Zoe Baker on Tech Empire Podcast 

@@makeandeatgummyleeches5975 Cope harder kid.

This is why I tend to advocate the idea that leftists should run for local office (we focus a little too much on federal/high level office), so they can 1) take advantage of the platform to radicalize the proletariat and 2) affect reforms that aid in the ability of others to be more able to perform direct actions. Social democracy ain't it, but it's a hell of a lot easier to do direct actions under social democracy than, say...fascism. I think one person that reflects this well imho is Elke Kahr, the current Communist mayor of Graz, Austria.

​@@JSmusiqalthinkayes, this is as you recognise is the same old palliating strategy of social democracy that doesn't deliver the fundamental change that is actually needed. We can keep riding around the Ferris wheel or we can instead remind ourselves and others that yeah actually we do need to recognise that direct action, worker and local power structures, and solidarity, are among the much more serious strategies we have at our disposal

@@jamtheman3017 Fundamental change takes a lot of effort and time to achieve. There's no way to make the revolution happen right just now, so we have to employ many strategies, including electoral ones. We have to do B O T H.

@@JSmusiqalthinkathe issue is, however, that insitutions such as military or national guards are on a state level. So you’re talking about overturning local politics to socialist reforms in hopes that it will in the end be easier to overturn. I personally don’t see the association ”social democracy” - easier to overthrow because an overthrowing of the state requires people to associate with each other and live in solidarity. So if you have a social democracy with a military that is willing to defeat insurrections, then it won’t be easier just because it’s a social democracy

@@JSmusiqalthinkaalthough, I will agree on your point that there is a necessity to elect people that are on the left in order to achieve a shift in political life. Zoe has explained this before, the idea of a complete rejection of voting within anarchism is more of a historical thing because back in early 20th century, voting was kind of a fraud. It would be naïve to not vote today.

That's a can of worms right there.

There's something in the back catalogue?

@@solgato5186 what do you mean?

@@otherperson in the videos for this channel is something about it

@Anonymous Jaeyun I'll read it thank you

100% agree

I'm not nearly as informed as Zoe is, but here's my best shot. (My background is in modern European history ~1400s - present day) Well the fact that MLs won the Russian civil war is probably the main reason lennist states as a whole last much longer than the Anarchist ones. The fact that the Soviet union was able to use their resources to prop up other lennist states and squeeze out any other leftist voices is really the testament to the long lasting nature of those states. Furthermore those states are state capitalist allows for the world to more readily accept them. Like the fact that Vietnam, China, Cuba, etc are state capitalist countries that call themselves socialist or communist or whatever, doesn't change the fact that they can use their cheap labor and buy their exports. Even tho Cuba has been embargoed by the US doesn't mean that other countries like Canada and China won't buy their cheap coffee and sugar. The USSR and the eastern bloc fell because of a united effort of the western and capitalist countries. These other stalinist states aren't being challenged by the west the way Russia was during the cold war. If they were, then they'd have fallen too. Historically Soviet Russia inherited a lot of natural resources, a big inhospitable country, the breadbasket of Europe (Ukraine), and took power during the time Europe was preoccupied with other things. Even then the west wasn't 100% against them the way they were after WW2 which allowed for rapid industrialization and economic development in relative peace. For example during the pre war Soviet union, tens of thousands of specialists and workers from Western countries lived and worked in Russia to help with industrialization, infrastructure, etc. Furthermore once the cold war began they had become a superpower and could stand the war of attrition from the west while expanding their sphere of influence and helping bourgeoning lennist states and propping them up economically. Moreover the west eventually established economic ties with these newer lennist states and regularly engage with them economically to this day. In short the successes of the lennist states aren't necessarily the fact that they are more effective at achieving revolution, it's that the capitalist world doesn't have a problem with them existing as long as it maintains the status quo in their home states and keeps making them money so they can prefigure their own power. Conversely, anarchist movements are a direct threat to the ecomic elite in practically any form. That's one of the reasons Rojava (the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria) has held on for so long. They're sitting on a big well of oil and aren't afraid to sell it. If Rojava stopped selling oil, stopped exporting cotton, and became more of a threat to the west then it would be crushed like every other anarchist society. Even so Turkey has put a lot of pressure on them economically and militarily because of the threat it poses to their authoritarian regime. Obviously it's more complicated that this, but generally what anarchists need to do is become less vulnerable to the attacks that the west and the MLs impose upon them. Even so there needs to be much wider efforts beyond localized communities. If we look at Menshevik Ukraine for example, they were incredibly successful at creating a stable and effective autonomous communities, but because of the threat that they posed to both the Bolsheviks and tsarists, they were put under much more external pressure than the Bolshevik counterparts. If the Ukrainian anarchist communities had more robust industrial centers and adequate resources I don't doubt that they would have been much more successful than they otherwise were. There isn't necessarily a flaw in anarchist strategy that MLs are better at, it's just that the states that MLs produce aren't as antagonistic to capitalism and the status quo as anarchist communities.

I typed this all in one go without proofreading it, so I'm gonna spend some time editing it and getting sources for confirmations to my points, and fixing spelling/grammar errors, etc. But I hope you get the main gist of my point for now. Zoe if you see this and want to correct me, weigh in on your views, etc I'd love to hear your critiques. I am a lowly undergrad student after all lol

@@purple-flowers Thank you for this I've been watching a lot of ml videos and though I hesitate against them they've been convincing me of some of their aspects. So anarchists need to get better at defending themselves though, correct? ML states are going to prop up ml states, and anarchism of any form threatens the global capitalist order. So let's say America had an anarchist revolution. Can it really compete against the rest of the world?

@@rosaliahale3118 I mean we'd inherit so many resources, a giant country, industrial centers, etc but what really needs to happen is a global revolution. Also like I said, the fact that the Soviet union was successful wasnt necessarily because they were MLs but because the conditions were in their favor. In the left today we see a lot of internalized social darwinism, that because the Soviet union was successful means that they are somehow better at achieving their goals, when it reality it was multiple factors. Also a lot of apparent "great man" theory in leftist historical analysis. These methods of historical analysis aren't very good, and lead to a lot of flawed ideas. Not to mention that the conditions of today are so incredibly different than it was in the past. With today's conditions I firmly believe that anarchist tactics are so much more effective for the simple fact that we have the internet. We can coordinate at a decentralized level so much more easily than we ever could, and the conditions to build dual power has never been better. Honestly the thing that's holding us back is that we're spending too much time watching the internet as atomized individuals rather than engaging in direct action. If everyone who subscribed to Zoe fully committed themselves to direct action, we'd see a lot of progress imo

@@purple-flowers I think you made a definitional mistake. A war of attrition must not be what you think it is.

So anarchists reject hierarchies based on power and subordination, this does not, however, reject hierarchies totally since social regulations will enact norms and structures. This has happened in indigenous communities historically where they will shun people who go against norms etc. You can look up the book ”Hierarchies in the forest”, it goes in depth on this topic

Not an answer but I do want to clear up the misconception that bees 'serve' the queen. The queen serves the main purpose of reproduction while the other bees focus on gathering, caring for brood and building comb. It's two separate roles, simply a caste specialization. Imposing our human ideas about servitude don't apply to bee hives.

That is assuming production is the prime motive not leisure, which is how things are under capitalism, but a lot of anarchists think anarchism would change that. In any case, I agree with your point as it applies to modern society.

@@carsonpearce5980 doing the work of actually staying alive like hunting, gardening, fishing, processing plants and animals, gathering wood, spinning and weaving is already "leisure" and arguably better. The line between being productive and being leisurely is artificial and totally colonial

@@gekkobear1650 thats a great point. I don’t have much else to say lol Have a nice day, and thank you for such a thoughtful and respectful response

@@carsonpearce5980 and thank you for yours. It's hard to find people arguing the anti-civ anti-tech position coherently or respectfully so I'm happy to try my best where i can.

@@gekkobear1650 i think in addition to that these ideas could definitely be applied to other realms of “labor” I really do think that having control of your own society and your own life could make what we think of as work much more fun, wether that is survival like you are talking about or more industrial things, though I’m really not yet qualified to argue about wether or how we should do industrialism.

Well, that's focusing more on the hippie pacifist angle than the anarchist ideology. There are communist hippies which have in the past, and would still suffer the same fate today, but again, that's because of the hippie thing and not the anarchist or communist ideologies. Speaking as an anarcho-communist, we don't see it as everyone are warriors so much as we still have a military. It's just run very, very differently. The soldiers... Those who work with their comrades everyday, are the ones who decide who the best leaders are and the ranking system in general. They are also strictly defensive, of course. We even have localized and decentralized police who are primarily trained to deescalate first. The use of violence is an absolute last resort. They enforce the custom laws for the community, which are designed through consensus democracy by those who choose to live in that community. Since they are localized, each community (who voted them in) also holds the power to remove them if they are incompetent or become bullies. However since they know they answer directly to the community en masse, they'll most likely want to stay on good terms with them and do their jobs well... At least if they don't want to be fired.

@@beeinthehive also I think the more “hippie” anarchists would argue that this problem of getting conquered by authoritarians is why the anarchist struggle needs to be more global and why current anarchists should be engaged in other movements’ struggles for immediate improvements and in creating propaganda to spread the ideals of anarchism more widely, and only then would a successful revolution be possible, or at least thats how I understand their position from my admittedly limited experience.

@@carsonpearce5980 I agree. They would have their place. They could give medical aid, help feed and clothe the military as well as help spread propaganda.

@@carsonpearce5980 as a more "hippie" anarchist, I'd argue that our primary strategy ought to be convincing people not to attack us through mutual aid and making it a lot more appealing to work with us than attack us. Secondarily, yeah everyone should be a warrior and we should absolutely not have a standing army comprised of soldiers (not warriors). There are lots of indigenous people who can explain the difference between warriors and soldiers better than I can. You can probably meditate on it and figure it out in a way that makes sense to you. Additionally, any proposal I see to organize a standing army in a decentralized way is still a protection racket to everyone outside the standing army. This is what Fredy Perlman meant when he repeated over and over that faced with threats from Leviathan, the worst thing you can do is encase yourself in your own proto-Leviathan (this is a paraphrase. Read Against His-story, Against Leviathan its a wonderful resistance mythology). Edit: fixed typos

@@beeinthehive yeah! Personally I highly doubt that I could ever pick up a gun unless I was actively physically in danger, but I also know if there was another CNT-esque situation during my lifetime I would most certainly find a way to help out even if I didn’t participate in defense, however necessary I know that is.

*advocates 3 hour work day*> *gets told "people don't live to work"*

@@BasicallyBanal I work eight hours three days a week, so an average 3.4 hours/day. You could advocate 30 seconds a day, but we'd all starve.

TL;DR: Please read some anarchist theory, because im not that good at explaining this stuff That said: almost none of that was what anarchists actually believe lol. Yes, people work to live, thats why Kropotkin said that after the acquisition of the means of life the most important goal should be leisure. The way the horizontal social structure would be “enforced” is… You guessed it, horizontally. You don’t need a hierarchy to tell people not to take too much food, or not to fight each other, because social pressures from peers (shame, threat of expulsion) can do that, and social values and traditions can act as a compass in which these pressures operate. By influencing people’s worldviews these values and associated traditions also act as a preventative measures against “upstartism” or the desire to seize power over others. The main reason anarchism would work is that people are social creatures and have a nearly 0% chance of surviving on their own, so if ideals of solidarity, fraternity, and an understanding of the benefits of the anarchist system can be preserved then the society will be self sustaining. This is part of why education is so important to anarchists, because anarchism will collapse if future generations forget the oppression of the state or if traditions necessary for self government fall out of use (in addition to the importance of adaptability to new conditions, but that’s irrelevant to my current point) Also the thing about excluding groups: Have you not looked at the world today? The rules of capitalism don’t say “oh, and you have to be nice to everyone by the way” The issue of arbitrary social conflict has been seen to exist or not exist in any given society, no matter the organizational system. That said, it would be even harder to do this under anarchism because no hierarchy is present, so no one person makes the rules. In addition, historically anarchists have largely argued for the equal treatment of all people (and for many like myself the abolition of gender and race along with class hierarchies) so it would be assumed that in a successful social revolution these values would be written into the traditions of the new society.

​@@carsonpearce5980 I've read Kropotkin, Bakunin, Proudhon and some others. A tapestry celebrating Mutual Aid is hanging on my wall, and I've also read The Conquest of Bread. I haven't studied any of them rigorously, but I don't claim to describe their systems. On the other hand, historical anarchists are many and varied, so they have no single system to describe. In the anarchic organization I imagine, rules are not enforced. They're chosen. If you don't want too much food and you surround yourself with people who don't want too much food, then no one in your community is forced not to consume too much; however, a community of gluttons may consume what seems too much food to you. If they don't force anyone to provide them food, I have no problem with it. Social cooperation requires agreement on the rules whereby people interact. A voluntary community is a group of people agreeing on a set of rules governing their interaction with each other and with resources like land also governed by the rules they prefer. How can different people preferring different rules all have the rules they prefer? Solidarity, fraternity, and social justice sound good to me, but the terms are vague, and people don't agree on what they mean. People won't forget the oppression of the state as long as they're subjects of states. A state can't not oppress its subjects. Regardless of their intentions, a state's central authorities never have enough knowledge optimally to satisfy the diverse and changing preferences of their subjects. I don't know how to be nice to everyone. Fortunately, I don't need to. A voluntary community may have as much hierarchy as its members want, but I expect much less hierarchy when communities are ruled only by free association, i.e. you are subject only to rules accepted freely by all members of a community, and you have a practically unlimited variety of communities from which to choose. Capitalism is a system in which every means of production is ruled by an individual or corporation with hereditary title in perpetuity (current owner chooses the next owner) and in which a state imposes respect for the titles on everyone else and otherwise represent the interests of the title holders. A voluntary community is not bound by this constraint on its resource organization.

That is not a good definition of anarchism. It is way too narrow. Too specific. "Is anarchy coherent otherwise?" Why would you ask this while introducing a contradiction? It is incoherent the way you introduce it. "Does this discrimination violate any principle that historical anarchists proposed?" Yes. Antidiscrimination.