• Rom [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    His comments on reddit seem pretty based otherwise. One of his comments wrt ideology:

    I would say if I have to work with non-anarchists, I would rather work with less ideologically committed folks than with dogmatic adherents of any hierarchical ideology. The “I just think social services and wealth redistribution is neat” social democrat is better (in some ways at least) than the “THE PROLETARIAT WILL BE SAVED BY THE VICTORY OF MY IDEOLOGICALLY PURE PARTY” ML. By the same token, the casual “I just like reading Lenin” ML can be better than the “Revolution is an immature and uncivilized idea, capitalism is the best system actually and just needs a few tweaks” social democrat. The difference lies in the potential for the less ideologically committed individuals to participate in anarchistic tactics and be radicalized in a libertarian direction.

    I think if he had a few more years he would have probably cooled off on the ML hate, even if he wouldn’t have become an ML himself. We all figure these things out at our own paces.

    • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      I just don’t particularly understand how you can be part of the strictest hierarchical structure that exists, understand how efficient it is and what we are fighting, and then somehow lambast MLs for wanting a strict hierarchical structure for the revolutionary party because we understand what we’re fighting against.

      It’s just so contradictory.

        • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          Maybe you can think “this isn’t efficient” but anyone who thinks about it for a few minutes can see how it’s more efficient than nobody taking or giving any orders at all.

          Doesn’t have to be efficient, just has to be more efficient than the alternatives.

          If someone can come up with something more efficient I will immediately switch to it.

          • CatoPosting [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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            9 months ago

            Maybe efficiency isn’t everything. Maybe you could try to see how, having grown up under one hierarchical boot, and then working inside of another, they could feel that hierarchy will always be oppressive and therefore should be struggled against.

            • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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              9 months ago

              Efficiency is everything in a zero-sum war between capitalism and revolutionaries.

              You either do shit better than them or you lose. It’s really as simple as that. The revolutionary forces need to become strong enough to overcome the defence forces of capitalism.

              There are two ways to this:

              1. Building a more efficient revolutionary army than the army of the state.
              2. The army of the state becoming so resource-stretched that it becomes weaker than the revolutionary army.

              Or most likely: A combination of the above.

              You can try and be completely disorganised and just hope that the state collapses so fucking hard that it can’t even fight a leaderless revolution with no hierarchy. But seriously consider that that isn’t going to be allowed to happen by foreign capitalists who WILL intervene when the moment of collapse occurs if things get that bad. More likely things wouldn’t ever get that bad too, which is why you need the vanguard to begin with, to push things truly over the edge, to place a thumb on the scales.

                • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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                  9 months ago

                  The soviet union was less efficient in that it allowed compradors to take power and end it. It was a less efficient proletarian-dictatorship than the rival bourgeoise-dictatorship. Its principle mistake were structural mistakes allowing the liberals into power.

                • zed_proclaimer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  9 months ago

                  Yeah having all of their cities and a quarter of their population destroyed will do that.

                  Under Stalin and Lenin it was extremely efficient, growing and developing the economy at extreme rates unseen in human history up that point until the German invasion of WW2. The destruction of WW2 and the Liberal-revisionist take-over of the post-war government after Stalin’s death led to liberalization and stagnation right at the time where they needed to recover the most via command planned economy. Kruschev’s social imperialism and revisionism led to the Sino-Soviet split.

                  There was a failure there, a failure in purging out the social-imperialists and revisionists like Krushchev and his ilk.

        • zed_proclaimer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          Regardless it’s very evident it would smear every anarcho-commune on earth in a millisecond if it felt like it. You cannot compete with organized imperialism with rifles and a can do attitude.

      • mar_k [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        I mean he clearly regretted joining and felt guilty about being part of that structure, considering some of his last words were “I am an active-duty member of the United States Air Force, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide

      • HexBroke [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        The transition to anarchism seems to have happened while he was in the military, I’m sure few months with leftist orgs on the outside would have shown the value of ML

    • ProletarianDictator [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      this dude was maybe a year or two off from being an ML. Once you’re at this stage of opinion, things tend to snowball. Shoulda popped onto his stream and paid him in Twitch currency to read Blackshirts and Reds