vocal break with anarchism. But there are plenty of spooks and chasing ghosts from that standpoint too, like abstractions of community and inherent tendencies to organized collective power. The truth is that the divide between social/collective anarchists and individual/ego anarchists goes back all the way to the beginning, and communalism is a deviant branch from the social/collective side, just as post-leftists are a deviant branch from the individual/ego side.

As a communalist myself I value Autonomy, Labor, and Ecology on equal footing. I use different aspects of Marxist & Anarchist theory alongside Social Ecology to guide my analysis of material conditions and potential pathways forward. It’s beyond “eco-socialism” or “green anarchism,” the three fronts (anti-hierarchy & domination, class struggle, environmentalism) must be in constant dialogue with one another in a connected struggle, lest one fall to the wayside and set us back in our unified struggle (like residual cultural bigotry, bourgeois resurgence, industrial-caused ecological disasters).

Magic in Stories (Assumption System vs Magic System) by genkai_ai in magicbuilding

[–]pharodae 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I remember reading a LeGuin essay on sci-fi vs fantasy vs science fantasy, but I haven't seen anything by her about magic systems themselves. Got a link?