Everytime I see an Anti-Tankie community and or a Left Anti-communist community they (almost) always side with US-NATO / First World Chauvinism and condemn the BRICS+ / Third World...
That's pretty much like the norm for Anti-Tankies and Left Anti-Communists, they will almost always side with US-NATO and condemn the BRICS+ almost all the time when it comes about world politics and geopolitical issues...
Lawlessness is also coercive and abusive. Lack of food, shelter and medicine are also coercive and abusive. Leaving people to fend for themselves without the structures they need to collectively organize, build and defend their society is coercive and abusive.
And let's not pretend that anarchists themselves historically have not resorted to coercive and abusive methods in order to prematurely and without having done the proper material and class analysis try and bring about their society "without coercive and abusive power structures".
And that's the jist of "anti-authoritarianism", it shuns class analysis and never bothers to ask "whose authority?". It tries to ignore material reality and looks only at the form and never at the content. And in the end it becomes more tyrannical than the authority it purports to fight.
Thanks for this response. Yes, you're correct, letting criminals prey on people is not liberation from coercion. Neither is paleo-anarchism or what have you, and neither is the kind of 'proto anarchocommunism' Graeber describes in debt. The problem with the latter of these is that small communities tend to have very, very strong social laws and mores that can have varying severe consequences if they're not followed, and it functionally boils down to the same as being governed by an HOA.
I believe that government must play a role in dismantling coercive power structures, including the ones you mentioned, but in order to do that judiciously, the government must be accountable to the people it governs, not creating creepy secretive self-surveillance programs like you see in the US, China, and other major players. Anarchists may use violence, but targeted assassination and thrown sticks of dynamite cannot remotely compare to the kind of completely deranged outcomes you get when an authoritarian government mobilizes for violence. You might argue that your preferred violence is for a good cause, but you've got a bit of a trap on your hands, because every bad guy out there convinced themselves that theirs was the right choice to make at the time. Nettanyahu thinks he's the good guy here, the CIA believes that they're right and justified when they set up reactionary movements. Some Americans even rationalize the genocide of first nations by arguing that it resulted in the United States, which is a good thing in their opinion (lol, lmao even), and therefore it's retroactively acceptable. In other words, the problem is that all organized violence is self-assured and self-justified. I personally reject the notion that a just and equitable future can only be built on a pile of corpses.
it functionally boils down to the same as being governed by an HOA
Yes. And that is one of the most tyrannical and dystopian things imaginable...
I believe that government must play a role in dismantling coercive power structures
So you acknowledge the need for a state to guide society through the transitional period of socialism from capitalism to communism. Good. Then we are on the same page.
the government must be accountable to the people it governs
The government must be accountable to the class it represents. Again, the keyword here is class. A state is an instrument of class rule. It upholds and enforces the power of one class over another. And as you have acknowledged already the need for a state, the only question that remains is what kind of state: a bourgeois or a proletarian one?
Of course we all know that socialism can only be built under the dictatorship of the proletariat. And because the proletarian state represents the collective interests of the working class that is the class which it is accountable to. As all proletarian states are and have been throughout history, with the power to elect and recall representatives being given to every layer of the system over the one above it.
This is what Mao called the People's Democratic Dictatorship, what China today calls "Whole Process People's Democracy", or as it was known in the USSR, Soviet Democracy.
Anarchists may use violence, but targeted assassination and thrown sticks of dynamite cannot remotely compare
That's hardly all the violence anarchists have done throughout history. Pogroms and banditry by the Makhnovites come to mind, as well as the CNT/FAI who called themselves anarchist and rejected the Bolshevik model while paradoxically themselves setting up what was essentially a state....with prisons, a criminal justice system and executions.
It turns out that in practice you don't need to call it a state to do large scale, organized or semi-organized violence.
You might argue that your preferred violence is for a good cause, but you've got a bit of a trap on your hands, because every bad guy out there convinced themselves that theirs was the right choice to make at the time.
And that is why there can be no revolutionary praxis without revolutionary theory. Only through rigorous dialectical materialist analysis of the world and by studying the objective conditions that exist do we learn to set correct goals and implement correct policy.
On the other hand, if you shun theory, if you shun study of material conditions and class analysis, then of course you will be unable to distinguish between when tools such as the application of violence are used to further the liberation of the working class and when they hinder it. Then all you can do is look at how something looks superficially and not at what it actually is and does, in other words you are stuck thinking in terms of form over content, which is one of the main indicators of residual liberalism that you have yet to unlearn.
And it's not like anarchism is this pacifist ideology that rejects violence on principle. Anarchism acknowledges the need to employ violence to defend against aggressors like fascists, imperialists and other counter-revolutionary forces.
In other words, the problem is that all organized violence is self-assured and self-justified
Which is why we must identify when it is actually justified and when it is not. And here we come to the crux of the issue. It is not that you reject violence but rather you have a problem with organized violence. Yet anarchic, decentralized and disorganized violence is both less disciplined (and thus more prone to abuses) and less effective as there is no unified command that sets a clear goal, develops a plan and organizes its implementation.
Small scale groups each acting on their own are by nature parochial and will often be myopic to the larger picture, and because of this will lack the understanding that is needed to take the right actions at the right time. Ideological heterogeneity which is bound to take hold in the absence of an ideological vanguard further exacerbates this chaos. And the forces of reaction will gladly take advantage of any disunity or lack of discipline to subvert and then crush all that you have achieved. Then all your lofty ideals count for nothing.
I appreciate that you are making an effort to engage in good faith so i have tried to do the same and not immediately be as dismissive as some of the other comrades here, but in general i highly advise that you read and learn more on these subjects to correct your misconceptions, not just on Marxist-Leninisttheory, but also on socialist states where you seem to have fallen for certain anti-communist tropes spread by western and liberal propaganda.
Absolutely stellar response. Thank you for taking the time to write this. In a world where I had more free time, I would love to take the time to research and make an equally well composed rebuttal. As it stands, your response is very informative, and it has helped me to understand the point of view better.
You're welcome to stay and learn from the lemmygrad community. If you do i think you will find we are generally quite welcoming and willing to take the time to explain our point of view and answer questions politely (and hopefully competently, though that is for others to judge) when approached in good faith. It is only low effort trolling that we tend to react quite allergically to.
That being said most of these questions have already been addressed before, and much more thoroughly than i ever could, be it in exceptionally well researched and sourced posts by other comrades or in the classic theory texts. So if some of the responses you get are somewhat terse, it might have to do with the frustration at having to deal with the same misconceptions over and over.
Although we do try, as Sankara said, to never stop explaining, we are only human...
u are a wierd type of "left" com u reject unprincipled anarchist views but by objecting to violence u also reject principled anarchist views. so let me ask u what the fuck are gonna do, like u cant not be violent when the ruling class will murder u if u do something that meaningfully challenges their power, so like why even believe in anything if u also refuse to do anything. like whats the plan try to do something and either fail or get close enough to "suicide" by 2 shotgun shot to the back of the head? like a stick of dynamite is gonna win a fucking war mate we need an army.
not creating creepy secretive self-surveillance programs like you see in the US, China, and other major players.
So no modern security state apparatuses then? What's your take on China's booting out the CIA in recent decades and the constant attempts of the west- as well as its long and well-recorded history- of destabilizing and destroying states through "color revolutions," insurgencies, etc?
Some Americans even rationalize the genocide of first nations by arguing that it resulted in the United States, which is a good thing in their opinion
Shitting on dumbass Americans is fair enough, but we all know that no one is promoting settler-colonialism and genocide here. There is no such thing as a retroactive justification, nor is genocide ever an acceptable answer. But you and I both know there's no disagreement in this thread on that matter.
I personally reject the notion that a just and equitable future can only be built on a pile of corpses.
Personally I reject the notion that the idealistic path should be taken as the first option- that's my response to that. Does a better future have to be built on a pile of corpses? Not necessarily, no. But the times when such a path has been possible are a rare, extreme minority, and in many cases throughout history- the establishment of the Soviet Union, PRC, and many post-colonial and revolutionary governments (including many of the now status quo "liberal, democratic" western governments) it could not be done.
Idealism has its place- where and when it can be afforded. For instance, if you look up how modern Communist China re-educated and rehabilitated Puyi, the last Qing emperor and a infamous Japanese collaborationist- it really is something that impressed me, reading it at the time. But that was during a time when Puyi had been truly defanged in every way possible; in comparison, would I blame the Bolsheviks for their handling of the Russian imperial family, or the French revolutionaries for their handling of theirs? Not at all, rather the opposite- these nobles still had their fangs; look up the letters and actions of Marie Antoinette seeking to call foreign interventions from her relatives, for instance (not to mention the other reasons of varying validity, for her charges of treason- the actions of sending the royal treasuries abroad, for instance), or consider the royal family's significance to the cause of the Whites and to the multiple interventions by pretty much every other global power during the Russian civil war. Consider in the French revolutionaries', or the Bolsheviks' circumstances- how many more lives were spared by these actions, than not? Why is there such a focus on the "martyred" nobles, putschists, landlords, kulaks (farmer-landlords), plantation-owners, and all sorts of varying reactionary figures when contrasted with the mountains of corpses from deprivation, disenfranchisement, and abuses of all kinds that always existed behind the maintenance of the former order's status quo, the sheer brutality brought to bear under their name and through their actions against those seeking to free themselves from their tyranny, etc?
What I'm describing is not limited to individual cases, nor the system of nobility alone- the same goes for liberals, for all manners of tribalists, reactionaries, all sorts of petty corruption, injustices, and criminality alike. Any sensible system will weigh the price of inaction or insufficient action- the "collateral damage" that comes in the form of innocent lives lost to reactionary backlash, irredentism, sabotage, and from merely the typical behaviors of those who are not properly reformed before being allowed loose on the world again.
A "just and equitable" future requires those involved to be willing to defend the process necessary to to create it, from start to finish. Anything else is just willful martyrdom- and I can promise you, while people might remember the countless martyrs of this world fondly, their peoples always, always, would have rather preferred they succeeded in the end, and the outcomes of their martyrdom are near always infinitely worse than if they had managed otherwise.
Left-wing authoritarians: lol, lmao even. You’d understand if you’d read more Mao, Marx, and Lenin. Now get against the wall.
You got that right at least- anarkiddies, l*bertarian pedos, and other false leftists get the wall. You don't get a pass for being useful idiots for imperialism (if even that), for being "enlightened centrists" and pretending your terrible takes don't always translate to being racist and worse. Go to the wall, do not pass go, do not collect 200$...
But what about their factories/apartment buildings/office buildings?
You can't just take those away and give.it to the people who work/live there right?
mfw anarchists actually succeed in overthrowing the capitalist class but then are immediately crushed by external reactionary forces because they said the proletariat must not seize state power because that's authoritarian 🤯 [the outcome was obvious from the start]
Oh no, my reputation on a Tankie sub has been ruined. Tbh, if you guys ever get control, I'll probably get the bullet because I can't keep my mouth shut and some fuckstick revolutionary officer is going to overhear me talking shit about the party. Not really worried about it, let come what may.
Tbh, if you guys ever get control, I’ll probably get the bullet because I can’t keep my mouth shut and some fuckstick revolutionary officer is going to overhear me talking shit about the party. Not really worried about it, let come what may.
why are yalls brains just persecution complex fanfiction factories
I think I've got the measure of the rhetoric. Anarchists are inexperienced and unburdened by the wisdom of the truth and, given only time and wisdom, we'll come around to the truth that organized murder is the only way we'll ever be free. I think that's an intellectually lazy view that auths arrive at because it's just easier to hit fuck it and start murdering people than dealing with them with compassion and intelligence. That's why the CIA is so big on right-wing violence, it's just easier to use violence to get what they want now, no matter if it's going to blow up in their face thirty years on down the line.
What world do you live in where MLs just want to murder people instead of dealing with them with compassion? And lmao at the weak connection with the CIA, as if they didn't spend the entirety of the 70s and 80s attempting to stop MLs.
The ruling class and its lackeys will never, EVER, give up their lifestyle without a fight and once they lose it, they will do ANYTHING to have it back. History tells us this with the Hungarian “revolution” of 1956 and the counter revolutions that happened throughout the late 80s early 90s.
Moral of the story: By seizing state power, the proletariat must become the oppressors, and not believe in childish notions of “noooo I can’t be as bad as them”
Let’s hope you drop your idealistic views until then and figure out that you cannot maintain a revolution without seizing state power. Your association of defense volunteers is just an inferior version of an actual centralised army.