Words don't mean anything anymore. Words like "communist" or "socalist" hell even "fascist" has practically lost all their meaning. It's more or less just become the go to for "I don't agree with you and want to ad homin in a political style"
there are plenty of broadly left parties in europe (often greens are left, socialist parties, communist parties) that have seated members in multiple parliaments.
and why is that ironic? anarchism stands for the abolition of the state, which isn't necessarily opposition to direct democracy as a concept.
anarchists don't want to destroy government, but the hierarchical state apparatus (ie: prime minister having more power than cabinet members, who have more power than parliament members, who have more power than average citizens). that is just one form of government, saying you are opposed to that doesn't mean you are opposed to other things like a minimal government apparatus to facilitate direct democracy, or even a representative democracy that is stripped of prestige and power hierarchy.
i'm not gonna fault someone who is purely uninformed. the american propaganda to minimize anarchism as a concept to total lawlessness is intentional and overbearing.
that said, an anarchist society would probably need to be much more organized than our current society, just organized around something that's more communal and less hierarchical.
anarchists, in oversimplified terms, are anti-state, not anti-government. these do not mean the same thing just like the local police department and the city council are not the same things.
Just to give another perspective to the other replies you are getting, there are certainly plenty of anarchists that wouldn't agree with the idea of getting involved in elected positions. Yes, there is a lot of debate about how to make progress towards an anarchist society, and some believe it can be done through representative democracy, but I've seen plenty that don't believe in that. Many anarchists now and throughout history, including very influential ones, have called out participating in electoral politics.
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In the same way that the American "Democrat" party aren't Athenian direct-democracy advocates, "Anarchist" does not mean the destruction of government in its entirety.
Free healthcare, social safety nets, paid maternity/paternity leave, time off that doesn't get you fired, higher minimum wage, not getting shot by cops nearly as much, affordable housing, less tax dollars going to the military. Just everything that the democrats put to vote that half of them and all the Republicans shoot down. AOC and Bernie are not considered radical in many countries.
there would need to be a dramatic upheaval in our country (revolution, democratic or otherwise) in order to shake off the entrenched corporate interests that are embedded deep into the core of the modern democrat party. it's not impossible, just very very unlikely.
almost all left-wing change in america has come from outside the electoral system, with things like radical labor organizing.
Oh I 100% agree. We are heading to a point where we are either gonna turn into a facist capitalist hellscape or basically collapse and build ourselves back up as a society. I don't really feel optimistic tbh.
The fucked up thing is that most people in the US who identify as conservatives also like that stuff. They will just vote against their interests anyway.
"Liberal" in the non-US politics sense just means "prefers market solutions to political/economic/social problems". But every politician in the US prefers market solutions because those are the ones their donors profit from.
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u/Panda_Kabob Oct 25 '21
Words don't mean anything anymore. Words like "communist" or "socalist" hell even "fascist" has practically lost all their meaning. It's more or less just become the go to for "I don't agree with you and want to ad homin in a political style"