As more mainstream libs are discovering Lemmy, we’re seeing a pattern of complaints that opinions outside the ones they deem acceptable are allowed on the platform. We’ve even seen instances defederating because their userbase does not wish to be exposed to these views.
Interestingly, these are the same people who level censorship and control of free speech as their main critique of communists. What we’re seeing is that these people absolutely don’t care about free speech. They understand the necessity of censorship and actively advocate censoring opinions that they find dangerous. Yet, when societies based on values different from their own use these same tools they screech about authoritarianism.
Turns out it’s not authoritarianism libs hate, but having their own views censored. What actually offends them about places like China is that it’s their ideology that’s being suppressed there.
I agree with all that, and I’m never going to discourage anyone from working with other people whose goals are compatible with your own.
I think the issues with anarchism aren’t with the goals which are largely compatible with ones that MLs have, but rather with the methodology. Vast majority of people who subscribe to anarchism mean well, but often reject effective methods for organizing and effecting change at scale.
For example, I find the rejection of authority to be highly problematic when it comes to building an effective movement. It’s simply not possible for large groups of people to organize and to keep long term consistent goals in absence of centralization. You end up with many fractured groups each having their own idea pulling things in different directions, and a movement rife with opportunists. This is precisely what we see happening with western left at the moment.
There needs to be a consistent vision and some form of a vanguard whose job it is to ensure that all the different groups are pulling in the same direction. There also needs to be a common theory of change that everyone understands in a similar enough way to work together effectively.
In my experience, anarchists often tend to make the mistake of assuming that majority of people naturally shares their ideas, and if current system could somehow be torn down then we’d naturally enter an anarchist utopia. Of course, the reality, is that if the current system did happen to collapse, then it would be groups that have good organization that will end up coming into power. If the left fails to become disciplined then it will be the right that takes over.
Just to defend the vast majority of people who subscribe to anarchism a little, ime huge amount of self proclaimed anarchists don’t have particularly strong opinions on methods for organizing or effecting change at scale, mostly because a lot haven’t done much organizing. In my experiences with anarchist types they’re pretty flexible on the methods part just because it’s nice to do anything for a change and doing basic organizing in the maximally anarchist fashion can just get exhausting.
Granted i’m mostly talking abt like new to leftism anarchist by default types but the anarchists who’re ideologically committed to the point of opposing all centralization in organizing bc authority are overrepresented online and irl MLs are incredibly unlikely to even have a chance to work with them.
For sure, anarchism is far less stigmatized in the west and therefore it’s natural for left leaning people who fall out of the mainstream to get interest in anarchism. I suspect that a lot of people who start seriously thinking about what it takes to effect systemic change end up moving closer to ML point of view later on.
that’s def what happened to me, a huge turning point for me was participating in an small group with a very anarchist structure and seeing all the issues that creates, and eventually finding myself in the small group of de facto leaders doing evil unaccountable centralism bc of a combo of social cachet and being one of the few ppl to actually bother showing up to meetings. coming across The Tyranny of Structurelessness was an unpleasant literally me moment. ragging on ML organizing for not being democratic enough made a lot of sense until everyone’s silently democratically decided you’re responsible for everything or else the whole thing falls apart
Yes but it is not just new people it is also seasoned organizers. In my union, for example, which is full of anarchist types, I think it is problematic that when difficulties arise, we are effectively led into just blowing off anxiety and frustration instead of thinking through how our adversaries are challenging us. Action is prioritized over strategy and even though leadership always says they just follow what union members want, it is always the loudest (and most anxious) people calling the shots while everyone else just tries to maintain solidarity and goes along with it. Maybe I am just too cynical tho idk.
yeah that sounds pretty different from the sorts of situations i’m talking about, it makes a lot of sense to be cynical over it though. i think seasoned anarchists, even if they fully mean well, can turn orgs not explicitly laid out like that into something really unpleasant. there’s a kind of normative behavior that comes out of consensus based organizing that’s very focused on raising basically every single concern you might have and avoiding keeping quiet for the sake of getting along that is pretty essential for consensus to work as intended but can end up pretty obnoxious outside of that context. maybe the only way out is just not going along anymore if enough ppl are tired of it even if it’ll likely be unpleasant.
I consider myself an anarcho-communist; it isn’t always a rejection of authority but of unjustifiable hierarchies.
Your statement:
“Vast majority of people who subscribe to anarchism mean well, but often reject effective methods for organizing and effecting change at scale.”
is overly simplistic. If were gonna throw out stereotypes, MLs aren’t really all that experienced in organizing anything outside a book club. Black Bloc anarchists have been organising street-level protests for years. It wasn’t an ML that punched Richard Spencer….
I think an example of what is being addressed is found in occupy wall street. The movement had presented itself as self-led, or leaderless, yet it had de facto leaders, particularly David Graeber. In name it was pure democracy but in form it was a shadow leadership choosing its direction. The vanguard approach may or may not be beyond reproach, but it attempts to admit the natural reality of a vanguard which seems to arise regardless. Some people are skilled, persuasive, knowledgeable, and have the time to perform tasks for an organization and these people will either be recognized and put in leadership roles, or will find themselves there haphazardly and further, they may be rejected due to anti-authoritarian dogmatism. The trick is, of course, maintaining a continuity with the people the group is serving, not necessarily determining how decisions are or aren’t made.
In my own experience with self-proclaimed anarchists, for example in a small-time prisoner advocacy group, the same problem arises. No one can take responsibility for certain tasks because of a risk for creating a chain of command and thus my partner and I were blocked from taking on roles because roles were seen as problematic by the rest of the group. Of course, the group failed, and I left.
I find that this is partially the result of anarchism as it is usually known and practiced in my community but also, and perhaps more importantly, it is a result of reaction to neoliberalism. Our age of neoliberalism has led to an increase of powerlessness and blatantly corrupt liberal “democracy.” People want to combat this by feeling as though everyone has a say and everyone has power. It is the ultimate legitimacy to claim as much. This is achieved, at times, by rejecting anything that even seems “top down.” In effect, the organization strategy is usurped by dogma for the purposes of what you might call “owning the authoritarians” in what might be a kind of ideological virtue signaling. I don’t usually like the term “populism” but when merely harnessing reactions to neoliberalism, “populism” is usually the result, not democracy, and not socialism.
I will also add that IMO, the most interesting and effective “anarchist” or anti-authoritarian strategies are most effective for survival - expropriation attempts, food sovereignty, squatting on abandoned land etc., but not as effective at consequentially shifting power.
We need to learn how to survive in the society of states that are dominated by capitalist relations and disciplined by markets controlled by colonial powers, but we must also figure out how to address these power structures. IMO ML actually steps up to the plate in this regard by seeking to usurp the state and rediscipline it towards the people. I don’t think it’s ideal because no solution can be perfect and certainly states (especially peripheral and semi peripheral states under the yoke of imperialism) are subjected to many pitfalls which can potentially erode continuity between the state and the people, or can fall into liberal fallacies, or outside meddling influences, but still, we must do more than reject authoritarianism ™ to address the problem of the society of states.
That’s a really important point actually. Having implicit power structures form without any formal method of recall is precisely what allows unjust hierarchies to come into being. When there are no explicit hierarchies then implicit ones necessarily arise because some individuals are more charismatic and extroverted than others, and people tend to rally around them.
Sure, but MLs aren’t promoting unjust hierarchies either, there’s no disagreement on the point of accountability and recall. And of course, anarchism is a very broad ideology with many different interpretations. For example, I do think that anarcho-syndicalism is generally close to ML ideologically. So, it is a fair criticism to say that I oversimplified things in my comment.
While it’s true that MLs in the west haven’t accomplished much recently, I don’t think anarchists have much to show for their efforts either. Organizing street-level protests and punching nazis is great, but unless that is a step towards actual systemic change then these actions aren’t accomplishing much of anything in the grand scheme of things. US has protests every few years, but they always die down and life moves on as if nothing happened. We see the same story in France a well where people are even better at rioting, yet they aren’t moving the needle either.
So, perhaps we shouldn’t disparage book clubs after all. Lack of education is one of the key reasons people aren’t organizing effectively. People end up doing naive things that result in ad hoc protests that quickly burn themselves out. Learning history of effective movement building, methods that work, and building ideological convictions necessary to make a long term impact is the first step that can’t be skipped over. Russian revolution started out effectively as a bunch of book clubs where workers read and discussed communist literature. It took over a decade of coordinated effort to build an effective movement.
The reality is that ML approach does have a lot of demonstrated success when done seriously as seen in USSR, Cuba, China, Vietnam, Korea, Laos, and Nicaragua. These are all large scale demonstrated successes, and they should be studied intensively by everyone on the left in the west.
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