I don't mean to call anyone out - I despise conflict, especially of the sectarian variety.
I wrote the following in response to someone's assertion that all anarchism is, amounts solely to fighting in the streets, but it is a more general response to how I feel about the community in general - vis-a-vis Marxist-Leninists in particular. Since this comm. is fairly quiet, I figured I'd put it here as I spent a lot of time writing it and it would be a shame if no one saw it. 😑

I am becoming more and more convinced that the ML crowds that are the loudest proponents of 'read history' and 'read theory' do absolutely neither.
Anarchism is one of the prestige forms of socialism - it was half of the First International, and, just like Marxism, was disseminated and adopted throughout the world during the 19th and 20th centuries.

  • Even during Marx's time, one of the most informative experiences of the era was that of the Paris Commune - heavily contributed to by anarchists.
  • The Russian revolution was not undertaken solely by a cadre of intellectual vanguardists - it was facilitated by the formation of the proletariat and peasantry into trade unions, factory committees and worker's soviets - at this time, Lenin et al weren't even in the country due to exile.
  • Even Lenin on his deathbed spoke of 'witnessing the resurrection of the tsarist bureaucracy to which the Bolsheviks had only given a Soviet veneer'; after the civil war rejecting the popular demand for socialism via worker-control and disbanding organisations like parties, committees and soviets - not to mention utilising force when necessary such as at Kronstadt. This is not a blunt stab at the Bolsheviks - it is important to note the Marxist Contradiction: That the Bolshevik state was established to achieve socialism and to represent the interests of the proletariat - yet, at the opportunistic post-Civil War moment to do so, they declined, instead favouring the opposite.
  • Mao himself read anarchist theory and was inspired by it - beyond being a passing interest as a young man, it likely fed the basis of his later departures from Marxist-Leninism and criticisms of state bureaucracy.
  • In Korea, anarchists established the Korean People's Association - an autonomous confederation of 2 million people, operating on a mutual aid based economy.
  • It would be folly to discount entirely the efforts of the Spanish anarchists in establishing 'actually existing socialism' in Catalonia and Andalusia - money was abolished, productivity increased, and thousands took up arms in horizontal armies to fight the fascists. Putting aside issues of ideological supremacy, these are real, material impacts that in some cases have lasting effects - even today the municipality of Marinaleda maintains a system of mutual aid, collective ownership and autonomy.
  • In Cuba, anarchists lent their support to the revolution wholeheartedly - joining the guerilla groups fighting Batista directly.
  • Edit: Of course, how could I forget the Zapatistas? They currently control a sizeable territory in Mexico, and have been directly addressing the needs of their largely rural and underprivileged citizens for over 25 years.
    etc.

In many of these cases, anarchists have repeatedly facilitated revolution, and even established instances of real, tangible socialism. That they did not survive suppression and encirclement is not proof of their lack of capacity for success - if such a thing was true, the Soviet Union would never have been established (on the basis of historical revolutionary suppression and exile) nor should there be Marxist-Leninists left now that it has been dismantled.

The assertion that anarchist movements are prone to corruption and co-option by reactionaries is also flawed - the same applies to Marxist-Leninist parties too. There is no shortage of ML parties in various countries extolling reactionary views today, and the conditions that led to the dismantling of the USSR can be seen as exactly this phenomenon - the undermining of public trust in the party by propaganda and the infiltration of the party itself by opportunists and yes-men for the purpose of usurping it.
How can Marxist-Leninists say with confidence that their method is the only scientific application of Marxism; lambasting others for their perceived vulnerabilities to Western capital; when not even their prestige test-case itself was immune? How can we be expected to fall in line with the logic "The Marxist-Leninist state was undermined and dismantled. The solution is Marxist-Leninism."

Finally, why is it that calls for 'Left Unity' apply solely to Marxist-Leninism - that we should overlook our differences in their favour in the interest of the bigger picture, yet you will find nothing in kind from them?
I have spent years carrying water for ML ideologies - for the USSR, for China, etc. - against my personal beliefs and better judgment in the interest of internationalism and anti-imperialism. The least I expect, is to be treated like a communistic equal, fighting in the same struggle. Instead, our communities are filled with Marxist-Leninists quotebombing dissenters with Lenin and stamping on anarchists at every possible opportunity - only occasionally moderating themselves with a token "I have many anarchist friends, but..." or "I support left unity, but..."

Put aside your wretched egos for once in your lives. Consider the fundamentals of our theory and praxis - that material conditions around the world and throughout history are not uniform. There may indeed be cases where Marxist-Leninism is the most effective - I claim that in earnest.
Will you be able to acknowledge the possibility of cases where anarchism is the most viable? Especially when anarchism spans such a range of approaches and theories - from syndicalism to mutualism to synthesism.
You need to be aware, that for many people, the barrier to the adoption of Marxist-Leninism is not simply the influence of Western propaganda, or the the lack of 'reading theory' - it is our diametric opposition to hierarchy in any form. That does not preclude our contributions to your causes - it means that they are done voluntarily.

The truest demonstration of Left Unity for me, will be when I don't feel like an outsider, as a communist within the communist community.
:left-unity-2:

  • DivineChaos100 [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    That's a good recap on things but there are a few things i would point out.

    You say that a central leadership is needed to quickly manouvre against capitalist aggression, but are there any cases there apart from warfare where you have to be that quick that the decisions can't travel up to the main governing body in like i don't know, a week or even way faster with today's tech? And even if we're talking about warfare, you can do what the iroquis did: the main governing body makes the decisions about it but the smaller units can put in a veto in it. The Ukrainian's anarchists strategic mastermind was Makhno but all his tactical decisions had to go through a column and that didn't bother thm as much as the fact that they were fighting with stones basically. Guerilla warfare also is stronger if it's not revolving around one central leadership but is a network of multiple coordinated groups. This is just an example, i'm not trying to disprove you btw just to show that there were other successful models.

    Also the thing with being top heavy is that a party can paint a crosshair on a leader which the reactionary forces will absolutely happy to target at, why do you think it's rather a strength and not a weakness? For example if this wasn't the problem in Burkina Faso, than what? (Note: I know jack shit about Burkina Faso apart from that France killed Sankara and from that point the ervolution was basically over)

    The problem you have here is that in order to achieve our goals this is a necessary aspect of revolution and defending the revolution. No matter what happens, no matter what kind of revolution we have, this is a power that will be used and is a power that must continue to be used until reactionary forces no longer exist. I don’t mean this in the sense of murdering reactionaries of course, although that will occur, but even in the sense of elimination through re-education, it is something that must continue to exist until capitalism is gone. How do you propose to check this while also recognising that it MUST continue to be a power used while capitalist forces seek to destroy our gains? If we over-check it then we kneecap our ability to stop reactionary forces destroying our project through a 5th column or through the national-bourgeoisie whereas if we under-check it then it gets wielded as a weapon to destroy us if reactionaries ever take over leadership in the project.

    The thing with this is that as anarchists movements are bottom-top structured there's less chance of infiltration because the project starts when people are on board with it and this is a very important point. You said that the mass line is about putting the party in every people's lives so the party basically becomes society, that is a valid way, but for anarchists it is the other way around, it's about building society first then comes the "party" It's safe too because if there are reactionary elements in the society, it's society that expulses them, not a secret police - however there's bigger flexibility in anarchist movements because you don't have to fall in line to be a part of society until you're not straight up destructive.

    As for over and underchecking, most anarchist/ic projects' structure makes it really difficult to hijack them. Administrative positions are rotational, for example. Thing is that they are structured in a way that if someone clearly tries to distract a project than it's easier to get rid of them than for them to exert real power over the movement.

    I am really bad at writing long rants btw

      • DivineChaos100 [none/use name]
        ·
        4 years ago

        What isn’t warfare when it comes to Capitalist attempts to collapse your country? If you’re Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia or China, it doesn’t matter, you’re under capitalist siege in an attempt to destroy your revolution.

        I mean i was specifically talking about direct warfare, which fortunately isn't happening in any of these countries because i consider that to be the kind of thing that needs quick decisions.

        But it's good that you mention Cuba, because it's clearly different from the others and is one of the ML projects that has close to unilateral support from society, which is key if you are fighting a political war that's going on against these countries. To me i think this is the reason they're dealing with the pressure better than others and why the empire can't get a grip on them. Bolivia is similar, because before Evo in El Alto there was already a tremendous effort in grassroots organizing that just went on without representation and then became a basis of his coming to power.

        The thing with the Uighurs is that while these attacks might have been influenced by the US (and most probably were), this thing goes way back before the us even thought about Xinjiang, things probably went awry when China and the USSR were having a feud over the control of the territory without any care about the people's wellbeing, so the US could tamper because there was a societal tension they could organize a terror cell behind. And while i still don't agree with how they handle the case i would argue that they don't fall under the category i mentioned because they already had their revolution. So what i want to say is, that yes, the Uighur problem can't be solved with anarcjistic methods because for that the Chinese power structure would have to be torn down and rebuilt from the bottom up which they in their position can't afford and it's completely okay. I mean it's not okay, but it's understandable that they went that way and i think there's no turning back at their point, so good luck for them.

        What i was saying was more about future projects: A 5th column is much harder to create if there is a unified society that can block these attempts at their roots aka making sure that the tensions can't be created or artificially exaggerated. That's pretty much the case in Bolivia, the movement is much more independent there from MAS than it seems, early on there were huge protests against Evo in El Alto because they tried to privatize the water service, but the people living there didn't like the idea. It wasn't privatized in the end. And as we saw last year even this way they can be very easily mobilized.

        And of course there's the problem of dealing with domestic capitalists that you mentioned but it's not at all against anarchist theory to take drastic measures against people who are openly trying to destroy the revolution which is for some reason a common misconception about them.