This is mostly a serious question. Also, not for the tankies/MLs. I already know what your answer to that question is. I may not always agree with you on everything, but you do have an answer that if the conditions became right, could actually work.
No, this is for the type of anarchist completely against the wall, gulags, seemingly any amount of getting hands dirty. What is the solution to those types of people? There are so many of them in the US, a lot of which are heavily armed, that they could easily topple a socialist system, and even if they didn’t do that, their existence would be incompatible with any marginalized group living their lives, since they love to harass them at best, outright murder them at worse. So what’s the solution? Anarchists often seem to avoid this, seemingly believing that if there was a socialist or communist society, they would just say “aw shucks, guess I was wrong about that. Guess I’ll no longer be racist or xenophobic!”
So am I missing something, what’s the answer?
I’m not an an anarchist but I challenge the premise of the question, I think it’s pretty clear there have been plenty of anarchist groups throughout history “willing to get their hands dirty”. Anarchists aren’t hippies lol.
In USA anarchists are rebranded hippies. In Global South anarchists are usually pretty cool.
So now the question becomes, why is it OK for anarchists to use authoritarian methods to deal with reactionaries? Why was it OK for the Catalonian anarchists to execute priests, implement discipline in the factories etc? I don’t disagree with what the Catalonian anarchists did, but it strikes strange that no one sees it as example of authoritarianism. Whenever anarchists were in messy situations, they used violence and subjugation as much as MLs do.
look, clearly what needs to happen is we just all use black flags and everything is good and ok
black flags are bad ass
Ehh, I’m kinda partial to the “our flag is red for the blood of our martyred comrades” thing
red flags are bad ass
Thesis: black flag
Antithesis: red flag
Synthesis: :af-heart:
“authoritarianism” isnt a real thing to begin with, thats where your question fails
Well, actually that’s the point of my question. I wanted to show anarchists that authoritarianism implies some kind of moral judgement where some actions are authoritarian and some aren’t. And since morals are inherently subjective, that means authoritarianism itself is a subjective term.
As it is already been said in this thread self defence is not authoritarian
The anti clerical violence in anarchistic Catalonia for example is not generally considered authoritarian because they were spontaneous acts undertaken on the agency of the perpetrators rather than being systematically carried out by a hierarchical organisation like with comparable ML ‘terrors’
Glad you agree that the gulaging of kulaks or the extermination of landlords is not authoritarian.
So your violence is good because its done in a supposedly spontaneous manner, but violence by MLs is bad because it is more organized? Murdering people without a trial, without following any pre-defined rules(a.k.a no rule of law) is not authoritarian. But executing people after a trial, in accordance with rule of law is authoritarian?
I think you’re reading a few things into my comment that aren’t there
‘Glad you agree that the gulaging of kulaks or the extermination of landlords is not authoritarian’ is quite a jump from what I said(make some pedantic argument about what constitutes self defence if you wish but I was clearly referring to immediate physical danger)
I didn’t say ‘my’ violence was ‘good’, I explained why people don’t consider the anti clerical violence authoritarian, as you asked
Who makes said rules? Who carries out the trial? Are they members of a hierarchical state with more power than the individual on trial? If so imo that is authoritarian
The kulaks posed immediate physical danger of starving the Soviet people from their lack of cooperation. The landlords were actively suppressing the peasants.
The rules come from the constitution voted upon by the people.
Tell me how would an anarchist society enforce laws then? And how would an anarchist society ensure every individual would have equal power?