Today were can clearly see that, communism was always a red herring. Tankies during cold war and tankies today (that love to dress in American flags), were always about supporting of totalitarian regimes.
Definitely not imo, if we are talking about the ideology. Many socialist/communist countries have been totalitarian though, so there’s a big divide between the ideological basis and goals and what has ended up happening.
Sort of? Vanguardism is inherently totalitarian, for example. The core idea is that the vanguard know better than the poor proles what’s good for them (Maoism is basically vanguardism). Stalinism is quite obviously and clearly totalitarian, putting rapid “strong” decision-making for the goal of rapid economic development above everything.
There are more democratic and equal forms of socialism, like Democratic socialism, syndicalism, mutualism (if you accept anarchists as part of the umbrella) and so on.
My core point is that socialism can be totalitarian or not depending on the actual ideology inside the big varied umbrella term.
Well put. I just meant more that socialism and communism doesn’t have to be totalitarian, ideologically a lot of the views inside those can be close to anarchism. The real life examples of socialist and communist states we’ve had (the thing people think of often when they think of socialism and communism) have just been examples of it either having been a totalitarian form of it or have devolved to totalitarianism (depending a bit on the interpretation, but that’s a really heave topic).
Anarchism is an inherently socialist and communist ideology.
Anarchism in short: heirarchy should be abolished
Socialism: workers should own the means of production. Being forced into wage labor is a form of heirarchy
Communism: a stateless (hierarchical structure), classless (social heirarchy), moneyless (a system of power that easily lends itself to hierarchical means) society.
One way to look at anarchism is a description of the way to realize communism, and continue past it into a more egalitarian social structure. Nobody has successfully realized communism for an extended period of time, but there are/have been projects that were well on their way. The zapatistas, CNT-FAI, and rojava come to mind. We’re lead to view the USSR and China (for example) as socialist/Communist because associating those places with the word understandably puts people off of the idea. Their insistence that they are socialist/communist doesn’t help that either. They never really met the mark imo
I knew of the Zaptistas, but reading up on the other two u mentioned. CNT-FAI, im vaguely familiar with the anarchist movement in the Spanish Civil War, but did not know of this acronym for their organizing efforts. Thought this bit taken from their wiki (itself sourced from an archived version of their statutes published in 77) was a fun condemnation of tankie claims on this website that not participating in the current political system is part and parcel for far-left politics (emphasis mine):
“…the aims of the CNT are to “develop a sense of solidarity among workers”, hoping to improve their conditions under the current social system, prepare them for future emancipation, when the means of production have been socialized, to practice mutual aid amongst CNT collectives, and maintain relationships with other like-minded groups hoping for emancipation of the entire working class.”
Will be reading more about them, and rojava as well, thanks!
Happy to give you a new rabbit hole! The more you learn about libertarian socialist tactics/theory the more you realize just how little of the popular conceptions of what “anarchism” is holds up to scrutiny. It’s not all breaking windows and punching cops. Currently, there’s very little of that. Most of it is starting unions, co-ops, non-profits and general mutual aid. It’s all prefigurative and done with intent. Sometimes the state apparatus is used (insofar as it doesn’t negatively impact your goals) sometimes it isn’t, it’s all contextual and nuanced. Something a lot of auth-left people seem to struggle with. Guess they’re not used to having a toolbox instead of a script
If I may ask, why do you think that? They’ve been a big inspiration to me and most of what Ive read about them has been great. Outside of authoritarians wildly misunderstanding their recent restructuring I haven’t seen much in the way of criticism. If anything, I’m a bit more critical of rojava. They have something that appears to be (or could turn into) an embryonic state at the top of their organization. The fact that there is a “top” to their organization is cause for concern of we’re speaking strictly in terms of libertarian socialism
Nah communism is just naive people trying to enact collectivist policies wholesale not realising or not wanting to believe that such policies are incredibly open to subversion by authoritarian groups.
At the risk of feeding a troll.
My argument is basically the ‘china/russia were never real communism’ one but with the caveat that real communism isn’t possible in the first place with real human beings because its so easy for a bad actor to hijack the entire thing and thus that will inevitably happen almost immediately. Any real communist is probably naive, deluded or excessively optimistic.
Tankies are just the same kind of bad actor who are the reason such a system is impossible in the first place and promote communism simply as way to seize ever more power. Its a very pedantic point of view but I’m sick of the right wing changing the definition of words.
I was talking about tankies, whose definition says those are communists that were also fine with using tanks on population by Soviets during the Hungarian revolution.
I’m trying to say those people weren’t as much in love with communism as with the love of the Soviets and this is much easier to see today since Russia isn’t communist.
Today were can clearly see that, communism was always a red herring. Tankies during cold war and tankies today (that love to dress in American flags), were always about supporting of totalitarian regimes.
The hammer and sickle is to support USSR.
Tankie is a special sort of communist. Doesn’t seem fair to paint all communists as tankies.
Tankie is just facist wearing red instead of brown. Leave communism out of it.
Seems pretty fair to me. Socialism and communism are inherently totalitarian.
Right when bad things happen under capitalism it’s just the profit motive
Bad things don’t happen under capitalism.
Bitch, bad things are happening RIGHT NOW under capitalism wtfdym
Lolwut?
You’d see if you’d open your eyes and stopped trolling
What is happening? Stock prices are through the roof, markets are booming, everything is bloody awesome.
“Capitalism is when everyone just has a good time”
fucking what
Definitely not imo, if we are talking about the ideology. Many socialist/communist countries have been totalitarian though, so there’s a big divide between the ideological basis and goals and what has ended up happening.
Sort of? Vanguardism is inherently totalitarian, for example. The core idea is that the vanguard know better than the poor proles what’s good for them (Maoism is basically vanguardism). Stalinism is quite obviously and clearly totalitarian, putting rapid “strong” decision-making for the goal of rapid economic development above everything.
There are more democratic and equal forms of socialism, like Democratic socialism, syndicalism, mutualism (if you accept anarchists as part of the umbrella) and so on.
My core point is that socialism can be totalitarian or not depending on the actual ideology inside the big varied umbrella term.
Well put. I just meant more that socialism and communism doesn’t have to be totalitarian, ideologically a lot of the views inside those can be close to anarchism. The real life examples of socialist and communist states we’ve had (the thing people think of often when they think of socialism and communism) have just been examples of it either having been a totalitarian form of it or have devolved to totalitarianism (depending a bit on the interpretation, but that’s a really heave topic).
Anarchism is an inherently socialist and communist ideology.
Anarchism in short: heirarchy should be abolished
Socialism: workers should own the means of production. Being forced into wage labor is a form of heirarchy
Communism: a stateless (hierarchical structure), classless (social heirarchy), moneyless (a system of power that easily lends itself to hierarchical means) society.
One way to look at anarchism is a description of the way to realize communism, and continue past it into a more egalitarian social structure. Nobody has successfully realized communism for an extended period of time, but there are/have been projects that were well on their way. The zapatistas, CNT-FAI, and rojava come to mind. We’re lead to view the USSR and China (for example) as socialist/Communist because associating those places with the word understandably puts people off of the idea. Their insistence that they are socialist/communist doesn’t help that either. They never really met the mark imo
I knew of the Zaptistas, but reading up on the other two u mentioned. CNT-FAI, im vaguely familiar with the anarchist movement in the Spanish Civil War, but did not know of this acronym for their organizing efforts. Thought this bit taken from their wiki (itself sourced from an archived version of their statutes published in 77) was a fun condemnation of tankie claims on this website that not participating in the current political system is part and parcel for far-left politics (emphasis mine):
“…the aims of the CNT are to “develop a sense of solidarity among workers”, hoping to improve their conditions under the current social system, prepare them for future emancipation, when the means of production have been socialized, to practice mutual aid amongst CNT collectives, and maintain relationships with other like-minded groups hoping for emancipation of the entire working class.”
Will be reading more about them, and rojava as well, thanks!
Happy to give you a new rabbit hole! The more you learn about libertarian socialist tactics/theory the more you realize just how little of the popular conceptions of what “anarchism” is holds up to scrutiny. It’s not all breaking windows and punching cops. Currently, there’s very little of that. Most of it is starting unions, co-ops, non-profits and general mutual aid. It’s all prefigurative and done with intent. Sometimes the state apparatus is used (insofar as it doesn’t negatively impact your goals) sometimes it isn’t, it’s all contextual and nuanced. Something a lot of auth-left people seem to struggle with. Guess they’re not used to having a toolbox instead of a script
Zapatistas have a good PR arm, that’s it. Always stick up for the CNT-FAI and Rojava though.
If I may ask, why do you think that? They’ve been a big inspiration to me and most of what Ive read about them has been great. Outside of authoritarians wildly misunderstanding their recent restructuring I haven’t seen much in the way of criticism. If anything, I’m a bit more critical of rojava. They have something that appears to be (or could turn into) an embryonic state at the top of their organization. The fact that there is a “top” to their organization is cause for concern of we’re speaking strictly in terms of libertarian socialism
The whole point of these ideologies is a totalitarian regime.
As someone above said it well, it depends. The whole of socialism and communism though, no.
Yes. One must be utterly delusional to believe that communism is not totalitarian.
Communism wasn’t a red herring with the anarchists
Nah communism is just naive people trying to enact collectivist policies wholesale not realising or not wanting to believe that such policies are incredibly open to subversion by authoritarian groups.
No, you’re talking about tankies
Why do you fine folks draw lines on political and skin pigmentation if it’s about collectivism?
At the risk of feeding a troll.
My argument is basically the ‘china/russia were never real communism’ one but with the caveat that real communism isn’t possible in the first place with real human beings because its so easy for a bad actor to hijack the entire thing and thus that will inevitably happen almost immediately. Any real communist is probably naive, deluded or excessively optimistic.
Tankies are just the same kind of bad actor who are the reason such a system is impossible in the first place and promote communism simply as way to seize ever more power. Its a very pedantic point of view but I’m sick of the right wing changing the definition of words.
I was talking about tankies, whose definition says those are communists that were also fine with using tanks on population by Soviets during the Hungarian revolution.
I’m trying to say those people weren’t as much in love with communism as with the love of the Soviets and this is much easier to see today since Russia isn’t communist.