/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>401287
way better than modern anarkiddies

>>401309
makhno had very little to do with how the free territory was run, and the local councils of the communes held most of the power. Only some of the communes used currency, and only fewer had the problem that you stated.
>>401444
The Bolsheviks and the anarchists weren’t allied for the entirety of the war. You realize this, right? The bolsheviks betrayed the anarchists on two occasions, leading to their alliances ending.

>>401502
>irrelevant trot paper
No thanks

>>406054
>The Bolsheviks and the anarchists weren’t allied for the entirety of the war. You realize this, right? The bolsheviks betrayed the anarchists on two occasions, leading to their alliances ending.
Wow, it's almost like the "irrelevant trot paper" (which based a solid 1/2 of its analysis off PRO-Makhno primary accounts) actually goes into detail about why these two occasions happened and you're making a fool out of yourself

>>406075
So you agree that the bolsheviks betrayed the black army multiple times, ending their alliance, and thereby justifying the black army seizing supplies from the bolsheviks to survive?

>>406090
No, because 1. Your timeline is not correct (Makhno's men stole from the Bolsheviks more or less continuously throughout their entire existence) and 2. Neither one of the incidents involved the Bolsheviks betraying Makhno. The first was actually quite the opposite (Makhno attempted an uprising against the soviets after he abandoned his post in the middle of a fucking civil war) and the second was the Bolsheviks wisely deciding that someone who has proven to be an unreliable, dangerous, and capricious man needed to be dealt with before he destroyed the whole revolution.

>>406103
forgot flag

>>406103
Can you give me sources for anything you said there?

>>406114
I gave you a fucking source you illiterate cocksucker, you called it an "irrelevant Trot paper".
Here's the order Trotsky gave during the first "betrayal" of the anarchists. As you can see, he makes explicit references to a planned congress to rise up against the Red Army and widespread desertion among Makhno's ranks. Call it unreliable if you want, but given that Makhno's men were literally holding back the White Army at the time of this order, it would have been ludicrous to make this move if the claims weren't true.

>>406155
Forgot the link: http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/trotsky/ord107.htm

>>406155
Is there a source for this congress ever took place? And if it did, who cares? Why does the actions of a few people who have no control outside of being generals warrant betraying your ally?

>>405613
>Anarchists are aware of this issue. They call "the tyranny of structurelessness
and what are the proposed solutions to this? because what I see is that many anarchists end up reinventing the state from first principles. in so doing I feel they miss a lot of ideas, for example sortition, aimed at dealing with inherent problems in states

>>406837
>what are the proposed solutions to this?
Having formal rules and procedures rather than just figuring out as you go along

>>401287
How much power did Makhno personally have in the Free Territory?

>>406866
you mean like an actual, formal bureaucracy? like that one found in say, a state? a bureaucracy where everyone knows the rules, and where misbehavior can be challenged with reference to said rules?

>>406881
Little to none. Even though Makhno did face arduous tasks where at times he was tempted, he surprisingly enough showed restraint, not to mention that even if he wanted to, the structure of the free territory prevented him from ruling it in a thoroughly centralised manner.

""This council embraced the whole free region. It was supposed to carry out all the economic, political, social and military decisions made at the congress. It was thus, in a certain sense, the supreme executive of the whole movement. But it was not at all an authoritarian organ. Only strictly executive functions were assigned to it. It confined itself to carrying out the instructions and decisions of the congress. At any moment, it could be dissolved by the congress and cease to exist." [Op. Cit., p. 577]"

http://nestormakhno.info/english/makfaq/h_6_5.htm

As far as control went, the man was one of the leaders of the black army, not some sort of warlord who ruled over the ukraine. Considering the black army would shoot anyone who abused their power over the people (from them executing pogromists, rapists) and were answerable to the people, Makhno himself had little control over the free territory itself.

I would also recommend reading this to.
https://libcom.org/files/NestorMakhnoAnarchysCossack.pdf

>>406919
>if you form an organisation you create a state, anarkiddies BTFO
Anarchists, unless we're talking posties, don't oppose the idea of delegation. If you have the time, watch this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYiK55UxQrA&t=761s

>>406881
enough to have a constant rape train going
<More disturbing was Makhno’s treatment of women. According to Voline, Makhno and his commanders would hold drunken parties that turned into “orgies in which certain women were forced to participate.”
https://www.isreview.org/issues/53/makhno.shtml

>>407034
That boy t h i c k

How'd he get that scar?

>>407023
Voline had a falling out with Makhno and used that to slander him.

Voline's allegations against Makhno in regards to sexual violations of women have been disputed that the evidence was unsubstantiated and due to eyewitness accounts of the punishment meted out to rapists by the Makhnovists, and were originally made by Voline in his book The Unknown Revolution which was first published in 1947, long after Makhno's death and following a bitter falling-out between Makhno and Voline. Voline and Makhno fell out due to Kuzmenko and Voline having an affair, which is later corroborated by Ida Mett after Makhno had died in Paris.

>>407039
Some argue he got it from his wife, others say he got it via bullet wound. As mentioned here >>401332

>>407014
>Anarchists, unless we're talking posties, don't oppose the idea of delegation
then wtf is the problem? do anarchists think that ML states literally decide everything centrally? that there is no delegation? I mean I'm quite critical of the lack of democracy in ML parties, which seems to breed corruption as I have already noted. term limits and sortition are ways of dealing with that. but it's not like anarchist orgs aren't immune to that shit either. arguably they're more vulnerable to it, what with their tendency to be fine with things so long as they put the right label on them and the right clique is in charge. this I have seen first-hand

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYiK55UxQrA&t=761s
I'm on shitty phone internet at the moment, but I'll try to give it a watch when I'm back in civilization

>>405732
most of the critics are legit though, even if theres the usual banter on top too

>>401287
He killed some people I dislike

>>407054
>then wtf is the problem?
Ask them. Personally it was because more or less the reasons you list in the comments that i stopped being an anarchist, mostly due to criticism of Marxism Leninism being either very specific to the soviet union or forgetting that the soviets (under stalin no less) did try to democratise itself.

>do anarchists think that ML states literally decide everything centrally? that there is no delegation? I mean I'm quite critical of the lack of democracy in ML parties, which seems to breed corruption as I have already noted. term limits and sortition are ways of dealing with that.
Again, should probably ask them. I very much doubt this is the case, but but you can't deny with increased power of the vanguard, and the neglect of popular democratic vote to have the soviet union maintain itself (with the gov choosing to dissolve it) was in part to its centralised governance.

>but it's not like anarchist orgs aren't immune to that shit either. arguably they're more vulnerable to it, what with their tendency to be fine with things so long as they put the right label on them and the right clique is in charge.

How? Even Kropotkin argued the reason he adopted a decentralised form of governance wasn't because he believed in the best in humanity- quite the opposite. He advocated for it in the sense to mitigate it.

>this I have seen first-hand.
Yeah and I've seen MLs actively purge dissent, consolidate power and act hyper secretarian all the while brushing aside legitimate criticism? See? I can call a tendency bad based on my own annecdotal experiences too.

>>406090
lmao, no wonder theres an anti anarkiddo bias
'why is my generals being unreliable fucks in a war and my org not being able to enforce a coherent strategy and diplomacy caused the ally we're stealing from and plotting against to turn on us?'
get real. the bolcheviks prolly were not fond of them anyway and would have turned against them eventually, which is shitty from them, but they also had good reason for it.

>>407063
>Again, should probably ask them. I very much doubt this is the case, but but you can't deny with increased power of the vanguard, and the neglect of popular democratic vote to have the soviet union maintain itself (with the gov choosing to dissolve it) was in part to its centralised governance.
see, this is an actually useful argument. I've read elsewhere that a big problem was that the peasantry was very poorly represented, with party membership mostly being drawn from middle management

>Yeah and I've seen MLs actively purge dissent, consolidate power and act hyper secretarian all the while brushing aside legitimate criticism? See? I can call a tendency bad based on my own annecdotal experiences too.
fair enough

>>407012
>entire territory literally named after the dude
>"he actually didn't have any power over it"
press x to doubt

>>407584
Damn, I didn’t know his name was Nestor Free Territory of Ukraine

>>407590
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makhnovshchina
Dude, you're embarrassing yourself with your willful ignorance. The "Free Territory" is a posthumous title, given to it by anarchists, that literally none of the contemporary people involved ever called it.

>>407602

The Free Territory wasn't called Makhnovshchina either.

>>407625
No, but the Black Army was named after Makhno and people in that time would be much more likely to know what the fuck you were talking about if you called it Makhnovshchina instead of the Free Territory.

>>404799

Oh I def. agree. It was a reference to a /leftypol/ meme video.

I just find it very amusing that communists, when defending to the USSR, can reference literally hundreds of primary sources from neutral third parties observing the advantages of the system, while anarchists literally only cite Makhno's best friends and pamphlets written by Makhno's army when defending the dude.
Seriously, look at the references from this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Insurrectionary_Army_of_Ukraine

Literally every single one is written by people so biased that they shouldn't even be considered reliable sources.

>>407629
Well ofc people would know that name better, since it was the name given by the bolcheviks, added by the fact Makhno was a semi-legendary figure during the civil war.

>>407641
t. thinks grover furr is a neutral third party

>>407641
Might have something to do with Makhno slaughtering anybody who said otherwise, unlike the Bolsheviks

>>407641
Let put aside you thinking the marxists-leninists don't carefully chose their "neutral" sources sources, and the way to read it. Maybe it is the fact the USSR lasted for nearly a century, is one of the most controversial and studied field in contempornary history, whereas Anarchist Ukraine was like 3 years during a civil war, with a almost mythical status over it and complete silencing of direct sources during the Soviet time. The things written against Makhno are as biaised as his defenders.

>>407649
Grover Furr is a little too harsh on the USSR tbh.

>>407649
I'm not referencing Grover Furr. Did you know Kropotkin had positive views on the USSR shortly before he died?
>>407658
I can't confirm or deny this.
>>407659
I agree with you, which is why I think anarchists need to stop worshiping the territory, because the fact of the matter is we have no reliable idea of what it was actually like to live there. Makhno's claims that it was a stateless wonderland and the Bolshevik claims that it was a warlord hellhole are equally valid because there is no third party verification one way or the other. It's literally he said, she said.

>>407629
Damn I didn’t know his name was Nestor Black Army

>>407668
Did you know Kropotkin had positive views on the German Empire shortly before he died? The bread book was pretty good, but after that it all went downhill fast.

>>407649
Grover Furr is bullet proof though. Hes always clear where he is "hypothesising", he provides clear references that have always checked out and he states his persuasion (that hes a communist) but insists he tries his best to stay neutral

And regarding his references he ALWAYS provides an English translation on the same page of what hes discussing so you dont have to dig through some obscure archive to find out that the Ukrainian source used was obscure Ukrainian nazi collaborators who republished a translation of a Nazi newspaper.
Or some obscure journal in Polish that actually doesnt say what is claimed or ignores the previous passage which invalidates the implied claim etc.

Tactics Western 'historians' do literally all the time

Whenever anyone posts a " rebuttle" of Furr its usually that schizo post on /r/armchair historians or that trot page which makes zero fucking sense and ignores all the discoveries of the 80s onward
And i say that as someone who first read Furr actively thinking the dude was a complete crank

Its why theres no takedown of Furr
How hard would it be for a historian to do a take down of Furr like Taugar did of Anne Applebaum where he goes through her footnotes and just calls her a straight up liar again and again
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/169438

>>407668
I believe the Bolsheviks in part because they’re historically trustworthy, but mostly because anarchists can easily be observed as barely functioning babies so it’s pretty easy to believe the Free Territory turned into bandit hell

>>407054
>do anarchists think that ML states literally decide everything centrally?
No. And deciding things centrally isn't the problem. The problem is of accountability and responsiveness to the public. If the public can recall officials and reverse their decisions then the "authority" is with the people. The issue arises when there are things that are out of the people's control for one reason or another and cynical people or groups are able to use that to leverage more power for themselves. This can be a problem at a national or a local level, although the higher up the chain it goes the harder it is for the people to combat usually given the scale.

>>407063
>but you can't deny with increased power of the vanguard, and the neglect of popular democratic vote to have the soviet union maintain itself (with the gov choosing to dissolve it) was in part to its centralised governance.
Exactly this. The fall of the USSR was one of the greatest tragedies in world history and it wouldn't have happened if it had organized things in a more anarchic way. Shit's not black and white. The more power the people have the better it is, and if the USSR really wanted to live up to the "state withering away" they should have done the opposite of this and "de-centralized" or rather distributed more and more political power to the people. Of course, the reason they didn't do this isn't a moral or ideological one but a material one, since it's in the nature of a state to cling to power and try to accumulate it. There's also the factor of competition with the west, but I don't believe that empowering Soviet citizens would have weakened the USSR in that way, especially after decades of developing the political project. If there's a time where the "you need authoritarian power to not get destroyed" applies, it's going to be in the earlier and more perilous periods. The problem is that over time having a system where a minority of people have concentrated power it will attract (or produce) people who will exploit that power for their own gain. It's not guaranteed to be ruinous but the longer that situation persists the greater the chances of your project backsliding toward a system where a minority of people decide what happens based on material interests that are at odds with those of the majority, a de facto class system. State apparatuses exist to reinforce and reproduce class and if you keep them around that's exactly what they'll do.

>>407735
>If the public can recall officials and reverse their decisions then the "authority" is with the people
based and democracy pilled. this is why I say anarchists have useful critiques

>>401287
He literally was a bandit lord. Anarchists upholding him for any reason is extremely cringe