Hey #anarchist comrades, I'd like to have an open and good-faith discussion on a question I had during a meeting some time ago that anarchists present weren't able to answer to an extent either of us were satisfied with. It can be here, or in DMs or on Matrix. But the question is:

What makes authority just or unjust?

I've gotten two different answers to this. The first is that unjust authority is exploitative. This conversation ended more quickly than the other, because I agree with it entirely — and I think most statist socialists would as well. If a government and a state are not exploitative of the people, are not operating for profit, and there is a representative democracy set up that is deemed effective and representative by the population, that's the Marxist ideal for an early-to-middle-stage socialist society. But I feel that isn't what most anarchists mean?

The second answer I got was that someone who has proven expertise in a field has just authority in that field: For instance, you don't deny a doctor authority over you in the field of your medical health. My question was: If we therefore have people who have shown expertise in the areas of sociology, economics, local/national/international politics, does that not suggest that a righteous and representative government has just authority in the same way as a responsible, rational, and ethical doctor does?

The answer I got to this one was, "Yeah, but it's more idealistic than that, it doesn't get broken down into the material that way", which neither of us admittedly found satisfying, so I wonder if folks have further explanation, or other answers, to give me a better idea of modern ancom ideology. Thanks!

Not to be alarmist...well, maybe, but a #famine will be incoming for the United States. Famines under capitalism tend to take the form of "there's food, we promise, it just happens to be too expensive for you to afford", so...you've technically been under famine conditions for a little while, but it's about to get a whole lot worse. Your latest administration has completely slashed agricultural subsidies, deported thousands of migrant agricultural workers, drained a reservoir in California, and levied tariffs on the three countries it imports the most food from. This is a good time to remember that many revolutions are preceded by famines, and it's time for you to start preparing and start organizing with anyone you can, before you're starving — which, again, I'm sorry to say, it's going to happen.

Talk openly about it; this is the time you can do it safely, and that window is going to be short. Find anyone, literally anyone, who is willing to talk back about the possibility of organizing together. It can be as simple as a mutual aid group, to try to afford bulk food more cheaply together when this happens, but we here, the people of the imperialized world, your fellow workers, are hoping that you will do more, and fight to end both famine and fascism in your country once and for all, no matter what it takes.

Red Paw Collective was a failure as a space because of the apathy that gradually settled into the community. Apathy breeds apathy, and, as one friend and ex-member put it to me, it self-selects: People who care in an otherwise apathetic space end up leaving for the sake of their own sanity.

I'm hoping to form another community on Matrix, with these lessons kept in mind. If you're viewing this post, you're invited.

This will be a community of anticapitalist solidarity, open and inclusive to all revolutionary anticapitalists in solidarity with the entirety of the working class without discrimination. This has been the three-point membership requirement for years, and it has been extremely effective, allowing Leninists, Maoists, anarchists, classical Marxists, and plenty of others to engage progressively with one another.

We will also retain our democracy. RPC's democracy was very successful and effective in empowering its members and creating a community that felt safe and appealed to people.

RPC was, as the community-chosen name implies, a fairly furry-heavy community, as that was also a focus of its founding members. This new community will eschew that focus. I would like to be more inclusive and less intimidating to people outside this subculture. I believe this secondary focus is also partly the cause of the apathy that would eventually lead to the community's downfall.

Finally, in correcting for those past mistakes, this new community would have the additional requirement that active members are also active in some form of organization within the space. This may be as simple as starting out with a reading club or mock debate, building our theoretical foundations, but as time goes on and hopefully we grow, we will branch into more depending on the interests and talents of our membership. For this reason, we will be on Matrix and only on Matrix, on a privately hosted server outside of the United States. Although we encourage relationship-building between comrades and may have rooms pertaining to shared interests, they will not be a focus, and if a member is engaging in only these secondary rooms without engaging in foundation-building or organization, they will be invited to self-criticize.

If you are interested in being a founding member of this space, leave a reply or send me a DM. There are a few of us already, and once we have a good small group going, I'll pull the trigger, and Workers of the World will have a new live space, ready to be built from the ground up.

#anticapitalism #communism #anarchism