I saw a post that talked about racism towards people and when I talked about it the response I got was very heated and a person even called lemmy.world a community of ‘hitlerites’
I have been around for a week or so and this is my first time seeing such explicit vulgar reaction towards another community, is this a one-off or should I block hexbear?
Say we fast forward. How do you pull off a non-violent revolution?
build the new world in the shell of the old
By fostering parallel institutions such as community run markets, local production systems, and peer to peer financial services, people can begin meeting daily needs outside the state’s control. Engaging in counter economics, including black and grey market, mutual aid networks, decentralized governance tools, and local methods of conflict resolution. Things like local exchange trading systems, local currencies, and more exotic monetary/post-monetary ideas could fundamentally shift how we exchange and interact with each other. Robust tools to aid in resistance, communication networks, seamless ways to effectively organise and resist that can’t be stopped, mutual aid networks,etc. As modern technology continues to empowers communities to self organize and fund projects that was previously impossible, they gain resilience and independence from official channels. If enough people see that decentralised solutions genuinely improve their lives, they will choose to opt out of the state’s apparatus and voluntarily support these alternative systems. Over time the state loses both moral and practical support, culminating in a peaceful transition rather than a violent upheaval.
Sure, and you think the Bourgeois state will sit back and watch it happen? And that workers won’t have to defend themselves? You’re not even taking an Anarchist position, Anarchists believe that violence is necessary in prefiguration.
They’ll be powerless to stop it. No point of attack.
Plenty of anarchists believe in non-violent revolution, including ya know, Proudhon.
Even in prefiguration, Proudhon emphasized nonviolent methods as the foundation of societal transformation. He advocated for workers to establish cooperatives, mutual credit systems, and other self-managed institutions as a way to model and embody a future society based on reciprocity and equality. These institutions would exist alongside the state and capitalism, gradually eroding their necessity without requiring violent overthrow. He proposed the creation of federations of autonomous communities and associations, emphasizing voluntary cooperation and self-management.
He believed in economic transformation via mutualist exchanges rather than seizing power through violence. He saw the expansion of non-exploitative economic practices as a way to delegitimize and outgrow the capitalist and state systems. He was critical of revolutionary violence and abrupt insurrections, arguing they often resulted in authoritarian regimes or chaos. Instead, he focused on evolutionary change that mirrored anarchist principles, allowing society to “prefigure” a stateless future without upheaval.
He did recognise the reality of entrenched power dynamics and systemic oppression could lead to conflict or resistance from those in power. However, he consistently argued that violence should not be the primary tool for change, as it risks undermining the very principles anarchists aim to achieve. In 1840, I would have agreed with him entirely. But technology will give us the upper hand in the modern world.
In what manner has a bourgeois state ever been powerless to try and stop usurping its power? Revolution has always garnered hostility. Again, you aren’t taking an Anarchist stance, you’re taking a Utopian stance like the Owenites.
In the P2P world where everyone has a phone in their hand and we can iterate and codify better systems however we like.
There’ll be resistance, they’ll try and block things, points that become too centralised will be targetted, but eventually, there will be no stopping it. Just like they were powerless to stop torrents and the failure on their war of drugs with darknets.
I’m not too fussed about what kinda label my stance is, but seems pretty aligned with Proudhon who I’d think would have some authority on the matter?
Coding is only one aspect of Capital, the overwhelming majority of necessities runs on industrial Capital. You can’t P2P that, just like you can’t torrent food or a brand new phone.
As for Utopianism, it refers to “model building,” ie trying to think of a perfect society and trying to convince everyone to adopt it, rather than analyzing existing society and its trajectories to predict what can come next. It’s like trying to completely reinvent computers, rather than looking at how they exist and trying to use that knowledge to make a better system. I suggest reading Socialism: Utopian and Scientific for why Utopianism is largely looked down upon by practicing Leftists, Marxist and Anarchist alike.
Why not? We can and we must to reverse the damage we’ve done to the planet or not much will matter.
The critique assumes that envisioning better systems and working toward them are mutually exclusive, but they’re not. Both are needed. Without imagining and striving for what could be, we risk being confined to the boundaries of what’s already been normalized, even when those boundaries are actively destructive or unsustainable.
How do you P2P a smartphone factory? Are you trying to suggest we revert to less developed production methods and reject manufacturing?
Secondly, you’re not understanding the critique of Utopianism at all, Utopianism is specifically when your model building becomes the focus and thus you separate it from sociological analysis. You should read the essay I linked, you’d benefit from it greatly.