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.
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.