Disclaimer: I adore my anarchist comrades and I don’t write for a newspaper, I have in fact never even read one.
aimixin on left unity:
“Left unity” is pointless. If you have a total of 5 leftists in your country, it doesn’t matter if they all unify, they’re still powerless. People seem to have this delusion that if only Marxists and anarchists stopped fighting, they could come together in countries like the US and take power, but in reality, this is more likely to be the result.
It’s also completely backwards. No revolution has been carried out by only class conscious communists. Communists have to learn how to appeal to the masses, and the masses then have to support it. This is the problem, the highly class conscious communists will always be in small numbers, and will never have the numbers on their own, even if they all unify together.
Historically, the socialists and communists that come to power are rarely even the result of “unity”, but it’s always one specific section overtakes everyone else by storm. That’s because some organization figures out a way to rally the masses, and once you get the masses on your side, all other organizations get in line or get destroyed.
The problem is not lack of left unity, but lack of any organizations that have figured out a way to rally the masses. Nobody has figured out how to overcome all the anti-communist brainwashing and to have a message that appeals. It’s only been successful in colonized countries but not in the colonizer countries.
People who act like there’s some simple solution that we’re just all too stupid to see, like, “if we just all stopped fighting we’d win the revolution!” are not appreciating just how difficult the problem is. The reason communists have not succeeded in colonizer countries is not because they’re all missing something “so simple”, but because the problem is fucking hard, and they have a mountain to climb.
Like, I kinda disagree that the only point of left unity is “if we had it, the revolution would happen”. If you’re setting up a kitchen for feeding homeless people on Thursday nights or something, you’re not helped by burning every single bridge and are helped by having some spaces where disparate groups of 5 leftists at least talk to each other without airing their grievances about something Stalin did in 1928. This goes for setting up protests, or really any activity that involves more than 5 leftists. And within those spaces people will wander back and forth between groups on theoretical stuff and personal beefs and just time availability. Focusing on just “will this bring forth the revolution” is… idk, it probably leads to not doing very much.
(I agree with the point that left unity spaces or lack thereof is what is standing between us and “the revolution”)
What @emizeko@hexbear.net is talking about is ideological and organizational unity.
What you are talking about is tactical unity.
Those are two different things that at times may intersect at times, and at other times run separate from each other
I’m largely talking about how it appears on this website and how I see it on the ground in my local area. Thus far, no one has suggested that all the trots, anarchists, MLs get together on the ground in my area, though they periodically try to recruit members from each other. Which, sure, I guess is tactical. I don’t think I’ve actually seen very much of what emizeko is suggesting compared to what I’m talking about.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
