It is Clan Mentality and Hardship that Creates Superiority - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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The 'no government' movement.
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#15019922
After reading the fantasic Mutual Aid by Kropotkin my conclusion is that Dialectical materalism would always have led to heirarchy. It is true that the evidence suggests mutual aid led to human progression and we could live by it but ultimately when clans integrated during hardship, repaying servitude led to social order and the creation of faith moral standards maintained that order. Also mutual aid is only a factor within clans (community) and not the species as a whole. Animals do fight over territory from outsiders - and just by viewing human history we know this to be true for them too. And as that is a factor, the creation of states is inevitable to protect the self interest of the clan. So you can eliminate the state but ultimately they will return due to clan mentality and unless the clan is willing to accept refugees from other clans during hardship (which they might not do due to limited resources) conflict ultimately occurs and as such a state is created that way.

So the only realistically option to regain a mutual aid society is not anarchism but communism. Where states are created at first and those states integrate overtime when forming federations. Once the last state forms into one you have finally achieved a stateless society. But even this relies on Dialectical Materialism removing oneness mentality, the end of moral superiority from deity, ethical codes and the proletariat regaining their class consciousness. In other words, we have to wait until the end of Capitalism before the conditions for Mutual aid are possible.
#15023944
Feel like the concept that might grab your interest in regards to a value that underpinned working class movements of the past and seems fundamental to any modern (social) subject is that of solidarity.
Solidarity means giving support to a stranger on their own terms; so solidarity differs from community because it is extended to strangers, and differs from philanthropy because it is given on the stranger’s own terms, not that of the giver.

Solidarity is the fundamental ethic of the workers’ movement, obliging workers to support the struggles of all other oppressed people.
...
In particular, solidarity is necessary for the functioning of large cities where we routinely share our lives with strangers.

The importance of solidarity is that it forms the basis for trust. Trust is required by individuals to participate in a single system of activity or “subject,” be that a social movement, professional association or urban neighbourhood. Trust is the rational expectation of the cooperation of others. So in order to create the basis for the strengthening of a new radical subjectivity, trust is required. Trust in business is based on honesty; trust in struggle is based on solidarity. So solidarity is the fundamental relation which underpins the relation between radical subjects (not founded on wealth), and is the basis for the formation of new, voluntary social ties (not founded on tradition – family, locality, religion, ethnicity, etc.).

Trust and solidarity are relationships which are underpinned by certain virtues; to acquire a virtue, one must go through the relevant life-experiences. Since solidarity is necessary for the survival of the working class, and is practiced by working-class organisations, being a proletarian entails developing the virtue of solidarity. Social cohesion and trust are being eradicated by the conditions of modernity; solidarity is the only means of restoring this loss. It is the basic pre-condition not only for social progress, but for any kind of viable urban life today, outside of a fortified village.

Certain experiences are deemed necessary for successful development. Respect and esteem are the aspects of relationships in which subjects relate to each other externally. Self-respect and self-esteem grow from the weak bonds operative in the world market. They are compatible with life in an atomised society which lacks any social cohesion, while giving great scope for libertarian freedom. Solidarity, however, springs from the need to combat the effects of the loss of social cohesion and provide a real basis for mutual trust and self-confidence, for which external relation is insufficient: mutuality, or “mutual inclusion,” is required.

Solidarity, is characteristic in its proper sense only of modernity, in which the family becomes less important as a site for the building of trust and self-confidence, and one must continuously deal with strangers. This is a world in which a person must be willing to take a risk to help a complete stranger, and when in need, one looks to the solidarity of strangers for support. Solidarity differs from religious kindness (as exhibited by the priest in Les Miserables) because it has a secular basis rather than being aimed at pleasing God; solidarity differs from philanthropy in that solidarity means supporting the project of the subject receiving aid, rather than drawing them into one’s own project.

I say as much because it is an ethic particularly relevant to modernity where we communities are broken down and not as significant as they were in earlier ways of life, as such we have to foster an ethic towards strangers which most people are in modern life. Can see how the above distinguishes it from support to those that are already apart of one's group.
But I don't think it's something one has to wait for the end of capitalism, rather the fostering of solidarity is necessary to change capitalist relations into an ethical life.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/ethics.htm
Just as "friends have no need of justice", citizens of the genuinely human society have no need of a measure of value.

Look at the youth cultures. Oppositions to "society" which comes forward as "life-styles"; no program or "theory of knowledge"; and the response of capital is to transform them into commodities. The day of the revolution will be the day capitalism is unable to transform a vibrant youth movement into a commodity. But the overthrow of capitalism simply means that people go about their business without having to "balance the books" with every transaction; the day we live by Ethics and not by "economic rationalism" is the day capitalism is over.

On the basis of the fullest development of science and the world-wide division of labour, it is now possible for people to live humanly. A different way of thinking and a different way of living is possible only upon the basis of social relations in which human labour is not bought and sold as a commodity, but rather is the voluntary act of free human beings choosing to enter into cooperation with one another.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/help/value.htm
The "labour theory of value" disappears with value itself, as soon as people stop exchanging commodities. We do not need a new theory of value. We will demonstrate our values when we can decide how to spend our time and the sooner we can decide what to do with our own time, the better. So long as we still want something in exchange, so long are we enslaved. So long as we have to spend out time doing one thing in order to get something else in exchange, so long are we enslaved.


Although the issue of hiearchy does need to be questioned although I don't necessarily take an anarchist position of essential opposition to it, but it's not without problems of corruption/degeneration.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Virtue%20and%20Utopia.pdf
The Question of Delegation and Hierarchy
Two problems have plagued social change activism over the past millennium: delegation and hierarchy, with the incipient transformation of delegates into officers.

The tendency of a delegate structure to solidify into a hierarchy does not issue from egotism on the part of delegates, but on the contrary, more often because of the unwillingness or incapacity of other members of a collective to do the work required of a delegate (an incapacity which may be itself a product of the structure of delegation). Even in organizations where representation and delegation are absent, there is an incipient tendency for informal roles to fossilize into offices, and representatives to be transformed into managers. Voluntary associations have been aware of this tendency and have struggled to overcome it for at least 500 years. But without the use of delegation it is impossible to organize on a scale larger than the number of people who can meet in one room together. Over the centuries organizations have used various measures, such as limited terms of office, mandation of delegates, rotation of positions, etc., to manage this situation. There is however no substitute for the fostering of virtues among all the participants. The internet certainly moderates these pressures but I don’t believe it essentially changes the situation.

MacIntyre’s advice quoted above is relevant here: “without the virtues … practices could not resist the corrupting power of institutions.” The fossilization of delegate structures into hierarchies is a symptom not a cause of the loss of the practical virtues and the degeneration of workers’ democracy.

To which should be an area of study itself of how one fosters virtue in organizations.
MacIntyre distinguishes between institutions and practices. Institutions, he says, are concerned with external goods, so as to sustain themselves and the practices of which they are the bearers ‒ good performances are rewarded, and wages are paid for full-time commitment and apprentices are given formal training by old hands. Education systems based on testing regimes are an example of how institutions can undermine the very virtues that they set out to sustain. “For no practices can survive for any length of time unsustained by institutions … institutions and practices form a single causal order in which which the creativity of the practice are always vulnerable to the acquisitiveness of the institution …without the virtues … practices could not resist the corrupting power of institutions” (p. 181). Elsewhere (2014), I have argued that collaborative projects (practices) rather than individuals or groups should be taken as the units of analysis for social theory, and that institutions be seen simply as part of the life cycle of projects. Given the antipathy anarchists tend to manifest towards institutions, MacIntyre’s claim that they are necessary to sustain practices is an issue which Franks could address. (See my review of Andrew Jamison, Blunden 2012). As Franks would agree, surely there are institutions which sustain virtues without undermining them at the same time by rewarding performance, and aren’t they exactly the kind of institutions we aspire to create? Without institutionalization, how are the practices to be sustained and the virtues fostered and maintained?

In the early days of working class organization, breaches of union discipline were punished with fines; gradually, over a period of 100 years, these sanctions faded away as the norms of unionism were internalized by workers and new generations raised in the necessary virtues. No-one would argue that these fines exercised a “corrupting power,” but the point is that the virtue of solidarity took a protracted period of time to become instilled in the broad mass of the working class and where unions are still strong, is still maintained this day by means of other sanctions. How this virtue became instilled and maintained in masses of people is a question of great interest for us.
#15023949
B0ycey wrote:After reading the fantasic Mutual Aid by Kropotkin my conclusion is that Dialectical materalism would always have led to heirarchy. It is true that the evidence suggests mutual aid led to human progression and we could live by it but ultimately when clans integrated during hardship, repaying servitude led to social order and the creation of faith moral standards maintained that order. Also mutual aid is only a factor within clans (community) and not the species as a whole. Animals do fight over territory from outsiders - and just by viewing human history we know this to be true for them too. And as that is a factor, the creation of states is inevitable to protect the self interest of the clan. So you can eliminate the state but ultimately they will return due to clan mentality and unless the clan is willing to accept refugees from other clans during hardship (which they might not do due to limited resources) conflict ultimately occurs and as such a state is created that way.

So the only realistically option to regain a mutual aid society is not anarchism but communism. Where states are created at first and those states integrate overtime when forming federations. Once the last state forms into one you have finally achieved a stateless society. But even this relies on Dialectical Materialism removing oneness mentality, the end of moral superiority from deity, ethical codes and the proletariat regaining their class consciousness. In other words, we have to wait until the end of Capitalism before the conditions for Mutual aid are possible.


So you've read Mutual Aid! Very good!

However the rest is rather puzzling in it's validity. I'm not particularly sure your ideas on clan mentality is rather scientific given the studies on real life tribes and clans which seem to indicate the opposite mentality.

Regardless Kropotkin and Anarchism in general isn't suggesting that we return to social organization based on clans. If you would like to know what Kropotkin ideally thinks society should operate you should read The Conquest of Bread by him.

The Conquest of Bread is a shorter work and is a fictional one as well. If you like fiction you'll enjoy it. It's a philosophical novel of sorts which discusses how a group could organize themselves. I would suggest other works after that but you would first have to read Conquest of Bread before I can give you more recommendations.

Trust me you'll love them all.
#15023975
Wellsy wrote:Although the issue of hiearchy does need to be questioned although I don't necessarily take an anarchist position of essential opposition to it, but it's not without problems of corruption/degeneration.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/Virtue%20and%20Utopia.pdf

To which should be an area of study itself of how one fosters virtue in organizations.


When I was reading the book I was thinking of you @Wellsy. The first few chapters was quite revolutionary at explaining why behaviour is key in survival and answered a question I have always questioned myself. Can humans cooperate? Under another economic model away from Capitalism I believe they can if it is in our interest to do so. This book is a masterpiece in biological thinking but really only addressed this issue in the first few chapters. Oh well.

The rest really explained how heirarchy came about and not really biological in text. Unfortunately to me how heirarchy came about are just generic steps in civilization and would repeat themselves every single time if civilization collapsed and reformed. If you are forced to join a new clan due to hardship, you adhere to that clans mentality or are rejected from the tribe against your self interest. Humans seem inheritantly submissive to domination in order to adapt and be accepted if you look back at history.

@Palmyrene I will read the Bread of Conquest but after the book you recommended to me once before that I have now forgotten the title to. What was the book that explained why selfish behaviour was key to Anarchism or was it that didn't discredit the ideology?
#15023979
B0ycey wrote:The rest really explained how heirarchy came about and not really biological in text. Unfortunately to me how heirarchy came about are just generic steps in civilization and would repeat themselves every single time if civilization collapsed and reformed. If you are forced to join a new clan due to hardship, you adhere to that clans mentality or are rejected from the tribe against your self interest. Humans seem inheritantly submissive to domination in order to adapt and be accepted if you look back at history.


Submissiveness is learned not born. People learn from an early age to submit to authority from our education system to our culture and mentality. It isn't any more natural than sexism or racism is.

@Palmyrene I will read the Bread of Conquest but after the book you recommended to me once before that I have now forgotten the title to. What was the book that explained why selfish behaviour was key to Anarchism or was it that didn't discredit the ideology?


Oh yeah it's called An Ego and His Own by Max Stirner. Max Stirner is an individualist who takes it to it's logical extremes which results in what is essentially "individualist communism". I'm sure you'll find it interesting.
#15023983
B0ycey wrote:Thanks. I'm sure I shall.

Then you can check out Karl Marx XD
Image

For a brief summary, there is a section here that summarizes Max Stirner and Marx's critique of him. The idea is that Max Stirner criticizes Feuerbach's concept of man as just as abstract and alienating as the conception of God that Feuerbach criticized. Marx critique of Stirner is similar to his critique of Feuerbach in that he like many leaves the issue of alienation at the level of critique but doesn't offer any viable means of actually over coming alienation as the social is regarded as illusory to the individual. But the individualism he advocates seems little more than the morality of a liberal for whom there is no over riding common good of society but only the pursuit of the object of one's desires.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/macintyre2.pdf
In each of the historical settings that MacIntyre investigates, he is able to show that the type of justice and the type of rationality which appears to the philosophical spokespeople of the community to be necessary and universal, turns out to be a description of the type of citizens of the community in question. Accordingly, the justice of liberalism and the rationality of liberalism is simply that justice and that rationality of the “citizens of nowhere” (p. 388), the “outsiders,” people lacking in any social obligation or any reason for acting other than to satisfy their desires and to defend the conditions under which they are able to continue satisfying their desires. Their rationality is therefore that of the objects of their desire.

In this viewpoint, the common good is seen as an unjust imposition over one's individual desires because there seems to be no connection of self interest to a possible rational shared interest. Which at the time seemed absurd to Karl Marx as the working class had already the world over organized itself into historical subjects pursuing common ends, as such the shared interest already proven itself in practice.
As such, he gets no further than any of the young Hegelians who wage a war on ideas but have no thought to the relation of their philosophy to the actual state of German society and the conditions which underpin their ideas and thus need to be changed in actuality rather than merely criticized.
#15023990
Tribalism is most definitely natural. Communists just form new tribes and start killing each other, just like the pre modern Christians who also fantasied about getting rid of tribes. You don't even have to look at the genocidal history of intra Communist conflict, just check out your local far left groups, they all hate each other with a passion, that makes Donald Trump's attitudes to Mexican immigrants look positively motherly.
#15023994
Rich wrote:Tribalism is most definitely natural. Communists just form new tribes and start killing each other, just like the pre modern Christians who also fantasied about getting rid of tribes.


Well MLists all claim to be the leading party of the working class so they fight each other because you can't have everyone lead the upper class.

You don't even have to look at the genocidal history of intra Communist conflict, just check out your local far left groups, they all hate each other with a passion, that makes Donald Trump's attitudes to Mexican immigrants look positively motherly.


Yeah, no. Especially if you're talking about the US.

Let's make some ground rules:

1. Liberals aren't "far left". This means Democrats don't count as leftists. The term liberal refers to people who support capitalism and the nation state. By all means you're a liberal Rich.

2. Supporting policies such as welfare isn't "far left" so any groups that do cannot be considered "far left" on this basis only.

Now let's get to your claim.

The biggest decidedly "far leftist" group in the US is the Libertarian Socialist Caucus which operates under the umbrella organization the DSA or Democratic Socialists of America (however there are discussions of secession). I'd argue they aren't that anarchist but whatever, they're the closest thing the US has to an actual "far leftist" organization.

Now here's the issue with your claim, the DSA-LSC contains a majority of leftists in the US. In fact, I'd argue they have a monopoly on all leftists in the US due to it being the only serious leftist party out there. This means that, while the LSC may break off the DSA to start it's own organization, the DSA-LSC is practically the united front of leftists in the US. There are no internal power struggles going on that you're referring to.

Now if you're referring to antifa you may have a point. However antifa isn't an organization, it's a brand, a form of affiliation. You just put an Antifa logo on your hat, wear the colors, and do whatever you want. Just show up in a rally and go nuts. This means antifa draws in a wide variety of people many of whom aren't even leftists.

But using antifa as an example of leftists being inherently disorganized and rabid is ridiculous given that it isn't a fucking organization.
#15023997
Rich wrote:Tribalism is most definitely natural. Communists just form new tribes and start killing each other, just like the pre modern Christians who also fantasied about getting rid of tribes. You don't even have to look at the genocidal history of intra Communist conflict, just check out your local far left groups, they all hate each other with a passion, that makes Donald Trump's attitudes to Mexican immigrants look positively motherly.


At the very least they have divided the world into two races "the left" and the "the right". You can bet anyone they identify as being in the latter race is marked for extinction.

There are two kinds of psychopath in this world the Ted Bundy types and the Torquemada types. Bundys don't need, and don't bother with, excuses or pretty stories about why they have to chop people up and fuck their corpses. They just go ahead and do it.

Leftists are all Torquemada types, they want to do the same stuff as the Bundys but they need a pretty high sounding excuse for why they "had" to do it. They want to chop people and fuck their corpses with the belief that some imaginary person somewhere is applauding them for their virtue and heroism while they do it. All of their ideological posturing is to this end.
#15024000
SolarCross wrote:At the very least they have divided the world into two races "the left" and the "the right". You can bet anyone they identify as being in the latter race is marked for extinction.


Oh please. Left unity is for losers anyways. The only people who care about it are Marxist-Leninists who want to assure anarchists that they won't betray them again.

The term leftist is a misnomer just as much as a rightist is. Communists have more in common with your ilk than anarchists. Both rightists and communists force people into labor camps, genocide millions, and threaten to wipe humanity off the face of the Earth all in justification for "the state".

Both of y'all can go suck my dick. If you're willing to service your masters you can service me. I assure it won't lower your dignity any more than it has now.
#15024002
Unthinking Majority wrote:People are not equal, so some form of economic hierarchy is natural and desirable.

I want to live in a society where you are rewarded for working harder and smarter than the next person, and punished for being lazy and making stupid decisions. I don't want to carry the dead-weight, I want to help the dead-weight carry themselves.


That's not how society works. In anarchism this is exactly how it would work. You're only given access to certain goods if you either do your share or preform labor equivalent to that of the good you're trying to get.

Generally anarchism is about rewarding people the full value of their labor whether individually or collectively depends on the ideology.

In capitalism and hierarchy however, you don't have do anything. You could be born into wealth and never have to do anything. You could own property and leech off the money and work of other people. You could make money by moving money.

And no matter how much you make, you may never reach your desired amount of income. I've talked to homeless people who have worked for 72 years and haven't gotten anything in return for their hard work.

Meanwhile a fucking idiot is born rich, manages a business franchise that bankrupts time to time only to be saved by daddy's money and stumbles on to be president.
#15024017
SolarCross wrote:What is my "ilk"? :?: Nice person? Good sort? Good egg? Non-crazy person? Non-psychopath?


Communists, the Stalin kind. That's your ilk.

Just curious whether you are looking for an excuse to chop me up Torquemada style.


No ome is going to chop you up. And if you try to get in the way of someone's freedom the most that will be done individually is work things out in discussion.
#15024027
Palmyrene wrote:That's not how society works. In anarchism this is exactly how it would work. You're only given access to certain goods if you either do your share or preform labor equivalent to that of the good you're trying to get.

Generally anarchism is about rewarding people the full value of their labor whether individually or collectively depends on the ideology.

In capitalism and hierarchy however, you don't have do anything. You could be born into wealth and never have to do anything. You could own property and leech off the money and work of other people. You could make money by moving money.

And no matter how much you make, you may never reach your desired amount of income. I've talked to homeless people who have worked for 72 years and haven't gotten anything in return for their hard work.

Meanwhile a fucking idiot is born rich, manages a business franchise that bankrupts time to time only to be saved by daddy's money and stumbles on to be president.


That reminds me of the Caddyshack quote.

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