Many anarchist share the ideal of preconfigurative politics, as in how we organize the revolution has a big influence on the society after the recolution.
Using this ideal as a guiding post, we should look how both currents propose to organize people, ressources and people. More details on synthesis and platform can be found in the anarchisf FAQ.
For me, when just looking at those two, the synthesis approach is more to my liking as is closer to what I would like society to look like and it seems to hone skills necessary for cooperations despite disagreements way more than the platform approach with its mandatory unity.
In practice I dont know of any noteworthy and actually relevant synthesis organizations currently or in the past, even when they were/are pretty big. It also seems to be less favored in my region of the world currently, where platform (and similar, especifismo) approaches are springing up all over the place.
I think Synthesis works better with freedom of association and prefer that. But a unified fighting force is military doctrine for a reason, even if I dont like it.
There’s no versus. It’s “yes and yes.”
Both achieve our emancipation of the oppressors, all the while conscious of our failures and how we improve our efforts into liberating our comrades.
There is a versus. Atleast for platformists, as they want to achieve a dominant position in their regional anarchist movement or even aim to make their organization the only anarchist organization.
I dont know in the synthesist side has similar goals
No, there’s no versus, only distinctions. Platformists want to emancipate proles by temporarily organizing and localizing plans to be effective executives during our revolution. The state does the same exact strategy by employing local class traitors (police), federals, the army, & mercenaries when opposing proles. Disarray, encirclement, and guerrilla tactics will be employed regardless how synthesists & platformists strategize our emancipation. We differ in our strategies, but the goals remain the same until we are all free.
Both these strategies should be temporary. The state desires to keep their dominance pyrrhic-ally
If we cant work together to bring about revolution, then I do not have hope we could after.
They’re both authoritarian bullshit, though platformism very much more so.
Anyone who proposes that this or that thing be made a part of an anarchistic system merely demonstrates that they don’t even grasp the concept.
The necessary reality of a truly anarchistic system is that any statements regarding collective norms can only be made as ex post facto analyses of the norms most often supported and expected by the people exercising their full right to choose as they please.
Anyone who declares that some set of norms are or must be a fixed and required part of the system is still thinking in authoritarian terms, and trying to wedge their failure into a supposedly “anarchist” framework.
But how do you actually connect with other folks when you do not want to follow / expect any social norms at all? Maybe I am not getting your point, but why is sharing an agreement on how one wants to relate to each other as members of an organization authoritarian? Its not like you are forced to join that group.
Sorry if I totally miss your point
What you’re describing is neither platformism nor synthesis.
Platformism and synthesis are both formalized ideas that some third party(ies) will be empowered to oversee and direct an anarchistic system, with the only difference being that platformism starts by decreeing the norms that will be required, while synthesis ar least vaguely nods toward anarchism by ceding the fact that no norms will ever be universally voluntarily held, but still then goes on to posit some body given oversight over the collective, and merely stipulates that they’ll “allow” multiple viewpoints.
What you’re describing is just individual interaction, which is in fact the only thing that anarchism can be based on. Yes - if the system is truly anarchistic, you’ll be free to ally yourself with whoever you might prefer on whatever basis you might prefer, as, of necessity, will everyone else.
Platformism and synthesis are not ways in which you might choose to pursue that, but ways in which the entire process might be “organized.” They’re explicitly top-down ideas, which is exactly how and why they both fail.
