• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Corpus Christi is running out of potable water precisely because they’ve drained so much of what’s available.

    That’s an actual example you can reference. One in which individual residents cannot simply defy the government to get what they need. At some point you need collective action. And collective action requires some amount of leadership, organization, education, and accumulated resources to draw from.

    • A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      Have you found the nearby anarchist collective yet? Bc i guarantee if theyre worth a salt theyre doing something.

      You seem sharp, im sure they’d appreciate your input.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        Have you found the nearby anarchist collective yet?

        Food Not Bombs is a great group full of genuinely enlightened people. Unfortunately, they are constantly getting harassed by the police.

        Makes doing anything on a routine basis a serious chore.

    • PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S [he/him]@anarchist.nexus
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      4 days ago

      Collective action does not require, and in my view is not even helped by, the existence of the State. Defying the government is (insufficient and) unnecessary to push off the water crisis to the future, e.g. the government can physically import water from elsewhere (although I wouldn’t bet on it), but defying the government is necessary (but insufficient) to permanently (on human time scales) solve the water crisis there, precisely because the State is designed to prevent the people from solving their own problems when it conflicts with capitalists’ interests.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Any collective organization that can form a bureaucracy for the management of capital is a State, for all intents and purposes. Any large capital project needs administration and expertise to function and a means of socially reproducing these roles in order to continue to function over time.

        The question becomes how to integrate yourself and your neighbors into the mechanics of statecraft without overwhelming people with bullshit or hedging them out into serfdom. But trying to prohibit statecraft is as much a fool’s errand as trying to impose it at a great distance through imperialism.

        People will organize into state bodies whether you want them to or not.

        • A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world
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          11 hours ago

          can form

          Thats why we approve of dual-power and anti-power approaches. Basic reading in practical anarchist thinking would show how our forms of democracy work differently than what youre used to. Consensus democracy is what we want.

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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            10 hours ago

            we approve of dual-power and anti-power approaches

            It’s not a matter of approval, though.

            Basic reading in practical anarchist thinking would show how our forms of democracy work differently than what you’re used to.

            Historically speaking, they haven’t worked. Anarchist organizing is easily infiltrated, regularly undermined, and poorly provisioned. The ideals are strong but the executions have proven lackluster time and time again. The end result over the long term is a chronic sense of paranoia and alienation among veterans. And that shrinks the pipeline of younger and more idealistic activists, who then turn to more stable and well-resourced alternatives.

            Basic reading is engaging and inspiring. But the praxis is another creature entirely. Anarchist propagandists love to talk down to skeptics. Anarchist activists are far more pragmatic and self-critical.

            • A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world
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              9 hours ago

              You and I have differing experiences. Maybe its just me, but down here in the South we like to dance.

              If you want to poke holes in anarchist theory from a comfortable chair knock yourself out but I wont be your target.

              • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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                9 hours ago

                Maybe its just me, but down here in the South we like to dance.

                I don’t know which South you’re in. I see plenty of liberalism, plenty of libertarianism, plenty of social democracy, and plenty of Christian democracy.

                Vanishingly little anarchism as the textbook thumpers want to describe it.