In the West it's a lot more culturally acceptable to be an anarchist than it is to be a socialist and especially more acceptable than being a communist. It's like how the 90s Geo Prizm and Toyota Corolla we're the same thing but to laymen the Geo had a bad reputation and the Toyota was considered the best vehicle of the era. Anarchism is when Toyota Corolla, Communism is when Geo Prizm
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2025
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It depends where. In my country, France, anarchists have a much "worse reputation" (for the normies) than socialists and communists, especially because anarchists mobilize much more during demonstrations and are much more vehement than communists who, well, are big pussies here, not gonna lie : they forget what praxis was
No I don't think that is happening.
What is more likely is that they are anarchists who just have a couple good takes about specific things. Most anarchists have their own boutique version they follow and there isn't as many set "lines" as there are with MLs. So there are a lot of anarchists who haven't moved passed anarchism because they are overloaded with anti-communist programming, but still come to some correct conclusions that align with ML
I haven't encountered this phenomenon myself, but I think it's likely that if you're an ML in an area where the only communist orgs are reactionary like the RCP and ACP, or full of sex pests, you'd opt to just stick to anarchist orgs. That might mean that anarchist orgs are getting new ML members and the ML members introduce ML ideas in a subtle enough way that the ideas get adopted.
I tell people im an Anarchist all the time if I think they are likely to be the type of person to be affected by the mind terminating cliche of marxist=tankie=fascist.
I dont feel bad about it, im an Communist-Anarchist and an ML anyway, (I know its a lot but shit, its just the range of ideology where im like, yeah core principles are good) I could work with either and would be fine with either ideology getting us past the finish line. I have issues with anarchists who are anti-communist, but if they havent got an issue with me I havent got one with them - we want the same thing after all.
What do you mean by ML? You mean they unconsciously reproduce democratic centralism and anti-imperialism?
Marxist-Leninist? Or do you mean which features?
I mean that some agitators use similar rhetoric (as in strong focus on class, pointing out state propaganda, militant tendencies, etc.) some even show anti imperialist patterns. I'm glad they exist. I just wonder because IRL, the anarchists I know have zero understanding of the capitalism-fascism contingency for example. The agitators mostly do know it and point it out imo which I like.
Anarchists are also socialists after all, so you will hear a similar rhetoric from them. The main difference is that for anarchists, state is the primary contradiction, rather than class.
That is the reason mostly why i went from anarchism to classic socialism.
I read about anarchism and found huge hierarchies in local groups which were really aggressive when I pointed that out. That gave me the impression that its the same thing but less transparent and easily abused.
I'm sure that is not the case everywhere but thats when I noped out and went classic socialist, etc.
Read Tryanny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman
It is all about the exact phenomenon you describe, written by an anarchist
With pleasure! Thanks, comrade. :)
The absence of hierarchy does not mean the absence of structure. Conceptually, her work is not very rigorous. This is very common among American theorists who claim to be left-wing. Moreover, her theory seems to be seriously challenged if we are to believe the current social protest movements in Europe, in the dawn of surveillance capitalism, which, on the contrary, seems to be much more effective when they are spontaneous, decentralized, and horizontal (the french yellow vests, for example, a movement without structure which has freaked out the power in place like never before since perhaps the events of May 1968)
What has yellow vests accomplished through their spontaneous movement? I'm not French and haven't heard of anything coming out of those protests.
Either way, I'm sure dozens of organizations with hierarchy were involved in those protests, and that there were centralized, planned aspects within the movement just as there were spontaneous decentralized aspects
i have no idea what you mean by classic socialism
As in not libertarian socialism (which anarchists are described as in the anarchcist faq). The "dictature of the proletariat" thing. Maybe I'm mixing up terms here. Not sure.
You might mean Scientific Socialism, but someone else can correct me.
Isn't the primary contradictions hierarchies in general, rather than the state specifically?
it depends. hierarchy is just a very abstract concept, so it is practically impossible to analyse + impossible not to have in a big enough org. most anarchists I talked to just focus on the state.