It wasn’t a hostile discussion or anything, i didn’t even go full “the kulaks deserved it” (although the mod that single-handedly banned me did go full “the kulaks did not deserve it”). I just laid out plainly and calmly that revolutions are inherently authoritarian, that Luxemburg said “the revolution will be as violent as the ruling class makes it necessary” and that there’s one Trotzki quote i 100% agree with: “If the October Revolution hadn’t succeeded, the world would have known a Russian word for fascism 10 years before Mussolini’s March on Rome”. Basically the whole “Jakarta Method” train of thought laid out clearly and without calling anybody names.
Note that this was on an explicitly left-leaning server that does not allow cops and troops to join. Also after several days of another poster starting destructive, aggressive bad faith arguments in the politics channel until a number of users went “disengage” on her and the channel had to be frozen until recently, when she immediately started being hostile and arguing in bad faith again, which got her not one, but two warnings from the same mod without further consequences. Meanwhile, when i defend AES without attacking anybody, that’s apparently too much for her to handle. No advance warning, no “sis, you’re talking to me as a mod here”, not even a notification that i got banned.
The best part is that according to screenshots a friend just sent me, she’s now completely going off about “authoritarians”. The nerve some people have.
Sorry for posting pointless internet drama here, i just needed to vent.
The person complaining about authoritarians is a petty discord tyrant
this was on an explicitly left-leaning server that does not allow cops and troops to join
she’s now completely going off about “authoritarians”
I think my newest take is that anti-authoritarianism is not left-leaning, it shares the aesthetics of the left but should be seen as a unique ideology in and of itself that ultimately serves the status quo. Efforts should be made to distinguish it as a unique ideology and define it firmly away from the left.
In application anti-authoritarianism opposes all revolution and all construction of anything post-revolution. It opposes authority use within the existing state but it also opposes authority use to end the existing state and in doing so it upholds it and takes a position against any and all people that seek real change.
Anti-authoritarianism is weird because it sees government authority as an ultimate evil but private entities authority as the status quo.
Private banks forcing people out of their homes? Thats a good society. Government doing the same and distributing it? Authoritarian evil.
Then if there is a successful revolution - anything the revolutionaries do is now authoritarian because they took over the government.
The problem is authoritarian doesn’t have a precise mechanical definition at all. Anarchists and liberals don’t use the word in the same way. A lot of my anarchist comrades don’t even use the term because of how imprecise it is. Instead I’ll see anarchists mention lopsided hierarchies in general, imperialism, or how a hierarchy can lead to abuses of power. Or more broadly they might disagree with seizing state power as a tactic, but I think well-read anarchists realize that authoritarian is not a coherent ideological position. No one identifies as an authoritarian, for instance.
Liberals use it as a way to conflate fascists and communists. They use it to mean there’s a lack of representation from groups/interests they believe are inherent to any society. Since all socialist countries exclude or restrain representation of the capitalist class, that makes all socialism authoritarian by a liberal point of view. They see a single party state as tyrannical, because they would prefer to see a state with various competing bourgeois elements rather than the single uniting interest of the working class.
Liberals also use the term (and tankie) in a completely racist way. White countries aren’t authoritarian, that’s reserved for scary foreigners
The problem is authoritarian doesn’t have a precise mechanical definition at all. Anarchists and liberals don’t use the word in the same way. A lot of my anarchist comrades don’t even use the term because of how imprecise it is. Instead I’ll see anarchists mention lopsided hierarchies in general, imperialism, or how a hierarchy can lead to abuses of power. Or more broadly they might disagree with seizing state power as a tactic, but I think well-read anarchists realize that authoritarian is not a coherent ideological position. No one identifies as an authoritarian, for instance.
it’s also why, for instance, the political compass is such an awful concept in general
but yeah, I try to be cognizant of how different parts of the Left just have fundamentally different definitions behind the same words, like “authority” for instance, and so bringing up e.g. Engels to somebody who doesn’t think authority means what Engels defines it as is kinda pointless, but the liberals have turned “authority” into such a meaningless term now that I can understand why your anarchist comrades don’t care to use it
I think it’s strident individualism masquerading as anarchism.
Both anarchism and socialism heavily center community. They put slightly different emphasis on different parts of community and anarchism is more decentralized but anarchism still places community and a persons place and rights vis a vis their community as well as the expectations a community can have of its members at the center.
It’s less obvious with anarchism since anarchism is less proscriptive about what form community should take and usually it’s some vision of a decentralized variety of voluntarist communes or something like that, but it always has the idea of a person as a part of their community at the center.
Strident individualism, the idea that the individual is more important than the collective, is antithetical to both anarchism and socialism and this is what really separates right-libertarianism from anarchism.
A lot of people make the claim that individualist anarchism is right wing because they just don’t know what it’s actually about and think it’s some kind of philosophical anarcho-capitalism. But I’ve never met someone who read Renzo Novatore and thought he was right wing at all. Edgy? Extremely so. Kinda dumb? Honestly I think so too. But right wing as in in favour of the reaction and the capitalist class, no way.
I think my newest take is that anti-authoritarianism is not left-leaning, it shares the aesthetics of the left but should be seen as a unique ideology in and of itself that ultimately serves the status quo. Efforts should be made to distinguish it as a unique ideology and define it firmly away from the left.
In application anti-authoritarianism opposes all revolution and all construction of anything post-revolution. It opposes authority use within the existing state but it also opposes authority use to end the existing state and in doing so it upholds it and takes a position against any and all people that seek real change.
You have described neo-liberalism; nothing must change, only managed decline.
Maybe that’s the correct way to frame anti-authoritarianism to actually get people to start recognising the need for some authority if you’re going to see change.
We might honestly be slowly re-treading ground that the neoliberal thinktanks have already been over in their decision-making to support, back and push this ideology.
You did sort of reinvent anarcho-bidenism and the premise of that FBI anarchist publication.
I mean, sorta?
The distinguishing feature of anarchists is that they do in fact want revolution and are willing to shoot guns over it. While there is no such feature of ancaps, the NAP is explicitly anti-revolutionary, and opposes all capability to effect change within the system through any means other than the use of money and property.
So yes. I can kinda see that comparison. The only thing I will say however is that the anti-authoritarians that can be pipelined leftwards are usually still in favour of use of authority for some things, such as enforcing the age of consent. Whereas the libertarians seem to be against authority in even that case too. This distinguishes which group of anti-authoritarians that pipeline left vs which group of them pipeline right.
I wrote a longer rely to op but I think it’s when the rights and liberties of the individual are made supreme to the point of overriding the rights of the community, that’s when it’s just crypto-libertarianism masquerading as anarchism.
I don’t think anti-authoritarianism (as you describe it) can be separated from leftism (anarchism is right there), nor should it be (it’s largely correct in many cases and also a powerful organizing tool). Rather, I think anyone who digs in on that front should be asked two questions:
- How would you get from our current society to the one you think is best?
- In the society you think is best, what would happen when Person A harms Person B?
Either they will have practical answers that lead naturally into discussions like “when is authority justified, and what actions can a justified authority take?” or they’ll show their ass with some “abolish bedtimes” baby anarchist stuff.
I don’t think anti-authoritarianism (as you describe it) can be separated from leftism (anarchism is right there)
Anti-authoritarianism is distinguishable from anarchism because anarchists do not oppose use of authority for revolution nor to maintain post-revolution, they support authoritarian means in those cases.
Anything that opposes revolution upholds the status quo.
The anti-authoritarians might be a pipeline into the left, but are not yet among the left in that their ideology literally upholds neoliberalism by opposing all use of authority to change it. You could view them in the same way that belief in alternative medicines isn’t right wing but is a pipeline into right wing conspiracy thought. Distinguished from the right but you can see how it leads into it. Anti-authoritarians are distinguishable from the left in that they oppose all the things we need to bring about any real change, but they can be a pipeline into the left by making them realise this.
This is also why the anti-tankie rhetoric is so necessary for liberals. It makes it harder to do the work to pipeline the anti-authoritarians into the left by aiming to kick all real leftists out of the anti-authoritarian spaces and shut down all thought-processes of anti-authoritarians if/when they speak to people that are part of the proper left.
Sure, but we must articulate it in a specific way or people continue to join them in the genuine belief that they’re not.
In addition to what everyone else already said, being against something isn’t the same as supporting something.
Anarchists are pro-anarchy, communists are pro-communism, but anti-authoritarians aren’t necessarily either of those two. They’re anti-authority, which is often a word they themselves can’t even define. And because it’s impossible to exercise in reality, they have to pick and choose which powers they consider “authoritarian” and which aren’t. Since these people don’t read, this just ends up looking like another flavor of liberalism.
American actions abroad since WW2 are definitely not authoritarian!
and then the counter-argument is always just “I don’t know anything about American actions abroad since WW2”
The nifty thing about never claiming to support anything is that you never have to defend anything either. Anti-authoritarians can just say that they oppose the US along with China, the USSR, Cuba, their teachers, and their parents.
Like, there’s a word for an antagonism to authority. It’s anarchism. This doesn’t imply an ignorance of power or of its present application in the real world, nor does it imply that all authorities are indistinguishable, but it does imply that we hold no structures so sacred as to be above question. That’s not counterrevolutionary: it’s the very thing that revolution consists of.
I don’t have the time or energy to argue for/against a state at the moment but I’d like to leave some stuff for anyone interested in an actual anarchist analysis of the state over idle speculation from people who have a clear bias against left-libertarian politics. Plenty of anarchists read statist material to gain an understanding of the statist perspective. I’ve personally read enough of Lenin (including the state and revolution), Trotsky and all that to know it isn’t my jam. Not to mention, Marx and Engles were against the state as a revolutionary apparatus (it’s included in the link, don’t @ me).
The State is Counterrevolutionary
And for an anarchist analysis on revolution, complex systems analysis, etc. The Revolution Series
Marx Against the State (article)
I’m only linking the one channel because it’s relevant. Anarchism, as an inherently decentralized ideology and movement has a wide variety of theorists, analysis and opinions. Anarks material is well imformed and comprehensive. I’m not looking to convince anyone to “switch teams” but if we’re going to criticize one another it would help to know what we all actually believe and stand for
I’ve literally read all of these before.
Nothing I said is a critique of anarchism.
Not to mention, Marx and Engles were against the state as a revolutionary apparatus
No. This is definitely nonsense, I don’t want to get into sectarian bollocks but you deserve correcting. Marx is completely explicit about it here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/04/bakunin-notes.htm
But again. Nothing I fucking said was a criticism of anarchism. This isn’t about anarchism this is about something explicitly different to it, anti-authoritarianism is not the same thing as anarchism, anarchists are not universally anti-authority.
Stop trying to turn this into sectarianism. Nothing I said was about anarchism. Fuck off. Wrecker somewhere else.
Pretty much every anarchist I know would be okay with suppressing the rights of capitalists, as well as their ability to use the state to enforce private property. That would be pretty “authoritarian” from the perspective of a capitalist, but fuck them, they do the same to us.
I would like to link to this article, it goes deeper into the anarchist conception of authority. TL;DR: These are pointless definition wars. All anarchists are fundamentally against the same thing, it’s just that some prefer to not describe it as “authority”
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/london-anarchist-federation-the-problems-with-on-authority
Did you actually read the article on Marx? It misrepresents Stalin tremendously and slightly misrepresents Lenin (who was at first the biggest proponent of a “state capitalist” DotP), but it clearly and explicitly defends the notion of the DotP as a socialist state preceding stateless communism, as all Marxist-Leninists do. It would have been better to include more of the writing Lenin quotes in his own work about the paradox of the “free state”, maybe even Lenin’s own thoughts, but we can only expect so much from a Trot rag like this.
You aren’t making a good case for your “informed criticism” plea, as though it had a chance when you call Leninists “statists”. Just say “tankie” if you refuse to say ML, it is unironically less irritating.
What is one supposed to call leftists who advocate for a state if not statists?
That really sucks.
Whenever I bring up commie shit in real life, people are generally just really surprised because they haven’t ever heard those ideas or perspectives before. Sure they argue sometimes, but they can’t just kick you out of a place.
Online though? You get the boot real fast. None of these people would have the guts to treat you that way in real life.
Online though? You get the boot real fast. None of these people would have the guts to treat you that way in real life.
Sounds like this is a result of the rapidly increasing prevalence of liberal solipsism originating from the massively overblown obsession with the few 2016 election ads Russia bought. Now liberals have an easy get out of being flanked from the left card by always accusing anti-western communists of being either literal chat bots or paid shills. That’s much harder for a lib to do offline while the conversation is literally face to face.
Although, I do remember a few years ago a comrade on this site made a vent post about how they were literally called a bot in an offline argument with a coworker. That one absolutely boggles the mind.
Although, I do remember a few years ago a comrade on this site made a vent post about how they were literally called a bot in an offline argument with a coworker. That one absolutely boggles the mind.
When a lib calls someone a bot, they aren’t trying to make a factual statement about the world. It’s a social signal: “I don’t have to listen to or engage with the content of what you say because you’re on the Bad Team.”
I would hope that liberals don’t literally believe that we are all AI chatbots that are replying to each other over and over, I think it’s just used in the same way that chuds use “NPC”. like, the only way you could get to our views is if you have zero critical thought about the world, know very little, are hyper suggestible to the first narrative you see, etc, which is very funny coming from (typically American) liberals whose entire concept of the world is generated by scrolling through reddit and half-remembered thoughts from high school
Yeah definitely, most of the time it’s not literal, but since LLMs have entered mainstream discourse, I’ve been seeing leftists accused of being actual, literal bots more and more often. Of course, this is usually on reddit where you could mistake ChatGPT as the second coming of Christ from how they talk about it over there.
beyond the material aspect of, i there’s also something very appealing to westerns about the ‘end of history’ line of thinking - the way that it obfuscate capitalism and its ideology. it’s a self-made mythos. western liberals saw the fall of the soviet union as liberalism’s final triumph over communism, cementing the neoliberal idea the that there can be no alternative. admiting that they’re wrong - that there is an alternative - now also means conceding that they’ve bought into, and is guilty of upholding, a system that is more monsterious than any communist boogeyman that could dream up
it’s far more comfortable to just tear down any alternative; to find some reason to exorcise the spectre of marx. that’s probably why western academia, so self-assured in its own skepticism, became enamoured with deconstructionalism following the decline/fall of the soviet union
The red scare fuckin’ blows
