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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • I prefer Parenti’s quote on democracy

    Democracy is a wonderful invention by the people over history to protect themselves from the power of wealth. That’s what democracy was in Greece, that’s what democracy has been ever since. It’s an invention of the people, nobody else but the people. There’s no great philosopher that invented democracy, there’s no great political theorist that thought about it and put it together, there’s no great intellectual or writer or artist who created democracy! It was the mass of people! Anonymous, ordinary working people, working women and working men, people trying to survive, they’re the ones that fought for it and they’re the ones that gained whatever modicum of decency and security we might have in this inhumane capitalist system throughout history.









  • well, let’s start by breaking down the word.

    • Anarcho: without leaders
    • Syndicalism: a socialist economy in which the will of workers are directed through labor unions

    So as a word, it means a socialist society without leaders, with an economy controlled by justified hierarchy. From what I’ve found in my search is that anarcho-syndicalists don’t really have any major published political philosophy (I know it’s out there, I just haven’t found it), but it’s typically taken the form of aggressive, sometimes militant methods of organizing workers. Historically, the one extreme example of their success was the anarcho-syndicalist CNT union during the Spanish revolution, which established a wartime socialist economy based on syndicalist values.

    An important term I want to point out that’s important to all anarchist strains of political philosophy is justified hierarchy. An extremely common misconception is that anarchists want pure chaos by destroying all of society, which couldn’t be further from the truth. In actuality, they are opposed to all hierarchy that cannot be justified. This includes political parties, governments, and representative democracy. Instead they believe in highly cooperative direct democracy to ensure the will of the people. This is distinct from government due to free association. With syndicalism in the mix, this means that unions direct the distribution of goods within and between communities based on free association; both communities/unions/federations cooperate for as long as both groups see it as beneficial. These unions do not have any influence on what people choose to do, in fact the union itself is a justified hierarchy with limited direct influence on their member’s lives, but controlled via participatory direct democracy. that is what it means to have justified hierarchy.