this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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As someone who's read Marx and lenin, and Bakunin and Goldman... not to mention kroptikin(god damn that guy bullshat his way through conquest of bread)
The anarchists always decry practical steps that are needed for the transition, but they have a poverty of ideas when it comes to propose better alternative solutions to the problems faced by actual revolutions. And frankly, reading their literature I understand why. They're still hung up on ideas and values and not material analysis much more than MLs. They're still trapped within liberal hegemonic thought though they are against liberal capitalism.
Neither the anarchist revolutions in Ukraine nor Spain seemed to lack "practical steps"... what they did lack, however, was practical steps for turning into a reactionary elite as soon as they seized power - something the Bolsheviks and their ideological spawn seems to have no problems with.
They absolutely did, their inability to coordinate and make compromises during wartime absolutely led to their failures as revolutions.
Oh... being (respectively) stabbed in the back by Bolsheviks and being sabotaged by Stalin had absolutely nothing to do with it, eh?
No, tankie... I don't think you've read any anarchist literature at all.
Yes, the Spanish anarchists were unsuccessful because Stalin, and not because they refused to be integrated with the popular front(which even the fucking liberals joined), including militarily until the war was already well lost, which made coordinated actions against the fascists with the popular front impossible
The lessons of the Spanish civil war dont reflect well on the anarchist movement there.
so now we are gonna start calling names. Cool, very mature.
Well, then... what do you think we should call them? Do remember... it was Marxist-Leninists themselves that came up with that term.