https://raddle.me/wiki/leftunity
Some choice quotes straight from the US state department
The USSR alone was responsible for the de-Tatarization of Crimea, the genocide of the Ingrian Finns, the ethnic cleansing of Poles, the mass gulaging and pogroms of Greeks, the deportation of the Karachays, the deportation of the Kalmyks, the deportation of the Chechens and Ingush (Aardakh), the deportation of the Balkars, the deportation of Azerbaijanis from Armenia, the deportation of the Meskhetian Turks, the deportations of the Chinese and Koreans, the execution and deportation of Latvians, the expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe and the Holodomor famine that largely happened due to the USSR's confiscation and export of all the grain stores in central and eastern Ukraine, and preventing people from acquiring more food by banning free movement. Then there's communist Czechoslovakia's Romani sterilizations, the Cambodian genocide, Bulgaria's "revival process", Vietnam's Montagnard persecution, the Isaaq genocide in Somalia, the Hmong genocide in Laos, the Gukurahundi massacres in Zimbabwe and the mass starvation of anywhere between 15 and 55 million people that happened in China during Mao's "Great Leap Forward".
LMAO
Marx really made his career shamelessly ripping off Proudhon's earlier work point by point, but piling on a thick authority sludge before serving it up to the world as if he were presenting something new and not just an authoritarian perversion of Proudhon's ideas. Once Marx found fame with his plagiarism, he then decried Proudhon as being detestable; a bad economist, a bad philosopher, whose critiques were worthless and unevolved.
MARX STOLE COMMUNISM FROM ANARCHISTS!!! LOL
identifying as a leftist is a statement to the world that you support nationalism, states, borders, a monopoly on violence, being ruled by kings or presidents or central committees. Anarchists aren't left or right wing, we're anarchists. We reject the power machinations of both wings of government. We reject all authority.
LITERALLY A LIBERTARIAN
If the concept of community is authority-based e.g. steeped in majoritarianism, then what good is it to anarchists? Since at least 99.9% of all existing self-identifying communities and even theoretical proposals for communities are beholden to states, councils, committees, voter bodies and other forms of rulership, it's safe to say the community ideal in itself is just another vessel of authority. If all organized communities on the planet can be clearly demonstrated to be authority-based, then it's a safe bet that the entire concept of community is authority-forming... By simply looking at every example in the world today, you can bet with absolute certainty that any forced grouping of people around the community ideal is going to lead everyone involved through another abusive and torturous adventure in archy.
Anti...COMMUNITY??? Can't make this shit up omg.
The few remaining free people in the world e.g. the Hadza in east Africa ("Tanzania") don't live in anything resembling what we know as a community. They're nomadic, have no leaders, no gods, no rules, no crops, no property, no marriage, no parents (Hadza children have full autonomy and essentially raise themselves), don't extract anything from the land other than foraged food and are quick to remove themselves from the presence of anyone who tries to rule them.
PLEASE LET ME GO MONKE, I HATE HUMANS SO MUCH
The original National Bolsheviks in both Russia and Germany had the same idea, believing socialism needed more blatant nationalism and racism than it already had under Lenin and Stalin. In the 1980s, the concept of third positionism was taken up by the far-right, fascist political party National Front in the United Kingdom. Today there has been a resurgence in third positionist fascism under various labels, from modern nazbols to "national anarchism" to neo-Eurasianism to (I argue) Dengism. It's completely unsurprising that an ideology founded by virulent racist and colonialist paternalists like Marx and Engels would find support with so many racist nationalists.
Fucker is trying to cancel Marx using literal nazi propaganda ROFL
I consider myself pretty anti-authoritarian myself, and thought that's what anarchism was as well. The whole point in my mind of anarchy is to find small communities that can typically mostly agree on issues, and they then vote democratically (either direct democracy or something like consensus democracy to help against majority rule). So there's still rules, just no power structure. Is that an accurate representation of anarchism? And how would that compare to anti-authoritarianism?
Well, now you're running headfirst into what "authority" even is. How would you enact these polices; throughway revolution? That's the most authoritarian thing there is, it's inherently a small subset of the population enforcing it's will on the rest. When you begin to unravel what the idea of "authoritarianism" even is you can see that any wielding of political power, period, can rightfully be called authoritarianism.
That can lead to greater underatsnding about how it's a term largely used by those in the imperial core to degrade those in the imperial periphery who've had the balls to wage any kind of real revolution. Authoritarianism is rarely applied to imperial core nations, no matter how brutal their policies are, and never in a way that dismisses everything about them; but the opposite is true for socialist countries.
I'm not sure how it would happen to an entire country like the US - obviously no amount of "vote harder" will make that happen - but figured it's already being experimented with on more local levels.
I think theoretically the whole voluntary association part of anarchism would handle the issue of "forcing" (via authority) anarchism on others. Of course, that's easier said then done in a world where just picking up your life and moving somewhere else is so non trivial.
Side note, but it really feels like online communities can do anarchism much better, since the voluntary association bit is so much more feasible online. I could see a nice lemmy instance or something that's run by charging each member a tiny amount, enough to pay for hosting (I can't imagine it'd be more than a few cents per person), and the policies of the instance would be fully democratically decided on. Bans would be decided by the community, etc.
This disregards the sacrifice and strength that those outside of the US have shown in creating revolutions. There are clear paths to victory for those who are willing to create a revolution and there are no clear paths to victory for those who aren't.
There's a reason that the only socialist states to exist are "authoritarian", it's because when it comes down to it they are in a war against the imperial core, yt supremacy, and capitalism because capital is willing to slaughter to maintain class supremacy.
Advocating against revolution like this means, at the end of the day, instead of opposing the abuse of the global majority you'll instead enable and benefit from it as a US citizen. Socialists, and I mean the ones who've fought hard and worked hard, have laid down their lives to find whatever system works. I think dismissing them out of hand as "authoritian" not only denies learning the complex and fascinating reality on the ground, but also reveals unchallenged western and white biases.
For a long time the going theory was parallel power - building community structures that would provide services for the community entirely outside the control of the state. Ie set up your own trash collection network, set up local childcare systems, free clinics, free libraries, tool libraries, bike shops, mutual aid for food and medicine. Whatever the community needs. Then you eat up the state from within as people increasingly recognize that they can provide their own damn services and don't actually need the state for a lot of things. Combine that with the tendency towards regular crises in capitalism, and for example the US's "No one is coming to save us" policy regarding disasters of all kinds, and you can, in theory, weaken the state until everyone just stops paying attention to it and it doesn't have enough soldiers to maintain control.
I have no idea what internet anarchists are doing these days. i really haven't met any with any real theory in a while.
The way I tend to think of it, is how authority is managed. In a vertically-oriented power system it is managed through layers of hierarchy.
What many anarchists aim for, including anarcho-communists, is a horizontal power system that doesn't have hierarchies to be exploited.
If there are rules, there is a power structure, but it can be organized through vertical and horizontal implementations. Authority in the former would be handed down, while authority in the latter would be participatory and derived through mutual agreement.