Topic: Radical Feminism (continued from Capitalism) - page 2. (Read 5930 times)

why do my posts keep getting erased? 

The usual formula (victim blaming) doesn't fit here.
Singling rapists out as a cultural group, instead of a systemic impulse implies that rape is not a symptom of a larger disease.

Re-responding for the lulz. Troll.
Owning a penis is as simple as a trip to your local sex shop, geneticist, online store, or woods where you can gather a stick, widdle and sand it (hopefully) and attach it to your crotch with some vines, ect.
You are not in a position to determine "the true goal of actual feminists." Equality is a meaningless buzzword. Equality amounts to erasure. I am not attempting to erase women, but bring about understanding of the developed injustice that has grown around women.
Misandrist is also a meaningless and reactionary buzzword, used exclusively to discredit and confound feminists.
Also, next time you typo I'll find it and I'll hound you to the grave about it.

When you say you want to end rape culture, are you implying that our culture tolerates, if not encourages rape? Or, are you trying to eliminate rapists as a cultural group? (I suspect the former)

When I heard about a recent high-profile gang rape case I had a sinking feeling that it only made the International news because the boyfriend was also attacked. This implies that she was not alone, and presumably was dressed modestly, not showing unusual interest in other men. In short, victim blaming is not possible in that case: the victim did everything right.

Sort of refuting my point, I found a BBC article about high-profile cases in India. that story does not mention the boyfriend at all.

So since we are on the topis, you are saying men can not be subjugated? You seem to be only repeating yourself rather than elaborating on your point. Since you don't believe in the possibility of equality, wouldn't that make you a supremacist?

Firstly, thanks for finally posting something somewhat on topis
Secondly , the contents of your pants has as much to do with accepting that the undeniable sweeping waves of abuse women (specifically) have gone through at the hads of self absorbed.men is real. It's propped up by the inane notion of "equality." "Equality" is a myth. I want to end rape culture.

"Subjugate people based only on the fact that they have a penis."
This is trolling of the least admirable sort. That subjugation- rare as it is, only happens when Men try to stick their dicks where they aren't welcome or needed.

By anti feminist, I mean anyone unwilling to empathize with the construct of reality, as viewed by "the weaker sex."

Heureka! This seems to be the piece of the puzzle I have been looking for. Now what you are saying is making much more sense to me than before!

Bravo, I like Chomsky and Marx. Herbert Marcuse, Georg Lucács and of course the background influence to all these guys: G. W. F. Hegel had all good criticism about capitalism.

Sorry Rassah, but you lack fundamental knowledge on the matter (no offense intended). In anarchist philosophy there's no "giving all your belonging freely to any passerby", that's charity, which is a christian concept abhorred by anarchists.

First, one thing is personal property (your clothes; your furniture; etc.) and a very different thing is private property (which refers only to the means of production: the land; the factory; etc.).

Secondly, most forms of anarchism are not against the existence of free market (except for anarcho-communism), they are against capitalist free market.

Thirdly, anarcho-chapitalist don't accept state hierarchy but accept private hierarchy as the natural state of things. I'll put it silly simple: an anti capitalist anarchist would never accept to be a boss, nor to have a boss. For a collectivist anarchist self-control of the proceeds of his work is fundamental for his liberation as an individual. In collectivist anarchism the workers themselves would decide what to produce, how to produce it, and wether to trade those proceeds or not. For an anarcho-capitalist it's ok to rent his labour at market price (something that for a collectivist anarchist would mean "voluntary slavery"), as long as that its the most profitable option for him. It's basically a very different philosophical approach on what freedom means, and which do you think is the natural way to manage your own time and work.

I'l quote again Chomsky just because, while it can be criticized in many things, he is incredibly clear in his exposition, and he is a character with which US folks should be familiarized with:


Chomsky is quite the prototypical marxist, thus he thinks that capitalism alienates that creative urge intrinsic to human nature he mentions above. Anarchists and other marxist influenced thinkers believe that labour is a fundamental aspect of individual freedom, and this aspect shapes society as a whole. For a marxist, a worker developing his labour in a privately owned system is alienated from his own humanity, becoming a tool for others.

In a nutshell Marx's Theory of Alienation is the contention that under capitalist conditions workers will inevitably lose control of their lives by losing control over their work.

This "theory of alienation" is one of the cardinal points of The Capital, and Marx thoroughly describes 4 differents types of alienation that happen in a capitalist society (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_alienation#Types_of_alienation). Understanding those points is crucial to understand past and modern critics to the capitalist system.

BTW, if you'd like to have a "soft and easy", "american" and modern first approach to collectivist anarchism you could start with this: http://www.amazon.com/Chomsky-Anarchism-Noam/dp/1458787435.

I think Proudhon may be getting a bit outdated, in the same way that some really really old dude's rants against kings and monarchs isn't really relevant to our present economic situation. Sure, there are still a lot of old capitalists who own their vast wealth thanks to force, that there are more and more new capitalists that earned it through just capitalism. Examples of such capitalist ventures that are the new super-wealthy that didn't use force are Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and even Microsoft and WalMart. All their wealth came from innovation, and people wanting to give them money in exchange for their products.

By the way, Chomsky's anarchists don't sound all that different from anarcho-capitalists. It all only depends on whether those organic units/communities would freely give up all their belongings freely to any passerby who asks for them, or whether they should protect them and give them up to other communities in trade.

To me it seems quite obvious that the office of president is for show only and the real decisions get made "behind the throne" so to speak. Similarly I view government in todays form as not much more than a tool by which to legitimize and enforce the agenda of people with deep enough pockets and good enough connections to influence the direction government is taking. This is why I keep laughing at people who want the government to "do something" about banks run amok and transnational companies exploiting the hell out of everybody. It can't and it won't because they are the masters of government, not the other way round.


By the way I am not from the US I am from a country which has found itself on the socialist side of the iron curtain. Your assessment of property = freedom for US intellectuals is probably accurate (don't know, never been to the US) and property = slavery might express the viewpoint of many a western European intellectual. But in the former east block countries the situation is somewhat different in my experience. During socialist times property still existed, but the ideological tendency was to malign it and fight against it. Or to be clear, fight against private property. Of course there was government owned property. Thus for people in this area the ideological tension doesn't seem to be between property & no property or maybe statism & anarchism but between private property and public property. This is why they keep believing in the (in my mind illusory and misleading) political division of "left wing" and "right wing". They see one as advocating more public property and the other advocating more private property. With this philosophical framework established I think it's easy to see why people fail to think about the concept of "no property" and why my particular flavor of anarchism allows for the existence of property as well. Being a disciple of the Godess of Chaos, this opinion is of course subject to change and revision. Us Discordians don't believe in dogma - we prefer catmas (temporary relative meta-beliefs) I'm going to read up on some of the stuff you've recommended. It's been a while since I read any political philosophy - I've been on a sci-fi reading binge for the last 2-3 years

Not really, property rights can also be enforced by individuals (as in the middle ages), but its true that for anarchists modern governments are only a construction in order to defend the privileges and the property rights acquired by the capitalists. Thus, in a capitalist society "the wealthier ruler", and modern states are just a tool of the wealthier (practical example: who do you think rules America? Obama, or the economical powers behind him?)

To understand all this you should read:

The Capital, by Karl Marx, which is the work in which the meaning of capitalism was defined. Not having read this work and discussing politics (and specifically capitalism) is nonsense.
What is the private property? By Proudhon

Now let me add a point I made in the past and that I think its relevant to bring up when discussing with US folks that basically never thought of even discussing the legitimacy of the capitalist system and thus private ownership of means of production:

If you are interested in the practical aspects of work organization in collectivist anarchism and specifically in anarcho-syndicalism I recommend you Anarcho-syndicalism: Theory and Practice, by Rudolph Rocker.

The system was tried and was efficient. Main principles: self-management, direct worker control, integration of agriculture, industry, service and personal participation in self-management.

Quoting Chomsky:


*The Mutual Aid (Kropotkin)

Do I understand this correctly when I say "anarchism can not maintain private ownership of the means of production because property rights can only be enforced by government"? So is there no way of having the concept of "property" around without the state to define and enforce it? Not sure if I'm willing to embrace this idea, since property seems to be a concept to me and concepts are workable whenever they're shared by people via their cultural operating system.

Sounds like an extremely inefficient system. So what does one do if he wants to build or make something, and needs specialists for the job?

Anarcho-Syndicalism is anti-capitalist, which simply means that there is no private ownership of the means of production.

Anarcho-syndicalism and what Rothbard called "Anarcho-capitalism" are in opposite sides of the spectrum.


Anarchism is a revolutionary doctrine that advocates for the abolition of both the state and the private ownership of the means of production. Workers self-manage and control the means of production in an horizontal, non-hierarchic way. No state and no bosses.

The above is not true for the Rothbardian, capitalist interpretation of anarchism, which advocates for the abolition of the state only, while maintaining the private ownership of the means of production. From an historic point of view, "anarcho-capitalism" is pretty much an oxymoron, two words that cannot go together. For the original anarchists, in order to reach the people's liberation abolishing capitalism was as necessary as abolishing the state.

How is Anarcho-Syndicalism any different from Anarcho-Capitalism, which allows for formation of unions and syndicates? Are labor unions not allowed to compete for employment by capitalists under anarcho-syndicalism? Or do capitalists, i.e. people who have a vision and wish to hire a lot of workers to see their idea become reality, just aren't allowed to exist under anarcho-syndicalism?

The founders of anarchism were basically for two types of non-capitalist economy: Mutualism, which is a kind of anti-capitalist free market (Proudhon) and anarchist collectivism (Bakunin).

Other "sub-genres" of collectivist anarchism are a) libertarian communism (Kropotkin) and especially b) anarcho-syndicalism, which we could say that is the most structured, practical and systematic way of organizing economy in a collectivist anarchic society, and the only that was "empyrically tested" (Rudolf Rocker, Diego Abad de Santillán, etc).

The collectivist criticized the mutualist, but they always cooperated as the very strong and basic common point was a fierce anti-capitalsm and anti-totalitarism.

The only mid-sized experience of an anarchist society (Aragon and Catalonia, Spain 1930-1938) had an economy based on collectivist anarchism strongly influenced by the CNT, and thus basically anarcho-syndicalist (BTW, Chomsky is a big fan of anarcho-syndicalism). This spanish experience worked extremely well until it was crushed by the collusion of state communists of the KPSS and the fascists. Nevertheless, the sample is relatively small (it was a community of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, but not millions) and the timeframe quite short (only 7/8 years).

I can think of only three ways of survival:

1) Trade your labor to someone who is an expert on how to use it most efficiently, in exchange for things needed for survival (work for a boss).
2) Apply your own labor to acquire things you need to survive yourself (grow/hunt your own food, or run your own business).
3) Steal or live off of other's labor without contributing anything in return.


#2 typically requires a lot more work than #3, either because you are not an expert in all the things you require to survive (may be a good farmer, but suck at building houses), and/or because more people working on the same problem is typically more efficient that a single person working on it by themselves.

#1 is essentially capitalism, where you trade your skill for someone else's capital. #2 is capitalism only if what you produce you end up trading for something else. If all you do in #2 is build your own shelter and grow your own food, that's not capitalism.

#3 isn't capitalism at all. It's either theft or parasitism.

So, am I missing any other means of survival? And if not, which of those do you propose we use?

Thanks for your reply Rampion, it certainly gives food for thought.

I find myself going back and forth on this issue. I think the very word "capitalism" is at the root of a lot of confusion. It's been used and abused and changed its meaning many times so that I find when I hear people talking about "capitalism" most everyone has something a bit different in mind. Even though etymologically speaking it should be quite clear - capitalism is any system of thought putting the concept of "capital" at its core. Which makes me wonder: how can we organize ourselves in a peaceful way without the concept of capital?

I've read your post which you've linked to and to be honest, I still don't quite see how the very concept of capital is in its essence coercive. Maybe I should read the recommended books you've mentioned first? Anyway I won't argue that having capital doesn't give you power, it clearly does. But I'm torn on whether it's any sort of coercive power. After all as the owner of some capital you can offer it to people in return for other stuff you desire and they are free to decline your offer and you can't do anything about it. Well, maybe hire some thugs with your capital and extract it from them anyway. It's when people are dependent on acquiring capital in order to be able to get stuff needed for survival I can see how the power to withhold capital could be viewed as coercive. In other words, as long as there are other alternatives for providing a living besides acquiring a single form of capital I don't see a problem with that. Would you view Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies for example as incompatible with anarchist thought, because they represent a form of capital? I personally wouldn't, because to me anarchy (going back to etymology here) means "no ruler" which doesn't necessarily have to be a person or a group, but a single universal system which everyone is forced to follow. People often accuse anarchists as being "against any rules whatsoever" which I find silly, considering how hooked people seem to be on creating rules all the time. My personal anarchist philosophy just argues against the existence of a single universal system of rules being forced on everybody. I have no problem with several competing/complementary systems of rules or several competing forms of capital for that matter. I argue for this on grounds of efficiency (don't care much for the "moral argument") and aesthetic style (you can laugh now ).

Well I guess I'll read some of those books and come back to this topic later, because I still haven't quite decided on what to think about it.