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Title: Smashing the Orderly Party
Date: 2019
Language: en
Topics: Leninism, party, post-left
Source: Retrieved on 2020-04-28 from https://www.sproutdistro.com/catalog/zines/history/smashing-orderly-party/

Smashing the Orderly Party

Need some context? Here’s an introduction

I would like to write down some thoughts regarding Leninism as a

historical and theoretical position. I am writing to those who are

willing to listen in hopes of refining a critique of authoritarian

socialism. I do not have delusions that this short essay will convince

anyone of something drastically outside of what they already believe or

at least that is not my intention.

Recently, there has been much debate on listserv and social media sites

about an upcoming “Bash Lenin Pinata Party” being hosted by some local

Atlanta anarchists. In response to this. Leninists and other

authoritarian socialists (including Maoists from other parts of the

country) have responded with vitriol, homophobic slanders, and

multitudinous critiques of anarchy. “sectarianism,” and “trolling.” I am

writing this because I believe that anarchists and anti authoritarians

in other parts of the country have had similar encounters with

Leninists. The responses I have seen are usually limited to poking fun

or reverting to listing-off familiar historical bloodbaths of the

Leninist project. I hope to bring a humble contribution to the

discussion with the intention of increasing our capacity to meaningfully

engage in ideological debate with the Party of Order — be it Leninists,

bosses, police, liberals, misogynists or anyone else who seeks to impose

discipline on our bodies.

For a wild, uncontrollable, rebellion without object or measure.

For anarchy!

A Brief Glossary of Terms

It is almost never the case that serious disagreements stem from simple

miscommunication. With that said, I would like to avoid

misunderstandings stemming from an imprecise lexicon.

AUTHORITY: The difference between your mother or your kindergarten

teacher and a police officer or party hack is that the first kind of

authority undermines the basis for its own existence over time and the

second kind creates the material and social relations which discipline

your body and mind in a self duplicating relationship of domination or

attempt to do so. When anarchists talk about “authority.” we are nearly

always disparaging the domination of the latter. Marxists following the

Leninist tradition are often intentionally unclear about their

definition of authority. bouncing back and forth between the two listed

above when it is expedient for them. Some Leninists even go as far as to

say that they don’t even know what the word authority’ means. Here. I

have laid bare a coherent, nuanced definition that I believe reflects

the lived experiences of contemporary human reality. Note: an

“Authoritarian” is simply someone who believes that

authority-as-domination is necessary, desirable, or inevitable. This

includes the “authority of the majority” espoused by democrats

(lower-case “d”).

AUTONOMY: The freedom to decide for oneself about things involving ones

own body (See also: “Individual”). The limits of autonomy under

capitalism are clear — it’s not enough for us to simply negotiate a

peace treaty with Power, we must attack! Regardless, most anarchists see

autonomous self organization as an absolute prerequisite to any

emancipatory project.

DISCIPLINE: It is always rewarding to accomplish a goal or to overcome

an obstacle in one’s life. More often than not, this requires patience

and dedication or some would say, discipline. There is obviously nothing

wrong with this undertaking. When I talk about “discipline” in this

piece. I am referring to the historical, social, and institutional use

of force, guilt, and coercion to conform human behavior to existing

social morals or expectations while subsequently pathologizing or

imprisoning all behaviors or biologies that do not fit the values of the

social order. For anarchists, the problem of prisons, asylums. and

courts is not only a problem of administration but of the entire world

order attached to their development and application.

INDIVIDUAL: Throughout the text. I may refer to the social category of

the “individual.” In liberal Enlightenment philosophy. The individual

was a free roaming monad who entered equally into voluntary contract

with other free persons and developed mechanisms of ensuring security.

even at the expense of autonomy and freedom. In anarchist philosophy. as

in the Marxist tradition, “individuals” do not truly exist outside of

the context they are socialized in. Many anarchists are avid readers of

the Postmodern and Poststructuralist marxists (ie. Critical Theory,

Autonomia, “post-68” literature, etc.) who offer accurate and meaningful

critiques of the metaphysical “individual” described in classical

liberal thought. However, it is important to account for the real

subjective experience of memory and the body as continuous nodes of

interaction with other persons, places, and systems over time (meaning

that all people experience themselves as singular organs of sense

experience in space-time). The individual is a being in the world who

experiences itself in a limited social context and who shapes its

destiny in an ongoing creative process, one way or another.

THE STATE: For Marxists, the State is a centralized tool of class

oppression. For Marx, the State is simply a compulsory apparatus for

maintaining class distinctions. It is never really defined too strictly,

which benefits anyone who wants to be in power. A useful definition of

the State is either a body which maintains a monopoly on the legitimate

use of force or a body which maintains a monopoly on legitimate decision

making. The economist definition of a State put forward by Marxists

doesn’t really tell us anything about how states have worked. Instead,

it simply locates the State in its role in a market. It is possible,

however, to conceive of governing bodies which do not impose themselves

as economic actors, but simply exercise disciplinary control over human

bodies. Such is the domination of the concentration camp.

Against self-victimizations anti-intellectualism among some

anarchists

I am going to begin with a few thoughts on anarchists and our collective

inability to meaningfully respond to the theoretical maneuvers of

Leninists. I believe most of these critiques are obvious to those inside

and outside of the anarchist space. Since my intention with this piece

is to contribute to anarchist critique of Leninism, with my intended

audience being anarchists, I feel like it may be tasteful to begin with

some humble self-criticism.

It has been my experience that many anarchists have regularly and

compulsively presented themselves as victims of a global historical

conspiracy. By and large, the anarchist space rejects the logic of

submission and victimization often expressed by liberals and activists

on the Left. We prefer to see ourselves as active partisans in a social

clash waged inside of societies or between worlds. It is surprising,

then, that anarchists would be so reluctant to critically analyze the

historical failures of anarchism. Of course, we have faced off tyrants,

capitalists, and political opportunists of the Left: we have fought wars

against fascism: we have made ourselves the enemies of rapists and

homophobes. In short: we have declared war on the Existent and find

ourselves with few comrades. Because of this, we stand against

tremendous odds. However, anarchists have not simply failed because of

outside forces. If this is the case, we must analyze the significance of

this reality and develop holistic strategies for defense. It is not

enough to be the purest ideology in the marketplace of ideas.

In the last two decades, anarchists and others have written countless

essays and pamphlets critiquing the Spanish Civil War and the Paris

Commune, as well as other mis-steps within the anarchist current. Still,

many anarchists are unfamiliar with these critiques or have not

developed their own theory regarding the events.

This brings me to my next point anti-intellectualism in the anarchist

space. This is a problem that has influenced nearly every human grouping

since the dawn of symbolic thought. I don’t care about most of those

groups — I want to talk to anarchists for a moment longer.

It seems that Marxism, as an essentially idealist philosophy from the

Hegelian tradition (despite all claims to the contrary), has primarily

produced an endless cast of academics, intellectuals, published authors,

professors and other paid thinkers. On the other hand, anarchism has

developed primarily as an evolving practice of revolt. The existential

differences between Marxism and anarchism are not by chance and are not

without consequence. In light of these differences, and perhaps in a

sense of arrogance or even resentment, anarchists have not often

meaningfully engaged with theoretical texts. Worse, many anarchists have

avoided useful insight published by those pushing hardest at the

barricades! Explicitly anarchist independent distribution networks of

all sizes exist internationally, and that is beautiful. There are

anarchist study groups and publishers. Still, the role of engaging with

strategic or tactical considerations, let alone theoretical engagements,

has been somewhat specialized in the anarchist space. This is

unacceptable. We must develop a culture of praxis in the anarchist space

— not so that we can abstractly bloviate on panels or in the university,

but so that we can effectively spread social rebellion and disorder!

In recent years, the problem of anti-intellectualism has become less and

less relevant. The crisis has given rise to several waves of anarchist

activity all over the country — particularly on the west coast. In the

current climate, even more so after the spontaneous developments of the

Occupy movement, anarchist networks have sprung up where they were

previously lacking, including here in Atlanta. This is a perfect

opportunity for many to begin with a proper footing

TL;DR quit whining, read a book, think for yourself & let’s kick ass.

Lenin as a historical figure; Some notes on the concentrated

spectacle and the cult of personality

And since commodity production is less developed under bureaucratic

capitalism, it too takes on a concentrated form: the commodity the

bureaucracy appropriates is the total social labor, and what it sells

back to the society is that society’s wholesale survival. The

dictatorship of the bureaucratic economy cannot leave the exploited

masses any significant margin of choice because it has had to make all

the choices itself, and any choice made independently of it, whether

regarding food or music or anything else, thus amounts to a declaration

of war against it. This dictatorship must be enforced by permanent

violence. Its spectacle imposes an image of the good which subsumes

everything that officially exists, an image which is usually

concentrated in a single individual, the guarantor of the system’s

totalitarian cohesion.

—The Society of the Spectacle, Thesis 64

Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Che, Kim Jung Il, Pol Pot...

Many people associate Leninism, or even Marxism generally, with the type

of totalitarian cult of personalities surrounding the leaders of nearly

every “successful” socialist regime. Leninists typically respond that

sure, cults of personality exemplify an obvious cultural shortcoming in

the nation-states in question, but the leaders themselves usually did

their best to actively combat obsession. According to the Leninists,

critiques that reference the pattern of cults of personality lack a

historical materialist understanding of the conditions surrounding the

culture. Thus, the beloved leader’s hands are washed off the cult

surrounding them. Although some such critiques are obvious results of

American propaganda, there is still a clear issue of obsession over

leadership within the Leninist tradition — and not every critique can or

should be reduced to its “McCarthyist” or “rightist” origins.

Socialism seeks to radically reform the legal regime of property (more

on this later). A part of this process involves what leftists, including

some anarchists. call “seizing the means of production.”

By this. Leninists mean something like “universal nationalization of

wealth” or “socialization of all resources and industries.” I could say

this another way — I could call this “concentrating the power to

distribute goods and food into the hands of a small group of people.”

It is simply intellectually lazy to critique cults of personalities

without addressing the material conditions out of which they developed

Marxists should be very familiar with this process.

I would argue that any regime or government that consolidates forces of

production and distribution into a single apparatus (whether Party or

People’s Army) is only able to reproduce slavish citizens. The

centralization of production holds everyone dependent, against the

alternative of certain war and famine, on the central apparatus. This

daily existence in bureaucratic state capitalism of the Leninist

persuasion, can only reproduce itself. The citizen-worker-subject is

trapped in an infinite cycle of subjectivization. Outside of this

process stands only the sovereign: the patriarch who represents

everything that could ever be free, the only thing that could ever

meaningfully impact reality, the only individual left in a sick, dead

world of work poverty, misery, and obsession. Production, distribution,

trade security. Nation, and then dependence are wrapped up in a single

concentrated spectacle: the Big Brother who accounts for all of one’s

needs.

Security and dinner came with Stalin’s face branded on the packaging, so

to speak

In this way, the Leninist strategy of “seizing state power” had to have

a Stalin.

In contemporary American society, with its integrated spectacle, all of

life is reduced to the consumption of competing fluid and meaningless

images that only specialists can understand. Americans create and

participate in their own becoming-false. They are alien in their own

bodies and see themselves as reflections of images. Under bureaucratic

state capitalism, however, this was not so. Since all commodity

circulation was centralized, the images of those commodities were also

centralized. Everything was mediated by the image of the leader who was

the only real actor in the entire social factory. There is no reason to

believe that this will not happen again every single time production is

organized this way.

Lenin and his willing executioners

I am not going to address the famines caused by forced industrialization

or forced collectivization. It must be mentioned, however, that the

centralization of power destroyed the Russian ecosphere and caused

millions of deaths over several decades from famine and drought. Many

Leninists today still view industrialization as good and view the

reluctance of the peasants/sailors to send all of their food to Moscow

for War Communism and redistribution to have been “individualist.” This

comes, I believe, from a profound disregard in the Leninist tendency to

consider environmental devastation as well as rampant authoritarianism

in their tendency. I am also not going to discuss Stalin’s forced labor

and extermination camps because most Leninists understand that Stalin

was a horrible bastard.

I’d like to spend the least time here because I think many people are

aware of the deaths dealt at the hands of Lenin and other Leninist

dictators. Of note is the suppression of the Kronstadt Commune and the

Ukrainian Black Army. Both of these groups helped to overthrow the Tsar

and collaborated with the Bolsheviks for years leading up to their

deaths. Also noteworthy is the Stalinist repression of the Spanish

anarchists and the Maoist beheadings of anarchists during the Chinese

Cultural Revolution.

Leninists are often frustrated when anarchists bring these things up,

and for good reason. Leninists (whether as strict Marxist-Leninists or

as Maoists or Trotskyists) identify with a very particular historical

moment. They see themselves as reflections of these leaders. They locate

themselves in the theory, behaviors, and lives of these Great Men. To

question the legitimacy of this his-story calls into question how they

see themselves. Although they would argue that they are not dogmatic

followers of their leaders, it is yet to be illustrated that they

wouldn’t follow similar orders to maim and kill political opponents if

they were made today. After all, there were many smart, independent,

comrades who gladly persecuted political opponents under socialist

governments.

When Leninists are confronted with the betrayals of the Kronstadt, don’t

they always justify it? “It was a historical necessity.” If it’s not a

divine/objective necessity. like the colonization of the New World was

thought to be, then it’s the fault of the anarchists. Why weren’t they

sending grain to Moscow? Why weren’t they submitting to the orders of

the Bolshevik leadership? Why did they oppose class collaboration with

the national bourgeoisie? These excuses mimic the justification for

virtually every imperialist or totalitarian venture in history.

The most insidious justification is that it was a sad thing that had to

happen. This way, modern Leninists are able to distance themselves from

behaviors that they see as wise and, besides being unfortunate,

completely legitimate. They can maintain airs of radicalism while

preserving their loyalty and commitment to the Party-line.

The final justification they offer is some form of disassembling. They

insist that “Lenin wasn’t a superhero” who could just do whatever he

wanted. This is dishonest in full. Aside from the fact that the

Bolshevik party was totally hierarchical and Lenin could have literally

retracted the order to murder if he wanted, it is also an inconsistent

distribution of agency.

They laud Lenin for the good thing he does and divert

blame for the bad things. Furthermore, anarchists know the problem

wasn’t just Lenin. We are very much aware that the problem was totally

structural. That is why we are against the State. People shouldn’t have

the authority to make decisions like that. When people are able to

dominate others, they usually do. Lenin could have been anyone and

that’s what scares us about his followers.

Oh yeah, one more thing!

Anarchists are not innocent activists and in none of these circumstances

were they quietly trying to build up State power. Anarchists are rebels

and in most of these circumstances they were actively moving forward

with revolutionary maneuvers against domination. Because the Leninist

Strategy of “seizing State power” involves establishing a new

“revolutionary government.” an equivocation is made whereby the “State”

is substituted for “Revolution” and the phrase “enemy of the revolution”

is subtly transformed into the Hobbesian/monarchist “enemy of the

state.” It is no surprise that enemies “on the right as well as the

left” are opposed with tyrannical force. The State is to blame for

anarchist deaths. That much is clear. This was not the oppression of

legitimate citizens in an otherwise quaint society. The anarchists

killed by Leninists and Maoists were casualties in a social war.

Against all authority; Critique of the vanguard strategy +More!

Hence, our task, the task of Social-Democracy, is to combat spontaneity,

to divert the working-class movement....and to bring it under the wing

of revolutionary Social Democracy.

— “What Is To Be Done?,” “The Spontaneity of the Masses and the

Consciousness of the Social-Democrats”

Perhaps the defining characteristic of Leninism as a distinct political

philosophy is his revolutionary strategy developed in his text What is

To Be Done?, published in 1901. In the text. Lenin describes the

repressive conditions of the political situation in Tsarist Russia at

the turn of the century and the potential vectors of revolt at that

point from his perspective (which, it turns out, is “objective” and

“scientific”! How lucky!). The text describes a backward feudal society

completely controlled by the Tsar and his police. Surveillance is near

total and any attempts at economic blockades or even passive

demonstration are met by brutal repression by the royal police force.

Furthermore, there was little to no revolutionary momentum or theory

coming from Russia at the time, outside of the Nihilist movement

Lenin proposes that the spontaneous self-organization of the working

class has as its limit “trade union consciousness” which can only

negotiate conditions inside of market society and cannot develop the

force necessary to overcome it. The only solution to this problem. Lenin

believes, is to form secret, conspiratorial bands which will intervene

in the struggle of the working class to beat back liberalism and to help

develop an insurrectionary fervor. These groups, called cadres, would be

federated with nuclei in the factories. Cadres would report back to the

central committee of the Bolshevik Party, which would consolidate the

information brought back and decide the strategic course of action at

that point. When an insurrection begins, the Party will team with the

advanced layers of the working class and their most revolutionary

organizations and groups to “seize state power” with which to launch a

“dictatorship of the proletariat.”

I do not believe that I have straw-manned the position of Lenin,

although it is likely that I am inaccurate about some of the details. I

have not thoroughly read What is to be Done?, but I have read several

sections and I’ve discussed the text with self-described Leninists many

times. Furthermore, I have read online overviews and watched short

introductory videos. In short. I do not claim to be an expert — so

excuse any inaccuracies. Regardless. I believe this to be the basic

position Lenin holds.

---

Remember that the State, according to Lenin, is simply an instrument of

class oppression. Thus, once it is used by the Party to obliterate class

distinctions, state functions will become totally redundant. The State

will ‘wither away.” bringing us to full Communism.

Cadres vs. Affinity Groups: Similarities and Differences

Cadres: A cadre is a tight-knit group of professional revolutionaries

who intervene in social movements and working class organizations

according to the needs and recommendations of the larger coordinating

body (i.e. the central committee). While cadres have relative autonomy

because they are federated, they are not expressions of legitimate

self-organization. Their membership guidelines preclude free

association, while the party structure that governs them enforces

ideological hegemony and conformity. Although in “democratic centralism”

debate is encouraged individuals are expected to go along with the

majority decision. How this is distinct from contemporary bourgeois

democracy is unclear to me.

Affinity Groups: The affinity group is the basic unit of most anarchist

organizing. especially from currents directly or indirectly influenced

by Italian and North American insurrectionary anarchism. Affinity groups

are essentially small, closed, informal groups of people who share a

common goal, common knowledge and who have come together to directly

achieve their goals. “Common goals” can be anything from “smash the

windows out of the Niketown” to “make some leaflets before the march” to

“hold the banner together.” Affinity groups coordinate and organize

themselves autonomously. They intervene however they see fit, but

usually with some level of consideration for the plans of larger

formations. “Common knowledge” means that each person in the affinity

group has a general idea of everyone else’s expectations, temperament,

and how they will feel about the action they take following its

execution, especially in the event of repression or failure. Affinity

groups are normally between 3 and 10 people and come together only for a

particular set of actions (ie. informally).

Affinity is developed through discussion and shared experience. Affinity

is not short-hand for “friendship,” although it is often the case that

people form affinity groups with those they are closest to socially.

There are certainly limits to affinity-group organizing, especially in

periods of open insurrection when it may be necessary to involve upwards

of 100 people in infrastructural attacks (as happened in the December

2008 uprising in Greece), but they are still the basic unit of an

autonomous uprisings. Organizing by affinity allows wide sectors of the

population to develop critical thinking skills, the confidence to take

initiative, and higher capacity to organize and coordinate combative

activity, as well as providing for each person’s material and emotional

needs.

Self-organization vs. Substitutionism

Anarchist affinity groups, and affinity groups in general, are

expressions of autonomous self organization. They do not seek to

represent the “interests” of any group of people and they act purely

according to the desires of those involved. Affinity group organizing

does not seek to over determine the field of legitimate human activity,

nor does it succumb to the liberal traps of democracy or formalism.

Affinity groups are formed any time groups of people come together to

act. This is the type of self-organization seen in Montreal 2011, France

2005, Italy 1977, Algeria 2001, and, of course, Seattle 1999.

On the other hand, cadre organizations see themselves as the legitimate

agents of a social clash. They need to control, oversee, and defend the

movement against capital which, unfortunately for them, is overrun with

“unconscious” masses. Cadres seek to perform a specialized task so that

they can substitute themselves for the revolting people. For cadres,

unruliness and ungovernability are problems that must be overcome.

Cadres must build up legitimacy in working class organizations, usually

without revealing themselves, so that they can exercise disproportionate

influence over decisions. In this way, they are authoritarian and

destructive to any liberatory project.

We could say this another way: Anarchists, as anti-representational

catalysts of destabilization and revolt, experience themselves as forms

of life incompatible with all domination. The cadre sees itself as the

touched-up image of a revolting populace in the theater of political

life.

A few thoughts on “armed struggle”

One particular strategy of Marxism-Leninism Maoism, especially popular

in the 1970s, is the strategy of the “armed vanguard.” The idea is

essentially that a nuclei or cadre will arm itself, go underground, and

levy armed clashes with the State. This specialized activity cannot be

done by most sectors of the population and will, therefore, nurture awe

and respect for the “Revolutionary Organizations.”

This strategy is a strategy of substitutionism, like many Leninist

projects. As has been mentioned elsewhere the force of insurrection is

social, not military. The question is not quantitative, as in how much

damage was done to capitalist infrastructure or how many were killed,

but rather qualitative: How deep has the practice of revolt spread in

society?

Anarchists do not seek to constitute ourselves as a counter-subject, a

counter-state, which will wage war with the existing state and

eventually overcome it. Anarchists seek to create a livable and endless

state of exception whereby society has made itself completely unrulable.

In recent years, anarchists in some places have adopted the urban

guerrilla strategy, language, and aesthetic of the Maoists. They insist

they are not a vanguard, but words are not enough. Much has been written

on the subject and I will not go further into it here.

---

“Seizing State Power”

The State exists for its own reasons but Leninists and most Marxists

make the argument that the State is simply a tool of the bourgeoisie and

that its functions should be taken over by the Party to repress their

political opponents. Let’s be absolutely clear about what this means,

because Leninists always try to avoid the facts about this situation: In

order the repress the bourgeoisie or the “enemies of the

revolution/state” — including anarchists and other “infantile”

ultra-leftists — the Party wants to become the government.

The “dictatorship of the proletariat” needs very specific things to

exercise its control:

Police to round up perceived class enemies,

Courts to judge them in,

Prisons to hold them in, and

A centralized military to defend from outsiders.

It is common for Leninists to critique “the capitalist state,” “racist

police,” and the “privatized prison system.” These phrases have the

appearances of radicalism. The terms “capitalist,” “racist” and

“privatized” seem to be modifying the nouns “state,” “police,” and

“prison.” But that couldn’t be further from the truth. They are using

distinct nouns. Leninists are not against the State, like anarchists

are. They are against this state. They are not against police. They are

against these police. They are against these prisons. The problem of the

State, for Leninists, is an administrative question. In their eyes, the

wrong regime holds power.

In this light we can see them for what they are: the most extreme social

democrats for a drastically reformed state. The mode of this reform is

revolution. That is perhaps the most profound difference between

Leninists and Scandinavian-style social democrats who believe in the

vote.

In any case, “seizing state power” is an obscene idea in today’s world.

The State is no longer the primary impetus of domination in today’s

Empire. To add to the directory of independent countries” only

contributes to our current asphyxiation. The enemy today confronts us as

a set of governing practices dispensed in a permanent state of global

counter insurgency, not just as a class of dastardly expropriators. The

entire project of constructing People’s governments failed miserably in

every single attempt. Even if it was simply the fault of outside forces,

that reality is something Lenin’s followers are going to have to account

for.

The true contrary of the proletariat is not the bourgeoisie. It is the

bourgeois world, imperialist society, of which the proletariat, let this

be noted, is a notorious element, as the principal productive force and

as the antagonistic political pole... To say proletariat and bourgeoisie

is to remain within the bounds of the Hegelian artifice: something and

something else. Why? Because the project of the proletariat, its

internal being, is not to contradict the bourgeoisie, or to cut its feet

from under it. This project is communism, and nothing else. That is, the

abolition of any place in which something like a proletariat can be

installed. The political project of the proletariat is the disappearance

of the space of the placement of classes. It is the loss, for the

historical something, of every index of class.

—“Theory of Worlds,” pg. 7

Socialism sucks: All power to the communes!

A critique of Lenin can’t be made in a vacuum Lenin is one of the most

famous and respected socialists in the world. I’d like to take some time

to shit-talk socialism as a political category and as a theoretical

system. I’d like to make the case that socialism is not an alternative

system to capitalism at all and that its proponents are not even

communists. Socialism is a system of distribution inside of a capitalist

economy. Socialism preserves the labor-capital relationship and the

alienation of human labor. Socialism even preserves the value-form and

the general M-C-M’ formula of capitalism.

Capitalism is a set of social relations whereby wealth is extracted from

human activity. The general formula for this relationship, one that is

vague enough to account for many types of capitalist management and

distribution, is Money-Commodity-More Money (M-C-M’). In this setup

everything is subjected to the demands of the economy. It’s also

important to remember that capitalism developed in the terrain of many

other imbalanced social relations, including patriarchy, white

supremacy, and heteronormativity. I am not going to go too much into the

details about capitalism here, but others have offered compelling and

full analyses of the revolutionary mode of production.

Socialism is extreme reformism

Socialism is a system of government that radically re-defines the legal

regime of property (most obviously from “private” to “public”).

Capitalists are no longer allowed to hold property and they are

repressed for trying. The representatives inside of the Party control

the property. But we know that there is a huge difference between

“public property” and “no property.” Under socialism, the M-C-M’

equation is preserved and the capitalists are replaced with bureaucrats

inside of the Party. This is a well-known critique of socialism even

amongst “ordinary people.”

If we are still compelled to work by factors outside of our control

where we are still producing wealth and value for others to enjoy, and

we still must suffer the boredom and misery of industrial metropolitan

society, aren’t we still living under capitalism? Socialists (including

Leninists and other authoritarians) are quick to point out the standard

of living of the masses of citizens in socialists countries but this

begs a question: is socialism simply a welfare state on steroids?

Socialization and the legal regime of bureaucratic capitalism

Capitalism as a mode of production is composed of different parts. The

most obvious parts include the working humans and those who oversee the

extraction of value from their behavior (these people almost always

profit from that behavior, but I suppose that’s not necessary).

Capitalism is reproduced because people keep behaving in ways that

produce value. This is, of course, a tautology. The community of capital

is why there is capitalism. Everyday life under capitalism is

capitalism. The only way to destroy capitalism is to destroy the

value-form and all relations of exchange through the negative projects

of collective self-negation and communization.

---

Is this a quantitative question or a qualitative one? All things

indicate to me that socialism is, in fact, capitalism in its nicest

possible form.

Until it can be illustrated that socialism is something other than a

redistribution of wealth, it should still be considered an element of

capitalist accumulation and political economy.

Furthermore, it is an apparent strategy of authoritarian politics to

equivocate the meanings of the people,” “the state,” or “the party.”

These keywords are deeply coded, but they all mean the same thing: small

groups of people controlling others, often by pretending to be on their

side.

To quote from a particularly popular iconoclast—

A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth it

also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: “i, the state, am the

people.

A few tentative conclusions

Anarchy and Leninism are distinct. There is an ocean between the tension

of anarchy and the positive political program of Marxist-Leninism.

Anarchy is the destruction of all authority, the destabilization of all

control, the unruly indulgence of lust and passion, the Dionysian

explosion of Life and excess. The anarchist sprints forward infinitely

past the tyranny of the “possible” and toward living life to the

fullest. The anarchist seeks to develop the material solidarities to

provide for one another’s emotional, mental, spiritual and physical

needs in the present tense, so that we may launch a counter-attack

against everything that has made us ashamed of our bodies and our dreams

and so that we may encounter worlds we never considered before.

The positive project of Marxism-Leninism seeks to impose a new world of

Order. They seek to construct a reality of scientific coherence whereby

the current categories of society may fully realize themselves. For the

Leninist, life is always elsewhere. Although they speak of communism,

they aim to build a new socialist government. The Leninist believes so

little in the human capacity to self-organize and in the capacity of

individuals to take their lives into their own hands, that they command

strict adherence to a Party of technocrats and intellectuals.

In any case, the relative irrelevance and lack of traction amongst young

people toward Lenin should be relieving for anarchists. In this context,

we shouldn’t trap ourselves into identitarian ghettos. Insurrection is a

social event. In the coming years, we may find allies in strange places.

That being said, we should collaborate with other groups on our own

terms as distinct autonomous partisans with our own ideas about how

struggles should move forward. Our collaboration with Leninists should

be contingent and relative to our level of affinity with individuals on

a limited scope for specific purposes. We should work with them

informally whenever possible for the mutual gain of all. This general

strategy, of course, rewards the anarchist spirit more than the Leninist

tendency, as Leninists tend to hesitate initiating meaningful radical

intervention in the social clash.

Although we should not back down from critiquing authoritarian

socialists, we should recognize their relative weakness in the current

context. It can be important for anarchists to establish the autonomous

space for anarchy by distancing themselves from the Left. While that is

important, we shouldn’t focus too much energy on defining ourselves in a

positive sense — the better to recuperate our efforts! There is an

entire social terrain to find accomplices and friendships. We should

focus on building those necessary complicities in anticipation of the

social clash with domination. Once we have established the necessary

distance between anarchist spaces and the Leninist Parties, we should

shift to a general strategy of ignoring them completely. when it comes

to organization, except for when we may be able to work together.