I had a discussion with @[email protected] recently where they insisted that Anarchists on Hexbear accept Lenin’s analysis of Imperialism and therefore all support “Actual Existing Socialist” states such as Cuba, USSR and I guess North Korea as well.
In fact, they argued it’s the reason most anarchists of Hexbear don’t like to discuss anarchism away from hexbear, explicitly because outside anarchists do not support “AES”.
So I’m curious to see what your thoughts are on this. If you’re an anarchist who supports “AES” how do you square this support with the conflict these states have with anarchist theory on hierarchy?
Dude I can’t even get them to acknowledge China isn’t a good guy in every action, don’t bother.
Is Anarcho-Leninism a thing now? It sounds as antithetical as an atheist regularly going to the [place of cult] to pray.
Since they’re all over the place in that other post already, some Hexbear anarchists can surely take a little time off from dunking in order to explain how they deal with such a contradiction, and what it means exactly for them.Just as I support Ukraine, even though they are far from anarchists, (because I see them as victims of imperialism and I see the Ukrainian state as less oppressive than the Russian one), I can imagine it is not necessarily contrarian for an anarchist to support a state. I have an ideal world I can imagine which takes an anarcho-communist form, but also a more pragmatic ideology within the current state of affairs in the world. I imagine a lot of anarchists have this.
As a sidenote I think Hexbear and Lemmy.ml (Or any leninists) tend to lean heavily towards authoritarianism and I think that that is contradictory to anarchist pricinciples in itself. The “AES” tend to be as oppressive if not more than western capitalist ones and monopolise violence to a greater degree.
I think you have the right values, but I think your conclusion is a bit off. I think supporting a state is antithetical to being an anarchist. You can support the people, and not a state. For example I support the Ukrainian people in their defense against the Russian state’s imperialism, however I do not support the Ukrainian state. I think its fine to think some states are better than others, but supporting a state is something else entirely. We need to break away from the idea of the nation state, and stop equating people with the nation state they are a part of.
Edit: To add to this, I do not think an anarcho-communist society is idealism, and I don’t think we should settle for a “pragmatic” alternative. I think too many anarchists have fallen into a defeatist mentality, and while support anarchism, they dont believe it to be tangible. I think that is what makes anarchism intangible currently, too many of us don’t believe we can win. We lose by giving up
I get what you’re saying but this is how my brain works:
In the current state of affairs, I support the Ukrainian state in it’s defence against Russian imperialism. However, ideally, in my view, all states, including the Ukrainian one should not exist.
Then my question is why support the state at all?
I support it in it’s defence. I don’t support it in itself if you get what I mean.
I feel like simply supporting the people in their defense accomplishes the same thing without also supporting nation states in any way.
I guess it depends how you phrase it.
AES is a solid symmetric encryption standard. I support the use of it. However I think you might be referring to something else?
“Actually Existing Socialism”
I support worker co-ops for sure.
Yeah worker owned businesses are lit. As are communes.
It’s also a power company
From what I’ve gathered, Hexbear is just incredibly tankie driven. It wouldn’t surprise me if there are self-proclaimed “anarchists” on there that are just tankies painted black, du to social pressure.
As many have pointed out: anarchists usually don’t support “AES”. The spectrum I’ve seen ranges from “1917 was actually a bourgeois revolution” to “they tried but got corrupted in some way”.
> “Actually existing socialism”
> look inside
> capitalism, but the state is the capitalist
Every time, without issue. “My capitalism cool because it’s red!”
What? Anarchism is generally anti-statist and socialists sure love to shoot anarchists. By the logic of AES, Anarchists should support Assad and not the YPG since one is “anti-imperialist” and the other exists due to US military support.
Hey I’m as confused as you are. Which is why I opened this thread.
definitely sounds like tankie shit. glad we’re on the same page.
There’s a ton of ways to be an anarchist and the diversity of ideas is something generally celebrated, but the one minimum requirement is that you aren’t supportive of states (and hierarchy of course, but I’m just talking about the literal meaning of anarchy here), especially authoritarian states…
Oh.
Not Advanced Encryption Standard. Right.
No, I don’t support EAS in that context, because none of the states that they’re citing are anything other than deeply, profoundly authoritarian.
If there’s anarchists on Hexbear and none of them speak against AES, it’s because they know not to mention it.
I guess I could see some anarchists support vague nonsense that sounds similar to an ML. Like having even less sympathy for an openly capitalist regime than ones that are or purport to be socialist. But they’re obviously not anarchists if they genuinely support some states.
That makes about as much sense as “anarcho-capitalism”. Of course it’s no fun to have your mental gymnastics questioned outside of Hexbear 😅
But ok, for the sake of argument, maybe a dysfunctional late-stage AES is a more suitable ground for building something in the shell of the old. At least people in these states know from first hand experience just how bad state control can get.
Edit: curious that you left out China in your list of AES.
I’m actually not up to date on what the ML analysis on China is lately. Do they still consider it “AES” or is it seen more capitalist nowadays? I can’t always keep up with the mental gymnastics on display :D
Hexbear doesn’t care about the answer to that question. They support modern-day Russia which doesn’t have any pretense of socialism. Their stance is first and foremost anti-American. Anything else is window dressing.
Do they? I have blocked a few but mostly I see them either being sad at conscription of ukranian people to fight dumb imperial shit (conscription being bad seems uncontroversial to me), and supporting resistance to USA imperialism as necessary while acknowledging the Russian state is deeply disfunctional and exploitative.
Using anything about America to justify Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine is an obvious attempt to rationalise their support for something indefensible. The only involvement America has in this particular war is helping the victim of an invasion defend themselves.
I don’t think many people are glad Russia invaded.
You should probably not confuse countries and people though, while invading is bad the usa and allies using this as a proxy war to weaken Russia has just resulted in more Ukrainian people dying. It’s not actually helping any of the people in the invaded regions to conscript them and send them into a meat grinder to die. Regardless of who ends up paying taxes to whom after all this shitloads of normal people on both sides are dead, while elites lose nothing either way.
Hexbear anarchists are sus, all two of them. I won’t say they’re categorically not anarchists, but I’m going to be automatically suspicious of any anarchist that loves hanging out with Leninists.
Just in terms of self preservation instincts if nothing else
No. Broadly the way I’ve squared it is that I support specific policies and adopting of said policies, where even if they are not anarchist in principle properly benefit the working class or limit oppression in some capacity, if a state implements these I will support that decision, but not the existence of that state or more generally a state at all.
I feel as though most marxist leninists types of people want to divide people on other countries issues while not fixing issues where they live. Most anarchists I know are showing up to mutual aid, cussing out city council members for empowering cops and are in general more helpful.
The last writings of Lenin was 1923 a hundred years have since passed. Most marxists leninists I know haven’t read Murray Bookchin. Or don’t like to equate an Andrewism video to the the writings of Marx or Lenin. It’s like they think time stood still.
This also seems to be the case with most Marxists Leninists perspective on forgien policy as well. To think of North Korean as anything other then a monarchy doesn’t feel inline with either of Marx or Lenin’s writings. The USSR was what happens when a country with barely enough capitol becomes communist country in a short amount of time and unfortunately sometimes even forced.
Which brings me to Cuba. Cuba is a socialist country that has been constantly harassed, escalated, and intervened with. Cuda would be a successful socialist country if other countries wouldn’t treat them as a stage to dispute their differences and not recognizing things like the bay of pigs and the Cuban missile crisis in their history is very short sighted. Just as not recognizing current day atrocious that still take place there to this day.
As an anarchist I observe that Obama said he wanted to close Guantánamo but didn’t. And come to the conclusion that the military industrial complex wouldn’t let that happen. Free the people in Guantánamo detention camp. Return Guantánamo bay to the people of Cuba. Dissolve the CIA hold them accountable. End the Patriot act. Fuck the police. Abolish the prison industrial complex. Abolish the military industrial complex.
Can we make a list of countries that are AES without having fascist / totalitarian characteristics?
I have seen Cowbee write AES, but I thought the term was specifically to avoid something like NK counting against their arguments. I don’t understand how NK is AES? I’ll have to ask them which places are AES at all next time I see them use it.
North Korea doesn’t even claim that Juche is socialism anymore.
Yes. Here we go:
