Leftist Infighting: A community dedicated to allowing leftists to vent their frustrations

I'm back and honestly, I'm only madder than I was two days ago because I've had time to mull the bullshit over. Link, for those of y'all out of the know.

It appalls me that any community of people that claim to be marxists, that claim to follow the scientific method in all things that would contribute to the betterment of the world we're forced to share, that claim to be really out here performing praxis and making differences in their communities; it fucking galls me that a community like everything I just described can still look at a still on-going pandemic and still have such a tacit anti-mask stance.

More of you admitted to not masking than I'm comfortable with and y'know what, maybe we could've left it at that. It'd have been a form of liberalism to not dig my heels in on that and take a swing at that mindset because again: I took on a new disability in the wake of a COVID infection. My partner took on a new disability in the wake of their infection. I was put in a hospital bed, my grandparents were put on respirators, so many members of my family and my community were genuinely out of commission and a good number of us really had to question if we were going to make it to see the next morning under those infections-- but maybe, we could've left it at that.

But then, I have to see you people not only trying to justify it, but taking up for smuggards who just think it's all some big fuckin joke, like they're their favorite podcast crackerbro getting to have their own personal Matt Christman moment. I expect "u mad bro" smuglord fuckery out of crackers who can't even be trusted to properly wipe their asses after they shit, or to wash their hands after doing so. And worse, you expect me to not be heated about smug-assed crackers making light of genuinely-disabling infections after the fact.

I stand ten motherfucking toes down on what I said to Cantaloupe Ass and Ghost of Faso; any plague rat motherfucker who wants to take issue with how I feel about people who won't mask can catch the same cases my partners and my family caught. It's a whole lot of you motherfuckers that are so unserious, so emphatically not my comrades that it sickens me seeing you call yourselves so.

Do better. Deuces.

Found from S4A’s Mastodon post. S4A is an ultra-leftist, but he has his moments.

People often ask me what I think about Midwestern Mussolini. I think they're shit.

This whole article, "In Defense of the MAGAcommunism Strategy," dated May 27, 2024, lays out praise for Jackson Hinkle, who has stated that Marxism isn't about abolishing private property (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDXG4h5w1bY ), and Infracel, who…where even to begin there (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4ntTm-XBa4 )? Those two aren't spreading Marxism but a toxic synthesis of revisionist Browderism, cultish Lyndon Larouche-ism and neo-fascist Duginism. We generally call the end results, the pathetic wastes of life who believe in that garbage, "patsocs" ("patriotic socialists," stemming from one of their early controversies) or "nazbols" ("national bolsheviks," after the associated fascist-with-red-symbolism movements). And for Hinkle and Infracel, and I guess the Midwits now too, "grifter" also fits well. The right wing may have bad politics, but they sure have more money! (Hinkle's former mentor, Jimmy Dore, can tell you all about it.)

The article begins by talking about the author's sports coach, who supports Trump and "wants a political and economic revolution." Does he though? What you tend to find in that camp aren't anything like revolutionaries but confused and hateful bigots who're invested in every reactionary prejudice there is. We know this because decent people with any amount of solidarity refuse to stand with the shit the Trumpers do publicly and have been doing publicly for a long time. While a few of them may come around some day to some extent, most of them will remain on the capitalists' side for life and as hazards to a genuinely revolutionary working-class movement. In the short term, it's more realistic to plan to face them in combat than it is to think they'll willingly renounce their ignorance.

And what do Trumpers mean by an "economic revolution"? There are only two possibilities for running an advanced industrialized society: capitalism and socialism. And Trumpers definitely don't want socialism. Rather, what you get out of them tends to be crudely stated, petty-bourgeois, fascist middle-class politics. Instead, communists - which, again, to be clear, Hinkle and Infracel are not - generally should speak firstly to the advanced masses, who can help to guide the middle masses and to contain the backward, most ideologically captured masses. In other words, we don't start with the least class-conscious people who are tailing the 1% the most. Unfortunately, this describes a lot of the US population, but it is what it is, and denying that will get you nowhere you want to go.

Finally, the author states, "I haven't agreed with 100% of what Jackson Hinkle has said in the past three years," and yeah, I sure hope not, but let's be real: the Midwits agree with enough of Hinkle's 💩 to get on board with the founding of his new, fascist political party, the deceptively titled "American Communist Party" (ACP).

Give these 🤡 🤡 🤡 a very wide berth.

The 32nd Convention of CPUSA started on June 7th and went largely as expected. During the convention, we saw the passing of 23 resolutions. Some were genuinely correct in many aspects, such as Resolution #1 regarding Palestine, Resolution #2 regarding labor, and Resolution #10 regarding the DPRK and Asia.

What made this convention noteworthy, though, wasn’t the passing of correct resolutions, nor the passing of incorrect resolutions, but rather the discussion and forcing through of Resolution #5 pertaining to the 2024 presidential election and the party's explicit willingness to serve as a lapdog of the Democratic Party.

This resolution went on to commit the Communist Party to invest all its power and resources to “participation in the broad front to defeat Trump, Trumpism, and the MAGA Republicans.” The resolution went on to state that the defeat of Donald Trump in the 2024 elections will be a “decisive defeat for the corporate right-wing and fascist forces. This will help change the balance of forces and clear the way to change the direction of our nation—to slash the military budget, end the sending of weapons to Israel, tax the rich, win quality healthcare for all, strengthen the right to vote, strengthen union organizing rights, restore Roe v. Wade, and end police murder of people of color.”

[...]

During the opening of the 32nd Convention, the rules and presiding committee were presented. Per the party constitution, these rules are to be democratically adopted. If any person were to disagree with the presented rules, they are to be discussed prior to adoption.

The rules presented indicated that votes on resolutions would not be counted and would rather be conducted solely as a verbal “yes" or “no” vote, with the stipulation being if there was a split in the vote that the final decision would be taken to the National Committee, a body which is functionally subservient to the Sims-Cambron leadership clique.

During the presentation of these rules, objections were made, and these objections were subsequently ignored; marking the first, but not last, instance of disregard of the Communist Party's Constitution during this convention.

Prior to opening discussion on Resolution #5, Sims rambled at length about the “MAGA fascist threat,” at times outright claiming that if Joe Biden was not reelected in 2024 that “red state police” would be kicking down doors to drag immigrants and people of color to concentration camps.

When discussion was opened for Resolution #5, 51 people attempted to sign up to speak. Of those 51, only four were ultimately selected to speak. All four had been hand-selected by the presiding committee and were explicitly pro-resolution members of the party. At no point were dissenting voices to the resolution allowed to voice their opinions in any way whatsoever. This fact alone entirely invalidates the "freedom of debate" principle in Democratic Centralism, a key element in Marxism-Leninism, a principle to which the CPUSA still purports to adhere.

[...]

Dissent has been successfully crushed in the Communist Party during this convention, with the next one not scheduled until 2028. However, the current leadership has failed to inspire any faith in their commitment to Marxism, their ability to lead the party into relevance with the working class, or their interest in adhering to the rules they present to party members.

They have also been unable to fully remove or crush those committed to the scientific process of Marxism-Leninism; these members will likely continue to organize within the party and gain popularity. If the Communist Party truly wishes to succeed, it must abandon the Democratic Party and serve as a guiding light for workers, away from the rabid liberalism it currently endorses.

I don’t know what it is, but I almost hate anarchist and other “libertarian socialists” more than I hate liberals and conservatives. They have a completely useless dead-end ideology. At least supporters of capitalism have the fact that it’s propped itself up for so long and is the dominant mode of production now as their victory, and obviously us Marxist-Leninist have the Soviet Union and other Marxist-Leninist states as our victories, but anarchist have absolutely nothing to show for over 200 years of their ideology existing. They’ve never seized power anywhere for more than a couple months. They’ve never been a powerful force in politics. They’ve never had a revolution of their own. And worst of all is that they’re all steeped in that classic western anti-communism. I swear to god most anarchist would rather every historic or current Socialist country be destroyed by the west and turned into some capitalist liberal democracy than to let the “authoritarians” or “tankies” or whatever stupid term they’re using now have power. Anarchist don’t even do fucking praxis anymore like they did in the 1800s and early 1900s, they just whine online and do electoralism. I feel like the only two reasons someone would even be an anarchist at this point is because either

A. They’re a hyper individualist to the same degree as right-wing libertarians but just like left-wing rhetoric.

or

B. They never kicked the heavy amount of bullshit propaganda people are fed about communism, but still like the idea, so they’ve settled for an idealistic version which has never existed and will never exist.

Clearly this isn’t an intelligent or thorough analysis of anarchism, and I’m not saying anything new in the slightest, but I just need to get my hatred for them out of my system somehow.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2331989

I don’t really think he knows this site’s culture at all. No one is dissuading people from reading theory lol

Yey or ney for him?

As someone said in the post

As far as I can tell, he's a guy who spends all his time posting about how all leftists do is post.

~~And this ain't the first time, Roderick's a bit terminally online, arguing against other progressives like JT (Second Thought) and Michael Hudson....~~

Edit:

Ok I've made a right-deviationist mistake in saying that Michael Hudson is a progressive, and indirectly agreeing with the views of the former....

I've not investigated into JT's MMT videos nor looked carefully into Hudson (I thought he was also against capitalism, turns out, only finance and feudalism..., just cares for industrial capitalism)

To get straight to the point, I've been trying to move right back to reading from the original Marxists, esp. Marx and Engels themselves.

I think the online left and people organizing in real life are not paying enough attention to the trends at hand. Some people we are calling comrades today are going to be fascists, and I believe as undisputed fact.

People are making reference to an "industrial" versus "financial" capitalism, or reference to a so-called PMC class, or reference to a "critical support" of countries like Russia, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and many others. I see a lot of talk about multipolarity and geopolitics.

At first glance, this doesn't look harmful, but if we go back in time and imagine similar debates as though it were still World War I? These would be the ones first to try to pull a Mussolini and jump from Communist and anti-Imperialist to writing fascist theory.

As these perversions of Marx continue, I really do fear that a lot of middle-class (and those middle-class falling to proles) will see this and end up re-inventing fascism.

There is far too much crude and vulgar anti-capitalism, anti-liberalism, anti-imperalism. It's a grave error. Liberalism is born out of the French Revolution and brought us progressively towards radical socialism and Communism. Capitalism, for all its faults, brought us progressively towards alternative structures and the ability for workers to seize mass production for their class. Anti-imperialism, for some of its faults, brought us the Russian, Chinese, Cuban, Vietnamese, and Korean revolutions, all but one with total victory.

But I hear people calling themselves anti-capitalist, anti-liberal, anti-imperalist as if there was nothing more behind those words. We're in World War III it seems, but people who are clearly infiltrated and have a lack of understanding of serious conflicts are running left-wing parties. What are they doing? Who is there to critique them? Over the years we've had to deal with nonsense from the IMT, Midwestern Marx, the Black Hammer Party, PCUSA, and so on. There is no working class party with the tools and experience and support base to properly analyze and critique them.

I think we need to request of working class parties a way to redefine the use of anti-imperialist forces and the idea of nationalism and ideas of "oppressed nations" and the way the Global North and Global South are organized. To be blunt, Palestine is one of the only places on this earth where a real national liberation would be legitimate. From so many years of a weakened leftist movement, it looks like decades of work are going to be put in to fix it.

I get the idea that Cuba and North Korea are the last breath of Communism on this planet and, for how much of a fight they put up, they are still struggling. Hard. N. Korea is reliant on Russia. Cuba is facing so many leaving the country while their economy hasn't fully recovered, and they are turning to private sector to fix problems while still under a painful embargo. These are not pleasant places to live and I can't think of anyone in the real world that would see this socialism and decide it's the way to go. So much progress is squeezed into these tiny countries and there's nothing to show the world for it. On top of that, if Palestine doesn't get a real success in the near future, we are pushed even further back in terms of progess while the leftist movement is barely getting back to development.

I am still Marxist-Leninist, but I hope people understand that the mistakes of leftist movements today are going to be the framework for fascists tomorrow. I won't lose hope, but a lot of people will.

Who is going to be the one to transform the contradictions of today into the working class movements of tomorrow, speaking figuratively?

Sorry to let down many on Lemmygrad and Hexbear with this statement, but neither the rise of China nor the fall of the US will be way to success. Those are just inevitabilities based on present conditions, but the events alone aren't going to do much. The fall of the US might even put hell on some of the most vulnerable people on earth. And the rise of China isn't going to inspire much except a vague sense of "economic stability and prosperity".

At this point, my position is almost right in the middle, right between the average (in-practice) Marxist-Leninist and the average (in-practice) ML-Maoist. My views are starting to diverge a little too much from what I see online, but my views are still useful in real life situations and among the real world, which is a good sign, but it doesn't even look like half the people calling themselves some form of leftists are even trying to understand what they are doing. The world is moving too fast and too dangerously for so many people to make these deadly errors

Sorry about the long post (shortest leftist wall of text be like)

When it comes to the "labour aristocracy" in the first world, I feel like many leftists wildly exaggerate both its size and wealth. This is often done to the point of erasing class conflict in the first world, as this article does. I might be totally wrong here, but i feel like these authors are making anti-marxist errors. The following points are emblematic of what I am talking about (emphasis mine):

The class interests of the labour aristocracy are bound up with those of the capitalist class, such that if the latter is unable to accumulate superprofits then the super-wages of the labour aristocracy must be reduced. Today, the working class of the imperialist countries, what we may refer to as metropolitan labour, is entirely labour aristocratic.

This is just completely wrong when one considers just how many poor people live in the first world who obviously don't receive super-wages. US poverty rates alone are always above 10%, and that poverty line is widely known to be inadequate. The US also is significantly more wealthy than Europe, where the calculus is even worse. And that doesn't even account for the wild wealth disparities that exist in the first world.

When ... the relative importance of the national exploitation from which a working class suffers through belonging to the proletariat diminishes continually as compared with that from which it benefits through belonging to a privileged nation, a moment comes when the aim of increasing the national income in absolute terms prevails over that of improving the relative share of one part of the nation over the other

What it is saying is that when the working class share of national income becomes high enough, they start to want to exploit other nations as that becomes beneficial. However, the expansion of imperialism in the neoliberal era is also the reason for the stagnation of living standards in the imperial core. By accessing a larger pool of labor in the south, the position of northern workers is threatened. That's why Northern workers have fought against outsourcing, the very fundamental imperialist measure.

Thereafter a de facto united front of the workers and capitalists of the well-to-do countries, directed against the poor nations, co-exists with an internal trade-union struggle over the sharing of the loot. Under these conditions this trade-union struggle necessarily becomes more and more a sort of settlement of accounts between partners, and it is no accident that in the richest countries, such as the United States---with similar tendencies already apparent in the other big capitalist countries---militant trade-union struggle is degenerating first into trade unionism of the classic British type, then into corporatism, and finally into racketeering

I am not too familiar with the history of the trade union, but wasn't the degeneration of the unions largely a result of state and corporate action against the unions? They engage in union busting, forced out radical leaders, performed assasinations, etc. This seems like an erasure of the class struggle to the point that the unions are depicted as voluntarily degenerating.

I feel like these kinds of narratives, which are popular amongst liberals as well (liberals will often admit that weak nations are exploited. Example - America invades for oil meme) tend to justify imperialism to westerners. I have on more than one occasion seen westerns outright say that they don't want to fight against imperialism because they benefit from it. I think that's how a lot of westerners justify supporting imperialism. This kind of narrative ironically cements the power of imperialism

I'm not very advanced on theory so didn't read much what socialists leaderships wrote throughout mostly 20th century, so I'm not familiar about what albanian line is all about, all i know is they call themselves anti-revisionists and love to trashtalk post deng china, sometimes even mao (which is odd to me) and tito's yugoslavia.

this was brought to my attention because some subs here apparently don't like them very much at the same time that the fastest growing communist movement in brazil follow the anti-revisionism line.

so, what are your thoughts about it?

I was an anarchist for a huge part of my life (most of my teenage years) and kinda began to get more connected with M-L and stuff like that, and I would call myself a marxist. Yet, everytime I talk with other leftist I either get called a tankie or an anarkiddie. If I recommend Das Kapital, I'm a state bootlicker or a left wing fascist. If I talk about how I prefer direct democracy but know that the process to communism is slow and needs some help of a state, I get called an anarkiddie. Anyway, I just find exhausting the infighting. I already struggle a lot with mental health just to be poorly treated by other people that, supposedly, want the same as all of us. Anyway you guys in lemmygrad have been always so nice, thanks btw. Have a nice week and thanks for reading my small rant.

publicado de forma cruzada desde: https://lemmy.zip/post/8154633

Communist branches respond to Nicolás Maduro: "Mr. President, it is you who drives a bus full of corrupt people"

Indignation and total rejection has been registered in the last hours in the ranks of the Communist Party of Venezuela after President Nicolás Maduro confirmed his participation in the judicial assault on the PCV on January 4 and declared -without any proof- that the legitimate leadership, elected by the XVI National Congress, had "surrendered" to "corruption" and "imperialism".

From the hemisphere of the National Assembly, the Head of State made a point of greeting the political operator of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) appointed to star in the theft of the PCV's acronym, Henry Parra; however, the "mercenary" was not in the room.

"With their lies, even repeated a thousand times -as it seems they learned from the fascist regimes-, they will not be able to hide the intervention assault committed by the leadership of the government against the PCV, using mercenaries and the fraudulent action of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice", the "Pablo Neruda" branch of the PCV in Aragua state lashed out.

For its part, the membership of the "Silvino Varela" branch of the PCV in Caracas declared in a communiqué: "Mr. President, Nicolás Maduro, you are the one driving a bus full of corrupt people and attempting a maneuver to continue deceiving our people".

Also from the Venezuelan capital, the plenary of the "Alberto Bustos Fernandez" branch warned that "Venezuelans know who are the real corrupt and traitors of the people; and they know who are the incorruptible and loyal to the working class".

The organization recalled that while former Minister Rafael Ramírez was at the head of PDVSA, the PCV requested an investigation of his administration, "but [Maduro's wife] Cilia Flores and [PSUV number 2] Diosdado Cabello prevented the National Assembly from investigating him" and "Maduro protected him by appointing him as Venezuela's Ambassador to the UN".

Along the same lines, the "Pedro Pascual Abarca" branch of the PCV in Portuguesa state affirmed: "The Venezuelan people know that the PSUV leadership is taken over by corruption and has surrendered to imperialism".

The Caracas based "Raul Reyes" branch also addressed the Head of State to remind him that "you are the one who supports corruption by protecting the former Minister of Petroleum, the delinquent Tarek El Aissami" and added: "We also remind you that the party you preside over has been characterized for being a quarry of corrupt people, as has been demonstrated with dozens of PSUV militants imprisoned for corruption".

"It is appropriate to explain [to the President] that Hugbel Roa is not a militant of the PCV, neither is Tarek El Aissami, who stole with full hands from his government", specified the "César Vallejo" branch of the PCV in Nueva Esparta state.

From the Sucre municipality of Miranda State, the secretariat of the "Ernesto Che Guevara" branch assured the President that "all the communication apparatus of your Government to wash the face of the most corrupt administration that our history has ever known will be of no use" and pointed out: "you enjoy the contempt of the majority of Venezuelans. Neither you nor your governmental leadership represent the values of dignity, honesty and the sacred ethics of public affairs".

In Guárico, the "Jerónimo Carrera" branch took stock of the anti-popular policy of the government leadership and asserted that "the President of the Republic, who today kneels before national and transnational capital, has no ethics or morals to name and attack the Communist Party of Venezuela, and should -instead- dedicate himself to solving the high levels of corruption, mediocrity and inefficiency that have characterized his government administration".

The membership of the PCV's "Pío Tamayo" branch warned that these false accusations by President Maduro, issued "with shameless cretinism", give way to "a new phase of aggression: that of false positives, to put together rigged dossiers against the true, legitimate and genuine militancy and leadership of the PCV".

Read more: https://www.idcommunism.com/2024/01/venezuelas-communists-respond-to-nicolas-maduro-mr-president-it-is-you-who-drives-a-bus-full-of-corrupt-people.html

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/1578316

It's basically the new /r/GenZedong.

They should've done this way before this became a problem.

I'd like Nakoichi's thoughts on this as well.

The idea that the Palestinian people have only been able to persist because of their religion is ridiculous to me. They are resisting because colonialism, apartheid and genocide are very bad things to which nobody would want to be subjected, not because of Islam. If Palestinians were atheists, is he suggesting that they wouldn't have the strength or the will to resist? Would their lack of a belief in the supernatural turn them into doormats for Isn'treal?

I like Hakim's content, but his position on religion is quite frustrating. He is a Muslim first and a Marxist second. Also, Joram van Klaveren is still a right-winger.

Do they think the Catalan Anarchists had no bourgeois blood on their hands? Do they think the Makhnovites never executed counterrevolutionaries? Fucking idiots. I preferred it when anarchists actually threw pipe bombs.

Most of the memes are fine but for some reason they have one saying either AES or Russia are fascist and we’re evil tankies for critically supporting them. The comments are strange. There’s Communists saying “you sound stupid when you say “tankie”.” And then when they get a reply they’re like “obviously I don’t support AES or Russia, stop grouping me with them.” There are a couple other people defending AES with me in the comments and one is a patsoc 💀.

https://www.initiative-cwpe.org/en/news/ON-THE-TERMINATION-OF-THE-ACTIVITY-OF-THE-EUROPEAN-COMMUNIST-INITIATIVE/

North Korea has also taken steps to strengthen the so-called "free economic zones", the "market", where the Workers' Party of Korea for several years has rejected Marxism-Leninism, promotes the idealistic theory "Juche", talks about "Kimilsugism - Kimgyongilism", violating every concept of socialist democracy, workers' people's control, within a regime of nepotism.

https://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/The-International-role-of-China

TW for all sorts of fucked up shit

“They gaslighted individuals with mental illness, they bullied people by harassing them, they crashed meetings they were not invited to (Tafadar and Khalil had attempted to crash gender struggle sessions, demanding that everyone surrender their phones for a search and seizure, like a hostage type of move), they threatened people with violence, and abused their leadership or popularity status as a way to avoid criticisms.”

I really recommend reading this, especially to Amerikan comrades and all comrades who feel ideologically inclined towards "Marxism-Leninism-Maoism [principally Maoism]".

...a member of RGA’s Revolutionary Student Front is confronted by other members for consistent creepy, sexist, and manipulative behavior. Jared argues for him to remain a member through undergoing “rectification” through physical violence, a method that will become a feature of the cult. Carlos agrees to rectification, not believing he will actually be assaulted. He is beaten, after which he flees the state.

It really only continues to get worse.

“Without letters our comrade has no contact with the outside world and he continues to not receive letters from the majority of his comrades. The consistent lack of initiative has forced the PPSC to take further action against the negligible support provided to our comrade. From now on a fine of 20 dollars will be given to those who have a personal relationship with our imprisoned comrade but fail to send out at least 1 letter monthly. The 20 dollars will go in a collection to support our imprisoned comrade’s wife and child."

It gets far, far worse.

This is by far the most interesting, detailed, and horrifying exposé I've seen regarding the Red Guards. In reading it, I believe there may be valuable insight on how to prevent ourselves from getting swept up in the political games of narcissistic opportunists. It is also crucial to be able to differentiate democratic centralism from "democratic centralism", lest any of us find ourselves stuck in a situation like this.

“They gaslighted individuals with mental illness, they bullied people by harassing them, they crashed meetings they were not invited to (Tafadar and Khalil had attempted to crash gender struggle sessions, demanding that everyone surrender their phones for a search and seizure, like a hostage type of move), they threatened people with violence, and abused their leadership or popularity status as a way to avoid criticisms.”

I really recommend reading this, especially to Amerikan comrades and all comrades who feel ideologically inclined towards "Marxism-Leninism-Maoism [principally Maoism]".

...a member of RGA’s Revolutionary Student Front is confronted by other members for consistent creepy, sexist, and manipulative behavior. Jared argues for him to remain a member through undergoing “rectification” through physical violence, a method that will become a feature of the cult. Carlos agrees to rectification, not believing he will actually be assaulted. He is beaten, after which he flees the state.

It really only continues to get worse.

“Without letters our comrade has no contact with the outside world and he continues to not receive letters from the majority of his comrades. The consistent lack of initiative has forced the PPSC to take further action against the negligible support provided to our comrade. From now on a fine of 20 dollars will be given to those who have a personal relationship with our imprisoned comrade but fail to send out at least 1 letter monthly. The 20 dollars will go in a collection to support our imprisoned comrade’s wife and child.”

It gets far, far worse.

This is by far the most interesting, detailed, and horrifying exposé I've seen regarding the Red Guards. In reading it, I believe there may be valuable insight on how to prevent ourselves from getting swept up in the political games of narcissistic opportunists. It is also crucical to be able to differentiate democratic centralism from "democratic centralism", lest any of us find ourselves stuck in something like this.

i am not very fond of anarchism as an ideology. It just cant function without contradicting its own principles....How in a revolution, or US intervention would strategic decisions be made? You cant just make everyone elect some shit every few hours during a war without somebody having to make decisions for other people. Or production? If you would like to have a car, or a house or whatever, you would need to ask hundreds of people for consent to produce the needed commodities as there is no state that regulates what and how much one should work....that would take a fucking long time which in return means not everyone gets to be supplied their needs. Anarchism is just not something you can achieve directly after a revolution, it needs to be gradual, when imperialist forces and other capitalist threats are annihilated, global socialism can deregulate its state-functions and transfer piece for piece more power to the people.

"...nah bro, it's still anarchist because they adhere to anarchist principles!!"

"...nah bro, the EZLN is actually anarchist even though they openly reject anarchism as their identity!!"

"...nah bro, it's not an expression of a colonialist attitude to appropriate the EZLN struggle as being part of my political beliefs!!"

It's astounding to me that western anarchists will defend to the death the right of trans people to self-identify but when a political struggle in the third world asserts its right to self-identify they'll steamroll it without a second thought.

Imagine claiming to reject unjust hierarchies and then placing yourself above the people of a movement to paternalistically appropriate their cause as being part of your own political ideology.

Here are the EZLN in their own words on the matter:

The EZLN and its larger populist body the FZLN are NOT Anarchist. Nor do we intend to be, nor should we be.

Over the past 500 years, we have been subjected to a brutal system of exploitation and degradation few in North America have ever experienced.

It is apparent from your condescending language and arrogant short-sightedness that you understand very little about Mexican History or Mexicans in general.

Our struggle was raging before anarchism was even a word, much less an ideology with newspapers and disciples. Our struggle is older than Bakunin or Kropotkin. We are not willing to lower our history to meet some narrow ideology exported from the same countries we fought against in our Wars for independence. The struggle in Mexico, Zapatista and otherwise, is a product of our histories and our cultures and cannot be bent and manipulated to fit someone else’s formula, much less a formula not at all informed about our people, our country or our histories. We as a movement are not anarchist.

We see narrow-minded ideologies like anarchism... as tools to pull apart Mexicans into more easily exploitable groups.

But what really enraged [us is] the familiar old face of colonialism shining through your good intentions. Once again we Mexicans [find ourselves put into a position where we] are not as good as the all knowing North American Imperialist who thinks himself more aware, more intelligent and more sophisticated politically than the dumb Mexican. This attitude, though hidden behind thin veils of objectivity, is the same attitude that we have been dealing with for 500 years, where someone else in some other country from some other culture thinks they know what is best for us more than we do ourselves.

Once again, the anarchists in North America know better than us about how to wage a struggle we have been engaged in since 300 years before their country was founded and can therefore, even think about using us as a means to “advance their project.” That is the same exact attitude Capitalists and Empires have been using to exploit and degrade Mexico and the rest of the third world for the past five hundred years.

Even though [you talk] a lot about revolution, the attitudes and ideas held by [you] are no different than those held by Cortes, Monroe or any other corporate imperialist bastard you can think of. Your intervention is not wanted nor are we a “project” for some high-minded North Americans to profit off.

So long as North American anarchists hold and espouse colonialist belief systems they will forever find themselves without allies in the third world. The peasants in Bolivia and Ecuador, no matter how closely in conformity with your rigid ideology, will not appreciate your condescending colonial attitudes anymore than would the freedom fighters in Papua New Guinea or anywhere else in the world.

Colonialism is one of the many enemies we are fighting in this world and so long as North Americans reinforce colonial thought patterns in their “revolutionary” struggles, they will never be on the side of any anti-colonial struggle anywhere. We in the Zapatista struggle have... asked the world to... respect the historical context we are in and think about the actions we do to pull ourselves from under the boots of oppression.

Source

(Excuse the minimisation that the editor feels compelled to engage in with their mention of "the subtle colonialist tendencies" and in saying "it is unclear whose voice is this Zapatista response, which uses 'we' to speak for all on such important themes. We [My note: Who is 'we'? It is unclear whose voice in this editorial note which uses 'we' to speak for all on such important themes...] fully agree that arrogance toward the struggles in Mexico should have no part in any commentary. Perhaps it is also worth asking whether centralization and representation can be anti-authoritarian?" — does the editor have no shame and no capacity for insight? Did they even listen to the author before typing this out? It's remarkable that this editor's royal "we" applies a standard of demanding proof of consensus from the EZLN in their communications which is entirely absent from their concern when other movements write or when Subcommandante Marcos writes but is not directly criticising western anarchists, not to mention in their own editorial note itself. They are setting their own personal standards for how they define the terms centralisation and anti-authoritarian then they're projecting this onto the EZLN and concern-trolling over what they assume to be the EZLN falling short of the editor's standards. Way to miss the point, guys!)

Makes you wonder why the most committed anarchists would go to the Ukraine to fight if they weren't really anarchists in the first place.

If the anarchists were really as disorganised as this article paints them to be, any adventurist would have had much better luck finding their way to the front through virtually any other route than as an anarchist.

Notice the unfalsifiable orthodoxy that kicks in in the editorial note, immediately dismissing any anarchist who joined the Azov Battalion or the OUN as being a false anarchist since joining with fascists disqualifies your from being an anarchist. That's very convenient and all but the lack of self-crit shown in this article is astounding.

Named after Iskra, but not a single book by Lenin, 3 by Trotksy and even a couple anarchists. This is the trend among university "communists" over here. If a revolution was successful, it must've not been a real revolution, except for the aesthetics.

This is a persistent myth that is shared amongst anarchists and RadLibs alike that the Soviets betrayed the Makhnovists by reneging on their so-called alliance with the Black Army, turning on them immediately after the defeat of the White Army.

This furnishes the anarchist persecution fetish and common narratives about how communists will always betray "the true revolution" and how Lenin was a tyrant.

The historical facts, however, paint a significantly different picture.

For one, you do not sign pacts with your allies. There was a military pact that was signed but, like the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, this is something that occurred between two parties that were constantly at odds with each other and the pact was signed out of conditions where the interests of both parties were temporarily aligned. This simple fact escapes the historical revisionists constantly but, unsurprisingly, only when it serves their arguments.

Secondly, Makhno himself knew that this pact was only temporary. Upon the signing of the pact he had this to say in The Road to Freedom, the Makhnovists' mouthpiece, in October 13, 1920:

"Military hostilities between the Makhnovist revolutionary insurgents and the Red Army have ceased. Misunderstandings, vagueness and inaccuracies have grown up around this truce: it is said that Makhno has repented of his anti-Bolshevik acts, that he has recognized the soviet authorities, etc. How are we to understand, what construction are we to place upon this peace agreement?

What is very clear already is that no intercourse of ideas, and no collaboration with the soviet authorities and no formal recognition of these has been or can be possible. We have always been irreconcilable enemies, at the level of ideas, of the party of the Bolshevik-communists.

We have never acknowledged any authorities and in the present instance we cannot acknowledge the soviet authorities. So again we remind and yet again we emphasize that, whether deliberately or through misapprehension, there must be no confusion of military intercourse in the wake of the danger threatening the revolution with any crossing-over, 'fusion' or recognition of the soviet authorities, which cannot have been and cannot ever be the case."
[Source: Nestor Makhno: Anarchy's Cossack by Skirda and Sharkey, pp. 200-201]

Clearly these are not the words that allies speak about one another.

At the successful Seige of Perekop, whereby the Red and Black Armies successfully broke the back of Wrangel's White Army forces and brought the Southern front to a conclusion, Makhno's aide-de-camp Grigori Vassilevsky, pronounced the end of the pact, proclaiming:

"That's the end for the agreement! Take my word for it, within one week the Bolsheviks are going to come down on us like a ton of bricks!"
[Source: Nestor Makhno: Anarchy's Cossack by Skirda and Sharkey, p.238]

The fact is that USSR furnished the Black Army with much-needed military supplies without which they would have been unable to continue fighting and Makhno was no pluralistic leader who was open to Bolsheviks; in fact, his army incorporated Bolshevik forces which defected to the Black Army and Makhno set his military secret police force, the Kontrrazvedka, to at first surveil the former Bolshevik military leaders along with the rising Bolshevik influence that had developed particularly around Yekaterinoslav, and then later summarily executed the Bolshevik leaders when they posed too much of a threat to his power due to commanding some of the strongest units in his army.

But that's a topic which deserves its own post...

I think it makes some points. Does anyone more knowledgeable on this subject have a different take?

I'm astonished at how sensitive the mods must be over there.

Apparently you're allowed to say whatever baseless slander you like about the eeeeevil tankies but the minute someone says "Hold up a sec, you claim to be anti-authoritarian and yet you support authoritarianism either explicitly or implicitly?" and they have to shut it down immediately.

Regardless, I think I made a pretty solid counterargument to the typical complaint about communism being authoritarian.

Mfers skim read the Wikipedia entry on Hannah Arendt and start thinking they're justified in slinging accusations about "muh authoritarianism" smh.

Apparently this was an actual discourse going around.