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.
Is your definition of success the establishment of a socialist state? Because anarchists are never going to do that.
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 don’t actually believe that basically nothing has changed since before the industrial revolution, do you? That seems intentionally obtuse.
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:
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.
I said:
You don’t actually believe that basically nothing has changed since before the industrial revolution, do you? That seems intentionally obtuse.
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.
How is that a straw man? It’s literally what you said.
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.
Marxists have continued to sharpen our practice over time, a century of revolution provides a wealth of real experience to draw from. I am unconvinced that this strategy needs to be abandoned in favor of Anarchism, mainly because I agree with Marx in how production centralizes over time and thus humanity should master that process and democratize it so that humanity can subordinate Capital, rather than the inverse.
Anarchism on the other hand posits a totally different structute, one based on decentralization at its core, which negates the ability to collectively plan production and movement in order to abolish hierarchy in total, no matter the benefits if properly accounted for.
I’m not anti-Anarchist, I used to be one myself, but I think just as you earlier took issue with people not engaging with Anarchist theory, I think your own admission to having read at least the April Theses means you should dig more into Marxism and Marxism-Leninism if you want to understand your Marxist comrades better.
You’re not an anti-anarchist, and I’m not an anti-Marxist. Isn’t that just enough? Spending all of your time planning for what the potential future socioeconomic system might look like isn’t something that really scratches any itch that I have anymore. I’m far more concerned with what can be done right now.
I think you’re using your own personal experience with Marxists in your area as a blanket to generalize. Marxists as a general rule don’t spend all their time hypothesizing about future society, but practice labor organization, protesting, and building dual power (similar but not the same as prefiguration). The Black Panther Party, Marxist-Leninists as we all know, was famous for directly going out and feeding people, and protecting them from the State. The Party for Socialism and Liberation is at the forefront of the US-based pro-Palestinian protests. Marxists do get the here and now done.
Your personal experiences are giving you a malformed view of the broader US-based Marxist movements, which are recovering from the heights of the Red Scare. They are also missing the global context, Marxists currently govern many countries like China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc, and China in particular is becoming more and more important in the world context, which has an impact on US-based organizing as well.
I think you’re running into resistance because you have painted Marxists in general with your experiences of one subset of the particular.
The Black Panther Party were cool, but the PSL is a bad example, imo. They’ve had… issues. Really icky issues that kind of mar the whole organization. I did meet some cool former PSLers back in my DSA-LSC days, though.
I think it’s personally a stretch to call Xin Jinping a Marxist, even if that’s how he identifies. It kind of seems like China’s just doing a capitalism, but with more steps. I don’t know enough about Vietnam and Cuba, but it’s my understanding that Vietnam has been slowly moving in the same state capitalist direction that China did
There are issues within PSL, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t overall a Marxist group. The issues in PSL are largely varied by locality. At the moment, they are still at the forefront of agitation for Palestine, and do other cool work like labor organizing.
As for Xi Jinping, he’s a Marxist, undoubtedly. The PRC has a Socialist economy, the large firms and key industries are overwhelmingly in the public sector. They have a long way to go to abolish commodity production, but they are well into the process of centralizing all of the means of production and developing the productive forces to aid in that task, eventually allowing for commodity production to be ended. I wrote a bit more on the subject than this oversimplification here, but I am more than willing to answer any questions you may have.
From what I can gather, it seems you aren’t super familiar with Marxism beyond some of the basics, so you are definitely not alone in seeing China as some form of Capitalism just because it still has some private property and participates in global markets, but those complaints are generally resolved by reading Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc.
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.
Marxists have continued to sharpen our practice over time, a century of revolution provides a wealth of real experience to draw from. I am unconvinced that this strategy needs to be abandoned in favor of Anarchism, mainly because I agree with Marx in how production centralizes over time and thus humanity should master that process and democratize it so that humanity can subordinate Capital, rather than the inverse.
Anarchism on the other hand posits a totally different structute, one based on decentralization at its core, which negates the ability to collectively plan production and movement in order to abolish hierarchy in total, no matter the benefits if properly accounted for.
I’m not anti-Anarchist, I used to be one myself, but I think just as you earlier took issue with people not engaging with Anarchist theory, I think your own admission to having read at least the April Theses means you should dig more into Marxism and Marxism-Leninism if you want to understand your Marxist comrades better.
You’re not an anti-anarchist, and I’m not an anti-Marxist. Isn’t that just enough? Spending all of your time planning for what the potential future socioeconomic system might look like isn’t something that really scratches any itch that I have anymore. I’m far more concerned with what can be done right now.
I think you’re using your own personal experience with Marxists in your area as a blanket to generalize. Marxists as a general rule don’t spend all their time hypothesizing about future society, but practice labor organization, protesting, and building dual power (similar but not the same as prefiguration). The Black Panther Party, Marxist-Leninists as we all know, was famous for directly going out and feeding people, and protecting them from the State. The Party for Socialism and Liberation is at the forefront of the US-based pro-Palestinian protests. Marxists do get the here and now done.
Your personal experiences are giving you a malformed view of the broader US-based Marxist movements, which are recovering from the heights of the Red Scare. They are also missing the global context, Marxists currently govern many countries like China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc, and China in particular is becoming more and more important in the world context, which has an impact on US-based organizing as well.
I think you’re running into resistance because you have painted Marxists in general with your experiences of one subset of the particular.
The Black Panther Party were cool, but the PSL is a bad example, imo. They’ve had… issues. Really icky issues that kind of mar the whole organization. I did meet some cool former PSLers back in my DSA-LSC days, though.
I think it’s personally a stretch to call Xin Jinping a Marxist, even if that’s how he identifies. It kind of seems like China’s just doing a capitalism, but with more steps. I don’t know enough about Vietnam and Cuba, but it’s my understanding that Vietnam has been slowly moving in the same state capitalist direction that China did
There are issues within PSL, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t overall a Marxist group. The issues in PSL are largely varied by locality. At the moment, they are still at the forefront of agitation for Palestine, and do other cool work like labor organizing.
As for Xi Jinping, he’s a Marxist, undoubtedly. The PRC has a Socialist economy, the large firms and key industries are overwhelmingly in the public sector. They have a long way to go to abolish commodity production, but they are well into the process of centralizing all of the means of production and developing the productive forces to aid in that task, eventually allowing for commodity production to be ended. I wrote a bit more on the subject than this oversimplification here, but I am more than willing to answer any questions you may have.
From what I can gather, it seems you aren’t super familiar with Marxism beyond some of the basics, so you are definitely not alone in seeing China as some form of Capitalism just because it still has some private property and participates in global markets, but those complaints are generally resolved by reading Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc.