Posts by AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
(DIR) Post #AZMsxhZV5CIAja4AvA by AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
2023-09-02T20:28:03Z
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@apps this one!
(DIR) Post #Aa8C1wO8EIhPzwb1pA by AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
2023-09-22T00:09:07Z
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Here's a problem I have trying to explain to people why I want to abolish police, abolish prisons. No matter how I phrase things many people hear a moral argument. That police are evil, prisons are evil. But this isn't at all what I mean. In fact seeing the issue that way, as a matter of good and evil, completely obscures the explanation. It brings it into the realm of opinion. It lets people nod their heads and stop listening. Of course people can disagree over things like this!Dichotomies like that, good/evil, moral/immoral, work this way to cover up truths about the world that are impossible to face and still go on normally. The two poles of such dichotomies immediately conjure up a continuum between them. If something is evil or immoral it can be made less evil or less immoral and that's some kind of progress. Not accepting this kind of incrementalism makes one a moralist, a perfectionist, an idealist, a purist, someone who can ultimately be ignored, someone they can agree to disagree with, like we all do in order to get along with people with so many matters of opinion. There's no need to listen any more, it's just another extreme theoretical position among all the others.Imagine buzzards eating corpses on the road with their heads deep in the guts of a rotting deer. The stench of death, the slimy putrid ooze on their bald heads. It's not evil, it's how they live, but it's not how human beings live. Being seen by other people willingly, joyfully, smearing one's body with corpse juice, reveling in putrefied rotting dead goop, eating gobbets of rotting flesh, would be shameful, inhuman. It's beyond good and evil. It's not the kind of thing that invites accepting, polite disagreement. No one wants to hear that person's explanations about why wallowing in rotten corpses is good, actually. We want to run far away.This is what the police are like, what prisons are. They thrive on the bodies of murder victims, they blossom on fields soaked with human blood, rotting corpses. Cops, jailers, their supporters, are willingly swimming in pools of rotten stinking death, joyfully breathing its vapors. This essence is very, very well- hidden inside whitewashed mausoleums by ideologies, social narratives, cultural handshakes, and so on. I saw this all of a sudden a few years ago and I can't unsee it, the corpses swinging in the wind hanged by the tens of thousands and left to decay, but it's not so easy to explain to people. It's not a matter of stating the right facts, measuring the right statistics, it's a way of looking at the world. It can't be explained quickly, which in practice means often it can't be explained at all.#Abolition #PoliceAbolition #PrisonAbolition #WhitedSepulchres #BeyondGoodAndEvil
(DIR) Post #AaVURrpacmihGJt6i8 by AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
2023-10-06T22:15:33Z
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@lowqualityfacts like all the hypocrites in the replies have never simply meant to hit the mute button and instead accidentally spewed two long paras of incoherent rage. Happens to me all the time! Let them who is without sin something something...
(DIR) Post #Ab3Q4r4T8AvugIOy1o by AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
2023-10-18T12:00:37Z
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@escarpment @RD4Anarchy @jackofalltrades @JoBlakely If you mean historically they were the people who had the power to control the oppressive apparatus of the state to enact their capitalist projects, especially to enclose common resources and to reshape the legal framework in which private property exists. They were the ruling class at the time capitalism began to develop in the sixteenth century and after. This is well known history. I recommend this book a lot, but for a very lucid, very convincing picture of this process during the development of capitalism in the seventeenth century Atlantic world you could read The Plantation Machine by Burnard and Garrigus. The French and English governments not only forcibly created the frameworks in which slavery based plantation capitalism could develop, flourish, and evolve in the Americas, but they were also among its major investors. They forced it on us, where "us" means working people as opposed to capitalists, who are people that live solely from the labor of others The forcible establishment of capitalism didn't require the creation of the power to forcibly establish and maintain economic systems. That power pre-existed capitalism. They merely used that existing tool to advance their own projects. That power is called the state, itself a relatively recent historical development, although much older than capitalism. For a good treatment of that history see Against the Grain by James C. Scott.
(DIR) Post #AbRcvdmnYFtLHpTNiK by AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
2023-10-28T22:59:52Z
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Actual grownup people are really on this app arguing that "anarchism will never be implemented." Well, in one sense they're correct. Anarchism is the absence of state coercion and it's theoretically incoherent to talk about "implementing" a lack of coercion. What would one do? Force people not to be coerced?In another sense they're completely wrong. Anarchism is always on the verge of coalescing. Whenever the cops go away people start living anarchically. It's our natural state. If it weren't why does the state have to to such lengths, commit such ludicrously valuable resources, to policing? Without cops anarchy would break out everywhere! And we don't even have to abolish the police to see this happen. If enough people stop obeying them it's over, no more state, no more capitalism. Probably enough isn't that many, either. Just a few percent. Once it's gone it won't be easy to set up again, either.(Yes, this is a subtoot)#Anarchism #Anarchy #Abolition #Police #Capitalism
(DIR) Post #AbRm3Gz56y6STJvs9o by AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
2023-05-15T14:49:46Z
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#ACABH/T @ecosurrealism
(DIR) Post #AbTs6zMTYuMF11wx4y by AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
2023-11-05T01:23:27Z
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@freemo @jeffowski You can't have billionaires without capitalism. Billionaires imply capitalism.You can't have capitalism without enclosure of the commons. Capitalism implies enclosure.You can't have enclosure without homelessness. Enclosure implies homelessness.Therefore billionaires imply homelessness.#NoBillionaires
(DIR) Post #AbTsfDZdEBjiwKQQC0 by AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
2023-11-05T01:29:32Z
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@freemo @jeffowski Everything they have is stolen. What difference does it make if they give some of it back to their victims?
(DIR) Post #AbTtYENVwDnfMVzPN2 by AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
2023-11-05T01:39:32Z
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@freemo @jeffowski Soviet Russia was a capitalist society. There are no billionaires without capitalism.Without enclosure there's no reliable labor force to exploit, so no capitalism. This is why there has never in history been a capitalist economy without enclosure. The fact that there can be enclosure without capitalism is a non sequitur. You're confusing my claim with its converse.If there's no homelessness then the commons aren't enclosed. Again the argument is historical. There has never been an economy with enclosed commons that failed to have homelessness.
(DIR) Post #AbTtnxjXafkONAnGZE by AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
2023-11-05T01:42:23Z
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@freemo @jeffowski Nope. I understand wealth perfectly well. Wealth is capital, that is productive property to some people are denied access, private property. Capital earns money through the forcible appropriation of other people's labor. Which is why property is theft, as is wealth.
(DIR) Post #AbTuRnXCvfVqKC1IGW by AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
2023-11-05T01:49:35Z
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@freemo @jeffowski Great. Why don't you tell me what you think capitalism is. Tell me in a way that shows that Soviet Russia was not capitalistWhy don't you tell me what enclosure of the commons is, then. Also, the fact that non-capitalists may enclose the commons is irrelevant. I'm only claiming that capitalists must enclose Capitalism implies enclosure. The fact that the converse is occasionally true is irrelevant.
(DIR) Post #AbfgFVoHw3o8PtmACW by AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
2023-11-10T16:55:01Z
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A popular slogan in the United States, especially around election day, is that "politicians work for us." It's hard to pin down a precise meaning, but it's something along the lines of "we pay their salaries through taxes and we live in a representative democracy so they should enact laws that reflect the will of the people who elected them."1/n#USPolitics
(DIR) Post #AbfgFWzJYYDo4NwU1g by AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
2023-11-10T16:56:04Z
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This is a dangerous misunderstanding of how American political power works. The fact that politicians salaries are paid by taxes is irrelevant. For instance, the salaries of cops and teachers are paid by taxes and yet no one thinks that means they should do what taxpayers want. Their duties are defined by laws, which are written by politicians and enforced by courts. What taxpayers want cops and teachers to do is irrelevant except as mediated through politicians.2/n
(DIR) Post #AbfgFXkohwDeRiAQ4G by AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
2023-11-10T16:56:57Z
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But in the US politicians' duties are also defined by laws, also enforced by courts. For instance in California there are laws requiring politicians to provide access to public records and to not waste public money. If politicians violate these duties the immediate remedy is to go to court and ask a judge to order them to do their job, which sometimes works out. Politicians also usually have to take an oath of office, where they usually promise to faithfully execute their duties and to support the state or federal constitution or city charter.3/n
(DIR) Post #AbfgFYYRjPuyvdO3QO by AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
2023-11-10T16:57:57Z
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But constitutions and city charters never include a duty to represent citizens or to do what voters want. Nowhere in the United States is there any legal requirement that politicians represent the interests of anyone. Like cops and teachers they're only required to do what the law requires them to do, which literally does not include representing anyone in any sense of the word. No one can make them do this so it's at best a social expectation, not any kind of requirement.4/n
(DIR) Post #AbfgFZS6OURBiFQVAu by AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
2023-11-10T16:58:53Z
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This makes perfect sense when we consider the history of American representative democracy. The first governments in North America were charged with managing colonial exploitation. They were staffed by actual planters and concerned themselves with slave control and economic issues that affected the plantation economy. It wasn't necessary to require them to represent their constituents because the people actually running them -- the politicians -- were also planters.5/n
(DIR) Post #AbfgFaYsGnRt9XbQMy by AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
2023-11-10T16:59:33Z
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Over the course of the nineteenth century capitalists, some of them planters and others involved in more modern forms of exploitation like industry and real estate, gradually withdrew from direct participation in government, although never completely, and began to rely on professional politicians to handle their affairs for them. As more and more people were given the vote these capitalists and their proxy politicians developed ever more sophisticated methods to retain power.6/n
(DIR) Post #AbfgFc5AcCsPrzijLc by AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
2023-11-10T17:00:09Z
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At no point in this process was representing voters made a requirement. Why would it have been? To have done so would contradict the actual essential function of American government at all levels, which is to manage exploitation. If spreading rumors about how politicians are meant to represent citizens supports this project then they'll spread those rumors, but they will never make it an actual job requirement.7/7
(DIR) Post #AbfjQgQD7bQeNNX3QW by AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
2023-11-10T18:42:40Z
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@Aviva_Gary I'm not exactly sure what you mean. But if you mean in an actual democracy elected politicians are required to support the interests of the people who elect them there's never been one at any level in the US.
(DIR) Post #AcTYQOb9GFcT8olBvU by AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
2023-12-03T17:48:58Z
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I read a lot of posts on here from what might be called capitalist reformers. They admit that actually existing capitalism has serious problems but propose to solve them by modifying various aspects. Maybe we need more regulation, or a better social safety net, or some such things. I saw one recently who thinks corporate shareholders are the root of all capitalist evil and wants to reinvent corporations to eliminate them.Setting aside the serious issue that none of these theorists seem to understand what capitalism actually is, two other things they have in common are an unbelievable naivete about the mechanics of political change and a complete inability to see the unspeakable violence required on a daily basis to maintain capitalism.Listen to this brilliant idea! Everyone's been thinking about things wrong since capitalism started! We all want to do the right thing but powerful people are just confused about what it is! All we have to do is convince enough people of the right way to do capitalism and blammo! Utopia!For the sake of argument assume that all these capitalist reform ideas are actually reasonable. It doesn't matter. If you have any practical experience with the American legislative process at any level you'll know that good ideas have fuck-all to do with which laws are enacted. Legislators legislate to promote the needs of the powerful people whose interests they represent. There are people in every jurisdiction who can get custom-made laws written and enacted within weeks. For these oligarchs, and I don't use the word metaphorically, bespoke legislation is a frictionless part of their daily business. The quality of the ideas behind it are less than irrelevant. There are no ideas behind it. This is how laws are made in America.Now think about how the laws these oligarchs enact. They don't sit around thinking about what ordinary people want or need. They don't worry about implementing abstractly beneficial reforms of capitalism or anything else for that matter. They increase police powers. They make police weaponry more deadly. They continually ramp up oppression and exploitation. They build more prisons and criminalize more and more normal human activities to keep them full. Think about the laws they could very easily enact but they don't. Universal health care, free housing, free food, free education, public transportation, environmental protection. The list of non-existent good laws is endless. Legislators do whatever the hell oligarchs tell them to do and this is what gets done.And oligarchs have to use their power this way. They aren't fooling around trying to improve anyone's lives but their own. Without violent control of everyone else, without police to implement it, capitalism would collapse immediately. Why would anyone pay landlords or let bosses keep most of the money they earn without police violence forcing them to do it? With public housing, free food, free medical care, why would anyone choose to work for a boss? How would the bosses make money if people had the realistic choice not to work for them?So, dear capitalist reformers, even if your brilliant ideas would really do what you think they'd do, so what? Look at the people you're asking to implement them, look at the violence they choose every day, the violence they must to choose if their entire way of life isn't to collapse. These vampires are the people you hope to convince to change everything just because it's a good idea. Maybe your theories really are the right thing to do, maybe your ideas really are good, but it doesn't matter. No one with the power to do things within the system wants to do the right thing. They want to drink your blood and have the cops kill you if you fight back. Until your brilliant ideas take that evident fact into account I for one don't see any reason to take them seriously #Capitalism #Anarchism #Anarchy