Kropotkin is a nice start, though if you want an introduction I think Errico Malatesta’s work is a lot better for that. The essay “Anarchy” is short for leftist standards and is very good. Also “At the cafe” is honestly an amazing introduction piece and it’s written in a regular language as socratic dialogues, so it’s perfect for starting. It even adresses a lot of counter arguments from many perspectives.

Otherwise Anarchy Works by Peter Gelderloo is also amazing.

For the standards of leftists in the USA, they’re massive.

What would be different about this revolution that would see it go right (or what examples am I missing?)

I would say there’s no way revolutions of today will go in exactly the same path as before. Remember that China’s and Russia’s revolutions happened in extermely rural, agrarian, over exploited and basically completely ruined countries. If there’s a revolution in the global north, just the difference in conditions and systems is already going to make a huge difference. But even if it happens in the global south, most of it is at least partially industrialized and not agrarian, as far as I know.

Anyway, other than that, I can’t really give you an objective, unbiased answer. I was actually the same as you a couple of years ago, actually. I had the same concerns as you. I think you would really resonate with anarchist theory, analysis and critique of past revolutions, if you’re interested in digging into it.

Enormous by socialist standards. The fact that they can have so many members in this day and age is commendable. A few decades ago any socialist thought being given an honest platform at all among the general population was a miracle.

I think you’re seriously underestimating what most young socialists believe. It is true that they don’t believe in revolution, but many of them change when they grow older and they lose faith in the system. I’m confident that will keep happening.

No, an average person in the DSA believes in wayy more than any regular social democrat. I agree that they’re not radical enough, but they’re an enormous organization of people against the status quo and so many of them genuinely care, so it’s no surprise that a huge part of current radicals are ex-DSA members.

That’s what the media has always done. It’s just that in this age it’s the easiest it’s ever been to see past red scare propaganda.

Actually socialism is more popular now than ever. Enough that mainstream media constantly writes scare articles about how socialist the young generations are.

No. Stop hoping and take the houses instead.

I guess I’ll give it a try. Thanks for being patient.

Like I said I didn’t dig very deep into the site. I searched for the anarchist community, saw that it was almost completely dead except for this one post with hundreds of comments: https://hexbear.net/post/272574 And I saw that all of the comments were belittling and/or making fun of anarchists. So I left.

Are anarchists part of the moderation team, or is it all run by MLs that are just benevolent with us like most “left unity” subreddits?

I went to the Anarchism community, which was completely inactive, except for one post with 200 comments, all of which were statists making fun of us. After that I never looked at it again.

I looked at it, it seemed mostly vanilla, had good servers, didn’t have defederation drama like lemmy.world, thought it’s cool.

I’d be open to move to a “leftist” lemmy instance, but as a staunch anarchist I’m not really compatible with lemmygrad or hexbear.

You’re the one that doesn’t want to see us. I’m more than fine with seeing you.

What I’m trying to say is, if you push rhetoric that supports and subscribes to a state’s narrative, that doesn’t change no matter how nuanced or informed you say your rhetoric is. The effects of it are the same.

You know, as a general internet arguing advice, when you have no points to make anymore, and the response you write to the other person is literally just a bunch of insults, it’s probably better to just disengage.

Labour unions are not the same as a communist party or vanguard but to claim they’re not mostly organized and consisting of socialists is just immensely naive and stupid.

Just because you redefine a narrative in Russia’s favour as “nuanced” doesn’t mean you’re now somehow not saying pretty much exactly what Russia wants you to think and say. Same for all the defenses of China and Vietnam.

Then make your own instance and turn it into a safety bubble just for you. Don’t ruin it for everyone else.

To give you the less complicated answer, communism is an economic system, not a form of government. Communism can and has been authoritarian, but it can also be libertarian or anarchistic. There’s nothing inherently authoritarian about an economy without money and without classes, based on need. It’s just the ideologies that want to (or say they want to) implement it in authoritarian ways that got to run the more famous socialist experiments. If you want to see how non-authoritarian communism worked, there are also historical examples of it, they’re just smaller and lasted less.

Answering your question - in the period where most countries that called themselves communist existed, no capitalist countries accepted trans people either. But you are a capitalist nonetheless no? Huh, I wonder why.