"If people are different then that's a hierarchy, checkmate anarchists" = truly the most lazy dipshit line conservatives have.
1) Difference is not domination. What we oppose is relationships that constrain net choice. "Social hierarchies" are not any axis of difference.
2) Conservatives are trying to endorse a ladder of merit, where insofar as folks differ at all, some are better at X. And sure, if there's a objective good to strive towards, some will probably get further than others. But this doesn't imply we can *measure* such objectively.
Some misguided anti-authoritarians go down the postmodern path and deny there's any objective / universal good so as to avoid hierarchy.
But the more realistic path is to say *we as a society cannot functionally measure an individual's personal success towards The Good*
Further, individuals inherently occupy incredibly unique personal contexts with distinct opportunities to Do Good. It is completely possible for every individual to have accomplished equal amounts of Good, but in radically unique and *different* ways / paths / expressions.
3) I've been speaking in terms of The Good because it helps drive home that what conservatives are *really* talking about isn't that. They're talking about seizing power / status / wealth in capitalism.
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Borders were basically invented in the late 1800s as an imperial managerial tool -- polities had previously desired and competed for in-migration, but empires wanted to control internal labor flows. The whole idea of passports/visas was wildly denounced as insane authoritarianism
The US then bought into this new scheme by the British, Spanish, etc empires, in part because of authoritarian progressivism where low-skilled racist white workers backed vast expansions of state power and the police state here to expel and deport chinese-americans.
The Palmer raids against anarchists, "operation wetback", etc then massively expanded the US police state further and chucked previously basic constitutional liberties. Crude KKK populism driven by the most inane and worthless racist trash who should never be allowed in society.
It's weird to be decades into libertarians discovering left market anarchists and still fielding these kinds of critiques. Anarchism isn't "remove the state and whatever might come is good" it's a deep critique of power and thus *obliges* cultural and institutional changes.
Yes, we frequently highlight the systematic and dispersed impact of sustained state violence on shaping our present capitalist world and its economic and social norms. But we are not "come what may" advocates. As Charles emphasized endlessly: *we* are the market. We get choices.
So libertarians tend to miss that we are obliged not only to rip out the continued impacts of state violence that prop up bosses, corporations, etc, but also to work to *undo* the centuries of distortions and lasting impact upon the distributions and *norms* of our society.
"Lifestyle anarchism" continues to signify whatever one personally finds frustratingly illegible about a *movement* rather than a *Party.*
You don't know the local prison support crew? Then they're lifestylists. You don't get why some friends are brewing kombucha? Lifestylists!
Movements are fluid ecosystems. They grow projects & networks that defy easy mapping. They accrue tacit knowledge from praxis & argumentation that can't be codified into a single FAQ or onboarding document.
This is frustrating to newbies and infuriating to would-be bureaucrats.
Pretty much no one in the entire fucking history of the anarchist movement said "let's just squat and ride bikes; fuck all struggle and strategy." You're tilting at a crimethinc zine that doesn't even really exist and that they repudiate with their every publication for decades.
Love the inane "trump voters are just a product of material conditions" re-tread of 2016's "it's just economic anxiety." Same sort of reactionaries saying it, but they've swapped from identifying as libs to marxists.
People love Trump because 1) our epistemic ecosystems are toxic sludge, 2) many people have intense investments in the (often non-material) benefits of patriarchy and racism, 3) fear of ratcheting cancelation has scared every type of amoral bastard into mobilizing together...
4) transphobia is intense and rabidly popular rn as a blowback to progress, 5) mild personal inconveniences and changes to every day life during COVID radicalized people for life, 6) the left keeps pratfalling with horrifically bad analysis, and yes 7) inflation sucks.
Like don't get me wrong, I have my critiques and deviances from some of the movement's tendencies, but for better or worse modern anarchism is a mixture of radical feminism, quaker consensus, fourth generation warfare theory, 70s anthropology, and some of the autonomists.
It's cringe to look at direct action cells and be like "ah yes, I know this, Bakuninist terrorism." Stirner is more of an online meme than a popular influence. Virtually no one reads Nietzsche and Aragorn said he was of zero inspiration to his attempt to make "nihilism" a thing.
Well yeah, obviously. *Specific* revolutions will be won. Insurgencies will erode the ability of power everywhere to function. Prefigurative experimentation will spread more liberatory norms. Technologies will be contested and shifted.
Our forever walk towards anarchy -- as Malatesta described it -- is not a single hop on a single day. It's a gradual process of erosion and catalyzing strength.
Such evolution can be violent and punctuated, but there is no magical day after which we finish and rest.
When I was a young anarchist in the 90s and early 00s, the entire movement used "After The Revolution" as an ironic meme to emphasize the absurdity and the ignorance of anyone in that frame. We were also steadfastly hostile to nihilism. Because progress is possible without magic.