11
A video essay about campism from a Lebanese leftist (www.youtube.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/anarchism@hexbear.net
11 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Thoughts?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 19 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

I'm an ML, not an anarchist, so this may not be directed towards me. However, from my perspective, rigorous Marxist-Leninist analysis often gets dismissed as merely "west bad" by critics that would rather not engage with the actual analysis. It's similar to calling someone a "tankie," the utility is in packing a pejorative with nonsensical or outright evil traits, and smearing your opponent with it.

This isn't even getting into the use of "authoritarian" as a meaningful identifier of a state, as though there could ever be a "non-authoritarian" state. Marxists generally identify states by the class they represent, because that's far more meaningful than the idea of a state that somehow isn't a monopoly on violence.

Just my 2 cents, I'm sure anarchist comrades can share.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] [S] 9 points 3 months ago* (3 children)

    However, from my perspective, rigorous Marxist-Leninist analysis often gets dismissed as merely "west bad" by critics that would rather not engage with the actual analysis.

    As an anarchist, yeah I think we do have a habit of dismissing all ML analysis as "West bad" out of hand. Like when I critique MLs, I really try to stick to the argument. Also...the West is bad and it's not campist to think that, and any anarchist worth their salt should reach that conclusion. Campism would be thinking only that. And I also want to recognize that a lot of self-identified """anarchists""" are campist in the other direction (pro-West), which I push back on all the time with fire. To be charitable: they are often Westerners in the process of deconstructing their pro-Western programming. But to be a little less charitable: humanity cannot afford to wait for them to catch up.

    This isn't even getting into the use of "authoritarian" as a meaningful identifier of a state, as though there could ever be a "non-authoritarian" state.

    I mean I absolutely agree that formally, there is no such thing as a non-authoritarian state, and I think most anarchists would agree there...but there are differences between how much different states choose to exert their power, in particular against the working class. E.g., while I cannot definitionally say that Cuba is a non-authoritarian state, because the two terms are contradictory... it's a completely different animal than, say, the United States, which is a surveillance capitalist imperialist hegemon, or Israel, which is a ZioNazi hellhole. Like if someone says "Israel is an authoritarian country but Cuba is not"... it's not technically precise, but you know what they mean. I think there is another sense of the word "authoritarian" when people say things like "non-authoritarian states", although I personally try not to use that language since I think we inherited it from liberals.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 10 points 3 months ago*

    Yea, to be fair to you I've not considered you to be the same as the pro-west anarchists of the "we need to critically support NATO" variety. Those anarchists exist, and I'd be lying if I said I never had a NATO-anarchist phase. My decoupling with anarchism came alongside my decoupling with critically supporting the west, so truth be told my anarchism never actually co-existed with the anti-imperialist stance I have today.

    Definitely agreed that, frankly, we cannot afford to play the waiting game. If we could, then the accelerationists that support the DNC as the most competent managers of empire would actually have a point, we could try to speed run imperialism to its inevitable self-destruction. Unfortunately, this also means sacrificing the global south to imperialism for a longer time, and potentially letting climate change get even farther out of hand than we could potentially mitigate with revolution. That's why accelerationism is wrong.

    Regarding your point on authority, I fully agree that Cuba is more liberating for the working classes than the US. I also have to acknowledge that Cuba, in the interests of protecting working class power, is more than fine with expropriating property from the landlords and capitalists. The authority of the state is used as a tool to liberate the people, and oppress the former ruling classes. This is true across socialism.

    The real crux of the anarchist vs. Marxist argument is in communalization of production vs. collectivization. Should the world, in the final analysis, be made up of linked cells as horizontally as possible, therefore requiring redundancies and self-sufficiency to an extreme degree in each cell, or should the world be organized in one unified system, with a combination of bottom-up and top-down controls, all running along a common plan? The key difference is the question of how power actually works, and how production and distribution actually work at global scales.

    I'm not going to try to make an argument here in favor of what I believe is more "correct," it's already obvious based on my identification as an ML and I don't believe this is a space for debate. However, this does relate to the video, which questions how Marxists often venerate historical and present figures that have contributed a great deal in either a theoretical or practical degree. Marxists do not follow "Great Man Theory," but we do believe in the utility of leadership and disciplined, unified organization. This is the basis of Democratic Centralism, which is a stark departure from most anarchist praxis, that focuses on horizontalism and collective accountability without strict discipline even in the face of disagreement.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent