this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2025
364 points (97.2% liked)
196
5483 readers
560 users here now
Be sure to follow the rule before you head out.
Rule: You must post before you leave.
Other rules
Behavior rules:
- No bigotry (transphobia, racism, etc…)
- No genocide denial
- No support for authoritarian behaviour (incl. Tankies)
- No namecalling
- Accounts from lemmygrad.ml, threads.net, or hexbear.net are held to higher standards
- Other things seen as cleary bad
Posting rules:
- No AI generated content (DALL-E etc…)
- No advertisements
- No gore / violence
- Mutual aid posts are not allowed
NSFW: NSFW content is permitted but it must be tagged and have content warnings. Anything that doesn't adhere to this will be removed. Content warnings should be added like: [penis], [explicit description of sex]. Non-sexualized breasts of any gender are not considered inappropriate and therefore do not need to be blurred/tagged.
Also, when sharing art (comics etc.) please credit the creators.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us on our matrix channel or email.
Other 196's:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I mean, communism is a structure of government and rules. Anarchy is... Not?
I mean, I'm fine with them in reality (better than capitalists, no doubt) but how do you square the circle that "your watch is yours" when you don't buy anything and resources are finite? Doesn't matter if the people own the means, if the watch factory can only pump out 50 watches a day and 100 people want the watch, half of them don't get it. Like, I know the reality is they'll make another 50 tomorrow, so you'll have suckers like me thinking "Well, I can wait until tomorrow. Let another person get their watch today," but what if I'm the only one to think that?
I dunno, feels like differentiating between folk punk and anti-folk.
Both ideologies goals are a moneyless, classless society, and eventual dissolving of a state government. They just disagree on how to get there, which is a huge oversimplification. But not as big as an oversimplification as what you just described. I think you should try reading the literature on it dude.
Whilst many anarchists are in favour of abolishing private property, that's not the same as abolishing personal property. I've seen a few different definitions of those two terms, but one of the simpler ways to think about it is that private property tends to be the "capital" part of capitalism.
In your watch example, if there were more people wanting a watch than watches being made, then it might make sense to first ask who has need of a new watch, and who simply wants one. There's no reason why people who want a new watch can't have one — they might just have to wait a bit longer. Perhaps another answer might be to ask whether you have any skills or tools that would be useful in making more watches, if they are in high demand. Even if not, there would likely be things you could do to help out the people making watches that could help them to boost capacity — helping out with some of their domestic labour, for example. I don't see this as being a scenario where you directly trade your labour for a watch, but rather helping to fill a niche in your community (though I do think that it would be reasonable to expect that helping out would lead to you getting a watch quicker than you wanted). That's just my take on this hypothetical though, and I'm just one anarchist.
Though it's important to clarify that whilst a communist system would be more structured than an anarchist one, anarchism doesn't involve a complete lack of rules or structures. I think that one of the reasons why this misconception is so common is because anarchism, as an ideology or political philosophy, is far more diverse and scattered than communist theory, but the development of the theory is distinct from what the development of society under that theory would look like. For instance, if we were ever at a point where we were operating under anarchism, I'd imagine that the intellectual tradition of anarchism would look quite different to what it does now — I imagine there'd be a lot of consolidation of ideas, for example.
But if you were right and you were the only person who was willing to wait until tomorrow, then all that would mean is that we'd have to figure out how to manage the demand. I don't see that as being a problem really, and more just an innate facet of life, because as you highlight, there's always going to be times when the available resources are less than the demand. A real world example that is coming to mind is a local housing co-op near me that's always got more interest than availability. They have rules about what is required for someone to get a place on the waiting list, as well as guidelines that they use to prioritise people within that waiting list. To me, this is a small slice of what anarchism could look like in practice, in this particular context — whilst they obviously are beholden to the law, the actual rules that make up the bulk of their governance are decided on and managed by the co-op.
Though for what it's worth, if you did hold off on getting a watch out of consideration for others who wanted one, I wouldn't call that being a sucker — I'd call it being a good citizen. For me, anarchism is about asking the question of "okay, what would it take for there to be more people who are able and willing to be a good citizen?". We're so far away from that level that it's hard to imagine what an anarchist world could look like, but I don't have a problem with that when there are so many examples of regular, everyday anarchism that is already working well that I can try to understand and work towards in different contexts
Great examples. I grew up in a coop, so that life way really resonates with me. I also feel like actually existing anarchism will be just as different from "on paper" communism or capitalism are from their real world instantiations (that's not to sound pessimistic, but just that it'll probably be different).
There's also the question of what "large scale" anarchism (if that even makes sense) will look like. My opinion is that the daily experience of anarchism will be similar to existing in a coop, and anything at a higher level of collaboration will be some new type of social structure that will rise out of the anarchism practiced at the more human/local levels.
(It could also just be that I lack the boldness of imagination to picture anything too far out of my experience.)p
Sorry if I'm talking past you at all. I kind of read your comment in little bitty breaks over a four hour shift, and just getting around to commenting now. :)
You're not talking past me at all; I really appreciate your points.
In particular, I find the question of large scale anarchism interesting also. This will seem slightly tangenty, but bear with me: I find myself reminded of how there are people who criticise groups who call themselves "Queers for Palestine" by arguing that the people who use this slogan would face significantly more oppression in Palestine than in America. That may or may not be true, but I don't care about that because regardless of the current state of LGBTQ rights in Palestine, it is obvious that being subject to a genocide would put a damper on Palestinians who would be pushing for queer liberation.
Even if Palestine were free, I still wouldn't have much understanding or context to predict what the pathway towards LGBTQ liberation in Palestine would look like, because it would be ignorant to assume that things would take the same path and reach the same endpoint as queer liberation in the US (and given that that battle isn't going to great over here, it seems good that we wouldn't be serving as a direct template for activism and progress in other places of the world). I don't need to know any of this to advocate for people's freedom and self determination though.That's the sweet thing about solidarity — it implicity is a thing that occurs between people who you recognise as being like you in some way (such as through shared plight, or through basic personhood), but are different. There's a sense in surrendering to not knowing the other person, but trusting them to know themselves, and to work together to negotiate a common good.
It's pretty freeing actually, because it means that I don't need to know how to fix the entire world — I can mostly focus on the parts that I know and can meaningfully affect, because that's part of my duty to the world. I do also need to pay some attention to the wider world beyond that which I know, but for that, I mainly need to listen to and work to understand the concerns of people embedded within communities other than my own. If some people are deprived of the opportunity to speak or to build communities then I need to do what I can to fight for their freedom. But beyond that, my duty to the world mostly just involves a lot of listening and waiting to see other people will do.
At risk of muddying things up further with a poorly developed analogy, I think that biology can be a good way to imagine complex organisation. Like, to what extent does a liver cell need to know how the brain is organised? I reckon less so than it would need to understand the arrangement of its fellow hepatocytes within the same tissue. A red blood cell probably wouldn't need to understand how a nucleus works, just that most cells have one that they store their DNA in, but red blood cells don't. It certainly wouldn't need to know about weird mechanistic stuff like nucleoporins (proteins embedded in the nucleus). Anything info that's important can be communicated by hormones, or nerve signals, or stuff embedded in a cells outer membrane (like antigens).
I am more tired than I realised, so that got pretty rambly. I hope you get the vibes I'm trying to convey. As thanks for your patience, enjoy this [TL;DR in a meme format] (https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/1a1c7042-d583-464b-8d25-af9e36b57c21.jpeg)
Omg I love it, thank you.
I think your message came across well: we don't need to know every part of a system for it to be a good and working system.
Actually, it would be ridiculous to expect a plan to come fully formed, ready to be rolled out and implemented as-is. I'm sure there will need to be learnings and adaptations along the way, in collaboration with the many different people implementing anarchism.
If the state does not wither away and instead grows into a dense jungle, you have rolled a 1 on your communism check.