I'm in a dilemma.

It's my union Executive Committee elections and there are 2 main factions of candidates.

The Trots favour industrial action and indefinite strikes to break the employer, because supposedly even a failed strike builds class consciousness.

The liberals favour negotiation with the employer and only short strikes to win higher wages etc. rather than any anti-capitalist goals.

During our last industrial action over pay, we got an offer and the membership did an electronic ballot in favour of pausing the strikes.

The Trots had power in our Executive Committee during this time. The committee had a closed meeting and voted to overrule the membership ballot and continue the strikes.

I think this undermined union democracy.

In response to this, the liberals say they want to increase union direct democracy and reduce hierarchy. They say they will run the union via regular electronic ballots of all members, rather than just committee vote.

However, the liberals will encourage a more moderate and centrist union, rather than explicitly leftist.

What do you think?

Maybe I'm jumping to worst-case-scenarios too soon. Maybe in 4 years I'll look back at how silly I was to dramatize all this. Maybe the next 4 years will be not all that bad. But it's an unsettling time in the US right now, and this question has been popping into my head a lot. And I don't have a good answer right now.

I have friends and family who are trans, gay, immigrants, etc. And I know they all feel very threatened right now. The worst part is, things can get so much worse.

I figured this community might be a good place for this conversation. I'm interested in hearing if you have a plan for what you're going to do if the worst happens.

How are you maintaining any sense of optimism or resistance right now? Not saying any of this massive bullshit is new and that its not bipartisan but I feel particularly demoralized this week. It feels hopeless and bleak.

I heard that CBP is pulling people over they consider to be illegal immigrants. Theoretically speaking, if someone were to fly right by them at significantly higher than the speed limit, would they let that person go and chase after you instead?

first off, I'm not sure if this is an appropriate question for this sub but i think it fits.

How do I tell my friends that their hateful racist/nazi jokes are not welcome around me without coming off rude or mean

For anarchists that support direct democracy, it usually means any form of direct voting based on full and equal participation within a free association, which all anarchists should see as essential for people’s self-management and free agreement. Some disagree with this definition and argue democracy always implies majoritarianism because they claim democracy strictly means "rule of the people" and so is anti-anarchist, as it implies the rule of the majority over the minority.

This argument is based on a historical misconception in the first place, as the idea that democracy means "rule of the people" is false because "kratos" means "power" or "capacity." Therefore, demokratia lacks the archy (rule), and even in semantic discussions around the word, it aligns with the anarchist conception of "Power to the People." Democracy only became associated with "rule of the people" because it was used synonymously with republicanism between the 18th and 19th centuries. But all this implies that people still talk about democracy like it was used "originally," which simply isn’t the case. Here is a David Graeber quote on the matter-

"Democracy was not invented in ancient Greece. Granted, the word “democracy” was invented in ancient Greece — but largely by people who didn’t like the thing itself very much. Democracy was never really “invented” at all. Neither does it emerge from any particular intellectual tradition. It’s not even really a mode of government. In its essence, it is just the belief that humans are fundamentally equal and ought to be allowed to manage their collective affairs in an egalitarian fashion, using whatever means appear most conducive. That, and the hard work of bringing arrangements based on those principles into being."

In today’s North America, it is anarchists — proponents of a political philosophy that has generally been opposed to governments of any sort — who actively try to develop and promote such democratic institutions. In a way, the anarchist identification with this notion of democracy goes back a long way.

In 1550, or even 1750, when both words were still terms of abuse, detractors often used “democracy” interchangeably with “anarchy.” But while “democracy” gradually became something everyone felt they had to support (even as no one agreed on what precisely it was), “anarchy” took the opposite path, becoming for most a synonym for violent disorder. Actually, the term means simply “without rulers.”

Just as in the case of democracy, there are two different ways one could tell the history of anarchism. On the one hand, we could look at the history of the word “anarchism,” which was coined by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1840 and was adopted by a political movement in late-nineteenth-century Europe, becoming especially strongly established in Russia, Italy, and Spain, before spreading across the rest of the world. On the other hand, we could see it as a much broader political sensibility."

This understanding follows the same logic we have on anarchism, meaning that Bakunin, Kropotkin, and others did not invent the idea of anarchism. Instead, having discovered this broader phenomenon or "political sensibility" among the masses, they merely helped refine and propagate it.

A lot of anarchists, especially individualist anarchists and egoists, very much oppose direct democracy as being statist, and being contrary to true anarchy. In true anarchy, they say, every individual should be free from coercion, from external will—a system in which the majority have power over the individual is oppressive: tyranny of the majority.

But how could tyranny of the majority possibly not be the case? If every individual is equal, every two individuals are twice as powerful than the one, and so on. If the majority of people want to do Blank, more than they want to Not do it, they will do it. Even if that impacts the minority of people. What would stop them? Even with the belief that full consensus should be obtained, the only thing maintaining that is that the majority would rather reach consensus than just go through with it immediately.

Does a commune stop being anarchist the moment the majority, of their own volitions free of hierarchy, decide they won't allow someone to jack off in the park anymore?

How can anarchy ever possibly not be majoritarian? What could possibly be done that would guarantee the individual's freedom from the will of majority?

(I'm hammerd ESL and might be having a bpd episode so sry 4 bad grammar ans spell)

For the love of God can we stop taking for granted that 50% of Americans are magga even if we assume that evryone that voted for trump is magga (a lot of them will likely be disengaged traditional republican voters) only about 77 million voted for trump wich is just slightly above 23% of America https://edition.cnn.com/election/2024/results/president?election-data-id=2024-PG&election-painting-mode=projection-with-lead&filter-key-races=false&filter-flipped=false&filter-remaining=false

Pretending that half of america is behindnd trump just plays into the hands of right wing populist who pretend that criticism of trump = calling half of America dum

Thank you for cuming to my Ted talk