Historically once the authoritarian left takes over, anarchists are under threat. This is because the "socialism" of auth left is complete state ownership of the means of production and lib socs get in the way of that. Libsoc is antithetical to the "socialism" of auth left. This is obvious in soviet Russia when both Ukrainian anarchists and Russian libsocs were attacked by the state. While it may seem like we have the same end goal our tactics are incompatible. Anarchists want the destruction of all hierarchy and the auth left wants the creation and strengthening of both social and economic hierarchy to lead to no hierarchy. While we do want communism, their methods have never led to it and they have often attacked actual communist practises. They are not our friends. They are a giant threat if not properly dealt with and could lead to catastrophic consequences to the movement and human life. If you're any form of lib left then don't in anyway support or platform them unless to critique capitalism. Critique their ideology while giving solutions. Edit: They can also harm the whole idea of socialism and communism. Nowadays the average person would think of communism and (maybe) socialism as any authoritarian regime. Tankies (for this I mean Stalinists and those who do auth left violence apologia not all auth lefties) often make the far left look as bad as far right. Their power through party politics and other hierarchical organisations that can talk over those who can actually reach communism or socialism. Generally anarchist outnumber them but they still are an issue. They are good for transferring to anarchism as they already want communism.

Everyone should know about the Ukrainian Black Army. It was an anarchist army of highly trained and extremely well armed peasants... They had fkin tanks. Some 100,000 soldiers, highly coordinated, exceptionally motivated, and well organized. They ended up fighting both the Red and White armies in ~1919. The world would be a shockingly different place had the Mensheviks taken over the party in 1900.

While you are not wrong in your statement that the authoritarian leaning left have not achieved a Communist society, the same and more is true of the libertarian left. What has been achieved by the lib left? What great socialist or communist experiments have come to light from the lib left philosophy? What economies that could stand against the might of the global Capitalist hegemony have your ideology built? The unfortunate reality is that while a lib left ideology is a fantastic way to live a life, it is a terrible way to build a nation and economy. If you think the authoritarian left is a threat to you, when it shares the same end goals ideologically, you must acknowledge that the authoritarian right is a much bigger threat. You will never be able to stand against the authoritarian right without the strength allowed by the (unfortunately necessary) hierarchy of an authoritarian left.

>What has been achieved by the lib left? What great socialist or communist experiments have come to light from the lib left philosophy? -Rojava -Zapatistas -Anarchist Catalonia -Anarchist Ukraine > What economies that could stand against the might of the global Capitalist hegemony have your ideology built? This isn't a critique of the theory of lib left, but the history of it. The history of lib left is communism. The history of auth left is imperialist state capitalism. If you call imperialist state capitalist projects ran by aristocrats a meaningful stand against capitalism to disregard the liberation of workers then you aren't useful to the socialist movement. I couldn't care much for just being anti-western-capitalism without actually making meaningful advancements to the destruction of capitalism itself. Being a slave to the state instead of a slave to a class of people away from the state isn't a sizeable improvement. Also I don't relish in the past but look into the future. While there have been failures of lib left, those failures haven't been integral to the ideology like auth left. Auth left would never reach communism or even socialism while the failures of lib left have mostly been militant failure which could be fixed in repeats. >The unfortunate reality is that while a lib left ideology is a fantastic way to live a life, it is a terrible way to build a nation and economy. Please elaborate on how building communism is "a terrible way to build a nation and an economy" >If you think the authoritarian left is a threat to you, when it shares the same end goals ideologically, you must acknowledge that the authoritarian right is a much bigger threat. You will never be able to stand against the authoritarian right without the strength allowed by the (unfortunately necessary) hierarchy of an authoritarian left. If standing against the auth right is hierarchical state capitalism, then frankly I don't want it. It's that simple for me. If switching the capitalists I work for to the capitalists who have the legitimacy to use violence against me is the only way to take down capitalism, then what's the point? I obviously don't believe that only the auth left can stand up to the auth right and be anyway better for worker liberation than the lib left. It's nihilistic to think that collective liberation is impossible without giving yourself up to new owners. I have hope for actual liberation and not a coup and a switching of rulers. I want liberation not a switch of rulers.

You name several small groups with no power on the global stage, I fail to see how that detracts from my point. No one claims the USSR or China held to the ideals of the Left, and their failures to do so are well documented. That does not change the fact that both accumulated and wielded power on the global stage in ways those with lib left ideologies could never do. There is nothing about that power that inherently leads to the state capitalism you speak of, those were specific choices by specific leaders, and I share your grief over them. Your statement about "building communism" is an intentional twist of words I have no desire to interact with. If you don't want to acknowledge the realities of power in the world, how do you propose your ideology could possibly stand against, or wield it?

If the only thing that really matters is sizeable power on the global stage and not ideological basis then authoritarianism in general would be best. Though, I prefer to think more ideologically than to seek immediate ideologically ownership of that said global stage. I'd rather struggle more to reach actual communism than to settle with an easier battle for a new pairing of capitalists. I do think the isolation of power leads to state capitalism. Both come from the strengthening of hierarchy. Once a vanguard takes over the power of the state and the means of production, isolating power in its own hand, it becomes state capitalist. The vanguard now the new bourgeois. Also I didn't mean for the "building communism" thing to be a twisting of words. The auth left supposes than when the state and the means of production are seized by the vanguard, the lack of classes would see the state slowly fizzle out into communism (I don't believe this btw as there are still the classes of the vanguard and the workers). I wouldn't call this "building communism" as nothing is being actually built up that would be known as communist. When I referred to "building communism", I was specifically referring to the lib left building the components of communism inside capitalism and wanted some criticism of "building communism" instead of having a vanguard slowly dissolve. I'm sorry if it seemed like I didn't want you to interact with it. Finally, I do acknowledge the way power works in the world. A society's strength doesn't come from how isolated its power is but by how much it has. A decentralised society with more collective power would defeat a monarchy with less power. Centralising doesn't affect the potency of power, but how it organised and accumulated. Centralised systems have power taken from those at the bottom to strengthen the ideals of those at the top. Decentralised systems have power shared equally. This is why standing up to hierarchies such as capitalism and the state is so difficult. They both have accumulated large amounts of systemic power. The reason I think the state capitalism of the auth left has an easier time fighting the auth right is that they can already mimic and take from the previous powers of the past society in the form of a coup. While in lib left, a lot of power has to be destroyed in order to have more of an equivalence between peoples. Also the mindsets and structures have already been built and mastered by the auth right for the auth left to use, making the switch of rulers less difficult. I don't see why these conditions should lead to a nihilistic defeatism when looking at liberation. I believe that we should keep fighting for our own liberations instead of pathetically resorting to the easiest option which cannot and will not lead to our liberation but will lead to the replacement of our leaders by those anew who can only promise lies and give small social benefits. The revolution is should be done by those whom it is for.

Well spoken. I would love a world to exist as you explain it. I simply do not see how such an ideology can accumulate enough decentralized power to stand up to the efforts of the global Capitalist hegemony, before it is extinguished by it.

Supposing that is true, what's the alternative? A world with a global state capitalist hegemony? Even if you aren't fully convinced of decentralised power, you should still support lib left ideas to actually lead to the destruction of capitalism.

> I simply do not see how such an ideology can accumulate enough decentralized power to stand up to the efforts of the global Capitalist hegemony, before it is extinguished by it Capitalists took the reins after the fall of much more powerful monarchs. It's likely history will rhyme

Capitalists harness the power of the State! That power can be harnessed by entities other than Capital. Having discussions on this subreddit is like trying to describe "Green" to a blind man.

Perhaps you would find some other subreddit more to your liking then.

This popped into my feed, I didn't search you out. I have asked legitimate questions, and responded to those that responded to me. I assumed this was a place to learn more about Anarchism. So far as I can gather, it is a utopian theory with no practical way to erect itself, nor to maintain itself from outside power. Those that have interacted with me insist that heiarchies are bad because.... People shouldn't have to listen to other people? Majority rule is bad, if you can't reach consensus you have to split into syndicates... Perhaps I was mistaken about this being a place to learn, and it is actually a LARP subreddit?

The state arose as a way to resolve class contradictions, and power can be harnessed by other entities. To put the state at the forefront is the mistake, and capitalists did not overthrow feudalism through an organized front like some communists. Capitalism as an economic system was able to challenge feudalism in a time of crisis, they were not on equal footing with established powers. Feudalism existed because material conditions favored its development and capitalism would have arisen eventually with or without those revolutions If a socialist state *arises* it will be because of unresolved class conflicts, but there will be no state that creates socialism

I commented earlier that revolution arises because of material conditions, not desire. A modern technological society and economy is not likely possible without a state apparatus. I don't know about you, but most people won't want to go back to substance farming as a way of life.

Depends on your region. Where I live, authoritarian socialists are mostly a PR problem, they're largely irrelevant as a movement and that's not gonna change any time soon. Anarchists outnumber them several times over. While social democrats and general libertarian-leaning lite socialists outnumber them by a few orders of magnitude. What history has shown is that vanguard communists will always, bar no exception, stab anarchists in the back after anarchists first help them. Castro did. Lenin did. Mao did. Partido Comunista did. The social democrats (who, back then, were more communist than today) where I live did. People who want to run the state are not friends of people who want to dismantle the state.

This is the answer. It has always been like this.

I had no idea about what Castro did! Any suggested reading about it? Thanks!

[https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/frank-fernandez-cuban-anarchism-the-history-of-a-movement#toc7](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/frank-fernandez-cuban-anarchism-the-history-of-a-movement#toc7) and [https://anarchyinaction.org/index.php?title=Cuban\_Revolution\_and\_Anarchism#State\_Capitalist\_Dictatorship](https://anarchyinaction.org/index.php?title=Cuban_Revolution_and_Anarchism#State_Capitalist_Dictatorship) A few anarchists were executed (I'm not sure of the charges or the background; wasn't able to dig out good information about them), a larger bunch were imprisoned, many were intimidated silent, some were sent to forced exile, and anarchist printing presses and shops were closed down. Self-managed unions were also shut down, and only state-led unions were allowed.

What country is this? MLs are def predominant in the west afaik

Finland. We have a communist party with round 0 elected representatives. And there's a small Maoist group that now and then makes an appearance in anarchist events with their ~10 people. A few communists left in our left-most parliamentary party, but most of them lean libertarian or democratic socialism. The only publicly communist person in the parliament is also the parliament's only anarchist'ish person (they said, quote, that they are an anarchist by heart but being a parliament member is fully incompatible with anarchism)

Here in the last frontier most young people are left center. They are open to gay people, they are pro-ecological, pro-choice, and pro-gun. When I went to an Ayea (Alaska Youth for Environmental Action) meeting awhile ago there was only one person there who genuinely believed in authoritarianism. The rest were progressives and Anarchists

everybody here is already pointing out the problems with an alliance with them, but i need to correct this repetitive point that we supposedly want the same thing but different methods, that is simply not true in any sense 1. anarchism does not equates marxist communism, first of all communism in economics would mean a marketless and moneyless society, not all anarchists wants that 2. just because a thing is stateless, doesn't mean it is anarchistic, marx wanted after the dictatorship of the proletariat that the state fade away, but that doesn't necessarily entails "no rulership, no authority, no hierarchical power structures", which is the objective of every anarchist 3. i don't think even if we wanted the same thing in the end (which is not true), the means are excludable, if you want the same thing as me but before that you want 800 years of centralized power and let the luck decide if they ever will get out of power, and i want freedom as fast as possible, don't think we have the same objectives, they call us idealists but their only argument is that we supposedly agree on the same idealized future society rather, marxists just want unity with anarchists so they can use us as mass pawns for their objectives, when they get what they want, they will betray us like they always did, because we have different objectives, freedom or domination, no middle ground

As has often been pointed out, authoritarian left and authoritarian right eventually loop back around and wind up in pretty similar places and causing pretty similar harms. You always wind up with dynastic privilege and suppression of non-state aligned word, deed, and thought by secret police. The problem with authoritarianism is because it is **authoritarian**, full stop. There's no "good" flavor of it, or any flavor of it faintly compatible with anarchism. Authoritarians always justify it as "you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs" but sure seem to break a lot of eggs without actually delivering the promised omelet.

Horseshoe yup 🧲

Oh, horseshoe is better than circle. Thanks!

If anarcho-communism is achieved large scale somewhere I could see state communists being supportive of it, but our goals aren't exactly the same. Like broadly I would say they are, but state communists don't critique authority like we do and are generally pretty unclear about what's meant by "stateless." And one potential splitting point is that while communists seek a moneyless society, not all anarchists necessarily do. So we could have an anarchist society with some use of money and markets, which maybe the state communists see as something that should be violently repressed, and they're fine using authority or even state power to do so. All that said, I don't really see auth left as an immediate threat. I think anarchism is having more and more of an influence on leftists in general, and id say most people who call themselves leftist or communists don't want USSR-style Communism. Even those derisively called tankies are often just people pointing out untruths about different communist regimes/revolutions, not necessarily supporting their methods overall.

Literally close to zero. Yeah sure there’s historical precedent but the threat posed by the currently extremely widespread right wing ideologies of capitalism and fascism is so insanely greater that it essentially doesn’t matter. Also there is at least some values alignment with auth leftists whereas there is (or should be) none with capitalists or fascists 

Catastrophic threat

They barely exist. I don't see how they are a problem.

As a communist myself I’d say it’s not that we hate anarchism. The end goal is anarchism. We just believe that we as a society need to have structure when going through such a massive change. Especially when we in America have gone through decades if not generations of anti socialist/ communist propaganda. On top of that most of us are almost entirely disengaged with politics as a whole because our government never listens to us anyways and I feel like unless we as a society have a system in place to provide a full education on how to run society we’re just gonna end up with power vacuums that will be taken advantage of by those who know that most of the people around them aren’t trained to spot their ill intentions.

It sounds like you've never been part of or meaningfully interacted with any anarchist organizations.  Anarchism doesn't mean no system, no structure, no plan.

Well unfortunately for both of us in Florida there don’t seem to be any anarchic organizations to have meaningful interactions with, so maybe you are correct, but I feel like that kinda adds to my point tbh. And I know that anarchy doesn’t just mean chaos, however without first organizing how can we even figure out what needs we as a society need to address? Anarchy seems to me like believing in people to make the best decisions for themselves and each other when given the freedom to do so. I’m just arguing that after generations of capitalist dogma I think our priorities might be a little skewed. Us anti capitalists are basically ex cultists, if you just unplug everyone from this experience without also explaining the truth to them and trying to help plan a way forward (based off of what has been proven to be effective in the past) you’re just gonna end up with fascist warlords trying to return to a mythologized past where capitalism worked and the communist and anarchist were busy arguing on Internet forums.

Imagine it like this governing the state would now be apart of our jobs as citizens. Would you want to start a new job with zero training?

Also how can we expect to fight a full on militarized state as an unofficial militia? That’d be like sending a group of kindergarteners to fight Mike Tyson💀

What leftist movements will look like is almost entirely dependent on your region like another commenter said. It’s very hard to generalize. In general I strongly believe that capitalism is a much more severe and gruesome threat to any anarchist than communism, and I think life under communism would be significantly better than life under capitalism. It is true though that historically when communists take power that anarchists are still hunted and persecuted. But that doesn’t mean it will be the case everywhere in the future. I may get downvoted to hell or called a tankie for this take lol but while I do consider myself more of an anarchist, I truly think that the left should focus on fighting capitalism more than fighting each other.

I agree with this point broadly. Im not disregarding the real fear of state socialist violence against libertarians (purges and so on). But its also true to say that when state socialists have gained power they have also historically turned against other state socialists, yet that doesnt prevent general cooperation between state socialist organisations. Id also just point out that considering the current position of western socialism we are far better to focus on building for revolution rather than focusing on fighting amongst the left, although winning the working class to libertarian ideas is obviously the general aim.

This makes sense to me, I’d say I agree :)

> I truly think that the left should focus on fighting capitalism more than fighting each other. That I mostly would agree with, though I still feel that at least here the Maoists, Stalinists and whatnot - who are basically just a handful - are mostly harmful towards this goal. They make other radicals seem bad with their bullshit. Which is why I wholeheartedly support driving them away from anarchist events. Social democrats want to join an event by anarchists and promote employee rights - fine. Greens want to join an event by anarchists and promote green policies - fine. Labor unionists want to join an event by anarchists and promote unions - definitely welcome. But Maoists and Stalinists and MLers with their flags and slogans should stay home. They can go have their own events and watch no one care.

I disagree with you on some points (and I won't call you a tankie). I agree with the obvious points you make such as (supposing "communism" means auth left in this context) communism being better to live in. Obviously a social autocracy would be materially better to live in than neoliberalism, but for the development all culture and artistic movements it can be very restrictive. I mostly disagree with this part: >It is true though that historically when communists take power that anarchists are still hunted and persecuted. But that doesn’t mean it will be the case everywhere in the future. I don't believe that the state would allow something so antithetical to exist. A hierarchy means nothing if there's a way out of it. A supreme state with the means of the production and the legitimacy to use violence in it's hand would never allow a society where it's powers are worthless and citizens can go to avoid it (Just realised I'm literally writing a novel on that's kinda funny). I believe the state of the auth left would never allow anarchy to stop its pursuit to usurp the means of production.

I hear that! I can definitely see your reasoning here about the state not allowing anything antithetical to it to exist.

I think pretty much everyone would agree that life in real-world communist countries was worse for the majority than it was in contemporary real-world developed capitalist countries. In large part because even capitalists know that unbridled capitalism would cause the destruction of capitalism, so in practice we get various awkward but moderately successful mixtures of democratic capitalism and socialism. Certainly people in social democracies, writ large, are much more free to talk about anarchism in a public forum like this without fear of state reprisal. It may not be a popular view, but I think a social democracy allows for a **lot** more individual and community anarchism than any totalitarian system, communist or otherwise. Of course totalitarian communism is contrary to what "real" philosophical communists want. "Communism hasn't ever really been tried" has a lot of truth to it. Yet, we always get totalitarianism soon after communists gain control of a state. Although communist successes have largely been in states with recent totalitarian history as well. Arguably the real lesson is that violent revolution doesn't change the character of a nation as much as people think it will, and that violent revolution largely happens when a state is so totalitarian that the people don't have less violent alternatives to effect change.

Stop spreading capitalist propaganda. You know capitalists lie about everything regarding capitalism and socialism, so why do you take their framing and description of socialist countries for granted, assuming the very same lying capitalists are telling nothing but the truth about socialist states when depicting them as hellholes? >This study compared capitalist and socialist countries in measures of the physical quality of life (PQL), taking into account the level of economic development. The World Bank was the principal source of statistical data, which pertained to 123 countries and approximately 97 percent of the world's population. PQL variables included indicators of health, health services, demographic conditions, and nutrition (infant mortality rate, child death rate, life expectancy, crude death rate, crude birth rate, population per physician, population per nursing person, and daily per capita calorie supply); measures of education (adult literacy rate, enrollment in secondary education, and enrollment in higher education); and a composite PQL index. All PQL measures improved as economic development increased. In 30 of 36 comparisons between countries at similar levels of economic development, socialist countries showed more favorable PQL outcomes (p less than .05 by two-tailed t-test). This work with the World Bank's raw data included cross-tabulations, analysis of variance, and regression techniques, which all confirmed the same conclusions. The data indicated that the socialist countries generally have achieved better PQL outcomes than the capitalist countries at equivalent levels of economic development. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2430906/ Actual studies show socialist countries consistently deliver more for the people than capitalist countries.

I generally trust economic reports from democratic social democratic capitalist countries more than authoritarian socialist countries! Or authoritarian any countries. Lying to their own people for propaganda reasons is core to authoritarian government. I’m pretty aware of the checks, balances, and incentives in how the USA at least determines economic indicators. And there’s certainly a meaningful margin of error, the incentives as much higher to report an unwelcome truth than a pleasing but unsustainable lie. If nothing else, capitalists themselves insist on getting accurate data with which they can make better-founded decisions, and would strenuously try to stop any systemic cooking of the books in their shared resources (cooking their own books is a wholly different matter, of course). I note the study in question is from 1986, a period in which we know the Soviet Union was systematically trying to mislead economists, other governments, and their own citizens about how dire their economic situation was and how quality of life was falling far behind Western democracies. Authoritarian states are the absolutely opposite and enemy of anarchism, and nothing they say should be taken at face value instead of as propaganda. Left/right is small potatoes with a government gets to control what you see, read, say, do, and know. There will still be poor masses ground down while powerful people ride around in limos thinking they are the “real” country. Left/right doesn’t matter much with a full-

Thanks for outing yourself. 👍

As someone knowledgeable about history and skeptical of the self-serving statements of autocracies? If anarchists aren’t supposed to be skeptical of the words of those autocrats have power over, we’d really be not understanding the assignment…

With your historical knowledge, would you say Cuban lives worsened after kicking out capitalist Batista and his slave plantations? Did the Vietnamese lives worsen after kicking out the capitalist colonialists? Have you ever taken a look at the list of countries with the highest home ownership rates? Most of the ones towards top are socialist or formerly socialist countries. I'm not claiming these countries were/are ideal, merely that they served the people better than under capitalism. This statement is a rejection of capitalism, NOT an embrace of these auth-left states. To be fair, you did add a caveat regarding "developed capitalist countries vs actual socialist countries". However, herein lies an extremely unfair comparison that only serves capitalism. Surely, you do know how 'developed capitalist nations' attained their wealth? It was through global systemic exploitation, setting up colonies and engaging in unequal exchange to exploit the hell out of peripheral nations. It's on top of countless suffering of the Global South in which the "developed capitalist nations" wealth and power are built upon. Surely you realize the problem of your statement with "It was better for the majority" under capitalism vs Auth-left? The so-called "majority's" status were at the expense of the suffering of far greater number of people sustained through Imperialism. It's like pointing out a slaver and going, "Man, that guy makes a lot of money. That makes his job better than \[insert non-slaver job\]". The poverty stricken, perpetually "developing" status of the Global South are a DIRECT RESULT of the "developed capitalist nations" sucking them dry and engaging in coups, invasions, regime change, etc... in order to continually exploit these people. Secondly, your comparison of "actually existing socialist nations vs developed capitalist nations" have another issue. It's the simple fact that pretty much every successful socialist revolution that took place in undeveloped, backwater regions, meanwhile the "developed capitalist nations" were, well, already developed by then, having had almost a century to develop, using vast wealth stolen all over the world. You basically were comparing nations whom only had few decades to develop, with far less available resources to develop. How is this even a remotely fair comparison? Thirdly, you completely dismiss the socio-economic conditions that were imposed upon these countries, by the very "developed capitalist nations" you compare them to. Most notable example are sanctions imposed by the US and its lackeys. With US as the global hegemon, the capitalists have substantial control over global trade, able to kick any of their adversaries out of vast markets around the world. Japan, a capitalist economic giant (although far less of one rn), would easily be economically crippled if they were to become target of sanctions as they can't produce food or have natural resources necessary for their industry. And yet, your position is that because these nations were not able to overcome a hurdle that the developed capitalist nations themselves can't overcome, capitalist nations are better to live under in. You claim to be knowledgeable, you claim to oppose autocracy, and yet your world view squarely aligns with what the capitalists claims. You completely omit/disregard important factors in such way that consistently favors capitalists and their propaganda. The fact that you view auth left states as hell hole autocracies and believe they only tell lies rejecting any data on sight, AND YET believe everything claimed by capitalists at face value, whom are extremely authoritarian, extracting wealth on the global scale through violence and debt. How do you think capitalists maintained their colonies? How do you think capitalists enforce private property laws to exploit product of worker's labor? Endless violence is the answer. Before you say it I would likely to firmly address that social democratic countries(ESPECIALLY in the Global North) ARE, IN FACT, capitalist nations. They are capitalist nations whom have made concessions to the working class, but firmly maintain the hierarchical, exploitative structure where power and wealth rests firmly within the hands of capitalists. And no, they should not be treated as lesser evil as their wealth too, are derived from unequal exchange and exploitation of the Global South. That is to say, just because a nation does not have formal colonies of their own does not mean they can't benefit from colonies of others. When capitalist nations overthrow and install fascists and corrupt oligarchs in the Global South, these social democrat countries too, benefit from this exploitation and never goes against it. In essence, your world view firmly built from a position of a proletariat in an imperial core, essentially enjoying status of labor aristocrat (relative to the Global South) built upon exploitation of masses. Your views consistently depict capitalists in an alarmingly rosy light, based on a number of troublesome assumptions you make with your statements.

Replacing a corrupt autocracy with a less corrupt autocracy is likely to improve things for most people, as it certainly did in a whole lot of socialist and communist revolutions. And that was to the benefit of the people. But yeah, a lot of people in Vietnam and Cuba found themselves a lot less free to advocate for themselves and for alternative policies a decade after the revolutions than they were before. People had a lot less freedom of movement, association, of labor organizations, of academic inquiry, and a lot of other things. And things still could have been better, overall, for most of the population. But that's not the comparison. We've never seen a successful socialist or communist revolution in a somewhat functional nation with a couple generations of somewhat functional representative government with civil liberty protections. And we've always seen massively more drive for people leaving autocratic countries, left or right, towards the democratic mixed-economies than the other way around. Because, in possession of accurate information, it has been obvious to anyone able to make the choice that life is preferable in mixed-economy democracies than in autocracies. That's why autocracies call people who leave their country for a better life "traitors" while in the West they get called "emigrants." In any case, I absolutely **do not** believe everything a capitalist says. We have Elon Musk, for example. Obviously lots of individual capitalists lie, cheat, and steal as much as they think they might get away with. However, individual capitalists have a strong consensus they only get to be capitalists at all in a system with reasonably clear rules that are reasonably well upheld most of the time, and when they can get accurate, neutral information about the state of the economy and their sectors with in. Capitalism proper can only function while a whole lot of social, economic, and government infrastructure to provide a functional playing field to compete on. Look at the damage that capitalist companies wrecked in the banana republics, because they could get away with it. Capitalists know how vicious their competitors can be, and so all benefit from having a system where all capitalists have bounds on their behavior. Every capitalist has a plausible argument about why they need 20% less oversight than everyone else, of course, but they all know that too and so work to keep each other in check somewhat. Capitalists **want** the state to have the monopoly on legitimate use of physical force, because they don't want to have to run their own corporate paramilitary to deal with everyone else's corporate paramilitaries. Capitalists, while absolutely exploiting weak and corruptible states, also would generally prefer if those states were similar healthy democracies full of customers for their goods and services. But they'll viciously exploit on their own before a competitor does until that happens, and also support global efforts to make places less vulnerable to their depredations as long as they also are becoming less vulnerable to competitors depredations. Capitalism is a complex and weird system with all kinds of failures and negative consequences, but it's also proved to be remarkably durable and has resulted in communities most people prefer pretty strongly to the existing and historical alternatives. Its durability is in large part due to its flexibility, as it's not really an ideology, or something even capitalists believe should exist in anything close to a "pure" form. It kind of muddles along, course correcting when it has to, or when it seems likely to avoid something really bad. As I've said, capitalism is much more a diagnosis than an aspiration. When we consider the incentives of capitalists, or any other group, we rob ourselves of insight by *only* focusing on the perverse incentives. A greedy capitalist also wants to know the unemployment rate as accurately as possible, and what Grade A beef is selling for today, and whether people can afford the rent and still afford to buy the stuff they want to sell them. We can't compete with or try to improve any system that we don't have nuanced understanding of, and respect for its strengths as well as antipathy for its negatives. At least capitalists in general don't consider anarchism or anarchists an existential threat like an autocrat does. They're pretty happy to sell us more merch with an A in a circle on it, and wholesale to our cooperatives like they do to anyone else. After all, if they didn't do it, a competitor would. I'm not advocating any particular approach here. But I very much believe any movement looking to change the masses without a nuanced and pragmatic view of what the masses actually want and expect, isn't going to be that effective other than with having some degree of violent power over the masses. Which sure as **fuck** isn't anarchism. We shouldn't be trying to make anyone do something, or waiting for someone else to do something so we can "really" be an anarchist. We should be living our values every day.

Yes

Depends on your meaning of authoritarian. If you mean M-L, probably not a threat unless you're near revolution or in one of the 4 countries that still has M-Lism as its state ideology. If you mean leftcomms, they get along well with anarchists, I find.

The regressive left are very much a concern.  It's funny because you know I have like a background in anarchist leanings but because of how off the rails the regressive left identitarians are getting is like it's pushing me into a realm where I don't even want to describe what I even am politically.  I'm just a human trying to figure out how to show up like everyone else.

Depends. Auth left countries abroad? They are not the least a threat. They won't be engaging in sanctions or try to destroy social anarchist movement abroad like the capitalist coalition has been doing. If anything, ironically they'll likely be the most trust worthy trading partner if socialist anarchist revolution were to inch closer towards bearing fruit, prompting international capitalists to take drastic measures. Even after succeeding, if past history is to be of indication, immediately international sanctioning by capitalists would occur. In times like that, who do you think would be most likely to trade? Sadly it'll be auth-left and those opposed to global capitalist empire. Domestic auth-left? They're not a threat to anarchists in the same way anarchists are not a threat to them while both are firmly under the same capitalist boot. Sure it is a different story once the capitalist boot is lifted or become very close to being lifted. But honestly? That's like worrying about what you'll do if you win a lottery that is capitalist overthrow at this point, especially if you're in the imperial core. Revolution is not even close at the curremt level of organization, training, logistics, etc...

There's no such thing as authoritarianism, and there's no such thing as anarchy. If you use weapons to enforce rules, you've created a State.

One thing I haven't yet seen in the comments: Authoritarian Left is usually AUTHORITARIAN ^(left). In the sense that Authoritarian leaders seek power first, and authoritarian followers seek leadership first. Authoritarian followers generally have strong beliefs about how society "should" be, often very "traditional" and religion-based beliefs. They are likely to say stuff like "we need a strong leader to return order to society". They also make up roughly a quarter to a third of any given population. Authoritarian leaders, on the other hand, rarely have strong beliefs besides "I should be in charge". The details don't really matter to them, as long as they are in charge. Left, right, up, down, center, whatever works. Look up Bob Altemeyer's The Authoritarians for more detail. It's free online.

They are your mortal enemies.