As an anarchist, i think you are unequivocally wrong and are still engrossed too deeply in the propaganda of the western imperialist media.
Literally all of it is bullshit. Stop believing it. And stop applying western individualist liberal conception of freedom to other societies. It’s as bad as when people apply western perspectives to tribal societies within the field of anthropology, a view that was so backwards it died out 70 years ago.
Being anti-authoritary is cringe and the biggest mistake plaguing very-online anarchists right now. It's completely utopian and not grounded in reality.
To hold true to anarchist theory without being cringe you should consider instead adapting this mindset into being anti-unjust-hierarchies instead of anti-authority. We must use authority, we must use authority in the revolution, we must use authority to defend the revolution afterwards, anarchist or not, a shit load of authority will be used including policing, prisons, camps and shooting offenders dead. We can't be unrealistic with ourselves on this, even in the absolutely perfect scenario of an anarchist revolution that barely needs any help from MLs we would still run into all the same problems MLs run into, and with a lack of resources we will be forced through conditions to take up solutions that we otherwise would not want to take, because they will be the only available option other than releasing a fascist, murderer, or other extremely serious problem. We already know this to be a fact because we have already seen it happen in the anarchist Catalonia, I strongly recommend learning about the problems they faced as anarchists when they succeeded.
It is completely utopian to think otherwise.
I am currently pursuing MLism through necessity due to the extreme shortage of time we have. I can not live with the knowledge millions are going to die to climate change coming in the next 20-30 years and am well aware that anarchist praxis is not going to achieve the revolutions necessary in that timescale to avert it, that leaves taking up ML as the proven tool to start revolutions and the necessary one to save at least some lives. However I believe in anarchism, having been an anarchist for 20 years, it is still the goal.
Offtopic -- We desperately need community customisation (banners/images) so that people more easily recognise that they're in the anarchism comm before responding.
Anarchists just need to realize that they aren't alone, simple as that. You can create a hierarchy, authority free community all you want, but the outside world still exists. What's the plan for dealing with the remaining Capitalist world? Are anarchists going to align with Capitalists against the evil China and Cuba? What are the plans for the petit-boug and bourgeoisie? Are they just gonna love anarchy so much they don't do a counter revolution (not saying all Anarchists ignore these questions, they just don't have easy answers in their model).
The past two major Anarchist projects (the Commune and Catalunya) both failed pretty quickly whereas "authoritarian MLs" are still kicking and even growing.
There's a few others. The KPAM was completely conflict-free with MLs helping them set up, it existed at the wrong time and in the wrong place though, collapsing with the assassination of their leaders. Mao was very friendly with them but they were probably only able to exist because they had communists in control in the territory next door. As soon as the situation in the civil war changed and they didn't have the communists in the next door territory they got destroyed.
I think there's space for MLs and anarchists to coexist. I believe that as long as anarchists aren't presenting a threat to the ML nation then they have no reason to interfere with what the anarchists want to do next door. Living in the shadow of communists is probably the only way for any anarchist society to survive right now.
Anarchists would probably play a very significant role in the fading away of the communist state in a post-capitalist world, being the major advocators of it and leading by example in any of their own societies that they managed to set up and hold. I'm actually pretty sure that there would be a few that would immediately attempt to leap to this once capitalism is no longer a global threat.
Isn’t easy answer for bougie same as communist revolution? Hippity hoppity your factory/farm is now our property. The rest of capitalist world - yeah, they either have to be shielded, be prepared to vietcong their way for 10 years or be inside the imperial core
How you gonna take people's property without authority? What if they're charismatic and convince their subjects to give it back (c'mon man, y'all know this business is like a FAMILY where we treat everyone well!)
How could they retake it without auothority? it’s same as strike finished to logical end point.
If they are charismatic (or likelier, actually do something useful) and workers want to share, sure. I doubt amazon crew for example would welcome bezos.
Anarchists (allegedly, as I’m not enough read) are not opposed to army, they had army units before, just structured differently
We desperately need community customisation (banners/images) so that people more easily recognise that they’re in the anarchism comm before responding.
How easy would it be to pin a "Welcome, you're in XYZ comm" comment at the top of each thread by default? This might be an interim solution.
Comments can't be pinned. It's obviously another feature that would be good but no idea how far out that'll be. The customisation features and image embedding features literally exist, they're just disabled right now due to a security vulnerability that was discovered.
Offtopic – We desperately need community customisation (banners/images) so that people more easily recognise that they’re in the anarchism comm before responding.
Just a note on the state of things and how likely we are to get new features soon: this site is nearly one year old and you still cannot view page two of a user's history.
You have to refresh after clocking the "Next" button. It's annoying, but it's possible.
I'm not sure if I'm happy to have this knowledge or not. Thanks, though!
Actually you can, you just need to press refresh after you hit the page 2 button. Quirky bug, that hasn't been around a year though, half that I reckon, probably low priority because it still actually works if you press refresh.
You don't think it's just to maintain some sort of hierarchy in order to defend their revolutions until such a time as that defence is no longer necessary?
I am not convinced that it is possible to have a simultaneous global revolution, especially with the way mass media is today. Given this, it may be necessary for us to accept the need for the earliest revolutions to operate in this way. As time goes on, as capitalism weakens more and more, the need for such states decreases and I imagine the last revolutions will be incredibly token in the level of use of state and/or authoritarian measures because they simply will not be necessary.
The earliest revolution on the global scale have to contend with an absolute monster trying to crush them utterly. Their conditions will be vastly different to the later ones.
God I have so much to read. Still finishing Black Reconstruction, and I think Hammer and Hoe would be a good followup to that but I also just happened to find a copy of Caliban And The Witch in the lost and found at work.
just a weird fucking time to pick a fight on cuba I guess. You can criticize it, but probably don't do it in the middle of a bunch of libs saying the same stuff if you don't want to be lumped in with them.
I'm too stupid to call myself anything except a deathtoamericist. Pls don't go, i'll find bread memes and post them here.
Please do post bread memes. I always enjoy your memes and we need more anarchist memes.
It's not that I don't try, all the anarchist meme pages I follow post regular pan-leftist things you see anywhere besides some sectarian memes I won't post, so maybe I should read bread theory and make my own bread memes but that would make me a nerd and my own memes are usually garbage that don't get upvoted and that hurts my feelings man.
Anyways, there's this quick yogurt bread recipe I do as breakfast, it's the best.
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.
= we don't have the luxury of perfect principled idealism
If Cuba was merely a capitalist state with a red coat of paint, why would the US go through all this trouble and not just treat it like Paraguay or Panama?
I'd like to hear a way to deal with fascists that isn't just a flowery euphemism for the same mechanisms as a police force. Go to Chiapas and tell them to disarm like FARC did.
AuThOrItArIaNiSm
Can we just ban that fucking word please? It doesn't even mean anything except as a way to compare places like Cuba to the US.
It has no baring on anything going on in a society, except how much the US likes it.
It was literally invented as a term during the cold war during the years of sovietism and its perils being taught in classrooms.
If you're using authoritarian as a way to describe countries, especially ones the mother fucking US is at war with, you've eaten some bad propaganda and you need to expel it ASAP
Autonomous communist perspective on this:
The descriptor "authoritarian" is used to mean "using state power unilaterally against your opponents". But I think it doesn't matter quite so much as this question: "Do you concentrate power, or do you distribute power?" If you concentrate power, you are perpetuating a class division. But if you distribute power, you are tearing it down.
Informal hierarchies are a very real thing. They are what formal hierarchies evolve from. Many anarchists deny or downplay the prevalence of informal hierarchies, and often even bolster them. So you can sometimes have "libertarian" people that hoard power, and "authoritarian" people that disperse it. It doesn't have a certain correlation with that political axis.
Paging OP, @Balerion on this.
I am an anarchist as well. In my opinion, to be a consistent anarchist, you need to STOP BUYING US PROPAGANDA. This means not saying bullshit like "fascist Xi/Castro/Kim."
New idea, we have to have automod saying “define fascism” after each mention of the word. There are like ten definitions flowing around people’s head and it causes confusion.
Like primarily for me it’s state/petit bougie/lumpen alliance to crush workers movement, for somebody else it’s police state, for others it’s racist project, for others again it’s any authoritarian state. :shrug-outta-hecks: some of these would fit, while other won’t, but they all appeal to imagery of nazism, which is slightly different again
I mean fascism is an actual ideology, a shitty one, but it has consistent trends and tropes. Namely state sponsored racism, extreme privatization of industry, as well as heavy use of military to solve problems (such as labor strikes) and an imperialist desire, to name a few.
You'll find all of those things in a fascist state as part of the base line of its laws.
Stuff like authoritarianism is so vague, which is on purpose, and can be applied to literally any form of government.
because god forbid we admit that a socialist country might do bad things.
The person who acts like this does not really exist on this website. There exist people who act like this, but not really here. The overwhelming majority of people here will, if a socialist country does something bad, go "ok that sucks." The difference between a liberal and a leftist is that a liberal immediately follows that thought with, "Therefore we should commit genocide."
Please overthrow the US before you attempt or support regime change anywhere else
Ok good. But realistically, there's sweet fuck-all you can do to help the oppressed peoples of any "communist" state. And since liberals are brainwormed fuckwits who understand neither nuance nor critical support, any criticism of those governments is interpreted as tacit support of intervention, whether or not you actually called for it. Imagine you were filmed explaining your opinion on, say, Cuba for the local news, and you criticized both the embargo and the government, and they snip out the footage of you decrying the embargo, but keep the rest. You have, for all intents and purposes, given a reason to the powers that be to destroy the state, regardless of your intention. The reactionary brain only thinks in "western style liberalism good, everything else evil" binary. The notion that an embargo could be evil and damaging does not even once cross their mind. The notion that there are other forms of democracy beyond those of the exact electoral system of the US similarly does not cross their mind. That unless literal fascists can also run for elections then it's a brutal dictatorship.
You aren't those people, and I know you're not (although you did admit to voting in bourgeois elections, kinda cringe but w/e). But just like those tweets of the shitlib at the anti-Cuba rally For The Right Reasons™ being shocked there were so many MAGA chuds rubbing shoulders with her, you don't want to be that person.
Hey, I think the only way to counter the more authoritarian aspects of this website is by having more anarchist comrades, not less.
Right now there aren't enough to effectively counter it all so every time you post something critical, you'll get dozens of replies telling you you're wrong. I get it. It's exhausting. You have to frame your criticisms in a way that doesn't trigger that reaction.
But I know that the mods here are good folks. They do their hardest to ban all sectarianism and prevent the smaller communities (like anarchists) from getting drowned out.
One thing people have to remember is that AES countries are still, you know, states. There's oppression there. There's violence. There's everything anarchists criticize a state for. That doesn't mean anarchists want a freaking color revolution in China or Cuba so when people bring that up, it's just annoying.
There's also the fact that I'm cautious of criticizing AES too much. Like, whenever I read 20th century writers who're critical of USSR, it always hurts. Because though they had good intentions and often good ideas and analyses, they assumed that the USSR will be there forever. That their criticism can only improve it...
It hurts, you know? So, I don't want to make that mistake where I somehow end up contributing to something similar happening now. Anyways, sorry for the long reply. Hope you stick around.
Thanks, this is more or less what I was trying to get at but worded much better.
I love this site and I'm gonna keep using it, but I feel your frustration. Even though Hexbear is supposed to be a left unity site it's really not, it's an ML site. Anarchists are tolerated here but they're not really respected. As far as a lot of posters on this site are concerned anarchists are just baby leftists who need to be "educated" until they see the light and become MLs. The replies in this very thread prove my point. This attitude bothers me because I find it to be intellectually arrogant. Yes, it's true that those of us in the West were raised on a steady diet of anti-Communist propaganda and that AES states were/aren't as bad as we've been told.
But this doesn't mean that Marxism-Leninism is the proven path to Communism. The Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc collapsed and fell to counter-revolution. The socialist states that remained have had to make concessions to capital and liberalize their economies to some extent. As far as I'm concerned the jury is still out on which leftist ideology is the "correct" one. There's nothing wrong with having beliefs and being Anarchist or ML or whatever but we all need to be humble and be willing to be educated as well as educate.
My modlog comment for removing your comment:
This reads like an honest statement of a belief for the purposes of examination to me, but it’s still an “anarchists are baby MLs” take on an !anarchism thread about how the site isn’t friendly for anarchists. So with that context, I say this is inappropriate
I come from the anarchist tradition, and that stuff doesn't really bother me.
Ultimately we have to recognize that all systems, that subordinate humans to other humans, are the enemy. Anyone who makes an attempt that yields progress away from this and toward an egalitarian state of affairs is to be recognized. So I support Cuba as AES, and am adamant that leftists recognize Rojava as AES.
China may have made a Faustian bargain in the 70s, but it may yet benefit everyone on Earth. They might be repressive to dissenters and minorities, but they'll never be on the same level as Indian residential schools, the Tuskegee experiments, and so on.
I'm doubtful of how successful socialism can be when holding onto centralized state power, as I believe Capitalism and the State evolved together, and mirror each other's forms, and either one will resurrect the other if not dismantled.
Anyway it's just posting. I have a different opinion from the rest of the site about what works best, but we're all comrades. I'm not going to shit on ML projects or get in their way. Likewise I hope they will not crush the Destituent Commons that I take part in building.
Just curious, what would you have them (Cuba) do instead? If the US is attempting to overthrow a government in a place like that, what do you think would be the best course of action for them to stop it?
All I do is try to hold people to their stated principles, like ACAB or prison abolitionism, because I thought we fucking meant that shit when we said it.
We do, but we have our own house to clean and we do no favors to anyone by wasting energy on other countries. Anarchism is a thing that can only begin locally, the people that are protesting the Cuban government aren't anarchists, they are demanding US intervention.
And then I talk to the people who are nominally on my side, and it turns out they just want to slap a coat of red paint on all the terrible things capitalist states do. They start repeating conservative talking points without a hint of irony. They’re perfectly willing to justify anything a socialist state does under the reasoning that America is worse. Red Scare in reverse.
Cuba isn't a "capitalist state" it's one of the most besieged nations on earth alongside Palestine and DPRK.
If your “socialism” has police, prisons, billionaires, or re-education, I want nothing to do with it, and that’s a hill I will die on.
You're thinking of communism, the end goal of socialism AND anarchism, also Cuba does not have any billionaires that I am aware of.
Isn’t a better world supposed to be the point of all this? Or is it just about winning?
No it's about supporting our comrades around the world and not doing things that advance imperial interests. There are tiers of hierarchy, the top being US imperialist hegemony, first we must unconditionally oppose that (this does not mean uncritical support for anti-imperialist states, for example Syria certainly deserves less praise than Cuba).
We're anarchists, why would we tie ourselves to Lenin's definition of socialism? If a worker goes to work the grow capital they'll never themselves use. Whether that's for the state or an employer, that's capitalism.
We should oppose US intervention, but there's no point making apologies for Cuba or any other state.
Capital is power, and capital concentrated into the hands of a state that serves its people is much different than capital/power concentrated in the hands of private entities or states that serve private capital.
In the perspective of world systems theory, capitalism used as power to fend off imperialism is much more beneficial for the working people of the world than capital used as power BY imperialists. It’s as simple as that.
I agree, it is more humane capitalism. Russia challenges western hegemony and Norway does capitalism more humanly. Both are capitalist states and I don't see a point in using a different name for them.
It is better that Cuba exists as a communist controlled state than as a capitalist controlled state.
That's not the core of my argument. It's that we should be against bad things, even when they're for the greater good.
Is punching Nazis authoritarian or anti-authoritarian?
I know this is reductive but that's the point we have to get to the bottom of this issue.
Punching nazis is what you do when you can't deradicalize them. It's an unpleasant act and in my experience anti fa demos are traumatizing. But when there's immanent harm, you do what you must.
Like I said, anarchism is anti violence, not pacifist
The issue is that we don't have the luxury of denouncing violence as a blanket position given the reality we face.
We do have the luxury. We need to tell stories that affirm our values and ends, which means opposing violence. We also need to oppose imperialism. We can do both.
Obvs we need to be careful about what stories we tell where, but we still need those stories.
If you punch them in the street, it is neither. If you punch them while they're locked in a jail cell, it is unnecessary.
WRT capitalists and counter-revolutionaries, if someone is poised to repress you, you fight them, disarming and expropriating them. Once they're expropriated, and don't pose a material threat, do you still need to kick them while they're down?
Being against bad things outside of the recognition of the context of the reality of global geopolitics is not really being against bad things if the outcomes turn out worse. Look at the USSR collapsing: anarchists like myself usually argued that the USSR was just state capitalism and as bad as the USA. But that collapse has been a disaster for the working class both in Russia and globally. I’d rather fight the worst imperialistic capitalist hegemon and work our way toward fixing the bad things in less-bad countries. To do otherwise is to strengthen the hegemon.
In the past, as an anarchist, i once celebrated any resistance by anarchists or working class people against any oppression no matter what. But having seen that rebellion be used seamlessly by the global capitalist hegemon over and over to tighten its grip globally on control and power, thereby making things worse overall for the global working class, I have changed my mind and think there are irresponsible ways of rebellion that actually strengthen global capitalism even when they sometimes overthrow a local node of oppression. The only path to anarchism is through state communism that builds power against the capitalist network of world power until it can crush it. It’s literally the only way.
