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spaghettioverdose · 1 year ago

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how did u went from anarchism to ml question mark

I was just going to write a couple paragraphs but I basically ended up writing a novel so I'm going to put a keep reading link here for my everyone's sanity.

Tl;dr: I became disillusioned with liberalism, became ancom, saw many silly takes and analysis that felt incomplete, became disillusioned with ancom, learned more about ml, went "this makes way more sense, has been applied in real life and has also helped many millions of people", became an ml.

I became an anarchist when I was in my late teens. I was already disillusioned with liberalism, and while I was sympathetic to socialism because I come from a formerly socialist country and grew up with stories about it from my grandmother, I was still of wary of it. Partially due to some of the genuinely bad things that happened during it and partially due to the immense amounts of anti-communist propaganda I was constantly bombarded with growing up. Then I found anarcho-communism which to me at the time seemed like "communism with none of the bad stuff".

I got into it, I watched ancom youtubers, I read Kropotkin, Graeber, Bakunin, I joined online ancom communities etc.

Slowly, over time I started becoming disillusioned with ancoms.I found myself having to defend marxist-leninist projects a lot (mostly from usamericans) against some very silly cold war anticommunist propaganda a lot. Such as the idea that everyone was just miserable and trying to escape the country or brainwashed by the leader's cult of personality.

Keep in mind that I myself ate up a lot of anticommunist propaganda growing up, but I also come from a formerly socialist country and had someone who was around during the socialist era of my country to ground my view of it in reality to some extent. Most of the ancoms in these communities only had the propaganda.

I also didn't like the way so many of these people talked more about an idealised, aestheticised, romanticised and abstract idea of revolution, and especially past failed anarchist revolutions, rather than talking about the material results of revolution.

Even when I still was mostly convinced by anarchist theory, I still found anarchist analysis to be incomplete and lacking predictive power and real world practice. Other anarchists tended to excuse the fact we didn't have a lot of revolutions and that the vast majority of them were crushed within their first couple years by saying things like "we were up against everyone" or "we were betrayed" which didn't really hold up. The bolsheviks had to fight everyone as well and yet they still won. Same with the Chinese communists who were also against massive internal and external threats. This is because in both cases they had popular support and were capable of analysing the material conditions and formulating policies based on that.

Another rebuttal was that every socialist revolution was state capitalism because it didn't adhere to a very simplified definition of socialism. I thought that lacked nuance and in the end it mattered to me less than the fact that it got results and helped millions of people, but it didn't prevent me from internalising this to some extent. I did (for at least some time) think that most ml states were incomplete revolutions that eventually fell to state capitalism.

When I did believe to these ideas I often fell into pits of despair, as did other ancoms, over the fact that in our world view, communism was essentially entirely defeated and at best we (as anarchists) had two current revolutions: the Zapatista (a group who follows marxist theory, refuses to call itself anarchis and controls a very small region and only due to an agreement with the government) and Rojava (who also controls a small region, is a military ally of the US and has a constitution which guarantees private property and definitely fits the anarchist definition of a state).

The holes in anarchist theory became even larger and more apparent to me once I started reading Marx and Lenin. The contrast in the explanatory and predictive power of dialectical materialism against the philosophical idealism of anarchist analysis eroded my remaining trust in anarchism very quickly.

Anarchist analysis severely lacked much class analysis beyond "people do evil things to each other because of the profit incentive of capitalism" and "power wants to hold onto power" which while in some ways is correct, it is vastly incomplete. Which is why the conclusion of this analysis, that after an anarchist revolution the profit incentive would simply be gone and so would reactionaries, also felt incomplete.

As it turns out it's also historically been proven wrong. Revolution doesn't stop when the civil war ends and that capitalists (even if disposessed) don't suddenly stop being reactionary and don't suddenly stop being a danger to the revolution.

However many anarchists also viewed historical events in a vacuum and lacked any sort of tools for materialist analysis and therefore came to silly conclusions about why things happened the way they did.

Many propositions on how an anarchist society would run resembled some variation of Old West homesteading, medieval peasant communes or some other strange individualist fantasies.

In the end I realised about anarchism that it entirely resembled the philosophically idealist utopian communism of old. A form of communism that lost the debate against the scientific communism of Marx, Engles and Lenin over a century ago and there is no reason to engage with it in the present day.

#asks #iristraumaplayground #long post

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probablyasocialecologist · 2 months ago

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There are different kinds of courage: physical, legal, interpersonal. Richard Barnard was a participant in one of the Extinction Rebellion train-stopping actions of 2019, variously maligned as ‘tactically stupid’ and a ‘psyop’. Alongside Huda Ammori, Barnard has gone on to co-found the direct action network Palestine Action, which has seen major success in its campaign to attack and close weapons factories raining death on Palestinians. He has done this in the face of both pressure from the state and a wave of popular derision against XR, including from some who one might have hoped would have responded as comrades. Criticisms of XR’s founding branch in Britain circa 2019 – that their ‘apolitical’ approach was deluded, that they were tight with cops – were well-founded in that place and time. Yet they continue to be smeared over that organisation and over environmentalists as a whole, even as offshoots in Australia and elsewhere engage in increasingly abolitionist-inflected resistance, sometimes at great personal cost. While critique in good faith is an act of solidarity, much of what has been thrown is reprehensibly ungenerous. I have often turned to Huey Newton’s words: ‘We should never say a whole movement is dishonest when in fact they are trying to be honest… Friends are allowed to make mistakes.’

It’s hard to imagine how difficult Barnard’s experience must have been, but maybe it doesn’t matter. Richard Barnard is an extraordinary person. So is Mali Cooper, so was Tortuguita. And herein lies a paradox: for a truly mass movement, resistance can’t be the prerogative of a mythologised vanguard, distinct from ordinary people. Yet when they undertake action, climate defenders cease to be ordinary. They become, even if just for a moment, something other than what they were.

I think it matters that Richard Barnard is a Christian. It also matters that Palestine Action connects primarily white activists from XR with anti-imperialist movements, whose cultural and political vocabulary is drawn from sources other than Western liberalism. Some of these movements don’t share XR’s stated commitment to non-violence, instead affirming the right of a colonised people to resist their oppression by all necessary means, including armed struggle. Within such coalitions, a capacity for sacrifice becomes a weapon, transcending spectacle. Palestinian militants have long understood how an experience of pain or renunciation, such as a hunger strike, can have meaning larger than its effects on a single body. After Tortuguita’s execution in Atlanta, comrades smashed bank windows and ATMs, torched construction equipment and wrote ‘Martyrs never die’ – a slogan borrowed from struggles in Rojava, and the Koran.

29 August 2024

#climate change #extinction rebellion #just stop oil #environmental activism

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scottishcommune · 1 year ago

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In Northern Syria, 2.5 million people are living in a stateless, feminist, religiously tolerant, anti-capitalist society of their own creation. They call their territory Rojava, and they defend it fiercely. They’re at war with the extremist group ISIS, and they’re doing better than anyone in the world expected — least of all the Western powers who seek to treat them as pawns.

It’s a complicated situation, but we in the rest of the world have much to learn from the Rojava revolution. To that end, we offer this long-form introduction to the history and the present struggle of the Kurdish people.

Long live the Rojava revolution!

#Rojava #A mountain river has many bends #democratic confederalism #communalism #YPG #YPJ #PYD #Solarpunk #Anarchism #Revolution #Libertarian #Freeblr

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leftistfeminista · 4 months ago

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– Speaking of freedom, a topic that all women’s organizations especially highlighted in the last period. What would you like to say about this?

–It’s true, in fact freedom is at the top of the demands of all oppressed class. The patriarchal system is imposed on women from home to workplaces, and when they don’t accept the slavery, they will be “punished” with death. Notice that the women on the streets say, “We want to live.” Previously while the demands for how they wanted to live were highlighted, now they say, “We want a world, where we are not killed!”. The attacks on women are at the highest level. Freedom is the need of all oppressed segments in the imperialist-capitalist system. Freedom is the most fundamental problem of all women in the male-dominated system and its our first demand. Our fight and resistance are already for freedom and for liberation.

We must firstly explain that the women who are punished by all kinds of patriarchal methods are not victims, but the subjects that will destroy this system. In every material of bourgeois media, women shown as a violent “poor”. Without action, thoughts; women are seen as a victimized object that is cursed, beaten, abused and murdered. In fact, the message is clear; You will be thankful all the time, if you cross the line you will be punished with any method listed above!

We have lots of duties at this point. What will be our response to this violence, it’s a must that to go to an organization which will work beyond just seeking rights within the legal boundaries. We are not denying or underestimating this sort of works, but we will not be able to achieve true freedom by staying within these boundaries. We cannot break this violence without using revolutionary violence.

KBDH established with the claim of being a united-military-political organization of women that will organize the violence of women which will target all patriarchal institutions. Its currently true that we are not where we wanted to be and expected from us. However, there are objective conditions to take the women on streets to the illegal struggle which will spread the women’s struggle to the next level. Until now, we have carried out actions targeting the institutions of the patriarchal system, we want to increase these actions.

Women were left defenceless, unarmed, unorganized, with definitions such as “naive”, “peaceful”, “far from fighting” and “beauties”. We don’t accept these beauties, because what is trying to be imposed by them is deepening the slavery. Our only demand is freedom. First, we must create the awareness of freedom. Freedom, comes from organizing. Our call is: “Let’s organize, let’s get armed, lets create the united women’s struggle and be liberated”.

– Finally, what would you like to say…

– We believe we have the power, anger and sacrifice in order to do what we have mentioned, as long as we realize our power. Because while we are being taken to the cremation, we are the witches that who walks towards it with smile, and we dare to put our heads under the guillotine in order to be equal. We are the ones holding the positions on the front in defending the Rojava Revolution. We are the fighters/martyred in the mountains. We are the ones on hunger strikes to break the isolation in prisons. We are the ones who doesn’t leave the streets during the most violent attacks of fascism. Because we are women, we will become more beautiful as we resist and become free as we dare.

#marxism-feminism #women's rights #turkey #kurdistan #Rojava #marxism leninism #maoism

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ritchiepage2001newaccount · 8 months ago

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Project2025 #CorpMedia #Oligarchs #MegaBanks vs #Union #Occupy #NoDAPL #BLM #SDF #DACA #MeToo #Humanity #FeelTheBern

JinJiyanAzadi #BijiRojava British man who fought Isis in Syria charged with terror offences [UPDATES]

Aidan James, 27, is second Briton to face charges after travelling to join Syrian Kurdish YPG…

RELATED UPDATE: [VIDEO] Aidan James: British fighter who battled Isis in Syria jailed for four years

RELATED UPDATE: British volunteers who fought against Isis ‘harassed by security services’ for years

RELATED UPDATE: Islamic State: Prosecution strategy in shreds as another case against an anti-IS fighter collapses

RELATED UPDATE: Father and son 'left in limbo' by failed terror case

RELATED UPDATE: “Rojava Revolution” changed from Kurdish nature to pure Syrian

RELATED UPDATE: Arabs Across Syria Join the Kurdish-Led Syrian Democratic Forces

RELATED UPDATE: Mohammad Abbaszadeh, a singer from Ilam, was sentenced to prison

RELATED UPDATE: Custodial Status of Shahin Dej Resident Mitra Javadi Unknown Following Recent Arrest

FURTHER READING:

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the-final-straw-blog · 1 year ago

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December 8th Affair Trial in France is Under Way

Hey listeners, this mid-week release features the words of anarchists involved in or doing support for the December 8th Affair in France, in which 9 people were arrested at the end of 2020, following Movement for Black Lives protests took place around the world to challenge police impunity and racism. The French state is asserting, based on some pretty flimsy arguments, that 7 radical and anarchist folks were a part of a conspiracy to engage in terrorism based on their common connection to an activist recently returned from the supporting the YPG’s fight against Daesh or ISIS in Rojava. This activist goes by the name Libre Flot, or Free Flow, and he shares some words here as well.

Transcript

PDF

Zine (Imposed PDF)

The court case runs from October 3rd until 27th and can use international solidairty demonstrations, support for those defending themselves, and more that you can find information below:

Support Site: https://solidaritytodecember8.wordpress.com/category/english/

Fundraising for Legal Fees: https://www.cotizup.com/soutien-8-12

Zine sharing Libre Flot's experiences in hunger strike: https://solidaritytodecember8.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/letter_a5_print-a4_045132-1.pdf

Zine introduction to the case: https://solidaritytodecember8.files.wordpress.com/2023/09/what-is-the-december-8-affair.pdf

. ... . ..

Featured Track:

Beef by Pete Rock from Soul Survivor Two (Instrumental)

Check out this episode!

#anarchist #podcast #interview #feminist #antifa #anticapitalist

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nando161mando · 6 months ago

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In the big final between Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund played at Wembley Stadium in England, the fans opened the banner "BIJÎ YPG! DEFEND AFRÎN".

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thefree-online · 3 days ago

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Feminist Kurds on Death Row please support our sisters #NoToExecutions

After the recent announcement of the death sentence against Warishe we as Women Defend Rojava call once again to strengthen the actions of the women’s movement KJAR within the framework of #NoToExecution.Let’s make short videos in many places to express our solidarity with our imprisoned friend in the prison of the Iranian state and to create public awareness and pressure.You can find examples of…

View On WordPress

#NoToExecution

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dzthenerd490 · 8 days ago

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News Post

Palestine

Trump to worsen our plight: Palestinian, Lebanese victims of Israel’s wars | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera

Trump has a choice: Obliterate Palestine or end the war | Middle East Eye

Palestinian patients leave Gaza in rare medical evacuation (bbc.com)

Assailants shouting 'free Palestine' brutally attack Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam | The Times of Israel (Israeli fucks were attacking Arabian and Palestinian fans first. They just fought back in self-defense but according to the media it is antisemitic to do so.)

Lebanon

Updates: Israeli strikes on Gaza kill over 50; attacks on Lebanon continue | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera

2-Year-Old Boy Buried For 14 Hours After Strikes In Lebanon, Survives (ndtv.com)

Israel’s war aims in Lebanon are expanding (economist.com)

Israeli bulldozer destroys part of UN structure in south Lebanon: Unifil | Middle East Eye

Israel killed over 3,100 people in Lebanon since October 2023: Ministry | Israel attacks Lebanon News | Al Jazeera

Syria

Israel carries out ground raid into Syria, seizing Syrian citizen | AP News

Syria condemns deadly Israel air strikes on ‘civilian sites’ near Damascus | Israel attacks Lebanon News | Al Jazeera

Rojava will not surrender to Turkish attacks - Medya News

Inside the Feminist Revolution in Northern Syria (noemamag.com)

Ukraine

New Details of First Ukraine Attack on North Koreans in Russia's Kursk - Business Insider

Ukraine is forced to confront a brutal Trump reality that it hoped would never happen | CNN

Zelenskyy rebuffs Trump’s proposal for rapid peace deal in Ukraine war – POLITICO

Zelensky confirms deadly clashes between North Korean and Ukrainian forces (axios.com)

Sudan

RSF siege of Sudan's Al-Hilaliya leaves dozens dead - Sudan Tribune

Massacres, rape, plunder: The RSF's spiral of violence in Sudan (newarab.com)

The New Humanitarian | The struggle for survival for South Sudanese returnees

Sudan rolls out malaria vaccines to bolster efforts to protect children | Africanews

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beeden96 · 14 days ago

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Surah Ash-Shura (Consultation), Ayat 36 through 39

From the translation by Muhammad Asad. To me these verses indicate that consensus-based decision making around issues affecting the community is actually a Quranic injunction. That the call to mutual consultation is accompanied by a call to defend against tyranny, suggests to me that direct democracy is being laid out as the norm for self-governance among Muslims.

...

42:36 And remember that whatever you are given now is but for the passing enjoyment of life in this world - whereas that which is with God is far better and more enduring. It shall be given to all who attain to faith and in their Sustainer place their trust; 42:37 And who shun the more heinous sins and abominations; and who, whenever they are moved to anger, readily forgive; 42:38 and who respond to the call of their Sustainer and are constant in prayer; and whose rule in all matters of common concern is consultation among themselves; and who spend on others out of what We provide for them as sustenance; 42:39 and who, whenever tyranny afflicts them, defend themselves.

...

Women in Rojava/The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, greeting women in the YPJ (Women's Defense Units)

#rojava #direct democracy #surah ash-shura

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dailyanarchistposts · 22 days ago

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I have previously pointed out that the on-the-ground efforts in Rojava and Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi can be seen as…

attempting, as Wesley Morgan describes, “to create ‘dual power’ through the creation of cooperatives.” Morgan disapprovingly terms this “market syndicalism” and critiques it for simply creating “units in a market economy” and still relying “upon access to the market.” However, this opinion does not take into account the unification of this praxis within broader pushes for anti-statist autonomy such as large-scale community self-defense that, like in Rojava, are creating space for non-capitalist markets. Such a method would not be dissimilar to the call by Samuel Edward Konkin III for “agorist protection and arbitration agencies” and “protection company syndicates” to defend market growing outside of the state capitalist economy and contain “the State by defending those who have signed up for protection-insurance.”

Konkin’s vision is a somewhat cynical speculation in comparison to the lived struggle of the Kurdish fighters, but the comparison lends validity to the case that building a producer-centric cooperative economy is inseparable from direct action like self-defense or setting up networks of counter-economic exchange. For myself, these observations represent a more revolutionary and non-utopian development in the tradition of early North American anarchist Josiah Warren’s non-capitalist market community projects like Utopia, Modern Times, and the Cincinnati Time Store. But these ideas also fall under the umbrella of “liberated zones theory” as theorized (and struggled for) by comrades at Community Movement Builders. I therefore want to ‘advertise’ for their theory and praxis because I really do think it’s just that compelling. And though I will add my own thoughts (if only for the sake of thinking through some things), the real purpose of this piece is to emphasize the work already being done by BIPOC folks. In fact this article is, if anything, demonstrative of the fact that almost anything white settler anarchists like myself propose is already being done by Black and Indigenous communities.

Community Movement Builders is an incredible organization that describe themselves as “a Black member-based collective of community residents and activists serving Black working-class and poor Black communities” that “organizes to bring power to Black communities by challenging existing institutions and creating new ones that our people control.” They have chapters in Atlanta, Dallas, and Detroit, with each one adapting to their own local conditions. Some of the projects that these chapters are undertaking include land trust development, cooperative development, cop-watch programs, community gardens, mutual aid programs, and international alliances with socialist groups like Pati Kan Pèp in Haiti. All of this sits within the framework of “liberated zones theory,” the outline of which—provided by CMB—feels important enough to reproduce in whole here:

Liberated Zones are territories where the masses (the community of people who live in and around a specific area) are in near-complete control over their political and socio-economic destinies because they control the institutions in a specific region, city, town or state. Because liberated zones/territory will exist within larger capitalist economies and hostile state institutions, complete control can’t happen until another later stage of transformation. The control gained exists within a larger strategy of challenging state institutions and capitalism. Economically, the community will run the market system through various worker-controlled enterprises and cooperatives. This is to ensure that the surplus-value of local communities’ labor is controlled within the liberated zones and not exploited by the outside capitalists. For this reason, that surplus can be distributed to developing the community and addressing human needs instead of capitalist wealth. Thus, the communities will be in charge of generating and sustaining economic wealth from within. At a further stage in liberated activity, the state governing apparatus will also be under the control of the people (current institutions or new ones). That can be done through either revolutionary political parties that truly represent the people’s interest, or through the consistent political struggle of the masses. In any case, the state can be used to support cooperative economic activities and the creation of new economies to deter reactionary forces from reentering the liberated zone. The people within the zones will control their local resources such as land, housing, and labor and will be the decision-makers on how these social elements will be maneuvered. Ideologically from our perspective as a Black self-determining organization, the masses will see themselves as a part of a larger pan-African struggle and therefore, embrace the unity and resistance struggles of African people at home and abroad.

When I read this overview, it blew my mind. Here are folks who are doing incredible praxis in the framework of very excellent theory to establish autonomous networks of cooperative—and commons-based—market economies that resist capitalist extraction and legibility. The added (and necessary) elements of anti-racism and anti-colonialism—often somewhat lacking in my own thinking—make it an even more powerful and contextual model for social change.

Admittedly, one element of liberated zones theory that might rub anarchists (and particularly market anarchists) the wrong way is the goal that “the state governing apparatus will also be under the control of the people (current institutions or new ones).” However, I think this is much less of an issue than it might first appear. Even as CMB names “revolutionary political parties that truly represent the people’s interest,” they equally emphasize “consistent political struggle of the masses” and center the “challenging [of] state institutions.” And because of the decentralized approach of liberated zones theory, it becomes less a question of arguing over a single unified tactic and more about what is most appropriate to local conditions. For example, while my work often focuses on building non-state institutions like land trusts, cooperatives, and mutual aid programs, I am also on very good terms with my local branches of the Communist Party of the United States and Democratic Socialists of America and have supported plenty of local socialist candidates. I have no issue with coalitions of leftist parties and candidates winning control over the existing governments of larger urban areas to “support cooperative economic activities and the creation of new economies to deter reactionary forces from reentering the liberated zone.” In fact, this would seem to me to be one of the only ways certain policies like participatory budgeting and effective anti-trust action could be enacted.[1] Control of local government in particular zones also fits very well with Kevin Carson’s model of libertarian municipalism. He argues that cooperative governance structures like Michel Bauwen’s and Cosma Orsi’s “Partner State” do not need to be…

so much a ‘government’ as a system of governance. It need not be a state at all, in the sense of an institution which claims the sole right to initiate force in a given territory. It is, essentially, a nonstate social association—or support platform—for managing the commons, extended to an entire geographical region. . . . In fact, it is arguably quite possible to sever the Partner State altogether from even residual forms of sovereign police power over all the individuals in a contiguous geographical area. It is possible to have an entire polycentric ecosystem of commons-based institutions with self-selected memberships or users of a particular common resource, with substantially overlapping memberships, and large minorities or even majorities of those in the same area being members of most of them. In that case adjudication or negotiation of the relationships between them will cause a body of “common law” to emerge for the system as a whole, with a substantial degree of de facto coordination over a common geographical area.

Carson sees this project as a “municipal level” version of “[t]he Saint-Simonian idea of replacing legislation over human beings with the ‘administration of things;'” an interpretation that is directly (and potentially strategically) related to Friedrich Engels’ withering away of “political rule over men” into “an administration of things and a direction of processes of production,” on the foundation of, he continues elsewhere, “a free and equal association of the producers.” But with the added emphasis on community-specific institutions and the pluralistic overlap of many different governmental and non-governmental cooperative efforts, this and other programs gathered under the umbrella of liberated zones theory allow for common goals and, consequently, immediate collaboration between anarchists, democratic socialists, communists, and even radical libertarians to use local governance to facilitate community-owned and (particularly producer) cooperative networks.

Then there is the fascinating connection between liberated zones theory and Black Panther Huey P. Newton’s theory of “intercommunalism;” an attempt to adapt dialectical materialism to a modern colonial context.[2] Newton writes:

[T]he world today is a dispersed collection of communities. A community is different from a nation. A community is a small unit with a comprehensive collection of institutions that serve to exist a small group of people. And we say further that the struggle in the world today is between the small circle that administers and profits from the empire of the United States, and the peoples of the world who want to determine their own destinies.

Currently we live in an era of “reactionary intercommunalism, in which a ruling circle, a small group of people, control all other people by using their technology.” But…

[a]t the same time, we say that this technology can solve most of the material contradictions people face, that the material conditions exist that would allow the people of the world to develop a culture that is essentially human and would nurture those things that would allow people to resolve contradictions in a way that would not cause the mutual slaughter of all of us. The development of such a culture would be revolutionary intercommunalism.

This logic of community control over the means of production is extremely similar to that expressed in liberated zones theory. Newton even refers to “the people in the liberated zones of South Vietnam” [emphasis added] in his analysis. And in an interview with Millennials are Killing Capitalism, CMB’s Kamau Franklin explicitly outlines how their work is in the lineage of the Black Panther Party as well as identifying a solidarity between struggles of different peoples suffering under colonialism. This international collaboration between not just the working class but all oppressed peoples lends itself, with very little modification, to liberated zones theory being a development on intercommunalism and, consequently, a more contextual and decentralist relative of dialectical materialism as a whole.

Interesting to me as well is that Rukiya Colvin and Richard Feldman, in their outline of various institutions in Detroit pushing for liberated zones, identify certain religious institutions as centers of community development. For example, they write that the Episcopal Church of the Messiah is…

more than a place of worship as they host annual anti-violence rallies, cultivate creativity through makerspaces, promote wellbeing through community gardens, support the need for digital equity through the Equitable Internet Initiative, and hold monthly coalition meetings, while also working to rebuild the neighborhood through the low income housing options they provide. Their space also serves as a small business incubator.

This resonates with me greatly as I have, in the last year or so, brought my views on religious community and collective liberation to the forefront of my mind. But again this sort of thinking has already been covered extensively by Black and Latin American theologians and clergy from Martin Luther King Jr. to James H. Cone to José Míguez Bonino and beyond. So we once again return to the main point: BIPOC folks are already doing the work and thinking outlined in this article. We as leftists need to stop bickering and particularly stop telling BIPOC communities what they should or shouldn’t be doing. Instead, we join in on the effort to establish liberated zones in combination with other strategies like mass labor actions and revolutionary unionism. I would add too that market anarchists have a lot to offer to this struggle, whether it’s perspectives rooted in Hayekian knowledge problems and collective action problems, agorist tactics (as mentioned above), a state-monopolist model of capitalism (à la Benjamin Tucker), or just our bodies and hands. So cooperate! Get to know your neighbor! Learn to defend yourself or strategize to be defended! Bypass state-capitalist legibility! Oh, and if you’re interested in supporting Community Movement Builders check out their donation page!

[1] See my articles “An Anti-Statist Beginner’s Guide to (Taxation, Public Budgets, and) Participatory Budgeting” and “An Anarchist Take on Antitrust Laws: Dangers and Possibilities.”

[2] Encyclopedia Britannica is correct to end their entry on dialectical materialism with the caveat: “There exists no systematic exposition of dialectical materialism by Marx and Engels, who stated their philosophical views mainly in the course of polemics.” I do however highly recommend Bertell Ollman’s Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx’s Method.

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