If Anarchism is so helpful why hasn’t there been any kind of mass Anarchist movement in the colonized world? I used to be “live and let live” but now I need serious convincing that Anarchism is more than a dead-end lifestylism exclusive to the imperial core.
I really don’t have the energy to write something in-depth about this and explain the “who, where, and how.” I might also not be well-read enough on the subject just yet as well, sorry.
Quite honestly, I don’t even know where I myself am on that spectrum, so to speak, between ML and anarchism, but if you have some time to waste I’d advise you to read “Anarchy Works” by Gelderloos, it is relatively short and explains pretty well what anarchism is actually about and gives quite a few examples of past and present to illustrate his case. Even if you don’t agree with what he has to say, at least it should lend a better understanding of what anarchism is about beyond the standard trope of “Anarchists are just naive utopians”.
My main point in the end is that we should after all still be comrades here and shouldn’t drag each other through the mud like that, sure there are douchebag anarchists around, as there are douchebag MLs, but that shouldn’t be what is thought of as the norm.
Sorry for the abrasive tone in my first comment.
You weren’t abrasive lol. You’re being perfectly reasonable.
My main point in the end is that we should after all still be comrades here and shouldn’t drag each other through the mud like that,
That’s a very reasonable stance to take. Before I got too online for my own sanity I was the same. Hell IRL I’d probably be the same too but after hearing this argument about Anarchism and the colonized world, which is where I come from, I just can’t let that feeling go. It’s also something I haven’t seen Anarchists grapple with at all. I wanted to write in my reply that there are more communists in a random subsection of Kerala than there are Anarchist in the entire world but that would have been abrasive. But it is a question that Anarchists need to at least ask themselves. The Zapatistas don’t count. They themselves don’t like being called Anarchists and see themselves as a national liberation movement first.
Really give the book I cited a chance it opened my eyes to anarchist ideas and made me understand it a whole lot better, and he cites quite a few examples throughout history as well, which are either explicitly anarchist or some that might not call themselves anarchist, but are organized along the same principles.
Sorry that I can’t give you anything more concrete but my memory is sometimes a bit fuzzy when it comes to these kind of details on things that I basically only tipped my toes in pretty recently as well.
Circa 1910:
If communism is so helpful why hasn’t there been any mass communist movement in any part of the world?
Engels died in 1895. Bakunin in 1921. I think time’s run out on that argument.
??? An early thinker in an ideology dying at a different time has very little to do with the conditions in the world creating a fertile ground for their ideas being enacted into material changes.
My point is that it’s silly to say there is no example of anarchism working when pre-October revolution there wasn’t any example of communism being enacted on any scale. If we believed your argument then, then no progress would ever happen ever because “it’s never been done before”.
There are varied conditions in which principles of varied leftist thought will be useful or successful, it could be the case that large scale implementation of anarchist ideas aren’t suitable for the current moment, but they will be in the future. Or maybe if you wanted to make a more consistent argument you’d tell me why anarchism can never work for: X reasons.
