“The banks” ah yes seize all the worthless money instead of learning from iran and occupying vital infrastructure
Tbf this is just referencing the Paris commune which would genuinely have benefitted from siezing the banks instead of taking loans(lmao)
Protests that exist within the legal confines of the government you’re protesting against, are essentially just block parties. They’re a release valve.
I mean no disrespect, but you’re perpetuating a myth.
Revolutionary action relies heavily on benign protest for cover and recruitment. Anyone who wants to see a radical overthrow of the government should be thrilled by the No Kings marches.
I have this conversation often with a very experienced, very radical anarchist frequently. He constantly laments the wastefulness and short-sightedness of radicals who shit on the people who cultivate the recruiting pool and create giant, peaceful crowds for the more extreme element to operate concealed within, because they’re too concerned with gatekeeping and value signaling to learn tactics.
Be radical. But also: understand that peaceful protest has a very important role to play.
“Only violence works!” is stupid for exactly the same reason as “only non violence works!”
The two are synergistic and contextual, fool.
-you, having your legs eaten by a bear
Can you clarify what this actually means?
Sure thing. It’s a parable wherein you are menaced by a creature dead set on devouring you and choose to react by pretending that violent self defense is an an unreasonable response.
Okay. That’s what I thought. So can you see where my confusion is coming from? Because I didn’t dismiss the utility of violence.
Did you possibly misunderstand my comment? I described violence and non-violence as synergistic practices and ridiculed people who fail to understand that neither one can function independent of the other.
You replied to something nobody said, talking as if somebody said “hey guys let’s always do violence in every situation and nothing else”. Some real “So you hate waffles” shit.
Enlightened centrist.
Nah I think this user is saying that both have their place. And really, I don’t think that’s controversial. E.g., we do need to seize the banks, which will probably be violent, but we also need to do mutual aid, which need not be violent.
every time i see these centrist arguments, i feel like i should be keeping meme’s that explain the point succinctly, but then i have to keep reminding myself that all that effort will be ignored anyways.
It’s not like you can even recommend them Fanon, because these motherfuckers don’t read!
Finally, something anarchists and communists can agree on
Yes, we’re comrades who share a common struggle. But do you mean anarchists and marxists? Cause every single anarchist I know in real life is also a communist. And ever anarchist movement or org or squatting place or whatever too. Only online do I ever find anarchists who distance themselves from the idea of a stateless classless society (the universally accepted definition of communism). Like I assume you’re okay with society being stateless. So you want it to have classes? Not really, right? Marxists and anarchists have different strategies for how to get there, but clearly every anarchists who wants a classless stateless society (i.e. communism) is also a communist.
When I made this comment its because on Lemmy you’d think communists and anarchists are completely opposing ideologies with how much the users fight each other. Seems kinda strange if you ask me cause my experience is your’s in real life. The anarchists and communists I know in person happily get along with each other and provide aide in the same ways. I assume it stems from an examination of the past instead of a focus on the changes occuring now. I think today communists and anarchists have more reasons than ever to unite.
I’m new to the space and align more with Marcus thought but my understanding of the disagreements are that we disagree on the path to take to get to the final goal given the material conditions in the way (imperial states trying to destroy us, etc) I’m also probably oversimplifying the hell out of this.
Idk there’s a few users who call them selves anarchists that will rage against this
Goddamn right, we want everything, not just the banks
🍴😁🏴
Anarchists refused to seize the banks during the Paris Commune.
Source? If that’s the case then yeah, that’s a mistake on my ideological ancestors’ part.
The source is the history of the Paris Commune and the French Civil War.
Source: any place anyone writes anything about the Paris commune. It was a major thing. You can read about it in Marx writing, or you know, just Wikipedia or any history book about the timeframe.
Okay, here’s the Wikipedia article:
The Commune named François Jourde [fr; it; oc; ru] as the head of the Commission of Finance. A former clerk of a notary, accountant in a bank and employee of the city’s bridges and roads department, Jourde maintained the Commune’s accounts with prudence. Paris’s tax receipts amounted to 20 million francs, with another six million seized at the Hôtel de Ville. The expenses of the Commune were 42 million, the largest part going to pay the daily salary of the National Guard. Jourde first obtained a loan from the Rothschild Bank, then paid the bills from the city account, which was soon exhausted.
The gold reserves of the Bank of France had been moved out of Paris for safety in August 1870, in addition to 88 million francs in gold coins and 166 million francs in banknotes. When the Thiers government left Paris in March, they did not have the time or the reliable soldiers to take the money with them. The reserves were guarded by 500 national guardsmen who were themselves Bank of France employees. Some Communards wanted to appropriate the bank’s reserves to fund social projects, but Jourde resisted, explaining that without the gold reserves the currency would collapse and all the money of the Commune would be worthless. The Commune appointed Charles Beslay as the Commissioner of the Bank of France, and he arranged for the Bank to loan the Commune 400,000 francs a day. This was approved by Thiers, who felt that to negotiate a future peace treaty the Germans were demanding war reparations of five billion francs; the gold reserves would be needed to keep the franc stable and pay the indemnity. Jourde’s actions were later condemned by Karl Marx and other Marxists, who felt the Commune should have confiscated the bank’s reserves.[57]
The only source cited in this subsection is Marx.
The financial measures of the Commune, remarkable for their sagacity and moderation, could only be such as were compatible with the state of a besieged town. Considering the colossal robberies committed upon the city of Paris by the great financial companies and contractors, under the protection of Haussmann, the commune would have had an incomparably better title to confiscate their property than Louis Napoleon had against the Orleans family. The Hohenzollern and the English oligarchs, who both have derived a good deal of their estates from Church plunder, were, of course, greatly shocked at the Commune clearing but 8000 f. out of secularization.
So no evidence of anarchist concerns dominating the maintenance of the Bank of France so far. Let’s dig a bit deeper: from page 56 of Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune of 1871 by Merriman (2014), as recommended by the Wikipedia authors:
The Commune named François Jourde as delegate for Finance. On 19 March Jourde and Eugène Varlin went to the Bank of France to ask politely for a loan of 700,000 francs. This they received. The Commune also received a credit of well over 16 million francs – though it was a paltry sum compared with the 258 million francs credit Versailles received from the Bank of France, making possible the reconstitution of the French army. The Rothschild banking family also loaned money to the Commune. The Commune remained attached to legalism and did not confiscate funds in the Bank of France, which it easily could have done, but it did begin to mint its own coins in mid April.
Now we’re getting somewhere. Varlin was a Proudhon enjoyer, and Proudhon was a market enjoyer. Frankly, there are definitely Proudhon enjoyers in the modern anarchist movement (mutualists), but most anarchists these days would consider Proudhon a reformist and disagree with a lot of his ideas on economics…and frankly, this is a perfect example of why I disagree with mutualists about market economics. So certainly an anarchist refused to seize the Bank of France.
Which, I 1000% agree with Marx in his later writings on this (but from an anarcho-communist perspective) that this was an error in judgement on the Communards’ part, e.g. in Marx to Domela-Nieuwenhuis, 22 Feb. 1881 (Karl Marx Selected Writings page 642, same reference as Wikipedia): “The appropriation of the Bank of France alone would have been enough to put an end with terror to the vaunt of the Versailles people, etc., etc…”
But unless someone has a source that goes into more detail than that, which by the way is why I asked the person I replied to instead of searching for it myself, we don’t have enough evidence on hand to conclude that the anarchists (or even the Proudhonist faction as a whole) collectively were responsible for this error in judgement.
All the books I referenced are available on LibGen 🏴☠️. Also anyone who replies to this, feel free to tag my SDF account because SDF is taking a dive for a few hours.
With all the lead poisoning in the US, I’d say it works on the plebs too.
Sure, you first.
Join us coward
I have every intention to once there’s an “us” to join. I just don’t have respect for cowards who expect other people to do the dangerous work for them.
Give me an organized movement big enough to accomplish its goals and I’ll be there. Without a big organized movement, violence against the state is just impotent suicide.
The organized movement can’t get big if people wait to join it until it is big. I recommend PSL
Sure, but it also can’t get big if people jump straight to lead prematurely, we’ll get picked off one by one. Lay low, organize, and then explore alternative overt actions besides voting and peaceful protest. That’s not the message OP is implying.
Ah yes, revolution is when individual responsibility. 🙄
