dogshit ideology tier list
dogshit ideology tier list
reading the list of ideologies "harmful to the global south" and comparing it to the ideologies that the global south has tried and gotten results from and drawing no conclusions
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damn shame what internet """anarchists""" do to the good name of cool irl anarchists
irl anarchists don't agree with MLs either. People on this site love adding "internet" or "online" before "anarchist" to excuse blatant sectarianism
I know, I'm talking specifically about making fuckin polandball tierlists about it
Yeah it's doing anarchism a disservice. People always say "online anarchist" as if there's a hypothetical "real anarchist" who basically agrees with Marxists in every respect but is still an anarchist somehow. As if it's only internet-poisoned fake anarchists spoiling potential left unity.
Anarchists disagree with fundamental tenets of Marxism and especially MLism, and pretending they don't is disrespecting their actual views. "Left unity" papers over major, important differences. There's no reason to be antagonistic, but people let's be real. You can't be pro Stalin and pro anarchism without being at odds.
it's more my experience that anarchists I've met who avoid the internet just don't care about the debates at all. They don't tend to agree with Marxists, but also don't think the debate is very important
This has been my experience as well. Most of them (us) just aren't all that interested in having the theory debate most of the time. I have strong principled commitments to anarchism, and some theory disagreements with MLs, but I can and do work with MLs in the real world. The world we live in is so far away from the one where those theory disagreements will practically matter that they might as well not exist.
I think it's only in the US context where, as you point out, we are so far away from power, that we can cooperate so easily.
Nearing a revolutionary situation, the abstract debates about theory which are pointless now become questions of action. Marxists want to organize a political party to take state power and build a socialist state, and most (all?) anarchists oppose state power. At that point the pointless sectarianism becomes a live question and our goals diverge, if not contradict.
Yeah, I think all of that is right. There's so far to go before we even start to approach that problem, though, that sectarianism at this point seems ridiculous. If and when we get to the point of revolution, it will become a live question. Until then, though, we effectively all want the same thing.
It may not even be too intense of a question depending on how power is gained and when. I personally see China's development as a synthesis of anarchist elements during the cultural revolution and more traditional ML party structure. China's urban/rural divide represent different land management systems for instance as well. Cuban syndicalists/unions also frequently collaborate with the state in a similar way.
In those situations though the primary enemy was imperialism. Depending on how things go in the west, the anarchist/ML divide may not even be an issue, or it won't manifest that way. That's what I've always imagined, that the situation of an earnest socialist insurgency in the west would be such a drastically different situation that what we have now that there's probably going to be full volumes of new theory that have to be written.
the situation of an earnest socialist insurgency in the west would be such a drastically different situation that what we have now that there's probably going to be full volumes of new theory that have to be written.
That's a better way to put it, and I agree. I think sometimes people imagine that revolution in (say) the US would just look like the October Revolution come again. It won't. Our material conditions are vastly different, and the theory, tactics, concerns, and problems will be vastly different as well. There's certainly no need to do the enemy's work for him and reproduce the problems of the past before we even get to that juncture, and things may be so different we never need get there at all.
I don't even know what the qualifier "internet" is doing here. The majority of this site is pro-USSR, pro-Stalin, pro-China, etc. Even among the most principled, well-read, serious, committed, internet-avoiding anarchists, you will find 0 people who agree with or even tolerate those views.
Maybe where you're at is where they are logging on from? If MLs can make common cause with Islamicists for the sake of anticolonial struggle, anarchists should be able to tolerate MLs for the purpose of opposing their much more present common enemy. The basis of "big tent" theory is that groups should mutually tolerate each other, and groups that cannot do not receive the same protections. Your argument is essentially "all real anarchists are hopelessly sectarian, so speaking as though the non-sectarian ones are the preferable ones is itself sectarian". If you were right -- and you demonstrably aren't -- all you'd be arguing for is that anarchists cannot function in a big tent.
Yeah of course there's scenarios where anarchists and communists can work together. And I wouldn't say anarchists are sectarian because I don't think sectarianism is the lens I'd use to understand it. It's not sectarian to have mutually incompatible principles. But what percentage of anarchists are going to want hang out on a website that has strict rules about criticizing socialist states?
Also, it's an open question whether anarchists and Marxists can function in a big tent coalition. The two obvious examples, the Russian Revolution and the Spanish Civil War, are not examples of successful coalition building. And looking across the world, there's more examples of social democrats in functional coalitions with communists than anarchists. But harsh critiques of social democracy don't fall under "anti-sectarianism" rules. I can say that social democracy is the left wing of fascism, but not that anarchism is the highest stage of liberal idealism.
It's not sectarian to have mutually incompatible principles.
That's plainly not what we're talking about here, again see my example of MLs and Islamicists.
But what percentage of anarchists are going to want hang out on a website that has strict rules about criticizing socialist states?
Ones that have their heads screwed on tight enough to not be fixated on talking bullshit about other countries when their own is a neoliberal hellscape. We criticize China all the time, and there are weird cases of softballing like with revisionism in Yugoslavia, but I think that's just because so few people care to investigate it in one direction or another.
The two obvious examples, the Russian Revolution and the Spanish Civil War, are not examples of successful coalition building.
In one case anarchists failed to organize in a way that didn't cause them to produce more fascist militants than they killed, and in the other they just failed to organize period. If you're holding up Makhno as the highest aspiration of big tent initiatives, I'd suggest retirement.
I can say that social democracy is the left wing of fascism, but not that anarchism is the highest stage of liberal idealism.
Sure, but that's because the socdems want to defend capitalism and the anarchists (the ones who fall under the aegis, anyway) don't.
again see my example of MLs and Islamicists
I think this is a complicated example because although at times Marxists and Islamists made common cause, Islamists were also a very effective weapon against communists, such as in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, etc.
If you're holding up Makhno as the highest aspiration of big tent initiatives, I'd suggest retirement
I'm just not aware of many anarchist-communist alliances at scale, so those were the two examples I thought of. I don't think the Zapatistas or Rojava are clear examples, or at a large scale.
but that's because the socdems want to defend capitalism and the anarchists don't
And yet there's comparatively successful political coalitions that involve both socdems and communist parties. I'm thinking particularly in South America. China and the DPRK have sanctioned liberal/socdem parties, but I don't believe anarchist organizations are permitted. I mean, many social democrats see themselves as reformist socialists or Marxists of some stripe. And third world social democracy seems very different from imperial core socdems, but we don't have to qualify socdems as "western socdems" to criticize th
I'm not arguing against tolerance or mutual respect or focusing on primary contradictions.
I think this is a complicated example because although at times Marxists and Islamists made common cause, Islamists were also a very effective weapon against communists, such as in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, etc.
I am begging you to think about this dialectically. Obviously, I am not saying "Islamists are good friends to Marxists". Generally, I would hold the opposite to be true. That having been said, we can see today in Palestine and sometimes other places that MLs and Islamists can work together quite well when they have a common enemy that they oppose more than each other. Even in the best of circumstances, it is a partnership that will end in bloodshed as they turn on each other following the hypothetical defeat of their colonial oppressors, but for a stretch of time it works quite well.
Exactly this is what I am saying of the anarchists and Marxists in, for example, America. Perhaps it will come to an end that one or the other won't like, but if an anarchist thinks it is more worth it to fight muh tankies than to join hands with them to fight fascists, they are smoking crack.
I don't think the Zapatistas or Rojava are clear examples, or at a large scale.
Rojava is worth mentioning but Zapatistas, in the main, aren't anarchists and vociferously object to such a label.
And yet there's comparatively successful political coalitions that involve both socdems and communist parties. I'm thinking particularly in South America. China and the DPRK have sanctioned liberal/socdem parties, but I don't believe anarchist organizations are permitted. I mean, many social democrats see themselves as reformist socialists or Marxists of some stripe. And third world social democracy seems very different from imperial core socdems, but we don't have to qualify socdems as "western socdems" to criticize th
Part of the issue here is the simple inadequacy of anarchism with large-scale organizing and its natural opposition to compromise. What do you expect the PRC to do that would allow a show-and-tell anarchist to feel satisfied? To have a little commune or syndicate? But then mustn't such an entity be beholden to laws at a higher level, in both a theoretical and practical sense, to not just be a liability to the state and a cult-in-the-waiting? Doesn't sound very horizontal to me!
Of course, what I would consider a serious anarchist is someone who supports the revolution that feeds the children while pushing in the direction of horizontality, and by such a definition surely they should be happy with the implementation of, for example, the Tae-an farming system in the DPRK. But one who it more interested in spreading a religion of anarchism, to whom feeding the children with any verticality involved is an insidious deception, the fact that those collectives still must answer to the state means that any virtue they have is farcical.
Your sectarianism is my tolerance paradox, I guess, and it's indeed part of the insidiousness of capital that it's quite willing to compromise when it needs to.
"Socdem" is a difficult term to use the way you've expressed it because the term has a long and varied history with many offshoots in usage. The way that HB usually phrases it is that the people you just identified are in large part actually demsoc, and I think that phrasing is fair. One could also argue that the true dividing line is if the so-called demsoc believes revolution isn't the best strategy, or would actually oppose revolution should it appear seriously viable, with the uprising already underway.
I think we're on the same page. As long as a common enemy is shared, big tent coalitions can mostly function. Although in the cases I mentioned, Islamists came to the conclusion that Marxists were the shared enemy and that they could better function in a coalition with Western forces. That tension is always present. The enemy of my enemy is my friend is only workable as long as victory seems unlikely and nobody thinks about the future. For example the KMT turning against the CPC in WW2.
I think there's serious anarchists who would see in collective farms a revolutionary re-organization of society that is leashed by the state. In the same way that Marxists would see reform as insufficient if the rule of capital is not overthrown. If the state is the origin and mechanism of oppression, the existence of a state means that oppression will continue. So for serious anarchists I would think the goal would be to organize the collective farms to overthrow the state.
And that's a good delineation of socdem vs demsoc, I'll use that in the future.
or even tolerate those views.
There are plenty of MLs in the IWW comrade, this isn't even close to an accurate take. Touch grass.