This is getting into the weeds and that’s never good, let’s give a pivot to theory a try.

We do not think that “tyranny is good”: we think that the state is needed for a revolutionary project to survive as much as it is its fate to disappear as class contradictions do too.

The revolutionary idea started in the bourgeois state. How can it not be present under bourgeois rule? The disaffected will be discontent, and they will look to solutions. Some will be impatient actionists and be quickly shored up or be otherwise ineffective, others will eternally look to analysis and be equally ineffective – in the present moment, that is, not necessarily down the line, when their analysis bears fruit. Strings will be picked up, weaved into new tapestries, tricks that once worked to distract people from their nature and self-interest no longer hold any power. The antithesis co-evolves with the thesis and thus does the sublation. (That may not technically be Hegelian dialectics but you get my drift).

There is a way for the powers that be to halt the evolution of revolutionary thought: By imposing tyranny, not to stop disaffection, but to cut off transmission that enables one to think thoughts greater than oneself because one is standing on the shoulders of others, to arrest the antithesis at a stage not able to even properly conceptualise the thesis. But, and here’s the kicker: Capitalism can’t afford to do that, much less liberal capitalist democracies. Tyranny depresses the human spirit, you end up with serfs not able to contribute to capital accumulation as their surplus value addition stagnates, stays at a level fixed to the scraps you feed, mere machines, not creative minds.

That is the ultimate contradiction of capitalism: That it invariably breeds its own antithesis.

Scene change: North Korea. Now I don’t know what you believe happens down there but from what I know ever since Corona hit the country has been on a complete and utter lockdown, people can’t even smuggle drugs and food over the Chinese border, any more. It is tyranny in its final stage as the people choose between starving and being executed for trying to survive. It is the literal death-drive of society, Thanatos become flesh and force. Will the revolution come out of that place? Well, shit’s going to come to a point in one form or another at some soonish point, but it’s not the deliverance we’re speaking about we’re rather talking about mass-psychology driving people to run into machine gun nests in an attempt to rip Kim Jong Un’s head off. Be they successful or not, we either end up with a tyrant without serfs, or serfs with no idea where to go from where they are. At that point any theory you could come up with to explain things will be moot, it’s all pure instinct, raw human nature, all territory, no maps to be seen anywhere.

That is what happens when you try to arrest the revolution by imposing doctrine.

All Anarchism is necessarily gradualist, and not because we didn’t prefer things to go faster: But because we understand that you cannot create the ultimate socio-psychological form of Anarchism – everyone being bright eyed and bushy-tailed, for lack of more precise language, constantly reinforcing that in their neighbours by acts of understanding and kindness – by imposing strictures. People, first individually then as smaller groups then larger groups, have to understand that that’s what they want, that it’s a possibility, that it’s their birthright, and develop the skills to foster it. “Do or else” doesn’t stand a chance. Even less “thou shalt say to others: Do or else”.

So excuse me if I’m not particularly impressed by tales of past or present-day Anarchist projects falling short of perfection (and yes the Zapatists are Anarchists from a western analytical lens which they don’t share or at least give special status to, hence their non-identification): We’re not yet there. Those places happened because the right people fought straight tyranny at the right moment and gave people hope and a vision – but imperfect people. Who listen to what the revolutionaries have to say because they’re meeting you on eye level, without grand illusions of having the answer to everything. They tell you about equality of the sexes, you tell them about the tree spirit. Both learn. This is how societies progress.

In other places we don’t have straight-up tyranny. We can talk, we can exchange, we can be creative and race shoulder to shoulder, if not even a bit ahead of the thesis, in theory and praxis. And that’s all that’s necessary, that’s all it’s about. To quote Kerry Thornley: “Universal Enlightenment a prerequisite to abolition of the State, after which the State will inevitably vanish. Or – that failing – nobody will give a damn”.

And now comes the question: Would you rather bide your time in a non-ideal but definitely liveable liberal democracy, or pedal backwards, either participating in or overseeing the suffering of your compatriots? Be one of the actionists? Oh and have some maths proving I’m right not just on the political, sociological, or even psychological level, but the physical. Among other things trying to engineer the “perfect system for humanity” you run into the problem that you can’t be a good regulator of a system without being a model of said system, and modelling everything germane is infeasible. Universe isn’t large enough to contain the computer necessary. Presuming you know the ultimate face of the revolution, that you won’t have to co-create it with everyone, that there is nothing more for you to learn, is sheer hubris.