Leftism, anarchism, revolution, organizing, action, guilt etc

It's an obvious truism that we need some action to make a change... most would also agree that some (philosophical) understanding would also be important.

But while it might be good to encourage or emphasize action, I feel that sometimes it turns into a sort of pressure on helpless comrades; even some kind of feeling of guilt etc

Suppose that you are from a region where a libertarian socialist movement was practically absent. And you are poor, so struggling and have very few resources to do anything. And neurodivergent, which makes it difficult for you to interact with people, especially offline... etc etc.

And most of the people you could find, especially in offline circles—already quite small—are apolitical liberals with absolutely no interest in radical politics (or in anything not normie); any leftists in your region might most likely be just liberals with a leftist label, or the fewer (aesthetically) "radical" ones – again liberals, but "radically" so... (tankies)

You might already be doing things—however small—your way... perhaps online more than offline

But you shouldn't be subjected to pressure saying that you aren't doing anything for the movement! Don't have to face more pressure than what the shitty system already subjects you to (which is such an immense pressure already)!

To hell with those annoying liberals who say: "it is no use having ideas, only actions count"... Well, fuck you! this is all I can do, and I'm doing what I can do and what I want to do...
(Usually their idea of action, especially if they're a bit privileged, is like "charity" and stuff... well, fuck you! I'm the poor person, whom do I give charity and from where!; or, often, something so narrow and stupid like becoming a powerful government officer (like "IAS" — I lost count of how many times I heard this silly suggestion)...)

(What's most annoying, however, is probably that people who make such judgements, apart from regular liberals, tend to be MLs — the irony being that in spite of MLs having been predominant on the left (even more in regions like India), and having had very significant power and influence in many cases, all they have done is shit, again and again... and at best only established a (much) more (bureaucratically) regimented version of social "democracy", calling it "socialism")

(P.S. this is not an angry rant, even if it sounds like that... just thought perhaps some comrades could relate to this)

Now it would be a whole another—long—thread, as to what counts as action, or different ideas of revolution etc... not going into that

But to elaborate a bit on the reference about MLs doing shit....
yeah, they have had state power to themselves in many regions; for decades even, in a few provinces in India as well; not to mention USSR and other ML states.

It is a misfortune that we even have to specially mention this, but: Leninism (in whatever variant) has nothing to do with socialism (except as its anti-thesis)!
In the name of socialism they have destroyed socialism and continue to do so... they have killed and suppressed workers — in the name of workers' liberation. They have actively sabotaged anarchist, genuinely socialist projects every time and now they ask us: "what have you anarchists done?"
They probably did more harm to socialism than the (non-red) bourgeoisie themselves

In India it's largely reformist, and the more radical ones are no less reactionary in being authoritarian.

Our "socialists" cannot imagine a socialist society! They cannot imagine a world without capitalism. No wonder they have helped capital so much, and continue to do so....!

“…at some distant future there will be a new language for all – first as a commercial language, then as the language of intellectual intercourse in general – just as surely as there will one day be air travel.”

— Nietzsche the prophet, 1878
XD

Leninism, USSR, special pleading

Leftist defense of USSR or other ML regimes, or of Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Mao etc, is extremely absurd and largely depends on special pleading for these regimes/leaders, and on baseless assumptions generally.

If the same arguments were used in other situations, for other countries or leaders, it would look extremely absurd even for our Leninists. The dogma here is that SOMEHOW, no matter how remotely, these regimes must be seen as representative of socialism, as having SOMETHING to do with socialism. They have to be special because they claimed to be Marxist.

But it is only socialism in name. We have many other examples of that kind: from less extreme ones like the Indian Constitution (its preamble says India is socialist) to more extreme ones like the Nazis.
Leninists would dismiss most of these cases immediately without any argument, but when it comes to ML regimes there's all sorts of special pleading.
(Now outrage: "what! you compare USSR with Nazi Germany?? Daddy Stalin single-handedly killed every single Nazi including Hitler!!!!" Point missed again: it's not to say these regimes or their ideologies were equivalent, but to point out that calling oneself a socialist isn't enough to make one a socialist, be it an individual or a regime; or put it another way, not all these versions of socialism are equivalent, and just being "socialist" does not necessarily mean good... no more than Nazism is)

Calling it socialism, the pretentious aesthetic of "workers" or "the people" etc... remove all these, you end up with horrible regimes which are not essentially different from other imperialist regimes.

Some point to some vague pretension of democratic structure within USSR to claim it was democratic.
First, it's doubtful whether such a pretension of democracy means anything in such a highly centralized dictatorial regime. It is highly doubtful if people could, through that "democracy", have any meaningful influence on the top-level decisions.
Second, I haven't seen USSR but I see all the time, first-hand, how fanatically people here support leaders that are obviously corrupt and bourgeois from head to toe. No Leninist would say that these leaders are anything but bourgeois. So it is recognized well that this pretension of democracy doesn't mean anything, that it is democracy only in name. Popular support and a pretension of democracy doesn't mean anything, something our Leninists recognize as well as we do — unless the regime has "Communist" or "Marxist" somewhere in its party name or official documents (then special pleading begins).

Another thing they point to are some supposedly progressive policies in these regimes. But almost none of them are essentially different from what's in other bourgeois regimes. Difference in style or aesthetics, difference in implementation, difference in degree etc... but nothing that necessarily and essentially distinguishes them from other bourgeois regimes.
As I said, at best these regimes were highly regimented versions of social "democracy"; usually with a lot of extra shit.

"But social democracy is nothing but capitalism!" Yes, and so is it with these ML regimes — they are state capitalism. Engels, Lenin, Mao etc all recognized that such structures would amount to state capitalism (a term that's neither invented nor used solely by anarchists). That it is just capitalism, but their illusion being that somehow it is different when a party that calls itself Communist directs it, that it will then somehow lead to socialism. But it is neither socialistic in any way, nor could it lead to socialism, as has been proved again and again.

"But USSR was first to give women rights" "USSR was the first to do XYZ" Nah, still doesn't make it essentially different from other bourgeois regimes.
These same Leninists understand the baloney in pointing out to the women's rights in law-books if it's any other country... but if it is an ML regime it has to be different, it has to be special, right?

"These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world."

Actually MLs agree on a lot of things with liberals/conservatives, their arguments (not to mention the ideologies) being very similar.
"Why don't you recognize all the achievements of our regime!!!!" "Why do you oppose it entirely, can't you appreciate the good parts!?" "Our regime has lasted for so long!" "yeah there were all these "mistakes" (i.e., horrible atrocities and oppression and exploitation), but the system is good and just needs a few reforms" etc etc
The conservatives, regular liberals, and Marxist-Liberals all agree on these regimes being the representation of socialism. Yet somehow anarchists are supposed to be the ones agreeing with (non-red) liberals & conservatives, while all of them think socialism is nothing but a version of social democracy (MLs are just more selective; the social democracy also has to have less "democracy" and have "Communist" or "Marxist" somewhere in its name).

"JUST ACCEPT THAT IT IS SOCIALISM EVEN IF YOU DISAGREE WITH IT!! REEEE!!!!"

But gotta admit still: Lenin, Stalin, Mao and all the others were genuinely revolutionaries. Bourgeois revolutionaries. Or, in our sense, counterrevolutionaries. Perhaps with genuinely good intentions? Doesn't make them any less counterrevolutionary.
No less anti-socialist for us. For, socialism for us is "the emancipation of the working classes" that is "conquered by the working classes themselves", to use Marx's words... not something directed dictatorially by counterrevolutionaries with socialist aesthetics, where exploitation is glorified as workers' liberation.

“The ways by which you may get mon­ey al­most with­out ex­cep­tion lead down­ward. To have done an­y­thing by which you earned mon­ey mere­ly is to have been tru­ly idle or worse. If the la­bor­er gets no more than the wag­es which his em­ploy­er pays him, he is cheat­ed, he cheats him­self. If you would get mon­ey as a writ­er or lec­tur­er, you must be pop­u­lar, which is to go down per­pen­dic­u­lar­ly. Those ser­vic­es which the com­mu­ni­ty will most read­i­ly pay for, it is most dis­a­gree­a­ble to ren­der. You are paid for be­ing some­thing less than a man. The State does not com­mon­ly re­ward a gen­ius any more wise­ly.”

— Henry David Thoreau,
Life Without Principle

The continuing necessity of feminism in the West (and everywhere else)

"Apolitical" normies are more dangerous than zealots of any kind. It is masses of such people which made Nazi, Fascist regimes possible.

They make such regimes possible by not resisting them, by even supporting them "apolitically" 🤡

To them anything is either boring or exciting, something superficial like that... can easily be manipulated by a fascist party if it manages to come to power first

Liberals, without knowing it. Can be turned into: fascists, without knowing it.

First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."
Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

...

In spite of my shattered dreams of the past, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause, and with deep moral concern, serve as the channel through which our just grievances would get to the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed. I have heard numerous religious leaders of the South call upon their worshippers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers say, "follow this decree because integration is morally right and the Negro is your brother." In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, "those are social issues with which the gospel has no real concern.", and I have watched so many churches commit themselves to a completely other-worldly religion which made a strange distinction between body and soul, the sacred and the secular.

So here we are moving toward the exit of the twentieth century with a religious community largely adjusted to the status quo, standing as a tail-light behind other community agencies rather than a headlight leading men to higher levels of justice.

—

Martin Luther King, Jr. Letter From The Birmingham Jail April 16, 1963

True enough... but that sort of (consciously) ideological liberals are not really the vast majority of the population in most countries

Most people, in the West of the early 20th century and throughout the global South of today (and to a lesser extent, even in the West), don't really stand to gain anything from the domination of capital...
the privileged were and still are a relatively small minority


What prompted me to write that post is actually this "Modi selfie point" shit... they seem to have established them in Indian railway stations everywhere, and it's actually quite costly too

That so many people would think it's just so cool, that shit like this makes people think Modi is a cool leader, without reflecting upon his shitty personality or his horrible fascist politics... is just so infuriating! Shitty politics of aesthetics, shallow masses...

(This thing is not exceptional in any way, worse shit of this kind has been happening throughout the last few years since BJP has come into power)

ERNEST: My friend, you are a dreamer.
GILBERT; Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
ERNEST: His punishment?
GILBERT: And his reward.

— Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist

Feminism is not about "men vs women"

“Man, your head is haunted; you have wheels in your head!* You imagine great things, and depict to yourself a whole world of gods that has an existence for you, a spirit-realm to which you suppose yourself to be called, an ideal that beckons to you. You have a fixed idea [fixe Idee]!

Do not think that I am jesting or speaking figuratively when I regard those persons who cling to the Higher, and (because the vast majority belongs under this head) almost the whole world of men, as veritable fools, fools in a madhouse. What is it, then, that is called a ‘fixed idea’? An idea that has subjected the man to itself. When you recognize, with regard to such a fixed idea, that it is a folly, you shut its slave up in an asylum. And is the truth of the faith, say, which we are not to doubt; the majesty of (e.g.) the people, which we are not to strike at (he who does is guilty of — lese-majesty); virtue, against which the censor is not to let a word pass, that morality may be kept pure; — are these not ‘fixed ideas’? Is not all the stupid chatter of (e.g.) most of our newspapers the babble of fools who suffer from the fixed idea of morality, legality, Christianity, etc., and only seem to go about free because the madhouse in which they walk takes in so broad a space? Touch the fixed idea of such a fool, and you will at once have to guard your back against the lunatic’s stealthy malice. For these great lunatics are like the little so-called lunatics in this point too — that they assail by stealth him who touches their fixed idea. They first steal his weapon, steal free speech from him, and then they fall upon him with their nails. Every day now lays bare the cowardice and vindictiveness of these maniacs, and the stupid populace hurrahs for their crazy measures. One must read the journals of this period, and must hear the Philistines talk, to get the horrible conviction that one is shut up in a house with fools.”

— Max Stirner

* An alternative, if equally unliteral, translation of »Du hast einen Sparren zu viel!« might be ‘you have a screw loose’.

“‘Thou shalt not call thy brother a fool; if thou dost...’* But I do not fear the curse, and I say, my brothers are arch-fools. Whether a poor fool of the insane asylum is possessed by the fancy that he is God the Father, Emperor of Japan, the Holy Spirit, etc., or whether a citizen in comfortable circumstances conceives that it is his mission to be a good Christian, a faithful Protestant, a loyal citizen, a virtuous man — both these are one and the same ‘fixed idea.’ He who has never tried and dared not to be a good Christian, a faithful Protestant, a virtuous man, etc., is possessed and prepossessed [gefangen und befangen, literally ‘imprisoned and prepossessed’] by faith, virtuousness, etc. Just as the schoolmen philosophized only inside the belief of the church; as Pope Benedict XIV wrote fat books inside the papist superstition, without ever throwing a doubt upon this belief; as authors fill whole folios on the State without calling in question the fixed idea of the State itself; as our newspapers are crammed with politics because they are conjured into the fancy that man was created to be a zoon politicon [political animal] — so also subjects vegetate in subjection, virtuous people in virtue, liberals in humanity, without ever putting to these fixed ideas of theirs the searching knife of criticism. Undislodgeable, like a madman’s delusion, those thoughts stand on a firm footing, and he who doubts them — lays hands on the sacred! Yes, the ‘fixed idea,’ that is the truly sacred!”

— Max Stirner


* “But I say this to you: anyone who is angry with his brother will answer for it before the court; if a man calls his brother ‘fool’ he will answer for it before the Sanhedrin.” Mathew 5:22. (The Sanhedrin was the highest court of justice at Jerusalem.)

Our wonderful people!

They despise those so-called beggars on the streets who take to begging out of necessity, having nothing, victims of the system and a harm to none...

They have, however, very little against those clowns who perform in the circus called legislative assembly or parliament, and who—having too much wealth—come begging for our votes, who loot us and help the capitalists loot us...

Usually each person is a fanatic for at least one such governmental clown or clown-party.

If patriarchy or gender was natural, they wouldn't have to keep policing you, strictly enforcing (arbitrary) gender norms on all, persecuting queer people...

Patriarchy is a threat to everyone, not just those who identify themselves as queer...

It's imposed on you... so keep resisting

How gender, sexuality concern everyone

The strange phenomenon of the opposition to Anarchism is that it brings to light the relation between so-called intelligence and ignorance. And yet this is not so very strange when we consider the relativity of all things. The ignorant mass has in its favor that it makes no pretense of knowledge or tolerance. Acting, as it always does, by mere impulse, its reasons are like those of a child. “Why?” “Because.” Yet the opposition of the uneducated to Anarchism deserves the same consideration as that of the intelligent man.

What, then, are the objections? First, Anarchism is impractical, though a beautiful ideal. Second, Anarchism stands for violence and destruction, hence it must be repudiated as vile and dangerous. Both the intelligent man and the ignorant mass judge not from a thorough knowledge of the subject, but either from hearsay or false interpretation.

A practical scheme, says Oscar Wilde, is either one already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under the existing conditions; but it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to, and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish. The true criterion of the practical, therefore, is not whether the latter can keep intact the wrong or foolish; rather is it whether the scheme has vitality enough to leave the stagnant waters of the old, and build, as well as sustain, new life. In the light of this conception, Anarchism is indeed practical. More than any other idea, it is helping to do away with the wrong and foolish; more than any other idea, it is building and sustaining new life.

The emotions of the ignorant man are continuously kept at a pitch by the most blood-curdling stories about Anarchism. Not a thing too outrageous to be employed against this philosophy and its exponents. Therefore Anarchism represents to the unthinking what the proverbial bad man does to the child, — a black monster bent on swallowing everything; in short, destruction and violence.

Destruction and violence! How is the ordinary man to know that the most violent element in society is ignorance; that its power of destruction is the very thing Anarchism is combating? Nor is he aware that Anarchism, whose roots, as it were, are part of nature’s forces, destroys, not healthful tissue, but parasitic growths that feed on the life’s essence of society. It is merely clearing the soil from weeds and sagebrush, that it may eventually bear healthy fruit.

Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think. The widespread mental indolence, so prevalent in society, proves this to be only too true. Rather than to go to the bottom of any given idea, to examine into its origin and meaning, most people will either condemn it altogether, or rely on some superficial or prejudicial definition of non-essentials.

Anarchism urges man to think, to investigate, to analyze every proposition; but that the brain capacity of the average reader be not taxed too much, I also shall begin with a definition, and then elaborate on the latter.

ANARCHISM: The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.

The new social order rests, of course, on the materialistic basis of life; but while all Anarchists agree that the main evil today is an economic one, they maintain that the solution of that evil can be brought about only through the consideration of every phase of life, — individual, as well as the collective; the internal, as well as the external phases.

— Emma Goldman,
Anarchism and Other Essays (chapter 1)