I've read the sentence about anarchists ten times and I have no idea WTF he is on about. Btw the nerd's name is Peter Hudis.
Edit: FFS Tankies and anarchists stop shitting on each other here. Take your struggle session elsewhere. You're both my comrades.
:bugs-stalin: Stalinism
:stalin-fancy: Socialism In One Country
spoiler
this is a joke
What if I'm a self proclaimed Stalinist? :stalin-smokin:
:bean-think:
No, you are right. People are being civil. I'm sorry, but I've been in this online debate 100 times already, and I have no desire to reignite it.
Good analysis, btw
Theres some hyperspecific brainwoms in believing in Stalinism but also separating Marxism-Leninism and Stalinism as both equally bad concepts in his mind.
"Reformist social democratic version of socialism" is such an incoherent nonsensical thing to say after 1917, wtf do western faux-intellectuals mean when they say this shit, cause more often than not judging by context they seem to referring to Keynesianism and that always has me going :jesse-wtf:
Also lefties in the west need to get the difference between defeat and failure, the murder of a million communist Indonesians is not a "failure of an alternative" it's a military defeat, same with Chile, same with the Central American socialist experiments, same with the Cuban blockade, same with the apocalyptic genocides visited on Vietnam and Korea
A bullet or a bomb doesn't give a damn about the theoretical underpinnings of your collectivized consumer goods sector
The problem with contemporary western marxism is that there's no theory of state violence, the dipshits have completely subsumed the liberal fantasy of civil government wholesale, just look at the bit about anarchists.... "Nor did the anarchists fill this void in developing an alternative, since their correct emphasis on democratic and nonstatist forms of decision-making largely failed to consider that the capitalist law of value can exist even under conditions of cooperative or collective production"
No you dumb motherfucker they "failed" to develop an alternative cause if they tried they would be murdered by one of the hundred alphabet agencies, which naturally leaves only harmless life-stylism and entryist activism as viable routes for alienated individuals living under said alphabet agency regime
Dipshit is squinting at a gnarled burned husk of a tree wondering what happened, while ignoring the forest fire still burning in the distance
The failure of anarchism was with the end of the "direct actionist" wing of the labor movement in the 1950s. Anarchism offered one of the strongest socialist alternatives this country has ever seen and they were punished for it. They were rewarded with pinkerton gunfire, state assassination, imprisonment, AFL raids, and more.
There were internal issues, sure, like the split between the anarchist and socialist wings of the union, or the failure to unite immigrant workers with black workers, but they still probably wouldn't have withstood the outside pressures.
C'mon my dude, this is like, some pretty lukewarm contemporary Marxist discourse. The USSR did fail, it collapsed; it quite literally does not exist anymore. We don't have to pretend every project was a perfect uplifting of the masses that was only betrayed by capital, especially considering the more recent developments of Marxism (in particularly Leninism) claim to have adapted to deal with capitalist encirclement.
Note that I have no idea who this nerd is and am not necessarily endorsing his writings.
Leaving aside that the USSR was attacked and sabotaged at every opportunity, are we going to forget Cuba, China, Vietnam, the DPRK, and every other socialist state that ended with violence brought forth from the imperialist nations.
it collapsed;
I can't get over how incorrect this is. Western money was instrument in breaking up the USSR. A referendum supported keeping communism in the country.
and yet the infrastructure had already been set up that despite it going against the wishes of the people living there, communism left the country. that weakness to foreign capital is a weakness of the system, especially one that claims to count for such factors
China followed a different line entirely, there was the entire sino-soviet split after all. a critique of the USSR's communism does not imply a damning indictment on China.
Are you literally going to ignore aggressive and violent efforts to destroy the USSR by the West? Whatevs, this isn't the place for a struggle session. Please leave my lighthearted post to dunk on a Western intellectual nerd.
That is not what they said. They are saying the aggressive and violent efforts to destroy the USSR succeeding means the USSR had weaknesses.
We don’t have to pretend every project was a perfect uplifting of the masses that was only betrayed by capital
Sure and if thats what the writter was going against no one would complain . But both using the narrative of "revolutionary 19th and early 20th century socialism were TAKEN OVER by Stalinism and Marxism Lenninsm " with negative connotations, pointing to it as a/the reason for the defeat and as a mistake nontheless and taking the position of “no socialist proejct of them succeeded in representing a viable alternative and all degraded into capitalism” are positions less nuanced and neutral historicaly compared to the ones you describe. You cant describe that as having a lukewarm "Communist projects have been imperfect and for those that failed their internal contradictions and wrong decisions were responsible in a large part"
Anarchos in this thread think the intro writer is clowning tankies, tankies think he's clowning anarchos :picard:
Motherfuckers stop arguing with the phantoms in your head and read the paragraph very carefully, he's insulting both of you and dressing it up with left-tized language
Amazing how easy liberals have it, all they need to do is take one of the most important books of the socialist canon, add some cross-wrecking bullshit into the intro and boom you'll have multiple tendencies arguing pedantic nonsense and completely missing the fact the piece of shit gave himself away in the first sentence
For this round Liberals: 1
Leftists: 0
Reminds me of the foreword to the version of pedagogy of the oppressed that I found where some dude (not Friere) introduces the book and then goes off on a tangent about authoritarian countries and how the pedagogy can liberate them and how people living under authoritarianism should study these theories to free themselves and on and on. like bruh, I thought we were talking about colonialism
I was reading an article just last night about Aristotelian vs Postmodernist vs Brecht style storytelling and out of the nowhere the author inserts a criticism of Brecht’s storytelling by saying that Brecht didn’t denounce Stalin
Becht had to testify in front of the house un American activities in the second red scare, he was an actual leftist and one of the few that showed up. He didn't lie or anything, he just didn't fall on an imaginary sword. They accused him of writing revolutionary songs (what a thing to be accused of...) and he said he wrote then about the Nazis and of course he was for the fall of that government.
Wow so they grilled him for writing a song about toppling the Nazi empire.. fucking crackers
Perhaps I shouldn't give the the translator the benefit of the doubt, but are they even shitting on people, or are they just rather annoyingly stating the unfortunate fact that our historical paths to revolution are still in development and we are still ruled by the bourgeoisie, regardless of tendency?
I made a comment elsewhere pointing out this person most likely lacks any conception or theory of state violence, just going by his use of terms like "defective conception" or phrasing like "The result has been one failure and halfway house after another" this is not how someone would talk if they understood the absolute centrality of military affairs to the history of 20th century socialism (i.e. Allied invasion during the Russian Civil War)
Instead, his opposition seems to be ideological/theoretical and there aren't a lot of good places for that to go and his gibberish snipe at anarchists along with his bizarre use of the term "reformist social democratic version of socialism" which was apparently "taken over" by Leninists and Stalinists points to him being some social liberal who probably takes Hayek's nonsense critiques seriously
It's especially damning, considering our worst enemies have always had a clear if hostile understanding of the military history of socialism while shitlibs who write propagandistic intros to our books ignore it completely
In a further speech at the National Press Club, Washington D.C. in June 1954, Churchill lamented:
If I had been properly supported in 1919, I think we might have strangled Bolshevism in its cradle, but everybody turned up their hands and said, ‘How shocking!
Historian John Thompson argues that while the intervention failed to stop the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, it did prevent its spread to central Europe
However, it did succeed in so thoroughly engaging the forces of revolutionary expansionism that the countries of war-torn eastern and central Europe, potentially most susceptible to the Bolshevik contagion, were able to recover enough social and economic balance to withstand Bolshevism. The interventionist attempt left an ugly legacy of fear and suspicion to future relations between Russia and the other great powers, and it strengthened the hand of those among the Bolshevik leadership who were striving to impose monolithic unity and unquestioning obedience on the Russian people.
Hard to say, because a couple of paragraphs is not nearly enough context. He's not wrong about AES nations, though. Playing by the West's rules creates some pretty serious contradictions within communist states existing in a world dominated by capitalism. The USSR tried to resolve them through a strong bureaucracy, which ultimately failed when the top of that bureaucracy was infiltrated and influenced by the West, became too powerful, and carved up the productive capacity and took it for themselves. China is attempting to resolve those contradictions through consumerism, aka "treats". So far this has been an extremely successful release valve for internal pressures, but it's also why a lot of "one true leftist" types get a hair up their asses about China. Thankfully, it looks like Xi and the Politburo recognize that they're playing a pretty dangerous game with this strategy and are taking steps to limit the influence of wealth and the wealthy. I thought it was also pretty heartening to read that many younger Chinese, both party members and not, are rejecting consumerism, which is inherently individualist, and expressing a desire to work towards more collective goals.
As far as the line about anarchism, I really wish people would just shut up about anarchism, and I say this as an anarchist. Anarchism is the ideal, and ultimately the only way I believe human beings can sustainably exist as a technological species over long time periods, but we are multiple generations away from even having the vocabulary to talk meaningfully about anarchism. We need a world socialist revolution first, and multiple generations of people existing with a collective mindset, before humans can realistically conceive of eliminating hierarchies. Anarchism can only be successful when it arises from an already collectivized society.
I don't really wanna get involved in the struggle session I just wanted to say I think this is a really excellent take about anarchism in the modern day, especially in the imperial core. I've been trying to find a way to square my own views, which tend to be more inline with anarchist thought, with the real successes of ML thought and a desire to support AES nations. Especially in the context of anarchists in the imperial core, who so often say things I can agree with on principle but I think are foolish in our current situation.
Are we really going to fault the perceived flaws of AES, and ignore their poor initial development and the very aggressive attempts at their destruction?
Honestly anarchists are my comrades and I don't allow anyone to shit on them.
Nobody is "faulting" anyone. This is hexbear, not Twitter, know your audience, my dude. It's very ok to talk about why socialist projects have failed in this space. In fact, I'd say it's a necessity to talk about that here. Of course the USSR failed because of Western influence, but it's important understand how and why that was able to happen. Do you think China and Vietnam would be as successful as they are if they hadn't talked about it? You seem to be taking a very dogmatic approach to all this and I don't think that's healthy.
Anarchists are comrades, again, I am one. I'm not shitting on anarchism, obviously, just stating that it's really too abstract a concept at this point in human development to really be teleological.
You seem to be taking a very dogmatic approach to all this and I don’t think that’s healthy.
Awful struggle session language. Please leave here, I'm done with this convo.
I meant healthy in the context of an exchange of ideas, not that you are an unhealthy person. I should have used productive, instead, sorry.
We need a world socialist revolution first
Respectfully, you're just a socialist. Lenin would agree with you about anarchism being the eventual goal and only future for humanity. He might call it "upper communism," but the idea is the same.
A core part of what makes anarchism different is its insistence on doing communism here and now, whether you call that direct action, prefiguration, communization, alignment of ends and means, acting for today, worker self management or whatever.
Imagine buying a copy of Marx and you get left anticommunism :lenin-rage:
The sentence about anarchists is a pretty standard Marxist critique of anarchists. E.g. where is the successful anarchist revolution? How can anarchist praxis take on capitalism systemically and internationally?
We're still in the waiting room of history. The question of "socialism or barbarism" could go either way. The Marxist-Leninists, Social Democrats and Anarchists did not definitively answered that question. It's hard to look at the end of the 20th century and not see it as a defeat of the left.
There's points of light in the 21st century, but the struggle is uphill. It is unclear if China or any other project/formation will being able to move past the capitalist mode of production and capitalist social relations globally. That sucks, but it's truth.
Idk much about this but apparently the Chinese revolution included a strong current of anarchism? I feel like the whole ideas of decentralization, horizontal/nonhierarchical organizing, dual systems of power, etc make a lot of sense in the context of peasants taking the lead in the revolution as opposed to the proletariat. And I think there was generally an attitude of cooperation because the reactionary nationalists and liberals and so on had to be defeated.
Seems like we should learn from that. But again idk much there historically speaking so maybe someone could post some recommendations.
Yeah, and Mao studied the anarchists. It shows up in ideas like mass line, some of the pluralistic political bodies the CPC experimented with in the early years, and especially the great proletarian cultural revolution.
I know it's popular to shit of the GPCR and it was, for sure, a fucking mess, but it tried to put into practice things everyone here would support: the city as a classroom, practical education, worker self management, and more. A lot of those were probably directly related to anarchist ideas present in the progressive milieu that supported the revolution.
The Marxist-Leninists, Social Democrats and Anarchists did not definitively answered that question. It’s hard to look at the end of the 20th century and not see it as a defeat of the left.
This may be true but you are being a bit generous in assuming thats all the writter is saying.
Both using the narrative of "revolutionary 19th and early 20th century socialism were TAKEN OVER by Stalinism and Marxism Lenninsm " with negative connotations, pointing to it as a/the reason for the defeat and as a mistake nontheless and taking the positions of "non of them succeeded in representing a viable alternative and all degraded into capitalism" are positions less nuanced and neutral historicaly compared to the ones you describe
E.g. where is the successful anarchist revolution?
Every squat, every FNB, every bubble of anarchy that exists, whether for days or years, is a successful anarchist revolution. You have different measures of success.
That's just reducing the word "revolution" to nothing. Those structures just exists (temporarily) within capitalism.
Those structures provide alternatives within capitalism, just as China or literally every ML led state provides an alternative within capitalism.
They're not equivalent. They are both successful in their own categories.
Sure, i don't doubt that. I acknowledge what they have done up until now, what i wrote wasn't a value judgment either (or at least i didn't intend it as one, if it came across like that, sorry). I just wanted to show that the two ideologies have different (valid imo) standards of success, that, if projected over each other, always lead to sectarian dick measuring contests. Marxists want a robust state in order to protect themselves for prolonged periods. Anarchists, obviously, don't want that, they want the people to be able to protect themselves autonomously and whatnot. Both standards have their own successes, for Marxists it's China, for anarchists it's Exarcheia, it's community centers in Chile, it's long running mutual aid programs in the US.
You fell for my trap reported for sectarianism
JK.
"Carving out little enclaves of personal freedom" is way underselling it. It's about creating spaces where notions of capitalism are rejected that, if spread, can subvert capitalist institutes as happened multiple times throughout history. In Greece anarchists are clashing with the state for decades. At the end of the 90's/start of the 00's anarchists were at the forefront of the antiglobalist movement.
It's no use comparing third world liberation movements with first world anarchist ones, since the former a lot of times had state backing, while anarchists - especially in the first world - don't. Anticolonial struggles have much bigger backing regardless of ideology.
It's not just popular in the imperial core, South America is full of anarchists.
While I certainly agree with the principle of these spaces and am supportive of anarchist projects as I am socialist ones, I simply cannot see an anarchist movement fomenting revolution in the imperial core. The state would exterminate such a movement long before ever even considering accepting it in any way. The level of collective organization needed to oppose the state in this scenario would go far beyond what anarchists have ever executed, and even that may not be enough.
I think anarchist spaces are important and can make an immediate difference for individuals benefiting from them, which is huge and actual praxis, but I simply cannot see it as a tool for revolution unless it was part of some sort of united left front.
They are facing the same kind of oppression as any kind of leftist movement. The FBI went and straight up murdered Fred Hampton. Everyone is vulnerable.
If spread, can subvert capitalist institutes as happened multiple times throughout history. In Greece anarchists are clashing with the state for decades
I dont know if Greece isnt a proper example. Despite doing some good work and having greater numbers per capita compared to other countries anarchist clashes and spaces in Greece have neither spread nor subverted any capitalist institutions to any meaningful degree .Their movement and their spaces and projects arent viewed positively by even 0.5% of the Greek population by this point and for decades plus now. Didnt get any boost from the complete colapse of the economy and institutions and at almost any aspect of political organizing and action they are often matched or outpaced in scale or success by combinations of secondary communist and socialist parties , the youth wing of one of the most ossified ML parties on the planet and let alone the party itself . Especialy in Unionism/syndicalism and in anything oustide the 2 Major cities (Athina, Thessaloniki) they are close to nonexistant. They were in the forefront of leftist anti-status quo dissent in the mid to late 90s a but that was mostly a result of the communist movement emerging in the mid-late 70s from 30+ years of state killings, purges,exiles and illegal status comparable to Latam or eastasian nations, having an OK decade and then meeting both the fall of the ussr and a couple of horrible decisions . But anarchists never politicaly capitalized on that beyond solidifying a hold on preexisting enclaves and in niche music and art scenes because of rampant anti-organizationalism beyond street clashes at the time and propaganda of the deed dumbasses everywhere giving a chance for public opinion to rapidly turn against them . I have a lot of friends and even relatives that went through that period both both in the anacrhist and communist left and a lot that still organize in various places
I like this. The transition from feudalism to capitalism took centuries in Europe and the two modes of production lived side by side in various proportions and forms that whole time. Creating those spaces you describe to me actually feels like like buds of socialism developing within the capitalist mode of production.
We’re still in the waiting room of history. The question of “socialism or barbarism” could go either way. The Marxist-Leninists, Social Democrats and Anarchists did not definitively answered that question. It’s hard to look at the end of the 20th century and not see it as a defeat of the left.
Compared to the end of the 19th century where the entire world has been almost completely colonized by Europe and the US, the end of the 20th century is paradise. 1990s India, with all its problems, is orders of magnitude better than 1890s India where the UK was free to starve millions of Indians to death. 1990s China was better than 1890s China where millions of Chinese were transformed by the UK into junkies. 1990s Zaire, despite being ruled by some Western-backed dictator, was better than 1890s Congo Free State where millions of Congolian hands were paid as tribute to Leopold. I could go on and on.
Yes, the 1990s was a low point compared with the 1950s and 1960s, but the path towards the end of exploitation and class society is not smooth. There's going to be setbacks and retreats. One must not be coy about the achievements of socialism while completely dismissing the socialist project with the appearance of a single setback.
Yeah i had that book, give it to a friend. I regret paying extra 50 pages of forewords for word salad about how alain badiou is the only real maoist or some shit
