Authoritarian Leftism Only Achieves Capitalism : anarchism

[-] A404@lemmy.dbzer0.com 33 points 2 weeks ago

This is gonna ruffle some feathers

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 2 weeks ago

They're already here being salty

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 14 points 2 weeks ago

Crazy that merging everything within the state so nothing can be against the state would do that huh

[-] kibblebits@quokk.au 12 points 2 weeks ago

The ML cry under their pillows at night so the cameras don’t see them.

[-] naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 2 weeks ago

I would love to see what this person has to say but 2 hours is absurd lol.

Do they have transcripts? Video is the least accessible thing ever.

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 weeks ago

This is just a rebuttal video for responses to this short one: https://youtu.be/ZRJgYCi1vvY

[-] rako@tarte.nuage-libre.fr 8 points 2 weeks ago

Real talk (the video is in my to-watch queue): I am completely convinced by anarchism tenets, but the apparent lack of a path towards total liberation kinda frightens me. Where can I lear more about said strategy ? (Not about anarchism in general)

[-] med@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Concrete strategies are pervertable. Values are less so. If you know what you're aiming for, you should be able to evaluate any strategies you encounter to see if they align. It's also not possible to build one strategy for everyone. How could you make it right for all communities? How could you force everyone to follow it? You'd need a state...

Reading more about anarchism in general should expose you to concrete examples of what has been tried, how it worked, and how it was destroyed. I'd start with Orwell in Spain and the Anarcho-Syndicalysts.

Based on my understanding, the method by which we get from the world today to the an anarchist society is often conflated with the social revolution of socialism. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. I doubt it. What I do know, is that anarchism isn't just a theory - it's a practice. We are meant to live it, not just talk about it.

Start with anarchism as a spice. Any time you're in a position to influence the governance of something, a project, club, society or council, insist on making sure that all use of authority is justified.

Get involved in everything you can, be the person that brings the anarchist perspective. You don't need to call yourself an anarchist and proclaim your actions for the cause. This isn't a crusade, you're not killing in the name of. It's about making sure that use of authority is justified. Offer the anarchist options, show others how to live a different way.

Finally, always be aware someone will recognize what you are and what you're about. Anarchism is about making power justify itself, and if it can't, abolishing that power. This means that those that seek power will always notice you're the problem to them acquiring more power. They will seek to eliminate or neuter your ability to interfere.

If you're making small waves in a small community, the response will likely be similarly small. If you've succeeded in making a whole region change to a different way of life, maybe it's a national guard with guns that comes knocking. Both can be devastating.

If that sounds like a lot of effort, it is. That's why the world hasn't switched overnight. I would say however, that it's no more effort than is required anyway. Every strategy picked must be checked for suitability - the ends cannot justify the means.

[-] rako@tarte.nuage-libre.fr 3 points 2 weeks ago

I know all this and it wasn't my question. It's good to have values at your core, do what you can around you etc... but then building a nice community with people around can be enough. And I completely agree with that, you cannot change the world on your own. What I'm interested in is, how do you keep the flow going ? What makes it so that the end, is liberation of everyone and not just liberation of your community/region ? How not to conflate the end and the means ?

[-] JadedBlueEyes@programming.dev 1 points 2 weeks ago

I feel like aiming for the ultimate liberation of absolutely everyone as your goal is sort of missing the point a bit. To force everyone to be free is an oxymoron, and a path to a kind of totalitarianism.

If you want to help more people, then implementing anarchist values around you is a great place to be! Sharing those values, and educating other people with useful tools can help them help the people around them too.

[-] rako@tarte.nuage-libre.fr 1 points 2 weeks ago

Yes, I do want everyone to be liberated. Crucially I never said that I, or an organization, should liberate everyone, because I don't believe in this.

Yes, I know how it works, start around you etc... that's not what I'm curious about. That doesn't answer my question. How to make sure that, collectively, we don't stop in the middle ?

[-] ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 weeks ago

I feel like responding to BadEmpanada is just a trap and anyone who doesn't know it by now is just feeding into it. He's just going to keep trying to sow and reap controversy.

[-] Souvenir@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

It's a shame there's so much infighting on the left of the political spectrum. There is strength in a union.

[-] A404@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 2 weeks ago

I would be happy to work with other leftists towards a common goal but every time we tried that we ended up getting betrayed

[-] Souvenir@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 weeks ago

Which is a shame.

[-] Grainne@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 weeks ago

Which is why we need to stop thinking in terms of left vs right and more on people vs power.

[-] alapakala@quokk.au 6 points 2 weeks ago

There’s in-fighting everywhere.
You think brownshirts seized power cooperatively?

[-] A404@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 weeks ago

the kkk and the nazis used to hate each other

[-] alapakala@quokk.au 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

It's not even that, @souvenir@lemmy.dbzer0.com is completely aware fascists are turning on their führers as we type, yet one of us stomps on the powerless and the other empowers.
Which coin of in-fighting does souvenir want to face?
Deathcamps are still up.

[-] Souvenir@lemmy.dbzer0.com -2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I think you'll find they form a circle, hold the man to their right's penis, release their alpha male energy into the middle of the circle, and summon Mecha-Hitler. That's what the black sun/ sun wheel swastika symbol represents.

[-] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 weeks ago

The left is a broad collection of semi-related ideologies. I'm certainly not opposed to cooperating when we have a common goal but our politics are simply too different to form a single unified party or anything like that.

[-] BrilliantantTurd4361@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 weeks ago

Is broseph single tho?

[-] pleiades@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah. Anarchist leftism achieves... um... wait, what has anarchism achieved again?

(I'm just messing around)

[+] commiunism@lemmy.dbzer0.com -17 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Yet neither side in this can even define what capitalism is and are both absolute brain dumps deattached from reality (materialism)

Farce vs farce

Edit: now that's how you really ruffle some feathers, by calling a school yard fight that takes place within realm of imagination a farce

[-] PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S@anarchist.nexus 16 points 2 weeks ago

"Everyone is wrong except me"

[-] commiunism@lemmy.dbzer0.com -5 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah you're right, I should have picked a sports team and brainlessly attacked the other in this youtube beef where each side is yelling "noo actually my ideology is better than yours!"

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 2 weeks ago

I can absolutely define what capitalism is at its core

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 14 points 2 weeks ago

If you mean "materialism" as defined by Marx, then yes that is an "absolute brain dump deattached from reality" as several modern anarchists and anthropologists have pointed out with ample of evidence.

[-] commiunism@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 2 weeks ago

Curious to see what this evidence is then, since every time this kind of a claim gets dropped there's 0 elaboration or if there is elaboration, it's always some metaphysics brimstone

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 6 points 2 weeks ago

It's for example explained in length in Graeber's last book The Dawn Of Everything (with plenty of archeological evidence). Worth a read 👍

[-] for_some_delta@beehaw.org 3 points 2 weeks ago

Capitalism is said to emphasize free markets, private ownership and minimal government interference. The primary factors of production in economics are land, labor and capital. Capital are durable produced goods used as inputs for making more goods. The emphasis under Capitalism is to empower the capital component of the primary factors of production.

There is more to say anout Capitalism using terms familiar to those living under Capitalism. I find it disingenuous that your "ruffling of feathers" can only define Capitalism using Marxist Leninist terms like dialectical materialism. Again, it is a case of "just read our ML bible and you will get it brah". Cults are everywhere.

A major point of the video essay is that centralizing land, labor and capital under the state is a change of private ownership thereby reproducing Capitalism, but at the state level. All must labor using state land and capital except for the political class which holds power over labor. I call ML's RedFash and State Capitalist for this reason. Merging the state and capital sounded better when sold in the original German.

I'm not here to defend anarchy. Watch the video essay or don't. I'm here to define Capitalism in all it's flavors including the state kind.

[-] commiunism@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 2 weeks ago

Funnily enough, in this definition both ML's and Anarchists fall into the same trap, and that is ignore commodity production which is the fundamental atom of capitalism. You can centralize or decentralize production all you want, give ownership to the workers or the state - this doesn't matter as long as commodity production (production for exchange) and everything that it implies remains.

After all, capitalism IS generalized commodity production, it's what automatically implies markets, production for profit, money, etc...

Also don't confuse Marxism with Marxism-Leninism, as the latter is merely a "synthesis" created by Stalin that falsified both Marx and Lenin to suit the nationalist counter-revolutionary USSR direction of development. Both Marx & Engels opposed "Socialism in one state", fought against the idea that "commodity production is socialism actually" or the stageism that is anti-materialist

[-] pleiades@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago

Are you a leftcom? I feel like that last paragraph is a common leftcom opinion, and I'm curious to hear why you think it's a falsification. I don't think MLs believe that socialism should remain in one state at all, just that it's a stepping stone to an international revolution.

[-] commiunism@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 weeks ago

It's not exclusively leftcom opinion but just a take that anyone reading Marx would automatically come into, especially first 3 chapters of Capital and Critique of Gotha Programme (leftcoms are theorycels though so they do come to this conclusion). You can't have commodity production and somehow be socialist, despite Stalin's falsifications.

It also goes against materialism into the realm of idealism, where a DOTP can look inwards and start pursuing its national interests to build itself up and compete within the capitalist world against other capitalist powers using capitalism and everything that it implies (like class relations), and somehow through magic still retain proletarian character despite it actively going against the interests it pursues and literally being the kind of society the proletariat as a class have the historic task of abolishing. This is nonsense, and that's why the primary objective of DOTP is internationalism and it's where it lives or dies, rather than indefinite national development as it's not a national project.

I tried to keep this as short as possible since I could yap about this for super long so it's not all-encompassing, though I'd also recommend reading Engels Principles of Communism and Bordiga's Dialogue with Stalin, the latter text is especially related to this topic.

[-] pleiades@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago

I've read Principles of Communism already but I'm not sure how it connects to the topic of commodity production specifically, perhaps I need to give it a reread. I'll check out Dialogue with Stalin at some point, since my only knowledge of commodity production in Socialism comes from this short Hakim video. At around 8 minutes he starts talking about how the material conditions of past revolutions influenced their economic strategy and why they had to engage in commodity production as the most viable option, although he does dismiss international revolution as unrealistic without really going into why. Overall, I feel like the argument the video makes is cohesive though, so would you have any arguments against it?

[-] commiunism@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago

Principles is more targeted towards the "in one country" bit especially the 19th point, how revolution and by extension socialism isn't merely a national project and how in this global system people are so interconnected that an existential crisis of capital hasn't (as seen in ~1920's) and can't be localized in one country alone. It does touch up a bit on the nature of commodities and their production plus crises that inevitably arise from those (such as overproduction) which 'AES' states aren't magically immune to.

As for the video, even though I can't really watch it cus I'm at work, I can already guess the song and dance from your short description and from the fact that it's Hakim. It's true that historical conditions have changed, we live in a historically inopportune moment and proletariat have been largely pacified since 1920's, but in no way does this invalidate marxist materialist analysis which is what indirectly gets claimed by falsifiers. Commodities still have an inherently capitalist character, 'AES' countries using capitalism as its base to build up national wealth still remain capitalist and by extension still have capitalist material interests that cannot be shed by just having "people with right ideas in power", etc.

What's also relevant when it comes to critiquing SIOC is how it came about historically - by the time it was officially adopted in USSR, the country was undeveloped, isolated due to proletarian revolutions worldwide getting crushed or pacified, it already had given many concessions such as NEP towards non proletariat to avoid complete collapse and while these concessions (SIOC included as it abandoned proletarian internationalism in favor of national interests) were necessary, they were desperate measures to try and ensure that the state lives on rather than steps towards socialism. In other words, survival tactics stemming from failure.

Anyway, I would highly advise before anything else to read at least the first 3 chapters of Capital, it analyzes commodity and their nature fully and isn't too hard to grasp especially considering how concepts get repeated over and over again, it completely demolishes the idea that commodities can be socialist by just explaining what commodities are. There's also a video by RoseMedia about AES and why they're bound to fail in their goal which as with any youtube video (Youtube is not a replacement for theory) should be taken with a mountain of salt. There's also Revolution Summed Up, a text which talks about the history of USSR leading up to SIOC including wrong lessons that leftists took from it which is an interesting read also.