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When I was homeless and traveling the country, I ate meals from food not bombs more times than I met self described MLs. Though my local PSL feeds homeless people and does other praxis. I can definitely see how someone could come to that conclusion. We definitely need to be more visible in our communities. I think it’s just hard when the anti communist propaganda machine has been well oiled for so long.. coming out and saying your a Marxist to everyone you talk politics with, in a lot of the USA could mean alienating yourself in an already alienated population. Hell, it could mean losing your job. And for some reason I don’t think anarchists have the same amount of hatred.
"White Anarchists caused the George Floyd riots" over and over for 3 months last year. Do you live under a rock?
Idk maybe I’m full of shit but I haven’t personally experienced people give as much shit to anarchists as they do to communists. At least not in real life, taking all online conversations out of the mix. I mean to the average working American an anarchist is exactly like that, someone that just wants to throw bricks through windows and light buildings on fire. They only know what the media has told them. And the media has told them that Communists killed more people than Hitler.
I mean anarchists have recently gotten a lot of negative attention, but what little negative attention they got in the past read overshadowed by anarchism being cool.
I mean, look at me. I'm a self described libertarian socialist, but if I had been a marxist leninist do you think you would have people calling me the most important intellectual in America.
No I get what you’re saying. I think you’re right, I don’t think they organize as much as anarchists in the US and they definitely don’t advertise as much either. Even my local PSL calls themselves a “liberation center.” Everyone I’ve met subscribes to some sort of communism, but the chapter as a whole barely calls themselves socialist. Also judging by the amount of Twitter screenshots, Reddit takes, and all around culture of this place... I think the majority of people who frequent this website are what I personally would consider “terminally online”. So I’d say that would definitely skew a persons viewpoint.
It wasn't always this way. The Black Panthers were MLs, but since the 60s the feds have gotten a lot better at infiltrating organizations and killing the effective leaders
That's probably also why online anarchist communities are so lib. It's a lot easier to infiltrate a subreddit than a soup kitchen
I mean I also think it's because anarchism is sold (for lack of a better word) as theory-light, and historically has not put as much emphasis on developing the "correct line" through deep study
There are some very excellent pages in Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology about this.
This is an important reason to decentralize our leadership. Feds don't have the same jackpot of compromising a key player if it's just one role that they are dominant in, rather than ALL the roles.
You have to have an organization first before the leadership can be decentralized
This is true, but you can found your organization on principles that distribute different spheres of power to different people.
All your stones in one basket doesn't just make that basket a target, it wears out the basket.
The basket in the analogy is a "leader". If you rely on one "leader" (whatever that word even means lol) for all roles of authority, they're not going to specialize, you'll lack redundancy, and you unintentionally end up with a class division again around who is a leader and who isn't.
There'a a good reason why multicellular organisms and especially social insects use collective intelligence to make decisions, rather than decision-making all done in one most-important cell/individual who then sends commands to the rest.
I'm involved in direct action mutual aid and community organizing as an "ML" (I more just consider myself a communist, but most leftists would probably consider me an ML), but most of the public face of the work is anarchist. A lot of people might be squeamish about working with revolutionary Marxists or even engaging with them in public, so that might be part of the reason Anarchists, particularly in the vague sense, seem more represented in direct action. I'm considering bringing some literature to distribute in my activities, but I probably wouldn't make it Lenin or Mao for this reason.
Mutua Laid
Yeah, I noticed this too. Local socialist groups are wary of associating themselves with ML states.
When you do mutual aid, you get mutually laid :comfy-cool: :anarcho-bottom:
My experience with organizing has had 90% of people not clearly identifying as one thing or another. My experiences are probably a lot more limited than most people though. I've worked with food not bombs, attempted to unionize my workplace multiple times under the discretion of an AFL-CIO connected union, I carry an IWW card, and I've attended PSL meetings.
Nearly everyone I met lacked specific vocabulary for what they identified with politically, or maybe they were just reluctant to say so to me specifically. If they did, they would often just say leftist or socialist, even if they aesthetically presented as anarchist or Marxist or would talk about literature from one camp or another. If they did outright claim to be ML or anarchist, they tended to be very loud about it and rope it into discussions where it often didn't matter.
I think this might be a side effect of living in a genuinely hellish political atmosphere. Half the time we were talking about trying to scrape up the barest minimum of support or get money together for some kind of dire community aid effort like someone was dying or about to be homeless. It was considered a good day if like 2 passersby would listen to us say political stuff. With unionizing it was considered a massive victory worthy of celebration if I could convince a single coworker to give their phone number, much less something like getting a raise or more PTO or whatever.
Yeah so I often don't relate to the ideological camp stuff except when it comes to online discussions. I barely even relate to the idea of what it means to get anything done beyond getting like 4 people together on a lazy Sunday and awkwardly discuss handing out fliers or pooling some money because a comrade's car broke down.
This is because of the structure of ML parties and democratic centralism. We take part in action, but the action taken is at the control of those in leadership ranks of the parties. You see much less open talk about it because ML discussion of this stuff is:
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Something that occurs behind closed doors.
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Something that is strictly need-to-know.
Anything that feels foreign and unusual will appear to be larp until you normalise it.
No, that level of secrecy is totally ineffective at forming a mass organization given the political climate we have.
If your demcent org is not discussing openly and you're not allowed to voice your opinion or be informed, it's not a demcent org. You're supposed to be able to disagree (in a comradely fashion, of course) and all opinions should be heard and discussed - and then when it comes to vote time you agree to act in accordance with the majority. Youre even able to bring it back up later it's not set in stone and also you're supposed to be able to recall leaders at any time. You're not supposed to just do whatever leadership says, that's got the central part I guess but its missing the democratic.
I'm not suggesting open discussion does not occur among topics involving all org members, but that closed discussion also occurs at various levels in every org and that there are very much circles of trust with increasingly tighter controls on information or reasoning for decisions. Smaller tight orgs tend to have less of this but the larger ones have a lot of it out of simple necessity.
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Have you joined many ML groups?
Edit: upon re-reading, the answer is definitely no. So where did you get your generalization from?
But MLs and anarchists do the same direct action online: virtually nothing.
I don't see why that makes sense. They do other things online.
Because I see a lot more of it from (online) baby leftist Western anarchists. Specifically, an outright opposition to others' anti-imperialist action, effectively becoming domestic CIA assets.
Annoying baby (online) MLs are less harmful and are simply rarer. I think this is partly because most MLs people don't go straight from lib to ML.
If we want to build a pipeline towards solidarity and praxis by those in the imperial core - i.e., those who have nearly always disappointed and hav let themselves be coopted - we need to recognize our pipeline deficits so that we can strategize on how to address them.
That's not true lol. Mutual aid is harder than charity, so a lot of groups shoot for the first and end up doing the second.
No, but the work of the IWW, Earth First, the IWOC, and the countless anarchists working within abolitionist organizations is.
This is really why we need some level of left unity. Anarchists are better at building numbers through direct action, but MLs are better for long term results. Both are necessary. I'd also say anarchists (if not counter revolutionary) are necessary to ensure that basic rights are preserved, like LGBT rights, which haven't had a great track record in socialist countries. Of course as society has accepted LGBT people more that need may be lessened, but having persons to critique the power structures is still good (again if not counter revolutionary).
The problem with ML is that anarchists wanting to simply move on to the next steps will always be considered "counter" revolutionary. I think post-revolutionary socialism is becoming increasingly unnecessary. To the point where any period of socialism should simply be considered an emergency transition that is destroyed as soon as possible.
Also, I think it's partly because of how most people perceive the words 'Anarchist' and 'Marxist-Leninist'
When you call yourself Anarchist it (incorrectly) brings to mind disorganised, rebellious teenagers, vandals and trouble makers, an annoyance, but not a real threat to the status quo as they have no political power in the eyes of most.
You call yourself a Marxist-Leninist on the other hand, it brings to mind a total takeover and rehauling on the status quo into a scary 'authoritarian' communist dystopia with real powerful international support from China. Meaning you're more likely to be deal with harshly.
People hear the word Lenin and freak the fuck out, in other words. So MLs are wise to sort of... not make noise.
Used this way, "direct action" is a misleading term.
Most organizing action isn't bricks through windows. It's long, tedious, unglamorous work. Think weekends spent calling people about an upcoming union vote, or putting together digestible political education pamphlets, or maintaining community food pantries. Moreso, it's action that can be taken by anyone; it's not the exclusive domain of self-avowed anarchists or MLs.
Protests and confrontation, when they do happen, are flash points. Opportunites to challenge the status quo but not ends in themselves. And hell, even those need a lot of less-visible organization to be effective: police watchers, jail support, mashalls, medics, march guards, etc.
Based on my experience with anarchist types in my area, this is probably the kind of the stuff that OP is referring to? Not just smashing shit lol
Maybe lol. I wasn't sober when I typed this out so it's possible I interpreted OP's comment in a less gracious light than they intended.
Not all anarchists, I for one am a very lazy anarchist :comfy: :meow-melt:
Mind you that's because of crippling depression and ADHD.
It's funny to see Hexbear talking about "anarkiddies" who supposedly never read theory or organize. It's funny to see people talk about anarchists as if they are just undecided liberals given that half of you still have socdem hangups. Like yeah this site has always been ML leaning, but it's a little disturbing to see the astounding ignorance. It's a weird vibe of animosity and sectarianism being fueled purely by ignorance.
Personally I don't think you can get a proper appreciation of anything we have to do without understanding both.
Sadly there's just a long history of marxist leninists grinding anarchists through the mill of socialism instead of just letting them do their own thing as allies. Ultimately we all want to get to pretty much the same place in the end. I think with the advent of the digital age, anarchist ideas are more important than ever.
I don't know how much that even says because people have redefined direct action as meaning charity work. So now everybody from conservative church groups to the girls scouts is doing direct action at a level matching or often exceeding the leftist subcultures.
Honestly I never experienced that much of difference between leftist stuff and the normal charity stuff. MLs or Anarchist there just isn't anything underneath it where I'd be able to say the fundraising, food drives, whatever are really supporting anything other than more charity work. Like you take off the branding and so much of this stuff is functionally apolitical and the seedy stuff ends up just being petty vandalism.
