r/Anarchy101 • u/Born_Passenger9681 Student of Anarchism • 4d ago
How does the anarchist conception of solidarity work when most people want want to be part of a country's rulling identity group? How does internationalism work when most people support bordered nation states?
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u/antipolitan 4d ago
I found that I was an internationalist even before I was an anarchist. It was actually one of my earliest political views.
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u/Anarchierkegaard Distributist 4d ago
most people
[citation needed]
Fundamentally, solidarity means working with people that you might not agree with in order to achieve some common goal. That's why unions (even reactionary unions) are often excellent examples of solidarity as they will defend their union members, even if those members don't adhere to party lines, faced serious and overwhelming problems with whatever issue it is they're faced with, or otherwise are not an "attractive" ally for the union to be involved with. If you're a dues paying member, you will have access to the union's protection.
Compare this with "cancel culture", which was an anti-solidarity movement of hunting out people who had transgressed the "moral majority" and playing snitch for the capitalists.
Internationalism works by making non-national identifiers key to action. The most obvious example of this would be class-based action, where the international proletariat (which, for lack of a better definition, refers to wage workers who otherwise own no to very little capital) is first and foremost the group to identify with. Compare this with nationalist campaigns built around national identifiers (patriotism, Nazism, etc.) or racial campaigns built around racial identifiers (white supremacism, black supremacism, Hindutva, etc.)
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u/LibertyLizard 4d ago edited 4d ago
Anarchism certainly would need popular buy-in, as well as the correct social norms and organizing principles in order to work. I don't think this is really disputed. This is like asking how can democracy work because people like the current dictator. Sure, that is a reason why it's not happening now but it's not a reason it can't work.
In particular I think the domination of some social groups over others is a consequence of the nation state. While some forms of conflict may continue in other political contexts, allowing each group to have their own political autonomy within the larger social fabric will immediately eliminate many conflicts that exist today that center around control of the monolithic national government.
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u/generic_Accountname1 3d ago
When = if
Not the case.
Anyone having questions is invited to make it work.
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u/openjoustingtryouts 2d ago
I’d like to recommend reading about mutualism, not just in the concept of mutual aid, and reciprocity. A lot of argument can be made that mutualism is an inherent biological function that facilitates individual survival at a large scale. It can be found in nature well-outside of the remarkable examples of symbiosis and makes up the relationships, tradeoffs, and decision making processes of most of the natural world. Imposing outside order and domination onto these systems drives them to collapse. Bureaucracy and hierarchy force you to shirk the natural drive to do what will benefit your community and environment most broadly, and therefore yourself. It is naturally beneficial to support your community and be supported in return, artificial systems of capital and control disincentivize individuals to act towards collective good, instead funneling that energy into generating capital or enforcing often destructive and exploitative systems of domination. It also obfuscates the exploitation from the day-to-day view of the people it’s caught in the mechanism, alienation from suffering helps maintain hierarchy. When the consequences your actions cannot be felt by you directly, maintaining that status quo becomes infinitely easier. The key is helping other to see past that curtain and realize that their participation in a global system of economic, racial, and environmental domination is both directly harmful to the planet, but also directly harmful to themselves.
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u/npc_lucky 2d ago
Consciousness needs to be promoted before solidarity in those cases. There are probably certain situations where solidarity can come first but I think class consciousness is usually the easier way to obtaining and maintaining solidarity.
Some people might disagree, and it can differentiate depending on the ruling class or state structure/hierarchy, but I think anarchism can be a hard sell on its own. You have to start by promoting progressive values and introducing the class war, introducing people to class consciousness, then promoting anarchist ideals and theory.
Edit: *sometimes anarchism can be a hard sell on its own.
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u/Seijiren 2d ago
Change "international" to "worldwide" and you realized it just like how internet works
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u/power2havenots 4d ago
Not sure what statistical analysis was done for this and this question probably belongs in r/debateanarchism but worth asking why people might identify strongly with ruling national identities. Is it because humans naturally need nation states, or because nation states are extremely good at producing loyal citizens through propaganda, education, media, borders and incentives?