I had a discussion with @Cowbee@lemmy.ml recently where they insisted that Anarchists on Hexbear accept Lenin’s analysis of Imperialism and therefore all support “Actual Existing Socialist” states such as Cuba, USSR and I guess North Korea as well.
In fact, they argued it’s the reason most anarchists of Hexbear don’t like to discuss anarchism away from hexbear, explicitly because outside anarchists do not support “AES”.
So I’m curious to see what your thoughts are on this. If you’re an anarchist who supports “AES” how do you square this support with the conflict these states have with anarchist theory on hierarchy?
Just as I support Ukraine, even though they are far from anarchists, (because I see them as victims of imperialism and I see the Ukrainian state as less oppressive than the Russian one), I can imagine it is not necessarily contrarian for an anarchist to support a state. I have an ideal world I can imagine which takes an anarcho-communist form, but also a more pragmatic ideology within the current state of affairs in the world. I imagine a lot of anarchists have this.
As a sidenote I think Hexbear and Lemmy.ml (Or any leninists) tend to lean heavily towards authoritarianism and I think that that is contradictory to anarchist pricinciples in itself. The “AES” tend to be as oppressive if not more than western capitalist ones and monopolise violence to a greater degree.
I think you have the right values, but I think your conclusion is a bit off. I think supporting a state is antithetical to being an anarchist. You can support the people, and not a state. For example I support the Ukrainian people in their defense against the Russian state’s imperialism, however I do not support the Ukrainian state. I think its fine to think some states are better than others, but supporting a state is something else entirely. We need to break away from the idea of the nation state, and stop equating people with the nation state they are a part of.
Edit: To add to this, I do not think an anarcho-communist society is idealism, and I don’t think we should settle for a “pragmatic” alternative. I think too many anarchists have fallen into a defeatist mentality, and while support anarchism, they dont believe it to be tangible. I think that is what makes anarchism intangible currently, too many of us don’t believe we can win. We lose by giving up
I get what you’re saying but this is how my brain works:
In the current state of affairs, I support the Ukrainian state in it’s defence against Russian imperialism. However, ideally, in my view, all states, including the Ukrainian one should not exist.
Then my question is why support the state at all?
I support it in it’s defence. I don’t support it in itself if you get what I mean.
I feel like simply supporting the people in their defense accomplishes the same thing without also supporting nation states in any way.
I guess it depends how you phrase it.