this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
143 points (83.9% liked)
Memes
50658 readers
623 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm not sure who these MLs are that you're referring to, but the whole point of ML approach is to do all these things you're talking about and couple that with education that provides a clear theoretical understanding of what the problems are, and what the solutions need to be. The whole contribution of Lenin to Marxism was to provide the structure for organizing a revolutionary movement.
And that was a useful framework in the early 20th century (I've at least read the April Theses), but can we not continue to adapt our revolutionary strategy to better combat the forces who opposed us today rather than in 1917?
To date, nobody has shown a more effective approach to organizing that I'm aware of. All the successful movements follow roughly the same formula. The nature of society has not fundamentally changed in a century, so there's no reason to think that methods of organization need to drastically change as well. Just look at MAS in Bolivia as a very recent example.
Makhnovshchina, CNT, Rojava, Zapatistas...
Is your definition of success the establishment of a socialist state? Because anarchists are never going to do that.
You don't actually believe that basically nothing has changed since before the industrial revolution, do you? That seems intentionally obtuse.
My definition is the ability to defend the revolution and prevent a counter revolution. Marxists have been able to do this, but Anarchists have not. Incidentally, Zapatistas have actually started creating more central system now as well. Anarchists are free to demonstrate a working alternative to that though.
You can't actually address what I said without making a straw man can you?
All of the examples I listed should meet your definition of success, right?
You said:
I said:
How is that a straw man? It's literally what you said.
The examples you listed are either small scale, unable to challenge the overarching capitalist system they exist in, or they no longer exist at all. If you consider that a success then I really don't know what else to say.
It's literally not what I said. What I actually said is that the nature of human relations did not fundamentally change in the past century, not that there haven't been any changes. If you claim there has been some fundamental change in society, that would invalidate ML approach to organization, then do articulate what you think that was.