cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2139382
It seems most cross tendency engagement devolves in to fights between leftcoms/anarchists vs AES supporters or “Dengists” vs Maoists. Anyone can point at each other and say “they started it” and avoid responsibilities. We agree on 90% of stuff but Anarchists decide to randomly call us tankies and we feel the need to defend ourselves or else look like we lost without an argument. Likewise we make memes about Anarkiddies and write texts denouncing them and they feel the same. Among scientific socialists we see China as an ally and an example to learn from while Maoists want to call out “revisionism.” There seems to be a contradiction between the history of different socialist experiments and disagreements not really mattering to our own conditions and those experiments also being vital learning experiences for us.
It’s strange to think about how we pretty much agree with Patsocs on more than almost any other tendency yet they are almost useless because they don’t understand the basic dialectical method and why have our positions beyond aesthetics and thus cannot understand the basic material conditions of this country.
We can keep trying to bring more people into our own sects and hope they do work for our own type of socialism irl, but if we’re so divided how can this happen. Of course we should all just log off and do things irl, but then some will fall into the trap of either larping or just helping their own friends without the wider goal of revolution.
We all need to remember that the feds let us speak because we spend all our time bickering. How can we unify as a revolutionary left? There are projects irl for trying to find unity as scientific socialists like ChunkaLuta, but it would be nice to be able to do the same online. In a way I’m just wishing everyone could just listen to revleft and everything could work out, but what can Lemmygrad and hexbear do for this vision?
Leftists need to stop wearing their ideology like a team jersey. Marxism is not brand meant to be diluted into quickly digestible and perpetually recognizable symbols. Anarchism is not a hashtag to group posts with, nor does it boil down to the posts under that hashtag.
Notice how the language we use to label the Others is not language that’s useful for labeling actual movements. Why do both Marxists and anarchists in the online left claim the Zapatistas while the group itself embraces neither label? Because the labels, as we use them, are not useful for drawing distinctions about modern socialist movements. And it’s important to note that we don’t use the labels the same way that historical groups have. So if you are jumping to point out the number of ML parties responsible for socialist revolutions or how many people have been helped by anarchists organizing mutual aid, please finish reading.
The anarchist vs marxist divide in the online left is best viewed as an interpersonal struggle between brand elitists. There is often a fine line between what amounts to niche forum drama and what I would consider genuine attempts to build a leftist presence online amidst corporate platforms which are hostile to us. The way we use these words is very good at describing these interpersonal conflicts and their larger structural-cultural counterparts, the V I B E S of anarchists vs marxists. Am online anarchist and online ML can meet each other and instantly fall into distrust based on their respective labels, which are loudly displayed by easily recognizable symbols. This behavior may have once been recognizable as similar to warring clans, armies, or gangs (often differentiated by
). But in the context of the attention economy on the modern internet, you know what it is? Brand loyalty.
These are dynamics we need to be cognizant of and if we are going to use them, we must use them rather than be used by them. I think @Awoo@hexbear.net and company are doing a decent job of the kind of organized behavior I’m thinking of. Again, if you are someone who is critical of her or any of her associates, what is the first issue to come to mind? Is it an ideological difference which you’ve discussed at length with the intent of reaching a conclusion? Or did a Reddit mod that she co-mods with do some shithead thing on a subreddit you like? What are your priorities in your distaste for her and how does your current relationship with her, if any, differ from the sort of relationship two comrades who organize together would have? The bottom line is that ideological struggle is an internal mechanism, even when done at scale. It’s not that we’re unwilling or unable to struggle. It’s that the online left lacks a reason to struggle.
I just don’t think it’s valuable to be sectarian, at all. What does it achieve?
When an anarchist space wastes time shitting on marxists it becomes almost indistinguishable from an anticommunist space. This serves the right.
When a communist space wastes time shitting on anarchists it becomes insufferably up itself, any good points they have on theory or other things become hard for anyone to listen to because they’re insufferable about it. And they learn a sort of insufferableness from one another and carry it into any conversations with anarchists where they inevitably alienate themselves from people they NEED to work with. In particular a lot of communists will even admit to having been anarchists first, so it’s just hurting their recruiting pool. This all serves the right.
What’s worse is that these things also give wreckers an EASY method of fucking with us in the online space. And they do, routinely. You’ve all seen the number of liberals and fascists in leftist spaces doing work.
None of this helps the left.
It is far more effective to build a united front around anti-sectarianism. It cuts out wasted time, builds bridges and less time wasted on this shit is more time spent learning or pushing back against the right.
In the communist spaces the insufferableness needs to be pushed back on. In the anarchist spaces the nationalism needs pushback. The quantity of nationalism I’ve seen among people calling themselves ““anarchists”” over Ukraine is hilarious. They’re not anarchists and need to be pushed out or ridiculed until they become real ones. There’s a real white chauvinism in both spaces too that needs dealing with but it’s more present in the anarchist spaces where significantly less theory is read or discussed.
Shared spaces and moderation teams that actively prevent sectarianism achieve this.
Offline none of this shit happens because people are just more likely to not be assholes to each other offline with the social rules and such.