this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2026
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Anarchism
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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"?