The Bolsheviks did not make their army reliant on the ad hoc theft from peasants. They instituted quotas and taxes to feed the cities and soldiers. Once they adopted a taxation model, conflict with peasants more or less disappeared, they just opposed early war communism’s heavy handedness. The Bolsheviks used proper supply lines and it is unsurprising that they beat The Black Army who constantly formed and dissolved in response to pressures.

How many of these peasants were voluntarily taxed vs how many of them were taxed at the head of a bayonette? How was that bayonette any different than the one weilded by Tsar Nicholas II? Was it because it was Red?

There is very little difference between ad hoc theft and taxation in a civil war. At the end of the day it's some guy saying "I declare this a country, now pay tax." vs "I'm gonna need you to give me a sack of grain."

Actually I was speaking of the material reasons the Black Army had military successes in some ways and not others and how they did not find a realistic synthesis of peasant and worker interests and that this led to a direct conflict with Bolsheviks for material reasons, not just old stories about theoretical disputes and the various other romantic mythologies of “backstabbing”, which is what ignorany online “anarchists” obssess over.

Firstly lets introspect on "direct conflict with Bolsheviks for material reasons". Why did the Bolsheviks need to take Ukraine? Why not stay in St. Petersburg and Moscow after defeating the Whites? Why take the far east? Was there not enough land for left unity? Or was it something else? Why not stay allied with Moscow and have a Black Hulliopole and let the Western Ukranians decide their own fate when ridden of the Russian and German imperialists and their clients? These were real decisions, why were they made?

I think I was fairly clear in the fact that I was expressing a feeling that anarchists feel. A lot of the feelings you express regardless if you admit to them or not, are from a point of view that does not have a clear moral superiority. My attempt here is to stop the engagement of apologetics and counter arguments. There is not point to any of this but to learn from the mistakes of Bolsheviks and Anarchists and that includes to admitting to them and not rationalizing and justifying them. My attempt at comparing Bolsheviks to Anarchists is an attempt to point out that mistakes are made on both sides. If you're attempting to explain away my answer to the OP question, you're barking up the wrong tree. I literally do not want to have a typical red black fight over ancient history that we' both should be better than defending as if they were our favorite sports team.

If we want to talk about the feelings of online bolsheviks, very often they say things like this:

There was, of course, a grand greater good of feeding industrial workers and soldiers, securing an industrial base to fight off the rest of Europe, and the continued functioning of society in general past short-sighted views of a non-sustainable commune.

The problem with these things is that these are not moral absolute fact, they are by and large apologetic, that seek to explain away horror rather than admit to the mistakes of horror. Sometimes there is no "right" or "moral" way out of a problem and that's life, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't admit it, and it also doesn't mean that in those moments we should abdicate making tough decisions, but those decisions should always clearly bear the weight of our sins.

If you hurt innocent people it doesn't matter how valiant your ends are, you have still sinned. Consistent open acknowledgement and remorse for those actions is the path to absolution. Arguing it away as the greater good is simply hardening yourself to commit graver and graver injustices without recognizance or penance.

That is ultimately the core problem of Bolshevism from an anarchist perspective. When against the wall, they make tough decisions, and then they hide the bodies. That is the last tool in a toolbox of ruthless efficiency. That is what makes the definition of a kulak go from a landlord with sharecroppers to the owner of a butter churn.

Makhno wasn't an angel. As a sister thread points out he had a lot of shitty sexual proclivities, he treated women as objects and I agree with you that voluntarism when the chips were down often was cajoled in reality. A lot of these comparisons must be relative to the context under which they happened. We'll be here all day with endless exclaimers, we have to approximate. The Reds cajoled a lot more and a lot worse, but that's not the point.

ML's and MLM's treat Lenin and Mao as gods. Like Makhno they were men. Like Makhno they were very flawed men, you cannot be a perfect person at that level. Like Makhno were men who were intelligent, and did good things. Like Makhno they also committed great evils both personal and systemic. However you do not get this honesty from MLs or MLMs. Often you cannot even get MLs and MLMs to the same table.

I agree anarchists are annoying, they often hold the position of arguing from absolute morality having done nothing, they certainly haven't created a large global society. But for all their wishy washyness and their annoyingness, they do have a point. We should be honest about the human costs of civilization and production, who bears them, and how we can make that process as fair as humanly possible. Otherwise it's very easy to go from landlord to guy with a butter churn.