when people ask about your political beliefs irl, the term 'anarchist' is so thoroughly poisoned now that calling yourself an anarchist (and anarcho-communist is even worse) is the best way to have all your opinions instantly dismissed as nonserious edgy teenager shit by the vast majority of people (and calling yourself a communist makes people assume youre ml and then you get stuck in endless discussions about stalin and shit)
nobody irl knows what syndicalist means, but it sounds more serious (and is not entirely incorrect), and is a way of responding that indicates that you have an actual position, thats not just socdem. so then you can get on with the business of actually talking about political shit without being instantly written-off (especially if its about work/unionism etc)
I'll help derail here by saying that sounds like a bad way to present yourself politically. if we view ourselves as evangelists for radicalism (which we in fact are), then deception is not our ally. if our politics are absurd after the end of history, then we only reinforce this framing by trying to amputate our history just because it aches.
yeah i dont disagree although here i think the issue is less one of hiding radicalism and more of just particular words acquiring so much baggage that theyre perhaps not worth trying to salvage, and i unfortunately think anarchism is one of those words. i think its less a case that the politics are absurd and more just that the word itself is
and i do think its a different issue with the terms anarchism and marxism-leninism (or communism). for the latter, people will think of beardy old political theorists as well as the actual history of ml states, and it will be filtered through a tonne of anticommunist baggage but it will at least generally be thought of as part of a serious historical/political/intellectual tradition. and i think youre right that those terms are worth defending.
but when you say 'anarchism', absolutely nobody will be thinking of kropotkin or catalonia or makhno or propaganda of the deed or 'anarchist bombthrowers' (or even antifa), theyre gonna think of sex pistols and teenagers in black clothes aimlessly rebelling against bedtimes and dont even have the foggiest idea that theres an actual serious history or intellectual tradition behind it at all. so amputating the term anarchism really isnt amputating that history (which i agree is worth preserving) because absolutely nobody except leftists associates it with that history in the first place. it just means you can have a discussion of actual radical views without first sucking all the oxygen out of the discussion by immediately going on the backfoot to defend a label that people think of as more of a joke than an ideology. it just feels like a trap to me. and i dont even like the label of anarchist (or prescriptive political labels in general for that matter) much anyway, it doesnt fully represent my political views in any case (which are more marxist than the label implies)
whereas syndicalist allows you to sidestep the 'whats your label' question and maintain your very-serious-person bonafides, and pivot straight to talking about militant bottom-up industrial unionism and mass withdrawal of labour etc as a key source of workers power towards the ends of radical and even revolutionary change, and the history of how that power has been wielded quite successfully by workers in the past - talking about actual anarchist views without the label getting in the way. and i have these discussions mostly in a work context trying to unionise more of my workplace and radicalise people already in the union, and i really do think labels particularly hinder more than help in that context
im very aware that calling myself syndicalist is a very suboptimal solution, and i dont know what the real answer is. maybe just socialist, but thats so vague and has been co-opted by socdems and even the fucking labor party. maybe just leftist and leave it at that is better, i dunno
I think the lesson here is that it's better to be hated but respected than liked but disrespected. For all the anticommunist bullshit, there's still a degree of respect that liberal society has towards MLs, even if it's filtered through contempt. Liberal society reserves no such respect for anarchism and it's not like liberal society particularly likes anarchism either outside of very surface adoption of its aesthetics.
It's incredibly precarious for a political ideology to be seen as a joke because it's going to attract dead beats and losers who will hold that political ideology back.
Syndicalist was the first leftist label i used for myself when I went down the socialism rabbit hole, and for me it was just because I wasn't comfortable calling myself a communist yet even though I could feel myself being pulled in that direction every time I engaged with theory. But yeah it definitely has the air of a position you get at through Very Serious Thinking, even if you just kind of picked it randomly out of a bin.
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woah now, think of all the important things the IWW have accomplished in the last 50 years
ah wait youre right nvm
piss off. you're right but piss off.
look I fucking hate it too okay? I dont want to be right here
long ago I saw this one joke on socialist reddit about the IWW I still think about sometimes:
i do sometimes irl and i know others who do too
when people ask about your political beliefs irl, the term 'anarchist' is so thoroughly poisoned now that calling yourself an anarchist (and anarcho-communist is even worse) is the best way to have all your opinions instantly dismissed as nonserious edgy teenager shit by the vast majority of people (and calling yourself a communist makes people assume youre ml and then you get stuck in endless discussions about stalin and shit)
nobody irl knows what syndicalist means, but it sounds more serious (and is not entirely incorrect), and is a way of responding that indicates that you have an actual position, thats not just socdem. so then you can get on with the business of actually talking about political shit without being instantly written-off (especially if its about work/unionism etc)
I'll help derail here by saying that sounds like a bad way to present yourself politically. if we view ourselves as evangelists for radicalism (which we in fact are), then deception is not our ally. if our politics are absurd after the end of history, then we only reinforce this framing by trying to amputate our history just because it aches.
yeah i dont disagree although here i think the issue is less one of hiding radicalism and more of just particular words acquiring so much baggage that theyre perhaps not worth trying to salvage, and i unfortunately think anarchism is one of those words. i think its less a case that the politics are absurd and more just that the word itself is
and i do think its a different issue with the terms anarchism and marxism-leninism (or communism). for the latter, people will think of beardy old political theorists as well as the actual history of ml states, and it will be filtered through a tonne of anticommunist baggage but it will at least generally be thought of as part of a serious historical/political/intellectual tradition. and i think youre right that those terms are worth defending.
but when you say 'anarchism', absolutely nobody will be thinking of kropotkin or catalonia or makhno or propaganda of the deed or 'anarchist bombthrowers' (or even antifa), theyre gonna think of sex pistols and teenagers in black clothes aimlessly rebelling against bedtimes and dont even have the foggiest idea that theres an actual serious history or intellectual tradition behind it at all. so amputating the term anarchism really isnt amputating that history (which i agree is worth preserving) because absolutely nobody except leftists associates it with that history in the first place. it just means you can have a discussion of actual radical views without first sucking all the oxygen out of the discussion by immediately going on the backfoot to defend a label that people think of as more of a joke than an ideology. it just feels like a trap to me. and i dont even like the label of anarchist (or prescriptive political labels in general for that matter) much anyway, it doesnt fully represent my political views in any case (which are more marxist than the label implies)
whereas syndicalist allows you to sidestep the 'whats your label' question and maintain your very-serious-person bonafides, and pivot straight to talking about militant bottom-up industrial unionism and mass withdrawal of labour etc as a key source of workers power towards the ends of radical and even revolutionary change, and the history of how that power has been wielded quite successfully by workers in the past - talking about actual anarchist views without the label getting in the way. and i have these discussions mostly in a work context trying to unionise more of my workplace and radicalise people already in the union, and i really do think labels particularly hinder more than help in that context
im very aware that calling myself syndicalist is a very suboptimal solution, and i dont know what the real answer is. maybe just socialist, but thats so vague and has been co-opted by socdems and even the fucking labor party. maybe just leftist and leave it at that is better, i dunno
I think the lesson here is that it's better to be hated but respected than liked but disrespected. For all the anticommunist bullshit, there's still a degree of respect that liberal society has towards MLs, even if it's filtered through contempt. Liberal society reserves no such respect for anarchism and it's not like liberal society particularly likes anarchism either outside of very surface adoption of its aesthetics.
It's incredibly precarious for a political ideology to be seen as a joke because it's going to attract dead beats and losers who will hold that political ideology back.
Syndicalist was the first leftist label i used for myself when I went down the socialism rabbit hole, and for me it was just because I wasn't comfortable calling myself a communist yet even though I could feel myself being pulled in that direction every time I engaged with theory. But yeah it definitely has the air of a position you get at through Very Serious Thinking, even if you just kind of picked it randomly out of a bin.
it's a tendency in search of a movement, like most labels contemporary western leftos give ourselves
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"syndicalist" just sounds like a faction from a 80s/90s sci-fi book. Nothing more.
tbh it's branding, because ideology for some people is just a product to consume to have personality. Leftist label is just red astrology
Also we get it you are a syndicalist, i also like Heart of Iron 4: Kaiserreich
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