Sending you so much care, Andrew. This is a wonderful installment to the body of work you present to the community. As a Quaker anarchist and a multigen one, I have no knowledge of philosophical, academic or written anarchism. I just am and know when it aligns or doesn't align. These breakdowns are so interesting.
Indeed. Reminds my of Stafford Beer's quote: "The purpose of a system is what it does. There is after all, no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do." Capitalism is not meant to meet our collective needs in sustainability and abundance. So why would we expect it to? And to build a new system we can't expect it to be top-down from state officials. It needs to be a grassroots, bottom-up, community by community approach. Linking one town after another through community co-operative design and mutual aid. We need more organizations to provide that model. I only know of One Small Town that is currently offering such a model. Somewhat soon may be something called "Integral" by Peter Joseph off the heels of the release of Zeitgeist: Requiem, whenever that is, but yeah, we could use more.
@@coolioso808 You're confusing an economic philosophy with a political one. China is politically communist with a capitalist economy, while "Nordic states" are generally socialist politically but economic capitalist, and Cuba is politically communist but recently experimenting with capitalism.
@@benrudolph5582 Are you speaking to me? When did I talk about different countries and their political philosophies? I'm saying the system of capitalism, which is world wide, is unsustainable and like Stafford Beer, that means it has proven it doesn't work and naturally that means a new system should replace it, but a viable one this time. All the countries in the world operate in money and markets to some degree so they are infected by the capitalist world order no matter what their political dressing may be. Capitalism and the state are married, that's nothing new. Going back hundreds of years, state and capital have been tied to each other and often in contradiction with the needs of the people. The people don't collectively own the means of production, do they? And so they get exploited and oppressed. The people don't own the land collectively, so they get get exploited and oppressed by the small minority of elites who do own and control it. This is a problem. A devastating problem. The struggle of the next 10-20 years will be to overcome capitalism and replace it with something better, some will call it socialism or communism, I'd call it a "viable economy" with contributionism and a big library socialist aspect to it.
@@dodec8449This isn't a "strawman", after all, talking about how the only Hobbes we should respect is the cartoon tiger, wasn't actually an argument about politicians, so if anything, YOU were misrepresenting a point being made about how the only Hobbes we should respect is the cartoon tiger, and so YOU were strawmanning by making the point that was made, into something that it isn't.
"The major problem-one of the major problems, for there are several-one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job." -Douglas Adams
@@TheLastOutlaw-KTSThen you could try Demarchy, electing a random individual. If you think there is a bias in that, there is but can be easily removed. For example: we have 360° internal angles in a circle. A dice has 6 sides, therefore each side represents 60°. Using 2 dices, you have 6 sides on each, making it 12, which can determine 360° : 12 = 30° angle per combo of sides from each dice. And this can go oon and oon. It doesn't need to count on sides, whether forward, behind, to right, to left or mixed. But it could work with distances. Imagine doing this somewhere in the crowd and the randomity determines the individual to have, power, OR, alternatively, be an Inspector for people to see how the elected by luck person uses their Power as a leader. Corruption is hard to remove but chances of it will be smaller than the regular Demarchy.
That's true with the rarest of exceptions. This is why we should focus all of our energy in our communities, not on fighting the existing system, but on building the new. Try One Small Town initiative, they are already starting in towns around the world. The right bottom-up structure in place. We could use more organizations like that, but at least one exists and is ready to be adopted by those towns that understand the need and value of it.
This philosophy has always interested me because it is, in some very significant ways, pretty flawed. It presumes the desire for control is rooted in negative reasons, and ignores the plausibility (and indeed, the rare reality) where a ruler desires the power to shape a world for the better. There even exists a counter-philosophy to this: that any who will rule should never come from those who do not desire to rule, as they will not do right by the power so vested in them. A leader who is unwilling to lead tends to make a poor leader. Instead, a ruler should be willing to rule, their decision making being tempered by their knowledge and in seeking good counsel. To rule should be to take full advantage of all means available to produce the best possible state. As the video here goes on to demonstrate: those system ultimately fails. No matter how good the intentions of a prospective ruler may be, they are too limited in their own scope to provide justly for the whole. My point, though, is that it’s a pretty illogical argument to believe someone who wants to lead will always be a bad leader. Indeed, it is one of the most important qualities of any leader, be they a ruler or a community figure devoid of authority.
People have been told that leadership is the answer for so long it's nearly impossible to convince them otherwise. But I've seen firsthand, how the powerful use leaders as a handle for control. If a movement has no leaders, you see rich people pleading with them to pick a leader. The big-man leader isn't the power. He's the leash. This is why solutions will never come from leadership.
@@lubu2960I suspect most people seem evidence that tells them otherwise almost every single day. What I would say is that our existing system does require leaders. As a symbol, mainly. I'm not literally led by the UK prime minister, for example. You could replace him with a stick tomorrow and tell me that the stick was our greatest leader, and I'd see no difference in my life.
Unpopular take on power: it doesn’t corrupt as much as it reveals what was already under the surface. Folks who were already going to fold at the first opportunity to exploit others will do just that.
@@enntheelementale7461 this doesn't explain why those who come from solidly revolutionary backgrounds seeking to solve problems caused by the system end up upholding the system and becoming counterrevolutionary after they've gained power. Such is the case with many marxist labor parties in Europe, including the UK's labor party.
@@otherperson worth noting those revolutionaries got power with a very big asterisk attached to it. They were going to fold on arrival. During the Cold War, the USSR granted munitions and other forms of support to communist revolutions across the global south and Central America on the condition that they all install a ruling class (like what the USSR had) to manage the new dictatorships that worked as proxy war pawns against US imperialism. The working class people of a lot of those countries were often left worse off after the revolution and why? Because the ruling class of the global superpowers were seizing all the resources and power they could through proxy wars fought in those already disadvantaged countries. It’s literally what happens when rich people get state apparatuses and try to do socialism… their way.
@@enntheelementale7461 While it definitely reveals the already corrupted, it also corrupts well-meaning and wise people. Part of it is the information funnel described in Seeing Like a State, a ruler can only see the schematic, simplified version of the top-down perspective, and cannot operate from the nuance and complexities of the localized view. Another issue is the tool of authority shape the way you approach problems, if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Another one is that even someone in a place of authority, has to abide by the system that legitimizes that authority. Fail to keep the support of the powerful classes or military, or fail to reinforce the foundational narrative giving the state legitimacy, and you're couped (which breeds paranoia). I'm sure there are more ways power corrupts even good people to some extent, but these are a few I could think of in the moment.
I find it funny how a species known for its quick adaptability submits itself to a system that adapts to environmental challenges at a snail’s pace. War and domination seem to be the only things that can wake the state from its sleep.
1:50 we see that the world is structured in hammers and nails and they defame us for recognizing and rejecting the nature of that relationship. Honestly the best analogy i’ve found and fits very well with Seeing Like a State and the sections in hierarchy of An Anarchist FAQ, very straightforward and covers many bases of why hierarchical systems are fundamentally flawed
That Proudhon quote was intense, long, insightful, verbose, and you presented a nice visual in this essay. Hearing the words following "at the slightest resistance" made me remember especially when younger wondering why the world and so many suffer despite all the "progress."
It took me til 38:55 but i finally understand why anarchism has made sense on a fundamental level to me and its what you said about the revolution not appearing as a singular moment of comeuppance. We are too complex for anything to be solved in one single sweep. Anarchism at its base level is the active ongoing process by which we recognize and appreciate the complexity of other humans/ourselves. Thats beautiful. Thank you for the video 💜
I am a Sociology PhD student and "Seeing Like A State" was assigned in an Environment and Development course I am taking. I loved it (despite him not being an anarchist) and I am so happy to see it featured here!!
I'm still working towards understanding what the alternative to state control would look like. I'm not quite sure I'm an anarchist, but I'm certainly glad to have the help of yourself and persons like yours to help me to realize that other options need to be more deeply studied if humanity is to ever survive to socially evolve in a meaningful way. All Power to all the people.
An alternative is pretty simple theoretically. Fundamentally a state is trying to solve problems between people. So all we need to ask is "How can we better solve problems between people?" Census democracy is compelling, where people can get together in however big of groups the situation requires and talk out the problem till a genuine consensus is found. And this is infinitely scalable. From tiny two person decisions to bigger regional discussions of broad land use.
anarchy and democracy are opposed in many way as consensus and veto power are also a tool of hierarchy. this is more complex than you think. i can tell you that consensus based politics works very good with small groups with similar interests but at some point it doesnt work anymore, you get into deadlock discussions or people make a fixed "consensus" (aka laws) and the consensus democracy defeated itself.
@@cottagehardcoreultrasw3998 Then the question becomes "How do we avoid deadlock" and there are a lot of possible answers to this that we can try out. There's also a necessary change in mindset that will allow this to function better too. People need to be educated and willingly to act on beliefs such as; Understanding that they can't always get what they want. That other people are living lives differently from them. That sometimes you're wrong, that that's okay, and that it's also okay to change your mind to something better. To not identify so much with an idea that you feel personally attacked when someone tries to change it or deny it. Etc. In theory, it's still very simple. And I understand in practice it's a lot more time consuming and there's a lot more to consider, but that only serves to muddy the water. And besides nothing is set in stone. We can observe problems and fix them as they arise. Such is living at all, nothing is perfect, and everything is changing.
You're still working your way towards an alternative because you haven't been presented with one and I suspect you might have to either move on or die waiting.
@@cottagehardcoreultrasw3998 Not really. the difference between consensus and laws is that there is a legitimate choice to not partake in whatever decision is reached. The one scientist that doesn't want to agree with what the rest of the scientific community has come to consensus on, for whatever reason, is either free to go publish bad papers and make an ass of themselves, or accept it and go with the group until they have better evidence otherwise. Likewise in a normal community, there's no compulsion as there is under law. You don't "codify" the consensus, there are no anarcho-police.
This was one of my favourites of yours, thanks. I came to anarchism through questioning our existing systems, it was refreshing to know that I wasn't going mad and that many better and more intelligent people before me had reached similar conclusions about the way we are governed. Thank you for your excellent breakdown of it.
@@jimmyjohnson1870I think they were saying that they started reading and saying it at 18 but now even 8 years later they can’t articulate it as well as Andrew
This video did a great job of helping me better understand the real meaning of a "State". And how, if we don't have a clear understanding of what it is, and how it works, we'll never be able to reckon with it correctly.
I’m making a video essay on the game “papers please”, about the inherent authoritarianism of bureaucracy, for a college project about morality in video games. You said a lot of great rhetoric in this piece better than I’d ever be able to repeat. I want to know your feelings on the potential use of some of your audio in that project. I’d make sure to provide credit in the video and a link back to this video in the description if it ever makes it out of the my unlisted school projects graveyard.
Sounds like an excellent project: like the honourable system in rdr2 or conversely the murder system in ghost recon where you can kill people as long as they aren’t civilians!
@@Andrewism Due to feedback from my college ethics board I probably am not allowed to use your audio directly but I will be citing this video a lot. It’s probably going to suffer a little bit from school project syndrome anyways so it will probably be worth remaking later on.
The fundamental division of society into rulers and ruled like ours and then to be told we’re free is laughable. It reminds me of a line from one of my favourite socialist artists: “If you’re so good at fucking learning, When you learn about your past, Find we ain’t quite escaped the immortality of the ruling class” Immortality is sung sarcastically.
Many people in these comments are hung up on some kind of perfection. If anarchism can't instantly account for every single scenario one could think of, then it's without value. But we all know that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and that the systems we currently deal with are neither perfect nor good.
It's pretty crazy that those people expect perfect solutions for anarchism for problems that not only have never been solved, but also are actively exacerbated by our current systems
@@FujinKeima Precisely! This is what I'm saying. They also demand proof that a system will work when the current system didn't have to provide that proof to become established AND is demonstrably bad for a numeric majority of people. It's bizarre!
This is very much a mischaracterization of people's concerns and does nothing to further your ideological cause. It just makes you sound silly. Anarchism seems to break down at the most basic road blocks. I have yet to see an anarchist give a concrete answer to even the simplest hypotheticals. How to deal with bad actors? How to deal with the differing levels of skill and ability? How to deal with differing levels of competence? How to effectively scale-up to millions of people? How to manage non-renewable resources OR critical infrastructure (nuclear reactors?)? Very simple question: It's an anarchist utopia but a group of people want to intentionally cause a nuclear meltdown in your nuclear reactor. How do you effectively prevent this without hierarchy? Or Cletus the town idiot wants to operate the nuclear reactor, how do you effectively prevent this without hierarchy? 5 scientists say their is an issue and want to shut down the reactor, 95 lay people don't understand the issue and want to keep the reactor running, how do you effectively answer this without hierarchy? 5 scientists say the reactor is fine, 2 scientists say the reactor is going to implode in 30 seconds. What do you do? Okay, now here's the last one - HOW DO YOU STOP THE ABOVE SCENARIOS FROM RECURRING WITHOUT HIERARCHY? You solved the situation once, it happens again, are you going to just solve it from scratch every time? That sounds silly. If only there was a way to codify solutions to problems... and if only there was a way to enforce those solutions on people too dumb to understand the problem in the first place. Hmmmmm....
@@ReiPlush_MH Its not really a mischaracterization if you immediately ask your questions,valid as they are, in bad faith. Anarchists and other libertarians never figured how to handle that kind of conflict? No mention of consensus-based decision making? No mention of what to do if consensus fails? Of how if a random guy wants to nuke everyone (for fun or something) in a stateless society, people can just get together and stop them? That libertarian societies actually exist right now and are solving problems? Im not usually that type, but youre on Anarchist UA-cam and lots of anarchist literature is free online. Anarchists talk about conflict resolution in depth all the time. Also, you claim hierarchy fixes that fictional problem you brought up, but...If, instead of a "city idiot", it was a President or monarch wanting to randomly nuke places and people, how would a hierarchical system fix this? Just saying.
@@ReiPlush_MH That isn't hierarchy haha. The group of scientist you are talking about is the flat structure. It's the thing that already existed in many lab groups and in odd case, Valve company. Flat structure organization is specialized in dealing with problem like this in your supposed scenario and I would argue hierarchy structure like the bureaucracy we have today is exactly the thing you are describing. Bureaucracy is slow and tedious because you have to show your proof to many departments of your structure waiting for them to approve. I also don't think bad actors will be disappear. Human are capable of evil. But in a state structure, that evil becomes organized and scales. Its evidence can even be erased with propaganda. If you steal candy, good job, now everyone know you are a thief for the rest of your life. But if you are a politician stealing a candy, you can convince every media outlet with money to clean your name.
F me! 20 years I've been a socialist trying and failing to explain where previous attempts went wrong, how it can be different next time... ...and this video just made me realise I'm not a socialist. I'm an anarchist. I don't actually want state power, I want people power. I can't thank you enough for inviting me to take the first step on this journey!
I’ve watched some of your videos before, but for whatever reason things didn’t click until now that I am definitively, 100%, through and through, an anarchist. I’ve been thinking a lot about how the inability for people to just talk to each other and hear each other’s experiences, as well as seeing and honoring their humanity, is such a huge source of the world’s problems. But hierarchy and in-group/out-group thinking are so foundational in those problems. And so many leftists want to have this big revolution to overpower and overthrow the capitalist class. Do we not see the endless cycle of reactionary violence from the formerly oppressed group? Do we not recognize that tools of domination can’t create liberation? Change has to be cultural and ideological first. Anyone who thinks otherwise can look at U.S. politics; rights, freedoms, and protections are being rolled back, because we tried to impose them from the top down, and the reactionary right are using the same avenues and levels of power and hierarchy used to secure those rights to take them away. People need to believe that a better world is possible, and that hierarchy and state power won’t get us there. Only us, the people, working together and looking out for each other, will get us there.
I would say that a lot of anarchists actually disagree with the contention that change has to be cultural and ideological first. Most would say that change begins materially, through the creation of labor unions and tenant unions and other bodies of reaistance, and these material bodies, wherein ordinary people are able to build their class consciousness and practice self determination is the driver of cultural and ideological change. This is the basic anarchist theory of practice. We are shaped by our material actions, and transformative ideas develop out of practice. That is why prefiguration is important. After all, anarchism was not developed as the independent ideas of great individuals (nor was Marxism btw). It was developed as a consequence of existing working class struggle, developing these ideas and skillsets out of necessity.
@@otherperson thanks for the clarification! I think I broadly agree with this lens as well; in a lot of ways I was conceptualizing “cultural shift” as a consequence of a persistent pattern of focusing on and bettering the material needs of people. My big clash with certain socialist thought is the idea that an effective mechanism of change is the establishment of a socialist state via the overthrow of the capitalist class, that we can somehow reprogram people into collaboration and communism through a state-run process. So it would be more accurate to say that I believe cultural change is essential to actual social change, and that I think it can only happen in a long-term way through that grassroots organizing and meeting people’s material needs (bottom-up), rather than top-down. I’m not SUPER concerned with fitting under any particular ideological label (I think such labels have a tendency to encourage in-group/out-group thinking), but it is nice that anarchist thought seems to share the same values, priorities, and beliefs about how change happens that I do. I look forward to learning more!
As long as there exists an organized group that wants control other and extract value, anarchism can't be done. I believe anarchism/communism will be the main struggle that occurs once socialism is achieved over the majority of the globe. We can already see the issue of bureaucracy becoming a problem for China and was the reason the USSR collapsed. What will likely need to occur, in my opinion, is a quick switch up from socialism to communism through a slow leveling out of power over time. But this is something that will be seen when it occurs.
Everyone here made so many valid points I can’t even think of anything clever to add to the conversation but I will say that society has been built I. The does pain if part of life and we subconsciously take it too far as a whole tbh
Also I love to replace “Free Association” with “Voluntary Community” because it sounds more loving and intentional to me. The idea of anarchy as a constant practice in voluntary community is awesome to me. I think a lot about precolonial Igboland, and the collective culture of “free association” that existed in many of our African communities before we were grouped into more homogenous identities, often either by force or under duress.
Thanks for introducing us to the Anark channel. I was doing my stuff with a lot of short anarchy explanation video in my head. Boom, a new Andrewism video. Gonna watch it ( It's 2 am in here actually )
This is defeatist, but I get where you're coming from, and honestly it's a good thing to sometimes indulge the inner pessimist. But it's important to keep fighting and remember that there is ALWAYS a chance to make the world a better place than it was before you did anything. Even if there was zero chance to completely stop climate change (which isn't true) we'd all still want to do everything we can because every little bit helps to reduce the severity of the destruction. Instead of thinking "we cannot solve this problem, so what's the point" try instead to think "I can't solve this problem, but I will talk with others and together we will do everything possible to solve it"
Yep but definitely think all we can do is lessen the effects but it’s true we are too late since we allowed the state and those with money and status to decide things for us for far too long
Personally I think we will socially regress whilst we simultaneously progress in statecraft and technology. Life will become very cheap when rivers permanently dry, swathes of regions become desert, the loft productive lands are eaten up by sea level rise, and less food production is guaranteed. Less water and food and less reason to get along and less tolerance towards migrants as migrants increase. The people of the future will live morally simpler lives. Killing others to stay on top and keep what you have will become more necessary than today in our relative abundance from a gentler earth. The world and civilization won't end, but at some point we are going to shift into a new era characterized by the material changes. I think it'll be in full swing in another 200-300 years. I'm doing a fictional writing project on it. If life has taught me anything, it's that humanity will let you down and will always fail, and the way that things get better are seldom, unexpected, and few and far between. There is very little room in reality for optimism. We are bald apes with a propensity towards violence, and it's going to take a very long time before we evolve whatever is beyond that, which doesn't necessarily denote any sort of progress. It's practically a miracle we have enough sense to live in what we regard as civilization at all, mich less contemplate it. All the plans of life and men...
Great work! You've got me thinking some 3 things I'd like to ask you/the community: 1. How to address generationally ingrained hierarchical values that run counter to the idea of free association/voluntary community? 2. Wouldn't the issues of generationally ingrained values lead to resistance? 3. Would generations of state coerced re-education (in addition to many other simultanious programs) be necessary for addressing reactionary tendencies? (I''m heavily generalizing ofc - this is a huge topic. We're up against thousands of years of programming, and these values differ from culture to culture)
Ok, it sounds a bit like you assume that people will resist anarchism and therefore may need to be coerced? How about we just start doing it? You could implement sociocracy in your local gardening club or whatever. As people gain personal experience they are more likely to become allies. Most people want their interactions with others to be egalitarian, fair, and trustworthy. They just don’t believe it’s possible because they’ve never seen it.
It didn't escape my notice that every single thinker with the long fancy sentences he quoted was a dude. Methinks they're anarchists in the streets and patriarchs at home. Who's doing the dishes while they're busy writing these over-complicated books? There's no free association when someone has to stay home and do the chores.
@@ourmobilehomemakeover662Still, it's fair to assume people would resist for any number of rational or irrational reasons. They might simply think their ideas are better, or perhaps their quality of life may have worsened after the redistribution of capital.
@@jimmyjohnson1870 ok maybe. But it goes against the principle of egalitarianism and cooperation to make coercion the first solution to hypothetical resistance. Instead of trying to figure out how to make people do things they don’t want to do, maybe focus on finding and appreciating those who already want to help out. Social pressure is incredibly powerful.
Even under a liberal democracy those in power can vote to keep those marginalized underneath them, divided and into seperate groups for group punishment. Race is a social construct the truth is it has always been about class struggle. Those in power want to keep that power by any means necessary.
Racism still exists outside of class struggle. My slave ancestors, we're beaten by poor white people after all. Those poor white people viewed my ancestors as dumb and incapable of individual thought. Which is why the rich white ones enslaved them and the poor white ones beat them.
In liberal democries historically we're usually not able to vote on the majority of issues. In the US we vote on our representatives except for the President who is chosen by an electoral college and appoints Supreme Court Justices basically unopposed. Everything is constructed, not just race. The idea you just mentioned that people are voting to oppress others is also a construct. Whether something is a construct or not doesn't determine its truthfulness or validity.
A tour de force! Thank you, Andrew. Especially salient is the observation that states are incapable of arresting the biodiversity emergency. The best hope for humankind is ordinary people taking control of their lives and sharing power locally.
this video pushed me over the edge. for years I've been trying to grapple with whether or not I truly believe in anarchy, but now I'm properly radicalized lol. thanks, great vid
"What is politics" is a great anarchist anthropologist channel that changed my entire worldview on how power "naturally" occurs, especially as hunter/gatherers diversified creating more power imbalanced systems of living.
@@anubis2814 got it. In a comment I remember him saying he was not, but he pb changed his mind since that's a long time ago. There are some libertarian socialists who come from the marxist tradition rather than the anarchist tradition. They sometimes tend to be anti-state but arent always against all forms of hierarchical power structures.
Absolutely fabulous video! I usually have a hard time with keeping my full attention for this amount of time, but I was completely hooked all the way. Great explanations and example. I’ll share it with all my friends!🙌💜
I swear this is the second or third time I'm subscribing to you...(never unsubscribed but i was) anyway... luckily people mention your name enough i didn't forget you
This gave me food for thought as always. One thing about states is they are expensive in relation to anarchist societies. The example I kept thinking of is how the USA spends billions to sail fleets to the Strait of Hormuz to fire expensive guided missiles to stop the Houthi, and all they have are cheap rockets that cause nothing but grief for commercial ships in the area. Over time this strategy can't be maintained by states. States fail because they can't match the energy per time costs that amorphous, small guerrilla anarchist groups put out with constant irritation tactics.
Violence is implicit in every edict of our society. A lack of compliance to anything in law creates a chain which ends in compliance, or violence. If you are arrested for riding your bike the wrong way in the bike lane, and you choose not to go to jail over it, you resist arrest, you are physically attacked. If you defend yourself, you are killed. You were killed over riding your bike the "wrong" way in a bike lane
I love how you use artwork in all of your videos. As an anarchist and an artist, its refreshing to see someone respect art and implement it in such a way as you do. Keep going, i love your work.
The thing about centralized power that Infind most intolerable is the corruptibility of it. Its like collecting all of one's most precious things in a single pile. One thief ruins everything. When all the power is concentrated it draws and enables corruption. Democracy becomes theatre and chatity becomes performance as the citizensare left to their own devices in a society so structured that those devices are few and far between.
This is exactly my problem too. With centralized power you basically just have to hope that the person who gets into power is good and will use it well. If one bad egg is enough to absolutely wreak havoc once they get into power, that power shouldn’t be able to just be taken by one person.
I guess, for me, the big problem is that there's very few surviving anarchist places, because most of them got stomped out of existence. Hierarchies can muster so much power.
Andrew is such a treasure for us anarchists. This episode is wonderful. And know that everyone who walks, rolls, or drives on sidewalks and roads exist under anarchism: we agree to do what we need to do within safety parameters without any use of police or structure. We just do what our community needs us to do to all use the roads & sidewalks effectively.
Congratulations on an amazing video! You did a great job of presenting complex information in a digestible manner without watering it down too much. Also, sick artwork throughout the video!
(sorry for bad english) 11:49 "while states needed settled populations to get their start" I think this one sentence is weong, because for example recent historical research has shown that nomads from eurasia (mongols, turks, etc) had already since antiquity states institutions, with only the difference of not being centralized all the time in 1 ruler and 1 capital city I have a question too: wich is your source when you says that the institutionnalisation of surnames was a cause of the english peasant rebellion in 1381 ?
I'll have to look further into the presence of state institutions within nomadic populations. Do you have a source? The main point of that argument was simply a counter to the belief held by some that settlement necessarily resulted in states. Regarding the claim about 1381, this comes directly from Seeing Like A State: State naming practices, like state mapping practices, were inevitably associated with taxes (labor, military service, grain, revenue,) and hence aroused popular resistance. The great English peasant riing of 1381 (often called the Wat Tyler Rebellion) is attributed to an unprecedented decade of registrations and assessments of poll taxes.(52) For English as well as for Tuscan peasants, a census of all adult males could not but appear ominous, if not ruinous. That footnote (52) says: See the classic study by Rodney Hilton, Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381 (New York: Viking Press, 1977), pp. 160-64.
@@AndrewismThe mongols had a clear state, the Mongolian Khanates. These khanates had: permanent territorial claims, centralized leaders, diplomatic relations with other Khanates and laws.
another great video, thank you. as someone who is really getting into anarchism, and making my way through the classics, it is really good to be able get some supplemental knowledge from your channel :)
This is the first time that I’ve come across a video like this narrated by someone with a Caribbean accent. I think it’s great! We need more of this!🙌🏾
The more I study the Food-Energy-Water nexus, and Systems Thinking, the more I realize that people will need a story that goes beyond our wonky anarchist terms like free association. They don't care what the theory is, they care about what story you can tell about their life, their quality of life, and how it will be affected. It's the same with degrowth. I'm talking about urban planners, policy analysts, workers, actually explaining the systems and relationships in a case study. BUT the top two or three news networks all have terrifying Media Bias / Fact Check pages so I think we're SOL in general for a while here
I don't think free association is that "wonky." I think I do a good job explaining and contextualising it in the next video, but yeah a story is needed, also work in progress.
can we talk about how nice andrew’s voice is tho? i ordered the books from the andrewism reading list video and now im on the ecology of freedom wishing i were reading it as an audiobook with his voice 🥲
States are not abstract entities somehow divorced from the world itself. They are just as much actors in the world as everyone else and like every single actor in this world their primary purpose is to maintain their own power.
Seeing like a state was an eye opening book, to me. I easily still recommend it to anyone interested in politics (particularly people on the Left, to which I would say I readily belong). It greatly clarified my own ideas about politics, organizations, etc. And since coming into a career/jobs, I've seen things play out (the impossibilities of abstractly predicting all the problems that will inevitably crop up), exactly as described in book - both personally and in organizations. Coupled with the most fundamental aspect of Conservativism ('wisdom of ages' - the impossibility of human minds creating sufficiently complex models of reality to redesign it 'in whole'), I consider this to be the most useful and wise lesson to learn for anyone on the Left (I disqualify the Right cause I usually don't like the changes to society they hope to accomplish).
I'm glad to add to the reading list. I also appreciate how revolution does not happen over night. My hesistancy to support without much deeper thought is based around how issues of reparations and Inidgenous liberation are currently within a discourse of relationship to states.
Thanks for the video and it's important to note that there were Sedentary, Stratified Hunter-Gatherer societies in history like the Fort-building hunter-gatherers of Neolithic/Copper Age Siberia (see the Amnya Complex) which is something I find interesting since I always thought until recently that all hunter-gatherers lived in hyper-egalitarian nomadic societies.
i have anarchist tendencies, but something stopping me from making the jump to anarchism is the inability to reconcile the idea that revolution can be bottom up, and that we can maintain our gains from the lower rungs of our current hierarchy. I mean, sure, if we convince people that anarchy is viable more people will be sympathetic to it, but why can't the state, which will inevitably have some level of support from it's millitary, not be able to quash any kind of counter-resistance?
When revolution happen inside people's head, it's pretty difficult to uproot it. The state, capitalism or any kind of hierarchy, cannot exist without a certain mass of people at the bottom. The more people who are able to break out of them, the less power these systems will have over anyone. Sadly, it won't happen overnight, but it will have more lasting effects.
@@avanonyme some objections that immediately come to mind are can't capitalist forces who have much more cultural capital beat anarchism at every turn? can't, when push comes to shove, capitalism just kill the anarchists? didn't that happen before during facism and soviet communism? to be honest, i'm really quite new to anarchism. these objections that come to mind are kind of ingrained at this point which i recognise is a problem. this channel is by far the most accessible medium to access anarchist ideas for me at the moment. are there better avenues for me to access these ideas? reccomendations?
@@lemonboiyoutube You've grown up in a capitalist society, with the culture that comes with it, why are you searching for alternatives then? Reality is complex and I don't pretend to hold all the answers, but I am optimist and believe people can see capitalism for what it is and any anarchist alternative as a better way to live. It's only a matter of education, awareness spreading and passions. Classical authors that I've heard get recommended but haven't personally read, there's Kropotkin, Malatesta and Bookchin that I see getting thrown around a lot. Personally I'd recommend any work by David Graeber, there's lots of his talks on UA-cam. If you're willing to pay some money, Andrewism's community and Patreon is pretty cool. Anark as a youtube channel has lots of information too.
@@lemonboiyoutube Personally I have not found a satisfying answer from anarchists on this but I would love to be wrong. Historically though that has happened and anarchists were killed by the state esp in Europe. Friendly suggestion to look into Marxism-Leninism-Maoism since it's a communist tendency that deals with issues of capitalist restoration/counter-revolution and cultural capitalism as central issues, leading to a very principled criticism of (particularly post-Lenin) Soviet Russia and (particularly post-Mao) Communist China that aligns with Anarchism quite heavily.
there are several examples of states run by communist parties and successful ideologically communist revolutions, i know of no such lasting examples of ideologically anarchist revolutions producing something that endures on the scale of laos, vietnam, or cuba. those countries are so much better than their capitalist equivalents, i have a very hard time with the idea that we should doing something even more gradual than the dubious "after the dictatorship of the proletariat is around for awhile the state will wither away" idea you hear from marxists.
Oh holy crap I wanted an anti-state anarcho-communist essayist, and got recommended this by both F.D. Signifier and Foreign Man in a Foreign Land, and I am very happy for said recommendations! Time to obsessively hyper-fixate binge watch every single piece of content this channel has ever released.
If you dont already watch Zoe Baker, Lucky Black Cat, and Anark you should do that as well. Those alongside Andrewism are the best on UA-cam in my opinion. Andrewism is definitely the most poetic.
The accompanying transcript is so helpful. I read along while listening, and the content of this video sticks more. It’s nice to be able to pause and reread to make sure I understand!Thank you Andrew for the time and effort you put into your content🙏🏽
@@Feedbackking13 it’s an Indigenous decolonization philosophy from the (so called) americas which includes Indigenous anarchism. It is described as being different in different places at different times as we are many Nations not one.
@@something1600 I think they show us how to do it. You have to take a decade building multiple communities and training warriors to take the land back from governments (and any settlers insistent on settler patriotism).
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words. Ursula K. Le Guin
When we talk about hierarchies of power that are embedded into the human psyche, the one I find most central is the hierarchy that puts humanity at the top of the food chain. I’ve read some scholarship on Blackness and the redefining of personhood that talks about the potential of flattening the “pyramid” of evolution that puts humanity at the top. This feels at least a bit related to statehood and the need to carve out such distinctions between each other for the sake of control.
It's just so hard to organise because so many people have hierarchy so internalised. Whenever there is a group organising it usually ends up with a white guy leading and all poc, disabled and most women getting silenced, I really feel like most men (and a lot of women) cannot be trusted to not act upon their patriarchal conditioning same goes for race. This is the main issue I've observed, how could we solve this?
Because WASPs and most Europeans at least have a history of cultivating leadership and complex organizations on a mass scale, so it's on some level ingrained however deteriorated. The Asians took and learned all they could of what's been forged in Europe, mixed it with their own developed philosophies of organizing society, and prospered as well. Why attack a people when you can learn from them and become awesome yourself?
I mean this happened bc unfortunately those that won all the wars colonized and stole everything were white men from Europe-specifically white men who have a ton of capital and instigated the wars those many years back. I bet it’s their offsprings and other associates that enabled them in the past that keep it going.
I don't think there's a single solution but I'd advise looking to unions, they're probably the single most successful example of voluntary horizontal organisation, and have always been a favourite of Anarchists. There are probably many lessons you can learn from them and adapt to other projects.
I got so fired up by that quote but also it struck me that it's very similar to neolibreral rhetoric. It's so weird to me that neoliberals and libertarians use this kind of talk but somehow insist that the violent enforcement of private property is somehow "freedom."
What I find a little difficult with young organizations that are very focused on horizontal organization is clique building. Particularly of idealistic people that do not have a lot of contact with workers is that they form cliques that ignore outside input or acknowledge it but fall back to their cliques immediately. They also have absolutely no accountability because there is no form to hold them accountable because there's supposed to be no hierarchy. In many of these cliques it's also the most imporant how often and how long you can be at their plena which makes it very difficult to catch up on for people who have to work a job, have to care for kids or are neurodivergent and can't deal with very, veeeeery long meetings where barely anything happens. Isn't that another form of hierarchy?
Hey, I have sth to say about what the strategies to defend ourselves and our «revolutionary gains» are. I encourage you and everyone interested in that to reach out for the real practice of autonomy: Zapatistas experience and Cheran in MExico, or Kurdistan. BUt also look around to the real territory stuggles near you, cause the ppl defending their land (usually indiginous decendant ppl) are the ones that are building and reinforcin new forms of excercicing autonomy beyond state. Is real experience and not purely imagination what can keep us going with hope, I think. Those examples are not perfetc but they are real and in the making, let us be near them and learn from them and also contribute to these present struggles. Those are, as some would call them, «concrete utopias».
also what I tried to say about strategy, is that what we find in these real examples are always an effort to put together an «comunitary polices», as some call it, or «comunitary guards», which are compose by the members of the community of course, but it also rotates (I mean, not permanent individuals in them). BUt what is thruth either way is that the construction of autonomy and autodetemination comes with a necessary concern to arm ourselves in order to defend ourselves and not let that protection falls in the hands of third parties.
In my opinion, the most effective way to replace capitalism is to refuse to participate in exploitation of others whenever practical and possible. Others should include both the poor in our own states, the poor in other states, those over whom we might already hold power, and especially the animals we currently use for food and resources. If we stop exploiting others in large enough numbers, they pyramid scheme of capitalism with collapse and we will all be on a level(ish) playing field and can start cooperating instead of competing.
I think so too this could start for a gradual change it’s gonna take many generations for healing but that’s expected since we are carrying trauma of our ancestors for the last thousands of years
Fantastic video, definitely given me lots to think about. While I've always had issues with hierarchies, I can sort of understand why so many anti-capitalists especially in the imperial periphery lean into a DoTP or a workers' state. The question of authority in such states is an issue though. I'm still new to this stuff so I'm still figuring stuff out.
This is definitely an oversimplification, but I feel anarchism as an ideology in practice is more applicable to those who are in an imperialist state (a Global North country), rather than those who live in an oppressed state (a Global South country). The reason is, I feel, that a revolution in an oppressed state is required to defend its interests from outside forces, far more than one in an imperialist state; the state is a powerful tool in defending the interest of a class, while anarchism seeks to destroy it.
@@rakha8812 I'm not sure I understand. Did I do something wrong by "oversimplifying" as you state? I'm from the imperial periphery so I think that a successful revolution in a global majority state would need protection. The sort of protection that a proletarian state would provide
Hey Andrew, I'm glad somebody finally got around to combining these works and producing a video like this so that it can be shared with people (especially our friends who don't read). I was curious if you had heard of Kojin Karatani's The Structure of World History: From Modes of Production to Modes of Exchange. While the author is not an anarchist, at least explicitly, his work is of great interest to anarchists who deal with social science and works of that nature.
Hey, thanks for the recommendation. I'm a bit cautious about grand narrartive/stageist conceptualisations of history, but this one looks interesting, I'll def check it out.
Stay tuned for Part Two: Organising Anarchy 🙌🏽
Really excited! Keep up with what you are doing! You are making really important videos.
Hell yeah! This was one of my favorite videos of yours. Can’t wait
I can't wait!
Sending you so much care, Andrew. This is a wonderful installment to the body of work you present to the community.
As a Quaker anarchist and a multigen one, I have no knowledge of philosophical, academic or written anarchism. I just am and know when it aligns or doesn't align. These breakdowns are so interesting.
Looking forward to it
A system cannot fail those it was never meant to protect.
-F. Douglas
Indeed. Reminds my of Stafford Beer's quote: "The purpose of a system is what it does. There is after all, no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do."
Capitalism is not meant to meet our collective needs in sustainability and abundance. So why would we expect it to?
And to build a new system we can't expect it to be top-down from state officials. It needs to be a grassroots, bottom-up, community by community approach. Linking one town after another through community co-operative design and mutual aid.
We need more organizations to provide that model. I only know of One Small Town that is currently offering such a model. Somewhat soon may be something called "Integral" by Peter Joseph off the heels of the release of Zeitgeist: Requiem, whenever that is, but yeah, we could use more.
@@coolioso808
You're confusing an economic philosophy with a political one.
China is politically communist with a capitalist economy, while "Nordic states" are generally socialist politically but economic capitalist, and Cuba is politically communist but recently experimenting with capitalism.
@@benrudolph5582 Are you speaking to me? When did I talk about different countries and their political philosophies? I'm saying the system of capitalism, which is world wide, is unsustainable and like Stafford Beer, that means it has proven it doesn't work and naturally that means a new system should replace it, but a viable one this time.
All the countries in the world operate in money and markets to some degree so they are infected by the capitalist world order no matter what their political dressing may be.
Capitalism and the state are married, that's nothing new. Going back hundreds of years, state and capital have been tied to each other and often in contradiction with the needs of the people.
The people don't collectively own the means of production, do they? And so they get exploited and oppressed. The people don't own the land collectively, so they get get exploited and oppressed by the small minority of elites who do own and control it. This is a problem. A devastating problem.
The struggle of the next 10-20 years will be to overcome capitalism and replace it with something better, some will call it socialism or communism, I'd call it a "viable economy" with contributionism and a big library socialist aspect to it.
@coolioso808 You're exactly right and what I recently came to believe. Well done, apology. 👏
@@obinnachris5178 All good. Solidarity and unity, my good man.
Remember kids, the only Hobbes you should respect is a cartoon tiger.
Real
Truer words were never spoken!
I don’t know, Hobbe’s critiques of Descartes are pretty good.
Name one contempary (relevant) politician that is defending their actions with Hobbes. You guys are creating a strawman.
@@dodec8449This isn't a "strawman", after all, talking about how the only Hobbes we should respect is the cartoon tiger, wasn't actually an argument about politicians, so if anything, YOU were misrepresenting a point being made about how the only Hobbes we should respect is the cartoon tiger, and so YOU were strawmanning by making the point that was made, into something that it isn't.
"The major problem-one of the major problems, for there are several-one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
-Douglas Adams
Plato already said this...don't give power to those who desire it.
@@TheLastOutlaw-KTSThen you could try Demarchy, electing a random individual.
If you think there is a bias in that, there is but can be easily removed.
For example: we have 360° internal angles in a circle.
A dice has 6 sides, therefore each side represents 60°.
Using 2 dices, you have 6 sides on each, making it 12, which can determine 360° : 12 = 30° angle per combo of sides from each dice.
And this can go oon and oon.
It doesn't need to count on sides, whether forward, behind, to right, to left or mixed.
But it could work with distances.
Imagine doing this somewhere in the crowd and the randomity determines the individual to have, power, OR, alternatively, be an Inspector for people to see how the elected by luck person uses their Power as a leader.
Corruption is hard to remove but chances of it will be smaller than the regular Demarchy.
That's true with the rarest of exceptions. This is why we should focus all of our energy in our communities, not on fighting the existing system, but on building the new.
Try One Small Town initiative, they are already starting in towns around the world. The right bottom-up structure in place. We could use more organizations like that, but at least one exists and is ready to be adopted by those towns that understand the need and value of it.
@@coolioso808where are they? I'm interested
This philosophy has always interested me because it is, in some very significant ways, pretty flawed. It presumes the desire for control is rooted in negative reasons, and ignores the plausibility (and indeed, the rare reality) where a ruler desires the power to shape a world for the better.
There even exists a counter-philosophy to this: that any who will rule should never come from those who do not desire to rule, as they will not do right by the power so vested in them. A leader who is unwilling to lead tends to make a poor leader.
Instead, a ruler should be willing to rule, their decision making being tempered by their knowledge and in seeking good counsel. To rule should be to take full advantage of all means available to produce the best possible state.
As the video here goes on to demonstrate: those system ultimately fails. No matter how good the intentions of a prospective ruler may be, they are too limited in their own scope to provide justly for the whole.
My point, though, is that it’s a pretty illogical argument to believe someone who wants to lead will always be a bad leader. Indeed, it is one of the most important qualities of any leader, be they a ruler or a community figure devoid of authority.
People have been told that leadership is the answer for so long it's nearly impossible to convince them otherwise. But I've seen firsthand, how the powerful use leaders as a handle for control. If a movement has no leaders, you see rich people pleading with them to pick a leader. The big-man leader isn't the power. He's the leash. This is why solutions will never come from leadership.
I fear that if an anarchist alternative started taking off, it would be labeled a terrible danger and the drones and f35s would zero in
@jtcornpone Pretty much. That's probably why many groups don't want the name "Anarchist".
There are no solutions without leadership.
Your ideas have never been really relevant.
@@lubu2960 There are no solutions with leadership.
@@lubu2960I suspect most people seem evidence that tells them otherwise almost every single day. What I would say is that our existing system does require leaders. As a symbol, mainly. I'm not literally led by the UK prime minister, for example. You could replace him with a stick tomorrow and tell me that the stick was our greatest leader, and I'd see no difference in my life.
“Power not only corrupts, it addicts.”-Ursula K le Guin
Unpopular take on power: it doesn’t corrupt as much as it reveals what was already under the surface. Folks who were already going to fold at the first opportunity to exploit others will do just that.
@@enntheelementale7461 this doesn't explain why those who come from solidly revolutionary backgrounds seeking to solve problems caused by the system end up upholding the system and becoming counterrevolutionary after they've gained power. Such is the case with many marxist labor parties in Europe, including the UK's labor party.
@@otherperson worth noting those revolutionaries got power with a very big asterisk attached to it. They were going to fold on arrival. During the Cold War, the USSR granted munitions and other forms of support to communist revolutions across the global south and Central America on the condition that they all install a ruling class (like what the USSR had) to manage the new dictatorships that worked as proxy war pawns against US imperialism. The working class people of a lot of those countries were often left worse off after the revolution and why? Because the ruling class of the global superpowers were seizing all the resources and power they could through proxy wars fought in those already disadvantaged countries.
It’s literally what happens when rich people get state apparatuses and try to do socialism… their way.
@@enntheelementale7461 While it definitely reveals the already corrupted, it also corrupts well-meaning and wise people. Part of it is the information funnel described in Seeing Like a State, a ruler can only see the schematic, simplified version of the top-down perspective, and cannot operate from the nuance and complexities of the localized view. Another issue is the tool of authority shape the way you approach problems, if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Another one is that even someone in a place of authority, has to abide by the system that legitimizes that authority. Fail to keep the support of the powerful classes or military, or fail to reinforce the foundational narrative giving the state legitimacy, and you're couped (which breeds paranoia).
I'm sure there are more ways power corrupts even good people to some extent, but these are a few I could think of in the moment.
"Power not only corrupts, it draws the corruptible."- Frank Herbert
States rights? what about States wrongs?
States' rights? What about States' lefts?
What about State-"ments?"@@hailghidorah2536huh
You may take our Rights... But can you take our Lefts?
we support trans rights and trans wrongs here
@bingusenjoyer197 no such thing as trans wrongs
I find it funny how a species known for its quick adaptability submits itself to a system that adapts to environmental challenges at a snail’s pace. War and domination seem to be the only things that can wake the state from its sleep.
Or maybe war and domination ARE the State in its true (and only) form and it is us, the populate, that is kept asleep
1:50 we see that the world is structured in hammers and nails and they defame us for recognizing and rejecting the nature of that relationship.
Honestly the best analogy i’ve found and fits very well with Seeing Like a State and the sections in hierarchy of An Anarchist FAQ, very straightforward and covers many bases of why hierarchical systems are fundamentally flawed
This was one of your best videos yet. Phenomenal analysis and a wonderful overview of the topics at hand. Especially enjoyed your analysis of Malm
If we keep doing what we've done, we'll never see what we COULD do.
Love this !
That Proudhon quote was intense, long, insightful, verbose, and you presented a nice visual in this essay. Hearing the words following "at the slightest resistance" made me remember especially when younger wondering why the world and so many suffer despite all the "progress."
It took me til 38:55 but i finally understand why anarchism has made sense on a fundamental level to me and its what you said about the revolution not appearing as a singular moment of comeuppance. We are too complex for anything to be solved in one single sweep. Anarchism at its base level is the active ongoing process by which we recognize and appreciate the complexity of other humans/ourselves. Thats beautiful. Thank you for the video 💜
Anarchism is completely nonsensical and illogical as an approach to revolution
You do a good job making these videos nice to stare at honestly.
I try
I am a Sociology PhD student and "Seeing Like A State" was assigned in an Environment and Development course I am taking. I loved it (despite him not being an anarchist) and I am so happy to see it featured here!!
I'm still working towards understanding what the alternative to state control would look like. I'm not quite sure I'm an anarchist, but I'm certainly glad to have the help of yourself and persons like yours to help me to realize that other options need to be more deeply studied if humanity is to ever survive to socially evolve in a meaningful way. All Power to all the people.
An alternative is pretty simple theoretically. Fundamentally a state is trying to solve problems between people. So all we need to ask is "How can we better solve problems between people?"
Census democracy is compelling, where people can get together in however big of groups the situation requires and talk out the problem till a genuine consensus is found.
And this is infinitely scalable. From tiny two person decisions to bigger regional discussions of broad land use.
anarchy and democracy are opposed in many way as consensus and veto power are also a tool of hierarchy. this is more complex than you think. i can tell you that consensus based politics works very good with small groups with similar interests but at some point it doesnt work anymore, you get into deadlock discussions or people make a fixed "consensus" (aka laws) and the consensus democracy defeated itself.
@@cottagehardcoreultrasw3998 Then the question becomes "How do we avoid deadlock" and there are a lot of possible answers to this that we can try out.
There's also a necessary change in mindset that will allow this to function better too. People need to be educated and willingly to act on beliefs such as;
Understanding that they can't always get what they want. That other people are living lives differently from them. That sometimes you're wrong, that that's okay, and that it's also okay to change your mind to something better. To not identify so much with an idea that you feel personally attacked when someone tries to change it or deny it. Etc.
In theory, it's still very simple. And I understand in practice it's a lot more time consuming and there's a lot more to consider, but that only serves to muddy the water.
And besides nothing is set in stone. We can observe problems and fix them as they arise. Such is living at all, nothing is perfect, and everything is changing.
You're still working your way towards an alternative because you haven't been presented with one and I suspect you might have to either move on or die waiting.
@@cottagehardcoreultrasw3998 Not really. the difference between consensus and laws is that there is a legitimate choice to not partake in whatever decision is reached. The one scientist that doesn't want to agree with what the rest of the scientific community has come to consensus on, for whatever reason, is either free to go publish bad papers and make an ass of themselves, or accept it and go with the group until they have better evidence otherwise. Likewise in a normal community, there's no compulsion as there is under law. You don't "codify" the consensus, there are no anarcho-police.
This was one of my favourites of yours, thanks. I came to anarchism through questioning our existing systems, it was refreshing to know that I wasn't going mad and that many better and more intelligent people before me had reached similar conclusions about the way we are governed. Thank you for your excellent breakdown of it.
Andrew is determined to articulate all the shit I was reading and saying at age 18 better than I can say it now at 26
He's 18?!? Are you kidding me; I'm 17. I feel so inadequate.
@@jimmyjohnson1870I think they were saying that they started reading and saying it at 18 but now even 8 years later they can’t articulate it as well as Andrew
@@Kindlywaterbear oh yeah, I misread it, lol
@@jimmyjohnson1870 yeah I can get how it could be easy to misread. English is funky sometimes
This is one of my favorite channels on the platform. Your videos give me hope and determination.
This video did a great job of helping me better understand the real meaning of a "State". And how, if we don't have a clear understanding of what it is, and how it works, we'll never be able to reckon with it correctly.
Read Lenin
I see Andrewism video, and i click
Same, although I think I'm getting too susceptible to content like this, hard to stay skeptical
My hands draw me to the video my mind keeps me here and puts it on repeat
Simple as
I clicked so fast!
🏃🏻with the quickness🏃🏽➡️
I’m making a video essay on the game “papers please”, about the inherent authoritarianism of bureaucracy, for a college project about morality in video games. You said a lot of great rhetoric in this piece better than I’d ever be able to repeat. I want to know your feelings on the potential use of some of your audio in that project. I’d make sure to provide credit in the video and a link back to this video in the description if it ever makes it out of the my unlisted school projects graveyard.
With credit, sure, sounds like a great project
Sounds like an excellent project: like the honourable system in rdr2 or conversely the murder system in ghost recon where you can kill people as long as they aren’t civilians!
@@Andrewism Due to feedback from my college ethics board I probably am not allowed to use your audio directly but I will be citing this video a lot. It’s probably going to suffer a little bit from school project syndrome anyways so it will probably be worth remaking later on.
The fundamental division of society into rulers and ruled like ours and then to be told we’re free is laughable. It reminds me of a line from one of my favourite socialist artists:
“If you’re so good at fucking learning, When you learn about your past, Find we ain’t quite escaped the immortality of the ruling class”
Immortality is sung sarcastically.
Many people in these comments are hung up on some kind of perfection. If anarchism can't instantly account for every single scenario one could think of, then it's without value. But we all know that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and that the systems we currently deal with are neither perfect nor good.
It's pretty crazy that those people expect perfect solutions for anarchism for problems that not only have never been solved, but also are actively exacerbated by our current systems
@@FujinKeima Precisely! This is what I'm saying. They also demand proof that a system will work when the current system didn't have to provide that proof to become established AND is demonstrably bad for a numeric majority of people. It's bizarre!
This is very much a mischaracterization of people's concerns and does nothing to further your ideological cause. It just makes you sound silly.
Anarchism seems to break down at the most basic road blocks. I have yet to see an anarchist give a concrete answer to even the simplest hypotheticals.
How to deal with bad actors?
How to deal with the differing levels of skill and ability?
How to deal with differing levels of competence?
How to effectively scale-up to millions of people?
How to manage non-renewable resources OR critical infrastructure (nuclear reactors?)?
Very simple question:
It's an anarchist utopia but a group of people want to intentionally cause a nuclear meltdown in your nuclear reactor. How do you effectively prevent this without hierarchy?
Or Cletus the town idiot wants to operate the nuclear reactor, how do you effectively prevent this without hierarchy?
5 scientists say their is an issue and want to shut down the reactor, 95 lay people don't understand the issue and want to keep the reactor running, how do you effectively answer this without hierarchy?
5 scientists say the reactor is fine, 2 scientists say the reactor is going to implode in 30 seconds. What do you do?
Okay, now here's the last one - HOW DO YOU STOP THE ABOVE SCENARIOS FROM RECURRING WITHOUT HIERARCHY? You solved the situation once, it happens again, are you going to just solve it from scratch every time? That sounds silly. If only there was a way to codify solutions to problems... and if only there was a way to enforce those solutions on people too dumb to understand the problem in the first place. Hmmmmm....
@@ReiPlush_MH Its not really a mischaracterization if you immediately ask your questions,valid as they are, in bad faith.
Anarchists and other libertarians never figured how to handle that kind of conflict? No mention of consensus-based decision making? No mention of what to do if consensus fails? Of how if a random guy wants to nuke everyone (for fun or something) in a stateless society, people can just get together and stop them? That libertarian societies actually exist right now and are solving problems?
Im not usually that type, but youre on Anarchist UA-cam and lots of anarchist literature is free online. Anarchists talk about conflict resolution in depth all the time.
Also, you claim hierarchy fixes that fictional problem you brought up, but...If, instead of a "city idiot", it was a President or monarch wanting to randomly nuke places and people, how would a hierarchical system fix this?
Just saying.
@@ReiPlush_MH That isn't hierarchy haha. The group of scientist you are talking about is the flat structure. It's the thing that already existed in many lab groups and in odd case, Valve company. Flat structure organization is specialized in dealing with problem like this in your supposed scenario and I would argue hierarchy structure like the bureaucracy we have today is exactly the thing you are describing. Bureaucracy is slow and tedious because you have to show your proof to many departments of your structure waiting for them to approve.
I also don't think bad actors will be disappear. Human are capable of evil. But in a state structure, that evil becomes organized and scales. Its evidence can even be erased with propaganda. If you steal candy, good job, now everyone know you are a thief for the rest of your life. But if you are a politician stealing a candy, you can convince every media outlet with money to clean your name.
F me! 20 years I've been a socialist trying and failing to explain where previous attempts went wrong, how it can be different next time...
...and this video just made me realise I'm not a socialist. I'm an anarchist. I don't actually want state power, I want people power.
I can't thank you enough for inviting me to take the first step on this journey!
I’ve watched some of your videos before, but for whatever reason things didn’t click until now that I am definitively, 100%, through and through, an anarchist. I’ve been thinking a lot about how the inability for people to just talk to each other and hear each other’s experiences, as well as seeing and honoring their humanity, is such a huge source of the world’s problems. But hierarchy and in-group/out-group thinking are so foundational in those problems. And so many leftists want to have this big revolution to overpower and overthrow the capitalist class. Do we not see the endless cycle of reactionary violence from the formerly oppressed group? Do we not recognize that tools of domination can’t create liberation?
Change has to be cultural and ideological first. Anyone who thinks otherwise can look at U.S. politics; rights, freedoms, and protections are being rolled back, because we tried to impose them from the top down, and the reactionary right are using the same avenues and levels of power and hierarchy used to secure those rights to take them away.
People need to believe that a better world is possible, and that hierarchy and state power won’t get us there. Only us, the people, working together and looking out for each other, will get us there.
I would say that a lot of anarchists actually disagree with the contention that change has to be cultural and ideological first. Most would say that change begins materially, through the creation of labor unions and tenant unions and other bodies of reaistance, and these material bodies, wherein ordinary people are able to build their class consciousness and practice self determination is the driver of cultural and ideological change. This is the basic anarchist theory of practice. We are shaped by our material actions, and transformative ideas develop out of practice. That is why prefiguration is important. After all, anarchism was not developed as the independent ideas of great individuals (nor was Marxism btw). It was developed as a consequence of existing working class struggle, developing these ideas and skillsets out of necessity.
@@otherperson thanks for the clarification! I think I broadly agree with this lens as well; in a lot of ways I was conceptualizing “cultural shift” as a consequence of a persistent pattern of focusing on and bettering the material needs of people. My big clash with certain socialist thought is the idea that an effective mechanism of change is the establishment of a socialist state via the overthrow of the capitalist class, that we can somehow reprogram people into collaboration and communism through a state-run process. So it would be more accurate to say that I believe cultural change is essential to actual social change, and that I think it can only happen in a long-term way through that grassroots organizing and meeting people’s material needs (bottom-up), rather than top-down.
I’m not SUPER concerned with fitting under any particular ideological label (I think such labels have a tendency to encourage in-group/out-group thinking), but it is nice that anarchist thought seems to share the same values, priorities, and beliefs about how change happens that I do. I look forward to learning more!
As long as there exists an organized group that wants control other and extract value, anarchism can't be done. I believe anarchism/communism will be the main struggle that occurs once socialism is achieved over the majority of the globe. We can already see the issue of bureaucracy becoming a problem for China and was the reason the USSR collapsed. What will likely need to occur, in my opinion, is a quick switch up from socialism to communism through a slow leveling out of power over time. But this is something that will be seen when it occurs.
Everyone here made so many valid points I can’t even think of anything clever to add to the conversation but I will say that society has been built I. The does pain if part of life and we subconsciously take it too far as a whole tbh
Go read and study how we may actually revolt and the answer CANNOT be anarchism. Period. Point blank.
Also I love to replace “Free Association” with “Voluntary Community” because it sounds more loving and intentional to me. The idea of anarchy as a constant practice in voluntary community is awesome to me. I think a lot about precolonial Igboland, and the collective culture of “free association” that existed in many of our African communities before we were grouped into more homogenous identities, often either by force or under duress.
Thanks for introducing us to the Anark channel. I was doing my stuff with a lot of short anarchy explanation video in my head. Boom, a new Andrewism video. Gonna watch it
( It's 2 am in here actually )
The title rests of course on the premise that States were ever meant to benefit the people at large. As well all know, they were not
Another timely and communicative video Andrew, always love that you go above and beyond with these topics. 🙏🏾🙏🏾
to discuss this is so necesary, even urgent nowadays, thanks for taking the time
I think we're gonna fail to address the climate crisis, but I hope the survivor's will live better, happier, and simpler lives.
That's a defeatist attitude
This is defeatist, but I get where you're coming from, and honestly it's a good thing to sometimes indulge the inner pessimist. But it's important to keep fighting and remember that there is ALWAYS a chance to make the world a better place than it was before you did anything. Even if there was zero chance to completely stop climate change (which isn't true) we'd all still want to do everything we can because every little bit helps to reduce the severity of the destruction. Instead of thinking "we cannot solve this problem, so what's the point" try instead to think "I can't solve this problem, but I will talk with others and together we will do everything possible to solve it"
Yep but definitely think all we can do is lessen the effects but it’s true we are too late since we allowed the state and those with money and status to decide things for us for far too long
@markigirl2757 that's a defeatist attitude about 9 years and some dedication is all it would take to reverse climate change.
Personally I think we will socially regress whilst we simultaneously progress in statecraft and technology. Life will become very cheap when rivers permanently dry, swathes of regions become desert, the loft productive lands are eaten up by sea level rise, and less food production is guaranteed. Less water and food and less reason to get along and less tolerance towards migrants as migrants increase. The people of the future will live morally simpler lives. Killing others to stay on top and keep what you have will become more necessary than today in our relative abundance from a gentler earth. The world and civilization won't end, but at some point we are going to shift into a new era characterized by the material changes. I think it'll be in full swing in another 200-300 years. I'm doing a fictional writing project on it. If life has taught me anything, it's that humanity will let you down and will always fail, and the way that things get better are seldom, unexpected, and few and far between. There is very little room in reality for optimism. We are bald apes with a propensity towards violence, and it's going to take a very long time before we evolve whatever is beyond that, which doesn't necessarily denote any sort of progress. It's practically a miracle we have enough sense to live in what we regard as civilization at all, mich less contemplate it. All the plans of life and men...
Dude I'm on chapter 2 of Seeing Like a State rn!! Crazy timing Andrew, always a blessing
It's a fantastic read! Hope this video helps you digest it.
I’m at around chapter 2 as well haha. I considered waiting to finish reading before watching this video, but alas here I am. No ragrets 😉
I see no failure in the history of statehood, because for our rulers our wellbeing was never a goal
Great work! You've got me thinking some 3 things I'd like to ask you/the community:
1. How to address generationally ingrained hierarchical values that run counter to the idea of free association/voluntary community?
2. Wouldn't the issues of generationally ingrained values lead to resistance?
3. Would generations of state coerced re-education (in addition to many other simultanious programs) be necessary for addressing reactionary tendencies?
(I''m heavily generalizing ofc - this is a huge topic. We're up against thousands of years of programming, and these values differ from culture to culture)
Ok, it sounds a bit like you assume that people will resist anarchism and therefore may need to be coerced?
How about we just start doing it? You could implement sociocracy in your local gardening club or whatever. As people gain personal experience they are more likely to become allies. Most people want their interactions with others to be egalitarian, fair, and trustworthy. They just don’t believe it’s possible because they’ve never seen it.
It didn't escape my notice that every single thinker with the long fancy sentences he quoted was a dude. Methinks they're anarchists in the streets and patriarchs at home. Who's doing the dishes while they're busy writing these over-complicated books? There's no free association when someone has to stay home and do the chores.
@@ourmobilehomemakeover662Still, it's fair to assume people would resist for any number of rational or irrational reasons. They might simply think their ideas are better, or perhaps their quality of life may have worsened after the redistribution of capital.
@@jimmyjohnson1870 ok maybe. But it goes against the principle of egalitarianism and cooperation to make coercion the first solution to hypothetical resistance.
Instead of trying to figure out how to make people do things they don’t want to do, maybe focus on finding and appreciating those who already want to help out. Social pressure is incredibly powerful.
@@ourmobilehomemakeover662 True!
Even under a liberal democracy those in power can vote to keep those marginalized underneath them, divided and into seperate groups for group punishment. Race is a social construct the truth is it has always been about class struggle. Those in power want to keep that power by any means necessary.
Racism still exists outside of class struggle. My slave ancestors, we're beaten by poor white people after all. Those poor white people viewed my ancestors as dumb and incapable of individual thought. Which is why the rich white ones enslaved them and the poor white ones beat them.
In liberal democries historically we're usually not able to vote on the majority of issues. In the US we vote on our representatives except for the President who is chosen by an electoral college and appoints Supreme Court Justices basically unopposed. Everything is constructed, not just race. The idea you just mentioned that people are voting to oppress others is also a construct. Whether something is a construct or not doesn't determine its truthfulness or validity.
@@JohnSmith-mc2zz thanks for agreeing
imagine commenting this, and a month later commenting some bullshit about Hamas lmao.
A tour de force!
Thank you, Andrew.
Especially salient is the observation that states are incapable of arresting the biodiversity emergency. The best hope for humankind is ordinary people taking control of their lives and sharing power locally.
this video pushed me over the edge. for years I've been trying to grapple with whether or not I truly believe in anarchy, but now I'm properly radicalized lol. thanks, great vid
"What is politics" is a great anarchist anthropologist channel that changed my entire worldview on how power "naturally" occurs, especially as hunter/gatherers diversified creating more power imbalanced systems of living.
I actually think he's a libertarian socialist but not an anarchist.
@@otherperson According to himself in one of his videos, he's an anarchist. What is the difference?
@@anubis2814 got it. In a comment I remember him saying he was not, but he pb changed his mind since that's a long time ago. There are some libertarian socialists who come from the marxist tradition rather than the anarchist tradition. They sometimes tend to be anti-state but arent always against all forms of hierarchical power structures.
Anarchists must organise!
Absolutely fabulous video! I usually have a hard time with keeping my full attention for this amount of time, but I was completely hooked all the way. Great explanations and example. I’ll share it with all my friends!🙌💜
I swear this is the second or third time I'm subscribing to you...(never unsubscribed but i was) anyway... luckily people mention your name enough i didn't forget you
self interest produces incoherence;
selfishness produces corruption
This gave me food for thought as always.
One thing about states is they are expensive in relation to anarchist societies. The example I kept thinking of is how the USA spends billions to sail fleets to the Strait of Hormuz to fire expensive guided missiles to stop the Houthi, and all they have are cheap rockets that cause nothing but grief for commercial ships in the area. Over time this strategy can't be maintained by states.
States fail because they can't match the energy per time costs that amorphous, small guerrilla anarchist groups put out with constant irritation tactics.
Violence is implicit in every edict of our society. A lack of compliance to anything in law creates a chain which ends in compliance, or violence. If you are arrested for riding your bike the wrong way in the bike lane, and you choose not to go to jail over it, you resist arrest, you are physically attacked. If you defend yourself, you are killed. You were killed over riding your bike the "wrong" way in a bike lane
I love how you use artwork in all of your videos. As an anarchist and an artist, its refreshing to see someone respect art and implement it in such a way as you do. Keep going, i love your work.
The thing about centralized power that Infind most intolerable is the corruptibility of it. Its like collecting all of one's most precious things in a single pile. One thief ruins everything. When all the power is concentrated it draws and enables corruption. Democracy becomes theatre and chatity becomes performance as the citizensare left to their own devices in a society so structured that those devices are few and far between.
This is exactly my problem too. With centralized power you basically just have to hope that the person who gets into power is good and will use it well. If one bad egg is enough to absolutely wreak havoc once they get into power, that power shouldn’t be able to just be taken by one person.
I guess, for me, the big problem is that there's very few surviving anarchist places, because most of them got stomped out of existence. Hierarchies can muster so much power.
WOW! This is what I had always hoped to get from your anarchy orientation. Great stuff!!
Andrew is such a treasure for us anarchists. This episode is wonderful. And know that everyone who walks, rolls, or drives on sidewalks and roads exist under anarchism: we agree to do what we need to do within safety parameters without any use of police or structure. We just do what our community needs us to do to all use the roads & sidewalks effectively.
Congratulations on an amazing video!
You did a great job of presenting complex information in a digestible manner without watering it down too much.
Also, sick artwork throughout the video!
Glad you enjoyed it!
my school had a solarpunk talk you could sign up and go to and i half expected you to be doing the presentation lmao
(sorry for bad english)
11:49 "while states needed settled populations to get their start" I think this one sentence is weong, because for example recent historical research has shown that nomads from eurasia (mongols, turks, etc) had already since antiquity states institutions, with only the difference of not being centralized all the time in 1 ruler and 1 capital city
I have a question too: wich is your source when you says that the institutionnalisation of surnames was a cause of the english peasant rebellion in 1381 ?
Thank you for pointing this out! It is also true of the majority of the First Nations people in America (e.g. Haudenosaunee Confederacy)
I'll have to look further into the presence of state institutions within nomadic populations. Do you have a source? The main point of that argument was simply a counter to the belief held by some that settlement necessarily resulted in states.
Regarding the claim about 1381, this comes directly from Seeing Like A State:
State naming practices, like state mapping practices, were inevitably associated with taxes (labor, military service, grain, revenue,) and hence aroused popular resistance. The great English peasant riing of 1381 (often called the Wat Tyler Rebellion) is attributed to an unprecedented decade of registrations and assessments of poll taxes.(52) For English as well as for Tuscan peasants, a census of all adult males could not but appear ominous, if not ruinous.
That footnote (52) says: See the classic study by Rodney Hilton, Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381 (New York: Viking Press, 1977), pp. 160-64.
@@AndrewismThe mongols had a clear state, the Mongolian Khanates. These khanates had: permanent territorial claims, centralized leaders, diplomatic relations with other Khanates and laws.
another great video, thank you. as someone who is really getting into anarchism, and making my way through the classics, it is really good to be able get some supplemental knowledge from your channel :)
This is the first time that I’ve come across a video like this narrated by someone with a Caribbean accent. I think it’s great! We need more of this!🙌🏾
watching this before school i love your videos!
The more I study the Food-Energy-Water nexus, and Systems Thinking, the more I realize that people will need a story that goes beyond our wonky anarchist terms like free association. They don't care what the theory is, they care about what story you can tell about their life, their quality of life, and how it will be affected. It's the same with degrowth. I'm talking about urban planners, policy analysts, workers, actually explaining the systems and relationships in a case study. BUT the top two or three news networks all have terrifying Media Bias / Fact Check pages so I think we're SOL in general for a while here
I don't think free association is that "wonky." I think I do a good job explaining and contextualising it in the next video, but yeah a story is needed, also work in progress.
can we talk about how nice andrew’s voice is tho? i ordered the books from the andrewism reading list video and now im on the ecology of freedom wishing i were reading it as an audiobook with his voice 🥲
All authoritarianism has egalitarian emancipation as the main enemy. We will win, we know our enemies better than ever before! 🏴🏴🏴
Incredible work on this video. Thank you for your labour!
The problem really begins where we start to serve the state instead of the state serving us.
Truth is that the State never really served the people
It should ideally be a symbiosis, the minute the state has more power in any way it goes downhill.
States are not abstract entities somehow divorced from the world itself. They are just as much actors in the world as everyone else and like every single actor in this world their primary purpose is to maintain their own power.
We need people like you to speak to the world. You see with both eyes
Love your videos!! You are re educating a lot of people.
Amazing video. Very well done. Many thanks!
Seeing like a state was an eye opening book, to me. I easily still recommend it to anyone interested in politics (particularly people on the Left, to which I would say I readily belong). It greatly clarified my own ideas about politics, organizations, etc. And since coming into a career/jobs, I've seen things play out (the impossibilities of abstractly predicting all the problems that will inevitably crop up), exactly as described in book - both personally and in organizations.
Coupled with the most fundamental aspect of Conservativism ('wisdom of ages' - the impossibility of human minds creating sufficiently complex models of reality to redesign it 'in whole'), I consider this to be the most useful and wise lesson to learn for anyone on the Left (I disqualify the Right cause I usually don't like the changes to society they hope to accomplish).
Probably my favorite video of yours yet! (Followed by the library economy one)
Loved this. Thank you.
Great video, thanks for sharing.
Solidarité 🇵🇸✊
Perfect timing for this message.
I'm glad to add to the reading list. I also appreciate how revolution does not happen over night. My hesistancy to support without much deeper thought is based around how issues of reparations and Inidgenous liberation are currently within a discourse of relationship to states.
I always enjoy Andrew aneurysm. Well crafted words in excellent narration. It is a great pleasure to watch and listen to your videos.
Thanks for the video and it's important to note that there were Sedentary, Stratified Hunter-Gatherer societies in history like the Fort-building hunter-gatherers of Neolithic/Copper Age Siberia (see the Amnya Complex) which is something I find interesting since I always thought until recently that all hunter-gatherers lived in hyper-egalitarian nomadic societies.
Indeed. Hunter gatherers were just as capable of hierarchy.
Hunter gatherer societies were just as if not more diverse than modern socities due to slow communication leading to more cultural isolation.
I like this channel. Your videos are very comfy, but also informative, and well thought out.
i have anarchist tendencies, but something stopping me from making the jump to anarchism is the inability to reconcile the idea that revolution can be bottom up, and that we can maintain our gains from the lower rungs of our current hierarchy. I mean, sure, if we convince people that anarchy is viable more people will be sympathetic to it, but why can't the state, which will inevitably have some level of support from it's millitary, not be able to quash any kind of counter-resistance?
When revolution happen inside people's head, it's pretty difficult to uproot it. The state, capitalism or any kind of hierarchy, cannot exist without a certain mass of people at the bottom. The more people who are able to break out of them, the less power these systems will have over anyone. Sadly, it won't happen overnight, but it will have more lasting effects.
@@avanonyme some objections that immediately come to mind are can't capitalist forces who have much more cultural capital beat anarchism at every turn? can't, when push comes to shove, capitalism just kill the anarchists? didn't that happen before during facism and soviet communism?
to be honest, i'm really quite new to anarchism. these objections that come to mind are kind of ingrained at this point which i recognise is a problem. this channel is by far the most accessible medium to access anarchist ideas for me at the moment. are there better avenues for me to access these ideas? reccomendations?
@@lemonboiyoutube You've grown up in a capitalist society, with the culture that comes with it, why are you searching for alternatives then?
Reality is complex and I don't pretend to hold all the answers, but I am optimist and believe people can see capitalism for what it is and any anarchist alternative as a better way to live. It's only a matter of education, awareness spreading and passions.
Classical authors that I've heard get recommended but haven't personally read, there's Kropotkin, Malatesta and Bookchin that I see getting thrown around a lot. Personally I'd recommend any work by David Graeber, there's lots of his talks on UA-cam. If you're willing to pay some money, Andrewism's community and Patreon is pretty cool. Anark as a youtube channel has lots of information too.
@@lemonboiyoutube Personally I have not found a satisfying answer from anarchists on this but I would love to be wrong. Historically though that has happened and anarchists were killed by the state esp in Europe.
Friendly suggestion to look into Marxism-Leninism-Maoism since it's a communist tendency that deals with issues of capitalist restoration/counter-revolution and cultural capitalism as central issues, leading to a very principled criticism of (particularly post-Lenin) Soviet Russia and (particularly post-Mao) Communist China that aligns with Anarchism quite heavily.
there are several examples of states run by communist parties and successful ideologically communist revolutions, i know of no such lasting examples of ideologically anarchist revolutions producing something that endures on the scale of laos, vietnam, or cuba.
those countries are so much better than their capitalist equivalents, i have a very hard time with the idea that we should doing something even more gradual than the dubious "after the dictatorship of the proletariat is around for awhile the state will wither away" idea you hear from marxists.
Thanks Andrew. Excellent analysis.
Oh holy crap I wanted an anti-state anarcho-communist essayist, and got recommended this by both F.D. Signifier and Foreign Man in a Foreign Land, and I am very happy for said recommendations! Time to obsessively hyper-fixate binge watch every single piece of content this channel has ever released.
If you dont already watch Zoe Baker, Lucky Black Cat, and Anark you should do that as well. Those alongside Andrewism are the best on UA-cam in my opinion. Andrewism is definitely the most poetic.
I wonder how they feel about Luna Oi, Hasan, Yugopik, Hakim and Second Thought. I’m not sure that they would agree with this video.
The accompanying transcript is so helpful. I read along while listening, and the content of this video sticks more. It’s nice to be able to pause and reread to make sure I understand!Thank you Andrew for the time and effort you put into your content🙏🏽
As an Indigenist I shared your channel to my adult kids. One of them let me know you posted this. Great episode (again).
What does that word even mean?
@@Feedbackking13 it’s an Indigenous decolonization philosophy from the (so called) americas which includes Indigenous anarchism. It is described as being different in different places at different times as we are many Nations not one.
@@AuntyKsTarot What's your opinion on the Zapatista?
@@something1600 I think they show us how to do it. You have to take a decade building multiple communities and training warriors to take the land back from governments (and any settlers insistent on settler patriotism).
Was just thinking about this guy the other day and I couldn't for the life of me remember his channel name. This video is a relief in that sense
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Beautifully spoken. Thank you for making this public piece of information
When we talk about hierarchies of power that are embedded into the human psyche, the one I find most central is the hierarchy that puts humanity at the top of the food chain. I’ve read some scholarship on Blackness and the redefining of personhood that talks about the potential of flattening the “pyramid” of evolution that puts humanity at the top. This feels at least a bit related to statehood and the need to carve out such distinctions between each other for the sake of control.
This idea goes back to the Christian concept of the “Great Chain of Being”.
Absolutely loved the video, I credit your wonderful voice with turning me towards anarchism
It's just so hard to organise because so many people have hierarchy so internalised. Whenever there is a group organising it usually ends up with a white guy leading and all poc, disabled and most women getting silenced, I really feel like most men (and a lot of women) cannot be trusted to not act upon their patriarchal conditioning same goes for race. This is the main issue I've observed, how could we solve this?
Because WASPs and most Europeans at least have a history of cultivating leadership and complex organizations on a mass scale, so it's on some level ingrained however deteriorated.
The Asians took and learned all they could of what's been forged in Europe, mixed it with their own developed philosophies of organizing society, and prospered as well.
Why attack a people when you can learn from them and become awesome yourself?
I mean this happened bc unfortunately those that won all the wars colonized and stole everything were white men from Europe-specifically white men who have a ton of capital and instigated the wars those many years back. I bet it’s their offsprings and other associates that enabled them in the past that keep it going.
I don't think there's a single solution but I'd advise looking to unions, they're probably the single most successful example of voluntary horizontal organisation, and have always been a favourite of Anarchists. There are probably many lessons you can learn from them and adapt to other projects.
Decentralisation is the only way.
I like the art used to visualize your concepts. Please continue to use art in ur videos :)
34:52 damn, I'm not the biggest Proudhon fan but homie was spittin bars
Yeah, I think I understand what "based" means now lol
I got so fired up by that quote but also it struck me that it's very similar to neolibreral rhetoric. It's so weird to me that neoliberals and libertarians use this kind of talk but somehow insist that the violent enforcement of private property is somehow "freedom."
What I find a little difficult with young organizations that are very focused on horizontal organization is clique building. Particularly of idealistic people that do not have a lot of contact with workers is that they form cliques that ignore outside input or acknowledge it but fall back to their cliques immediately.
They also have absolutely no accountability because there is no form to hold them accountable because there's supposed to be no hierarchy.
In many of these cliques it's also the most imporant how often and how long you can be at their plena which makes it very difficult to catch up on for people who have to work a job, have to care for kids or are neurodivergent and can't deal with very, veeeeery long meetings where barely anything happens.
Isn't that another form of hierarchy?
Thanks for your video. Respect from Pakistan
I'm looking forward to part 2! Can you please include a section on defence? That's always where lack of hierarchy seems to stumble...
The video is already complete but it does include a section with such an engagement, no worries.
It frustrates me that most leftists do not understand this and are so hyperfocused on electoralism.
new favorite video about anarchism. phenomenal work, very well researched and argued
The people united will never be defeated!
I’m glad that you mentioned how hierarchy also negatively affects those with authority. I see too many people dehumanizing people in authority.
Hey, I have sth to say about what the strategies to defend ourselves and our «revolutionary gains» are. I encourage you and everyone interested in that to reach out for the real practice of autonomy: Zapatistas experience and Cheran in MExico, or Kurdistan. BUt also look around to the real territory stuggles near you, cause the ppl defending their land (usually indiginous decendant ppl) are the ones that are building and reinforcin new forms of excercicing autonomy beyond state. Is real experience and not purely imagination what can keep us going with hope, I think. Those examples are not perfetc but they are real and in the making, let us be near them and learn from them and also contribute to these present struggles. Those are, as some would call them, «concrete utopias».
also what I tried to say about strategy, is that what we find in these real examples are always an effort to put together an «comunitary polices», as some call it, or «comunitary guards», which are compose by the members of the community of course, but it also rotates (I mean, not permanent individuals in them). BUt what is thruth either way is that the construction of autonomy and autodetemination comes with a necessary concern to arm ourselves in order to defend ourselves and not let that protection falls in the hands of third parties.
Don't all of these still have leaders and hierarchies within?
This is the first anarchist thing I've come across that send to truly understand what the entire world needs.
In my opinion, the most effective way to replace capitalism is to refuse to participate in exploitation of others whenever practical and possible. Others should include both the poor in our own states, the poor in other states, those over whom we might already hold power, and especially the animals we currently use for food and resources. If we stop exploiting others in large enough numbers, they pyramid scheme of capitalism with collapse and we will all be on a level(ish) playing field and can start cooperating instead of competing.
I think so too this could start for a gradual change it’s gonna take many generations for healing but that’s expected since we are carrying trauma of our ancestors for the last thousands of years
love the video. States can never speak for the complexities of human beings and ecology. Looking forward to the next vid on organized anarchy
Fantastic video, definitely given me lots to think about. While I've always had issues with hierarchies, I can sort of understand why so many anti-capitalists especially in the imperial periphery lean into a DoTP or a workers' state. The question of authority in such states is an issue though. I'm still new to this stuff so I'm still figuring stuff out.
This is definitely an oversimplification, but I feel anarchism as an ideology in practice is more applicable to those who are in an imperialist state (a Global North country), rather than those who live in an oppressed state (a Global South country). The reason is, I feel, that a revolution in an oppressed state is required to defend its interests from outside forces, far more than one in an imperialist state; the state is a powerful tool in defending the interest of a class, while anarchism seeks to destroy it.
@@rakha8812usually, the thing you need to defend your revolution from the most is the state itself
@@rakha8812 I'm not sure I understand. Did I do something wrong by "oversimplifying" as you state? I'm from the imperial periphery so I think that a successful revolution in a global majority state would need protection. The sort of protection that a proletarian state would provide
@@marcusnguginganga2829 I meant that what I'm saying is an oversimplification, not yours, sorry.
@@longnoseboi The Cuban revolution says otherwise. I don't think Cuba would still stand as it does now if the revolution was anarchist.
Beautiful! Contemplating, sharing and enacting.
Hey Andrew, I'm glad somebody finally got around to combining these works and producing a video like this so that it can be shared with people (especially our friends who don't read). I was curious if you had heard of Kojin Karatani's The Structure of World History: From Modes of Production to Modes of Exchange. While the author is not an anarchist, at least explicitly, his work is of great interest to anarchists who deal with social science and works of that nature.
Hey, thanks for the recommendation. I'm a bit cautious about grand narrartive/stageist conceptualisations of history, but this one looks interesting, I'll def check it out.