"Authoritarian" as is commonly used often conflates people trying to abolish class domination with those working to uphold it. It flattens very different forms of power by treating coercion that arises in a revolutionary context, where entrenched elites are unlikely to give up their position voluntarily, as equivalent to the everyday normalized coercion that sustains capitalist rule.

Liberal democracies enforce property relations through police, courts, and prisons, yet this use of authority is typically treated as neutral or simply how society works. Challenges to that order are then singled out as specifically authoritarian.

Framing politics around "authoritarian versus anti-authoritarian" also allows capitalist domination in general to pass as freedom while collapsing the entire radical left into a caricature, for example by dismissing it all as "tankie."

As an anarchist, I want to see class society abolished altogether, not endlessly managed or reformed. Every social order exercises authority, the real question is whose interests are being served by that authority.

We break capitalist domination by expanding consciousness that both liberal capitalism and state capitalism are authoritarian systems that rob the working class.

Every state generates a class antagonism. Every state protects its oppression by a narrative about the ruling class serving the interests of the working class.

A distinction may be found between those whose power is justified by an intention to abolish class versus those relying on other justifications of power, but all are incapable of delivering liberation. A people may be liberated only by rejecting the narrative. The distinction ultimately is superficial. Once authoritarian communists consolidate power, they dismantle every current in society that is authentically liberatory, because they cannot endure the challenge.

I agree that all states reproduce domination and justify it through ideology, but framing liberation primarily as a matter of expanding consciousness is overly deterministic in its own way.

Capitalist domination is enforced through material institutions that constrain people regardless of what they believe. Rejecting the narrative is necessary I don't think it's sufficient to actually end the system.

Treating all authority as equivalent, or differences as superficial, flattens real differences in how power is exercised and contested. It does so without meaningfully explaining how domination is actually dismantled.

Communist governments will often suppress liberatory currents, that outcome follows from centralized power reproducing itself. However, that is also contextualized by capitalist governments attempting to undermine them. There's not some inevitable law that makes all revolutionary struggle collapse into the same form, which is what the'authoritarian vs anti-authoritarian' lens implies.

Overemphasizing the distinction among different justifications of power plays into the myth that certain consolidations of power are a path toward liberation. We should critically examine the differences while also remaining aware of the commonalities.

Ultimately, rejection of all authority is essential, even if not sufficient, for emancipation. Thus, it is constructive to propagate the understanding that authoritarian leftism is in many ways quite similar to rightism.

Saying authoritarian leftism is 'quite similar' to rightism collapses historically and materially different projects into a moral equivalence that explains very little about how power is produced, resisted or dismantled.

Rejecting all authority is an essential commitment that we do agree on. However, if that rejection erases distinctions in context, structure and antagonism then it becomes less a tool for emancipation and more a shorthand that discourages serious analysis of how domination actually operates and how it might be undone.

Everyone cannot read a treatise on every subject.

We need simple devices to break through entrenched misconceptions.

Such devices complement, not replace, properly nuanced discourse.

We seem to agree generally on the concepts, but for some reason you seem to be objecting, through the use of quote mining.

I quoted the last sentence of your last response because I disagreed with it, and gave the reasons for why in my response. I don't think simplifying things in the way that you are is either constructive or complementing nuanced discourse.

I don't see how that's quote mining.

I acknowledge differences as well as commonalities, yet you select one particular facet of my explanation to insist I am "collaps[ing]… different projects".

The situation we face is that much of the public believes leftism to be inherently authoritarian. The proposed "stethoscope" diagram is effective in separating the authoritarian versus anti-authoritarian left, keeping the latter close to rightism but not fully merged.

Breaking through the prevailing misconceptions requires us to emphasize specific relationships while keeping others as less prominent. We are not abandoning proper theory, only adopting messaging appropriate for the current circumstances.

I’m not interested in sorting leftists into 'good' and 'bad' categories for public consumption because that approach accepts the premise that left politics must earn legitimacy by distancing itself from its own radicals.

Even as purely a messaging exercise, this reinforces the idea that domination is a matter of posture rather than structure. That orientation leads the public to see liberation as a branding/mental exercise instead of a material struggle.

That type of approach narrows what kinds of opposition to capitalism can even be imagined as legitimate.

I feel your pure motives are in tension with practical constraints.

Messaging achieves efficacy through simplification. We pick the most important priorities, while still maintaining more rigorous discourse for anyone specifically able to engage more deeply. As movements evolve, and public consciousness develops, we find newer priorities, perhaps ones more favorable generally.

Being overly earnest in seeking a pure form of communication simply keeps the larger mass alienated that we rather need to be participants.

Regardless, state capitalism is not any kind of opposition to capitalism. We certainly should exclude opposition that is not meaningful.

...I'd prefer a single payer system where no one went without. Broke my nose while living in the UK and was impressed with their no bullshit system.

you can have democratic socialism of many flavors without going full on communism, and you'll never get to communism from here, abjectly shittified capitalism. I'd prefer denmark over...well, where has communism worked?

Like, I respect the medical professionals Cuba produces but would never want to live there.

You're advocating for the "lesser evil" option without having a basic understanding of leftist ideology. It's still capitalism, it's still a terrible right winger framework.

I think you replied to me twice with the same comment:

What is the practical constraint?

I already said I dont think there's value in approaching this as a messaging campaign. I also don't see how this would be an important priority.

I don't understand what you're trying to convey by saying this is a 'pure form of communication'. I think that this is a material struggle and trying to approach it like a marketing campaign is not constructive, it also reproduces liberal assumptions about power by treating domination as a matter of style rather than structure.

Regardless, state capitalism is not any kind of opposition to capitalism. We certainly should exclude opposition that is not meaningful.

I don’t think wholesale denunciation of past revolutionary movements in the name of consciousness-raising is useful. It turns complex, material struggles into symbols of what not to be, tailored for acceptability rather than understanding. That kind of simplification doesn’t challenge domination, it reassures people that nothing more disruptive need be imagined.

you didn't answer the question at all. call it whatever you want, I'd rather have something that I can see working - than something that I've never seen work. Unfettered capitalism is cancer, sure. But that's not exclusive to capitalism - government without restraints usually is miserable - see the USSR.

if you can show me communism working I'm down to learn new things; but you can't point at liberal social democracies and say "that's still in the terrible right winger framework" when it's functioning far better than the US or the communist countries I've seen.

Another data point would be great, but from my POV all I can see is left---(social democracies)---center-----right (capitalist fascism)

note there's no (communist society) on that spectrum.

The reality is that our movements may only succeed through expanding participation and improving unity.

Messaging plays a vital role in our movements developing along such a successful course, messaging that is accessible and straightforward even at the cost of completeness.

I doubt you will find a historical example to contrary, but it seems that on the particular matter we are simply in disagreement.

I don’t disagree that expanding participation and unity matters. I don't see that specific type of messaging as constructive to that end.

Most mass movements that achieved real gains did so by forcing confrontation with material conditions, not by first correcting public misconceptions. Simplified messaging tends to follow success rather than generate it.

Also that simplification isn't exactly neutral, it shapes how people understand power, struggle, and possibility. Messaging that gains accessibility by adopting liberal moral frames around 'authoritarianism' may broaden appeal in the short term, but it does so by narrowing the horizon of what opposition to capitalism can look like.

That tradeoff isn’t just about completeness, it’s about whether unity is built around confronting material structures of domination or around reassuring people that nothing too disruptive is required. I think we’re simply at different conclusions.

I appreciate the conversation, even if we don’t agree.

I stand by my assertion that accessible and straightforward messaging is essential, even while not sufffient, for movements to succeed, and that some simplification becomes inevitable.

I understand you disagree.

Regardless, criticism of authority is fundamental and unique to leftism. It is not "liberal moral frames".

I don’t deny the need for accessibility or simplification. I’m questioning whether centering 'authoritarianism' is a neutral simplification, rather than one that imports liberal assumptions about power and legitimacy.

Critiquing authority is central to anarchism precisely because liberalism already critiques some authorities while normalizing others. That distinction tends to get blurred when domination is understood more in moral terms than in structural ones.

Criticism of authority is central to anarchism because anarchism entails opposition to authority. Liberalism is incidental.

The anarchist criticism of authority is that it cannot occur except by coercion and deceit, and always produces exploitation and oppression.

All along I have been using the language "authoritarian leftism". I am at a loss to imagine how anyone would think I am referring to other than leftism. We clearly have authoritarian leftism, anti-authoritarian leftism, and liberalism, as three distinct orientations.

My argument was that the framing reproduces liberal ways of evaluating power, even when applied internally to the left.

My point isn’t that anarchism borrows its opposition to authority from liberalism, but rather that liberalism is relevant because it shapes the dominant criteria by which authority is judged, even within left and anarchist discourse.

You seem very certain that there's three distinct orientations. I’m not convinced those are discrete or stable categories in practice, rather than overlapping tendencies that emerge differently under specific material conditions.

What does this three-part distinction explain that a structural analysis of power doesn’t?