#moneyless revolution

[biznocrats]

https://social.digitalshoppingmall.net/content/perma?id=14630&cd1=4&cd2=4

[anarchistfrogposting]

any chance you could explain your perspective on the rift between anarchists and MLs/communists/socialists/etc? i understand there's some methodological disagreements, like anarchists would never place their hope for revolution in a socialist/communist/etc political party, but i've genuinely heard self-proclaimed anarchists refer to "communists" with such disdain and it just makes me go ?????? we (anarchists) are also communists?? we ultimately want the same things - communism is a STATEless classless moneyless society. just, what's going on here??? surely this is not the best use of our time?

I used to be pretty hardcore about hating on MLs etc. in my defence, some of them can be pretty annoying, but I’m sure much the same is true of anarchists if you’re stood on the other side of the argument.

One thing that is almost certainly and provably true is that the overwhelming majority of radical leftists believe what they believe because, at their core, they think the current state of society is unjust, and want to work to build a better one.

But I also don’t think the argument that runs something like “we’re all just communists with different methods of getting to communism” holds much water. I don’t think anarchists can completely work with their ideological opponents; the belief that hierarchies are unjust and need to be dismantled is fundamentally incompatible with the idea that you need a centralised proletarian vanguard that derives its power from the representative democracy of workers councils. There has been significant and bloody conflict between both camps for a reason.

On the other hand, right now, those conflicts are petty and ridiculous when neoimperialism and neoliberalism continue their stranglehold over society and economy. I have worked and do work with many MLs/Trots/Maoists etc., and we need some serious solidarity with the left right now.

When millions struggle to meet their basic needs, when the proles are beaten and killed in the streets simply for asking for their basic rights, when the rights of minority classes are routinely and systematically infringed upon and reversed, when the whole planet is choking and dying, what does your opinion on a worker’s vanguard matter? People don’t even have their basic rights. It’s petty and useless to badmouth obvious allies in a struggle that is right on our doorstep.

[communistkenobi]

Nick I am so sorry we have been friends for so long but what’s the difference between socialism and communism I am too American I am sorry

lol it’s all good! you can view socialism as a form of early communism, or rather, the transitional period through which communism is achieved. assuming a scenario in which there is a successful worker’s revolution, the socialist state has seized capitalist infrastructure and production and uses these things to work towards the ultimate goal of communism, a stateless classless moneyless society (stateless does not mean an undirected or unstructured society, just that the modern concept of the nation-state has been abolished as a result of the abolition of property and class - this is a pretty complex topic though so maybe a simpler way is to think of it for now is a world without borders. this is a scenario in which communism is global and has taken over all capitalist states, ie, very advanced or mature communism, and direction of resources and operations is done through administration as opposed to law and state governments - this is a very rough and general outline). a lot of capitalist infrastructure is extremely useful and necessary for the functioning of a proletarian state, and aren’t things we want to do away with (telecommunications, shipping, transport, medicine, various state and economic structures, etc - although obviously the way these things are run and the way workers are treated in those industries would change dramatically!). some people are socialists and just want a worker’s state without the communism part, some people (anarcho-communists for example) want to move directly to communism from capitalism, and debates about the exact nature and structure of a communist society are some of the fundamental things communists argue about. communism is the goal, socialism is (one of the possible) means. I personally tend towards models of centralised socialist state control and direction of a proletarian society, although I’m not well-read enough to provide you with a totally comprehensive platform on how all of that would work and that’s also like an insanely long conversation lol

[la-tache-rouge]

SIMPLE DEFINITIONS

To avoid strawmanning, please read these simple definitions.

Socialism: broad term to describe an economic system in which the means of production are publicly owned or collectively owned by the workers.

Communism: a stateless, classless, and moneyless society where property is socially owned.

Means of production: everything used by the workers to make products.

Proletariat: the working class.

Bourgeoisie: the capitalist class, those who own a large amount of capital and the means of production.

Capitalism: an economic system in which the means of production are owned and managed by private individuals for profit.

Fascism: a political system characterized by authoritarianism, ultranationalism, elitism, militarism, chauvinism, and the absence of basic human rights. It strongly opposes communism, anarchism, socialism, and historically (Classical Fascism) some aspects of capitalism.

Marxism-Leninism (authoritarian socialism): a branch of socialism that advocates for a one-party state to control all aspects of the economy. It's characterized by wanting to achieve a socialist society via a vanguard party in a revolution and wanting the means of production to be owned by the state rather than the workers directly.

Vanguard party: a group of the most informed and politically literate people who would lead the proletariat in the revolution against the Bourgeoisie and take power in the newly formed State.

Democracy failed countless times in history. But we never stopped battling for it. The same goes for socialism: we will never cease wanting a just and equal society for all, no matter how long we will have to fight.

Power to the People!

[anarkittywantspatsonthehead]

Ramblings of a chronically online trans woman

Its weird how political opinions can get the unfriend really quick. So with this in mind right now I am going to declare that

I am

A far left wing anarchist communist.

I believe in the right to bare arms.

I believe that the only reforms we can take on this country is by dismantling the current system and implementing a classless moneyless society where we can benefit and support eachother through mutual aid and organized community out reach. This is what I will be standing for til the day I die and If you aren't able to be apart of th a t conversation then that's fine but don't unfriend me or go quietly because I'm genuinely interested in your opinion.

The revolution and frustration of the bourgeoisie is the most important thing in the entire world

That means we have to:

A. PROTECT OUR SELVES BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. Fascist groups have had a long history and pattern of disarming minorities. Ben Harcourt from Columbia law school says, "If you read the 1938 Nazi gun laws closely and compare them to earlier 1928 Weimar gun legislation – as a straightforward exercise of statutory interpretation – several conclusions become clear. First, with regard to possession and carrying of firearms, the Nazi regime relaxed the gun laws that were in place in Germany at the time the Nazis seized power. Second, the Nazi gun laws of 1938 specifically banned Jewish persons from obtaining a license to manufacture firearms or ammunition. Third, approximately eight months after enacting the 1938 Nazi gun laws, Hitler imposed regulations prohibiting Jewish persons from possessing any dangerous weapons, including firearms"(harcourt). So, with the apparent evidence that targeted minorities are often disarmed in their communities its my opinion that we advocate for the arming minority populations, including trans women and poc.

B. help eachother grow and learn and understand why the other person feels invalidated or upset or angry or frustrated. This is a key step in holding eachother accountable for any harm people may have caused. A lot of left of center politics revolve around the act of shaming, policing, and otherwise gatekeeping*the bad kind* leftist spaces as a means to try and hold someone accountable. How ever this doesn't always work when the people you're shaming, gate keeping, or policing are the same as you and me. We are all prone to mistakes and causing acts of harm. But it's how we move forward that makes us better people and a better community. It's apart of my core beliefs that we must work out our individual traumas between us and those we've harmed so thst we can present a more solid collective.

C. Frustrate any attempts to separate or divide eachother, I don't think that any thing will be solved unless the left presents a unified front. A united front is key. With a united front we can actively take a stand against tyranny and our oppressors in ways we never could have before. But to present a united front we have to be able to collectively address issues together and take back our power as workers and minorities in this country.

And finally,

It is my honest opinion that there is going to be a revolution.

Every day people's rights come under attack and fascists are now able to be more bold in expressing rhetoric that invites and incites violence against minorities of all, shapes, color, culture, gender, sexuality, and religion. Do not let them control you with tactics they invented to police queer, poc, and indigenous people. It's up to us to stand up and fight back against people who would see us dead, in chains, or otherwise disenfranchised. Their strategy is divide and conquer and we must subvert that by any means necessary.

"On Gun Registration, the NRA, Adolf Hitler, and Nazi Gun Laws: Exploding the Gun Culture Wars", Ben Harcourt, Columbia Law School, https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/1327/

[once-in-a-blue-moon2021]

CRISES, SUBJECTIVITY, POSSIBILITIES AND CONTEMPORARY SPACES

CRISES, SUBJECTIVITY, POSSIBILITIES AND CONTEMPORARY SPACES

Paper Presented on 16th September, 2017, at Mazdoor Mukti Centenary Celebration of the Russian Revolution, organized by the Russian Revolution Centenary Celebration Committee Published on 23rd September, 2021 DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.23221.40165 License: CC BY 4.0 DEBAPRASAD BANDYOPADHYAY  AKHAR BANDYOPADHYAY  ABSTRACT In this paper, two parasitic authors, or otherwise, financial bourgeois,…

[third-nature]

Many trans men can give birth and menstruate, yes

Gender is a fluid social construct that can't be contained in a dualistic binary, yes

The American nation-state was founded on the genocide of the Indigenous people and the enslavement of Africans, inspired Nazi Germany's eugenics programs and concentration camps, and continues to enforce a racist/imperialist project domestically and abroad, yes

Capitalism is an unjust economic system premised on the subordination of the many for the profit of the few, yes

Though there are varied perspectives on this one and spirituality is a rainbow of fascinating outlooks*, there is no panopticonic bearded tyrant in the sky sending people you don't like to Hell, yes

Socialism is common ownership and democratic management of the means of production by the people impacted, which is indeed a moral way to run an economy, yes

Abortion is a valid choice for terminating an unwanted pregnancy, yes

Defunding the police and redirecting those funds to community programs that tackle root causes of social strife is a better idea than keeping bloated cop budgets (cops being the actual embodiment/enforcement of the "big government" conservatives are so afraid of) around, yes

*There are many religious and spiritual leftists in the world, to the point where liberation theology has aided socialist revolutions in the Global South. Many people see spiritual values (non-dualism, detachment from commodities, interconnected relationships with the Earth, soul universalism, embrace of the Other, etc.) as innately left-wing. This can be contrasted with hierarchical capital-r Religious institutions, which express a corrupted form of spirituality to justify worldly inequalities and prejudices and the love of money. In this sense, spiritual leftists overwhelmingly reject the atrophied autocratic God of reactionary religion and tend to embrace a more revolutionary or pantheistic conception of the divine that seeks to bring "Paradise" to the world itself -- "Paradise" in the sense of a classless/stateless/moneyless/international/ecological social order premised on "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need" and where "the meek inherit the Earth".

[a-god-in-ruins-rises]

by the way, this reminds me of something i wanted to mention. i’m actually not anti-elitist. in much the same way that i’m not actually anarchist. i might occasionally use some anti-elitist/anarchist rhetoric. but for me it’s more of a means than an end. i don’t wish to abolish government in general and i don’t wish to abolish elitism in general.

i simply want the destruction of our current government and our current elites. why? because our current regime is bad. it is corrupt. it is decadent. it is sterile. 

i want to destroy it and replace it with a good government and good elites. in a way, this is partly what the american revolution was about. from the perspective of the americans, the british elites had become bad and sterile and decadent. no longer fit to rule. so they replaced them. mandate of heaven and all that.

i want it to be clear that although i post about “socialistic” economics i am not a communist (in the marxist sense). i don’t find a stateless, classless, and moneyless society desirable whatsoever.

[anarchopuppy]

A friend was trying to respond to a Marxist that said that there’s never been a successful anarchist revolution and provided two examples of “failed” anarchist movements, and they asked me for help figuring out what to say. I thought my reply was pretty good, so I’m reposting it here. If you want to see historical examples of successful anarchist organizing and stateless societies, read Anarchy Works

I don't think it's really worthwhile to confront Marxist’s claims of "all anarchist revolutions failed" on their own terms, since their definitions of "success" and "failure" are so different from ours and often seem almost ad hoc constructed to exclude anarchist experiments. It's better to inspect those definitions and assumptions more deeply instead

There are a few questions I like to ask with these kinds of claims:

Did they even really fail? What were their goals? What did they achieve? What did they lose? Was it ultimately worthwhile to do? Many of the examples that they point to weren't even meant to topple governments and destroy capital, but are just direct action campaigns that did succeed in things like preventing deforestation, capturing and squatting territory, building connections, educating people, achieving reform, or improving people's material conditions. Calling something like Food Not Bombs a failed revolutionary movement is, to quote Michael Stevens, "like calling your peanut butter sandwich a not-fast airplane". Even temporary or localized victories are still victories, and that's often all anarchists are aiming for with an action (while Marxists sit around waiting for the "right historical moment")

Why did they fail? Was it really due to an inherent flaw with anarchism itself that can't be overcome? Have any other anarchist organizations been able to avoid that pitfall? Would Marxist tactics have been able to avoid it? If they're just criticizing a specific poor tactical decision, that's not fatal to anarchism as a whole - anarchists themselves can, should, and do inspect and criticize previous actions to learn from them. If there's even a single example of anarchist organizing that faced the same challenges as their examples and overcame them, then that invalidates their entire point, because it proves that anarchism can work despite that

Turn the question around on them - what successes of Marxist organizing can they name? Were those really successes if looked at with the same harsh qualifications that they put on anarchist movements? No Marxist state has ever successfully dissolved into stateless, moneyless, classless communism - why is that? Is there any reason to believe that Marxist strategies would be effective in the modern day, or in the type of country you/they live in? Are there any examples of that?

At the end of the day, the Marxist definition of a successful movement seems to just be "any movement that puts Marxists in power", which is very telling. Meanwhile, anarchists are carving out pockets of freedom in squats, occupations, communes, autonomous zones, and even entire large-scale societies like in Catalonia, Ukraine, Rojava, and Chiapas, and though they may in many cases be small and temporary, they still achieve a level of true liberation that Marxist tactics never have

[dustedandsocial]

Need to jot something down and get it out of my system, so I don’t keep responding to terrible tweets

It seems important to at least understand the implications of basic communist principles, regardless of what position we’re in on the left currently. That does not feel like utopianism or drawing blueprints to me, it feels like something that helps flesh out our motives and strategies right now. Regardless of communism’s likelihood, those principles tell us who we are and how we should act and clarifies our struggle. 

It could be that a stateless, classless, moneyless society is a contradiction-free utopia, heaven on earth, and also no less than 1,700 years away. Yet I think people could find the contradiction-free version of communism impossible while still maintaining a desire to pursue a communist society without illusions. Furthermore, communist principles are not actually suspended in our vision of the future, they involve beliefs and actions that have been with us for probably thousands of years. Communism would be a process of realization, not an alien consciousness seeping into the world.

This is partly why I think the emphasis on a distinction between lower and higher phase communism is unhelpful. Not only for how the lower phase morphs into state socialism when in the wrong hands. But also because it sounds like it involves some kind of break between two separate societies, and that the first phase would involve guidance. We don’t need guidance to learn communist principles, they have long been a part of how humans interact with one another. But I see people get hung up on the phase distinction all the time, which in turn leads to state planning seeming appropriate. 

There aren’t supposed to be two separate communisms. The phases are a part of the same process. Any higher phase would clearly be impossible unless its lower phase was in fact the birth of human liberation. The state can’t wither away if an army of guys in newsboy caps are pointlessly forcing workers into the fields every day at gunpoint. That the state would be withering away is not an invitation for organizational hierarchy. It means that we enter the communist world as capitalist subjects, who must struggle in order to overcome capitalism’s impact on our collective consciousness and reach any higher potential. The state can’t be a part of aiding struggle because overthrowing capitalism only comes with the elimination of the state. The state is a roadblock cutting us off from any struggle to test our potential. That struggle requires the state’s elimination as a precondition.

An actual communist world could very well deepen contradictions. It could make some of our problems more complex. New problems would reveal themselves once you’ve eliminated the ones we’re dealing with now. Even abundance may not be as magical as it seems. The value in abundance is that it eliminates coercion, but it is not the goal in and of itself and it does not guarantee peace and harmony. How that abundance affects our social relations is what matters, and it hopefully would just allow us to relate to one another in new, less destructive ways. 

There’s the weird idea, even among MLs, that communism must be easy from the onset in order to be successful, that it requites preparation and a countdown clock. There’s no reason it can’t be extremely difficult, birthed in difficult, contingent conditions. We would have to go through the process of maturation without instruction and together manage our mistakes in order for the communist world to meaningfully take shape. Breht Revleft Radio wouldn’t need to stand over our shoulders the whole time. The process would have enormous obstacles, yes, and it would still likely be preferable to what we’re dealing with now. 

You can have a stateless, classless, moneyless society where everybody is at each other’s throats while in the process of laying its foundation. Why can’t you? Why does it have to be capitalism, climate disaster, and barrel bombs versus literal heaven on earth? Why would anybody need to evolve first? Because we’re scared violence might breakout? Do you know what’s been happening in Syria or Yemen over the last decade?

The reason it bothers me is that I feel like you need to get this across somehow and not let people think communism is this violent leap directly into stress-free living. Yes, that would be very unlikely! But we don’t need guarantees that our problems will all be resolved on some spiritual level. You’re never going to rid the world of contradictions. But this isn’t the fucking issue! The issue is whether or not communism, even at its predictably difficult onset, is better than what we’re living through now, or what we’re being offered. On what grounds would communism be preferable? Are the current conditions forcing our hand anyway? Is there even an other option at this point, beyond mass suffering and ecocide? Can you counter everything I’ve said and explain why running Matt Bruenig or Connor Kilpatrick or whoever for president in 2024 is going to get us out of the crisis?

I think we need some plan for climate change that affirms humanity, seeing as though humankind is what we’re trying to save. Talking about it only in terms of nature, with the always-implicit idea that we are not an aspect of nature ourselves, makes it easier for fascists to solve the problem. For me, communism is the gateway towards building up our collective self-esteem in defense against the worst impulses of the right. 

The movement towards communism would be one that solves issues by highlighting and negating the logic of capitalism through actions that necessarily plant one foot forward into a fully decommodified world. People are currently being made houseless in the middle of an economic crisis despite there being enough empty housing for everyone in the country. A communist movement would negate the logic of capitalism and fill those empty houses through force via collective action. This would loudly affirm human worth, demonstrate an alternative vision for the world, and highlight the absurdity of being ruled by an economic system, all at once.

No, we don’t want blueprints insofar as they design our future, but we can address the implications of communist principles in order to clarify what we’re actually fighting for. We need a basic life-affirming vision right now. I don’t think mild yet still impossible welfare reforms are going to cut it. If you’re still bickering with Democrats about votes and non-votes, as if you can scold them into not being a capitalist party, you should realize that you’ve hit a wall.

No clue how to get people on board with even the horizon not being perfect. It makes sense to me, but people don’t seem to like the idea! I’m told that in order to take the present situation seriously, we have to abandon ideas around a future society’s principles, even ones that actually help give us direction in the here and now. Never mind that I'm poor and vulnerable myself, struggling without ever abandoning the idea of total human liberation. I just think history shows us nothing but poor or otherwise greatly disadvantaged movements fighting for immediate gains and human liberation simultaneously. I think you see that in the movement for prison abolition right now, even if the need for revolution isn’t explicit.

I don’t think we’ll get anywhere unless there’s hard work done in clarifying communism or at least fleshing out a coherent vision around human emancipation and taking its principles and their implications seriously.

Or maybe we avert disaster by running Freddie de Boer for president in 2024, what do I know. It’s not like Liz Bruenig ever called me one of the greatest living writers of her generation.

[shodansbabygirl]

After the revolution and establishment of a stateless moneyless and classless society, we should just keep banks around.

So that we can have outrageous bank robberies again. But as like a theatrical hobby this time.

[and-then-there-were-n0ne]

Money was created many times in many places. Its development required no technological breakthroughs – it was a purely mental revolution. It involved the creation of a new inter-subjective reality that exists solely in people’s shared imagination.

Money is not coins and banknotes. Money is anything that people are willing to use in order to represent systematically the value of other things for the purpose of exchanging goods and services. Money enables people to compare quickly and easily the value of different commodities (such as apples, shoes and divorces), to easily exchange one thing for another, and to store wealth conveniently. There have been many types of money. The most familiar is the coin, which is a standardised piece of imprinted metal. Yet money existed long before the invention of coinage, and cultures have prospered using other things as currency, such as shells, cattle, skins, salt, grain, beads, cloth and promissory notes. Cowry shells were used as money for about 4,000 years all over Africa, South Asia, East Asia and Oceania. Taxes could still be paid in cowry shells in British Uganda in the early twentieth century.

In modern prisons and POW camps, cigarettes have often served as money. Even non-smoking prisoners have been willing to accept cigarettes in payment, and to calculate the value of all other goods and services in cigarettes. One Auschwitz survivor described the cigarette currency used in the camp: ‘We had our own currency, whose value no one questioned: the cigarette. The price of every article was stated in cigarettes … In “normal” times, that is, when the candidates to the gas chambers were coming in at a regular pace, a loaf of bread cost twelve cigarettes; a 300-gram package of margarine, thirty; a watch, eighty to 200; a litre of alcohol, 400 cigarettes!’

In fact, even today coins and banknotes are a rare form of money. In 2006, the sum total of money in the world is about $60 trillion, yet the sum total of coins and banknotes was less than $6 trillion. More than 90 percent of all money – more than $50 trillion appearing in our accounts – exists only on computer servers. Accordingly, most business transactions are executed by moving electronic data from one computer file to another, without any exchange of physical cash. Only a criminal buys a house, for example, by handing over a suitcase full of banknotes. As long as people are willing to trade goods and services in exchange for electronic data, it’s even better than shiny coins and crisp banknotes – lighter, less bulky, and easier to keep track of.

For complex commercial systems to function, some kind of money is indispensable. A shoemaker in a money economy needs to know only the prices charged for various kinds of shoes – there is no need to memorise the exchange rates between shoes and apples or goats. Money also frees apple experts from the need to search out apple-craving shoemakers, because everyone always wants money. This is perhaps its most basic quality. Everyone always wants money because everyone else also always wants money, which means you can exchange money for whatever you want or need. The shoemaker will always be happy to take your money, because no matter what he really wants – apples, goats or a divorce – he can get it in exchange for money.

Money is thus a universal medium of exchange that enables people to convert almost everything into almost anything else. Brawn gets converted to brain when a discharged soldier finances his college tuition with his military benefits. Land gets converted into loyalty when a baron sells property to support his retainers. Health is converted to justice when a physician uses her fees to hire a lawyer – or bribe a judge.

Ideal types of money enable people not merely to turn one thing into another, but to store wealth as well. Many valuables cannot be stored – such as time or beauty. Some things can be stored only for a short time, such as strawberries. Other things are more durable, but take up a lot of space and require expensive facilities and care. Grain, for example, can be stored for years, but to do so you need to build huge storehouses and guard against rats, mould, water, fire and thieves. Money, whether paper, computer bits or cowry shells, solves these problems. Cowry shells don’t rot, are unpalatable to rats, can survive fires and are compact enough to be locked up in a safe.

In order to use wealth it is not enough just to store it. It often needs to be transported from place to place. Some forms of wealth, such as real estate, cannot be transported at all. Commodities such as wheat and rice can be transported only with difficulty. Imagine a wealthy farmer living in a moneyless land who emigrates to a distant province. His wealth consists mainly of his house and rice paddies. The farmer cannot take with him the house or the paddies. He might exchange them for tons of rice, but it would be very burdensome and expensive to transport all that rice. Money solves these problems. The farmer can sell his property in exchange for a sack of cowry shells, which he can easily carry wherever he goes.

Because money can convert, store and transport wealth easily and cheaply, it made a vital contribution to the appearance of complex commercial networks and dynamic markets. Without money, commercial networks and markets would have been doomed to remain very limited in their size, complexity and dynamism.

- Yuval Noah Harari, Shells and Cigarettes in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

[autokratorissa]

What would you want to replace humanism with? What is your vision of an “ideal society”? And do you agree with using any means necessary to achieve such a society?

I’m not sure any single philosophy can replace humanism one-for-one like that, but nihilism is the obvious answer; it can exist without contradiction alongside scientism (I use that word in a neutral, even positive sense) and is arguably unique in the sheer diversity of application and interpretation that individuals can make of it---it’s a more personal, more individual, more holistic narrative than anything that has come before. We do not need humanism, is the point; I don’t think it’s accurate to say that where once the power of the Church and religious ideology needed to be replaced by a secular ideology, that secular ideology now itself needs to be replaced; rather, that that part of the ideological superstructure is increasingly becoming unnecessary. A kind of socialist patriotism and internationalism while classes still exist may be able to fill something of the same role, but previous examples of such things---in the USSR, say---were themselves humanist, so there’s no real example to actually look at yet. Nihilism conquers humanism, but that’s not the same as nihilism supplanting humanism.

I don’t have a vision of an ideal society; that’s a fruitless endeavour. I simply know my own society as it now exists, and the many, many problems that exist within it. I’d like to think I’m not naïve enough to believe that, even if every problem I can identify in society was instantly remedied, we would somehow have reached utopia. by definition, such a thing cannot exist. There are always things to be done, hurdles to be overcome, progress to be made, failings in the social organism. To quote Parenti, I support the revolution that feeds the children; we should start there, at such a basic, foundational level, and only then build upwards, not start at some abstract ideal and work backwards to work out how to get there, because invariably, you will not, and even if you did, the values, hopes, dreams, fears and longings of any age are values, hopes, dreams, fears and longings of the politically dominant class, so at best, you would only end up creating an inverse image of what was once reality. This is not to say you do not have goals and ambitions, obviously, just that you should not behold yourself and your political movement to an idea above everything else. To give some vague outline of, socially speaking, where I would like us to end up though, beyond the standard classless, moneyless, stateless (I’m not too bothered about this bit specifically and would certainly not call myself anti-state, but the state will wither away when the material conditions are right irrespective of what people may feel about it) definition given of communism, I think it’s worth working towards a society that has abolished family (not simply the nuclear family, but familial social organisations themselves), gender (first in labour, and then, as all mental states are reflections of labour-states, in the mind too), race, age (as far as is possible---the complete dehumanisation and disenfranchisement of children by the very nature of that social category, at the very least, should be abolished, and the juvenoia of mature generations actively fought by social institutions), and speciesist distinctions built upon the human/nonhuman divide that not just humanism but all prior ideologies have made.

The ends always justify the means, or else they are not true ends. For an end to be such it must, definitionally, rank above all other things; therefore, to say ‘the ends justify the means’ is to simply state that ‘these are the ends,’ and ‘the ends do not justify the means’ likewise amounts to ‘these are not my ultimate aims’. The means/ends distinction is but one of many examples of language masking true power relations and motives. As an aside, the possibility that most people simply do not have the ultimate aims they think they do---indeed, it is arguable that many people do not have any at all---is one that never seems to be considered, but strikes me as almost self-evident. There are, in reality, only means; all ends are but stop-gaps to greater or more fundamental goals (cf. P. Foot, Morality as a system of hypothetical imperatives). So yes, I’d say I do support the means, but without you giving me specific means to support or reject that statement holds very little weight.

[notsoterriblymisanthropic]

The difference with previous revolutions is that communisation proceeds far more by subversion than by elimination: it saps counterrevolutionary forces by removing their support. Communisers' propulsive force will not come from shooting capitalists but by depriving them of their function and power. Communisers will not target enemies but undermine social relations. The development of moneyless and profitless relations will ripple through the whole of society and act as power enhancers that widen the fault lines between the state and growing sections of the population. Our success will ultimately depend on the ability of our human community to be socially expansive.

Gilles Dauve, From Crisis to Communisation

[lesbiskammerat]

1 and 5

1. Give a short explanation of your politics.I’m a communist, specifically a Marxist, meaning I believe that we can (must) achieve a classless, stateless and moneyless society, and that this would necessarily be achieved through a revolution by the working class.

5. What have you identified as politically in the past, and why?Back when I just barely got interested in politics at like 12 I was some type of market liberal. A few years later I began questioning liberal economic policy, and also improving my social views from stuff like “homophobia is bad” to more systemic critiques (but still pretty much constrained to liberalism). For a while I remained unsure about economic policy but sort of vaguely left leaning, until like a year and a half ago when I became convinced communism was possible. After that I was unsure about anarchism vs Marxism for a while, until about half a year ago when I read some more in-depth texts about class society and political economy, and became a Marxist

[anarkittywantspatsonthehead]

Thoughts on patriarchy

More ramblings from a chronically online transwoman. An essay explaining reasons behind the misandry movement.

By Lain. It it's she they.

The problems with people who are AMAB or Assigned male at birth stems from the simple fact that they exercise something called male privilege. Male privilege is the system of advantages or rights that are available to men solely on the basis of their sex. A man's access to these benefits may vary depending on how closely they match their society's ideal masculine norm. It is my honest opinion that steps can be taken to deprogramme amab people and help them understand how to recognize it and in doing so dismantling the patriarchy.

This is something that every amab person has experienced throughout their entire life because of a systemic installation of toxic masculinity and dominance over women into society as an everyday thing for thousands of years. This is called the patriarchy. Patriachy is defined as a a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it.

Patriarchy teaches us to develop hierarchies between men and women that have created disparities like the wage gap, domestic abuse and violence, the pink tax, etc through white supremacy and fascist tactics. The patriarchy also has opened a space where people feel bold to commit acts of violence against trans people both amab and afab. The idea of feminism is that there should be equal rights between the sexes; male, female, and intersex people should be able to receive the same opportunities and rights.

The quote "men are trash" is not a real call out because its a satirical line used to highlight the fact that men do shitty things at a statistically higher rate than women do because the whole of human society was built around misogynistic behavior.

To state clearly, i am a woman, but i am also transgender/trans sexual, and it would not be far off to say that from my own experience, that over my 28 years i personally have benefitted from male privelege. Even at certain points after i came out and before i started medically transitioning. To make excuses for this behavior would be detrimental to the growth of our society as a whole as we move further and further towards the coming revolution because in a classless genderless moneyless society we need to be able to hold eachother accountable whether you're a trans nonbinary femme, or cis ally. So, in my opinion, I believe that holding men accountable for the subjugation and oppression of women is an important and crucial first step to making existence slightly more bearable between the sexes and genders.

So I will wrap things up by restating that Male Privelege is a conditioned behavior that is installed in people who are AMAB at a very young age. it is possible to deprogramme this behavior so that you can understand the real life iniquities that women(this includes transwomen) and gender non conforming AFAB people deal with as a result of male privilege and the patriarchy. And understanding is a very important step to achieving the goal of abolishing the patriarchy and male privelege in one fell swoop.