+Donald Duck That is what is lacking to a lot of anarchist mouvement, ORGANISATION there needs to be more anarchist literature on the revolution 101 side of things, even if conditions are sometimes unique. We have all the reasons to revolt only we don't know how.

The people who actually believe in anarchism and the people who just identify as anarchists to vent their anger at society are vastly disproportionate in number. You can see this by the number of liberal-progressive types who "become socialists", don't organize offline, only talk about liberal gender and race issues in a way that divides and perpetuates as opposed to uniting and solving, and generally just act like american progressives with a hint of red. Then you have guys like OP, who actually understand the theory and application of Anarchism. OP is in the minority. It's easy to talk about theory and to critique, but it takes both confidence and understanding to propose new systems and methods. Most of the 'socialists' you see online have neither.

Your response is too reasonable and genuine. Please use more racial slurs when commenting next time. Thanks.

realevilcorgi couldn't have said it better man

Lol, this doesn't take into account any practical considerations whatsoever. It assumes absurdities about humans, and then proceeds to claim that without any sort of hierarchical manner of legal system and norm-enforcing apparatus, society just "functions". Complete gibberish.

@@aussenseitermagazin I never said I was against individualism tout court. It's not an absolute choice between binaries. No form of democracy can work without the creation of individuals who can think and act for themselves. Autonomy has two aspects: collective and individual. Autonomy requires these to aspects to be structured in such a way that they are co-operative and mutually reinforcing. But, ontologically speaking, the collective is prior. Individuation as a potential, a sociological process and an outcome rests upon and is made possible within particular social-historical contexts (and not others). It is grasping this that makes anarchists anarchist. It seperates them from the Marxists on the one hand and liberals on the other. If you know you history you will know that anarchism grows out of the socialist tradition. Its founding moment is Proudhon's 1840 critique of private property. Hence, anarchism is first an foremost a collectivism. But it is a collectivism that does not seek to suppress the individual, but to cultivate the individual through direct participation in collective deliberation. It therefore understands democracy as direct or not at all, and is therefore opposed to so-called "representative democracy, which it understands as simply another form of oligarchy, albeit one selected and ratified by plebiscite. It is also why so-called "individualist anarchism" is an oxymoron. It tends to be indulged in by idiots whose neurotic egoism is matched only by their ignorance of the terms and history they seek to appropriate. They tend to be young, middle-class wankers who would sing the virtues of capitalism if it weren't for the fact that their youth situates them temporarily among the exploited and the financial security represented by their parents means they can assume the identity of opposition while insulated from its risks. They are fine young cannibals, and, recognising them for what they are, we find we don't need them. Hope this helps.

@@anisau new vid????

@@kingkyleiv7960 I should do it, but I've got to find the time. It's much easier to respond to these comments in between doing other things. But, yes, I should do it.

@@anisau Holy shit, you should comrade you should. Ive been using your video as a go to explanation of how ansyn orgs work for years now. And you say we can have more of that good stuff?

souds like the usual special pleading i usually hear from marxists...

G'day, Samrat! Earstwhile? Surely the CNTE still has sections in Catalonia, Mercia, and Valencia... Anyway, thank you for sending me a non-Xmas greeting today. Fuck the churches of our priest-ridden lands. 😉

Hola Rebel! :)

Hey man, idk if u still check this comment, but is the party still called CNT/FAI or does it have a different name? Also, is it popular in places like Galicia, Basque country or any autonomous region for that matter? I mean, is it still debated, does the "common man" still talk about anarchism as a possible form of government?

@@yeatnumber1Dmuncher Hi! After the dictatorship the anarchist trade union had to be "built" again and it separated in two: the CNT and the CGT. The CGT has more people, but the CNT is the only one which doesn't accept funding from the state or privileges amongst the workers. I believe CNT has only about 5000 or 6000 members now (it had 1'5 millions). Unfortunately anarchism is not as popular as it was, and is not considered by most people (since communism/marxism had most popularity or propaganda after franco) . But you can still see the circle A painted in most villages. There are occupied (anarchist/ self managed) social buildings in most cities, and the anarchist and non hierarchical values are present in most social movement or collectives.

@@yeatnumber1Dmuncher I also believe anarchism is more popular here than in other countries, and in general and CNT in particular it's gaining popularity. CNT has chapter all over the country, And an important part of the population are critical with government and capitalism

​@Scott's Precious Little Account Anarcho syndicalism and anarcho communism aren't normal communism because there is no leader in charge and without a leader in charge there can't be a dictatorship also no Anarchist i know uses the term utopia because propagating a utopia is just a propaganda tool of the state, we just want to make the best out of the current situation. Still Anarchy is build on the idea that everyone is equal because we are all just humans and the term comrade is used to express this unity.

We're closer than you may think :]

I shall have to pull my finger out. Thanks for the nice comment!

While the monty python boys were doing a piss-take, I think there was a genuine level of understanding when they wrote that scene. Either way, Thank you for the kind comment. Happy New Year, mate!

All hail the algorithm

I almost wishe I hadn't sworn though after a school teacher contacted me to express his disappointment that he wouldn't be able to show it too his students...

@@anisau LMFAOOOO

@@garibanibizzeka IWW is not anarchist, nor is its decision making process anarchist practice

@@ngrep much of the reason for its decision making process being the way that it is is american laws strictly encouraging top-down hierarchy within unions and diminishing the rights of collectivized bottom-up unions. Still, joining an industrial union is good, and as its membership is somewhat small a large influx of anarcho-syndicalist membership may change its shape. I agree it's not quite as committed to anarchist ideals as I would like, but it is a good platform for syndicalist ideals in general and would support anarcho-syndicalist action.

@@cooldude6651 The laws 'encourage' top down hierarchy within unions? You think that is something new and isolated to the USA? anarcho syndicalism is a particular practice of organising which deliberately avoids the representative democracy of general membership. It promotes the dissipation of power rather than its centralisation in a General Executive board. Arguing that the system can be changed by entryism is not my cup of tea, and the fact that those devoted to the IWW keep promoting it when anarchists are putting forward an alternative organising, and an alternative one big union in the IWA comes across as a deliberate tendency to undermine anarchist praxis with weak arguments that the government forces unions to be hierarchical.

@@davefregon2921 oh wait there's an alternative? Cool, fuck the IWW. I don't really like them that much anyways, their praxis isn't that great. I just want people to unionize.

wait nevermind I misinterpreted what you were saying

Hi John, I'm really pleased you see the video as an aid to practice. That was very much the intention. When I cobbled the presentation together, there was nothing I could find that linked organisational forms to overarching values on a clear and succinct way, and I think this is necessary, not just as a justification/validation of the IWA, but more importantly, to provide people with a clear understanding so that they can be creative in building their own organisations and federations. If the presentation helps people to feel more confident do this, I'll have done it's job.

A-anarcho S-syndaclyst M-marxist R-revolutionary

Of course you did. People love the fairy tale about the emperor with no clothes, but find it altogether more confronting to find that the crowd of so called citizens, are also in fact bereft of the clothes they imagined themselves to be wearing. No one will thank you for busting their bubble.

Thanks for the nice comment. Good luck with your reading.

a fellow comrade! its nice to see another anarcho-syndicalist here!

Thank you for the kind comment, compañero!

I apologise for neglecting to respond to your questions about things to read these last two weeks. Let’s remedy that. An excellent place to start is Rudolf Rocker’s short book, Anarcho-syndicalism: Theory and Practice (1936). From memory Chs 1, 4 and 5 are the theory chapters with Ch2, 3 being focused on labour history and historical antecedents of the anarcho-syndicalist movement, and Ch.6 being devoted to more recent (c. 1936) developments. Chs 1, 4 and 5 is where the juicy marrow is to be found. If you are interested on following up on the history of the movement, Vadim Damier has an excellent book called Anarcho-syndicalism in the 20th Century. I’m also going to recommend Van der Walt and Schmidt’s Black Flame (2009). It’s a controversial recommendation, given the scandal surrounding Schmidt’s (inexcusable and stupid) flirtations with white nationalism, but aside from some small sections usefully critiqued by Alexander Reid Ross (who exposed Schmidt’s activities), the book remains an important one. By all means read it in tandem with the series of articles containing ARR’s expose, but don’t be put off by the unnecessarily alarmist and sensationalist tone ARR adopts. Schmidt’s clearly guilty of much that ARR has alleged against him, but the book itself was written with due concern for academic rigour, and I don’t think the 97% of it which is very good should be tossed aside for the sake of the 3% which suffers from errors of interpretation. As with anything, you should read it, but read it critically. The Spanish Revolution is an important topic, but I’m embarrassed to say I’ve not yet delved as deeply into the wealth of publications as one might. Some books that I found interesting and informative have included Stuart Christie’s We, the anarchists! and Vernon Richards Lessons of the Spanish Revolution. Chris Ealham’s urban history of Barcelona, Anarchism and the City (originally published as Revolution and counter-revolution in Barcelona, 1898-1937) was very good read. I’ve had Jose Peirats Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution sitting on my bookshelf for six months, but have not yet found time to read it. I greatly enjoyed Mark Leier’s Biography of Barkunin, and have dipped in and out of Daniel Guerin’s anthology of anarchist writings. Things I need to do are to follow up on Proudhon’s and Bakunin’s writings in greater detail, rather than dipping in an out of volumes of their collected writings. I also need to go back and read Kropotkin in a more systematic way, but I didn’t find myself terribly impressed by his Conquest of Bread. It is also worth your while reading people who aren’t anarchists. I have found the writings of Cornelius Castoriadis to be extremely important to me personally. Castoriadis started out as a Marxist before rejecting it in the late 50s. His critique of Marx (first two chapters of the Imaginary Institution of Society) is especially comprehensive. Marx is someone you should read and understand, but it is helpful, as an anarchist, to know what to retain from him (the critique of capital, the theory of surplus value, the idea that humans create themselves as beings, rather than there being any essential human nature, and I also like his early, more romanticist writings from the 1844 economic and philosophical manuscripts) and what to chuck out (the coup d’etat plan for revolution, the fetishisation of theory, and the illusion that economics and history can be scientifically predicted). Most of the Imaginary Institution is pretty heavy going (very important philosophically, but boring and not necessarily helpful to the practicalities of revolution). I’d recommend the Castoriadis Reader published by Blackwell, and also his extensive back catalogue of essays (including everything he has to say on democracy). The later are freely available through the webzine notbored! www.notbored.org/cornelius-castoriadis.html Castoriadis never considered himself an anarchist, but he had sufficient in common to be seen regularly arguing philosophy and politics over cigarettes and coffee with old Spanish exiles at the CNT office in Paris during the 60s and 70s. Alongside Castoriadis, you could also do a lot worse than read Agnes Heller (esp. her A Theory of Modernity) and Marshall Berman’s All that is Solid Melts into Air. I suggest these because it is good to get a clear sense of what modernity is, how it is that the future is open to us in a way it wasn’t for previous ages, and also what the possibilities, limitations and dangers are. We want revolution (i.e. the extension of (direct) democracy to every intuition of society), but we also need to be critical and self-reflexive about how we do that, especially when creating economic arrangements that allow us to democratically control them, rather than have our economic arrangements non-democratically control us. This should be first and foremost a political question, and only secondarily an economic question. In overthrowing capitalism, we need to build the institutions and culture of democracy, not utopian systems in which we imprison ourselves.

TheCommunistDragon from what I understand anarcho syndicalism is a way of organising an anarchist society and can allow for communism, collectivism and mutualism.

TheCommunistDragon I see anarcho-syndicalism as being an alternative to capitalism that retains the supply and demand trait in order to satisfy human nature, through organised workers unions (syndicates) workers would trade goods and products for mutual benefit, but workers hold control over their production due to the direct democracy within syndicates. Imagine an agrarian/agriculture syndicate wants houses, so a syndicate with builders that wants food for its workers says, alright we will build your workers in your agriculture syndicate houses, and we want a years worth of food for our workers. (This is a hypothetical and philosophical scenario I’ve made to explain what I believe to be anarchy syndicalism) Anarcho-communism would be workers in communes (basically the same to syndicates) that the workers have control of production, however since it is a communist society with the idea of “Contribute what you can, take what you need” these communes rely on mutual trust to contribute their goods and products into a universal pool that all communes can take from to satisfy the needs of their workers. These are pretty unrealistic and vague scenarios but are what I see to be essentially the difference.

Anarcho syndicalism is a method of working toward libertarian communism, or anarchism. Anarcho communism is a term used to explain pure communism, that is without a state, money or classes, to distinguish it from 'state communism'.

They're effectively similar, though syndicalism actually predates marxism. It advocates for militant strike action, taking control of the means of production through unionization and thereby gaining control over the government to make it democratically structured, with labor unions as the base democratic structure. Anarcho-syndicalists believe in communism, but have very specific praxis laid out when it comes to establishing and running communism, and in my eyes highly effective praxis. The revolution is [relatively] nonviolent, giving it a 53% chance of total success (compared to violent revolutions' 23% chance of total success), and is therefore more approachable to those with less revolutionary sensibilities. In addition, it uses much more familiar ideas - unions, strikes, work slowdowns - and much more detailed organizational structures than other forms of communist praxis, while retaining the qualities of democracy that anarchists enjoy and the powerful institutions that marxist-leninists look for. And not only do I think it's an extremely approachable and agreeable praxis, it's also one of the most plastic and able to handle changing conditions. At least, if you do industrial unionization. Workplace unionization by comparison is extremely fragile, industrial unions are a better way to go and they include those who aren't necessarily in big shops that can enact large strike action.

Cool Dude where did the 53% and 23% statistics come from? Just interested, as I don’t know much abt this stuff

Thank you for your kind words about the video. Nice to hear your inspired to get onboard. Let's work together to build the organisations that are going to take us to revolution!

@@anisau, Agreed! I've just emailed the ASF for joining info for a local affiliate. Thank you once again for being an inspiring voice :)

Nate Fredricksen, thanks for the kind words. Regarding any possible synthesis between anarcho-syndicalism and sociocracy (at least as elaborated by Endenburg) at a holistic level, I’d say ‘no’, no synthesis is possible. However, breaking sociocracy down analytically, and asking whether some elements might be considered complimentary, then I’d give a guarded ‘yes’, but suggest democratically organised groups do those things anyway, without necessarily making those elements conceptually explicit. At a holistic level, anarcho-syndicalism and Endenburgian sociocracy are incompatible. Anarcho-syndicalism is anarchist unionism aimed at revolution, but seeks to achieve this by promoting worker’s interests and rights today, and so building its organisational capacity. It does contain within it a method of organisation that can act as a structure for the formation of a post-revolutionary, direct-democratic and federalist society, but at that point it would cease to be a form of unionism and just become anarchist federalism fully realised. My reading of Endenburgian sociocracy, by contrast, is that its model of dynamic governance that seeks to create harmony within more narrowly conscribed organisations. Yes, it is orientated towards consultation and ultimately consent, but it does not dispense with hierarchy. Yes, the seeking of consent makes it less autocratic than other forms of hierarchy, and to that extent it is a step in the right direction, but without dismantling hierarchy, it cannot fully democratise power. It merely endows work teams with a degree of autonomy over the area of work allocated to them by some sort of central committee. It’s possible that one’s “circle” may have representatives on the central committee, or on the mid-level committee that answers to the central committee (which is worse), or on the committee another tier down (which is worse again), and so on. The central committee may be composed of elected or rotated representatives, but in all likelihood they are a board or directors appointed by other processes. Either way, regardless of how the appointment is made, sociocracy seems to me to be predicated on a division between managers and executants (i.e. between managers and workers), by virtue of the fact that the ‘circles’ are organised hierarchically. That makes it bureaucratic at the very least, but also potentially, and many cases actually, capitalist. The best that can be said for it is that it is capitalism with a more human face. I think that this is demonstrated by the way that sociocracy is presented by many of those who promote it as apolitical or politically agnostic. Reading into it more deeply, this prpblem with sociocracy goes back to its original formulation by Auguste Comte in the context of his positivist philosophy. There is a deep link between his desire to find a positive ground for knowledge via an ordering of the sciences, and his hopes for a rationally ordered society directed and managed bureaucratically by scientifically-qualified experts. The question is who has the right to set the direction of the enterprise as a whole (be it company, NGO, or community/nation/society)? Comte’s answer is that the scientifically educated elite should decide. But elite scientists are also essentially specialists, and not necessarily qualified to adjudicate between competing claims made by different areas of speciality. Hence the need to give each disciplinary circle its due, via the right of veto: refusal of consent. But, this is still a vision of a technocratically organised and oligarchic elite. Into this, Endenberg seems to inject an ethical counterpoint premised on the axiom that all workers become experts in the practical minutia of what they do, and therefore makes consent a bulwark against unfettered technocratic autocracy. This is a good thing, but it is essentially reformist in nature, and fails to address the underlying problem, which is the difference in power of social initiative between different social classes as they are organised within the hierarchy of sociocratic circles. I think that the emphasis on minimal reciprocity given articulation in the expression or withholding of consent is a practical and ethical necessity, but it is by no means a feature exclusive to sociocratic organising. All groups based on equality and orientated towards concensus rather than majority tend to work this way when maximal reciprocity in the form of consensus is not practically realisable. They do it, but they may not have conceptualised it explicitly in the way advocates of sociocracy have. That said, I am not certain that Endenbergian sociocracy overcomes the key problem: that the terms of validly for withholding of consent are circumscribed more or less narrowly by reference to the collectively understood mission of the organisation. This returns us to the question of direction setting, and disparities of power within the hierarchy of circles. It seems to me that the harmony sociocracy purports to facilitate can only be achieved in the context of some (necessarily and always) previous determination of organisational mission. As soon as this is put in question, we return to politics as the arena of agon, and the only just method of deliberating in the context of social agon is radical democracy characterised by a thoroughgoing equality between citizens/members/workers. This will likely fall back to some sort of vote, but is at least legitimated by participation. These more existential questions, such as the determination of overall organisational direction, are prior to and therefore beyond the scope of sociocracy. Hence sociocracy’s claim to be able to achievement of harmony is based on a more or less totalitarian premise. Analytically, however, I can appreciate why you might suggest parallels between the methods of organisational consultation Enderburg envisages and anarchist federalism (which is a method of marrying local, democratic autonomy with the need for wider patterns of coordination). Both entertain the need to delegates to represent the views of their fellow workers, and Enderberg, to his credit, does deploy his concept of consent in a way that ensures outcomes are minimally acceptable to all involved. I can see the value in elaborating the concept of consent in this way, and it does mirror the way in which many initiatives within the anarchist groups I’m involved in work in practice. But at a broader scale, sociocracy’s positivist origins mean the great existential question regarding the overall form society is to take (no less admitting everyone to participate in that level of deliberation), are simply beyond it. I think anarchist thought concieved as a meditation on just forms of decision making, can attain to heights of critical social theory in the Kantian sense, as understood by the likes of Jürgen Habermas, Cornelius Castoriadis and Agnes Heller, by which I mean ‘critical’ in the sense of addressing itself to the conditions of possibility of knowledge and the conditions of possibility of free, self-reflexive, autonomous social formations. Sociocracy can’t act as an arena for that. But anarchist federation potentially can. I’ve rabbited on for a bit, but I hope this all makes sense.

How do you solve the problem of providing incentives to maintain trust and cooperation, and preventing defection from maintaining the high trust norms necessary to sustain civilisation?

I've got an hour long presentation on anarcho-syndicalism and the IWA that I need to fix the audio on. It was part of a presentation given at the invitation of Liberté Ouvrière journal in November, which I plan to post as soon as I find the time to fix it. In it I spend some time explaining how the commonly accepted public understanding of the term "democracy" was subject to change between 1790 and 1835, and that this had a direct effect on Proudhon's decision to describe himself as an anarchist in 1840, despite his politics clearly being democratic. I'm impatient to get this out there because I'm keen to arm people to critique the common misconception of democracy I'm especiallt sick of reading how the 6 Jan. 2021 insurrection by Trump's supporters was an attack on democracy. Certainly it was an attack on electoral representationalism within a state governed by parliamentary institutions, and of course Trump and the other fucktards involved are a first class shitcunts, but the middle class handwringing irks me as missing a number of key points. Electoral representatonalism is not democracy. The ancient Athenians understood this. Even the drafters of the US constitution understood this. (James Madison stated so explicitly.) Yet the historical amnesia and muddled thinking that affects (a) academic historians and political scientists and (b) their current and former students working in the media and in public policy roles is extraordinary and profound. That misunderstanding has as near to universal acceptance as it is possible to get. It's taught in schools and repeated ad nauseum in our newspapers and TV bulletins. It is what Castoriadis would describe as a cardinal social-imaginary signification; a foundation stone of our current Western liberal ideology so deeply entrenched as to be almost unquestionable. Talking about it typically meets with embarrassed incomprehension because it not only undermines the accepted worldview everybody shares, it throws into question the self image of one's interlocutors as lucid adults who have a rational and correct grasp of the world they inhabit. In terms of human psychology, it's much easier to dismiss someone who questions such a pervasively held view as a crank, conspiracy theorist or a philosophical romantic with their head in the clouds. Yet, I don't think the contemporary situation in the US, for example, can be understood without abandoning that misconception. Democracy, rightly understood, is coming together on the basis of equality to deliberate on what is common. This is not what goes on when and elected elite deliberate in a parliamentary setting, regardless of whether they are selected by plebiscite or not. A parliament is an oligarchy (oligos = few; arche = rule) and they deliberate in a chamber in the absence of the demos (people) they purport to represent. When a demos is not present at deliberations, it cannot be said to have a grasp on power (kratos = "grasp" and only signifies "power" via secondary derivation). Representative parliamentarianism is therefore logically, etymologically and historically something other than democracy. Electoral representationalism, as an institution, has always been much closer to fascism than people realise. Fascists too make a claim to being representative, even if the supposedly "authenic" people they claim to represents a narrowly circumscribed fantasy of national rebirth. In imagining the demos in idealised terms, and imagining themselves as the authentic representative of that demos and its interests, fascist leaders clothe themselves in the language of democracy as a method of political legitimation. But they can only do this if the discourse of representationalism is both available and sufficiently pervasive for cooperation. The fact is that the US, like most other places in Western modernity, is not a democracy, but a liberal oligarchy. The attack on the Capitol was not an attack on democracy per se but an attack on the liberal culture that balances out the authoritarian structure of governmental institutions and enables the elites that govern from them to share power by contesting periodic elections. None of the column inches currently wasted in analysing those events correctly capture this. They all conflate democracy with representation and so fail to recognise participation as democracy's true essence. Why is this? I think the answer is structural. Our society is just as invested in dividing people into experts and clients, managers and executants, politicians and citizens as it is in dividing people into bosses and workers. The media commentariat's place in the order of things relies on maintaining these distinctions as right and proper. And so their perennial misrepresentation of democracy as representative rather than participatory extends from this as a natural consequence. What is the anarcho-syndicalist response? To continually point out that if we lived in a democracy things would be different and to continue to offer a strategy for revolution that will achieve a genuine democracy.

Good questions. But first a preliminary comment. Many of the people asking questions here presume that the presentation relates to a plan for a future society. It does, but only as a secondary implication. First and foremost, the principles outlined in the presentation describe how the IWA and its member sections operates TODAY. We want to translate these modes of organisation to society by one day pulling off a revolution, but I think it is important not to lose sight of the text that this is how the anarchist unions that make up the IWA work in the here and now. You asked which group votes for delegates. My answer is that that local groups select delegates for a range of tasks (i.e. any role the group agrees is needed and which the scope mandated responces and perogatives is defined. The score of anything the group agrees is appropriate). The task could be maintaining a website or keeping an eye on incoming emails, for example, or any other job. One of the critical jobs is representing the group at regional or national congresses when these are held. Congresses are periodic (biannual, annual or biennial defending on the level). It is a mistake to think of congresses as some sitting body of decision makers. (I'll explain this further in a moment.) Being one of a group's mandated delegates to congress is typically a matter of rotation rather than election. With election, the same people might go every time. But, we don't want that. We want different people every time. This is very important. (Plus, we always send more than one, so they can keep an eye on each other, and so we know they aren't overstepping their mandate.) What's also important to grasp is that the delegates are not decision makers. Decisions making (i.e. the defining of the group's position for our against proposals on the congress's agenda), is done the local level by everyone in the group. The delegates are simply tasked with communicating accurately the group's position. These positions for our against proposals are tallied at congress, and each proposal either passes or does not. This is how we maintain direct democracy in the context of federation. Note this might seem like a terribly convoluted way of arriving as decisions, but most of the activity that takes place is simply done autonomously at the local level. We want initiative to reside with local groups and are careful not to overburden ourselves with federal obligations. So this is how things often work: Local groups come up with initiatives that they put into practice themselves. Some of these work. Some of them don't. It's all trail and error. If initiatives do work, then other groups tend to hear about them and give them a go too. If the success continues, it might be wise to organise a working group with a federal mandate to coordinate the new intitative. Why? Because it might warrant financial support through the federation, and/or it might be desirable for regular reporting to take place through congress and the federation's newsletters. If so, it will be at this point that proposals in support of elevating the initiative will be put on the agenda for the next congress. I hope this helps.

Some points of clarification: The organisational principles I described in the video is how anarchist unions have organised since the mid-1890s. ("Syndicate" comes from the French "syndicat" and Spanish "syndicado" and means labour union). Anarcho-sydicalism is a strategy for revolution by which we aim create mass organisations that carry forward working class interests today and which might successfully attempt revolution tomorrow. A successful revolution of the kind we seek requires that a culture of (direct, participatory) democratic practice be developed which is strong enough to withstand the stresses of revolution and civil war. The adjective "anarcho-sydicalist" does not describe a future society. If an anarcho-syndicalist revoltion is successful, the society that will result will be an anarchist society, which is to say a truly democratic society. It will be organised according to anarchist principles, but in overcoming both capitalism and the state, it will no longer comprise or have need for unions, since the workers will be in control. In place of unions, we will have collectives and federations of collectives. In broad terms, such a society might be called anarchist, libertarian socialist or anarcho-communist (although these terms are used with various minor differences depending on whom you read). As for your post, I find almost nothing in your second paragraph I can agree with. The presuppositions you are working from are different from mine. You say you have always thought that the best way a natural ruler-ruled polarity to manifest is if everyone is a ruler over oneself and enters into cooperation with other rulers over self. But... (1) If rule is reduced to "ruler over oneself" surely this destroys any "ruler-ruled polarity"? (Plus, autonomy shouldn't just be reduced to relations of political equality; just as, for example, the members of a group of equals cannot say they are autonomous if they are slaves to tradition.) (2) Why "natural"? Sociology, anthropology and social and political theory abandoned the idea of "naturalness" as a meaningful concept in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Given the diversity of social forms to be found in "primitive" and "archaic" societies, it is difficult to think what naturalness might consist in. Whatever inate potentialality we might have towards language and rationality, our sociability is "asocial" (i.e. it can be both anti-social and positively social) and so there is no such thing as human nature in any real or deep sense that is immune to the vagaries of socialisation. Without the "nature" of humans being open (and so not "nature" at all), there would be no potential for human freedom. (3) You imply that, ideally, individuals are soverign (rulers over oneself) and enter into cooperation on the basis of free agreement, but I don't think of individuals in this way and think free agreement between soverign parties is a flawed basis for thinking about autonomy. Individuals cannot be abstracted from society and few of our relationships with others are voluntary, except in relatively trivial situations. Individual and collective autonomy needs to be developed in the context of situations in which individuals have no prior independence from each other. Hence free association cannot be reduced to voluntary association. Rather, free association needs to thought of as a mode of reciprocity between individuals that allows them to relate as equals who negotiate shared outcomes and the means to achieve them. Only the democratic attitude orientated towards consensus (as an aim if not always as an acheivement) can cultivate freedom in this sense. I agree education is important. One reason anarcho-syndicalism works is that it teaches people how to do democracy through direct participation in it. It requires thinking for oneself and speaking for oneself, and building one's confidence to represent oneself in argument. Because we practice rotation of office, it also means cultivating the skills and confidence of your comrades in whom you are going to rely as delegates to congresses and as office bearers. We don't have paid offices. It's all voluntary, but it is expected that you will do your turn. As for education in a future anarchist society (which I think your question was mainly seeking an answer to), I don't think it would be radically different from education today. There will still be teachers and students. There will still be masters and apprentices. And best-practice methods of teaching will be much the same as best-practice methods are now. What might be different is that the ends of teaching will always be towards the creation of autonomous individuals: people who can think, act and speak for themselves. Education starts when a master takes a student or apprentice, cultivates that person's talent, and finishes with the development of an equal. This used to be how trades work. Capitalism doesn't do that. Sure managers replace managers as top dogs retire and shit eaters climb the greasy pole, but is not so much an exercise in education towards autonomy as the breeding of conformity and a preference for those who are docile and complient. Rocking the boat is the last thing that will see someone promoted. And why invest in cultivating workers' skills when they are only going to be poached by the capitalist down the road? If anything, anarchism will rehabilitate an appraoch to education which is gradually being lost, in which the wider personality is cultivated, rather than an increasingly narrow focus on work ready skills. If nothing else, this means reinvesting in the importance and value of Arts faculities in our universities and in history, literature and philosophy in our schools.

I've not come across Edward Abbey. Thanks for bringing him to my attention.

exactly!

Just spotted your question. Firstly, the video describes how the unions of the IWA act in practice, but the principles do have broader applicability and can, as you suggest, be applied society-wide. So, how might it respond to a situation like COVID-19? Actually in much the same way the institutions of the nation state. It might look like the current responces are being managed by politicians who direct the show, but in fact emergency response plans tend to be drafted by agreement between stakeholders well in advance and then adapted when actual emergencies arise. The key difference will be that the patterns of accountability by delegates on emergency management committees and working groups will be bottom up rather then top down. The key thing about functional management isn't management, but the functional apportionment of roles so that people are clear about what they are supposed to do, clear about what others are supposed to do, and clear about who they need to communicate with in order to coordinate their activities effectively. What's important is not authority but initiative and communication. Authority in a crisis is only worth something if it confers responcibility to take initiative. People only look to authority if they have been habituated to look for it. But authority is a liability in a crisis if one waits to receive it. There was a case 30 odd years ago where a boat capsized and sank in the Tasman Sea. A passenger flight en route through the area was notified and asked to look for survivors and by luck they found the sailor, radioed his position and circled the man to keep him in view. The local airforce base heard the call but no jet was scrambled to relieve the passenger flight and keep the poor bastard in sight. In the end, the passenger flight had to leave when its fuel got low. The fighter pilots could have got there in time to circle and keep him in view til a helicopter arrived but they sat around waiting for an order that never came because no one felt they had the authority to authorise the flight. When finally a belated order did authorise participation in the search, it was too late. Looking for a single man the Tasman Sea is like looking for a needle in a haystack. The means were available and the man could have been saved. Instead, he drowned because the question of authority got in the way of making a decision when it was clear what needed to be done. Returning to your question, the structures of anarchist federation are not there to facilitate decision making in a crisis. They are there so that we can talk to each other and get our shit together beforehand, and so that we are clear about our lines of communication. Whenever a responce is needed, a call may go out through formal channels so that everyone is in the picture, but the response is spontaneous and immediate, because we are organised, have talked beforehand, and share a common understanding of what's required. The response need not be directed, because we are self-directing, and it is this that facilitates speed of action. But as I said earlier, much of this is not so very different to how much of society works presently. The hospitals here in Australia are not preparing for COVID-19 because the government directed them to do so. What happened is that the WHO put out an alert, and the hospitals promptly and spontaneously initiated their preparedness and readiness plans independently of any directive. Why? Because it is consistent with their social role and those who perform any social role have a responcibility to perform it competently. They also coordinate at a regional level not because they are told to, but because it is consistent with their mission and it facilitates a good response. Similarly, people are heeding the advice to engage in social distancing and to restrict their movements, not because they are legally required to, but because they realise it is in their interests to do so. Most were actually doing these things before the current state of emergency was declared. The police are making a show for the TV cameras of enforcing the government's lockdown rules, but it's all show. There are simply not enough of them to hope to do it effectively. What is making it work is that the great majority of people are keen to act responsibly because it is in their interests. In fact, there was a column in the Guardian Newspaper earlier this week by a Professor of Epidemiology at ANU in Canberra arguing that the lockdown rules should be repealed immediately because there was never any evidence that they were required in the first place. People were heeding the guidelines when they were guidelines, because they appreciated the good sense in what the medical experts were saying. I've strayed a bit in effort to give a wider view on the issues at play. I hope it answers your question.

@@anisau Interesting response. What about blatant infringement on personal autonomy in the name of some perceived greater good? It seems to me that if this is ever allowed, we sink into a sort of "witch hunt" mentality with our pitchforks at the ready... In your view, how would "anti-vaxxers" be treated in this particular pandemic scenario, under your political lens? Cheers.

@@shin-ishikiri-no [Sorry for all the typos. It was very late . I've just proof read and corrected them.] Anarchism is misunderstood because people who are unfamiliar with it conceive of it in abstract terms as the opposite of whatever the state is and does and provides. But a historical analysis of its origins in the mid-19th century show clearly that it is a form or revolutionary socialism that aimed to create conditions of workers' collective self-managemrnt. This implies direct democracy similar to the sense we see in ancient Athens, but with a universal concept of citizenship and co-operation within and between social functions organised by federation. It implied citizens who take a genuinely active part in the decisions that affect them, and so there is a different, more participatory more collectivist ethos and culture that is required to compliment the social structure. Critically, like the ancient Greek poleis (pl.) it would not be state, despite its capacity for geographic extension and internal division of competence and labour because the people come together in various federal planes (intersecting but distinct) in the basis of equality to deliberate directly on that which is of common concern. This is very different to social life under a state, which, in organisational terms is a bureaucratic and hierarchical apparatus of power in which leaders, whether selected by aristocratic birthright or popular election, deliberate as an oligarchical class in parliaments characterised by the absence of the demos whose interests they may or may not competently represent. In representarive parliamentarian context, the public life that was a vital constituent of the ancient Greek concept to be human is suppressed, not so much by direct oppression, but by lack of cultivation, so that most citizen fail to see or have the desire to enter public life in the active political sense. They are "privatised" by socialisation, unless they attended exclusive schools intended for the sons and daughters of the middle class in which the social drive to assume political leadership is cultivated by the institution of prefects, debating clubs, and other modes of instilling both (a) social and polical ambition to assume prominent roles and (b) respect for others by virtue of office or social position. An anarchist society will be much more raucous, but there will be institutions and the requirement to act with responsibility and respect. One is expected to act out one's social autonomy not only by being self-motivated and industrious, but by attending meetings where issues of direct interest to you, your family and your enterprise (collective or individual) are deliberated on. That means giving critical thought about means an ends resource availability and how to achieve the cooperarion required to achieve the collective ends you argue for. All the functions of the state will need to be managed and fulfilled, but by different organisational means. There will no doubt be an economy, and a mixed market for goods. I belive we can't do without money as a means of exchange, but also a means of comparison for evaluating the cost of alternative projects. In certain respects, the economy will need to be planned, and how this is achieved may be not terribly different to the negotiated manner in which Britain's WW2 economy was managed, where vital needs are specified and enterprises negotiate priorities and the attribution of resources. All this would need to be done. Organisationally, you might think that this requires a high degree of market-based and state-bureaucracy-based organisation, and it is therfore a de facto state, which is reasonable, so far as it goes. The analogies are plain enough. But the differences are also vital. The distribution of power will be different, profit sharing on the basis of equality, and the pattern of information flow (which is the key structural characteristic of a bureaucracy) will be different. So an anarchist society, because direct democractic, is not a state. But in many respects an anarchist society will look very similar to that of a modern liberal oligarchy, because it will need to fulfill similar needs and aspirations for shelter, sustenance, security, freedom of movement and association. Modern society is divided into distinct value spheres (law, politics, religion, economy, science/technology, and art.) These are quasi-independent and dynamic, and, although their relationships change, they all persist. Anarchism qua direct democracy and federative organosation will require changes to the political sphere, but the other values spheres will adapt and continue to change and adapt, as that is what they always do. As for covid, the authority of medical science will not change, we will continue to make choices based on clinical advice and risk, but what mandates will be put in place will be agreed directly and collectively thought federal structures and enforced by ones peers under threat of disassociation. But generally, democratic people operating in a democratic context respect collective decisions because they respect the process and they have cultivated an ethos of solidarity and mutual aid. People tend to act more maturely when they are able to contribute to the decisions they will have to abide by, and their attitudes are less self centred. After all, nothing moderates people's behaviour like face to face discussion. This is my view.

​@@anisau I think that model works, but only in a network where one can trust - (through personalized verification, not "experts said" where the experts are incentivized to purport an agenda) - the methods used to approach a collective decision based on scientific information. My background is a mixture of secular "left" and "right" in the US context - (I am not religious, but disagree with notions of 30+ genders, and the perpetual victimhood framing of women, etc), - I find an alarming amount of the measures taken with regards to the pandemic to be draconian and explicitly authoritarian in nature... On the other hand, I've also lived in Japan and am quite aware of the power of cooperation, collective investment, and common sense approaches to problem-solving. So while I generally would agree with sensible measures to be taken, I think the issue is I simply no-longer trust the hands pulling the strings. Whether by cronyism, media funding, censorship online, etc... and yet the "left" as I understand it is overzealous and cannot seem to draw the line of responsibility for self-management vs the autonomy of others. Interestingly, I take issue with overt authoritarianism and its derivatives (totalitarianism)... which seems to be a similar thing many far "left" individuals are advocating against regarding "fascism" in the US context... However, our target/enemy differs. I've noticed that the "left" is extremely hostile to dissent from (the now progressive-dominant) mainstream narratives which I observe as being controlled/manipulated by corporate interests. In my view. It's almost as if... The "left" is fighting itself. Particularly with Covid, I find it bizarre that no one sees how censorship and thought policing is benefitting the already wealthy elites. I think of the WEF statement "You will own nothing, and be happy" and immediately wonder if the elites plan on giving up their power, or controlling the rest of us under the ILLUSION of a fair and reasonable socialist system. I believe this conflict is what intrigues me about Anarcho-Syndicalism. It seems to not be too extreme either way. Anyway, thank you for your lengthy response.

Hi Ethan. Still responding. You seem to have the relationship between some of the terms confused, and I suspect the underlying problem is that the definition of democracy that you are working with is not the same as the one I'm working with. Firstly, federation and delegation are not "limits" on democracy but mechanisms by which democracy can be made to function in large groups (upwards of 100 and potentially in the millions). Secondly, anarcho-syndicalism is not an alternative method of organising society. Anarcho-syndicalism is the anarchist method for organising workers unions democratically. "Syndicate" is the French word for union. Anarcho-syndicalism is not only the anarchist approach to creating unions to fight for better pay and conditions, it is a strategy for revolution in that it is the basis for creating a mass organisation that, through participation, acts to school its members in direct (i.e. genuine participatory) democracy. It is also a form of organisation capable of fighting a revolution should an opportune situation arrise. If anarcho-syndicalist unions create a revolution, our hope is that the forms of democratic organisation learnt by the members within the union can be applied to all institutions of society. The result would not be an anarcho-syndicalist society, but an anarchist society (i.e. a society that is genuinely democratic). Indeed, it couldn't be an anarcho-syndicalist society, because, with workers taking over enterprises and running them democratically, there will be no need for unions, which is a type of organisation that exists to fight capitalism. Liquidate capitalism and unions liquidate themselves as unions. As you may see, an anarchist society is also a socialist society, albeit a particular type of socialism. Now to get to your question about representative republics and the question of revolution or reform... The capitalist states nominally called "democracies" today are not in fact "democracies" . They are states characterised by "electoral representationalism" or "representative parliapentarianism" (which are two terms for the same thing). Yes, the are also "republics" (and even so-called constitutional monarchies like the UK and Denmark are in fact found to be republics if one examines their locus of soverignry through a functionalist lens rather than through a nominalist lens), but they are none are genuine democracies. So why are they called democracies? In short, because of ideology. Ideology works in part by confusing people by mixing up the names of things. (It is rare that you will find an anarchist quoting Confucius, but I will do so now because he was the first philosopher we know of to write explicitly about politics, and he said something very interesting about politics and ideology. Specifically: "that the first political act [i.e. the first act that is necessary if one is to think through the problems of politics in a rational way] is the rectification of names". What he meant is that we words we use to name things are often wrong, and if we are to think and speak clearly, we need to define things properly. Just because everyone (or almost everyone) calls electoral-representative institutions "democratic" doesn't mean they actually are. Imagine this scenario: Let's imagine you got your hands on a time machine and went back to Ancient Greece circa 420 BC and invited the very first bloke you met to travel back with you to the present time to get his opinion on what he saw. If you took said Greek to any capital city - London, Paris, Washington, Tokyo, Delhi, Canberra, Wellington, Jakarta, Buenos Aries, Olso, Stockholm, whereever - and you asked him what he saw taking place in Parliament, or even on election day, the one thing that is certain is that he WOULD NOT describe what he saw before him as "democracy". Any ancient Greek, not just those from Athens, would name what they saw as "oligarchy". They might even call it "aristocracy". But they certainly would not call it "democracy". Let's thank our ancient Greek and drop him back. Now set the dial for 1790, head to Pittsburg or New York and collect any one of the so called American founding fathers, tour them around the world's parliaments and ask them the same question. They would also NOT describe what they saw as "democracy". Republican institutions, certainly. But not democracies. We know this because they said so explicitly, or at least James Madison, James Joll and Alexander Hamilton said so explicitly. In fact they argued for the current US constiturion not because it was democratic, but because it wasn't democratic. (Read the Federalist Papers and you can see this for yourself.) Many (following Montesquieu following Cicero) have called it a mixed constitution - with the President representing monarchy, the Senate representing aristocracy, and Congress representing the democracy - but these are just metaphors. There is a sleight-of-hand that takes place if we mistake the essentially metaphoric nature of representation as being somehow real. This is partly how the ideological illusion opperates by which a "representative institution" is mistaken as somehow really characteristic of that which it represents. Don't fall for it! Learn and underatand how language works. We need language to think with, but if we are not careful, it can distort our thinking in ways we are blind to. So what went wrong with the words "democrat", "democracy" and "democratic"? When the word "demacrat" was originally used in both the modern French and US contexts, it was as an insult to hurl at one's factional enemies, especially those of the more liberal or populist faction. This was because the middle class equated democracy with mob rule. In the US context, it was initially employed in attempt to discredited people by associating them with the lawlessness of the French Revolution. However, as with epithets such as "whig" and "tory", eventually the insult was taken on as a badge of identification by one of the two self-proclaimed "republican" parties (that of James Madison), which adopted the title, "the Democratic-Republican Party". By 1828, the negative associations with the term "democrat" had largely dissipated, such that, after the 1824 split, Andrew Jackson felt confident to simply call his faction "the Democratic Party" tout court. It was only in 1836 that anyone thought to call the general situation in America "democracy", and that was the early sociologist, Alexis de Tocqueville. But he didn't use the term to refer to Amarica's political arrangements, but the "equality of conditions" he found there, specifically equality under the law, or what the Ancient Greeks had called "isonomia". Because of the success of Tocqueville's book on both sides of the Atlantic, people slowly began to refer to the political arrangements in Britain, France and the US as "democracy". But the problem with this is that the US simply isn't a democracy. Demo-kratos is where the people (demos) grasp (kratos) power in a direct and unmediated way. What we have in the US and elsewhere today are systems of electoral representationalism, which is "oligarchy"; an elected few (oligos) act as the origin (archē) of the laws. Now, here is the logic: if we can refer to an oligarchy of one person as "monarchy", then it is not a form seperate to oligarchy, but only its most extreme form. This leaves us with two cardinal forms of government: oligarchy (rule over everyone by a few) and democracy (collective self-rule on the basis of equality). So, what we have in the contemporary world is the absurd situation in which the term for universal and direct collective participation in government (democracy) is used to describe its opposite, rule by a minority (oligarchy). It matters not that this oligarchy is elected and supposedly representative of those it governs. One only needs to look at the different social origins of the elected minority and those they purportedly represent to see it's a lie, completely apart from the fact that in any electoral organisation, decision makers quickly become a class unto themselves, with their own interests. Back to revolution and its necessity: Any attempt to change the status quo will be vigorously resisted by those who benefit from the status quo. They will resist reform. But changing things is not just a question of revolutionary power, it requires a change in mentality from the workers who stand to benefit from change. Oligarchy breeds oligarchic mentalities both amongst the rulers and amongst the ruled. Yet, democracy, i.e. real democracy, requires a will to democracy. Part of the attraction of anarcho-syndicalicalism is that it provides a context in which people can grow their confidence in their own capacity to act democratically and shoulder some of the responsibilities its entails, and to grow confidence in their peers and democracy's modes of organising and relating to each other. It's appropriate to call the change that will bring about democracy revolution. Democracy means not only the end of the state, it means the end of capitalism. It means profound changes in the way people think about themselves and society, and in the way they act. The change required is significant, and it won't be effected without a fight.

@@anisau Right I understand the terms, I'm under no illusion that contemporary republics are anything but elective oligarchies, and not to be confused with true democracies. I've just been considering syndicalism for a few years now and I always come back to the argument of revolution vs reform. But I think I understand what you're saying. For a societal change so large and rapid, reform would be too difficult/impossible. I will say that I was a little concerned when you brought up federation and delegation, as it seemed like it would just be a repeat of a republic, but you made several very good points in regards to controlling it responsibly. I'm definitely interested in learning more about it and maybe participating in some capacity in the future.

@@BattleNugget, I think it's really useful to pick apart exactly what is changing when something is described as a revolution. Often it's just a coup d'etat and nothing really changes. Take the Russian revolution for example. The February revolution was a spontaneous popular uprising and can legitimately be called a revolution. The October revolution, by contrast was a coup d'etat. Certainly, the communist party made important changes but politically, one aristocracy (the Party) imposed itself where the February Revolution deposed the old one. It is also questionable whether the revolution had a communist character at all or whether what was ushered in was a regime of state capitalism. At the end of the day, perhaps the question of revolution or reform is less significant than being precise about what exactly one desires as an outcome. I think that will decide the revolution or reform question for you. Anyway, thanks for the questions and sorry if I misinterpreted you position somewhat at the outset.

@@anisau Yes that does make a lot of sense, and helps me to think about it. Thank you for explaining and for the video, it was really helpful in understanding the organizational element whereas most of the things I've read are all philosophical ideas and whatnot.

Mate, if your level of intellectual engagement is limited to the feelings the symbols associated with the movement provoke in you, then you really aren't engaging in any way that is genuinely critical, and your criticism isn't worth much. My own criticism is that much that some people would like to pass off as anarchism is nothing of the sort. Anyone can wave a flag or paint a circle A on a wall. Yet the creation of free, direct democratic institutions that improve people's lives in the here and now, and which are capable of being built up in a way that might pose a genuine challenge to capitalism, like the unions of the CNT did from 1890 to 1936, is quite another thing entirely. Anarchism is a revolutionary social movement with roots in the socialist tradition of the popular classes (i.e. the peasantry and working class) of Europe. For this reason it has aquired a kudos, a form of 'cool' antiestablishment glamour which some people, often very young, have been attracted to and have sought to appropriate for their own ends. Some of those ends are fine, some less so. The point is that the circulation of political symbols, and the approprtion of cultural significations is unregulated, and not a sure means of understanding the strengths and weaknesses of anarchism's philosophy, or its genuine character as a movement. Only getting acquainted with anarchism's history and key texts can do this. If you don't know where to start, try Daniel Guerin's "Anarchism: From Theory to Practice" (1965, Eng. Trans 1970). It's not perfect, but I think it is the best general introduction to what is not the easiest political ideology and movement to get a handle on. However, in simplest terms, no other political ideology shares anarchism's commitment to the original direct and participatory meaning of democracy. In essence, that is what it boils down to.

@@anisau I should have prefaced my first comment by explaining that I know little to nothing about your proposed society and that my impressions were from the perspective of a curious outsider. My gripe has nothing to do with your proposed system itself. It seems like a pretty apt society to me. My criticism has more to do with the way I've been seeing people treat it. I'll definitely delve deeper, I'm not one to pass off an idea because of what I feel about it at first

@@grovenn, no worries. I had guessed thay es the case. Best of luck with your reading. Feel free to hit me up here idc you have any further questions.

@@grovenn ohhhh, you're probably running into HOI4 kaiserreich fans. It's a game mod where france, britain, and north america become syndicalist because in that universe the central powers won ww1. If you've seen a torch and claw hammer inside a gear and a circle, or heard them shouting "Break the chains! Break the chains!" it's usually just a Kaiserreich fan, though many kaiserreich fans are genuine syndicalists and went to the series because they recognized their ideology and went "hey look it's me!".

"strong animal farm impressions" lol No idea why that amuses me, but I am coming from a similar perspective to yours. Here to learn more.

+Goose1981 That's a good observation. But I think Robert Michels' conclusions about the inevitability of oligarchy are premature, and that Cornelius Castoriadis' suggestion that democracy is a tragic regime (i.e. that the freedom it embodies cannot be divorced from its the possibility of its own self-destruction) contains a better assessment of its risks and potentials ("What is democracy?" in Figures of the Thinkable, pp. 195-246, )

There would be no businesses in an anarchist, communist society as private property would be abolished and all produce would be given to the people.

watch the vid FFS, you ignorant.

He said he will in another response

Forget it, I found them online. Thanks for the concise uploads

Would you mind posting the link?

'Bullshit' is a relatively tame word, but it was still a mistake. I had a high-school teacher get in touch to say it was the only thing preventing him from showing it to his Year 11 and 12 students. Either way, thanks for the nice comments.

@@anisau I do believe you used the term ‘fucked up’ at one point, though I’ll need to listen again to check and I’m on my phone atm so it’s awkward. But it doesn’t really matter that you swore as far as I’m concerned. I understand why your teacher couldn’t use it but I just see ‘bad language’ as a way to control discourse, and that it’s only offensive because we’ve declared that it is. I’m not usually a fan of communicating anger, I’m much more concerned with communicating logic, data and critical thought clearly, but I also think we can lose a lot of emphasis and importance in our messages when we stifle what we want to say by being ‘decent’, with regards to swearing only, especially when we find nothing ‘decent’ about the subject at that moment. That, and I think there’s something honest about swearing that humanizes people, and teenagers will probably appreciate that more than most, if anything.

Thanks for your comment. You raise an interesting point. To address it, I'm going to restate what is at issue and then walk you through three levels of explanation (physical, biological, psychological) and explain how they interelate. Please bear with me. To start, you raised issue with idea of spontaneous motion, which I used as a metaphor to explain the concept of "spontaneity" in a political context. (I wanted to define spontaneity as "emerging from the resources of the self" and use it to reconcile this idea with autonomy as a potential for rational deliberation and capacity for planning, rather than the more usual connotations of "spontaneity", which, due to their association with improvisation, tend to associate it with whimsy and a lack of prior or sustained thought.) Also, I agree with you that the idea of spontaneous motion is, strictly speaking, contrary to the principle of efficient causality. The position you are advancing is called Determinism. I acknowledge it is a fundamental tenet of the physical sciences. It is not my intention to contradict it. I do however think its explanatory potential is limited to specific domains. The problem is that, followed to its logical conclusion, Determinism denies the possibility of Free Will. If we accept this, then also: (a) the sphere of Politics eases to exist as a domain of free (i.e. open, unpredictable) contestation (b) the emotions of hope and anxiety have no meaning and both ought to be supplanted by resigned fatalism (c) consequentially much of our lived experience ceases to make sense. In short, philosophical determinism, taken to its logical conclusion, confronts us as deeply (even existentialialy) paradoxical. So, how do we resolve the apparent contradiction? By limiting the concept of efficient causality to its proper domain: the physical and biological sciences and acknowledging that is applicability to psychology is both limited and partial. To explain.... Please recall that I deployed the concept of "spontaneous motion" as a metaphor to explicate the idea of spontaneity as a predicate of autonomy, defined here as a capacity for reflective deliberation and creative action emerging from out of the resources of the self. This appearance of spontaneity has something to do with the complexity of the systems in question. But it is not simply a question of complexity or our inability to adequately model it. For example, we may have difficulty predicting weather systems, but no one would argue weather systems develop in anything other than rigorous accordance with Determinism and the principle of efficient causality. And its not just a question of where we define the system/environment boundary. To explain, let's first consider a hypothetical microbiologist observing the movement of protozoa, and who might describe them as capable of "spontaneous movement". What he really means by this is that their movement under the microscope appears random and that their motive force is attributed to the movement of the cilia of each individual cell rather than to currents within their environment. In this instance, the microbiologist may use the phrase "spontaneous movement", but what he means is that the impelling force is attributable to the internal resources of each cell. In this moment he is not talking about the longer term energy exchange between the cell and environment that nourishes it, which is a perspective that would see them as part of the same system. Rather, he is arbitrarily asserting a system/environment boundary between the cell and its environment and "bracketing out" (temporarily ignoring) the fact that the protozoan cell is part of a more general system. In this he is not denying the fact of efficient causation nor the infinite chain of chemical or physical causes. He is not contradicting the determinism that underpins his vocation as a scientist. He is speaking figuratively to communicate the fact that the protozoa demonstrate propulsion that exceeds the means attributable to their environment alone. I was thinking of this sort of scenario when I originally suggested "spontaneous motion" as a metaphor to explicate the idea if spontaneity as "emerging from out of the resources of the self". But my explanation does go beyond it in a way that goes beyond determinism and the principle of efficient causality. Is this a contradiction? No. Why? Because figurative uses of speech are valid if they adequately communicate the intended meaning. Let's continue... The microbiologist in our example used figurative speech to as a means of locating the effective cause of the protozoa's movement internal to the protozoa itself. He did not speak contrary to philosophical determinism when describing the movement of protozoa as spontaneous because his meaning was figurative. Yet, the meaning I attempted to convey in the video goes beyond determinism and the principle of efficient causality, because I am not talking about protozoa but about humans: humans capable of political action. Humans are capable of reflective intentionality (including the comparative evaluation of means and ends) and of symbolic expression. Hence, humans are capable of acting in ways that exceed the effects of either instinct or of classical or operant conditioning. Perhaps this is an effect of system complexity, but it results in what seems to be a genuinely emergent set of phenomena that transcend deterministic explanation and yield a relative, fraught and incomplete, yet nonetheless real and significant, capacity for free will and genuine creativity. My point is that this creativity doesn't need to be relegated to making shit up on the spur of the moment because we are suddenly confronted with an opportunity. Our spontaneity can be expressed by a decision to enact a long term strategy expressed in the form of organisation building, such that we can foment revolutionary opportunities and increase the liklihood of success when these opportunities arrise. We affirm or spontaneity through deliberative action. We are affirm our freedom because we will something, and especially so when we will something in the face of opposition. We affirm our autonomy in the attempt to be autonomous, even if we temporarily or persistently fall short of our goals. Sorry for the long and complex explanation, but your question opened up a deep set of issues. Hopefully this responce not only clarifies things for you but helps you to feel confident that beneath an apparently simple and straightforward 24 minute video is a much deeper and more philosophically rigorous vein of thought than might otherwise be apparent at first glance.

@@anisau @Anarchy is Autonomy @Anarchy is Autonomy wow that's a lot to read and even harder to truly unpack and give a response. But I will do the best I can. 1: Free will doesn't exist. Plain and simple. We can make choices but none of them are truly "free" because none of us are "free" and never truly can be. Its impossible task to attain. As for the "will" aspect, it's usually meant to refer to a person's hardened conviction and willingness to arrive at a particular goal. But in order to have that goal, there has to be external sources influencing that. You referred to this "will" as the "resources of the self". 2: I'm very familiar with Determinism as I identify with the term. though I understand and appreciate the desire to throw in a more Compatibalist explanation of how things happen, it's just that; a desire. It's wishful thinking, a lie we tell ourselves to feel in control of our destiny. Well there is no destiny and there is no fate. Only the past, the present and the potential future decided by the events that came before it. Everything can be explained in q logical, scientific and rational way if we look hard enough for the answer. It might take hundreds of even thousands of years for confirmation of those facts but we will find them. 3: We are reflective creatures with great capacity for forethought and planning, as well as instinctively ingenuitive, some more than others for a variety of reasons. You are correct that just because we can't comprehend the complexity of something, it doesn't mean it occurred randomly. Chaos and randomness are not synonyms despite the common mistake to the contrary. But anything we think, decide and do whether it's impulsive and poorly thought our retributive plans of anarchistic terrorism or it's all thought out, intentionally planned action, is brought about by a series of conditions. Not to mention our natural genetic influence by our forebears. This reflectiveness is proof not of free will, but rather proof that we have an unparalleled mental capacity to observe, respond and deal with complex situations in our environment due to our large and highly structured brain that is rivaled only just barely by Dolphins, Octopus, Crows and Elephants. 4: It's not accurate to say something is external to the law of cause and effect. Nothing it beyond it, or else we get into religious, deity spanning entities that interfere and manipulate reality. People are nothing more but complex organisms that constantly are at war between seeking a functional and coherent system structure while competing in a constant conflict between those who have structural power who wish to organise and control the function of the system as well.like the events unfolding in Ukraine, there are many moving parts, even more catalysts that Putin himself may not be consciously aware of, and infinitely more possibilities that will stem from it. Everything anyone does is determined by something or someone else. That is why it's so important to decentralize power and have a democratic society, so that the realm of influence is not squarely on the shoulders of a few. But sadly, this will always occur. Nature demands it. As much as we wish to mitigate the nasty and brutish effects of the state of nature, we cannot escape it. There will be leaders, lazy people, disabled people, intellectual people, dumb people, dedicated people, people prone to criminality, people prone to altruism, people prone to selfishness. I appreciate your well thought out life philosophy and it's direct association with a material foundation for how to change things, but it simply won't result the way you wish. 5: In my opinion, there must be a state apparatus. It must be there to quell certain acts and behaviors. Things not entirely caused by economic growth and stability but often made worse explicitly because of it. Certain behaviors cannot and never should be accepted by the majority and once the majority accepts them, it's sadly left to the government to control what society can't on its own. Thomas Paine said it best when discussing the role of the State and it's relationship to the civil/private political sphere. Today, we live in a society that stands for nothing but degeneracy and arbitrarity. It's by design. If we can't agree on basic codes of conduct, if we can't agree on the problem then there will never be any meaningful solution. Personally, I wonder if it's too late. No amount of union membership or worker management will save us from social anomie, the destruction of the family (not specifically the nuclear family mind you, but the extended and multigenerational), the tossing away or discipline and the eradication of roles, typically associated with gender but not always. 5: I share your desire for a society, nay, economy, that is but around the people themselves, working and collaborating. But the argument for an anarchist society sounds dreadful because it's fantastical. People are meant to be led, to place trust in community elders and leaders. There will always bees it be a strong authority to keep things together. No matter what kind of father figure it is. Whether an actual father, which society is suffering from a lack of due to specific laws and cultural adoptions by Capitalism, or the State itself, which serves as a beacon of guidance and security. The effect of today's generation is a cultural decline paired with and partly created by inequality, uncertainty of roles, destruction of fatherhood and the incessant division created by the elite to convince men and women they are enemies rather than complimentary to one another. Until that gets fixed, nothing will. Because the motivation to be a contributing, productive member of society dwindles the more and more we fall into this "I don't need no man" and "I'm going my own way" nonsense. But each is a reaction. Created by a set of conditions whether real or imaginary. When I saw imaginary I'm referring to manufactured outrage and deviance to further the ends of the elite by destroying families and convincing those people they would be better off alone or without them.

Anarchism grows out of, and is part of the socialist tradition. However, while economics is an important question, it is only of secondary importance in the order of things. Politics is primary. Yet people make the error of seeing economics as primary. Why? Here are three reasons. 1. Poverty highlights real needs. Socialism has always sought to solve economic questions because they are of pressing concern to the popular classes (i.e. the peasantry and the working class). (But the solutions are primarily through political action. Politics is cardinal and the source of solutions, despite the pressing nature of social needs satisfied through economic endeavors.) 2. Marxism's emphasis on materialism as a perspective on the social world has had lasting influence, nor lest because materialism has (justifiably) become the dominant mode of social analysis within the social sciences. It accounts for much that pertains to human motivation and technique. (Politics needs to take it into account. But politics as the sphere of social conversation and cooperation comprehends the economic, b not the other way around.) 3. It is useful for people in positions of power and authority to stave off political congestion by framing debates in economic terms. It allows them to constrain debate to options that don't challenge their institutional position while also projecting the illusion that their are no other options, because the status quo or object of their agenda is economically necessary. (The necessity is always "all other things being equal". The illusory necessity of any particular economic regime functions to hide its real contingency in the face of changes to the political regime.) You also asked why not capitalism. The reason is that it is essentially undemocratic. It is also essentially exploitative. Bosses may exploit their workers to a lesser or greater degree. But the fact of exploitation is intrinsic to capitalism. The right of property ownership, whether of land, industrial premises, or licensing of legally protected knowledge, gives its proprietor power to exact a premium from the labour of others, a premium which if reinvested, confers increased power to extract value from others' labour. Capitalism is at bottom a question of power, and that power manifests as a specific form of relationship between classes. At bottom, capitalists are able to exploit workers because capital is not democratically controlled. It is a question of politics, not simply of economics. Anarchists are those socialists who wish to extend democracy -i.e. direct participatory democracy, not electoral representationalism, which is oligarchic, and falsely called democratic - to every institution of society.

@@anisau I see your point ime not an anarchist my self more of a socialist but I support all leftists ideologues

Wankologist, Perhaps... It would certainly require people who desire their life to centre around more than potato chips and television. But the degree to which people would need to be well informed and educated prior to embarking on such a project as a prerequisite for it to work is not clear to me. Participation is itself educative. (Perhaps it is the best education.) And people create themselves through what the do. (This was also understood by the Greeks. There is an excellent essay by Cornelius Castoriadis on the changes in the human self-image that took place during the first few decades of the democratic era in Athens, and which can be grasped by contrasting the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles. It's in the public service edition of "Figures of the Thinkable".) Additionally, it is a misunderstanding that all revolutionary institutions will suddenly need to be created from scratch on the day after the revolution. In many instances it will be to late by then. The strength of anarcho-syndicalism is that out allows us to create and practice the forms of organisation, sociability and self-dicipline required after the revolution, but to do so today. It also allows us to make mistakes and correct then at a time when failure is less critical. Also, it allows us to be less apprehensive that we are potentially sacrificing everything on a single,high-stakes roll of the dice, because that is not how anarcho-syndicalism as a strategy works. Involvement on a libertarian socialist union brings with it all the immediate benefits of collective self-empowerment through union struggle, as well as the confidence that we are affirming our autonomy in the attempt to realise it, and realise it more fully. Personally, I may never see the t revolution. But even of this is the case, I can do what I can to give those younger than me the best chance of succeeding. I think this needs to be the attitude and set of understandings that people require to go onto this with eyes open and to persist in the struggle through all the setbacks that will inevitably occur.

@@anisau I feel like capitalism will cause the revolution through global warming since capitalists have become too comfortable and weak so when the time comes there be caught off guard

@@anisau yes

@@anisau I agree with you on this

The aim of anarchism is revolution, but we understand this revolution in a two-fold sense. Negatively speaking, what we are against is capitalism and the state. Positively, what we are for is the extension of (direct, participatory) democracy to every institution of society. The creation of democracy is (a fortiori) the destruction of the state, because what makes a state a state is that it is a hierarchical and bureaucratic apparatus of power that sits seperate to and above the people it governs. The creation of democracy is the destruction of capitalism, which is is the hierarchical and bureaucratic relationship in which the workers are subordinated to the bosses and shareholders who direct and exploit our labour for profit. Democracy is not voting for leaders to decide for on our behalf. An oligarchy selected by vote is still an oligarchy. No, democracy is the creation and changing of situations so that we can come together on the basis of equality to debate and decide by voting directly on all the issues that affect us in common. You asked about real world projects, so how is this to be achieved in the real world and on a real world scale? Through the strategy of anarcho-sydicalism! The International Workers' Associatiom (IWA-AIT) is a federation of workers unions organised and operating according to anarchist principles. It's aim is to advance and defend workers interests against the capialist and rent-seeking classes today whilst building an organisation capable of carrying through social revolution tomorrow. The key thing is that the organisations federated within the IWA are not waiting for tomorrow to bring democracy into being. To join is to start participating directly and immediately in the project of collective and individual autonomy. Collective and individual autonomy are two sides of the same coin. You cannot achieve a full development of your individual autonomy unless you actively create and participate in social institutions that realise and practice collective autonomy, which is to say democracy in its direct and participatory sense. While the end game all anarchists work towards is social revolution, the extension of (direct, participatory) democracy to all institutions of society, we affirm our autonomy in the here and now by making the attempt to build organisations with this character. Every meeting, every picket and every strike represents an event in which the power of capitalism and the power of the state meet resistance and are made to retreat. Every attempt at organising and extending or organisation further represents the fact of our thinking and acting for ourselves both as individuals and as members of the working class. This is what makes it a real world project. The revolution isn't some far off all-or-nothing event. The revolution is all of the steps on the way to and through and past any single climax of struggle. And nothing that we do to support each other through the organisation and militancy of an anarcho-syndicalist organisation is wasted. This is what makes it realistic as a long-term strategy for revolution. The benefits of participation are direct and rewarding despite the distance to our end goal. The values, actions and forms of relationship, (equality, autonomy, solidarity, mutual aid, direct democracy, direct action, federation) that we put into practice today within our organisations are the same values, actions and forms of relationship that will characterise a future anarchist and libertarian socialist society. And nothing builds confidence in oneself and real friendship with others than engaging in a struggle for better wages and conditions or to get sacked workers reinstated or compensated. We don't need the bureaucrats within mainstream unions to tell us how to do these things. We are more creative and achieve better results when we do it for ourselves. We can do without the bosses and the bureaucrats and politicians, but they cannot do without us. That is our strength and our power. All we need to do is think and organise and stand together when we act. We have the tools to do this. They are called anarcho-sydicalism and the IWA-AIT.

Alexei Strife, I'm up for a debate. But as an opening remark, I'd observe that without a term in office being limited, the is no moment when rotation can occur. Rotation implies temporal Knutson of office. Any group can extend a term, and there are a variety of reasons they might do this. But the key value for me is rotation and editing one's comrades are prepared and encouraged to take a turn.

Where can you learn this stuff? I recommend two books to start with. You can probably follow your nose after that, as there are plenty of books available, and there is plenty on the internet. Daniel Guerin "Anarchism" (1970), (also published as "Anarchism: From Theory to Practice") is my favourite book to recommend to people just getting to grips with anarchism for the first time. It is a sound general introduction, and doesn't fall into the trap of looking a great theorists at the expense of the historical context and anarchism as movement of the popular classes (I.e. not just the working class but the peasantry, which were vital to the movement for example in Spain and Ukraine). You can find it in pdf here: b-ok.global/book/913250/817c8e Guerin has also published a useful reader of primary texts. I also recommend Rudolf Rocker's "Anarcho-syndicalism: theory and practice" (1936). This book is divided into chapters on history and theory. I'd just stick to the theory on a first read through. b-ok.global/book/962741/372f06 For sure, read as much anarchist stuff as you can, esp. Proudhon and Bakunin, but also read more widely. If you don't (a) you can't be sure anachism is the best approach to politics (which it is, but you want to be sure), and (b) you will never win the arguments you will inevitably get into with others (since the only way to really win an argument is to know more about your interlocutors' positions than they know themselves). So, read some history of political philosophy (Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Paine, Bentham, Mill). Read the Greeks, but not just Plato and Aristotle, but also Thucydides and Herodotus. Why? Because of all the political ideologies, only anarchism desires to institute democracy as the Ancient Athenians would have recognised and understood it, and Plato and Aristotle were both hostile to democracy. Read some history, particularly the French Revolution (anarchism emerges out of the unfinished business of the French revolution). Read Marx, but learn what anarchists find useful in Marx and what we reject. Read some sociology and social theory, both the classics (Durkheim, Weber, Marx, Ellias, Freud, E.P. Thompson), and some newer stuff (Castoriadis, Heller, Foucault, Habermas, Luhmann). Read Kant. Yeah, he can be boring, but he's important, esp. if you read Marx and Nietzsche and youbwant to read them critically. Read Schiller's book on Aesthetic Education (it's not about aesthetics but about politics and the French Revolution). Just fuckin read as much as you can. None of the time spent will be wasted.

Anarchy is Autonomy Thank you so much comrade!

The system describes the principles according to which anarchist unions presently operate. They do extend to a post-revolutionary society presuming we prevail in the struggle. After getting rid of the bosses, were not gonna put up with any other parasites. If you are able bodied and of sound mind, and want to share equally in our food you'll have to share equally on the work required to produce it. That said, the automation that currently contributes to unemployment will be used to reduce working hours for all. After doing your share of the graft, you can kick back to your heart's content and wank in front of any screen you choose... Just don't wank on mine!

@Anarchy is Autonomy Thanks for the reply. AWWW WHAT? I’m struggling with the basic fundamentals here now. What constitutes things like an ‘equal sharing of food’, or consumption of resources like electricity, water and all? Like, can I start filling a water pool in my garden, or sing for 1.5 hours of Backstreet Boys in the shower or is that deemed stealing. Regarding ‘equal food sharing’, are you going to calorie check my grocery shop or something? This might be a deal breaker for me because I’m a chunky monkey, but I think it’s innate in me since i come from a big family. I don’t think I’ll cope with someone confiscating my ice cream, I think I’ll start throwing hands. Wait, if I started throwing hands after someone confiscated my ice cream, how does policing work? Take my ice cream and I swear I’ll go berserk, like Hulk, smashing the city up, the only option would be to shoot me down probably. So who’d have the rights to shoot me? Anyway, so how does one ‘get rid of parasites’, if I refuse to work, whilst able bodied and minded, are you going to literally remove the ‘human rights’ I have, the crux point of socialist regime, regarding housing, healthcare, food, water and all? Are you going to leave me to suffer and struggle, just like in capitalist systems? What if I’m working as a video game streamer, or an artist but amassing no great revenue? Am I still entitled to all those ‘human rights’ as mentioned before, am I a ‘parasite’? Capitalist systems tends to leave these people struggling and suffering, by not having access to those ‘human rights’ as mentioned before, being unsuccessful, so they at least, part time, move on to other jobs like retail and all, but in your system can I just endlessly keep on going in my failure and be alright? I’d sure be happy playing video games all day with basic needs paid for. What exactly constitutes a ‘fair share’ of work? I know in capitalist systems this can also be deemed ambiguous as *some* people who do little, can still make a disproportionately large sum of money, off of others’ backs, but does your system leave room for even greater exploitations by *all* peoples to make, at least their necessities, off of other peoples backs too for little to no work? I’ve seen videos of people in socialist systems doing the literal minimum and most uninspired amount of work to ‘get their government cheque/resources’; for example once beautiful cultured communities/nations making amazing and great street foods, starting to all make simple, plain ham sandwich shops, waiting for their government pay... it doesn’t come at all from any customers.

You’re the reason anarchism doesn’t work😂

Fascist !!

Just spotted your question. Anarchist communists and anarcho-syndicalism are not discrete terms. You may find people who, quite reasonably claim to be both. Some may opt for one term over another as a question of emphasis. Some people are definitely one and not the other. In short, the terms address different questions. Anarcho-syndicalism is a strategy for revolution achieved through the creation of unions organised on specifically anarchist principles. Anarcho-communism describes a particular post-revolutionsry social organisation that gets rid of money and distributes goods via free appropriation from communal stores. Personally, am not an anarcho-communist (or at least not in that "money is the root of all evil" sense). I do however understand anarchism as a species of socialism. I think it is a mistake to see politics primarily in economic terms, or to privilege the economic over the political. Economics is important. But it is a separate and distinct value sphere. Socialism should be understood primarily as a question of democracy and its extension to all areas of social life. That is what makes me an anarchist.

How can you possibly remove all “hierarchical forms”? From the fact that mental and physical traits are normally distributed, and markets provide the best returns of any organisational method, how could it logically follow that we should “remove” “hierarchical forms”?

@@ashleigh3021, You've posted two questions, a mere 40 words yet the amount of stuff you get wrong (i.e.the assumptions and false premises underlying those two questions) is profound. The reason no one has responded in four days is that the sheer quantity of words and the time wasted setting you straight in a detailed and coherent way is hardly worth anyone's effort. So, I'm just going to state very broadly some of the problems with your questions and the things they assume. 1. Firstly, you misinterpreted the phrasing of someone's question (one thatI responded to) as the statement of contention. You're thus taking issue with a contention no one has articulated and no one cares to defend because to do so it would give credence to a mischaracterisation. 2. The empirical perspective you adopt ("mental and physical traits normally distributed") is hopelessly naive. I appreciate you are implying a distinction btw the empirical and concrete on the one hand and the ideal and abstract on the other in order to suggest you inhabit the real world and your ideological opponents indulge in fantasies, but anyone who has studied any history and philosophy of science, yet alone any philosophy, will immediately be able to point out how the empirical perspective is shot through with idealist constructions (e.g. the abstract nature of numbers, the constructed nature of any ordering, the ideal origin of the values that render ordinal representations meaningful and so permit them to be interpreted as hierachies). Unbeknownst to you, the very premises of your questions militate against tropes you would employ in rhetorical defense of the ideology you inhabit. 3. You presume a natural relationship between individual aptitides and traits and their corresponding market outcomes that would render economic inequality just, as if there were some natural proportionality between the two, when all the evidence suggests that private property serves to amplify whatever differences are initially attributable to individual variability. Whats more, under conditions of multi- generational inheritance, wealth tends to shield lack of aptitude or talent from economic penalty. The idea that economic success is intrinsically linked to talent is a contention that presumes what it sets out to prove, i.e. the laughable contention that capitalism somehow expresses itself as meritocracy. 4. "Markets provide the best returns of any organisational method"? Returns to whom? Under what conditions? And in what aspects of life? There are at least six highly differentiated, quasi-autonomous value spheres operative in modern society, of which the economy is only one. (The others are law, religion, art, politics and science/technology.) Each has it's own medium and dynamics. An economic fundamentalism that seeks to impose the values and dynamics of the market onto these other value spheres not only results in the emiseration of great swathes of the working class, it results in corruption and injustice in the sphere of law, mediocrity and cliche in the sphere of art, reduced innovation in the sphere of science and technology (which requires other, non-market forms of investment if the risk of failure in the more radical and speculative research fields is to be overcome and they are to yield the profound advances we have become accustomed to, especially in the biological sciences), hypocricy and mystification in the sphere of religion, and corruption and oppression in the sphere of politics. 5. To push to the logical consequence of your presuppsitions, if inequality is an innocuous and benign outcome of freedom, why limit it to the economic sphere. Why not extend it to the legal sphere and the political sphere? Why stop at capitalism? Why not opt for fascism or some other form of neo-feudalism? Surely if you are committed to freeing the potential for unequal economic outcomes from the egalitation limitations law and politics impose upon it, then respect for the boundaries of these different spheres of life is just another idealist prejudice. Now thay you've been given some things to think about, lets answer your initial question. Anarchists don't think they can remove all hierarchies. We have no interest in hierarchies of artistic taste for example, which we (along with everybody else) understand to be intrinsically contestable. Yet we do, absolutely and unapologetically, seek to destroy political hierarchies. We also seek economic equality as necessary and coterminous with political equality. But even here our approaches vary: we seek arithmetic equality in politics and law, and proportional equality (based on need) in economics. This is because we realise that some inequalities cannot be removed, but only mitigated via proportional treatment. Hence the following maxim: To each according to his needs; from each according to his abilities. If we can achieve this, true diversity, such as the diversity of taste and talent, and the internal diversity to be achieved through cultivation of different aspects of the personality will be able to manifest themselves in everyone, not just the wealthy few who can combine plenitude with leisure. Those who see and seek difference primarily in terms of wealth and the status it confers all to often tend to be stupid, barbaric and little philistines, no matter how big their car and how expensive their taste in whiskey. In think we (and you) can be better than that...

"Firstly, you misinterpreted the phrasing of someone's question (one thatI responded to) as the statement of contention. You're thus taking issue with a contention no one has articulated and no one cares to defend because to do so it would give credence to a mischaracterisation." I didn't misinterpret anything. I asked a fairly simple question related to the original comment, I didn't say he specifically held that assumption. YOU were the one who misinterpreted me. "The empirical perspective you adopt ("mental and physical traits normally distributed") is hopelessly naive. I appreciate you are implying a distinction btw the empirical and concrete on the one hand and the ideal and abstract on the other in order to suggest you inhabit the real world and your ideological opponents indulge in fantasies, but anyone who has studied any history and philosophy of science, yet alone any philosophy, will immediately be able to point out how the empirical perspective is shot through with idealist constructions (e.g. the abstract nature of numbers, the constructed nature of any ordering, the ideal origin of the values that render ordinal representations meaningful and so permit them to be interpreted as hierachies). Unbeknownst to you, the very premises of your questions militate against tropes you would employ in rhetorical defense of the ideology you inhabit." You don't need to understand obscure philosophy of science debates to perform the scientific method, you just do science. Trained scientists do it every day, it's not hard. If other systems were better at removing error, bias, wishful thinking etc (as the scientific method does) we would use them, but we don't for a reason - because the scientific method is the best method of arriving at the truth ever developed. "You presume a natural relationship between individual aptitides and traits and their corresponding market outcomes that would render economic inequality just, as if there were some natural proportionality between the two, when all the evidence suggests that private property serves to amplify whatever differences are initially attributable to individual variability. I don't presume anything, I can testify that other people (i.e. countless psychometricians and behavioural geneticists over a period of 100 years, through countless different psychometric test batteries) have performed sufficient due diligence to arrive at measurements such that we can claim that mental traits, along with physical traits are normally distributed. Of course private property amplifies differences in ability, that's the point. Capable people demonstrate their capability and acquire resources, that increases inequality and have existed since time immemorial. People have demonstrated preference for it since before the Bronze Age. "under conditions of multi- generational inheritance, wealth tends to shield lack of aptitude or talent from economic penalty. The idea that economic success is intrinsically linked to talent is a contention that presumes what it sets out to prove, i.e. the laughable contention that capitalism somehow expresses itself as meritocracy." Exactly the opposite is true - wealth doesn't mitotically divide itself, because we see regression to the mean occur, which is perfectly normal and what we would predict given knowledge of behavioural genetics and statistics. Most families lose a large proportion of their wealth by the 3rd-4th following generation because of that fact. Of course, we still tend to see retention of wealth and resources because intelligence, conscientiousness and industriousness are mostly heritable. "Markets provide the best returns of any organisational method"? Returns to whom? Under what conditions? And in what aspects of life? To the people who contribute to them. Natural selection existing doesn't somehow disprove that. "There are at least six highly differentiated, quasi-autonomous value spheres operative in modern society, of which the economy is only one. (The others are law, religion, art, politics and science/technology.) Each has it's own medium and dynamics." Reality is made up of multiple dimensions, and the abilities of individuals and groups determine the properties of systems, always and everywhere. Evolutionary laws do not change, and the communist false promise of escape from them has never happened. "An economic fundamentalism that seeks to impose the values and dynamics of the market onto these other value spheres" You're talking about rule of law vs discretion. If you have rule of law then you don't have those things, because the full scope of property is protected and immoral behaviour is prosecuted. Rule of law is not possible without private property, so again, you're contradicting yourself. "To push to the logical consequence of your presuppsitions, if inequality is an innocuous and benign outcome of freedom, why limit it to the economic sphere. Why not extend it to the legal sphere and the political sphere? Why stop at capitalism? Why not opt for fascism or some other form of neo-feudalism? Surely if you are committed to freeing the potential for unequal economic outcomes from the egalitation limitations law and politics impose upon it, then respect for the boundaries of these different spheres of life is just another idealist prejudice." You're right, that's why I do advocate rule of law, market fascism and ethnocentrism, because it's the most eugenic and optimal system for a polity ever developed, and nothing you advocate would ever survive in the market against it (hence why it never has survived against it, isn't widespread currently and never will be).

Anarcho-syndicalism is anarchist unionism. It dates back to the early 1890s in Spain, and expressed a desire to return to the organisation building strategy of the First International after the decade of anarchist terrorism proved itself to be a wrong turn. Essentially it is unionism that is organised and struggles in accordance anarchist principles, with a long term goal of building organisations with an anarchist culture and which will one day be capable of carrying through a libertarian-socialist/anarchist-commiunist revolution. Council communism emerged in the 1920s and sits within the Marxist tradition as a moment of self-critique from within that tradition, expressed as a leftward (ergo direct democratic) tendency. In many respects it can be thought of as a significant step towards anarchism, in that, like anarchism, it opposes the authoritarian elements of Marxist doctrine (e.g. the party as vangard and "democratic centralism" which is how the Marxists refer to toeing the party line.) It advocates the creation of direct democratic workers councils during moments of revolution, and sees these councils as embodying the democratic potential of the revolutionary moment. Anarchism and council communism have many points of convergence. Anarchists too look towards the creation of workers councils as necessary outcome of successful revolution. So broadly speaking, they share similar ambitions, and are both forms of libertarian socialism. However, they are very distinct traditions and have their different concerns and points of emphasis. The devil is always in the detail, and that counts for a lot. Anarchists place a lot more stress on the congruence of means and ends, and so their methods of struggle are often described as prefigurative. We believe that we need to build anarchist culture in our organisations, to run them as we would run a post-revolutionary anarchist society. Council communism tends not to emphasise this, because they look at the problem of revolution differently. They are still essentially Marxists, and to that degree believe the internal contradictions of capitalism will create revolutionary situations. Council communism addresses the question of what to do when the revolution comes, and looked to the Petersberg Commune of 1905, the workers councils of 1917 (later domesticated and/or suppressed by the bolsheviks) for inspiration. Organisationally, it tends to takes the form of a revplutionary party, but it doesn't see the role of the party as one where the state is seized through coup d'etat, but as advocating that workers seize the means of production and set up workers councils to coordinate production, distribution, exchange and revolutionary defense. Anarcho-syndicalism isn't the only tendency within anarchism, but historically it is the greatest in terms of its size and impact. Although many of Marx'seconomic ideas are taken seriously by anarchists, we have always rejected Marx's theory of revolution and have looked upon his theory of history with ambivalence. We think the idea of capturing the state, using it to create socialism, and then allowing it to whither away is disasterous bullshit. So, we see the need an organisational form that can potentially do what the state can do, but do it differently, without being or becoming a state. Anarcho-syndicalism and its federative model is a way of creating that organisation, practicing it, educating people into how it works and can work, and building a culture that will maintain it through the stress of revolution and allow its patterns of organisation to be replicated along different axes (local industrial unions of all trades and simultaneously national federations of specific trades, local councils, and federations of local councils in regions as and cities). We want to build all this up so that we are strong enough to directly contest capitalism. It is a revolutionary strategy that doesn't really on a theory of history and doesn't have Marxism's messianic belief in the contradictions of capitalism and the workers party as saviour and redeemer. Council Communism holds onto those things. It theorises about the after, but the question of organisational form has always be ed n an open one, a party functioning as a de facto propaganda group in anticipation of the revolution. Of course, as time has gone on, there has been lot of mutual reading and occasional borrowing, and anarchists and council-ish trots often rub shoulders without too much friction in unions, bookshops, antifa and down the pub, but there is still a very strong tendency to see oneself either as a Marxist or as an anarchist and to argue all this shit out interminably in the usual spirt semi-friendly antagonism.

@@anisau thank you for your answer. I hope you will make more videos

Very glad you liked it. It's good that people still watch it and find it useful.

Hi Aaron. This is a really good question. So, thank you for asking it. I'm going to set up my answer first be clarifying some contextual issues first, and then answering your question. The first thing to point out is that my video is a sktech of how anarchist organisations are set up. Specifically, it is a sketch of how the International Workers Association (the IWA-AIT, formed in 1922), its member sections (the earliest being the Spanish CNT (formed in 1910), and the unions and regional federations of unions that comprise those sections (the earliest dating back to the mid-1890s) relate together and operate. Because anarcho-syndicalist unions have a revolutionary aim, they organise and militate according to the same principles the hope to institute on a society-wide basis. This matters for a number of reasons: Firstly, their practical operation is as much a proof of concept as a path towards their aims. But its not just "prefigurative". The IWA is (a fortiori) the revoltion. I know this sounds a bit pompous, but what I mean is that, if the organisation manifests its ideals organisationally in the process of militating for revolution (which we do by advancing workers' rights and outcomes, and building our organisations and capacity in the process), then its not just a means to the end but participates in the end it is trying to achieve, perhaps not fully, but at least partially and in a growing way. (This is also our great difference in comparison with the Marxists, whose methods betray the very ideals they defer until some post-revolutionary date.) Because, for us, the means and end are bound up together, the history of the organisation can be examined for an indication of how it is likely act in the future. Not totally, because history is always open. But anarcho-syndicalist organising do have a definite organisational character; a personality, if you would like to characterise it as such. This means we can look to its past and how it reacted in certain contexts to make an educated guess to how it might react to similar situations in the future. Now, to answer your question. The life of the an anarcho-syndicalist union is to be found in the workings of its local assemblies. It is the forum of discussion, argument and decision making. All of the proposals that are put to congresses whether this be at the regional, national or international level originate, are debated, and have positions taken (for or against) at the local level. (Not to mention all the decisions that only pertain locally.) Now, people don't always agree. And, actually, there is a lot to disagree about. All of these disagreements manifest at the local level as well as the various confederation levels. But the debate it is not restricted to lines of formal communication, precisely because so much of it is informal. None of this is captured in the video, and you are right to ask about it. The IWA has multiple channels of informal communication that envelop it. The IWA is not a state. It is not even a proto-state, but its structure could (and hopefully will) one day replace the state. This means it will need to relieve the state by taking over many of its functions But (and this is my point) the relationship between the state and civil society is necessarily paralleled within the IWA. All of the informal communication (seperate to the formal channels mediated by the regional, national and international secretariats), all our chatter on social media, all the pro-anarchosyndicalist propaganda groups and journals, etc. can be thought of as a sort of civil society that operates in the wider environment of the IWA. This is where a lot of the aguements and faction forming occur, if they occur at all in any issue. To get a good sense of this (because it is historically well documented, you can look at the propaganda groups that emerged in the 1920s in the orbit of the Spanish CNT, and from which the FAI emerged. The FAI was less an organisation with a singular, coherent program and more of a corresponding society made up of different affinity groups and across which journals, newspapers and propaganda materials were circulated for consumption by each other and the broader CNT. All of the arguments within the CNT were reflected in those publications, because this was a means of broader persuasion. It was a sort of DIY mass media and very important to influencing the debates that took place in the assemblies of the CNT. But these publications were not just narrowly political in focus, they were a vehicle for all sorts of cultural expression, and reflected much of the informal life of the movement. Things like picnicking excursions out to the countryside, theatre troops made up of union members, poetry and essays, stuff on rational education to try and break the Catholic church's strangle hold on education, ecologism and naturism in both its nudist and non-nudist forms, which was part of questioning what a healthy life could and should be and which was a big thing in those days. So, they had a wider cultural importance. But their political importance was key and cannot be overstated given that they were central to maintaining a culture of revolutionary militancy. During the late 1920s, as the membership of the CNT grew above 900'000 members, a reformist faction sprang up within the organisation. How? Well, while the CNT was anarchist in inspiration, form and action, it was open to all workers. The great majority of people who joined the CNT did not have any specificly anarchist leanings proir to joining. And from amongst this group developed a political tendency that wished to forego the CNT's revolutionary stance for a more reformist approach. Because of this, for a while in the late 20s, the CNT was at risk of losing its revolutionary character. To combat this, various anarchist propaganda groups wrote and published with furious activity denouncing reformism and promoting a belligerent revolutionary perspective. Together, as the FAI, these groups helped each other circulate this material. This successfully influenced the outlook of the great mass of members and the revolutionary aims of the CNT were reaffirmed when the issue was debated in the various CNT assemblies, plenaries and congresses. So, hopefully this answers your question. Different tendencies and factions do form. The fights and arguments can be ferocious. But they are tempered by respect for the broader revolutionary project and the ideals of direct democracy and anarchist federation. Revolutionary success requires a mass organisation, and that cannot be achieved if the arguments result in expulsions and splitting. Above all, organisation needs to hang together. But what holds it together isn't the aims and statutes or any legalistic structure, but a commitment to its fundamental culture, one that is simultaneously libertarian and built on working class solidarity. Also, because the secretariat is not a decision making office, but more of a clearing house for formal union channels of communication, there is no value in seeking out positions within the secretariat. It is not a central committee and it cannot be used to try and project power and control. This is one of the reasons the Marxists don't try to infiltrate our organisation. The only point of centrality (the secretariat), does not and cannot make decisions. So, for the Marxists, there is nothing to be gained from the attempt to infiltrate. But the informal, civil-society-esque role played by all the spontaneous chatter, journals, blogs, zines, forums, is all crucial. Anarcho-syndicalism provides a point of focus around which all these manifestations of anarchist culture come together, but our federations are also the bones around which the flesh of anarchist culture grows and gives the movement life. And, to return to your question once more, there is an inter-penetration between all that external activity and the debates that take place in in the assemblies of anarcho-syndicalist unions

Two last points: Anarchists are always very careful about not overstepping the mandates of the group that delegates them to look after an activity or to communicate their positions at Congress or any other forum. This constraint requires self-discipline, collective-monitoring and preparedness to call out behaviour that misrepresents the decisions or positions adopted in the local union assembly or at congresses. This means that other avenues are required to maintain free debate and the free expression of ideas. So, having these other, informal avenues for broader communication and debate is vital. There is always a very clear distinction between what is formal and mandated, and what is not. Maintaining this distinction is part and parcel of creating and maintaining the trust that allows us to cooperate effectively. Its part of the normative structure of anarchism which binds us together in solidarity. Lastly, local autonomy is prized, and we tend not to create overarching rules that require adherence by a whole federation where there is no need. Consequently, our statutes tend to be meta-political rather than political. What do I mean by this? Meta-politics is less about what we do and more about how we do it. You can think of it was the minimum set of rules required to play a game: due process; whose got the conch and how it is passed about; that sort of thing. We are very structure on how our secretariat behaves and how our congresses are run. And abiding by the decisions of our periodic congresses is mandatory. We require that collectively of ourselves. But there is no need to bind ourselves to positions, strategies or tactics that are unnecessarily restrictive or which will work only in some areas or not in others. This respect for local autonomy and other ways of doing things moderates disagreement. And sometimes the fact that there is disagreement is enough to convince those who proposed something that, while they are actions that can be adopted in some places, they shouldn't be mandated everywhere. We had an example of this recently. Anarchism has traditionally been militantly atheist. And our aims and statutes expressed a commitment to a separation between politics and the church. There was a recent proposal from one of our European sections to strengthen this to declare an opposition to all religious organisations. Although the proposal was passed, it passed narrowly, and two sections explained that an expression of agnosticism and anti-clericism rather that militant atheism was better, because it didn't act as an impediment to joining in their countries, and also made their situations less dangerous, because the governments in those countries were less likely to persecute their organisations in the name of the state religion. Because if this, even though the proposal passed by a democratic process, the issue is going to be revisited at the next plenary and the decision either reversed or a compromise acceptable to the minority position reached. It's an example of argument and disagreement being carried on in the right spirit and finding the right balance between universalism and particularism. If we keep the universal to the necessary minimum, there will be sufficient autonomy to adapt to the particular circumstances at the local level.

@@anisau I like how the formation and formulation of "political will" is treated here distinct from forming factions as power groups, something anarchists as far as I understand it despise. Influence not power.

Chris Brown, it's a good question. The first safeguard is that the Secretariat's function is to act as a clearing house for formal communications, ensuring they ate circulated to all member groups. It is not a body vested with decision making power, except for minor tasks for which is powers are formally mandated at a congress. But the members sections need to monitor this, and be ready to hold the secretariat to account, and recall and rotate the responsibility. Without the will to actively monitor and hold to account, power is usurped. But it isn't just about preventing aggregations of power: people appointed to roles (secretaries, treasurers, members of working groups) need to do their job and not be slack. So it cuts the other way too. The second thing is to understand that federations have constitutions, and anarchist constitutions stipulate that all federal decisions are made and/or ratified at congress, and all groups, including that one charged with the secretariat-role needs to abide by those decisions. But at the end of the day, groups need to be willing to hold each other to account, to understand the principles of anarchist organising and to promote and defend them. Without this, things fall apart. This is what Castoriadis calls the tragic character of democracy: without a democratic (i.e. anarchist) culture, things will fall apart. If a democracy reflects the common will, it is nothing without that will, and that will is always at risk of either slackening or going down the road of domination (usu. both simultaneously, albeit by different parties).That's why I think it's important to be clear about the constellation of values that motivate us. Otherwise there is no reverence point against which to measure anti-democratic drift.

Many thanks for the prompt and unexpected response. I appreciate you taking the time. I can see that the safeguards, the security and vitality of the process is totally dependent upon the dynamic of the active participation of the individual, to fuel the decision making, and using the inbuilt safeguards, check that the process is working as it should. I take the point that without continuous and sustained participation, there could be "spaces" within the process for cliques or other forces to fill the vacuum. I think the keyword is dynamic, that democracy in Anachist terms, needs to constantly to express and exert itself. Its an empty balloon otherwise. Would issues a group wishes to raise be presented to the Secretariat first, so that details can be circulated before discussion at federation level, or would the group's representative raise them ? I could see that there may need to be a way of filtering out the trivial, or bouncing the issue back as a group/local concern rather than a federal one.

In response to your question, two observations need to be made. The first is that membership of two or more federations is not necessarily a mutually exclusive thing, and only becomes so if the principles of one federation place obligations on member groups that directly contravene the principles of membership of another federation. In his excellent 1936 book “Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice” Rudolf Rocker describes the federative ties of metal workers of a particular city in Spain. Along one axis this craft union was federated with the workers of all the other industries in their city. This city-wide industrial union was then federated with other industrial unions in their region, and this region in turn was federated at a national level as a regional section of the CNT. Along a second separate axis, however, the metal workers of that city participated in a second federation with all the other metal workers’ unions in Spain, to communicate and organise things specific to their trade (e.g. ways of managing safety issues, education standards undergirding apprentices, or up-skilling on new materials or techniques). In this instance, there is no conflict. Federations are not sovereign bodies. If sovereignty has a locus in anarchist social institutions, it is at the local level, vested through the direct participation by individuals. Additionally, in a post-revolutionary context, one might imagine additional, non-industrial, federative axes, such as one in which individual workers participate directly in the council of a neighbourhood or city-ward, which had delegates representing them in the city-wide council, and perhaps even with delegates rotated through positions on whatever boards were required to manage public utilities (water, waste collection and recycling, transport, education, etc.) In each case, delegates sent to represent their local wards would not themselves have decision-making power, but would bring issues back to local groups for discussion and a position to be reached, and they would then be mandated to communicate that decision at council or on the broad they are serving on. The second observation is that decision-making through federative structures is that reaching a decision can take time. In Australia, the Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation (my union) has congresses roughly every one to two years at which we do things like rotating the secretariat or amending our aims and statutes where they need refining. The congress is either called by the secretariat or proposed by a local group 6 to 12 months ahead. Proposals for decision must be submitted to the secretariat in time for the agenda to be circulated 3 months prior to the congress, so that local groups can debate proposals, reach positions and select and mandate their delegates. The IWA (the international federation to which the ASF belongs) has an agenda that is circulated 6 months prior to congress. So, as you can see, this places realistic limitations on the speed of federative decision making. How do we deal with this? We keep federation-wide proposals to a minimum. A lot of our organising makes use of federative channels, but simply takes the form requests for solidarity actions in other cities where a business we have an issue with has an office. This doesn’t require that everyone agree. We just ask for help and the help comes. We know that the other sections will do what they can to assist (mutual aid), but no one directs them to do it: the decision resides with them. They always come through for us, but we try to make it easy by providing them with information on addresses and office hours, etc., so that they are not put to unnecessary effort. By making use of federation-wide email groups, there is often very little organising that the secretariat need do, and much of their activity is directed toward maintain the website, making sure correspondence from the IWA is circulated to the list, responding inquiries, and collecting reports on active issues for publication in union newsheets. But there is always the option to provide the secretariat or working groups with whatever scope for discretionary action is required by them by being specific about their mandates, and specifying what conditions exceed the bounds of those mandates, such that guidance from local sections is required. We have a process for making decisions between congresses, usually with a one month turn around, and any section can make those proposals. It all sounds horribly bureaucratic, but the requirement to make decisions in this way are rare. Local sections retain a high degree of initiative and autonomy, and simply making calls for solidarity is sufficient to gain the type of cooperation we need from other sections for the union to work on a national level. Sorry for the long-winded response. I hope it answers your question.

Thanks again for a comprehensive reply. I have come across Anarchism only very recently, perhaps rather than trouble you with questions, you could suggest a reading list, so I could "get up to speed".

Recommended reading for getting up to speed quickly? I’d start with Rudolf Rocker’s Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice (1936), Chapters 1, 4 and 5, as the best place to start. The first chapter is a very brief overview of the key figures and their significance plus some historical precursors. The fourth and fifth chapters are about the aims and methods of anarcho-syndicalism as the major historical expression of anarchism as a mass movement. The other chapters are more historicgraphic in nature and I wouldn’t waste time on them unless you were sufficiently interested to come back to them later. I’d also recommend Chapters 1-4 of “Black Flame” (2009) by two South African authors Lucien van der Walt and Michael Schmidt with the caveat that this is a controversial suggestion, and not something I would recommend without a word of guidance. Schmidt was the subject of a major scandal in 2014 when it was discovered that under a pseudonym he had been flirting with the politics of racial-cultural identitarianism on various right-wing internet forum. Initially he said this was part of keeping tabs on the movements of far-right (something antifacists find it prudent to do), but since this was exposed, and despite his admissions, his responses have never satisfactorily addressed the evidence published against him, with the result that the anarchist group he formerly belonged to - the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (to which van der Walt still belongs) - have cut ties with him. The book’s publishers, AK Press, ceased publication when the scandal broke, and Schmidt’s co-author, Lucien van der Walt, has since decided that the damage done to the book’s reputation has been sufficiently great not to seek its republication. (I think he, quite justifiably, no longer wants his name to be associated with Schmidt’s.) Van der Walt is currently working on a new book covering much the same ground, but which will be entirely his own scholarship, but until that time, I still think Black Flame is, on balance, sufficiently rich to be worth recommending with the following two words of caution. The references to James Connelly being associated with anarchism (which are in fact a very a minor element in the book) are the result of flawed scholarship and should be ignored. This error of interpretation originated with Schmidt, who seemed to have throught Connolly’s association with grass roots militancy was sufficiently close to the ethos of anarchism to turn a blind eye to Connolly’s politics of racial and cultural exclusivity, despite anarchism’s essential commitment to anti-racism and the politics of international working-class solidarity. (In view of this, it can’t be argued that the book isn’t materially affected by the Schmidt scandal.) The other word of caution is that the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front is a “platformist” group, and Black Flame is written from a perspective that advances the legitimacy of platformism as a credible organisational strategy within anarchism. Platformism is a position originally developed by exiled Ukranian anarchists in 1927 when they re-grouped in Paris after their military defeat they suffered by the Bolsheviks in 1923. It seeks to learn from the strengths of the enemy that defeated them, and consequently asserts that affinity groups engaging in anarchist propaganda and militancy should seek to establish and operate on the basis of “tactical and theoretical unity”. This is much too close to the establishment and maintenance of a “party line” than anarchists have traditionally been comfortable with. The Platformist position was the subject of vigorous critique by the Russian exile G.P. Maximov in his pampthlett, also published in 1927, titled “Constructive Anarchism”. Platformism certainly deserves a mention within a history of anarchism, and, although still I minor current, is more popular today than at any point previously, but I personally believe that platformism constitutes a flawed strategy and is not deserving of the sort of prominence it receives within Black Flame. In spite of these two caveats, Black Flame is richly detailed and generally well-balanced book and I think you could do a lot worse than track down an electronic copy. Part of the reason I recommend it is that it is phrased in modern language with a wider audience than either academics or anarchists in mind, the interventions it makes in the historiography of anarchism (Ch.2) are welcome and valuable, and it will provide you with enough references to start exploring the rich history of anarchism on your own. If reading the above two books doesn’t dull your appetite, I think Daniel Guerin’s anthology, “No Gods, No Masters” very useful to dip in and out of. Vernon Richard’s "Lessons of the Spanish Revolution” (1949, 1983) is an extremely valuable one (however I wouldn’t suggest visiting it as first port of call). Although he never considered himself an anarchist (despite progressing toward a rapprochement with anarchism during the course of his career), I’m also keen to suggest people interested in anarchism ought to explore the works of Cornelius Castoriadis. The reader published by Blackwell is a useful place to start. Hope this helps.

OHexpat12, very glad to hear that you think it useful. Please fell free to share. Happy to take questions and field criticism too.

here in Thailand, it is quite difficult to find those willing to work cooperatively in a non-nationalistic mode. Labor rights and labor unions are boxed in and the people resist direct action or functioning in a direct democracy. Individual/kinship rules of autonomy work against collective autonomy. It is, for example, against most kinship rules here to openly talk about money in the family.

OHexpat12, I understand what you mean. The ASF has been working closely with comrades in Indonesia to give them assistance to get their own federation of the ground. They opted to refer to their federation as the "Anarch-Syndicalist Workers' Brotherhood" in their language, because the terminology of federation is currently too far removed from the language of contemporary Indonesian culture. We are presently have a network of contacts together in the SE Asian region together and have been sharing materials. If you would like to tap into this, you're welcome to do so. Just send an email to info[ at ]asf-iwa.org.au, and mention you've been speaking to Ben. It'll filter through to me. :)

Anarcho-syndicalism is the formation of workers' unions that are organised and which struggle according to anarchist principles. But it is also a strategy for progressing towards libertarian socialist (i.e. anarchist) revolution through the building of mass organisations. The character of the revolution we desire is the extension of direct democracy to every institution of society. This implies the overthrow of capitalism and seizure of the means of production, distribution exchange and communication, which will be collectivised and subject to workers self-management and federated modes of coordination. If revolutionary attempt is successful, the resulting society will be anarchist, not anarcho-syndicalist, because there will be no more need for unions as such. So, to start answering your question, will your family's capitalist enterprise be collectivised? Well that depends upon whether it employs workers motivated to collectivise it. If so, then yes. If not, then no. If the number of non-family employees is very small, then it is unlikely to be collectivised by force. However you will likely face the prospect of your non-family employees abandoning your enterprise to participate in collectivised industry elsewhere. In which case you may find you have a labour problem. But the best way to see what might happen is to look at history. The history of the social revolution in Spain, such took place in the context of the Spanish Civil War 1936‐1939, is instructive. For part of this period the anarchists controlled Catalonia and Aragon and pushed forward with their plans for revolution. Industry and agriculture was collectivised, but it was also the declared policy of the anarchists not to collectivise the farms of peasant families by force. Large industrial farms owned by the aristocracy and worked by landless peasants were of course collectivised, but most small holdings were not forcibly collectivised. Admittedly, the situation was messy and in some areas small holders were not given a choice. But many small holders did voluntarily chose to collectivise. Some did it out of conviction, others did it because collectivisation enabled them to have access to the farm machinery they needed bit world otherwise have not been able to afford. As tome went on, those that initially held out against it chose to collectivise, because without doing so, they were not integrated integrated into the new direct democratic and federated political structures and had no influence in community decision-making. So, if your family's business is small enough, it will likely not be collectivised forcibly, however in the new post-revolutionary situation you may eventually find yourself compelled to choose collectivisation because it is in your interests to do so. Is this to impinge on your autonomy? From an individualist perspective that asserts the primacy of personal property rights, then Yes. But not in any way that is different to how social, political and economic forces impinge upon your autonomy already (or how you impinge upon the autonomy of the workers whose labour you exploit when you hire someone). After all, there is nothing natural or inevitable about the economy you operate in or the laws of the state you operate under. Is this individualist perspective philosophically defensable? No. Why? Because it is founded on a naive realism that, in terms of the history of philosophy, is about 170 years out if date and is subject to an understanding of autonomy that is narrow, blinkered, self-cotradictory and (ultimately) wrong. Not that you should feel bad about this. It's basically was everyone thinks until 6 weeks into their first university course on anthropology, politics, sociology, psychology, social theory or philosophy. If you didn't go to university, or you studied something different, like engineering or chemistry, you may not had opportunity to get acquainted with this stuff. But I promise you, if you really want to argue with random cunts on the internet, you'll do yourself a big favour by spending a couple of spare hours reading up about social constructionism from the perspective of the history and philosophy of science and neo-kantianism in philosophy. If after that you want to come back for an argument about the ins and outs of rival political philosophies, I'll be here.

What you just said strikes me as a very interesting thing to say. It suggests that you see anarcho-syndicalism and anarchist-communism as separate and perhaps parallel in not opposed. Can I ask you to please expand on how you understand the relationship btw the two? And how you arrived at your point of view? I suspect we don't see this relationship the same way and I think there is an interesting discussion to be had.

@@anisau im working on a digital version of my graphic which is very much inspired by your graphic but is showing ancom so that includes the abolition of money/voucher/market but free thus also voluntary mutual aid. I found your model to be the best I've seen regarding anarchist organisation.

@Likely Lad I will be interested to see this and wish you the best if luck. Please let me know when it is available to view. Personally, I am sceptical about that particular element of anarchist theory. In terms of the collectivist vs communist debate within anarchism that originally took place in the late 19th and early 20th century, I side firmly with the collectivists and therefore have an ambivalent attitude towards Kropotkin, who (as you will be aware) was (and still is) is greatly responsible for the popularisation of the economic thinking associated with the anarchist communist perspective (i e. the abolition of money and free appropriation from communal stores) to which you to refer. When I made my video, it was done partly out of a need I saw to address a tendency within anarchist circles to focus on a desired economic regime at the expense of due attention to the question of anarchism's model for a political regime (i.e. direct democracy and anarchist federation). I think the project of individual and collective autonomy, which anarchism embodies, must see politics (understood here as a sphere of values) to be ontologically prior to the other five spheres of social value (i.e. law, religion, art, economy and science/technology). My criticism of the anarchist-communist perspective is that it tends to treat the economy (as a value sphere) as either primary or ontogically coeval with politics. (Marxism makes a similar mistake, but sees it as coeval with science/technology.) I also worry that anarchist-communism, as defined above, tends to conflate the market as a social institution with capitalism as a specific set of social relations made possible by, but distinct from, the market. The market is a potential site of exploitation, certainly, but I don't think it is necessarily so. Rather, it relies on a system of exclusive property rights (guaranteed by the state) over the means of production, exchange, distribution and communication to make systemic exploitation possible. For me, solving the question of how to do politics presents the solution to the problem of economic exploitation. This is the point of the collectivist perspective within anarchist theory. Whether or not we choose to adopt the anarcho-communist model of economic relations or to retain money and markets is a question subsequent to the question of how we should do politics. And of course, we are free to choose either path when it comes to how to organise an anarchist economy. Personally, I can't see a complex modern society operating without an impersonal abstract medium of exchange. Aytempts to abolish it will only see it's spontaneous re-emergence, if only because it makes possible ready comparison between otherwise incomparable options for making, doing and consuming. I am also worried that the anarcho-communist model necessarily implies either explicit rationing or the socialiation of individuals towards an ethic of self-limitation and psychology of aesectism. If you can point me towards any anarcho-communist text that doesn't implicitly or explicitly fall back on the messianic assumption that a new humanity embodying this ethic will emerge in the context of the revolution, I'd be very grateful. The fact is that free appropriation might potentially work if economic abundance occurs in the context of small autarchic societies that are socially and technologically static, but no society is static or sufficiently so in the long term. There is much that Marxism gets wrong (e.g. it's philosophy of history and model of revolution), but one thing that Marx got right is that human society develops in the context of an expanding horizon of needs. Anarchist collectivism as a political model is adequate to the challenges this insight poses. Anarchist communism as the abolition of money and free appropriation from communal stores is not. You no doubt have a different view on all of this. If you have the time, I'd look forward to hearing them. In the meantime, please keep me posted on anything you publish.

@@anisau yeah I disagree. It is unfortunate that there are still people having that notion - Instead of looking to the examples of actual working anarchist communist areas, they tend to mainly see the problems that there were within the context of our still current system existing besides them. The people who lived in the ancom areas for example in aragon (Anarchist Spain) successfully abolished money - the means of production were free accessible to everyone who could operate them and the resources/goods were free accessible based on need. The success of such a society is based on the knowledge that mutual aid is necessary for a society to prosper and that therefore people are responsible and held accountable when they abuse/exploit. That knowledge was the collective understanding and ironically the "price" of the high stage of liberty. They knew that any artificial, imposed means of exchange thus currency is at the end still coercive in the way that it ignores the human condition: 1. You were forced into this world 2. You have needs given by nature, this inherently entitles people to freely fulfill their needs without any barrier between them and obviously equally regarding that fact to everyone else. I see that Anarchist collectivism is more achievable now than Anarchist communism but it does not even necessarily be so. A transition from ancol to ancom is feasible but even a direct transition to ancom is. The reason why is the today's standard of technology. We can produce more by having less. We can be highly efficient while also being sustainable and providing high quality. Anarchism needs utilise and implement these elements and realise it's radical potential. This could help us achieve Anarchist communism way faster and in a manner that would attract larger and larger populations. To create a sustainable access abundance monitored by high tech would make society stable, combine that with the checks and balances of democratic oversight and organisation and there it is. A free and social society with a high technological and scientific standard. Due to its obvious advantages, the people want to maintain it and will educate generations in it which would see any less of that as non acceptable. It's a matter of perspective to acknowledge the possibility of a totally different society when you know that we have the knowledge and the technology, means and people we just need to get them under democratic and social control. I think the transitionperiods themselves towards any libsoc system are more difficult to successfully manage than the maintenance of it because of the many factors people cannot forsee interfering. I'd recommend also researching the concept a "resource based economy" and jacque fresco, the venus project. It would be a shame and not only that, it would be a waste of potential if the libsoc movement as a whole just ignores all of that. We need to adopt all what is compatible with Anarchism and cannot let this crucial aspect of potential, radical change slide.

Thank you for your kind words. In responce to your question, there is not and cannot be any such thing as an anarcho-syndicalist commune. "Syndicate" is one of the words the French use for "union" (as in "trade union" or workers' industrial union"). Certainly, you can have an anarchist commune. (The planet of Annaris in Ursula Le Guin's book, "The Dispossessed", is supposed to be exactly that.) But the idea of an anarcho-syndicalist commune isn't a logical one, since anarcho-syndicalism implies a particular relationship of struggle against the institutions of capitalism. The idea of an anarchist commune implies the members have escaped that relationship (possibly by revolt, rebellion or successful revolution, which is the end goal of anarcho-syndicalism). Please understand that the structures of anarcho-syndicalist organisations described in the video do not refer to an ideal future world. It describes how the member unions within the International Workers' Association (IWA-AIT) organise and relate to each other today, and have done since 1922. I suggest you research the IWA-AIT and look at the aims and principles of the IWA and it's members. This will help you understand how these organisations work, how the run their congresses (which are periodic events rather than standing councils), and how they reach agreement and mediate disagreement. Also, I've responded to these questions a number of times in the comments to this video, and am certain that if you explore those comments you will find answers to the questions you'd seek answers to. One more thing. Rather than merely write some utopian or distopian fantasy about a mythical future world, there is plenty of grist for context in the present struggles between the revolutionary unions of the IWA-AIT and the reformist and authoritarian factions have been forced to split off in recent years when their attempts to gain control of the IWA and its member federations have failed (or in Italy, Germany, Argentina and parts of Spain succeeded). You might also draw some inspiration from the democracies of Ancient Greece, since the anarchist ideal draws strongly on the idea of direct democracy. If you do this, it pays to he very careful about understanding the relationship between democracy and slavery in Athens. Much research fails to understand that the great majority of Athenian citizens were too poor to own slaves, and in fact that democracy emerged as part of a class revolt during a period when poorer citizens were at risk of being permanently sold off into slavery when they couldn't pay their debts. To get a good understanding on this issue and how it affects contemporary scholarship, it is worth reading what Cornelius Castoriadis has to say on the issues. His writings are freely available in English translation through the Not.Bored website. Good luck with your book!

@@anisau I will certainly use the information you provided, but just to explain myself a bit here, the reason I used the word "Commune", was because the software I use to visualise my world does not have a closer category to represent a syndycalist movement :) Of course you're right, that the word isn't accurate, but that's the reason I used it haha

ThatFighterGuy, Man, I really enjoyed reading your post. What region of the world are you in? If you are not already involved in a union affiliated with the IWA (and maybe you are), but if not, get in contact, and if there is nothing in your country, let us know, so we can help you start building. You can contact info@asf-iwa.org.au or look us up at www.asf-iwa.org.au \o/🏴

Anarchy is Autonomy, I live in western Washington, just a few minutes from the Canadian border. I'm only sixteen, seventeen in August, and I haven't worked a real job for a day in my life, much less joined a union. When I turn Eighteen next year I am going to join the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America). I consider myself to be an intellectual (On a related note, sorry about the poor quality of my original comment, I was in a hurry while writing it.), and I believe that the best way that I personally can assist the Socialist cause is through writing; specifically satire and political commentary. To that end I am currently writing a Sci-Fi novel called "Come in Ares One" (It should be on shelves about this time next year.). The story takes place in 2092, after a race of peaceful aliens visit earth in 2021. In the future, the corrupt PRC imploded due to both internal and external pressure, and was replaced by the much more democratic and progressive Federal Republic of China. The FRC heads an economic bloc that encompasses most of east asia, making them a super-power. The only other super-power in the world in the European Union, which now encompasses every nation in Europe (Except Russia). Particular attention is drawn to Spain, which in the timeline of the book becomes an Anarcho-Syndicalist nation at some point in the 2050's. The economy of the world now revolves primarily around the Euro and the Chinese Dollar. It is both heavily implied and outright stated several times throughout the book that the United States is a fading power, and by 2092 is almost completely irrelevant in global politics. It is heavily implied that their downfall was in not adapting to the changing times, and that their continued adherence to the Two Party System drove the nation into the ground. The story itself takes place on a joint Human-Silurian research base; the aforementioned Ares One, and is told from the perspective of a "conservative" (For the time; she's actually quite progressive by our current standards.) catholic woman named Marie. The story is part comedy, part tragedy (One of the main characters dies at the end, and said character's best friend and love interest has an emotional breakdown as a result.) and part societal commentary about how we as a species are going through a continuous cycle of granting liberty to an oppressed group only to immediately find some new people to oppress. As on of the Silurians aptly puts it: "You humans always find something to hate."

It should also be mentioned that in the book, the Silurian society and government is heavily fleshed out, and is constructed according to my own personal beliefs about how the perfect society would appear. Silurians themselves are Hermaphroditic, and posses both male and female reproductive organs (which is a metaphor about how in this day and age, what genitals you were born with really shouldn't matter aside from purely medical reasons.). Silurians live in a highly communal society, and like to spend as much time as possible learning, meeting new people, and in general being extremely sociable. Living quarters are small, so as to encourage people to go outside and socialize. At eating establishments, there are only a few large tables, where everyone sits together and takes food from common platers. Sharing food is the most basic and fundamental instinct of pack-oriented species, and this is meant to tune into that and bring the people closer together. Drugs and alcohol are strictly illegal (most Silurians have a fatal allergy to nicotine.) but recreational intercourse is extremely common among friends, again with the idea of bringing people closer together. The Commonwealth (Silurian controlled space) is governed by a system that is reminiscent of the checks and balances of the United States. However, there are several key differences. First and most obvious, there are no political parties. The Silurians utilize the concept of a No-Party state, where political parties are banned and politicians are elected merely to serve the will of the people at large, not enforce the agenda of their party. The executive head of state is called the Chairman, and is really nothing more than a glorified speaker of the house. The executive branch is very weak, and is almost entirly at the whims of the legislative branch, which consists of the Central Committee, which is the primary power in government and is (in theory) under the direct control of the people themselves, who elect the members of the Committee directly every two Silurian years (A Silurian year is 405 earth days.) The Central Committee chooses the Chairman themselves, but this isn't a problem because the role is almost purely ceremonial in nature, existing mainly to act as a public relations figure and to give the government a face that people can picture instead of picturing a room of 200-something beurocrats debating something trivial, which brings us to one of the Commonwealth's main problems: beurocracy. Local areas are governed more or less independently by the people who live there, but the problem is that even these local communes act as an extension of the central government, which despite being heavily de-centralized, is still absolutly massive. Due to heavy streamlining, the system normally works quite well, but problems arise when unexpected things happen. The system is somewhat rigid in structure, and so does not cope well when presented with new and unforeseen challenges. It takes some time for the structure of the government to shift enough to comfortably accommodate new developments. The judicial branch is not very well fleshed out yet in the book, but it is independent and has several notable improvements to that of the United States. I'm sorry, I've over-explained everything and I've been rambling for way too long, I just enjoy world building and political theory. Looking forward to your next video!

@@thatfighterguy5846 Hey man did you ever finish that book? Sounds really interesting and damn impressive for a teenager to create!

Ali Alsous Not yet, but progress is still being made. I'm at 60,000 words on my first draft. Its just slower going now because I'm in my final year of high school and I'm taking supplementary classes at the community college, and I have to worry about college admissions. But fear not! It will be finished by the end of this year... probably!

Apples and oranges. Federation is a relationship between groups of people. Blockchain is a tool for recording interactions between social actors. You might conceivably use blockchain in the context of a federation (though I struggle to see how this would be desirable or useful), but the two concepts are not directly comparable, yet alone interchangeable. If someone came to you and asked if the minutes of a meeting could replace the meeting itself, you'd point out the absurdity. Sure they are related, but they are not of the same order of things.

@@anisau I appreciate your reply, and thank you for your valid point.

Thanks for the suggestion. I just looked it up. I have to say that, to the extent that it cedes deliberative power to a nominated delegate (which is a very different use of the term "delegate" that anarchists intend), it is not a form of democracy at all, just as representative democracy is not a genuinely democratic form. Both are species of oligarchy. That aside, the management of preferences through multiple tiers, and how the breadth of derivative scope is to be managed, to determine just who has authority to carry deliberative power on which particular issues for certain others brings a level of complexity that is problematic. A similar issue exists with the arguments of those who advocate for multiple rival blockchain currencies competing against each other. The effort that needs to be invested on making informed choices within the confines of such a system quickly becomes overwhelming. And where choice is overwhelming, the functioning of the system as a whole becomes opaque, and this opacity becomes an issue of transparency and therefore legitimacy. If anarchist federation, which is the organisational basis for anarcho-syndicalism, is to be coupled with anything, it seems best to me that it be coupled with the sort of economic planning set out be Cornelius Castoriadis in his (1953-55) titled "On the content of Socialism", which outlines a planned economy, but doesn't preclude markets for goods and services at the point of individual consumption.

@@anisau I find the idea of direct democracy or as you put it yourself *democracy in the video, I find it hard to conceive that ordinary people would work 8 hours a day and after that go to a local council and talk about local governing issues like where to put new conduits or how much percentages a yearly budget would need to be put into education. Liquid democracy as I understand the concept is a system of delegators and delegates whereby all whom are entitled to vote can at any moment remove their delegated votes if the delegate is irresponsible. If someone exceeds in handling issues concerning education for example, they might have 19000 delegating votes one day, and the next day media exposes them for being corrupt loosing all their delgated votes. I find direct democracy, or *democracy, as a concept very interesting, but we also have to realize that most people are tired after working 8 hours a day.

Arrow's impossibly theorem does not in fact prove that collective decision making is impossible. (If it did, an empirical approach to political science would justify our rejecting it as idealist bullshit.) Arrow's impossibility theorum refers only to situations in which voters have three or more options to decide between, and states that no RANKED VOTING ELECTORAL SYSTEM* can convert the ranked preferences of individuals into a community-wide ranking while also meeting a specified set of criteria: unrestricted domain, non-dictatorship, Pareto efficiency, and independence of irrelevant alternatives. (*Note the restricted subject to which the predicate terms refer.) Rather than demostrating that collective decision making isn't possible (as your question suggests), it demostrates ONLY that ranked preference voting can't be used as a mechanistic panacea that would obviate the necessity of politics as a field of social contestation. If anything, it suggests that democratic politics, defined as the justice of universal participation in deliberating on that which affects us in common is a vital constituent of the Good and the only regime in which individual autonomy can achieve its maximal unfolding. But I would like to thank you for your contribution to this debate. 15 minutes ago I had never heard of Arrow's impossibility theorum. But it only took 5 minutes following up the links on Wikipedia to see the error in thinking that prompted your question. So we've both learnt something and everyone's a winner! Do come again!

How long's a piece of string? The ASF is currently very small, made up of around 50 people, with local sections between three and six people (three being the number required for quorum and so the minimum number under statutes of the federation). Because we are collectivist, it is sections not individual people that vote. This prevents branch staking or bigger groups within the federation dominating smaller groups. If a bigger group feels their perspective is underrepresented through these arrangements, they can divide themselves into a number of smaller groups. It's an effective means of dividing power and preventing cliques taking control of the federation. Historically, the CNT in Spain operated using the same model (our statutes were based on theirs). In total they had had 900'000 members in 1930 and 1'590'000 members in June 1936. So the arrangements can and do work for true mass organisations. Our hope is that by using this model in our unions today, as we grow, increasingly large numbers of people will become see that it works, become aculturated to it, and this culture of direct democratic participation will survive the stresses of revolution. If the state is a hierarchical and bureaucratic apparatus of power that sits above and seperate to the people it governs, even the creation and extension of (direct) democracy to every institution of society is the destruction of the state. This is anarchism's positive content. It's one thing to say "Let's smash the state", but that can only happen by building organisations consistent with direct democratic collective self-management. Democracy is direct or at all. And the institutions governed by electoral representationslism (e.g. parliament) are not in fact democratic, but oligarchic. A parliament is always and by definition a minority who govern in the absence of the demos they claim to represent. The ancient Athenians understood this well. They considered election to be a aristocratic principle whereby the best (aristos) were selected. They did practice election, but only for positions of specific technical competence (e.g the generals or strategoi of the army and navy, of which 10 were elected every year). Anyway, back to your question: anarchist federation can be practiced at any scale, but their may be nested levels of federation (local, regional, national, international). Federations can also overlap. The CNT had regionally based federations, in which all the trades were federated together in the region, but at the same time metal workers, for example, federated directly with metal workers all around Spain. Federation doesn't need to be singular and monolithic; it can be plural and simultaneous because its fundamentally purpose is needs-based, rather than being an instrument of power as and control. Hope this helps.

You are confusing things. So called "representative democracy" is not a form of democracy. It is the selection of a minority clique by electoral processes for the purpose of decision making. It would be better called "electoral representationalism" or "representative parliamentarianism", but it is not democratic (strictly speaking). Aristotle reflects the ancient Athenian view quite accurately when he describes elections an aristocratic mechanism, "aristos" meaning"best". The problem with it is that the same people tend to get re-elected time and time again, and this elevates them to a class (functionally defined), with their own interests additional to those whom they purport to represent. When you speak of wealth being determinate of class, you are applying a cultural definition. But the key determinate is power: decision-making power. Sure wealth my confer power, but power can extort wealth, and power is primordial in this instance. Capital only becomes capital when it's wealth extorting power is actualised in the relationship between boss and worker. Power is key. But to return to your comment. Rotation is associated with direct democracy. Organisational efficiency is created by the creation of offices, the perogatives of which are limited, and which are accountable to the "direct" democratic assembly. Office bearers are rotated through, but they don't "represent" by acting as proxies for soverign decision making in the comprehensive way elected representatives do. If rotated delegates look similar to rejected representatives, the then that is only because you've overlooked the very different contexts from which they emerge. Election and rotation are symptomatic of two different types of popular regime. Hope this makes sense.

My personal perspective (and I can't speak for anyone else) is that we would need a citizens militia, not unlike national service. It wouldn't be compulsory, but people ought be debarred from enjoyment of full political rights if they were able bodied and not volunteer. Why? If you want to enjoy freedom, you have to be prepared to defend it with arms. No standing armies: the people armed can defend themselves. (Durruti said something similar.) I don't like the idea of right to bear arms being an individual right, though. Only militia members on militia duty should carry arms, and the militia must be accountable to the citizenry through the assemblies in which we all participate directly on the basis of universal equality. I also don't like the idea of people being of single professions which define them in class terms. People who cultivate diverse aspects of their personality are more reasonable and more sociable than those who don't. specialists are all too often inhuman and inhumane. I have an ambivalent relationship with Marx, but think he was right when he said under capitalism I am free to be fisherman, or a gardener, or a herder of cattle, or a storyteller/critic just as I choose, but under socialism I can be a fisherman in the morning, a gardener in the afternoon, a herder of cattle on the evening and a storyteller/critic at night. He's phrased it poetically, but what he means is that a rich life is a diverse life, and infinitely richer that than tending factory machines 12 hours a day, 6 days a week for your entire life. Sure we will need specialists, but they should be vocations, not professions, and they should not be the sum total of what one does, because out of that grows power and classes, and we don't want power and classes; we want freedom and equality, and lives rich in diverse experiences for everyone, even if those experiences mean we sometimes need to do our far share of shovelling shit, and sweeping streets. We rotate our delegates to congress to share responsibility, don't we? So, if we are serious about shared responsibility, we must rotate the shitty boring jobs too. Volunteering for the militia is should be part of that. It's a commitment to the anarchist society we will build together. That's just how I see it. But I have thought long and hard about it. What do you think?

@@anisau Yeah, that seems pretty reasonable. Thanks for the in depth explanation.

@@anisau I understand what you mean by not wanting specialists, and it makes sense for people doing labour intensive jobs to try diverse options, but I think you completely underestimate or don't understand the amount of time it takes someone to be a skilled scientist, or doctor or other specialists of that sort. I'm working to be a scientist, and it would take up pretty much all of my time and dedication to do so and I am ok with that. Also, our world cannot function without these specialists.

So, you call yourself logical fruit. You decide to post a comment. You edit it at least once, and you still have no clear, coherently stated point to contribute? I talk about organisational structures and the value choices informing their institution, and you want to know about prices. You seem to be that proverbial man who made it his business to know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Well done. Do come again.

It would quite obviously be impossible to coordinate those things, because economic calculation is impossible without market prices.

uyghui ghbbjb, oh, your a blast from the past. But (and this hasn't changed) your still confusing the market with capitalism. You think that they are synonymous, i.e. that the relationship between them is metaphorical, but in this you are wrong. The relationship between market and capitalism is metonymical, not metaphorical: the relationship is not whole to whole, but whole (capitalism) to part (market). The fact that markets are necessary to capitalism, doesn't mean that the are sufficient for capitalism. The fact that markets are a sine qua non of capitalism, dies not mean that capitalism is a sine qua non of markets. This is why you fail to make sense of the world you inhabit, and tend to lose the arguments you engage in. You are, and forever will be, what sepos call a punk arse bitch. Good night.

The problem of the determination of prices under any order doesn't concern me, the problem of the maintenance of an order that preserves the market cooperation (high trust) necessary for continual economic calculation does. Only parasites who prey on the accumulated capital of others wish to participate in a polity with discretionary, arbitrary law (communism), those with the ability choose to form or participate in a polity with nondiscretionary law which will insure their property from the imposition of costs in all transactions. Hence the preference of the majority of people for high-trust, and not the nonsense you or rothbardian lunatics advocate. Libertarians are unable to define aggression because they're unable to define property, communists fail for exactly the same reason. Both are unable to devise a system of law to preserve the extremely complex and often intangible forms of property (i.imgur.com/LOiXcCA.jpg) in existence, and therefore unable to preserve a level of high trust and eliminate cycles of retaliation. It seems I've actually transformed my thinking, yet you still practice nonsensical talmudic, low-trust parasitical ethics. Pity really.

uyghui ghbbjb, you're an idiot, and I'll explain why. You think the internal consistency of your ideas guarantees their correctness. In this you are not unlike that other neo-liberal goon, Hans-Herman Hoppe. The problem with both of you is that you abandon reference to historical and empirical reality and build castles in the air that hold together only so long as they don't touch anything solid. Anywhere else they'd call this schizoid delusion, but you two seen to think it a virtue. An example of this is your identification of capitalism as "a polity with nondiscretionary law", and your contrasting it with communism. As capitalism's opposite, you ascribe to communism obverse characteristics, labelling it " a polity with discretionary, arbitrary law (communism)". What seems like a logical operations, here, is totally bogus, because it has lost all reference to reality. No society can exist where the law is discretionary and arbitrary for individuals, and communism, in those instances where people have sought to institute it, was in all cases instituted as a new set of laws grounded on a change in political power; the old regime of laws were suspended and a new regime of laws put up in their place. So, your claim that it is marked by "discretionary, arbitrary law" just sprays silly to anyone not blinkered by the hierschy of concepts you've wedded yourself to. Similarly, you claim that both libertarians and communists are "unable to define aggression because they're unable to define property". Yet anyone who knows even the slightest thing about Proudhon or Marx will know what you say, here, is rubbish. Both have perfectly adequate concepts of property and of aggression. The truth is simply that they have a different standard of justice to you, because they are animated by different values. Your discretionary, arbitrary decision not to recognise this demonstrates nothing other than your willful blindness, as if closing for eyes to what threatens your worldview will make of go away. You really are at sea in the world, aren't you?

Feel free to ask as many questions as you want. Regarding equality, the video is specific to how the IWA, which is an international federation of workers unions that organise and struggle according to anarchist principles operate today. Because we are talking about the governance of institutions, equality is interpreted with this frame of reference, i.e. formal equality. You suggest the metaphor of "one man, one vote" as a possible means of interpreting it. This is reasonable enough, however in practice, it is "one section, one vote" at congress. Sections (i.e. each local union) do not necessarily have the same number of people, our local unions tend to operate on a consensus basis when forming positions. But essentially the interpretation of equality applicable here is formal equality. When you ask about equality of outcomes, you are stepping out of the frame of reference of the video and perhaps talking about the sort of post-revolution society we hope one day to realise. It would make sense to ask about whether or not equality of outcome would be realised in that context. The honest response is "it depends" and "it would vary from pace to place depending on what the different people in those places sought to achieve". There are different positions held by anarchists on these issues. The two classical positions are the collectivist position which seeks equal pay for equal hours worked regardless of job role, and the anarcho-communist position which tends to seek abolition of money and free appropriation on the basis of need from communal stores. Following Aristotle, we can call these "arithmetic" and "proportional" equality respectively. In practice, the collectivist position has tended to be moderated towards proportional equality by facilitating unequal distribution on the basis of need. Either way, however material distribution of goods is managed, the point is that it is collectively agreed and the basis for that agreement is rigorous and formal (arithmetical) equality between all members of the community. If this sounds like socialism, it is because it is. Anarchism is a type of socialism and has very deep roots deep in the socialist tradition.

Firstly, syndicalism isn't a type of regime (like socialism or capitalism or feudalism or whatever are types of regime). Syndicalism is the French word for unionism, so anarcho-syndicalism is forming and struggling together as a union, but with anarchist (i.e. direct democratic) goals, principles and strategies. Asking how automation works under syndicalism doesn't make much sense as a question. It's like asking how washing machines work under unionism? The answer is: same way they work under capitalism. A washing machine's just a washing machine (however wonderful it is as a labour saving device!) If your asking how would automation work in a truly democratic post-revolutionary society, then you need to ask a different question. But the answer still wouldn't be much different, because a washing machine is still a washing machine. If the workers have risen up, fucked the bosses off, and are running the show democratically and federatively, what do you think their attitude to automation would be? They are going to be all for it. Why? Because it will actually hold out the prospect of reduced work and greater leisure time for all. What does automation cause under capitalism? Greater profits for the rich and greater monotony, drudgery and lower pay for everyone else. Why? Because automation is associated with a replacement of skilled artisnal labour with unskilled factory labour, and the greater productivity of the machine is pursued without regard to the social consequences for the workers whose labour the machine replaces who disproportionately bear the traumatic burdens of modernisation. The problem isn't automation. The problem is the social relations in which the tendency towards greater automation takes place. If we can create a more egalitarian and democratic society (which will also be a much free society in more ways than one), the consequences of automation can benefit everybody. As Oscar Wilde said in his 1895 essay The Soul of Man under Socialism, man was made for better things than disturbing dust, and, in the future, if machines can do the work, they should. Does this answer the question you wanted to ask?

Anarchy is Autonomy Not sure if it helped the op but it definitely made sense to me. I was wondering about the same thing and you broke it down perfectly. Thank you very much, I look forward to seeing more videos.

Anarcho-syndicalism is not a worldview. It's a strategy. Anarchism is a worldview. Anarchists tend to hold two contrasting views on the question of money. The anarcho-communists tend to favour its abolition and replacement by free appropration from communal stores. The other group, called collectivists in the context of this question, see money as a useful medium of comparison and exchange and advocate its retention. Consistent with the abolition of money, and free appropriation from communal resources, anarcho-communists see markets dissolving as a consequence. Collectivists see markets continuing as a spontaneous context of exchange, but see markets subjects to communal (i.e. political) control, mandating wage equality (absolute and based on hours worked, or proportional based on need, or mixed). The key thing is that it will removing labour power from market-based price setting. People will still have personal possessions, by private property over the means of production, distribution, exchange and communication will be abolished in favour of collective control. Liberals will decry this as limiting the prerogatives of the private individual and hence an attach on freedom, however they are typically blind to the fact that freedom has two dimensions: individual autonomy and collective autonomy. Collective autonomy is embodied through participation in collective decision making (i.e. democracy in the direct, participatory sense), and it is the maximisation of collective freedom that anarchists seek to realise. Liberals also mistakenly tend to see individual autonomy and collective autonomy as opposed. They are in fact mutually reinforcing, and one cannot realise the maximisation of individual autonomy without simultaneous investment in the maximisation of collective autonomy, which is its foundation and guarantee. Why are your questions focused on money and markets? And have we met here before?

ancom doesn't work in reality bc its an oxymoron. it can only exist within the mind of the leftist "intellectual". the simple fact is that you dont derive personal freedom and anarchy out of complete governmental control over the economy. anarchy can only come out of complete rejection of totalitarianism & large concentrations of power, two things that big government socialism/communism cannot coexist with.

TheGerthax, I think that if you pressed them on the issue, you'd find that the question is not whether or not to have laws as and law enforcement (all societies require laws anr a means of enforcing them), but specifically about how laws are to be made and who is responsible for enforcing them. As anarchists, we desire the destruction of both capitalism and the state. But it is important to understand exactly what the state is: a hierarchical and bureaucratic apparatus of power that sits above and separate to the people it governs, and which serves the interests of the class in power (previously the aristocracy, now the bourgeoisie). The state is destroyed by creating and extending democracy (qua direct democracy) to every institution of society, because this will put political power directly into the hands of the people organised on the basis of equality, without an class of politicians acting to mediate this power. The people will enact or repeal any laws it deems fit, but do so directly. The question of law enforcement works along similar lines. The people themselves are collectively responcible for enforcing them, in that anyone can bring a charge of wrong doing before the local assembly for trial. The assembly will adjudicate. It is important that the people (as a collective) be armed, not so individuals can carry guns and act as laws onto themselves, but so that the local militia, acting under the sovereign power of the local assembly, can protect the will of the assembly in which everyone participates as equals. The important thing is that there is no separate class of state guardians of professional policemen. Participation in the militia will be a duty of all citizens, and it will be through participation in the militia that the carrying of arms will be regulated. That's how I envisage things, anyway. Of course, all this presumes a successful social revolution, but anarcho-syndicalists see this as a natural outcome of their unions forming militias to fight and confirm workers' power against the forces of the state. This will occur in the immediate context of a general strike (in which the workers will lock out the bosses and take control of industry), which will usher in the revolutionary period. Anarcho-syndicalism is anarchist unionism, and we practice the mode of organising the future society today on the way we organise and struggle within our unions. Participating on the union today is therefore an education in hi the future anarchist society will work. I hope this answers your question and shows that ours is a coherent social vision.

Anarchy is Autonomy let me hit you with a hypothetical. If someone decides they want to dump their waste into the local water supply, or drill a well unbeknownst to the people and was stealing ground water (Colorado United States has very strict ground water laws for perspective on where im coming from), you cant expect everyone to not be a violent criminal, would it be on an angry mob to shoot him out? Or would that be grossly misrepresenting what youre saying?

TheGerthax, yes it would be to grossly misrepresented what I'm saying. Understood properly, the is nothing in anarchism that says that there cannot be or should not be systems of due process. The problem you have is that you are assuming that juridical systems involving due process are irresolvably bound up with the state. This is natural enough, but nonetheless wrong. For example, ancient Athens had a well developed legal system, complete with systems of due process, yet Athens was not a state. (The tendency to call the Greek poleis "city-states" is less a description of what they were, and more of a mistranslation based on modern translators reaching for a metaphor their readers will easily understand.) Your water example is a good one, because management of a water catchment will involve multiple communities, and a mechanism for deciding disputes that won't result in war between affected communities. Anarchists have an answer to this: anarchist federation. It isn't a state, since sovereignty is devolved to local assembles, but it still articulates the patterns of organisation and reciprocal obligation necessary for geographically extended groups of communities to work their shit out and thrive. This was partly what my presentation is about.

Here are some readings on anarchism and criminology. anarchist-studies-network.org.uk/ReadingLists_Law

Old and done 1000 times, mate! Everyone who was here for that joke has already departed to go watch the Philosophers v. Popes football match...

zeleni sok, my apologies. This reply is in two parts. Thank you for your detailed criticism. You are clearly speaking from a position of knowledge, and I think your overall approach to understanding anarchism is objective and impartial in its intent, and to this end is both valid and useful. However it has its weaknesses, which I will endeavour to explain. I’ll then explain why, starting from an appraisal similar to your own, I consciously departed from it in order to approach anarchism from a different angle, which I hope you'll come to see the use of, even of you continue to prefer your own. If I characterise your approach as classically academic, this is a compliment rather than a criticism. Your approach aims to be both objective and comprehensive. It collects together all of the positions that have described themselves as “anarchist”, and (a) looks for what is common, before (b) dealing with inconsistencies by creating a taxonomy of different types. The result: from the perspective of political organisation you find them to be either insurrectionary, individualist or social; from the economic perspective you find them to be individualist, mutualist, collectivist of communist; and from the vantage point of strategy you distinguish between individualist, insurrectionary, syndicalist or platformist types. Once ordering them into types in this way, you are then is a position to evaluate between the different types and decide which you think is best, or else rule out what you think is unproductive. (I agree with you about the insurrectionary trend being bullshit, but I can see usefulness in the black bloc tactic, especially when mobilising in opposition to demonstrations by the far right. However I totally agree with you that the sort of demonstrations against the state that the self-described insurrectionaries indulge in conform to the logic of liberal protest, fall short of genuine revolt, and mostly lack the creative element involved in long-term organisation building.) Anyway, I think your approach has clear merits, and is always an important first move. But it is also open to the accusation of nominalism, by which I mean that every position that nominates itself as anarchist must be accepted as anarchist, and while on reflection you may personally prefer one type over another, this approach tends to deny itself criteria for assessing which types are less or more central, as well as for determining whether any particular type should be discounted as undeserving of the title it has appropriated. This is an important concern, especially given the widely disparate range of positions that claim to be anarchist, and it has implications for determining what anarchism’s key features are. The result is that the core features of anarchism appear thin and threadbare (reduced to a smaller number of common concepts than might otherwise be the case, and risks both the philosophy and the movement as a whole appearing to be less coherent than it in fact is. It is for this reason that I prefer moving beyond such an approach toward methodology with greater interpretive power, not unlike Weber's hermeneutic approach to grasping the spirt of capitalism in “The Protestant Ethic” (1905). Anarchist variations on this approach can be found in Daniel Guerin's book “Anarchism” (1970) and Van der Walt and Schmidt’s “Black Flame” (2009) (perhaps an unfortunate example, but their overall methodology is nonetheless sound). Being hermeneutic, it is a more subjective approach and therefore open to dispute, but it yields a more coherent picture, by giving greater weight to more representative elements, while free to give less weight, or indeed, to throw out entirely other less representative elements. What this approach hopes to achieve is a distillation of the critical essence of anarchism that emerges out of a study of the broad tradition. My decision to anchor anarchism's values in the “liberty, equality, fraternity/solidarity” of the French revolution is intended to situate anarchism as part of the the broader history of modernity associated with the European enlightenment, but also to imply that that revolution is unfinished (and will remain unfinished until we achieve some form of anarchist socialism) Critical to this approach is understanding what I like call Proudhon's genre-defining moment (for want of a better term) with his publication of “What is property?” in 1840. By answering the question with the statement “property is theft” he identifies himself as part of the socialist tradition. His objective is to make an intervention aimed at changing the character of French socialism, which (under the influence of both 1790s Jacobinism and the enragé Gracchus Babeuf) had become centralist and authoritarian in character. This is generally well understood. What is less well understood is Proudhon’s attitude to democracy. Most people take him at his word when, immediately prior to calling himself an anarchist, he declares that he is not a democrat, but here it is vitally important to know why he says this, because it is critical to understanding why he reaches for the word “anarchist” at all. The answer is that he is reacting to the publication of (and implicitly arguing against) Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” (vol. 1, 1835; vol. 2 1837). In that book Tocqueville changes profoundly (and for the worse) how people understand the concept of ‘democracy’, and we can see this by contrasting it with the sense in which James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay used the word ‘democracy’ in “The Federalist Papers” (1786-1800). In those articles, Madison, Hamilton and Jay speak of democracy in very lukewarm terms, because they understand it (exclusively) as direct democracy. In defending the US constitution, they thought of themselves as defending not democracy but republicanism (i.e. a parliamentary oligarchy). In fact they only use the word democracy or it's variants (i.e. democrat, democratic...) 29 times, usually negatively. Tocqueville changed how people understand the word. Altogether, he used the word ‘democracy’ and its variants) 980 times, using it to refer to anything characterised by the “equality of social conditions” particular to the US republic during the early 19th century. Ever since the publication of Tocqueville’s book, democracy has been synonymous with representative parliamentarianism (or other institutions of electoral representationalism) and the liberal social order This presented a lexical problem for Proudhon, because ‘democracy’ as it was previously understood - from Plato and Aristotle to Montaigne and Rousseau - meant direct participation in social deliberation by all members of the citizen body, who voted not for leaders but directly on the issues of the day. This is also, essentially, what Proudhon wants too: a decentralisation of collective deliberation to local communes (qua towns) with all members free to participate directly in their collective self-management. But he can’t call himself a democrat, because Tocqueville has misappropriated the word. What does he do? [End Pt. 1.]

zeleni sok [Start Pt. 2] Proudhon’s a well read man, and a keen reader of ancient greek poetry. He knows his ancient history. He has read Plato, Aristotle and Xenophon, and he knows that they are all associated with the oligarchic faction and critics of athenian democracy. He is aware that they all disparage it by calling it anarchistic, and the early moderns (such as Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke) continued to denigrate democracy in the same way. So this is the term Proudhon reaches for, thereby signaling his democratic sympathies without recourse to the word. When he says “I am an anarchist” he is effectively saying, I am someone committed to collective autonomy in the form of direct, participatory democracy. This also sheds light on why he claims “justice is the unity of anarchy and order” (in “What is property?”, 1840). (This is the quote from which we get the circle-A symbol: A+O superimposed to represent unity. Only democracy in its genuine (direct) form fulfils this criterion of being both anarchistic (because everyone is equal and hence there are no leaders) and a vision of social order at the same time.) So the concept of direct democracy is central to the anarchist movement. It is why the exiled Spanish anarchists who founded my union here in Australia would claim “Anarchism is the assembly.” Anarchism is the life of the democratic collectivism. But what about so called individualist anarchism? The answer is that I simply don’t recognise them to be genuine anarchists. Sure, they are part of the anarchist story, but they are not worthy of the name, especially nowadays; rather they are associated with the two periods of crisis in the history of anarchism. The first period of crisis is the 1880s, which you will know are the years of anarchist terror and propaganda by deed. After the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris commune of 1871, a wave of anti-revolutionary repression swept across Europe during which it was very difficult to organise. Individualist anarchism arises in the context of this crisis. This is also the time when Max Stirner’s ideas found fertile ground within the anarchist movement. It is also the era of ‘propaganda by deed’. The idea that individuals can inspire revolution through acts of heroic and spectacular terrorism is a sign of a movement in crisis and despair. Individualist anarchism and terrorist violence were both a deviation and a dead end, and by 1890 were widely recognised to be so. What was returned to was the organisational program of the First International. Individualism is inimical to a collective social movement, especially one that is essentially socialist and democratic in nature, and anarchism is nothing if not a collective social movement. If individualism had a place, it is in the act of free association into collective of production and of affinity, but also in the necessity of any democratic collective to be composed of free thinking individuals capable of holding their peers to account. These are the reasons I assert that anarchism is a collectivism. But I recognise that collectivism has another (albeit related) meaning within anarchism. During the 1880s, anarchism in Spain, under the guidance of Bakunin’s writings, retained its collective, organisational character. Why? Because the Spanish peasants had a long history of surviving dire poverty through organising collectively and practicing mutual aid. Was this free association or the compulsion of necessity? In reality, it was both. Either way, the ideas of Bakunin and Proudhon fell on fertile ground, and from there followed the movements of the population to the industrialising cities, esp. Barcelona. They understood collectivism as the collectivisation of the means of production and wage equality (often modulating distribution of wages on the basis of need). You know all about anarchist-communism as free appropriation from communal stores, usually in the context of a cashless, marketless economy, so I won’t explain it. And (as I’m sure you know), historically, it was only when this idea was contrasted with wage equality and distribution mediated by money that the word “collectivism” came to be understood as a specific type of anarchist economy (contrasted with mutualism and anarchist-communism). But the original senses of the term as a description of the political act of collectivising the means of production and of running enterprise in the form of (direct) democratic worker’s self-management still hold true. This is why I claimed (and still claim) that anarchism is essentially and necessarily a form of collectivism. Democracy is collectivist. Socialism in its true form (not that Marxist bullshit) is not only collectivist but also democratic, so long as it represents equality of control through (direct) democratic processes, not just equality of wages. Your raised an interesting point when you argued that libertarian socialism differs from anarchism in that anarchism insists on free association, whereas libertarian socialism is broader and may accept compulsory membership, and this is definitive of the stateless/state divide between the two. However, I’m not certain the distinction holds fast, because I think free association is a more ambiguous concept. Ever since Rousseau’s second discourse (i.e. his “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality”), the idea that someone can escape from society has been recognised to be deeply problematic. This is echoed in Bakunin’s assertion that “man is not only the most individual of beings, but also the most social”, and also in his assertion that “He who does not work will not eat”. Free association also means (by reciprocal implication) freedom to disassociate, but in the context of a successful anarchist revolution, ostracism or even the willful disassociation by an individual may represent freedom to starve if no other collective/commune is willing to accept him. (I have anarchist-communist friends who, for this reason, assert that in an anarchist society that extends all across the globe, sponges and freeloaders would have to be tolerated as parasites, or else those who work would be practicing compulsion over them and cease being anarchists. I think this is bullshit, but they do make this argument). I am therefore unwilling to see free association as the sine qua non of anarchist politics. Free association is desirable, important, and necessary in all other circumstances, but the only absolute value for anarchism is freedom to participate in the collective life of the democratic assembly. This is the collective aspect of freedom. For these reasons I reject your distinction between libertarian socialism and anarchism, and also your concept of the state. For me, the state is characterised by subjection of the citizenry to a political class. Ancient athens (for all its limitation of the concept of citizen) was not a state. (City-state is a modern metaphor for the word polis, but polis was much closer in meaning to our word “community”.) Yes, they had slaves; yes, women and foreigners could not vote, but they are not considered citizens in either a political or legal sense, and do our focus must be on the degree extension of the Athenian concept of citizen, rather than whether the polis was or was not a state. The anarchist revolution is the extension of (direct) democracy to every institution of society. This is the destruction of the state. Anyway, this is why I describe things in the way I have. But thank you for your critique. And I should like to hear your response.

Thanks for the response. I do consider being called classically academic a compliment x) To reply: I don't think you described nominalism of my approach correctly. Maybe we could call it historic nominalism. Even though my comment doesn't proceed in that order, my approach has it's beginning and core at the part where i say "When we take into account the views of Proudhon, Bakunin and other original seminal anarchists authors, and carefully analyze them, I would say that the best definition of anarchism is..." This gives me no problem in rejecting "anarcho"-capitalism. Note that bc this is not a vulgarly historicistic approach, it also doesnt give me a problem in rejecting any sexism from the fold of anarchism, even though Proudhon himself was a sexist (which was pointed out during his life to be inconsistent with his own value, namely libertarianism / the first tenet of anarchism, as i enumerated it above). Just to notice it is somewhat ironical that you want to (rightly) anchor anarchism in the Enlightenment project, but that you chose a non-rationalist, non-analytical approach to defining it x) But what is more important is that doesn't seem to yield better results. You havent given a concrete definition of anarchism yielded by your method (which would be better than mine). Also, note that this definition im using was good enough historically, and was good enough so much for some people that they advocated almost only that, those were the "anarchists without adjectives", they basicially didnt care which of the four kinds of economic arrangement the post-revolutionary society will prevailingly have, just that anarchism (ie its three tenets) is established. "When he says “I am an anarchist” he is effectively saying, I am someone committed to collective autonomy in the form of direct, participatory democracy" - I believe you are saying this based on your preference for an exclusively collectivist designation of anarchism. I think that Proudhon chose the word anarchy bc of the etymology, no-rulership, bc he wanted to signify his opposition to hierarchy. Yes, opposition to rulers implies (direct) democracy, but even an enterprise of several people or even one can be called anarchist in the sense of being non-hierarchical, but we it would strange or nonsensical to call it (directly) democratic. You are correct in what you say about democracy, but i dont think that was Proudhon's thinking here, i would offer a counter-example, namely his talk about property. He says that property is liberty and that property is tyranny (and theft, yes), and that therefore it is a contradiction, but he nowhere makes up a new word with regards to this topic, he uses possession for the alternative to property, which is an existing legal term, even though his concept of the institution is different from the legal one (the legal one signifies use itself, Proudhon's one signifies an institution based on use, not use itself, which is very important, the first one give merit to "an"cap objections like "so if go outside my house for an hour someone other can move in"), he even continues with using legal terms like ius in re and ius ad rem. I dont think he would have a problem using just democracy if he wanted to. Like we shouldnt have a problem with using anarchism even though the word has been misappropriated to mean just opposition to the state. "But what about so called individualist anarchism? ... they are associated with the two periods of crisis in the history of anarchism. The first period of crisis is the 1880s, which you will know are the years of anarchist terror and propaganda by deed." - I know the phraseology youre using was used historically by a lot of anarchists in europe, but for the sake of clarity i would call them insurrectionary anarchists, so as not to mix them up with individualist anarchists (as i explained who they are in my original comment), who were (together with mutualists) especially opposed to insurrectionary tactics, as they were opposed to the revolution. Opposing insurrectionism isnt therefore a collectivist thing, but an organizationist thing. I agree with you that the insurrectionist misinterpretation of "propaganda of the deed" was something bad, not only pointless but counter-productive, but i dont agree that it falls under anarchism. You mention collectivism in connection to Spain, but look at the revolution which happened later, of all the collectivized settlements, less then five percent had complete collectivizations. In all the rest of them there were some workers with their fields and workshops who didn't want to join the collective economy. They weren't forced to, bc anarchism is based on free association. Also, i remember reading that also there werent attempts to make them join through economic pressure, actually the opposite, individuals and the enterprises which were part of the collective economy would on the local lever barter with those outside it. Anarchist Ukraine also showed that there can be a society based on free association, possession, and opposition to hierarchy, and it was a society which functioned economically as an anarcho-individualist society with some mutualistic traits, they didnt even start building a non-market economy. Note that the value of free association was accepted both by Proudhon and Bakunin, both of whom insisted upon it, Bakunin even explicitly said that exploitation must be tolerated in anarchy, if its voluntary, and it was even accepted by Kropotkin, who did in places used rhetoric as if rejected the second and third tenet of anarchism, instead advocating common property and compulsory communist economy, but in other places he did explicitly mentioned cases of people being able to disassociate from the collective economy, as long as they are not exploiting anyone (being a boss to someone or getting property income). Some, like Malatesta, have explicitly opposed libertarian communism which isnt based on free association, he said that that "Imposed communism would be the most detestable tyranny that the human mind could conceive". And he isnt here talking against the alleged communism of state-capitalists, this sentence is followed immediately by his sentence i quoted in my original comment, where he gives the enumeration of four possible economic arrangements inside anarchist society. I said above your approach to defining anarchism doesnt seem to yield a better result, but its not just that, it seems to yield a much worse one. This approach would seem to put the founder and some of the most seminal authors of anarchism outside the folds of anarchism, which i think quite clearly shows it is a bad approach to the question of what is anarchism.