Thoughts?
I’m an ML, not an anarchist, so this may not be directed towards me. However, from my perspective, rigorous Marxist-Leninist analysis often gets dismissed as merely “west bad” by critics that would rather not engage with the actual analysis. It’s similar to calling someone a “tankie,” the utility is in packing a pejorative with nonsensical or outright evil traits, and smearing your opponent with it.
Just my 2 cents, I’m sure anarchist comrades can share.
However, from my perspective, rigorous Marxist-Leninist analysis often gets dismissed as merely “west bad” by critics that would rather not engage with the actual analysis.
As an anarchist, yeah I think we do have a habit of dismissing all ML analysis as “West bad” out of hand. Like when I critique MLs, I really try to stick to the argument. Also…the West is bad and it’s not campist to think that, and any anarchist worth their salt should reach that conclusion. Campism would be thinking only that. And I also want to recognize that a lot of self-identified “”“anarchists”“” are campist in the other direction (pro-West), which I push back on all the time with fire. To be charitable: they are often Westerners in the process of deconstructing their pro-Western programming. But to be a little less charitable: humanity cannot afford to wait for them to catch up.
This isn’t even getting into the use of “authoritarian” as a meaningful identifier of a state, as though there could ever be a “non-authoritarian” state.
I mean I absolutely agree that formally, there is no such thing as a non-authoritarian state, and I think most anarchists would agree there…but there are differences between how much different states choose to exert their power, in particular against the working class. E.g., while I cannot definitionally say that Cuba is a non-authoritarian state, because the two terms are contradictory… it’s a completely different animal than, say, the United States, which is a surveillance capitalist imperialist hegemon, or Israel, which is a ZioNazi hellhole. Like if someone says “Israel is an authoritarian country but Cuba is not”… it’s not technically precise, but you know what they mean. I think there is another sense of the word “authoritarian” when people say things like “non-authoritarian states”, although I personally try not to use that language since I think we inherited it from liberals.
Yea, to be fair to you I’ve not considered you to be the same as the pro-west anarchists of the “we need to critically support NATO” variety. Those anarchists exist, and I’d be lying if I said I never had a NATO-anarchist phase. My decoupling with anarchism came alongside my decoupling with critically supporting the west, so truth be told my anarchism never actually co-existed with the anti-imperialist stance I have today.
Definitely agreed that, frankly, we cannot afford to play the waiting game. If we could, then the accelerationists that support the DNC as the most competent managers of empire would actually have a point, we could try to speed run imperialism to its inevitable self-destruction. Unfortunately, this also means sacrificing the global south to imperialism for a longer time, and potentially letting climate change get even farther out of hand than we could potentially mitigate with revolution. That’s why accelerationism is wrong.
Regarding your point on authority, I fully agree that Cuba is more liberating for the working classes than the US. I also have to acknowledge that Cuba, in the interests of protecting working class power, is more than fine with expropriating property from the landlords and capitalists. The authority of the state is used as a tool to liberate the people, and oppress the former ruling classes. This is true across socialism.
The real crux of the anarchist vs. Marxist argument is in communalization of production vs. collectivization. Should the world, in the final analysis, be made up of linked cells as horizontally as possible, therefore requiring redundancies and self-sufficiency to an extreme degree in each cell, or should the world be organized in one unified system, with a combination of bottom-up and top-down controls, all running along a common plan? The key difference is the question of how power actually works, and how production and distribution actually work at global scales.
I’m not going to try to make an argument here in favor of what I believe is more “correct,” it’s already obvious based on my identification as an ML and I don’t believe this is a space for debate. However, this does relate to the video, which questions how Marxists often venerate historical and present figures that have contributed a great deal in either a theoretical or practical degree. Marxists do not follow “Great Man Theory,” but we do believe in the utility of leadership and disciplined, unified organization. This is the basis of Democratic Centralism, which is a stark departure from most anarchist praxis, that focuses on horizontalism and collective accountability without strict discipline even in the face of disagreement.
From an ML perspective, the difference is overwhelmingly one of if a state is exercising democratic authority vs bourgeoise (or some other minoritarian) authority
Yeah you nailed it.
Like many left-lib pseudo-“anarchists” who propose this power-blind ideology, reality itself immediately set to correcting them two weeks later, considering this video was made in Feb 11th, before the US empire set about physically destroying the peoples and societies whose “true” interests these “anarchists” claim to hold in trust
Iran, Russia and Hezbollah are not the greatest threats to anarchism; the failure to recognize who owns the guns, who starts the wars, who has historically been the greatest killers and hunters of anarchists (i.e. the west) reveals the animus behind this brand of politics isn’t a sober analysis of power and control, but classical idealism, a romantic puritanism that wants to pretend human society can exist in Creatio ex nihilo, if we will it, we can have it, the material conditions of reality be damned
You can’t have anarchism anywhere on the globe if Western imperialism kills everyone sympathetic to it, if it destroys the material foundations of society on entire continents, leaving people more concerned with individual survival than anarchist ideals, if it generates dozens of intelligence agencies that hunt your compatriots across the globe, leaving no one alive except the harmless life-stylists
To ignore that and forge unspoken alliances with Western imperialists to crush or discredit states that are merely in survival mode represents one of the most profound examples of misplaced priorities in political history and is the main generator of global anarchist marginalization
campism
Virtually all people accusing others of campism would support the Allies during WWII. One camp had genocidal anti-Semitic white supremacist imperialists with ambitions to conquer the world who shoved people into concentration camps in an attempt to exterminate the population. The other camp had Nazis.
Just started watching the video and will finish it later, but does anyone have a source on the “iran state media even admitted killing 3000 protesters”? Tbh I’ve only seen western sources about the protests so I have only taken them with a grain of salt
Another thing right off the bat that this essay made me think of is the attempt to disconnect anti-imperialism with socialism, as if one or the other has to be prioritized and (from what it seems) he’s trying to frame “Tankies” as being anti-imperialist to the degree that they would support it even if it hurts socialism.
In my view anti-imperialism is a necessary condition for socialism, and socialism isnt a static thing, but a process that is ever changing and developing, which is where I think this misconception comes from (ugh I feel rusty on theory atm and dont know if im making sense)
you are correct that anti-imperialism and socialism are inextricable. anyone fighting imperialism is furthering the cause of socialism, even if they are anti-socialists doing it purely out of nationalist reasons. as long as there are socialists existing to push a movement further, we must ally ourselves with whoever is on the same side of the contradiction as us against capitalism, with the understanding and awareness that at some point when contradictions resolve and new ones become primary, we may no longer be on the same side of the contradiction.
an important example of this from the CPC is discussed in this lecture series from Tsinghua University on Socialism With Chinese Characteristics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl-0YVz7c-I
That video (200) is the beginning of the section I am referring to, but there are 12 videos in the section after it.
I haven’t seen it in years but tl;dr is that the CPC had to ally with people they knew were class enemies that they would later have to fight against (Chinese national bourgeoisie in this case) in order to resolve the most relevant contradictions of semi-colonialism and semi-fuedalism, then once the japanese were expelled and the chinese warlords quelled they were now immediately at odds with their national bourgeoisie. so this could happen with some people who prioritize anti-imperialism but have no class consciousness, particularly if they are in positions of power within a bourgeois society like clergy or merchants who may want to be the ones to seize power when the common enemy is defeated. this is why there must be an organized vanguard party to ensure that the masses have an alternative leadership of workers to continue making demands beyond anti-imperialism or else an organized bourgeois party will be prepared to co-opt the movement and keep power in their hands.
as far as the Iranian “protesters,” I don’t remember the number but the Iranian government did say that they were capturing/killing a significant amount of Israeli assets and US proxies during that time. The deaths were because these proxies were armed by the US and israeli and were committing acts of violence, which was well documented. they were openly calling for and trying to do an armed insurrection, including murdering people, so yeah getting killed or imprisoned might happen if you try that. can’t really add them to the number of murdered “protesters” when they are armed insurrectionists doing a literal coup attempt
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
