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.
In the West it’s a lot more culturally acceptable to be an anarchist than it is to be a socialist and especially more acceptable than being a communist. It’s like how the 90s Geo Prizm and Toyota Corolla we’re the same thing but to laymen the Geo had a bad reputation and the Toyota was considered the best vehicle of the era. Anarchism is when Toyota Corolla, Communism is when Geo Prizm
It depends where. In my country, France, anarchists have a much “worse reputation” (for the normies) than socialists and communists, especially because anarchists mobilize much more during demonstrations and are much more vehement than communists who, well, are big pussies here, not gonna lie : they forget what praxis was
Sorry, I still don’t understand. Can I please get this analogy but with burgers?
No I don’t think that is happening.
What is more likely is that they are anarchists who just have a couple good takes about specific things. Most anarchists have their own boutique version they follow and there isn’t as many set “lines” as there are with MLs. So there are a lot of anarchists who haven’t moved passed anarchism because they are overloaded with anti-communist programming, but still come to some correct conclusions that align with ML
I haven’t encountered this phenomenon myself, but I think it’s likely that if you’re an ML in an area where the only communist orgs are reactionary like the RCP and ACP, or full of sex pests, you’d opt to just stick to anarchist orgs. That might mean that anarchist orgs are getting new ML members and the ML members introduce ML ideas in a subtle enough way that the ideas get adopted.
I tell people im an Anarchist all the time if I think they are likely to be the type of person to be affected by the mind terminating cliche of marxist=tankie=fascist.
I dont feel bad about it, im an Communist-Anarchist and an ML anyway, (I know its a lot but shit, its just the range of ideology where im like, yeah core principles are good) I could work with either and would be fine with either ideology getting us past the finish line. I have issues with anarchists who are anti-communist, but if they havent got an issue with me I havent got one with them - we want the same thing after all.
What do you mean by ML? You mean they unconsciously reproduce democratic centralism and anti-imperialism?
Marxist-Leninist? Or do you mean which features?
I mean that some agitators use similar rhetoric (as in strong focus on class, pointing out state propaganda, militant tendencies, etc.) some even show anti imperialist patterns. I’m glad they exist. I just wonder because IRL, the anarchists I know have zero understanding of the capitalism-fascism contingency for example. The agitators mostly do know it and point it out imo which I like.
Anarchists are also socialists after all, so you will hear a similar rhetoric from them. The main difference is that for anarchists, state is the primary contradiction, rather than class.
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.
Read Tryanny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman
It is all about the exact phenomenon you describe, written by an anarchist
With pleasure! Thanks, comrade. :)
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)
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
i have no idea what you mean by classic socialism
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.
You might mean Scientific Socialism, but someone else can correct me.
Isn’t the primary contradictions hierarchies in general, rather than the state specifically?
it depends. hierarchy is just a very abstract concept, so it is practically impossible to analyse + impossible not to have in a big enough org. most anarchists I talked to just focus on the state.
So I should start by saying I’m not a Communist (albeit many of my ideas are technically “socialist”, and I took a quiz once to make sure) but that I don’t disrespect Communists as the stereotype shows. There are several mindsets and Communism is just another mindset. For me, the “feeling” of red scare doesn’t come from their ideas, it comes from the pushiness experienced. I have been on the receiving end of several difficult times simply because I had even minor disagreements with Communists, such as whether anyone should be advocating assassinations (I don’t think so). When I see a whole swath of people cheering for some guy who travelled to NYC to eliminate someone who was actually himself trying to fix a system he was put in charge of, it is without any doubt in the world that I’m going to have serious misanthropic contemplations. Even though, yes, some seem to be veiling themselves in some way to escape the fear factor, often with emphasis on anarchist elements as you say, that doesn’t solve the issue. You’re all potential friends, and I just want peace between us.
When I see a whole swath of people cheering for some guy who travelled to NYC to eliminate someone who was actually himself trying to fix a system he was put in charge of
What?
There are maybe a few hundred people (if not a few thousand) in this ML community. For every one person who thinks what happened was overkill, another five are praising the killer, hence the memes that paint him as a literal saint. Surely an unreluctance for violence isn’t a pillar or prerequisite for Marxist-Leninism (especially in a discussion about people hiding their affiliations), right? I’m not cheering for either side, but one side resorted to murder when they could’ve, I don’t know, sued.
Are you really crying for the united healthcare ceo? That is so pathetic. “oh we should all be nice and let the rich peope steal from us and lie to us. We should all just be peaceful as they grind us into the mud with police that murder people without consequences and make laws that slowly make any form of opposition illegal.”
You disgust me boot licker.
This is the kind of thing I am referring to and which brings us to the OP’s situation to start out with. The way things ended, especially when the killer wasn’t even insured with the person’s insurance or could’ve just sued, isn’t the way to go.
People often worry the democratic process isn’t functional, correct? Well, the way to deal with things peacefully was wide open, and the killer instead opted for something to make a statement, presumably for the fame (according to all the psychoanalysis, though I don’t pretend that’s infallible).
God damn. Your words are like feces laced with aspartame.
Too bad you waste your rhetorical skills on standing up for the damned. I suppose you’ll enjoy hell along with the people you defend.
I’m not standing up for the damned. I’m standing up to overkill. Not sure how me describing precision of justice should earn my words the adjectives you give them, not to mention my denomination doesn’t even adhere to regular notions of Hell.
So you stand up for people who worship mammon and you follow a false gospel? Either way you are headed for an eternity of sorrow and teeth gnashing.
You say that like you aren’t, by definition, standing up for murderers. I am what one might call dual denomination (“denomination” one being “Aiken” which is the world’s most LGBT-friendly “sect”, the other being Australian aboriginal folk Christianity which often blends with LDS tradition in Australian form), and both traditions warn against dependence on violence and the value of diplomacy. I will say again I don’t support the victim wholly, but that how things happened was excessive.
You are confusing “Murder” with “Killing.” There is no commandment against killing in war. It is not “over kill” to use violence against the cult of mammon. It is not “Murder” to kill in class war.
You say they warn against the dependence on violence but that does not preclude its necessity. You are just a coward who would uphold the right of evil men to prosper by abusing the just instead of working to bring those men to justice. You are a lazy heretic who warps the teachings of justice to protect sinners rather than help the poor. You will surely be held to account for your apostasy in this life or the next.
This must be rage bait
I’m confused. I was responding to the part of the question about confrontations and people disguising themselves and explaining that there was more to it than that. What did I do wrong?
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Oh. Thanks, friend. I wasn’t in the know.
