34
submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

I'm running around in leftist circles a lot since beginning of last year. I first got introduced to socialism through anarchism [stereotype alert] started to read and went pretty straight to communist and then ML pretty recently. The shoe is still new but it fits very well so far.

Whenever I bring up socialism and communism (let alone ML), I get a lot of flak from other leftists and especially from anarchists. Yet, I feel like a couple anarchist agitators sound like MLs just cosplaying. It would make sense as anarc kids are totally open for socialist ideas if one lets out the "science" part which irritates me a lot.

Does anyone have similar experience or is able to explain?

Btw pls let me know if this is inappropriate to ask. I dont mean to offend anyone.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago

That is the reason mostly why i went from anarchism to classic socialism.

I read about anarchism and found huge hierarchies in local groups which were really aggressive when I pointed that out. That gave me the impression that its the same thing but less transparent and easily abused.

I'm sure that is not the case everywhere but thats when I noped out and went classic socialist, etc.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago

Read Tryanny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman

It is all about the exact phenomenon you describe, written by an anarchist

[-] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

With pleasure! Thanks, comrade. :)

[-] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

The absence of hierarchy does not mean the absence of structure. Conceptually, her work is not very rigorous. This is very common among American theorists who claim to be left-wing. Moreover, her theory seems to be seriously challenged if we are to believe the current social protest movements in Europe, in the dawn of surveillance capitalism, which, on the contrary, seems to be much more effective when they are spontaneous, decentralized, and horizontal (the french yellow vests, for example, a movement without structure which has freaked out the power in place like never before since perhaps the events of May 1968)

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

What has yellow vests accomplished through their spontaneous movement? I'm not French and haven't heard of anything coming out of those protests.

Either way, I'm sure dozens of organizations with hierarchy were involved in those protests, and that there were centralized, planned aspects within the movement just as there were spontaneous decentralized aspects

[-] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

i have no idea what you mean by classic socialism

[-] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

As in not libertarian socialism (which anarchists are described as in the anarchcist faq). The "dictature of the proletariat" thing. Maybe I'm mixing up terms here. Not sure.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

You might mean Scientific Socialism, but someone else can correct me.

this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2025
34 points (100.0% liked)

Ask Lemmygrad

993 readers
29 users here now

A place to ask questions of Lemmygrad's best and brightest

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS