Anarchists are starting to figure it out
Arrested development narrator voice: they weren’t
Anarchists are the Sisyphus of getting it.
What’s hilarious is when they actually manage to invent Leninism (as “revolutionary confederalism,” or something) – but still foam at the mouth about le ebil redfash tankies.
Lmao, same as when libertarians end up with regulations.
Libertarian drama is the funniest thing ever. Their sects usually count 1 person and are calling eachother “socialists” all the time over minuscule differences. Best is when one of them gets a flash of contact with reality like “guys maybe let’s not have warlords all over?” and others are immediately like “statist! statist!”
Not to mention that time some libertarians took control of a town, and got run out (fittingly) by angry bears.
loool this is so fucking funny
we have to struggle against goverments, big enterprises and imperialism not to mention whole ass countries like Cuba dealing with a brutal embargo and somehow commies still manage to make it work decently but ancaps having an entire town for them, no embargo, no imperialism, no govermental oppression, no fucking cops and they SOMEHOW still managed to fuck up.
These same people will then tell u on the internet that sOcIaLiSm HaS fAiLeD
Literally unbearable.
This is a great article on prostitution and how it’s not being your own boss and all of the awful things about it from a left perspective rather than a morality perspective. It focuses on transgender prostitution, but many of the points mentioned can be applied to most sex work situations. https://proletarianfeminist.medium.com/a-socialist-feminist-and-transgender-analysis-of-sex-work-b08aaf1ee4ab
From the article:
Real power doesn’t lie in forming loose associations to ask your abuser for slightly less-sadistic abuse. Real power is the ability to crush your enemy — the bourgeoisie, the pimp, the john, the trafficker — in order to abolish the conditions causing your exploitation. In a literal way, we must crush their global market that sells and trades women and girls and initiate a revolutionary movement demanding ambitious improvements to women’s conditions.
It’s worth pointing out that most AES states are absolutely merciless when dealing with traffickers. In the DPRK, human trafficking is apparently one of the few crimes that actually can be punished with public execution. China has mounted massive raids against trafficking hubs, and taken thousands of people into custody. Governments absolutely can fight this rot, and some do.
Read somewhere that the CPC has or is working on instituted/ing free vocational training for prostitutes as well… punishing the johns and the pimps severely while giving economic opportunities to those forced into the sex trade.
edit: looking it up now, I am awash with western media calling this vocational training “arbitrary detention in forced rehabilitation centers” even though not a year or two ago I read from western media a much more neutral spin on them, as “vocational training schools”.
Should be required reading for all leftists.
now i did get into some brawling over this issue here, but i do agree with the answer, because it contains the underlying principle of sex work being work and workers in the current economy usually being subject to some form of coercive, abusive and (co-)dependent relationship.
My control question is usually: who is assange to you. if they say “rapist/abuser”, then you know they have been brainwashed by MI6/CIA/NED astroturf and bellingcat influencers and are making the “sex-work equals rape” argument only to further condemn and smear Assange for all the corrupt nazi corporations and puppets in our endless-war-ukrainiannaziignoring-governments
A point on terminology, we Marxist feminists don’t use the term “sex work” or “sex workers”: that was a term coined by an indepently wealthy liberal feminist in the 60s who wanted to try out prostitution as a lifestyle choice. Most egregiously it tries to give “agency”, to the 99% of women and children trapped in the sex trade or coerced into the rape economy for monetary reasons. The term “sex worker” highlights the freedom of a tiny number of independently wealthy people, not the 99.9% of people coerced and kidnapped into the sex trade.
We also take issue with the equation of “work” with the patriarchal domination and control over women’s bodies.
We use the terms: the sex trade, and people in the sex trade to refer to our comrades trapped / imprisoned there.
in principle i agree as this all is basic marxist theory about worker exploitation. and while libshit suffragettes do all sorts of whacky renamings and reframings, the problem remains that if it is a lifestyle, it is not work in the sense of an exploitative relationship anymore. at least they way i understand work and lifestyle. (psycho grindset sigmamorons aside - basically a propaganda meme created by rich ancap heirs…)
i mean i take issue with “work” under patriarchal domination and control over bodies in general. and yeah, womens bodies are sort of overregulated…
regarding this terminology i would would still prefer “human trafficking/sexual exploitation” as i see this is more appropriate of the actual situation of people subjected to such abuse. And yeah, in global terms they are the majority among “sex workers” (and it also concerns strippers and dancers in some regards the abuse of which often is contextual to their own economic/psychosocial backtround. I mean i know girls who love dancing and earned money for doing it in clubs & skimpy outfits. In many ways they sold their bodies and the club owner still got way richer, while they were being subjected to male fantasy of a small group of unberable morons within any given audience. but at least for them, security was provided and it was security, not a pimp. Was this situation exploitational? that’s more a case by case basis
BUT… all of them told me that the margins from dancing in mens clubs to being subjected to abuse or becomeing a prostitute/porn actress are very thin, as usually, such etablissements are ripe with all sorts of drugs, predatory men and offers of easy money. which can be considered a perfect trap to slip into some abusive dependency for anyone not of clear and sound mind, with a titanium bar for a spine and a clear vision of why they are doing it in the first place.
Yes… Ha Ha Ha… YES!
Anarchists have been making that argument for a very long time, what do you mean they’re starting to figure it out? Have you read any anarchist theory? Do you know any anarchists IRL? Have you seen grass IRL?
I’ve read a decent amount of Anarchist texts: malatesta, gelderloos, kropotkin, goldman, graeber, bakunin and I can tell you they wouldn’t make even middling figures in the Marxist canon. The only one of those who is decent, is gelderloos, because he unlike the others does a little materialist and class analysis. The others mostly focus on “freedom” like most liberal thinkers, and are still stuck in the utopian socialist phase of thought, especially kropotkin and malatesta. Bakunin is just a raging antisemite, and advocates individualist or blanquist terrorism as a solution.
You pretty much won’t remain an anarchist after you read basic marxist texts like, how europe underdeveloped africa, socialism utopian and scientific, state and rev, wage labor and capital, etc.
Honest question but do you have any theory on Anarchist views on wage labor? I tried to Google it when I saw your comment but I’m having a hard time finding anything.
So I’ve been going for around 15 minutes now, skimming through articles and message boards and I’ve yet to find a concrete Anarchist views on labor, apart from ‘voluntary communal principles’. There’s even Anarchists claiming that it’s not about the economy and that any economic model can be adopted into Anarchism (???) or people that just suggest having robots do all the work.
If any Anarchist can provide me actual theory, go ahead. I’d love to learn. But everytime I read something on anarchists I can’t do anything other than disagree on most things.
If you want to lose all faith in humanity, read “The Abolition of Work,” by Bob Black. One of the “classics” of anarchist theory, along with “Eleven Ways to Kill a Child.”
(Black’s thesis, as far as I can tell, is that work in an anarchist society will be kind of like sex, and everybody will be horny, so nobody will have any problem working.)
That essay is one wild ride. Its kind of impressive that this antiwork phenomenon has such a dogshit basis, and is still so popular.
But… That’s almost exactly what happened in anarchist Spain. And if you have read Marx, you’ll know he makes a similar argument. Touch grass once in a while maybe.
Yes, but for Marx, the state of society where “labor becomes life’s prime want” comes far in the future, and is brought about by a level of technical development we can’t yet even imagine. Essentially, there has to be a such an abundance of material goods that the need for coercion fades away. In the meantime – probably for centuries or millennia – there will be scarcity, and work will have to be coerced.
Funny, I thought that what happened in anarchist Spain was that the anarchists went around raping nuns and burning churches, and in general alienating the deeply religious Spanish peasantry, so that even today, it’s hard to make much headway with certain more traditional sectors of the population.
raping nuns
ah, anarchist praxis.
Internet forums are a bunch of people who don’t go outside telling other people who don’t go outside to go outside.
Also quit acting like a child. “Touching grass”, i.e. going outside will teach you nothing about anarchist theory. Sitting on your phone or computer or buying a book will, sorta the opposite of touching grass.
Oh yeah, the anarchist spain the failed almost immeadiatly and caused the collapse of the republican side and got easily capitulated by the fascists, yes we all remember that sorry bad joke that comndemned an country to decades of an fascist dictatorship.
And marx never said even joking that “work will be like sex, so everyone will be happy” thats an lie. And the only argument you ever said on this tread was saying to people calling out anarchist bullshit to “go touch grass”, what about you go touch some theory them?
ABC of Anarchism includes a lot of stuff like this:
