I’m just gonna ignore your campist gish-gallopping if you don’t even bother to skim the video. You’re not interested in engaging in critique that contradicts your worldview. Just like people in a cult would do.
The images very much embody what PRC is actually doing.
You still failed to explain what we’re actually seeing on the left. It’s visually indistinguishable from green capitalism, so you failed in using a picture to promote whatever the PRC is doing.
TIL tha green LEDs will safe the environment. /s
Edit:
Lol, you posted the first thing you found when you googled Zapatista dissolution, didn’t you? The Zapatistas restructured their autonomous approach. They didn’t abandon autonomy. They still exist, therefore they didn’t fail.
I love how you just assume here that you’re making some novel arguments here. As if I’m not familiar with them. Pretty rich of you to call other people campist too given the whole context for this discussion.
You still failed to explain what we’re actually seeing on the left. It’s visually indistinguishable from green capitalism, so you failed in using a picture to promote whatever the PRC is doing.
Except I literally did explain this in the very comment you’re replying to. I didn’t ask you to watch a video because I’m actually able to articulate my thoughts like an adult with a fully developed brain:
You’re just doing sophistry here. The whole idea of state capitalism is a bit of a misnomer. It basically says that while you have state owned enterprise, the internal capitalist relations within it remain largely the same. While that’s true, there is a fundamental difference here. Capitalism is a system where people who own capital hire workers to exploit there labor with the purpose of increasing their capital. The goal of capitalist enterprise is to create wealth for the owners with any social benefits being strictly incidental. On the other hand, the purpose of state enterprise is to provide social value. Workers in state owned companies are producing things that the society needs. They are working for their own benefit and those of others around them. Therefore, the nature of work itself is fundamentally different from actual capitalism. And it’s very obviously a huge step forward from capitalism.
I love how you completely ignored this and just proceeded to regurgitate the talking points you memorized like a parrot.
TIL tha green LEDs will safe the environment. /s
Oh look more dishonesty from a troll. Let’s look at what I actually said:
China is literally at the forefront of clean energy, mass reforestation, and desert greening.
Weird how you choose not to engage with that.
Edit: Lol, you posted the first thing you found when you googled Zapatista dissolution, didn’t you? The Zapatistas restructured their autonomous approach. They didn’t abandon autonomy. They still exist, therefore they didn’t fail.
Oh yeah they did restructure to make their system more centralized and to add *gasp* hierarchy because they’re not anarchists or zealots. They were actually able to honestly look at what they were doing acknowledge the problems and move in a direction that makes more sense. Precisely the thing western anarchists are unable to do.
To add onto the Zapatista point, even actual self-described anarchists like in Catalonia developed vertical organizational elements during the Spanish Civil War out of necessity, and were more effective for it. Their reluctance to do so at first actually hindered them. Contrast that to the Red Army, which started off more horizontal but adapted much quicker, and we can see that the Red Army’s success in the Russian Civil War can be partially attributed to their flexibility when encountering new material conditions.
Right, hierarchies are a necessary tool for managing complex systems. Hence why they continue to show up both in nature and human organizations. They’re not some inherent evil as anarchists see them, but merely a tool for creating abstractions and partitioning work. At this point, I’m convinced that anarchism has been sanctioned and promoted as a legitimate form of dissent within the western system precisely because of its opposition to hierarchies. It ensures that anarchist movements never actually grow and become a real threat to centralized state power.
I think it’s a bit of that, but also more nuanced. Gramsci points out that anarchism does not necessarily have a solid class basis, though it’s common among classes like the petite bourgeoisie, it also attracts proletarians and other classes opposed to the present bourgeois state. After socialist revolution, proletarian anarchists overwhelmingly side with the socialists, as the new proletarian state no longer oppresses them, while petite bourgeois, bourgeois, etc. anarchists continue to oppose the new socialist state.
Anarchism is, essentially, loosely linked by the desire for class freedom against an oppressive class state, not by a proletarian world outlook like Marxism-Leninism. The Russian revolution largely mapped out how Gramsci described, with “Red anarchists” joining the soviets, leaving the remainder to be seen as the new totality of anarchists that occasionally fought the soviets. This form of historiography hides the actual left unity that happened, the working together of the majority of anarchists with the Marxists, and pit them as bitter enemies when class interests brought the majority of anarchists together with the Marxists.
I’d argue that people end up gravitating towards anarchism because they desire personal agency, and I would also argue because western society conditions people to become atomized and see things from individualistic perspective. So these small organizations and flat structures become appealing from that perspective. There’s also an aspect of defeatism to it as well where people can’t really see the system being challenged and they start focusing on carving out something for themselves within it, like making a commune. It’s not about broader liberation, it’s just a way to solve a personal problem.
And this explains the phenomenon of anarchists adapting to a socialist state once others do the heavy lifting of creating it. The new social conditions are more conductive towards making communes and other types of organizations anarchists desire. So, in a way the hostility anarchists have towards Marxism-Leninism is itself strange. If they’re willing to live under a capitalist system and try to carve out spaces for themselves within it, then doing so under a socialist system would surely be easier.
I do think that if there was a serious ML movement in the west, a lot of anarchists would in the end align with it as they have in the past. Part of the problem is that it’s all largely theoretical right now with the conditions being what they are.
Yep, I largely agree with this assessment, with the caveat that these days many anarchists do actually side with MLs, preferring to push for anarchism under socialism than under capitalism.
I’m just gonna ignore your campist gish-gallopping if you don’t even bother to skim the video. You’re not interested in engaging in critique that contradicts your worldview. Just like people in a cult would do.
You still failed to explain what we’re actually seeing on the left. It’s visually indistinguishable from green capitalism, so you failed in using a picture to promote whatever the PRC is doing.
TIL tha green LEDs will safe the environment. /s
Edit: Lol, you posted the first thing you found when you googled Zapatista dissolution, didn’t you? The Zapatistas restructured their autonomous approach. They didn’t abandon autonomy. They still exist, therefore they didn’t fail.
I love how you just assume here that you’re making some novel arguments here. As if I’m not familiar with them. Pretty rich of you to call other people campist too given the whole context for this discussion.
Except I literally did explain this in the very comment you’re replying to. I didn’t ask you to watch a video because I’m actually able to articulate my thoughts like an adult with a fully developed brain:
I love how you completely ignored this and just proceeded to regurgitate the talking points you memorized like a parrot.
Oh look more dishonesty from a troll. Let’s look at what I actually said:
Weird how you choose not to engage with that.
Oh yeah they did restructure to make their system more centralized and to add *gasp* hierarchy because they’re not anarchists or zealots. They were actually able to honestly look at what they were doing acknowledge the problems and move in a direction that makes more sense. Precisely the thing western anarchists are unable to do.
To add onto the Zapatista point, even actual self-described anarchists like in Catalonia developed vertical organizational elements during the Spanish Civil War out of necessity, and were more effective for it. Their reluctance to do so at first actually hindered them. Contrast that to the Red Army, which started off more horizontal but adapted much quicker, and we can see that the Red Army’s success in the Russian Civil War can be partially attributed to their flexibility when encountering new material conditions.
Right, hierarchies are a necessary tool for managing complex systems. Hence why they continue to show up both in nature and human organizations. They’re not some inherent evil as anarchists see them, but merely a tool for creating abstractions and partitioning work. At this point, I’m convinced that anarchism has been sanctioned and promoted as a legitimate form of dissent within the western system precisely because of its opposition to hierarchies. It ensures that anarchist movements never actually grow and become a real threat to centralized state power.
I think it’s a bit of that, but also more nuanced. Gramsci points out that anarchism does not necessarily have a solid class basis, though it’s common among classes like the petite bourgeoisie, it also attracts proletarians and other classes opposed to the present bourgeois state. After socialist revolution, proletarian anarchists overwhelmingly side with the socialists, as the new proletarian state no longer oppresses them, while petite bourgeois, bourgeois, etc. anarchists continue to oppose the new socialist state.
Anarchism is, essentially, loosely linked by the desire for class freedom against an oppressive class state, not by a proletarian world outlook like Marxism-Leninism. The Russian revolution largely mapped out how Gramsci described, with “Red anarchists” joining the soviets, leaving the remainder to be seen as the new totality of anarchists that occasionally fought the soviets. This form of historiography hides the actual left unity that happened, the working together of the majority of anarchists with the Marxists, and pit them as bitter enemies when class interests brought the majority of anarchists together with the Marxists.
I’d argue that people end up gravitating towards anarchism because they desire personal agency, and I would also argue because western society conditions people to become atomized and see things from individualistic perspective. So these small organizations and flat structures become appealing from that perspective. There’s also an aspect of defeatism to it as well where people can’t really see the system being challenged and they start focusing on carving out something for themselves within it, like making a commune. It’s not about broader liberation, it’s just a way to solve a personal problem.
And this explains the phenomenon of anarchists adapting to a socialist state once others do the heavy lifting of creating it. The new social conditions are more conductive towards making communes and other types of organizations anarchists desire. So, in a way the hostility anarchists have towards Marxism-Leninism is itself strange. If they’re willing to live under a capitalist system and try to carve out spaces for themselves within it, then doing so under a socialist system would surely be easier.
I do think that if there was a serious ML movement in the west, a lot of anarchists would in the end align with it as they have in the past. Part of the problem is that it’s all largely theoretical right now with the conditions being what they are.
Yep, I largely agree with this assessment, with the caveat that these days many anarchists do actually side with MLs, preferring to push for anarchism under socialism than under capitalism.
Haha, I just updated the comment right after you replied to note that. I very much agree with you.
Haha, fair! Agreed!
That’s fascinating and insightful, thanks for sharing
No problem!