Are there no anarchist books? I’m pretty sure there are and anarchy doesn’t mean willful ignorance.
Stop avoiding your homework OP, read the damn theory!
I like the anarchist tendency to encourage thinking for yourself because I think outsourcing political opinions and generally the narrative that politics is too complicated for the layman to fully grasp goes a long way in enabling a world where everything is treated as sophistry leaving gaps for people to blindly follow ideologues. Something similar happened with science and now we have folks ‘debating’ things that are clear as day if you just look.
Encouraging each person to think for themselves isn’t to say everyone should live in a private conspiracy. I think everyone should take a course in propositional logic or higher because it truly helps your brain sort through information more clearly and quicker, and makes you much sharper at catching sophistry.
In ourselves we should try to note when we hit that point in an argument when we are arguing just to win. At that point we should (potentially apologize) and bow out. Arguing just to win is unhelpful.
Theory is much more helpful once you have your feet under you. You are committed to dignity for all. That is a strong position to assess the world from. The categories are quite clear. Once you are here reading theory, especially examples of successful revolutionary projects, helps you understand the types of tools and approaches you might use (or avoid) to bring about change. It also saves lives to avoid strategies that commonly fail.
Neither theory nor science should be gatekept, but that doesn’t mean studying both aren’t still necessary.
Anarchists usually don’t need the kind of deprogramming of capitalist, monarchist, colonial, or imperial systems that socialist and Marxist theories typically focus on.
To be fair, big shoots has a very broad definition of friend, which is what they replaced “someone” with
Surprise twist: I am aware anarchists like reading; I like reading; and I’m not actually an anarchist!
It’s just a fun meme making fun of upright overly intellectual Marxist-Leninists (that part is sincere).
I know, I like the meme, and we can have fun here :)
I can just beat someone with praxis. Take that, theorists!
Anarchists wrote books too ya know, you can’t just escape reading by changing your allegiance.
The only real problem with the people who don’t want to read theory is they just love talking over the people who did. The Dunning Kruger effect exists in revolutionary spaces.
Reading theory ≠ being highly competent, though. Dunning Kruger states that people with low competence (in specific areas) overestimate themselves, and highly competent people underestimate themselves.
Reading doesnt necessarily make you better at things (though obviously it can help). A community organizer that’s been feeding the hungry for 40 years but has never read a political book will be more competent than someone who’s read hundreds of books but never gone out and done stuff.
Both will be less effective than someone that balances both. It isn’t either-or, but both/and.
You can’t read a revolution into existence, but you can’t have a successful revolution without properly preparing for it and studying revolution. You wouldn’t want someone to perform surgery just because they want to help, they will almost certainly end up doing more harm than good. Revolution is the same way, we stand against the most brutal global system of imperialism, we must be prepared for it!
If anyone wants a place to start with theory, I wrote a new basic Marxist-Leninist study guide. Give it a look!
The US military is always asking for recruits. If you don’t read, you won’t know that “helping them” means killing civilians.
Putting on my D.A.R.E. T-shirt and clutching my state issued copy of the Ten Commandments and snapping an Amazon Ring Camera on my front door, so I help the state identify any of those nasty, America hating Antifa I’ve been hearing so much about.
I’m helping!
Remember kids, you can’t be a good communist if you don’t have any skills. We already have people well practised at arguing on the internet.
This is me. Not into all the political theory, just want my fellow human beings to be treated with dignity and for everyone to have a comfortable existence.
Reading theory helps teach us how to best make that a reality.
I mean I’m an anarchist and I got to my position by reading 🤷
“Wait a second…is that from the ‘83 tour?!”
We need good analysis to guide good praxis, but you can literally learn a lot of more advanced stuff from just listening to comrades, even if reading with comrades is even better.
Knowledge is important, but values and character are more so, IMO. Many complex ideas are founded on the belief of/are distilled from basic humanity.
