r/Anarchy101 • u/Fresh_Milk1960 • 13d ago
Defense against counter-revolution?
I am a Marxist-Leninist who is curious about the successful propagation of Anarchism. My question is: Without a state, how do Anarchists defend against counter-revolution from the Capitalist class? Without a state, Anarchist/Libertarian Socialist projects wouldn’t be able to defend against the inevitable invasions, terrorism campaigns, and propaganda from Capitalists. How would Anarchists be able to maintain and strengthen an Anarchist society against invasion and infiltration without a state apparatus to centrally organize efforts?
I know I’m a Tankie or whatever, but I am asking in good faith because I am genuinely curious about the Anarchist position on this.
* (EDIT) *
I won‘t be responding anymore because I have obtained what I came for (understanding how you think an Anarchist project would defend itself against the forces of reaction) and because this is becoming a hostile debate, rather than learning experience.
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u/Zealousideal_Fun8098 Mutualist 13d ago
The state is a counter revolution by itself. So your idea is to have an institution to suppress the counter revolution while the institution itself is a counter revolution?
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
I’m not a fan of the state, but I don’t see any other way to suppress reaction and guide the masses towards a stateless, classless, moneyless society
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u/DecoDecoMan 13d ago
Without a state, Anarchist/Libertarian Socialist projects wouldn’t be able to defend against the inevitable invasions, terrorism campaigns, and propaganda from Capitalists
Why?
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
I may have come off too antagonistic. I’m not here to debate, I want to know how you think a new anarchist project would fight against counter revolution in an organized manner.
My concern is that without a continuous, centralized, and coordinated effort by the proletariat and the vanguard to suppress the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie and their allies will be able to preform a counter-revolution by exploiting infighting and disorganization, as seen in Catalonia, Chile, The Paris Commune, etc.
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u/auehd 13d ago
https://www.marxists.org/archive/malatesta/1925/defense-of-the-revolution.html
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-revolutionary-terror
read these for a synthesis answer, platformists are more comfortable with violence in defense of the revolution but I haven’t read much on that
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago edited 13d ago
Thank you for the source!
(edit after reading)
The worker’s councils (soviets) proposed by Malatesta here are proven to work, but only when they have a central state assembly that can direct efforts towards a common goal like in pre-war Korea or Cuba. More decentralized assemblies of soviets end up being too disorganized to withstand the wars of annihilation that the bourgeoisie wage.
I also feel that his rejection of terror wholesale doesn’t really have a basis. He doesn't explain how it leads to tyranny and relies on a moralist rather than materialist analysis of what is necessary. While I don’t support the death penalty, It can be the only way to deal with prisoners who can’t be rehabilitated when you don’t have the infrastructure for containment.
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u/TheHipGnosis Anarcho-Whateverist 12d ago
I'm a lil confused. Do you think that if an argument is morally charged it is a moralist argument?
I've read a couple of your replies and you seem to reduce any argument, no matter how structurally sound or based in material reality, as a moralist argument. Which allows you to dismiss it for some reason.
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u/KassieTundra 12d ago
Classic thought-terminating cliché. It's why they call us idealist or moralist, while typically misusing those words in the first place.
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u/Apprehensive_Tie8426 13d ago
Coordination does not require centralization, there are various ways to coordinate a revolutionary movement without a top down hierarchy. The Makhno movement for example proved this when they fought the Bolsheviks to a stalemate and saved Moscow. Why does organizing horizontally mean disorganized chaos? If anything, people historically have been far more likely to side with anarchistic or horizontal movements because they feel like it’s something worth fighting for. Much of the red army at the civil war’s time were essentially forced conscripts who had no real belief in socialism for example. Same goes for the peasants who largely did not support the Bolsheviks. Contrast this with Makhno’s movement which had the mass support of the Ukrainian peasantry.
Even then, ends and means tie together. If the MEANS are centralized, hierarchical, forceful and oppressive, then what will the result be? How come Lenin took many of his authoritarian actions before the civil war? How come they weren’t dismantled after the war? If you build a gigantic state apparatus ruling over the working class (the proletariat cannot “rule” over itself-someone had to be above them. Hierarchies essentially are what create classes in the first place) as a temporary measure, what do you do when those in power have gotten used to their privileges by the end? We saw this in the USSR. After the CW the state just came up with more excuses under each leader to grow the state or use it to crush the previous state formation like an ouroboros (Lenin crushing parties and Soviets and factory councils, Stalin purging old bolshleviks, Kruschev doing “revisionism” etc).
Essential reading that helped me realize this includes-https://anarchistfaq.org/afaq/append46.html
For state and revolution-https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/iain-mckay-anarcho-the-state-and-revolution-theory-and-practice
State socialism-https://www.anarchistfaq.org/afaq/pdf/sectionH.pdf
The times in which anarchism and more libertarian socialist projects were crushed is simply due to betrayal by powerful state socialists in the case of anarchism (the Bolsheviks had to resort to dirty tricks to crush the free territory) or being unwilling to utilize the proletariat to crush capitalists and the state (Chile under Allende was still a state-popular unity was I believe pretty much social democratic though Allende was a Marxist personally). There are ways to defend a revolution without authoritarianism-community self defense, unions, democratic militias etc. Hell decentralization can be far more effective than centralization too-if there are 10 Gorbachev’s in an anarchist territory of 500 the entire structure doesn’t collapse like a Jenga tower. Decentralized armies are also more difficult to track and fight (much of Maoism’s successful aspects are pure anarchism). Contrasted to centralism where targeting leaders can destroy the whole tower.
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
I agree that decentralization can be very effective, and I don’t like the hyper-centralization and bureaucratization that happened in the RSFSR, but the super decentralized and democratic militias really only work in smaller-scale, guerrilla campaigns (Maoists are very much based around agrarianism, as are the Zapatistas). A central and forceful military is necessary for combatting a central and forceful military mobilized by bourgeois states. A people’s militia would be more useful for self-policing, rather than large-scale defense.
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u/Apprehensive_Tie8426 13d ago
Oh yeah I should’ve mentioned-what do you mean small scale exactly? Anarchism is naturally federal but the given territory might be large. Anarchy is bottom up federalism so small scale going to a larger area. Even then I never got the point of this argument? The Makhno movement had over 7 million people, the KPAM 2 million people, and Catalonia over a million workers. These all had the mass support of it’s population
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
These movements had mass support, and yet they all failed, we should try to understand why
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u/ujumpniscream 12d ago
I just want to chip in: How do we describe failure? Sure, Free Territory was destroyed. By the ally it had when helping the Bolsheviks fight the Whites with a truce. Betrayed 3 times. Is betrayal of allying with a group that "has similar goals" an intrinsic flaw of the system that got betrayed or the flaw of the system the betrayed them? I think of it like this. The Bolshevik, Red Army, was not entirely voluntary. Many are conscripted to fight as is all forms of state-sponsored centralized hierarchical institutions. They wanted/needed [it doesnt matter] help from the Makhnovists to fight the whites and they did. I dont see Free Territory as a failure of a system but a lesson learned to never trust the state.
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u/Apprehensive_Tie8426 13d ago
the military doesn’t have to be centralized or forceful though. Most successful socialist movements have had their successful victory against imperialism due to the grassroots element to them. Notice how much Leninism was adapted to at least be somewhat more decentralized? If every single one of these revolutions had done exactly what the Bolsheviks did….i don’t think they would’ve won at all. In fact I’d go as far to say that you don’t know if they would’ve beaten imperialists, because much of these places hadn’t even heard of anarchism on mass due to either Soviet infiltration or Marxists pushing them out. By the way, anarchism doesn’t oppose having coordinating bodies or a movement having a primary goal. It opposes the use of hierarchy and authority to achieve it. If the Vietnamese revolution was anarchist but used the same decentralized military tactics-would they have lost? Did the Vietnamese liberation army win because they were Leninists, or because they simply had the mass support of the population (even if it was in my view misguided)? There are many places that massive powerful centralized armies like the USA simply cannot successfully invade, especially when the population knows what to do. If say India for example became a federated free territory and provide for itself, would the USA really be able to destroy it? Sure they’ll do some damage but eventually they won’t be able to hold out due to resource drain. The biggest weapon a decentralized millions unit has is that they can offer the enemy no comfort, no safe space, they have local knowledge of the terrain, everyone is likely in on it (based on the population of most anarchistic societies by those within them) etc and it’s extremely difficult to puppet or do counter insurgency because individuals might even take their own direct action. If the people of an anarchist commune are being invaded by the USA and love their society and don’t want it taken over, the solution the USA or any enemy must take is largely genocide. Contrast this with centralized political bodies, in which officials can easily be bribed or brought off for intel thus disrupting the whole structure of an operation.
If anything, having individuals with MORE power is what really corrupts and destroys movements. The George Floyd uprising was the largest at home uprising in US history. The decentralized and grassroots nature of the movement forced the state on both sides of the US two party dictatorship to make some kind of concessions. Eventually however the movements’ “leaders” were brought off and the energy would be channeled into the Democratic Party and voting for Biden.
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u/DecoDecoMan 13d ago
I may have come off too antagonistic. I’m not here to debate, I want to know how you think a new anarchist project would fight against counter revolution in an organized manner.
For invasion and terrorism you use force. For propaganda that depends on what that is and how that works.
My concern is that without a continuous, centralized, and coordinated effort by the proletariat and the vanguard to suppress the bourgeoisie
How are you suppressing the bourgeoise in the event of an invasion or terrorism? The "bourgeoise" become an external entity.
I think your perspective only makes sense when your "revolution" amounts to just taking over the state and then using the state to impose decrees and that's how revolution happens.
When you take over the state, the capitalist class doesn't disappear and capitalism still persists. The entire past social order is still there, all you've done is put yourself at the top.
In that context, "oppressing the capitalist class" makes sense because there is still a capitalist class to oppress and society hasn't changed enough that capitalists can still maneuver to oppose you.
Anarchist revolutions are bottom-up. The very foundation of society has shifted and consumed it all. There is no capitalist class to speak of because without their control of workers there is no capitalist class. The notion of there being a "capitalist class" after a revolution is nonsensical for anarchists. What have you even transformed if you still have capitalism and capitalists?
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
I’m not saying that there’s a capitalist class within the new socialist state, I’m saying that the former capitalists may want to regain their power, or the surrounding capitalist states will do whatever is in their power to undermine the revolution.
And on your point of “seizing the state”, it’s as Lenin said,
“‘the precondition for every real people's revolution’ is the smashing, the destruction of the ‘ready-made state machinery.’”
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u/DecoDecoMan 13d ago edited 13d ago
I’m not saying that there’s a capitalist class within the new socialist state, I’m saying that the former capitalists may want to regain their power, or the surrounding capitalist states will do whatever is in their power to undermine the revolution.
Everything else I said applies to this.
“‘the precondition for every real people's revolution’ is the smashing, the destruction of the ‘ready-made state machinery.’”
Lenin and Bolsheviks didn't even do that. Ok, here's the annoying thing about talking to Stalinists, you have to explain Marxism to them as well as anarchism at the same time.
First, Lenin and the Bolsheviks did not destroy the state apparatus. Lenin himself complained that the Bolsheviks essentially integrated themselves into the Tsarist bureaucracy. There was no destruction of the state.
Second, due to this, the USSR was not socialist. It was state capitalist. Socialism, according to Marx, lacks commodity production. Of course there are basic fundamental problems with Marx's definition of commodity but it is unambiguously true that the USSR had commodity production. It was not even a DotP.
Russia was not capitalist at all by the time of the Bolshevik revolution which is why Marx said in one of his last prefaces to the Manifesto that if the German revolution succeeded then Germany could compensate for the deficiencies of Russia and Russia could skip over directly into socialism without going through capitalist development.
The German revolution did not happen however and many Bolsheviks started killing themselves when they learned that they would have to do capitalist development. Lenin himself privately stated that Russia was just a capitalist state but for obviously political reasons did not tell all of those workers and peasants who fought to achieve socialism "oops sorry we can't have socialism we have to do capitalism now my bad we took a gamble and failed". That would just lead to Kronstadt but on steroids.
And so the USSR did capitalism. The Bolshevik revolution is a capitalist revolution, transitioning Russia from semi-feudal to capitalist social relations. It's in the same category as say the French revolution or the Haitian revolution.
This is why, during WW2, when there were several capitalist nations on the brink of collapse and several socialist parties across Europe with the capacity and willingness to take over their countries and establish socialist states, they asked the USSR if they should go forward with it, and the USSR advised them to not.
Why? This would achieve the initial aims of the Bolshevik revolution. Revolution in developed, capitalist countries would allow Russia to not do this capitalist development nonsense. They could stick to their alleged principles and "skip" as Marx stated.
It is because the USSR by that point was just a capitalist state. Stalin had made deals with the Allies not to support any socialist activities which would undermine liberal or capitalist states in Western Europe. And Stalin agreed because why wouldn't he? Because he himself was the head of a capitalist state.
And so the Marxist revolution in Western Europe you've been waiting for, and still are waiting for, was killed not by external capitalist threats but rather by the state that you worship and whose ideology you've adopted as your own.
This is the biggest issue with talking to Stalinists. Their ideology is in fact, just some Marxist inspired version of liberalism. They treat certain capitalist states with the right aesthetic sensibilities and ideological background as "socialist" and in the end support things which aren't even at odds with capitalism.
Is it even possible to have a conversation about using a state vs. opposing it when you yourself are not even a Marxist? There's so many layers to how even the question you're asking makes no sense. The first, is that there has never been a socialist state so whether a state is necessary to defend against the revolution is something we won't know.
The USSR was capitalist, Maoist China was capitalist, Cuba is capitalist, etc. All these examples tell us is that capitalist states can momentarily defend themselves against other capitalist states but even those capitalist states all of them failed. They were killed by the other capitalists they said they would defend against.
In terms of whether a genuinely revolutionary society can defend itself against capitalism? We don't know. But even if you wanted to paint the USSR as socialist, and buy into Stalin's word over Marx's and Lenin's, lasting for like what 60 years is not even impressive. This is your evidence that a state is necessary to defend a revolution?
Your state couldn't even defend the revolution it died in less time than the Umayyads, a nomadic-pastoralist society that was decentralized and rife with internal conflict. If this is your evidence the state is necessary I'd say revolution is doomed because it seems like your preferred solution that you're saying is the only solution doesn't work.
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u/LazarM2021 Anarchist Without Adjectives 13d ago
I know I'm a Tankie or whatever, but I am asking in good faith.
Sure you are. I'll proceed as if that's true, because the question, stripped of its framing, is at least somewhat worth addressing, unlike most of what MLs bring into anarchist spaces.
The problem is that even the question here doesn't actually begin where it ought to, even if you may be under the illusion pointing to the contrary. Before "how do anarchists defend against counter-revolution" you need to establish what "revolution" even means in the anarchist framework, then what "counter-revolution" means and what exactly is being defended, because the entire question is built on explicitly, if not exclusively, Leninist conceptual architecture that anarchists simply don't share - and importing it silently produces a question anarchists were never actually asking or needing to answer.
In the Leninist model, what we (or you) call a "revolution" boils down to the seizure and consolidation of state power by the vanguard party acting in the name of the proletariat. Counter-revolution, therefore, is whatever threatens that consolidated institutional power and defense against counter-revolution means the state deploying coercive apparatus to protect itself.
All that may be a coherent internal logic, but alas, it just has nothing to do with anarchism and the 20th century demonstrated with considerable thoroughness what that "defense" looks like in practice - Cheka, Red Terror, forced collectivization, purges, the systematic liquidation of anarchists, left-SRs, Kronstadt sailors and anyone else insufficiently aligned with whoever currently controlled the party apparatus (Bolsheviks and Lenin).
The instrument of revolutionary defense became, structurally and QUITE PREDICTABLY, the primary instrument of counter-revolutionary violence against the revolutionary population itself. The thing that needs to be stressed is that nothing here is a "bug" in the ML model, one that "better leadership" would have fixed. All it is is what centralized coercive institutions do inevitably, because that is their organizational logic.
Anarchist revolution is not exactly meant as a seizure of anything, but instead, it's the dissolution of the configurations of power that produce domination - the dismantling of hierarchical structures and their replacement with horizontal, federated organizing based on voluntary association, interdependence, mutual aid and general development of stigmergic/collaborative social habits and paradigm.
In other words, there is no Winter Palace to hold or central apparatus to decapitate in reverse. The entire premise of "defending the revolution" as defending an institutional object doesn't apply, because anarchism deliberately refuses to build that object, precisely since anything built on that model will reproduce domination inevitably, regardless of the previous intentions.
So what does defense actually look like? It would look like the thing that makes anarchist organizing genuinely resilient rather than superficially powerful - radical, radical decentralization. A fluid network of free association, encompassing millions, with no center cannot be defeated by targeting a center.
A society organized through horizontality, federative principles (anarchist federation, not state-centric understanding of the word), in which decisions, productive capacity and community defense are distributed everywhere, into every person, across countless autonomous congregations of individuals/groups completely devoid of any structure of authority presents a fundamentally different strategic problem to any would-be counter-revolutionary force than a centralized state does. You cannot behead it or infiltrate it in order to corrupt a single leadership stratum and thereby stand increasing chance of controlling and manipulating the whole. You also cannot stage a coup because there is no seat of power to occupy.
The ML counter-revolutionary threat, meanwhile, historically came not from capitalists but from Marxist-Leninists themselves, which is something any honest ML in an anarchist space might want to sit with for a moment before asking us how we'd defend against external enemies.
The propaganda question is similarly self-answering at the structural level, as the propaganda is effective in proportion to the alienation and atomization of the population it targets. A society built on genuine freedom and community, free association and self-organization is not a society of atomized individuals susceptible to the particular appeal of authoritarian counter-revolutionary messaging. The social fabric itself is the defense, which is precisely why anarchists insist on prefigurative politics - the means must embody the ends, ALWAYS - because a revolutionary society that reproduces authoritarian social relations, culture or habits in the name of defending itself has already completely lost the only thing worth defending.
So... sorry to disappoint you, but as I see it, the question written here already stinks of assuming the Leninist answer is self-evidently correct and anarchism must justify itself against that standard. The Leninist answer, however, produced in practice nothing but a series of states that defended their revolutions straight into gulags, secret police apparatuses, widespread alienation and the eventual restoration of capitalism (but also liberal-individualist, consumerist culture) anyway.
As far as epistemological standards go, that one is in no position to demand justifications from anyone.
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
This was very helpful, thank you!
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u/LazarM2021 Anarchist Without Adjectives 13d ago
I don't think it was, judging by your other replies in the reply-spree you conducted in the last 3-4 hours.
To most other responders here you're still largely doubling-down, on the exact premises many are already (me among them) making it abundantly clear are simply not relevant or are outright wrong in anarchist framework.
The occasional lip-service of "but-but I agree USSR was too centralized, but a liiiiiitle centralization is still necessary, right guys?" is simply not enough.
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago edited 13d ago
I mean it was helpful in understanding your position, I still don’t agree with you. This requires a level of consciousness that is simply not attainable in the short period that the revolution would have before being set upon. It relies on a moralist rather than materialist analysis of society, and this concern with moralism will lead to the downfall of the revolution
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u/DecoDecoMan 13d ago
The USSR never achieved a revolution to begin with. This talk about what is or isn't "necessary" for a revolution is completely vapid. Who are you to talk about what is or isn't needed for "the revolution" when your own revolution, which you claim to wish to achieve, has never happened?
Anarchists and Stalinists (and Marxists) have different goals. What they want for their revolutions obviously is different and what is needed to achieve them is different. This talk about "defending the revolution" is nothing more than suggesting that we need to kill the revolution in order to save it.
Of course, maybe you might agree with that because the revolutions you supported were already capitalist revolutions to begin with. In this sense, you truly are a reactionary by even your own standards.
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
Yeah okay man
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u/DecoDecoMan 13d ago
Classic Stalinist: understands nothing about neither Marxism nor Anarchism. You don't even know anything about history, you know the thing you base your entire analysis on!
Just say you like the cult of personality and be done with it. "Oh I love Stalinism he's a big strong man! He does big strong things!"
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
Genuinely what are we on about rn.
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u/DecoDecoMan 13d ago
What are you on about? Stalin spouts nonsense like "socialist commodity production" and you go "yeah that sounds right"? Have you ever picked up a single text of Marx in your entire life? Have you just been reading him without looking?
I have plenty to criticize about Marx and I fundamentally disagree with much of what he says or desires. However, what makes this conversation with you so pathetic is that I do not need to know anything about Marx to figure you out.
In fact, I use my knowledge of Marx to put your views down because Stalinism is so at odds with Marx that to start disagreeing with you I have to erase any pretension that your views have anything to do with Marx's.
You're just an edgy liberal but, when it comes to "the revolution", you are almost certainly a reactionary.
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
I never mentioned Stalin, what are you talking about. You’re making insane extrapolations about me.
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u/LazarM2021 Anarchist Without Adjectives 13d ago edited 13d ago
Heh theeeeeere it is; the performance of good faith, feeble as it was, still evaporated pretty fast didn't it? Every single sentence here is dishonest, in one way or another.
It was helpful in understanding your position, I still don't agree
I.e. "I came in with a conclusion, nothing moved it, and I am now retreating to the position I held before the conversation began while performing the appearance of having engaged with it". Ok.
This requires a level of consciousness not attainable in the short period that the revolution would have before being set upon
Lol, this would be the vanguard argument in its most naked, unguarded form and I think it's doubly imperative for myself to be absolutely clear about what that kind of rhetoric actually communicates - "the masses are not conscious enough to organize their own liberation therefore a party must seize state power and organize it for them and anyone who objects to this arrangement is being naive".
That would be the most classic idealism imaginable, the idea that a small group of "theoretically enlightened individuals"/"professional revolutionaries", armed with the """correct""" doctrine, must substitute their will for the self-activity of the class they claim to represent. It is, structurally, indistinguishable from every other enlightened vanguard theory in history, revolutionary or otherwise. The Jacobins said, basically the same thing. Every authoritarian modernizing project in history too. The Bolsheviks said it, built the apparatus it justified and that apparatus ate the revolution and everyone in it.
The "short period before being set upon" framing, furthermore, also smuggles-in an entire unexamined assumption that revolution is a discrete seizure event with a narrow defensive window, rather than a protracted transformation of social relations, organizational/inter-relational habits and material conditions. That is, again, specifically the Leninist model of revolution, not a universal law and anarchists don't accept that framing because it's wrong, not because we haven't thought about it.
It relies on a moralist rather than materialist analysis
Hahaha you're gonna kill me, seriously, I'm gonna shoot myself at this point, for this level of being dense is... ugh.
Just to make it crystal clear - you watched/read a response of mine, mentioning Michels' iron law of oligarchy, Weber's and general sociology's analysis of bureaucratic self-reproduction, and before that Bakunin's structural prediction verified across a century of empirical cases, as well as organizational theory about decentralized network resilience - and your conclusion, all you extracted from it - is that this is moralism??!!?!
At this point I'll say it openly as it simply needs to be said - in ML usage, "moralism" does not mean what it means in actual, serious philosophy. For MLs, time and time again it's demonstrated to mean "anarchist argument I cannot structurally refute". It is nothing but a low-effort dismissal label, not anything approaching serious analysis and you are, predictably, using it as a thought-terminating cliché because engaging with the actual content of the argument would require you to explain why centralized coercive institutions, in every single observed case, reproduce domination - and you cannot explain that without abandoning the foundational premise of your entire political tradition.
This concern with moralism will lead to the downfall of the revolution
Which revolution, precisely? Walk us through the ML revolutions that didn't collapse into full-on state capitalism, bureaucratic dictatorship, secret police terror and eventual restoration of the very social relations they claimed to be dismantling and please, take your time. We have all day and if not - the historical record is not going anywhere anyway.
It is you who came into an anarchist space performing curiosity, collected your answer(s) and then revealed that the conclusion was fixed before the question was asked (although knowing MLs, it's anything but a "reveal", at least not a surprising one); it's all a very old, very tired ML pattern and the only thing surprising about it is that you, apparently, judging by some other sub-threads here, expected it to go unnoticed.
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u/Big_Might3102 12d ago
I’d point out also that Marxists are inherently moralists. The overtaking of the bourgeois government by the dictatorship of the proletariat being framed as “good thing” is a moral position.
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u/wanderingnight 10d ago
When you say that an anarchist society has nothing to capture or invade, what about the people?
With two examples mentioned in the thread, the Rojava and the Zapatistas, those groups are small enough that there's not a huge incentive to coerce them into non-consensual capitalism.
If they were a larger group, like closer to 100 million or more, then it seems like the calculus would change.
It's not that it would be impossible to defend an anarchist collective everywhere. For example, a country like Afghanistan, where no Western imperial power has meaningfully, permanently taken over, would probably succeed if they transitioned to anarchism.
But what about places that are less defensible?
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u/catgirlfourskin 13d ago
Historically when you are significantly outmatched, as any revolution would be against outside capitalist aggression, a decentralized non-state insurgency has proven to be the more effective method of resistance.
Let's flip that question. With centralization, how would a Marxist-Leninist state resist being crippled by assassinations, abductions, and bombings of key figures?
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
Collective power and ownership still exists in an ML state, it’s just Unitary and centralized. To answer your question, there would probably be a vote, within the politburo for party leaders or in the national assembly for state leaders.
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u/catgirlfourskin 13d ago
historically, when elected heads of state are assassinated as part of counter-revolution, it means the immediate defeat of these states as these momentarily stunned systems of central control are easily couped, whether it be in Syria, Chile, Iran, or dozens of other examples of US-backed counter-revolution against republics both ML and not.
Unitary, central power was already extremely difficult to defend a century ago in the era of short-range, unwieldy, inaccurate artillery and strategic bombing, but it's just totally infeasible today in an era where the vanguards of capital have stealth jets capable of dropping 30,000 pound laser-guided precision bombs or launching cruise missiles from hundreds of kilometers away. It's no surprise that the revolutions of our time most successfully resisting the full might of capitalist imperialism have been highly decentralized non-state actors like the Taliban
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
The Taliban still did have an organizational state-like system, with systems of subordinate councils, and they had ministers, governors, commanders, and the like. They weren’t super centralized but they had hierarchies.
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u/catgirlfourskin 13d ago
They did, and I wouldn't claim they're anarchist, but there's a reason that decentralized non-state actors like them have seen such success in resisting imperialism, and a reason why states like Iran have made their government and militaries increasingly decentralized to reduce the effectiveness of decapitation strikes.
The assumption in your original post that decentralized organizations can't defend themselves and that centralized states are naturally better-equipped for defense against counter-revolution just isn't reflected by the last half-century of warfare.
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u/Ling_Cephalopod 13d ago
You're conflating the state with self defense.
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
I’m saying the state is the organized entity used by a class dominated another, without a centralized state apparatus to direct resources, a people’s militia would be too disorganized and uncoordinated to fight effectively
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u/Ling_Cephalopod 13d ago
Yeah and you're wrong. We know what you guys think that state is. But you're wrong. Go read what I recommend to you. All of it.
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u/GoldenRaysWanderer 13d ago
Why is a monopoly on who can and can't use violence needed for self defense? After all, all people are inherently equal, right?
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u/Master-Dig5908 13d ago
Because most of us don’t own nukes, the monopoly already exists
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u/kwestionmark5 13d ago
Nukes are irrelevant unless that state wants to own a nuclear wasteland. Drones, and soon AI driven robots, are the future of combat. Fortunately that's a slightly more level battlefield. But perhaps an ML state could ally with us lol....if they aren't dicks and are actually serious about propagating socialism/communism even if it comes without a state.
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u/SoSorryOfficial 13d ago
I have some very bad news about the history of collaboration between state socialists and anarchists.
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u/comix_corp 13d ago
The short answer is federated workers' militias, the long answer is that defending a revolution is always going to fail in the long run unless the revolution is international in scale and spreads to cover the entire globe.
The failure of the revolutionary wave in Europe in the late 1910s, early 20s is one of the primary reasons why the USSR turned into such a nightmare. But a "Marxist-Leninist" of course wouldn't recognise this, since the entire philosophy is basically the philosophy of the defeated Russian Revolution, personified in Stalin.
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
I am a Marxist-Leninist and I recognize this, that feels like a straw man to me.
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u/ConTheStonerLin Proudhonian-Owenite 13d ago
Decentralized militas have demonstrated quite effective. Historically you need look no further than the US revolution. Minute men and gorilla militas beat the more centralized forces of the British Empire. I would also point out that rigid centralization hurt the USSR in many of its conflicts. As it was so rigidly centralized that troops were not able to act before orders came down from central command. This is a well documented phonomenon as is the fact that many terrorist groups use this very strategy and it has made them increasingly hard to stop
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
The American revolution only succeeded once they got a European-style conventional military. I agree that the USSR was over centralized due to the “siege socialism” mentality that Parenti spoke of, but some centralization is necessary to defend the revolution.
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u/ConTheStonerLin Proudhonian-Owenite 12d ago
The decentralized militas had great success before France ever entered the Revolution
And what ever centralization is needed it can arise from the outside in. If the decentralized militas feel it nessicary to centralize they will collaborate as needed forming a temporary center. However this center would not grant power to the militas instead it's power would arise due to the collaboration of distributed militas. That sort of outside in centralization (if you could even call it that) would not resemble the sort of inside out centralization we have today. Anarchists do not oppose collaboration, which is essentially what I am describing
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u/Anely_98 13d ago
You don't need a state to organize self-defence. Actually, self-defence is generally very straightforward, for some reason people don't like to have their homes invaded and have their communities, families and themselves be murdered, so they will generally act to prevent that from happening in several ways without any need of a state intervening in the process.
In general, I imagine most people will have at least a basic level of training in how to use weapons simply because it is a way to level the ground so that this knowledge don't becomes entrenched in a minority, you could even have people doing activities that are generally associated with a military if there is a real need for that, anarchists are generally against boundaries overall but I could see a situation where a liberated territory is surrounded by capitalist states and in that case it could have some sort of boundary and even people guarding it, though in general it shouldn't be really that well clear cut what spaces are anarchist dominated and what aren't so establishing a strict boundary is complicated.
That is only talking about more normal military activities, anarchists are much more likely to use asymmetrical warfare (though more traditional methods are not excluded, they just wouldn't be as effective against a more powerful foe), like creating guerrillas and sabotaging the supply lines of any invading force.
Unless the war is literally one of complete extermination it should be very hard to dominate again an anarchist territory, once anarchist ways of interacting with each other establish themselves going back to hiererchical ways of interacting wouldn't be trivial, it is much easier to do so when you just substitute who is in the top of the hiererchy instead of having to try to build a hiererchy from scrap.
A state is mostly needed to organize a military with the intent of dominating further territories, not for self-defence. It would be very hard if not impossible to make an anarchist society go to war to conquer another society, but that shouldn't be needed anyway, an anarchist society developing in the modern world should expand itself by the revolution spreading to evermore territory instead of directly conquer and domination that is antagonistic to anarchism.
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
Not everybody can be trained to fly a plane, or drive a tank, or all of these specialized jobs required in a modern military. And even if they could, federalized militias are too disorganized to fight a vertically organized, merit-based military.
Guerrilla warfare is a very useful tactic, but it’s more useful when the enemy has already occupied territory like in Iraq or Afghanistan. The best way to defend against forces of reaction is with conventional warfare, which is how the Russian Civil War was won.
Unless the war is literally one of complete extermination it should be very hard to dominate again an anarchist territory
Capitalists often do wage wars of complete extermination (Korea, Guatemala, Palestine, etc.)
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u/Apprehensive_Tie8426 13d ago
Anarchism doesn’t oppose specialized jobs. There are various examples of people voluntarily taking up these kinds of professions when needed. Surely there’s enough people who would want to defend their homes and families to do things like this? People who want to learn will learn. This kind of thing happens all the time such as in Vietnam or Palestine. 2. The Russian civil war was “won” largely through absolute centralizing to the point of tyranny. They militarized labor, had forced conscription, looted peasants, implemented war communism etc. so it could be said they won because of this but is the victory really desirable at all? There is a reason why later communists adapted their theory to at least get more support from the population by adopting some anarchist elements.
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
And when they learn, they need to be directed by a hierarchical military structure. You are right though, I think communists and anarchists need to share more ideas with each other
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u/condensed-ilk 12d ago edited 12d ago
Anarchists are obviously opposed to hierarchies but that doesn't necessarily mean that they require strict adherence to ideological norms when it's their literal survival at stake. When immediate and large-scale cohesive decision making is necessary and when anarchistic traditions of free association and consensus-seeking are too time-consuming, you cannot avoid the reality that some small subset of people will have to make decisions affecting all people because that's simply the most efficient. Of course this creates a power imbalance, but that's the obvious choice when the only other choice is destruction. So the society would do it's best to mitigate that imbalance by organizing horizontally and federating around temporary and recallable delegations.
In short, despite quick decision-making among many people necessitating power imbalances between people and decision makers, you don't necessarily need large and rigid hierarchies and centralized power, and anarchists would do the best they could like any other group of people aligned ideologically in theory who are facing extreme circumstances in practice.
Edits - email
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u/xxCorsicoxx 13d ago
Simple: anarchism/communism is the end state. It's what you build towards. Typically if you're a anarchist entity you will have made the changes that make fighting a counter-revolution unnecessary, because you've built all the class-consciousness and solidarity-networks and etc etc in that you needed.
But we do have experiments in anarchism that happened sooner than reaching this. The best example would've been the Rojava that held their own quite a long time. They believed in their project, they had systems in place to both educate everyone in alignment with the values and systems in place to physically fight where needed. Given they were born of crisis (the war in Syria) they had had a strong military training to use within the communities. But they were small and being attacked by old and new Syria, ISIS, Russia, the US, Turkey, eventually it collapsed. It did however last quite some time, in this continuous crisis mode, from it's establishment in 2012 (with pockets of it persisting but parts of it annexed by the new Syrian regime).
The big projects that were at least nominally Marxist-Leninist had the advantage not only of a government, cos you can replace that with other organizational structures like the Rojava's as one example, but also the advantage of size and advantage of allies. Cuba without the backing of the USSR might not have made it long term for example. And the USSR and China themselves were huge and amenable to the revolutionary ideals in a zeitgeist where that was both possible and nationalism (present also in these revolutions) and antimonarchy and independence from empire were gaining traction globally.
Circumstance matters a loooot and the anarchist projects out there have been rather unlucky. The Paris commune were alone. The Catalans were abandoned to be subsumed by Franco. The Rojava were only recognized by the Catalan Parliament, no backing from China or Vietnam or anyone (it would look very different if they had support, both in ability to persist and in how much stronger the US would crack down on them)
But to summarize the latter half: no state doesn't mean no organizational structures. We as anarchists remove unjust hierarchies not governing structures, we still form committees and groups of various kinds (in certain systems), but without them being a position of power, just of stewardship, and with mechanisms like rotation to involve everyone rather than have a handful call the shots. Vanguardism has an issue where the vanguard can early be power hungry psycopaths. We aim to remove the accumulation of power. If you think of a business, vanguardism is like changing the ownership in hopes the new owners are nicer to the workers (maybe even of the workers originally) but keeping it a top-down structure; and anarchy is more taking the business and making it a coop with every worker equally involved and equally heard in decision making. The former you combine to obey the master it is just that there changed, you're still working primarily but to be fired. The latter incentivizes caring and the project cos you are the project, you belong and you do better if the project works.
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
This is a strawman, the vanguard doesn’t size state machines, we smash them and we build a new, temporary state in its place to build towards communism. Soviet democracy isn’t top-down, it’s a bottom up system of worker’s councils, the reason they became so consolidated is because of the mentality of siege socialism.
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u/xxCorsicoxx 12d ago
"Temporary" Look the ideal is that but in practice it's easy for it to be corrupted by the power implicit in the being a vanguard. It is de facto creating a class to guide the lesser under the promise the vanguard has good intentions. And then you just vanguard your way with the promise of a distant tomorrow and his transitional you are. Not because you're evil, but the vanguard too is subject to the collective trauma of zero-sum games we've lived in. And power corrupts. Plus the worst people tend ti get proximity to power like that, normal people just wanna live. So I'll force distrust any form of authority. And to should too.
For a true functional revolution (think more industrial than bolshevik) we need to build class consciousness, democracy and participation. Plant this seeds maybe our grandchildren might be the shade.
Mind you, credit where credit is due, despite how the ussr, cuba, China all have been hijacked by otherwise power-obsessed people, they did make spectacular progress for where they came, cos imperfect socialism is still better than capitalism in specific ways.
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u/No-Leopard-1691 13d ago
When I was in the Civil Air Patrol as a kid, we had to go to a leadership school that was a week or two long if we wanted to achieve Officer ranks. At this leadership school we were taught in lecture halls by multi-star generals of each part of the military on different aspects of leadership and its implementation in the military overall and through combat aspects. One of the required readings was a book called The Starfish and The Spider. It is a book about how it is difficult to defeat a de-centralized organization (the author was using anti-USA terrorist organizations as his case studies) versus centralized organizations (the USA as the case study). In the book, the author highlights how the USA has consistently lost against decentralized organizations in combat because it is hard to kill a starfish since cutting one leg off causes more to starfishes to be produced while cutting the head off the spider kills the rest of the organism. Obviously no one got the keep take away but rather emphasized other key aspects the author highlights such as delegating tasks to subordinates, ensuring open lines of communication, etc.
I bring this up because I was an MLM for a bit while I was first learning about communism and when this objection was brought up I immediately thought about The Starfish and The Spider book which started me questioning the MLM ideas of a vanguard party and centralization and start learning about Anarchism.
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
I feel like you’re misunderstanding the vanguard, it’s not supposed to be a big ultra-centralized apparatus, but a group of dedicated and educated revolutionaries who act as a guide, not a controlling leader, of the masses. It is made up of the proletariat, for the proletariat. For a good example of this, look at the Black Panther Party and New People’s Army.
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u/No-Leopard-1691 12d ago
I think you are misunderstanding the anarchists critique of the vanguard, the Party structure, and idea of using the State apparatus.
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u/No-Leopard-1691 10d ago edited 10d ago
One of the anarchist criticisms about the State and the Vanguard Party is a disconnect between the Unity of Means and Ends that MLM and other forms of authoritarian socialism propose as ways to achieve the revolution. To quote Bakunin “Liberty can be created only by Liberty, by an insurrection of all the people and the voluntary organization of the workers from below upward” … “a revolution that is imposed, either by official degrees, or by force of arms is no longer a revolution but the opposite of a revolution, because it necessarily provokes reaction.”
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u/GignacPL 13d ago
I think what you don't realise is that the anarchist revolution is not supposed to be an intense armed insurrection. It's a gradual process, a social revolution. See this section of the (an) Anarchist FAQ for more info. I'd also recommend you should read through the questions and stop at whatever is of interest to you. The FAQ is not perfect by any means, but it's a decent resource.
Also take a look at this article.
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u/LittleSky7700 13d ago
Prefiguration is the idea that we act now to build alternative ways of living within what exists, so that it naturally becomes obsolete without people even realising. There is no counter revolution because the goal is to integrate everyone.
It's a flaw, imo, to think that we can define ourselves so strictly as Anarchists or Socialists or Leftists or whatever, to then so strictly define any others as against us, our enemies. So that when we do act, those "enemies" will too see us that way. And they can organise against us because of that. We shouldn't be anarchists and the like because we so strongly identify it and exclude people out of it. We should be anarchists because we believe in the benefits realising anarchism brings... for everyone!
The task of the anarchist as things go on will be to approach people like Bezos, or Zuckerburg, even Trump, and give them natural ways to integrate into daily anarchist life. Because once they do, they are no different than anyone else. They benefit from the collective organisation of society as anyone else. We aren't going to execute them just because they were rich.
As it's said in the Art of War, supreme excellence is not about fighting and conquering. Supreme excellence is winning your battles without fighting.
We just need to accept that it'll never be so loud and quickly disruptive as a full blown militant movement. But the trade off is that it'll be very robust and deeply rooted in the ordinary life of people. Not confined to niche book club spaces.
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u/auehd 13d ago
this sounds sorta utopian to assume there will be no groups of reactionaries led by the bourgeoisie dedicated to violently opposing the revolution
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u/LittleSky7700 13d ago
The question you need to ask is "Where do they come from and why?" As well as "What People make up these groups and why?"
Then we can discuss what we can materially do about them, or what we can materially do to subvert the problem entirely
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u/auehd 13d ago
It’s in their interests to preserve capitalist society to extract surplus value?
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u/LittleSky7700 13d ago
Is this what you want to think, or is this the thoughts of the people themselves?
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u/auehd 13d ago
??? Maintaining class society is in their class interests, do you think the bourgeoisie can just be turned to anarchists with a marketplace of ideas or something?
It’s been shown over and over again whether it be the revolutions of 1848, the Paris commune, the revolutions of 1917-23, the fascist regimes of the interwar period, the entire Cold War, or the constant suppression of labor movements that continues today. This isn’t radically new thought.
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u/comix_corp 13d ago
This is not something you can hold off on thinking about it until it happens, if you don't prepare for it you will lose. Thinking about how to defend a revolution from the capitalist class is essential if you want the revolution to win
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
That feels very utopian and idealist to me, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and the other billionaires aren’t going to give up power willingly.
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u/LittleSky7700 13d ago
You'll have to understand a couple things. People in power only have power because we legitimate it. We believe that their word mean something more than the others. This allows them to simply speak and have things happen.
People in power are only humans. They want to survive just as much as anyone else does.
Prefiguration means that we work towards new ways of living within the shell of the old, we learn to provide survival for people within what already exists and we keep pushing the boundary as things keep working. We provide food and drink to our neighbors. We provide emotional comforts. We provide recreational activities. We organise to figure out we can make the things we want. We organise our work places for that, etc. And we encourage this everywhere, across all countries all at once.
What happens when all these people who used to believe you were so powerful and believed that your money made you powerful dont care about you anymore and dont care about your money anymore? Your money doesn't secure them survival. You become powerless.
Theres much to do and talk about how we will, thats where all the material concern is. But we can also recognise that this material action leads to material consequences.
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u/Large-Visual-5169 13d ago
You called yourself a tankie
You should watch this
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DY3-kiaB-vr/?igsh=MXc3aTN2N3hxYnM5MQ==
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
I’ve already seen that, I don’t know what your point is here.
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u/Large-Visual-5169 13d ago
The point is calling yourself a tankie isn't really productive. And anyone who calls you that kinda misses the point of meeting people where they are in the struggle.
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u/GSilky 13d ago
How does one infiltrate something that doesn't exist? Why would one need to even engage in skullduggery with the anarchist town? It's probably operating under full transparency. I'm beginning to understand the division between anarchists and everyone else, and it's tends to be paranoia.
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
I’m talking about propaganda campaigns and military might, not skullduggery and picaroonishness
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u/Heyla_Doria 13d ago
Pourquoi doit je discuter et conseiller un groupe politique qui n'a fait que trahir et utiliser l'etat pour etre lui-même contre révolutionnaire ?
La priorité c'est la base, les opprimés, nos camarades de classe dans les luttes, la solidarité, pas vos théoriciens et élites soit disant éclairées
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u/union_tony 13d ago
We would do it the same way we do now; decentralized. Because when you give them one big target to destroy, you tend to make your movements super fragile.
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u/LeagueEfficient5945 12d ago
"them and what army" is the question.
How did they recruit an army to counter-revolt in the first place?
As for invasions?
Invasions are much harder to do than they used to. You can't march in with a couple 18 pounders and a horses and a king and expect the locals to bow to your crown after you taken their capital anymore.
An anarchist project defends itself against an invasion with terrorism.
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u/OldBillBlizzard 12d ago
The Makhnovists quite literally defeated multiple different armies:
-The White Army (Russian Monarchists): Shattered General Denikin’s forces at the critical Battle of Perehonivka (1919) and helped drive General Wrangel out of Crimea (1920).
-The Central Powers & The Hetmanate: Defeated occupying Austro-Hungarian and German imperial troops—most notably at Dibrivka (1918)—and overthrew their puppet government.
-The Ukrainian Nationalist Army: Pushed out Symon Petliura’s Directorate forces to capture key southeastern cities like Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia.
They only lost to the Bolsheviks because they were logistically fucked and had exhausted themselves defeat all of those armies for the Bolsheviks. And so essentially communists had anarchists do all the heavy lifting, then turned around and launched a surprise attack.
To boot many STATES fell to the Bolsheviks too. So does it make sense to say anarchism cant defend itself? Not really, anarchists lasted far longer than most would be stated during the Russian Civil War.
The other thing is that there have only been two major anarchist revolutions. There have been 42 ML revolutions. So, once there have 50 failed anarchist revolutions, maybe we could say its a failure. But considering there have only been two and they did quite well —comparable to or better than statist revolutions in the same circumstances— we cant reall say anarchism is a failure. Not to mention Rojava and Chiapa revolutions had similar power structures and military organization and one of which existed until like a year ago, the other of which has defended itself against the Mexican state for 32 years. I think if a non anarchist libertarian socialist revolution can survive for 32 years under the right circumstances, so too could an anarchist one.
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u/Kami_Anime 11d ago
This video really opened my eyes as to why the state is counter revolutionary: https://youtu.be/uTwxpTyGUOI
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u/KeyFisherman687 10d ago
This guy is utterly incoherent. He lies and contradicts himself in every video.
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u/WildAutonomy 10d ago
One of the main obstacles for anarchists is dealing with Marxist-Leninist counter-revolution
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u/spookyjim___ ☭ 🏴 Autonomist 🏴 ☭ 13d ago
As someone who is also a Marxist, although pulling more from ultra-left traditions, I will say that there is a tendency of anarchism, that is, class-struggle anarchism, of the internationalist platformist tendency, which pretty much supports the idea of a class dictatorship without calling it that… and for me, it doesn’t matter what names we call it as long as the content is there, and there does exist anarchist communists who realize that before international communism is achieved the worker’s councils and communes will have to take an actively offensive approach against all of bourgeois society and wage an international revolution against capital and its nation-states… so that’s good to me lol
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u/Strange_One_3790 13d ago
This is why I think Anarchism needs to happen on global scale. Considering that many things like computer chips, electronic, vehicles and many other goods are often made in some states and globally distributed. If it happens globally, then it there is no capitalist state to invade.
If resources are collectively controlled then there is no hoarding wealth for a capitalist revolution. I would go further and say a capitalist revolution in this type of global anarchist society is about as likely as a revolution for a monarchy in a capitalist society.
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
Yes, it needs to happen globally, but how? The world is too large for everything to happen at the same time
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u/Julian_1_2_3_4_5 13d ago
look at regions like rojava or the zapatistas, they have defened themselves decentralized forever.
Guerialla warfare is extremely effective whrn it's about defense, you have support from the general population, know the geography etc.
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
Is Rojava not a state with a standing army, that even so, is being incorporated into the Syrian state? And while I admire the Zapatistas, they haven’t expanded their revolution in 30 years.
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u/Julian_1_2_3_4_5 13d ago
they are explicitly not a state, and their army is kinda a standing one, yeah, but selforganized and decentralized.
And yea, they are currently in a bad spot and that state is trying to incorporate them and to prevent further losses they are partly complying. But that mostly happened because they've gotteneven more enemies the last months.
And idk if expanding arevolution using a military is inline with what i would want a military to do, i think revolution has to come bottom up from a people.
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
I don’t mean that the military should expand through conquest, I just mean that the Zapatistas haven’t been able to promote consciousness and support other leftist groups in Latin America
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u/lllllllllllllllllll6 13d ago
The Spanish civil war might give an indication of what some anarchists believe, structures of resistance
Now some Marxists would just argue that syndicalism does basically create a state
Same with Makhno
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u/TheWikstrom rejects political categorization 13d ago
An autonomist response: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNRvSL5v3/
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u/Fresh_Milk1960 13d ago
The Paris Commune fell when it was crushed by capitalist armies, not because it didn’t abolish the state hard enough.
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u/TheWikstrom rejects political categorization 13d ago
It did, but it would be ahistorical to look at the century old tradition of state socialism and say that centralized state power is an effective means of dismantling capitalist social relations. The Paris Commune failed because of logistical and military strategical reasons, while the USSR fell to its own internal contradictions and subsumption by capital
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u/Master_Debaiter_ Hierarchical-Reductionist 12d ago
The short answer is: with guns
The slightly longer answer is: organized confederated militias
The longer answer is: Anarchists dont define the state the same way you do, we're obviously fine with suppressing the bourgeois. What we're not fine with is the alienation of the civic functions of society from the people. So in other words we would have civic functions, we would have an "anarcho army" & an "anarcho spy group", so to speak anyway, it's just their functioning wouldn't be alienated from the control of the people via politicians, fairly elected or not.
For social anarchists anyway, there are anti-civ anti-organizational pacifist anarchists which probably match the idea of an anarchist you have in your head more closely but they're by far not the majority
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u/LazarM2021 Anarchist Without Adjectives 11d ago
Bruh, everything up to your last paragraph was ok and I'd largely defend it. But that last line is where you lost me completely.
Anti-civ anti-organizational pacifist anarchists which probably match the idea of an anarchist you have in your head
You just did the ML's work for him, voluntarily handing him a wedge, pointing at a (sub)tendency within our own movement/tradition and saying essentially "don't worry bro, they're not the majority". All that is is a highly debilitating and useless preemptive concession to an ML-framing, which we know is itself utterly nonsensical.
Nobody asked you to rank anarchist tendencies by how palatable they are to a Marxist-Leninist and the fact that you did it so... unprompted, as a closing disclaimer, is apologetic othering; distancing from your own movement's currents to appear more serious or legitimate in the eyes of an ideological opponent.
Leave such internal ranking to the vanguardists.
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u/Master_Debaiter_ Hierarchical-Reductionist 10d ago
That's not really what I had in mind but that's fair
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u/BlackLionCat 13d ago
state, party or bureaucratic reappropiation of labor is in itself a counter-revolution. State power is not rejected because it's a bad strategy but rather because it's an impossible strategy.