…other users had questioned whether the term ‘Free Territory’ had any basis in reliable sources. I was a little surprised. This was the term that I had used for years, one that was inextricably linked in my mind with the Makhnovists. This could not just be some random neologism coined by Wikipedia… right?...
Inklusibo’s new manual on housing rights provides an in-depth narrative of the urban poor’s right to housing and livable spaces. This is the first free publication under the Housing and Living Spaces category.
I. Occupations are effective because they are disruptive. The April 1968 occupations shut down the entire university for over a week. This forced the administration to concede to their demands, even after the movement faced repression....
Maybe they won’t and for a time they’ll live in their filth and starve. But who wants to live like that? Since time immemorial people have been finding ways to feed and clean themselves and others without notions of profit, wages, division of labor, mute compulsion of work or starve, etc. People have figured this out before and we can do so again.
Surely you clean your own house and stock your own food, if not cook it yourself? The same compulsion that drives one to clean their own homes and feed themselves will continue to exist on a societal scale even after work has been abolished.
Antiwork does not mean unpleasant tasks will disappear, rather that these will vs collectively managed in a way to maximize leisure. In the book The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, a book that has a lot of antiwork themes, people take turns cleaning and dedicate 1 day out of 10 to take their turn doing chores in their community. Every other day they’re free to self-actualize in whatever way they see fit. There are some parts of the book that isn’t antiwork, like a machine that sometimes assigns people to only manual labor when they’d rather write, but generally the book isn’t a model for antiwork and that plot point was part of the central drama of the text.
What if people refuse to help clean or take turns doing unpleasant jobs if they are able, however minimized it has been made? In the The Dispossessed, this is mentioned. In the book, those people are treated differently, and people regard them less. Think of it if you had a roommate who is a slob. You’d be contemptuous of them. But who wants to be held in contempt? People want to be liked. The cost of these tasks is no longer “work or starve” but “help out or you’ll be disliked.”
There will be other ways to persuade. I cannot recount them all. And if they persist? Let them. It is better that a few freeloaders live than everyone live under a regime of work.
Anthropology has a lot to teach us on how people dealt with such large-scale endeavors without the state. If there’s conflict, they find a mediator or perhaps hold a meeting between the two groups to hash these things out. Sometimes, two groups would go to war. But anarchy is not merely statelessness, it means a society of consent and collaboration without hierarchy. Previous forms of statelessness may see peoples going to war or exert hierarchy with one another over any sort of disagreement or conflict, but anarchy means means a commitment to figuring out how to settle conflict and disagreements without hierarchy. So yes, anthropology has a lot to teach us on how people dealt with conflict in healthy ways. Sometimes they’d settle conflict in violent ways, but our purpose is to learn from these and do better.
tl;d: how is this done? talk to each other and learn from how people mediated conflict without states.
During the Ukrainian Revolution, there were all sorts of gangs that emerged that killed Jews and stuff. What did anarchists do? They killed those pogromists in turn. Under conditions of anarchy, there is no state that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence to punish those who break the “social contract.” Rather, there is a plurality of violence that various groups can inflict on offenders. If you fuck around, you will find out.
Is this a violent sort of life? Not really. It’s not as if Indigenous or pre-state peoples live in violence all the time. Sure, violence did happen, so what?, violence happens all the time under state societies too. The difference is that without a state, people cannot call on a higher power to coerce so they have to rely on each other to keep each other safe. Besides, the people doing the raping, stealing, and killing in state societies are precisely the people protected by privilege and the state. Under conditions of anarchy, such privileges mean very little.
I think you’re fundamentally misunderstanding that social relationships to harm are fundamentally changed under conditions of anarchy. I apologize for the misunderstanding as writing on obscure forums doesn’t exactly encourage me to write with vigor.
Of course there would be a plurality of violence under conditions of anarchy, but this does not fundamentally mean the rule of vigilantism. Right now, people have been dealing with harm without the state for generations. These are found in criminalized communities like Black and Indigenous people, people who use drugs, people who engage in sex work, etc. These people develop mechanisms by which to deal with harm without the state and oftentimes without engaging in vigilantism. For these people, vigilantism is not a court of first resort but a last resort. Vigilantism puts a target on their back from the state. Instead, they talk it out, develop safety plans, plan boycotts and bans, etc.
Rather than thinking of justice in anarchic terms as vigilantism, think of it in terms of people dealing with harm and conflict in healthy ways.
Why is a theory of Asian anarchism necessary? The reasons that I believe it is important to create a theory of Asian anarchism can be boiled down to the following points....
The authors of the genocide in Palestine today is the Israeli settler state led by Netanyahu and supported by Biden. Of course the comparisons to Hitler are justified. Your comment reads as genocide denial within that context. These Hitler comparisons not fall from the sky but was developed in context. If you really are outspoken about your support of Palestinians, then it would have been obvious why these comparisons are made.
And what? You happy with these self-congratulating fucks cook us alive with their inaction? Be serious. Bully Biden until he phases out fossil fuels or overthrow the government. Pick one and don’t bother me with your contentment.
We Carry a Free Territory in Our Hearts: How Wikipedia Fabricated an Anarchist State (www.thecommoner.org.uk)
…other users had questioned whether the term ‘Free Territory’ had any basis in reliable sources. I was a little surprised. This was the term that I had used for years, one that was inextricably linked in my mind with the Makhnovists. This could not just be some random neologism coined by Wikipedia… right?...
Resisting Evictions of the Urban Poor: A Resource for Housing Rights Advocates (www.inklusibo.org)
Inklusibo’s new manual on housing rights provides an in-depth narrative of the urban poor’s right to housing and livable spaces. This is the first free publication under the Housing and Living Spaces category.
First We Take Columbia: Lessons from the April 1968 occupations movement (illwill.com)
I. Occupations are effective because they are disruptive. The April 1968 occupations shut down the entire university for over a week. This forced the administration to concede to their demands, even after the movement faced repression....
Happy May Day! (slrpnk.net)
Alt text:...
Some clarifications on antiwork
Yes, it’s true: before work was invented everyone lived in their own filth and starved all the time because work hadn’t been invented yet....
How Anarchy Works [Andrewism] (www.youtube.com)
Piped / Invidious...
We want the zero hour work week! (slrpnk.net)
Workers of the world, stop working! (slrpnk.net)
The Basis & Preliminary Examination for a Theory of Asian Anarchism (www.thecommoner.org.uk)
Why is a theory of Asian anarchism necessary? The reasons that I believe it is important to create a theory of Asian anarchism can be boiled down to the following points....
obey (slrpnk.net)
water gallon bottle (slrpnk.net)
The purpose of a system is what it does. The police do not protect us. (slrpnk.net)
Please vote for 99% Hitler 🥺
https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/38a7e909-7c3f-4621-991f-5bd965914c78.webp...
Target is the only reasonable vote for climate! (slrpnk.net)
Hillary did the meme “liberals would vote for Biden even if he drank the blood of an infant only because Trump drank the blood of 1.25 infants.”
“It galls me that a new Fascism should choose to use the experience of the victims of the earlier Fascism among its justifications.” (slrpnk.net)
Read “Anti-Semitism and the Beirut Pogrom” by Fredy Perlman