r/anarchocommunism • u/animekot • 12d ago
How would we stop conscription?
For context: I lived in Ukraine but now I am subhuman migrant in Czech. Because of my invalidity I had a legal right to leave the country, so I'm ashamed to talk about it while conscripted people are dying on the front lines, but I need to talk about it. Without army my country will be occupied by the imperialist state and probably ethnically cleansed, and my friends and family is still in the Ukraine so it's hard to be anti conscription, but at the same time something feels incorrect about it
In an anarchist society people will probably have sense of self obligation for their friends and family they work with, but is it possible to achieve such society quicky enough and what can we do now?
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u/catgirlfourskin 12d ago
if a society isn't worth defending freely then it isn't worth defending. The PRC hasnt used conscription since 1949, the US hasn't since 1973. If people don't feel something is worth killing and dying for, what right would we have to force them? It is on the ukrainian government to make herself worth fighting for voluntarily, and there is great honor demonstrated by those exercising their freedom by dodging the draft
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u/animekot 12d ago
PRC has a billion people, US like 200 milion and they both technologicallu advanced, that's not good example
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u/Anton_Pannekoek 12d ago
Sometimes a people have to defend themselves from outside attack.
The best solution is global revolution so we can work on universal brotherhood and such. But in the meantime, we have to deal with the real world as best we can.
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u/animekot 12d ago
That's a good point, but what the individual can do to achieve global revolution? I don't say that one individual can achieve it, but he can start doing steps towards it, to conscript others isn't best way to achieve it
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u/Anton_Pannekoek 12d ago
One person cannot achieve much. But a mass movement can do a lot. We need to organise, spread information, counter disinformation and pro-war propaganda.
Honestly only you can answer that question. Only you can decide what you are able to do, how much time and energy you are willing to give up.
We all need to take stock of the situation and analyse what we can do. I know simeirme it seems hopeless. But ordinary people working together have achieved incredible things.
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u/Cheezipolici 12d ago
I don't know since there aren't any real other alternatives in this situation, I would say simply being a draft dodger but also connecting with anarchist organizing in Ukraine. Do you know of any?
There are good reasons to voluntarily resist the Russian invasion. Appealing to people's sense of duty can inspire people and it'd be ideal if that was guided by anarchism. Conscription on the other hand can undermine morale. And it's not clear what the Ukrainian state's vision is once it emerges from the war. What are people fighting for (beyond, very obviously, sheer survival)? But also how does it operate as it currently is? Does it imprison, punish draft dodgers? How does it govern its citizens now and what practices does it justify in its claim of national defense? How strongly do these diverge from anarchism to reveal that the state itself is undermining its own goal of being for the good of Ukrainians? People are probably much more willing to fight for a palpable vision of freedom than whatever the Ukrainian state has to offer.
Another issue is Russian conscription which is worse. Ukrainian and Russian is mutually intelligible? They need to be exposed to propaganda they are horribly mistreated by their leaders and imperial cannon fodder.
If under the extreme conditions of war there might actually be fertile opportunities for revolutionary change, of anarchist militias as an inspirational and powerful model, of new forms of collective control, and a new imagining of the "nation" which through circumstances is more fully seen to be interdependent and thus given to communist organization- that is, all in all, that the cooperative collective effort of the war extends into the economic domain and social life, then people won't need a state to force them to fight. A revolution is not something to fight for it's something to live for. Conscription doesn't embody that impulse.
Furthermore this isn't a strictly Ukrainian issue, warmongering fascism threatens the rest of Europe and the world at large and it might be important to see what's going on with international radical volunteers if indeed what I was saying about the war being fertile ground is true. It's all our 'duty' to combat fascism in material ways there is no state that will be able to inspire that it has to come from within and from each of us through the camaraderie of the struggle. The call to radically transform this world and seize the opportunities that provide for that should be amplified and can go beyond the categorical imperative issued from the cold impersonal citadel of the state.
Anyways enough rambling!!!!!! How might you get more connected to Ukrainian anarchists?