this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
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I don't think asking leftists to not punch left is asking for much of a compromise
i'm no ML but anarchists should read the jakarta method.
anarchists should be able to see that cuba, china, vietnam, laos, and north korea are far preferable to american hegemony despite all their flaws, and that contextually an anarchist uprising in cuba would immediately cause the island to fall to imperialists. You don't have to like states to understand that you kinda need one when the dominant mode of geopolitics is relations between states.
i'm here for anarchism when the bigger threat of capitalism is gone or if anarchists can get something going in the imperial core but i don't see any examples of successful movement building comparable to the BPP.
You are asking me to accept that a state is necessary - i.e you are asking me to stop being an anarchist. Once again, the only one that has to compromise in this "left unity" is me, and the compromise is so big I have to completely stop being myself. On your end though, there is nothing. This is exactly what I'm pointing out. You're just saying it in nicer words.
Thank God you're contained to the internet (like most of us). You would be getting people killed in real life.
Funnily enough it is the statists that most often kill the anti-statists "in real life" but okay, you do you buddy.
This is only the second time in my life I've engaged with someone who used the word "statist". The first guy was a libertarian, and the second is you, an anarcho-natoist. I guess the implication is that a state is inherently bad. What the state is used for is inconsequential. Funnily enough, in the real world we evaluate what's goid and bad based on material consequences, not baseless ideals pulled out of your ass. This has the same rigor as liberalism.
This is the usual tactic of attacking your use of specific words instead of the essence of what you're actually saying. Use inspect element and replace "statist" with the word you'd like me to use instead. I'm not gonna do that for you.
Anarchism isn't baseless or pulled out of anyone's ass. You can disagree with it, but to claim literally no material analysis of the state and/or its consequences, or the relations and dynamics of power and hierarchy exists, is just plain ignorance, no different from a conservative feeling the authority to look down on marxists when they have only skimmed the communist manifesto. If you are interested I can link you to some things, if you are not, just own up to it and say so.
LMAO fucking LARPer complaining about "Statists murder anarchists!" do you have any other state department talking points you'd like to walk us through?
What are you on? Revolutionary states killing anarchists is just an objective historical fact. I'm not even talking about the common stories brought up about Makhnovshchina or Kronstadt, every single revolutionary state has done it. You can look it up. Is part of the "left unity compromise" to blind yourself to actual things that happened?
that's not what i said at all. i said you need a state to play the game of states that the external hostile states force you into, that's not needing a state full stop.
what's the anarchist solution to contemporary geopolitics? i'm genuinely unaware and happy to change my line if you have something more successful than rojava to offer.
That's a more fair claim, excuse me for misunderstanding.
Can you elaborate a bit more on what specifically are you asking about? Do you mean how to resist agression from states? How to avoid being co-opted or hijacked?
nation states don't recognize or respect non-state organizations of people (well. corporations, which are surely worse than liberal states) and if you don't have a formal structure for them to recognize they will simply trample over you, would they not?
perhaps it's my own ignorance but i'm aware of zero modern anarchist anti-imperial projects at the level of viet nam, dprk, laos, or cuba. You don't have to like everything they do (or china or the ussr) but it should be really obvious that those states are less of an enemy of the people than and i would think they are therefore deserving of critical support in the face of western imperialism.
it's a priority thing. i think anarchism has a shot in the US because of how fucked our culture is, and i would support any movement regardless of tendency that got anything going, but the most successful leftist project here in a century was the black panthers. Anarchist thought needs to explain how an anarchist society would survive the onslaught of capitalist imperialism right now and if you want more credit from fence-sitters there needs to be something durable and independent that's bigger than food not bombs.
if there's an anarchist project doing for its people what the cuban revolution did with literacy and hospitals and... please tell me about it i would love to move there.
your political ideology is just a consumer identity. you are not a real anarchist.
If an anarchist is entirely willing to drop the anti-statism why should they even call themselves anarchist? This isn't some obscure niche issue, this is literally the entire core of the philosophy. Would you call a marxist entirely willing to drop the call for a DotP or materialism a marxist?
In my experience, those who claim to be both anti-tankie and anti-statist tend to really fucking hate AES states but not mind the US or the west that much. They don't apply their anti-statism equally.
"Both 'anti-tankie' and anti-statist" is redundant. You cannot be anti-statist and not "anti-tankie", because "anti-tankie" is opposing socialist states. Anarchists only criticise socialist states more often when they're talking with people who defend and excuse them, which is why you see the assymetry. In a regular anarchist community of mostly anarchists, both online and especially in real life orgs, it's actually quite the opposite.
The fact you have no self-awareness of how ridiculous this makes you sound, again reveals you have no idea what anarchism entails or what the class conception of the state is, you don't know the history, you can't define the terms, and you can't even articulate a remotely accurate description of marxism
Lets me guess, your definition of "state" is when "govment does stuff" isn't it? lmao you're not an anarchist, you're a confused liberal who likes to larp as a radical
If you truly believe anarchism is not against the state, I genuinely have no idea what to tell you. I seriously hope this is a conscious attempt at gaslighting and you're not THAT confidently incorrect.
In the remote case you are actually interested in anarchism, I'll leave something here for you.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-state-its-historic-role
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/mikhail-bakunin-what-is-authority
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anark-the-state-is-counter-revolutionary
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-an-anarchist-programme
You should, if you intend to keep thinking yourself an authority on anarchism to actual anarchists while also keeping any sense of integrity, at the very least, read this one, it's only 50 pages.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-anarchy
My brother in Christ I have loudly posted pretty much the entirety of Kropotkins Mutual Aid and no one has ever told me to shut up.
I was talking about the Reddit style libs that call themselves leftists and then proceed to call actual leftists evil authoritarian commie tankies, I've seen both anarchists and MLs be called tankies here by libs that stumble in.
Anarchists are not allowed to shit on MLs here just as ML are not allowed to shit on anarchists. No one here is going to dogpile you or ban you for not wanting a state unless you shit in MLs in the process. Just as MLs are allowed to want a state as long as they don't shit on anarchists.
Just read yourself. "No one is going to be mad at you for not wanting a state, unless you criticize those who want a state in the process". Even in your own words, it's exactly how I said. "You can believe in your little anarchisms, but shut the fuck up".
your desperate desire to be "oppressed" online is embarrassing.
I never spoke about opression. I spoke about the dynamics of these kinds of spaces and what an ML that believes in "left unity" actually wants in practice, even if they're sincere and even if they're vehement about their beliefs in it.