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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

What do you think anarchists are and do you think you were ever really an anarchist?

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Grace OP wrote (edited )

Anarchists are people who want to immediately abolish the state after the revolution and do not want a replacement state. That's the simplest terms. I was definitely an anarchist. A lot of MLs used to be anarchists.

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train wrote

Idk if that's entirely accurate. I would describe anarchists as people who seek to replace hierarchical relationships and dependencies managed by the capitalist economy and state with sustainable mutual support networks through the process of insurection. I don't think anarchism is programatic or sequencial and thus doesn't really make sense if you try to think about it in that context. Of course I'm not an anarchist so I could be wrong.

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Grace OP wrote

Is it? It's been a while since I cared about anarchy. Being against any type of unjust hierarchy and the immediate abolition of state is what I thought anarchists were.

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train wrote

Replace immediate with continual and I think you would be closer to the mark.

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Grace OP wrote

how strange, because when I used to own the GenZanarchist discord i saw almost everyone wanted immediate state abolition

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train wrote

I can't speak for those anarchists but I can speak to the ones I've talked to. For them it seems like anarchism is a process not really an exact state of affairs. Ie anarchy (as you might imagine being equivalent to communism) doesn't really exist. Thus if you hear an anarchist advocating for anarchy now, they don't mean they expect utopia simply from the abolition of the capitalist state.

Rather the aim of anarchism is to continually unmake hierarchy and in that process the state is abolished. I also don't think anarchists believe the state is the be all end all of exploitive relationships. Nor do I think they are ignorant of the reactionary forces that will attempt to counter insurrectionary tactics.

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ziq wrote (edited )

People who think in absolutes are misguided. But you do the same thing when you say "when the revolution comes". Revolution is a constant process to unmake the authoritarian institutions that control us, it's not something that will just happen one day and everything will be fixed.

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ziq wrote

The "unjust hierarchy" brand of anarchist isn't really an anarchist, they're just mild socdems.

w/expertise_vs_authority

Anarchy isn't a goal, it's simply the ongoing rejection of authority. I'd argue the reason those baby anarchists become MLs is because they never actually understood anarchy to begin with, and that's a failing of the anarchist movement: for allowing gross people like Vaush to represent anarchy and proselytize for anarchy when they have zero understanding of it.

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