I don't mean to call anyone out - I despise conflict, especially of the sectarian variety.
I wrote the following in response to someone's assertion that all anarchism is, amounts solely to fighting in the streets, but it is a more general response to how I feel about the community in general - vis-a-vis Marxist-Leninists in particular. Since this comm. is fairly quiet, I figured I'd put it here as I spent a lot of time writing it and it would be a shame if no one saw it. 😑
I am becoming more and more convinced that the ML crowds that are the loudest proponents of 'read history' and 'read theory' do absolutely neither.
Anarchism is one of the prestige forms of socialism - it was half of the First International, and, just like Marxism, was disseminated and adopted throughout the world during the 19th and 20th centuries.
- Even during Marx's time, one of the most informative experiences of the era was that of the Paris Commune - heavily contributed to by anarchists.
- The Russian revolution was not undertaken solely by a cadre of intellectual vanguardists - it was facilitated by the formation of the proletariat and peasantry into trade unions, factory committees and worker's soviets - at this time, Lenin et al weren't even in the country due to exile.
- Even Lenin on his deathbed spoke of 'witnessing the resurrection of the tsarist bureaucracy to which the Bolsheviks had only given a Soviet veneer'; after the civil war rejecting the popular demand for socialism via worker-control and disbanding organisations like parties, committees and soviets - not to mention utilising force when necessary such as at Kronstadt. This is not a blunt stab at the Bolsheviks - it is important to note the Marxist Contradiction: That the Bolshevik state was established to achieve socialism and to represent the interests of the proletariat - yet, at the opportunistic post-Civil War moment to do so, they declined, instead favouring the opposite.
- Mao himself read anarchist theory and was inspired by it - beyond being a passing interest as a young man, it likely fed the basis of his later departures from Marxist-Leninism and criticisms of state bureaucracy.
- In Korea, anarchists established the Korean People's Association - an autonomous confederation of 2 million people, operating on a mutual aid based economy.
- It would be folly to discount entirely the efforts of the Spanish anarchists in establishing 'actually existing socialism' in Catalonia and Andalusia - money was abolished, productivity increased, and thousands took up arms in horizontal armies to fight the fascists. Putting aside issues of ideological supremacy, these are real, material impacts that in some cases have lasting effects - even today the municipality of Marinaleda maintains a system of mutual aid, collective ownership and autonomy.
- In Cuba, anarchists lent their support to the revolution wholeheartedly - joining the guerilla groups fighting Batista directly.
- Edit: Of course, how could I forget the Zapatistas? They currently control a sizeable territory in Mexico, and have been directly addressing the needs of their largely rural and underprivileged citizens for over 25 years.
etc.
In many of these cases, anarchists have repeatedly facilitated revolution, and even established instances of real, tangible socialism. That they did not survive suppression and encirclement is not proof of their lack of capacity for success - if such a thing was true, the Soviet Union would never have been established (on the basis of historical revolutionary suppression and exile) nor should there be Marxist-Leninists left now that it has been dismantled.
The assertion that anarchist movements are prone to corruption and co-option by reactionaries is also flawed - the same applies to Marxist-Leninist parties too. There is no shortage of ML parties in various countries extolling reactionary views today, and the conditions that led to the dismantling of the USSR can be seen as exactly this phenomenon - the undermining of public trust in the party by propaganda and the infiltration of the party itself by opportunists and yes-men for the purpose of usurping it.
How can Marxist-Leninists say with confidence that their method is the only scientific application of Marxism; lambasting others for their perceived vulnerabilities to Western capital; when not even their prestige test-case itself was immune? How can we be expected to fall in line with the logic "The Marxist-Leninist state was undermined and dismantled. The solution is Marxist-Leninism."
Finally, why is it that calls for 'Left Unity' apply solely to Marxist-Leninism - that we should overlook our differences in their favour in the interest of the bigger picture, yet you will find nothing in kind from them?
I have spent years carrying water for ML ideologies - for the USSR, for China, etc. - against my personal beliefs and better judgment in the interest of internationalism and anti-imperialism. The least I expect, is to be treated like a communistic equal, fighting in the same struggle.
Instead, our communities are filled with Marxist-Leninists quotebombing dissenters with Lenin and stamping on anarchists at every possible opportunity - only occasionally moderating themselves with a token "I have many anarchist friends, but..." or "I support left unity, but..."
Put aside your wretched egos for once in your lives. Consider the fundamentals of our theory and praxis - that material conditions around the world and throughout history are not uniform. There may indeed be cases where Marxist-Leninism is the most effective - I claim that in earnest.
Will you be able to acknowledge the possibility of cases where anarchism is the most viable? Especially when anarchism spans such a range of approaches and theories - from syndicalism to mutualism to synthesism.
You need to be aware, that for many people, the barrier to the adoption of Marxist-Leninism is not simply the influence of Western propaganda, or the the lack of 'reading theory' - it is our diametric opposition to hierarchy in any form. That does not preclude our contributions to your causes - it means that they are done voluntarily.
The truest demonstration of Left Unity for me, will be when I don't feel like an outsider, as a communist within the communist community.
:left-unity-2:
I'll just say two things -
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I'm reading Mutual Aid by Kropotkin right now, because I decided that I'm actually going to read theory and not just shitpost, and that was the first book on the sidebar.
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I feel this site is a lot more outwardly hostile to anarchists than the subreddit was. It's really irritating.
But yeah, kudos to you for this post. I hope mods/admins/superposters see this shit and start treating all leftists, regardless of ideology, better. If this site is meant to be a ML circlejerk, then pin that shit on c/main so everyone else can stray clear.
I feel this site is a lot more outwardly hostile to anarchists than the subreddit was. It’s really irritating.
That's what I feel, too.
A bit serious. It seems a bit disingenuous to call this site "left unity" when there is so much anarchist bashing here. I feel like we need a c/tankie com so we have something like moretankiechapo here. I don't think the userbase would go that way right now but if you are serious about building a large community we need to not have "uyghur genocide isn't real" stuff on the front page even if it's true. China Good is a position that I know you agree with and even I'm coming around on it but that will not attract a massive userbase here.
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I always knew that this community leaned ML during the Reddit days but it was never this pronounced. During the early discord and .chat days, there were plenty of straight-up conspiracies that the admin team "HaD a SeCreT AnArCHiSt aGeNDa!" And it seems like the admin team took that to heart and just started letting MLs run wild. Like whenever theres an anarchist bashing post "its just friendly jokes calm down" until its an anarchist joking about MLs its "SECTARIANISM." I straight up don't really use the site or the discord other than the minecraft server because of it.
There was a post a while ago from some guy who thought anarchist supported facism in some country because one random anarchist group wrote a think peice about it or something. The person then went on strange diatrides about how much theory they read and all of their cool sources in the comments. Like how the fuck are we supposed to feel welcome here when post like that are allowed up? I love my ML comrades i've learned a lot... why can't we all be comrades together? ❤️
There was a post a while ago from some guy who thought anarchist supported facism in some country because one random anarchist group wrote a think peice about it or something. The person then went on strange diatrides about how much theory they read and all of their cool sources in the comments. Like how the fuck are we supposed to feel welcome here when post like that are allowed up? I love my ML comrades i’ve learned a lot… why can’t we all be comrades together?
Tbf that post was deleted, but that person is still one of the most vocal MLs of the site and is very happy to lecture eastern europeans about the history of their own homeland.
Like whenever theres an anarchist bashing post “its just friendly jokes calm down”
I thought I was the only one who noticed this lol, comments too
This is a very good post. You should consider posting it on !main@hexbear.net , because !anarchism@hexbear.net has only about a tenth of the userbase.
I suppose so. Part of the reason for this post being here is that we don't feel able to express ourselves without being shouted down or infantilised.
e: hm it appears you can't crosspost to main 😕 e2: pseudo-crosspost completeIf I was forced to label myself I suppose I'd call myself an ML (but I'd just prefer the communist label) and I think you should definitely put this in a more visible comm, more people here need to hear this and chill out with the anarchist bashing
Ah! I see that you can't crosspost. Maybe just copy/paste into a new post with a link to the old?
I am becoming more and more convinced that the ML crowds that are the loudest proponents of ‘read history’ and ‘read theory’ do absolutely neither.
spot on
Zoe Baker had an excellent point in a recent podcast:
So, I think there is a problem within the Left, which you might call 'Left Wing Conservativism", which essentially is: they relate to historic socialist literature the way that a lot of religious fundamentalists do to religious texts - which is, rule 1 is you don't actually read the text, you just pretend to, but then rule 2 is that there's some kind of authority figure who will decode the text for you and tell you its true meaning, and then you attack other people for not subscribing to the 'correct' interpretation as established by, say, the leader of the central committee, and what this results in is this vulgar Marxism where they're not grappling with Marx and understanding him, but also where they're not doing what a good Marxist should do, which is, you analyse the contemporary social situation, you develop an in-depth understanding of the processes by which it operates, and then work out a way in which you as a political group can intervene in order to push the class struggle forward, building on the already on-going class struggle that's occurring in response to these systems of oppression.
I think there's a need to 'read the classics', and actually read them - not just pretend to - or skim the Communist Manifesto and then interpret it through how your party's told you to understand it. [...]
We have to go beyond and do what they did for their time (Luxemburg, Malatesta, Marx) for our time, and we have to continue the thing that they began but not merely repeat them.I resonate with this so much. Like, Capital is fascinating! It's an incredibly important piece of theory that really helps crack open the way you see political economy.
But if someone pulled it out at a meeting and said, "I think we should focus our resources on the wage campaign instead of the housing campaign, because in Chapter 4 of Volume 1 of Capital Marx points out that..." I'd have a hard time taking them seriously. It's like quoting a Bible verse or something, and I think it's the complete wrong approach to theory.
There's also confusion around the blurry line between the political theorizing of the day and the political pamphleteering of the day .
damn, I really like Zoe. I've been watching her since probably 2013 and her takes are consistently good
I am becoming more and more convinced that the ML crowds that are the loudest proponents of ‘read history’ and ‘read theory’ do absolutely neither.
sorry but this is delusional lol
MLs absolutely read theory and many ML parties have it as a requirement to join
I think OP was talking about a subset of ML’s on this website.
thats at best unclear and honestly i could say "a certain subset of anarchists do x"
"MLs say only anarchists get coopted and blame these subsets of anarchists and use them as a strawman of anarchists" -this post
then in the comments the same shit about MLs lol
it’s supposed to be a left unity space
What's the policy on trolling?
This place isnt a posting gulag, people just dont think theyre right, but people getting trolled or owned never seems to be a problem for trots or demsocs or ultras or that weird german account i love
My phrasing was emphatic but my intended meaning was that 'those that are the most vocal' - I assume (and hope) that most MLs have a good understanding of theory as well as a more favourable and less antagonistic assessment of anarchism - but then again, the comments made by this potentially vocal minority are not challenged or more realistically, downvoted. I have always downvoted posts by anarchists that have contributed nothing but flak or shit-stirring, it's a waste of time and serves nothing than to make people mad.
I honestly think it's probably exactly the same for both when it comes to the online space.
When it comes to actually-practicisng MLs(members of parties) then it's not true at all, you can't get into any explicitly ML party without being interviewed and there is a pre-reading list for every ML party I know of. You also have to take part in ongoing reading and political education within the party.
I tend to lean towards the notion that anyone calling themselves ML while not being a member of a party is ultimately larping though.
Nice post, btw.
There are a lot of MLs and Anarchists who don't read theory at all. Maybe you have actually hard shit going on in your life and you are busting your ass to keep a roof over your family's head. Maybe you're actually spending your time IRL engaging in mutual aid and building socialism in your community. This is awesome and you will probably learn more from doing it than you will arguing online with other lefties because,
There are a lot of MLs and Anarchists who say they read theory but really they skimmed the Manifesto/Bread Book and now conceive that they understand Marxism/Anarchism as a monolithic, fixed concept, but they are really just trying to find community in an online sectarian hive-mind,
There are a lot of MLs and Anarchists who read a lot of theory but don't understand that theory in context and accept their particular niche as some sort of dogmatic religious truth.
I'm a weirdo post-left anarchist and I agree with pretty much everything you said. Why wouldn't I want to surround myself with and help other people who are making my community a nicer place for me to live? Who cares if they read different books from me, as long as they don't force me to swear allegiance to their particular flavor of leftism at gunpoint. I'm a nihilist, not a complete dick.
I'm more concerned with the tendency to be fixated on a period 60-100 years in the past. Most of the theory that MLs encourage was written before the development of modern psychology, sociology, anthropology, and even biology. Vanguard party regimes that called themself protectors of "scientific socialism" fell hard for the trap of Lysenkoism not once but twice, and discoveries like the
Stanford prison experimentMilgram experiment, the BBC Prison Study, and so on cast a major doubt on the viability of ML-style parties.In recent memory we can point to several struggles that anarchists (Occupy, Rojava, Standing Rock, BLM and adjacent uprisings), MLMs (Nepal, Naxalites, Philippines), and even demsocs (Pink Tide, "socialism in the 21st century) have been instrumental in shaping or characterizing. If there are any examples of where MLs have been relevant in the past 40 years, or if they've written novel theory that isn't just a defense of older theory, I'd like to see it.
Modern-day anarchism has its flaws, especially in how it tends to be anti-structure rather than truly anti-authoritarian. But that's a different story.
Corrected. But I still think the principle holds that an advantaged class (whether economic as in most cases or political in the case of a vanguard party) will tend to feel justified even in unethical measures of subordinating a disadvantaged class.
I guess I gotta go fish then, so to speak. But I've lost count of the number of times I've been reading psychology or behavioral econ texts and thinking "this inadvertently seems to suggest that a stateless, classless paradigm would make the average quality of life much better".
Then why not start to abolish hierarchy in all forms, and replace it with egalitarian and horizontal organizing, from the very beginning? That's how ants and bees and termites do it.
Reactionaries like to say that hierarchies are stable, but in fact that couldn't be further from the truth. Absolute rulers always have resentful subordinates and envious rivals, both of whom pose a constant threat to the ruler's survival.
I hold that the abolition of hierarchy is contingent on culturally dismantling the bourgeois concept of "leader" and "leadership". Being an expert or authority on one topic is okay. Being the authority in all topics is not.
discoveries like the Stanford prison experiment cast a major doubt on the viability of ML-style parties.
Can you expand on this?
I don't have an sourcepost lined up, but a huge chunk of the discipline of social psychology has been uncovering for 50 years how human individuals bend their values to justify things that hypocritically advantage themselves over others.
I don't remember the name of the experiment where the test group losing a game of chance attributed it to chance, and the test group winning the same game attributed it to personal skill. I don't remember the name of the experiment where various primates show revulsion at categorical class distinctions. I don't remember whose research it was that demographics that don't have political representation consistently get unfavorable social outcomes. Maybe I should have written it all down somewhere.
Mass line would improve on this issue no? I think it's important to note that almost no MLs are anti-maoism, in fact most are explicitly Maoist but only where appropriate. Lots of Maoist theory is specifically built for the political and geographical location it was formed in however I don't know any MLs that are explicitly against improvements in party organisation and method of collaborating with the masses that he brought to the table. ML +M(Where appropriate) seems to be where every ML is these days, most just say ML because for convenience.
Mass Line as it is formulated is mostly just a long workaround to the inherent problems of leadership and concentrated authority. It has potential... but why not just do away with the bourgeois concept of "leadership" entirely, spread out roles amongst as many people as possible, and elevate every revolutionary to the point where there is no in-group or out-group at all?
The tendency of a centralized party structure with no checks on it is to become absolutist and contrarian, to harbor patterns of abuse, and to eliminate dissenters.
Mostly because we believe you need it right now in order to be able to respond to capitalist aggression effectively. They (the capitalists) use the people against us and if that takes hold it results in disaster, not to mention that events occur that are sudden and complex which a small leadership group may be capable of learning all the information about in a short space of time in order to respond to it that the larger bulk of society won't be able to learn about and come to an agreement on fast enough for the response to be adequate.
The solution is to involve as much of society as humanly possible in the party while having a structure and pathway within the party. Embed it into everything and anything. If society and the party merge then ultimately when hierarchy is no longer needed to oppose the capitalist aggression then struggle will break out within society to eliminate the remaining new socialist hierarchy. I think that if our struggle in capitalist hegemony can be considered to be class-struggle against class hierarchy, I believe the struggle within socialist hegemony (after capitalism is gone) will be the new hierarchy of leadership and led. This will then give way to elimination of leadership.
I don't think you can do this now. An adequate and fast concentration of forces is required that requires people dedicated to the task of making those decisions as a full-time responsibility. In essence the situation is un-ideal and requires an un-ideal solution that must later be struggled against after securing victory against the current contradiction. Mass line and integration of the party into all areas of society is at least going to mitigate the worst of evils of state, because through this what you are doing is merging the people and the state.
and to eliminate dissenters.
The problem you have here is that in order to achieve our goals this is a necessary aspect of revolution and defending the revolution. No matter what happens, no matter what kind of revolution we have, this is a power that will be used and is a power that must continue to be used until reactionary forces no longer exist. I don't mean this in the sense of murdering reactionaries of course, although that will occur, but even in the sense of elimination through re-education, it is something that must continue to exist until capitalism is gone. How do you propose to check this while also recognising that it MUST continue to be a power used while capitalist forces seek to destroy our gains? If we over-check it then we kneecap our ability to stop reactionary forces destroying our project through a 5th column or through the national-bourgeoisie whereas if we under-check it then it gets wielded as a weapon to destroy us if reactionaries ever take over leadership in the project.
That's a good recap on things but there are a few things i would point out.
You say that a central leadership is needed to quickly manouvre against capitalist aggression, but are there any cases there apart from warfare where you have to be that quick that the decisions can't travel up to the main governing body in like i don't know, a week or even way faster with today's tech? And even if we're talking about warfare, you can do what the iroquis did: the main governing body makes the decisions about it but the smaller units can put in a veto in it. The Ukrainian's anarchists strategic mastermind was Makhno but all his tactical decisions had to go through a column and that didn't bother thm as much as the fact that they were fighting with stones basically. Guerilla warfare also is stronger if it's not revolving around one central leadership but is a network of multiple coordinated groups. This is just an example, i'm not trying to disprove you btw just to show that there were other successful models.
Also the thing with being top heavy is that a party can paint a crosshair on a leader which the reactionary forces will absolutely happy to target at, why do you think it's rather a strength and not a weakness? For example if this wasn't the problem in Burkina Faso, than what? (Note: I know jack shit about Burkina Faso apart from that France killed Sankara and from that point the ervolution was basically over)
The problem you have here is that in order to achieve our goals this is a necessary aspect of revolution and defending the revolution. No matter what happens, no matter what kind of revolution we have, this is a power that will be used and is a power that must continue to be used until reactionary forces no longer exist. I don’t mean this in the sense of murdering reactionaries of course, although that will occur, but even in the sense of elimination through re-education, it is something that must continue to exist until capitalism is gone. How do you propose to check this while also recognising that it MUST continue to be a power used while capitalist forces seek to destroy our gains? If we over-check it then we kneecap our ability to stop reactionary forces destroying our project through a 5th column or through the national-bourgeoisie whereas if we under-check it then it gets wielded as a weapon to destroy us if reactionaries ever take over leadership in the project.
The thing with this is that as anarchists movements are bottom-top structured there's less chance of infiltration because the project starts when people are on board with it and this is a very important point. You said that the mass line is about putting the party in every people's lives so the party basically becomes society, that is a valid way, but for anarchists it is the other way around, it's about building society first then comes the "party" It's safe too because if there are reactionary elements in the society, it's society that expulses them, not a secret police - however there's bigger flexibility in anarchist movements because you don't have to fall in line to be a part of society until you're not straight up destructive.
As for over and underchecking, most anarchist/ic projects' structure makes it really difficult to hijack them. Administrative positions are rotational, for example. Thing is that they are structured in a way that if someone clearly tries to distract a project than it's easier to get rid of them than for them to exert real power over the movement.
I am really bad at writing long rants btw
What isn’t warfare when it comes to Capitalist attempts to collapse your country? If you’re Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia or China, it doesn’t matter, you’re under capitalist siege in an attempt to destroy your revolution.
I mean i was specifically talking about direct warfare, which fortunately isn't happening in any of these countries because i consider that to be the kind of thing that needs quick decisions.
But it's good that you mention Cuba, because it's clearly different from the others and is one of the ML projects that has close to unilateral support from society, which is key if you are fighting a political war that's going on against these countries. To me i think this is the reason they're dealing with the pressure better than others and why the empire can't get a grip on them. Bolivia is similar, because before Evo in El Alto there was already a tremendous effort in grassroots organizing that just went on without representation and then became a basis of his coming to power.
The thing with the Uighurs is that while these attacks might have been influenced by the US (and most probably were), this thing goes way back before the us even thought about Xinjiang, things probably went awry when China and the USSR were having a feud over the control of the territory without any care about the people's wellbeing, so the US could tamper because there was a societal tension they could organize a terror cell behind. And while i still don't agree with how they handle the case i would argue that they don't fall under the category i mentioned because they already had their revolution. So what i want to say is, that yes, the Uighur problem can't be solved with anarcjistic methods because for that the Chinese power structure would have to be torn down and rebuilt from the bottom up which they in their position can't afford and it's completely okay. I mean it's not okay, but it's understandable that they went that way and i think there's no turning back at their point, so good luck for them.
What i was saying was more about future projects: A 5th column is much harder to create if there is a unified society that can block these attempts at their roots aka making sure that the tensions can't be created or artificially exaggerated. That's pretty much the case in Bolivia, the movement is much more independent there from MAS than it seems, early on there were huge protests against Evo in El Alto because they tried to privatize the water service, but the people living there didn't like the idea. It wasn't privatized in the end. And as we saw last year even this way they can be very easily mobilized.
And of course there's the problem of dealing with domestic capitalists that you mentioned but it's not at all against anarchist theory to take drastic measures against people who are openly trying to destroy the revolution which is for some reason a common misconception about them.
They (the capitalists) use the people against us and if that takes hold it results in disaster, not to mention that events occur that are sudden and complex which a small leadership group may be capable of learning all the information about in a short space of time in order to respond to it that the larger bulk of society won’t be able to
This sounds more like received dogma than anything.
Don't you think that each person having a stake in how it's done, a feeling of self-ownership, would induce people to resist capitalist methods? Why is having one small group of people that has stratified power over others ("leadership") better than having many small groups of people with a united cause?
An in-group of a party leadership structure is extremely prone to groupthink and to missing things that "flatter" organizational structures would catch. More minds thinking about a problem means better answers. Subordinate minds don't produce answers as well as autonomous minds do. A party leadership is also a huge target for capitalist forces: if they know who your leader is, they can incapacitate you easily by striking at, threatening, or negotiating separately with the leader. It's no coincidence that both cops and military intelligence are obsessed with "finding out who's in charge" or "who the leader is". Ultimately, aggregating all roles of power into one "leadership" category is risky, and is counter-productive to revolutionary pursuits IMO.
If society and the party merge then ultimately when hierarchy is no longer needed to oppose the capitalist aggression then struggle will break out within society to eliminate the remaining new socialist hierarchy.
Again, this sounds dogmatic. What guarantees that after defending a hierarchy this whole time, that we'll shift gears and dismantle it? Habits matter; culture matters; behavioral inertia matters, just as much for organizations as for individuals. You have to have some consistency of your ends with your means. If you predict that something is going to happen beyond your lifetime, and you don't do anything to set it in motion or at least parallel it in some form, then you might as well admit to yourself that it is never going to happen; it is utopian, deus-ex-machina, wishful thinking for there to be a discontinuity sometime in the future. That's basically saying "I'm not going to do anything to solve this, I'm going to leave it all to future generations of revolutionaries". And no wonder revolutionary progress gets stalled. You need the sprouts of what you look forward to, or else it will never be harvested.
Consider modern warfare, especially what the US has engaged in. No centralized armed force has been able to fight the US and win. It's guerrilla warfare, not command-and-control, that has stymied the ability of the US to conquer. Whether it's the Internet or a slime mold or a combat force, the decentralized model is far more resilient and adaptable than the centralized one.
I think what you're trying to say is that "during a combat situation, we need one person (or a few people) in strategic control", and I agree, but that's not what "general leadership" means I just don't think that role should persist outside the scope of combat. Algonquian peoples, Nahuatl peoples, and colonial-age pirates all knew this, and had separate and limited domains for their war leaders. There are many ways to be a contributor or an expert at something; "leadership" means that one person (or one chain of command) does all these roles. And that's too much to ask for one person/CoC. It's much more efficient, and avoids the bottleneck and assassination problems if you distribute the roles. E.g. your dominant economic planner, your battle captain, your political theorist, and your highest council of dispute resolution are all different people, and none of these quantifiably have power over another.
Don’t you think that each person having a stake in how it’s done, a feeling of self-ownership, would induce people to resist capitalist methods? Why is having one small group of people that has stratified power over others (“leadership”) better than having many small groups of people with a united cause?
No. I do not. For the reasons outlined in this post giving examples of those methods: https://hexbear.net/post/48138/comment/441948
Your conception of what "capitalist methods" are needs to broaden to include far more complex and nuanced attack methods that you are currently imagining. Good old community spirit doesn't overcome racial prejudices when people's families are being cut into pieces in the streets by religious zealots that are being associated with a minority race.
What guarantees that after defending a hierarchy this whole time, that we’ll shift gears and dismantle it?
Historical materialism does. Contradiction gives rise to struggle. If a contradiction exists then struggle to eliminate it occurs. This occurred with tribes, it occurred with slavery, it occurred with monarchies, it occurred with mercantilism, it is occurring now with class struggle under capitalism, and it will occur in the socialist phase of our societal development. You can call that dogmatic but there is not a single example to refute it. You're imagining something occurring without any evidence or historical basis for it. This argument boils down to "What if your imperfect society creates conditions the make it impossible to achieve our perfect society?" and it is very odd because conditions currently exist that make it impossible to achieve the perfect society we all want anyway. We simply can't jump from where we are to the perfect communist utopia we all agree that we want. There must be a step between. Yes that step will not be perfect. It will however still be better than it currently is.
I just don’t think that role should persist outside the scope of combat
You are in persistent combat forever until all the capitalist countries are gone. "Peace" only exists in that there is not an ongoing actual battle with people shooting bullets at each other but that by no means means maneuvers and strategies to bring about the elimination your entire society are not occurring at all times. Just because the shooting has stopped does not mean they aren't implementing an active ongoing strategy to destroy you that requires an active and ongoing response from people with the fulltime responsibility to perform that role. The problem however is that the response required is not as simple as shooting back or moving some tanks, complex attack exists at a societal and cultural level.
Contradiction gives rise to struggle. If a contradiction exists then struggle to eliminate it occurs. This occurred with tribes, it occurred with slavery, it occurred with monarchies, it occurred with mercantilism
Tribes still exist. Slavery definitely still exists, with more people enslaved than ever before. Monarchies still exist, and far from dying out, de facto monarchies have popped into existence frequently enough. Feudalism and mercantilism didn't vanish, so much as they made the small evolution to capitalism to stabilize themselves while keeping their characteristic traits of economic domination by a minority. The above are all parts of a genetic lineage of "the predatory phase of human history". Communism necessarily needs to escape that whole branch, not to continue along it, and reach the separate branch that contains primitive communism. You can't say that just because there's a contradiction that it will necessarily result in progress, that it won't be resolved by a status that is stable yet results in untold amounts of human misery.
You’re imagining something occurring without any evidence or historical basis for it.
I'm not imagining something, you are projecting and doing an inversion. This discussion is about the validity of ML as a political strategy to achieve communism, and the concept of a dictatorship "of the proletariat" that ends itself of its own accord. Neither of these have come to pass. ML regimes have made notable progress, but there is nothing to suggest that they ended up on a course to end capitalism globally; they have invariably all stalled out. Dictatorships don't just voluntarily cede power, there is not a single case you can name when that has happened. It doesn't matter how saintly your dictator is, they are still human, they are still subject to the availability bias, and this will inevitably result in people close to them being structurally favored in society (stratified).
What do you think would happen in a society that just lets literally everyone discuss what to do about terrorist attacks
Maybe if there was a recent real-world example of exactly the situation you are suggesting, let's say, a socialist polity that's under attack by Western-backed religious fundamentalists and also by ethno-imperialists. Maybe their military command doesn't extend beyond the armed forces at all; maybe they even have a military that requires you to learn decolonial and feminist perspectives, and has further institutional protections to prevent the military from perpetuating a hypermasculinized culture of violence. I can't quite put my finger on it. Can you name an example of this?
Tribes still exist. Slavery definitely still exists, with more people enslaved than ever before. Monarchies still exist, and far from dying out, de facto monarchies have popped into existence frequently enough. Feudalism and mercantilism didn’t vanish, so much as they made the small evolution to capitalism to stabilize themselves while keeping their characteristic traits of economic domination by a minority. The above are all parts of a genetic lineage of “the predatory phase of human history”. Communism necessarily needs to escape that whole branch, not to continue along it, and reach the separate branch that contains primitive communism. You can’t say that just because there’s a contradiction that it will necessarily result in progress, that it won’t be resolved by a status that is stable yet results in untold amounts of human misery.
Fuck me. Not as a global system of organising society. How can I have a conversation with you about this topic if you're not going to engage it from a basic ground in socialist theory? Both anarchist and ml theory all holds its roots in marx's work, you can't ignore historical materialism or make arguments that make claims that completely disregard all the points of historical materialism. Do you understand the concept? Have you actually read the foundation works of everything all of our theory and movements have built off of for the last 250 years? Their piecemeal existence is a part of the structure of capitalism today. Not the basis of the organisation of society.
Neither of these have come to pass.
You absolutely can't make that assessment because the conditions for it to come to pass, which have been repeatedly stated for the last 250 years, have not occurred. It will not come to pass until capitalism is gone. It will not come to pass until socialism is the basis of organisation of society. That is not the case. We live in a capitalist organised world. This only confirms my belief that you haven't actually read any of theory at all, you're making arguments that claim things haven't happened that nobody has said should have happened, literally nobody claimed these things would occur under the conditions that we live in. The ONLY time that the state will begin to fade away it is no longer required in order to protect the dictatorship of the proletariat -- it exists to protect the dictatorship of the proletariat from capitalist attack, it will begin to fade when that threat no longer exists because we will restructure resources that are will be wasted defending us from... Nothing. Those conditions and ONLY those conditions have ever been the claim of Marx and everyone ever since him. Please read the theory properly. Nobody has made any claim that it would happen while capitalism is still the method of organising society in the world.
Maybe if there was a recent real-world example of exactly the situation you are suggesting, let’s say, a socialist polity that’s under attack by Western-backed religious fundamentalists and also by ethno-imperialists. Maybe their military command doesn’t extend beyond the armed forces at all; maybe they even have a military that requires you to learn decolonial and feminist perspectives, and has further institutional protections to prevent the military from perpetuating a hypermasculinized culture of violence. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Can you name an example of this?
Did you just completely ignore the comment I linked to and told you to read?
Lmao at 150-year-old theory being the foundation and sine qua non of all socialist/communist projects going back 250 years. This is what dogma does to your brain. Just accept the text harder, if you don't see how it has all the answers then you're just not believing in it enough. You treat Marx's work like fundies treat the Bible.
If your understanding of communism was strong enough to hold up to criticisn, you could explain it in a way that makes sense, and wouldn't have to throw "that's not what I meant, read all this one guy's stuff".
Marxist historical analysis is a way of explaining general changes ex post facto. It doesn't "predict" things the way scientific theories do.
It sounds like you're saying that we can't fully do away with earlier stages (tribes, feudalism) until we finally achieve the last stage of development. Just a couple more lifetimes, keep the faith.
The ONLY time that the state will begin to fade away it is no longer required in order to protect the dictatorship of the proletariat
Wow TIL states have never faded away in the past 10,000 years of human existence. I was really hoping for a counterexample that disproves the assertion there, but I guess there is none.
Did you just completely ignore the comment I linked to and told you to read?
You mean the one I quoted? Answer the question instead of trying to change the subject.
Is there a socialist-ecologist-feminist polity out there, maybe somewhere in western Asia, with an updated strategy on countering the pitfalls of "leadership", or isn't there?
Look, I'm not going to read this after reading the first sentence. I'm not going to continue a discussion with someone that wants to be hostile, aggressive or insult the other side in every single comment. It's not a good faith exchange and this is supposed to be a unity website, rethink that.
This is an interesting thought and now that you mention it I think it's why Mao got a lot of influence from anarchists too. The very nature of Maoism and protracted people's war relies heavily on the support of local populations which relies heavily on leveraging relationships in exactly the manner you're describing.
This obviously falls apart when you replace the mountains and farmland for very urban settings though.
Community operated internet is probably the correct pathway towards making a modern Maoist movement work against more modern militaries because you can't just broadcast a radio station like older guerillas used to do in order to put out propaganda. Building internet networks and communications for local communities would allow you to also put propaganda up that would be harder to track down. I imagine these days if you broadcasted a radio station it wouldn't be very long before the exact location is tracked and a drone hits it.
10/10 post, one thing i would argue is that MLs here don't read theory, they absolutely do, but mostly Lenin and Parenti aka ML theory which is cool and good, and then start to shit on anarchists because "Lenin epicly roasted them" which is ridiculous (this goes the other way too btw, if you want to critique Lenin, read his stuff first) especially when two camps that didn't read each other's theory find each other.
The other thing i want to double down on because it's really subtle is agenda pushing which is only there from MLs, where they inject their opinion in most threads where they don't directly say it, but the gist of what they say is that there's only one way that's right, and it's "the party line". I don't see it from anarchists here (on reddit though it's absolutely rampant) doing that and i refrain to do that too (because what's less anarchist then telling people who didn't ask what to read) but i'm getting to the point where i'm just gonna reply to every mention of State and Revolution with "Read Anarchy Works", because it's turning me off of this site big time.
Back before r/genzanarchist got 'epicly roasted' I made a similar comment that, you tend to hear a lot of praise of Lenin - but it's the more 'theoretical Lenin' of the pre-civil war period rather than 'practical Lenin' thereafter.
His initial elucidation of vanguardism is reasonably democratic, for instance, it's just that in practise it was manipulated into something else entirely.
I'm willing to interpret the discrepancy as a result of paranoia stemming from the precarious nature of a solitary socialist state in its infancy, but it doesn't make the situation suck less.That's basically where i'm at too and most anarchist critique is about what Lenin did in practice, too (sometimes you can get ML's after 3 hours of flamewars to accept that maybe the constant persecution they imposed on anarchists, who were never a legit threat for the revolution wasn't the best solution).
Great post comrade, I had to catch myself going on a diatribe against anarchism a few days ago because of anarchists in my own life lending their support to Jo Jorgensen. As I was typing I realized, much in the way you point out, that this co-opting is hardly specific to any sub-faction of the left.
Oof wow, I should hope most anarchists in here can sympathize with you for that.
Unless they were doing it to maximize right infighting as a bit, in which case it's hilarious.
Left Unity is always of the utmost importance. The anarchists are my comrades every bit as much as the MLs are, despite personally being much closer to an ML. We've got to have each other's backs and recognize that the way out is through, together :heart-sickle: :unity: :af-heart:
I needed to post a nomination thread this month, anyway, so consider it done.
