Kamala implementing policies you wanted would’ve lost her enough votes to make winning impossible
she lost enough votes from safe votes who opted out due to people equating Trump and Kamala
In that case her defeat was inevitable and none of this matters. I reject that defeatism because her strategic errors are obvious and many. If establishment democrats don’t see a path to victory, they should get out of the way and let someone with more vision have a try.
The path we’re on is fundamentally unsustainable. Something will have to give. Free markets are not capable of addressing human needs and the collective crises we’re facing, but regardless, you won’t be getting any change in any direction except the steady decline into dysfunction and right-wing extremism that we’ve been getting so long as the two party system remains hegemonic.
You can punch left all you want, but again, the anti-genocide voters did not swing the election. Regardless, you people all have a completely upside-down conception of politics. Politicians must change to conform to the values that voters have, not the other way around, it’s completely backwards to blame masses of people for holding onto valid moral convictions rather than blaming the politicians that failed to account for and accommodate those convictions. It’s just bootlicking, I find it quite spineless and repulsive frankly, and it’s very sad to me that anyone could have such a feckless way of thinking about politics.
Again, not free markets in the ancap sense. A truly freed market requires us to dismantle all non-state forms of coercion and privilege that distort economic interactions.
There is nowhere left of me to punch. I’m punching up at the Auths who think reform is a viable path to liberation.
Election wasn’t lost because of values it was because people are easily manipulated to vote against their interests.
Again, not free markets in the ancap sense. A truly freed market requires us to dismantle all non-state forms of coercion and privilege that distort economic interactions.
There is nowhere left of me to punch. I’m punching up at the Auths
“Distort economic interactions” is idealist nonsense, as is this whole conception of a “truly freed market.” Here in reality, groups pursue their own interests, and in a capitalist system, wealth will concentrate enough that the bourgeoisie will inevitably be able to seize power and change the laws to create a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, unless they are prevented from doing so through “Auth” means. “Auth” is not a real political alignment, it’s a bedtime story your rulers tell you to make sure you don’t get any funny ideas about trying to actually wield power or challenge them. There is only one physical reality, and what happens in that reality is a function of who holds power and what they do with it. When starving peasants are storming the gates of the rich to seize their food, what is more or less authoritarian, to stop them, to help them, or to sit back and watch? It is a nonsense concept.
Even if only a fairly large minority of the industrial workers, and not “millions” and “legions”, follow the lead of the Catholic clergy—and a similar minority of rural workers follow the landowners and kulaks (Grossbauern)—it undoubtedly signifies that parliamentarianism in Germany has not yet politically outlived itself, that participation in parliamentary elections and in the struggle on the parliamentary rostrum is obligatory on the party of the revolutionary proletariat specifically for the purpose of educating the backward strata of its own class, and for the purpose of awakening and enlightening the undeveloped, downtrodden and ignorant rural masses. Whilst you lack the strength to do away with bourgeois parliaments and every other type of reactionary institution, you must work within them because it is there that you will still find workers who are duped by the priests and stultified by the conditions of rural life; otherwise you risk turning into nothing but windbags.
There is a practical process of dismantling state-enforced monopolies and coercion. Authoritarianism, whether bourgeois or revolutionary, perpetuates centralised power. True liberation arises not from seizing power but from rendering coercive systems obsolete through counter-economic action.
In reality, political revolution only changes rulers; the system of coercion remains. Only through economic revolution can true liberation be achieved.
Nothing idealist about it. Seems the be the only praxis that’s made any progress actually rather than circlejerking over theory we know doesn’t work.
It’s always very funny the absolute disdain people have towards Lenin and his body of work, or rather, the disdain you have towards the idea of reading anything he wrote. Even from a purely historical perspective, he’s one of the most important people of the 20th century, if not all history. And yet you always refuse to read anything he wrote while having very strong opinions regarding his ideology. His greatest crime, of course, was that he had the audacity to put theory into practice, and to do things to actually affect material change rather than sitting around theorizing.
True liberation arises not from seizing power but from rendering coercive systems obsolete through counter-economic action.
This is nonsense because without power it is impossible to affect change. In order to conduct counter-economic action, you must have some ability to influence the economic sphere, which is to say, power. You can dress it up in flowery language all you like, but ultimately, you have a vision of the world that you’re seeking to enforce through economic power. The only difference is that you’re choosing to tie a hand behind your back before fighting a pack of lions. Building and exerting economic power is all well and good, but it would be incredibly foolish not to use any means of power available (including political) in a life-or-death struggle against a far stronger foe. And what do you get in exchange, the satisfaction of feeling like you’re being ideologically consistent, while the state guns down everyone you care about?
Diffuse coercion is optimally handled by local, immediate self-defense. Though the market may develop larger-scale businesses for protection and restoration, random threats of violence can only be dealt with on the spot ad hoc.
This is fully suicidal. States have the ability to leverage overwhelming force against “local, immediate self-defense,” which they pretty much always have been since the days of knights and lords, but it is especially absurd in the context of modern militaries.
The crushing of the Paris Commune, the lack of coordination in Republic Spain… the only reason anybody thinks this is at all viable or desireable is because they haven’t seen it in action, and they haven’t seen it in action because people learned from it’s historical failures, or they were defeated.
Even if the forces were evenly matched (which they wouldn’t be), it’s very easy to divide and conquer. Without a unified front, forces cannot be dispatched to defend strategically vital locations, people will insist on defending their own homes and towns, which a centrally managed force can easily take advantage of.
Libertarianism elaborates an entire philosophy from one simple premise: initiatory violence or its threat (coercion) is wrong (immoral, evil, bad, supremely impractical, etc.) and is forbidden; nothing else is.
This is extraordinarily idealist. “Initiatory violence” is a concept inherently tied to property rights. It is also completely wrong. Is is wrong (immoral, evil, suprememely impractical) for a starving man to steal bread for his family? Or does theft not count as “initiatory violence” if you really, really need it?
But let’s use a more real world example. There are many countries around the world where the people live in abject poverty, even though the natural resources are quite plentiful. In many cases, their resources were seized by force during colonialism, and now continue to be owned by foreign multinational corporations. Is it wrong (immoral, evil, supremely impractical) for those nations to reclaim control of those resources, given the opportunity? And for that matter, was it “supremely impractical” for colonial powers to seize those resources in the first place? Because it seems like the people who did it made a lot of money off of it and died quite rich and happy.
Of course, this moral proclamation is handed down from on high by the author, without establishing any kind of philosophical basis for it, let alone any consideration of how thing function in the actual, material world. Why should I not simply reject this assertion?
His greatest crime, of course, was that he had the audacity to put theory into practice, and to do things to actually affect material change rather than sitting around theorising, which the Western left despises above all else.
The issue isn’t the implementation of theory but the centralisation of power. Lenin’s approach replaced one form of coercion with another, perpetuating oppression under a different guise. True liberation arises from dismantling coercive systems entirely and fostering voluntary, decentralised networks that operate independently of centralised control.
This is nonsense because without power it is impossible to affect change… Building and exerting economic power is all well and good, but it would be foolish not to use any means of power available (including political) in a life-or-death struggle against a far stronger foe.
Political power often reinforces the very structures it seeks to dismantle. Genuine change stems from creating resilient, voluntary networks that operate in the shadows, gradually eroding state influence through counter-economic activities. By building these systems, we undermine coercive institutions without legitimising them through political engagement.
This is fully suicidal. States have the ability to leverage overwhelming force against “local, immediate self-defence,” which they pretty much always have… Without a unified front, forces cannot be dispatched to defend strategically vital locations.
By the time local self-defence becomes necessary, the state’s power will have diminished due to the proliferation of decentralised, counter-economic networks. These networks, operating independently, build resilience and adaptability, making it impossible for centralised authorities to suppress them effectively.
Initiatory violence is a concept inherently tied to property rights… Is it wrong (immoral, evil, supremely impractical) for a starving man to steal bread for his family?
A starving individual seeking sustenance isn’t initiating violence, the coercive system that led to their deprivation bears responsibility. Reclaiming resources taken through coercion is justified, whereas establishing new systems of authority through violence perpetuates cycles of oppression.
Why should I not simply reject this assertion?
Coercive systems have consistently failed to deliver genuine freedom. Building decentralised, voluntary networks offers a sustainable path to liberation, circumventing the instability and oppression inherent in centralised power structures. Historical evidence demonstrates that centralised authority always leads to systemic failure and human suffering.
In order to conduct counter-economic action, you must have some ability to influence the economic sphere, which is to say, power.
Counter-economic activities cultivate influence by operating outside the state’s purview. Engaging in black and grey markets enables individuals to build economic strength without relying on state mechanisms, undermining the state’s control over resources and diminishing its legitimacy.
A starving individual seeking sustenance isn’t initiating violence
Ah, so stealing is not in fact stealing if you really really need it, gotcha.
There’s something I need to explain here and I think the only way to do it is to step back and tell you a story.
I studied physics in uni because I didn’t know what to study and it seemed like the best place to try to understand reality. The day we started studying the more complex, and weird stuff, like relativity and QM, my professor gave us a speech that really resonated with me.
“The stuff we’re about to cover doesn’t make a lot of sense, and some of you may find it troubling that the universe works in such a strange and confusing way. But in a way, it makes sense that it doesn’t make sense. Our brains evolved to understand things on a macro scale, and everything we’ve studied up to this point has operated on that level. But nothing in your genetic makeup or day to day life has equipped you to understand subatomic particles or objects approaching the speed of light. It would be very strange, then, if we were able to grasp these concepts immediately and make sense of them right off the bat. Eventually, if you keep studying and working with these concepts, they will become second nature and start to make more intuitive sense, but you just have to sort of rewire your brain a bit first.”
What’s important about his speech is that it touches on something broader that’s a little difficult to put into words. It’s the fact that reality is always just a little messy. It never works just exactly the way we want it to. Sometimes, it works in a way we really, really don’t want it to. But you study things enough, eventually you start to recognize what truth is shaped like. And for me, I make a distinction between “natural” ideas and “man-made” ideas. In a sense, all ideas are man-made, but there are certain ideas that seem to inherently reflect reality, such that any intelligent being would come up with them, physical laws and the like. But then there are other ideas that are distinctly human. They are clean, pleasing, comforting, they help us establish our identity, and they are often bullshit. They don’t reflect reality as it is, messy and imperfect, they’re always a bit too clean, and the real purpose is more psychological than anything.
Agorism is a man-made idea. The entire foundation of the philosophy, according to what you linked, is the inherent, absolute principle, that initiating violence is always wrong, and the only thing that is wrong. And yet, the first example I come up with that follows that example to a messy, uncomfortable conclusion, suddenly it doesn’t count. Somehow.
What it comes down to is that this ideology isn’t designed to actually do anything or to reflect any actual truth. It’s supposed to sit there in your head providing you with a particular sense of identity. In the realm of the physical, the results are often messy and imperfect, but in the realm of the mind, everything can always work out perfectly for everyone. Thus, Lenin’s great sin of moving things from the theoretical, where they could be clean and perfect, to the physical where they would actually have the capacity to affect change, at the cost of having to confront difficult, messy, life-or-death questions.
If someone is starving, you say, it must be because of a coercive system. But that isn’t necessarily true, and more importantly, it doesn’t really address anything. “Systems” cannot be held accountable, you cannot take the concept of Capitalism to court and demand it start giving the man bread. Suppose the man simply cannot find work - who is responsible? Every business owner who refused to hire him? Every landowner who prevents him from living in his natural state of a hunter-gatherer? But let’s broaden the scope some more - of course, in the mind palace, we can simply decide who’s responsible and hold them responsible, regardless of how much wealth or power they might possess, but what if the culprit is external and beyond our reach? Say, we’re in one of those nations that had their resources stolen, and the nation decided to reclaim its resources, and in response, the colonizers have imposed sanctions and a blockade. So the man is still starving, but it’s not because of anyone within his society, there is no one he can reasonably seek restitution from, and he doesn’t have the means to steal from the colonizers, so instead he steals from someone who’s completely innocent.
It seems to me that this absolute moral law from which the entire ideology is derived and which, above all else, must never be contradicted, doesn’t actually survive contact with the physical world. It needs so many exceptions and amendments that to make it work you essentially end up ignoring it and just doing whatever your conscience tells you is right. Which is obviously a superior approach, since that law is a nonsense, man-made idea that doesn’t actually reflect reality, while your conscience is influenced from experiences interacting with the real world.
I’ve focused too much on that point but I will try to quickly address some others.
Historical evidence demonstrates that centralised authority always leads to systemic failure and human suffering.
That’s like saying that historical evidence demonstrates walking on two legs always leads to systemic failure and human suffering. Centralized authority pops up everywhere because it is an effective way of addressing certain problems. Again, decentralization is romanticized because it is foreign and it is foreign because it often has significant problems. Decentralization is often synonymous with warlordism, not to mention things like generational blood feuds, lynch mobs, and witch burnings. Centralization has reasons for being so common, and suffering is also quite common, but that doesn’t mean that one causes the other. What is you evidence for decentralization working so much better? How do we know it’s that and not some other factor?
Counter-economic activities cultivate influence by operating outside the state’s purview. Engaging in black and grey markets enables individuals to build economic strength without relying on state mechanisms, undermining the state’s control over resources and diminishing its legitimacy.
Black and grey markets are not going to magically make you rich if you’re broke. If you’re powerless, you’re still powerless, and have no ability to affect the world until you obtain some form of power. It’s possible, of course, to acquire economic power through such means, but it’s also possible for the state to SWAT you the moment you actually become a credible threat to its legitimacy.
In that case her defeat was inevitable and none of this matters. I reject that defeatism because her strategic errors are obvious and many. If establishment democrats don’t see a path to victory, they should get out of the way and let someone with more vision have a try.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation.
It was with the sentiment generated by never-genocide voters, sure.
Socialism? In America? After decades of red scare hysteria and hypertardation? Gerrymandering and vote suppression? Doubt it.
What’ll work is a truly freed market. Not in the AnCap sense but in the anti-capitalist (and anti-collectivist) sense.
The path we’re on is fundamentally unsustainable. Something will have to give. Free markets are not capable of addressing human needs and the collective crises we’re facing, but regardless, you won’t be getting any change in any direction except the steady decline into dysfunction and right-wing extremism that we’ve been getting so long as the two party system remains hegemonic.
You can punch left all you want, but again, the anti-genocide voters did not swing the election. Regardless, you people all have a completely upside-down conception of politics. Politicians must change to conform to the values that voters have, not the other way around, it’s completely backwards to blame masses of people for holding onto valid moral convictions rather than blaming the politicians that failed to account for and accommodate those convictions. It’s just bootlicking, I find it quite spineless and repulsive frankly, and it’s very sad to me that anyone could have such a feckless way of thinking about politics.
Again, not free markets in the ancap sense. A truly freed market requires us to dismantle all non-state forms of coercion and privilege that distort economic interactions.
There is nowhere left of me to punch. I’m punching up at the Auths who think reform is a viable path to liberation.
Election wasn’t lost because of values it was because people are easily manipulated to vote against their interests.
“Distort economic interactions” is idealist nonsense, as is this whole conception of a “truly freed market.” Here in reality, groups pursue their own interests, and in a capitalist system, wealth will concentrate enough that the bourgeoisie will inevitably be able to seize power and change the laws to create a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, unless they are prevented from doing so through “Auth” means. “Auth” is not a real political alignment, it’s a bedtime story your rulers tell you to make sure you don’t get any funny ideas about trying to actually wield power or challenge them. There is only one physical reality, and what happens in that reality is a function of who holds power and what they do with it. When starving peasants are storming the gates of the rich to seize their food, what is more or less authoritarian, to stop them, to help them, or to sit back and watch? It is a nonsense concept.
What zero theory does to a MFer.
There is a practical process of dismantling state-enforced monopolies and coercion. Authoritarianism, whether bourgeois or revolutionary, perpetuates centralised power. True liberation arises not from seizing power but from rendering coercive systems obsolete through counter-economic action.
In reality, political revolution only changes rulers; the system of coercion remains. Only through economic revolution can true liberation be achieved.
Nothing idealist about it. Seems the be the only praxis that’s made any progress actually rather than circlejerking over theory we know doesn’t work.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/samuel-edward-konkin-iii-new-libertarian-manifesto
It’s always very funny the absolute disdain people have towards Lenin and his body of work, or rather, the disdain you have towards the idea of reading anything he wrote. Even from a purely historical perspective, he’s one of the most important people of the 20th century, if not all history. And yet you always refuse to read anything he wrote while having very strong opinions regarding his ideology. His greatest crime, of course, was that he had the audacity to put theory into practice, and to do things to actually affect material change rather than sitting around theorizing.
This is nonsense because without power it is impossible to affect change. In order to conduct counter-economic action, you must have some ability to influence the economic sphere, which is to say, power. You can dress it up in flowery language all you like, but ultimately, you have a vision of the world that you’re seeking to enforce through economic power. The only difference is that you’re choosing to tie a hand behind your back before fighting a pack of lions. Building and exerting economic power is all well and good, but it would be incredibly foolish not to use any means of power available (including political) in a life-or-death struggle against a far stronger foe. And what do you get in exchange, the satisfaction of feeling like you’re being ideologically consistent, while the state guns down everyone you care about?
This is fully suicidal. States have the ability to leverage overwhelming force against “local, immediate self-defense,” which they pretty much always have been since the days of knights and lords, but it is especially absurd in the context of modern militaries.
The crushing of the Paris Commune, the lack of coordination in Republic Spain… the only reason anybody thinks this is at all viable or desireable is because they haven’t seen it in action, and they haven’t seen it in action because people learned from it’s historical failures, or they were defeated.
Even if the forces were evenly matched (which they wouldn’t be), it’s very easy to divide and conquer. Without a unified front, forces cannot be dispatched to defend strategically vital locations, people will insist on defending their own homes and towns, which a centrally managed force can easily take advantage of.
This is extraordinarily idealist. “Initiatory violence” is a concept inherently tied to property rights. It is also completely wrong. Is is wrong (immoral, evil, suprememely impractical) for a starving man to steal bread for his family? Or does theft not count as “initiatory violence” if you really, really need it?
But let’s use a more real world example. There are many countries around the world where the people live in abject poverty, even though the natural resources are quite plentiful. In many cases, their resources were seized by force during colonialism, and now continue to be owned by foreign multinational corporations. Is it wrong (immoral, evil, supremely impractical) for those nations to reclaim control of those resources, given the opportunity? And for that matter, was it “supremely impractical” for colonial powers to seize those resources in the first place? Because it seems like the people who did it made a lot of money off of it and died quite rich and happy.
Of course, this moral proclamation is handed down from on high by the author, without establishing any kind of philosophical basis for it, let alone any consideration of how thing function in the actual, material world. Why should I not simply reject this assertion?
The issue isn’t the implementation of theory but the centralisation of power. Lenin’s approach replaced one form of coercion with another, perpetuating oppression under a different guise. True liberation arises from dismantling coercive systems entirely and fostering voluntary, decentralised networks that operate independently of centralised control.
Political power often reinforces the very structures it seeks to dismantle. Genuine change stems from creating resilient, voluntary networks that operate in the shadows, gradually eroding state influence through counter-economic activities. By building these systems, we undermine coercive institutions without legitimising them through political engagement.
By the time local self-defence becomes necessary, the state’s power will have diminished due to the proliferation of decentralised, counter-economic networks. These networks, operating independently, build resilience and adaptability, making it impossible for centralised authorities to suppress them effectively.
A starving individual seeking sustenance isn’t initiating violence, the coercive system that led to their deprivation bears responsibility. Reclaiming resources taken through coercion is justified, whereas establishing new systems of authority through violence perpetuates cycles of oppression.
Coercive systems have consistently failed to deliver genuine freedom. Building decentralised, voluntary networks offers a sustainable path to liberation, circumventing the instability and oppression inherent in centralised power structures. Historical evidence demonstrates that centralised authority always leads to systemic failure and human suffering.
Counter-economic activities cultivate influence by operating outside the state’s purview. Engaging in black and grey markets enables individuals to build economic strength without relying on state mechanisms, undermining the state’s control over resources and diminishing its legitimacy.
Ah, so stealing is not in fact stealing if you really really need it, gotcha.
There’s something I need to explain here and I think the only way to do it is to step back and tell you a story.
I studied physics in uni because I didn’t know what to study and it seemed like the best place to try to understand reality. The day we started studying the more complex, and weird stuff, like relativity and QM, my professor gave us a speech that really resonated with me.
“The stuff we’re about to cover doesn’t make a lot of sense, and some of you may find it troubling that the universe works in such a strange and confusing way. But in a way, it makes sense that it doesn’t make sense. Our brains evolved to understand things on a macro scale, and everything we’ve studied up to this point has operated on that level. But nothing in your genetic makeup or day to day life has equipped you to understand subatomic particles or objects approaching the speed of light. It would be very strange, then, if we were able to grasp these concepts immediately and make sense of them right off the bat. Eventually, if you keep studying and working with these concepts, they will become second nature and start to make more intuitive sense, but you just have to sort of rewire your brain a bit first.”
What’s important about his speech is that it touches on something broader that’s a little difficult to put into words. It’s the fact that reality is always just a little messy. It never works just exactly the way we want it to. Sometimes, it works in a way we really, really don’t want it to. But you study things enough, eventually you start to recognize what truth is shaped like. And for me, I make a distinction between “natural” ideas and “man-made” ideas. In a sense, all ideas are man-made, but there are certain ideas that seem to inherently reflect reality, such that any intelligent being would come up with them, physical laws and the like. But then there are other ideas that are distinctly human. They are clean, pleasing, comforting, they help us establish our identity, and they are often bullshit. They don’t reflect reality as it is, messy and imperfect, they’re always a bit too clean, and the real purpose is more psychological than anything.
Agorism is a man-made idea. The entire foundation of the philosophy, according to what you linked, is the inherent, absolute principle, that initiating violence is always wrong, and the only thing that is wrong. And yet, the first example I come up with that follows that example to a messy, uncomfortable conclusion, suddenly it doesn’t count. Somehow.
What it comes down to is that this ideology isn’t designed to actually do anything or to reflect any actual truth. It’s supposed to sit there in your head providing you with a particular sense of identity. In the realm of the physical, the results are often messy and imperfect, but in the realm of the mind, everything can always work out perfectly for everyone. Thus, Lenin’s great sin of moving things from the theoretical, where they could be clean and perfect, to the physical where they would actually have the capacity to affect change, at the cost of having to confront difficult, messy, life-or-death questions.
If someone is starving, you say, it must be because of a coercive system. But that isn’t necessarily true, and more importantly, it doesn’t really address anything. “Systems” cannot be held accountable, you cannot take the concept of Capitalism to court and demand it start giving the man bread. Suppose the man simply cannot find work - who is responsible? Every business owner who refused to hire him? Every landowner who prevents him from living in his natural state of a hunter-gatherer? But let’s broaden the scope some more - of course, in the mind palace, we can simply decide who’s responsible and hold them responsible, regardless of how much wealth or power they might possess, but what if the culprit is external and beyond our reach? Say, we’re in one of those nations that had their resources stolen, and the nation decided to reclaim its resources, and in response, the colonizers have imposed sanctions and a blockade. So the man is still starving, but it’s not because of anyone within his society, there is no one he can reasonably seek restitution from, and he doesn’t have the means to steal from the colonizers, so instead he steals from someone who’s completely innocent.
It seems to me that this absolute moral law from which the entire ideology is derived and which, above all else, must never be contradicted, doesn’t actually survive contact with the physical world. It needs so many exceptions and amendments that to make it work you essentially end up ignoring it and just doing whatever your conscience tells you is right. Which is obviously a superior approach, since that law is a nonsense, man-made idea that doesn’t actually reflect reality, while your conscience is influenced from experiences interacting with the real world.
I’ve focused too much on that point but I will try to quickly address some others.
That’s like saying that historical evidence demonstrates walking on two legs always leads to systemic failure and human suffering. Centralized authority pops up everywhere because it is an effective way of addressing certain problems. Again, decentralization is romanticized because it is foreign and it is foreign because it often has significant problems. Decentralization is often synonymous with warlordism, not to mention things like generational blood feuds, lynch mobs, and witch burnings. Centralization has reasons for being so common, and suffering is also quite common, but that doesn’t mean that one causes the other. What is you evidence for decentralization working so much better? How do we know it’s that and not some other factor?
Black and grey markets are not going to magically make you rich if you’re broke. If you’re powerless, you’re still powerless, and have no ability to affect the world until you obtain some form of power. It’s possible, of course, to acquire economic power through such means, but it’s also possible for the state to SWAT you the moment you actually become a credible threat to its legitimacy.