(Part 3) Top products from r/Anarchism

"One cannot simply choose whatever one's starting positions are arbitrarily. After all, I cannot simply say "I believe I'm the most important thing in the world, so I can justifiably steal from you or harm you for whatever purpose."

>Well why not?

If your moral theory compels you to accept an ethical proposition such as "I value myself and not others in such a way that I can (for example) permissibly torture you to death for the pleasure I derive from it" then that counts against the plausibility of your ethical theory. It's a huge bullet to bite. I'm not saying you're being inconsistent by adopting such a starting position and following through with it. But consistency isn't the only metric by which we can evaluate moral theories.



>I've not ever seen a good argument that objective, universal values exist. Or that values exist outside of our own choices at all.

I can recommend some well regarded stuff. Enoch's [Taking Morality Seriously](https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Morality-Seriously-Defense-Realism/dp/0199683174) Shafer-Landau's [Moral Realism: a Defense] (https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Realism-Defence-Russ-Shafer-Landau/dp/0199280207/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=CNVDTNHGJW3FHXNR8821), Oddie's [Value, Reality and Desire] (https://www.amazon.com/Value-Reality-Desire-Graham-Oddie/dp/0199562385/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496676933&sr=1-1&keywords=Value+reality+and+desire), Huemer's [Ethical Intuitionism] (https://www.amazon.com/Ethical-Intuitionism-M-Huemer/dp/0230573746/ref=pd_sim_14_4?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0230573746&pd_rd_r=0X50H65ZP0KD630TPQGQ&pd_rd_w=imPRX&pd_rd_wg=uCVqd&psc=1&refRID=0X50H65ZP0KD630TPQGQ), Parfit's [On What Matters] (https://www.amazon.com/What-Matters-Three-Derek-Parfit/dp/0198778600/ref=pd_sim_14_19?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0198778600&pd_rd_r=S7VW3J457CTBW6RT503R&pd_rd_w=Gz5f7&pd_rd_wg=Vrfn0&psc=1&refRID=S7VW3J457CTBW6RT503R)
Wedgwood's [The Nature of Normativity] (https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Normativity-Ralph-Wedgwood/dp/0199568197), Cuneo's [The Normative Web: An Argument for Moral Realism] (https://www.amazon.com/Normative-Web-Argument-Moral-Realism/dp/019958138X/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496678105&sr=1-6&keywords=terence+cuneo).


And here's some free papers you can read (too lazy to name them all, sorry):

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard_Boyd5/publication/240034001_How_to_Be_a_Moral_Realist/links/556f6f4308aec226830aab09/How-to-Be-a-Moral-Realist.pdf

http://www.academia.edu/4116101/Why_Im_an_Objectivist_about_Ethics_And_Why_You_Are_Too_

https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=433000088031098030104101075089022124028072042008084011092124087113084016108098084005098003032035018116033080110110127020085084106080012039033080068103113067015099089032030091083096096084064089109093065079071016028099008078093021125125068072101086002&EXT=pdf

https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=207103102008006126082026003080087077015002001000090086121025066112086090029103080091030096049125038001052020081100031102121000046002046043009065006112075102115099049080048111067091106094117103109111097113120126103124079110093018090122114122112110007&EXT=pdf

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~umer/teaching/intro181/readings/shafer-Landau2005EthicsAsPhilosophyADefenseOfEthicalNonnaturalism.pdf

http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1007/s11245-016-9443-7?author_access_token=R2EN7zieClp6VWWEo8DyZPe4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY6_LyD8T3yNLLNQUBcKQRpfV5lbirZE36eSIc6PLipzIUjIvQrTe9aO4meFw0oJ_Dp784B0R9TnA9qTFaNLe9oWPQUaroxf3o-BsITKWjp_6Q%3D%3D

http://www.owl232.net/5.htm

















>Maybe. But if so then what are these properties?

Moral realists are traditionally divided into two camps on this. Moral Naturalists take moral properties to be natural properties, and Moral Non-Naturalists take moral properties to be sui generis, irreducible, that they cannot be wholly understood in natural terms, that moral properties supervene on the natural. (This is a woefully rough outline: here's a good place to read about the difference: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/. And here's an attempt to describe what non-natural moral properties are: http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/INP.pdf


>And what is "good" and "bad". I've not seen a definition that doesn't just feel arbitrary.

It has been argued that it is precisely that these things cannot be defined that makes them what they are. See the non-naturalism SEP entry above in the section on Moore's Open Question Argument and this for more responses: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism-moral/#OpeQueArg

>And even if it's possible to believe in objective values one way or the other - the fact is that no-one's come up with an ethical system that's so convincing everyone agrees.

True, but disagreement about x doesn't necessarily mean right answers are impossible to derive.

>And the objective fact is that at present different people have different values (and good luck trying to get them to change!)

True again, but we can test the reasons why they hold these values.


"But even slaughtering a final generation is better than breeding and slaughtering generations in perpetuity."

>I think that if we're making that decision on animals behalf, without asking them - then that's still domination.

Slaughtering them? Sure is. I'm not saying that's the best solution. Just better than what we're doing now. That's how bad it is now.


>That's the thing I can't see any relation with animals at present that isn't some kind of domination.

That's why some vegans basically want to leave them be. Other vegans will argue having pets is ok, so long as the pet is amenable to being domesticated, like dogs seem to be, and provided we can provide them with a good life. In fact, helping animals like these could be argued as being a good thing.

Other vegans will maintain that some animal use is justified, like medical experimentation. (Not all, but some.) Others will argue that even killing animals for food is justifiable, provided a person does this to survive and be healthy -- or if affordable, healthful alternatives are not readily available to them.

>We all die someday. If had to choose between getting killed at 30 or not existing at all, I'd rather die at 30.

Again, this rather misses the point. The question is, is someone justified to kill you at 30 for whatever purpose, provided they were instrumental in bringing you into existence? It doesn't seem so.

>Equally there's plenty of people who know that they're about to give birth to a child with a life threatening disability, who still choose to make that life anyway. If we don't give farm animals that same choice then we ARE treating animals differently to humans.

In this case, the parents aren't really giving that child a choice. They are making the choice to bring a child into existence. Furthermore, it doesn't seem we have an ethical obligation to bring children into existence. Perhaps it's a permissible option, but it doesn't seem to be a duty. After all, I could have a child and probably provide her a good life. But if I get a vasectomy, that doesn't make me akin to a murderer. Non-existing beings cannot make choices, and they cannot be harmed.




>I don't personally think it's a bad thing to do that. But I do think that it's not possible to come up with a plan for agriculture that doesn't involve humans making decisions on animals behalf - either slaughtering them or placing further restrictions on their freedom than they have already.

Which supports the idea that we shouldn't bring them into existence in the first place.


Edit: fixed a link. And fixed "non-natural terms" to read "natural terms".

A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit is a good one. Its not "counter culture" as in 1960s counterculture. Its about the "counter cultures" that result from disaster situations (9/11, earthquakes, fires etc) that resemble anarchies because of their horizontalism and sense of community. Also a lot of people find so called disaster situations funner and with more opportunity than the media/history makes them out to be. The book was based off ethnographic studies and people's histories. Highly recommend. It was a joy to read.

Provo: Amsterdam's Anarchist Revolt by Richard Kempton. This is closer to the 1960s counterculture, but like 100,000 times better. Provo was a sort of anarchistic counterculture group of the mid 1960s. Its a short but fun read.

Squatting in Europe by the Squatting in Europe Kollective. I actually haven't read this book yet (my reading list is like 100 books deep as it is) but I would like to and it sounds like something that you would be interested in.

To start, I would check out The Dragon in the Land of Snows by Tsering Shakya. He is one of the most prominent Tibetan historians in the West. It is a history of modern tibet since 1947.

Other notable books to start include The Tibetans by Matthew Kapstein and History as Propaganda: Tibetan Exiles versus the People's Republic of China by John Powers.

A history of Tibet is complicated. But there is a lot of misinformation out there, shaped by Orientalism, and reinforced by an apologetic look at Mao's destructive policies and rule. Tibet was never a shangi-la, only uninformed westerners thought that it was. But China's rule in Tibet has been incredibly repressive, devastating, and near genocidal.

If you get through those books, here are some more suggestions for some in depth understanding:

• The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk by Venerable Palden Gyatso
  
• Buddha's Warriors: The Story of the CIA-Backed Tibetan Freedom Fighters, the Chinese Communist Invasion, and the Ultimate Fall of Tibet by Mikel Dunham
  
• Arrested Histories: Tibet, the CIA, and Memories of a Forgotten War by Carole McGranahan
  
• Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West by Donald Lopez
  
• The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama by Thomas Laird
  
• In Exile from the Land of Snows: The Definitive Account of the Dalai Lama and Tibet Since the Chinese Conquest by John Avedon
  
  I'll also mention these two by Melvyn Goldstein, with the preface that he is academically rigorous, but widely thought of in Tibetan communities as an apologist and biased towards China.
  
  
• A History of Modern Tibet, 1913-1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State, and
  
• The Snow Lion and the Dragon: China, Tibet, and the Dalai Lama
  
  One final note is that Tibetans do not want a return to the past, they want freedom. They want freedom of religion, freedom to practice their culture, freedom from military occupation, and a return of the Dalai Lama. Check out Phayul for current news from Tibetan exile communities.
  
  Happy reading

Thanks for doing this legwork. I appreciate it.

The Wikipedia page on this guy alone is a big read. I've skimmed some of it, and here are the sections that I found alarming:

> Carr argued that within the context of the Soviet Union, Stalin was a force for the good.

also,

> In Carr's opinion, if a historical event such as the collectivisation of Soviet agriculture in the early 1930s led to the growth of the Soviet heavy industry and the achievement of the goals of the First Five Year Plan, then the collectivisation must be considered a progressive development in history, and hence all of the sufferings and millions of deaths caused by collectivisation, the "dekulakisation" campaign and the Holodomor were justified by the growth of Soviet heavy industry.

and

> Labedz noted it only after 17 years after the first volume of the History of Soviet Russia series was published did Carr criticize Stalin in volume 8 of the series, albeit only once and in a veiled form.

also

> In A History of Soviet Russia, Carr paid more attention to relations between the Soviet Union and Outer Mongolia than to the Kronstadt mutiny, which Carr gave only a few lines to under the grounds that it was unimportant

I'm having trouble finding it, but I may be able to slip into a local college library and have better luck. Also his book "What is History?" sounds like an interesting read. I guessing that's where the predominance of people describing good as "progressive" and bad as "reactionary" comes from. I'm interested in understanding Marxism better, and that looks like a good place to start.

I've done some research, and this statement

> Labedz went on to argue that Carr's decision to end the History of Soviet Russia series at 1929 reflected not the lack of documentary material as Carr claimed, but rather an inability and unwillingness to confront the horrors of Stalin's Soviet Union.

Suggests the reason I can't find the volume that deals with the Holodomor (1932–1933) was because he didn't write one. He did write The Twilight of the Comintern, 1930-1935 - is that what you were thinking of? It looks like I can get it used for less than five bucks with shipping. I'm still going to be disappointed though if it doesn't give the Holodomor more than a few sentences.

All history you learn in high school is that kind of bullshit. Unfortunately, a lot of history books will give you the propaganda dissipated at the time as fact, much as I imagine nationalistic history books written in 200 years will quote from CNN and Fox to describe Bush's great war against the terrorists who hate our freedom. People don't like questioning nationalistic mythologies. Especially when they explain that we're all great heroes of idealistic freedom.

Given that you're on /r/Anarchism, you'd probably enjoy A People's History of the United States. Or really anything by Howard Zinn. The Populist Movement by Lawrence Goodwyn is good for talking about the post-Civil War era economic bullshit. Any biographies or autobiographies of the founders (even those written from a nationalistic point of view) will be unable to hide their business dealings and positions of power before, during, and after the revolution.

Any decent US history class you take should have a good list of readings. Better than I can remember off the top of my head.

If you have a Kindle The Autobiography of Ben Franklin is free and goes into great detail about his wealth, his positions in the Pennsylvania colonial government before the revolution, and his terms as President of Pennsylvania after the revolution (before the Constitution was adopted abolishing such positions). It does, of course, completely gloss over the fact that he knocked up a prostitute at 19, or that he was constantly having affairs. But often history is about recognizing what people aren't saying.

> Medieval feudal farming was absolutely harder work than post_industrial revolution farming

There's a major gap, in American history at least, here. this author author goes into the pre-Capitalist (hierarchical) yet post-Market (prices and trustworthy ledgers) method of organization for production. Yields boomed. Hogs could weigh more than 250 lbs before carting them to town. The tools roughly "stayed the same", so most of the productivity gains were, in my guess, people talking to one another about how to sell more food.


This all predates 1830s, so you'd have at least 2 generations of farmers who could achieve more output per acre devoid of steam engines, coal turbines, and everything else steampunk aficionados dream about. In the USA at least, I'm unfamiliar with European agricultural developments.

But even so, take a step back for a minute. In Egypt, around the time of 500 BC, the amount of grain preparation was mastered so well that a portion of extra bread and beer predated currency.

In Europe during some parts of "feudalism", tilling plots with the three system instead of the two field system (fallow flip) was a productive increase in harvested crops.

So a source which would help the claim of "effort needed daily to survive" should have a calorie basis. This is a source I've read tracking agricultural production back before 1400s

Hierarchy is the antithesis of cooperation. What is hierarchy? I happen to have just wrote a book on this. It's delegated or otherwise sole decision-making. This requires subjugation because no one really knows what the decisions (or even the questions) are going to be. They have some vague idea what this person's nature is, but you can NEVER completely know a person's nature. It's one thing to trust your soul mate of 50 years to make decisions for you. It's another to trust anybody else. There's a complete absence of deliberation or collective input. His/her decisions dictate standards of behavior and that's unacceptable. The only thing that should dictate standards of behavior is community deliberation and collective decision-making.

I'm reading a book on deliberative democracy right now. This is a good alternative to hierarchy whenever any situation that seems to require delegated decision-making arises. The people are chosen randomly, thus eliminating all that makes hierarchy toxic and convene only temporarily; being nothing more than normal members plucked from the community.

Seriously. How could you guys be so misguided? This is /r/anarchism, for FSM's sake.

Good books to read about the origins of Suburban Sprawl...

• Crabgrass Frontier
  
  
• Building Suburbia
  
  Both give a good history of the forces behind the development of the American suburb.

This is a good book.

http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Jose-Saramago/dp/0156032732

In the same vein:


https://www.amazon.com/Hate-Cops-Crackhead-Sleeve-T-Shirt/dp/B07WXPJJLP

This + this + this = Socialism and worker autonomy cannot come quickly enough

[Fascism: A Very Short Introduction] (http://www.amazon.com/Fascism-A-Very-Short-Introduction/dp/0192801554) is a really condensed and informative little book.

It is true that traditional societies across the world experience much more systemic warfare and violence than modern states.

Check out some of Jared Diamond's work on the subject (The World Until Yesterday is a great example).

States have allowed civilization to advance to a very high level of health, wealth, and safety, even for average citizens, and the massive drop in the violence an average person can expect to experience or endure can certainly be at least partly attributed to the monopolization of violence by the state.

I don't think any learned anarchist would dispute this, but it's still true that we can make even further strides taking what we've learned from the nation-state model and expanding past it to render it obsolete.

For an outright interesting read on science/philosophy, I'd recomment The Beginning of Infinity.

For climate change politics, I'd recommend anything by Naomi Klein, with The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism being of particular relevance.

Ooooo! An atomised public! All the old school chums are scaaaared! Actually though children without families raised collectively in mass orphanages don't seem very free likely material to me. Strike that. Lord of the flies. Strike that. Cabbage.

Go try http://www.amazon.co.uk/Simone-Weil-An-Anthology/dp/0141188197/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333194896&sr=8-1 instead.

Yeah, the only things I'm getting on the subject are Trotsky's work, which, in spite of its length, is apparently very readable according to the reviews there, and Ten Days that Shook the world.

I might make a post in /r/communism for recommendations. I've been trying to find a more modern book on the subject, but the ones I've read reviews of seem to be very biased against the revolution.

I think there is a divide that is more general, and deeper, than the specific issue of banning.

I elaborated on this a few times before, so I will just quote and link a post describing what I think is the fundamental disagreement here (and advocating for "my side"):

> > That fucker you were pleased with in this very post said that "refusal to debate" is reactionary and/or authoritarian.
>
> Yes... and I don't care much for the exact phrasing (and in fact, I went on about the phrasing here).
>
> But it really is a simple fact that the refusal to debate, the use of pat answers and cliches with the air of finality, the shutting down of disagreement through mockery/abuse, etc., are characteristic of both the authoritarian personality, and of authoritarian societies.
>
> C.f.:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_Reform_and_the_Psychology_of_Totalism
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem
>
> > Cis people are that fucking entitled.
>
> Do you really think it has anything to do with "cis people" feeling entitled? Actually I think most people in most circumstances feel entitled to receive justification for assertions given to them. Not to demand justification is actually an authoritarian trait, in a way -- the kind of thing that begins with a childhood of being told "because I said so" and ends with the "agent state" capacity described in Obedience to Authority.
>
> Personally I am trying to raise my daughter in such a way that she feels entitled to explanation in exactly this way. I do not want her to accept anything on a "because I said so" basis. So, I am always giving her the reasons for things (when I don't let her do things, for example), even if she won't understand, so that she will expect reasons. And when she is older I will tell her not to listen to anyone who can't explain why, and I will warn her about the many people who believe things without knowing why.
>
> That was a bit of a tangent, but the point is, I don't think this feeling of being entitled to explanation, debate, rationale, etc., has anything to do with "cis people," and I don't think it is a bad thing. I think it is a very good thing. I think it is the foundation of skepticism. I wish to see more of it, not less.
>
> Incidentally, I'm reminded of a relevant quote. I am sorry that it is so long, in addition to my already-long post with many links. But it is quite good, and there is no way to shorten it.
>
> > Paul Rabinow: Why is it that you don't engage in polemics ?
>
> > Michel Foucault: I like discussions, and when I am asked questions, I try to answer them. It's true that I don't like to get involved in polemics. If I open a book and see that the author is accusing an adversary of "infantile leftism" I shut it again right away. That's not my way of doing things; I don't belong to the world of people who do things that way. I insist on this difference as something essential: a whole morality is at stake, the one that concerns the search for truth and the relation to the other.
>
> > In the serious play of questions and answers, in the work of reciprocal elucidation, the rights of each person are in some sense immanent in the discussion. They depend only on the dialogue situation. The person asking the questions is merely exercising the right that has been given him: to remain unconvinced, to perceive a contradiction, to require more information, to emphasize different postulates, to point out faulty reasoning, and so on. As for the person answering the questions, he too exercises a right that does not go beyond the discussion itself; by the logic of his own discourse, he is tied to what he has said earlier, and by the acceptance of dialogue he is tied to the questioning of other. Questions and answers depend on a game — a game that is at once pleasant and difficult — in which each of the two partners takes pains to use only the rights given him by the other and by the accepted form of dialogue.
>
> > The polemicist , on the other hand, proceeds encased in privileges that he possesses in advance and will never agree to question. On principle, he possesses rights authorizing him to wage war and making that struggle a just undertaking; the person he confronts is not a partner in search for the truth but an adversary, an enemy who is wrong, who is armful, and whose very existence constitutes a threat. For him, then the game consists not of recognizing this person as a subject having the right to speak but of abolishing him as interlocutor, from any possible dialogue; and his final objective will be not to come as close as possible to a difficult truth but to bring about the triumph of the just cause he has been manifestly upholding from the beginning. The polemicist relies on a legitimacy that his adversary is by definition denied.

-----

Finally, for a bit of balance, I will quote /u/Voltairinede's defense of the opposite position, with emphasis added:

> >Is it acceptable to mock people for their assumed physical appearance/grooming?
>
> depends on whether their oppressed or not.
>
> >Is it acceptable to imply that other people have never experienced marginalization, while knowing nothing about them?
>
> its an odds game, but I get it right nearly all the time.
>
> >Does making light of "marginalization" in this way (bragging about the power to marginalize others) create the kind of atmosphere in which the marginalized become safer, or does it normalize marginalization itself?
>
> marginalising the non-marginalised makes safe spaces for the marginalised.
>
> >What kind of response is this type of behavior likely to provoke?
>
> Fear, confusion, anger, frustration.
>
> >What kind of social atmosphere follows from it?
>
> A hostile one for reactionaries, one where the war between oppressed and oppressor is in the open.
>
> > Does it produce the kind of social atmosphere that you would like to see characterize society as a whole?
>
> Yeah

(This may not be the strongest defense of that position, but I quote it as a clear statement of what that position is.)

i think it's unfair to say that all the right believes the poor are bums. Since the 60's, many elements on the right have recognized that poverty is the outcome of government policies that prevent the poor from generating income.

Look at Milton Friedman's [capitalism and freedom] (http://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Freedom-Fortieth-Anniversary-Edition/dp/0226264211) and clarence carson's [the war on the poor] (http://www.amazon.com/POOR-Negative-affects-government-programs/dp/B000J0IDVO/ref=sr_1_14?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407590748&sr=1-14&keywords=the+war+on+the+poor) and later Walter Williams' [the state against blacks] (http://www.amazon.com/State-Against-Blacks-Walter-Williams/dp/0070703787/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407590807&sr=1-1&keywords=the+state+against+blacks) an Charles murray's losing ground. All of these books are about institutional poverty resulting from government policies that make life worse for the poor, not a culture of poverty.

The poster's idea sounds like an unfeasible utopia. Societies without property rights are dirt poor; read Hernando de soto.

Getting rid of occupational licensing laws, zoning laws, the war on drugs, the social security tax, and compulsory schooling laws (which divert money and resources away from kids interested in learning and turn schools into prisons for those who don't) should help alleviate poverty.