It wasnāt a hostile discussion or anything, i didnāt even go full āthe kulaks deserved itā (although the mod that single-handedly banned me did go full āthe kulaks did not deserve itā). I just laid out plainly and calmly that revolutions are inherently authoritarian, that Luxemburg said āthe revolution will be as violent as the ruling class makes it necessaryā and that thereās one Trotzki quote i 100% agree with: āIf the October Revolution hadnāt succeeded, the world would have known a Russian word for fascism 10 years before Mussoliniās March on Romeā. Basically the whole āJakarta Methodā train of thought laid out clearly and without calling anybody names.
Note that this was on an explicitly left-leaning server that does not allow cops and troops to join. Also after several days of another poster starting destructive, aggressive bad faith arguments in the politics channel until a number of users went ādisengageā on her and the channel had to be frozen until recently, when she immediately started being hostile and arguing in bad faith again, which got her not one, but two warnings from the same mod without further consequences. Meanwhile, when i defend AES without attacking anybody, thatās apparently too much for her to handle. No advance warning, no āsis, youāre talking to me as a mod hereā, not even a notification that i got banned.
The best part is that according to screenshots a friend just sent me, sheās now completely going off about āauthoritariansā. The nerve some people have.
Sorry for posting pointless internet drama here, i just needed to vent.
Website isnāt co-operating with me, so you might get spammed, but Iām going to break the reply up to see if that helps:
There was a prick in this thread doing just that
Iām not an especially nice guy in these discussions, at best Iām just the type of stubborn where Iāll be damned if I give you something you can use against me beyond āheās rudeā. I can see how youād get dogpiled because maybe 10% of the things you have said here are astronomically dumb, but if you get better at recognizing this and try to have a personable conversation on c/askchapo or whatever, I think youād have an alright time. Anyway, thanks for trying to be conscientious in that regard.
idc about what you think of particular other anarchists, so we can skip that beyond me also being glad that you disown v**sh. Someone else pointed out something interesting, though.
This one is frustrating and itās emblematic of a persistent issue in your writing. You were not in the gulags. You were not in the Paris commune. You werenāt in the trenches in Vietnam. When I say someone isnāt in a minority by virtue of calling themselves an anarchist online and ābelievingā anarchist things, but many people play at it, what I mean is that you are not, by virtue of those traits, a social minority. You are not being oppressed and the Spanish anarchists would probably spit on most of the people who are on Reddit going "They killed us" like they have any personal connection to who was killed beyond agreeing with them (setting historical distortions aside). You are not them just as Iām not a Soviet or a CPC cadre or a Panther. Weāre just people online and maybe we are involved in organizing, but I sure as shit have never been shot at by a Makhnovist and you sure as shit havenāt been attacked by a PLA soldier.
You probably are a member of some oppressed group because most leftists are, but you are not oppressed by the dang tankies, and itās unlikely you are oppressed as an anarchist at all (though some are), so not making even a hint of a distinction between yourself and those historical and current people comes off as a childish roleplay and highlights how the whole thing doesnāt need to even be true historically because itās just a fucking vibe and a narrative youāve bought into with no material connection to the history. Itās all just storytelling.
I mean this not only directed at you but the many āanarchistsā who are frankly much worse about this than you.
The interesting thing about lemmygrad is that it absolutely despises the cultural trend of anarchism and the people who were fighting with Lenin, etc., but I donāt think they truly categorically hate anarchism (stay with me, now!). I think any of them who isnāt a total crank would recognize that Sholem Schwarzbard is a hero and a badass, for example, and obviously the Paris Commune was quasi-anarchist and they quite like that. Iām not saying you should want to be there, but itās not like they are frothing at the mouth for āanarkiddyā blood. Mainly I think they are just sick of red scare shit and really spurious accusations. Speaking of which . . .
The October Revolution was the Bolshevik revolution, so I must assume you mean the February Revolution, in which case every single person who has the opinion you wrote was/is a useful idiot. Who is the tyrant, the liberal government that got into power on the basis that it would stop Russian participation in the pointless, imperialist First World War, or the Bolsheviks who then took power and brought Russia out of the war? Oh, but Iām sure the tyranny only happened after, with the ridiculous increase in every metric of human welfare when the country wasnāt actively being invaded by fascists (and, to be fair, at least one mostly-unrelated famine).
Oh, but tell me more about āusurpationā, my friend of revolutionary leftism. Canāt have people trying to āusurpā liberal governments. If your anarchism has you caping for Alexander motherfucking Kerensky, you should ask yourself where your supposedly radical, anti-capitalist ideology is really leading you.
Not true! My accusation against Makhno was 100% what he admitted to while he was defending himself when he lived in exile in France. He couldnāt spend every waking hour alienating other anarchists and trying to save the lives of fascists, so he filled most of it with other types of squabbling in his shitty newspaper.
The Bolsheviks had much, much harsher things to say about him and I have no interest in discussing those claims with you or really anyone, though I donāt think we can just dismiss them as totally false out of hand.
Interestingly, he did develop āplatformismā once he was in exile, which doesnāt contradict what you say but suggests that he had some realization that what you said was true and a problem. Perhaps in some respects he did learn from his failures, though it seems he mostly doubled down from what Iāve read.
Part 2/2
Again with the āusā business. Neither of us were in Korea, comrade. You were not personally aggrieved by this, your identifying with it is a matter of your personal psychology.
Do you want to just relitigate all this shit? I think this website has a monthly debate on Catalonia (use the search function), but I struggle to imagine that in Cuba or Korea it was all that different from the people crying for Makhno, just more counterrevolutionaries and maniacs causing problems and probably also some good anarchists and honest rubes getting caught in the crossfire. If you do want to relitigate it, whatever, I will humor you, but first I want to propose a more useful direction:
Ideology is not religion, you donāt get to just put up a flag and make demands, your input is fundamentally the same as that of any other person in a proletarian democracy. Now, this may look like a denial (aside from that it already isnāt) but I want you to consider this: What do you want?
Do you want the people to eat? Do you want them clothed and housed? Do you want hospitals and schools? Protection from hate crimes? Maybe some roads and railways?
Wonderful! So do they and so do MLs, let us work to make that happen.
Do you want an unaccountable death squad armed to the teeth so you can run around shooting people at your own discretion? Weāre going to have a problem.
What gets you a seat at the table is not opposition but freestanding competence (see Tito, despite all of his failures and revision). Opposition correctly gets you liquidated.
Do you want āWins for anarchismā or better conditions for the actual human beings whose lives are at stake?
āOh, but we only want anarchism so it can help peopleā
Cool, if what helps people is anarchism, then call me Peter Kropotkin, I donāt give a shit! What matters is that the revolution is protected and lives are improved.
If you think the revolution is better protected by causing more pointless fighting to paint the flag black so you can run your āI canāt believe itās not a state!ā commune, but really just get obliterated by capitalists exploiting the infighting, then fuck off.
Hereās Michael Parenti saying something that I find relevant
At least we agree here.
You donāt need to endorse the US to be a useful idiot, thatās not really what a useful idiot means to begin with. You can act in the USās favor while believing you have your own boutique radical ideology, and thatās much more what being a useful idiot is, and encouraging people to, for example, hate the PRC is a perfect example. Look at any of the threads on this shitty network of websites where the liberals are louder and you will see in their discussions of any AES project the āanarchistsā and neoliberals arguing side by side without even batting an eye at this fact. Neoliberals are happy to co-opt anarchist attacks on AES because, even from the most charitable view, anarchism still poses no immediate threat to them while Marxism does. Not internally, as you seem to think I meant, but externally. Internally, what I am speaking of is having solidarity with those foreign socialists and encouraging solidarity with them even with whatever our personal misgivings may be, because they are enemies of the global hegemon and represent a historically progressive force, even if they didnāt take their constitution from your manifesto.
Most people are not ideologically coherent because ideology is downstream of oneās own conditions. You can say āOh, but Iām critiquing it from an anarchist point of viewā and it matters zero fucking percent. Do you know how many smug liberals Iāve seen quote Bakuninās āThe Peopleās Stickā line? It doesnāt fucking matter that heās an anarchist and believed himself to be speaking from a certain ideologically coherent position, the takeaway is fundamentally āAES is oppressive and disingenuous huehue 1984ā and thatās all there is for the vast majority of people who encounter such things. Radlibs particularly have mastered the art of attacking Marxism from both the āleftā and the right at their leisure.
Some more discussion on a similar topic that rambles even more than I do but is still one of the most insightful essays Iāve ever read.
Even if you quite understandably donāt like me on a personal level and disagree with a lot of what I have to say, I hope thereās something here that you find informative in the way that I intended it to be.
Our posts are getting longer and longer, and more and more unrelated to this thread. Would you be interested in having this conversation in DMs maybe?
1/2
I assume you mean the person who posted āMarx against the stateā? I assume what they were trying to do is to say that he wouldnāt have been in favour of the methods of the bolsheviks, not that he simply would have fully agreed with anarchists. I donāt know, I havenāt read that essay, Iām not very interested in it. I genuinely think anarchism and marxism are very separate. I concede this person is wrong and shouldnāt be trying to do that.
Youāre genuinely one of the calmest and most reasonable people Iāve argued with on this site. At least despite everything it seems like we are having a fruitful conversation and even reaching agreements on some parts. The worst thing youāve said is āget a gripā which is really nothing. I have to remark that I appreciate it because every other time I try to reach out and show my perspective to online ML places I just get viciously mocked, belittled and talked down to in an extremely smug way. Honestly I think the reason Iām not getting dogpiled is that weāre very deep into the reply thread and people donāt bother reading it.
Itās very rare that anarchists and MLs treat each other as equals in an online conversation, I do agree that sometimes anarchists are the ones at fault in this, but it sucks that itās hard for me to reach out and have like, you know, an actual exchange where Iām not being belittled every two sentences. And donāt let me even get started on Discord, oh my god itās a million times worse.
I mean minority in the objective sense, as in, weāre a lot less than you all in virtually all spaces that arenāt anarchist focused or anarchist exclusive. And that does lead to us being considered less, treated as less important and disregarded. I illustrated this with an example, even in this instance which makes a point about unity and anti-sectarianism, an anarchist felt the need to make a post basically begging to not be disregarded and demeaned because everyone was doing it anyway.
I agree that this is nowhere near the things that historically happened, itās an online forum, and in my experience with real life MLs theyāre a lot better. I mean, I did make a point that using these events to refuse working with other leftists is very dumb. I just donāt think we should go to the other extreme and completely disregard them either. Once again itās important to understand why it happened and reach an agreement. If you stick to your guts and just keep believing that the anarchists weāre talking about were all maniacs and bandits and didnāt do anything good and none of their actions were justified and the crushing was a 100% the right thing to do, then of course anarchists arenāt going to listen to you. We definitely are guilty of idealizing Makhnovshchina and excusing or ignoring the very awful things and grave mistakes they did, but itās not like MLs are any better. Itās more of a general problem of worshipping the past instead of focusing on the present, in my opinion.
I havenāt dug as deep into lemmygrad as I have into hexbear, but every time Iāve visited and read on what its members think about anarchism itās been something extremely hostile and insulting, and everytime an anarchist has decided to come reply to them, I see them get dogpiled and replied to in the usual leninist extreme smug by two, three, sometimes four people. I donāt think it matters if you think theyāre wrong or said something āastronomically dumbā, the bullying is something I just donāt support. Bully liberals, if you really want to bully people online.
Anyway my point is that despite hexbear being āstrictly left unityā they have zero issues federating, supporting and endorsing lemmygrad which is very hostile to anarchists. There is no anarchist Lemmy instance, but I can only hope that if it forms, the same accomodations are given to them - seeing what they think of and post about Raddle, I doubt it though.
2/2
No. The October Revolution was much more than the bolsheviks taking power. I donāt really think itās relevant to this discussion so if youāre interested in the perspective we generally hold about it I will once again point to Anark:
https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=uwU3STgBknQ
Iāve looked this up and youāre right, my apologies.
Reading post-exile Makhno is kinda depressing so I havenāt dug very deep into it. As far as I know, he deeply regretted a lot of things he did.
I can see what you mean? I donāt really see how it makes my point any different though. Once again all Iām saying is that there is a big history of ML betrayal of anarchists and I donāt think it should serve as an excuse to not work together but I also donāt think it should be discarded or itās okay to believe it was all always purely and 100% the anarchistās fault and everything that happened was justified, much less that anarchists should accept that narrative from yāall.
In Cuba and Korea, the anarchists were there before the marxists came. If anything, your narrative is backwards, you just donāt see it as counterrevolution because the usurpation succeeded, and thus became the revolution instead.
I donāt think itās productive to engage with this, because weāre just gonna keep pointing the finger at each other and refusing to budge. If you want to listen to an anarchist perspective on these events there are plenty of places to, if youāre not interested and just want to keep believing in the same nothing I say will change your mind.
Thatās the thing, often anarchist input isnāt āfundamentally the sameā. Itās not fundamentally the same if we are never listened to, much less if our input is met with bullets or jail cells. Itās not fundamentally the same if there isnāt even a discussion and everything we say is just discarded. Working together is actually working together, reaching a consensus and a compromise between each other. Anarchists who support left unity try to do this, but obviously, in exchange, they expect the MLs do the same. Otherwise, theyāre just being useful idiots.
If you stick 100% to your guts, then objectively speaking there is absolutely no benefit in working together. Demanding that we ally but refusing to listen to our input on things is basically just wanting to use us. Thatās what most anarchists are afraid of when talking about left unity.
Youāre talking like if itās an exclusively binary choice of completely separate things. Anarchists want anarchy because they believe it is what will bring the best conditions for the actual human beings whose lives are at stake. I am sure that most, even despite what they write online, would be willing to sacrifice their anarchism to an extent if they see that conditions are being genuinely improved, but they have to see that, and itās obvious that if what happens is a fully by-the-book ML model, they wont see that. Because theyāre anarchists.
I mean, MLs are the same too. No one can escape bias. So the only reasonable thing that can happen is a compromise. If MLs are not willing to compromise, why should anarchists work with them if theyāre so different? This goes both ways. Everyone needs to be held to the same standard, the complaint is that most of the time itās the anarchist that has to sacrifice and the ML sticks to their guts. Either both sacrifice and compromise, or both donāt and work separately. This in-between MLs want where anarchists work with them but they also donāt have to listen to them in any way is just not going to happen.
This is exactly what I said. The problem is not the critique but when itās completely stripped of context. When anti-PRC statements are just parroted with no real alternative proposed or philosophy behind them. Itās not a problem with anarchist critique per se. By your logic literally any anti-PRC statement is helping the US, even ones made by marxists. Rather than ājust stop talking bad about socialist states!ā I think itās better to make sure youāre doing it in proper context and making sure youāre not going to be misinterpreted. Shutting down critiques alltogether is not useful. We should always have conversations about these things, to learn and improve and change.
Sure, but give those liberals just the essay where that line was written and they will despise Bakunin. This is what I mean, what matters is the context, thatās not just the ideology behind the person who said the thing.
As I said before youāve given me no reasons to dislike you. But this illustrates what Iāve been talking about all this time. The fact that you view me as someone you need/want to āinformā, and not someone youāre having an honest exchange with. Most MLs do this, they see us as misguided, silly weirdos, and simply assume thereās nothing they can learn from us. They do not view us as equals even when we try to reach out. This creates a power imbalance in the āunityā that a lot of anarchists just donāt want to deal with.