Reply #46: I'm sorry, but in practice in the US, socialism means getting things done.

[readmoreoften]

Anarchism means talking about getting things done. Socialist democratic centralism means you can vote and delegate authority for someone to bring the chairs to the meeting. Anarchist "anti-hierarchical decenteredness: means you have a 2 hour consensus meeting to make sure no one is oppressed or no one's opinions are hurt in the activity of bringing the chairs to the meeting.

I was at an anarchist meeting for FOUR hours last night to prepare for the occupation and all that happened was: people complained about how the general assembly organizing wasn't consensus enough, people complained about the "We are the 99%" meme (because EVERYONE is responsible for capitalism, doncha know), people complained about the occupation being a detriment to their decentered, community-building projects. Absolutely nothing was accomplished.

In the same period of time, in my region one small trotskyist socialist group got 3 unions to sign on to the Occupation. One with 100,000 members. I vote for that method.

There is no group of people more sectarian than anarchists. I went last night to try to talk to building a united front with them so that we could bring an anti-capitalist message and challenge the Ron Paulers. They refused. Even the anarchists who didn't have an anticapitalist message (businesses can be good, so long as they give back to the community!) were treated with respect while the socialists were passive-aggressively attacked. They are organizational fetishists who like to navel-gaze about meeting processes. Anarchists don't need to have a revolution because they think they ARE the revolution. And that means that all the people who aren't anarchist are the reactionary enemy.

Trotskyists were sectarian in the mid-20th century while they were scrambling to defend themselves against Stalin. There is no LESS sectarian movement on the US left than one or two of the Trot groups and one Maoist tendency I can think of (Kasama.)