The Angry Marxists are a group of ex-self-proclaimed-anarchists who turned Marxist-Leninist almost immediately after they were repelled from an anarchist space.
Broadsnark has recently written an excellent article on Che Guevara, and like clockwork, the vile Maoist “uber radicals” are striking back because Che was “one of the most successful and inspiring revolutionaries of the last century”. All that Mel did was to “twist the language of anti-colonialism to write up an a-historical and factually incorrect hit-piece”.
By Kropotkin’s beard, it’s like reading the Barefoot Bum all over again.
I am so glad that /r/anarchism resisted the sectarianism of their particularly toxic brand of “anarchism”. Their blatant authoritarianism and rhetoric of violence was warning enough and as soon as they were repelled, they turned into “Angry Marxists”. It’s a bit funny really, I’ve been following their blog since it started out of something like a morbid fascination to see just how rabid they can become. For example:
Lemme make something clear: we like firing squads. We are down with internment camps. We think working class and oppressed people have every right to shoot their class enemies in the neck and leave them in a ditch.
Given how they have labeled almost everyone who disagrees with them as a “class oppressor” this should send shivers down your spine if they ever come even close to grabbing any sort of revolutionary power. It would be the Kronstadt Massacre all over again ((inb4 the Angry Marxists come here to tell me how it was all individualist anarchists and thus deserved to be killed)).
I also find it quite fascinating of just how quick self-proclaimed anarchists who used to agitate quite a lot in an anarchist space for a very specific moderation policy (take a guess what it would look like), would almost overnight become completely anti-anarchist, and even espouse the same old tired strawmen against anarchism. This only reinforces my concerns that this group was part of yet another entryist attempt from Marxist-Leninists. And when it failed due to its inherent authoritarianism being anathema to an anarchist community, the masks fell off and those who were just masquerading assumed their actual beliefs and displayed proudly their ignorance of what Anarchism actually is.
This is only too humorous given just how often everyone else was dismissed as “Anarchyists” because we recoiled in horror at their violent rhetoric and suggested tactics.
The firing squad comment was in response to me. I didn't expect it, and it was chilling. I understand why people use violence. There are any number of circumstances where defending self and other from harm makes sense. But, planning to murder people for the ideas they carry in their heads? When has that ever produced a better society?
Do you have an example of their authoritarianism on /r/anarchism?
What exactly are you looking for?
Authoritarian comments or even just a username before becoming "Angry Marxists".
Finding individual comments currently would be quite a task but you can check the links I have from my post about the Great /r/Anarchism ShitStorm of 2010 and you should find there comments asking for authoritarian measures or betraying an authoritarian mentality from various [deleted] profiles.
I cannot give you a username because they have all deleted their reddit personas when they left.
Btw, my latest post on this should also give you an idea.
Did Russia even have individualist anarchists?
Good question. I'm sure it had some, but I doubt the Kronstadiers were,
The only point I can offer is that Marxists ought to be basically anarchist and Leninists should be by extension, too.
The bottom line is that the above quote ("we like firing squads. We are down with internment camps. We think working class and oppressed people have every right to shoot their class enemies in the neck and leave them in a ditch.") is not applicable to Marx. It is applicable to Lenin in a limited fashion. But not to socialists at large – Chomsky has remarked that Lenin was quite possibly the greatest enemy of socialism in the 20th century, and I think he's right. Lenin probably meant good, but that makes him hardly any different from many framers of the US constitution – slave-holding capitalists, at that.
The fact is that the only real justification for authoritarian activity in the context of Marx's doctrine is the dictatorship of the proletariat. And that simply means that the community that produces value should be in control of it – similar to the idea that individuals living in a community deserve autonomy. Any antagonism against the bourgeois is only to subsume them into the class of producers, to make them productive members of society (or at least give them that opportunity).
I think that the above violent sentiments are relics of a narrative long-established that describes communists in much the same way. Though that isn't justification for the ridiculous rhetoric of violence. There is nothing authoritarian about the basic premise of communism, that is, the worker management of the work-place.
I'm not certain why you are telling me all this. You do realise that I'm an Anarchist communist, right? 🙂
Perhaps it is more for the self-described "Marxist Leninists" who conflate top-down class war with its inverse…