I’m not demonizing anyone. China is in many regards not worse than France. You’re idolizing, though, claiming it’s somehow better because the marketing for their social war is different than here in the Global North. Today is may 1st, we’re commemorating the anarchist martyrs of the 8 hour workday, and here you are promoting a State-capitalist nation where 996 is commonplace. Don’t be a puppet, fight with the people against oppression whatever its forms and colors!

Tell that to the peasants and working class of Xiancun evicted to make way for gentrification. A State is a State. The interest of the States are rarely aligned with that of the people.

Yeah, sure. Just like Port-au-Prince is a french city, Grozny is a russian city, Standing Rock is USA land, Kobane is a syrian city, and Jerusalem is an Israeli city, right. You’re just defending colonial empires. That’s sickening.

The question is not what the carrot is. It’s what the stick looks like if you refuse. Here in France the government is also very happy to provide you with a nice apartment when they kick you out to destroy a neighborhood. That doesn’t mean there isn’t going to be a violent eviction if you refuse, after many years (though not every time).

You would be surprised to learn that many people don’t want to leave their house, even if on paper a newly constructed building looks better. Is it okay for the government to decide for you? In my opinion, no. And neither China nor the West is any good on that point.

OK and if you refuse to move because that place is your place, what happens? Violence happens. That’s not a racist trope, that’s how expropriation works in the western world, too. Does that make it OK to evict people to gentrify neighborhoods? In my opinion, no.

Yeah right, that is if you don’t count Hong Kong special operations (i.e. invasion), for example. By that standard, France is not at war in its colonies like Kanaky, Russia is not at war with Ukraine, the USA is not at war with Iran, and Israel is not at war with Lebanon.

That’s very limited view of the world and its social/political conflicts you have here. Social war is everywhere if you understand what low-intensity warfare means.

It’s hard to formulate a coherent opinion because reality is complex and multifaceted. And on the one hand, “purity” is an impossible goal in politics and can lead to various forms of sectarianism and moral judgement (as you can see in much of the liberal left who’s much more interested about optics and PR than about direct action and building collective power).

I mean, from some perspectives, calling China or USSR “socialist” is already picking a side. Neither really abolished private property, both have/had very wealthy ruling classes, and both came hard on the critiques from the left who were building popular power via the soviets (see Emma Goldman / Volin for early critique of bolsheviks killing communists and dismembering the soviets). In marxist views, the dictatorship of the proletariat is supposed to be the ugly/necessary phase on the road to communism (abolition of State and private property); a critique of those “socialist” States is that they are not working toward these goals but merely reinforcing themselves for their own sakes.

I mean, was the USSR good or evil? Both? Neither? From a geopolitical perspective (be careful with those analysis, the tools of the enemy usually produce the worst thoughts), the USSR provided balance to prevent total US domination. In a more local perspective, they supported many revolutionary movements throughout the world, but also destroyed some revolutionary movements around the world when it did not fit their interests (eg. Spain 1936). In the case of Ukraine/Russia 1917-1921, they crushed millions of people in the name of their so-called revolution and tried to bribe figures of the movement (such as Kropotkin, who died in poverty refusing privileges that were not given to the masses, or Emma Goldman, who at first fell for it before realizing). Later, under Stalin, they committed a bunch of actual genocides.

I personally don’t think we can say things are better or worse in China today than in the West. In some regards, they are much better (education/healthcare), and in some regards they’re much worth (pollution/slavery). A comparison can only be applied if very strongly situated (studying a specific aspect, from the perspective of a certain social group) otherwise it will be meaningless. There are strong social movements both in Europe and in China; as an anarchist, i believe my comrades are those who struggle all over the world, and my enemies are the States on both sides crushing the people.

Although i would object to saying the USSR was not imperialist, or that China isn’t imperialist today. From a very strict definition of Lenin they are not, but as i talked earlier about Ukraine/Chechnya, the USSR had colonial blood on its hands, a very clear process of “otherisation” and deprivation which is characteristic of colonialism. Just like today, it’s hard to look at military occupation in Tibet, the mosque destructions and muslim reeducation camps in Xinjiang, and not draw a parallel to (being a french person) French imperialism and colonial practice.

Nothing is binary and in communist/anarchist praxis, self-criticism is very important. While not exactly an anarchist/communist revolution, you may be interested to read about the Kurdish liberation movement and Rojava’s democratic confederalism. They practice tekmil weekly and that’s a very important part of life especially in the collectives / public administration. My personal rule of thumb is if a specific power/person is not capable to hear criticism from their left and below, they are not working in the interests of a global socialist revolution and in the interests of the peoples ; under that standard, both China and the USSR would fail the test.

Oh i forgot to link to a zapatista perspective about not being anarchist/communist.

Before delving into the topic, let’s be very clear about one thing: anarchism in most forms is communism, and vice-versa. There was not really a distinction when the socialist movement was born. Many anarchists consider themselves “anarcho-communists”, and many marxists are in fact libertarian and don’t defend a “dictatorship of the proletariat”. There is not really an opposition between anarchists and communists, but there is a strong historical opposition between free-thinkers and a marxist-leninist vanguard eliminating everyone who disagrees with it including many marxists. I’ll assume in the rest of this comment that’s what you meant with “relationship between anarchism and communism”.

From an anarchist perspective, i can attest to books others have recommended. Classic anarchist books give very good historical examples and arguments against the tyranny of a well-meaning vanguard ; i was lately reading Bakunin making that very argument about a scientist-run government, which i think is quite relevant today with Andreas Malm arguing for what we could call a green dictatorship of the proletariat.

More historically, [Bloodstained: one hundred years of leninist counterrevolution](Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrevolution) was a good read. So were some books about the Spanish revolution, but i don’t remember the names (except Homage to Catalonia, which someone mentioned). Emma Goldman, in Trotsky protests too much (1938) made a powerful historical account of how Trotsky and Lenin rewrote history after massacring the Kronstadt soviet, and i remember reading some french translation of Volin, a great revolutionary from the russian/ukrainian revolution (but i don’t remember which text precisely).

For a case where “anarchism” and “communism” work fine together, you can read about the zapatistas. I personally would say there’s two interesting features making it work:

• the zapatista movement refuses identification with marxism or anarchism, saying their political orientation has much deeper roots, from much before the europeans divided themselves along those lines
• the zapatistas have a strong separation of powers: the militias (which tend to be more marxist and hierarchic) don’t have any political powers because they have the military power, and leave 100% of the political power to the communes (which tend to be more anti-authoritarian farmers)

All in all, the zapatistas have elements of authoritarian culture (especially in the people’s army, where discipline and security management is important) and anti-authoritarian culture as they have no State, police or prisons as we know them. Unfortunately, apart from oral history recounted by comrades, i don’t know of good sources for these specific questions/divisions/perspectives.

From an anarchist perspective, i can attest to books others have recommended. Classic anarchist books give very good historical examples and arguments against the tyranny of a well-meaning vanguard ; i was lately reading Bakunin making that very argument about a scientist-run government, which i think is quite relevant today with Andreas Malm arguing for what we could call a green dictatorship of the proletariat.

More historically, [Bloodstained: one hundred years of leninist counterrevolution](Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrevolution) was a

Incredible community! Maybe some day i should try and participate there instead of writing ansible spaghetti code :P

Thanks for sharing this article. It’s more nuanced and interesting than i expected, although i have disagreements with some parts of course. Overall, it raises the question of Do we want to accept authoritarian rule and some forms of injustice, in the name of material development for the masses?

Personally, i’m strongly in the “no” camp (“freedom or death”). But this article is a somewhat fair argument for “yes”.

Listen to Noam Chomsky holding forth about “left intellectuals” who try to “rise to power on the backs of mass popular movements” and “then beat the people into submission. . . . You start off as basically a Leninist who is going to be part of the Red bureaucracy. You see later that power doesn’t lie that way, and you very quickly become an ideologist of the right. . . . We’re seeing it right now in the [former] Soviet Union. The same guys who were communist thugs two years back, are now running banks and [are] enthusiastic free marketeers and praising Americans”

What’s wrong with this quote? Is it not true that in much of the ex-USSR the “communist” elites have organized the privatization of resources/industry? Is that not how Putin for example came to power and helped establish the new oligarchy?

Is that not the case all the way back to Lenin, who promised communism but massacre everyone who actually practiced it (Ukraine Commune, Cronstadt…) ?

these Reds side with the poor and powerless often at great risk and sacrifice to themselves

I guess it depends on local context, but i would say it’s true for some persons/networks, but definitely not true when it comes to Communist Parties. Or it may be true depending on the perceived advantages of doing so… for example the PCF in France defending independent Algeria on paper then voting for the war against independence, or denouncing State racism then mounting local militias to attack immigrant housing.

Orwell announced that a “willingness to criticize Russia and Stalin is the test of intellectual honesty

Again, what’s wrong with this quote? We could say the same about the US empire, btw… I’d say someone who is not willing to criticize both is a puppet of imperial interests. In practice, Orwell witnessed this first hand when he was in a trotskyist militia during the spanish revolution: he saw the communist party seize power and massacre all opposition (anarchist/trotskyist), so i can understand where that sentiment comes from. I truly recommend reading his autobiographic Homage to Catalonia for historical context.

And the Soviet Union, along with Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, and Cuba provided vital assistance to national liberation movements in countries around the world, including Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress in South Africa.

That’s true, but misleading. Some people’s republics have done huge service to foreign populations (eg. Cuban medical support), but when it comes from the USSR it was never (that i know of) for free. Material support was in exchange of suppressing the local leftists (like Lenin/Trotsky did in USSR) in order to build a vassal state. That’s for example what the USSR did during the spanish revolution, which arguably killed the revolution and led to the victory of fraquist fascism.

Instead, we maintained that, aside from the well-publicized deficiencies and injustices, there were positive features about existing communist systems that were worth preserving, that improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people in meaningful and humanizing ways.

Well that’s the first fair and balanced sentence in the whole article. The author went to great lengths to say that the USSR and other people’s republic were unjustly attacked, before finally recognizing that there are “injustices” to address… which was the whole point of criticizing the USSR (from a leftist perspective) the entire time.

“Western and also Third World intellectuals were attracted to the Bolshevik counterrevolution [sic] because Leninism is, after all, a doctrine that says that the radical intelligentsia have a right to take state power and to run their countries by force, and that is an idea which is rather appealing to intellectuals.”

Well that’s true. Enlightened intellectuals tend to consider the people too stupid to self-organize or have an informed opinion on things. The author would do himself a great service by analyzing what he finds wrong in this quote, instead of just asserting it’s plain wrong without explanations.

(Lenin) Yet he himself is repeatedly identified as an ultra-left putschist by mainstream journalists and some on the Left.

Yet again, what’s wrong with this? Lenin literally came back to Russia in the middle of a revolution, organized a military putsch, and jailed/killed all opposition. Not only did he do it but he advocated for this as “vanguard” and “dictatorship of the proletariat”.

Left anticommunists find any association with communist organizations to be morally unacceptable because of the “crimes of communism.” Yet many of them are themselves associated with the Democratic Party

Wow we are definitely not talking about the same “leftists”. Remember the author was citing Chomsky as an example of left anti-communism. How is Chomsky any close to the Democratic Party?

the perks enjoyed by party and government elites were modest by corporate CEO standards in the West (…) Soviet leaders like Yuri Andropov and Leonid Brezhnev lived (…) in a housing project near the Kremlin set aside for government leaders. They had limousines at their disposal (like most other heads of state) and access to large dachas where they entertained visiting dignitaries.

Right on point. But how does that make such injustice acceptable? Noone is arguing that western neoliberalism is “better” than USSR State capitalism. At least noone on the left.

But a real socialism, it is argued, would be controlled by the workers themselves through direct participation instead of being run by Leninists, Stalinists, Castroites, or other ill-willed, power-hungry, bureaucratic, cabals of evil men who betray revolutions. Unfortunately, this “pure socialism” view is ahistorical and nonfalsifiable; it cannot be tested against the actualities of history.

It’s a historical view. There are countless examples of such movements throughout history, except in marxist-leninist “history” because they have been entirely erased.

The armed workers would take control of production without benefit of managers, state planners, bureaucrats, or a formal military. While undeniably appealing, this worker syndicalism denies the necessities of state power. Under such an arrangement, the Nicaraguan revolution would not have lasted two months against the U.S.-sponsored counterrevolution that savaged the country

This is a fallacy! That military activities requires central planning goes mostly without doubt (though some could argue otherwise). But that does not mean that central military power should hold political power over the local population. Two historical examples:

• the Makhnovtchina held zero political power over the communes of Ukraine
• the EZLN holds to this day zero political power over the zapatistas caracoles

On the contrary, it is arguable that personal/communal autonomy is a fuel that drives people to defend the revolution with all their heart, whereas conscription or being ordered to execute your neighbors or union comrades is not exactly a good motivation…

All this is not to say that everything Stalin did was of historical necessity. The exigencies of revolutionary survival did not “make inevitable” the heartless execution of hundreds of Old Bolshevik leaders, the personality cult of a supreme leader who claimed every revolutionary gain as his own achievement, the suppression of party political life through terror, the eventual silencing of debate regarding the pace of industrialization and collectivization, the ideological regulation of all intellectual and cultural life, and the mass deportations of “suspect” nationalities.

Correct. But i find it weird not to apply the same kind of historical criticism to Lenin/Trotsky.

In fact, the capitalist restoration in Eastern Europe seriously weakened the numerous Third World liberation struggles that had received aid from the Soviet Union and brought a whole new crop of right-wing governments into existence, ones that now worked hand-in-glove with U.S. global counterrevolutionaries around the globe.

Correct.

No longer needing to convince workers that they live better than their counterparts in Russia, no longer restrained by a competing system, the corporate class is rolling back the many gains that working people have won over the years.

Correct.

Having never understood the role that existing communist powers played in tempering the worst impulses of Western capitalism, and having perceived communism as nothing but an unmitigated evil, the left anticommunists did not anticipate the losses that were to come. Some of them still don’t get it.

I somewhat agree with this interpretation. But i could also take it from another angle: Having never understood the role that perspectives of actual freedom & equality for all played in tempering the worst impulses of tyranny, and having perceived anarchism as nothing but chaos, the marxist-leninists did not anticipate the losses that were to come. Some of them still don’t get it.

I personally would love if voting was restricted to members of a specific community. That would truly help augment the signal/noise ratio. Practical example: it’s not uncommon on /c/anarchism to have stalinist fanboys come and mass-downvote all they can find… except our forum is not intended for them to consume/judge.

Well The Register’s article does not sound anti-Wikipedia at all. In fact i would argue it’s pretty much pro-Wikipedia, since this kind of nonsensical “vandalism” (as they say in wiki land) is entirely transparent and so was possible to identify at all.

Now yogthos is pretty much anti-Wikipedia because they see it as a pro-US propaganda machine. Which is silly, you just have to read articles on Julian Assange, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, CoIntelPro, or NSA to realize that many Wikipedia articles directly contradict US national interests and propaganda apparatus.

“Nooooo but what are the chances that our military agencies would do R&D and then try to masquerade it as aliens? Military is good and honest and transparent, only aliens would try to hide!”

(end sarcasm here)

Unfortunately there is close to zero trustworthy hardware manufacturer these days. In the DIY world there’s still Virax or Festool who have a well-deserved good reputation. In the laptop/phone space there’s some manufacturers making efforts like System76/Librem and a few others, but they still have no power over all the components so obsolescence (planed or not) still applies.

But in the 2D printer world it’s just… mafia everywhere. Apparently print heads are remarkable high-tech that are designed around specific ink mechanical properties to handle, and there’s very few people/corporations with the know-how and the budget to produce these. That’s why you find an abundance of free-hardware 3D printers (a heating head is easy to manufacture) but exactly zero free-hardware 2D printer.

I personally would spend more money than i should on a free-hardware 2D printer. Printers are usually the worst pieces of hardware i have to interact with.

BTW thanks for sending me down a rabbit hole that Mastodon account is a gold mine ;)

I usually hate that meme of the macho muscly doge as symbol of perfection, but with all the glitter added i like it :P

According to Videolan org there is officially no motive communicated yet, but as the article points out there’s a correlation that some viruses used forked VLC as a means of reaching targets lately. It’s not far-fetched to imagine that someone, somewhere in an office who has no idea what “compiling” even means thought they need to block the (official) VLC website to stop the infections.

I recommend you read some history. Many popular uprisings have been led by women at the forefront. That organized workers movements gave them little space/autonomy (much like for non-white people) is undeniable, but to say that worker struggles were a “men’s right movement” is a REALLY far stretch.

I’m not from the USA but for example there two major figures of the workers movement in late 19th century / early 20th were Emma Goldman and Lucy Parsons. That they’ve been mostly erased from history books tells more about who writes/distributes the books and their agenda than about a perceived lack of women in social struggles.

For example, when it comes to anarchism people usually recommend reading Kropotkin/Bakunin/Proudhon, slipping under the carpet the many theoretical contributions of women. If only to name one, read Emma Goldman ;)

Tssss l’argument d’autorité direct ;) ;)

la bise aux francophones vénères <3