Throughout history, governments around the world have consistently proven themselves enemies to both land and liberty. Before we can achieve liberation, we must understand how and why the State fails both society and nature.
Thumbnail Art: Gustave Dore
Introduction ā 0:00
What is the State? ā 3:28
What is the Origin of the State? ā 8:43
The Anarchist Critique ā 13:49
Why States Fail Society ā 19:15
Why States Fail Nature ā 27:32
The Anarchist Alternative ā 36:06
Outro ā 44:26
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outro music: Cedar Womb by joe zempel
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCuMhK75-tYDMV_7nEExFmg
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Sources & Resources:
Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1990 by Charles Tilly. (pages 1-2, 96-97)
Anarchy by Errico Malatesta ā https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-anarchy
Against the Grain by James C Scott
Worshiping Power by Peter Gelderloos
Seeing Like A State by James C Scott
Yale Article ā https://e360.yale.edu/features/phantom-forests-tree-planting-climate-change
OpenDemocracy Article ā https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/protecting-30-of-the-earth-by-2030-would-threaten-indigenous-peoples/
Malm on Jacobin: https://jacobin.com/2020/06/andreas-malm-coronavirus-covid-climate-change
On Climate Leninism: https://strangematters.coop/libertarian-socialism-economic-planning-anarchist-supply-chains/
More on Climate Leninism: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/klokkeblomst-green-desperation-fuels-red-fascism-return-fire
Even More on Climate Leninism: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alexander-dunlap-ecological-authoritarian-maneuvers
The State is Counter Revolutionary ā https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvwoHdNGq9wVy-iR1oHJKoJY2lh6ypXKZ
Shawn Wilburās Archy vs Anarchy ā https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/featured-articles/archy-vs-anarchy-notes/
The Solutions Are Already Here by Peter Gelderloos
source
Absolutely fabulous video! I usually have a hard time with keeping my full attention for this amount of time, but I was completely hooked all the way. Great explanations and example. Iāll share it with all my friends!šš
even though I disagree with you on almost everything, you're still the only political YouTuber I have any vested interest in watching
It is so refreshed to hear an Anarchist take in our polarising and conflicting world. It bothers me everyday that we have so called Liberators and proud Communists or Leftists who do apologia for state craft, authoritarianism and imperialism.
States will always seek to perpetuate their power. It doesnāt matter what state it is – East or West, Liberal or Authoritarian, they fundamentally have no interest in giving up overall control to the people and operate under the basis that people need to be ruled and governed closely or at the minimum coerced.
The US and EU hegemony is immoral and dangerous but why on Earth do we think a Russian or a Chinese Hegemony would be any better? Siding with them doesnāt serve out interests.
The fundamental division of society into rulers and ruled like ours and then to be told weāre free is laughable. It reminds me of a line from one of my favourite socialist artists:
āIf youāre so good at fucking learning, When you learn about your past, Find we aināt quite escaped the immortality of the ruling classā
Immortality is sung sarcastically.
This was one of my favourites of yours, thanks. I came to anarchism through questioning our existing systems, it was refreshing to know that I wasn't going mad and that many better and more intelligent people before me had reached similar conclusions about the way we are governed. Thank you for your excellent breakdown of it.
The real enemy of humanity.
Looking forward to watching this. I am a communist (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) however, I tend to align more with anarchists than other communists in the realm of the state and revisionism. I believe in a socialist transitory state only because of the threat of counter-revolution from forces who want to restore capitalism.
The primary function of a real socialist state is to redistribute political power to the masses and to wither away as it becomes unnecessary during the transition to stateless, moneyless and classless society. Unfortunately this is a fact that many so-called communists forget.
Hmmm… On a systemic level, how do we go about counteracting the extreme amount of pro-status-quo propaganda out there? Over the last five years or so we have seen that simply putting good political material out there has SOME impact, but it's too slow and random for what we need?
As a software engineer, lately i'm trying to figure out what could be possible through software that does not obey capitalist logic, and i have a big what if.
If the 'state' was just a non-personal entity, a distributed appratus capable of organizing huge amounts of different efforts and resources, without any kind of coercion, so ALWAYS voluntairily and consensually, in these conditions, would an anarchist and a marxist have the same objectives?
I'm thinking about an approach that doesn't require any commitment that isn't in the moment in which you agree with the 'group proposal', by giving resources or non-binding availability of a portion of your personal production power.
Anarchists must organise!
love the video. States can never speak for the complexities of human beings and ecology. Looking forward to the next vid on organized anarchy
so, anyone working on a social network?
It took me til 38:55 but i finally understand why anarchism has made sense on a fundamental level to me and its what you said about the revolution not appearing as a singular moment of comeuppance. We are too complex for anything to be solved in one single sweep. Anarchism at its base level is the active ongoing process by which we recognize and appreciate the complexity of other humans/ourselves. Thats beautiful. Thank you for the video š
A super modern example of anarchist defense is how the Kurds in NE Syria, completely left alone by the Syrian government, organized themselves along the lines of Democratic Confederalism, and managed to repel IS. BY themselves. They stood up for themselves and their homes. You don't need a state to tell you when it's time to defend yourself.
Thanks for the video and it's important to note that there were Sedentary, Stratified Hunter-Gatherer societies in history like the Fort-building hunter-gatherers of Neolithic/Copper Age Siberia (see the Amnya Complex) which is something I find interesting since I always thought until recently that all hunter-gatherers lived in hyper-egalitarian nomadic societies.
I Love states.
The more I study the Food-Energy-Water nexus, and Systems Thinking, the more I realize that people will need a story that goes beyond our wonky anarchist terms like free association. They don't care what the theory is, they care about what story you can tell about their life, their quality of life, and how it will be affected. It's the same with degrowth. I'm talking about urban planners, policy analysts, workers, actually explaining the systems and relationships in a case study. BUT the top two or three news networks all have terrifying Media Bias / Fact Check pages so I think we're SOL in general for a while here
The video makes some assumptions that states and decentralized groups are incapable of working together. Sure, Turkey messed up its tree planting, but why is it impossible for it to do better? Scientific forestry ignored biodiversity in favor of production, why is it impossible for those squares to fit with each other.
Time was dedicated to pointing to how awful War Communism was, but not much to counter the concept of a state to tackle the environmental crises, just specific examples. And those examples are countered by vague examples. I don't doubt indigenous people know how to take care of the environment, I do doubt that it is impossible for the state, with its centralized resources and capacity for mobilization, to help them.
Also, I've never seen any anarchist address the rise of leadership in leaderless communities. I've personally seen friend groups, work places, and leftist groups fall prey to manipulative, politicking actors that try to advance their interests dishonestly. Ironically, in the same style of Stalin's rise. How can the community stop a problem that takes advantage of the closeness of a community and its unaccountability to another authority?
"The major problemāoneĀ of the major problems, for there are severalāone of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who mustĀ wantĀ to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
-Douglas Adams
Chaco late
i support this
This isnāt intended to be facetious or discourteous, I genuinely want to know, but how does Anarchism build a space program? I am of the belief that in order for the ultimate survival of our species we must eventually take to the stars, and I am unable to see how we get there with free association alone.
This video did a great job of helping me better understand the real meaning of a "State". And how, if we don't have a clear understanding of what it is, and how it works, we'll never be able to reckon with it correctly.
any discussion on states is incomplete now without Graeber and Wengrow – Dawn of Everything…
This is geniunely the only time i've actually been described what anarchism is.. all the other time it was in jokes..
And it sounds legit to meš
Stay tuned for Part Two: Organising Anarchy šš½
WOW! This is what I had always hoped to get from your anarchy orientation. Great stuff!!
āThis is YouTube lol:ā seems to mean āI donāt want to say the strategy is violence and terrorism š¢ā
It frustrates me that most leftists do not understand this and are so hyperfocused on electoralism.
The whole concept in itself could also be tied to the idea of Mythic Violence by Walter Benjamin, where the very existence of this regimes is enough of a shock to justify their existence, for despite every supposed source of glory, fame or divine right granted upon them, they're still vacuous and empty…
I think you will enjoy this fascinating essay on nostalgia and how entrenched it is with our current woes, which is where I first heard about the concept of Mythic Violence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbWJYuIkN_Y