I want to start a discussion that critiques this essay:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ziq-tankies-and-the-left-unity-scam
My personal critique is that while everything said here is true about state communism, this essay limits itself by appearing to create a false affinity between communism and anarchism.
I feel this essay could have expanded it's critique of communism all the way through, arriving at solid black anarchy as the conclusion of rejecting left unity.
really tho wtf is "solid black anarchy" and how does one arrive there
it’s like “solid snake” from Metal Gear Solid
Basically means full negation of colored elective proposals as I see it. A focus on the negation.
Sad that you are the only one to get that. Goes to show how much red has eclipsed anarchy in many social environments.
While I think it's perhaps time they left continuing anarchism to the all blacks I actually think that there is still a use for them as 'anarchist structured' ideologues. It's ideology but it's at least preferable to all that other state stuff which is still very much alive. It could serve as a useful gateway still. The red, the orange, hell even the gold stuff to a certain degree.
I personally see anarchy as grey and beyond all or nothing negation or affirmation. That would be the true egoist open minded position.
so nihilism/"antipolitics" ?
also smugness and cynicism
lacks even the negation but emptiness is not for everyone.
"Brave-spirited wearers of the patched robe possess an outstanding, extraordinary aspect. With great determination, they give up conventional society. They look upon worldly status and evanescent fame as dust in the wind, as clouds floating by, as echoes in a valley.
Since they already have great faculties and great capacity from the past, they know that this level exists, and they transcend birth and death and move beyond holy and ordinary. This is the indestructible true essence that all the enlightened ones of all times witness, the wondrous mind that alone the generations of enlightened teachers have communicated.
To tread this unique path, to be a fragrant elephant or a giant, golden-winged bird, it is necessary to charge past the millions of categories and types and fly above them, to cut off the flow and brush against the heavens. How could the enlightened willingly be petty creatures, confined within distinctions of high and low and victory and defeat, trying futilely to make comparative judgments of instantaneous experience, and being utterly turned around by gain and loss?
For this reason, in olden times the people of great enlightenment did not pay attention to trivial matters and did not aspire to the shallow and easily accessible. They aroused their determination to transcend the buddhas and patriarchs. They wanted to bear the heavy responsibility that no one can fully take up, to rescue all living beings, to remove suffering and bring peace, to smash the ignorance and blindness that obstructs the Way. They wanted to break the poisonous arrows of ignorant folly and extract the thorns of arbitrary views from the eye of reality. They wanted to make the scenery of the fundamental ground clear and reveal the original face before the empty aeon.
You should train your mind and value actual practice wholeheartedly, exerting all your power, not shrinking from the cold or heat. Go to the spot where you meditate and kill your mental monkey and slay your intellectual horse. Make yourself like a dead tree, like a withered stump.
Suddenly you penetrate through - how could it be attained from anyone else? You discover the hidden treasure, you light the lamp in the dark room, you launch the boat across the center of the ford. You experience great liberation, and without producing a single thought, you immediately attain true awakening. Having passed through the gate into the inner truth, you ascend to the site of universal light. Then you sit in the impeccably pure supreme seat of the emptiness of all things.
Moving into action as an enlightened teacher, with rolling waves in the ocean of speech, you unleash the skills of unobstructed understanding and eloquence. With chosen pupils, you set up a situation or utter a saying to reveal extraordinary perceptions. You cause all beings, whether ordinary or sage, whether sentient or insentient, to look up to the awesome light and receive its protection.
But this is not yet the stage of effortless achievement. You must go further beyond, to where the thousand sages cannot trap you, the myriad conscious beings have no way to look up to you, the gods have no way to offer you flowers, and the demons and outsiders cannot spy on you. You must cast off knowledge and views, discard mysteries and marvels, and abandon all contrived actions. You simply eat when hungry and drink when thirsty, and that's all.
At this stage you are never aware of having mind or not having mind, of gaining mindfulness or losing mindfulness. So how could you still be attached to what you have previously learned and understood, to "mysteries" and "marvels" and analyses of essential nature, to the fetters of names and forms and arbitrary opinions? How could you still be attached to views of "Buddha" and views of "Dharma" or to earth-shaking worldly knowledge and intellect? You would be tying and binding yourself, you would be counting the grains of sand in the ocean - what would there be to rely on?
All those who are truly great must strive to overcome the obstacles of delusion and ignorance. They must strive to jolt the multitudes out of their complacency and to fulfill their own fundamental intent and vows. Only if you do this are you a true person of the Path, without contrived activity and without concerns, a genuine Wayfarer of great mind and great vision and great liberation."
(Translated by J.C. Cleary and Thomas Cleary, published 1994)
"and how does one arrive there"
By rejecting leftism all together in favor of individualism.
We build a wall, not a concrete or electrified steel wall, but an ideological wall which prevents the cerebral indoctrination of budding anarchists!!
Let's make anarchy great again!!
as long as you paint it SOLID BLACK
well, it’s their fanfic, they can ship communism and anarchism if they want. but it’s okay if you want to make a wrting prompt to write one where they are frienemies. i’d personally like to see one featuring One Direction where black anarchy metamorphs into Super Rainbow Deluxe Glamarchy!!!!!! : D <3
" The close similarities between fascism and Marxist-Leninist ideology are hard to ignore. Both Marxism-Leninism and National Socialism masquerade as socialism but in reality have little to do with it and are simply excuses to mount dictatorships. "
this line could be criticized for differentiating between "real" socialism and ML and national socialism. instead it could be proposed that both are actual socialism and that socialism can/must tend toward authoritarian government, or that socialism is a spectrum that includes these kinds of extremes.
In the tankies section, where they talk about rapid industrialization is a good place to criticize communist theory as pro-civ and progressive. it could be proposed that communism DOES require the rapid industrialization of a nation since it's a step-by-step approach to getting from pre-industrial society to communism. the possibility the communism might not be possible without the atrocities carried out in its name. good place to suggest rupture/insurrectionary breaks instead of progress. (this criticism doesn't take into account communization and insurrectionary approaches to communism)
could argue that anti-state communism is a contradiction and a distortion of what communism is said to be. by some definitions communism is supposed to initially have a state, and in practice that state doesn't wither away.
" Lenin's acts later inspired further dictators in the 20th century who also misused the word "communism" to describe their brutal state-capitalist regimes. He effectively destroyed any chance humanity had to achieve communism in that century, and the damage he did to revolutionary action is still being felt today as the word "communism" has become synonymous with "totalitarian state" in the public consciousness. "
again a place to argue against the difference between "real" and fake communism.
argue that the politicians and authoritarian set ups the author criticizes are themselves "actual left-wing movements" and not some aberrations of "real" leftism.
ask: who decides which communisms are "legit"? why is communism only the good things about communism? what's the difference between the author's idea of communism, and anarchy? if they are the same, why call it communism at all?
dat was legitnesss
Is essentially rooted in a Xian societal form regardless of the state or so-called anti-state form. It also is infected by messianic structural logic.
In regards to the idea of the state withering away, after actively attacking class, I think Marx and Engels have it backwards. You have to actively attack the state and subsequently CLASS will wither away or at least be reduced to tiny regional margins in the world. This anarchist approach avoids the technocratic monopolistic measures that are inherent in Marxism and Communism.
ANARCHISM AND COMMUNISM SITTING IN A TREE!
K-I-S-S-I-N-G! FIRST COMES LOVE, THEN COMES MARRIAGE, THEN COMES BACKSTABBING POWER PLAYS AND REPRESSION AND EVERYONE GOING INTO HIDING AND BECOMING DISENCHANTED AND RESENTFUL!
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