Anarcho Liberalism

Some people falsely think most Marxists are first world university Trotsyists and Anarcho radlibs. In reality the majority of Communist parties on Earth sustain at least some manner of Marxism-Leninism

Anarchists and Libs are perfect for each other. Libs have only destroyed the planet and Anarchists have accomplished next to nothing. But hey they will convince the enemy with some mutual aid /s

Anarchism is a radlib ideology

There's a reason that essentially all of the worst radlibs are Anarchists. The whole anarchist philosophy is devoted to fighting abstract "hierarchy" instead of materially uplifting the workers, which means that from the outset, Anarchists are operating on an idealist framework instead of from a material framework

So what this means is that Anarchism consummately itself to wokeness and the fuzzy radlib conceptions of "oppression" and "struggle". (though Karl Marx, Frederich Engels and Vladimir Lenin use these terms as well! They do have a real meaning.)

Moreover an important part of the Anarchist theory is that the ends and means are synonymous,meaning rigidly policing any hint of oppressive or adulterated ideas and conduct within leftist movements is a proper and handy part of revolutionary activity as opposed to an aimlessly divisive time sink. It's no bewilderment that so many Anarchists became radlibs when their complete ideological framework is innately radlib from start to finish (It depends on who you ask. There are various tendencies found within anarchism and they disagree about things)

Though this might not be that Anarchist at all, as it has been the Marxists and Trotskyists who have historically done such things as this in a way more organized manner. It was the Bolsheviks who conceived the "correct line of thought" which people weren't permitted to deviate from. Of course, the Bolsheviks had an absolutely wide discourse though within the party. It wasn't all simply Joseph Stalin's way or nothing like the media would have you believe

The Marxist-Leninist idea of a "party line" is not related to policing wrongthink, yet instead having a unified method to address strategic questions. Democratic centralism is on paper used to just apply to questions of vital strategic relevance to the party and only in reference to addressing the outside world. 

Anyone who utilizes demcent to police a person's private opinions or to ban a person from the party over strategically non relevant questions like the position of your small 500 person org on Israel is doing so improperly and outside of it's original boundaries and orthodoxy. 

There have been some slight insigificant factions that have abused demcent in such a way but it's far from the mainstream Marxism Leninism approach and has hardly any grounding in Karl Marx or Vladimir Lenin's theories.

In fact, enforcing a dogmatic thought line which a person cannot deviate from and dictating what a person can think and what their speech should be is extremely un-libertarian. If the US anarchists are doing that type of thing, then they're doing it wrong.

Some of the best arguments against P.C. have been put forth by anarchists, for example like Larry Gambone's "Laughter Is Bourgeois: The Roots of Political Correctness".

Some of the most shrewd criticisms of what we now refer to as "wokeness" or "SJW"-ism have been by Anarchists or libertarian socialists or people who were influenced in that tradition. 

See "Bigger Cages Longer Chains", or the work by Murray Bookchin on lib environmentalism and feminism, or Noam Chomsky's views of post-modernism and trendy liberalism.

But then again, each of the classical anarchist thinkers are rigorous-going materialists, from PJ Proudhon (who penned "Property is theft") to Milkhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin, and Emma Goldman too. Bakunin began his book "God and the State" with the following paragraph:

"Who is right, the idealists or the materialists? The question, once stated in this way, hesitation becomes impossible. Undoubtedly the idealists are wrong and the materialists right. Yes, facts are before ideas; yes, the ideal, as Proudhon said, is but a flower, whose root lies in the material conditions of existence. Yes, the whole history of humanity, intellectual and moral, political and social, is but a reflection of its economic history."

There has certainly been some Anarchists who aren't radlibs, particularly the older Anarchists who were born before woke culture was in, however this doesn't change the fact that Anarchism and radlibism go together like a horse and carriage 

Now at least a few of the  Classical anarchist thinkers merely paid lip service to materalism yet were still idealist for all intents and purposes. The overall anarchist framework is rooted in idealist conceptions of freedom and equality and when they're questioned from a materalist framework (like pointing out the real practical reasons why a lot of the compromises made by the USSR was needed) the recoil right back to idealism to defend their positions.

Anarchists are the worst of both worlds. They’ve demonstrated that they have no desire to manage the capitalist state, and they cannot overcome the capitalist state either. Anarchists don’t give a damn about building a popular platform and advocating for real demands, which in our times socialists should simply be able to accomplish. Instead, Anarchists subscribe to sectarian, anti-political irrelevance.

Anarchists have a tendency to loathe any effort that engages with the material conditions in real life since that means having compromise and not only getting to stand around and disregard all of the impure rabble.

Though despite my critiques of Anarchism above, I break with closet tankies who declare every kind of socialism that's not Super Scientific Marxism to be liberal/lib and counter-revolutionary. 

But only the best forms of Marxist communism are of the libertarian variety and are functionally indistinguishable from Anarchism so that is one point in Anarchism's favor

My positive attitudes toward Anarchism is cemented through me studying anthropology and sociology. Due to learning about what really drives and motivates human behavior and a knowledge of the development of human culture. Anarchism is solidly materialist and thus empiricist. And the methods of syndicalists have historically succeeded more at organizing labor in a truly democratic sort of way than the majority of major variants of Marxism.

Marxian analysis is precious but if someone thinks that Marxism as a political ideology isn't deeply entrenched in 19th century bourgeois ideals, said person is only kidding themself. There's a reason Marxist-Leninism constantly recreates the machinations of oppression it seeks to dismantle in the end.

'Post-left' Anarchism is better to criticize than Anarchism as a whole. Most self proclaimed Ancoms of our day and age are the freaking most cringe and are the liberals that Murray Bookchin described as lifestyleists

But this sectarianism is dull and lame and ignorant.

The older Anarchists primarily come across as socialists first and foremost who distrust what they perceived to be authoritarianism in Marxism. Many of them do in fact accept a bunch of Marxist theory, but they do not accept the political practice. Definitely, they didn't used to go on about "hierarchy" in such a religious manner as they do today. I still admire Anarchist Emma Goldman.

The era of Bertrand Russell is gone. Noam Chomsky is basically the the only anarchist who is still solidly grounded in reality. Anarchism is currently like 95 percent of the DSA, only a social club for upper-middle-class bojos and lame-os to hang out in and make believe that they’re doing so to “smash the fash”

Though there is Anarchist David Graeber. There must be good anarchists however most aren't sectarian and have been Anarchists for quite some time now.

Noam Chomsky is awesome and all when he is asked about his views on issues such as the Patriot Act and  the middle east wars, yet when he is asked about Anarchism I think he still says things about anarchists as I do in this post

There's a popular video where Noam spends about an hour talking about anarcho-syndicalism in practice (like post revolution), and in the entire video he's only sitting there mumbling on about how freedom =good and unfreedom =bad. He doesn't do what an Marxist Leninist would do, which would be to say he doesn't meticulously flesh out the particular ways that the state would function and be structured, how stuff would be distributed, how counterrevolutions would be averted etc.

Doesn't Noam simply defer to Michael Albert's Parecon model for that? Here's Chomsky's intro to one of Albert's books: https://chomsky.info/201409__/

Yep, Chomsky has said on numerous occasions that a central government is needed as a bulwark against corporate power:

"In the long term, I think the centralized political power ought to be eliminated and dissolved and turned down ultimately to the local level, finally, with federalism and associations and so on. On the other hand, right now, I’d like to strengthen the federal government. The reason is, we live in this world, not some other world. And in this world there happen to be huge concentrations of private power that are as close to tyranny and as close to totalitarian as anything humans have devised.

There’s only one way of defending rights that have been attained, or of extending their scope in the face of these private powers, and that’s to maintain the one form of illegitimate power that happens to be somewhat responsible to the public and which the public can indeed influence". — You Say You Want a Devolution

We need to win elections and implement reforms that do a better job at positioning workers to go toe to toe with capitalists - so that we don't get trounced in the process. Contrary to Anarchist assumptions, near-complete employment and a cushy welfare state has made the workers bold, not docile. They advocate for more militant demands. Winning office and doling out reforms is needed and serves a purpose as to get us where we need to be.

Noam states clearly that in a “democracy” like the US, you have a bit of an ability to control what happens and you shall in theory thus use that. He’s not claiming he’s in favor of state power however that it cannot and should not be removed too early. That’s uncontroversial to any sensible libsoc yet leftists who are more cynical of Anarchists than I am appear to think Libsocs don’t exist.

Chomsky evidently doesn’t get involved in reforms to further the cause of abolishing capitalism yet because he isn’t able to just not care about people here and now. He’s quite correct about this but I don’t see how much on the way he thinks this will assist in pursuing the end game goal but he of course isn’t against reforms. 

The assumption that comfortable workers end up being docile is not an Anarchist one, I know Anarchists on both ends of that argument. I personally agree above, as I said, engaging in elections isn’t about that for me overall but about me helping people in the here and now.

I also Emma Goldman too. 

Any actual anarchist is first and foremost a socialist but also possess a firm value of freedom. This is the way we disagree with certain aspects of Karl Marx (you have to admit the authoritarian parts of Marx if you want to be seen as legit but people do not appropriately admit the more libertarian parts that form the foundation of libertarian Marxism) but we agree on the fundamental things

Marx’s critique of capitalism is core to any socialist of any type including Anarchists. We also agree with the goal of a communist society, there are simply disagreements on how to that point. A huge part of a communist society is the aboliishment of hierarchies so that one has no master or servant — this is the reality but it’s pointless to yammer on about being opposed to hierarchy constantly as many Anarchists (even of the non-radlib sort) do. I agree this is really a bit irritating.

Anarchism always has heavily been steeped in bourgious idealism even at initially. There's a reason that Karl Marx wanted to far distance himself from the early Anarchists and keep them away from every organization that he was involved in as much as he could

But then give me some bourgeois idealism. Literally every Wikipedia history buffs knows about Mikhail Bakunin and Karl Marx and anyone who has issues with them are dogmatic babies

Anarchists created only one utopia dream world, which lasted for a couple months as a wide scale functioning society, and for at most 2 and a half more years as a fractured network under nonstop siege from outside and ever growing incursion by authoritarian "socialists" from within.

It was a fascinating time/place, and is a relevant thing to study, but not something we can emulate today, given the conditions of advanced industrial societies of the 2020s

Maybe Barcelona Spain in 1936 is more relevant to the present day than Petrograd Russia in 1917 or Berlin  Germany in 1918, but as time moves on, all of these revolutions fade into obscurity, and the chasm between the material conditions then and today increases

The Anarchists of Spain were, unfortunately, doomed. They took a bunch of conflicting approaches to revolution, yet each of them were not likely to be sustainable, even if they had found a way to manage to unite their whole entire movement around a particular strategy.

The "Libertarian Youth" / "Iron Column" / "Friends of Durruti" method of going in harder for a right away social revolution was doomed due to attacks on the Church and the rejection of collaboration with bourgeois Parties, while requisite for the revolution to go further, would have made the revolutionaries become isolated and in a position to be attacked by militarily superior fascist forces with their enormous colonial mercenary army, training, financing, and resources from fascist Italy and Germany, and economic support by US and significant European power capital.

The CNT leadership role of collaboration with the UGT, PSOE, IR, and PCE and essential limits on the reach of revolutionary activity in favor of being victorious in the war against fascism at least had a little hope of success if the needed amount of purchased military aid were handed to them via the Stalinist USSR or possibly even "socialist" led France, along with maybe just maybe an international push for sanctions against Italy and Germany alongside an economic blockade of Francisco Franco by the huge powers. 

However, even if this unrealistic "best case" Popular Front situation played out, it would most likely would have lead to WWII starting at least a few months before it actually did, with Spain as a huge front, and resulted in Spain's government being blown out by pro-Ally forces. It would have put a lid on the social revolution and definitely not lead to any sort of functional anarchist-communism.

Those Marxists never proclaimed to have achieved communism. They were triumphant in defeating Nazism and Italian fascism, industrializing a portion of the more backward parts of the world (though double edge sword since that industrializing has destroyed nature and contributed heavily to climate change and damaging our eco systems), technological progress (non computerized tech progress only since computers didn't exist back then and Marxists back then would hate computers and computer tech) that rivaled and at times was greater than that of much richer capitalist powers, and bringing about rapid improvements in health, and overall welfare. 

They could not implement workers self-management and direct, non-bureaucratized collective ownership, however the income and wealth gini indicies were pretty low.

Anarchists have commonly described the Eastern Bloc, Yugoslavia, Cuba, and East/Southeast Asian Marxist governments as "prisons with a welfare state", yet their degree of incarceration for the majority of their histories was much lower than the US today. They were socially illiberal, yet some of the freedoms available for at least a time in the Eastern Bloc and Yugoslavs are still unavailable in the majority of the West today. Until 1974 the mere possession of illicit drugs (without intent to sell) wasn't a crime in the USSR

It isn't so nutty to find at least a few positive lessons from the history of Marxist governments. Keep in mind that many of the political machines pushing for a more free and open Eastern Bloc at the same time considered themselves Marxists. The activists of the Prague Spring viewed themselves as socialists in the tradition of Karl Marx, even if that came with a vision that was different than Moscow's.

Picture Yugoslav cooperatives and autogestion without their dependence on IMF loans.

Picture a scenario where Sal Allende had not been assassinated and Cockshott as opposed to the Chicago Boys coming to Chile to develop the economic vision that would shape our modern era

Yeah, it's quite cringe that misguided and lame-o groups such as Antifa give Anarchists a bad name.

Successful anarchist societies have made the lives of workers better and these societies have existed, and do continue to exist today. Spain in the civil war is the clear example in the annals of time, but not the one and only one. Today, the one region in Syria thats not a full hot mess is Rojava, which is built on a foundation of Anarchism

I agree with the policing statement and ideas portion. Unfortunately, a lot of "anarchists" now are in favor of heavy restrictions against freedom of thought and speech, including from the government. This is not a distinct thing - the entire left is infected with this retarded idea. 

Yet, Anarchists that are not Antifa kinds of people are in my experience defenders of freedom of thought and speech, and they follow the classic tradition of Anarchism as laid out by people like Mikhail Bakunin, who stated that to "advocate the restriction of freedom on the pretext that it is being defended is a dangerous delusion."

Whenever there has been a "accomplished" anarchist society in our day and age in our world (ie. has been able to survive for more than one year), it typically turns out it has simply invented the state with a different name and in another form.

A hierarchical confederation of democratic structures who have an army and law enforcement with a monopoly on legit force over a geographical area is totally not a state.

Rojava is not anything that is too close to being an anarchist society despite what I typed above. Yes that's generally the ideology it supports, and yes they do plant trees and have women who fight in the army, but its effectively a capitalist economy simply like most other countries on Earth.

I've read my share of anarchist literature and it is...not compelling. Like, I do disagree with free marketers, yet I can read Frederick Hayek, Adam Smith and Milton Friedman and a lot of it is generally reasonable. I'm not a tankie, yet I can read Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Zedong Mao and see where they're coming from. I'm not a fascist, but reading Oswald Mosley, Bennito Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile makes me understand how people end up being one.

Yet I can read The Conquest of Bread, which is intended to be a top-notch anarchist book, and it, in addition to different mainstream anarchist literature, just appears to be akin to a whole lot of utopian nonsense with no coherent plan for improving material conditions or really making any of that work. The only Anarchists who appear to be compelling are the Anarchists who are first and foremost socialists, like Emma Goldman.

That's basically why I cannot be a full Anarchist. Ideals are fine and dandy but they're legit useless if you can't truly translate them into relevant plans of action, and yet in some way in spite of over a century worth of Anarchist theory the best they were able to do is over and over again trot out fantasies about spontaneity and global broad strikes and to criticize everyone else's plans for building socialism for being compromised and imperfect.

Peter "standardized train fares are proof of the innate tendency towards communism" Kropotkin. You may try reading CoB to give anarchism a fair shot, yet that can cause you to chuck the book against the ceiling in disgust when or if you realized how hollow and retarded Kropotkin's analysis was in comparison to Karl Marx

Conquest of Bread is impractical, maybe suitable for making dreamers out of  teenagers but not much else.

When Jordan Peterson was peaking and all people on the left mocked his lobsters b.s, it seemed lost on all of the Chapo people and so that that sort of thinking was literally Peter Kropotkins foundation for Anarchism, except he desired to structure society around the behaviors of bugs as opposed to crustaceans..

The issue is not anarchism in and of itself but the issue is the fact that it's become the leading idea of what a "pure" leftist would appear to be like, which lends itself to assorted less-than-anarchists misapplying pieces of anarchist ideology, rhetoric, broad subculture etc. in an illogical, loose or poorly-fitting way.

Regarding many developments in the DSA, like the usage of “jazz hands” instead of clapping, support for open borders and more: I think this is really related to a trend that's not directly related to idpol or so on; I’m referring to the effects of the emergence of anarchism as a standpoint in far-left consciousness.

One of the reasons why I view the usage of the terms "Cultural Marxism" misleading in such discussions is that many of it is related to a far-left ideology that's empathetically not Marxism – of which I am talking about anarchism - and which has time and time again for all intents and purposes defined itself against Marxism as a libertarian, anti-authoritarian strain of communism. 

Indeed, it the term "Cultural Marxism" obscures how fully Marxism got obliterated (in the Western world) during the process of the collapse of the USSR; anarchism, along with other things has filled its position as some kind of an indication how a "pure" anticapitalist, a person who does not give in to capitalism (and patriarchy, white supremacy etc.) in the least, shall have to function. (Other role-fillers too are the concept of human rights and feminism, however those aren’t the point of this post.)

This can be seen rather crystal clear when we observe leftist subcultural practices. It's not by chance that Breadtube is named Breadtube, for example. Similarly, the “jazz hands” are an Occupy method that, as far as I can tell, has originated from anarchist groups. And so, even modern Marxists are consciously or unconsciously being influenced by anarchist trends, and the stream of autonomist Marxism, for example, has been rather clearly influenced by anarchism. 

Now though, this valorization of anarchism as an different model of anticapitalism did not begin during the USSR collapse but, it began its present form going way back to the era of the New Left at a time when new leftists began to get mightily disenchanted with Marxism-Leninism after observing and then noting that the boring bureaucrats in ill-fitting wares in the USSR block (and the Western communist parties) sustaining the Cold War impasse were, in reality, pretty damn similar to the boring bourgeois bureaucrats in ill-fitting wares doing the same thing in their own systems, specifically when students in similar clothing and with similar mottos of socialism with a human face were getting the sh*t kicked out of them by the police and soldiers in both Prague Czechoslovakia and Chicago Illinois at the same time in 1968.

Of course, there are more reasons for the anarchist shift too. Like, anarchism is more made for the kind of freeform activist strain of leftism that’s been popularized by the anti-globalization movement and Occupy, if not the decentralized nature of Internet-aided activism overall. 

To go further, anarchists have basically been ahead of other left-wing thought on many types of values questions that place them closer to the social mores of today’s left; you can see anarchists supporting gay rights and trans rights even before WW1, for example. I am not claiming there weren’t a lot of unwoke anarchists, clearly, but when comparing to, say, the USSR backtracking on gay rights pretty much right as they had legalized homosexuality, the comparison puts the anarchists closer to modern leftist mores.

Now, I'm not even claiming really that DSA is an anarchist organization or that its members are anarchists (though there are some – the Libertarian Socialist Caucus fancies itself to be that, at least upfront). You can barely be an anarchist within the confines of mostly institutional politics, after all, and assuredly not when you are in a group that, practically, operates as the leftmost sect of the Democratic Party. 

However, the pre-eminent stance of anarchism in the far-left consciousness brings them to an implicit notion that there is this romantic or good thing about deferring to anarchist positions on specific issues, without looking into the fact that those positions are actually logical only within the backdrop of a society who in general is operating by anarchist values – like prison abolition or fully open borders.

I mean, if you’d go with an assumption of a world which pretty much has no states at all, there would certainly and likely be less difference than now in the question of if there’s an open border or not an open border (one may say there would be such a absolute chaos everywhere anyway there would be no reason to move to some different chaotic place anyway). 

Likewise, if all other actions currently being done by the state were done by a particular self-managing popular cooperatives of something, so too would the functions currently done by the cops and the prisons – whether that alternative might really be much better is, obviously, another question, yet then once again, anarchists pretty much appear to rely on human nature itself doing these vast changes in a stateless society and believing that through that everything would somehow resolve itself 

The overreaching problem is, then, that the anarchist idealism is fused with demsoc pragmatism (pragmatic within the position of far-left politics, that is) in an untenable sort of way. 

This is an unsustainable fusion and will not be suffice to withstand alone. However, when affected idealism and political pragmatism go up against each other, it has in general been political pragmatism that comes out on top, so I don’t believe there will ever be 100 percent open borders, even with an all-DSA administration. 

You even at the present get things like attempting to describe prison abolition in areas that really strive to be more suggestive of reforming prisons and like renaming them something with a different label. A lot of genuine anarchists, I perceive, also come to this conclusion, thus being leery of the DSA all the more for this matter

Now this is not some new idea – Bhaskar Sunkara wrote of this as “anarcho-liberalism” – though I’m not really too certain Bhaskar’s describing this same phenomenon as I’m doing, here. Or possibly, Bhaskar's simply describing the same tendency in the pre-mid 2010s activist culture when it currently also shows itself by way of the structures and conventions of what aims to be a mass organization that's more formally connected to electoral politics.

So what about Syndicalism / Anarcho Syndicalism and its co-dependence on labor (radical union) foundational struggle as a way for class liberation ? You would like to think that they'd be the first to get rid of the idpol nonsense. Again its been a long time since I seen someone who was a self described syndicalist. All I seen were Ancoms and they typically to match my above Anarchist description

I'm not an anarchist ,but the whole "the ends justify the means" labeling of anarchists doesn't feel right despite me saying it above.  

Anarchists (at least ones that aren't 'online') including part Anarchists like myself  do not agree with the more authoritarian kinds of communism exactly because they and me believe the ends DON'T justify the means.

Normally, Marxist Leninists and anarchists have the same goal in the end, but they debate on how to reach that point, and typically anarchists believe that that goal of communism doesn't justify dictatorship, etc. to reach that point

IIRC this line of thinking (the ends justify the means) might be attributed more suitably to Maoists than to anarchists.

Now for anarchists who say that the ends and means are one in the same, this means that the means have to be anarchist in order for the ends to be anarchist. In other words, you can say that anarchists do not want to employ means that are justified by the ends, and necessitate that the means be justified as ends in and of themselves (as anarchist, as non-hierarchical, as consensual, etc.).

I do like the anti authoritarianism but anarchism is basically a meme ideology.  Though,  Anarchists don't really hate authority,  they just hate not being the authority.. Anarchists hate hierarchies unless of course that hierarchy is "us politically correct superiors" against "the white cishet scum". This is wrong and Anarchists should be against all hierarchies including those types (I am against those hierarchies and all hierarchies too)

There is not any "ideological frameworks" of anarchism. There is no true "anarchist theory," but instead there are theories that can be categorized as anarchist or non anarchist

And you know, Marxism technically might have a place within the anarchist category, in respects to it wanting a society to develop (ultimately) toward a state of anarchist communism.

A core part of anarchist theory is that ends and means are synonymous, and this means rigidly policing any trace of oppressive or impure ideas and behavior in the ideologies of leftist movements and this is seen by even some non anarchist leftists as a authentic and usable part of revolutionary activity

Ted Kaczynski is an anarchist, but he murdered a lot of people as to publish his manifesto opposing this kind of nonsense.

He wants to return to hunter-gatherer societies without a state ("anarcho-primitivism"). He does outright say that these sort of societies have hierarchy and that these type of hierarchy is an tolerable cost. 

He wrote a short paper where he quoted anthropological pieces like The Forest People to prove that those societies were hierarchical, had conflict, and were violent, to oppose a utopian outlook of them, but said that every part of that was an acceptable cost of abolishing industrial civilization.

19th century anarchists would attack 21st century anarchists.

I don't know what context or country I am talking about here to when I say the above, but in one northern European country, the syndicalists, although not the political power they were around a century  ago, have around 3000 organized members in the overall organization and in the neighborhood of 20 local city chapters. Might not sound like a lot but it's a tiny country of 9 million. They organized 37 000 workers in 1924.

They are a realistic alternative to the mainstream unions who are way more unlikely to strike and pressure employers. More than a few of said members would also more than likely take part in anti-fascist protests while dressed in black.

Also, why would they attack modern Anarchists? For protesting against fascism so violently?

Though at least in the US, our anarchists truly are just obnoxious liberals with a radical aesthetic.

I could consider myself a syndicalist but I have seen enough anarchists to not be one.  Anyway, the situation in the US dismal. For a person in northern Europe, it be difficult for me to relate the ways of how bad it is. 

If a person lives in the US like me and we describe ourself as a Leninist, we are simply identifying with an author we like instead of us describing a political program that we are pushing

Vladimir Lenin was alive in a revolutionary era, and the general thrust of his plans were an acceptable response to that fact (whether or not we agree with the concept of democratic centralism, the position of the revolutionary party, etc.). 

We, though are only now recovering from the successfulist reactionary era in the US's history. Social democracy has been for all intents and purposes stifled, union membership has dropped to about 10%, working class consciousness is essentially nonexistent, and bourgeois consensus has overwhelmed politics (so all that is left in the US is technocratic management of the state and rampant culture wars to distract the proles).

Anarchists, in my experience, do not challenge ANY of this. It's more of a social scene than it is a political movement if anything

Although not as dire, social democracy indeed is not what it once was in Northern Europe either. It's nearly turned into a pejorative term for an establishment turncoat and doesn't bring for any new ideas to oppose conservative nationalism or neoliberalism on the upswing 

Extreme idpol have also turned many potential supporters from supporting leftist politics in my opinion. The syndicalists in Northern Europe don't f*ck around though and they can't actually be painted as being posers but that could be because they are focused on real labor issues and union organizing than they are of the lifestyle choices and linguistics.

They most likely won't organize all workers in Northern Europe countries in the immediate future but the claim was that anarchists are only idealists, don't give a hoot about material conditions and don't organize workers and that's not the case in Northern European countries

The truth can be found in some odd places . https://i.imgur.com/kn0oFM5.png

Yes as all left wing anti idpolers know that just succdems are the legit socialists

Most people who see themselves as anarchists don't want any change in politics at all since their use of the label has not one thing to do with a conviction in or even knowledge of ideology but instead has to do with aesthetics.

Some ancoms never even heard of syndicalism Such ancoms are burner wooks and best exemplify the general anarchist archetype of this post

My post here is hard to take for anyone who identifies themselves  as an anarchist for any relevant period of time and is seen by them by me using this post to do a stupid guilt by association mumbo jumbo and a smug dismissal of "scientific" marxists (who in the end fall in line with authoritarian tankies when push comes to shove) has been a meme for 150 years.  Though if I come off that way in this post I apologize and it is not my intention to do so (as anyone who reads this whole post and talks to me would gather)

But in my experience the Anarchists who simply "look the part" of Anarchists are the same ones who are truly serious in the political realm. If a dude or dudette is donning a sweater and slacks and says they are an anarchist they are more times than not an anarchist

The more cynical answer is that anarchists are generally non political and can not foresee any possibility of transformation.

Of course I concede there should be no purity tests for Anarchists (since I am against purity tests). Otherwise, I sound like what reactionaries say to anyone who claims the USSR wasn't an ideal example of true Marxism

If we, rightfully or wrongly are going to sustain an industrial society then anarchism doesn't seem to be a good thing to implement to sustain it.  Imagine the nightmare of attempting to organize a continent which spans a rail system or electrical grid via a patchwork of city-states, communes, and "horizontal structures." And our problems reach globally?

It's less clear to me that any specific US leftist faction has resisted idpol more so than others. It appears to be essentially bipartisan (amongst lefitsts), so to speak. Anarchists do seem more likely than not to be pronoun warriors, however

My post reflects the state of more anarchist discourse than non anarchist discourse, which is upsetting because as a part anarchist i like to think that my belief in it is more of a philosophical methodology than an actually achievable goal. 

Reformation to reduce hierarchical structures ultimately is way more useful and makes a heck of a lot more sense then to condemn a generic boogeyman based upon a child like reading of social cache systems. 

Its also vital to keep in mind that as much as it is in the end a good thing to make an effort to dismantle unjust hierarchical and cache structures and systems it moreover is vital to note that hierarchy can't simply be eliminated, even in the framework of an anarchic society, social hierarchies among individuals might still exist and any effort to prevent them from organically popping up is equally as oppressive as a hierarchy anyway under my vantage point

Anarchists are more times than not merely trying to appear edgy and don't actually have an understanding of the ways that societies really function. You might argue that nation states competing with each another is a type of anarchism on a grand scale. Wars sort of prove it doesn't work.

OR

You might also argue that the literal exact opposite of anarchism is yet another variant of anarchism.

But doesn't this also give credence to the fact then that anarchism does work as much as anything else ever might work, since if everything is anarchism as I wrote above and I simply erased the complete distinction?

There are two kinds of Anarchists: those Anarchists who want the state to keep out of their liberty, and those Anarchists who are set to implement their whim right when the state is abolished or retreats, one are vulgar libtards and the other is the self-serving oppression in the majority of history itself yet again. Consider if you might, what Edmund Burke stated here:

“But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths.”

The anarchism that we observe on reddit or any other place on social media (or in real life meetups of said social media Anarchists) except on the IDW, web3 forums, decentralized forums , alternative net and similar nooks and cranies of the net does not give you the complete picture (or in some respects not a true picture) of anarchism 

A lot of social media Anarchism ts controlled by left-wing feel good robots and at at the first light of conflict or if a different ideal gets adopted, said Anarchism gets terminated like a possessive power hungry fascist. .. If you want to get a unique and complete view of anarchism (or maybe a invisible main current of it) go on to IDW, web3 forums, decentralized forums , alternative net and similar nooks and cranies of the net where you can live out such a virtual Anarchist world (like a simplified version of Second Life)

In such unique, off the beaten path anarchist spaces as I mention above, they do not ban you for having populist or 'unacceptable' views. After all, Anarchism does not revolve around loving each other and being lovey dovey.  Of course in such unique and off the beaten path 'free speech' , synthesis anarchist spaces the audiences tend to be diverse in viewpoints and many of them by way of that tend to be the types with 'undesirable' , 'unsavory' and 'extremely edgy' views so there is that to keep in mind

So how do we Marxists reconcile the chasm above between Marxism and Anarchism? Well this article anarchism outlook mentioned here by Allan Antiff said that post anarchists (i.e post structuralists) like Todd May would appear to want Anarchist (i.e post anarchism) to embrace a similar concept of positive power to Marxism (or even Marxism Leninism) which would be one way to do so. I touch on this more in this post

My hyperreal, unironic ironic political views can be found here