Seems the concept of “winning” only meaningfully applies to rationally or emotionally coherent systems. In a way, the anarchist stance is to resist genocide and ratcheting inequality by opposing “winning” (defined as totalization of system) in favor of ecosystem.
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This works right up until the point where a bunch of statists kick down the door and shoot everyone inside.
Which they are wont to do.
That's the crux of my point. How do you prevent *that* in an anarchist context? I haven't seen a good answer. It always ends in state violence.
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And much as I love a good last stand, I just don't see the merit in getting a bunch of good people killed for very small gains that don't last.
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When it comes to assessing social gains of disobedience and resistance, there are a few broader considerations. First, when have we ever seen states reduce the power of the ruling class in favor of the masses without major unrest, mass protests, strikes, desertions, riots etc?
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Pretty sure the answer is: zero. Mass resistance of this kind is produced by enough people sticking their necks out that wave upon wave of new groups join them.
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Another consideration is that for every act of highly visible resistance there are many acts of lesser anarchy that get no publicity yet have cumulative effect. Inspiration to small but numerous secretive acts of sabotage, defection, losing paperwork, slow-walking—this adds up.
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We’re powerfully trained to be socially compliant even when we recognize that we’re complicit in stupidity or evil. So seeing others refuse compliance has power. And daily exercise of small acts of defiance make possible larger acts when our moment arrives.
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Yes, my problem is not with subversion or disobedience which, one might add, are not anarchist tactics per se.
(Was Gandhi an anarchist? Was Havel? Mandela?)
My problem isn't even really with anarchism, but...
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... with the not inconsiderable number of anarchists who talk grandiosely about how all states and nations are illegitimate and must be dissolved.
And this without any theory for how to do so that hasn't repeatedly proved unequal to the task, obviously, since it's some goal!
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So anarchism becomes a sort of toolbox ideology, good for working cracks into totalizing systems.
But to actually create a better society at scale, I think we need more..
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I want to go from 1 billion starving people to near-zero, wanton waste & pollution to something the planet can absorb. How to get there is the big question, for me
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The other side of anarchism is mutualism, the whole social toolbox of cooperative strategies by which free people care for each other, cultivating and protecting the commons from seizure and privatization.
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This mutualism is what state and capital have eroded so badly that we scarcely believe it could exist even when we hear about communities who live in mutuality.
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