Nah, driving is a privilege, not a right. You don’t NEED to d I’ve and you absolutely don’t need to drive while impaired. Even if you think you’re good, you’re not. There are THOUSANDS of cases of people being killed by drunk drivers who thought they were good.

The creepy new drama teacher was an evil demon the whole time?!?

As a middle schooler I used Power Point to make FMV games for my friends and classmates, and it was basically this. Just, like, SO MANY slides

middle managers suck.

FTFY

You have big “tipping the waitress a penny for bad service” energy

Still alive!

Corrected. Thank you, kind stranger

Aaron Swartz is spinning in his grave

Edit: Misspelled his last name

Yes, that’s the meatspace hacking I’m talking about

Signal can only be hacked in meatspace. It’s totally end to end encrypted.

Yes, but you assume they know literally anything about the academic system at all. They think anybody who works at a university is an “elite”, and is therefore somehow being treated better than them.

The Black Panther Party were cool, but the PSL is a bad example, imo. They’ve had… issues. Really icky issues that kind of mar the whole organization. I did meet some cool former PSLers back in my DSA-LSC days, though.

I think it’s personally a stretch to call Xin Jinping a Marxist, even if that’s how he identifies. It kind of seems like China’s just doing a capitalism, but with more steps. I don’t know enough about Vietnam and Cuba, but it’s my understanding that Vietnam has been slowly moving in the same state capitalist direction that China did

All of the examples I listed should meet your definition of success, right?

You said:

The nature of society has not fundamentally changed in a century, so there’s no reason to think that methods of organization need to drastically change as well.

I said:

You don’t actually believe that basically nothing has changed since before the industrial revolution, do you? That seems intentionally obtuse.

How is that a straw man? It’s literally what you said.

I mean, it’s both. Hungary was the upper cut and Czech was the right hook. But regardless, if you don’t have a blind allegiance to just any state calling itself socialist, then you probably aren’t a Tankie, right?

To date, nobody has shown a more effective approach to organizing that I’m aware of.

Makhnovshchina, CNT, Rojava, Zapatistas…

Is your definition of success the establishment of a socialist state? Because anarchists are never going to do that.

The nature of society has not fundamentally changed in a century

You don’t actually believe that basically nothing has changed since before the industrial revolution, do you? That seems intentionally obtuse.

You’re not an anti-anarchist, and I’m not an anti-Marxist. Isn’t that just enough? Spending all of your time planning for what the potential future socioeconomic system might look like isn’t something that really scratches any itch that I have anymore. I’m far more concerned with what can be done right now.

The VAST majority of anarchists are, in fact, cribbing from Marxism. Anarchists don’t generally reject Marxian economic analysis.

I guess if I can point to anything in this dynamic it’s that there isn’t really a huge difference in how effective the different groups are at accomplishing their short term goals, so IMO it would just make more sense to figure out which ideological line is most attractive to the people it’s supposed to serve in a given area and stick to that.

I 100% agree

And that was a useful framework in the early 20th century (I’ve at least read the April Theses), but can we not continue to adapt our revolutionary strategy to better combat the forces who opposed us today rather than in 1917?

You’ve done nothing but act in good faith so far, and of course I will extend you the benefit of the doubt. Asking questions is how we learn, right?

Honestly, I think the reason why a lot of anarchists tend to view Marxists as overly theoretical is because there a few of them participating in the everyday struggles. I can personally say (and this is purely anecdotal) that in actions I’ve taken part in, the committed Marxists that are there are some of the most loyal and trustworthy people I’ve ever been beaten up by cops with, but they are almost always the minority. It’s usually a mix of various leftist tendencies, mostly anarchist, that are all there to achieve a common goal. Very liberal protests, for what it’s worth, seem to have a tendency to attract large groups of Trotskyists.

And then in big tent orgs I’ve been in, then MLs especially, are usually the ones pushing for electoralism and reform.

Anarchism is a LARGE umbrella, kind of like Marxism. But anarchists that I know in real life are generally willing to put aside differences in petty ideology in order to accomplish a goal for the greater good.

I run into people online ALL the time who blindly support the DPRK, the PRC and modern Russia out of some kind of, I don’t know, ritual practice? ANYBODY political online (including both of us) should be treated with heaping mounds of scepticism.

But to more directly answer your question: Anarchism has a history with nihilism. And it has a history with statist projects. And the two things are not mutually exclusive. You will be called “Tankie” the same as I will be called “Liberal”, because nobody that’s making those accusations really know what they’re saying anyway.

Personally, Tankie is a term reserved for very specifically people who defend the Soviet Union in the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia . Nothing more or nothing less.

Now, if you’re talking about if you can count on anarchist comrades to take arms and fight against their oppressors, the answer is a definitive “yes”. But if you’re asking them to follow a vanguard that promises it has their best interests at heart, then that is a resounding, “no”. Because hierarchy itself is challenged, there will be no capitulations on personal autonomy that doesn’t originate specifically from the proletariat.