Freedom to bear arms under Libertarian Communism?

And doubts at the margins will always be a good thing and the day we ever stop doubting would be a genuinely bad day for communism.

No one claims accountable and directly democratic decision making will be a piece of piss. There will always be niggles, glitches, things to be worked out, gaps to be filled in later, occasional mistakes and just plain wrong decisions. But a society/commune based on solidarity, equality, accountability, a profound sense of freedom and sound anarcho-communist ideas will have far more chance of rectifying its mistakes and resolving any errors than any other kind of society would.

Oh how the goalposts have shifted!

If the statements in this thread had been as moderate as those above me, we all could have agreed we like democracy, hugged, and then been on our merry way. They have not, however.

To be fair, this is exactly what I've been trying to get at: what kinds of relationships need to be in place for a democratic process to function with some sanity? And it's in this regard that I feel like a sense of individuality is actually useful to communism. On page one I basically said that would be a better discussion, and I hoped for it to go that way rather than have everyone throw their arms up when presented with hard cases, or insist that communes can legitimately ban masturbation.

(Added): and I would take issue with the idea that these relationships can be worked out post-rev. If discovering anti-authoritarian relationships isn't gaining consciousness, then I don't know what is. This should be the groundwork before anyone is even talking about a revolution.

I don't think it's quite that simple. We have one poster here, LBird, who is stridently insisting that, post-rev, the commune can legitimately decide what books you read, if you are allowed to own instruments, if you can have sex with consenting adults of the same gender as yourself, and we have several other posters passively agreeing with him/her.

It is really NOT an issue of an unknowable future, at least not completely. It's also partially an issue of what kind of democratic structures we are proposing and setting up. We can propose, as LBird does, a democratic power with essentially unlimited power over its constituents. I, on the other hand, would prefer a commune with a specific mandate, i.e. one which had certain limitations placed on its power. It should be bound to respect the decisions of individuals (a swearword for good Communists like LBird of course) unless that individual's actions clearly and demonstrably pose a threat to the wellbeing and freedom of others. As LaForce has said, preference should be given to positive behavior. (The freedom of a person to freely experiment sexually with consenting adult partners overrules the freedom of the homophobe to live in a sexually homogeneous society).

These are not petty or abstract issues. There are many regions, in my own country and in others, where certain freedoms (such as the right to experiment with consenting adult partners) would almost certainly not be respected by the majority and would probably be stamped out by a directly democratic commune with unlimited power over individuals.

Now there are obviously instances where the individual's actions can pose dangers to others, and in the case of firearm usage, this is obviously an area where the risk to others may, in some cases, supercede the freedom of the individual. If my commune banned guns I would be happy to abide by the rule. Perfectly fair enough if you are worried about reckless people doing stupid things. But if my commune starts banning books and sexual orientations, that is not OK or "legitimate", even if it was decided on by a majority vote.

I would like to point out that as LaForce says, individual communities can make their own decisions and people can prefer different ways of life. I think many parts of the world would institute communal garrisons, as LBird imagines, whereas in other places, such as the rural US, people would retain individual ownership of guns.

Not everyone will obey LBirds communal decisions. Won't happen. Problem solved no need to worry about it.

You get the communal decisions with full legitimacy and authority. When the community is insane individuals/sub communities will resist.You can't guarantee that the reaction or the resistance will be reasonable but to me it seems like the social circumstances will make this much more likely than today.

The struggle will never end. No system can provide guarantees.

This is not an argument against the democratic commune but for it.

Who are you calling a moderate?

Actually, I've a sneaking suspicion you and LBird actually want to rub each other up the wrong way. You do seem to bring out the worst in each other

Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis, my friend.

Not the bloody dialectic again!!!!!

I know, how about this:

while i agree it is no one s business what books you read, what you sexual preferences are, so long as it harms no on. But communes would consist of everyone, how could everyone be given as specific mandate?

The tension between the two could slice a mountain in half, right?

LOL. I like dialectics, it's such an aesthetically pleasing concept.

I had to troll up the thread a little, just couldn't resist.

That is exactly what I am saying. Lets discuss things yes!!! But lets in attempting to figure out any topic that people want to "vote" on discuss not just the who, but the why, what, when and where as well. There is no point saying "we have decided that individuals will not keep guns in this community" without first knowing "how" the community will store them and access them, because as i said in discussing the how we might find that our original motivations behind our why are even more under threat when after the fact we start to discuss the how.

See I understand and up onto a certain point I agree with the second quote. But when the freedom of a persons to realise a desire for which the process of doing so does not effect the freedom of other people to fulfill theirs; is subject to the kind of thinking that permeates your firstquote that is where things get scary.

In the image of a classless society it provides the framework for secret associations as well as the atmosphere for a community of spies.

Essentially I agree with your second quote. But as soon as the federation betwen these communities becomes too globally integrated in terms of universal application you have essentially created a global state and a state can not help fostering a class system.

There is a real difference between a society and a state. We can maintain global communications, networks, movement, trade (access to production and resources), without that becoming controlled by a centralised administration.

The kind of protections you think will be required will have to be the responsibility of comunities that essentially are made up of individuals. As son as we give the responsibility (the power) to someone else to take action of these issues we are creating a state and a class system.

We will and do form society's for a reason: for mutual "aid"; not for mutual "restriction". Which is why we must in our attempts to federate societies do so for reasons of aid (transport, resource and production exchange; culural exchange; technological and scientific exchange; information exchange etc). As soon as our reasons for federation become based on restriction, then the nature of the mechanics of our federation will begin to reflect this (ie classes, authorities, centralised administrations).

For me precepts and motivations for libertarian communism or anarcho-communism are that people when left to their own devices without a governing body (whether it be a state or economic enequality - both govern), these people will naturally increasingly be at their healthiest and most productive (not in quantity but in quality). Also that when people work together for the benefit of each other efficiency is increased and the rewards become greater with less effort (the collective produces in a manner which is larger than the sum of its parts).

We must take risks in creating this society without a state because people will have far greater opportunities to "do the wrong thing". There are two sides to this coin though. One is the belief that in these circumstances (liberated comunal society) people will be far less likely to do so, the other is that to root this belief in everyday reality we must be willing "as individuals" to (both individually and collectively) take responsibility for that belief, which means taking responsibility for directly dealing with situations where we discover our belief has been unjustified (like when someone commits an act of paedophilia).

Not to psychoanalyze this board, but...

It wasn't that surprising to me that a common sentiment on a forum that is admittedly mostly straight men does not answer to questions of minority oppression with much more than a shrug, or assumes that such cases are marginal cases that can be dealt with ATR. It could be boiled down to a matter of emasculation, that men simply want to be in on the decision making process, in the 'boys club' so to speak, and that all other things are auxiliary or subsumed within that goal.

Admins: If this is just a horrible digression then please, snip, move, and moderate away.

Birthday Pony #170

I shall try and give you my take on the questions you have raised.

(1) Firstly I do not think any democratic process justifies a class society. If we can substitute the word ‘facilitate’ for ‘justify’, then I would agree the future is pregnant with possibilities. A ‘democratic process’ is only one of the mechanisms from which privileged elites could be generated. How about any number of ‘essential workers’ demanding special statuses? The revolution is not a one off ‘Judgment Day’ type scenario, when everyone from then on does their own thing (man). I think the idea that ‘everything is political’ does not change after the abolition of the state and private property. People should be free to air their concerns and where should they do that, if not through the forum of direct democracy? If someone wants a book banned (for whatever reason) surely this should be argued out?

I am probably in a minority on Libcom in thinking no one should be compelled to ‘work’. Indeed I would hope the difference between work and play would often be hard to fathom from our present day perspective. If however the future commune of which I was a member decided that everyone had to make an effort or they should sod off to another location, then I hope I’d join them on their exodus. If the commune’s will is ignored or subverted, then worker’s control is an empty fiction. We must learn from our mistakes. On another thread I have argued for non-uniformity in communist culture and language. To be fair LBird has on other threads argued for minority rights.

(2) I have no problem with individuality though this is not the same as individualism. I think Durruti talked of carrying a new world in our hearts. I read that as our individual hearts, not some collective heart, like the heart of the revolution, the nation etc. That notion is way too mystical for me.

The construction of the communist individual is simply impossible without the social revolution. The new world in our hearts is an intellectual construction without the social and economic conditions, which will regenerate us as living breathing free communists. We will shed our alienated existence and have a new collective identity (like iron filings attracted to a magnet – a poor analogy but all I can think of). There is no contradiction in being a communist individual in a communist society as one brings the other into being.

I hope this is helpful.

My questions were in direct response to statements made by LBird.

I agree that there's a myriad of possibilities, and that to do it right, so to speak, requires more than agreeing to process. This could have been a nice little echo chamber thread where we all talked about how great democracy is, but that's pretty much primer stuff.

I'm not exactly sure why you think that. Don't get me wrong, capitalism is pretty pervasive, but it's not to the point where any hopes of counter-cultural constructions are impossible. And if it is, then I'd like to understand what exactly a social revolution entails if any work towards it within capitalism is an impossibility.

Now I agree to some extent that the fundamentals of our social relationships are rooted in capitalist force, and when the time comes the abolition of all that stops us from viewing our relationships as expressions of mutual aid will be necessary, but I also think it's possible to begin realizing new social relationships.

Birthday Pony #194

Working towards a social revolution is possible I think without imagining that anti-capitalist activities and organisations constitute the forms that the new society will take. The conditions which breathed life into any counter-culture would have ceased to exist. The working class a product of capitalism will itself be metamorphosed in the new classless society.

Let me give a trivial (to me) example. Post revolution football will cease to exist as a professional game. No Premier league, etc. In his book Summerhill, A.S. Neill wrote that if children were allowed to play to their hearts content and need only attend lessons when they wished, there would be a lot fewer adults lining the terraces projecting their stunted childhood fantasies onto their chosen team.

It is not my intention to argue if Neill was right or wrong, only that libertarian communism will create and be created by people whose culture we can only surmise.

My hat's off to LBird. He tried like fuck to put the libcom perspective and I agree with him that this has been bogged down in individualism. The commune/assembly/whatever-coming-together-of-libertarian-communists-you-wanna-call-it is the place decisions will be made. I challenge anyone to propose a social revolution made by individuals and morphing into some post-revolutionary post-modernist do-we-have-democracy-or-don't-we situation where individuals can drift in and out of decision-making and somehow override collectivist, consensual decision-making when they feel like it on specific issues. Doesn't work like that, won't work like that and I don't want to fight for that. I want to fight for a revolution that does away with class-based imposition of thought and replaces it with federated direct democracy through the workplace. That means discussion and agreement in the collective, for the collective and not by and for the individual. If an individual wants to hang onto his/her gun in opposition to the assembly the question should not be why the assembly would want to take his/her gun away, it should be why s/he wants to hang onto it so desperately against the wishes of his/her compañer@s.

Let's get away from the whole question of how the commune will control access to firearms. I have already said that if my commune decided to ban firearms or keep them all in the communal garrison I probably wouldn't have a problem with it. LBird has enlarged the discussion from "can the Commune legitimately control access to guns?" to "can the Commune ban the book Lolita and homosexuality?" Lbird says yes on the second question. Do you agree?

It's funny that when processes that are purportedly libertarian communist are called into question for their lack of liberty, the discussion gets reduced to simple abstractions and theoretical name calling like "individualist". The logic goes that because being an "individualist" is bugaboo, you can call someone an individualist and somehow get away with not having to make a solid practical defence of your theoretical propositions.

Its all well and good to argue for libertarian communism but however you see that being "practiced" needs to be evaluated on its ability to satisfy both parts of that equation: liberty and community. The idea that someone is an "individualist" because they see that in some areas the responsibility and decision making should lie solely with the individual is bullshit. The same indivisualists will quite sensibly see the benefit in some areas of communal decision making.

That is really where one of the cruxs of the issue lies: benefit. Who benefits? What will lead to the greatest benefit? Will collective decision making regarding permissions lead to the greatest benefit? Are there no circumstances where a "democracy of one" is legitimate? Shall urination be the subject of permission?

The collective democratisation of permission is a pre-emptive strike against imposition. The motivation behind it is so good natured I understand that. Unfortunately the application of it requires impositions. So what is the verdict?

Basically the other core of this argument is the same argument that led to the developmet of the judiciary and legal systems. Essentially what we are talking about is lawmaking. In law's attempt to serve two functions (the protection of the innocent from harm and the protection of the innocent from false judgement) it invariably judges the innocent falsely whilst doing very little to protect them from harm. It is an institution of revenge.

One fundamental philosophical difference between my idea of libertarian communism and liberal legalism is that legalism is a negative process where libcom is a positive process. It understands the ineffectiveness in law's attempts to prevent injustice, and the consequence this attemp has in creating injustice. Law is preemptive but libcom without law will only ever be responsive. For this to be successful requires a collective responsibility for many areas of life: education; basic needs; culture; production; and importantly response to injustice.

How we deal with the proposition of injustice should be a positive effort to create conditions in which people are less likely to behave unjustly. How we deal with instances of injustice should be a fluid and dynamic process that organically emerges from the immediate situation. We have seen the police state fail and continue to do so. There are a lot of marxists here who seem to place a lot of value on historical materialism. Lets learn from the past and in an attempt to make a new world not begin with the same condition that created this one: lawmaking.

Good points made here, and LaForce's last post got me thinking.

I view collective decision making much different than legislating. Collectives only do and they do not do not. For example, "I propose we all go to Jeff's to watch the Mets," is a proposal for ideal collective decision making, while "I propose that it be illegal for anyone to watch the Mets anywhere but Jeff's" is not.

The reason is that legislation, writing laws, somehow documenting a list of "do-nots" is only communism as long as you're on the right side of it. Written codified law is essentially just a list of moral sanctions that creates criminals by its being inscribed. It adds a degree of legal guilt, so to speak, onto the criminal that becomes inscribed in them socially. And codified rules are always just an easy way to try to control conflict. Someone was loud after 11PM one night, so now under no circumstances must anyone be loud after 11PM.

I think a much more democratic and less totalitarian way of dealing with conflict is through recorded resolution and mediation. Let people make their case, have it be written down, and come to a solution collectively. This sets a precedent for cases in the future to be assessed by a past metric, measured by how future cases are similar or dissimilar rather than a hasty moral sanction against any and all future actions of a similar nature.

Thanks for your support, ETR. I agree with every word you wrote.

Tasty, if the answer is 'No' to the second question, who decided that was the answer?

At least I answer questions, and take logical political positions, recognise their inherent difficulties, and wish to discuss those, as you rightly point out, difficulties.

But sticking one's head in the sand and refusing to answer my fundamental political question leaves us nowhere.

BP, your basic conservative philosophy is showing through ever stronger.

Can't anyone else see that humble respect for custom, tradition, 'what's been done before', is tantamount to, as a conservative once put it to me in support of the past, having 'respect for the dead and allowing them to vote in our present discussions'.

We can't have a democratic argument with the dead, mate. 'Precedent?' What about discussion in the light of new evidence? We're supposed to be revolutionaries, mate.

LBird, are you fucking kidding me?

If anything, I figured what I was getting at to be more of a case by case method rather than holding everything up to one rule made in the past. I didn't mean to say that we should decide things once and then respect that decision, and if you spent a minute thinking about my post you'd realize that the thing you're trying to criticize me for is my criticism of legislation: that writing codified laws is the ultimate way of making one decision and then respecting that "tradition" for all time to come.

Let me put it to you this way: which of these two seems to put more weight on a 'respect for tradition': referencing past decisions for future cases with different circumstances or writing down how conflict should be handled and then blindly punishing all cases exactly the same despite their differing circumstances?

Birthday Pony, how were 'past decisions' made? How do we 'store' those decisions?

If they weren't made democratically, why should they be binding on those who took no part in the decision-making? Does every person keep a copy of their own decision in their bedroom and refer to that as 'precedent'?

If not written 'codified' laws, reached by democratic means, which can be referred to by all affected by those laws, and subject to revision or rejection whenever those collectively affected by those laws decide to amend them, how would you deal with these issues?

If this isn't 'legislation', what is it?

Why don't you challenge my position with an argument based on your position, rather than producing a 'straw man' of what I'm arguing for?

What is your position?

No authority, no laws?

I'm a Communist. I think there should be a democratic authority which produces, and can recind at any time, laws which must be respected by all those who participated in their creation, whether they personally agree with them or not.

Do I think there are difficulties with this stance? Of course I do. But to discuss them, we have to have a basis for our discussion.

'Who decides?' has to be our starting point for any further discussion to take place.

Really? So you aren't reading my responses. That explains a lot. Let me refresh your memory from a few posts ago:

Meaning, in cases of conflict, let people come together, bring their case to the commune, assembly, trusted folks in the community, whatever, and let everyone come to a decision on how to handle it. Judge future cases by their similarity if need be, or don't. Just keep it recorded for folks to reference.

Because laws decided before conflict even ensues are a much more reactionary way of dealing with conflict, and punishing along the lines of laws written who knows how many years ago is much more vulnerable to the criticism you levied against me.

I explained pretty simply that I think cases of conflict should be dealt with democratically on a case-by-case basis.

Ha! Take some of your own advice. Let me explain two possible scenarios of what happens when you respond to my post. Either you're so infinitely wise that you can tell anyone's position without them even explaining it and can smell bullshit a mile away (even over the internet), or you're so god damn arrogant that you convince yourself you know someone's position and then continue to argue as if you did even after laborious and repetitive explanations that show you to be absolutely wrong and completely imbecilic, making you look like some self-righetous douche bag suffering from an odd case of Tourette's that causes them to repetitively say "bourgeois individualist" and "who decides" after both terms have, at best, a strained relevance to the topic at hand. You tell me.

Yet you refuse to discuss them. As you have admitted, multiple times, you view it to be absolutely, 100% A-OK for a democratic body to ban books. Unless you'd like to answer to that, which you have not, then I can only assume the "difficulties" you're referring to is the massive amount of cognitive dissonance associated with calling yourself a libertarian communist.

Seems to me this is beginning to reveal the need for some serious clarification of law in a communist society. If you read most theorists they tend to avoid the argument by suggesting that there is no incentive to crime in a communist society because equality negates acquisitiveness.

BP, do you really think that law would work by sometimes referring to precedent, sometimes not? Don't you think people judged one way would feel aggrieved seeing someone else judged differently or vice versa? Wouldn't that undermine the trust and equality in our communist society? I can see the case for what I believe would be common law (I'm no lawyer so I'm not sure if that's the right terminology for non-codified law), but that would presumably require consistent consideration of precedent, not some vague non-system where we decide or don't on some unknown basis.

Does anyone know if there is a credible piece of work on law in a post-revolutionary society? I've always taken it for granted that a federation of assemblies would be the forum in which all matters of production, distribution, justice, defence etc were discussed and decided, which could encompass case-by-case decisions, although I still believe there could arise problems of inconsistency of application of principles and precedent, which tends towards, if not codification of law, at least a consistent body of law. If people could be treated differently in different communes or assemblies, could there be a hypothetical situation in which appeals are heard from localities to regions to whatever replaces national, causing a need for clarification and codification? Or are localities sovereign? In which case, might there not be extreme inconsistency between localities?

Or am I missing something?

I think that what I am asking of potential societies is an ongoing process of mediated conflict resolution. If a former precedent seems backwards or unjust there's no reason not to overturn it, just like there's no reason not to overturn unjust laws (outside of a desire for control). What this entails is a constant return to argumentation and critical thinking in every case of conflict rather than a tendency towards laziness and tradition set forward by once written and always enforced laws. This creates a constant check on power, because as you rightly note, a person treated differently in a somewhat similar case may feel undermined or alienated. So in order to do so, one would have to make a damn good case, thinking beyond what some founding generation intended or appeals to authority. I see it as a more likely way to build a conscious community.

Also, if you want a society with criminals, then write laws. Laws do not simply settle future conflicts, but they create the identity of "criminal" which is a surefire way to alienate the class of people that step outside the boundaries of a set of rules. If dealt with on a case-by-case basis, then those in the wrong are not identified as criminals, but rather people that were wrong in one case.

Birthday Pony wrote:

Only just noticed this comment. He's relevant to this discussion because of what he says in the text I was recommending.

Yes, I've read it. And I don't understand what you were getting at. I don't think either LBird or I fall into the category of what Bookchin called 'lifestylism.'

BP wrote:

I'd like to agree with that, and with the 'ongoing mediated conflict resolution' idea, except that I can't see anything that safeguards consistency, unless there is some cumulative framework, which suggests some reference to precedent.

Im not sure how consistency is congruent with justice?