Vote with your wallet

When are we going to finally accept that this is nothing but a delusion? How many failed boycotts over and over will it take?

Thank you for being willing to engage sanely in the first place. <3

You made the point that the Black Army was critical to the war effort. I made the point that the USSR was also critical to the Black Army’s war effort.

The relevance to the discussion should be apparent. I’m not sure how much clearer I need to be.

I have literally never disputed this. I’ve never met an anarchist that did. Of course, its always the case that according to MLs they know plenty of anarchists that say they want to burn little babies alive, but I even conceded that whoever thinks this isn’t the case is wrong. You keep bringing it up as if its a super own that changes everything, it really doesn’t.

Right. So you’re obviously operating under this notion that the Makhnovists were intending on a path of peaceful coexistence with the Bolsheviks. There’s a very clear pattern of outright antagonism towards the Bolsheviks across Makhno’s reign. This “UwU I’m just a smol anarchist bean who wants to be free to do my own thing, why not just leave me be?” routine doesn’t hold waters.

It seems to me like you made up an angry baby anarchist in your head to be mad about instead of going against anything real people believe. It’s very clear the relationship was extremely wary and purely out of political convenience, and once again, I’ve never met any anarchist who disputes this, much less well read people.

To just pretend that the anarchists persecuted and purged the poor little innocent bolsheviks out of nowhere and for no reason other than ideology is just as idiotic and ignorant of what was really happening. Once again, we are all supposed to excuse and understand and give the benefit of the doubt to and even support bolsheivk attrocities no matter how repressive, bloody and absurd, but anything bad an anarchist does is “those evil anarkiddies!!!” with no other context or reason.

There was a very serious distrust that the bolsheviks were just taking advantage of them and treating them like useful idiots, giving basically scraps as “aid” with increasingly pressuring terms and conditions that they would not even get that if they didn’t immediately stop being anarchists (a tactic they would repeat with catalonia btw). It is completely understandable that they thought the very openly anti-anarchist bolsheviks that were helping out were going to backstab them when they had the chance to. What would you have done in that situation, smartass?

In fact, while we’re talking about it, it’s funny that you’d demand such a thing for a group which did not extend the same idea to the Mennonites and the German settlers. Strange how you’d demand this for one group and yet apparently have no concern about extending it to others

Whataboutism (and a bunch of propaganda).

Can’t wait for another reply from you which relies on vibes and convenient narratives to summarily dismiss historical facts which go against your beliefs.

The only one trying to push a narrative here is you. By your own admission that was the aim of your entire post.

Can’t wait for more handwringing over a gasp! Lenin pfp. (I bet you don’t do this for the gang-raping and ethnociding Makhno when you see his pfp, do you? Spare me your feigned outrage and your hypocrisy.)

What exactly is hypocritical about not arguing with someone who… agrees with me? You spare me the propaganda too, please.

Makhno PFPs have been some of my best friends and among the most kind and honest people I’ve ever met. On the other side, I’ve yet to meet a Lenin PFP that treats me with basic respect, you being no exception, so excuse me for being wary.

Can’t wait for an anarchist to assume a position of unjust hierarchy over my own opinions on the matter.

What the fuck are you talking about? Are you just trying to carve in as many “owns” as possible into your post? We’re in a forum entirely consisting of people who dislike everything I stand for, you really don’t need to.

…I’ve made one effortpost. I’ve written it on some factors in Makhnovia.

Are you planning to sign up to my Patreon or something? If not, by what right do you demand that I write on topics that you feel are the most important for me to research and write about?

Sorry if I expressed myself wrongly. I never demanded you to do anything. I said that the USSR had a tendency to abandon any socialist movement that wasn’t exactly aligned with theirs, one that they carried to their grave. You said you’re soon going to talk about Catalonia, and I merely said that this applies to statist leftists just as much.

Sigh… as usual, engaging with you people is always incredibly pointless and frustrating. As many accusations of “vibes only” you always throw, you always mainly rely on giving a vibe of owning the other person, just like conservatives.

You can’t have a basic conversation with another person, you must always be disrespectful, mocking, smug, belittling and angry. That’s so much more important to you than an actual argument, that you always end up showing a complete and utter lack of understanding of even the most basic principles of what anarchism even stands for or wants, while claiming you know it better than us. I don’t know if this mentality just stuck to you after reading so much Lenin or if it’s a genuine tactic, but every single one of you I’ve met has always done the exact same thing, no matter if I approach respectfully or not.

I’m extremely tired of this argument and I’m going to disengage. I hope you have a good day.

I am sorry for being agressive. I mostly assumed you thought the same things as the person you were quoting. I appreciate that you at least admit you aren’t well read enough, that’s more than most people I talk to.

I’m happy to receive some recs I can follow up on.

I really appreciate this too. Thank you. I think as a direct expanding on what I’m talking about, this essay is very good:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anark-the-state-is-counter-revolutionary

It’s available on video form too, but the video doesn’t have citations.

Here’s a good rebuttal of On Authority:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/london-anarchist-federation-the-problems-with-on-authority

A modern and a classical reading on how anarchists view authority and power:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anark-power

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/mikhail-bakunin-what-is-authority

I’ve come across plenty.

Cool. They’re wrong. Doesn’t change what the USSR did.

And the USSR provided critical materiel to the Makhnovists at a time when they had dwindling supplies so, in turn, the USSR helped the Makhnovists survive but yet again, historical facts escape the convenient narrative it seems.

Seriously, what’s the point of insisting on this? Even assuming that we for some reason never knew about the soviet aid (We did, what kind of anarchists are you talking to?), what they did in the end is still deplorable.

If we’re helping each other survive, and once you can survive on your own (in a big part thanks to me), you shoot me in the back of the head, it doesn’t stop being something shitty to do just because I expected it, or because you had helped me too before you decided to shoot me.

Stick around for my effort posts on Revolutionary Catalonia and, eventually, the Kronstadt Rebellion I guess. There’s plenty more to learn from history.

Can’t wait for another Lenin PFP to say the sabotage didn’t happen, and if it did it was minor, and if it wasn’t it was their fault, and if it wasn’t they should have expected it, and if they did they deserved it anyway, and if they didn’t anarchists were sabotaging too, and if they weren’t well they still couldn’t endure it so clearly anarchism doesn’t work.

Also… why do you stick to anarchism? What I’m talking about happened with statists too. Hungary, Yugoslavia? The fucking Sino-Soviet split?

Thanks for ignoring everything I said.

Look, I agree that it’s dumb to call yourself a socialist and have zero respect for most attempts at socialism, especially when your critique doesn’t come from anything serious but just parroting of cold war propaganda. I agree that these countries weren’t literally the devil, nor fascist, not “pretending”, that’s all fine.

But it’s still so dishonest of MLs to dig for quotes and smugly boastbout how “libertarians never succeed”. Even if we completely ignore all the very explicit and deliberate attempts at sabotage anarchists had to endure from their statist “comrades” (which we shouldn’t but we always casually seem to be forced to do in the name of “unity”), it doesn’t change the fact that vanguardist revolutions have all been incredibly flawed too.

You all are very often willing to recognize your failures, most of the people like you I have talked to seem to agree that at some point the revolution was “hijacked”, usurped, corrupted, lost aim, usually coinciding with a figure they don’t like taking over the revolutionary government and messing things up.

The supposed “strong state that crushes all opposition” being taken over by the reformist opposition and then the capitalist one in the case of the USSR and Leninists. The market reforms of Deng in the case of China and Maoists. But you all never seem to ask yourselves the question “Why was that allowed to happen?”. Why am I supposed to put my trust in some authoritarian bullshit solution specifically justified as a means to protect the revolution when it failed at doing so? Why do you have to be so smug and condescending at me for not trusting in things that didn’t work?

Why do you instead of learning from the mistakes in your methods that most of the time you yourself recognize and trying to come up with new ideas and systems for the current age, insist on still clinging to material analysis of the world of a hundred years ago as the gospel, the sole undying and absolute truth on how to Make Socialism, merely saying “it’ll totally work right this time” instead? Why do you insist on mocking and “”“dunking”“” on anyone who refuses to do that?

They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted.

This is all completely false. It genuinely is just lies. You can disagree with the explanations, but to claim there literally aren’t any is just ignorance and a complete lack of good faith. Look, if you’re a socialist in the internet, you probably have dealt with confidently incorrect liberals whining about strawmen that you don’t believe, because they haven’t read anything about it - and it’s probably been incredibly frustrating. So why do you never think twice before doing the same thing with anarchists?

I’m always told to read Lenin and a ton of authoritarian essays and I always do in good faith, but it’s extremely rare for me to ever be afforded the same honour, and then all the conversations I have end up with people telling me shit like this and me having to explain anarchism 101 to them because they genuinely don’t actually know anything.

No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.

I am also always told to be charitable and nuanced about the failures and mistakes of vanguardist revolutions, but no one ever has the same honour with anarchist ones.

Yeah no, fuck this. If you’re an anarchist and you go offer your life for a state, you’re not an anarchist at all, no matter how horizontally you say you’ll do it.

Do note that CrimethInc are post-left dudebros, they have some good essays but a lot of what they write is very dumb and sometimes vehemently anti-communist.

How is this a debunking of anything? You are merely correcting technicalities as if anarchists didn’t know about them. It’s obvious that the Makhnovists and the Bolsheviks could never agree on anything, and I’ve never met any anarchist who thought the alliance was not temporary or even that it could last.

The facts still are that anarchists helped the USSR survive yet the USSR destroyed them once they were no longer useful. I do think that using this event as a blanket statement to “never ever work with statist leftists of any kind no matter what” is a bit silly given how much time has passed and how different the situation is. However its still an useful piece of history. Especially because they had that same behaviour throughout their entire lifespan - of crushing or abandoning any socialist movement that weren’t 100% aligned with theirs.