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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote (edited )

Reply to comment by !deleted8445 in by !deleted21007

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_anarchism

Can't say I know much about it. Based on this wikipedia page it seems to range from

  • something troublesome like the equivalent of "left unity" except just for anarchists, "anarchist unity", combining individualists, anarcho-syndicalists, and anarcho-communists, except where instead of marxists eventually the platformists take power.
  • on a charitable reading something ostensibly ok about complimentarity, "these currents were not contradictory but complementary, each having a role within anarchism: anarcho-syndicalism as the strength of the mass organisations and the best way for the practice of anarchism; libertarian communism as a proposed future society based on the distribution of the fruits of labour according to the needs of each one; and anarcho-individualism as a negation of oppression and affirming the individual right to development of the individual, seeking to please them in every way." But this seems to imply that, for example, we can't be fluid actors who respond anarchically to whatever is happening to us. Most individualists still have to work, and can still join a damn union. And a syndicalist can still rob a bank when they're not at work.

But with green anarchist critique, it destroys the possibility that the red systems are compatible with the green ones. So a claim like de Cleyre's

""There is nothing un-Anarchistic about any of [these systems] until the element of compulsion enters and obliges unwilling persons to remain in a community whose economic arrangements they do not agree to. (When I say 'do not agree to' I do not mean that they have a mere distaste for...I mean serious differences which in their opinion threaten their essential liberties...)...Therefore I say that each group of persons acting socially in freedom may choose any of the proposed systems, and be just as thorough-going Anarchists as those who select another"

Which I would be fine with in actual anarchist societies, I don't think is possible insofar as more red tendencies are only minimally anarchist.

So in any case it seems that synthesis anarchism is primarily an approach to how we relate to other anarchist tendencies.
I don't really like the premises of the whole thing, since basically I dislike all of the tendencies being considered, and think that anarchism is more organic and context-defined than this.

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