this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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You'll see anarchists praising Rosa Luxemburg, who if they had actually read her writings -- they would see that she was very clearly one of the "authoritarian" socialists that they rail against so much.

You see them praise the Black Panthers, who were supported financially by the DPRK and aligned themselves with the Juche ideology of Kim Il Sung.

They even praise Thomas Sankara, who purged anarchists and arrested syndicalists.

If these people had succeeded, i have no doubt in my mind that anarchists would call them "tankies," they would call their experiments "capitalism with a red flag." And I also have no doubt in my mind that if the October Revolution, Chinese Revolution had been crushed, they would hail Lenin and Mao as proletarian heroes.

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[–] alicirce@lemmygrad.ml 43 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yeah, definitely! Once you win a revolution, you have to govern, and that inolves rules and tradeoffs etc.

You might like this essay: Western Marxism, the Fetish for Defeat, and Christian Culture

[–] Zaratustash@lemmygrad.ml 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

lmao I literally clicked this thread to post this exact essay

[–] alicirce@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 1 year ago

it's very good 😊

[–] toomanyjoints69@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 1 year ago

I also think that during a revolution the most intense promises will be made so its the equivalent of judging a candidate on their election promises versus the guy who won and actually got the chance to do not perfect.

[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 41 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Another thing I find hilarious with Anarchists is that many of them are huge EU supporters. Turns out they're totally fine with centralization and large unelected bureaucracies in practice. These people are just LARPing.

[–] mulcahey@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can't say I've seen this among anarchists... Any examples?

[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

My personal experience talking about the EU with people like @poVoq@lemmy.ml

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[–] angrytoadnoises@lemmygrad.ml 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, Anarchists don't seem to actually want to succeed in anything. They just want to perpetually feel superior about their morals as well as comfortable that nothing will ever change. They want to be cool, contrarian good guys, imagining a world that will only ever exist in books and stories.

[–] ColonelRevolution@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's why my anarchist phase was short-lived. I was reading about anarchism and I found out that many of them don't even expect that the revolution will succeed. It's just a desperate moral opposition to the status quo without any serious intention to change the material reality.

Not a great strategy to make the world a better place lol

[–] angrytoadnoises@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 1 year ago

I'm very much the same. Had a short anarchist phase, don't entirely disagree with a lot of the worldview, but feel the situation is too desperate to rely on fantastical situations when there's already existing theory on how to fix the world.

[–] savoy@lemmygrad.ml 22 points 1 year ago

They're pretty much more liberal ultras. They bang on about this wonderful utopia and tear down any attempts at socialist revolution or maintaining a workers state. And not only that, but they don't put in the needed work into building towards revolution or increasing class consciousness among the working class. They're entirely fine trying to build cooperative farms or doing performative mutual aid.

[–] ButtigiegMineralMap@lemmygrad.ml 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A Psalm from the Apostle, Parenti: “They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. NO SURPRISE THEN THAT THE PURE SOCIALISTS SUPPORT EVERY REVOLUTION EXCEPT THE ONES THAT SUCCEED.”

[–] CPCsStrongestWumao@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 1 year ago

another parenti W

[–] Mzuark@lemmygrad.ml 18 points 1 year ago

Most self professed leftists don't actually have a plan for what happens if they get the revolution they want. I guess they think the point of the ideology is just killing people and burning shit, not creating a better society.

[–] Valbrandur@lemmygrad.ml 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Aside from the what it is to be said by the already recomended text on western marxism and christianity by Jones Manoel on RedSails, which I find very fitting here, I have found out by experience that anarchists usually have a very strong tendency to romanticize the act of revolution in general, of sublevation to overthrow the existing hierarchies, and very little focus on what comes after, which is the organization of the new society that is to come.

Chances are that this lack of focus is the result of the development of an anarchist's conceptualization of a post-capitalist society falling an overwhelming majority of times in one of two fields: either authoritarianism (most of us have witnessed an anarchist accidentally developing the idea of vanguards in their search to defend their revolutions) or the most bizarre and impractical modes of production and self-defense that could be concieved, such as the idea that medicines and other highly complex products could ever be produced by individual people as a form of pastime.

This is, overall, too much hassle for the average western anarchist, who doesn't find the need to concern themselves with that simply because, for them, anarchism is just an aesthetic used as a form of expressing one's identity and individuality, and not as a project to work towards.

Edit: Grammar.

[–] StalinsMoustache@lemmygrad.ml 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

for the revolution to succeed, youll need some sort of mechanism to oppress the oppressors. Most anarchists seem to want the revolution, but dont want to secure it cause oppression /authoritarianism/hiearchies is bad. A problem with being an absolutist.

[–] reazonozaer@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 1 year ago

It is easy to support failed attempts because then they can imagine that this time those folks would have done things "perfectly" or in other words, the way the person imagining it would have done things. Without any of the messy details of having to work in the real world with real conditions.

[–] Krause@lemmygrad.ml 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
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[–] Drstrange2love@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Online anarchists are a flandering version of the ideology they preach.

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