Von dem mehr an Wirtschaftswachstum profitiere ich doch gar nicht. Also warum?

Discussions about human nature are always fruitless, as humans cannot exist in a natural state. They are always culturally integrated and completely shaped by their culture. Hannah Arendt once said, “Anyone who says ‘human nature’ is lying.”

“Every fool,” as Emma Goldman put it, “from king to policemen, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weakness of human nature. Yet how can any one speak of it today, with every soul in prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed?”

Change society, create a better social environment and then we can judge what is a product of our natures and what is the product of an authoritarian system. For this reason, anarchism “stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government.” For ”freedom, expansion, opportunity, and above all, peace and repose, alone can teach us the real dominant factors of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities.” (Red Emma Speaks p. 73)

Someone who is extremely intelligent and educated gains a lot of social status. But that has nothing to do with hierarchies. At least not necessarily. For example, I don’t think anyone feels subordinate to Eminem just because he has a lot of social status.

This is surely how they argued in the Middle Ages when it came to justifying the different estates.

I don’t believe that hierarchies are something inherently human. You don’t seek out hierarchies in your normal environment. Very few people do. And those who do are usually not very popular. You don’t want to subordinate yourself or dominate others. We are all only human, after all. It’s just that we live in a society that is hierarchical, and therefore it seems normal to us. In fact, however, this order can and is only maintained through violence. That cannot be natural.

Some groups are hierarchical and others are not. My group of friends, for example, is not hierarchical. My partnership is not hierarchical either. So human social groups cannot be described as inherently hierarchical. Perhaps it is necessary to entrust people with tasks. But temporary, democratic delegation of responsibility is something different from social hierarchy. For example in cooperatives there is usually an elected chairperson. Nevertheless, most cooperatives are not hierarchical.

This applies to economic hierarchies such as those between the working class and the owner class, but also to social hierarchies, for example through patriarchy, racism, and other forms of discrimination. If you believe that hierarchy between people is natural and therefore worth stabilizing, for example, that men should call the shots in relationships and in society, or that it is right for the majority of society to work, while a small minority does not work but becomes rich from the labor of the majority, you are advocating a right-wing view of society.

Left and right are misleading terms that originate from the seating arrangement in the French National Assembly. Roughly speaking, left and right can be distinguished by the fact that those on the right approve of social hierarchies and want to maintain them, while those on the left want to abolish them. A supposed middle position would be “only some hierarchies are good.” But that is also just a right-wing position.

That is why there is no “middle ground” in anarchism. Either you want a system in which everyone benefits equally, or one with a clear capitalist hierarchy. Either everyone has one vote, or the weight of the vote depends on wealth. Either we consider the freedom of all to be important, or only that of those who have enough capital. Either no one is dominated, or only those who have to sell their labor.

There is only either/or here. Those who do not consider all people to be of equal value consider some to be more valuable. This is not a spectrum; rather, the difference lies in very fundamental normative decisions.

Nicht deine Schuld, aber ich finde es schon bezeichnend, dass man bei den großen Medienhäusern das Thema konsequent ignoriert. Als vor ein paar Tagen bekannt wurde, dass die zwei Frauen von HateAid nicht mehr in die USA reisen dürfen, haben sie sich nicht mehr eingekriegt. Wenn antifaschistischen Organisationen und Personen durch Druck aus den USA in Deutschland die Konten gekündigt werden, hört man nichts davon. Obwohl letzteres sehr viel weitreichendere Implikationen und Folgen hat. Warum darf die USA bestimmen, wer in Deutschland ein Konto haben darf?

That’s some privileged hippie bullshit. Gratitude does absolutely nothing about the problems of the world. Class consciousness, mass protests and Molotov cocktails on the other hand…

I never would have thought that the recipient of the great FIFA Peace Prize would do something like that 😮

Objektiv betrachtet ist es sehr unwahrscheinlich, im öffentlichen Raum Opfer einer Gewalttat zu werden. Noch viel unwahrscheinlicher ist es, Opfer eines Terroranschlags zu werden. Das Bedrohungsgefühl der Leute speist sich also nicht aus der persönlichen Erfahrung, sondern eher aus der medialen Wahrnehmung (Heute insb. auch sozialen Medien) von konkreten Fällen. Daher werden Maßnahmen die zu “mehr Sicherheit” führen, keinen Effekt auf die gefühlte Bedrohungslage haben, weil sie eben keinen Einfluss auf die Ereignisse haben, die das Gefühl auslösen - nämlich die Berichte, die heute in der persönlichen Wahrnehmung auch noch in viel größere Anzahl im Vergleich zu Zeiten vor dem Internet als Massenmedium existieren.

Was real übrig bleibt ist also kein verbessertes Sicherheitsgefühl, aber eine deutlich ausgeweitete Überwachungsarchitektur. Das macht mir tatsächlich Angst. Natürlich ist diese Art der Angst der CDU völlig egal.

That is such a simplification that it is probably wrong.

Marx did not really concern himself with the ultimate goal of communism. His great achievement was his analysis of capitalism. Marx did not describe a slow evolution toward communism, but rather a process in which the contradictions he identified in capitalism culminate in revolution. No evolution! The few times he commented on communism, he described its prerequisites. He writes in the Communist Manifesto “In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.”

Lenin’s approach was enormously successful in some respects. After the October Revolution, the USSR underwent unprecedented industrial development, which greatly improved the living conditions of most people. In general, the argument that “it has never worked before” is very problematic. For some strange reason, communist countries have always found themselves under massive attack from capitalist countries. For example, by Hitler’s Germany or the US. Inconceivable sums of money were invested by global capital and its states to show “that communism does not work.” If it really hadn’t worked, none of that would have been necessary. That still applies today. Lenin was a right-wing, authoritarian communist and was rightly criticized for this by people like Rosa Luxemburg. But economically, things were improving so rapidly that capitalist states became increasingly concerned. The fear was so great that capitalists in the US even agreed to the New Deal. Something similar happened in Europe.

ML does not stand for Marx and Lenin, but for Marxism-Leninism. A propagandistic self-description of the system of the Soviet Union under Stalin. Another word for it is Stalinism.

But there are a lot of monsters out there. The MAGAs consists largely of people who have an explicit interest in destruction and cruelty. They celebrate their leaders for kidnapping people off the streets, sinking fishing boats, starving the poor, depriving people of their rights, supporting dictatorships and anti-democrats, and declaring war on empathy. Oh, but they’re also interested in vintage computers. How nice of them.

Mach es mal konkreter.

Weil sie wissen dass sie gewinnen werden.

Das denke ich eher nicht. Auch weil nicht klar ist, was “gewinnen” bedeutet. Wenn du damit meinst, die Regierung zu stürzen, dann vielleicht ja. Aber wenn es darum geht, Venezuela amerikafreundlichkeit einzubomben, dann eher nicht. Und schon gar nicht, wenn sie das Land dauerhaft besetzen wollen. Genaugenommen waren so ziemlich alle Militäreinsätze der USA mit Soldaten auf dem Boden seit dem zweiten Weltkrieg ein einziges Desaster. Ein Land, dessen Bevölkerung um keinen Preis erobert werden will, wird in der Regel auch nicht erobert. Besetzt vielleicht. Dauerhaft gehalten eher nicht.

Du hast mich zum lachen gebracht. Ich küsse dein Herz.

Didn’t know that, thanks!

Thanks, yes, that’s helpful. Although not exactly what I’m looking for :)

Thank you, this looks promising!

Die USA definieren sich auch als Demokratie. Ich bin erleichtert, dass gerade Bürgis auf der gesamten Welt einsehen, dass Gesetze nichts mehr wert sind, wenn sich die Staatsführung einfach nicht daran hält. Was zählt ist die normative Kraft des faktischen. Wenn der Staat vor die Wahl gestellt wird, was enden soll, der Staat oder die Demokratie, würde kein Staat der Welt zögern. Der Staat existiert als Selbstzweck, nicht für die Demokratie, nicht für die Bürger, nicht für das Grundgesetz.

Kannst ja mal versuchen, die Dummköpfe im Kanzleramt davon zu überzeugen, dass die Austeritätspolitik, die sie mit allem was die haben verteidigen, das Ursprungsproblem der gegenwärtigen Krise ist. Der Staat muss mehr ausgeben und Arbeit weniger besteuern. Aber das geht in neoliberale Köpfe nicht rein.