Title. Is it because looser adventurism gets more headlines? is it an image thing? Dunno how to articulate reliably what I’m thinking, just seems like all I hear about are “anarchists squat building”, or about food not bombs (admirable work so I hear), or is it just down to difficulty in organising in other groups?
Enough anarchist are fine with supporting NATO. “Critical Support” this is called.
It is more compatible with bourgeois ideology than someone may think. Maybe you can give some exemples where you read this headlines, posts on Reddit are also OK.
If we’re focusing on media, recently, because of the word “antifa” being tied to anarchists and being used to scaremonger by the media. The media generally scaremonger with “communists” referring to external threats and “anarchists” referring to internal threats (unless its policy or a politician, those can be labeled anarchist or communist or socialist).
In my view, in the US it comes down to obstacles to organizing ML movements. Anarchists don’t get as strong pushback from the state because they’re less of a credible threat to state power if things “get out of hand.” CHAZ, for example, didn’t last long and didn’t overthrow state power. Because of the instability of large-scale anarchist organizations and the tendency of their movements to fizzle out, the US government doesn’t need to put as much effort into Cointelpro, infiltration, and wrecking efforts. The need to protect against police infiltration and the extensive false consciousness, chauvinism, and anti-intellectualism of American settlers and labor aristocracy means that you need to spend a lot of time and effort vetting and training new members, of whom there are not that many candidates in the first place. Then, suppose you successfully organize a vanguard party, which currently doesn’t exist even in a nascent form. In that case, you need to get broad support among the people heavily affected by false consciousness, which requires extensive and expensive propaganda campaigns. Adopting a cell-based organizing system like al-Qaeda is necessary for the long-term success of underground or illegal Marxist-Leninist organizing in the United States, as such organizations are harder to infiltrate. It becomes difficult to organize a vanguard party under such circumstances.
I think you are overlooking some key things here. Anarchists definitely suffer similar forms of state repression. In fact the free kitchen I work for on occasion has been targeted by 3 sweeps in 2 years.
If you read my post carefully, you’ll see I said anarchists don’t get as strong pushback from the state. I stand by that statement 100%. It doesn’t mean that I think anarchist movements don’t face repression from the state. Getting targeted by sweeps is not in the same ballpark as Mccarthyism, Cointelpro, and assassinations of leadership. As MLs we seek to build enough power to credibly challenge the power of the state, and that naturally provokes a proportional response from the state and requires an adequate defense from the state. That’s not to say that anarchist movements don’t have value especially given how thoroughly ML movements are coopted and repressed. It makes sense to provide mutual aid in the short term especially given how oppressed people can be in this country, and you’re doing good work. But it’s not a movement that needs to be defended in the same way as it’s more compatible with the existing state than what we’re trying to do.
I am saying that we often face more direct immediate repression and I can provide evidence. This isn’t a contest or anything though just saying we get just as much flak.
The sad fact for Marxists in the west is that the Anarchists are more organized and do more praxis these days.
I find it very annoying when my fellow comrades respond to the actions taken by Anarchists or non-Marxists by simply belittling them.
“occupy did nothing. chaz was doomed from the start. etc.”If we think we are supposed to be the vanguard, the most proactive guardians and forward pushers of the working class’s power, we need to start doing shit. Because right now we’re a laughing stock of sit-around bookreaders arguing theology.
Our main attack against all other forms of socialism are that they’ve never won and secured a worker state. Well right now the Marxists in the west haven’t even started.
Marxists who do nothing but post will come up with some horrible names to call me which are just new fancier versions of “heretic” but as it stands, (on average) even the least read anarchist in Food Not Bombs has done more to advance worker power than the most well read “Marxist” in a typical org.
The clearest example I can think of:
It wasNew York CityAnarchists working as part of the Direct Action Network who secured the massive abolition of Third World debt owed to the IMF. And it is not exaggeration to say they also almost suceeded in abolishing the IMF entirely. Despite the most vocal opposition to the IMF coming from us Marxists, it seems right now we are all talk. We must improve.EDIT: I misremembered: DAN was most active in NYC but the anti-IMF successes were across the US not just NYC.
Because our praxis is immediatist and there is nothing resembling a vanguard party in the imperial core.
I am extremely jade about this. A lot of action that is taken can be reduced down to anxiety relief and identy expression. Anarchists and many leftist types fetishize action but imo it just increases the amount of masterbatory, self serving actions that are more about profile building than anything else.
There is the trope that western leftists don’t do anything. Haha… Well it’s actually a lot worse than that I’m afraid. It’s also that the actions that are taken are also undignified. It’s not just a lack of organization or action that holds us back.
