Friends can help you cope. If your issues/politics isolate you, make sure to build up a good support network of friends. Anarchist friends are best, but non-anarchist friends are way better than none at all. Therapy (expensive, but worth it) and support groups (often free) helped me a lot. If you do therapy, find one that is a liberal/radical sympathizer, ask them to not take any notes and feel free to not disclose certain things. Find things that inspire you and give you hope - Homage to Catalonia, Les Miserables, V for Vendetta (i know, not really anarchist), The Matrix, Fight Club, anarchist/activist documentaries, pretty much anything on Netflix's "Fight the System Movies", Chomsky talks, vids from Snowden, Assange, etc. Democracy Now is a good way to catch the news five days a week without a ton of toxic emotional bs.

If you have meds that help and that you like, make sure to take them regularly. If you're anti-meds, then make sure to live daily life in a way that doesn't make you your own worst enemy. Find other people, even in books, that have figured out how to cope and do what they do - here is some cool reading if you're an introvert reader like me - The Murdering of my Years, Lifelong Activist (reformist but useful), also here's a cool random vid on Time Management For Anarchists. Best of luck. Post back here if things ever get super rough, we're here for you. <3

>Im not zizek but if you wanna criticize the source you can read him or see the videos were he explains his filosofy

I know who Slavoj Žižek is.

 

I have watched a lot of his Debates and Videos on YouTube. I have watched how he "Debated" the maniacal Transphobic Misogynist Judeo-Christian Fanatic called Jordan B. Peterson.

I have read his books let me Synopsize them for you; Accordingly—

 

• "Violence." ( A very Neo-Liberal Psuedo-Hegellinistic view and description of Voilence and a bit on Heirarchy. )
  
  
• "Sex - and The Failed Absolute." ( Hegellinistic/Kantian revisionistic Interpretation of Sex-Differences represented through skewed interpretations of Films, Literature and Entertainment he uses as Examples to bring forth the Hegel/Kantian view of Sex and Gender. SIDE NOTE Kant was a very Religious Philosopher, believes in Authority and that God/Jesus is a good Ideal to follow. An Academic Theologist basically. )
  
  
• "The Sublime Object of Ideology." ( A very shitty Kantian Interpretation of Marx's defintion of Commodity and Freud's weird un-materialistic Interpretation and Opinion of what Dreams are. )
  
  
• "Less than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism." ( His justification book to Revise the words and meanings of Marx's Defintion of Materialism and Materialistic Views. )
  
  
• "The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?" ( Apologia Piece towards the Atrocities of Christianity through— you guessed it; Kantian Perspective. )
  
   
  
  Slavoj Žižek— is a Capitalist Masquerading as a Communist.
  
   
  
  He is a Modern Stain on Anarchism and Communism, he believes in a lot of ways - that the Revolution will never happen and because he is Depressed he Actively writes Psuedo-Communist Revisionist Literature to discourage Revolution.
  
   
  
  Why do you think he is so popular, so free to "Debate" people, why the Media Corporations aren't trying to Damage his reputation? Not trying to deplatform him? It is because the Capitalist-Class, States/Militaries around the world and Religious Figures aren't afraid of him— because in his works he has never wrote directly against nor outright discouraged Capitalism.
  
  He is a hack, and a Disengenueous Revisionist towards the cause and goal of Cummunism- which is Anarchism. Anarchism is the end Goal of Communism, Communism is just Karl-Marx's "How to" Guide to Achieve Anarchism.
  
   
  
  I've read a lot of Theory on Anarchism and Communism. I'm an Active Anarchist in my part of the World-( Which I will not expose for Safety reasons ) somewhat succeeding in Communal Living.
  
   
  
  If you want real Scientists and Philosphers' views on Anarchism and Communism read Pëtr Kropotkin's—
  
  
• "Conquest of Bread"
  
  
• "Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal"
  
  
• "Scientific Evolutionary Principles of Anarchism & Co-operation based on Darwin's Evolutionary Theory."
  
   
  
  Albert Einstein's—
  
  
• "Why Socialism".
  
   
  
  Read Karl Marx as well— so that you don't fall for bullshit Revisionists of the Modern Times like Slavoj Žižek.
  
   
  
   
  
  

  EDIT:
  

  
  >And the guys on top dont really wanna control you they just dont want to lose their power
  
  Are you even an Anarchist? I don't think you have any Idea what Power is. You have a very Childish view of Power.
  
   
  
  How does one protect Power? Maintain it? How do Dictators, Kings, Queens, The Pope - Politicians protect their Power? Hm? Do you know the Dynamics of "Power"?
  
  I don't think you do, going by your— description... if we can even call it that.
  
  Do you know the Definition of Control? Please educate yourself before you try to talk about things you don't really understand.

The second edition of Debt is better than the first one.




No, he is indeed talking about markets.

An important point that is often overlooked (that you might find interesting given your flair), is the one that Graeber bring up when talking about he calls "human economies":

That the existence of money does not entail the existence of a market. Many societies had money, but they never used to buy/sell "stuff".

People often mistakenly equate money with coinage. Money simply provides a recognized unit of value. That unit can be a price in the market, but it can also be the size of a gift or a measure of need.

People often come out with very weird misunderstandings after reading Debt for the first time.

I think it's because it's their first exposure to economic anthropology, if you anyone want to deepen their understanding of this stuff, read:

• James G. Carrier's A Handbook of Economic Anthropology, it's an introductory text but it's still very useful, you can download it on libgen:
  
  http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=84967F65B9102FE7EE1882ECC8B48C8F
  
  
• Alain Caillé and Jacques T. Godbout's book The World of the Gift is the perfect introduction to anything related to "gift economies", you can find a cheap copy on Amazon:
  
  https://www.amazon.com/World-Gift-Jacques-T-Godbout/dp/0773521364
  
  
  
• For an introduction to non-gift (and even non-exchange) transfers, or what David Graeber call "Communism" in ch5 of Debt, there's Thomas Widlok recent book Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing:
  
  https://www.routledge.com/Anthropology-and-the-Economy-of-Sharing/Widlok/p/book/9781138945548
  
  
  

I'm not exactly an Anarchist, per say, though I am a strong ally, so I'll offer up my 2 cents here.

As far as general radicalizing, accessible texts by Anarchists go? Gotta be Chomsky, dude.

Requiem, Manufacturing Consent and Who Rules the World? are excellent introductions to deconstructing mainstream hegemony- step 1 towards radicalization.

(edit: and Requiem for the American Dream even has a documentary based on it, so that makes it even more accessible if your friend doesn't feel like diving into a massive swathe of books right away. You can even watch it for free online!)

Now general anti-capitalist work? That's more my speed. Here's a reading list I made a while back of books that I've enjoyed which are both socially radical and operate within a Marxist (or at least socialist) framework. Some on specific social issues, others addressing Capitalism directly.

Now is an EXCELLENT time to question your dogmatic commitment to nonviolence.

May I suggest Peter Gelderloos' excellent How Nonviolence Protects the State?

Or, perhaps, Ward Churchill's Pacifism as Pathology?

I haven't read her, but Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize in economics for her work demonstrating how commons could be successfully managed. I think the definitive work is her Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action.

There is also a section in An Anarchist FAQ (which surprisingly doesn't mention Ostrom's work): I.6 What about the "Tragedy of the Commons"?

That's not true. He was referring to people like Heidegger and Paul de Man, left wing European intellectuals who were nazis and then became heroes to the new left and post modernists. Insinuating that anybody you disagree with is an anti semite or racist is a stalinist tactic of ziofascist neocons and establishment liberals. Richard Wolin has written about the phenonomena of nihilist, anti enlightenment, anti capitalist, and anti science romanticist European intellectuals who were first nazis and then whose ideas were supported in America by post modernists.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Seduction-Unreason-Intellectual-Postmodernism/dp/0691125996

http://www.amazon.com/Explaining-Postmodernism-Skepticism-Socialism-Rousseau/dp/0983258406/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375668152&sr=1-1&keywords=stephen+hicks

http://www.amazon.com/Deconstruction-Literature-Criticism-after-Auschwitz/dp/0874515661/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375668256&sr=1-6&keywords=david+hirsch

http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Enlightenment-Tradition-Zeev-Sternhell/dp/0300135548/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375668499&sr=1-3&keywords=zeev+sternhell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romantic_nationalism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Enlightenment

The two intellectual movements Molyneux was referring to. Supported by European intellectuals like Herder, Heidegger, and Fichte.

Sharing economy might help. It pretty much shows how ridiculous the whole "no one else in the world can ever use these resources" is. Keep in mind sharing economy is distinct from gift or exchange.

Here's a book on it https://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-Economy-Sharing-Thomas-Widlok/dp/1138945552

Biology doesn't the work the way the Neo-Darwinists, who you're thinking of, tells it does.

I recommend you take a look at this paper: http://videnssamfundet.au.dk/fileadmin/www.videnssamfundet.au.dk/nyheder/kalender/afviklede_aktiviteter/ingold.pdf

I also would recommend at the work of biologists like:

The famous physiologist Denis Noble and his two books:

"Dance to the Tune of Life: Biological Relativity": https://www.amazon.com/Dance-Tune-Life-Biological-Relativity/dp/1107176247/

"The Music of Life: Biology Beyond Genes": https://www.amazon.com/Music-Life-Biology-Beyond-Genes/dp/0199228361/

James A. Shapiro's "Evolution: A View from the 21st Century": https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-View-21st-Century-paperback/dp/0133435539

You are thinking about power, that's awesome. I think Post-Scarcity Anarchism will help: http://www.amazon.com/Post-Scarcity-Anarchism-Working-Classics-Bookchin/dp/1904859062

OK I've been looking up left fascism and this is really fascinating.

This book especially:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Seduction-Unreason-Intellectual-Postmodernism/dp/0691125996

I have a few you might be interested in:

Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord

Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky
The footnotes to Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky

Foundation by Isaac Asimov This book will bring up many interesting discussions on power systems, for a discussion group I would recommend just reading the first book in the series and discussing the themes.

The Mexican Revolution by Alan Knight

Dreams of Freedom : A Ricardo Flores Magon Reader

Stone Age Economics by Marshall Sahlins

The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin

Fragments of Anarchist Anthropology by David Graeber

[Zapatista Reader] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Zapatista-Reader-Nation-Books/dp/1560253355)

Our Word is Our Weapon

The Kingdom of God is Within You by Leo Tolstoy

Government is Violence by Leo Tolstoy

That's as much as I can remember, but my recommendations are bias towards my interests.

Sure.

Jacques Ellul, of Propaganda and The Technological Society, was a Christian anarchist. His most famous book on that field is Anarchy and Christianity which I believe is the best in the works. (http://www.amazon.com/Anarchy-Christianity-Jacques-Ellul/dp/1606089714)

For a classic, there's Leo Tolstoy's "Government is Violence" (http://www.amazon.com/Government-Is-Violence-Leo-Tolstoy/dp/0948984155)

And for a current group, there's "Jesus Radicals" (http://www.jesusradicals.com/) They have conferences, essays, but lately have moved very supportive of primitivism.


(Sorry for the Amazon links, but I'm lazy to find another copy, shop around. AKPREss and the like have bulk buying programs for them I believe)

• “A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form,” by Paul Lockhart.
  
• “The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education,” by Grace Llewellyn.
  
• “The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition,” by Don Norman.
  
• “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder,” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
  
• “The Language Construction Kit,” by Mark Rosenfelder.

I'm a part-time babysitter and I believe raising a child right can be one of the most revolutionary things one can do in this world. Two books I'd recommend
Unconditional Parenting Alfie Kohn is a radical in his field, I would pay no attention to almost any other book on parenting than this one.

And for when they're a little older: The Teenage Liberation Handbook This book is written towards teenagers, but i recommend you check it out too. Mostly about unschooling and general hierarchy challenges.

If you're a real computer scientist then you'll enjoy reading the following:

• Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science.
  
  
  
• The Knowledge We Have Lost in Information: The History of Information in Modern Economics.
  
  
• Markets come to bits: Evolution, computation and markomata in economic science.
  
  
  
• The Cultural Logic of Computation by David Golumbia.

David Graeber has written about how Occupy Wall Street was organized along "horizontal" lines, where power was not distributed in a top-down manner. Anthropologists have done much research on societies that are not governed along capitalist lines. Both of these facts can be easily verified by googling the appropriate question.

Murray Bookchin, whose writings and ideas synthesized anarchism and ecology, traced the origins of domination and hierarchical relationships to an economy of material scarcity. He argues that due to scientific change and technological development, society has moved to a stage beyond scarcity. Thus, he writes that we do not need to impose hierarchy and exploitation in order to live. I am unable to write on his ideas in detail, but I would recommend reading his books.

http://www.amazon.com/Post-Scarcity-Anarchism-Working-Classics-Bookchin/dp/1904859062
http://www.amazon.com/Remaking-Society-Pathways-Green-Future/dp/0896083721/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371996581&sr=1-2&keywords=remaking+society

Thanks. Bell Hooks I found. There were a bunch of different things called "Black Flame" though. Is this the one you're referring to?

I only have the pdf. The writer has text file up on his site,

http://kevinacarson.org/drs/

You can get a kindle file off amazon for a buck too,

https://www.amazon.com/Desktop-Regulatory-State-Countervailing-Individuals/dp/1523275596

There's also A is for Activist by Innosanto Nagara link here

And, there's also A Rule is to Break by John Seven and Jana Christy link here

a nobel price winner,

her on wiki,

one of her books,

and a book called 'the possibility of cooperation' by michael taylor which is available in torrents

I don't know of any zines; but depending on how young they are, there's this book.

Just found it. It's actually the ABCs of Anarchy.

https://www.amazon.com/ABCs-Anarchy-Brian-Heagney/dp/1453687815

Biology doesn't work that way. Selection is not the single factor in evolution and selection doesn't operate at the level of the gene.

There's no "selfish gene", Neo-Darwinists like the asshole Dawkins are just arrogant pricks and not actual scientists.


I recommend you take a look at this paper: http://videnssamfundet.au.dk/fileadmin/www.videnssamfundet.au.dk/nyheder/kalender/afviklede_aktiviteter/ingold.pdf

And this: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/whats-the-point-if-we-cant-have-fun

I also would recommend at the work of biologists like:

The famous physiologist Denis Noble and his two books:

"Dance to the Tune of Life: Biological Relativity": https://www.amazon.com/Dance-Tune-Life-Biological-Relativity/dp/1107176247/

"The Music of Life: Biology Beyond Genes": https://www.amazon.com/Music-Life-Biology-Beyond-Genes/dp/0199228361/

James A. Shapiro's "Evolution: A View from the 21st Century": https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-View-21st-Century-paperback/dp/0133435539


What it Means to be 98% Chimpanzee: Apes, People, and their Genes: https://www.amazon.com/What-Means-98%25-Chimpanzee-People/dp/0520226151/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

for kids of all ages;

A Rule Is To Break

ABCs of Anarchy

A is for Activist

The Streets are Free

Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children's Literature

because, Lets have kids who Smash the State!

• Gifts and Commodities by Christopher A. Gregory, (the new edition with a new foreword by Marilyn Strathern).
  
  
  (Chris A. Gregory's book is one of the most important books in economic anthropology. If you want to know anything about economic anthropology, that book has to be on your reading list).
  
  
  
• David Graeber's Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams critiques/shows the discrepancies inherent in various market-based bullshit philosophies.
  
  
• Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing by Thomas Widlok, (this one rips into/destroys the usual economic logics based on exchange, like those coming from market people).
  
  
• Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber.
  
  
  
• Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture by E.P. Thompson.
  
  
  
• The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia by James C. Scott.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The World of the Gift by Alain Caillé and Jacques T. Godbout.
  
  
  
• The Anthropology of Economy: Community, Market, and Culture by Stephen Gudeman.
  
  
  
• Virtualism: A New Political Economy edited by James G. Carrier and Daniel Miller.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Edit:
  
  
  Commercialism/markets is just as bad a system of social relation as Capitalism.
  
  Markets on their own are just as socially destructive and individuality-crushing as capitalism.
  
  Markets may be distinct from capitalism, but they're inextricably linked to States.
  
  I don't think markets CAN even exist without States.
  
  The historical shows that they pretty follow each other.
  
  Abolishing states would take markets and the commodity relation with it, which is why I think it's absurd to speak of them here, unless you're for some form of state to accompany the legalism and all the bullshit that comes with markets.
  
  That's why most anarchists are very anti-market.
  

Look you seem to have good intentions but you're completely immersed in the neoclassical economics bullshit.

So, I recommend taking at this particular book:


The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community by Harvard Economics Professor Stephen A. Marglin, who is also a reformed/ former neoclassical economist.


Philip Mirowski's book Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science, his book More Heat than Light: Economics as Social Physics, Physics as Nature's Economics and his latest The Knowledge We Have Lost in Information: The History of Information in Modern Economics deal with a lot of the bullshit coming from economics.


You can find a more anti-capitalist critique in [The Beginning of History: Value Struggles and Global Capital](http://www.lamarre-mediaken.com/Site/COMS_630_files/Beginning%20of%20History.pdf
) (I included a PDF to it).


As for books on what communism might look like:

• Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to Postcapitalism by Massimo De Angelis.
  
  
  
• Living at the Edges of Capitalism: Adventures in Exile and Mutual Aid by Andrej Grubacic and Denis O'Hearn:
  
  https://www.amazon.com/Living-Edges-Capitalism-Adventures-Mutual/dp/0520287304
  
  
• “The World of the Gift” by Alain Caillé and Jacques T. Godbout:
  
  
  
  
  https://www.amazon.com/World-Gift-Jacques-T-Godbout/dp/0773517510
  
  
  
• “Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing” by Thomas Widlok:
  
  
  
  https://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-Economy-Sharing-Thomas-Widlok/dp/1138945552
  
  
  
  
  The economic mechanism that Thomas Widlok talks about in his book is very to what Peter Kropotkin calls "mutual aid" and David Graeber calls "everyday communism".
  
  
  
  

I don't know if you can attribute it entirely to apathy. Lots of Americans are kept too busy -- worrying about their jobs and other immediate needs -- to the point where they can't pay attention to politics beyond what they get on the evening news.

And as long as stories like this don't make it onto the evening news, they'll continue thinking society as a whole is alright and they're just unluckier than most.

Check out Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent": http://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media/dp/0375714499 -- it may be 25 years old already, but it's still dead on.

Markets and "individual property" aren't the issue here . It's about hierarchy , institutional violence and wage slavery / employment contract among other components of what's called "capitalism".

If you like markets , check out the work the people at https://c4ss.org/

Here are some their books :

http://radgeek.com/gt/2011/10/14/markets-not-capitalism-1st-ed/

http://mutualist.org/id114.html

https://www.amazon.com/The-Desktop-Regulatory-State-Countervailing/dp/1523275596

https://c4ss.org/resources

For the McJobs career depression and rage, I found two books helpful. The Murdering of My Years by anarchist Mickey Z will show you that you are not alone. The Lifelong Activist will give you some direction and focus, especially if you are willing to compromise a bit.

Also, an open minded liberal therapist can go a long way. If you are worried about privacy (pdf), ask them to not use any written notes, watch your words and only open up to them 85%. If you can't afford therapy, read the Lifelong Activist and give it a few years. What ever you end up doing, take care of yourself.

Pacifism as Pathology by Ward Churchill

How Non-Violence Protects the State by Peter Gelderloos - PDF

Deacons For Defense are one of several groups of armed black Americans during the civil rights movement.

Orgasms of History

from riot to insurrection more of the theoretical side than history

See also: general strikes and the riots that accompanied them. The history of the labor movement, which is full of strikes that became riots. The timeline of the civil rights movement, in that it was only after the riots began that meaningful civil rights legislation began to be adopted, and even MLK knew that the only reason they were giving him a seat at the table after calling him a communist etc... was because of the riots forcing them to deal with the non-violent moderates of the movement and make concessions.

Yeah, as /u/ptcool said, Zizek's Violence is an excellent book to read in order to get a fairly accessible argument about how systemic and institutional "violence" is just as violent as subjective violence (violence which can be readily traced back to a single individual).

In a nutshell, the two main arguments would be that 1) systemic violence has the same practical consequences as subjective violence, and 2) acts of subjective violence are often the result of long-term, historical systemic violence. For instance, one cannot understand the very violent reactions of colonized people against the European powers without also understanding the systemic violence of the colonial project.

>The "right" to own slaves was a fabrication of the state. I hope you see that owning a slave violates the non-aggression principle very blatantly.

This ties in with the liberal fixation on subjective, as opposed to objective forms of violence - which I will discuss further in this post in retort to the obvious attempt to steer the conversation in the direction of the concept of "self-ownership" and the subsequent natural rights arguments that extrapolate from that.

>Talk about stealing concepts for your own. Calling the American and other western systems capitalist I'm assuming is as laughable as calling the Stalin era of the USSR Marxist

Well, no. The West is capitalist. It may not be your idealistic conception of fundamentalist free-market libertarian capitalism, but it is capitalist. This is so obvious that it doesn't even merit discussion. There is private ownership over the means of production - the prevalence of a State which encroaches on the 'free-market' doesn't negate the fact that we live under a capitalist system.

As for Stalin, I'm not one of those wishy-washy left-communists that says "Uhh, the USSR under Stalin wasn't really Marxist or an example of a socialist state etc." So, you've got no traction there I'm afraid. I'm more than willing to uphold the USSR under Stalin as an example of actually existing socialism which by and large, was a net positive force for social progress in 20th Century history. Yes, it had its flaws which can only be understood in an intellectually honest manner through thorough historical analysis, placing strategic policy decisions made by the Central Committee (not the simplistic appeal to "Stalin" the omnipresent and tyrannical dictator) in their historical context. Of course, doing this means that we can't use the bullshit ideological scapegoat of 'authoritarianism' which simplifies complex issues into the vagaries of an individual madman, as anti-communists and others are wont to do. But, alas, the USSR under Stalin is a different, and tangential discussion that is still quite divisive even amongst Communists, never mind people that despise Communism. So, I think we should leave it there.

No, I don't want to hear about Holodomor, or the Purges - or any other banal buzzwords that are usually associated with Stalin. /r/communism101 will be more than happy to answer questions you, or anybody else may have on that.

>Is anarchism not supposed to be about decentralization and not letting one person decide how everything should be run? Where's the respect for self-determination?

I don't get your point. It is. Accepting the analysis of one person because that analysis is right doesn't mean that you have to be contrary and disagree with it. It doesn't imply that unless you disagree with Marx you're voiding your right to agency or "self-determination", any more than arguing that unless you reject that Darwin was able to provide a useful theoretical framework for the Natural Sciences, you're rejecting "self-determination".

> So you believe humanity has evolved past human qualities like "desire"?

No. I didn't say that. To paraphrase, I said that 'human nature is bollocks, for further reference - see introductory texts on the subject in the academic field that we call Anthropology'. For further clarification, the first link on Google for 'anthropology + human + nature' suffices to provide a concise summation of my point:

>>Human capacities are not genetically specified but emerge within processes of ontogenetic development. Moreover the circumstances of development are continually shaped through human activity. There is consequently no human nature that has escaped the current of history. . . .

>>This does not mean, of course, that a human being can be anything you please. But it does mean that there is no way of describing what human beings are independently of the manifold historical and environmental circumstances in which they become–in which they grow up and live out their lives.

>>–Tim Ingold, Against Human Nature (2006:259,273)

There are numerous studies with rigorous empirical evidence to prove that a concept of a common 'human nature' is utter crap. How we react to the world is determined by the environment that we grow up in, our social position and a large number of other factors - the 'selfish human nature common to all humans' that dominates Western academic thought is a Western bias that is not replicated when studying indigenous tribes that have not been exposed to our culture and society. Whilst the argument can be made that academic thought based on the assumption of the 'rational' utility-maximising consumer is useful in the West, you cannot claim that this is 'human nature'. So, "human nature" is bullshit.

Not to be blunt, but if you had just gone off and made that Google search, I'm sure that you would have managed to find all of that out on your own without me having to take the time to type it all up.

> Do human beings not chase what is incentivized? Would they really not care whether they're putting in 10 hrs of labor for a meal vs 1 hr?

Well, the humorous answer is - you're right to a degree. The reason that I'm a Communist is because I don't want a Capitalist to expropriate the surplus value that I, or anybody else creates. Getting 100% remuneration for the work that I do is very much an incentive to work. I also don't want to work for 9 hour days, 5 hours of which is used to create surplus value for a Capitalist when in actuality, I only need to work for 4 hours in order to produce the goods necessary for my sustenance.

>I want to understand your point of view because I admit, its fascinatingly blurry and elusive

Well, that's nice - but it's not really. I'm introducing a lot of standard concepts that anybody who is moderately familiar with Marxism is well aware of. Like any subject matter that you're not familiar with, it appears to be difficult, or 'blurry' if you don't know anything about it. What I'm discussing is neither advanced, nor is it esoteric. It's pretty much bread-and-butter Marxism.

>Do you believe you own your body?

And, we come full circle to the concept of 'self-ownership'.

The first point is the loaded term 'to own'. No, I don't 'own' my body. My body is mine and I am inseparable from it. To talk of 'owning' your body requires us to set up an unnecessary mind/body duality whereby your mind exists independently of your body and asserts 'ownership' over it. This is not the case, and is a hangover of traditional philosophical thought most famously popularised by Descartes. In short, the concept of 'self-ownership' is fundamentally flawed as it's based on the fallacy of 'mind-body' duality which was not seen as such by people like Locke etc. It's a theory of its time that has had its time.

> And, when is it okay to initiate force against someone acting peacefully?

It's not. Our understandings of violence are different. You, and others like you see violence in the simplistic sense as existing only between actors - it is the concept of subjective violence that you're concerned with. You're concerned with subjects meting out violence against each other, and violence can only exist in this context.

Marxists on the other hand are concerned not just with subjective violence, as you are - it's wrong to stab people, etc. But also the concept of objective violence, particularly its manifestation as systemic violence. That is to say, violence which occurs not due to the acts of any individual subject, but regardless of the subject the violence occurs nonetheless. In relation to capitalism as a form of structural, or systemic violence - we can observe this by the way in which capital follows an inherent logic which pursues self-expansion and accumulation to the detriment of all else. For example, it is more profitable for a pharmaceutical company to invest in the production of skin-cream for Western Markets than it is to manufacture anti-retroviral drugs for people with HIV in developing countries. Thus, millions of people die every year, not due to an individual capitalist or group thereof who wish to deprive millions of poor people of life-saving drugs, but due to the more banal fact that the inherent logic of the system compels all of the capitalists to seek the most profitable ROI or else they'll eventually get fucked out of the market.


If you actually don't want to delve into any heavy political texts on the last issue - this book by Garry Leech is very good at explaining, and expanding on the concept. For less light reading, Zizek's book on Violence is a very good read too.

If you do take the time to read these books, it should become clear why not just I, but so many other Marxists address anybody of the pro-capitalist persuasion in such an acrid manner. These discussions aren't just ideological tiffs around differences of opinion which are ultimately harmless - from a Marxist perspective, it's impossible to portray Capitalism as anything other than an inherently violent and oppressive system which is the root cause of so many of the World's ills, both historically and today.