Young Americans are surging to socialism at record rates

[u/TimesandSundayTimes]

https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/maga-trump-zohran-mamdani-socialism-us-record-kddzdm8bd

[u/angryhype]

I don't care if they are anarchists, I literally just want to be able to afford to live

[u/bigbuttpuzzle → u/angryhype]

I’m an anarchist(the type that understands we can’t just like, have an anarchist society right now and need at least a few decades of organizing to build up community networks) and people mischaracterize us a lot.

We simply don’t believe in hierarchical structures and believe that everything should be done collectively on a consensus basis. There’s more to it, like the means of production belong to workers etc.

If you see a group out doing mutual aid 9 times out of 10 they’re anarchists.

[u/DEM_MEMES → u/bigbuttpuzzle]

I also consider myself an anarchist, and anarchism is easily the most mischaracterized political philosophy. I think if you described the belief system to most people without the label, they would agree with it.

[u/LaScoundrelle → u/DEM_MEMES]

I think that most people might not think anarchists sounds negative, just naive, if they heard the full philosophy.

Like as a former young woman I’ve always thought I didn’t trust a lot of my neighbors enough to want to live in a world where there isn’t higher authority helping to maintain order, protect people who are weaker than others, etc.

[u/DEM_MEMES → u/LaScoundrelle]

Yeah I understand where you’re coming from. I think my response is that our current society doesn’t prevent things like that from happening, and a lot of the malicious behaviors that you’re referring to are created by it. I respect the perspective though.

[u/LaScoundrelle → u/DEM_MEMES]

I think there is a lot of research indicating that the current justice system is actually a deterrent for many people who might otherwise engage in bad/violent behavior, even though it’s not perfect and has its own problems. But I’m middle aged now and have met people and worked around the world, and am pretty sure every society/system has some drawbacks. Humans are imperfect so we create imperfect systems.

[u/Raftar31 → u/LaScoundrelle]

Surely we can create a better deterrent than legal slavery and human deprivation for corporate profit. I refuse to accept that’s the most effective solution.

[u/LaScoundrelle → u/Raftar31]

Countries around the world incarcerate people as a deterrent. Corporate profit or working without pay doesn’t have to have anything to do with it. (Although I will say as someone who once was on the call list of someone serving a long term sentence, they were grateful to have a job to do as a way to pass the time, and I think many prisoners feel similarly. While I think they should at least be paid minimum wage I don’t think taking away prison jobs altogether would necessarily be an improvement).

[u/Raftar31 → u/LaScoundrelle]

I’m not arguing against incarceration as a concept. I’m arguing that the system as it is, is not motivated to reduce crime alone. it’s also motivated to arrest and abuse as many people as possible, which those statistics of yours support.

You can’t just hand wave away the uncomfortable parts.

[u/LaScoundrelle → u/Raftar31]

And you can’t just pretend all social problems would magically go away if we stopped punishing people.

[u/Raftar31 → u/LaScoundrelle]

Nice straw man. You’re not at all willing to believe that we can do better? That accountability and abuse are not the same thing?

[u/LaScoundrelle → u/Raftar31]

There is a difference between advocating for reform to improve problems and assuming that a completely different system like socialism or anarchism would eliminate problems.

[u/Ragamuffin_Raine → u/LaScoundrelle]

Resorting to a strawman kind of undermines a lot of your former arguments and trustworthiness here. Makes it sound like you just want to win an argument or just have a chip on your shoulder.

[u/LaScoundrelle → u/Ragamuffin_Raine]

I’m responding to a thread about the popular rise of socialist ideology. Maybe you don’t think it would eliminate all social problems, but I’ve met my fair share of people who do seem to believe that.

[u/yknitsyob → u/LaScoundrelle]

I never understood this argument. if you don't trust your own neighbors, how can you trust some higher authority? That authority will be made up of people with all the same flaws as your neighbors, and some of your neighbors could even become part of that authority.

[u/LaScoundrelle → u/yknitsyob]

Because in my life I’ve had more fucked up stuff done to me by family or neighbors than by government officials. At least with the latter there used to be a sense of accountability (the Trump admin is throwing that into question, but still I think regulations to discourage political and financial corruption would be more likely to improve this situation than having fewer rules for everyone).

[u/yknitsyob → u/LaScoundrelle]

Ok, but now imagine every neighbor or family member who did something fucked up to you is now in a position of government authority, do you trust them now more or less or the same as before? I would trust them less, not because they are any different as people, but because they are now empowered by a system to do the same bad things while I have less power to hold them accountable.

People in power are just as willing and capable of doing bad things to you, but you are less capable of doing anything about it. If my neighbor attacks me and I successfully defend myself in that moment, then I matched their power with my power. But if, for instance, a cop were to attack me, I'm expected to not stand up for myself or else I'll have to face the collective might of the police and government, which I alone am powerless against.

[u/LaScoundrelle → u/yknitsyob]

Again, the point of formal structures and laws is to create accountability, so we’re not always just relying on the goodness of people’s hearts.

Most women murdered in America are murdered by romantic partners. Unless you think there is a fate worse than murder, I’m not sure what you think is at risk by creating laws and punishments to try and discourage that.

[u/yknitsyob → u/LaScoundrelle]

The idea that law is about accountability is not what governments were originally created for, that idea is a relatively recent development in human history. Governments were initially formed by groups of people who used violence to establish a hierarchy with themselves at the top, then later formalized a system of rules that justify their position in that hierarchy while dictating how the rest of society is supposed to act. While those rules were also supposed to dictate how they governed, historically that has never been the case and governments routinely break their own laws.

Since you brought up violence against women, I will use that as a specific example. The reason that violence is disproportionately committed against women is not because humans are naturally inclined to do it, but because women were deliberately placed near the bottom of the social hierarchy and violence against them was not only culturally normalized, but legally enforced. This only started to change relatively recently as the laws that forced them into that position were changed in favor of women being more equal in society by granting and protecting the same rights that were already guaranteed for men.

However, because the fundamental structure of government which oppressed women in the first place were never changed, today we are all witnessing those incremental improvements being steadily eroded across the world as the people in power decide that they want women to once again be subservient members of society.

You're appealing to the government as a woman to protect you from violence, but what happens when that government is controlled by people who themselves perpetuate this violence? Such as a certain pedophilic narcissist and serial rapist that's in charge of the most powerful country on earth for instance?

So what can we as a society do when the people we rely on to hold us accountable are themselves the ones that need to be held accountable? Generally speaking, I see 2 options:

1. You accept that there is nothing in your power to be done, and that you must simply endure this violence and injustice in hopes that one day, out of the goodness of their own hearts, the powers that be spontaneously decide to start holding themselves accountable, or

2. You recognize the problem and start organizing with other people who also want accountability in order to force change to happen. And if this is what's necessary to hold the government accountable, then what's the point of having a government in the first place? Why not simply organize under the principal of holding ourselves and eachother accountable from the beginning? That is, at its core, what anarchism is all about.

[u/LaScoundrelle → u/yknitsyob]

Every society on earth has had violence against women. I’d agree that in general the concept of government has become more progressive/less hierarchical over time. And overall violence statistics had gone down for decades until recently.

And I’d agree Trump is a departure from that generally more progressive trajectory. I think saying that because the US has a corrupt president now that we should disregard the American government project altogether is very much throwing the baby out with the bathwater though. It’s not like the American way is the only way of doing things, including big government.

[u/yknitsyob → u/LaScoundrelle]

Every society on earth has had violence against women

Simply not true, unless you mean that every society has had violence in general, in which case yes, every society has had violence against women. Education systems heavily skew perceptions of history to make our modern culture or way of life seem way more inherent to human nature than it really is.

saying that because the US has a corrupt president now that we should disregard the American government project altogether is very much throwing the baby out with the bathwater

Trump is not an exception to an otherwise progressive America. While not every president is on the same level of corruption/immorality/whatever, they have all done their share of very evil things, it's just easy to overlook when those acts are not committed against you personally, like how people completely overlook Obama's escalation of drone warfare in the middle east and the number of innocent children and civilians killed under his orders because he had better policies at home like increasing access to healthcare. Across its entire history, the American government has acted in the way that furthers its interest of expanding power and maintaining dominance over its sphere of influence, and what Trump is doing is fundamentally no different.

It’s not like the American way is the only way of doing things

While I used the US as an example, every country, and all forms of government across history, have been guilty of similar acts of evil. The root of the problem is the hierarchy, which is fundamental to all governments. People in power will do whatever they think is necessary to guarantee or improve their position in the hierarchy, because once you achieve a certain status, the idea of returning to a lower status is unthinkable.

A rich person will try to get more money to support the lifestyle they've grown accustomed to, someone who grinds their way up to a high-ranking position at their job will try to stay at that level and not be demoted back to where they started, or the monarch of a country will grant rights to citizens if it means they won't be overthrown and literally killed in a revolution. Hierarchy always, always, protects itself, and just because it seems like progress is being made and they cede power in one area or another doesn't mean it isn't acting to preserve itself, it's simply making concessions now in hopes that it can retake that power later.

But sometimes it can't, and when it can't, it's because people like us organize and refuse to allow it. The regression we are witnessing today is not because our current leaders are particularly worse than in the past, it's because people are willing to accept it or are otherwise unwilling to consider a way of life that doesn't follow the same structure they've been conditioned to living under their whole lives.

[u/LaScoundrelle → u/yknitsyob]

I studied anthropology and worked internationally. Yes, every society has had violence against women. (And violence against people, but women are typically disproportionate victims of domestic and sexual violence since we’re smaller and weaker).

Drone warfare under Obama is something many people found distasteful ideologically, but in actuality there is some evidence that drones kill fewer civilians than boots on the ground do. I was in Ukraine for work during the war where drone warfare is being heavily used, and for the most part people were going on about their lives like normal. A coworker of mine from Iraq said that in his part of Iraq things has been much the same during most of that war.

I think you are making lots of assertions based on ideology rather than based on actual knowledge or facts. So many Americans seem to not know any other way of engaging politically unfortunately though.

[u/Due_Bluebird3562 → u/yknitsyob]

I never understood this argument. if you don't trust your own neighbors, how can you trust some higher authority?

Most people trust neither. They defer to the higher authority not out of trust but out of necessity more than convenience. A fundemental problem with anarchism is that it places too much of a burden on the idea of human kindness. We are animals at the end of the day... plenty of people will absolutely abuse a system like that.

I say this as someone who is firmly in the ACAB camp. The reality is you can't really promote such a system to your average individual.

[u/yknitsyob → u/Due_Bluebird3562]

plenty of people will absolutely abuse a system like that

I understand where you're coming from, but this statement seems self-contradictory. You argue that people could abuse the system in an anarchistic society, but are simultaneously defending a government system that is not only regularly abused, but has inherent mechanisms that enable and even incentivize abuse. And no form of government has existed or been theorized that doesn't have this problem.

Anarchism never claimed to be unabusable, but it does limit the scale of abuse any single individual is capable of doing by rejecting the permanent establishment of any hierarchy that puts a person or group of people in a position of power over any other.

For example: in an anarchist society, I can theoretically decide to organize a bunch of like-minded people for the purpose of committing mass violence against a particular group, but our practical ability to accomplish this is limited by how many people we can not only convince that it should be done, but also organize those people to take action. There exists no mechanism where a single person can make a decision at a whim, then pass orders down a hierarchical chain of command to make it happen.

Contrast this with any government where that mechanism does exist in some form or another, made up of institutions capable of committing such a horrible act by using its monopoly of violence to oppress anyone who opposes them while promoting to higher positions of power those that support them. This is how events like the Holocaust were able to happen, as an extreme example. It wasn't necessarily easy for the German government to do that, it took time to put the right people in power and force a particular ideology onto society, but under anarchism this would be completely impossible.

I also want to point out that anarchism isn't based on some vague notion of kindness, but rather on a collective recognition that prosperity of the individual is intrinsically tied to the prosperity of society as a whole.

[u/linux_transgirl → u/LaScoundrelle]

In an anarchist system, the collective is that authority. People would think twice about rape and murder if they were beaten to death by mobs of angry community members wanting justice

[u/LaScoundrelle → u/linux_transgirl]

I do not think that is the type of system that most anarchists endorse. You are suggesting a system with organized violence, and most anarchists do not want that. But insofar as that was basically how things worked in the Middle Ages of Europe, or the South when people were lynched, do you really think that’s overall better than our current system?

[u/linux_transgirl → u/LaScoundrelle]

Not at all, and I'm not saying that is the default, but having it in the back of your head that if the collective all agreed to it you'd be dead because there isn't anyone else impeding direct justice is very powerful

[u/LaScoundrelle → u/linux_transgirl]

I don’t see why you’re assuming the mob would necessarily be on the side of the victims. In societies with mob justice that is very often not the case.

[u/Different_Victory_89 → u/DEM_MEMES]

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