this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
244 points (100.0% liked)
chat
8182 readers
231 users here now
Chat is a text only community for casual conversation, please keep shitposting to the absolute minimum. This is intended to be a separate space from c/chapotraphouse or the daily megathread. Chat does this by being a long-form community where topics will remain from day to day unlike the megathread, and it is distinct from c/chapotraphouse in that we ask you to engage in this community in a genuine way. Please keep shitposting, bits, and irony to a minimum.
As with all communities posts need to abide by the code of conduct, additionally moderators will remove any posts or comments deemed to be inappropriate.
Thank you and happy chatting!
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Am I an anrchiddie if I say the conquest of bread is a good starting point?
I'm ML and haven't read Kropotkin, but i think his idea of mutual aid as a part of evolution is really valuabe, since social darwinism has so poisoned lib thought especially in the US that most USians don't differentiate between Darwin's actual scientific theory and social Darwinism, to the point of believing "survival of the fittest" is a Darwin quote.
The book to go for then would be "Mutual Aid: A Factor in Human Evolution", right? As far as I know, Conquest is mainly a utopian socialist thought experiment about how production (using technology and figures of his time) could easily provide for everyone with much less work. I think it's valuable, just has different subject matter.
Yeah that's the one i was thinking about. Thanks.
It honestly really irritates me how influential social darwinism has been in the US and i really wanted to rant about it lol
I fully support it, just wanted to comment on book topics. Social darwinism is insidious and it is difficult to imagine criticizing it too much.
Yes. I'm not sectarian to anarchists in general, but conquest of bread is basically a fantasy novel taking itself seriously. It isnt grounded in any research. If you like the ideas presented in conquest of bread, that's fine, but it doesn't actually go into how those ideas can be achieved, outside of mostly "people will just spontaneously do it"
I don't think this is a bad thing though. Books like the bread book or The Dispossessed can help open people up to a leftist POV by showing them that there are very realistic alternatives to a capitalist system that, while utopian, would be so cool to live under. I feel like we should push people less towards "gloom and doom" books as their first book.
I guess I would prefer books that laid out a realistic system that was better than laid out an unrealistic system that was better.
CoB is based on economic research, not magic, but absolutely is utopian in basically eliding the problem of "how would this ever be established?"
My partner double checked a bunch of the numbers he cited and he plays very loosey goosey with it.