That requires knowing what "anarchists" or people who call themselves anarchists even want, nowadays it's mostly, like all internet leftism, a branding thing, I don't know if there are that many "real" anarchists left that actually have to be accommodated. Twitter anarcho-anti-communists wouldn't be any different than liberals after a revolution
I'm not american either but I think historically and up til now plenty if not most of the people who call themselves anarchists did so because that was the "safe" kind of leftism, plus it also had some state backing. I'm not talking about ursula k le guin or emma goldman here, there are real committed american anarchists but past a certain point, namely when everyone started using twitter, I don't think you can people's self-identification that seriously so I can't say that "anarchism" is that prevalent in the US so much so that it would have to be accommodated, idk maybe this doesn't make sense
to be fair so do a lot of the communists
I'd say the same about them, weirdoes, especially if they call themselves "marxist-leninists" but don't want to join a party or do anything.
It is. Here in Portland at least, the radical labor unions (the IWW and the ILWU) both operate on anarchist lines (although ILWU was originally communist lead), and most resistance to oppressive city policy has take the form of militant direct action. Meanwhile there's a small business movement of offering your shop to your workers when you go out of business, so now there's a lot of coops. There's also multiple anarchist info shops and a small collective farm just south of the city.
There are a lot of people who call themselves Anarchists. A lot of the online ones seem primarily interested in perpetuating American radical individualism in a "I don't want to participate in society and telling me that I have to cooperate with others and not just do anything I want with no repercussions is authoritarianism".
Most of my critiques of American Anarchism is trying to work with Anarchists who believe it primarily means they can do whatever they want and don't have any obligations to others beyond what they choose to have. Like they're not thinking about how to bring about a fundamentally different society, they're thinking about how great it would be not to have building codes and be able to do their own plumbing and electrical. It's all American individualism, "every man in his own castle" rugged frontiersman bs with a thin coat of left paint. There are more theoretically sound Anarchists but they're a lot thinner on the ground.
burn that bridge when we get to it :some-controversy:
nah the form of the unity government is crystalized during the revolution, a weak anarchist group might be a part of some China-style united front bloc of lesser parties, or they might be running several industries, unions, & formally/unformally sitting in all the important councils. the scope and scale of anarchist cooperation with communists and liberals in the Second Republic prove anarchists & communists don't burst into flames when their structures interface
I've been thinking about it and I've decided that after the revolution you'll be allowed to have cops in your federated commune if you really want.
Jokes aside, I think that the American radical movement has always defied easy categorization. Plenty of "anarchists" have also been "socialists." For example, Lucy Parsons.
Or the 1920s "direct actionist" movement was part of an organization founded in part by Eugene Debs, who would have been recognized as a "political actionist" by many of its members. In fact, Emma Goldman who worked with Debs on strike support also wrote speeches calling him naive for his belief in American Democracy.
Then later, the CIO organized in ways drew on the "direct actionist" practices of the IWW, but was linked to the CPUSA, which pursued political solutions in ways the IWW never did.
Unlike say, Russia, the American movement has never been cleanly divided between anarchists and socialists.
If you go to the most relevant socialist orgs in America, the DSA , you'll find "anarchists" and "Marxist Leninists" collaborating on the same projects through both political and direct action.
There will not be a "future American ML" state any more than America will become a federation of communes.
A revolutionary America would be a weird hodge podge of sovreign Indigenous nations, labor unions controlling industry, whatever institutions the farm and food worker movements make and the residue of the American state.
If there are good numbers of both, it wouldprobably manifest as less centralization of the state and some elements of syndicalism that may not otherwise be there, plus an enshrining of anarchist ideals and representation in the state (oxymoronic as that sounds lol). You might also see synthesis movements that combine elements of anarchism and ML-ish thought, as the simultaneous popularity of both alongside a successful unity movement would probably lead to cross-pollination.
I think assuming that the ideologies internet revolutionaries talk about will heavily inform the shape of society is naive. When BLM happened, the focus was on defunding the police, something only a small slice of more moderate anarchists had been talking about before that. A larger uprising would shape the discourse even more than BLM did.
Absolutely. The exact demands and conditions will dominate, at least in most people's minds.
I interpreted the premise of OP's question as a "what if?", where the hypothetical is that ML types "win" alongside anarchists. The exact conditions will matter, but unless it's a bourgeois revolution (which I wouldn't count as winning), the ideological commitments of those groups would play a big role.
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That requires knowing what "anarchists" or people who call themselves anarchists even want, nowadays it's mostly, like all internet leftism, a branding thing, I don't know if there are that many "real" anarchists left that actually have to be accommodated. Twitter anarcho-anti-communists wouldn't be any different than liberals after a revolution
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I'm not american either but I think historically and up til now plenty if not most of the people who call themselves anarchists did so because that was the "safe" kind of leftism, plus it also had some state backing. I'm not talking about ursula k le guin or emma goldman here, there are real committed american anarchists but past a certain point, namely when everyone started using twitter, I don't think you can people's self-identification that seriously so I can't say that "anarchism" is that prevalent in the US so much so that it would have to be accommodated, idk maybe this doesn't make sense
I'd say the same about them, weirdoes, especially if they call themselves "marxist-leninists" but don't want to join a party or do anything.
It is. Here in Portland at least, the radical labor unions (the IWW and the ILWU) both operate on anarchist lines (although ILWU was originally communist lead), and most resistance to oppressive city policy has take the form of militant direct action. Meanwhile there's a small business movement of offering your shop to your workers when you go out of business, so now there's a lot of coops. There's also multiple anarchist info shops and a small collective farm just south of the city.
There are a lot of people who call themselves Anarchists. A lot of the online ones seem primarily interested in perpetuating American radical individualism in a "I don't want to participate in society and telling me that I have to cooperate with others and not just do anything I want with no repercussions is authoritarianism".
Most of my critiques of American Anarchism is trying to work with Anarchists who believe it primarily means they can do whatever they want and don't have any obligations to others beyond what they choose to have. Like they're not thinking about how to bring about a fundamentally different society, they're thinking about how great it would be not to have building codes and be able to do their own plumbing and electrical. It's all American individualism, "every man in his own castle" rugged frontiersman bs with a thin coat of left paint. There are more theoretically sound Anarchists but they're a lot thinner on the ground.
burn that bridge when we get to it :some-controversy:
nah the form of the unity government is crystalized during the revolution, a weak anarchist group might be a part of some China-style united front bloc of lesser parties, or they might be running several industries, unions, & formally/unformally sitting in all the important councils. the scope and scale of anarchist cooperation with communists and liberals in the Second Republic prove anarchists & communists don't burst into flames when their structures interface
But the second republic did prove that anarchists tend to participate in workers states given the chance, which we don't talk about enough.
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I've been thinking about it and I've decided that after the revolution you'll be allowed to have cops in your federated commune if you really want.
Jokes aside, I think that the American radical movement has always defied easy categorization. Plenty of "anarchists" have also been "socialists." For example, Lucy Parsons.
Or the 1920s "direct actionist" movement was part of an organization founded in part by Eugene Debs, who would have been recognized as a "political actionist" by many of its members. In fact, Emma Goldman who worked with Debs on strike support also wrote speeches calling him naive for his belief in American Democracy.
Then later, the CIO organized in ways drew on the "direct actionist" practices of the IWW, but was linked to the CPUSA, which pursued political solutions in ways the IWW never did.
Unlike say, Russia, the American movement has never been cleanly divided between anarchists and socialists.
If you go to the most relevant socialist orgs in America, the DSA , you'll find "anarchists" and "Marxist Leninists" collaborating on the same projects through both political and direct action.
There will not be a "future American ML" state any more than America will become a federation of communes.
A revolutionary America would be a weird hodge podge of sovreign Indigenous nations, labor unions controlling industry, whatever institutions the farm and food worker movements make and the residue of the American state.
If there are good numbers of both, it wouldprobably manifest as less centralization of the state and some elements of syndicalism that may not otherwise be there, plus an enshrining of anarchist ideals and representation in the state (oxymoronic as that sounds lol). You might also see synthesis movements that combine elements of anarchism and ML-ish thought, as the simultaneous popularity of both alongside a successful unity movement would probably lead to cross-pollination.
I think assuming that the ideologies internet revolutionaries talk about will heavily inform the shape of society is naive. When BLM happened, the focus was on defunding the police, something only a small slice of more moderate anarchists had been talking about before that. A larger uprising would shape the discourse even more than BLM did.
Absolutely. The exact demands and conditions will dominate, at least in most people's minds.
I interpreted the premise of OP's question as a "what if?", where the hypothetical is that ML types "win" alongside anarchists. The exact conditions will matter, but unless it's a bourgeois revolution (which I wouldn't count as winning), the ideological commitments of those groups would play a big role.