• Sanctus@anarchist.nexus
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    1 day ago

    You dont understand, my centralized power structure is based on giving. It could never be commandeered by power hungry psychopaths and used for their own gain like the rest of the power structures around the globe.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      1 hour ago

      We don’t believe socialism to be pure of corruption, but that it’s both more resistant to it and more effective in general at meeting the needs of the people. The problem isn’t with power structures, but the mode of production and distribution, and the class character of the state. States run by the working classes as a consequence take better care of their people and those they rely on than capitalist ones do. Even the nordics, which are generally nice for their own population, rely on imperialism and foreign plunder to keep going, while socialist countries do not.

    • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.net
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      24 hours ago

      So either anarchism has no power structures, thus implicitly admitting that it is fundamentally incapable of bringing about the political change that it advocates for, or it has a power structure and thus it is liable to be commandeered by power hungry psychopaths and used for their own gain like the rest of the power structures around the globe.

      Which way, western anarchist?

      • EtAl@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        23 hours ago

        Anarchism is a network of smaller structures. Yes, a psychopath would be able to a tribe into a cult. However, the rest of the network would work a check on that psychopath’s power. Better that than a psychopath turning a nation into a cult.

    • LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      1 day ago

      If you “don’t believe in power structures” you’re not even a fucking anarchist, you’re a child out here larping. Anarchism isn’t “the abolition of all power structures” it’s the abolition of unjust and arbitrary power structures. You literally cannot have a fucking functioning society without some form of hierarchy to it, there has to be some sort of decision making body whose decisions need some sort of enforcement structure. The whole fucking point to anarchism is ensuring that all is based on democratic participation and not “the bourgeoisie or nobility have all the power”

      NATO “anarchists” out here acting like the Catalonian syndicalists just magically got shit done without having any officers elected to direct work

    • btbt [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 day ago

      The excuses some of y’all come up with for not doing anything never cease to amaze me, do you really think you can bring about revolutionary political change by just asking nicely? If actual anarchists were like you the ideology of anarchism would rightfully be taken about as seriously as Posadism

      • Sanctus@anarchist.nexus
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        1 day ago

        You dont even know what I do locally and now we’re all making uneducated guesses cause I wanted to make a joke about centralized power structures. Chill.

        • btbt [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 day ago

          Local work is good and commendable, but wider societal change requires centralized leadership and the use of force to counter the violence which the capitalist class will engage in to protect its existence both during and after any revolution

          • Sanctus@anarchist.nexus
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            1 day ago

            Anarchist cells operating simulteanously can accomplish the same thing without relying on a single point of failure or granting a figurehead to attack.

              • MLRL_Commie [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 day ago

                Well, to be fair, Islamic resistance groups (not ideologically communist but progressive) have recently developed cells and flexible leadership methods which are sustainable and relatively successful. This is not what anarchist are usually referring to, though, because that still works strictly in a heirarchical structure and wields state power (good)

                • BanMeFromPosting [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                  8 hours ago

                  It didn’t, considering how revolutionary Catalonia did not survive the war.

                  This is peak western leftism. Only supporting failed movements because they are able to remain “pure”.

                  • Sanctus@anarchist.nexus
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                    2 hours ago

                    Crazy, I remember saying those words exactly, “I only support failed movements” was an actual comment that I made in those words.

                • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.net
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                  24 hours ago

                  Revolutionary Catalonia was not in any way a collection of independent anarchist cells. If you actually read the work of historians on Catalonia you’d realize that they had basically everything in terms of state apparatuses that someone like you would be ideologically opposed to, if you were consistent in your politics.

                  Workers couldn’t even leave their villages without the permission of the village council in Revolutionary Catalonia my guy. I don’t know how to tell you this but that sounds awfully like a repressive state doing what a repressive state does, even if it flies a black (and red) flag.

                  • Sanctus@anarchist.nexus
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                    1 day ago

                    They were still sustainable. The same thing is going to happen to any startup anarchist collective as nations and corporations hold an ungodly amount of power and material wealth. It was destroyed because it was actually working but couldn’t defend itself completely from a nation. That is a flaw but its one any up and coming revolution starts with.

    • JillyB@beehaw.org
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      24 hours ago

      One of the tent-poles of Marxism is the idea that actions are driven by material conditions. It seems so obvious to me that the material conditions of a self-appointed vanguard class (regardless of their original intentions) will lead them to be tyrants. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely” as they say.

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        20 hours ago

        Vanguards are not “self-appointed,” they are chosen and backed by the broader working class, which is how they have any powwr in the first place. Secondly, the idea that “absolute power corrupts absolutely” is closer to idealism than materialism.

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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            23 hours ago

            The constituent assembly, the bourgeois institution the workers had already abandoned in favor of the soviet government? Why would anyone hold legitimacy to that? The workers rallied around the bolsheviks, and the SRs backed the overthrow of the state and following the soviets anyways. The bolsheviks had their power from mass support, and because the other groups rallied around them, rather than the SRs, whites, etc.

            • poVoq@slrpnk.net
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              23 hours ago

              Right, that is what Lenin said afterwards to justify this blatant power grab by force. You are really funny 🤡

              • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                22 hours ago

                No? It was the truth. The majority of the faction vote supported overthrowing the constituent assembly and only recognizing the soviet government, which was by that time the government recognized by the working classes. That means that the total of the SRs, Mensheviks, and Bolsheviks voted in outweighed the votes the Right SRs and other factions, and thus support for overthrowing the constituent assembly in favor of the soviets was popular.

                Shortly after, the Left SRs and Bolsheviks formed a coalition, and won against the Right SRs among the peasantry, effectively a vote to support the soviet government. After the overthrow of the Tsar, the workers threw the broad majority of their support behind the bolsheviks, with most Left SRs and Mensheviks joining the bolsheviks and the rights split between the whites and the bolsheviks.

                I really don’t know what you’re trying to get at, here, do you think the Kerensky government was popular?

                • poVoq@slrpnk.net
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                  22 hours ago

                  Yes, the “truth” as written by Soviet historians afterwards 🙄

                  The Bolshevik were deeply unpopular and could not claim at all to represent the working class. They only got into power through political maneuvering and outright violence. Maybe at the time they were seen as the lesser evil, but that sure turned out to be a big miscalculation after Lenin started to purge his former political allies.