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Autor: Amir
Datum:  
To: unsystem
Betreff: Re: [unSYSTEM] Anonymous - Official announcement for the worldwide Humanity Party
Pablo, you made a good outline for a general anarchist theory which
still needs some development because it leaves out a path for creating
this society from our current context. Bookchin has very strong
arguments for a sort of federal democracy by creating civil society
movements that take political power through local municipalities. In
Catalonia for instance, there's an anarchist cooperative we work with
called the CIC (http://cooperativa.cat) organizing small local
businesses and cooperatives to evade the economic system through
economic disobedience, such as using the law to avoid paying tax (like
the big corporations do). The Kurdish movements in Turkey switched from
a struggle for de jure independence to a struggle for de facto
independence heavily influenced by Bookchin's ideas of libertarian
municipalism.

Bookchin's ideas are refreshing because they point to a real path to
political power that is actually very contemporary and being employed by
anarchist groups in multiple places. Combined with free market mutualist
or syndicalist ideas which give a path to economic power, and we have a
solution for strong thriving anarchist societies. The key is civil
society development and this is where the postmodernists like Nietzsche
or Foucault have a massive contribution that point to big flaws in the
fabric of our moral systems that are life-denying and the propensity for
lying through rationalist positivism (which makes Objectivism look
ridiculous). Philosophy influences scientific development and rational
truth- words like central planning, command and control economy, and ...
are old fashioned today. Instead we're more likely to use words like
tipping point, butterfly effect, ...

Ours is an age of movement, uncertainty and transition. By necessity
anarchism has to change with the times. It feels that this age of
materialist Marxism has tainted anarchist thought since Proudhon, making
anarchism anachronistic and dogmatic at times. That's not to say that
anarcho-communism has nothing valuable to offer. The liberating thing
about anarchism is that every strain of anarchism (even
anarcho-communism and anarcho-capitalism) tells us new interesting
things, and offers up new strategies and tactics for fighting
authoritarianism.

By saying you are a proponent of anarcho-communism or anarcho-capitalism
means you believe that questions of class and economy are the most
important issues- not our ethics, how we administrate and govern, the
relations between people and culture. However one philosophy gives us a
history of experience for organizing economically. The original
criticism of capitalism emerged from Proudhon, the anarcho-syndicalist
and first person to call themselves an anarchist.

The other philosophy gives us practical tools like Bitcoin, smart
contracts and agorism. It also teaches us about economics and the
destructive role played by central banks and corrupt government
intervention in the economy. These are all useful, valuable ideas and we
should not reject ideas completely without studying them all first, and
then you deciding what to take, and what to leave.

psy:
> You will cannot practice never anarchism by using capitalism.
> You always will be subjugated to market rules which are really
> anti-socials.


That's a very dogmatic thing to say. How do you feel about projects
organized by the Catalan cooperative which are using the free market to
support socialist projects. Are they not practicing anarchism because
they are using capitalism?

I'd argue the opposite. I'd say they are thriving in their work through
their adoption of contemporary ideas, broadening their thought to all
ideas of anarchism.

I've seen the opposite. The stifling control and retardation of markets
which hinders development of good projects. Some of us say to the state:
give us a free market! We are happy to compete with the giant
corporations on an equal level. Imagine no copyright, and therefore no
Microsoft, no proprietary software and a rich successful open source
market (and therefore free software).

Repeal all the paperwork and bureaucracy, and more people will take
initiative. Stop giving power to the corporations, and people will start
doing work that is fulfilling and character developing. Remember it is
monied interests that control the economy, own all the land and buy up
the government. They don't follow rules, pay tax and they constantly
alienate us with spectacle. Meanwhile our life energy is being sapped by
a freedom-hating cold machine that dominates our minds refusing us to
live off the land and rigging everything against free-thinking people.

I do agree that neoliberalism is a destructive ideology, but
neoliberalism actually represents a mutation of Ayn Rand's thought which
is influenced by Mises. However the general American libertarian
movement is far richer with people like Henry Thoreau, Lysander Spooner,
and Rose Wilder Lane. I would more accurately say that the problem is
capitalist modernity, not all forms of capitalism. And yes, you can be a
socialist and say that. After all I wouldn't say that all socialists are
state socialists. There is such a thing as socialism from the bottom up.
If you like cooperatives, then you are supporting non-authoritarian
socialism.

Capitalist modernity is a more specific term describing the context of
our situation. It's refers to a break with old tradition, teleological
history like liberalist narratives of progress and perfectibility,
scientific positivist rationalist-obsessed materialism, neoliberalism,
an obsession with industrialization and urbanization, authoritative
ideas of a strong nation state with its institutions (administration,
education, police), laws (masquerading as 'rights') and surveillance.
The challenge now is to develop a new anarchist philosophy that gives us
a path to this transition we're experiencing now. And for this, I'm
strongly pointing people to study the Kurdish movements and Rojava. They
have developed a highly contemporary anarchist philosophy based off the
ideas of Nietzsche, Foucault, Bookchin and Proudhon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Confederalism

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/5a7b18b5-0ec3-3d3e-a307-54820a7c6a59

They've also fused this with old mythology which we really need to
understand because of this new wave of growing nationalism. Mezopotamya
(now Kurdistan, Iraq, Syria) is 1 of 3 first civilizations in human
history. The mythologies and how they changed explain how the societies
were changing, particularly the mother, life and nature worship which
transformed into mythologies of war, strong men and domination. Here's a
BBC documentary about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPMocsqHnDo

Nietzsche teaches us that we can create our own moral systems. There is
nothing authoritative or intrinsically right. Just societies and values.
And this is where it gets exciting- the Kurds are postmodernists. When
you say this or that isn't anarchism remember Wikipedia:

"Anarchism draws on many currents of thought and strategy. Anarchism
does not offer a fixed body of doctrine from a single particular world
view, instead fluxing and flowing as a philosophy."

"Many types and traditions of anarchism exist, not all of which are
mutually exclusive."

Different strategies and tactics from different schools of anarchism can
be used side by side, and mixed together in different ways to create new
societies with different values. Anarchism is far too rich to reduce it
down to a single school or even reject recognized schools in their entirety.