On Anarchism

[droqen]

Regarding a g radley's
"On Anarchism"

[droqen]

p6

Unjustified vs justified hierarchies . . .
I would tend to describe this question more in terms of whether procedural hierarchies have any utility, which I believe they do, rather than in more moralistic-leaning terms like whether they are justified or unjustified
 . . .

(Quote from Engels' On Authority)

". . . the necessity of authority . . . will nowhere be found more evident than on board a ship on the high seas. There, in times of danger, the lives of all depend on the instantaneous and absolute obedience of all to the will of one."

I read this and had to start this thread in order to take a note down:

While situations such as this may be unavoidable, I do feel the strong need to ask, is it necessary to put ourselves into hierarchy-dependent situations in the first place? It is true that hierarchy has utility, but it is, too, capable of inflicting irreversible damage. Is such damage worth its deployment? If it is not possible to navigate the high seas without temporary authority, is it worth navigating the high seas?

This is a question I'd like to engage later.

[droqen]

p7

The anarchist concern, in my understanding, is . . . procedural hierarchies may ossify into a bureaucracy or a state-like entity, . . . Or, that, while procedural hierarchies are good, useful, valid, necessary in certain narrow spheres of production, they are never, or at least rarely, justified or useful in the general political sphere.

i am worried more about the ossification than i am about the second thing, but i think even that example exposes how little i am concerned with (and aware of!) the "political sphere" in general.

radley writes earlier (p3) about how "a lot of anarchist formulations. . . posit or assert things in a certain way that suggests that the state and society exist in a sort of historical vacuum" which i agree with, w/r/t myself -- i especially like the quote (p3) "The state is not arbitrarily sitting on top of time and history, like a dragon sitting on a [hoard] of gold (the gold here being human potential), that can be thrown off and replaced"

[droqen]

anyway, i'll come back to that later. i think my major concern with the ossification is not in any particular formulation of what procedural hierarchies may ossify into, but that any structure which follows from accepting procedural hierarchies will, it follows, be built on the assumption that hierarchies are fine, which (i believe) they are not.

[droqen]

p8

it is possible for revolutions . . . to use the state as an instrument of suppressing the old ruling class until such time as that class can be reshaped in the image of the new ruling class.

i agree with this, and i'm not sure how anyone could disagree with it, tbh! i wonder what the "anarchist formulation" to which radley refers looks like, and how i would react to it.

p8

In my experience, anarchists tend to see the state more as an independent object existing in a vacuum . . . sometimes even as a kind of conspiracy, . . .

i do not know how i view the state. at times it feels like an independent object, for sure, but i fully understand that when it appears that way it is due to a lack of understanding on my part. it is a complex machine made of people following values and structures and whatnot, out of which results many complex consequences.

hmm. anarchy as a way to not think about this stuff?
but, how could anyone say such a system is justifiable?

[droqen]

p9

If class distinctions were abolished . . . people would still have a "capitalist mindset" for lack of a better word.

. . . So, capitalism must first be held under the dictatorship of the proletariat, so that the bourgeoisie can be suppressed, and the old ideas can be obsolesced . . . the development of the new system [must be shepherded] . . . An anarchism that tries to abolish class and state at once will find itself doing neither.

i don't know how to think in terms of all the fancy words, but what i'm understanding is that people's minds will be stuck in the old ways -- no, how better shall i put this? -- everyone is playing the game, and if we abolish the rules all at once without putting into place new rules, then people will continue to play the same old game, and someone will put into place new rules, and since most of the someones are still playing the same game (despite the rules having been removed), the old rules, driven by the old values, will come back.

p9

The state . . . must be "worked through" or "sublated" rather than simply abolished or turned off with the snap of one's fingers.

interesting. it occurs to me that anarchy -- sorry, i should say, my anarchy -- is less of a stance with regards to what the ideal political system is, and certainly not an actual plan for accomplishing one, and more of a moral stance. i wonder what it would look like, for a dream of a realistic working political system to flower from a moral stance? i guess marxism probably flowered in this way.

what does it mean, to sublate?

"To negate, deny, or contradict." "To take or carry away; to remove."

hmm. so the state is a process that must be "sublated," in this case i suppose radley is describing a lengthy process, a long sublation, rather than an instant one. we must work through sublation.

[droqen]

i'm stuck on this other thing radley said.

p8

it is possible for revolutions . . . to use the state as an instrument of suppressing the old ruling class until such time as that class can be reshaped in the image of the new ruling class. . . . if the anarchist formulation is that the state can not be used for this purpose, it is simply wrong. It has happened and will surely happen again.

in my mind, the way that i would formulate (or reformulate) this position is that the state ought not be used for this purpose, and that knowing the state is used for this purpose is perhaps the deeply foundational problem with the existence of the state in the first place.

how can one even conceive of the value of anarchy without understanding its opposite?

[droqen]

i will go back and do these readings some point. not now, now i am trying to get a birds eye image. what are my gut responses? i will go back and revise my initial reactions.

[droqen]

p15

. . . for me, from a historical materialist point of view, I can't apprehend the state [as?] anything other than an expression of class domination and as a battleground to be conquered by the proletariat for the purpose of overthrowing the bourgeoisie's dictatorship. . .

p16

Simply abolishing the state and retreating into regional communes with no centralized instruments of production or political mediaction, or means of suppressing the inevitable counter-revolution and re-assertion of the capitalist hydra, is inadequate . . . An anarchist revolution. . . of immediate state abolition, would fail to bring about a stateless or classless society.

stateless, classless. this isn't how i perceive or think about anarchy, although it surely is a part of it. but, i mean, it's not my goal, it's not my primary goal, but it is something that must, surely, follow from a total lack of... x, whatever x is. it's something larger than state or class, some raw material out of which state and class are constructed, which feeds them.

p16

If such a proletarian state does degenerate into a bureaucratic, oppressive, counter-revolutionary [what does counter-revolutionary mean? radley uses this term a few times] entity, I would hope in the post revolution, classless society, or perhaps the society now divided into class-like categories based on division of labor instead of division of ownership (bureaucrats vs. non-bureaucrats), then I would hope the anarchists of the day would overthrow that state!

fascinating

But I can't see us ever moving past the era of bourgeois domination without an adequate, historicized understanding of what the state is in its historical development, or praxis of conquering and transformating the state so that it may eventually be sublated ("aufhebung'd").

whoa whoa whoa sublated is one of those words i just had to look up, what the fuck is aufhebung? take me to that source material, there's even a footnote...

p16

"abolition" or "sublation." In this case, the Marxist view is that the state can only be sublated ("withered away, lifted, but in a certain sense preserved"), not immediately abolished.

fascinating. i agree with this without reservation, but i'm surprised that marx says this and continues to suggest a revolution; i am not so interested in wholesale 'abolishing' anything, which seems to be radley's description of what anarchism is all about? perhaps because he is very much in the mind of revolution, but maybe i am just too optimistic.

[droqen]

takin a break for a while, this is already a lotta reading and thinking whew.