Leninism is based on naive idealism; a completely unsubstantiated belief that power, in the hands of an ideological elite, can be wielded in the interests of the masses. It was refuted before implementation and has now failed the test in 100% of all cases it was applied to.

Leninist idealism requires you to believe that power and hierarchy are neutral concepts and that they have no inherent linkage to exploitation, but instead that hierarchies of power just need to be organized ideologically, a decidedly UN-materialist assessment.

If I am going to psychologize the Leninist, I think they choose their ideology because they are tired of feeling powerless, tired of feeling like they're on the losing team. Instead of admitting we are still at square one, they convince themselves we are slowly winning

They want to be able to point to some smashing success story, to some powerful project which vindicates their vision. So desperate for this, they ignore any ideological betrayal, they make any excuse, anything to avoid that feeling of powerlessness.

I empathize with this, truly. It is a hard pill to swallow that we have not yet waged the model socialist revolution, anarchist or authoritarian. As Debord said: “the bourgeoisie is the only revolutionary class that ever won.”

But if we are ever going to wage a successful revolution of the global proletariat, it requires our recognition of these hard truths. The anarchists I meet are ready to own up to the failures of the last century. It is time for the statists to sober up.

Judging from this thread, they are not ready to sober up. They are fucking HAMMERED on their own mythology: https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/1248728086834601984