this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2026
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Anarchism
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Actually... all the state needs to do to defeat non-cooperation is to throw more and/or larger crumbs off the table. Bismarck and Roosevelt proved how easy this is to do.
Very little cracking down required.
That's true for people who do these things without an ideologically underpinning. This is why we need always explain how feeding off the crumbs is always harmful, even if it appears to have material benefits. I.e. it's better to be in a union, even if the wages seem to be increasing on their own. It's better to do a co-operative over a small business etc.
And as the system collapses from its own contradictions, its capacity to provide these crumbs drains, which why it's easier to agitate during these times.
There is no such thing as a revolution with an ideological underpinning - Anarc essentially says as much in the video, and, for once, I agree with him.
It is the groups that attempt to hijack the revolution that bring the ideology.
The left has absolutely failed to come up with an effective way to deal with liberal counter-insurgency even when said counter-insurgency comes with absolutely zero material benefit to the working class - as the (so-called) "Democratic Party" is demonstrating right now in the US - so I'm not exactly sure how explaining anything to the working class is going to change that (which the left has been doing since forever - with rather disappointing results).
This is all fine and good - until the union (inevitably) gets hijacked by corporate interests and the co-ops are (inevitably) crushed by oligarchic business practices.
I don't see any real signs of collapse. You can argue that the liberal consensus is in crisis, but, then again, the times when the liberal consensus wasn't in crisis is few and far in between. It has proven extremely... adaptable.
We've been having back to back "once in a lifetime" crisis since the early 2000s, if you don't think a collapse is coming I don't know what to tell you. I see the system on its death-throes and the collapse of the AI-bubble might just be the thing that finally pops the everything bubble.
Anyway I don't see any point in responding to nihilistic perspectives. I think organizing in non-hierarchical ways improves the lives of people who practice them in the here and now and have revolutionary potential. If you think nothing we do has a chance to succeed and the system won't collapse, even with a looming climate apocalypse, I don't know what's there's to discuss. Go ride off into the sunset or some shit.
And people on the left has been predicting the collapse of capitalism since before WW1. Are you certain you are not making the same mistake they did by completely underestimating the liberal consensus' flexibility and resilience? Something, something, know your enemy... how does that line from Sun Tzu go again?
It is not nihilistic to turn away from magical thinking... especially if said magical thinking has delivered no tangible results for more than eight (that's 8) decades now and still counting.
If you believe that the libertarian left has no option but to tackle the future with the same woefully orthodox theory and consequently misguided praxis... well now that is what I would call nihilistic.
I mean... doesn't it ring any alarm bells for you that the two libertarian projects in recent history that anarchists got most excited about - Rojava and Chiappas - wasn't instigated by anarchists at all but by tankies that decided to dump Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy in the rubbish bin and go back to the drawing board?
Are you trying to tell me that anarchists cannot - or simply won't - do the same?
If they can't, they have nothing to offer the working class.
It must be windy that high up in your soapbox.
I don't mean to tell you, but the world order completely changed after WW1 and WW2. In case you missed the millions of deaths, the years of poverty and famine, the collapse of colonialist powers and the rise of the USA as a global hegemon. The system DID very much collapse, and a new one was built in its place. I never promised that anarchists would be the one who will come on top in a collapse, I merely said that it's during a collapse when people's minds are more malleable to new forms of organizing.
It's wild to accuse people of suggesting a radical change of being ineffective because people are too propagandized to perform said radical change.
This "misguided praxis" is the only thing that has shown it can work when put into praxis. Whether it can be put into praxis is an entirely different thing and what we agitate for.
No? Why would it ring alarm bells? I'm not there to tell you for sure how much anarchist influence there was and neither were you. I'm just happy they functioned in a more libertarian approach and once again proved that libertarian socialist approaches work when left to do their own thing.
What is "the same"?
Standing on a soapbox is still much better than having your head in the clouds.
Sooo... these collapses you speak of - I'm assuming absolutely none of them resulted in the liberal socio-economic being any less resilient and dominant than it actually is today?
Last time I checked it certainly hadn't.
I'm not sure what point you are even trying to make by defining these crises as "collapses."
So the propagandised working class is to blame for the left's abysmal failures, eh?
Okay... let's assume that is the case - just for the moment. The first question that comes to my mind... how is the left's counter-propaganda theory and praxis coming along, then?
Over the last decade (or so) I've seen lots of (so-called) "debunking" media on libtube... oops, sorry, I meant to say breadtube - and even some of it here on lemmy - which, as any competent propagandist can tell you, is essentially useless for waging a war of narratives.
If I were to ask any (self-described) radical on lemmy to explain liberalism to me - which is where any competently thought out counter-propaganda narrative (ie, one that acknowledges the working-class' actual political experience) would start off from - using only one, succinct sentence... would any of them be able to manage that?
If the answer is "not many can do this extremely basic thing" then... you have a problem - it would be extremely premature to blame the working class' propagandisation for the left's failures if it were to turn out that the left is hopelessly incompetent at counter-propaganda.
And yes - before you ask - my background is in propaganda.
Lots of libertarian leftists (including, of course, anarchists) assure me that they do, in fact, listen to Bakunin's proverbial bootmaker... but I'm not seeing all that much of it.
Would you like to modify your statement, perhaps... and blame the left's failures on something else?
If you think that's a good comeback, it's very very sad.
The system and the world order itself completely transformed. Its resilience is not what we're talking about.
That during these collapses is when radical leftists have more chance to push through the propaganda which is powerful while the system is stable?
No? You should know better than to put words in people's mouths.
As always, we're outnumbered and outgunned, but we do our best with the shit show we've inherited.
I'd love to hear what tactics you actually suggest, because tearing things down in theory is easy, but I don't see you suggesting anything better.