there’s this anarchist meme i keep seeing along the lines of “oh, we don’t propose any blueprints or program for society, instead we just intend to allow the people to decide for themselves how best to make decisions collectively” and it’s like….. you realize that you, also, are people? “the people” is not some abstract force separate from yourself, but rather something you are immersed in, and a part of?
like there’s this idea in some segments of the anarchist left that we should destroy capitalism and the state without having any game plan for what mode of social organization to replace it with, because we should “let the people” decide that, but like…. “the people” includes us! we can start the process by which we collectively create a model for a better world right now! i agree that we should avoid falling into the trap of reverting to a top-down hierarchical vanguardist model, but that doesn’t mean we have to abstain from discussion of specific ideas about how we might organize a post-capitalist society.
valerian house archive 