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ziq wrote (edited )

Reply to comment by !deleted13453 in by !deleted13453

It's actually pretty fascinating watching the "ideological growth" of a typical baby ancom from Kropotkin all the way to Stalin.

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ziq wrote (edited )

It's not always true, but notice how tankies vastly outnumber anarchists? Tankie spaces are filled with ex-ancoms who went down the red rabbithole and came out the other side thinking themselves great intellectuals and now crow loudly about how they were once foolish unevolved anarkids who didn't comprehend the glory of Lenin or understand that only authoritarian rule can overthrow capitalism.

Places like r/anarchism, r/COMPLETEANARCHY are just seedtrays for tankie propaganda. That's where the Lenin and Stalin and Mao and Trotsky cults get their new recruits. It starts with simple wall and gulag memes, intended to normalize authoritarianism, until it seems like a logical solution to ridding the world of the "reactionary" element. A strong ruler to wipe out all their enemies for them.

A small minority of baby anarchists stay anarchists as they age (almost always thanks to post-left theory), but most start to accumulate capital (as the middle classes will do) and descend back into liberalism in order to safeguard their privileges.

The rest get tankier the more they read until they finally decide the only thing that can save their great Western civilization and all its wonders is a heroic ruler backed by a vanguard of very smart people (them).

The problem is most red anarchists don't think about hierarchy, instead they fixate on capitalism. If they never really understood that capitalism is merely one of the many, many hierarchies that result from an authority-based system, and think all the problems in the world can be traced back to the way labor is arranged, it won't be hard to brainwash them into thinking an evolved intellectual elite seizing control of capitalism is the one and only answer. Regardless of how many times Marxists have failed to fix capitalism's ills, and have in fact often made them worse.

Communists want to reform capitalism and the state. Anarchists want to destroy it. Anarchists who can't stand the idea of their lives being completely upended will inevitably gravitate towards red industrialism aka state capitalism rather than risk losing all the comforts capitalism has granted them.

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ziq wrote

Yeah fam, the vanguard is doing a very good job educating you, what with the authoritarian shit you keep presenting as "libertarian". Classic auth doublespeak.

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ziq wrote (edited )

Libertarian = anti authority.

Vanguards = authority.

"Intellectual" elite = authority.

Your ideology is as libertarian as anarcho-capitalism.

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ziq wrote (edited )

Vanguards aren’t inherently an authority. You can’t just create your own definitions for terms.

Is the dictionary definition an acceptable authority for you to accept if the anarchist definition isn't?

authority

[ uh-thawr-i-tee, uh-thor- ]

noun, plural au·thor·i·ties.

the power to determine, adjudicate, or otherwise settle issues or disputes; jurisdiction; the right to contol, command, or determine.

Yeah..

The marxist conception of a vanguard is well established, and it is obviously not what you think.

Lol.

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ziq wrote

I know what a fucking vanguard is. Why do Marxists always assume everyone that sees through their bullshit just doesn't read?

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ziq wrote

If you were actually libertarian, and were really a proponent of "libertarian vanguardism" (which is still a bunch of bs doublespeak mind you), you wouldn't be equating your vanguardism with a "party", as you've repeatedly done in this thread. That's pure Leninism.

You also refer to wanting an "organization of the state" and wanting an intellectual elite to educate the lowly masses to maintain the revolution.

When you persist in using authoritarian language like this, you can't be surprised that people will be offput when you claim you're anti-authority. There's nothing libertarian about enshrining an elite group with the power to decide how the workers should behave to maintain the "revolution" (which they also get to define).

All you're doing is parroting Lenin but putting the word "libertarian" in front of all his ideas. Libertarian party, libertarian vanguard, libertarian state. It's empty rhetoric.

And why the fuck are you quoting Lenin; an authoritarian, to define your concept of "libertarian" vanguardism?

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ziq wrote

Pay attention, yo. The intellectual elite know better than us dirty peasants.

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ziq wrote

regressive ideologies

Let's be more specific: Anarchists, anticivs, antiworkerists, hunter-gatherers, nomads, artisanal socialists.

progress from each social system to the next

Because waiting for the party to tell you how to achieve communism worked so well in the past... Oh wait, they're a "libertarian" state this time so no reason they would refuse to wither away like authoritarian states did, right?

How bout instead of waiting for an authority to tell us how to slowly hop between social systems they come up with on our way to anarchy, we just go straight to doing anarchy? Is that really so difficult? Someone tries to assert authority? Kill them. Someone else tries it? Kill them. Don't legitimize them and give them the keys to rule you.

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ziq wrote

Regressive ideologies are ideologies that wish to regress into capitalism,

As defined by Marxists. So Anarchists, anticivs, antiworkerists, hunter-gatherers, nomads, artisanal socialists.

it is better to not let them into the vanguard than killing them like you suggest

So much for self determination, but I guess I'm just not clever enough to join your elite party since I think Marx was a piece of shit.

States can be decentralized and weak, they need not be all powerful.

Because it's so easy to control a state's growth. Unlike every state in the history of civilization, your state will be different. Pinky promise!

humanely 

Does any word define doublespeak better than this one?

Overall, I’d rather have a small state so we can humanely deal with reactionaries and liberals instead of just killing people.

I'm so looking forward to a stay in your libertarian gulag.

It’s pretty scary to just advocate taking human life like you’re doing.

It's scarier being trapped under an authoritarian's boot for 30 generations. And weren't you advocating declaring war to fight imperialism just yesterday? Lol.

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ziq wrote (edited )

Nah, you’d be allowed to join

Wow I get to join the holy vanguard even though I'm dangerously anti-vanguard? Goody. I'll bring lots of guests and lots of guns.

No states ever purposefuly gimp themselves for the sole purpose of their own destruction, so we wouldn’t know.

No shit? It's almost like power isn't something the system voluntarily gives up...

Even if it were true, ‘gulags’ are a better alternative than just outright killing people who disagree with the society you’re trying to build.

Yes killing your oppressors is way worse than marching everyone that dissents from the great architect's grand plan into labor camps and working them to death.

Fighting a war against imperialism in your home country is entirely different from advocating to shoot all people who disagree with your political project.

Says the kid who wants to march all the liberals (aka most of the human population) into gulags. And "disagreeing with your political project" is not a reason to kill someone. Them forcing their authority on you; forcing you into their servitude (like, in a gulag) is.

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ziq wrote

Oh, we won't be waiting til "the end" to smash it once you let us in. If we did that, it would never go away. Best to smash it on the first day before it roots itself too deeply.

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ziq admin wrote

By asking such ignorant questions, you're just proving that you're not clever enough to join the vanguard and thus don't deserve a say in how you live your life.

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ziq wrote (edited )

I thought you said the elite intellectual vanguard party wouldn't allow undesirables to join..? And it would "humanely deal with" all the "liberals and reactionaries"? So how does it include "the whole people"?

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ziq admin wrote

Do the people of raddle want to take a vote? Is /u/BrowseDuringClass1917 regressive? If so we should exclude them from u/meta by their own ideological stance.

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ziq admin wrote

Actually, we only need to ask the people who we've allowed into our vanguard. So just me and you.

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ziq admin wrote (edited )

/u/BrowseDuringClass1917 is hereby barred from the raddle intelligentsia and stripped of all voting rights. Democracy has been served:

Regressive ideologies are ideologies that wish to regress into capitalism, and it is better to not let them into the vanguard

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ziq admin wrote (edited )

Yes, and when we have educated the people enough, we will declare communism and they will be permitted to dine at our table as our true equals.

I estimate this arduous education process will last a mere 20 generations... Unless we author further tomes of theory to teach them, of course, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

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celebratedrecluse wrote

The problem is most red anarchists don't think about hierarchy, instead they fixate on capitalism.

I genuinely disagree, every single ancom that I know is very concerned with intersectional oppression, and ground their critique of capitalism with a fundamental critique of hierarchy & understanding of forms of hierarchy besides capitalism itself. Many that I've interacted with online also fall in line with this generalization, although of course i can't speak beyond my experience.

Even a fair number of trotskyites and demsocs care about intersectionality & problems of hierarchy in general, even if in a more shallow way because of their preoccupation with dismantling a narrowly-defined capitalism at all costs.

Capitalism is one of the most widespread oppressive forces, I can't really fault people for focusing on it unless they articulate reactionary viewpoints because of their perspective. For me, that's the basic dividing line between anarchist communists and statist communists/demsocs-- anarchist communists do have that fundamental critique of authority, and you saying that they don't is just totally counter to my entire perception, experience, and context.

Also, re: the gulag & wall memes. If you get uncomfortable joking about killing landlords, shooting violent nazis, or collectivizing insurance companies, I can't take you that seriously...CMV, maybe im problematic, but that's how i feel lol. i know people on raddle get very concerned with violent content, and that's valid in many cases & has made me pause to reflect before.

However, I don't buy the slippery slope line of discourse with regards to wall jokes turning people into tankies...it sounds like marijuana gateway theory, or marilyn manson & trenchcoats causing school shootings, neither of which have any credibility to me. An alternative, and more convincing, explanation for why anarchists stop being anarchists is the utter failure of mass anarchist politics over the last century, in any tangible geopolitical sense. During the second world war, anarchism was stomped out, and we're only now in the new millenium really starting to maybe get ready for another wave of mass anarchist politics. However, there's still profound disorganization, and I can't say I feel at all ready for the wave of reactionary violence that seems to be rising, let alone the challenges of systematic market failure or climate change. So I would take a structural & materialist, rather than an cultural & individualist, explanation for why ancoms defect to tankie ideology. They don't see us achieving the goals they desire with the tactics and resources at hand within anarchism, so they look to a solution that makes sense to them as an expedient, and eventually this changes their politics toward authoritarianism. In fact, that's what they'll tell you, most of them, if you ask them why they abandoned anarchism.

So i think it's unnecessary, and even perhaps unhelpful, to characterize them like this: they always were tankies, were morally degenerate because what defines them as tankies is a lack of willingness to give up privilege. Perhaps thats part of the story, but there are also very good reason to consider giving up on anarchism's (as a political community that actually exists in the present tense) prospects for engaging in the social transformation needed to avoid serious negative consequences, and instead opting for something that you believe will do that.

I, of course, disagree, but I understand the disagreement. The difference between anarchists and statists, instead one of moral purity, comittment to the revolution, or any of that, is fundamental a question of what you think will be effective. Saying otherwise, while it may be rooted in personal experience, strikes me as close-minded, and totally ineffective in reaching out to prevent people from becoming tankies because it doesn't engage with major reasons why someone might come to that conclusion. Especially when the alternative offered to these potential tankies by nihilist anarchists is often this banal "yeah people will die, there's no way to prevent that, sorry". People aren't usually willing to accept mass death as a foregone conclusion, this either turns them off from any sort of politics or turns them into "radical pragmatists" like tankies or fascists often think of themselves.

However what it certainly doesn't do for these people is turn them into anarchists, which is what I would like to see happen...

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ziq wrote (edited )

anarchist communists do have that fundamental critique of authority, and you saying that they don't is just totally counter to my entire perception, experience, and context.

If they were really willing to critique authority, they wouldn't freak out whenever someone points out that civilization, and even society itself is an authority. They wouldn't constantly try to justify authority and hierarchies that they cling to Chomsky-style. I've written a lot about this in my anarchistlibrary stuff, so it's not really worth repeating myself. Red anarchists presume to oppose authority, but most have a lot of trouble really committing to critiques of authority beyond capital and state because to do so would mean completely giving up their comfy place in the social hierarchy, and that's a big ask.

Also, re: the gulag & wall memes. If you get uncomfortable joking about killing landlords, shooting violent nazis, or collectivizing insurance companies, I can't take you that seriously...

I don't get uncomfortable because I'm a fucked up nihilist, but it is juvenile as fuck and makes it hard for people to tell us apart from tankies on first look. Wall / killing jokes don't belong in our propaganda / memes, it belongs in serious theory where it can be presented in context, rather than throwaway "bad guys get the wall lolz!" comments which is just going to make anyone who isn't keyed in slowly back away from us.

Gulag memes, on the other hand, have no place in any anarchist setting. Prisons are for authoritarians, pure and simple, let alone forced labor / slavery.

However, I don't buy the slippery slope line of discourse with regards to wall jokes turning people into tankies...it sounds like marijuana gateway theory, or marilyn manson & trenchcoats causing school shootings, neither of which have any credibility to me.

Edgy memes is 99% of how fascists add recruits to their ranks, why would you be surprised that tankies utilize similar tactics?

I point you to this person if you need an example of someone who has gone down that rabbithole, and I could link you to hundreds more that I've seen over the years:

RedPanda and then /u/RedFreedomPanda.

An alternative, and more convincing, explanation for why anarchists stop being anarchists is the utter failure of mass anarchist politics over the last century, in any tangible geopolitical sense. During the second world war, anarchism was stomped out, and we're only now in the new millenium really starting to maybe get ready for another wave of mass anarchist politics. However, there's still profound disorganization, and I can't say I feel at all ready for the wave of reactionary violence that seems to be rising, let alone the challenges of systematic market failure or climate change. So I would take a structural & materialist, rather than an cultural & individualist, explanation for why ancoms defect to tankie ideology. They don't see us achieving the goals they desire with the tactics and resources at hand within anarchism, so they look to a solution that makes sense to them as an expedient, and eventually this changes their politics toward authoritarianism. In fact, that's what they'll tell you, most of them, if you ask them why they abandoned anarchism.

Except that authoritarian communism has failed far more times than anarchism (literally every time it's been attempted), so there's not exactly any logic to their denunciations beyond them being happier as hopeful members of the elite intelligentsia.

So i think it's unnecessary, and even perhaps unhelpful, to characterize them like this: they always were tankies, were morally degenerate because what defines them as tankies is a lack of willingness to give up privilege.

I don't like the concept of "moral degenerates" and would argue every human could be defined in that way. None of us are morally pure when we're really tested. We act out of self-interest when our survival depends on it, and sometimes just when we feel like it. Plus morality is a meaningless term. It's always defined by authorities that have shit for ethics.

Perhaps thats part of the story, but there are also very good reason to consider giving up on anarchism's (as a political community that actually exists in the present tense) prospects for engaging in the social transformation needed to avoid serious negative consequences, and instead opting for something that you believe will do that.

If they think a state will save them after hundreds of red states have failed to free humanity, then I can only imagine all of their senses have failed them simultaneously. Anyone who claims to understand the nature of authority and then embraces it as liberator never understood authority in the first place.

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celebratedrecluse wrote (edited )

so im extremely online and decided to comment anyway. lol. alright here we gooooooooooooooooooooooo

I don't get uncomfortable because I'm a fucked up nihilist

high Five :^)

But okay, I think you're right, it does make it harder to take anarchists and socialists as different tendencies if they communicate similarly. That i agree with. That they turn into tankies due to the memes, i still don't think that's accurate for most people. I think people turn from ancoms into tankies because they are exasperated with anarchist spaces and desperate for something that will actually transform society, because they know that this shit cannot last, whether on the ecological sense or on the personal i-cant-survive-on-these-wages-with-these-bills level.

I don't like the concept of "moral degenerates" and would argue every human could be defined in that way. None of us are morally pure when we're really tested. We act out of self-interest when our survival depends on it, and sometimes just when we feel like it. Plus morality is a meaningless term. It's always defined by authorities that have shit for ethics.

Right that's why i used that harsh word, i was trying taking what you were saying to its logical conclusion, which is that you are lodging a moral or existential complaint with ancoms, instead of one that treats them as reasonable people who are just muddying through ideology like the rest of us, who have real stakes in the game like other people, and who are not operating from an ideological realm of "i like industry, how can we protect and expand industry" but rather a personal point of "i know i need these things to survive, how can i get them and share that with everyone i care about". If you regard them this way, it is much harder to dehumanize them, and much more likely that you'll be able to better communicate with them your meaningful and important critiques of their praxis.

Edgy memes is 99% of how fascists add recruits to their ranks, why would you be surprised that tankies utilize similar tactics?

I still don't think that's how it works, people always give way too much credit to propaganda and memes and other "door-openers". People still have to be in the hallway to walk through the threshold, its the hallway that needs to be looked at, not the posters on the doors so much, if you ask me.

I think people leave from anarchism to authoritarian socialism not because of good arguments, or funny pictures, they come to the tankie state of mind because they don't see anarchism working to achieve the goals they want to achieve, not in the timeframe we have. Which, honestly, is kind of a fair assessment at the moment, there's absolutely no mass action, against harmful industry for instance, that isn't liberal/symbolic as fuck, like extinction rebellion seems to be for example.

While authoritarian communism has had innumerable tragedies, and I would never recommend that as the way to change the world now, they have at least achieved some tangible things from time to time, even if those tangible things were very terrible in many cases. unfortunately this is more tangible than anarchism has done in recent memory, for a lot of people who aren't into the subcultural space that is anarchism the achievements we have made aren't large or significant enough for people to feel invested in the projects, or they have seen too many failures connected with the ideology as it exists contextually in their lives.

If they think a state will save them after hundreds of red states have failed to free humanity, then I can only imagine all of their senses have failed them simultaneously.

Perhaps it is the community that has failed, rather than the individual. It is not a question of intellectual or moral ability, but a social question, one of efficacy of the ideology in meeting the reasonable goals and needs at hand for the person who holds the ideology-- not slaving your life away, making sure the people you care about have food clothing shelter medicine & clean water, that sort of thing.

But now we get to what i think is your strongest point, which you actually led with, sorry this is all jumbled, my brain is everywhere today:

If they were really willing to critique authority, they wouldn't freak out whenever someone points out that civilization, and even society itself is an authority. They wouldn't constantly try to justify authority and hierarchies that they cling to Chomsky-style. I've written a lot about this in my anarchistlibrary stuff, so it's not really worth repeating myself. Red anarchists presume to oppose authority, but most have a lot of trouble really committing to critiques of authority beyond capital and state because to do so would mean completely giving up their comfy place in the social hierarchy, and that's a big ask.

I don't know that ancoms are feeling too comfy right now, as a group. There's a reason they are trying to organize for a transformation, it's because their lives are generally impoverished and subordinated like many other leftists. But there are certainly bourgeois people who are part of the left, and those people have a class positionality which inclines them to what you are talking about, and that's a valid criticism of those people. However I don't know that you can castigate ancoms like this, and not have a similar critique of many nihilists for example. Stirner knows, there are a lot of bourgeois nihilists, right? But i would never suggest that nihilism or its anarchist versions is a bourgeois ideology, just because of these people I've met.

On the contrary, I would rather take a materialist perspective, that it is the material conditions of bougie-ness that produce these fuckers' shitty politics, rather than an entire field of political ideas or practices that produce the bourgeois nature of some of those people. The shit politics can take many forms, dressing up as everything from far-right to far-left to post-left, but its ultimately superstructure and derived from the material benefit one has to stand by not actually trying to transform society.

edit: also, i agree that gulag memes are a bit creepy. ive been to jails, theyre not fun, and i wouldnt wish them on anyone, even people i would like to see dead

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ziq wrote (edited )

The difference between anarchists and statists, instead one of moral purity, comittment to the revolution, or any of that, is fundamental a question of what you think will be effective.

Effective at what? Reforming capitalism? Yeah, that's my point. The primary concern of all reds is changing the way labor is organized. Everything else stays the same, but bosses are eliminated. This is why ancoms are hard for me to take seriously. Reorganizing labor will not solve all the world's problems. The world will still be in ruins in a few short years because of industry.

Saying otherwise, while it may be rooted in personal experience, strikes me as close-minded, and totally ineffective in reaching out to prevent people from becoming tankies because it doesn't engage with major reasons why someone might come to that conclusion.

So what? They're not useful to me. Their end goal is to reorganize labor so they can enjoy greater privileges under industrial civilization. They're not going to help my end goal; which is to leave civilization behind entirely so life as we know it can actually continue to survive on this planet.

Especially when the alternative offered to these potential tankies by nihilist anarchists is often this banal "yeah people will die, there's no way to prevent that, sorry".

Now you're going in a weird direction. Industrialism is killing everything. Literally everything is being killed RIGHT NOW as I type. Entire species go extinct every day. How are nihilist anarchists responsible for that just because we don't have our heads buried in the sand?

People aren't usually willing to accept mass death as a foregone conclusion, this either turns them off from any sort of politics or turns them into "radical pragmatists" like tankies or fascists often think of themselves.

Then maybe they should stop pushing for more mass death (industry)?

However what it certainly doesn't do for these people is turn them into anarchists, which is what I would like to see happen...

Nah fuck em. If they love working so much, let them be tankies.

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