I think there are great responses to these points (often in the form of “what better alternatives do you have?”, which is usually a good response to anarchist critiques)
I don't think Bakunin is right overall. I'm saying you can make a reasonable point in a losing argument, and that point might have value even if you ultimately go a different direction.
The entire point of the damn critique is that revolutionary tyranny is bad.
NJR is using that to left punch, while ignoring that there is no anarchist method that does not involve equal or greater violence than a traditional Marxist one. Engels made this point and I've never heard an anarchist response to it, ever.
But this isn't just not providing an alternative, it's incoherent!
It's positing a Marxist boogeyman to an ideology that historically has advocated and done the exact same thing. The Paris Commune didn't exactly ask nicely, did they?
And as head of the DSA, that's what he's proposing we do, ask nicely for the reins of the state. To do what, exactly?
This isn't an attack on you but NJR's line of reasoning is incoherent and he must know that.
You cannot use an anti state argument as a fucking DemSoc. And you can't handwring about tyranny as a fucking anarchist! Car bombs and molotovs aren't exactly fucking horizontal organizing.
I don't think Bakunin is right overall. I'm saying you can make a reasonable point in a losing argument, and that point might have value even if you ultimately go a different direction.
The entire point of the damn critique is that revolutionary tyranny is bad.
NJR is using that to left punch, while ignoring that there is no anarchist method that does not involve equal or greater violence than a traditional Marxist one. Engels made this point and I've never heard an anarchist response to it, ever.
But this isn't just not providing an alternative, it's incoherent!
It's positing a Marxist boogeyman to an ideology that historically has advocated and done the exact same thing. The Paris Commune didn't exactly ask nicely, did they?
And as head of the DSA, that's what he's proposing we do, ask nicely for the reins of the state. To do what, exactly?
This isn't an attack on you but NJR's line of reasoning is incoherent and he must know that.
You cannot use an anti state argument as a fucking DemSoc. And you can't handwring about tyranny as a fucking anarchist! Car bombs and molotovs aren't exactly fucking horizontal organizing.