Post-scarcity anarchism
"In this series of related essays, Murray Bookchin balances his ecological and anarchist vision with the promising opportunities of a 'post-scarcity' era. Surpassing the constraints of Marxist political economy--which was rooted in an era of material scarcity and could not forsee the sweeping changes ahead--Bookchin argues that the tools necessary for the self-administration of a complex, industrial societyhave already been developed and have greatly altered our revolutionary landscape. Technological advances were made during the 20th century which expanded production greatly, but in the pursuit of corporate profit and at the expense of human need, workers' control and ecological sustainability. Through direct control on industry, and by incorporating an ecological and utopian vision for society, the working class can now dispell the myth that the state, hierarchical social relations and political parties (vanguards) are necessary to their struggle for freedom. Bookchin's analysis, rooted in the realities of contemporary society, remains refreshingly pragmatic."--Jacket.
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- I'm fond of the communalism of Murray Bookchin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communalism_(Bookchin)
their ideas of liberatory technology and post-scarcity anarchism are refreshing
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lewis-herber-murray-...
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post...
plus the Kurds & co evolved their own system from the "libertarian municipalism" Bookchin described
- Great question and there’s two steps in my opinion:
First is to become as free as possible from lock in and own your own data. The best way to do this is the self host your own technology.
This is really not possible for the majority of people though.
So practically I always suggest that you have multiple providers for services, don’t pool your data any one place (other than your own place) and own your backups. This is basic stuff that we’ve been teaching since the 90s and still very applicable today.
The harder and more impactful thing is to then create community owned technology that is outside of the commerce model.
So for example imagine that instead of FAANG running the world, the largest tech and data orgs would look more like wikimedia foundation, Annas archive, scihub, Graphene, Linux etc…. and more generally that technology and governance are open and not bound to commerce/taxation/coercion based organizations.
Ultimately we need to create a democratic-technology movement such that capitalists don’t monopolize technology, which is currently the trend. This is not some kind of simple thing by the way, this is revolutionary economics is what I’m talking about.
My suggestion is to read Post-Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin
- "..summon “unsullied” socialism, a game with ever more variations, which long since has become confusing—and boring."
to quote a comment I found, because it puts it better than I could;
"Murray Bookchin's concept of communalism and his follower Abdullah Öcalan's similar concept of democratic confederalism. It can be summed up as "refocusing politics around local government by popular assemblies, while higher levels of government being confederations of these local units". Thus communalism does mean there would still be a state, although far more decentralised. This was one reason why Bookchin stopped calling himself an anarchist, though his disillusionment with the '90s the anarchist scene was another."
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libertarian municipalism + communalism, a kind of libertarian socialism
with social ecology as the philosophy framing our situation
Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971);
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post...
some use the meme of "google Murray Bookchin", because once you get into their work, so much of it makes good sense (and their polemic bits are funny too)
a really good podcast on Murray;
+
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Bookchin
.
and there's the adapted democratic confederalism of Ocalan, which is actually used in Rojava (Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria)
https://nybooks.com/online/2018/06/15/how-my-fathers-ideas-h...
this is the group that was US aligned until Trump said no, which allowed Turkey to do a land-grab and dispossess folk
- companies are flush with capital and desparate for labor input; wages are not stagnating
in this case i'd recommend "post-scarcity anarchism" by bookchin
- I'm not gonna go meticulously through all your stuff between we are just arguing about the same back and forth.
> But that's literally human nature. We are not equal. I may be able to produce the finest of farts, but the fart market is terrible and nobody wants my farts. You, being a fine apple farmer, are in much higher demand. It's a natural process that you'll gain power by being in demand.
It's not human nature, it's a structural property. There has been societies all through the history of the world, and some are still in existence, as described by the book Anarchy Works that I linked earlier, that has also had fine fart makers and fine apple farmers, but the difference was that the foundation was, that even though what I do is more in demand than what you do, we share what we have, so no one falls behind, and then maybe discuss if I really should spend so much time perfecting my farts. There is no reason why society should "allow" someone to hoard stuff when it's not beneficial to society. Instead, society should try to deter hoarding and greed, and in the event that it's not possible, they should exile the person until they change their behaviours to match the wishes of society.
If you structure your society so that greed is rewarded, you get greedy inhabitants. If you structure society so that solidarity and compassion is rewarded, you get inhabitants accordingly.
> But do you want anti-vaxxers to have their voices heard?
They should be able to say what they wish. Anybody should. The reason why such things seem to have a hold is because information is not free, you have to fight to be educated, and your education is dictated by lobbyists, and you have news and politicians and social medias who manipulate information for profit. That's why stuff like flat earth and anti-vax seem to be growing. It's because of misinformation and a lack of education in the populace, at least that's what it seems like to me. The more knowledge and information is available to all in a population, the less we see of such things like flat-earth, anti-vax, extreme religious beliefs, nationalism, racism, speciesism and so on.
It's because people can make bucks from stuff like that - see for example Facebook - that such things are spreading. In a society where compassion and solidarity were rewarded, stuff like that would be much less.
> I know about liquid democracy. I've watched the pirate party with some anticipation before they spiralled out of control into yet another utopian far-left "reality is not relevant" hobby club. First of all, for it to be meaningful, it requires an informed public. We don't have that, and we won't get that. Ah, but they don't need to be informed, they can delegate their votes! Please take a look at Youtube or Twitch and who the most successful content creators are. That's who will command the votes in your liquid democracy. You're annoyed by Trump? Add more liquid democracy and Trump will seem like an elder statesman.
And that's why we cannot reform society to such things. We cannot try to have a bit of direct democracy here, and some cooperatives there, because it will always be in opposition to the rest of society, and in the end, as greshams law dictates, bad will win. We need to "tear it down" and built it up anew, on a better foundation.
> I do not believe that democracy should be the dictatorship of the majority that it is today. When you want to decide everything by majority rule, you're turning everything into a political battlefield. I do understand the allure and the hope for efficiency if we decide something once and then it's settled and everybody has to surrender to that decision. I also do understand that it's a road to hell, that it will lead to conflict and war.
I don't believe in the dictatorship of the many, and direct democracy doesn't. It's not inherent it in. There is lots of ways to structure direct democracy is not a dictatorship of the 51%. Right now though, we have a dictatorship of the 1%. That's far worse than a dictatorship of the 51%.
> 1) Acknowledge that people are different, have different preferences and aversions. 2) Acknowledge that your preferences and aversions are not the result of a quest for truth but simply that result of your genes and the experiences you made, so it's not that they are right, it's just that they are yours, which makes it feel like they are what everybody should have. 3) do not attempt to force yours on everyone, not by violence, not by vote. 4) Where the preferences conflict so that a (largely) unanimous direction can not be found, do not force a decision, but offer a split: if you and I cannot decide on a car and color, that's okay. We don't have to, we can get two bikes instead.
What you are describing is directly fitting with the anarchist playbook, and it's directly contradictory to our current society in the modern world. Yet, you are saying our current society is quite good.
I don't wish to continue this discussion, it's just too draining. I think you should try and read these following books, and if you do, I think you'll find that you actually agree with anarchism very much. I'm not sure where on the anarchist spectrum you lie, but at least it does sound like you align very much with anarchism in general, if you'd just give it a chance.
Here are three books:
* Anarchy Works: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-ana...
* Post-Scarcity Anarchism: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post...
* The Democracy Project: https://b-ok.cc/md5/1BD930F7B17488F2F5BD28BE2AE4584C
- although people here may have an aversion to the word 'anarchy' - "Post Scarcity Anarchism" is a great book on this topic: http://www.amazon.com/Post-Scarcity-Anarchism-Working-Classi...
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