this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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chapotraphouse

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 8 months ago (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 8 months ago (2 children)

This assumes they see it as efficient. They hated it. They chafed under it.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

I think the work you are looking for is effective. You really don’t understand military structure if you think they will be more efficient than your cells.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Efficiency is everything because if your system is less efficient you will be destroyed by the more efficient one

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (3 children)

So the Soviet Union was less efficient than the US, got it.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

Yeah assuming that the better system always wins out is pure ideology. Everything is circumstance. A bunch of crabs that recently learned how to make spears and developed minor mathematical capabilities could defeat a nuclear nation given the right circumstances. And whoever is the Victor is not automatically correct.

AES is in many ways a good term, especially because it reminds us we should materially support the projects that actually currently threaten global capitalism, but the implicit ideology that “survival = more morally correct” is incorrect at it’s core. I’m an ML because I actually think the vanguard party is a good idea from a theory perspective and a historical perspective, not because the vanguard party winning all the time is morally right. Morality has nothing to do with it. And if you were to bring morality into the equation, I would actual agree with anarchists because the society they describe is both possible and better than one that is newly socialist, I just don’t think it’s possible right now.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 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"

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Yeah, I only became ML after actually doing real shit; I don't think he had the chance.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Not everyone fundamentally believes that vertical hierarchy is inherently superior than horizontal organization. One could have a theoretical basis for this or hold the opinion out of pure reactionism. And it could be a strong or soft opinion. I'm not going to argue one way or another, but seeing how strong an enemy is does not mean one must believe that enemy wields perfect power.