Left Unity.

 

      Left politics and right politics, where does the right stop and the left begin, how far left is still right, is left unity just another branch of the right, seems an odd way of classifying your political thoughts. Do you stand for no authority over others or just a little, do you think people need to be lead, or do you think that they can handle things by themselves. Do you think the people need some sort of leader to point the way and make sure they don't get it wrong, or do you think that people should be left to shape their own future, based on respect, equality, free association and responsibility, mistakes and all. I stand firmly in with latter.

The following is from Raddle:
Submitted by ziq in Anarchism (edited ) 

          The disturbing trend of anarcho-tankies we've been seeing can be traced back with a straight line to the proliferation of "left-unity" spaces
The biggest one is r/chapotraphouse and its spinoffs, along with r/dankleft, r/breadtube, r/genzanarchist, and probably leftbook and several youtube channels.
         Red fascists infiltrate the mod teams of these spaces and initiate left unity policies that successfully ban all criticism of their backwards conservative views. The more vocal opponents of the new policy are quickly purged for breaking left-unity, leaving a more passive audience who are ripe for indoctrination.
       Then the propaganda starts. Endless authoritarian memes to normalize gulags, guillotines, firing squads, violent struggle sessions and genocide. Tomes of nonsensical ideological "theory" that serves to brainwash young people who are starved for identity and belonging. Almost immediately, any ideas that conflict with the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Xi create desperate cognitive dissonance in their minds and the kids angrily lash out at the unindoctrinated for being "libs" and "imperialists" rather than risk parting with their new-found identity.
        Once the majority in the space are comfortable joking about murdering "kulaks", and quoting Chinese state media to counter "western propaganda", the shaming campaign begins.
        Anyone in the space who breaks with the tankie party line is lambasted and ridiculed into submission. The remaining anarchists in the space now find themselves hopelessly outnumbered by smug middle class white genocide fetishists telling them they're imperialist CIA stooges for thinking the Uighurs maybe shouldn't be put in concentration camps.
        In order to not be shunned by their peers, the anarchists adopt an obscene anarcho-tankie ideology that allows them to favor libertarian writers like Chomsky and Kropotkin, while embracing the authoritarian third positionist dogma enforced from the top down by their chosen community.
       Uncritical support for every nation (and empire) that opposes the "West", the insistance that anarchism and communism are one and the same because "they have the same end goal", the claim that anarchist communes and an ML state can co-exist in harmony, the attempt to whitewash authoritarian concepts like the dictatorship of the proletariat and the vanguard, the nonsensical belief that they can be an anarchist and also a Marxist. Suddenly they're able to take completely contradicting ideas and fuse them together in order to be accepted by the red fash echo chamber they so desperately want the approval of.
       The conflicting ideas grow increasingly out of whack the further down the rabbit hole the left unity space takes them, and the ridicule they get for their remaining libertarian attachments begins to eat at their ego, until finally they post "How I went from an anarkiddie to a principled Marxist-Leninist" and the transition is complete.
       Tldr: Left-unity is a deliberate ploy by disturbing groomers to indoctrinate impressionable young minds into their authoritarian third positionist fascist ideology and force them to abandon any libertarian beliefs they once had in order to be accepted within the collective's rigid hierarchy and not be branded a liberal or an anarkiddie for forming their own thoughts or questioning their leaders narratives in any way.
      "Left unity" is nothing more than tankie doublespeak for "obey us or be purged".

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The Next Step.

         Sometimes somebody makes a calculated prediction and it seems to come true many years later. I'm no disciple that worships at the feet of Lenin, but I think, in this case, his prediction of capitalist development was spot on.

 

        Of course accepting his development of capitalism is just one step, the next step is how to stop that continuing power struggle between these financial and corporate competing imperial powers that continue to be responsible for countless millions of lives lost unnecessarily, devastation and misery for millions more and vast swaths of poverty and deprivation, not to mention the destruction of the planet's ecosystem. They won't be beaten by smart phones, but by ordinary people on the streets of every country in the world, all with the one aim, to take back control of our own lives by mutual aid, co-operation, sustainability, respect for all humanity, the planet and all its varied life forms.

The following is an extract from an article by By Pål Steigan

The imperialist powers divide the world according to the power relations between them

      Lenin gave the best and most durable explanation for this, in his essay «Imperialism – the highest stage of capitalism«. There, he explained five basic features of the era of imperialism:

1. The concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life;
2. The merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy;
3. The export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance;
4. The formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves; and
5. The territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed.
   

       But Lenin also pointed out that capitalist countries are developing unevenly, not least because of the uneven development of productive forces in the various capitalist countries. After a while, there arises a discrepancy between how the world is divided and the relative strength of the imperialist powers. This disparity will eventually force through a redistribution, a new division of the world based on the new relationship of strength. And, as Lenin states:

“The question is: what means other than war could there be under capitalism to overcome the disparity between the development of productive forces and the accumulation of capital on the one side, and the division of colonies and spheres of influence for finance capital on the other?“

       The two world wars were wars that arose because of unevenness in the power relationships between the imperialist powers. The British Empire was past its heyday and British capitalism lagged behind in the competition. The United States and Germany were the great powers that had the largest industrial and technological growth, and eventually this misalignment exploded. Not once, but twice.-------

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Workers Know Your History, Communist And "Communist".

      To some people looking at the political split in the left here in UK, communist and "communist", it may seem as if it was always so, but in our not so distant past, anarchist, socialist and communist all stood under the anti-parliamentarian banner.  It was the formation of the Communist Party of Great Britain around 1921 that caused the damaging split that we are still suffering from today. It was because of this that the Anti-parliamentary Communist Federation, APCF was formed in 1921. For those who are not familiar with the history of that era there is a very good article in The Free Communist:

      It was hoped to create a Communist federation out of these remaining groups. The principle of federation — a federation of Communist groups developed voluntarily from below rather than an imposed centralisation from above — was always an important and consistent part of the anti-parliamentary movement’s proposals for unity. Aldred summarised the position in The Spur:
       I have no objections to an efficient and centralised party so long as the authority rests in the hands of the rank and file and all officials can be sacked at a moment’s notice. But I want the centralism to be wished for and evolved by the local groups and not imposed on them from a centre. . . . The Communist party, the real party, must be evolved through a federation of local groups, a slow merging of them into one party, from the bottom upwards, as distinct from this imposition from the top downwards. (August 1920)
     The idea of federation was coupled with a demand for self-determination — the British revolutionaries should determine their own policy in relation to British conditions, irrespective of what Lenin and the Bolsheviks might say. Lenin was faced with different circumstances, Aldred argued, and might be forced to compromise to save the Russian Revolution, but in Britain there was no such excuse for compromise:
       Lenin’s task compels him to compromise with all the elect of bourgeois society whereas ours demands no compromise. And so we take different paths and are only on the most distant speaking terms.
Or, more directly, we should stop ‘chasing the shadows of the great man [Lenin]. . . . It is not he who is running the British Revolution, but “ourselves alone”. The policy of looking to him to mind our business is hindering and not helping the revolution.’ But increasingly such advice from Aldred and a few others was ignored, as the move to join the CPGB gathered pace.

Read the full article HERE:

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LET'S RETURN TO ANARCHISM!

      The arrogance of most modern economist that the capitalist state system that we have devised is an advancement from the more “primitive” societies and also a natural progression in development, is more and more being challenged. As we start to understand the structures of those earlier societies we realise that anarchism is not just a template for the future, but also a welcome echo from the past. Far from our capitalist state system being the "pinnacle" of evolution, it is proving to be a massive retrograde step. Lots of those earlier societies functioned on none hierarchical structures and lasted, in some cases, for thousands of years. I found the following article very interesting, perhaps you will also. 

This is from Wild Culture: 

       -------As early as 1925, the founder of French anthropology, Marcel Mauss was famously advocating the alternative morality of stateless societies in his “Essay on the Gift”. His study of gift exchange in kinship societies – like the potlatch of the American Indians of the Pacific Southwest and the elaborate Kula rings of the Trobriand Islanders – challenged the universal assumption that economies without markets or money must operate by means of barter. Far from seeking to engage in market behaviour, in which each party strives to get the best goods possible at the least cost to themselves, Mauss postulated that gift economies were not based on calculation at all, but on a refusal to calculate. It was not that they had failed to develop a system sophisticated enough to yield profit in an efficient way, but rather that these exchange systems were rooted in an ethical system which consciously rejected the basic notions on which we generally believe economics to be based.

      Mauss, a revolutionary socialist, aligned himself with many classic anarchist positions, but he never actually described himself as one. Significantly, another Frenchman, Pierre Clastres – who was a self-proclaimed anarchist – became well known for making a similar argument to Mauss on a political level. Whilst Mauss used anthropology to illuminate ways in which it was possible to build an anti-capitalist economy (as a response to the crisis of Lenin’s socialism), Clastres used anthropology to demonstrate how it was possible for power to operate in an egalitarian, non-coercive manner. By considering the power structures of stateless societies on their own terms Clastres found a way to politicise primitive societies. In doing so, he radically challenged the notion, outlined most prominently by Thomas Hobbes, that state power is a necessary illusion.

Read the full article HERE:

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WHERE TO NOW, WHERE, TODAY?

      From The Anarchist International:

Thesis:

The majority of the Anarchist International does not reside in the country, in the small town, or on the periphery of capitalism. The majority of us inhabit the centers of global capital and spend our lives close to our enemies heart. One side effect of living in such close proximity to these glowing cores of money and power is a confusion as to what reality is like for those who live far away and near the edge. Military suppression, famines, civil war, and urban guerrilla warfare are commonplace in nation states such as India, China, the Philippines, and Afghanistan. Those inhabiting the interior sometimes trick themselves into thinking they understand what living in these situations is like, but obviously they do not.

 Continue READING:

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