Edit: I just realized I replied to a one year old post. But I’ll leave it. I mostly post to structure my own thoughts anyway.
I like how you framed this as a dialogue and I appreciate the humor.
A lot of this is mere ideology. What matters is what can actually be done right now. We can’t transcend anything right now, we can’t even defeat the state right now. All this talk just distracts from our actual class position. Of course left unity matters only to people who are actually out there and organizing. And among those people, it’s actually very popular. Everyone else won’t ever effect anything anyway and might as well continue playing word games.
Mentally putting yourself in a position of power, where you can ponder about what to do with technology and the state on a global scale is not just illusory. It’s a consequence of capitalist hegemony. Which is the generalization of particular interests of the ruling classes. Arguing from this imagined top down position is inevitably arguing from the position of the currently existing ruling class. Ironic, how anarchists are totally no less guilty of this. That’s why capitalists class interests sneak in. Like splitting left unity. That’s why liberal ideology sneaks in. Like: “We should do this or that, for any number of normative ethical reasons.” Marx and Engels never engaged in this. They knew that morals and societies evolve dialecticaly from the historical, material conditions. We won’t know what the future looks like until we win it. Together.
Edit: I just realized I replied to a one year old post. But I’ll leave it. I mostly post to structure my own thoughts anyway.
I like how you framed this as a dialogue and I appreciate the humor. A lot of this is mere ideology. What matters is what can actually be done right now. We can’t transcend anything right now, we can’t even defeat the state right now. All this talk just distracts from our actual class position. Of course left unity matters only to people who are actually out there and organizing. And among those people, it’s actually very popular. Everyone else won’t ever effect anything anyway and might as well continue playing word games.
Mentally putting yourself in a position of power, where you can ponder about what to do with technology and the state on a global scale is not just illusory. It’s a consequence of capitalist hegemony. Which is the generalization of particular interests of the ruling classes. Arguing from this imagined top down position is inevitably arguing from the position of the currently existing ruling class. Ironic, how anarchists are totally no less guilty of this. That’s why capitalists class interests sneak in. Like splitting left unity. That’s why liberal ideology sneaks in. Like: “We should do this or that, for any number of normative ethical reasons.” Marx and Engels never engaged in this. They knew that morals and societies evolve dialecticaly from the historical, material conditions. We won’t know what the future looks like until we win it. Together.