Left unity has its place, so don’t take this as me trying to pit anarchists and socialists against each other. I know the political compass is reductive. However,
I think one reason anarchists and socialists (or for simplicity, let’s say statists and anti-statists) are mostly better off working in parallel but separate tracks and collaborating only when their interests align is because they have fundamentally different approaches to organizing and solving problems. Statists work top down, and anti-statists work bottom up.
Either approach is capable of creating leftist community, but my (biased) opinion is that the anti-statist approach is more resilient, more flexible, and less susceptible to co-optation or abuse of power. The tradeoff is that it’s sometimes slower, but this is mitigated by anti-statist focus on the local community level. It may take years to turn a whole country leftist, but it may only take weeks or months to start the beginnings of a commune or an integrated community organization in your neighborhood.
I used to be disappointed that anti-statist and more specifically anarchists didn’t seem to have centralized “orgs” like the DSA for statists, where you could join a working group for any number of issues. But I realized that those working groups were usually attempts to rally around getting the current state system to change its policies. Even more militant statist communists and socialists tend to favor the idea of simply replacing the existing state with a new one that does what leftists want. Meanwhile, most of the anti-statist leftist organizing I’ve seen tends to be very centered around meeting unmet needs around particular issues, often within the context of a particular locale. This means that it’s possible to advocate for state change and do anarchist organizing at the same time. It means one doesn’t have to wait for the government to do the right thing, one can go out and begin to do the right thing oneself, with the help of one’s community. It also means one doesn’t have to wait for the state to become leftist, as in the case of militant statists.
Now, certainly anarchists can also put pressure on the current state to make positive changes, even as we reject its ontological validity as the Tool of Change par excellence. But I wonder if some of the paralysis felt by many young would-be leftists (myself included) is there because we’re used to seeing the statist approach to change reflected in most media. Liberalism says that the state is the only valid mechanism for change, meanwhile statist groups across the political spectrum from fascists to communists* reject the current liberal state but uphold and reify state mechanisms as valid. In short, if you don’t have the supplies and troops to field a revolution, you’re basically stuck. We can’t find a revolutionary org or militia to join, so we end up feeling ineffective.
But the grassroots, anti-statist approach may be as simple as asking, “What does my next door neighbor need?” “What do the people on my block need?” “How about the people in my church, synagogue, mosque, or temple?” In meeting any of these needs, we may encounter resistance from the state, and that is the time to practice our own resistance, either forceful or peaceful. The more people we bring together to fill unmet needs, the bigger the anti-state community grows.
This also allows people to get involved in causes they feel more affinity towards or are more equipped to support, without pitting those causes against each other. A community needs all kinds of different people filling different roles.
I am still learning how to do this in my own life and community. There are many tools from all different kinds of leftists that are useful, and certainly where statist groups converge on meeting a need anti-statist groups want to meet there can be collaboration. We can demand that our elected officials keep their promises *and* get our neighbors together to help each other. But I think we need to reject liberal state reform vs statist revolution as a false choice. Because the revolution, rather like the Kingdom of God, is within you. Within each of us. And it’s already breaking into our midst
*This is not to say that fascists and communists are remotely comparable in their political platform. Just that statism is a tool used across the entire spectrum by various groups. Also this is not to say that all communists are statists.
