Original title (which I find a bit too click-baity):
Socialism: Let’s Not Resuscitate the Worst Mistake of the 20th Century
This is a strong refutation of the argument that social democracy always works and that all social democrats are good people.
Social democracy is a dead end. Where the left in power won serious gains like in Venezuela, Bolovia, or Brazil, they did so not under the banner of social democracy. And even in these countries, the left in power eventually developed a class consciousness diametrically opposed to the socialism of the streets and eventually betrayed their mass bases. In Bolivia and Brazil, where reaction was particularly harsh, the harshness of the reaction made people forget the failings of state socialism and tried again. I will continue to watch these dynamics play again and again and again for as long as I live. This is the folly of state socialism, whether social democratic or otherwise.
Also, please respect that this space is anarchist. There are other communities on this site that aren’t.
The Brazilian social democratic reforms were sufficiently well-embedded that, even when the people made the mistake of electing an authoritarian right government, that government wasn’t able to remove them. The organised working class in Brazil was than powerful enough to remove the authoritarians even in the face of voter suppression. The system in fact worked as intended (unsually for Brazil!) and the Brazilian people are benefiting once again.
By contrast, the record of anarchists is… what? A handful of temporary governments during civil wars, which anarchists can’t even agree were actually anarchist?
I didn’t think anarchists were oppose to having discussions. I don’t think you’re representative of anarchists in that regard.
Anarchists usually participate in a lot of grassroots movements, which put pressure on the state to benefit oppressed groups through reformism. So they too have an impact here, they just have a much more ambitious project that is extremely hard to create in a current world situation, but they are actively improving the lives of oppressed people.
I’m not opposed to having discussions, I’m opposed to you using this space to push authoritarian ideas.
The fact of the matter is that elections alienate people from agency and the ballot boxes represent mere images of agency. People voted in fascism in Brazil because it gave them that image of power that denied them true agency. They voted for PT again on the same grounds. These are the same dynamics I observed in the Philippines.
Anarchists don’t oppose the ballot box on the basis of its effectivity in gaining reforms but rather on the basis of the alienation it represents. Anarchists who argue to vote argue so on the basis that this alienated agency is easier to mobilize in the short run, not because it is inherently anarchist to vote. It’s only easier to mobilize votes precisely based on the same alienation that characterizes the alienation of electoral politics.
The record of anarchism is obviously not measured in taking state power because that’s the exact opposite of anarchy. Meanwhile social democracy will always run risk of turning neoliberal or fascist as it has in Bolivia and Brazil, if even reluctantly neoliberal. Anarchism opposes this fight for an image of agency that voters must contest over and smash this edifice of bourgeois democracy altogether.
Just recently, your beloved state socialists in Chile under Boric are resuming the colonial war on the Mapuche. All while under the continuing guise of socialism. The same happened in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Brazil. I will watch it happen again in Brazil.
