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Wild Insurgency TOTW: Anarchist defeatism

From Wild Insurgency:

“Dual power” was a term used by the Bolsheviks to describe the political situation in Russia following the February Revolution. This upheaval came to a tee between March 8th and 16th, 1917. Lenin, an enemy of anarchists of the day, suggested that as the dominant institutions of Eastern Europe would increasingly continue to fail, individual citizens of nations would be left more and more without a social safety net. Essentially, he predicted a situation where more and more people of all classes and castes would be forced to fend for themselves.

In this vacuum, according to Lenin, alternative and counterinstitutions can be formed as a response. This is something anarchists should reject. Unlike the communists, genuine anarchists aren’t world-builders.

Lenin provided three fundamental characteristics for delineating a dual power situation. First, the power of parliament and the respect for and adherence to laws and other official institutions is offset by a “direct initiative of the people from below” (Lenin). Second, “the direct arming of the whole people”. Lastly, the “officialdom and bureaucracy” is “replaced [my emphasis] by the direct rule of the people”. These qualifications represented and typified a form of alternative state power, one desired by the Bolsheviks in March of 1917, and still desired by Marxists today, in 2019. This had supposedly been exemplified to communists (Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Lenin, Luxemburg, and so on…) by the experiences of the Paris commune.

“To become a power, the class-conscious workers must win the majority to their side.” (Lenin)

But as an anarchist, I attempt to understand how and why dual power scenarios cannot end exploitation, social alienation, and domination, or other-control. Alternative and counterinstitutions cannot and will not build anarchy. They can only bolster the extant. They might indeed form some sort of alternative hell to this one, but would still rest firmly within the constraints of civilization. Anarchism must be anti-institutional and against humanity itself.

What kind of world do you desire? One without civilization? Without humanity? Life without representation? Then what you desire most is self-control, freedom of will. Freedom from authority.

The proletariat will not win or make gains against capitalism. Our only true target as anarchists is civilization itself.

As individual animals, part of Gaia, we have much more to gain from civilizations downfall than from a communist revolution. Turn all wars into civil wars. Turn them into tribal wars. Delineate, deterritorialize. Find your inner barbarism. Become the wild savage you could be.