I don’t know what it is, but I almost hate anarchist and other “libertarian socialists” more than I hate liberals and conservatives. They have a completely useless dead-end ideology. At least supporters of capitalism have the fact that it’s propped itself up for so long and is the dominant mode of production now as their victory, and obviously us Marxist-Leninist have the Soviet Union and other Marxist-Leninist states as our victories, but anarchist have absolutely nothing to show for over 200 years of their ideology existing. They’ve never seized power anywhere for more than a couple months. They’ve never been a powerful force in politics. They’ve never had a revolution of their own. And worst of all is that they’re all steeped in that classic western anti-communism. I swear to god most anarchist would rather every historic or current Socialist country be destroyed by the west and turned into some capitalist liberal democracy than to let the “authoritarians” or “tankies” or whatever stupid term they’re using now have power. Anarchist don’t even do fucking praxis anymore like they did in the 1800s and early 1900s, they just whine online and do electoralism. I feel like the only two reasons someone would even be an anarchist at this point is because either
A. They’re a hyper individualist to the same degree as right-wing libertarians but just like left-wing rhetoric.
or
B. They never kicked the heavy amount of bullshit propaganda people are fed about communism, but still like the idea, so they’ve settled for an idealistic version which has never existed and will never exist.
Clearly this isn’t an intelligent or thorough analysis of anarchism, and I’m not saying anything new in the slightest, but I just need to get my hatred for them out of my system somehow.
Let them be as long as they don’t hinder serious communist movements. Anarchists over here like to shit on our party and call us tankies but they never get further than organizing a soup kitchen or some niche art thing. We don’t see them at serious protests or whatever.
This one time we had a fascist meeting in town and lots of orgs, including our party, did a counter protest, but we wanted to do it in a peaceful way as to not give the Nazis any more fuel, as just days before that their leader got beaten down (by one of our members actually). The anarchist solution to this all: ‘bro we should beat them up!!!’. When one of the organisers, a highly respected woman in left wing circles whose family was imprisoned in a concentration camp, said that it wasn’t a good idea, the anarchists laughed at her and called her a pussy and such. Proper weird behavior.
We just ignore them, basically. They pose no threat whatsoever with their fringe group. Let them scream into the void.
Sometimes these people are plants and will try to use violence or cause destruction when not necessary to give the government ammunition and greater public support for cracking down.
They detour otherwise well informed and well intentioned potential revolutionaries into dead ends and worse, more tools to spread anti-communism and western chauvinism. I like to think that this just lasts a short time and most people get over it and grow up. But sometimes I think that they are a damaging wrecker force. But engaging with them and wasting time arguing with them just wastes energy and emboldens them. I think the best we can do is to have some calm deprogramming patter for the recovering anarchists.
anarchism is a handy tool for radicalization. lots of people get attracted to the cool aesthetics of anarchism and that feeling of intellectual superiority you get when you can recite some obscure untested and unfounded political theory
so it’s ineffective outside of the individual’s ego but it does position them firmly against capital and modern statehood. if you sit in that long enough you start to build genuine hatred for the status quo. genuine hatred leads to genuine curiosity which leads to actually reading theory and uncovering the utterly absurd idealism of anarchist theory
this isn’t like a codified pipeline and anarchist theory still poisons the well of a lot of western leftist discussion, but most commies I know in real life had personal brushes with anarchism in their past. and if all else fails they’re still useful idiots when things get spicy. that whole ‘you’re alright now, it’s after the revolution we’ll have problems’ meme.
I agree as a former anarchist. It’s always worth engaging with the ones that seem smart but misguided or uninformed.
Not every anarchist is an idiot, although I definitely met many, but if you can have a meaningful conversation with someone and recommend some literature to discuss then you might soon have a ML Comrade.
The hardest part, for me, has always been convincing someone to read State and Revolution. That’s the book that turned me from an anarchist to ML, and I’ve got a couple others with it.
The hardest part for me has always been convincing any of them to read at all tbh
Don’t be too hard on yourself.
If you’re talking with anarchists and you can convince them by example to be like you and wash their anus then you’re already ahead.
You see, the first step in any proletarian revolution is to get in the shower, soap up your loofah, and just go to town on your ass crack. Just wash all those accumulated farts and toilet paper bits off.
When I came to the party headquarters one morning, there you were with your unwashed anus half in the toilet, your hair was in the toilet water. Disgusting.
There are cool anarchists out there, particularly ancoms. And their criticisms can often be useful and valuable to process, and this can also work in the opposite direction.
The major problem is that Western self-labelled anarchists really shouldn’t call themselves that. I’m not even being overly strict. Most of them seem to have read nothing at all about the basics of anarchism and can’t tell the difference between the anarchist position that unjust hierarchies must be dismantled vs. the incoherent Western goofball idea that all hierarchies of all kinds are invalid and bad, like forming a committee to coordinate and decide on how to distribute supplies at an action.
This anti-knowing-anything-before-adopting-intransigent-positions-on-things is most characteristic of this Western “anarchist” tendency, which again, isn’t really anarchist at all. And it bleeds into everything they do and say, including the lazy repetition of anticommunist talking points and trying to do some of the dumbest things you’ve ever seen as actions.
Anyways I think the best remedy is to find some cool anarchists and have positive experiences with them. Have you ever worked with Food Not Bombs? They tend to have a mix of anarchists and commies and socialists/liberals at various stages of pipelining and they have a pretty straightforward mission that doesn’t usually lead to much infighting. It’s also something that is pretty easy to do even when you’re very tired from organizing.
It was an anarchist who leaked the US no-fly list. Aaron Bushnell was also an anarchist. I know another who exposes sexual predators. Some of them do more praxis than I’ll likely ever be capable of, I’ll give them that. Doesn’t mean they’re right.
I stand by the statement that the only cool anarchists I’ve ever met have been so offline, so deep in the grass that I suspected their blood was at least 20% chloroplast.
For the B version:
I personally think it’s good to strive for that ideal, possible or not. The closer the better. I would agree the communism ultimately gets closer to that end given the material conditions, but those folks aren’t even close to your enemy.
I’m not online (or well-read) enough to really take a “side” on any particular flavor of socialism or another. I do sympathize with a variety of viewpoints from across the spectrum. That said, I lean more towards our anarchist comrades. In my case, it may just be a result of actually having met a lot more of them than I have met communists.
I haven’t organized in big cities, but in small and medium sized towns I always find anarchists, and they are always doing something: feeding people, organizing gardens, putting up propaganda, confronting nazis…
I’ve met very few communists, and the ones I have met don’t seem to be doing that much. Reading clubs, collecting dues to send up to the leadership… I have had some that came and helped out with a mutual aid project. That group broke up over some internal drama though (this definitely happens to anarchists too!)
Keeping it real-- here in the US, it doesn’t seem like anarchists or communists are really building any serious political power. In my experience, anarchists are at least more likely to be in the streets helping people out.
I hear you. They infuriate me.
