I’ve met countless libertarian proletarians, I was one of them in fact. Because societal trends are just trends, and society doesn’t simply collapse into what the majority of people (not that a majority of proletarians are socialists at all) will it to be, in fact, that happens very little. If your theory were true, states would have never developed in the first place, as they were against the interests of the vast majority of people living in stateless societies.

It’s okay to see trends and predict based on them, but to think the trends indicate a very specific thing is GUARANTEED to eventually happen, and to think henceforth that any other investigation of alternatives is pointless, is what I call self masturbatory fatalism

Things are right when they make sense and follow logic and empiric evidence, not when a genius says them. Tell me what they said and we may discuss it, to simply say “oh but a genius said so” is meaningless.

Authoritarianism is a measure of how monopolized and heirarchical the decision-making process is within an organization. There’s nothing meaningless about that, it’s a very specific thing. Now if you use the definition from Engels, where your stomach is authoritarian when it’s hungry, it’s definitely meaningless, but to pretend that is the only or even the main definition is just asinine.

Indonesia or Guatemala

Are you referring to Jacobo Arbenz and Sukarno? Those were pacifists who refused to arm themselves. That has nothing to do with decentralization.

If you don’t understand the material trends of society

You can’t! No one can! Society is not a monolith! It’s billions of people with different thoughts and feelings and ideals and desires and conditions, you can’t condense them all into a theory, you’re not smart for thinking you can. Guessing that society will definitely surely follow a very specific process to the letter is again, purely self-masturbatory fatalism. It’s Not Even Wrong.

It’s weird how the author somehow manages to define the word “elite” in such a way that excludes actually existing political elites (since those people are directly responsible to their organization)

Elites are nothing more, and nothing less, than groups of friends who also happen to participate in the same political activities.

… And then uses this idea to justify the integration of groups into a hierarchical party apparatus. There’s hypocrisy in criticizing informal elites while openly embracing a larger hierarchical structure and elites. Good luck holding the head of the party accountable!

Also, some of the principles in the essay directly correlate with decentralized principles of organizing anyway - delegation, limited mandate, rotation in particular… the only one not explicitly mentioned is instant recallability. I’d question 2 and 3 mainly. Especially given the party apparatus she’s advocating for… otherwise everything else is already done by “informal groups”

I really struggle to conceive the idea of a “fully structureless” group this is advocating against anyway. Any group of people coming together for any length of time, for any purpose, will inevitably structure itself in some way. We are people with different backgrounds and capabilities and ideals, after all.

I think overall though… the piece is mostly good. Past a certain size, you need to have formal structure and accountability with clear duties. You also need to anticipate that certain systemic oppressions are going to show up in your group and you need to have a way of accounting for this. I don’t really see why this means every other benefit of decentralization and horizontality needs to be abandoned though.

I guess what you mean is that "everything will somehow work out [without struggle],

No, even with struggle, you’re just saying that things will naturally eventually fall into place because they’re just destined to be like that. You’re not a prophet and you cannot predict what billions of different peoples will do and how. You never really even adressed any of the points I made about decentralization, you just said “nah that wont happen, this will happen instead, sorry”. There’s nothing I can even respond to that! It’s just fatalist nonsense!

Freedom is not the only goal in decentralization, there’s many other tangible benefits to it

And, well, don’t be confused about me saying “we need some authority”, what I’m saying is “if there really is a tangible proof that a process NEEDS to have people in positions where their will has to be followed, that can be done when it is deemed necessary” but this is not me arguing in favour of rigid vertical structures. I am in favour of mods being rotated and elected and that people in the forums should be able to strip them of that role if they think it’s necessary, for example. The point is not to apply a single organization model for everything but to do the best we can

You could only get those admins and mods because those people could make their own Lemmy instance - had they made a subreddit their attitude would have gotten them banned by the higher ups. Because of being its own thing it gets to enjoy its own management consequences and not the consequences of everyone else’s management, which is why it’s not affected by Reddit’s shitty venture capitalist ideas.

All of the benefits you’re speaking of come from decentralization! As for needing a moderation team on a forum, yeah I agree, I don’t think there’s any other way of keeping an online forum good. But, I did say:

Centralization is a cancer. You fully kill it if you can, and if you can’t, you try to reduce it as much as possible. Showing proof that some things have to be centralized is moot, we can centralize that thing specifically and not centralize everything else.

This all just reads as “don’t worry, everything will just somehow work out! <3” and… I don’t really buy it.

It’s not supposed to be serious theory.

People certainly treat it as one. It’s like a thought terminating cliché honestly. The amount of times I’ve seen people treating this work as if it would blow your mind and immediately stop all your silly little freedom thoughts is way too much to just ignore. Why specifically is it treated so specially, unlike the other work you linked?

I’mma read it soon and post what I think btw thanks.

I can get behind that a lot more, but keep in mind, you’re always going to have to end up trusting someone. And I assume the sensible way to go around such a system would be to be informed by it and not commanded by it. To take its data into account when making a decision but not simply doing what it recommends immediately without question. It’s after all still a machine

I get what you mean - the planners and producers become the same economic class, as in their relation to property and capital, but you’re acting as if political class does not exist, the planner has way more power than the producer - as the planner literally controls the production and decides its fate. The planner belongs to a structure of governance the worker doesn’t, the planner is hierarchically above the worker, the two belong in different systems that incentivize them to do different things. You can elect the planners, but it doesn’t fundamentally solve that problem, as you then just rely on rolling a dice over and over and over hoping a good planner is put in that position, and with the passage of time that wont happen

In what way are they part of the planning structure exactly though?

What would ensure the central planning mechanism always puts the needs of the people as the goal, and not the needs of the central planning structure, or the needs to perpetuate and protect it?

can you elaborate?

oh yeah I didn’t say it was any different in capitalism, it’s the same thing. I’m trying to tell you it’s mostly the same thing. it’s the position of massive control over the economy paired with a goal thats the problem to me, not the ideology of the people in that position, that can lead to variations but the problems with the approach are the same either way

The thing is, it doesn’t matter. like… i totally agree that politicians are paid by the capitalists and most are just goons, but even if they weren’t goons, they’d behave in the same way. maybe the favours would be less, maybe they would be to different people, they’d do x or y thing differently, but the core abuse of power and trampling are always going to happen, perpetuating your rule and reach and protecting your power and position will always matter more than any reform or serving

of course I’d much rather have strong democratic checks than nothing but I still don’t think it’d be enough to justify it

I know I’m kind of a doomer on this but I just have never seen or read about a ruling structure that didn’t behave this way

I don’t want this power in ANYONE’s hands, no matter who they claim to serve

States and governments only serve themselves anyway

YOU NEVER DID

COME ON EXPLAIN IT

thanks

definitely true