99.9% of all institutions in my life are at best feudal orders, run by aristocrats so far removed from my life that they wouldn’t even know how to survive without their armies of servants, nannies, and assistants. Democracy needs to extend beyond the state. Democracy must be present in every part of our society, or it will, as it has now, inevitably become nothing more than another oligarchy for and by the rich.
Recommended readings:
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire.
Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon.
Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber.
Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti.
Neocolonialism by Kwame Nkrumah.
Anarchism and other Essays by Emma Goldman.
Recommendations from the comments:
/u/BallShapedMan - The Dictator’s Handbook by by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith
Based as fuck. Organizing a union is bringing democracy into the authoritarian dictatorship folks call work. Organizing a tenant union is bringing democracy to the commons. All heirarchy is bad, because all heirarchies seek to remove democracy
All heirarchy is bad
Unless it’s democratically elected hierarchy, right?
Sort of. Think for example, of consent-based policing. There are some tasks police do that are genuinely good and worthwhile. However, if there is not a democratic process to bar people from being in those roles of power after abusing them, then it’s still a bad heirarchy.
Different example: say there’s an elected steward of the commons in a library economy who fails to uphold their duties of automating the means of production. It would still be a bad heirarchy if this problem cannot be resolved by democratic means.
Edit: I forgot about the solution to preventing these problems: unions. They would serve a drastically different role, obviously. But their purpose would still be to facilitate these democratic actions through direct action and organizing.
No need for hierarchy, it is different than designated leadership and roles.
How is it different? That doesn’t seem obvious to me.
Leaders and organizers and stuff will always be necessary even in an anarchist society, but those roles shouldn’t be given the reverence and special treatment that they currently are. They’re important roles, and should be respected and cooperated with just like any other role, but if they’ve proven themselves to be unworthy of that there should be democratic processes to replace them. People in leadership roles shouldn’t be earning 10+x what everyone else is, and they shouldn’t be able to hold onto power the way they currently are
no. power centralized in the beaurocratic state apparatus is also oppressive. electoral politics are a sham, and democracy is impotent when the capital owning class can simply buy influence.
if 9 people vote to kill the 10th, is that just?
I’d like to add to your reading list The Dictators Handbook.
Fantastic read on the mechanics of politics and how democracy and autocracy are similar in more aspects than we imagine.
That’s one I haven’t read yet, I’ll check it out, thanks for the recommendation!
I’d love to hear what you think as you make your way through it. I’ve also added some of the books you recommend to my reading list. I’m always looking for my next mind blowing book!
Thank you for providing a reading list! People be like: “read theory”
And then theory nerds be like: “what you wanna read theory? Don’t, it’s a waste of time, and unnecessary to be rhetorically effective”
And I’m like :3
I have useless managers at work that like to try and bend the rules, and it gets hella on their nerves when I just outright ignore or argue with them because I know they’re wrong and that they can’t justify firing me. I recommend anyone else in that position humble those “above” them when possible.
It’s wild, actually. I got away with saying “this is why no one likes you” to one because they were the instigator after I’d annoyed them enough. Like they went to the next level up in management over it and got told they were the one in trouble lmfao
I work in continuous improvement, think Henry ford stuff.
If the workers had their say nothing would improve and the business would be a disaster.
“No not doing that” “why?” “Well we always did it this way and it works so we aren’t changing” " the other way has been proven to work better" “doesn’t matter we always done it this way so we aren’t changing”
“We are working 9-5 no more shift work” “the machines will idle for 2/3rds of the day. That’s horribly inefficient and are products will be uncompetitive and we will get closed down”
“We aren’t using that new machine” “why it is digital and uses machines to create accuracy 10x better than a person.” “I spent 40 years learning how to do it manually that’s the way I’m doing it and all the new kids are going to learn when I teach them”
“Look at this machine it makes 10x the output as a traditional team” “no it uses 9 people instead of 10. Someone will get made redundant we aren’t using it”
The only reason this happens is that capitalism ties survival to labour. Automation should be liberating us, and yet the structures of capitalism and “protestant work ethic” cause it to do the opposite :/. People would act this way because otherwise the greater efficiency acts as a detriment to their survival ability.
None of what you said is an argument against worker democracy, but an argument against the fundamental models of capitalism and “”“free”“” market ideology . (or more generally, any system and ideology which gatekeeps access to basic resources behind their perceived ability to provide “value” or perform labour).
