The vapid “you’re an anarchist or a Stalinist” perspective of this community is deeply harmful and intellectually untenable.
I think it is a lot better here than in many other places, but you're right. It still is something which should be combated. Most of the time it is a false dichotomy. Leftist tendencies are much closer to a venn diagram with a big overlap than they are to a binary choice. For the most part, they are doing all the same shit - organizing people, political education, meeting people's material needs - just with a particular focus on different aspects of the struggle. Additionally, the situation is far too dynamic and multifaceted to determine what the "correct" course of struggle should be. Furthermore, these tendency labels we choose are mostly aesthetic. What you do matters a lot more than what you enjoy reading. If we judged leftists based on what they do to contribute to the struggle rather than unfounded paranoia about our comrades going out of their way to resurrect the worst missteps of past struggles, many of these categories would become fully redundant.
This isn't the Bolshevik Revolution. This isn't the Spanish Civil War. We are on a new frontier. We are all trying to carry forward the best lessons from past struggles while learning from their mistakes.
I think it is a lot better here than in many other places, but you're right. It still is something which should be combated. Most of the time it is a false dichotomy. Leftist tendencies are much closer to a venn diagram with a big overlap than they are to a binary choice. For the most part, they are doing all the same shit - organizing people, political education, meeting people's material needs - just with a particular focus on different aspects of the struggle. Additionally, the situation is far too dynamic and multifaceted to determine what the "correct" course of struggle should be. Furthermore, these tendency labels we choose are mostly aesthetic. What you do matters a lot more than what you enjoy reading. If we judged leftists based on what they do to contribute to the struggle rather than unfounded paranoia about our comrades going out of their way to resurrect the worst missteps of past struggles, many of these categories would become fully redundant.
This isn't the Bolshevik Revolution. This isn't the Spanish Civil War. We are on a new frontier. We are all trying to carry forward the best lessons from past struggles while learning from their mistakes.
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