I recently got sent this page on sociocracy. I noticed it sounded a lot like how I've envisioned an anarchist society, as I've described here on hexbear. I found it weird that it doesn't mention anarchism, but perhaps they just are using the term "self governance" to refer to anarchism but not by name (due to its stigmatization). It specifically tried to differentiate consent versus consensus as decision making processes, but honestly I thought consensus already worked how they described consent to work. So if that's the case, I guess I'm actually a fan of consent decision making, not consensus. I was wondering if any leftists (esp anarchists) on here could vouch for their interpretation and clarify if you find it a feasible and good form of anarchist society.
I'm also wondering how a society that's purely online would work like this. Like a video game or something that teaches anarchist values by just being like a survival game where cooperation is clearly beneficial but there's no built in party or guild system, so people form anarchist organizations instead. But I'd be concerned about people forming hierarchies within those organizations anyways, and not allow players to come and go as per free association. That's perhaps off topic from the first part of this post, but I'd be interested in hearing thoughts on how a game might encourage players, purely through gameplay, to form anarchist organizations.
Thanks, this was a really thorough response! I really appreciate it. That all makes a lot of sense to me. I think I'm personally on board with rehabilitation facilities operating as you described, but definitely only in cases of repeated offenders of pretty heinous crimes. For the vast majority of crimes, it seems fine to just focus on making the victim whole again and, if applicable, solving whatever conditions led to the crime happening in the first place (e.g. fixing the problem of drunk driving by ensuring there's convenient and safe transportation available). Definitely agree with the abolitionist idea that punishments for the sake of retribution or deterrence is ineffective and unjust.
I guess, to a certain degree, discussion of how much crime will actually go away in a society all needs are met in is still all theoretical. It's hard to say just how big of a population there is that would still be "unable or unwilling to prevent themselves from acting criminally". There's part of me that still wants to insist that population literally wouldn't exist, mostly rooted in general skepticism around psychiatry's current understanding of nuero-atypical people (given its very poor historical track record), but I ultimately don't know. You adding "or unwilling" makes me significantly more comfortable agreeing it'll likely always be a non-zero population being discussed here, though.
It's interesting that you brought up cultural factors as one not being fixed by addressing material conditions and mode of economy. I think that might be more relevant in terms of what must be done immediately to make the current incarceral system more humane, true prison abolition is such a long-term project that I think cultural shifts can be considered part of it. Like, I suspect crimes that occur following someone discovering they've been cheated on will likely go away over time, as I feel like constructs like sex, gender, and monogamy will wither away. Once again this is all theoretical, but I wonder if large cultural shifts like that, if they do happen, could make some of the crimes you mentioned as likely to stick around "as long as humanity does" fade away as well.
Once again, thanks for the response. I appreciate your perspective and I believe it's improved my understanding of prison abolitionism.
Since the George Floyd protests I've learned a lot about the arguments of prison abolition, and found them quite persuasive. I have a couple questions though that I was hoping I could find answers to here, as they relate to dialectical materialism which doesn't seem to come up that much when looking into abolition online.
I've been reading through elementary principles of philosophy, and while doing so I had the realization materialism applied to one of the common prison abolitionist arguments: that the idea that some people are "naturally" bad (thus un-rehabilitatible and must be removed from society), is untrue and has been used historically to dehumanize people in the past, often those with disabilities. My current understanding of materialism would follow that the material conditions surrounding someone significantly impacts their ideas and, therefore, behaviors. So a materialist and abolitionist would find common ground saying that if everyone's basic needs were met (and if the proletariat owned the means of production, for the materialist), then anti-social behaviors would essentially go away. Is this a correct interpretation? And if so, does that mean a marxist-leninist would be in favor of prison abolition (in a society with no imperialist threat and after sufficient time to ensure everyone was in fact having their needs met)?
In the letter he attached, he concluded with something vague that I think could be hinting at announcing a new third party or him moving to an existing third party. I like that Jason Hickel and Shaun have pointed out this could be the moment to start the difficult fight of replacing dems with a different party, and tbh demsocs might be the ones to do it. I'm obviously not a fan of 
over 
, but if the party is (more) resilient to capitalist interests (and the FBI doesn't stop him) then it could lead to meaningful socialist policy changes.
Thanks for the recommendations, I'll get started reading them. I just want to make sure its clear, I was not trying to argue materialists must be biological absolutionists or otherwise have rigid views on sex and gender. Even as I was writing it, it just didn't make sense to me that materialism would argue for objective natural phenomena but also argue its in constant motion, that just really seemed to be what the wiki page described. I know queer liberation is a strict requirement of the leftist movement, and I know everyone here are allies. I'll gladly go improve my understanding on the subject with the resources you've provided, thank you.
I've been thinking about social constructs a lot and doing a lot of research into them, and I've basically come to support the idea of constructivism: that essentially all of reality is a social construct, and that everything only exists through our subjective experience of it. That even science itself is our constructed understanding of the physical world, not the physical world itself. That basically everything new we experience is manipulated by the context of our own previous experiences, which is both shaped by and shapes our understanding of the world.
I think this understanding is important, because it disproves all arguments that essentially go "that's just the way it is", or otherwise try to root themselves in alleged objective truths about the world. For example, transphobes have used sex (as opposed to gender) as "objective" so they can argue about fairness in sports or some other transphobic bs. But our definition of sex is just as subjective - socially constructed - let alone any notion of fairness in sports being at all objective.
But on here, with everyone talking about materialism vs idealism, it sure seems like constructivism is the same idea as idealism, which Marx et al argued against. I've read through the prolewiki pages on idealism and dialectical materialism and it seems its just the part about objective reality that I disagree on. e.g. I agree with all but the first bullet point in the list in the introduction of https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism.
To put the sex and gender example above in idealist vs materialist terms, I think my understanding is that an idealist would argue that sex and gender are subjective, and that by changing our ideas about sex and gender we can make material change on things like trans rights. A materialist would argue that there is an objective natural phenomena that we refer to as sex, but that that phenomena is in constant motion and by guiding that change we can change our ideas of sex and gender. To me, the idealist just makes a lot more sense here, but I'm frustrated by that because apparently Marx considered materialism a foundational theory for leftist ideologies, and I don't know how to reconcile this.
Yes, I think I'm definitely in alignment with you and the hexbear community at large on what our goals shold be now.
I'm not totally sure I fall in the realm of anarchist, because I typically still want voting and some form of organizing, I just don't like the power structure and needless abstraction of representatives. I typically describe an ideal form of society as one composed of many small communities, that are sufficiently small for consensus democracies to be effective. That is, every rule is workshopped until it has unanimous support. So there are still rules, but through discussion and compromise, everyone supports every rule they follow. Travel and migration should be freely allowed, so people can find communities they are politically compatible with (perhaps by finding someone to trade houses with or asking to move in with someone). For projects that require scale to be reasonable, such as a form of currency for trading or a rail line or something, these communities can form coalitions, where decisions still require unanimity from a larger amount of people now, but only on the policies relevant to the coalition.
The point is, the above still follows what I think the spirit of anarchism is: spreading power as thinly as possible, treating individuals as equals and preventing them from being subjugated by another.
I don't think that what I described would be allowed to exist today due to imperialism, but I see it as an ideal that can be achieved eventually, as the contradictions of capital inevitably lead to a more equal and just society. That is, since socialism/communism are more stable than capitalism, eventually a society such as I described shouldn't have to be strong enough (militaristically nor controlling information) to defend itself against imperialism, and can then just peacefully exist.
I think he's had enough bad takes to be worth avoiding. Tbh I feel like all YT commentary channels are worth culling
Back in the GG days I was following various anti-woke sources/creators (read kotakuinaction, watched JP, shoe, Chris ray gun, etc.). Since then I've obviously left that whole sphere (I mainly attribute this to innuendo studios tbh), but it's interesting to see that Brianna Wu has made just everyone dislike her. I hope she sees the light someday, because honestly it feels pretty weird to still be disliking one of the people GG attacked.
Edit: other notable figures in my radicalization are Hasan and second thought, and my wife and I have had a bit of a radicalizing feedback loop. Then I discovered lemmy during the API thing, found out about hexbear because of everyone talking about how scary it is, and choosing to check it out myself and finding it incredible based.
I have a job in software development, and I enjoy the work I do, my coworkers, and the pay is quite good. However, management keeps the work environment very... unsympathetic. Despite it being a programming job it's very strict on working in office, and there's a vibe of everyone just being a mistake or two away from being fired. This came to a head for me when I had a child recently and when my spouse was a couple weeks from her due date she started struggling to get out of bed to use the restroom or get food. However, when I requested to work from home so I could just briefly help her out a couple times a day (a frequency and duration of break which is totally fine in the office), I was made to start my paternity leave early.
I worry about coming across as out of touch, since having paternity leave at all makes me super fortunate, but it feels absolutely terrible having to give that time up and spend it without my kid because of my company's resoluteness on this matter. (Side note: they've explained it to me as not wanting to make exceptions / "play favorites", while not acknowledging that they themselves can just make the rule that you can be remote at will, when your spouse needs help, etc.) It's enough for me to start looking at other opportunities when I am able, but I'm back at work without any bites. I just wish to work someplace that feels like it cares about its employees more. But man, job hunts are just so draining, and since my salary expectations are quite a bit higher than they were when I first got this job, the hunt hasn't actually gotten any easier from me having professional experience. I just want somewhere I can work remote so I can spend more time with my kids, and as a pie in the sky optional requirement I want a democratic workplace, where I can more realistically expect business decisions to be in the employees' best interests. But the very very few of those that exist are not really looking for new members, and with the kid already here I can't take a risk on starting a new co-op that could take months to years to become financially solvent, if ever.
Realistically I can just keep working here which I realize puts me in a much more fortunate position than so many fellow humans, but I can feel the stress increase as the employees continue to get spread thinner and thinner, while the company's massive success YOY does not proportionally scale to our own benefits or salaries increasing, and the parental leave incident has just left an incredibly sour taste in my mouth. I'm just not sure what to do.
I have a trans friend who lives in Italy and they are very very right leaning and transphobic over there. The friend herself spouts some pretty conservative takes every so often, like when she told my wife, who doesn't have a job, that she thinks those without jobs don't deserve housing or health care... Which was especially insulting because we'd been letting her stay with us for free as well.
Point is, I don't think Americans escaping to Italy makes sense
I'm not sure how it would happen to an entire country like the US - obviously no amount of "vote harder" will make that happen - but figured it's already being experimented with on more local levels.
I think theoretically the whole voluntary association part of anarchism would handle the issue of "forcing" (via authority) anarchism on others. Of course, that's easier said then done in a world where just picking up your life and moving somewhere else is so non trivial.
Side note, but it really feels like online communities can do anarchism much better, since the voluntary association bit is so much more feasible online. I could see a nice lemmy instance or something that's run by charging each member a tiny amount, enough to pay for hosting (I can't imagine it'd be more than a few cents per person), and the policies of the instance would be fully democratically decided on. Bans would be decided by the community, etc.
I consider myself pretty anti-authoritarian myself, and thought that's what anarchism was as well. The whole point in my mind of anarchy is to find small communities that can typically mostly agree on issues, and they then vote democratically (either direct democracy or something like consensus democracy to help against majority rule). So there's still rules, just no power structure. Is that an accurate representation of anarchism? And how would that compare to anti-authoritarianism?
I would not advise connecting without a VPN, for obvious reasons. The slow down is expected and the magnitude of it will be dependent on the server you're connecting to.
What I'd recommend is configuring the torrent client specifically to use the VPN, assuming it supports it (I personally use transmission inside a docker container so I don't know how you'll want to set it up with qbittottent)
I'm aware of stonetoss and Shaun. What's the specific beef this is referencing?
I'm part of the incremental community and also anarchism and socialism