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The split is very real and irreconcilable because it is a question of fundamental aspects of political organizing a mobilization.
I will bluntly and confidently state that anarchist political projects will never go anywhere because they place abstract principles in priority over the accomplishment of real, tangible, meaningful results. IE, a knee-jerk rejection of “hierarchy”, centralization, discipline, and party-building as anathema to socialism because of some paranoid fear of “descent into tyranny”. We have actual, historical evidence that all revolutions that have survived and succeeded found it a necessity to centralize power, produce a unified and coherent agenda of readily-attainable goals, recognize clear leaders and respect their authority, and organize a professional and disciplined army instead of relying on loose collections of militias. I find reflections on historical events on the left always tend to focus not on lessons of successes by revolutionary projects but on relitigating petty feuds between long-dead personalities, romanticizing “what ifs” that utterly failed, and debating how to prevent their inevitable revolution from degenerating into “authoritarianism”.
I consider it additionally to be symptomatic of a chronic problem of the post-WW2 American “left” in that it tends to conceive of politics not as an arena for organizing to fight for tangible material gains but as a forum for individual self-expression as a reflection of one’s virtue and character. It’s mind-numbing and boring.
Just to add a funny piece of history to the idea of the idea of the cia intentionally splitting ‘leftists’. Back in the day the bolshiviks had an agent of the tsar high in their ranks that actively discouraged unity between the bolsheviks and the mensheviks - the intention being to stop the socialists from forming a larger political bloc. But from lenins point of view the main thing it did was prevent the bolsheviks from taking on the internal contradictions of the mensheviks.
This unity of the left that people fight for nowadays is a false unity based on ignoring internal contradiction instead of struggling on it and navigating it. If anything was a cia project I would say it’s the tendency to build false coalitions strife with internal contradiction that are bound to fall apart from the seems at the mere presence of any meaningful hostile external factor ( if these forms don’t already disassemble themselves before hand).
Maybe it is, but the question is whether we hash out those contradictions internally, as part of the combined struggle, or as separate tendencies taking potshots at each other.
Left unity doesn’t mean we don’t argue, it means we argue together, which means we can more easily arrive at the specific tactics needed to succeed in certain material conditions. And honestly, even as an ML I see the Ancoms generally being far more effective at small-scale organising and struggle, even if I’m skeptical about that becoming a larger movement.
I often feel that the different tendencies just have different focuses, and they’re actually all important. Imagine believing that any one particular school of thought has a monopoly on the truth haha it’s a very… competitive mindset, not really conducive to healthy leftism/social science imo.
It’s, frankly, intellectual arrogance to act as if ‘only my school of thought has all the right answers’. In any academic field, you’d get laughed out of the room for acting that way. It’s just not a realistic relationship with the truth, imo
There’s no such thing as “hashing out differences as a combined struggle.” There are irreconcilable differences. There’s no meeting in the middle. It’s ok to have different political programs. There’s some weird idealism of wanting everyone to be friends or something involved here
Ironically the Mexican State surrounding them on all sides is the only thing preventing them being crushed, else they would be long gone, and they reject being associated with anarchism or communism, publicly denouncing vanguard parties or their support.
It will eventually collapse, they fail to provide even the most basic of infrastructure for themselves.
I think people who downvote things they disagree with are nerds haha just so you know that I didn’t downvote you. I know they identify as explicitly Neozapatismo in philosophy, but various Zapatistas have talked about their influences and they borrow from all branches of marxism. They’re, basically, explicitly non-sectarian haha but I think it’s hard to argue they don’t lean pretty firmly towards anarchism
I also think it’s hard to argue they will inevitably collapse because they don’t provide for themselves. They’ve been running for decades and decades, and seemingly only gaining ground. But I’m admittedly not that familiar with the movement.
The smug eurocentrism here is palpable. This paternalist instinct to dismiss indigenous movements for not adhering to a brand of leftism and thus doomed to failure is really gross tbh.
What are the collective farms, coffee plantations, schools, and armies then?
I know very little about the internal workings of their organization, but AFAIK they are comfined to the most backwater and isolated parts of Mexico’s rural periphery. But they are a military organization with someone who appears to be a visible and recognized leader, have taken actual, existing action and achieved tangible material gains. It’s only of very limited success, but that’s not really the point of what I was trying to imply.
I support organizations like EZLN unconditionally just as much as I support the Naxalite movement, the People’s Republic of China, FARC, or the Peruvian Communist Party. The vast majority of my ire in this issue is directed at the Western left, which is still utterly obsessed with “movementism” (as J Moufawad-Paul dubbed it in The Communist Necessity) that is wholly reliant on spontaneity and primarily influenced by anarchism. This results in liberal entryism, incoherence or outright lack of a program, lack of leadership, and fragmentary decentralization to the point of non-existence, or at least a total disappearance once the latest wave of spontaneous outrage has subsided. For god’s sake, even after the ruthless suppression of the Sanders insurgency by the Democratic Party leadership and countless clear and unmistakable signals that they do not want the left in their party and will never even cede an inch of ground to their demands, it is somehow still treated as a debate that we should continue working with, supporting, and “boring within” that party instead of breaking with them definitively and working towards destroying and consuming their position with a real working-class party.
They were founded by Maoists and use a synthesis of Maoism and Maya. Anti-colonial politics (which are in general radically democratic.)
If anarchists recognize ourselves in the EZLN, It’s because of the Mayan influence, the libertarian turn of N. American socialism in the 60s, and the generally pro democracy bent in Latin socialism.
I mean, their economics and governance do look pretty dang anarchist. Like, the EZLN rejects all external labels besides Zapatismo, but if we’re going to project, it seems at least as fair to call them anarchist as it is to call them Maoist because of their Guevarist roots.
Explain the libertarian element however you will, but I think it’s pretty obvious that it’s there
But what about… after that?
This is, in my opinion, the biggest reason that it’s irreconcilable. The revolution is not the act that ends capitalism, it is merely the act that flips who has dominant power. It is the act of the proletariat taking authority. A state will be absolutely necessary to maintain that power and authority over the bourgeoisie, and the state will be absolutely necessary in eliminating the bourgeoisie in the coming decades, and in eliminating the existing relations of production, and enforcing the new relations of production. It’s necessary because it fills a space of power that if left open, will be filled by the first group that can organize and fill it, i.e. reactionaries.
Attempting to build decentralized anything during this time of fragility will certainly fail, because the time it will take to learn new modes is exactly the time when the reactionaries will strike with the already existing, already tried and tested old modes. And the vast majority of humanity is already familiar and comfortable with the old modes. They will flee to them because new modes are scary, uncharted territory.
But what about… after that?
After that you need to survive the reaction, they are not going to leave you alone. China is a Nuclear armed state and they trying a color revolution right under its nose. The USSR fell to one because its last Secretary General abandoned ML principles.
After that you will still require MLism just to stay above water, and the Reaction is also nuclear armed so its not like you can just set off to launch global revolution, they will use them.
A classless society is the objective but first you need to outlive the enemy, else it will forever stay an objective.
Holy shit.
Individual expression of virtue and character is bad. Your comrades are “mind-numbing and boring”, you decide to name your hologram LeninsRage. What does this hologram look like?
I get the vibe that you don’t really like art or people and might not be in a good headspace right now. That’s probably because you’re the victim of an online psy-op.
The shallow economism and “Leninism” of the image of the USSR in the imperial core generates the kind of thinking that leads to anarchists and artists getting killed. There’s a gaping hole in your theory. When people call you red fash they’re expressing themselves honestly. They’re detecting fascism.
The differences between “Communists” and “Anarchists” aren’t irreconcilable. This idea would make revolution seem impossible. In reality they’re the same people! They get along fine! They’re from the same class! They can get class consciousness! They want the same things! Some people are also anarchists and communists within the same identity. There is no antagonistic contradiction. You have been lied to by compradors.
If you actually think there’s an irreconcilable difference in a left that doesn’t exist yet you’re the victim of a counter-revolutionary bourgeois psyop. Full stop.
Stop trusting the people who are intent on making sure you stay inside Eurocentric theory. Get past the USSR-centric “legal communist party” thinking.
