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On Cognitive Dissonance
(lemmygrad.ml)
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I agree with all that, and I'm never going to discourage anyone from working with other people whose goals are compatible with your own.
I think the issues with anarchism aren't with the goals which are largely compatible with ones that MLs have, but rather with the methodology. Vast majority of people who subscribe to anarchism mean well, but often reject effective methods for organizing and effecting change at scale.
For example, I find the rejection of authority to be highly problematic when it comes to building an effective movement. It's simply not possible for large groups of people to organize and to keep long term consistent goals in absence of centralization. You end up with many fractured groups each having their own idea pulling things in different directions, and a movement rife with opportunists. This is precisely what we see happening with western left at the moment.
There needs to be a consistent vision and some form of a vanguard whose job it is to ensure that all the different groups are pulling in the same direction. There also needs to be a common theory of change that everyone understands in a similar enough way to work together effectively.
In my experience, anarchists often tend to make the mistake of assuming that majority of people naturally shares their ideas, and if current system could somehow be torn down then we'd naturally enter an anarchist utopia. Of course, the reality, is that if the current system did happen to collapse, then it would be groups that have good organization that will end up coming into power. If the left fails to become disciplined then it will be the right that takes over.
Just to defend the vast majority of people who subscribe to anarchism a little, ime huge amount of self proclaimed anarchists don't have particularly strong opinions on methods for organizing or effecting change at scale, mostly because a lot haven't done much organizing. In my experiences with anarchist types they're pretty flexible on the methods part just because it's nice to do anything for a change and doing basic organizing in the maximally anarchist fashion can just get exhausting.
Granted i'm mostly talking abt like new to leftism anarchist by default types but the anarchists who're ideologically committed to the point of opposing all centralization in organizing bc authority are overrepresented online and irl MLs are incredibly unlikely to even have a chance to work with them.
Yes but it is not just new people it is also seasoned organizers. In my union, for example, which is full of anarchist types, I think it is problematic that when difficulties arise, we are effectively led into just blowing off anxiety and frustration instead of thinking through how our adversaries are challenging us. Action is prioritized over strategy and even though leadership always says they just follow what union members want, it is always the loudest (and most anxious) people calling the shots while everyone else just tries to maintain solidarity and goes along with it. Maybe I am just too cynical tho idk.
yeah that sounds pretty different from the sorts of situations i'm talking about, it makes a lot of sense to be cynical over it though. i think seasoned anarchists, even if they fully mean well, can turn orgs not explicitly laid out like that into something really unpleasant. there's a kind of normative behavior that comes out of consensus based organizing that's very focused on raising basically every single concern you might have and avoiding keeping quiet for the sake of getting along that is pretty essential for consensus to work as intended but can end up pretty obnoxious outside of that context. maybe the only way out is just not going along anymore if enough ppl are tired of it even if it'll likely be unpleasant.