Would a realised libertarian communist society assume moral consensus ?

Well, not as a class no, a libertarian communist society would be classless. Classes are defined in relation to other classes, so in abolishing the ruling capitalist class the working class ceases to exist as a class itself.

Well, the aim of libertarian communism is to create a revolutionary working class movement that will end in destroying the state and capitalism. One thing that distinguishes libertarian communism from many other revolutionary traditions, though, is the idea of 'prefiguration', that the very movement that destroys our existing society is at the same time 'building the new society in the shell of the old', that is, the movement itself is where the new social relations and the new 'values' and 'culture' are created and built up.

It's important to say in this respect that libertarian communists, on the whole, have a materialist analysis of society. That means we see things like culture and values as based on the real, material, social reality of peoples' lives - rather than being independent from the society they exist in. So in a society where everything is based on cooperation and free association, values and culture based on liberty, solidarity and mutual aid are the logical outcome.

Hope that clarifies things...?

~J.

what cultural insititution instilled your ideals, may i ask? shouldnt you be a christian market lubber in that case?

could you clarify what you mean by negatively reinforced?

in my understanding of a anarchist/lib com society you would be free to think what you wanted. people have many thoughts that they don't actually act on. it would be your actions that would be of some varying degree of importance to your society.

my understanding is that there would be a variety of beliefs held about the many complex motives and pressures that impel people into the kind of antisocial and cruel behaviour that i imagine a libcom society would move to prevent. i imagine that such 'crimes' would be more likely to be ones of interpersonal violence,seeking to wield undue power etc. rather than hoarding materials tho.

i would hope it would encourage an increased sense of personal and collective responsibility and power...but there is no denying that as a species our track record has been uh.. patchy
but that is no reason to give up now & accept authoritarian rule.

If I understand this correctly, you are trying to find some ideological/social/cultural unity out of the LibCom movement and the society it wishes to create, no? Because the LibCom movement doesn't necessarily strive for a very defined consensus in society, except for the Platformist ideology.

That is in fact the basis Stirner’s criticism of Marx’s Feuerbachian (pre 1845) idea of communism.

The Feuerbachian idea, and Karl’s, was that it was natural for human beings to want to, and enjoy, looking after each other; and anything else was a perversion of our human essence or nature etc.

Stirner said this was just an idea, ideal and ideology and in fact a more tyrannical one than even Christianity.

As it would damn and condemn anyone who didn’t believe in it as a pervert and even inhuman.

And that even capitalism and Christianity never went so far as to say ‘sinners’ against those ideologies were not humans.

Following on; Stirner said that there were two forms of coercion in society.

One is the more obvious and ‘benign’, and that was society physically forces people to abide by it rules.

The other form of coercion for him was more pernicious and powerful than that; ie it was ideological eg Orwells 1984 and Chomsky’s manufacturing consent etc.

For Stirner the ideology of Feuerbach’s and Karl’s 1844 ‘all you need is love’ (and Feuerbach and Karl used the ‘Love’ word) was a new form of ideological and cultural tyranny against the egotist.

And in such a new society egotists like Stirner would be labelled as wankers, or something even worse, for doing want they felt like.

Or in other words the contradiction between the social ideological/cultural imperative of altruism, and 'love' versus its theoretical ‘antithesis’ of egotism.

Not that Stirner supported the idea of different individuals exploiting or shitting on each other.

Although his alternative of a “union of egotists” wasn’t clear and he skipped over it I think.

However it was probably something like you scratch my back and I will scratch yours and lets use each other to our own mutual benefit.

Not that Stirner dodged the ‘love’ idea with his kissing troubled of (or was it creased brows) etc, much.

Thus for him if I get a egotistical kick or buzz out of being ‘nice’ to someone else then that is what I will decide for myself and not have it imposed on me by some new hippy, pseudo christian, Feuerbachian "communist" all you need is love ideology.

Despite Stirner’s intellectual rigorous and impressive book he never goes into, or avoids why, such a buzz, pleasure or kick exists in the first place.

Which he seems to confess is real, as a personal subjective experience.

Personally I don’t like self-serving pragmatic egotists and therefore wouldn’t go rock climbing with Stirner on that basis alone.

On a pragmatic self-serving level I wouldn’t either; on the thought of at what point ‘premature’ point he might decide to cut the rope and let me drop.

i upped your post because the stirner recitation was flawless imho.

i don't really understand what you are asking, people tend to take on the values of the society hey live in, there are exceptions , but this isn't necessarily a big problem

well people who dont take on the "values" of libcom get banned. that is if you talk about law enforcement as in the posting guidelines. if you talk about things like freedom, equality, solidarity and stuff i didnt have to sign anything yet.

hey B, chill out, im not an admin and it was no threat. but you were wondering how resistance to take on values is broken and i pointed you to the measures that are being taken here as a praxis to enforce values, i dont think that was such a useless contribution?

People tend to natural imitate what they see around them, even the ones who resist the current society usually do this, so without some thing wrong with the society that makes people want to reject it they will mostly take on the values and norms of that society.

I assume education will include "we do things this way because" but even without something like that if people grow up in a world they take and active part of running they will understand how things are.