Everybody forgets that some of us are still here…
Some of us have even been here since the beginning!
… so anarchism is a historical project? about recollection?
I remember! I try to post stuff in !anarchism@hexbear.net ever so often.
ah shit i’m sorry to have to do this, but
always has been
It’s obvious to anyone who’s been here since before the subreddit got banned. We had literally years of effort posts and struggle sessions about it lol.
But for newer folks, Hexbear is the big bad of Lemmy according to everyone else. They’re just pissed that we managed to reach a consensus and ruined the debate bro aspect of leftism for them.
Nominally, but proportionally this place is 90% some flavor of ML.
I think the site’s red lines on AES chase away a lot of western leftists who would rather keep their chauvinism than actually work together. I think this is the key to having any sort of successful left unity project, having fundamental values underlying everything so the group doesn’t tear itself apart arguing about whether or not China is really “socialist” or not.
There’s no point in criticizing any existing projects when there isn’t one at home. Only thing you can do is observe and take notes on how those projects handle issues that come up.
Lots of people would rather just spend all day screaming about how everyone else is wrong than spend any time thinking about what actually needs to be done.
Exactly, it’s the most important step for any western leftist or group to reach before they can start affecting positive change. Spending time complaining about how others are doing socialism “wrong” instead of spending your time building socialism at all only helps the capitalists.
Nothing should be exempt from criticism. That being said, there are lessons to be learned from “AES” states that can be improved upon.
It’s not only that there’s no point, it’s actively harmful if they are attacking a nation that is being targeted by active US imperialist attacks. If they decide the moment to criticize Maduro or Venezuela is after he’s been abducted by imperialist invasion then kindly fuck off.
no point in criticizing any existing projects when there isn’t one at home
So nobody in the west ought to have a position on Palestine? Well they don’t live there do they.
The situation in Palestine is directly caused by the Hegemonic State that Westerners continue to allow to exist. If by having a position on Palestine, you mean criticizing the nuances of how Hamas and other Palestinian organizations carry themselves, then no. That is pointless.
If by having position you mean criticizing the US and Israeli involvement in Palestinian affairs, then that’s fine.
yeah we might have preferences for one Palestinian faction over another but the first and most important thing is getting rid of
Yeah? One of the big things in the early days of chapo.chat was trying to combat sectarianism.
Yeah, I Combat Sectarianism. I Combat other Sects all the time
There used to be a lot of zenz posting
we are actually 2nd international fanfic shipping forum
You see I’m basically a centrist.
Yup, it leans mostly ML and ML associated pretty strongly. Unfounded and unresearched attacks on AES isn’t allowed or at least will lead to a lot of pushback which leads to rhe anarchists here being generally ML sympathetic, anarchism unfortunately by definition can mean a horde of different things, but we have the best anarchists, folks. Many people are saying it. And yes, the anarchists i like are those willing to tow the ML line until the furthest possible breaking point because im an ML, we have the least amount of disagreements, sue me
Even have anarchist emojis:
And that’s only a couple of them.
M-L in the sheets, anarchist in the streets
“I broke up with my anarchist boyfriend. The sex was terrible! All he’d do is sit on the side of the bed and talk about how good it’d be when we came together.”
I think one of the taglines is, or used to be, “ask us about China.” A joke on the endless China struggle sessions during the early days. We had to strictly enforce anti sectarianism to get to a point where people could have a decent conversation.
We hate imperialism here.
I’m just here because I don’t like capitalism. How we end it isn’t as big of a concern to me tbh. I think many/all forms of leftist struggle will be required to put pressure on it at the same time from every possible angle.
Folks, it’s
every day here.I’m not a teleological Marxist (e.g. communism will necessarily grow from capitalism), but I do think my utopian society is closer to anarchism than any AES. However I fully believe AES and state centralization is the only way to get there (and once we have global communism the state can finally wither away).
But that’s just my take and I really do respect our comrades who do direct action and mutual aid. Those are important and meaningful individual actions one can do now, but ultimately I diverge in that I think you can’t win against the great Satan through individual action. It’s the same reason charity is ‘good’ but I don’t actually fight for it on a systemic political level.
I have an issue with comparing direct action and mutual aid to charity. In the imperial core it might be more difficult and even impossible to organize the masses, but any level of organization weakens the imperial powers.
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Organized workers are much harder to exploit and can demand concessions on their way that their labour is used (I.E. not handling Israeli goods)
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Direct action, if done correctly, attacks and weakens capital and showcases the contradictions in our society which helps workplace and community organizers to convince people to change their minds and/or join their cause.
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Mutual aid is essential because the working class is out under immense strain constantly and in order to make it possible for people to become organizers it is important to together work to make our lives a little bit easier so we have time to organize and have a community to fall back on when we are individually met with punishment from the capital class for our organizing. It lessens the risk of organizing and thus makes it easier to convince others to join.
I basically agree with everything here. The comparison is just that it can’t be the structural approach or goal. Obviously it can and should be done, but with recognition the real goal is to (in the case of charity) make it obsolete. I suppose it’s almost the reverse with mutual aid (a ‘withered state’), but in that case I think it’s because at least as long as imperial forces are driving society no amount of mutual aid is “enough”. Even well intentioned direct action, absent a mass movement, won’t stop it.
However as you note, connected to a workers org makes these things more powerful and useful strategies of resistance. However they aren’t the be all end all, and in the near term I want state distribution of resources. I think
’s take at the end of bullshit jobs is instructive here where he frames ubi as a way to expand the state to allow for more flourishing of creativity and mutual aid. Ubi, a jobs guarantee, healthcare, housing and food would make for a world where further mutual aid can be celebrated and cultivated, but I want a world where those things are ensured by some state apparatusThen I’m curious what your suggestion is for what we should do to move forward and to reach that goal. As in your previous comment you said that we can’t win from the great satan through direct action. It might be unintentional but to me it reads a bit dismissive of direct action.
My opinion is that, before society collapse, the interconnection between workplace and community organizing, direct action and mutual aid is the best way to work towards defeating capitalism. These things should always be done as a means to create a mass movement.
I don’t want to dismiss it - direct action and mutual aid build org cohesion, preserve our members, and allow for us to produce meaningful changes on a small scale.
But the only way that change happens at scale is when those smaller pegs cohere into the mass movement that can go beyond just shutting down one node in the system of death. And that’s going to require the takeover of current institutions of power (e.g. the military, police, etc) to both push the movement further and/or preserve it.
I’m sure electoralists might chime in here, and I don’t want to entirely dismiss it but electoralism should be aiming to take over and use those institutions of power as well (e.g. the chapo take about using ICE to arrest and try everyone involved in the trump admin).
Needless to say, the only way we survive as a movement or species is through solidarity. But these are tactics for survival, and without an eventual turn to usurp the state monopoly on violence I sadly feel that’s all they’ll ever be.
A general strike is obviously a great goal but even that, absent inaction from the military or a revolutionary vanguard, would just eventually lead to the use of police/state forces to compel work through violence, no?
I understand where you’re coming from now, thanks for explaining. This is a subject I’m not well read on yet so I can’t comment too much on it, but I appreciate your perspective.
No worries. I’m mostly influenced by the account of more anarchist led movements in Brazil from Vincent Bevins’ If We Burn. Basically, I really appreciate the local efforts and ways that direct action can foster change, but in Bevins’ account at least, those protests and actions, without a turn to more structured ML approaches, basically just opened the door for Bolsanarism. Now, this is just a journalistic account so YMMV but it really feels like there’s certain hinge points in movements where you need to use representation, authority, and for lack of a better word, power and violence to both continue to achieve goals and prevent cooption.
Again, I have tons of respect for anarchist approaches and have nothing against them as tactics and even a strategy in local contexts. However, (and this is just me vibing, I have less theory for it), it feels like there’s a point where a movement gets to a size where you can’t just rely on mutual aid and decentralized approaches without opening yourself up to wreckers in a really dangerous way.
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Marx wasn’t a teleological Marxist either, so you are in good company.
Capitalism is pregnant with the socialist mode of production, but that doesn’t guarantee that the birth will take place or that circumstances like climate change won’t kill the parent and child at the same time.
Anarchists have the best bookstores! And the zines!
Jokes aside - I think there’s typically a misconception of what anarchism actually means (probably because there are so many flavors/bastardizations) - and in Amerikkka it basically means libertarian/individualism but they used to skateboard.
I recall this site/cth was big on getting people to read Conquest of Bread in the early days. And that was my first exposure to left theory.
I can’t claim to understand the intricacies of ancient social interactions (I barely understand modern ones) to know why I should care that Marx and Proudhon had a falling out, for instance. But I’ve found that anarchist writing (Proudhon, Kropotkin, Bakunin) resonates as much as anything Lenin/Marx/Mao/others have written.
My personal interest in this overlap is how Indigenous communities have historically integrated both ideas pre/post kkkolonization - like federations of otherwise disparate groups which operate independently but as a collective. One example I found https://www.jstor.org/stable/41604467
Idk maybe I’m just a book nerd 🤓 and really like stuff with pictures of angry cats on it
Yeah duh. Just because there are a bunch of fake friends “anarchists” out there doesn’t mean us commies don’t respect and appreciate our actual comrades. Same as real friends anarchists working with commies even though Trots, Weird Maoists, PatSocs, and Avakians exist.
