What’s wrong with syndicalism? I was watching Thomas Sankara: the upright man, and he specifically said down with anarcho-syndicalism. They seem to be one of the more decent strains of anarchism, the USSR supported them in Catalonia, maybe it’s my bias as someone who was introduced to Marxism through syndicalism, but I can’t see much wrong with them. Is it a lack of materialist analysis?
At a certain point its just about not wanting to call yourself a communist. A majority of westerners have very negative opinions about the socialist world. It helps them maintain the, “what we have is bad, but it’s the best we have;” mindset. You can associate with anyone in order to advance your motive as long as you don’t compromise your own understanding in the process; at the same time, you should be willing to defend the socialist world and its history from our supposed allies. Their spite and prejudice towards communism is their greatest hindrance, as well as ours as a movement.
Seriously. You can say some of the tankiest shit to these people and they’ll nod along up until the point where you ask them to sympathize with AES. And then it’s like a switch gets flipped and they revert back to liberal insanity. How in the world do they expect to challenge capitalism in their first world home countries, which is centered around US empire, without supporting the nations that are resisting said empire?
Hell, we don’t need them to even “like” or be knowledgeable about socialism in other countries. We just need them to recognize the enormous fucking primary contradiction that is US imperialism and divert their energy towards challenging that. If they can’t even do that, they’ll never get their wish for whatever utopia they have in their heads.
As far as not needing them to “like” the socialist world. I don’t see why they can’t just admit they don’t know everything and it’s not their primary concern.
I have tremendous respect for China and follow all the little stories when they come up, but my knowledge of China is very limited. China isn’t an immediate concern in my life.
As you say, it’s not even about getting them to like China, the USSR, DPRK, and the like. All we really need for them to do is lay off, and just recognized the shared humanity between us and them. They aren’t cartoons.
Syndicalism is an ideology which puts the premise that the government should be ran by unions, instead of a party. This, therefore, makes Syndicalism as somewhat of a ‘decentralised’ ideology, instead of one which focuses on centralisation, like the Vanguard party developed within Marxist-Leninist theory.
The issue with Syndicalism is that it is insufficient for praxis, and that Syndicalism in reality does not exist in the modern day. Rosa Luxemburg also debunked the fact that unions are not effective:
[T]he objective conditions of capitalist society transform the two economic functions of the trade unions into a sort of labour of Sisyphus, which is, nevertheless, indispensable. For as a result of the activity of his trade unions, the worker succeeds in obtaining for himself the rate of wages due to him in accordance with the situation of the labour-power market. As a result of trade union activity, the capitalist law of wages is applied and the effect of the depressing tendency of economic development is paralysed, or to be more exact, attenuated. However, the transformation of the trade union into an instrument for the progressive reduction of profit in favour of wages presupposes the following social conditions; first, the cessation of the proletarianisation of the middle strata of our society; secondly, a stoppage of the growth of productivity of labour. We have in both cases a return to pre-capitalist conditions, Co-operatives and trade unions are totally incapable of transforming the capitalist mode of production. [1]
This is not the whole story, as Anarcho-Syndicalism inherits syndicalism, but instead despises the state and any form of government. This means that not only they inherit the flaws of Syndicalism, they inherit the flaws of Anarchism as well. Meaning they’re not only ineffective, but they’re also incredibly ineffective as well. Just because Anarcho-Syndicalism is a more ‘decent’ strain, it doesn’t mean they’re right or that they are effective.
deleted by creator
I have heard a very, very different take of Catalonia, and their very anarchist related failures. Let me find an exert I remember…
Anything with “anarcho” in the prefix is the same to me. They might have 1,000 different made-up micro-ideologies that purport to be the One True Pure Utopia, but they are all IMO just fictional hair-splitting done inside people’s heads.
Likewise, I don’t really like to spend time differentiating different types of Marxism-Leninism. Communists tend to either be MLs, or ultras/Trots, simple. Beyond that, there’s little point dividing us into infinite camps (in MOST discussions, not to say nothing can be learned from all the many tweaks to the base ideas).
No hate btw just my 2 cents.
The 2nd article here really gets to the main point.
I liked this from the reddit comments:
“Anarchism is a metaphysical, moral theory which postulates ahistorical, acontextual “truths” such as: violence and domination are immoral, therefore we oppose them in all situations, etc etc etc.”
“Anarchism takes the moral categories inherited from bourgeois philosophy and ethics (such as the individual subject, possessor of rights and property, etc) as given, and tries to go beyond them while still basing itself on these categories. Marxism critiques these moral categories and points a way beyond them, through revolutionary practice.”
edit: and I liked that post from aimixin and parentis_shotgun as well
https://dashthered.medium.com/where-do-tanks-come-from-8723ff77d83b
from the article:
Anarchism is outdated and irrelevant, already, it’s just a matter of the last remaining anarchists (existing overwhelmingly in the West, being predominantly white, and largely from the middle classes) to acknowledge it, but have yet to do so.
There is a reason that all the revolutions in the poorest and most oppressed places on the planet, still today, practice Marxism-Leninism and not Anarchism. It isn’t because they aren’t aware of anarchism — this dismissals of the Global South as not being just as politically aware as Western anarchists is backwards and chauvinist. Anarchists are not important, at all in the real world of today, and themselves need to find reason to dismiss or even dehumanize the vast numbers of Marxist-Leninist around the globe (especially in the Global South), to validate their already dead philosophy.
deleted by creator
