Anarchism as a libertarian socialist tendency is also a plurality.

As a Marxist I work pretty well with anarchists and I’m glad for it

I wish.

Right but it isn’t that easy. MLs and Trotskyists were taught things a certain way, a way that developed contrary to each other. Trotskyists and anarchists were purged ruthlessly and that has an effect on our politics. It would be nice to just dispense with it, but its not that easy. As long as people learn organizing from more experienced organizers, we will carry baggage from the past into the future. It takes an enormous amount of work and reflection to overcome, and I argue that most leftists regardless of ideology lack the tools that are needed, because many of us also carry the baggage of philosophical liberalism by default, either we don’t know how it affects us or when we do know we act contrary to it, which is still a source of heavy influence.

This isn’t being doomer about it, the solution is praxis, but the problems caused by history do actually exist, and have to be reckoned with

Oh mb you are talking about Ukraine.

https://marxistleftreview.org/articles/nestor-makhno-the-failure-of-anarchism/

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-arshinov-history-of-the-makhnovist-movement-1918-1921

Makhno and his generals were tyrants. Perhaps no worse than the Bolsheviks during the civil war, but certainly no better. War forces the point, and idealism gives way to necessity.

ML

Trotsky

You know Trotskyists and MLs are completely different right? 300k is almost 10x the number cited in Averich’s history. At this point you aren’t even trusting other anarchists.

I think you’re being sectarian, because you are misrepresenting facts to fit a one-sided narrative. None of this changes the fact that your meme is extremely confusing. Using a term (Blacks) no one but your own sect uses that way, which conflicts with most people’s understanding, is one sure sign of sectarianism.

Defend your meme all you want but you’re actually carrying water for Stalinist MLs, despite what you may think. A disconnect between one’s political imperative and what is actually happening is it’s own kind of authoritarianism. You’re depending on people accepting your authority, negating the authority of fact. The idea that Russia could muster 300k troops in (what appeared to the Bolsheviks to be) the middle of a civil war, is Victims of Communism levels of historical revisionism. But I’d also compare your sources to my own, sources if you would care to provide them.

Go ahead and make me out to be your enemy because of what Trotsky did over a hundred years ago. This bears no relevance to our present day struggles, yet another sign of toxic sectarianism. Another sign is that you would accept me if I identified as an anarchist, but instead you frame me as an enemy for identifying as a trotskyist, even though we fundamentally agree that Kronstadt was unforgivable. So the surest sign of our political difference is that I care more about learning and teaching the unvarnished truth, whereas you’re invested in campism. It seems like you’re saying facts don’t matter, only ideology matters, which is authoritarian and sectarian. The anarchists I work with never had a problem with my beliefs. They trust me and I trust them. Ideological puritanism is a bigger threat than Trotskyism. So you might want to take a look at that.

Are “the Blacks” anarchists? It really seems like this is saying that Trotsky betrayed black people, which makes no sense. Incidentally, not even Paul Averich, the anarchist historian who wrote perhaps the best history of the Kronstadt tragedy, blames Trotsky and Lenin for it.

Personally, I think Trotsky’s handling of Kronstadt was an absolute disaster. But if Kronstadt had been taken by western invaders the revolution would have been defeated. The sailors would have likely been killed by invaders anyway. But after 1921, the revolution was defeated. Lenin banned factions and instituted the NEP. Russia never recovered from the civil war. I think it’s fair to criticize, I’m a Trotskyist and I’m sharply critical of this period, many Trotskyists are! Paul Leblanc says in Lenin and the Revolutionary Party, that Kronstadt was where the Bolsheviks broke from socialist revolution, and I tend to agree.

But Trotsky is the only person in history to lead two successful socialist revolutions. When Lenin and the bolsheviks were backing a bourgeois revolution, Trotsky convinced them that only a worker-led socialist revolution would defeat the Tzar. Trotskyists who reject sectarianism are defenders of democracy and authentic progressive socialists. My group works with the decentralized anarchists in our city pretty closely. On the other hand it wasn’t that long ago that a clique of anarchists all but destroyed our city’s DSA chapter. Painting any tendency with a broad brush is mindless propaganda. I could just as easily cite examples showing Makhno was little more than a petty tyrant, just to smear anarchism as a tendency. But I wouldn’t because what matters is what we do now, and IMO our tendencies need to work together, rather than litigate 100 year old catastrophes that were actually caused by tsarists and capitalists.

I have nothing but love for anarchists generally, and I understand this attitude given the history. The sailors at Kronstadt were heroes of the revolution. But online, this meme does nothing to advance anarchist or libsoc perspectives, it only helps online Stalinists gleefully defend the mass murder of revolutionaries from both of our tendencies.

They literally don’t know why they hate Trotsky.

This old canard of “USA (bad thing) vs USSR (good thing)” is so flat and devoid of meaning, it is qualitatively no different from blanket statements that the USSR is all bad or USA is all good.

And I understand the methodology here, trying to use “cognitive dissonance” in order to stimulate reflection within a subject (the subject being a thinking person). Stimulating reflection and critical thought in people is the aim of socialist education, it is a precondition to unlearning views we have been “propagandized” to accept. These same tactics of flattening and abstracting a history in order to lead people to certain conclusions is exactly how we have been propagandized. But to just do it in reverse is wrongheaded. It shows that the propagandist hasn’t developed a method of education beyond the bourgeois propaganda they are trying to unlearn. Using the same method of propaganda as an enemy with roles reversed isn’t liberating, it is replacing one set of illusions for another set. Engels called it “unity of opposites” and it is shocking to hear people cite “Dialectical Materialism” still miss this.

Practically, this method of propaganda has mixed results. If the individual is moved to take action, and somehow resists falling into sectarianism, then the propaganda could have actually shaken loose the subject from their illusions. Through discussion and personal development they might overcome the propaganda and become critical thinkers rather than simple followers of an ideology. Unfortunately sects are usually pretty good at managing critical thought through social acceptance. Since people abandoning the status quo often find difficulty sharing their ideas in most places, the sect becomes the only place where a person can feel accepted, which if you’ve ever engaged in recruiting or onboarding into resistance actions, you know this feeling can be extremely powerful. Its always amazing to me how sectarians can be so close to myself in principle and imperative, but practically seethe with disdain if I mention where my own socialist education came from, or if they hear me frame an issue a certain way, or principally acriticize the bureaucracy of a country that receives uncritical support from the sect.

The most effective sectarian propaganda is always half-true. It sorts people into camps, there becomes a camp that stresses the truth in the propaganda, and a camp that stresses the lie. Both camps engage only in opposition to one another, deepening their differences, both moving further away from real conditions in the here and now as they dig in deeper to this or that idealist version of history.

A meme about gun control and education might stimulate discussion about how the USSR educated people from a young age how to handle arms and conceive of gun rights (I’m not an expert on this part of Soviet history, just extrapolating from what little meaning is actually contained in the meme); whereas in the USA, the discourse around 2A is so poisoned, practically no one can come to any agreement except the people who are 100% for and 100% against, even though both groups when surveyed, often show individual support for common sense reforms and especially education. Rather than provide even a glancing analysis of real conditions, or dig into any actual phenomenon, two distorted abstractions are placed next to each other so the viewer is sorted into their camp.

Fortunately for my point, this meme is clunky AF, and the dynamics within the discourse are easier to suss out because of it.

Ideas only exist in practice, and the presentation of these ideas have only led to catastrophe and disaster. Not to say, USSR bad or good or whatever, only that getting people to agree with you isnt revolutionary. Only the self aware, critical subject is capable of revolutionary praxis. Turning people or movements into objects to be “educated” or struggled against is just bourgeois idealism flying a socialist flag, which is no kind of socialism at all.

Definitely an interesting video, I already see where I need to go back throught and take a few more notes. I thought he put forward an interesting if a bit simplistic view of coalition building.

But it has a few problematic areas. For one, this should not be considered an even glancingly accurate depiction of Marxism. And I’m not complaining about his unwillingness to engage with any historical subjects, only theoretical ones. And I won’t say that some of his criticisms might apply to certain vulgar Marxist tendencies. But as far as Marxism being out of date, he is fundamentally a pre-marxist, not a post Marxist. The fundamental insight of Marxism, that material analysis should be human-centered, conceiving of a unified subject and object rather than separate categories of analysis, is completely lost. For all his talk of “the people,” any strip of humanity is sacrificed for engagement with a method. As Marx said of Feuerbach, he can conceive of “single individuals and civil society” but can’t place the individual in society, nor society in the individual. His early idea that change starts with the individual is sort of correct, but he doesnt advance a step beyond this insight, and instead engages with theory instead of “the people.” As such, he’s an idealist, even if he is the kind to imagine a better world he won’t be able to change himself or anything else.

Other limitations that I noticed, is that he spends a lot of time talking about Gramsci’s theories of hegemony superficially, then spends a lot of time talking about language and post - structuralism. But the fundamental insight of Gramsci, the whole basis of his theory of hegemony is language. His theory of hegemony is based on the risorgiamento period in Italy, which allowed Gramsci to concretely develop his theory by paying close attention to the way that the Florentine dialect spread across Italy, replacing local dialects with The Florentine one, which is what we now know as the Italian language. Through analysis of the spread of language he was able to trace the spread of the ruling class superstructure, which included other things like politics, culture, and finally, power.

The fact that he avoided concrete analysis in order to talk about postmodern theories is pretty glaring imo. As an organizer I’m a bit at a loss for what to do with these theories, but like I said, I wanna go back and review. Its def a perspective I haven’t heard before, and maybe if Marx’s fundamental insights were included, then the method could have some practical application. But as it is described by him, I think its impractical and idealistic.

Otherwise, its a good video, very informative, but if he bothered to actually understand Marx then it could be so much better. Instead, he’ll be stuck using very advanced forms of flawed bourgeois reasoning, which leads nowhere.

Thanks for the share!

Thanks for this response! I’m a little familiar with Gramsci’s formulations on hegemony, so I’ll check this out!

The piece I struggle with, is how do you deal with power? I’m a commie, but I’m the kind who actually believes in an endless struggle against oppression. As long as there is injustice, there will always be struggle, so I’m not looking to create a socialist state and then my job is done. My job is to create the party, then criticize it and develop it through struggle. After that, the goal is internationalism, not a socialist state. The state can only be transitional, a socialist state is at best, a way to keep power out of the hands of rulers and build power for the masses, a historical phase of society committed to liberation.

But power is material, tangible, and objective. It always centralizes. Leninists have a strategy of Democratic Centralism, where the natural tendency of centralizing power is balanced by democratic mass participation. This takes different forms based on historical necessity, sometimes more authoritarian measures, still beholden to the democratic authority of the masses, are necessary, such as the dreaded “war communism,” but communists should always fight for more internal democracy, while preserving the centralized nature of organization. In fact what makes war communism such a blight is that it creates unwinnable dilemmas, such as the unmitigated tragedy at Kronstadt.

But without centralization, a more powerfully centralized force can easily break up our democratic movement and destroy the historic potential to liberate the masses, taking the power away from the masses to centralize in the hands of a new ruling class. This is exactly what happened with the Stalinist bureaucracy that formed after the Russian civil war, state bureaucrats filled the positions of power in the revolutionary government, and the power centralized in the hands of the state bureaucrats replacing the soviets who empowered the first popular revolution in Feb 1917. The civil war created the conditions for the basis, as it destroyed the entire productive capacity of the country, decimating the working class as a class, leaving only the peasantry, the bureaucracy, and only a few genuine revolutionaries.

But what caused the failure of the revolution wasnt ideology it was the loss of democracy that disappeared when the basis for worker power, and hence worker democracy, was smashed by the invaders and white armies, and replaced with a more centralized, more oppressive and authoritarian basis for power.

The other side of this, is that even when power is not formally centralized, such as within a state or government, it is still informally centralized, so that a group or individual can claim that power is being distributed, and maybe it is to a certain degree, but it is being distributed in a way that further centralizes that power. In this instance the tyranny takes the form of de-centralization but its substance is still centralized. In these instances a formal democratic centralized structure is much less authoritarian, because it reveals to the masses the true form of its authority, allowing itself to be properly reckoned with, shaped and improved, rather than the informal authoritarianism that claims to be decentralized but is in fact the opposite.

Please don’t read this as a sweeping dismissal of anarchism, I am very fond of anarchism and anarchists, but the discourse between our traditions is bad for reasons that are completely outside of our control. While I cringe violently watching commies quote “On Authority” at anarchists as if it means a damn thing in this day and age, I think that the democratic centralist model of organizing, while fraught and vulnerable, is much more transparent and practical than decentralization. I acknowledge that anarchists are not a singularity, as you’ve already mentioned ITT, and I’m aware of different anarchist approaches to these issues thanks to my libsoc comrades, even if I don’t fully understand them.

I think the difference is somewhere in the way that the anarchist truly concretizes and celebrates the individual, which unfortunately somehow gets disappeared in much Marxist analysis. I study Malatesta to try and compensate for this shortcoming of our tradition, but the big practical structural questions still nags me.

Tell them you love them lots, tell them they have to love their siblings, that family is important because family will get you and support you when none else will, when they’re a little older and fighting really bad, walk past them and tell them something like, “you know you two are best friends right?” Celebrate differences, try not to compare, make value judgements or set expectations based on personal value.

The DSA libertarian socialist caucus has reinvented itself the last year or so, they put out some good solid analysis prior to convention, and is doing a lot of work to build a libertarian socialist plurality within the org.

Right libertarians arent politically coherent, their lack of coherence means they are shot through with Nazis who exploit unprincipled movements yo plant the seeds of hate. A libertarian could be your uncle who smokes weed but listens to Dave Rubin and Joe Rogan podcast, or it could be a school shooter, a transhumanist tech accellerationist who always brings up Rokos basilisk after a couple Busch lights, or a neo-Randian objectivist.

As a left-Hegelian, I like discourse around human freedom, but people never concretize what they mean by freedom, and we always end up back to Marx:

Do not be deluded by the abstract word Freedom. Whose freedom? Not the freedom of one individual in relation to another, but freedom of Capital to crush the worker.

He was probably released accidentally on purpose due to his status. ICE has been picking people up who have criminal records, technicalities really, but then using that as additional legal definition of illegal immigrant. It legit is a free speech violation and he will probably win.

But if they can drop it then pick him up later they can just disappear him into the system. He Wong have been picked up for having anarchist materials, he’ll be picked up for having former charges that were never resolved.

Damned if you do damned if you don’t. His case is def stronger now than it will be in the future

He’s a total ideologue.

I’m not crying you’re crying

Read Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Read Wretched of the Earth. Read The Revolution Betrayed. Read Kronstadt 1921.

Enjoy your Blanqism and Bonapartism

“When education is not liberating it is the dream of the oppressed to become the oppressor”

Well history shows, that guillotining your ruling class, such as happened in France, leads to centuries of rational peace and prosperity. The French successfully ended all wars, and liberalism ushered in an instant and uninterrupted 250 year peace. Since they designed their guillotines not to cut the heads of any undeserving peasants who were caught in the political maelstrom, and enlightened the peasants so that every citizen was a productive and conscientious member of society, every French person and all of their descendants has become a productive civic philosopher. No despot ever managed to come to power in France ever again, and certainly not within 10-15 years.

Having successfully merged society with the Hegelian world spirit of human freedom, the rest of Europe gave up all colonies, freed the people, and helped them achieve a level of national and self actualization in line with the French wave of historic human transformation. No despot ever managed to come to power in Europe again.

Now, the world’s children know no fear or hunger, only freedom and reason; and its all thanks to the fact that the French did such a good job chopping the heads off of exactly the right people.

Its the most expensive installment in the franchise, also its the most expensive film in the franchise.

inevitable only in hindsight

I’m not so sure. I’m still friends with a guy who told me emphatically “you dont understand what we did, we destroyed the global economy” and then explained the whole subprime mortgage scam to me, back in like 2007. Lots of downstream businesses, new home builders, paint and drywall companies, building materials stores, started folding several months before the official crash as well. I wasn’t nearly as aware of things then, I was a grown adult but not yet 30 and with little formal education, but there were definitely huge flashing signs. Only the media, based 100% on the words of the banks and insurance companies, thought that a crash was undetectable.

I’m not sure quite what it would look like yet, but I’m willing to bet if you look where these data centers are being built, when the cash runs out to keep the whole scam afloat, these big companies will stop paying their bills. The smaller companies providing services and supplies will run out of money before the huge mega corpos start showing signs, so that is one of the metrics I’m watching closely. I just happen to live in the shadow of these data centers so I’ll be pretty close to it, that is if I’m right.