Why are many anarchists actually liberals and are anti-communists even if they don't realize it...

Why are many anarchists actually liberals and are anti-communists even if they don't realize it? Why is the anarchist portrayal of Marxist-Leninists (Or Stalinists as they love to call it) a caricature in the same way right-wingers view all kinds of socialists? I'm not a hyper ☭TANKIE☭ LARPer or anything, i understand self-critique as well as critique of past versions of socialism done in the 20th century as well as recent 21st century ongoing attempts, however it looks like anarchists don't, they just like to shit on everything that doesn't fit their criteria the same way dumb twitter leninist role-players do. I know there's actual intelligent anarchists but a looot of these guys are high on ideology.

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Other urls found in this thread:

encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Kronstadt Anti-Soviet Rebellion of 1921
marxism.halkcephesi.net/Grover Furr/Furr tortsky japan.pdf
youtube.com/watch?v=AiA8dKNcjjk&t=413s
twitter.com/AnonBabble

"why do you anti-authoritarians hate our authoritarian ideology?!?!?!?"

When did i say i support MLs killing people that do no harm? Stop strawmanning and answer my fucking questions.

Please give a historical example of this. If you bring up the Free Territory of Ukraine, remember that Stalin encouraged its existence while ⛏️rotsky decided to burn it to the ground.

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I blame academia. Anarchist is a safe thing to call yourself and won't get you hounded out of polite society like being a Marxist who defends historical socialist states. It's the path of least resistance and fertile ground for weirdos and grifters.

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lmbo leftypol is so full of reactionary fascoid ☭TANKIE☭s that it literally cannot comprehend principled opposition to its authoritarianism from the left

As an ex-ancom I can say that it's mainly just ignorance of the realities of revolutions and life in ML states, which to be fair is pretty understandable given that their view of these states is about the same as the vast majority of westerners. They buy into these myths simply because they are so prolific, and when plenty of professional historians and political scientists are warning of the evils of statist socialism it can be pretty easy to take them at face value. It's far easier to distance yourself from what is perceived as a failed project than trying to redeem it, especially when its irredeemable in the public imagination. However to be fair I've met a few anarchists (although its important to note that most of them are now ex-anarchists like myself) who had a similar assessment of 20th century socialism to my own, mainly that it was repressive (probably more so than the west), but not as repressive as western propaganda says it was, and given the circumstances it was at least partially excusable. Then you also have the issue of their ideological hang ups when it concerns things like repression of counterrevolutionaries, although to be fair again, there are some anarchist theorists who very well recognize the need for violent repression of reactionaries (Kropotkin mentions it in the Bread Book iirc), however many anarchists believe that the repression in ML states was excessive, and that it was too often directed against other leftists who were internal rivals to a particular faction than it was against genuine counterrevolutionaries. Which is a totally valid critique imo

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i don't fucking care about disagreements over socialists models, it's a healthy thing overall to get many points of view, what really gets me fucking mad is seeing anarchists repeat the same shit reactionaries say and get historical facts wrong despite being against capitalism. Also learn how fascist economy works dumbass

Anarchists aren't trots m8, so ⛏️rotsky wanting to destroy the free territory is exactly the kind of thing user is talking about (ie statist socialists setting out to crush an anarchist revolution).

Charlie Chaplin was a self-admitted anarchist, and his speech in The Great Dictator got him investigated by The House Un-American Activities Committee and exiled from USA.

"why do mice hate us. what have we done to deserve such scorn"
- cats

Trotsky was more ☭TANKIE☭ than Stalin

This. Ask the IWW about how the feds were totally cool with anarchism.

cringe

only reasonable non ML person itt so far.

Actually I'm basically an ML at this point, I just post under the sabotabby flag because I have a boner for American socialism and its iconography.

Very good post.
This is an important point. Being a leninist is damn near as bad as being a nazi in most people's minds. To actually convince a significant chunk of the population of our cause, we will need to properly differentiate our project from that of the soviets, even if this is just a matter of differing material conditions. They need to be assured that it won't be "like last time", whatever they imagine "last time" to be. I think the cybernetic socialism narrative does this nicely. The Soviet Union didn't have the technology to make socialism actually good. You need modern computing and communication technology for that. This story is easy to understand and addresses the so-called calculation problem, which is one of the most influential critiques of socialism, thereby giving it an air of credibility. It also has a futuristic feel to it, which speaks to the imagination.

I don't even think you need to be that specific. People are automatically receptive to ideas that appeal to enlightenment principles of freedom, equality, and democracy, so all you have to do is emphasize those while acknowledging the very real flaws of 20th century socialism, mainly its repressiveness and its inability to address flaws in their economic model. I find that if you just sit people down and tell them that you intend to methodically and empirically identify the causes of the problems that westerners are familiar with (particularly repression and lower standards of living) and resolve to address them, people are far more likely to listen to you. Most people are smart enough to realize that problems that plagued socialist economies aren't some mystical law of nature that says socialism must always fail, rather they are practical, identifiable issues that can be traced back to any number of factors both internal and external, ranging from something as difficult as information processing/calculation problems, to something a simple as bureaucrats cheating the system for personal gain. It follows that if the problem can be identified it can be solved. The issue here is that too many people need this spelled out for them, however its impossible to deny its validity once you do so.

Above all its essential to espouse the ideals of socialism, particularly those of the enlightenment that are already familiar to liberals, followed by a recognition of the genuine issues of 20th century socialism, and a public commitment to not making the same mistakes.

Strawmanning.

Anarchists can't even be considered leftist tbh.

I don't go in for the romanticism which I think it's prone to. I don't see the appeal of structurelessness – aren't we basically living in that already? Most people my age work insecure jobs without much in the way of stability as it is. Anarchism is prone to Blanquism. Anarchists also criticize protests as ineffective but that's clearly contradicted by their own tendency to hijack protests and use them as a vehicle to escalate the situation with the cops whenever the situation presents itself, and regardless of the potential consequences, so that criticism comes across to me like bad faith on their part.

This has been my experience as well, it funny because the more I learn theory and apply it to what I know and continue to learn about history the more I sympathize with Anarchism .
But if you bring stuff like state oppression of men, for example the prisons they are thrown into that are basically rape factories, they get all werid and sound like feminists, but the wage gap is definitely the collective fault of all men.

Debunking the anarchist victim narrative in three sentences:
1. Anarchist Catalonia ended up as it did because anarchists fucked up, and not because le evil stalinists (who kept sending them military supplies).
2. Anarchist Ukraine ended up as it did because BOTH sides (Makhno, ⛏️rotsky) were extremely skeptical of the other's intentions and kept on focusing on petty differences, exaggerated by the extreme circumstances, hence "le betrayal narrative" (betrayal of either size of the other) makes no sense.
3. The Shanghai commune was the direct result of Mao's cultural revolution, without it would have been impossible, and it was basically legitimized and stopped by Mao.

There. Read a fucking book, you sectarian losers, instead of gobbling up the bourgeois narrative that keeps dividing us.

What about Kronstadt rebellion?

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There were obviously legitimate grievances that led to the Kronstadt rebellion, but keep in mind, this was A REBELLION against the Soviet Union, was supported by imperialists and had a predominantly petit bourg character.
encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Kronstadt Anti-Soviet Rebellion of 1921

Totally not biased.

Everthing is biased you imbecile. You're asking this question on a communist board so you'll get a communist angle.

Are you the same guy who made that "holdouts and dengism" thread? You are one of the best posters still left on this board. It's nice having more ML's here compared to a year ago but it lately this place feels like r/communism or ☭TANKIE☭ twitter (except you can call people faggots without getting banned).

Sounds like we have pretty similar views. I lean towards ML (and I think some aspects of maoism/MLM are pretty useful) but I think critiquing 20th century socialism (without falling into anarchist/trotskyist/ultraleft idealism) is important. I think most ML's get way too caught up in defending every aspect of 20th century socialism from any kind of criticism while sort of fetishizing it's aesthetics.

A ☭TANKIE☭ board*

Go ask /liberty/ if you want a totally non biased freedom loving response.

They don't even know what the Kronstadt rebellion is.

Anarchist Catalonia didn't end because the anarchists "fucked up." It ended because after three years of Franco trying and failing to defeat a militia literally made up of farmers using old, defective equipment, he finally had to enlist the help of Mussolini and Hitler, who gave him their firepower.

YOU read a fucking book, you retard.

Nice job avoiding the Paris Commune, by the way, you gigantic fucking moron.

How was the Paris Commune 1) an example of anarchism (to my knowledge the communards were not exclusively anarchists), and 2) an example of anarchists being betrayed by authoritarians or whatever?

Because that's what anarchism is. The real question is: why don't you know that?

The Paris Commune is a form of libertarian communism finding short-lived success. It's an important example that anarchists and libertarian socialists more broadly point to, including key people like Rudolph Rocker and Peter Kropotkin. This thread is about authoritarianism vs. anti-authoritarian, essentially.

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Idealism is the butter of Anarchist ideology, they can churn out utopias and ideal worlds that could exist if ONLY reality wasn't how it was. Anarchism cannot exist in reality, it exists in dreams. It's unfalsifiable.

All western socialists hate actually existing socialism and how it was ACTUALLY implemented in the past because they hate REALITY.

Makhno's widow and daughter became forced labourers in Germany during WW2 and afterwards were arrested and trialled by the NKVD to forced labour. There is your "le betrayal narrative".

How is that Soviet Union coming along?

Anarchism has never worked on a mass scale, but it has often worked at a community level. There are still communities that operate with anarchist and left-communist principles, but they're small. That's why Barcelona and Paris are useful examples - they were examples of the grassroots anarchist principles being implemented on a larger scale.

Of course, the ideal anarchist society would just consist of many, many democratic communities, only working together and collaborating when they have to, want to, and when it benefits them both.

Yeah that was me, although I haven’t checked on it in a while lol.

this is a fake-ass dichotomy that ignores the material bases of power relations

It's not. It's pretty foundational, actually, since the anti-authoritarian societies support grassroots, direct democracy, while the authoritarian ones support top-down ones. It's literally the most fundamental anarchist critique of Marxism - Bakunin pointed out that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" phase would result in a new, even more brutal elite, who would refuse to give up power. Kropotkin, who was influenced by Marx, made part of his goal to create a communist revolution that would bypass the dictatorship of the proletariat phase, since he believed it was doomed to fail and undermine the revolution.

In part I agree, however I think it’s important to not lose sight of the very real political consequences of a society with an extremely narrow spectrum of publicly acceptable opinion. All political projects may use violence, however that doesn’t negate the dramatic differences experienced in people’s lives, and in the operation of the polity, according to the scope, intensity, and application of that violence. So no, authoritarian vs anti-authoritarian policies is not a false dichotomy, it describes a genuine difference in the way violence is used, and thus genuinely different politics societies.

ideology has no history. even in an anarchist society knowledges would be produced and maintained in accordance with social relations. i'm not going to respond to the other person because he shows negativge understanding of marxism.

what makes you think we give a shit about marxist theory in the first place? why would we give precedence to marxism?

So what's the "History of ideas" field about?

"Power" isn't something one can hold in its hand, son.

If you're interested in some of my views on ML romantization of the past you can read this and pic related.

Still, the USSR was a society that existed for 70 years, went through different "era's" (war communism, NEP, five year plans, kosygin reforms) that had different positive and negative aspects and experienced successes and failures that can be analyzed and learned from. Anarchism has never managed to get itself off the ground. There is basically nothing about anarchism that can be analyzed because there's no anarchist society in history you can point to that lasted for longer than a couple months. What is the best example? Catalonia? Barely managed to sustain itself for a few years while getting crushed by fascists. A complete failure, and still you guys fetishize the shit outta this "experiment" to this day. So I do think there's a difference between how ML's and anarchists relate to their histories.

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You shouldn't use abstraction to obscure the truth.

Say what?

And yet the best Soviet leaders were Lenin and Gorbachev, the latter being effectively a liberal. Some communist paradise.

And none of those "era's" were socialist.

The sad thing is that it never went through actual communism. Anarchism so far is the only branch that has been able to actually produce communist communities, EVEN if they were short lived and on small scale.

It achieved something that ML ideologies never did: communism. I'd rather live a few months in anarchist Catalonia and then flee to West-Europe, then live an entire life in a police state like the USSR.

That just shows how much bigger of a failure Marxist-Lenism actually was, compared to anarchism. The only thing I have learnt from the USSR is: avoid it, whereas Anarchist Catalonia actually taught me that communist societies could exist. It's literally what stopped me from being an enlightened centrist.

But you are.

Check out "A King in New York". There are pretty heavy words spoken to Chaplin's character, the king, by a young boy, who actually happens to be played by Chaplins's son, Michael.

Attached: Anarchist Kid.mp4 (480x360, 12.06M)

ok im out

Never go full ☭TANKIE☭.

Catalonia was not stateless you absolute dipshit. There was state repression, labour camps, labour discipline, etc.

The state ruining a revolution. Noticing a trend here… Parts of Catalonia most certainly were, until they were repressed violently by other less anarchist left wing groups.

A stateless society can’t exist tbh.

Weber’s definition of the state >>>>> Marx’s definition of the state.

I though anarchists used Marx's definition.

Once you change the definition of state so you can apply it to basically any group of humans involving violence, no matter the details; of course 'statelessness' becomes unobtainable.

If you want to prove 'statelessness' can't exist, you first have to agree on what 'state' entails. And since we're discussing whether anarchism succeeds in its goals, it's only logical to use anarchist definition of 'state'.

They were never stateless.
If by repressed you mean entered into a pluralistic liberal governing body instead of seizing the public mandate to set up their own government for fear of being labeled authoritarian and prioritizing antifascist action over the revolution then sure they were repressed.

Anarchists use whatever definition is convenient for them at any given time.

Are you doing a bit or are you actually this retarded?

If you think proper communism is retarded, you're on the wrong board.

So what's your definition of the state?

look at his flag and take a guess

Like the MLs did? They even claimed to fight for "bourgeois democracy" and didn't want to antagonise Western democracies when they were the dominant group in the government.


I like Engels' description:

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where are you getting this from. i see a difference in understanding of state and power. you, on the other hand, seem to be smoking some hot ideology.

Go to bed Batko.
Seriously, why is this guy issue brought up so much, sounds like some IdPol bullshit to me, socialist states didn't treat gays worse than capitalist states and the GDR legalized homosexuality before West Germany and allowed transitioning.

Yeah. Just like that. MLs are far from infallible.

I defend Stalin and his anarchist friends against trot imperialism.

The main criticism of the USSR is that it was authoritarian. Although it is true that harsh measures had to be used that restricted liberties, it was most necessary due to the constant polemics by all imperialist nations and inside enemies.
Btw it was socialist, otherwise state officials would be living like kings from all that exploitation. Leftcoms Btfo

The reason there hasn't been any successful libertarian revolution is because a decentralized and direct democratic system is incapable of defending itself. The only reason the free territory existed as long as it did was because the soviets allowed it.

This horrible thread started on false and fake assumption. OP is faggot.

The main criticism is that it was not communist.

Of course it wasn't communist. Thats why they called themselves Marxist and not Anarchist.

This is true but imo there is still plenty of valid criticisms to be made in regards to precisely how much repression was really necessary, and whether or not it was being used for the personal aims of some factions. For example, regardless of how you feel about Stalin, I think that its ridiculous to suggest that guys like ⛏️rotsky or Bukharin were closet counterrevolutionaries, and its not too crazy to suggest that Stalin's purging of them was done to secure the power of his clique, rather than an actual need to secure the revolution. Then there's the issue of the persistence of this authoritarianism, which was arguably far less necessary after the end of the war. The fact is that it arose out of the immediate needs of the revolution, but the Bolsheviks of 1921 displayed an incredible lack of foresight by failing to institute mechanisms that would ensure the eventual return of democracy and political freedoms. Even the ancient Romans mandated that a dictator of the Republic must lay down his power after a term.

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oh right because socialism and communism are somehow different things in your undeveloped brains. read gothacritik.

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There were organizations that wanted to assassinate Stalin that ⛏️rotsky and Bukharin were part of. Also, judging by his actions, Stalin wasn't a megalomaniac as none of his actions implied that. He recognized both the cult of personality and the increased bureaucracy as problems and attempted to solve them.

Fucking leftcoms man….
The USSR was lower stage communist, happy now?

It is common knowledge that since Lenin, the word "socialism" has been used to refer to what Marx called "lower stage of communism" or "first phase of communist society" or whatever, but sperging out over the inconsequential semantics like that while contributing nothing of value to the discussion really is the essence of left-communism.

Well given the deadly nature of power struggles in the early Soviet Union this doesn't surprise me, however this doesn't prove that either of these guys were counterrevolutionaries, unless you consider Stalin to be the revolution personified, which is probably the most un-Marxist position a person could hold on the issue.


I never said he was, but that doesn't mean he wasn't trying to consolidate power around his clique and calling anybody who stood in his way a reactionary or saboteur.

That would be fine if MLs didn't also redefine the lower phase to mean the transitionary period/DotP. It's just revision after revision with you people.

I don't think Stalin was the revolution personified, however I think he held the interest of the revolution.
Also, trying to assassinate the general secretary is a counterrevolutionary act, whatever your intentions are.
I don't see how you can call people that were trusted his clique.
There had been votes that didn't go in his favor. He did consolidate power to the party, however the threats against the revolution were real and needed a united front to deal with them, he wasn't paranoid.

I don't say everything was done perfectly or that there weren't any mistakes, I just think that for the circumstances they did what they could.

No it isn't about "authoritarian vs anti-authoritarian" It's about anarchists being idiots and anti-communists in general. Fuck outta here with that reading comprehension.

Only idiot twitter ☭TANKIE☭s still do that, they're the ML version of you if you think about it fam

Ignorance is strength, show your true colors you filthy idealist. Even Kropotkin would be dissapointed to hear these words from """"anarchists""""". Next time don't use wikipedia to give yourself an ideological label.

Man you are a dumbfuck aren't you.

Pathetic

Never happend you motherfucker, no one can be this stupid unless you are a right winger fucking around.
Anarchists are just like fascists, they have their one enemy that somehow is responsible for all their failures and it's their favorite scapegoat.

You could argue the same thing in regards to the systemic purging of various party officials, committed revolutionaries, veterans of the civil war, and pretty much all the most experienced Red Army officers.


I agree that the threats were real, however ⛏️rotsky and Bukharin were not threats to the revolution, they were threats to Stalin.

How buttblasted are you right now, none of your answers say anything other than passing the hot potato to """""""""""""""""TANKIES""""""""""""""""".
Who the fuck is Griffith btw?
And who said anything about gays bitch? I agree that ML states in the past were fucked up in the way they treated these people. Most people all over the world were fucking anti-gay back then so maybe try to think what you fucking say instead of throwing all the blame to the Soviet Union and scream LE ☭TANKIE☭S ARE LE EVIL FASHISTS and GO BACK TO FUCKING REDDIT

I mean it's not like you do either way. You belong there.

Assassinating Stalin would've had disastrous destabilizing effects during that period.
The purges to the army weren't as bad as western historians describe them to be, most officers were reinstated and newly, better trained officials filled the gaps. The party purges surely did kill some innocents, I'm sure, but most were criminals and admitted the crimes they were accused of.

It's pretty clear it's Ba'tko, he posts the same shit on Twitter ever since he got accepted into the radlib circle, he's not as far gone as Muke but he's still pretty up there.

Remember how his argument which was completely unrelated to the topic and just served to underline muh oppression was about gays, this is a typical liberal rejection, usually paired with the claim that Stalin said something mean about Jews.

Wasn't ⛏️rotsky collaborating with the Nazis and Japanese at one point? Didn't he actively send out wreckers into the chinese communist parties at the time to undermine their efforts against the Japanese?

Read Berserk.

Yes, ⛏️rotsky was working with the Nazis and Japs to get put into power. Goebbels also used his speeches to demoralize the USSR,
marxism.halkcephesi.net/Grover Furr/Furr tortsky japan.pdf

Which era(s) were socialist(s) and how?

First off, I'm skeptical of how true that accusation is. Second, even if it was true, that happened after he was already expelled and its pretty clear that his hatred of Stalin overcame his convictions. However at the time he was actually exiled, he wasn't guilty of any of that, and his past actions up until that point showed him to be a committed revolutionary. Don't forget that he was one of the primary military leaders of the civil war.


Possibly, or it could have consolidated power in ⛏️rotsky's clique much as purging ⛏️rotsky consolidated power for Stalin's clique.


So I guess a 6:1 casualty ratio against little Finland is not so bad to you? The Soviet performance in the Winter War was so poor that Hitler took it as a sign of the Red Army's weakness, and accelerated plans for Barbarossa. Given the Red Army's far superior performance in previous conflicts, I can't help but feel as if the purges were largely responsible for this catastrophe. Also there's a good video on exactly that issue.


youtube.com/watch?v=AiA8dKNcjjk&t=413s