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.
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.
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.
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.