I came across this thread which had some interesting interpretations and posits that ML grew as a function of anarchism's failure to recruit/organize:
My sincere answer for why tankies reemerged five years ago is that movements are social hierarchies and newbie teens don't want to compete for status in existing illegible/inaccessible spaces like anarchism, so they resurrected a dead/empty scene that had trappings of status.
See also leftypol & the dirtbaggers. Folks get converted on one issue and then recoil about being expected to also learn / change their opinion on a variety of other topics. Respecting pronouns?! Never! You olds are a joke! We're making a new movement with hookers & blackjack!
Most of the anarchist movement had sneered at and avoided the internet (seen as an insecure tool of civilized alienation). Also it was illegible, most of the shit we expect you to learn/accept we don't even write down. And getting involved? We're terrible at helping folks join.
But ALSO the anarchist movement got up its own ass. We derided the internet and avoided utilizing it effectively. We embraced illegibility as resistance, forgetting that accessibility is critical to undermining hierarchies. And we corrupted into playing internal status games.
So what do we ascribe the sudden uptick in radicalization?
Here are my major disagreements:
Anarchism is inherently more diverse.
In my personal experiences, Anarchist collectives have been significantly more white than the ML/MLM/Maoist organizations I've been in contact with. This is true on an international level, where the strongest base for Anarchism is in the US & EU.
Anarchism illegible to newbs.
I wouldn't say "illegibility" is the problem. But it is incredibly difficult to join Anarchist collectives. None of the ones in my area have a formal recruitment process. It is all about meeting the right people at demonstrations, being in the punk scene, etc.
In my experience, Marxist-Leninist are much better organizers than Anarchists. I think the rise in Marxist-Leninism and the decline in Anarchism is that simple.
You can shroud it in language such as "we're oppose to hierarchies", "we prioritize individual agency", etc. But that's the inevitable consequence.
If you’re a baby leftist, it’s way easier to get into anarchism than any flavour of Marxism.
Yup, if you're American you can keep a lot of your worldview as an lib-soc and analyze a lot of things through the lens of "freedom" and such, but this time you get to acknowledge the inherent power dynamics at play during something like a salary negotiation (while liberal analysis just assumes both parties have equal standing). This is a good thing.
First, because "socialism with American characteristics" is going to have a heavily libertarian component, for better or worse. The material and ideological environment isn't really there for something that resembles the Chinese or Russian revolutions. Of course that could change in the future.
Second, any decent anarchist should be familiar with Marx, even if they may have some reservations. As a Marxist, I welcome and encourage them to dive deeper, and develop a materialist worldview along the way (don't really care about their political tendency which is distinct from that, in my opinion)
No one should be above criticism or be given special social privileges without recourse or oversight just because they’re popular. We do a lot to try and curb that on this site
Sometimes I think it would be fun if anyone who hit 10,000 comments (or whatever number) made a thread about it and deleted their account at the end in celebration.
It would be a good self-enforced "damn I should log off for a bit" moment, too.
If feels like this person has never really read or understood any discourse outside of the U.S.
This is exactly it. I'm not from the US, and none of that makes any sense to me.
It reads to me like weird infighting about some weird fanfiction 50 nerds care way too much about. I have no clue what any of this shit is lol, like "tankies were always 3 white dudes at the back of an IWW gathering"??? "When I first started hearing whispers of anyone under 50 actually defending Lenin it was newly minted trans girls in abusive cult collective houses" ???? "A creepy professor schooled in standard creepy tankie entryism gathered some students, got them to take over fb pages, etc" ????? "Now did some of these people get hooked up with checks from the PRC or something? Maybe. We've seen eg DPRK funding neonazi reading groups. But I think this is minor and is not responsible for the 2015/2016 tankie explosion. Bernie did that."??????????????????? "Now did some of these people get hooked up with checks from the PRC or something? Maybe. We've seen eg DPRK funding neonazi reading groups." ?????????????????????????????????????????
Can people just start talking about real life, substantive shit for a change?
Reading more it seems like the author is projecting their own obsession with appearance and social status on the entire left, while having no material analysis whatsoever and reducing everything to social cliques. Sounds like a teenager tbh
I've followed him and a bunch of anarchists on twitter and it seems like Willy Gilly and PNW anarchist scene are a bit of a meme even among anarchists.
I think there are a few salient points, like it grew out of the Bernie movement, and the way that when it collapsed tons of people went balls-deep into Communism, but yeah the rest is kinda ehhh
Same. It's amazing what watching a decent candidate get sandbagged does to a mf
Yeah, I read this thread back when it made it to the subreddit, it all sounds much more like the OP was working some stuff out/subtweeting their fellow anarchists.
I want to not die in a climate holocaust. That requires the overthrow of capitalism and institutions willing to use their authority to crush any movement back towards capitalism.
Marxist-Leninism (and its derivatives) has been the most successful tendency at carrying out a revolution, and defending it.
After studying the theoretical works of Marxist-Leninist thinkers & seeing that theory put to practice in Marxist-Leninist states, it becomes incredibly obvious why they have been the most successful.
Yeah, this is spot on. People are looking for solutions that work. Marxist/Leninism has a track record of success that can't really be compared to any other leftist tendency -- it's taken two feudal backwaters to superpower status, and kept smaller states like Cuba and Vietnam afloat despite enormous outside pressure.
The "what might actually work?" question has driven lots of people to democratic socialism for similar reasons. The DSA is pointing to existing non-ML states that, while not socialist, have far more worker power than the U.S. and do far more for their citizens. On the back of that they've actually won some major elections and are getting to the point where they're approaching real political power.
There are legitimate criticisms of both of these projects, but the value of "hey, they're out there doing stuff, and it's either worked before or is working now" is high.
I read the thread and largely agree with the analysis, mainly around people rushing to self label in order to appear legit. Most self-labeling (especially online) is poorly done and shouldn't be taken seriously, but it was, leading to people labeling themselves mainly on whether or not they like the USSR or modern day China, and that's it. Then you're either hanging out in "tankie" or "anarchist" spaces and shit talking the other group and closing yourself off to a lot of what socialism can teach you.
Stop getting hung up on labels because it's killing the "left" and it's handicapping you from actually growing as a socialist.
I have no clue why they'd even want to do that lol like wtf is the point? What is it supposed to achieve?
TIL Anarchism is a job field, with limited spots open.
Most of the interpretation seems kind of garbage. Like, assuming that people "converted on one issue and then recoil about being expected to also learn / change their opinion on a variety of other topics", how would that make them end up as tankies? Surely, ML is just as far if not further from most people's ideologies as anarchism? Apparently, you don't need to know anything to be a tankie, you just need to be status-driven, authoritarian and bloodthirsty.
It's pretty easy to end up under the illusion that you arrived at your current ideology through being rational, and that somebody not in the same place must have something wrong with them. This should obviously be avoided, seeming up your own ass like this guy is one of the better consequences of it.
I think a lot of people who call themselves "MLs" really just read some Marx and Lenin and found them to be insightful, rather than subscribing to the state ideology of the Soviet Union, or organizing around doctrinaire ML principles. If Marxism-Leninism were truly on a meteoric rise, we would have a communist party at least the size of DSA, but we don't.
The reason Marx and Lenin are rising in popularity are because their works are useful and explanatory. They help people understand what is happening in the world around them, while a lot of (but certainly not all) Anarchist writing tends to be more utopian and idealistic - explaining what the world may look like if everyone treated each other as comrades and shunned power imbalances on principle.
In the US, I think the Anarchists are also hindered by the rampant individualism which is baked into our culture. I don't think this is the fault of Anarchist theory, but at some level anti-hierarchical practice needs to take on a collectivist form to have any chance at long term success. This is a difficult point to impress upon newcomers without some sort of official political education program. When you shift from a critique of hierarchy to the practical details of navigating a world full of hierarchies, there is a lot of nuance to work through and opinions are very fractured.
So I can't start calling chapos with bad takes the g word? This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me
I read Blackshirts and Reds, came here, and then watched as China, Vietnam, Cuba, and other AES countries did a great job with Covid while even social democrat states in the E.U. failed. That's a radicalizing moment right there.
