How To Start A Revolution

So in short: breaking and stealing stuff. That's a great way of building something!

I can't believe I had to come out and teach people what the anarchy sign meant agaian

come on, they didn't have tear gas in 1789

can't picture the bastille with out thinking of my main man, that perverted marquis, hanging out the window, egging them all on. oh, dontien, you scamp!

I disagree with you on a lot of things but your videos are entertaining and I like getting your perspective

It is easy to criticize imperfect socialist experiments when you’ve never been part of any successful revolution.

I'm a leftist, but I have a lot of philosophical/general disagreements with anarchism. You did explain what change could look like well, perfect balance of oppose and propose as you said. However, if I am going to adopt anarchism as my ideological persuasion, it's going to take a long time to deconstruct my issues with it. Therefore, I'm open to civil debate and discussion with people here

Jesus is the only answer

Thank you

I was the 7 thousandth like :DDDDD

we need the military on the peoples side, no one talks about this. after all they are human too

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YRD YYAFBKUABFNOUHFLUSFNVNOUGBW

"Maybe we should have prefigured something differ-ant" -- laughed so hard I had to scroll back and see what I missed.

I didn't see much in this video about building new systems that take the power away from the current control structure, as well as things that are strategically unwise. Protests just make us an easier target by having us all congregate in one place, as well as giving an opportunity for the ruling class and our political opponents to frame us. Take the protest in Seattle a couple of years back for instance, it allowed the so called 'news' media and the trump cultists to frame it as a violent takeover even though clearly wasn't to anyone that looked into it, and most people around where I live just north of Seattle still believe that to be the case and these people are mostly what would called 'left liberal'. And good luck trying organize a militia in the age of near total surveillance, and even if you could you are much more likely to turn much of the public against us because violence is very hard to control, whether in regular armies or militias. For instance in the American Revolution militias would murder the innocent wives of Red Coats and there were committees that would persecute even SUSPECTED loyalists in a way that totally perverts every concept of due process of law; which is why I have said for the longest time that the American Revolution was essentially a lesser version of the French, with not that much better results to show for it

As someone living in a privileged and wealthy country, where talk of change is often frowned upon in the general public, how would a revolution be organized?
It seems that gathering enough people to even do these actions are simply out of reach, when the thought of degrowth and nature harmony is simply taking away their capitalist profits.

Beautiful video, sharing it. Thank you for doing what you do on the planet.

Get your facts straight. The world is better than it has ever been, I'm not saying there is nothing we need to change, but not need for this depressing fear mongering.

Excellent stuff. Very thoughtful video. Bookmarked it, I'll probably watch it a few times.

loved this, just left with one question....Lots of us want change, some of us start the change...but then those some are accused of many various things EXCEPT for the actual intention. How does one/a group push through this? How do we solidify a change instead of the usual "We'll change for a bit, but eventually go back..."? How does a change become OBJECTIVELY permanent?......

Thanks!

So, I am an Indian settled in Australia -- pretty introverted, I should say. But like, how do I even get involved in organisation building if there isn't already any organisation? I have no idea where to start. I know it's obnoxious to just be so "theoretical", but I really don't know how to get to it. I want to help and contribute, but how do I? being as introverted as I am in a foreign country.

thank you for highlighting that disabled are often left behind when revolution is discussed!

I may not be an Anarchist but I will always respect my Leftist comrades
Also your general strike cat is cute

Bro said "in minecraft"

in minecraft

I study in a public university in Brasil (Unicamp, the second most important here) and that means I know quite a few communists and am close to party organizations (we have a multi party system, and a few (I think, like, 4) communist parties, and every communist party here has a youth organization which is very present in public universities). I just participated in a student strike, which was tied to a worker strike from the workers of the university (that is still ongoing), and which had an occupation of the campus. It's rly fucking empowering. But I see that most of them have this simple view of revolution that u said, as some far future. I've tried from a young age to mobilize ppl around me and generate change, but the only place I rly saw it happening was in this strike, which had many bureaucratic touches to it, as it was mostly commanded by these ppl filiated to communist parties. I am part of a few left-wing organizations who seek to bring change to local communities, one in my home city and other in my friend's city, which is between mine and the university I study, but it rly feels like nothing changes and it sucks. I rly don't know what to do

I found this so inspiring...really helped soothe the hangups I had about whether revolution was possible without authoritarianism. And it did amazing things in helping me better understand direct action ❤ TY

Democracy is everyone getting a say, whether or not their opinion is valuable, and is not desirable. What is Necessary is a system wherein everyone's opinion is legitimately heard and accounted for, but has weight according to the truth of their opinion and the positive value of their ideas.

It's crucial to distinguish between actual authority based on competence and granted authority based on ignorance and power.

Love your content

No one can "manage their own affairs without higher-ups until the higher-ups (those who have Not earned their wealth at all) get out of the way. That means a real physical revolution or a blue-blood plague, or a complete change of consciousness in society. Which seems more likely?

You can't fix a broken system with its own broken tools, and since governments now overwhelm the power of any group of citizens, that means revolution must be subversive rather than direct. For those of us without power (wealth), the best we can do is a bottom up, grass-roots movement. It means creating a turnkey utopia by formalizing best practices at every level of governance such that any organisation can adopt them in situ, as needed.

so funny thing: i was JUST thinking about how i wish i could be doing the non-illegal parts of this right now

i just found your channel and this video is really good and interesting! the point about lobbying groups naturally forming an elite who do the negotiating with politicians is an interesting and poignant one I hadn't considered. subscribed

I'll admit that I'm not the most educated on the subject. So if there's something that I'm not understanding, please forgive me.

The system that you describe puts way too much faith in humanity. I could imagine a hundred different ways that it could be broken by people with good and bad intentions.

For example, I'd assume that your Utopia would still rely on Botinists, Biologists and experts in Environmental Science to make decisions on where/how to grow food?

Intentionally or not, it puts them into a position of power and creates hierarchy. They would be able to dictate how land can be used and what you can grow on it.

I'm not saying that this is a bad thing. An ideal society should listen to scientists and live in harmony with nature. But then you have to ask who accredits these scientists? How could that power be twisted and corrupted? Etc.

I haven't "read the theory" (or any theory), so maybe I'm missing the point, but I'm having a hard time envisioning how a society could exist without hierarchy. It's too easy to accidentally create without even noticing or realizing it.

It also seems like we would need to sacrifice a lot of modern luxuries to get there. The ability to buy produce out of season, and the ability to buy things grown in completely different environments in separate parts of the world.

I want to bake a cake, but I doubt my local farmers market imported any sugar cane.

Machinery too. Cars, washing machines and computers use minerals mined in completely different locations.

A single individual can't just build a computer on his own. It requires a large group of people all working in different places on different things and some amount of hierarchy to coordinate them.

I'm not trying to be antagonistic. I'm here because I know that I'm left, but I don't know how far left and I want to understand my own political views better.

It is not what we do.. but what we STOP doing that will end such corruption. Peacefully is the only way. The corrupt are the masters of conflict and war, so those methods will never work.

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As usual, there is a terrible confusion in the implications of these videos, for it was the Communists who defined communism, the revolution itself, and the practice of actual revolutionaries, as part of the actually revolutionary class, as " the real movement which abolishes the present state of things". By contrast, it was some anarchists, Bakunin for example, who were the true advocates of Putschism, of Blanquism. In particular, Orwellian parody (of an actual collaborator... with the Police) is particularly sterile when engaging Lenin, for no one has been clearer on the counterrevolutionary, downright reactionary nature of the State than Lenin: not just the abstract embodiment of authority, but the concrete embodiment of bourgeois authority, THAT is the true doctrine of the State. But of course, behind the organicist conception of change belied by this content, there is of course a lack of an understanding of the world, Our current capitalist world, as it is shaped by human practice. The phalansteries of Fourier and the Owenian communities, they have always existed and they will continue to exist so long as capitalism rules. More importantly, class struggle itself, in its sometimes brutal violence, is but a necessary component of capitalism, as exploitation is necessary for the reproduction of the currently dominating mode of production. Dialectically, class struggle itself is but a necessary component of capitalist social metabolism that ensures its continued existence. Humanity cannot just create the new society within the shackles of the old, for this is bourgeois socialism, that wants all of the advantages of modern social conditions without their necessary downsides, "a bourgeoisie without a proletariat". Current state of division of labour, the real material Community of Capital, along with its State watchdogs, make the sorts of activities advocated for here,
merely part of revolutionaries' resistance, never of revolution itself. It is necessary to go on the offensive, for the Old World may be agonizing, but its death is not around the corner, and a wounded predador is even more dangerous than before. So we must not forget that the educators must be educated, and that change cannot just be created in the world out of sheer will. It is in real, actual, political struggle, that revolution is created, not through activism and ideation, nor through small, supposedly self-sustainable cells. The spurious analogies of the actual implications of this kind of necessary and completely possible political struggle (local and national insurrection, worldwide revolutionary civil war, "dictatorship of the proletariat", an "International Communist Party") with religious faith and the Rapture are particularly grating, for it is an inheritance of martyrologies to believe that change comes about through the action of a handful of charitable (sorry, "mutually aiding"...), Enlightened individuals, guiding the disenfranchised masses, Poor in Spirir, correcting Mankind's Fall of Grace through Property, and atoning for the Original Sin of Authority. Ms. Goldman, don't dance by yourself, we are already having a carnival.

Nice video

Making the world a better place is not about changing the world.

dude, treasure your takes on this stuff. community organizer from the midwest in the US over here... its just tragedy...

I'm not calling for armageddon, just another revolution. They happen all the time in history and all over the world.

I was today years old...god i hate capitailisms poisonous ahistorical revisionist propoganda 😢 thank you for your work.

Revolution is a tactic, not an event, I say. It goes hand-in-hand with evolution.

Revolution is when you disrupt, evolution is when you build. Both must be used and applied properly and in the right circumstances to produce lasting and meaningful change for the better. The art is in determining when and how to apply which. Take Iran, for example. The Mahsa Amini protesters seem to be foundering, sadly, though of course they have not given up. I tend to think that in that case this was a case of too much evolution and not enough revolution: they weren't forceful enough, too wedded to a peaceful approach when given the absolute ruthlessness and heartlessness of the regime they were and are facing, some form of direct, violent countervailing force would be required. A Revolutionary War in the classic sense - these "protesters" are well past time to need to think seriously about choosing and grooming generals to lead a Holy Crusade against Patriarchy.

But in other cases, the opposite is often the case. We should be peaceful when possible, disruptive when effective, and violent when necessary.