I've talked about it here and there for years, but this is my actual attempt to talk, definitively, about Tankies. -- --Become one of my first Patrons: https...
Yea, to be fair to you I’ve not considered you to be the same as the pro-west anarchists of the “we need to critically support NATO” variety. Those anarchists exist, and I’d be lying if I said I never had a NATO-anarchist phase. My decoupling with anarchism came alongside my decoupling with critically supporting the west, so truth be told my anarchism never actually co-existed with the anti-imperialist stance I have today.
Definitely agreed that, frankly, we cannot afford to play the waiting game. If we could, then the accelerationists that support the DNC as the most competent managers of empire would actually have a point, we could try to speed run imperialism to its inevitable self-destruction. Unfortunately, this also means sacrificing the global south to imperialism for a longer time, and potentially letting climate change get even farther out of hand than we could potentially mitigate with revolution. That’s why accelerationism is wrong.
Regarding your point on authority, I fully agree that Cuba is more liberating for the working classes than the US. I also have to acknowledge that Cuba, in the interests of protecting working class power, is more than fine with expropriating property from the landlords and capitalists. The authority of the state is used as a tool to liberate the people, and oppress the former ruling classes. This is true across socialism.
The real crux of the anarchist vs. Marxist argument is in communalization of production vs. collectivization. Should the world, in the final analysis, be made up of linked cells as horizontally as possible, therefore requiring redundancies and self-sufficiency to an extreme degree in each cell, or should the world be organized in one unified system, with a combination of bottom-up and top-down controls, all running along a common plan? The key difference is the question of how power actually works, and how production and distribution actually work at global scales.
I’m not going to try to make an argument here in favor of what I believe is more “correct,” it’s already obvious based on my identification as an ML and I don’t believe this is a space for debate. However, this does relate to the video, which questions how Marxists often venerate historical and present figures that have contributed a great deal in either a theoretical or practical degree. Marxists do not follow “Great Man Theory,” but we do believe in the utility of leadership and disciplined, unified organization. This is the basis of Democratic Centralism, which is a stark departure from most anarchist praxis, that focuses on horizontalism and collective accountability without strict discipline even in the face of disagreement.
Yea, to be fair to you I’ve not considered you to be the same as the pro-west anarchists of the “we need to critically support NATO” variety. Those anarchists exist, and I’d be lying if I said I never had a NATO-anarchist phase. My decoupling with anarchism came alongside my decoupling with critically supporting the west, so truth be told my anarchism never actually co-existed with the anti-imperialist stance I have today.
Definitely agreed that, frankly, we cannot afford to play the waiting game. If we could, then the accelerationists that support the DNC as the most competent managers of empire would actually have a point, we could try to speed run imperialism to its inevitable self-destruction. Unfortunately, this also means sacrificing the global south to imperialism for a longer time, and potentially letting climate change get even farther out of hand than we could potentially mitigate with revolution. That’s why accelerationism is wrong.
Regarding your point on authority, I fully agree that Cuba is more liberating for the working classes than the US. I also have to acknowledge that Cuba, in the interests of protecting working class power, is more than fine with expropriating property from the landlords and capitalists. The authority of the state is used as a tool to liberate the people, and oppress the former ruling classes. This is true across socialism.
The real crux of the anarchist vs. Marxist argument is in communalization of production vs. collectivization. Should the world, in the final analysis, be made up of linked cells as horizontally as possible, therefore requiring redundancies and self-sufficiency to an extreme degree in each cell, or should the world be organized in one unified system, with a combination of bottom-up and top-down controls, all running along a common plan? The key difference is the question of how power actually works, and how production and distribution actually work at global scales.
I’m not going to try to make an argument here in favor of what I believe is more “correct,” it’s already obvious based on my identification as an ML and I don’t believe this is a space for debate. However, this does relate to the video, which questions how Marxists often venerate historical and present figures that have contributed a great deal in either a theoretical or practical degree. Marxists do not follow “Great Man Theory,” but we do believe in the utility of leadership and disciplined, unified organization. This is the basis of Democratic Centralism, which is a stark departure from most anarchist praxis, that focuses on horizontalism and collective accountability without strict discipline even in the face of disagreement.