Leftism is complicated and multifaceted, and when you start down that road suddenly everything is unfamiliar and almost the complete opposite of what you've been taught to believe all your life. And everyone is using weird overcomplicated terms to describe everything. And if any non-leftists find out, you need to be an encyclopaedia of history and philosophy and economics or else be instantly dismissed. It's a bit exhausting.
So it's very seductive to have someone come and tell you "here comrade, here's the Right Way to think about everything. Don't worry yourself about making up your own mind about it". The ML side of things does a much better job of presenting itself as a coherent whole with Correct Answers you can easily draw on for everything. In my baby leftist days it was all university Trots, and they were very very good at recruiting, primarily because they were good at presenting themselves like a nice cohesive package, I think. But most people didn't last long there because longer reflection maybe made them disagree with some aspect or other of the dogma, and then they were Wrong. I guess there's a similar phenomenon going on, just with tankies instead of trots?
I really like a lot of ML thought (and ML comrades) and I don't want to shit on it at all, but I do question the idea that absolutely every one of their conclusions on everything can be drawn logically and unequivocally from Dialectical Materialism like some Unified Field Theory of leftism, and I think it does really feed into this idea of putting us into neat boxes where our thoughts on everything are determined by what "stream" we're from (and in turn giving us that warm "knowledgeable ingroup" status). I'm confused as shit, I dunno what I think from one day to the next on half this stuff. I don't even know what the hell I'm trying to say here. Perhaps just that there's less perception of a Correct Anarchist Take on everything (perhaps in part because everyone thinks anarchists don't read any theory), which perhaps hinders recruitment but maybe that's not entirely a bad thing?
Leftism is complicated and multifaceted, and when you start down that road suddenly everything is unfamiliar and almost the complete opposite of what you've been taught to believe all your life. And everyone is using weird overcomplicated terms to describe everything. And if any non-leftists find out, you need to be an encyclopaedia of history and philosophy and economics or else be instantly dismissed. It's a bit exhausting.
So it's very seductive to have someone come and tell you "here comrade, here's the Right Way to think about everything. Don't worry yourself about making up your own mind about it". The ML side of things does a much better job of presenting itself as a coherent whole with Correct Answers you can easily draw on for everything. In my baby leftist days it was all university Trots, and they were very very good at recruiting, primarily because they were good at presenting themselves like a nice cohesive package, I think. But most people didn't last long there because longer reflection maybe made them disagree with some aspect or other of the dogma, and then they were Wrong. I guess there's a similar phenomenon going on, just with tankies instead of trots?
I really like a lot of ML thought (and ML comrades) and I don't want to shit on it at all, but I do question the idea that absolutely every one of their conclusions on everything can be drawn logically and unequivocally from Dialectical Materialism like some Unified Field Theory of leftism, and I think it does really feed into this idea of putting us into neat boxes where our thoughts on everything are determined by what "stream" we're from (and in turn giving us that warm "knowledgeable ingroup" status). I'm confused as shit, I dunno what I think from one day to the next on half this stuff. I don't even know what the hell I'm trying to say here. Perhaps just that there's less perception of a Correct Anarchist Take on everything (perhaps in part because everyone thinks anarchists don't read any theory), which perhaps hinders recruitment but maybe that's not entirely a bad thing?