If there’s a biggest indicator for me, it’s historical success. The only successful revolutions, in the global south in particular, have resoundly rejected anarchism in favor of Marxism Leninism.

These comrades are fighting for their lives, they understand the need for organized coercion, violence, and know that building the vanguard party is their immediate necessary task and most important thing they can do to survive.

Anarchism on the other hand is only embraced by the well to do in the imperial core, who, since they aren’t under threat of violence, can reject authority without actually challenging it.

Anarchism has been a tremendous historical failure, and it should be in the trash can along with all the other intellectual only trends that have died throughout history and are only studied as intellectual curiosities.

I totally agree. I really wanted to be an anarchist, since I like punk rock and the asthetic and the idea of federalized communes with no central authority and no hierachy. It was a long and dissapointing journey learning exactly how unrealistic anarchism is and how little historical relevency, or how it is basically only believed in the west in well to do countries. I swallowed the propaganda about China and the USSR under Stalin because other Anarchists believed it. I thought that MLs were the ones only in it for asthetics, I thought MLs were pretentious for using words like “scietific” to describe socialism. I eventually learned that Marxism, socialism are just the natural conclusions one comes to when using dielectial and historical materialism. I hear many Comrades talk about the Western leftists obsession with being an underdog because they have been losing for so long, if we assume that than it seems obvious why anarchism is so appealing to many. I maintain that as the material conditions change in America and the rest of the imperial core and possibility of revolution becomes more possible, Anarchists will see who are the disciplined ones making real progress and change thier tune much like you said.

CNT-FAI is barely an example of a solidly Anarchist state. It also included Communists and Liberals, it was generally just built of people who opposed Fascism in Spain. And, at that, the Anarchists were far more “authoritarian” and cruel than the Communists were, and further, the Anarchists had a lot of infighting with the Communists and were fully ready to weaken their movements and their fronts just to dab on the Communists.

The most “Anarchist” thing about CNT-FAI is the flag, had they won the war it likely would have become a state not unlike literally any other socialist state, not some Anarchist utopia. But the Anarchists put this example up on a pedestal along with the counter-revolutionaries in Russia and the Kurdish State (which isn’t a Libertarian project) because A. They don’t understand history, and B. They have no theory to assert themselves as a legitimate ideology for long-term liberation, and thus have to grasp at straws to prove to themselves that their idealism is possible.

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I love the idea of Anarchism, but it’s entirely unrealistic on a major scale. I think there’s one anarchist autonomous zone in Mexico (forgot the name), but it’s like a few tens of thousands of people in one smaller region. They also never even had to deal with a full-on fascist leader of Mexico who was willing to spill blood in order to destroy their society – if one came to power or if they posed a big threat, they would be crushed in 2 seconds.

Anarchists also bring up Rojava in Syria, but it’s only been around for 7 years, and recently when Turkey invaded they immediately had to ask Assad for help. And honestly, I’m not even sure how “anarchist” it even is, I’m not uber familiar with the situation there, only read a couple of things, and it seems more like a mix of different ideas.

In a purely idealistic discussion, I would probably side with anarchism more than with communism. HOWEVER, I’m also realistic and realize that’s a pipe dream.

Yeah, I would love a free society where no authority was needed and everyone just got along and helped one another, but that’s just not a reality we live in. It never worked on a large scale and it never will. You need a centralized power to enforce marxism and fight off any attempts at reactionary takeovers or outside influences (like, how would an anarchist country split among many different sections and no centralized military force fight off an invading fascist force for example?) and just, in general, take care of a million other problems that come with not having a centralized government.

The funniest thing to me that they love to bring up is the CNT-FAI – which was super authoritarian towards people who didn’t want to participate – but they brush that off as “not real authoritarianism.”

I wouldn’t throw out all of “anarchsim” Bakunin, Chomsky and a few others have some things to say about capitalist feudalism, propaganda etc that can be a bridge to more organized left politics, socialism, ML etc., Lenin in particular could be pragmatic in this way while never sacrificing the core of the method or message.