Not sure if it's just me, but I feel like the moment Lenin and co fucked over the Russian people and instituted Bolshevism and called it "Communism", the moral legitimacy of all flavours of Communism began to evaporate amongst the mass of people, especially in the West (so called). This has meant that any attempt to convince regular folk of the legitimacy of alternative models of communism (eg. Anarcho-Communism) was a virtual non-starter.
Accompanying this was a cast of Western intellectuals (and activists) who attached themselves to national CP's or Trotskyist/Leninist/Maoist groups that sought to dismiss or scapegoat the dictatorial aspects of so called Communist regimes (Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc) and supported their 'vanguardist' methodologies in order to 'create a revolution'.
All the while the Western capitalist class and their media wing was loving watching all these figures flying the flags of totalitarian regimes or quoting Lenin or Mao or whoever. It was the easiest propaganda campaign in history: You want socialism? look at the USSR - that's socialism! No democracy, police state, no right to protest, etc. Don't take our word for it, look at all these intellectuals joining the CP's; they think it's socialism too!
This essentially fortified the public's mind against capitalist alternatives or left wing economics. Two things that have been sorely lacking over the past 40-50 years.
Anyway, I'm not sure if its clear what my point is, but this is something that has been nagging at me for a while.
TL;DR: I blame the Lenin's Bolshevism for the failure of socialism (let alone Anarchism) to get any traction in the general population and has enabled the corporate media's hundred year "red-scare" campaign of decrying anything mildly left wing as "socialism" (i.e. the socialism of Bolshevik Russia).
like when anyone from republicans to free market libertarians and an-caps claim capitalism has been kept from really accomplishing the greatness it's truly capable of because of government interference?
regardless, for anarchists there is no legitimate governance: capitalist, socialist, communist or otherwise. sad to see so many begging to differ.
Hello me. Irregardless I beg to differ.
no communism is the best communism
Signed, the You-knighted States of Murika. And Donald Trump. And your Mom in Alabama.
Yes the fools don't realize that Hillbilly-ism is a form of rural communism, damn god-fearing plebes!
no communism is the best communism
Signed, a good number of anarchists. Especially those killed and imprisoned by communists.
They are state capitalists; there's no "communism" there.
Whuh?! Well maybe tribalism then, but not state caps!
Anarcho-hillbippy. Hillbilly hippie against authority
The individualists anarchists were tearing into that collectivist ideology even before Lenin and company showed what it was in practice. You will always get workerism and collective sacrifice with that silly worldview. Non of the founding anarchist 3(Godwin, Proudhon or Stirner) were commies and for good reason.
Even on the socialism v capitalism question I'm now agnostic on which is preferable overall and reject both. IF socialism were purely libertarian with an anti-work bent and did not have that Mr Hyde side to it then it would seem to be the preferable one, but unfortunately socialism has that ugly authoritarian side to go along with-quite often-insolvent economics that makes everyday life even worse.
---IF socialism were purely libertarian with an anti-work bent and did not have that Mr Hyde side to it then it would seem to be the preferable one---
I completely concure, in fact, many indigenous ---tribal council management systems---lived in a proto-communist system which, due to the lack of technological/agricultural industrialization/distraction, (see Jarred Diamond's Germs Guns &Steel), developed instead highly complex communities based upon compassionate egalitarian codes of behavior.
Does anyone on earth care what this guy thinks? A show of hands?
Failed ideologies always need scapegoats.
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