Edit for clarity: I’m not asking why the Tankie/Anarchist grudge exist. I’m curious about what information sources - mentors, friends, books, TV, cultural osmosis, conveys that information to people. Where do individuals encounter this information and how does it become important to them. It’s an anthropology question about a contemporary culture rather than a question about the history of leftism.
I’ve been thinking about this a bit lately. Newly minted Anarchists have to learn to hate Lenin and Stalin and whoever else they have a grudge against. They have to encounter some materials or teacher who teaches them “Yeah these guys, you have to hate these guys and it has to be super-personal like they kicked your dog. You have to be extremely angry about it and treat anyone who doesn’t disavow them as though they’re literally going to kill you.”
Like there’s some process of enculturation there, of being brought in to the culture of anarchism, and there’s a process where anarchists learn this thing that all (most?) anarchists know and agree on.
Idk, just anthropology brain anthropologying. Cause like if someone or something didn’t teach you this why would you care so much?
This is an important point and the most genuine argument topic between anarchists and communists imo.
The thing to understand here is that a worker state was never really included in the Marxist definition of communism. Marx, Engels, Lenin, all very clearly oppose the existence of the state and believe that the final liberation of humanity will require its long term dissolution. Socialism, as the premature stage of communism, requires a state as a means of establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie.
Being against the state is not incompatible with being a communist, on the contrary it is necessary for socialism to progress and evolve. But it is purely utopian to believe that you can have socialism without a worker state, when classes are still an existing thing. Just look at the past century to see the relentless effort of the bourgeoisie to regain control. Do you really think you have a chance against that without a means of their oppression?
That, I believe, is the major ideological difference we have with anarchists, the rest is purely a result of anticommunist propaganda.
Word. I’m an anti-state ml or whatever. I don’t consider it a contradiction because a state is a tool, a technology, and a weapon. It’s also a horrific form of violence and often a source of enormously harmful oppression. But, to date, the only weapon that can reliably fight and kill states is another state. For lack of an available alternative state-killing weapon, a state is needed. And I just hope that when we’ve killed all the capitalist states we can engage in what is very literally a disarmament process to disassemble the state as weapon and consign it to the dustbin of history with nukes and other superweapons.
The equivalent tvtropes would be Godzilla Threshold - how bad do things need to get before summoning Godzilla to fight the other Kaiju leads to less overall destruction that not summoning godzilla.
Well said. The real difference is Marxists want the transitional state while anarchists see that transitional state as problematic as well. My clumsy analogy is socdems vs socialists