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I don’t understand why tankies can’t make the logical step from “governments of the west don’t care about any peoples’ sovereignty (despite justifying their war efforts with claims that they do) because ultimately they just serve whatever keeps them in power” to “no governments care about any peoples’ sovereignty because ultimately they just serve whatever keeps them in power”
I actually did make that exact step as a teenage anarchist. Then I continued learning and realized this was an incorrect generalization, so I proceeded to update my understanding of the world in accordance with my dataset, something I have continued to do to this day and which has led me here. I followed a path of careful fact finding and reflection, and it turns out that political maturity is realizing the commies were correct.
If you learn enough, stay humble enough, and pay close enough attention, eventually that’s what happens. You realize that, generally speaking, the really high-octane commies have the most lucid understanding of the world out of any group out there, and the only reason this wasn’t always obvious to you was because you live under a capitalist power structure which aggressively indoctrinates its populace from birth into believing that communism is No No Bad Bad.
They have the most lucid and correct understanding of capitalism. They have the most lucid and correct understanding of imperialist extraction. They have the most lucid and correct understanding of western warmongering, global power dynamics, white supremacy, institutional racism and misogyny. That’s why they keep being proven right, about everything from US military actions to the fascism of the far right to the abusive nature of the so-called “moderate” liberal to the moral depravity of billionaires and the capitalist class.
there’s no group which perceives the abusive dynamics of this civilization with a greater degree of intellectual clarity as a whole.
…except for anarcho-communists who actually know what they’re talking about.
I don’t disagree with this as a whole–Marxists are pretty much dead on with most of their analysis and see the world a hell of a lot more clearly than people still indoctrinated by capitalism. The problem is that Marxists-Leninists don’t go far enough when they diagnose the problems with capitalist society. They think it’s enough that power structures are seized by the proletariat and set up to align with their interests, as they believe (based on their analysis of how societies work) this will inherently cause the power structures to wither away over time. But that’s not how power works. You can’t fully reduce it down to class conflict.
When a Marxist says “the history of societies is the history of class struggle”, imo there are two ways to read it:
(a) Class and class struggle has made up the core of all societies’ structure and general existence for all history; or
(b) There is nothing else to societies’ structure or general existence that is not reducible to class and class struggle
I agree with (a). It’s supported by history and evidence. (b) inherently can’t be because it presupposes itself.
From my own understanding of history, I think that a strictly ML understanding of how societies work misses a vitally important aspect of the role power plays. I could be wrong about that! But I’ve yet to see a ML explanation of why it’s necessarily wrong. And I think the reason for that it because ML theory presupposes itself. It wants to say (b). And in that sense, I think it’s actually a wildly un-humble framework: not only does it make the bold claim that all of history is just class, it forms the basis for governments that force this restrictive historical understanding on people and dismiss any other framework as liberal or reactionary.
As the article claims about MLs, there are plenty of anarchists who don’t know what they’re talking about–who have a really shallow understanding of power or are secretly just liberals. But anarcho-communism is thus far the only framework I’ve found that addresses all of the historical dynamics and structures identified by Marx and Marxists while still being humble enough to admit that it doesn’t necessarily hold all the right answers and that it’s not the only valid framework out there.
…except for anarcho-communists who actually know what they’re talking about.
That must be why anarcho-communism is the tendency that has spawned the most successful revolutions and uplifted all those hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Oh, wait.
while still being humble enough to admit that it doesn’t necessarily hold all the right answers and that it’s not the only valid framework out there.
except for anarcho-communists who actually know what they’re talking about.
Ooh, time for the classic “we violently shut down your attempt at revolution, therefore your theory must not work” argument y’all like to use that totally isn’t just a repackage of the liberal argument about why communism doesn’t work. You’re so caught up in your dogma that you’re repeating the same gaslighting shit capitalists spout to justify why capitalism/liberal democracy is the only realistic system.
I deleted my original comment because it wasn’t worded very well and came from a place of frustration and exhaustion. But what I was attempting to get at with “context-dependent dynamics” is that the model of history described by Marx can’t be claimed to hold explanatory power in every possible aspect of sociology/anthropology/social sciences generally, because that’s not how any model of anything works (as you said). Whenever I get into these conversations with MLs, it feels like they can’t conceive of there being an aspect of how the human world works that isn’t reducible to class struggle and dialectical materialism. Comparing it to physics, it’s like they’re hearing about quantum mechanics and all the extra complications and nuances that introduced in order to explain results that classical physics couldn’t, and just perpetually going “nah, classical physics has been right about everything else. We must just be mismeasuring these results.”
I don’t understand why tankies can’t make the logical step from “governments of the west don’t care about any peoples’ sovereignty (despite justifying their war efforts with claims that they do) because ultimately they just serve whatever keeps them in power” to “no governments care about any peoples’ sovereignty because ultimately they just serve whatever keeps them in power”
I actually did make that exact step as a teenage anarchist. Then I continued learning and realized this was an incorrect generalization, so I proceeded to update my understanding of the world in accordance with my dataset, something I have continued to do to this day and which has led me here. I followed a path of careful fact finding and reflection, and it turns out that political maturity is realizing the commies were correct.
…except for anarcho-communists who actually know what they’re talking about.
I don’t disagree with this as a whole–Marxists are pretty much dead on with most of their analysis and see the world a hell of a lot more clearly than people still indoctrinated by capitalism. The problem is that Marxists-Leninists don’t go far enough when they diagnose the problems with capitalist society. They think it’s enough that power structures are seized by the proletariat and set up to align with their interests, as they believe (based on their analysis of how societies work) this will inherently cause the power structures to wither away over time. But that’s not how power works. You can’t fully reduce it down to class conflict.
When a Marxist says “the history of societies is the history of class struggle”, imo there are two ways to read it: (a) Class and class struggle has made up the core of all societies’ structure and general existence for all history; or (b) There is nothing else to societies’ structure or general existence that is not reducible to class and class struggle
I agree with (a). It’s supported by history and evidence. (b) inherently can’t be because it presupposes itself.
From my own understanding of history, I think that a strictly ML understanding of how societies work misses a vitally important aspect of the role power plays. I could be wrong about that! But I’ve yet to see a ML explanation of why it’s necessarily wrong. And I think the reason for that it because ML theory presupposes itself. It wants to say (b). And in that sense, I think it’s actually a wildly un-humble framework: not only does it make the bold claim that all of history is just class, it forms the basis for governments that force this restrictive historical understanding on people and dismiss any other framework as liberal or reactionary.
As the article claims about MLs, there are plenty of anarchists who don’t know what they’re talking about–who have a really shallow understanding of power or are secretly just liberals. But anarcho-communism is thus far the only framework I’ve found that addresses all of the historical dynamics and structures identified by Marx and Marxists while still being humble enough to admit that it doesn’t necessarily hold all the right answers and that it’s not the only valid framework out there.
That must be why anarcho-communism is the tendency that has spawned the most successful revolutions and uplifted all those hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Oh, wait.
Ooh, time for the classic “we violently shut down your attempt at revolution, therefore your theory must not work” argument y’all like to use that totally isn’t just a repackage of the liberal argument about why communism doesn’t work. You’re so caught up in your dogma that you’re repeating the same gaslighting shit capitalists spout to justify why capitalism/liberal democracy is the only realistic system.
Because that’s a kindergarten understanding of socialist/ML theory and politics in general
deleted by creator
Can you think of any non context-dependent dynamics?
I deleted my original comment because it wasn’t worded very well and came from a place of frustration and exhaustion. But what I was attempting to get at with “context-dependent dynamics” is that the model of history described by Marx can’t be claimed to hold explanatory power in every possible aspect of sociology/anthropology/social sciences generally, because that’s not how any model of anything works (as you said). Whenever I get into these conversations with MLs, it feels like they can’t conceive of there being an aspect of how the human world works that isn’t reducible to class struggle and dialectical materialism. Comparing it to physics, it’s like they’re hearing about quantum mechanics and all the extra complications and nuances that introduced in order to explain results that classical physics couldn’t, and just perpetually going “nah, classical physics has been right about everything else. We must just be mismeasuring these results.”
I don’t even know what you’re saying tbh. Context dependent dynamics? Power is bad and context is bad? Is that from some anarchist theory?