Major ML achievements:

• USSR
• China
• Cuba
• Vietnam

All of which have existed for 70 years and counting (excluding the USSR). All of which fought long wars, some of a civil nature, against the forces of reaction.

Anarchist achievements:

• Um
• Hmmm
• Hold on I’m sure I can find one
• Paris Commune? But that lasted 2 months and wasn’t entirely anarchist
• Revolutionary Catalonia? But that lasted only as long as the civil war did and wasn’t entirely anarchist.
• Makhnovia? But they exploited the unrest created during the October Revolution (communist) and lasted 3 years only due to this instability and their relative unimportance.
• Kronstadt? But that was started by Whites aiming to establish a non-communist government, nothing anarchist there.
• Mondragon federation? But Huawei is bigger and operates from the PRC.
• Rojava? But that’s a Kurd nationalist state who oppresses their other populations (such as Assyrians).

Anarchists do not have the high ground to be taking this kind of speech to us, because they have achieved nothing. So they take the *moral *high ground instead. Yes, they didn’t succeed. But their revolution was pure, unblemished by authoritarian acts. Except when Makhno chain-ganged peasants and forced conscription, the anarchists in Catalonia executed priests and the Whites masquerading as anarchists in Kronstadt were about to mass execute Bolsheviks. But we don’t talk about that. Anarchism is pure, it’s not the evil tankie red fash authoritarianism. The fact that is has never succeeded is exactly why it’s pure – they’ve never held to power long enough to actually do anything with it.

So my best advice to dealing with anarchists is to ignore them. I don’t feel threatened by anarchists, because for that they would have to actually pose a threat. I don’t expect them to ever achieve anything (due to their whole ideology), but I fully expect them to fight against the socialist government – they want 0 government, they want to smash the state, they have always been very clear about that. What do you think will happen after we establish the socialist republic? It’s still a state, so they’ll fight against us. And like at Kronstadt, or like in the kibbutz, they’ll side with the reaction. Hey, do this funny thing: google kibbutz. First link is Zionist state propaganda. But they’re still anarchism in practice, I swear!!

… Though anarchists themselves can’t seem to agree on what anarchism is. I’ve seen it described as “anything that fights against the state”, and the person who said that made it clear that the Nazis (who did not actually fight against the state, they were invited by it) would be anarchist at least in spirit under this definition. It doesn’t help, obviously, that they are so averse to reading in general, not just political theory. Anarchism is also usually the first ideology rebellious teens go to if they want to put money where their mouth is (and I get that, it’s not easy being a teen in a late-stage capitalist society) so I’m not holding this anti-intellectual stance to every anarchist. But certainly to most of them.

You have to understand the reasons for being an anarchist lie deeper than merely having ideas – because of course we are not idealists, we are materialists, and we understand the material world one lives in influences one’s ideas and not the other way around. Anarchism is a petty-bourgeois ideology founded on libertarian principles. Now, anarchists will claim they coined the term libertarian first in the 19th century, and the “right-libertarians” like you see in the US co-opted their movement.

But you don’t see right-wingers co-opt Marxism. So why is that? That’s because left-anarchism has more in common with capitalism than it has with communism. They just want to be left alone in their commune, where they are free to make whatever laws they want. Anarchism is mostly found in petty-bourgeois backgrounds (there are more MLs living in the state of Kerala, India than there are anarchists in the world), because then they could make laws for their famous worker’s coops. If you gave anarchists laid-back capitalism, where they could basically live in their gated communities among themselves, work in their manufactures that belong to them only whenever they want, and trade their stuff and make money off it, they would love it. Perhaps that is why kibbutz love having the protection of the Zionist state as well.