Editing Ontology:Q49,84 (section)

=== In Existentialism and anarchism ===

Within [[:Category:Existentialist-Structuralist tradition ontology|a certain cluster of academic anarchisms]] largely centered in the United States and Europe, there has been a totally different approach to opposing Stalin than there has been within "orange" Marxisms. Here the primary problem has been that there is a particular very abstract concept of <dfn>freedom</dfn> that is assumed to underlie all human societies, which Stalin is claimed to have violated. On the surface these arguments will appear reasonable, but with enough research into what any of the concepts or words they rely on are even attempting to mean, they only become increasingly more confusing. (Given this, it is impossible to properly cover them here in their entirety, and it is recommended you browse through other Ontology entries to better understand them.)

One of the major themes you will see come up in [[:Category:Existentialist-Structuralist tradition ontology|this particular kind]] of anticommunist work is the abstract notion of an "ability to do otherwise". The writers will begin with some abstract concept of [[E:Free Will|Free Will]], then start defining the presence of <dfn>freedom</dfn> as the physically available capacity to do otherwise, while attempting to characterize anything that limits the capacity to do otherwise as both anomalous and malicious. It is very common for [[:Category:Existentialist-Structuralist tradition ontology|Existentialist]] types to try to use this half-baked concept of Freedom to try to define a [[E:generalized dictator|generalized dictator]] that applies to all situations in which anyone tries to limit the capacity to do otherwise, regardless of the actual surrounding material context that would prompt someone to do so. This is no matter of "[[E:Communism as special pleading|but Communism really is that important]]": if you believe that [[E:Nothing should be done unless everybody considers it wonderful|no possible material context could ever justify limiting the ability to do otherwise]], then you logically believe that Tory types are justified to band together by the millions [[E:COVID measures were devised in order to create Bolshevism|to refuse masks and vaccines]] if they personally feel that doing otherwise is more important to their own agency and well-being. For Tory types it is genuinely impossible to tell what is and isn't tyranny based on their own desire for well-being and freedom. Sociality and community and every positive process that "makes people human" will all feed Tories with the impulse that vaccines and masks are hurting them, the will of their communities is not being respected, their free will is being [[E:don't tread on me|treaded on]], and the way they are being treated is practically undemocratic. The Existentialist model of Free Will is simply inadequate to explain observed Tory behavior. It does not explain why after having all the freedom anyone could want in daily life to the point of arguably [[E:structural racism|limiting the freedom of minority ethnic groups]] Tories would still be so bent on gaining self-determination they apparently believe they do not have.

If Existentialists can be pried away from the concept that Stalin is bad because "I'm not permitted to vote him out" or "I'm not permitted to walk away", one of the next things they will likely try to say is that Communism is an artificial imposition that creates or preserves poverty — a model where although people having the right to desert Communist parties or leave workers' states is irrelevant, the material processes of Bolshevism themselves are [[E:Communism doesn't work|faulty and ineffective]] compared to the processes that would attempt to solve the same problems otherwise. These arguments begin to resemble the "state capitalism" arguments given by Trotskyists and Bordigists. All of these are more reasonable than the "freedom" arguments because they actually begin to present propositions that can be analyzed through [[E:relativistic determinism|dialectical]] and [[E:historical materialism|historical]] materialism. With that said, all of these arguments leave critically important questions assumed or unspoken. If people are afraid of a country "failing" or "faltering"... why? Do people put individual wealth over the well-being of a national population of millions of people? What is the value of maintaining the structural integrity of a population? Can you put a value on not scattering a population out of a country and forcing its members to be assimilated into miscellaneous other countries and empires? What is the value of not being prejudiced against a population of millions of people and indifferent to its destruction? Finally, if people move out of one country that is "faltering" into another country, can they ever be expected to take care of that second country when it goes through hardship, or only to plunder it and abandon its people [[E:Why did people leave Europe for the United States?|once again]]? Is there any reason to expect that the principles of the United States for example are something anyone would find value in or bother to preserve when people so easily leave other countries just to move wherever they personally find it possible to secure their immediate survival? None of these questions would be damning to a Materialist, but Existentialists are generally terrible at giving properly explanatory answers to any of them.

Across various Existentialist texts, you will find a common unspoken theme that the authors do not only embrace migration as an easy solution to countries' "unsolvable" problems but outright do not seem to care what country people are actually in. If Einstein moves out of Germany to escape politics, Existentialists will casually relate the story and accept it. If people get upset with the Soviet Union and leave, Existentialists will casually tell that story and not spend any time thinking about the alternative of what happens when people stay. Then they will throw a fit when people get baffled and stumped at the exponentially more complicated problems of the United States and don't bother to commit themselves to being part of the United States or trying to fix it.

Much of this pattern can be traced back to a particular pattern that seems to characterize today's capitalism, which meta-Marxism has tentatively labeled [[E:Careerism (meta-Marxism)|Careerism]]. This is the process of individuals freely flowing across a country or occasionally across the world to claim unfilled [[E:business territory|business territories]] or job-slots until every slot is filled by increasingly more impressive people and many spatial regions of capitalism practically speaking have no more open slots. Careerism confounds the historical process leading to Bolshevism because it takes away the imperative for populations to house and feed extra people to get rid of conflict — if people can just go wherever they want and individual action is assumed to create the best outcomes for everyone, why would people "move" to a Communist party? To a schizoanalyst type this might sound great, because they've avoided Stalin. But the dark side of Careerism is that everyone is obligated to make individual decisions before they can ever have any expectation of anyone providing open jobs, welfare programs, or anything that aids their survival; nobody is incentivized to predict Menshevism, Bolshevism, or even anarchism happening as much to expect that either privilege or [[E:structural racism|antisocial treatment by Tories]] will be their future with no in-between. This system is a vicious cycle. Everyone who benefits from it has no reason to believe it isn't beneficial while everyone who suffers has no recourse because all the people who have benefited have [[E:Free will is a zero-sum game|filled up all the slots where people have agency]]. The only real way things can go is for all the sets of filled-up slots to start essentializing themselves small amounts and admit they're [[E:separable multiplicity|countably separate]]. Materially they will all have to admit they have become finite and need to define themselves by specific rules just to make sure everyone inside them is the optimal set of people to be in them and gets along; Idealism will slowly become physically impossible versus the understanding that all groups of people are physical arrangements of physical objects put together for particular reasons or particular purposes. At the very least, Careerism doesn't inevitably lead to racism, but it could lead to a weird imperative for people to culturally differentiate to the point freedom does not meaningfully exist any more and all choices are a matter of never inherently fitting into anywhere or wanting any result of a choice but choosing to go through a long "degree" of "culture classes" to become the culture-tool that is most required to supply open spaces.